I'm a lasagna boy!

The name of this band is Yo!

Idly poking through the "Recent Used Arrivals" bin at the record shop, I picked up a couple of interesting records and hummed a few bars from I Zimbra, but couldn't find something that really grabbed me. And as I walked up to the register, I saw a CD of The Name Of This Band. Yo!
... this beautiful record (the series of photographs on the inner sleeves are as imprinted in my memory as are the songs themselves: David Byrne with a big guitar in a living room; Jerry Harrison waving energetically from behind a keyboard; and Eno's name, everywhere) has always been a record to me: but the CD has such beautiful, clear sound, and it's not like yesterday anymore.
It gets better: next to the Talking Heads reissue was a CD copy of Caroleen's Taking Tiger Mountain cover CD. Hot diggity!
All in all, an eno-riffic mid-day. And all I meant to pick up was a salami and baguette for lunch.

... and this is my receipt for your receipt

A few weeks after I had filed yet another complaint with the CPUC, the Chronicle ran a great article on how PG&E sends estimated rather than actual bills to its customers. Morally as well as fiscally bankrupt.
Utilities should not only fall under public oversight, they should be a completely public -- owned and operated -- service. Free enterprise is for beer and house-painting services, not for critical civic infrastructure. I'm going to go watch Brazil now.

PG&E says it sends out almost 70,000 estimated bills each month -- frequently for amounts higher than actual usage would warrant -- because customers' meters are inaccessible.

But current and former insiders say the utility deliberately bypasses some neighborhoods to save itself the expense of hiring enough people to handle the workload.

State regulators worry that ratepayers are being overcharged on a routine basis. They said an investigation into PG&E's billing practices already is under way and that the utility could face significant fines or penalties.

PG&E spokesman Ron Low said that while meters in a particular neighborhood may go unread due to employee illness or traffic conditions, no policy exists to estimate customers' bills as a cost-cutting measure.

"Our policy is to read every customer's meter each month," he said. "We have the proper staffing level to allow us to do so."

Depending on the person I speak with at PG&E, I am told, variously, that my meter has not been read in eighteen (18) months, that the meter readers cannot find the meter, that the meter reader was unable to find anyone at home, that the dog ate their homework, etc., etc.

Spinning in his grave

Donald Leslie, inventor of the speaker of the same name, died at the age of 93.

Third floor, just past the koi

Haight and Pierce

On the southwest corner, attached to a utility pole:

See span? See span fall.

MoDOT brought traffic on the Mississippi to a halt by demolishing a bridge into the river. The plan called for destroying a single approach, not the whole bridge.

Something to ipod about

http://homepage.mac.com/amake/shared/docs/essays/backup.html

And when we see the next-generation iPod, what will the new feature be? Photo sharing and a colour screen? Rendezvous-enabled wireless broadcast capability? An open spec, so that third-party developers can write (or reverse-engineer) the OS and make it more flexible?

Thanks to this nifty script, iTunes can find album cover art to complement whatever's playing. Alleluia.

Yeah, I feel better now.

It is an art thing!!!

Pinball machines, roller-coasters, and making art with other boardwalk amusements.

Fiore's own roots, as demonstrated in past projects, never stray far from this notion of collaboration with the machine. In 2000, she removed the glass from an Evel Knievel pinball machine, overlaid cut vellum around the bumpers of the "playboard" (1,000 points when lit!), and played a full game with three balls she had doused in red, white, and blue oil paint, respectively. The resulting painting, a lavender oblong that looks like a hallucinated skull, testifies to Fiore's ability to excavate or "see" the buried image within the machine, almost as if it was written in invisible ink. In the same way that Michelangelo envisioned David's sensuous curves within the notoriously busted Duccio stone, Fiore anticipated a painting that would conjure the first celebrity superhero made flesh: a daredevil who motorcycle-jumped over a tank of live sharks and is listed in the Guinness Book of World's Records for having broken thirty-five bones.

I love Pokey comics. How nutty!!!

A route of one's own

Although it's been done (and perhaps in more style), four San Franciscans decided to ride all MUNI routes over the long weekend. It took them all weekend?

Ready for Noël?

A woman in Girona has a nice online store for her caganer figurines.
What are caganers? They caused a stir when some appeared in the opening exhibit at Copia.
The woman who runs the toy museum in Figueres was so excited when I was excited at their display of caganers, and gave me a nice poster commemorating this peculiarly Iberian Nativity character. (It now hangs in my bathroom.) The museum's web site has a nice Flash dealie.

Spare the Air

I'm curious why the last two "Spare the Air" days have occurred on non-working days (Saturday last week; tomorrow, Labor Day). This means that public transit riders do not receive the discount that happens when the Air Quality Index rises above 100.

If public transit is recognised as helping air quality, shouldn't drivers of private cars receive negative incentives? The Spare the Air web site says, " Most of the air pollution in the Bay Area is man-made, and results from industrial processes and everyday activities like driving ... ". And the first item under "What can I do to help reduce summer air pollution?" reads "The biggest action you can take is to drive less."
There's also the ironic, tacit acknowledgement that households have more than one car: "Drive your most fuel-efficient car".

This Monday, September 6, is a Spare The Air Day in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ground-level ozone air pollution is expected to exceed 100 AQI (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) tomorrow. Because it is not a weekday, there is no free commute on BART.

Manana es un dia "Spare the Air." Por favor, maneje su carro lo menos possible manana.

Clear skies, hot temperatures, a strong temperature inversion trapping pollutants near the ground, and light winds will combine to produce poor air quality for the Bay Area.

People are being asked to:
- Avoid the use of charcoal lighter fluid and barbecues
- Eliminate the use of gasoline-powered yard tools like lawn mowers and leaf blowers
- Exercise in the morning before air quality hits unhealthy levels
- Postpone errands and link necessary trips
- Use public transit whenever possible

To monitor current air quality conditions, visit www.sparetheair.org

Empty breath, empty mouths

I live in a densely-populated area in the middle of an incorporated city, where I pay sales tax and property tax. I want the city to maintain the road from the main street to my neighbourhood, so that I can get in and out of my neighbourhood -- presumably, to contribute to the community by working and spending and volunteering.
The city says: "Build it yourself. Or collect the money to build it, and we'll install it for you."
Well, that didn't quite happen, since cars are involved. But suggest ditto for pedestrians -- that the city maintain a pedestrian walkway in order to accomodate citizens keen on participating in their community without cars -- and bollocks to you.

The usually-noxious Chronicle Watch feature of the San Francisco Chronicle features a revealing piece about a city's priorities.

San Francisco residents who use a decaying set of stairs in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood are hoping the city will come to their rescue. The staircase - which runs the length of a passageway called Bengal Street -- provides a welcome shortcut in the hilly Mount Davidson neighborhood between Lansdale Avenue and Miraloma Drive. ChronicleWatch tipster Al Parso uses the stairs to get to his bus stop nearby, but says they are so badly deteriorated they are no longer safe. "Is there any way to get our fine city to repair this public throughway?" Parso asked ChronicleWatch. "Or is all of our maintenance reserved for automobiles to the exclusion of walkers and public transit riders?" Status: San Francisco public works spokesman Frank Lee researched the matter after our call and discovered that the property owners on either side of the stairs are responsible for maintaining them. "We don't have a record that any city agency built them," he said. However, Lee told us the stairs appear to be dangerous and said the city will close them to the public. His department will notify the property owners of their responsibility, explain the situation to nearby residents and alert Muni about the closure. Lee said his agency would be willing to build city-maintained stairs if the neighborhood wants the job done and will help raise the funds. To weigh in on the status of the Bengal Street stairs, call Lee at (415) 554-7928. -- Who's looking into it: Ed Lee, S.F.'s director of public works, (415) 554- 6920; edwin_lee@ci.sf.ca.us