Category: Bay Area

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane! No, wait…it’s not that at all.

Today in the San Francisco Chronicle‘s online edition, the SFGate, there was a very brief story on the front page for a few hours.

Here’s the headline:

Pot-firing catapult found at Arizona-Mexico border

Ok, in a nutshell, the story is:

“Drug smugglers trying to get marijuana across the Arizona-Mexico border apparently are trying a new approach — a catapult.

National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station say they observed several people preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence last Friday evening.”

Blah, blah, blah, the Border Patrol and National Guard seized the catapult and about 4 pounds of the green stuff.

A fairly amusing story, all in. But that’s not the best part.

SFGate allows readers to comment on articles, and that’s where it gets good.

Here’s a selection of the best of what SFGate readers had to say:

“The catapult has been held without bail”

“Time for US to spend a few billion dollars to develop counter-catapult technology.”

“When trebuchets are outlawed, only outlaws will have trebuchets.”

“Total distance traveled by projectile: Over the border;
Time to impact from launch: 2.5 seconds;
Angle of launch: 45 degrees;
Temperature at time of launch: 65 degrees Fahrenheit;
Dimensions of projectile: 8 inch wide x 12 inch long cannabis;
Force of gravity: 32.15223 ft/s/s;
Muy bueno!”

(that’s geeky goodness)

“OMG it’s raining pot!”

“sounds pretty half baked.”

“No doubt these guys got the idea for their new delivery method from playing Angry Birds on their stolen iPhones.”

“They left this part of the story off:

‘Shortly after the seizure, the Mexican troops contacted the Americans and offerred to capapult 10 kilos of marijuana to the American side of the border in exchange for 10 large combination pizzas and a case of Doritos.'”

“Sophisticated criminals use a trebuchet.”

“Green Express. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

“This is what you get when the smugglers trade pot to an engineer for design work…”

“Save the bales!”

“The free Mexican Air Force is flying tonight
Flying so high yi hiyeeeeee!!”


I guess I should expect no less from the Bay Area, a place notoriously in favor of the use of the same stuff that is being lobbed over the wall.

Buncha smartasses. *grin*






Image from Icanhazcheeseburger


With The Passage of Time

While toiling away at my desk job every day, I like to keep the day going by listening to the radio in the background.

Generally, I like to stream the oldies country station out of Albuquerque, channel 104.7. It is very comforting to hear familiar music mixed in with ads for local ABQ businesses. It’s also very perplexing for my coworkers, which is an added benefit.

This afternoon while crunching spreadsheets and lobbing emails over the wall, the circa 1969 song “Okie from Muskogee” came on the radio.

Now, as you know, I do love a Merle Haggard song.

For some reason today, instead of just mindlessly singing along, I listened in on the words.

It’s a pretty outdated song by many accounts, yet in some ways still feels relevant.

Take this, for example:

“We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy/
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.”

Well, for one thing, long and shaggy hair is commonplace now. It’s actually mainstream.

For another, there’s not any hippies in SF these days. I don’t think the free-love folks from the sixties would even recognize the place anymore. Funny how scads of money tends to move the needle toward conservative, no matter where you are.

That said, that’s still my favorite line in the song. I sang it at the top of my lungs when I saw Merle in concert this summer. The absurdity of singing a line deriding San Francisco while being near San Francisco was just too delicious.

Then there’s this part that has always cracked me up:

“We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse/
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.”

So he’s singing about how being a square is a good thing. About having good clean fun. About waving the flag and being upright and just.

Oh and he’s also singing about drinking an illegal alcohol substance.

Marijuana? No. Moonshine? Just fine.

Am I the only one who finds that just a little…oh I don’t know…ironic?

Plus, I can guarangoddamntee you that Mr. Haggard has sampled of the green stuff. More than once. More than once today.

Merle has said he wrote “Okie from Muskogee” as a protest to the Vietnam protestors. He found them a little hard to take after he’d been released from San Quentin.

Oh wait. So the flag waving good clean fun guy was in prison?

Five different times, actually. Doesn’t that seem…uh…also ironic?

Which makes me remember that the whole song, while conservative and flag waving and a bit chiding in tone is really, actually, all done tongue in cheek.

It’s a bit of a ruse, and a well-done ruse. A Grammy winning poke at society.

And that’s where the title of this post comes into play. With the passage of time, The Hag starts to look a little less like a musical outlaw and a lot more like a musical genius.

Plus he helped me get through a really rough day. Thanks Hag.




Photo Fun: Fish Eye lens

A couple years ago I invested in a few of those fun plastic Lomography cameras.

I own an Action Sampler multiple lens camera, a Colorsplash with gel films for the flash, and a camera with a built in fish eye lens.

Of the three, the fish eye has been my least favorite. With that big bubble lens skewing the view, it felt damn near impossible to take a good photo with the thing.

Better photographers than I understand the proportions of this extremely wide angle lens, but for me I felt like I was fighting with it.

So I gave up.

Recently, I was cleaning out my gear and I noticed that the fish eye camera had a roll of film loaded, and the counter showed 1. Turns out I hadn’t even used a single frame of the roll.

I tossed the camera in my bag for New Year’s Eve weekend. I knew we’d be staying near Sausalito and there’s plenty of photo opportunities up there.

Well, I forgot I had that fish eye in my bag until the day we were driving home when I had a flash of inspiration. As we drove over the bridge, I held the camera out the window and on the roof of the car, tilted it up slightly, and snapped away.

Sometimes serendipity is the best friend of the photographer.

Other than straightening the horizon, this photo is straight off the camera.

Suddenly I like that fish eye camera a whole lot more.



(click to see a larger size)


An Ode To The Shortest Month

Yesterday, in the midst of the weirdness and woe, there was also something magical to note.

After severe rainstorms and plenty of freezing weather, Monday was this clear, sunny, warm, beautiful day.

It was, I think, a hint of what’s to come: February.

Yes, I said February.

The second month of the year. The shortest month of the year. February is a beautiful month.

In February, winter is not quite over, but spring is not quite here. In February we start to see the brilliant yellow of blooming daffodils against the monochrome hue of stormy skies. Daffodils are the harbinger of warm sunny days to come. They gives the cold body hope.

I believe the daffodils and tulips and the snowfall of Cherry Blossoms in February are meant to keep us going like the carrot at the end of the stick. The “something wonderful just around the bend” that help the human soul stay willing to endure the cold and damp days that are yet to be endured.

In February, Punxsutawney Phil pokes his burrowing animal’s head out of the ground and lets us know the score. The planning can begin.

The ground begins to thaw. Birds start to think about coming back this way. There is hope.

Heck, February is also the birth month of at least three of my favorite people (wait, four! Just thought of another).

I appreciate we’re still a good two weeks away from February, but I’m looking toward the second month of the year with a secret anticipation.

In other words…I’m flat tired of winter.

But it’s more poetic to speak of daffodils and warm days.






**Footnote: I purposefully ignored the “holiday” in February. I’m grateful to celebrate every day with my beloved, I don’t need a certain day set aside.


Photo by Andrea Kratzenberg and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


Can’t Handle The Pressure

The celebration of New Year’s 2011 was an interesting one, at least from my perspective.

It’s no secret that times have been a little rough for the past, oh, three or so years, but on December 31, 2010, there seemed to be a lot of optimism.

The general tone of the tweets, articles and conversations I experienced was that 2010 was over, and expectations were very high for a good 2011.

Even I fell into this category, being as suggestible as I am. It felt SO good to cast off what was, but a most accounts, a crappy year and turn my face to a new year that could hold so much joy, healing and peace.

Wipe the slate clean. Start again. The market is coming up a little. Jobless rate is going down a little. It seemed like more people had jobs and a bit more money to celebrate the holidays.

These are all good trends. Heck yeah, 2011! Bring us something good!

Today, the seventeenth day of January, it feels like folks have become a little impatient.

Where is my something good? Bring it to me already!

The credit card statements are rolling in, and those fun holiday celebrations are demanding they be paid off.

A few more people have jobs, but I can’t see that any more people are particularly happy with their jobs. It is, after all, still called “work”, as much as I’d like to get up in the morning and go to “fun” all day long.

Then there was that horrifying event down in Tuscon which not only ripped apart a community, but also became fodder for the harrumphing heads (<--like a talking head only wind-baggier). The news doesn't seem happier. People don't seem happier. Things are improving, but slowly. This weekend I started looking around at my fellow man and realized something. Everyone is pissed off. There is rudeness abounding, people saying shitty things, and today at the grocery story, something went down between the checker and a customer that ended up being taken outside. At the grocery store. Ay god. Then we came home from the store to see a police car sitting on our block in front of a neighbor's house. What the f--- is going on around here? I'd like to blame my own neighborhood and say "eh, it's just turning bad" but I'm not sure that's it's just happening here. I think people are fed up. Maybe, just maybe, we've put too much pressure on 2011 to be the panacea for all of the residual worries, anger and sadness from the great recession. One month into one year cannot fix all that came before. Maybe let's give both 2011 and each other a break, ok? We've got a lot of days left to go in this year. Who knows what 2011 has up its sleeve for, say, April? Or August? Ya just never know. I still believe in you 2011. You won't let us down. Right?