MAR VISTA

One can’t expect perfection. At best one can avoid victimhood. With this mindset I suffered through twice- or thrice-daily autoupdates for McAfee’s security suite. While these updates are supposed to happen in the background, they made other programs so jerky that I’d just wait, and suffer till the updates completed.

Despite this I got infected with a couple of Trojans, which pop-ups told me McAfee had removed or quarantined. Not so.

The nice lady in India told me that an infection that had progressed as far as I described required the help of McAfee’s “virus removal team.”

To get with McAfee’s “team,” the nice lady told me, I’d have to purchase a “peen” for either $70 or $90. The peen gets me one-time virus removal: for $70 I do the keystrokes at their direction, for $90 the team does the keystrokes themselves.

So, finally, I had to ask the nice lady to spell the word that sounded to me like “peen.”

“P-I-N,” she said. She wanted to sell me a fucking pin number!

It became clear, and she confirmed: I pay McAfee for protection, and when McAfee fails to protect me, I pay McAfee even more.

My XP machine had worked ok for four years, about two years longer than I expected, so rather than spend $90 for a one-time fix, I spent $400 for a new, and much faster, Vista machine.

The Trojan, I guess this is what they do, took over my internet connection and blasted out email spam. The Trojan rendered my internet connection unusable, but it isn’t doing additional damage to my old computer, such as replicating files until the hard drive bursts, so I can access the information on it.

Rather than buy a new monitor to go along with my new computer, I figured I could get a splitter/switch to allow both my old (infected) computer and the new one to access the one monitor I already had. I know it’s stupid, but even that much contact between old and new made me paranoid.

So I checked my cheapo flat panel TV and found a socket labeled “PC” and “VGA” and used a $24 cable from Radioshack to hook up my old computer to my TV. Amazingly it works!

During this, I had to get my car smog-checked, for what I was told might be $90. We’ve all heard stories about unscrupulous stations that fail cars on purpose to get the repair work.

I guess I’m just a worrier.

So I asked around and was told to go to a particular test-only station in my neighborhood. The young guy, a number-one-son type, who wrote my service order was all smiley. First thing he asked was who had referred me, and was happy to hear my answer. $54.95 out-the-door, tout compris.

Frying crullers.

On the way home I stopped at the office of my insurance agent to meet him face to face after a seven year relationship, and to meet his assistant who had recently done some admin shuffles to get lower rates for me and my brother. Of course he acted glad to see me.

I paid the latest installment, so I’m good to drive for another six months.

I’d like to sell my car and get back on Muni where I can get some reading done, except for grocery shopping. I really enjoy having a car to get groceries home from the supermarket, which is more than a mile away. If there were reliable cab service I’d gladly pay six or seven dollars, or ten, for a ride home with my groceries. I’m talking about a gallon of milk, two half gallons of juice, and four two-liter bottles of Diet Coke, per trip. This is not something one does on Muni. And that’s just the beverages.

[Click on pic for source.]

I guess a true San Franciscan dines out and/or eats hand to mouth from the corner mom and pop.

At the big Safeway by the Mint on Market Street one used to see older Negro gentlemen in their full-size sedans parked by the exits waiting to take neighboorhood housewives home with their groceries. I wonder if they still do that.

Obama, smog certificate, new computer, if I score some socks and pjs for Christmas I’ll be all set for 2009. Best of all, economic trends will be providing me with plenty of company in my poverty and unemployment.

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UNIFIED FEEL THEORY

I’ve been reading the Greek tragedies. This is my second time. One Christmas vacation during college I determined to read the complete Greek tragedies, which is less formidable than it sounds.

There are only twenty-nine of them extant, and they average maybe 1300 lines. Back then I got bogged down in Euripides and left two or three of his unread. The same thing is happening this time.

I told myself I’d read everything else before doing the Oresteia and the Oedipus cycle, but I couldn’t hack it and am now in the middle of the Eumenides.

Anyway, I’m impressed this time with the centrality of emotion in all the plays. There is never a dearth of “alas, I am ruined,” “woe is me,” “life is nothing but pain.”

We must accept our fate, i.e., death, but we are definitely not happy about it. How we go about dealing with anger and frustration creates our life stories, but in the long run we aren’t much different than goats being led to the sacrifice: we bleat then we bleed.

So, a couple weeks ago I’m driving to the tennis courts in Golden Gate Park for my usual morning session (poor me!) and I’m totally steamed about the bailout news—like, this guy Paulson is fucking me and I never said yes and he ain’t even my type.

The usual bicyclists were annoying but there were a couple of egregious near-death encounters with spandexers whipping through stop signs out of a blinding rising sun. Readers here know how pathetic I find the bicycle movement as an expression of left wing politics.

Why do these guys (and gals) risk their lives pitting their flimsy frames against evil death machines?

[Click picture for source.]

Looking at my own boiling rage I understood their need for physical confrontation. Young people (more than old people) yearn for it. Warfare, gang warfare, and individualized violence are the undesired forms of confrontation. Political action (which is basically the threat of warfare) is the alternative, and physical confrontation is part of it.

Civil rights in the fifties and sixties wasn’t about constitutional law, or some Marxist theory. It was about fire hoses, and police dogs, and martyrdom. The white kids (and not-so-youngs) who went south for Freedom Summer were in the same kind of peril that soldiers experience.

Similarly, the bicycle activists are putting their own lives on the line.

The felt need to confront, and if necessary die, seems better than suffering in silence and feeling like one will explode.

The evil perps in this country who deserve to be confronted have so well insulated themselves that the enemy, for bicyclists, has become anyone who drives a car.

Meanwhile Pelosi and Newsom and the building trade unionists will be spending more than a billion dollars on a three-stop subway that was cooked up as a payoff to Rose Pak for her support in some pissant political race, long forgotten.

This time through, my favorite play is Philoctetes, which is about political conniving. In it, Neoptolemus (son of Achilles) responds to Odysseus’ advice to employ deceit against the blameless man:

Neoptolemus
…I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating. …Do you not find it vile yourself, this lying?

Odysseus
Not if the lying brings our rescue with it.

Neoptolemus
How can a man not blush to say such things?

Odysseus
When one does something for gain, one need not blush.

BTW: It was Neoptolemus who eventually killed Priam, king of Troy. He also killed Astyanax, the infant son of Hector and subject of the “the most touching scene” in the Iliad.

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DOUR CYCLISTS' LAND GRAB

The issue of bicycling in San Francisco always rouses negative emotions in me.

The rude, illegal behavior of many cyclists contributes to this, but there is more.

Bicycle advocates seem to think that their agenda is pro-environment (show me the numbers) and therefore “progressive.”

In general, “progressive” refers to collective, shared solutions to social needs.

A bicycle is a personal transportation device.
An automobile is a personal transportation device.

While reasonable people can compare and contrast the benefits and drawbacks of these two types of personal transportation devices, neither has anything to do with “public transit.”

As a political effort, bicycling is reactionary.

Public transit (Muni) is progressive.

So that explains the bicyclists’ fuck-you attitude—they’re basically right-wing survivalists. Look at their physical fitness, and derring-do.

Recently Fog City Journal covered a City-Hall-steps rally (all one word in German) advocating implementation of the City’s Bicycle Plan, which has been stalled by inadequate Environmental Impact Studies. (Just like right-wingers, bicyclists don't much appreciate EIRs.)

I gush over Luke Thomas’ photography, but this story had photos by Adam Aufdencamp which are also very impressive. Taken together I think of the photos as “The Faces of Cycling.”

Above pictures are details from Mr Aufdencamp’s photos of some of the cycling advocates at the rally.

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PARK HEARING POLITE, BORING

I watched the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development committee meeting on Monday, cheapo digital camera ready, to catch some fireworks.

I expected at least some vituperation during public comment—none. There was a Bike Coalition leader who used so much visual aids that we never saw his face. And by the time Dede Wilsey appeared the camera battery had pooped out.

The issue is closing part of Golden Gate Park to auto traffic (and parking). This part of the park is closed to autos on Sundays and holidays. Advocates want to extend the ban to Saturdays also.

The particular stretch of road in question also provides access to the park’s institutional attractions: the DeYoung Museum, the Conservatory of Flowers, the Japanese Tea Garden, and the in-progress reconstructed Academy of Sciences which houses a natural history museum, an aquarium, and a planetarium.

Because there were so many public commenters, each had a one-minute limit, which, like stop signs in this town, was seldom heeded.

This Saturday closure proposal was put before the voters a few years ago and rejected. Last year the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance for Saturday closure which our mayor, bless his heart, vetoed.

The bike people say visitors can take public transit (and travel light) or park in the new underground garage at $4 per hour.

The status-quoers are hiding behind ADA and the issue of access for the disabled.

In general, the anti-car people are promoting ideology, and the anti-closure people are concerned about the specific, practical effects the change would have on their lives. There are no creative ideas being generated about this, it's pure muscle.

Because of Sophie Maxwell’s dignity and scariness, plus the presence of children, elderly, and disabled people, the fireworks I expected never went off.

[Photo by Michael Sutter. Click on image to go to source page.]

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Policy and Practice: BICYCLES IN SF

An errand yesterday afternoon took me south along Lake Merced Boulevard on my way to the 280 freeway. It was a beautiful, spring like afternoon, perfect for bicycling, and the evening commute was already warming up.

The stretch of Lake Merced Blvd is four lanes, two in each direction, with only double yellow lines for a median. On the west is Lake Merced/Harding golf course, on the east are the rear-ends of SF State and ParkMerced housing development.

Because there is no cross traffic the speed limit is 45mph. When traffic is heavy in both directions there are a lot of cars going pretty fast in a very small area.

So yesterday I notice a little congestion ahead in the curb lane, turns out it’s a bicyclist, racing bike, cool(?) spandex riding outfit. I thought, This guy’s a fool! He’s doing like 25 and the cars are trying to go 50.

Just as I’m passing the bicyclist I see a sign by the road saying, “Bicyclists have the right to the full lane.”

This sign has been turning up in Golden Gate Park. This is the first such sign I've seen on a road posted higher than 25mph.

The bicyclist yesterday wasn’t asserting his right, he was trying to ride next to the curb so that cars in the curb lane could pass him.

Such bicycling is dangerous and annoying. The anti-automobile, pro-bicycle lobby feels their cause to be morally correct and worth fighting, and possibly dying for. I’m afraid that will happen. SF Bicycle Coalition website here.

The signs about bicycles having the legal right to a traffic lane are kind of a joke, since most bicyclists routinely violate numerous laws in order to maintain momentum—stop signs, red lights, sidewalks, side-of-the-street.

As bicyclists become more assertive, the chances of tragic accidents go up. The relationship of cars to bicycles is not clearly defined by our city government. And nothing regarding bicycles seems to be enforced by the police.

I think the mayor and the supervisors all hold their breaths hoping significant bicycle fatalities don’t necessitate serious work on the problem, not to mention blame-dodging.

We obviously can’t have one bicycle going 25mph occupy one of the two southbound lanes of a major commute artery that’s posted at 45mph.

Because of cost and efficiency trade-offs, we design products and processes with minimal safety features, because that’s cheapest and most efficient. Then, when deaths occur or other liability is generated additional safety features can be deemed cost-effective and deployed. An obvious example of this is increased security procedures along with new, more expensive machinery at airports since September 11, 2001.

That particular stretch of Lake Merced Blvd has cars approaching each other at a combined speed of 100mph with a four or five foot painted median separating them.

I cringe.

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