I'm a lasagna boy!

How Not To Use the Cellular Telephone

Umberto Eco's essay on How not to use the cellular telephone springs to mind whenever I think about how sensitive I am to the buzzing slab of metal in my pocket, to the chirp of the pager on my belt, to the ringing of a bluetooth headset. Thanks to Amazon for providing the searchable text and scanned pages of How to travel with a salmon, his excellent and hilarious collection of essays.

I was a little surprised to see that his latest novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, does not appear in English translation by the formidable William Weaver. The subject puts me off, too: an apparently-trendy work in which the protagonist loses his personal memory, but remembers exactly each comic book, novel, and printed word he has read. The work unfolds partly as a graphic novel. Although neither the cultural synthesis nor collage-like accumulation of information is foreign to Eco's novels, the modernity rubs me the wrong way. Eco has written about memory and isolation before, in both The Island of the Day Before and in Foucault's Pendulum.

In which the disbelief continues

While cycling home from the bus-stop yesterday evening, I saw yet another fixie (a converted late-model Bianchi Pista) hauling ass down Market St., with a freewheel and no rear brake. Although technically feasible, the rear-brake-less fashion is a frightening and stupid trend. There are a lot of fixies, off-the-rack and custom, speeding up and down Market these days. It's a little ridiculous, especially with all the playing cards tucked in the rear spokes.

In which the new is old again

A story about urban archaeology in San Francisco contrasts with a story about the rebuilding of the Central Freeway ("Octavia Boulevard", the Road That Goes Nowhere).

Other now-inland shipwrecks serve as interesting obstacles for public works projects. The new Municipal Railway tunnel extension that takes baseball fans out to SBC park goes right through the hull of The Rome, a ship's remains underground at the intersection of Market Street and the Embarcadero along the waterfront."

I am embarrassed to have voted for the Octavia Boulevard project, partly because it has turned out so poorly, and partly because at the time I was mostly excited that the Central Freeway would disappear. I was wrong about the intention of Octavia Boulevard: it misses the opportunity to provide a clear, continuous surface-grade thoroughfare from south of Market Street to Geary Boulevard. Although this route is indirectly available through Gough and Frankling streets, these do not permit seamless travel from the freeway to Geary, which is something essential to moving private auto traffic to those highly residential neighbourhoods along Geary. Octavia Boulevard and the Market Street off-ramp also turn out to be strangely pedestrian- and bicycle-unfriendly: a freeway offramp touches down exactly where many pedestrians and cyclists will be walking. I cannot imagine that will be a fun intersection to negotiate during rush-hour, with cars choking the southeast corner of the off-ramp in order to turn right on to Market St (will this even be permissible? If so, chalk up another design oddity).
On the other hand, I imagine that Flippers is looking forward to a boom in its business. It sits neatly at the end of the Octavia Freeway, at a t-intersection where drivers wishing to continue on Octavia need to dog-leg to the north or turn on to Hayes Street.

In which the Owl catches a Bug

The two o'clock N-Owl pushed this new Beetle onto the sidewalk. The MUNI driver, calm and collected, stood outside the bus door and said "That person must have been drunk when parking." More photos. This has not been a good week to park your car on Haight Street -- and take it from me. I know something about trees falling on parked cars.

In which Aram gets a good one

Aram takes the concept of a 'straw man' to a whole new level. Man, I wish we worked at the same place: I do'n't have enough of a sense of humour around the office.
... not that I am there a whole lot. Today I stuck around the house to handle the usual assortment of inept, illiterate, under-informed, tardy, or totally incompetent contractors, sub-contractors, and workmen. The exception was, of course, the cheery carpenter who did not actually finish anything today but managed to put off what he needed to do ("Your parts are on order. We'll 'ave 'em in a few weeks."). I spent hours on the telephone: with customer service; with technical support; with billing; with product support; with premiere technical service; with billing; with customer service; with account activation services; et cetera.
For confirmation, may I please have the last four digits of your Social? your mother's maiden name? your street address? your account number? Please press 1 for English. Do you mind if I put you on hold for a minute?
How do people ever get anything accomplished? I do not trust any of these workers, these distant customer-service people, or these account specialists to actually effect what they claim they are.
On the other hand, I have a better approach to telemarketers now.

In which it comes in three flavours!

bhs pointed out that chicken now comes in three flavors, thanks to a popular fast-food restaurant. Better yet, learn how to fold your t-shirts. Do'n't click here.

In which we circumcycle Stanley Park

Anna and I pedalled our way around Stanley Park in Vancouver.

Thus was Adonis Murdered

Reading the late Dame Sarah Caudwell's delightful epistolary mystery novels featuring a quartet (or quintet, or sextet) of New Square barristers, I recalled picking up The Sibyl in Her Grave from a sidewalk sale in La Jolla five years ago, probably just after it was published. The Edward Gorey cover illustration caught my eye, and the curious title excited my imagination.