I'm a lasagna boy!

Once more, with attitude

Now, if you happen to have £2000 burning a hole in yr pocket, you might want to scope out the view from these webcams. iamevilgordon and his beloved Belinda are in town for nuptials, and brought Aram a fine bottle o' Islay malt. I like their motto: "Bruichladdich - The distillery with attitude"

Malt does more than Milton can to justify god's ways to man

Re-used green space

UPDATE: Now that the summer's ending, San Mateo County reopens its parks. I wrote about this earlier because I like public space (and public clocks).

Bay Area Anti-derailleur and Single-speed Society

Riding to work today for the first time all week, inspiration overcame me. I re-worked the Bay Area Anti-derailleur and Single-speed Society web site, which consists of a single page. I took elements from gmail (clicking on a div does something!), and innerHTML wizardry from Cody.
The old page will remain on the site for a while, for no good reason.

The man who killed Alan Liu

Sure, it was buried on an inside page, but the drunk driver who killed a Bay Area cyclist this spring received a prison sentence yesterday.
This sets a good precedent, although the eight-year sentence is too light (the charges to which he pleaded guilty carry small prison terms), especially since the driver was without a valid licence. I wish that a prosecutor could construe this as wilfull, or first-degree, manslaughter, rather than vehicular manslaughter. The guilty party is a lawyer -- he has special knowledge of these circumstances! -- and got behind the wheel of his car voluntarily, while intoxicated. Is this comparable to firing off a gun randomly into a crowd?

A headline only a mother could love.

Today's Examiner has the banner "Fans arrive by land, sea Giants, Raiders rooters exhaust transit options" for their lead story.

Serpents in Paradise

Began reading Dea Birkett's Serpents in Paradise, but the writing really isn't very good -- although the material, a woman's journey to and stay on remote, legendary Pitcairn Island, deserves much better.

It's in the can.

The Future of Food will play two nights at the The Castro;
Bikes Against Bush: video shorts will play as part of the 2004 Bicycle Film Festival in San Francisco.
How many clowns can you fit onto a conference bike?

Razzmatazz in peace

Ed Zelinksy, whose Musee Mecanique brings old-tyme laffs and joy to San Francisco, died Thursday.

This is Bliss

Carfree Week, and what does California's Governor do? He signs into law a piece of crap that allows single-occupancy hybrid cars to use the carpool lanes.
When we should be seeking solutions to reduce freeway traffic and to eliminate highway congestion; at a time when we should promote alternative transportation and find ways to eliminate vehicle trips, the Governor and State Legislature have found a way to add cars to the already-burdened carpool lanes, and to let people think that driving one in a car is okay. It's not. The problem is not miles to the gallon, it's air quality, proximity of services.

To infinity and beyond!

While I admit to a love of infinity and of a certain cat, I never thought to combine the two.
And a-propos of math, a research group at Berkeley will place puzzle placards on a quarter of MUNI buses. The puzzles will feature appealing math puzzles and offer rewards for correct solutions.

We will meet in the place where there is no darkness

Re-read Nineteen eighty-four in a beautiful paperback facsimile first edition.

These things happen," he began vaguely. "I have been able to recall one instance -- a possible instance. It was an indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word 'God' to remain at the end of a line. I could not help it!" he added almost indignanty, raising his face to look at Winston. "It was impossible to change the line. The rhyme was 'rod.' Do you realise that there are only twelve rhymes to 'rod' in the entire language? For days I had racked my brains. There was no other rhyme."

The precepts of doublethink, once a symbol of Totalitarian regimes such as Stalin's (and the mustachioed Big Brother of the book bears an eerie metaphorical likeness to him), makes me wonder: are we actually at war with any country?

Can't stop this!

Messengers on fixed-gear bicycles think they're so hot.
On the other hand, cyclocross is hot. Beware of any enterprise which requires new clothes.

Can't touch this (yo)

Foods you cannot eat because the US goverment doesn't permit it.
This include jamón iberico. Dammit. I'm going to Barcelona.

Ivan the Terrible

Hurricane rains hit Pittsburgh yesterday:

Waller and Steiner: "The more you buy, the more you save!"

For the past month, I have not seen the Santa-hat-wearing fellow who sells books each Sunday mid-day at the corner of Waller and Steiner. He stopped me one morning out on the stoop, while he was negotiating three shopping carts laden with his stock-in-trade, and asked if I wanted to sell him the stuff I was putting out onto the sidewalk. I told him he could take it all in exchange for three books. I wonder if he's moved to another intersection? Have we fallen from favour? (He brought levity to the oddly grimy corner, and also kept it neatly swept. He gave picture-books to kids.)

Brian Wilson and the Significance of an Abandoned Masterpiece

Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote mightily in the New York Times that Brian Wilson's "Smile" LP should remain unfinished.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/opinion/18sat3.html

Some readers, and I am one of them, prefer the version of
"The Prelude" that Wordsworth finished in 1805 and laid
aside to the version published soon after his death in
1850. "The Prelude" is an autobiographical poem, and a
certain freshness and immediacy evaporated as Wordsworth
revised the text. His is a case in which an early work of
art comes to have greater authority than the artist, in
later life, who made it. As a poet, the young Wordsworth
overrules his older self.

And so it is with Brian Wilson, the singer and songwriter
who made the Beach Boys what they were. In late September,
he will release a record called "Smile," a reconstruction
of a song cycle he abandoned 38 years ago. Earlier this
year, Mr. Wilson and a backing band performed the songs
from this new version of "Smile" to rave reviews on a tour
of Europe. It was an act of courage for Mr. Wilson to
confront this part of his musical legacy, written at a time
when his artistic confidence and emotional stability had
begun to shatter.

But the new recording of "Smile" - the entire
reconstruction, in fact - poses a problem. Mr. Wilson's
achievement as a musician is enormous in its own right and
for what it allowed other musicians, including the Beatles,
to do. He composed an extraordinary catalog of music, and
he revolutionized the songwriter's use of the recording
studio. He created two-minute masterpieces for the Beach
Boys, as well as a succession of darker, more somber songs
that redefined the possibilities of popular music and
painfully evoked his own isolation and anxiety. But that
Brian Wilson never made it out of the 1960's. I say that
with regret, because I have loved his music for more than
40 years.

In an extremely chaotic but productive few months in 1966,
Mr. Wilson laid the groundwork of an album he wanted to
call "Smile." Some of its tracks eventually appeared in one
form or another, including "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes
and Villains." But the record collapsed even as he was
collapsing. He had long since given up touring with the
Beach Boys, and they had begun to question where his music
was headed. The artistic success of the album "Pet Sounds"
only increased the pressures on Mr. Wilson - to write new
hits for the Beach Boys, to live up to the impossible
reputation of his own genius and to face the difficulty of
living with himself. His retreat from the world was well
documented. His second comings have been, too.

But the "Smile" pieces that surfaced over the years -
including most of the songs on this new album - were
remarkable. Some, like "Good Vibrations," are immediately
familiar to almost everyone. Others, like "Cabinessence"
and "Vegetables," are not. The original versions are not
timeless, and yet that's what engraves them permanently in
my mind. They capture a moment in Mr. Wilson's musical
evolution, a moment of great ambition and surpassing
silliness. He has broken free of most of his restraints -
the two-minute single, for instance - and that freedom is
about to do him in.

And what still makes those songs matter, apart from their
beauty, is the fact that they were sung by the Beach Boys.
Mr. Wilson used mostly studio musicians when he was
recording. He collaborated with a legendary lyricist, Van
Dyke Parks. But even in 1966 he was still writing for the
voices of the Beach Boys - his brothers, Dennis and Carl;
his cousin, Mike Love; and Al Jardine. The timbre of those
voices, singing together, is virtually a native American
idiom. Critics often argue that the commercial appetite of
the Beach Boys and their willingness to stick to a Top 40
formula held Brian Wilson back. But you could argue just as
easily that they stuck with him until he came apart. They
shared his naïve sense of humor. They sang what he taught
them to sing. They gave his songs a vocal identity that is
as instantly recognizable as the songs themselves.

Why does this matter? Dennis Wilson died in 1983. Carl
Wilson died in 1998. The importance of what they,
especially Carl, brought to the band has been swamped, and
in some sense properly, by the legend of Brian Wilson.
"Smile" was going to be a Beach Boys record, but it became
a Brian Wilson record. His collaboration with Van Dyke
Parks was heralded at the time as the union of two
geniuses. But Mr. Parks's contribution - nonsensical lyrics
- pales utterly compared with the contribution of Carl
Wilson's voice alone.

Audiences have celebrated this new version of "Smile" as
much for the survival of Brian Wilson - his recovery from
years of mental and emotional illness - as for the music.
Everyone loves a therapeutic tale. But these versions of
long-familiar songs add nothing to what we have already
heard. The new lyrics for "Good Vibrations" grate on my
ears, as does the absence of those old essential voices. In
the 80's and 90's, the Beach Boys, without Mr. Wilson,
became a Beach Boys cover band. Now Brian Wilson, without
the Beach Boys, has become a Brian Wilson cover band. The
younger artist - the original art itself - still possesses
greater authority.

Path Between the Seas

Reading the grueling story of the Panama Canal, as told through David McCollough's Path Between the Seas.

Gas leak shuts down BART

Just as BART were planning an emergency readiness drill for 26 Sept., Murphy struck:

OAKLAND -- A gas leak at BART's main headquarters building in Oakland Friday forced an evacuation of all employees including the computer center triggering a shutdown of the rapid transit system.

The evacuation -- which took place around 2 p.m. -- grounded to a halt all traffic on the BART lines including at least one train in the Transbay Tube.

BART officials were trying to reboot the system from a remote location, but as of 2:38 p.m. the trains were still not running. No other details were immediately available.

UPDATE: BART claim that trains were operational at 2.30

Story-telling

I Found Some of Your Life, a Auster(e) chronology through pictures.

Let's have Carter our President!

Jimmy Carter told us about how he saw a UFO in 1968.
He also spoke today about his programs to eradicate common parasitic diseases, promote democracy and human rights. The cadence of his speech is wonderful, and he's a very witty speaker -- sharp, incisive, and thoughtful. And he loves his wife.

Afterwards someone pointed out that I was wearing an old Habitat for Humanity t-shirt.

I think I know my geography pretty damn well

This map of Springfield even has my office, just a wee bit southwest of the Mall.

He makes the sign of a wave

While riding to work with Peter this morning, I churned through a pile of construction debris near the San Bruno Pedestrian Overpass, and immediately got a pinch flat. I dread getting flats on the bianchi, because the Wolber rims are slightly oversize. Peter whipped out a spoon and said, "This works well." And it does. Magnificently in fact. If I hadn't filed down all my spoons to use as shivs, I'd stick one in my timbuk right now. Maybe I can lift one from the café.
Peter got a flat when we rode over a recently resurfaced section of Polhemus Road, where two nice bicycle-tyre-sized potholes made him almost ditch. We heard the 'sproing' of breaking spokes (a common sound on Peter's wheel these days!) and he pulled over to the side of the road and whipped out the spoon. We decided to shoot for the 10.03 train, which was about two miles away, and rolled up to the station just as it pulled away. We waited for the next train equipped with donuts and chocolate milk from a convenient nearby bakery.

These are the people that you meet Pt VII

Today was the SF Gran Prix. Greg probably got the best photo, the front of a fixie with a sleeping baby perched in a child seat.

The name of this band is Yo!

Idly poking through the "Recent Used Arrivals" bin at the record shop, I picked up a couple of interesting records and hummed a few bars from I Zimbra, but couldn't find something that really grabbed me. And as I walked up to the register, I saw a CD of The Name Of This Band. Yo!
... this beautiful record (the series of photographs on the inner sleeves are as imprinted in my memory as are the songs themselves: David Byrne with a big guitar in a living room; Jerry Harrison waving energetically from behind a keyboard; and Eno's name, everywhere) has always been a record to me: but the CD has such beautiful, clear sound, and it's not like yesterday anymore.
It gets better: next to the Talking Heads reissue was a CD copy of Caroleen's Taking Tiger Mountain cover CD. Hot diggity!
All in all, an eno-riffic mid-day. And all I meant to pick up was a salami and baguette for lunch.

... and this is my receipt for your receipt

A few weeks after I had filed yet another complaint with the CPUC, the Chronicle ran a great article on how PG&E sends estimated rather than actual bills to its customers. Morally as well as fiscally bankrupt.
Utilities should not only fall under public oversight, they should be a completely public -- owned and operated -- service. Free enterprise is for beer and house-painting services, not for critical civic infrastructure. I'm going to go watch Brazil now.

PG&E says it sends out almost 70,000 estimated bills each month -- frequently for amounts higher than actual usage would warrant -- because customers' meters are inaccessible.

But current and former insiders say the utility deliberately bypasses some neighborhoods to save itself the expense of hiring enough people to handle the workload.

State regulators worry that ratepayers are being overcharged on a routine basis. They said an investigation into PG&E's billing practices already is under way and that the utility could face significant fines or penalties.

PG&E spokesman Ron Low said that while meters in a particular neighborhood may go unread due to employee illness or traffic conditions, no policy exists to estimate customers' bills as a cost-cutting measure.

"Our policy is to read every customer's meter each month," he said. "We have the proper staffing level to allow us to do so."

Depending on the person I speak with at PG&E, I am told, variously, that my meter has not been read in eighteen (18) months, that the meter readers cannot find the meter, that the meter reader was unable to find anyone at home, that the dog ate their homework, etc., etc.

Spinning in his grave

Donald Leslie, inventor of the speaker of the same name, died at the age of 93.

Third floor, just past the koi

Haight and Pierce

On the southwest corner, attached to a utility pole:

See span? See span fall.

MoDOT brought traffic on the Mississippi to a halt by demolishing a bridge into the river. The plan called for destroying a single approach, not the whole bridge.

Something to ipod about

http://homepage.mac.com/amake/shared/docs/essays/backup.html

And when we see the next-generation iPod, what will the new feature be? Photo sharing and a colour screen? Rendezvous-enabled wireless broadcast capability? An open spec, so that third-party developers can write (or reverse-engineer) the OS and make it more flexible?

Thanks to this nifty script, iTunes can find album cover art to complement whatever's playing. Alleluia.

Yeah, I feel better now.

It is an art thing!!!

Pinball machines, roller-coasters, and making art with other boardwalk amusements.

Fiore's own roots, as demonstrated in past projects, never stray far from this notion of collaboration with the machine. In 2000, she removed the glass from an Evel Knievel pinball machine, overlaid cut vellum around the bumpers of the "playboard" (1,000 points when lit!), and played a full game with three balls she had doused in red, white, and blue oil paint, respectively. The resulting painting, a lavender oblong that looks like a hallucinated skull, testifies to Fiore's ability to excavate or "see" the buried image within the machine, almost as if it was written in invisible ink. In the same way that Michelangelo envisioned David's sensuous curves within the notoriously busted Duccio stone, Fiore anticipated a painting that would conjure the first celebrity superhero made flesh: a daredevil who motorcycle-jumped over a tank of live sharks and is listed in the Guinness Book of World's Records for having broken thirty-five bones.

I love Pokey comics. How nutty!!!

A route of one's own

Although it's been done (and perhaps in more style), four San Franciscans decided to ride all MUNI routes over the long weekend. It took them all weekend?

Ready for Noël?

A woman in Girona has a nice online store for her caganer figurines.
What are caganers? They caused a stir when some appeared in the opening exhibit at Copia.
The woman who runs the toy museum in Figueres was so excited when I was excited at their display of caganers, and gave me a nice poster commemorating this peculiarly Iberian Nativity character. (It now hangs in my bathroom.) The museum's web site has a nice Flash dealie.

Spare the Air

I'm curious why the last two "Spare the Air" days have occurred on non-working days (Saturday last week; tomorrow, Labor Day). This means that public transit riders do not receive the discount that happens when the Air Quality Index rises above 100.

If public transit is recognised as helping air quality, shouldn't drivers of private cars receive negative incentives? The Spare the Air web site says, " Most of the air pollution in the Bay Area is man-made, and results from industrial processes and everyday activities like driving ... ". And the first item under "What can I do to help reduce summer air pollution?" reads "The biggest action you can take is to drive less."
There's also the ironic, tacit acknowledgement that households have more than one car: "Drive your most fuel-efficient car".

This Monday, September 6, is a Spare The Air Day in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ground-level ozone air pollution is expected to exceed 100 AQI (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) tomorrow. Because it is not a weekday, there is no free commute on BART.

Manana es un dia "Spare the Air." Por favor, maneje su carro lo menos possible manana.

Clear skies, hot temperatures, a strong temperature inversion trapping pollutants near the ground, and light winds will combine to produce poor air quality for the Bay Area.

People are being asked to:
- Avoid the use of charcoal lighter fluid and barbecues
- Eliminate the use of gasoline-powered yard tools like lawn mowers and leaf blowers
- Exercise in the morning before air quality hits unhealthy levels
- Postpone errands and link necessary trips
- Use public transit whenever possible

To monitor current air quality conditions, visit www.sparetheair.org

Empty breath, empty mouths

I live in a densely-populated area in the middle of an incorporated city, where I pay sales tax and property tax. I want the city to maintain the road from the main street to my neighbourhood, so that I can get in and out of my neighbourhood -- presumably, to contribute to the community by working and spending and volunteering.
The city says: "Build it yourself. Or collect the money to build it, and we'll install it for you."
Well, that didn't quite happen, since cars are involved. But suggest ditto for pedestrians -- that the city maintain a pedestrian walkway in order to accomodate citizens keen on participating in their community without cars -- and bollocks to you.

The usually-noxious Chronicle Watch feature of the San Francisco Chronicle features a revealing piece about a city's priorities.

San Francisco residents who use a decaying set of stairs in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood are hoping the city will come to their rescue. The staircase - which runs the length of a passageway called Bengal Street -- provides a welcome shortcut in the hilly Mount Davidson neighborhood between Lansdale Avenue and Miraloma Drive. ChronicleWatch tipster Al Parso uses the stairs to get to his bus stop nearby, but says they are so badly deteriorated they are no longer safe. "Is there any way to get our fine city to repair this public throughway?" Parso asked ChronicleWatch. "Or is all of our maintenance reserved for automobiles to the exclusion of walkers and public transit riders?" Status: San Francisco public works spokesman Frank Lee researched the matter after our call and discovered that the property owners on either side of the stairs are responsible for maintaining them. "We don't have a record that any city agency built them," he said. However, Lee told us the stairs appear to be dangerous and said the city will close them to the public. His department will notify the property owners of their responsibility, explain the situation to nearby residents and alert Muni about the closure. Lee said his agency would be willing to build city-maintained stairs if the neighborhood wants the job done and will help raise the funds. To weigh in on the status of the Bengal Street stairs, call Lee at (415) 554-7928. -- Who's looking into it: Ed Lee, S.F.'s director of public works, (415) 554- 6920; edwin_lee@ci.sf.ca.us

on the catwalk

Found out that a friend of mine is a successful model:

Swinging on the flippity-flop

Sometimes I do get the feeling that reporters are lazily picking up memes and framing stories around them.

"Rock Paper Scissors: The Movie," a documentary about the 2003 world championships in Toronto, is to be released in January.

I feel so culturally cool: Tom Frank and I use the same logo for our "Contact Me" pages.

September 5, 2004

Rock, Paper, Scissors: High Drama in the Tournament Ring
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

MY opponent and I faced each other across the white lines, separated by an arm's length in the dark, smoky bar. He planted his feet firmly, shoulder-width apart, while I fell into a fighting stance, right foot forward — a natural response from years of tae kwon do. The referee stood between us. The crowd looked on expectantly.

The rules were deceptively simple — rules that people all over the world grasp as young children.

Paper covers rock. Rock crushes scissors. Scissors cut paper.

But like the game Othello, another childhood favorite, Rock Paper Scissors takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

Rock Paper Scissors has gained a cult following in much of the English-speaking world over the last few years. The World Rock Paper Scissors Society, based in Toronto, says that its history dates to London in the mid-1800's and that its membership has grown to 2,300 from 5 since its Web site, www.worldrps.com, first appeared in 1995.

Word of mouth generated by the Web site, and by the world championships that the society has sponsored since 2002, have led to a spread of formal and impromptu tournaments in bars, fraternity houses, homes and high schools. A bar in Chapel Hill, N.C., for example, held a tournament on Aug. 15 that drew 40 competitors. A tournament held for the past two years at the Roshambo Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., has attracted hundreds of spectators and competitors.

"The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide," by the brothers Douglas and Graham Walker, the society's directors, will be published next month by Fireside Books, and "Rock Paper Scissors: The Movie," a documentary about the 2003 world championships in Toronto, is to be released in January.

When I decided to compete in a local tournament and started training, some of my friends scoffed at the idea that the game could involve strategy. But this was not the Rock Paper Scissors of the playground, a hurried competition to see which team got the ball first, or even of the fraternity, to see who would go and buy the beer. This was tournament-style Rock Paper Scissors, in which the stakes are high, and expert players do well over time only because of skill and hard work.

There were 128 of us competing for the top three places in the D.C. National Rock Paper Scissors Tournament at DC9, a Washington bar. The first prize was $1,000 and an XM satellite radio, a significant haul — although modest compared to the $31,000 BMW that was awarded at a tournament in Vail, Colo., last April, or to the one million shekels (about $220,000) that a 13-year-old boy won by beating 700 other competitors in an Israeli tournament on Aug. 5.

Advice came to me from all directions. An office-mate offered wisdom gleaned from his days at the frat house: "The key is to throw scissors early and often." Aaron Hoffman, a math graduate student at Brown University, suggested that I counter the risk of overthinking my throws with a seemingly random sequence of numbers. "You could memorize the digits of pi in base 3," he said. "Zero is rock, one is scissors and two is paper." Sure I could.

I called experienced players to ask for tips, and learned about the common tells that can reveal an impending throw. For example, many people will open up paper early. I was told that most people have a go-to throw, reflective of their character, when they are caught off guard. Paper, considered a refined, even passive, throw, is apparently favored by literary types and journalists; I found I was no exception.

I started going up to people at parties and in the office and challenging them to quick matchups. I even attended a training session with the tournament's organizer, Master Roshambollah (also known as Jason Simmons), and some local players.

Over time, my game was getting sharper. I was winning more than I was losing.

But now that I was here in a Washington bar on a Saturday night, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers in their 20's and 30's, I was nervous. Tournament Rock Paper Scissors proceeds a bit like a tennis competition: game, set, match. The first to win two games wins the set, the first to win two sets wins the match. The winner moves on to the next round; the loser, generally, is eliminated. I had never played under the stress of tournament conditions.

Earlier, in my effort to size up and profile the other people in my heat, I had spoken with an opponent, Ryan Taylor. I had been warned of the importance of understanding his personality and level of experience. Mr. Taylor was 23 and had a shaggy 70's-style haircut, and he said he had never played competitively before.

The referee put his hand between us and asked, "Ready?" He reminded us that vertical paper (which resembles a handshake) was a no-no. Many people had fouled on vertical paper over the years. We nodded.

I decided that I would try to psych out Mr. Taylor, using a a technique I had learned from the strategy guide.

I arched my eyebrows, looked him in the eyes, and said slowly, in a flat voice, "I'm going to throw rock."

He seemed momentarily thrown, but then regained his composure.

The referee lifted his hand and we started pumping our fists in sync, the part of the game known as the prime.

"One. Two. Three. Shoot."

Mr. Taylor was wondering, as he later told me, if I was really going to throw rock: "If she is, she expects me to throw paper, in which case she would throw scissors, in which case I should throw rock. If she really will throw rock, then at worst we would tie."

He threw rock. I threw paper. I won.

What Mr. Taylor didn't realize was that I was playing a defensive rather than offensive game, on the advice of one of the experienced players I had spoken with.

"If you are trying to beat them, you only have one throw" that will work, said Benjamin Stein, a 25-year-old computer programmer in New York. "If you play a defensive game, you have two throws. You can either tie or beat them, and you are successful." Draws are valuable, he explained, because they give you the chance to get more information about your opponent's mindset and strategy. If I could eliminate one of my opponent's three possible next throws, Mr. Stein said, I had a pretty good shot at staying alive.

In this case, I had a strong hunch that Mr. Taylor wouldn't throw scissors, just in case I did actually throw rock. So that left him paper or rock. So I played paper, because that meant I would either tie him (if he played paper) or beat him (if he played rock).

It was logic worthy of "The Princess Bride."

The referee raised his hand to ready us for the next throw.

I tried to divine what Mr. Taylor was planning. I decided he wasn't going to throw rock again after I had just beat him, so scissors was a safe throw for me.

I threw scissors. He threw paper. Game and set were mine. I was only one set from advancing to the next round.

But then I lost the next two throws in rapid succession. Knowing that novices tend to cycle all three throws, I threw a rock, thinking it was time for him to throw scissors. Instead he splayed his hand in flat paper formation. Then his scissors beat my paper. A one-two punch.

We were tied. My heart beat faster. How had I lost a set so quickly?

I gestured for a time-out, to break his momentum and regain my senses. I was disoriented. In the strategy guide, I had read about predetermined three-throw gambits used in competition. I considered a few — Paper Dolls, Fistful of Dollars, the Bureaucrat — before settling on the Avalanche: Rock, Rock, Rock.

I threw my first rock. He went with paper. Ugh. Now it was down to match point.

I breathed deeply. Everything was on the line with this throw.

I threw the second rock. He repeated paper. I was out, eliminated from the tournament.

I saw Mr. Taylor later that night, after he had made it to the top 32. I learned that he had just moved to Washington a few months ago to work at a local theater. (Theater! If I had known that about him, I could have profiled him as a paper guy.)

He offered to buy me a drink, and asked for my number.

I gave it to him. But only because I want a rematch.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Sucks to your derailleur

Chuck Shepherd writes:

Least Competent Criminals: Two men were arrested in Dearborn, Mich., in July and charged with robbing a Bank One branch, done in by a glitch in their getaway plan. They had hopped on mountain bikes to make their exit (which bank robbers have used with success from time to time), but they were apparently unfamiliar with the concept of a gearshift, and both men rode away in first gear (or perhaps second), so slowly that one witness followed them easily on foot, and a bank guard got close enough to shoot one of them in the arm. They were quickly arrested.

One Tree

According to FraudFrond,

There are 130,000 cel towers in the USA alone. A whopping 25% of these are "stealth" towers -- i.e. Lying Lumber -- so that's over 32,000 fake trees.

Wrong place, right time

Protestors in NYC (that's the USA ... ) were being arrested for having a bicycle*. And, of course, Joshua Kinberg was arrested.

The right to assemble peacefully is what separates us from them? They're all going to hell.

I've eaten at that restaurant. Mediocre, indifferent, the fish was no good. And it's right across from the
2nd Ave Deli! How could anyone pass up a meal at that place? Mmmmm, pickles.

Multi-modal, with mousse

Aram points out the word on the street: that fixed-gear stylee has jumped the shark. Well, duh. Some guy on the CalTrain this morning was chatting up a girl with his track bike as bait. She said, disdainfully, "It looks so plain". I was riding a bike with gears this morning.

A woman who spent a year student-teaching my 6th- or 8th-grade English class works here: http://citiesthatwork.com/ as an urban planner. I wonder why the city of San Francisco, despite its much-vaunted, voter-approved 1999 mass-transit plan, insists on have bicycle lanes overlap with MUNI bus stops? This only further delays bus service on busy streets.

The Music of Chance

A quiet morning, re-re-re-reading Paul Auster's Book of Illusions. Is this to modern fiction what math-rock is to rock & roll?

Word of the day: span.

Me and the Tenth Commandment