The world according to kid

WARNING: Content may be construed as daddy-blogging.  Enjoy or avoid as your preference may be.

This is our kid.  She's about 2 1/2 years old now.  She's like a little person now.  I mean, she was a little person the whole time, but when they're like 6 months old they're basically just a blob you put food into and remove waste from the outside of, and now she is starting to get independent and talks in roughly complete sentences and has LOTS OF OPINIONS ABOUT THINGS.  Maybe they will interest you.  Maybe they won't.  The Wife is out of town for a while here and I'm putting these here for her benefit just as much as yours.

On Food

"This tastes like orange" (eating an orange)

"This tastes like a pouch" (eating a pouch)

(After hearing what we're having for dinner) "Oh, that sounds really delicious"

"I want juice and milk in the same cup."  (Ew, no.)

On Familial Relationships

(Apropos of nothing, to me) "I'm your daughter."

"Mama's a big daughter"

(To every other guy boarding the N Judah) "That's not my dada."

(One guy said "No it is not," with a sense of relief? Or something?)

Misc.

(After I tickled her) "You need to calm down." (Pause) "We both need to calm down."

Her: "Shit. Shit. Shit."

Me: "What are you saying?"

Her: "Shit. Shit. Shit the odor."

Me: (lightbulb going off) "Shrek?  Shrek the ogre?"

Her: "Yes. Shit the odor."

While driving the car

"I'm looking for a parking spot."

Obviously a San Franciscan.

As I alluded to on Twitter, the experience of solo parenting (day 5 of 10 today, yay) has imbued in me a newfound respect for single parents.  We're very lucky because she's a pretty easygoing kid and is usually great to be around, but still, sometimes you just want to hand them off and be like "Here, you deal with this for a while" and having someone else around makes that possible most of the time.  So hats off, single parents. 

Million Dickhead Listing SF: Tonight, on a Very Special Million Dickhead Listing

Sorry I missed last week.  It was boring.  I mean, they're all boring, but it was even more boring than usual.  You didn't miss anything.

Not like this week is The Wire or anything, but it had its moments.  Andrew, who apparently does not actually sell any houses in San Francisco itself, is off in Tiburon with some 10,000 square foot pile that is ugly as fuck on the outside but I guess someone's idea of nice inside.  The current owners are some British lady and her dead-eyed son who seems like a slightly more malevolent Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

The lad, "Louis," has agreed to be this episode's villain because I guess it looks good on an application to Dartmouth.  In a continuous quest to become more disturbing, the next time we see Louis his jaw is wired shut because he "got jumped by a couple of guys" and now he talks like a super preppy Marlon Brando in The Godfather.  Louis appears to be the Point Jerk in making this sale and is not impressed with Andrew's meager efforts.  ARE YOU A CAN-DREW OR A CAN'T-DREW.  Oh fuck I'm sorry.  To appease Yung Tyrant, Andrew has a big open house that's like Project X for old rich white people.  Caligula orders him boiled alive in a vat of cheap pinot and Axe body spray.

Tonight we will go on a Very Special Journey with Roh as he learns to respect other cultures, even if he does not agree with them.  Speaking of, through circumstances too convoluted to explain, I found myself at the Battery last night, that private club we all made fun of a couple of years ago when it opened.  It's nice enough inside and is populated entirely by people who look like Justin from this show and his clients.  Also, beers are $9 WHAT WHAT.

ANYWAY GETTING BACK TO THE MATTER AT HAND, Roh goes to meet a gay couple at their pad on Potrero Hill that's all sleek and Architectural Digest and Japanese garden and then he has a problem with them because they want to adopt a kid and Roh's not sure he can live with that until his wife explains to him that he needs to be more accepting blah blah blah the whole thing is wildly obviously staged but I guess it's all for the best if it makes some other Muslim real estate agent watching TV reconsider his internal biases.  The real question is why a gay couple wouldn't fire on the spot some asshole who told them he wasn't sure he could accept them adopting a child.  There are only like seven million real estate agents in this town and people will basically drive up and hurl bags of money at them for their pad so why even listen to this oh it's for TV never mind.

Justin is going to try and sell one of the two units in that old firehouse you see every time you go to Twin Peaks.

It's got a lot of stairs.  A ;LOT OF STAIRS PEOPLE.  This is apparently very daunting even to the young, shallow, and presumably fit, and there's lots of talk about installing an elevator like JUST WALK UP THE STAIRS FATTY YOU CAN QUIT YOUR GYM MEMBERSHIP.  To sell Stair Nightmare, Justin decides to hold a "sexy fun event" like "Cole Valley has never seen" but I'm pretty sure Cole Valley has seen a salami and cheese plate before Justin.  Oh he also gets some Chippendales dressed up like firemen to make it super fucking awkward for everyone involved.  It appears that the buyers are all about Dat Horizontal Life and don't want this Escher painting turned $3M condo.

Later, Justin shows up at Roh's open house with some guy with a Strokes haircut and they get in a big fight.  Justin and Roh, not the guy with the Strokes haircut.  His only beef is with his stylist.  I mean, I hope so.  I'm not sure what they were fighting about but it seemed real serious.  We'll find out next week.

I love this story as an allegory of the new new San Francisco

Something's afoot at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium!  We don't know what.  Nobody knows. You're not allowed to find out about it.

I stole this from the Chroncile's web site. The whole story doesn't appear to be on SFGate? They're hiding that from you too.

From our friends at the Chronicle:

Dozens of parking spaces surrounding Bill Graham Civic Auditorium are closed for nearly a month. Lanes of traffic on Grove Street and Hayes Street are shut down in the already congested area. Sidewalks around the building are blocked off.

Police officers and private security guards on Tuesday formed a perimeter around the building, huge air conditioning machines were in place outside, and the city’s Planning Department is considering allowing the temporary removal of the huge glass windows on the facade for signage.

Something big is being planned. But what?

The online tech rumor mill is speculating that the auditorium could be the site of Apple’s annual autumn media reveal, the date for which is likely to be Sept. 9.

A monthlong hassle for Civic Center users for a one-day presentation of the next iPhone? It’s certainly possible, but everybody involved claimed not to know or wouldn’t say.

“I’m even the landlord of the building, and they won’t tell me,” said Rob Reiter, project director for the Civic Center. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I’m just a guy in the basement,” he said of his office in the bowels of City Hall.

Hahahaha.  Did you get that?  The fucking self-described LANDLORD OF THE BUILDING doesn't know because the Actual People in Charge of Our Garbage City have patted him on the head and told him he doesn't need to know.

(Also, I assume Rob Reiter is a nice guy and whatever but he really sounds beaten down by life to the point where he describes himself as "just a guy in the basement.")

Furthermore,

The Planning Department is reviewing a permit request from Another Planet to remove four huge windows from the Grove Street facade of the building, secure them with bubble wrap (yes, bubble wrap) and install temporary signage. Drawings on the permit request show big stars would be placed in the window-shaped signs.

The tech industry so thoroughly owns and operates this town now that it can command total secrecy as it reconfigures a PUBLICLY OWNED THEATER and maybe even swaps out the fucking GLASSWORK to its own specs.  We are all truly players on Apple's stage.  I guess that makes us iMovie elements. San Francisco is their set, and we just live here now.  Someone has to populate the background of EXT. STREET SCENE - NIGHT.

(Also, "big stars" in the windows sounds tacky as fuck, but what do I know, I'm not a technology conglomerate with a mayor on retainer, I'm just a doofus with a blog that operates thanks to a different technology conglomerate with the same mayor on retainer.)

Supervisor Jane Kim, whose district includes the auditorium, said she’d heard the Apple rumor but didn’t know for sure. Police officers and guards standing out front said they didn’t know, either.

Even the fucking cops don't know.  "Hey man, what are you guarding inside there that's so valuable?"  "Fuck if I know!"  HOW WOULD YOU KNOW WHO TO SHOOT THEN OR IF SOMETHING IS GOING WRONG.

Maybe you'll find out.  Maybe you won't.  Maybe Apple will have its next product launch in your fucking kitchen.  Shut the fuck up and don't eat all the English muffins, there's important people coming through.

Let's see what's going on over at Nextdoor dot com

I think I saw a brown person. What should I do?
Sandra Hofnagel from Volvo Heights

Hi neighbors - I don't want to scare anyone unnecessarily, but I'm 99% sure I just saw a brown person on the sidewalk here in the neighborhood. It looked like he might have been drinking from a can which I suspect was probably "malt liquor" or another kind of crime drink. He was casually glancing at some of the houses on my street which is known as CASING THE JOINT. He also has some kind of backpack which I assume was full of stolen goods.  I didn't call the police but I certainly will if I see another one.  Be careful out there!

Preston thanked Sandra

Skip Teva from Broey Valley

Thanks for the warning, Sandra! I too have seen a brown or dark brown person in the neighborhood but just assumed he was on his way to catch a bus after being released from prison. I didn't think about the possibility that he could be committing brand new crimes! You've opened our eyes. Thanks. Yes, definitely call the police or the army next time.

Please leash your dogs!  
Phil Angina from Cattle Guard
I know that you think you have your dog under "mind control" but as others have said IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP YOUR DOG ON A LEASH. Just last night an unleashed dog got into my garbage area and made a mess of things.  I managed to snap a picture of the doggie (see below) and if this is your dog YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

Preston thanked Phil

New market in neighborhood "Wall Green's"
Dorothy Smak from Inner Matlock

It looks like they finally got rid of that eyesore cafe with the whipped cream drinks and replaced it with a beautiful new market, "Wall Green's." I couldn't believe all the merchandise and it was so clean! The little Oriental girl who helped me find some new reading glasses was as nice as she could be. There was a man asking for money outside but I don't believe he is affiliated with Wall Green's.  Do yourself a favor and visit Wall Green's.

Preston thanked Dorothy

Free kittens!
Bebe Good from Spackle Hill

Our mama cat Siamese B. Anthony had another litter and we've got 8 adorable cuddly kittens to give away!  Free to a good home!

Preston thanked Bebe

Peacewind Sandpainting from Toggletown

Um, I hope you realize you're perpetuating the patriarchy and the oppression of all living things by suggesting that kittens can be given away like feelings or crystals. ANIMALS ARE NOT PROPERTY. I suggest you place the kittens in a human-free setting after they've been treated for PTSD arising from your horrible attempts to dominate them.

Gerhard Vorschlicter from Mountain Valley

I would like to rent a house soon I spend 2-3 days in the city per month so nothing too expensive but it should be spacious and cleaned regularly also a dining room table and a chair

Suspicious bicycle
Brick Oven from Shanty Creek

There's a bicyle parked in front of my house right now. It's been there for several hours.  If someone doesn't claim it soon I'm going to saw it in half and put the pieces under my neighbor's ugly Scion.

Preston thanked Brick

TK's Recipe of the Week: Gnocchi with Bacon and Escarole

Pasta used to be just dump a sauce over some noodles and call it a day.  Well, fuck that.  Here's how you do pasta: some kind of pasta + some kind of meat + some kind of green + something red.  I like gemelli and Italian sausage and spinach and chopped tomatoes.  This recipe is another version of that.  It's super easy to make but looks hella fancy like from a restaurant.  

I know what you're saying.  "Is gnocchi pasta?"  I don't know, ask Quora.  Who gives a fuck.  This tastes good.

I think I originally got this recipe from Food Network or something.  I definitely stole this picture from Food Network.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/4-inch pieces.

1/2 onion, chopped

1 small head escarole, roughly chopped

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1 17 .5-ounce package potato gnocchi

1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (about 1 ounce)

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Heat the olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven or something over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and crisp, about 7 minutes. Add the onion and continue cooking until softened, about 2 minutes. Stir in the escarole, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper. Cook until the escarole is completely wilted, about 3 minutes.  Then stir in the tomatoes.

WHILE ALL THAT IS GOING ON, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the gnocchi and cook as the label directs. It usually takes like 2 minutes and gnocchi comes with its own built-in timer that works like this: when it pops up to the surface of the water, it's ready!  How cool is that? Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain the gnocchi and add to the pot with the escarole mixture. Add the reserved cooking water and stir to coat, about 1 minute. (Or you can skip the reserved cooking water thing; I usually do, and nothing bad happens.  I guess it's good if the gnocchi starts to stick together but whatever.)  Sprinkle some parsley on top.  Bask in the warm glow of a job well done.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: Turning and turning in the widening gyre

Just like last week, we've got a new crop of greedheads anxious to cash register out of their homes and siphon money from Google into their voracious mouths.  Unlike last week, it mostly doesn't work this time.

Justin meets up with old high school pal "Kevin" at Milennium Towers and I for one am curious about where the fuck this high school is.  (Oh, it's Gateway; here's a 2002 SF Gate piece on a much younger Justin interning at City Hall. Sounds like he wanted to go into politics instead of getting loathsome people houses in SF, but there you go.)  I hope Kevin is a long-form performance art piece with his dog named Kevyn Jr. and his stupid polar bear sweater and his apartment and his desire to become a jam enterpeneur because if this is all real AND it's coupled with his insane request to get almost $4 million for his little apartment (later talked down to 3 mil) then he's just a gluttonous snake like the rest of them who happens to think he's so quirky and charming and that's much worse somehow.

For some reason Justin thinks the way to blood-draw 3 million dollars from some sucker for this place is to have a fashion show?  So he gets some guy to put a bunch of mannequins fucking inside? And that will make people swoon and hand over their Dropbox fortune?

I don't know anything about fashion or real estate but the only thing this makes me want to buy is a flamethrower.  Eventually some mental deficient offers $2.8 for this place and of course Kevin won't take it.  We'll taste jam in hell together Kevin.

Andrew is not in San Francisco at all, which is a positive development for everyone else in San Francisco but unfortunately it looks like he's only temporarily detained in Livermore, where a little guy with a beard spends his days rolling around a 7000 square foot mansion that keeps getting described as Tuscan although it's in fucking Livermore and not Tuscany and also having red tiles and a pergola does not make any McMansion "Tuscan."  It's surrounded by a chardonnay vineyard because of course.

Returning to SOMA, as we often do, Roh is at the Metropolitan, where Ching would like him to sell a room at the W furnished by Ikea with an assist from the Free Stuff section of Craigslist.  Oh, there's a tenant they can't get rid of, and this little cockroach has committed the grave sin of leaving its shoddy belongings all over the unit.  The apartment is owned by MR. WONG, an "investor in China."

Mr. Wong's lair I mean office

Mr. Wong initially demands ONE POINT FOUR MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS for this place but that is ridiculous even by San Francisco standards and Roh convinces Mr. Wong to go at the more reasonable 1.25.  Next a parade of assholes stomp through the place and pronounce it "ugly" and "horrible," just like their souls.  Eventually "Heidi," who has cultivated an aesthetic somewhere between truck stop waitress and Divine, comes forth with an offer: one million dollars.  Roh gets her to come up to 1.25 but I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.  Mere offers of under asking are loosed upon the world.  Jam Magnate/Complicated Hairstyle Kevin will not sell Mannequin Fuck Palace for under 3 mil, so our work here is done.  Tiny Wine Tycoon suddenly remembers that he has a daughter who wants to get married 'midst the rolling hills and lifted trucks of Livermore and so he cannot bear to sell Tuscan Towne for 3.8 or any other price.  Roh meets with Heidi fresh off her shift at the Flying J but she is about to grind out a Benson & Hedges in his eye when she finds out that Mr. Wong is no longer selling.  Instead, he is transforming the tenant into a postapocalyptic cyborg warrior who will do his dark bidding.  One day Mr. Wong will be the landlord of all of us.

Journalism! Oh well. Part 2.

I'm going to assume that Time magazine has gone to some kind of vanity press model where you can publish anything you want on Time.com as long as you pay them enough because that's the only rational explanation I can come up with for this sub-Debra-J-Saunders pile of drivel.  Or maybe it's just a naked, trolling pageview gambit because if any editor at Time thought this piece had any more journalistic worth than Weekly World News filler, journalism really is dead and US Weekly is our new New York Times.

The piece I am referring to, of course, is "Netflix’s New Parental Leave Policy Could Make Things Worse for Women," by one "Suzanne Venker."  It begins thusly:

No doubt people are dancing a jig with Netflix’s announcement Tuesday that the tech company will allow its employees to take unlimited maternity or paternity leave during the first year after their child’s birth or adoption—while earning their normal pay.

I'm dancing a jig!  No, I'm not, because I don't work at Netflix.  Also, who has used the term "dancing a jig" since FDR's fireside chats?  "Twenty-three skidoo, Ethel, I'm dancing a jig over the new warshing mechanism!  What's a Netflix?"

Suzanne Venker darkly sees many problems with Netflix's fantastic and generous policy that is a great benefit to employees and which I desperately wish my wife's company had:

First, offering an unlimited leave policy in the first year to new moms and dads means the remaining employees who don’t fit the bill will be left to pick up the slack. This will likely, in turn, strain relations among co-workers and make the workplace environment less effective.

[citation needed]  It will likely strain relations among co-workers!  This sounds serious!  I'm sure this is a well-documented problem that Suzanne Venker can support with studies and research.  Oh, when it's "likely" you don't need evidence.  This is the equivalent of Ancient Aliens' common use of the term "Isn't it possible that.....," as in "Isn't it possible that the stones used to build the Great Wall were quarried by ruby lasers attached to the foreheads of barely-sentient orgone slaves imported from Io?"  You can get away with anything like that!  Sure, Suzanne, it's likely!

Second, it isn’t fair to babies. By encouraging mothers, who are the still the primary parent at home, to bond with their baby for a long period of time with the expectation they’ll return to work at the end of the year means the baby will become even more attached to his mother, and separation may become intolerable.

Suzanne Venker is on much firmer ground here, because a vast amount of research supports the notion that separation may become intolerable when a mother returns to work after a year.  Oh no, wait, it's exactly the opposite!  I suppose it "may" become intolerable, sure.  If even one baby has trouble adjusting, we shouldn't do it at all!  Good thinking, Suzanne!

Offering new parents full pay for up to one year is akin to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The needs of children are huge, and they do not end at one year. On the contrary, they just begin. Taking a year off of work to meet those needs merely scratches the surface.

Get the message, Mom?  NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHILD'S SIGHT, NOT EVEN FOR A SECOND.  Any absence creates a "gaping wound."  Hope your college fund is for 2, because you're going with him/her!

It goes on and on in this vein, trying to shame women into staying at home instead of going to work.  Which, if you can do it and that's your choice, fine, but a lot of women either can't or don't want to and that's fine too and the last thing we need is Suzanne Venker trying to make someone feel bad with completely fabricated arguments supported by zero evidence.

We will later learn, although it is not disclosed anywhere in the article or the author's note, that Suzanne Venker is the kind of person who tweets things like "The war on men is real. And it has only just begun" or "Feminism is evil in disguise" so I'm starting to get the sense that Suzanne Venker isn't a 100% neutral source on this topic.

Fuck's sake, Time magazine.