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Nice, quiet weekend. Hung out with mslulu and Mike, without the cacophany of others -- as much as I love my friends, I needed a weekend away from most of them. Sometimes balancing all of their needs and pecadilloes gets too difficult, and I need quiet. This was one of those times.

Finally saw The Bourne Identity. Good, though not excellent. Nice cast, well-paced. Mike picked up Eight Legged Freaks, but we haven't watched it yet.

Buffy was on last night here, since it had been preempted by Basketball last Tuesday. Very nice, especially Xander's conversation with Dawn at the end. Made me think about their futures for a bit. At the end of the day, Xander is the chronicler, the one who sees it all clearly, who knows the secrets Buffy, Willow, and the rest never mention. I find myself thinking he's perfect to re-form (and reform) the Watchers. I wonder if Joss will go there . . .

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TO: The rest of the planet

I apologize for the coming conflagration that will likely be released by an idiot of a President who obviously has his own agenda, which apparently has nothing to do with facts.

What can I say, he's a monkey.

- Michael

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*SNORT*

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I wonder how many people have been fooled by those pop-up ads that scream "You've WON our hourly contest!"?

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I've decided to be responsible, tax moneys are going to be used to update my WAY overdue registration before my luck runs out, and to renew my insurance.

If anything's left over after that, THEN I'll play.

Hmm. I need the "Once More, With Feeling" soundtrack.

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While I could not care less about the Super Bowl if I'd been born deep in the Amazon Basin and never even heard of it, I am glad the Bucs won. Why? Because I'm a San Franciscan.

See, we have a joke about that ugly city on the other side of the bay (Oakland, for those who know nothing about California's geography), originated by Herb Caen, a beloved San Francisco Chronicle columnist until his death a few years back:

Q: Why does Oakland exist?
A: The Bay Bridge had to end somewhere.

San Franciscans hate Oakland (Well, I'm sure that some of us are stinky traitors who love Oakland, but they don't count). And even though I'm currently living in exile from my fair city, I still call it home.

So congratulations, Buccaneers. And thanks for trouncing those bastards for us.

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What is San Francisco? - A column from 1940. The times and the landscape have changed, but this column is still right.

I'm homesick. I miss the steel canyons and ocean breezes of home.
I miss the cacophany of voices and sino-pop in Chinatown, the easy access to J-Pop and K-pop in Japantown, the smells of good Italian food in North Beach, and the views in Golden Gate Park. I miss the constant sounds of life in a city, the lifeblood that tells you "I live among many, and I am part of them." I miss the jagglings and skraelings of the BART trains, the squeel of the rails that tells me "You are home." I miss the Chronicle, and the Sutro ruins, and the Japanese Tea Garden. I miss the leapords at the SF Zoo and the people in the Tenderloin. I miss the Life of a city that truly lives.

I find, though, that I also miss Napa. I miss the feeling one gets when sheltering from rain in a barn or under a huge old oak tree that still has most of its leaves. I miss the feel and smell of damp earth beneath my feet, green wild grasses thick and high. I miss the sight of the hills, practically glowing with green throughout winter and spring. I miss the sounds and smells of the horses, of fresh alfalfa hay. I even miss the effort of walking in six-inch-deep mud, your rubber boots squelching with the effort of moving without losing a boot. Most of all, I miss getting into the saddle and riding off for hours at a time.

I am of both the City and the Wilds. And I miss both.

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Thank you, Oakland, for justifying what I think of you.

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A whole new generation of kids thinks AIDS isn't such a big deal

That's part of a different story, but it includes this quote:

Apparently, there's a whole new generation out there that -- thanks to all the new medicines -- thinks getting HIV just means having to take a few pills every day.

"They've never seen the spots from Kaposi's sarcoma," Loyce said. "They've never seen people wasting away from this -- they just don't have the appearance of death in their mind's eye."

Jesus. I lived through watching several friends die. I can't imagine not taking that disease horribly seriously.

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THERE IS A staggering chutzpah to the Bush administration's approach to public relations. They don't bother to deal with facts already in evidence; they just say whatever they want us to believe and deflect all questions and contradictions.

They believe that consistency doesn't matter because no one is paying attention. They believe that policy analysis is for wonks, and that the great American public wants broad strokes and stirring rhetoric. Already, they have trotted out the increasingly resentful ghosts of the tragedy of Sept. 11 to support everything from police-state surveillance measures to a war against a nation uninvolved in the attack on the World Trade Center.

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I love it when my players ask questions that spark plot revisions in my mind that are even better and more evil than what I'd already planned.

It gets me warm in places you'd rather I not talk about. ;)

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You know, you never see Science Fiction fans doing crap like this just because Firefly or Farscape got cancelled.

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sigh