One of the "colorful local folks" in my 'hood is this guy whose not quite homeless but not quite all together. He's usually wandering around, giving this loud "mmmm" honk of a sound wherever he goes. Often, he stands outside one of the local flop houses and smokes what I'm sure is "medicinal marijuana." He is, however, completely harmless and not very crazy and as such is usually let in to all the various places in the 'hood.

A few days ago, in the early morning, I was out in the street and as he walked past me, he held up his hand to high five me. It was a pretty cool thing actually, realizing that I'm such part of the local fabric of the neighborhood that the local color was high fiving me on the street. Sometimes it pays to never ever move.

Last thursday I sat down to watch the news in light of all the stuff going on. Olberman was doing some smart piece about all of the Cheney craziness and the sketchy constituionality of it all and so flipped around to see what else was going on. On Fox, they were busy ranting and raving about all those Mexicans crossing the border. On CNN, the Most Trusted Name in News, Glenn Beck was busy rushing to defend Anne Coulter from those viscious attacks by Elizabeth Edwards while Larry King was busy interviewing Paris Hilton.

Sometimes, I really hate this country.

Luckily, I had V for Vendetta on the ole TiVo and so I watched that and felt better.

In light of both the MTV Movie Awards in which Paris got dissed right in front of her face and her subsequent surrendering to the cops to be jailed, I came up with this interesting little political metaphor, mainly that W. and Paris have a lot in common.

Okay, follow along here....

At this point, Paris is a joke. A punchline. Actually, she's somewhere way below joke. Like a really bad comedian you wish would disappear from the air. Everyone knows she is, everyone says she is, and everyone acts on it, and yet, Paris seems to be completely clueless as to her being such a joke. She goes from gala event to pop culture event as if everyone wants her to show up and doesn't seem to know that nobody actually wants her to be there. And she keeps on doing all that Paris despite it all-- drinking and boozing and whoring and making fun of Lindsey Lohan. Yet whenever somebody calls her on this, she acts surprised, like she has no idea why anybody would hate her.

Which brings us to the President who at this point in his Presidency is also a joke, a punchline, a depressing sad and tragic joke. Yet he appears to be completely unaware of this, still acting with that smirking arrogance that he's had since he was elected. He still thinks he's the President and an authority, a man of credibility, yet pretty much everyone in the country doesn't believe anything he says. And like Paris, whenever he's called on it, he acts surprised that anybody would think he wasn't just the most righteous person on the earth and doubt his word.

And also, like Paris, pretty much everyone wishes he'd just go the fuck away.

Today, as I was exiting off 101 to get onto my offramp, I was tailgated. Now, I'm going at about 65 and need to start slowing down for the offramp and the sharp left turn that immediately comes after the turn-off. But this fucker in one of those SUV's for people who don't want people to think they have an SUV was right on my back the whole way. Again, this is at 65. He was up in my grill as it were so much that I went wide into the turnoff and had to use two hands to get myslef into the lane. And he still tailgated me. Even worse, there's three lanes that I can get into once I go through the turnoff and he was behind me, tailgating still, in the far-left lane that I chose.

Now, I am pissed. I hate tailgaters and this guy was particulary douchey. What moron tailgates on an off-ramp? I wanted to do what most people do in that situation, curse to the heavens and maybe flip him off but I decided to do something else: I slowed down. Really down. As long as he was on my back, I crept through the city streets as slow as possible, even intentionally missing a light. The guy, pissed at me, eventually turned and went up another street to get away from me.

I'm pretty proud of myself, actually, for coming up with this solution on how to handle tailgaters. In fact, let this be a warning to all you tailgaters out there-- get on my ass, and I'm dropping at least five on the spedometer.

Suck it.

Went to brunch in Noe Valley (after navigating the street like frogger trying to avoid all the baby strollers) and saw two things at Savor which pretty much sum up Noe Valley. Well, San Francisco, actually.

One of them is in the outdoor section, there's a sign that says "we appreciate you for not smoking." Because, of couse, saying that anything is verboten is, well, verboten. Notice they don't say "please, no smoking allowed." Or even "we would appreciate that you don't smoke outside." Instead, they say in kind of a passive voice that they're really gosh darn appreciative that you don't smoke. Which also means that, you know, you could actually smoke out there. It's not that you "can't" it's just that they wouldn't appreciate it.

Also, in the bathroom, over the diaper changer, is a sign listing a bunch of rules for "moms, dads, and nannies." I'm surprised they didn't say "non-specific care givers" or "friends of the families' nannies out taking the baby out for a stroll with your kids so the Nanny can get her nails down."