Oh, The Humanity; or, An Unexpected Link Between South Texas and PETA

Saturday mornings, over lattes and bagels and cinnamon buns and the newspaper, we like to listen to "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me", the NPR news-quiz show which frequently reports anecdotes that highlight people being entertainingly weird, which is a nicer way of calling them bats**t crazy.

Perhaps I'm not being fair. Bats**t is not crazy, but a natural product of a normal bodily function to expel waste. It is perfectly sane compared to the following two examples I heard today:

1) In Kleburg County, Texas--of course it would be Texas--in 1997, some guy got the county to approve and the voters to pass a resolution encouraging replacing 'hello' with 'heaveno'.

I don't know if further commentary is necessary. When you look at the guy's website, he compares himself with Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Edison.

Perhaps people are just really, really bored in Texas, or maybe they are looking for a random, ridiculous hook for the tourism industry.

This actually seems to be getting a lot of coverage on the message boards. I can't help but wonder if this is some sort of hoax.

There are even people coming forward to dispute the guy's claim of coining the phrase. Apparently, if they saw a car wreck, they would want to join in the fun, just for the attention.

2) Apparently PETA has a problem with Pike's Place Fish Market's tradition of flinging fish. In protesting a demonstration to be given at a veterinarian's convention, PETA says the tradition by which workers at the market move fish from the displays to the counter is disrespectful.

PETA is defending the rights of fish . . . that are dead.

Don't get me wrong; 95% of the time I am in accord with PETA's campaigns. I was appalled as anyone by Michael Vick, and I do not want to see him reinstated to the NFL. But sometimes, I think PETA puts blinders on, and they go beyond the pale, making unfortunate claims that damage their credibility.

"Killing animals so you can toss their bodies around for amusement is just twisted," said a senior campaigner for PETA in an article in the LA Times. True, but . . . these are fish we're talking about. They were not killed just to be tossed around for amusement. They were killed to be sold at market. They were sold at market to be eaten as food. Grizzly bears do it. Wolves do it.

Is there an element of showmanship to the fish-tossing in the market? Absolutely. It's a cultural thing, too. It's something that excites people. There is an element of entertainment, yes, but PETA, please, don't be ridiculous. Pick and wage your battles a little more rationally.

Okay, so maybe it is closer to 87% of the time that I am supportive of PETA.

Oh, the humanity of it all.

It is kind of funny, though, too.

Slices of San Francisco, From Recession to Absolutely Fabulous

I.

A spectacled young black man in a bulky jacket and neatly trimmed beard sits down next to me on the 49 Line.

"3 bucks for the whole bag," he announces.

"What?"

He lifts a grocery bag from the floor, sets it down between us.

"All this," opening the bag to reveal a cornucopia of potato chips and Hostess pies,"for only three dollars."

"Oh, no thanks. Don't need it."

"You sure? Okay." He turns away, moves the bag into the aisle, turns to the old bearded ex-hippie with the beret and the long beard.

"What have you got in there? Magic?" The hippie laughs, savoring the sound of the crinkle of the cellophane bags.

They fall to talking about growing up in the city, and the young black man, Nate, tells the old bushy-bearded bohemian about his temporary job, cleaning buses.

"You mean cleaning off this poetry?" he gestures at the scrawling tags of graffiti on the floor and the back of the seat

"Yup, and scrubbing the metal, peeling off the address labels."

A block on, Nate disembarks after asking for the nearest liquor store.

"What a beautiful child," the old man muses.

II.

Say what you will about recessions and economic woes in general: they do bring out the resourcefulness of the individual.

In addition to the story of Nate, the Public Transit Peddler of Junk Food--have to wonder where he got that and why he was selling it for $3--I have within the last five hours witnessed the following:

1) on the platform of the Civic Center Bart Station, a homeless man wearing a rust-colored jacket almost bigger than his body trying to sell a sealed FedEx package that he acquired somehow, somewhere, presumably illegally, to other passengers;

2) a wiry-haired gentleman in worn-out coat like a khaki army blanket and well-cared-for glasses asking for help for food in light of the economy and the historical re-occurrence of the rich exploiting the poor;

3) a young lady in newsie hat, denim jeans and jacket and scarf swiping a hunk of food off an abandoned plate on an outdoor table at Boogaloo's on Valencia.

I also heard a pedestrian telling his companions how he had just sold a van to a 50 year old man who was planning on overhauling it as a place to sleep. Shelter is shelter, and it is a pretty simple concept at its heart.

III.

In further news, I saw an office on Valencia that seems to be offering Confidential Marriages. I'm not sure what this would entail, but I like the connotations, which seem to harken to the jazz/noir age.

I also saw a poster advertising the California Lottery on a Muni shelter, written in Spanish, but I think it was saying, "If $27 million is muchmuchmuchmuchmuch money, is $12 million muchmuchmuch money? It's still plenty." The implication being, why wait for the jackpot to grow larger? Play the lottery now!

IV.

Riding the 24 Line last night, I saw a posse of five young people, three boys and two girls, all primped to look older than they were, disembarking from the bus, with talks of parties in high-pitched voices of excitement. The girls were also talking excitedly.

After the doors slid shut with a hiss, a cadre of four hip older kids, three latinos and one blonde woman, discussed the probability of the previous group being 18 or older. "And the girls probably think those guys are straight," they added.

A few minutes later, they started talking about which Absolutely Fabulous characters they would be. The guy in the baseball hat leaning against the blonde's chest said, "I would be Patsy, I think. No, wait, I'd be Edina."