Jackson West’s Obsessive Compulsion

Okay, I joke from time to time that I live in ‘the ghetto.’ Of course I know the root of the word from the history of the Jewish diaspora in Europe, and that it’s come to encompas any marginalized community in an urban area (at least I wasn’t responsible for coining the name for Berkeley’s ‘Gourmet Ghetto’ — if you’re going to get all offended, please go after those idiots first). Of course, the neighborhood teems with young white hipsters, no need to look any further than Pops or the St. Francis. But it’s still one of the forgotten corners of ‘the Mission’ that hasn’t been completely yuppified, and is still home to largely latino families (the day workers thumb for jobs just down the street on Cesar Chavez, and no, the irony isn’t lost on me there, either).

Last night, I was up late sucking on the boob tube, as we now have cable (don’t be surprised if my IQ falls twenty points in the next two weeks). I heard a melee breaking out across the street, and when I got up to look out the window found a man brandishing a tire iron, protecting a woman from a crowd of angry punks, one of whom seemed to brandishing a knife. The couple, with help from a friend, hopped into a waiting minivan and sped away. Shortly afterwards, the police showed up and arrested the most of the antagonists. Then, just as I was about to go to bed, around 3:30 I recognized a sound I’d first heard growing up on Seattle’s Central District — distant gunfire. Five shots to be exact, and it sounded like they were all from the same weapon (probably a medium-caliber pistol, if my experience shooting is any guide).

Now I’ve stumbled home drunk from Farolitos at three in the morning without so much as a “pinche huero.” It helps that I’m a head taller than most of my neighbors, and of course have the benefit of ’skin privelege.’ Kill me, and the SFPD would be so far up this neighborhood’s ass it would make a Norteño’s head spin. Not that I’m necessarily happy about that, but god damn it’s a lot to think about. So understand that my self deprecating joke about living in the ghetto has nothing to do with my view of my neighbors (the vast majority of whom are hard working poor people), and everything to do with what it means to be poor in this country and, especially, in The City. Gunfire? Knife fights? Being prepared to clobber somebody with a tire iron to protect a friend? Just another day in my ‘hood.

Political wanks wonks like myself trade chit chat, gossip and OTR background on a sunny Friday. It’s awesome!

Well, it’s official — two of my favorite people, whom I’ve known for nearly fifteen years, went and had a baby. Asa and Malia welcomed the first of my friends’ second generation, Henry, to the world. I can you tell you right now that this kid is going to be one of the cutest, smartest, coolest people in history. I, for one, can’t wait until I introduce this dude to the Hegelian dialectic and how it relates to baseball. Here he is hanging out with my other lucky, happy, newlywed friend, Melora:

Congratulations Henry! Hopefully we won’t fuck up the world too bad before you’ve had a chance to enjoy yourself. Asa, you’re gonna have a great time, so congratulations to you, too. And special congratulations to the person who did all the hard work, Malia. You guys deserve every bit of happiness and success that comes your way.

All my love and best wishes!

(I am posting waaaaaaay too often on this blog lately — look for a two month hiatus shortly)

So here’s the thing. At SFist, we get a shitload of spam in our comments and trackbacks. Should be no surprise, right? I mean, it’s been flooding my email for almost as long as I can remember having email (oh, for the glory days of 1994-97, before I registered a domain and stupidly put my email on my homepage). Anyway, while a little tipsy from beer, a thought flitted across my brow:

The first commercial use of a program that can pass the “Turing Test” will be for spam.

Why? Well, first, most of the ’subversive’ marketing these days is text-based. Humans just don’t leave photo comments or send HTML emails (though I could see hacking attachments of photos to the ‘great time I had with my new mature girlfriend watching Anna Kournikova naked’). Actual human-written spam, sometimes composed by people who’s first language isn’t english, isn’t necessarily any more intelligible than some of the obviously machine-composed nonsense. And, finally, black-hat SEOs are spidering millions of pages of blog content and adding them to their databases to fill with keywords and game Google.

So put those people who reverse-engineered the Google pagerank system to work writing an algorithm to analyze all that cached content. I think a neural net algorithm would work nicely. You need massively parallel computing for that task, you say? How about using all the trojaned zombie-boxes to do your processing…if you put the available cycles of all the compromised WinTels of the world together, you’d probably have the world’s largest supercomputer. And if anyone has been able to grok social engineering exploits, it’s hackers.

Okay, this is coming from a guy who thinks that mankind’s real dream and technological motivation (and I do mean man-kind) is to build a sexbot, but still. Anyone who’s watched technology knows that the innovation follows the money. And anyone who’s watched the internet knows that the money is in porn, advertising and advertising porn.

Two days, two opportunities missed. Could have blogged the Anger Management tour stop in San Jose and gotten a byline in the USA Today (okay, Knight Ridder spawned Frank Vega, and are union-busting assholes, but still). Thankfully, they hired my homegirl Irina! Then, today, a photo editor from Time Magazine inquired as to the pictures I took of Al Gore and friends at the Current TV kickoff party. A photo credit in fucking Time! Problem? Too low-res. But I hooked up my homeboy Matt Reamer with the connect, and I expect similar success.

Still, that’s two more editors that know my name, and I managed to keep it all in the fambly. So I’m still happy.

I was delivered some of the worst news you can hear the last few days, and got some of the most loving respect you could hope for. Thank you to everyone who thinks I’m worth the air I breathe, please understand if I fall apart from time to time.

Had a great, late time at the Melting Point party on Saturday…more from Flickr.

Download the Torrent, experience the excellence. May just have to liveblog it later…

There comes a time in every bloggers life when he’s asked to help in a time of need. In this case, Ian over at Wrapped up Like a Douche is busy guest-blogging at The Spoonbender, and since no one cares if I don’t update this site, I could guest blog for him without having to get a guest blogger of my own (”It’s turtles, all the way down.”)

Anyway, go read it, and pray for Ian to come back soon with ‘The Funny.’

Not since Violet Blue called SFist “potty-mouthed boozers” have I been so thankful. I was called a “creepy Chris Daly fanboy!” Fucking sweet! It’s true, Chris makes a mean margerita and enjoys a fine cigar, and for that, I am a total fanboy. He also has a habit of sticking up for poor people and getting politically jiggy with it. Are those such bad things?

If you hadn’t noticed, the vast majority of SFist’s political coverage has been about fair Gavster, good and bad, but mostly funny. Hell, we’ve even had Bevan Dufty and Sean Elsbernd make appearances on the site. If you want to know who my semi-psychotic, delusional fanboy interest is in, I’ll give you a hint: her name starts with J and ends with Biels or Alba.

So you’re right, I’m not an eLuxury shopper. I live in substandard housing, make submedian wages and subsist on burritos. Mock me all you want, but don’t call me crazy when your own schizophrenia manifests itself in posting with multiple anonymous handles in political forums.