Dan White

My wife says that if we don’t purchase a television soon, she’s going to make me see the new Katherine Heigl movie. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I’ve been trying to enjoy the storm. For example, I’ve been running all over my apartment, pretending it’s a pirate ship sailing through gail force winds. “All hands on deck! Man the bilge, ya swabs. Fire in the hole.” But there is no denying it. This storm is merciless and nasty. Today, an oak fell over and gave the car parked right next to my car a leafy smackdown, pinning it to the asphalt, slamming the hood, cracking the glass, totalling it. Scary. I had been parked three feet to the right, that would have been my squashed car. This storm is for real. Today, I visited Hayes Valley, and I almost parked my car near the general proximity of “Oak” and “Fell” streets. Not wanting to tempt fate, I moved. In other news, a strange woman pickpocketed me right in the middle of a Castro eyeglasses store, but she…

Incident one: Just last week, I went into my very favorite cheese shop in town and asked the guy for a small wedge of Fromage D’Affinoir. And the guy’s face fell! He wrinkled his nose and made a disgusted expression as if I’d just asked for the dumbest, most vulgar kind of cheese on the planet. He gave me the Fromage, but he practically threw the thing at me. I got out of there as quickly as I could. Incident two: The other day, I went into my second-favorite cheese shop in town and asked for some fresh ricotta, which, as you know, is very hard to find. The owner asked me why I needed fresh ricotta. I explained that my wife was making me a lasagna from scratch, using a Kitchenaid standing mixer with a pasta-making attachment. “What is she, a mail-order bride?” said the owner. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

All the MUNI buses have been immobilized. I’m charging up my solar flashlight. I feel like I’m trapped in that terrible in-flight movie starring Steve Carell and various animals. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I just returned from a wild and crazy trip through Maui and the Big Island. It was a great, great time. I stayed in an actual yurt, ate pickled raw smelly fish, inadvertently annoyed a green sea turtle, stalked a tropical fish, snorkeled in circles and ate mahi mahi fish and chips until my brain was numb. It was an almost perfect vacation, except for the following strange things. 1. In Kona, our next door neighbors were such slobs!!! They never left their hotel room. They stocked up on stuff from Costco, including an enormous bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, which they glurped outta the bottle. Then, they decided to hang out on their balcony while watching TV. To pull off this feat, they arranged their deck chairs with their backs to the water, and turned the TV set up so loudly that it shook the whole floor. We finally…

I have just returned from the land of the feral mongoose, Kona coffee and macadamia nuts. I promise to give a full report once I can shake some of the sawdust from my brain. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

For years I have resisted adding any design features to my bare-bones blog design. I think I did this out of laziness more than anything else. Or perhaps I was influenced by the editor of a small newspaper where I used to work. It was a black-and-white rag — and when we dared to suggest that he consider adding color to the newspaper, he shot back: “I will NOT have this newspaper dolled up like some dime-store hussy!” Well, I’m finally making a concession to modern times. I’ve added an actual graphic to this blog, featuring my unsmiling face during a desert survival hike some years back. I took this photo of myself, using a disposable camera, during a heatwave, as the thermometer edged to 105 degrees. At the time of this photo, I had just escaped from an ornery, grazing bull, and had returned to the trail after taking…

OK. I’m convinced. The strike is over. By the way, I am now available on eBay. More to follow. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

This week is the 100th anniversary of Muir Woods. To mark the occasion, Amy and I went on the best day hike in America. The scenery is very nice — old-growth and second-growth redwoods on bluffs marching out toward the Marin County coastline — but this is hike has the best amenity that I’ve ever seen in the woods — an actual, functioning beer bar, smack in the middle of the forest!!! You don’t even have to hike out of the woods to get to it. You just walk right up and there it is, right on the trail, like some kind of hallucination. (that’s what I love about this San Francisco area. People are always thinking of interesting ways to combine unhealthy and healthy activities in one convenient package.) This bar in the woods has wheat bear, lagers, and dark beer in enormous tankards. My only pieces of advice:…

In my blog, I run an occasional item about the various Dan Whites of the world. This week’s Dan White (no relation)is a prosecutor who commented recently about the illegality of toadsucking. Here is the actual article, from the Associated Press: “Law enforcement authorities have discovered that people are willing to go to great lengths to get high, including a troubling new method that features a frightened toad. “Toad smoking,” which is a substitute for “toad licking,” is done by extracting venom from the Sonoran Desert toad of the Colorado River. The toad’s venom – which is secreted when the toad gets angry or scared – contains a hallucinogen called bufotenine that can be dried and smoked to produce a buzz. In October, a Kansas City man was charged with possessing a controlled substance after Clay County authorities determined he possessed a toad with the intent to use its venom…