Subscribing to the paper is for suckers

Call me Mr. Dinosaur, but I purchase and read the San Francisco Chronicle every day, including weekends. I know it's all free online and welcome to the late 20th century and blah blah blah, but it's very hard to prop up a laptop and read it when you're standing on Muni. Likewise, there's something about getting back into bed on Sunday with a cup of coffee and an actual paper instead of a cup of coffee and an iPhone.

I buy my morning paper M-F at the newsstand in the 24th Street BART station. 50 cents a pop, plus a very nice "Good morning!" from the cheerful woman who staffs this kiosk. I get my Saturdays from the machine, usually, and my Sundays at my corner store. Sundays are $1.68 or something. I'm usually too tired or hungover to remember the exact amount.

So the total, per week, is roughly $4.68. Money well spent.

A few days ago, it suddenly dawned on me that "Hey! They have this service where they'll deliver the paper directly to my abode and that way I won't even have to face the public on Sunday to get my paper! And it'll just be sitting there for me every morning! Man, I gotta get me some of that!"

As it turns out, subscribing to the Chronicle costs $62 for 8 weeks, or $7.75 a week. That's right. Home delivery costs you about 3 bucks more a week.

Am I totally remembering this wrong, or did home delivery used to be cheaper than buying daily copies?

Anyway, I don't know what this says about the dying newspaper business or whatever, but sorry, Chron, I love you but I can't justify subscribing to you.

I usually just read it over my girlfriend's shoulder anyway

As I mentioned before, I am one of the few lonely souls who still hasn't joined Facebook. Now I've got Farhad Manjoo all up in my grille about it:

Friends—can I call you friends?—it's time to drop the attitude: There is no longer any good reason to avoid Facebook. The site has crossed a threshold—it is now so widely trafficked that it's fast becoming a routine aide to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant. It's only the most recent of many new technologies that have crossed over this stage. For a long while—from about the late '80s to the late-middle '90s, Wall Street to Jerry Maguire—carrying a mobile phone seemed like a haughty affectation. But as more people got phones, they became more useful for everyone—and then one day enough people had cell phones that everyone began to assume that you did, too. Your friends stopped prearranging where they would meet up on Saturday night because it was assumed that everyone would call from wherever they were to find out what was going on. From that moment on, it became an affectation not to carry a mobile phone; they'd grown so deeply entwined with modern life that the only reason to be without one was to make a statement by abstaining. Facebook is now at that same point—whether or not you intend it, you're saying something by
staying away.

Really? What am I saying? I don't want to "poke" anyone or be "poked"? I'm not especially anxious to hear from some (OK, maybe all) of the people I went to high school with? I don't want to get constant updates on what my faux-friends are doing?

I guess my bottom line is that, even though I have a blog and broadcast some of my personal life to literally tens of strangers daily, I feel like Facebook is sort of weirdly intrusive. All the updating and writing on people's walls and everyone knowing when I eat lunch just seems like a lot of work or something.

Your Craigslist post of the day

Unfuckingbelievable.

Here's the text:

I need to buy a new refrigerater!

But here is the deal. I am not poor but I am not rich.

Any generous donations of money would be greatly appreciated!

Whomever donates I will repost a list of names on here!

Donate with PayPal my address for PayPal is

xxxxxxx@netzero.net

I told you, this bailout thing was a bad idea. Now every sub-retarded keyboard monkey thinks they are entitled to some free cash for whatever needs crop up. At least if you donate to the Refrigerator Now program, you get your name on a list reposted on Craigslist! Oh, the joy!!

Oh well. 9 days counts for something, I guess.

It has become somewhat of a tradition to take a couple of weeks off from drinking in January to dry out after the alcohol-intensive Holiday Season and just kind of get your shit together. It also saves a lot of money, which is good because I'm usually broke in January.

This year, I fully and completely intended to not drink from Jan. 1 to Jan. 16. I know, it's not exactly a monumental achievement, but it's what I was going to do.

Well, believe it or not, I couldn't even make it to this easy-to-achieve goal. I blame Super Hot Irish Girlfriend. She hasn't been on board this year although, to her credit, she's only had like 2 glasses of wine since Jan. 1. Anyway, we made it through Friday night actually having people over and playing games without drinking, which is kind of amazing. Then on Saturday afternoon, she starts dropping the hints. "I mean, what are you trying to prove?" she says. "You know what?," I said. "You make a good point. Let's go."


We went to Valley Tavern and had a couple of beers there, then went home and had a few more while we watched a movie. I know, it would be a better story if we stayed out until 3 am draining one bottle of Veuve after another, only to wake up under a bench in Dolores Park, but reality doesn't always live up to the hype. Maybe I'm learning moderation!

P.S. Sober January seems to be a not-uncommon idea. They're doing it. And them. And her.

To me fellow would-be Sober Januarians, then, I say: Sowwy.

It's not THAT bad

In 2008, there were 99 homicides in San Francisco, about the same as last year. Sound bad? Sure, of course 99 murders is nothing to be proud of, but when you stack it up against other cities, it's actually pretty low. Let's go to the numbers.

The population of SF, give or take, is about 800,000. So that's about 12.25 murders for every 100,000 people.

The two cities closest in size to SF are Jacksonville, Florida (805,000) and Indianapolis, Indiana (759,400). Last year, there were 143 murders in JAX, or about 17.88 for every 100,000 people. The rate in Indy was 16.18 per 100 grand, about the same. Both higher than SF.

Even placid-seeming Tucson, Arizona, home to 525,000 sun-irradiated souls, saw 78 murders, for a rate of 14.86, also higher than San Fran.

Some cities are just way bad. Philadelphia - who loves ya, Philly? - had 392 murders on a pop of 1,449,000, for a rate of about 27.05 per 100 thou. But you think things are tough in Philly? You ain't seen nothing yet. I'm looking at you, Baltimore, with 234 murders and 637,455 peeps, for a staggering rate of 36.73 murders per 100,000 residents. Yikes. Scratch Baltimore off the "to-visit" list.

At the other end of the spectrum is NYC. Yes, NYC, which once had an annual homicide rate above 2,000, had a scant 522 murders in 2008 on a population of 8,274,000, for a low low rate of 6.31. 6.31 per 100,000! There's probably a higher rate of people who find crumpled-up $20s in bar bathrooms. Way to go, Big Apple!

So don't feel to bad, fellow SF-ers. You still have a better chance of being killed in a lot of other cities.

P.S. In case you're wondering, LA had 376 murders and a population of 3,834,000, for a rate of 9.81. Hrmph.

Top 5: New Year's Resolutions

I’m not really a resolutions kind of guy. I’ve never made any before, so I’ve never had to keep any. In fact, these aren’t really resolutions, per se. They’re more vague goals that I will write down in the hope that writing them down will motivate me to actually do them.

1. See at least one live music show a month

In 2006, I think I went to about 25 to 30 shows. In 2007, it was about 15. Last year, I think I maybe went to 8, if that. That’s lame. I love seeing live music and there’s no way I’m playing the “I’m getting older” card, so I hereby resolve to see at least 12 shows in 2009. One per month.

2. Learn how to make wine at home

This is going to be my new hobby. I’m not trying to make knockoff Opus One in my kitchen or anything; I just thought it would be a cool project. I’ll keep you posted.

3. Try to be more cool and patient

You may not have picked this up about me, but I can be wound a little tight at times. I'm sort of constantly cursing other people under my breath for real and perceived slights against me, like (1) standing there blocking the door of the BART train looking around instead of just fucking walking into it; (2) standing to the left on escalators, when everybody knows it's stand right, walk left; (3) taking too long at the ATM; (4) turning without using a turn signal; (5) you get the point.

So I'm going to try to calm down a little and take things more in stride instead of mentally screaming "YOU FAT FUCK!!! MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!! I KNOW YOU'RE MORBIDLY OBESE, BUT YOU SURE WON'T GET ANOTHER DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER JUST STANDING THERE IN FRONT OF ME!!!" Calm blue ocean. Calm blue ocean. Namaste.

4. Shoot up smack with a Thai hooker in the back room of a secret members-only bar in the Tenderloin

Wait, that was a 2006 resolution. Sorry.

5. Exercise more / eat better

Happy New Year!

So that happened.

New Year's Eve, about 8 pm, I'm waiting for the J Church. And waiting. And waiting. 4 trains go by in the opposite direction. Almost 40 minutes later, a J pulls up. It's packed to the gills. Somewhere in the middle of the train, a big group of kids is screaming and jumping up and down. I can see them passing around a bottle of Jager and a 20-ounce Diet Coke to chase it with. Ugh.

So the party at The Sister's place turned out to be a lot of fun, but for some reason, I just wasn't in the right party spirit. Super Hot Irish Girlfriend didn't feel good and had to be left at home. At the party, there was lots of good food and wine and beer, and the company was great, but I was just tired or something. Anyway, I stayed for the countdown and champagne and then, miraculously, found a cab at Church & Duboce to take me home.

Speaking of champagne, that's one of those things where the difference between the low end of the spectrum and the high end is so vast that it's like two separate beverages. If all you know is Korbel, when you have something really good, like J Vintage Brut, it's kind of a surprise and a revelation.

Yesterday SHIG and I went to Target and bought a new HD TV. Word to the wise: New Year's Day is a very good day to go to Target. It wasn't crowded at all.

So everybody's saying how glad they are that 2008 is over and they hope 2009 is a better year and whatever, but I gotta say, 2008 was pretty good, as far as I'm concerned. I got engaged, I still have a job (for now, anyway), we elected a President I'm kind of excited about, and Vanderbilt won a bowl game for the first time since 1955. I know we're in a Global Economic Crisis and all, but hey, I'm trying to brightside this thing.