San Francisco's nice, but like most cities has its problems. The mass transit system's great. There are lots of good restaurants. Parts of the city smell funny. There are homeless people everywhere. There appear to be fewer fundamentalists and more touchy-feely new-age types (which is a net plus because no touchy-feely new-age person has yet tried to convert my kid or demand my tax money to promote his world-view).
There's a table of Scientologists near the train station, complete with "e meter" and a pile of L Ron Hubbard books. For the uninitiated, Hubbard claimed that aliens were murdered by an evil being named Xenu 75 million years ago. The ghosts of those aliens are stuck to us and cause all of our mental problems. Using an "e meter", which is a cheap galvanic skin response meter in a fancy case, you can shed those aliens and become "clear".
And no, they're not as fun as they sound. They take themselves way too seriously and are only too happy to start smear campaigns against their critics. some of my best advice for mental health is to avoid 'em.
We ate at a restaurant mentioned in "The Maltese Falcon" yesterday. Halfway through our meal a group of college kids rushed in and handed us a flyer saying that this restaurant had been cited ten times for health code violations. They then hung out outside while the police kept 'em at bay. Of course, they weren't there because they were worried about my health. They were a group of young racketeers for the local union, which the restaurant had apparently offended in some way. Good food, though.
Between the homeless people and the union racketeers, I got yelled at a lot today.
How can a movie about robots have fart jokes? Farting would require a digestive tract, which robots presumably don't have. Oh well.
