Sunday, Day of Links

Oh for pete’s sake (via):

Flipping his badge open, he said, “No, not with that shirt. You’re protesting and you have to go.”
Beginning to get his drift, I said firmly, “Not before I finish my coffee.”
He insisted that I leave, but still not quite believing my ears, I tried one more approach to reason. “Hey, listen. […]

Isolated Wackiness, Shared By Everybody in the Whole Damn County

It takes a village to drive out a family. And if the whole village does it, it’s not just atypical, isolated wackiness.

How Avis and the University of California are Destroying the Environment

The corporate customer agreement between Avis and the UC system doesn’t include the “intermediate SUV” class. So the only way to get a vehicle with four-wheel drive and decent clearance, and be covered under UC’s insurance policy, is to rent in the “nonsensical gas-guzzler” class. (Note: there is a further class of SUV, the “giant […]

Images to Amend the Constitution By

If Dianne Feinstein can propose Constitutional amendments because she saw a moving photograph in the newspaper, so can I. But I’m going to use different photographs.

Blissfully Unaware of my Peril

Perhaps Kyso Kisaen will be a bloggy guide and muse through the Rite of Femminess otherwise known as getting hitched; she seems to have her priorities straight:

I already know shit like “less booze = less money” or “borrow stuff or make it, teehee!” Any dumbass knows that skipping a 4-tier cake-orgy in favor of a […]

A Brief Discussion of Other People’s Politics

I had a post all prepared about how clean running water is clearly more important than sex, because we put up with shit from plumbers that we would never take from a potential mate - not calling when they say they will, not showing up when they say they will, etc. But then the plumber […]

I’ll Stick to Compost, Thanks

I had just finished planting a couple of tomatoes in the front yard when a woman parked in front of my house. She got out of her car, and we chatted a bit; she was probably right that I should’ve planted on the other side of the walk, where they’d get a little more sun, […]

On the Racial Dynamics of Bus Boarding

Yesterday, as I was getting on the bus to go visit my new home and meet my new landlady and sign the lease agreement, I slipped through a jumble of high school students queued up to use the money-ticket machine. Me ‘n’ the picture of me on my bus pass smiled at the driver and […]

Miss Manners vs. the Washington Post

Here’s some sage advice:

Miss Manners realizes that people say these things [disaster stories] to mothers because they don’t know what else to say. She recommends dropping the category of potential mother, saying “Congratulations” to expectant mothers, “How adorable!” to new mothers and, to the rest, “So — how are the kids?”

Now if only the medical […]

Wine is for Men*

Thanks for reminding me, San Francisco Chronicle!

You intended to impress your date by taking her to one of the city’s most elegant fine-dining establishments. Moments after being seated, you’ve been presented with a leather-bound wine list the size of the Manhattan telephone directory. Fifteen hundred wines and not one word of useful description on any […]