Below are some photographs of two recent visits to Sea Ranch, a planned community about 90 miles north of San Francisco. The Sea Ranch has its roots in Castle & Cooke subsidiary Oceanic California’s 1963 purchase of the 5,200 acre Del Mar Ranch for $2.3 million. Not a bad price for five thousand coastal acres, especially since a single lot can cost over a million bucks nowadays.

The idea was to preserve the history and original character of the land as much as possible, and CCRs continue to prohibit the construction of garish mini-mansions and cookie cutter developments.

It’s a relaxing place to stay for those of us troll-like individuals who don’t want any nightlife.

The coast–what it’s all about.

View from a living room . . .

Just another cove.

Another view, with the fog coming in. Go to the jump for more photos . . . .

Home for the weekend.

Plenty of seals in there somewhere . . . .

A Zen thing . . . .

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• In Oakland, police shot and killed a drug bust figure who tried to drive away from the scene with a police officer still in the car. Doh.
• Former KGO talk show host Bernie Ward will get nine years of Soap-on-a-Rope on child porn charges if prosecutors get their way. As previously noted here, Ward came up with the lamest excuse ever when he claimed he had the pre-pubescent porn handy for research purposes.
• And speaking of lame excuses, former American diplomat Gons Nachman got twenty years for underage sex with kids in Brazil and Congo. Nachman claimed the cultural values of the girls’ countries validated the jail bait action. Wait ’til he gets a load of the cultural values exhibited in prisons toward short eyes types.
• San Francisco’s Kaushal Niroula stole $300,000 in jewelry from a Novato woman–to post bail in an unrelated case. This guy definitely gets the “unclear on the concept” award for this week.
• Alfonso Gonzalez was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit rape, kidnapping during a carjacking, kidnapping and making a criminal threat–again. The bungling psycho tried to appeal his convictions from last year, but a First District Court of Appeal put the kibosh on dis fool’s appeal. An owner of a Menlo Park jewelry outlet hired to Gonzalez to kidnap, rape, and murder a woman who ultimately escaped. Gonzalez hopefully won’t escape his 35 years to life sentence.
• And finally Larry Ellison comes up the highest paid CEO this year, with over $80 million. The difference between Ellison and the yutzes above? Vision.

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I’ve raged before against the robotic retardation of Shell gas stations and the idiotic TV screens stuck in the pumps, as if Shell management is desperate to prove it’s stuck in some 1958 vision of the future.

It just makes me feel human again to hear a machine with no eyes say, “It’s nice to see you.” So happy I’m ordering a Visa card made of plastic explosives.

And this is also the friggin place where the little hairy guy runs out an berates me in a language with no vowels when I use the squeegee to clean bird shit off my fender. ‘Justifiable’ and ‘homicide’. Two words that should be next to each other in the dictionary.

To make the day even cheerier, my next move was to Safeway, where 10:00 a.m. would seem like an hour when an experienced grocery retailer might expect to have customers. Wrong! Ever notice how Safeway’s aisles are packed with employees endlessly asking if they can help you? Like zombies, they stagger about, asking if they can advise on the features of the toilet paper or feminine hygiene products you’re stealthily trying to purchase.

Of course they’re never around when you’re in a real quandary, like you don’t know which kind of rat poison works best on overly inquisitive neighbors, or you’re not sure which kind of cleaner takes Jehovah’s Witness blood off a ceiling completely.

Oddly, the brilliant managerial acumen that populates the aisles with annoying simps does not contemplate the possibility that some customers might actually want to buy something. So I get up to the checkout areas, and there are literally 30 people with carts milling around two checkouts–and hordes of zombies are still wandering the aisles taking inventory, accosting customers, and just generally lingering around the embarrassing products no one wants to be seen buying.

WTF?! Fortunately, the check out clerk was too busy to ask if I needed help out to the car with my load of rat poison, firewood, and clothesline. Sometimes it’s the little things that get you through the day.

So then I go on to the laundromat . . . . but for various legal reasons I can’t get into that at all right now.

Image courtesy of the United States government via Northwestern library.

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Video: get your Olympic bloopers here.

Photo courtesy of Bay Area photographer Steve Kesten.

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Time/Warner and Morrow passed, finding the book too dark, to which I can only say, “Up yours, publishers!”

(Not to be confused by Jennifer Weiner and Michael Knight’s novels, which picked up the title after I used it. Look for the pen name Von Helsing.)

If you liked Sin City or The Punisher, you should just get the book and be done with it. If you’ve got the talent to make it into a graphic novel, I’m all ears.

If you liked Bridges of Madison County or watch the Lifetime Channel, spare yourself the nightmares.

Please God, somebody buy a copy and make me an author for a day.

Book cover image with permission of xlibris.

Phone image with permission of me.

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While the realm of jet transportation is far removed from our sordid underworld of roach coaches, recent cost-cutting measures in the airline industry suggest diverse ways of improving the MUNI experience.

It’s not so much a matter of cutting costs as making the customer pay them. As an example, JetBlue is playing the green card by charging fliers $7 for an “eco-friendly” blanket that comes with a Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon. (Nothing quite takes the sting out of a screwing than the implication that it somehow benefits the environment.)

It’s not hard to imagine how this principal would work if applied to MUNI. First of all, we live the age-old dream of eliminating fares completely. But travelers would then be charged for a menu of transportation choices that could make the commute more copacetic, like the Brothel Bus. Here are some other possibilities:

• Urine-free travel: Who doesn’t want to pay $5 to roll in an enclosure completely lacking the odor of urine or shaggy dog-in-the-backpack types emanating it? Travel vomit-free for an additional $3.
• Kinder, Gentler Armed Robbery: Being attacked, threatened, fondled, and/or robbed are all parts of the MUNI experience that we’ve all come to love–but hey, the drivers have to make a living somehow, right? Seriously, some folks would be happy to pay $10 not to be shot, $7.50 not to be knifed, or two-fiddy not to be beaten down Clockwork Orange style. (Not being pissed on is included in the Urine-Free option above.)
• Robbery Service Providers: MUNI would share part of the above robbery fees with carefully screened criminals who will use every professional courtesy in alleviating passengers of their belongings and dignity.
• Serenity Option: For $100, passengers would obtain the ultimate public transportation luxury: silence. Payment of the fee would result in a quiet, peaceful journey uninterrupted by babbling homeless people, glassy-eyed religious fanatics, or just all around dils who can’t shut the fu** up for ten seconds. Hey, maybe JetBlue should start offering this one!

Image with permission of Bay Area photographer Steve Kesten.

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