I've been silent about

I've been silent about this too long. It's time to clear my chest:

First, why does the U.S. Congress have nothing better to do during wartime than to snub the French by renaming side dishes? Freedom fries? Really? Freedom fries? French fries aren't even from France, you jackasses! They're Belgian! And besides, Americans are the only idiots who call them French Fries in the first place! What's next, lawmakers propose a bill that requires Black Forest Cake to be renamed to Liberty Pastry?

Ah, good, I feel a little better. Now, onto my next beef: people who say it's not right to criticize the President in wartime. So, what, anyone who formulates a bad plan is immediately let off the hook once that plan is in action? Listen, I'm not about to support any leader who thinks guilty-until-proven-innocent is a good foreign policy, no matter how many troops have already been deployed.

Finally, and most importantly, enough with the hypocrisy. Does anyone realize how ridiculous it is for U.S. government officials to be warning the Iraqis to support the Geneva Conventions when they themselves aren't adhering to the guidelines? Obviously I don't want U.S. troops treated poorly -- just as I don't want Iraqis treated poorly -- but the point is: you can't exempt yourself from war crimes tribunals while holding prisoners captive at Guantanamo Bay without sufficient reason and then expect everyone else to play by a different rulebook. That's not leadership, it's legal tyranny.

I take it back -- I don't feel any better.

According to reports at

According to reports at SF Indymedia, Pacific Lumber Company has removed Remedy (the tree-sitter I wrote about in December) from the 200-year old redwood where she was stationed. The company is now apparently preparing the tree to be cut down.

In related news, the Humboldt County District Attorney's office has filed suit against Pacific Lumber, claiming that the company's logging practices have been responsible for landslides and other environmental damage in the area -- a claim that treesitters and other environmental and local groups have been making for the past 15 years.

I will never again

I will never again drive my car into downtown San Francisco without first checking this site for my parking options.

Some good news: Dell

Some good news:

Dell offers curbside recycling of computer equipment for $15 per unit.

Senate Rejects Oil Drilling in Alaskan Refuge.

She has this dress

She has this dress that needs to be altered and so we went the other day to one of those little Indian shops on University Avenue. The shop itself was a random selection, chosen for its proximity to our parking spot. And as we walked in, I immediately slipped into a mild Indian accent, hoping that this would give me some sort of leverage when it came time to discuss price. But it turned out that the shop couldn't do the alteration we wanted and the man behind the counter (who, for some reason, was convinced that the dress hadn't been purchased in India when indeed it had) directed us to a different location.

"Take the opposite footpath and walk down to the Vick Copy," he said in an accent much thicker than mine. "Go around the back and you'll find it." And so off we went, across the street to the opposite "footpath" and down to the Vick Copy where we walked around to the back but didn't find anything. Confused, we stepped inside the Vick Copy to ask for directions. Within a minute or two, one of the clerks spotted us with the dress and suddenly we were ushered through a short maze of back rooms until we were at the desk of one of Berkeley's little known secrets: the Indian tailor.

It was a bit like those movies in which the lead characters are swept through a series of back rooms in a hot nightclub until they come to the desk of some mob boss surrounded by his thick-necked cronies, but not really. This mob boss had a brightly-lit room that smelled a bit like yesterday's naan and the various folding tables were covered in hundreds of little spindles of colorful thread. "Yes," he said in a barely audible voice after looking the dress over and taking some measurements. Then he picked up a hand-made business card and wrote the following on it: Sunday. $10.

That was about it, really. He said some things in Hindi that I pretended to understand, but mostly we just nodded and smiled at the fact that we had just found a seemingly good Indian tailor in the back of a Vick Copy. What did we do that was deserving of this inside tip? Was it the adopted accent, our lucky day, or simply a standard business referral? Who knows? In any case, the dress will be ready next Sunday. We hope.