Nothing but the hits. [entries|friends|calendar] Jonathan Garrett [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

SIGN O' THE TIMES [09 Dec 2009|12:55pm] As I headed into the BART subway station this morning, I caught this advertisement for medical marijuana above the entrance. Now THAT is how you draw business! post comment

BUT HE STILL COULD NEVER PRONOUNCE POWER ADE [04 Dec 2009|02:23pm] I made my first visit to Tallahassee in the fall of 1979. I was in third grade then, and had done very little traveling outside my hometown. So when the chance came up to visit my sister——then a student at FSU, I couldn't have been more excited. I remember marveling at all the trees, but even more so at the hills. For a kid who grew up living on a sand dune, Tallahassee might as well have been in the Swiss Alps. But what I remember most is going to an FSU football game with my sister. The stands were much wilder in those days (the drinking age was only 18), and the fans had far longer hair and wore far fewer baseball caps. It was fairly common to see women lifted up above the crowd and "passed up" to the top of the stands. There was also a weird old guy named Sol who gave candy to all the kids. It had just been announced that FSU would be going to the Orange Bowl that year, and so the fans threw oranges——hundreds of them——on the bench of the opposing team. Really quite dangerous in retrospect. And despite the fact that FSU wasn't playing the University of Florida, the fans still sang, "Go the hell Ga-tors, Go to hell! (Eat shit!)" throughout the game. As a kid, this was all VERY exciting. I bring this up because the FSU head coach that day was Bobby Bowden, then only in his third year with the University and still a long way off from becoming the coaching legend he is today. Bowden was forced to retire this past Tuesday, for fairly good reasons, but it will still be a bit of an adjustment for me and other FSU fans. After all, I am now a 40-year-old man, and he's been on the sidelines since I was in first grade! 5 comments|post comment

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? [03 Dec 2009|11:25am] It is astounding that I still continue to see articles, such as this recent piece in the Wall Street Journal on Oakland's "up and coming" Temescal neighborhood, which casually mentions that "the median home price of $620,000 attracts first-time buyers." The article then mentions that the TOTAL tax receipts for all businesses in the area is just under $350,000 (representing about $3.5 million in total sales). In other words, the purchase price of just five homes equals the total business income for the entire area. And just to give you a sense of what that buys you, here's a house that is going for $799,000 in the area. Even at $620,000, that is a $120,000 downpayment and over $3,000 a month. Who ARE these people? 1 comment|post comment

MUNI LAW #1 [01 Dec 2009|03:31pm] MUNI Law #1 If you are RIDING the bus, it will hit every red light and make every stop. There will be confusion and crying and gnashing of teeth. There is 50/50 chance that at any moment the bus will lose contact with the overhead wire and lose power completely. You will note crippled people on the sidewalk who are making faster progress than you. If you are RUNNING TO CATCH the bus, it will perform fantastic, never-before-witnessed magical maneuvers, whizzing through evergreen stoplights and buzzing along without a single passenger wanting to get off. There will be trails of rose petals left in its wake. This is the law. 2 comments|post comment

ALL THOSE CANES [04 Nov 2009|11:52pm] Sometimes I still miss my mom. In years gone by, I might have leafed through letters for a reminder of how she put sentences together, how she thought, the way she would go off on tangents that seemed random but were really part of a larger narrative. But the easiest things for me to touch are her emails, all 77 of them I have saved in my inbox. I haven't looked at any in a year, but tonight I chose one at random. I never dreamed I would have this mobilty problem althugh I should have since there are all these canes in the family and I remember my Grandma Shoemaker walking with a cane some of the time. Word to the wise: Keep on scrabbling while you can. Most families wouldn't hold onto the canes of people long dead, but my family did, because that's what they do, and somehow my mother's rumination is touching, if only because it highlights the sweet, sorrowful nostalgia that one can have in a family where nothing is ever thrown away. And I will keep on scrabbling. 2 comments|post comment

HOUSE BUBBLE PART II [26 Oct 2009|11:30am] I hate to get back on my Housing Bubble soapbox, but it is the subject that refuses to go away. First off, we HAVE to get rid of our national obsession with housing. It is not going to lead us out of this recession (that will take actual jobs), and yet we are spending hundreds of billions in an all-out effort to defend housing prices -- prices that were never realistic in the first place. I hate to say it, but my personal feeling is that prices should be allowed to fall naturally until they reach a level that is consistent with incomes. This is not radical thinking. This is what normal is supposed to look like. Even worse, most of the efforts to "save" troubled homeowners right now are really programs designed to allow banks to keep toxic mortgages on their books at full value. In fact, in many areas the banks are taking more than 6 months to initiate foreclosure proceedings because if they do, then they have to acknowledge they have loans on their books that are worth less than what they paid for them. Meanwhile, these homes sit as part of a "shadow inventory" that doesn't get counted at all with the conventional measures of foreclosure proceedings. My main source for info on this subject these days is my friend at the Dr. Housing Bubble Blog. Here's his take on some on the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP): Much is now being made about the “success” of the HAMP program with nearly 500,000 mortgages now in the trial modification period. We have major reasons to doubt this premature success. Let us go into detail why the HAMP program is largely a smoke and mirrors exercise in trying to stem foreclosures. On the surface the HAMP seems like a good initiative. Let us try to keep borrowers in distress in their homes. Yet the problem is in the way the program is structured ... The essence of the program is the belief that the problem is the interest rate and terms of the mortgage. Yet the real issue is something we all know. The banking industry is the main culprit in setting up this housing bubble and gave loans to people it shouldn’t have. Wall Street and banks made billions in profits and when things went bad, they took the taxpayer for trillions. HAMP is actually designed to help the banks, not the borrower. 3 million mortgages are estimated to be eligible for HAMP and nearly 500,000 are now in the trial phase. Keep in mind 757,955 offers were sent out. Another brainy move by the U.S. Treasury was allowing servicers to use stated income in allowing for the trial program. That is correct, the same style underwriting for Alt-A and option ARMs is being allowed for entrance into the trial period. So I would imagine that once we move from trial to permanent, many of these will re-default or will not qualify. To move from trial to full mod there is a requirement to vet income. Why not do that now? Good question. It is always good to put quick gimmicks in front of good public policy. A good example of horrible public policy is the $8,000 tax credit. A waste of time brought on by the lobbying arm of the housing industry and politicians with no backbone. There is also interesting data out on the first trial modifications. How many went into a permanent modification? 1,711 or roughly 3 percent ... Even at this preliminary stage, the low number of permanent modifications is still shockingly low ... So let us assume a rate that is nearly twice (5%) that of the early trial modifications dating back to May. This would mean that out of the 500,000 trial modifications some 25,000 mortgages will be helped! $75 billion to help 25,000 mortgages? This is insane! In fact, let us be generous here. Let us assume all the 3 million loans in the target range get a trial modification and 5 percent go into the permanent phase at the higher rate. We are talking about 150,000 mortgages. So do the math: $75 billion / 25,000 = $3,000,000 / for each fix $75 billion / 150,000 = $500,000 / for each fix What an absolute waste to basically extend and pretend. Keep in mind that principal reduction is basically absent in any of these loan modifications. Yet right off the bat, even when a borrower can “make things up” to enter the trial period the servicer is paid! Paid for what? We already know the current success rate is only 3 percent. Are we to expect a sudden jump over the months? Even at 10 percent we are wasting money at the front end. We would have better success just doing a lottery of delinquent loans and paying off 500,000. I assure you we are not going to have 500,000 permanent loan mods given these current measures unless something drastically changes. Also, you can modify all you want but unless we start seeing some job growth, what are people going to pay their mortgage with? Big banks love this. Why? Because these loans are still held on the books at full face value. That is right, banks can extend and pretend and buy some time, another 5 months by simply extending the trial period to a large number of loans – they don’t even have to check for income. Think that JP Morgan profit would be so huge if it had to deal with those 437,000 mortgages that are 60+ days late? You can bet that with WaMu and California lending, they probably have a ton of $500,000+ mortgages that are going to go bad when the option ARMs recast next year. post comment

BUT WHERE WAS FRANK CHU? [16 Oct 2009|04:26pm] Union Square is always a bit of a pain to walk through, as it's typically full of tourists who shuffle along in a daze, always looking up, down, or around--but never actually looking where they're headed. Of course the same might be said of the locals, typically shuffling along because they are high, or were injured while they were high, or simply shuffling because shuffling is what they do. In fact, now that I think of it, there are some world-class shufflers in San Francisco. But that's not my point. What I was getting at is that Union Square, which I have to walk through on my way home from work, was even MORE of a pain to shuffle through tonight, as President Obama was in town for a fundraiser at the St. Francis. This meant that some streets were cordoned off, there were satellite news trucks everywhere, police cruisers, etc. What I found curious, though, was that as I walked through the crowds, it took a good 30 seconds before I realized that the protesters on the streets were not the normal protesters, but rather carpetbagging protesters in from the suburbs. I knew this because A) They were all white. B) They were all dressed vaguely like an American flag. C) They were all interviewing each other with handheld camcorders. D) One of the signs read "Diversity is killing us." My other favorite sign, displayed without a hint of irony, read "No more Marxist Czars." 1 comment|post comment

DUDE, THEY SHOULD HAVE A PLAQUE OR SOMETHING [13 Oct 2009|05:27pm] So I'm back at work, and one of my first projects is researching the history of a funeral home located in Castro Valley, a little town south of Oakland. I've gone through the usual: building permits, city directories, etc., But it was only when I finally got around to snooping on Google that I learned what is perhaps the most interesting thing about the place: it was the funeral home where Metallica's first bass player, the legendary, Cliff Burton, was cremated. Such an odd little world I inhabit. post comment

BACK IN EARTHQUAKESVILLE [06 Oct 2009|01:08pm] We are back after a 27-hour travel day that took us from Luang Phabang, to Bangkok, to Taipei, and finally into San Francisco. Our carbon footprint is now size 16 EEE. Being back in S.F. is actually a fairly gentle transition from the dreamy landscape of Laos and Luang Phabang--at least in terms of charm and a disproportionate number of Asians walking the streets. But a few things were jarring. First off, the weather. After basking in subtropical humidity for three weeks, our complexion had taken on the oily luster of a delicately cooked ham. But after 20 minutes in the cool, dry air of California, my skin puckered and just reaching into my pockets resulted in chafed knuckles. It is very odd to see so many cars and so few motorbikes. Everywhere in Southeast Asia the motorcycle rules, and it is not uncommon to see whole families riding on a single moped (with the youngest child riding on the gas tank). Speaking of which, it is very odd to see so few children on the streets. Or dogs sleeping in the road. Of course, we do have people sleeping on doorsteps, but it lacks the same charm. In fact, in a four-block walk from the BART station to our apartment, we saw more battered and broken human beings than in all our travels--and we were in one of the poorest countries in the world! Also, the only border crossing where we ever had our bags searched was here in the U.S., where we were asked by two TSA agents whether we'd brought in any knives or sharp objects. One would think this would be more important before getting ON a plane, and also begs the question whether any of these TSA agents have ever seen a pawnshop in Texas, or Ted Nugent's living room. Believe me, if keeping exotic knives out of the country is a priority, we've failed. Finally, being away from a computer/email/TV was really nice. And even when we were near televisions, we couldn't understand what was being said. This is actually much more pleasant than you would think. post comment

LAO LAO AND BEER LAO IN LAO [09 Sep 2009|01:42pm] The tickets are purchased, my backpack is packed, and my passport is ready to pass. It's time. This weekend Serenna and I are heading back to the Lao People's Democratic Republic, otherwise known as Laos, for three weeks of nothing. Never was a honeymoon/vacation so needed and so welcome. I am ready to see the monks in their saffron robes and black parasols walking the streets of Luang Prabang. I am ready to eat barbecued Mekong eel washed down with Beer Lao. I am ready to swing into the cool Nam Song River on a warm afternoon. But most of all, I am ready to let my mind wander again, away from work and woe, to gentler things like a good bowl of noodles and a comfortable hammock. I miss the person who wrote these entries. I realize it's been far too long. 3 comments|post comment

FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! [04 Sep 2009|12:25pm] Fairly amazing time lapse photography of the L.A. wildfire. Looks like a volcano! post comment

SORT OF LIKE MERLIN, BUT MORE SPECIALIZED [02 Sep 2009|07:57pm] For the last month I've been completely consumed by a historic survey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ... working until 11 pm or later most nights, living on coffee, and badly neglecting my beautiful new bride. Anyone who thinks historians doze all day in quiet library rooms probably never had to figure out how, exactly, an Ion Cyclotron Resonance Lab related to the U.S. space program in 1970. And that's just researching one room, in one building, on a campus with over 150 buildings! It's like a science fiction nightmare. In fact, some of my most recent feverish report writing coincided quite nicely with the massive southern California wildfire which came very, very close to the lab itself. For a minute there I felt like the Stephen King character, Carrie, who starts fires with her mind. But that's not what I'm here to write about. Rather, it's time for me to revisit one of my favorite subjects: potential band names. While looking at 50-year-old schematics of the JPL Experimental Fabrication building (because that's the kind of exciting thing I do with my evenings), the name of a particular piece of equipment caught my name. And no, it wasn't the Monarch Lathe with the 27" swing and Keller attachment, nor even the Gidding Lewis Horizontal Boring machine. What I saw instead was the fabulously monickered "American Hole Wizard Radial Drill Press." For a moment I couldn't believe it. Then I found this. Now I'm not sure exactly what feats the American Hole Wizard is capable of; all I know is that you don't ever want to mess around with an American Hole Wizard, because when it comes to American Holes, it's a Wizard. PS: Runner-up prize goes to the Microlander Penetrator Technology offices. 1 comment|post comment

MOTOWN MORNING [14 Aug 2009|03:07pm] The BART station near 16th & Mission has a peculiar gravitational pull orbited by junkies, hipsters, homeless, and a Guatemalan food cart. On any given day, even early in the morning, you are going to see a trail of the walking wounded; a lot of shuffling gates, hard faces, and not-so-subtle hand-offs of money along the sidewalk. It's not a particularly dangerous place, but people tend to walk fast and avoid looking each other in the eye. So yesterday as I'm nearing the station, I hear a car blasting -- BLASTING -- music at top volume next to the station. But instead of the normal booming bass, it's the Ronnettes, washing over the stairs and bus shelters with a flood of Phil Spector echo. What made this curious is everyone, even the homeless on the benches, seemed to be listening. There was almost, dare I say, a collective smile, as if for the duration of just this one song, all was right with the world. Alone, this would have been notable. But as I headed down the steps and made for the turnstiles, I fell in line behind a man who was a dead ringer for Temptations singer, David Ruffin, right down to his all-white suit, white shoes, burgundy shirt and tie, and big glasses. He even had a black wrap around his head pushing up a pompadour of well-coiffed hair. I didn't know what to make of it all, but I liked it. 5 comments|post comment

RIDE THE PONY [12 Aug 2009|06:33pm] Last night I caught a new 15-second Match.com commercial. In it, an attractive young blond woman is seated astride a trotting horse. The screen flashes her username: Adventure90 and states that she is Online Now. She smiles at the camera and giggles, "I'm just a goof, looking for my ball." Subtle. post comment

DOES A MONGOOSE COUNT AS A PERSON IN THE HOV LANE? [11 Aug 2009|08:45pm] Earlier this year, California enacted a law prohibiting texting while driving. Good policy, but my first reaction upon reading the news was disbelief: 'You mean it up until now it WAS legal to text while driving?!' You'd think that some laws would be self-evident. But perhaps not. I mean, I believe it is technically legal, at this very moment in time, for me to drive down the highway in a 1974 Ford Econoline van airbrushed with an image of President Obama--in the nude--riding a winged unicorn, while listening to Mary Poppins on the CD player and artificially inseminating a live mongoose. In fact, if you can prove to me that it's NOT legal, I'll stop doing it. Now before I go any further with this story, I need to explain something about freeways in California. Every couple of miles or so you'll see a large electronic billboard standing by the side of the road. I believe these were constructed to relay "Amber" child abduction alerts, so named for an unfortunate young girl named Amber who was kidnapped and subsequently murdered. Why we as a nation feel compelled to enact so many laws named after maimed and murdered children is open to debate, but I'm getting off track here. Much of the time the billboards are turned off, but they also sometimes relay traffic information--quite often to inform drivers stuck in a traffic jam that they are, in fact, stuck in a traffic jam. Personally, I find this quite helpful, as being assured of continued slow traffic allows me to devote more attention to inseminating mongooses. This evening, as I approached the Bay Bridge leading from Oakland into San Francisco, I saw that one of the billboards was illuminated. What would it say, I wondered? Has some child been snatched away? Are there high winds on the bridge? But what actually confronted me was a message about the new texting law (see this IS going somewhere) that was as ironically delightul as it was brief: HANDS FREE IT'S THE LAW No problem, I thought. "Now come here you mongoose!" 5 comments|post comment

TIC = TROUBLE IS COMING [28 Jul 2009|02:49pm] Monday's headlines screamed about new housing sales going up by the greatest month-over-month percentage in 11 years. Hurrah! The housing collapse is over! We'll all be rich again! What was lost in there was the fact that the median price for a new home also fell by 13% during the same month. At any other time, a collapse of 13% in a YEAR would be considered horrific. But 13% in a MONTH is almost too atrocious for words. In terms of existing home sales, foreclosures now make up nearly 50% of the entire resale market, a trend which will likely increase. Currently, the number of foreclosures continues to significantly outpace last year's average, with over 300,000 houses going into foreclosure each month. This downward pressure on prices is not going to change anytime soon, either, as we are about to enter a great wave of Alt-A and Option-ARM mortgage resets this fall. But who cares, the stock market is up 10% in two weeks! And so, our national delusion about the housing bubble and its aftermath marches on. Nowhere is this more true than in California, and especially here in San Francisco, where people still feel that housing won't ever go down. Can't ever go down. Last week I stopped by an open house in the Mission District. For sale were a pair handsome flats constructed about 1910, with nice period details and thoughtful updates in the kitchen and bath. The 3-bedroom, 1 bath unit on the top floor was priced at $499,000, while the 2 bedroom downstairs unit was $439,000. The flats were located adjacent to a large public housing project, and there was no parking. Now, it should tell you something about the horror of the last few years that when I saw these prices I actually thought, "hey, things are almost getting affordable!" But then I took a closer look at the fine print. Both of these units were for sale as TICs, or "Tenancy in Common" units. This is a form of fractional ownership (used to get around condo conversion laws) where you purchase "shares" in a building that give you the right to use your unit. Thus, unlike a condo--where you actually hold title to the four walls that surround you, a TIC is not recorded on a deed, or map, or any other county record, but rather is a contract between you and the other owners. The thing is, with a TIC you may not get to meet the other "shareholders" of your building until it comes time to write the check. And if one of the other owners defaults, you may be left holding the bag, particularly if the building was purchased with a group loan. To get around this inherent risk, local mortgage firms (God bless 'em) have devised something called a "fractional loan" specifically to finance TIC units. Of course, this special service comes at a cost, usually a much higher interest rate than you would have for a conventional home or condominium. There are also usually various fees added in, which, for the units I was looking at, included a mandatory 1% "buy down" of the interest rate to 6.75%, as well as a mandatory 3% financing fee. So let's look at these numbers in terms of the 3-bedroom unit: - 20% down payment (required because it's a TIC) = $99,800 - 1% "buy down" (4,990) plus the 3% financing fee (14,970) = 19,960. Thus, you are looking at an absolute minimum of $119,760 just to walk in the door. As for the remainder of the $399,200 loan, you will be paying approximately $3,400 per month including taxes and insurance. To meet the current debt-to-income ratio, that means you have to make a minimum of $9,714/month, or about $117,000 a year. If you have any student loan debt/ car financing/ etc. you'd have to make more. Given that the median household income in San Francisco is $77,000 (and only 18% of households make $150,000 or more), there seems to be a disconnect. You want to know the real horror in all this?! It went under contract in 3 days. 2 comments|post comment

STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED [24 Jul 2009|02:15pm] Florida and California are actually much more similar than one would imagine. Both states have rootless, restless populations, with a strong Latino immigrant presence. They are both famous for their beaches, warm weather, palm trees and theme parks. One has Disney World, the other Disney Land. Both states have coastlines that are politically liberal, while the interior regions are conservative. Both live with the prospect of instant catastrophe, whether by hurricane or earthquake. And in either place you will find endless strip malls and faceless suburbs, grifters, drifters, corrupt real estate agents and lots and lots of fake boobs. But above all, Florida and California are justifiably famous for bizarre news. Based on this week's coverage, though, I have to give Florida the edge. I just think there's something about the intense heat and profusion of exotic animals that drives the whole place over the edge. In the space of just a few days, I ran across articles about organized hunts to control the estimated 100,000 non-native pythons that have invaded the Everglades, the City Manager of Fort Myers being fired because his wife is a porn star, and my favorite: a six foot nurse shark left in the middle of a Miami Street by a pair of men who apparently rode around town on the Metromover trying to sell it. Said one witness who saw the--apparently still alive--shark riding on the Metro: ``I didn't see a reason to call police,'' Singerman said. ``It's Miami. Stranger things have happened. The doors shut, and then we forgot about it.'' 1 comment|post comment

BUZZ CUT [23 Jul 2009|10:34am] As happens every so often, I woke up two Sundays ago and decided that I needed a haircut. Right away. There is no middle ground with my hair. One day all is suave and debonair. The next I am a sheepdog, afflicted by mange. Walking such a thin line is not usually conducive to making haircut appointments, so I headed over to the Mission where the Mexican barbers are accustomed to having a walk-in clientele. Here I should preface that there are a couple important things you should know about Mexican barbers. One is that they are very inexpensive, usually $8 - $12 a cut. This is a remarkable deal, given that I was paying about the same price back in Florida 20 years ago. However, you can't expect a salon cut for ten bucks. The barbers do a volume business, and when it comes to sheering they favor the speed and efficiency of a good stout pair of electrified clippers. This is usually not a problem, as currently the most popular style for young Mexican guys in San Francisco is a modified bowl cut, with a total buzz job from the ears down, and a respectably short mop above. I knew all this going in, and that's why I was certain to specify up front (and in Spanish), that all I wanted was a trim. "Solo un poquito," I said, holding my fingertips about 3/4 of an inch a part. "Just a little." Unfortunately, though, it seems that the kind woman who was about to cut my hair was not familiar with such a request. I had thrown down a stylistic gauntlet. She started to grab for the clippers, but must have seen my face blanch, for she put them down and instead reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. Then she stood silently before my head for a moment, as if pondering a novel creation. She started in at the back, cutting off the hair at about the specified length. She went all the way around my head, and she took her time. I'd estimate 20 minutes on the first pass. It was looking pretty good, but she wanted to clean it up a bit, and went for a second pass. I was silent, but increasingly nervous. We were now almost 40 minutes into the haircut, and my thighs were starting to stick to the chair. "Esta bien," I said. "It's good." But she stopped me and said she just wanted to clean up some rough edges. Then the clippers came out. Before I could protest she started skimming along the edges of my head, taking a little here, a little there. Of course, one clipper pass made the other side unbalanced, and so she buzzed there, and decided that now the other side was unbalanced again. It went back and forth, in agonizingly thin slices, to the point that I felt like my head was a proscuitto ham being carved up in a deli. At last, after more than an hour, she stood back and pronounced it done. My hair was barely an inch long. "Very handsome, Jonathan," she said. And it was only then that I realized she'd turned me into her idealized Mexican boyfriend with, by local standards, rakishly long hair. "Gel?" she asked. "No thanks," I said, and paid the fee, walking out into the sunshine, rubbing my hands over the top of my head like a marine recruit on his first day of boot camp. Fortunately, having a retro buzz cut was not the worst thing that could happen, for two days later I was called down to Pasadena to do a historic survey of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But that's another story. 4 comments|post comment

SUNDAY KIND OF LOVE [13 Jul 2009|03:06pm] First things first: our wedding was wonderful. The honeymoon was short, but divine. I knew it would be good as soon as I woke up and looked out the window. The sky, which the meteorologists said should be full of clouds, was a perfect baby blue with a gentle breeze to match. A salad day. The ceremony was brief and beautiful, with a friend of ours singing Etta James' "A Sunday Kind of Love" (it was a Sunday wedding). Serenna was as lovely a bride as ever there was. The rest of the afternoon was spent sipping champagne in the sunlight, talking with friends, and munching on Thai food. Later, we cut the cake and then cut the rug, dancing to old soul records on the oak floor of the pastor's house. We drove off with the sound of cans banging from our bumper, and a few friendly horn honks from well wishers. On the way home we stopped at a red light and a couple riding in a vintage convertible pulled up alongside. "Congratulations," said the woman. "We hope your honeymoon lasts forever!" Me too. 3 comments|post comment

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE GOT TAXOPLASMOSIS [03 Jun 2009|11:36am] Yesterday Serenna and I headed up the steps of San Francisco's grandiose City Hall, walked across the polished marble floors, and entered the Clerk of Court's office where we received our marriage license. It was a fairly simple process, and the clerks seemed friendly and professional. The best part, though, was a 45-page booklet from the California Department of Health that they handed us when they issued the license. It's entitled "Your Future Together ... " and has an illustration of a man and woman in wedding garb staring off into the distance. Upon opening the booklet, you discover that Your Future Together is a nightmarish place, involving domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, genetic disorders and parasitic diseases that can harm you and your babies. There are also paragraphs about the importance of regular exercise and folic acid. Now that's romance. 7 comments|post comment

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