Adventures in San Francisco

Spent most of yesterday studying at school and practicing on some teeth. Left in the evening and since I didn't have time for a long bike ride, I tackled a few of the more notable hills in this end of town. I went up and down the steep and crooked part of Lombard at the top of Russian Hill and then climbed up to Coit Tower at the top of Telegraph Hill. While on the way home I could see behind me some familiar masts sticking above the pier buildings. Hmmmm.

The fog rolled in last night and the fog horns started at it around 8 or so. As I sat on the couch studying until midnight I could hear the surf, LOUDLY. Laying in bed, it sounded terrifying and I started kicking myself for not having ridden over to the ocean to see it on my bike ride. There was more of it today, but it wasn't so impressive at Ocean Beach, 8-10 feet maybe but nobody was out in it to watch or compare the size to and it was far out and foggy and really windy. Not fun. Rode downtown (out of the fog and into the sun) and down Market Street to the Ferry Building and searched for those masts. The Maltese Falcon is berthed right near the east end of Fisherman's Wharf for the time being. Pretty cool.

On the way home, checked out Fort Point and there was some excellent surf and surfing going on. Watched it for a long time, talked to a couple people. Got really cold standing there. This is only the 2nd or 3rd time it's fired up like this since I got here in July and the first time I've seen it.  It was hard to leave. The wind on the way home along Crissy Field was brutal and along Lincoln Blvd, the fog was blowing so fast and thick you could see it billow in front of the oncoming traffic along the pavement. I took lots of pictures and put the best ones up on Flickr. Here's a sample I took from above Fort Mason.

Posters: Neither motivational nor demotivational. Discuss

There's various web pages out there that allow users to create Motivational Posters or Demotivational Posters. Insert picture, add title and caption and you've got a neat looking poster. 

Instead of making them de-/motivational, most seem to use it as an easy way to make a cool picture with a neat title font, caption, and black border. Here's some favorites.

Attack on the Lassen's!

Shoot, everyone who knows my family knows we don't really go out of our way for attention, but we seem to get it anyways. A few days ago, Political Watch Central Coast, posts an article after they discovered that someone in the Lassen family (apparently Dave Lassen, whoever he is, head of the Lassen's "corporation," which doesn't exist) donated a sizable sum of money to the Proposition 8 campaign. It wasn't me and I don't know who did it and I'm not even sure if the amount is correct although commenters seemed to confirm the accuracy. Commenters also began to comment on boycotting the stores and perhaps picketing them. That would be a sight to see indeed. Especially the smaller ones. I'd probably come down just to watch such a silly act. Fortunately someone in our family has a few friends and they stuck up for us and told us about the development. This started a large discussion, of which I involved myself heavily.

Over the course of the past two days of this debate, the writer also discovered the active involvement of the Mormon church in this matter and wrote another article exposing such diabolical scheming and hatemongering. So I involved myself in this debate as well.

I must say, I kinda enjoyed it. The two posts can be found here:
Lassen's Article
Mormon Church Involvement Article

In some ways I'm glad that the blog isn't read more, and other ways I'm sad because no one will read such excellent arguments made in favor of Proposition 8. But sadly, I get more comments on this blog than Political Watch does (with the exception of the two controversial posts) on theirs, and that's not a lot. So, I'm going to do a favor and recommend the few of you who read my ramblings head on over and at least drive the traffic to their site up more than normal for the next couple days. That way they can feel better about themselves.

P.S. I wasn't posting under Lassensurf because I was having gimpy problems registering with Wordpress. How embarassing....

Ur Doin it Wrong

Collected a few of these the other night from various places.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog

Dr. Horrible is an aspiring evil villain and hosts his own video blog about his exploits. He has a crush on Penny from the laundromat and his arch nemesis is Captain Hammer. 

Joss Whedon and his brothers wrote this movie and music during last year's writer's strike funding it himself and releasing it online for free. It's been out since spring and already has a cult following as determined by the soundtrack's Top 40 Albums status on iTunes last month. The movie was made without any corporate or executive restrictions whatsoever and is only 43 minutes long as one of the by-products of the freedom allowed in its making. You can watch it for free several places online, buy it from iTunes, and a DVD is coming out soon. 

Joss is best known for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Angel TV shows and related movies. Read his wikipedia entry. He sounds like a pretty interesting guy. If Dr. Horrible looks familiar, that's cuz he's Doogie Howser, MD. Captain Hammer is Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly and the OB/GYN from Waitress. 

As a family friendly writer, I must warn that the movie, if rated, would probably receive a mild PG-13 rating for a few comments regarding intimate human behavior from Captain Hammer, revealing a smarmy side to his character. Other than that, it is definitely G. Instead of thinking it like poo in a brownie, rationalize it as the High Fructose Corn Syrup tainting your ABC Vegan Cookies. (My family owns and regularly watches movies worse than this --as far as innapropriate dialogue goes-- so no hate mail from the siblings, please).

Tsunami!

To sellabrate the first day of the second quarter of school and to console my recently returned loneliness after a week with my family, I went for a bike ride this evening. The fog was rolling in and I'd heard reports of monstrous surf on Baker Beach and at Fort Point over the weekend. Wanting to watch the leftovers I headed to Fort Point first. No surf, but the fog was doing it's cool clear-under-the-bridge-foggy-from-the-deck-up business. From the fort I could see all the way across the bay and see the sun shining on Angel Island, but the deck of the bridge was a dark hazy stripe and the towers above it were non-existent. Awesome.

I booked it back up to the bridge and muscled up to Hawk Hill in the Marin headlands to enjoy the view wondering what surprises the fog would present me with. The ride across the bridge was dark (even though the sun hadn't set yet) and visibility was down to 200 feet or so. The ride up also was exciting as 20 mph winds blew billows of mist in the opposite direction I was going around the bends.

From the top, the air was the clearest I've ever seen it. I could see all the way across the bay and even the taller hills far beyond Oakland. The Golden Gate and everything south of the headlands was a sea of gray with 100-foot-tall-mile-long rolling swells coming from the west. Giant splashes of fog erupted around the headland's jagged coast where sea meets land. Only the very tips of the bridge's towers and Sutro tower were at all visible over the top of it. The wave-front was just approaching Yerba Buena island and hadn't wrapped around to engulf downtown. It was like watching a giant tsunami 700 feet tall moving in slow motion pour in through the gate and bury the city under thick gray sea water. After staring at it for twenty minutes and visiting with some other awe-struck viewers I hopped back onto my two-wheeled submarine and plunged back into the dark depths below. All along the road were other inspired folk, most just staring motionless at the scene, a few with cameras.

It was a fast and exciting ride home at the bottom of the sea-above-the-sea as water rained off of the bridge's invisible cables above, currents of wind tried to push me sideways, and other cyclists would appear and disappear like ghosts in front and behind me.

Now, I get to make dinner listening to the lonely fog horns sing their slow, deep songs to each other from each side of the gate like migrating whales.

Numa Numa

I've received some personal requests for the funny stuff, the pictures and videos I find during my rambles and wanderings across the vast internets. I'ma gonna start with some old school:

The original Numa Numa

Here's the original Star Wars Kid:

Both of these were parodied immeasurably all over the world wide web and even on TV. Arrested Development parodied the Star Wars kid many many times using George Michael and the family video camera. It became a long running gag. Both videos are at the top of "most viewed" videos on Youtube. Both caused the stars to get more-than-wanted attention. The numa numa guy posted his video intentionally while the star wars kid didn't. That became a scandal. Oh well.

Here's a few other singly popular fellows, made famous by their unique-ness and foibles:

Afro-Ninja and Tay Zonday with Chocolate Rain

Things like this that become inside-jokes of the internet are known as "memes" ( weird version of phenomenon). People are always trying to start their own memes intentionally, but these are prime examples of the fact that you'll never know what will get the mob's attention.