My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

There are Rescue Leagues for German Shephards, Boxers, Chihuahua’s, and every other breed of dog out there. People can adopt these animals that have come from abusive situations. I happen to adopt neglected plants from broken homes. Take the above lonely fellah. He was fed bong water for breakfast lunch and dinner. He spent his days in a dimly lit room staring out the window through the gossamer fabric of perpetually drawn curtains stoned from his roots to his shoots.

“I’m not a bad plant mommy,” his mother told me. “It’s the apartment. It gets no light.”

Well, people justify all types of bad behavior. Luckily the plant is with me now, and will receive a proper diet and plenty of natural light.

Was talking to a guy at a bbq last weekend, one of those summer in the city affairs with people bringing their best meats to grill and tons of micro brew beer but no one getting crazy. It was a restrained crowd of well heeled folks who wanted to talk to each other.

The back yard was no bigger than seven beach blankets laid out and we were back to back, butt to butt talking in small circles. City fire code requires fences to be no higher than six feet tall so I could look into the neighbors yards. We were the only ones out on this block.

San Francisco is a city of apartment dwellers and backyards provide a view of un-self conscious living with curtainless windows revealing posters on bedroom walls and back porches stacked with bicycles and grills and clothes draped over banisters.

I was eating steak skewers with a ten minute marinade of garlic. This guy I was talking to was eating a chicken skewer. Chirag was his name. He was a designer interested in importing and exporting through his contacts in India.

“There’s a lot of opportunity with all that cheap labor,” he said.

“What do people here really need?” I asked.

“I need a hug. How about we import hugs?” Chirag, my friend, said.

“That could work! Have a guy stationed at your door, when you get home from a tough day he gives you a hug and then you go inside and start dinner. He stays in the hallway.” I was sensing an opportunity.

“Busy moms can have someone hug their kids goodbye in the morning so they can send off some emails and get dressed.”

I was thinking to myself….”Chirag might make me rich.”

“A time saver with tons of health benefits.” He had a natural way with a sales pitch. This was a foolproof plan. I needed to start going to more of these types of BBQ’s. No one kicked over the grill, there wasn’t any gun play, but the world was about to change for the better.

this is in wine country. Would appear the fishin’ hole dried up.

I went to work today in an apricot orchard. Found this dead bird. Looked beautiful to me. Hope you think the same.

The light was just right for taking pictures.

Thanks for your patience friendly readers, and for your help John, Lyle, and ipower. The site is back to normal.

Sean sent this one in. In other news, I’m still trying to get my website to work in the right order. Here is the situation, as ipower.com tells me:

Dear Customer,

I am contacting you about your ticket, #5062092, regarding your WordPress. We have found the error of your WordPress to be because of the outdated version you are running. Your WordPress needs to be updated to a newer version to correct the issue with reverse ordering of your posts. For more information about updating your WordPress please visit http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress.

If you feel that you are incapable of upgrading your WordPress I can install the newest version on your account and import the database, but be warned certain items such as themes will not be migrated. Please let me know how you would like to proceed.

Thank you

If anyone out there can tell me what “themes” are and if I need them to be migrated or not, then maybe I can move forward. Or if someone can do this for me, I will send them the passwords and they can give it a shot. I will reward success handsomely.

Looks like he spelled Vietnam “Vietnman”, but he got “appreciated” right. Everywhere I look lately design has reverted to high school metal head font. By that I mean very hand drawn looking, with letters given depth…wait, I have a computer, I’ll just draw an example and scan it. Hold on a minute.

That’s what I mean. It’s part of the cult of the ugly. At first I heard it explained as a result of computer rebellion. People were tired of the exactitude of computers. The mark of the human, the artist, was desired. I think it’s something else now. Hold on, I’m cooking dinner. Be right back.

Okay. There is an obvious nostalgia for the 1980′s in this font. It is also a nostalgia for the recent youth of the designers themselves. Hey wait a minute – is that really a Metal Head Font? It kind of seems like an early graffiti font. I need some input here. I grew up in a town of 2,000 people. I had no idea where these cultural tides were rolling in from. Guess I still don’t. But for the sake of moving forward and until I hear a decisive answer from the public, we’ll call it Metal Head Font.

I’ve seen enough old hand written letters from the 1920′s and 30′s on up through the war years that I can see that penmanship has not been taught as religiously as it once was. Perhaps that’s how we came to this bubble letter non-cursive print font you can see on all kinds of corporate advertising as of late.

Hey, that might be the difference, eh? Bubble letters were graffiti/hip hop influenced, and the straight edge letters are metal. Let me draw an example. Hang on.

So that’s the bubble letter hip-hop style. Also right out of the ’80′s. Let’s get our old yearbooks out and find out when that stuff started appearing in the autograph areas.

The Cult Of the Ugly was a treatise of sorts written by Steven Heller. I’ve taken his quote from John Cage here.

“Where does beauty begin and where does it end?” wrote John Cage in Silence (1961). “Where it ends is where the artist begins.”

With that in mind, let’s go back to the panhandler’s sign at the beginning of this post. It won’t be long until corporate graphics are given this look by up and coming rebellious designers who’ve been hired to keep some shoe brand in touch with the dis-satisfied youth market.

by the good pal of mine, sean macdonald.

Uncle Sam as he should be.

Take a look at the breasts on this woman. They don’t seem to be in the right place.

Piccolo Pete’s is an institution down by the dump. $3 sandwiches that some say are made from seagulls culled from the transfer station a block away. The artwork hanging above the macaroni and beans in crock pots is a tribute to sports stars of the 1980′s.

we haven’t seen a good load in the truck lately. Who knew I would grow up to be a junk man? It was just a dream. My advice? Don’t stop believing.

Here’s a nice piece found at the S.F. Farmer’s Market. If you look closely you’ll notice they painted over an old menu that was done with stick-on letters. That’s a touch of authenticity an artist couldn’t capture. Note too the letter “T” is always capitalized. Hmmm….

Since the topic of the farmer’s market has been broached, let’s take a look around. In-flight and automobile club magazines and any other magazine that “takes a look” at fun things to do in a city will always go to the Farmer’s Market and get some local color. Like this kid:

Totally stoned as he lords over the produce, what the photo doesn’t reveal is this fresh air market is nearly underneath the intersections of Highway 101 and 280. There are tribute pieces graffitied on a cement retaining wall behind him. A notorious housing project further up the hillside. And this young field hand just wants to sit up on Dad’s new orchard mower and think about his girlfriend, but no, he has to come to the city and deal with stupid idiots all day.

That part of the story isn’t in your monthly Triple A magazine. Neither is this next photo, where I looked for phallic references in the vegetables. (Not particularly hard) ((No pun intended))

These travel articles are so predictable. How many times do you think the baker below has had to put on the rectal exam gloves and hold that loaf up? The thing is bigger than his torso. It looks like it’s fresh out of an elephants ass. But he’s trying to make a living and some asshole, (me) wants a picture of the giant loaf of bread. Let’s do it again.

So there it is. 100 Alemany Street in San Francisco, if you want to check it out. I’d rather be at a weapons market in Afghanistan handling shoulder mount rocket launchers, but it’s not that kind of city here. I’m trying to make the best of it.

Rode down the peninsula today on the train. If you are heading into S.F. you can go to the front of the train and look out at the world as it rushes past. This is a junk yard in the Bayview area.