I hate the song Rudy the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Let's look at the lyrics: Rudy was mocked by his peers for a physical defect. When Santa said Rudy would lead the pack, suddenly everyone loved him. That's really fucked up. It's not that they appreciated him, it's just that the boss likes him so they're sucking up. I would totally smack the shit out of those other reindeer.

Most people know of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge — it may be the most famous bridge in America — but in actuality it's the lesser used of the two bridges to San Francisco. The other bridge, Bay Bridge, ties San Francisco to Oakland and receives double the daily commuters. It's so long that it actually has to attach itself to an island in the middle of the bay, then continue to the other side. However it was not structurally sound, particularly for a major earthquake that would hit San Francisco any day now, and in 1989 part of it collapsed after a 6.9 shake. After heavily debating whether to buff up the current bridge or just remake the whole thing, twenty years later they finally built a completely new bridge that leads in from Oakland to the island in the middle of the bay (the section that goes from the island to San Francisco does not to my knowledge require any repairs).

The new bridge looks really nice and has improved traffic. However the old one is still just sitting there. I have no idea if there are measures to tear it down, but you literally drive across a bridge with a fucking bridge right next to you. It's pretty ridiculous. And at night, it's kinda creepy with this dark and abandoned structure looming over you:

FUCK.

YES.

Is it weird that whenever I hear the phrase "hand crafted" I don't think "high quality" but rather "more susceptible to containing an error"?

If you go into any New York souvenir shop, you can find these really easily. They're everywhere. But for me it's weird that I could also find them easily in San Francisco except it says "I ♥ SF" instead. Literally it's all the same crap except geared for another city. There are of course some original things, like models of cable cars or the Golden Gate Bridge, but otherwise it's identical to any store found here.

This is when I get hesitant over large companies. I can definitely think of how they've improved my life: Instead of dealing with fourteen different formats, corporations like Google were able to standardize things. But when I don't have any opportunity to search for other shit, then I'm wondering why isn't there more competition. Every single store in New York has the same vendor. And apparently every store in San Francisco as well. Where the hell is the variety?

I don't know why they thought this was acceptable, but those model cable cars were created from the cheapest material known to mankind. I never even considered buying this for someone back home.

Getting the beams in our living room ceiling has been kind of a bitch because it's not mass produced anymore and is expensive to get a solid chunk of wood like that. Our contractor managed to find a woman who basically disassembles old farmhouses in the tri-state area and sells the parts, and she came to our neighbor's house to look at their beams and assess whether she could gather the materials and the labor. She even sent over samples of different types of wood, how different types of stain look on them, and how she would achieve that chiseling effect you can see in the picture. We spent quite some time debating about our choices before finally selecting a dark oak, and then we waited for her to send over the beams.

Well, it turns out she's a con artist, and she ran off with the down payment. There's been several other people who've been duped by her as well, so I have no idea how she's still running around considering she's already been involved with a sting operation. But my question is this: Who the fuck is a beam con artist? It's such a weird thing. Stolen art, okay. Insurance polices, fine. But beams? That's probably why it's so brilliant; who the fuck would suspect a beam supplier?

Part of Animal Crossing is your neighbors. You try to interact with them, help them, and become friends. Sometimes they try to move on, but if you like them you can convince them to stay without much difficulty. I'm finding that this game is appealing to the shallow part of my personality because I pick and choose my neighbors depending on how cool they look. If I think they're shit, I do everything in my power to make them leave as quickly as possible. I wonder if this is saying something about me.

Harlan at IKEA:

"Sometimes I wonder if this is actually Swedish or if they're just stringing random letters together. Like bärbar. There's no way that's an actual word. Spöka can't be real either. They just wanna make it sound cool. Why say 'bed' when you can say 'malm' instead?"

San Francisco has several different modes of public transportation. Their only subway is called the BART or Bay Area Rapid Transit. However it's more of the equivalent of the LIRR or NJ Transit, i.e. it brings people from the greater urban area to the city center and is priced by zones. Besides that there is the MUNI or Municipal Railways, which is a fucking mess because it literally incorporates everything else. First we have their famous cable car system, which is mostly used by tourists but is the only thing that can climb steep hills. We have then the trolleys, which have tracks on the street. On major roads they have their own designated lane, but half the time they share it with traffic and generally cause a mess. I've also noticed half of their vehicles were bought from other cities that were phasing out their trolley systems, so when I'm waiting for one I see it's headed for Chicago or Berlin and not conveying any useful information about where I need to go. And even though MUNI stands for railways, for some asinine reason it also covers the bus system, which I've divided in half: normal ones that run on gas like any sane bus and ones that run via electrical wires. Literally hanging over the streets are these giant wires and the buses have these antennas attached to them in order to power the bus. Whenever one passes you by, you can hear the zapping of the wires.

But today I wanna talk about the trolleys. As I've said, sometimes they have their own central lane and sometimes they're in the street. On bigger streets they even are provided with a platform. But unfortunately the steps are too low for it. So their trolleys literally have a staircase that rises and lowers depending on what section of the route their on. When they're by platforms, the stairs rise to create a flat surface. And when they're on the streets, they lower to create steps.

I wish someone told me this shit beforehand. Here I am, on a crowded trolley by the doors, when suddenly I heard this announcement. It's as garbled as any other NYC subway. Then I heard this horrible screeching noise, which I'm assuming is their equivalent of a warning signal. All I know is it sounded like a cat being tortured. And then suddenly the stable floor I was standing on collapsed under my feet to create some steps. I'm freaking out, wondering whether this thing is falling apart.

As convoluted as the NYC subway system is, I'd take that shit over this crazy madness any day of the week.

First for your consideration, here is Willis Tower:

And now:

Me: WTC is now tallest building in the US, as it should be. Fuck Chicago.
Moham: Yo, fuck Chicago.
Me: Yo, so the Willis Tower was the highest before. Take a look at that shit. It's so ugly. We can't let that be the tallest building in America.
Moham: That shit looks like they ran out of legos halfway during construction.
Me: Who the hell designed it? Who fucking agreed to that design? Why is there no shame?
Moham: It looks like it was symmetrically designed at one point, and literally took chunks off random parts of it to make the top taller.
Me: "Fuck New York. Let's make this random building taller than theirs."
Me: "But sir, we don't have enough supplies."
Me: "Then grab some shit at the base and put it on top!"
Moham: Yup. Just take that shit and put it up there.

I think I've explained to everyone that Harlan's neighborhood sucks, but this is the part that always gets me: The only reliable shop in the area is a Walgreen's. I can understand them locking up some medications because of the drug addicts, but they also secure other items I find innocuous, like shampoo. I once asked a sales associate about this and she just said with a heavy Chinese accent, "Oh, they crazy. The crazy people are trouble." I can't imagine them having access to showers; why would they need this?

I got my answer from Harlan. His apartment has a small donut shop at the bottom, and once when he was in there getting a coffee, a man entered and approached him, "Hey... do you want to buy some shampoo?"

Riding a train for long distances gives you the opportunity to meet people that you usually wouldn't. For example, the waiters/waitresses force people to sit together even if there are other tables open so that you interact with your fellow passengers. If you sit in the lounge car, it's inevitable that someone will sit with you and start chatting. And I engaged in several interesting conversations: a coal miner from West Virginia whose family worked in the train industry for generations, a woman who rides the trains periodically as a vacation, a Vietnam vet who returned from the war to become a taxi driver and one night his passenger shot a man in front of him.

And then there's this: A middle-aged woman — I want to make this very clear that this woman was at least in her forties — said to me, "Have you heard about this thing that happened to the Jews called the Hologram? I saw it on The History Channel a few weeks ago. It's so sad." It took all of my effort to keep my face straight and not look at her in horror. There was no way I was continuing that line of conversation without sounding condescending.

Amtrak Adventures, Day 2:

Okay, unless you're willing to spend extra money each time you're traveling, never fucking take a sleeper car.  Because you will never want to go back.  It's infinitely more comfortable than being in coach.  For one, I can fucking change clothing.  For two, I'm not sharing the bathroom with sixty people and they keep that shit clean.

Meals are included as part of the sleeper car package, so if you take advantage of it and eat three meals a day, I think at least a third of the ticket pays itself.

Rocky Mountains = gorgeous.

Amtrak Adventures, Day 1:

Man, people are fucking disgusting.  There's no direct train from New York to San Francisco, so I had to take a nineteen-hour trip to Chicago, transfer, and then straight to San Fran.  Over the course of that first leg of the trip, that bathroom devolved into madness.  Seriously people, how are you not capable of flushing?  It's a huge fucking button.  Every single fucking time I was the one who had to rid the bathroom of their shit.  And it's one of those forced-air airplane toilets, so there's no excuse for shit to still be in the bowl.  What the hell is wrong with people?

Chicago's Union Station is their equivalent to our Grand Central, but they fucked it up.  Whereas our station is bustling with people coming and going, theirs is completely dead.  For some inconceivable reason they removed all the ticket sellers and announcements from the main hall and put them down in some tunnels off to the side, so I was able to take great pictures of the high ceiling and such because no one was there.

Finally, I'm trying to figure out if this week was the annual Amish convention or something because Union Station was inundated with them.  I couldn't look in any direction without seeing a person wearing a bonnet or sporting a long beard.  Also, did you know that the Amish really fucking love grilled Cajun food?  They practically mobbed the place.

I'm off to San Francisco for a week. Text me if you want anything.

[00:36:17] Dun 4 Hire: I should really stop watching anime and start packing.
[00:38:50] gtaex2739: if anime has taught me anything
[00:39:05] gtaex2739: it's that you should always fall into tits
[00:39:13] gtaex2739: i was going to relate that to packing, but i just don't see how
[00:41:20] Dun 4 Hire: I'm surprised with that knowledge that you don't allow yourself to trip more often.
[00:41:30] gtaex2739: speaking of tits
[00:41:34] gtaex2739: it's Greene's birthday

This is currently the two top comments for this video:

Honestly? Whenever I see a video like this showing Native American life before the white man came upon their shores, I think of shit like this:

Iroquois warriors conducted "mourning wars" in which they sought prisoners from their enemies. The chiefs distributed the prisoners to grieving matrilineages, whose elder women decided their fate: adoption or death. The matrons usually adopted women and children, who were more readily assimilated. Captive men more often faced death by torture, especially if they had received some crippling wound. Inflicting death as slowly and painfully as possible, the Iroquois tied their victim to a stake, and villagers of both genders and all ages took turns wielding knives, torches, and red-hot pokers systematically to torment and burn him to death. The ceremony was a contest between the skills of the torturers and the stoic endurance of the victim, who manifested his own power, and that of his people, by insulting his captors and boasting of his accomplishments in war. After the victim died, the women butchered his remains, cast them into cooking pots, and served the stew to the entire village, so that all could be bound together in absorbing the captive's power.
—Alan Taylor, American Colonies, ed. Eric Foner (New York: Viking, 2001), 102-03.

Remember that other part in Pocahontas when they were putting on their war paint? It wasn't as if that day they had to invent that ritual because battle and conflict was a new thing to them. No, Native Americans already knew all too well how to murder a person. Europeans were horrified at scalping; that was in practice long before any white man touched their soil.

This is kinda like my Chrono Cross complaint a few days ago: I'm not going to defend what was done to the Native Americans, but I'm not about to pretend that everything was perfect and peaceful until the Europeans arrived to fuck everything up. They were fucking human too with human desires. They fought over resources and influence. That idea was not purely an Old World phenomenon.

Really, this just sums up my argument: the Aztecs. If shit was so fucking idyllic, fucking explain them. No matter what you want to say about Christianity and its sins, at least its fundamental theology isn't "rip out people's still-beating hearts frequently to assure the suns rises every morning."

Seriously NYPL, you need to up your game. Okay, I'm totally willing to overlook some of the problems with your catalog. You have the second-largest collection in the world and there's gotta be some blips somewhere. But here's where I draw the line: when you don't give me the books I requested for. A couple of months ago I put down a couple of holds but they just sat and sat, saying they weren't ready for pickup. Until now I figured they were lost somewhere; surely with human error there's gotta be some stuff shelved improperly. But today I finally went to Mid-Manhattan and found all six of the books I've been waiting for for months just sitting there on the shelves. What the hell have you been doing all this time? A book or two, fine. But six? Did you even bother to get out of your chair at all to fulfill this request?

The best part is when I walked up to the circulation and the dude said, "Oh, sorry, these have a hold." I just paused and said, "Yeah... I'm the one with the hold. I kinda wanted to get around to reading them after ten months."