To Rut or Not ?

Headed out to Pt. Reyes to see how the elk were doing. Which reminds me, saw a few signs for elk and buffalo farms on my recent trip back to lawnmower land (Indiana). My brother informs me that the elk farm business has come and is now going away since my days wandering the fields. Seems Viagra has ruined the market for elk antler, for which the Chinese were paying a premium. Now they just pop a Viagra.

Oh, here's the URL for more photos:
http://www.think-local.com/Jim/Pt.Reyes/

Wall Street Journal / Tenderloin

Well, well, an article about the Tenderloin on the cover of the Wall Street Journal (10/24/06, SF Edition??).

Mostly about one woman's run-ins with the Gay Shame kids.

Gay Shame is to the Left as neo-Nazis are to the right -- they're all about anger and outrage, with little use for rational thought.

Fuelish Indiana

Lacking geographic constraints to urban sprawl, Indianapolis has concentric rings of growth and decay, and the entire state is a patchwork of sprawling development built on the presumption of never-ending cheap fuel and empty frontier landscape. As GW refers to it "our way of life." Though the war is not really talked about, or talked about in the grandiose "spreading democracy" and "stay the course" and "fighting terrorism" terms, I think there is a growing underlying awareness of people's children dying over oil to provide this "way of life."

The new awareness to me, which is really an old awareness re-awakened, is the sprawling expanse of wonderful green lawns. Neighborhoods, without fences, like sprawling golf courses, miles and miles of luscious green, all kept in order by armies of riding lawnmowers consuming... more fuel.

Some academic environmentalist "professional worriers," are concerned about us diverting crops from animal feed to produce methane and biodiesel. These people have obviously not gazed upon the endless miles of green lawns, many of them kept immaculate by chemical means. The herbivore in me was salivating at the prospect of munching on that giant salad bowl, and the practical scientist in me was itching to breed a "lawn cow" the size of a sheep or chicken. We like eating chicken, but chickens don't eat much grass.

INDIANA !

I went back to Indiana. Yup. It's still there.

The confusion of Indiana is summed up by items found in my 16 year-old nephew's room, which we stayed in two night:.

6 rap music CDs, 5 Black artists, 1 Eminem.
a Confederate flag pillow.
a bad-ass-looking knife, with locking blades that will flip out both sides so you can grasp the middle and stab someone in either direction. ---====---

Turns out a woman who waits for the bus the same time I do after work, is from Nepal.

She lives downtown in "affordable housing" not "low income housing." Nice building, bad neighborhood. She has kids, and has only been in the US for 3 years.

She mentioned something about the Red Maoist separatists or something like that (I didn't catch it all). Is that why you came here ? No. They came here "because we got green cards." Maybe some wealthy nonprofiteers are handing out green cards and cheap SF housing in Nepal ?! It's all beyond me.

Different in Texas ?

Is it really different in Texas ? Posting an email exchange, which I've inverted for chronology:

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Tue, October 3, 2006 4:20 am

I just don't understand Texas (and their perceived threats to
civilization)...
===============================
The [Supreme] Court also refused to consider whether a Texas law making
it a crime to promote sex toys shaped like sexual organs is
unconstitutional.

At 09:55 AM 10/3/2006, ***** wrote:
Jim, I'm gonna refer this to my good Texan buddy Brooks. Brooks, Jim is
my old Indy roommate, currently enjoying civilization in San Francisco.
*****

Don't know if I'd say I'm "enjoying" "civilization" here, but I haven't had my peace disturbed by any sexual toy promotion. In fact, a couple of weeks ago was the Folsom Street Fair, an outdoor leather event that features leather porn stars in all their glory. I believe we may have passed by Folsom street on our way in and out of town that day, and somehow managed to miss any traffic backups. The San Francisco police were recruiting new members at the event.

Noted: one of the few things the SF Police seem to be good at is crowd control. The recently announced that they were thrilled to have a new fleet of motorcycles to set up speed traps around town, but so far, I've only seen them joy-riding around like a motorcycle gang.