I saw Barry Bonds hit No. 715 today. It provided me w/ much happiness.

"The social rupture of the 1960s and '70s had flung father and daughter to opposite coasts and opposite ends of the political and social spectrum. They were almost caricatures of what America was then: She was an acid-dropping lefty, and he was Hoover's law-and-order enforcer. While he was ordering surveillance on Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen, she was searching for truth and meaning in communal living, free love and hallucinogens. While he was fielding calls from President Nixon on the hot line in his home, she was in Chile hanging out with Marxists."

Link.

"I moved to San Francisco from Boston, where beach fires like those currently allowed at Ocean Beach are completely unheard of. Spending a summer evening in the sand, hanging out with friends around a fire (or two...) has become a special part of my social life here, and I would hate to see this passtime legislated out of existence."

Link.

I would hate to see that too, although I never have bonfires at Ocean Beach.

A science teacher uses a rifle in a physics experiment; nervous nellies and busy bees freak out.

The .30-caliber bullet, he said, is fired into a foot-long, 8-pound block of wood hanging by cords from a ceiling mount. The students take measurements of the block's movement and mass and use that information to calculate bullet speed.

He said he fires the shot from point-blank range with all the students standing behind him, so there is no danger of an accident or ricochet. There has never been an injury or close call, he added.

"I've been doing this for years," said Lapp, who skipped two or three years after Columbine. "The students love it. They ask about it very early on in the year. It's one of the more exciting demonstrations."

Exciting is not the word, said Ted Feinberg, the assistant executive director for the National Association of School Psychologists.

"It's just absolute madness, from my point of view," said Feinberg, one of the founding members of the National Emergency Assistance Team, which has responded to most of the school shootings in the country. "It is not only crazy in concept, in light of the world we live in it is absolutely irresponsible."

Feinberg said he is shocked that a teacher would bring a gun to school in the wake of tragedies like Columbine, regardless of the educational purpose.

"Were there not other ways of illustrating whatever physical principles he was trying to demonstrate?" Feinberg asked. "What's the message we are giving bringing a loaded gun into a public setting and firing it off. It's a terrible model to project on students."

Link.

What a pussy.

How amusing, the psychological horror and disturbance unfurling madly from the delicate, privileged minds of Marin County high school students at the sight of...brace yourselves...a rifle. You know, "in the wake of Columbine".

Of course it's not about Columbine. It's about values. In Marin County guns signify the Other.

"You are Isabella freaking Rossellini. I don't care if you're starting to [oddly] look [more] like Mike Myers with every [passing] day -- you are not supposed to engage in tunic-and-trousers terrorism." Link.

I'm also depressed to see my hero/totem Sarah Michelle Gellar making an appearance on the cruelest, viciousest blog of all. Sigh.

"Toxicology tests confirm that four people found dead in a Yerington motel room died of carbon monoxide poisoning, authorities said Wednesday...Authorities believe the lethal fumes came from a malfunctioning swimming pool heater located beneath the victims' room."

Link.

Dracorex hogwartsia.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon is writing a new six-issue Buffy mini-series for Dark Horse Comics. The first volume is due out in October."

Link, via Warren Ellis.

Also from Ellis: Jill the Ripper?

I'm Your Man

There's a Leonard Cohen movie coming out.

Watch this guy dance!

"Do Not Resuscitate"

"[Mary] Wohlford, of Decorah, Iowa, got the [tattoo over her sternum] in February to hopefully eliminate the possibility of any Terri Schiavo-esque controversy about her medical wishes should she become unable to communicate them directly."

Link.

Today I painted the front steps and applied Water Seal to the deck, after having Jascoed the steps on Thursday and power washed both the steps and the deck on Friday.

Time to drink a Hawaiian Breeze* and watch Gilmore Girls reruns on TiVo!



*In a pint glass loaded with ice combine in order equal parts coconut rum, cranberry juice and OJ. Do not mix.

"It's sweet to forget this and therefore difficult to keep it in mind."

Link.

Preparations for a plant sale

Browsing the CA natives...

A Douglas Iris



Salvia apiana. Smells like liverwurst.



Salvia spathacea. Smells fantastic! Hummingbirds love this plant.



Another one the hummingbirds love--Mimulus gutatus, commonly called "Seep Monkeyflower". Kind of weedy-looking for me, but a nice flower.



Coreposis gigantea. Usually considered "a weird-looking plant". I have two of them. The one in a container is doing much better than the one in the ground.



Ceanothus 'Julia Phelps'. One of my favorite ceanothus. This isn't a very good photograph of it tho'.



Ceanothus 'Centennial' is not a favorite, but I like the picture.



Moving on from natives...

The rock garden succulents are fetching.









I love succulents in general.











Wisteria... I plant I enjoy in other people's gardens.



Protea (Leucospermum, more correctly). I'm ready for the debut of dwarf varieties. Why hasn't that been done yet?





More tomorrow...

Said about vines in the garden, but applicable to everything:

"Gardening is a continuing excursion from ignorance to ignorance, as what's familiar becomes hackneyed." Link.

How can people who wouldn't dream of drinking in a pub called Gestapo cheerfully hang out at the KGB Bar? If the swastika is an undisputed symbol of unspeakable evil, can the hammer-and-sickle and other emblems of communism be anything less?

...

[P]erhaps the strongest explanation is the simplest: visibility. Ever since the end of World War II, when photographers entered the death camps and recorded what they found, the world has had indelible images of the Nazi crimes. But no army ever liberated the Soviet Gulag or halted the Maoist massacres. If there are photos or films of those atrocities, few of us have ever seen them. The victims of communism have tended to be invisible -- and suffering that isn't seen is suffering most people don't think about.

"Communist chic?" The blood of 100 million victims cries out from the ground. To wear the symbols of their killers is no fashion statement, but the ultimate in bad taste.

And it's terribly unhip to point that out.
Link.