Friday, April 10, 2009
Keeping It Real: Cell Phone Photos
You know, I really do plan to post a cool little story about a toy sloth, but DAG this is one crazy time to try to get anything done. Inlaws (beloved) are in town. We go to seder tonight - a gourmet feast for mind and body, hosted by the inimitable Mitch and Cath, and I’m so excited. Work is very busy, especially since I’ll be taking off for a month as of next friday for bonding and I’ll need to clear my decks and make sure all disasters have been anticipated and pre-resolved. I’m back on the union bargaining team, and bargaining is not going well this time around. That sort of stresses me out as a team member, but also as a wage-earner. Kel’s been feeling poorly and the boys have been bouncing off the walls. Plus, there was that thing with Anatoli and the red light he didn’t see at Anza and Stanyan, that of course led to the thing with our car violently colliding with his, while Kel and the kids were all aboard. Everyone seems uninjured by the accident which is more than I can say for the car, which is teetering on the brink of being declared a total loss. WE JUST HAD THE BRAKES DONE. AND THE TRANSMISSION. AND WE CLEANED THE INTERIOR, goddamn it. The cd player just started working again. We just paid it off. Plus, of course, Kel starts back to work in about 10 days and needs reliable wheels. The timing, to say the least, leaves a lot to be desired.
So when my plan last night to work on posting my little story got subsumed in new plans to watch two hours of TiVovision and to have an unexpected sit-down for 45 minutes with my delightful FIL, and the evening just evaporated on me, I knew that my only real blogging window had irrevocably closed. I won’t be posting that story - yet. Yet, I have to post something, or my know-it-all nieu millenium hip-ness credentials will be revoked by some clove-smoking layer-wearing hipster enforcer. Before I get further carried away with this imagery, I think instead I’ll resort to cheap thrills and offload a few cell-phone photos on you. It’s better than one of those double-deck tourist buses, I assure you - hop-on/hop-off has nothing on me. Just look:
From my friend’s room at the St Francis, nine floors directly above the corner of Powell and Geary, looking out at dusk over Union Square. I took one other that was sharper, but it somehow conveyed so much less of what it was actually to be there.
This is a poster that’s up by the front door of the Finance Department.
Yes, it’s a little fuzzy, and it’s sort of dark, but can you see what’s going on? It’s the iconic silhouette of the attache’ man at the bureaucrat’s desk, a classic image of office decorum. Overlaid upon this, you can see the tripartite green mobius arrow of recycling. I can’t help but think, when I see this in passing, that they’re telling me that they recycle humans somehow. The Finance Section, not unlike soylent green, is People! Or so they would have us believe, anyway.
This is the crowd that gathers up the block from my office building on Thursday afternoons to watch the peregrines that nest up above the treeline hereabouts. SFGate just ran a story about it; they don’t need me posting a link and it’s too much trouble for me right now to bother. But it’s pretty cool that this natural covey has sprung up amid the towers of downtown san francisco, swooping around in search of indigenous prey, nesting in specially built containers right through every mating season, and that they show up with all this equipment every week to look at birds.
This fellow and his ream-worthy friend seem to have an urgent job to do. I wish they well, whatever they may be rooting.
And finally, a statue that caused some theological disruption in our household:
So we’re wandering through a small collection of sculptures and we see the first sculpure some distance ahead. “Why, that’s Edward Muybridge,” I predict, and so it is. Z asks who he was and I explain a little. Then we find this statue of Yoda, and Z is pretty sure that having a statue means that Yoda is for real, too, and honestly, doesn’t this make it hard to argue with him?
So that’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll be back with more, but later. Circumstances demand my attention, and who am I to disappoint circumstances?
