The ad-themed proposal for bailing the Golden Gate Bridge out of an $87 million budget deficit, which was the subject of this Project Janna post, has been rejected.

Half full: this is good.
Half empty: this was actually a serious proposal. I bet they had PowerPoint presentations and everything.

Q*Bert.

Jaspar.

I was walking on a busy street in the Financial District the other day, and I witnessed a minor car accident. For some inexplicable reason, a guy driving in the right lane decided to take a left turn without checking to see if there was any other traffic in the immediate vicinity. Predictably enough, the person driving just behind him in the left lane plowed into the rear driver’s side door.

I kept walking, figuring that it was none of my business, until I noticed something. Oblivious Guy’s car had escaped without any damage. Despite the fact that Faultless Guy was driving a decent sized pickup, Oblivious Guy’s Mercedes had maintained that “fresh off the lot” look that people with expensive cars tend to cultivate.

Impossible, I thought. I discreetly walked a little closer. Even at 50 feet or so, the body of the car was flawless. Not even a scratch, let alone the predictable dent. It was like the car was made out of some disturbing but highly effective combination of Teflon® and depleted uranium.

My thoughts? 1) Why do people who are totally oblivious to the rest of the world always have amazing luck? It’s not that I wanted someone to get hurt, but is it right for the Powers That Be to passively validate the driving skills of a person that could eventually kill someone? 2) It is a perfectly reasonable expectation that a base-priced $127,775 car be indestructible. I now understand a formerly elusive concept: the luxury car.

Oaklandish birds:

I was invited to add this photo to the Flickr group Colander on Head:

I am honored to support any group advocating the use of kitchen accessories as headgear.

shouldn’t weigh on one’s conscience. However:

I’ve met “feminists” who think Madeleine Albright is amazing because she is a strong female policymaker. I think there’s a special place in hell for those people. It’s that circle where you breathe depleted uranium dust, where your kid has a one in eight chance of dying before the age of five, and where cholera isn’t some old school concept you read about in Little House on the Prairie.