End of autumn; film at 11

One of the little love habits bewteen me and Cris is to nickname everything, and one target of this cutesy practice is the local TV news. Instead of calling it "the news," we call it either the Rain Show or the Fire Show, depending on the season. Once in a while it's the Snow Show, but only when they lead with a shot of some poor bloke doing a standup in front of the Donner Summit sign on I-80. In these shots, the image of the snow blowing horizontally from behind the cameraman and past the reporter makes it look as if the reporter is actually streaking out of the background with little speed lines around him like a cartoon. The Snow Show is usually on at 11:00; it takes that long for the guy to get up there. At 5:00 and 6:00 it's the Rain Show, with reporters standing in puddles at the Sausalito exit from 101. It's about time for them to start warning of floods on the Russian River and showing people wearily digging out the sandbags for another year.

Yes, it's the official end of fall, and a stormy one it is, too. I just pray that the thunderbolt does not hit when I have a cat on my shoulder; I'd never find my bloody ear.

Once in a while I check in at Tomato Nation, one of the blogs that got me going on blogging. I don't know this woman; she simply posted a riveting Sep. 11 eyewitness account that was widely linked to. She's a good writer even if she is annoyingly gen-Y sometimes. Tonight I checked in, wondering about the mood of New York, and then thought, what if someone reads this someday (no one is now) and wants to know the mood of San Francisco?

The Mood of San Francisco

A lot of people are out of work, and getting very nervous because of it. But I can't claim to know a lot about that, even though I have good friends who are out of work -- because most of the people I hang out with are *at* work. In fact, I'm about to leave to go to a Xmas party hosted by a co-worker. Perhaps I'll know more about the mood of the city, at least the mood of its employed citizens, after I go to that.

Otherwise, let's see. All I really have to go on is saying the things that are true about me and guessing about whether they apply to a lot of people. I know I have been getting scads of requests in the mail for charity -- everyone from Friends of the Urban Forest to Planned Parenthood to Catholic groups (I subscribe to the National Catholic Reporter and they figure I'm fair game, even though I'm a Lutheran). I daresay everybody is getting this stuff, from the overpaid (like me) to the unemployed.

I think people are wondering what's going to happen next in the war. Now that we've supposedly kicked the butt of everybody in Afghanistan who hated us, but didn't find Lex Luthor or any of the other masterminds of the Sep. 11 attacks, people feel cheated of a neat Hollywood resolution; but people in San Francisco also feel guilty about feeling that way. It looks like even Bush has decided it's a bad idea to invade Iraq, so people are no doubt relieved about that.

I don't think anybody is concerned about whether or not "the economic stimulus package" passes Congress, but people are looking at the news from Argentina, which is falling apart, and wondering whether anything like that could happen here. People are not scared of terrorists or anthrax or anything like that anymore; three months have passed and the worst that's happened is a recession (except for the four or five people who died of anthrax, which was probably sent by some American idot anyway).

Television is just the same, yamming over the Next Big Thing, whether it's the Super Bowl (thankfully that shit hasn't started yet) or a prospective trial of the guy from Marin who fought with the Taliban. Have you noticed that there's always some Trial of the Year either underway, wrapping up, or being promo'ed? I am so tired of big court trials. I don't watch them or even follow them, but just watching the promos makes me tired.

All in all, for all the people who keep repeating "Everything has changed," I think life in San Francisco is pretty damn much the way it was before Sep. 11. Goodness knows the dotcom bubble collapsed long before that, like a year and a half before that, so thousands of people were already out of work. In fact, the fact that everyone is now recogizing that thousands of people are out of work probalby means that the situation will soon end. All the unemployed dotcom people will have jobs six months from now, mark my words.

Or it'll be like Argentina, in which case there will not even be a Blogger. Forgetaboutit.