Freak Magnet

More cell phone photos. Signs and symbols. Images devoid of context, both cryptic and the overly pointed.

My friend Aesop used to call these "Chinese Chicken Cigarettes." Apparently they taste vaguely of chicken. When I worked in North Beach my coworkers would get them when they were broke. Maybe that's the double happiness element: they're a smoke and lunch in one.

Kneeling figurine on staircase, 3rd Ave at Geary. Found it set up this way.

Mr. Lee's dog was stolen.

Got this pizza from Cable Car when I was lit. Couldn't get over how funny it was to send someone who's stoned pizza in a box that says "Enjoy your delicious moments." You bet I fuckin' will.

Even the pizza chef on the box is high:

Portland?

Some local wheat paste:

This is everywhere lately. Looks like Adam from the White Barons in Run DMC gear:

In the Presidio:

On Valencia, at the old New College building. Notice it's covering a "GET UP GET UP" poster:

I really dig this drawing of Joaquin Phoenix. Just noticed he's got a sparrow in his hair. Knowing what I know about guerrilla marketing, and seeing how this is ALL OVER SF and also in LA, I'd say it's a on the down low tie in with I'm Still Here.

Best tag ever?

Worst daycare name ever?

Outer Sunset, Taraval:

Bernie's Coffee, Noe Valley:

The number:

This struck me as a really off campaign. I mean, it probably does good things to raise money for counseling and suicide hotlines and the like, but it just seemed funny to me. "Fuck, I really want to die today. Oh, people are walking against suicide? Wow, I guess I'll have to reconsider if all those people think my life isn't meaningless, painful, and empty."

Lot of work, here. Did they weld these metal plates onto the gate just to leave the message?

Taqueria Cancun, Mission at 19th. It's the cancer-causing chemicals that make it taste so good.

19th Ave at Sloat. I dig the sloth with the Novus Ordo Seclorum pyramid:

Mmm...tacos y burritos. Chubby Burger, Fremont:

San Francisco is so fucking enlightened--animal activists are everywhere. I found this puppy-loving protestation while walking my dog in my heavily Asian neighborhood. It was written on sticky paper. I wonder if whoever wrote it was going to wear it like a nametag?

This is a sculpture by whoever lives in the old Busvan for Bargains building on Clement. He's got some good stuff in the windows.

Wound the fuck up, eh?

Jacked from the interweb. Where is the dream?

I was going to meditate today, but I just got stoned and took a nap. That shit counts, right? Somebody ask the Buddha.

The question, of course, is where the fuck have I been? Well, like Agent Orange, I too had a Bitchin' Summer.

Lots of camping, riding Downieville and Northstar, trip to Portland to see the homies, Gabe gave me a 1979 Raleigh Super Course Mk II which I had modified and powdered and then built up into its current state (post on that later)...

Somewhere in the midst of everything, I lost the blog. It's kind of like losing your religion, but Michael Stipe doesn't sing a song about it. The Magnet became a Sisyphean task, wherein I felt compelled to translate into binary code all the minutia, all the Duncan detritus my adoring fans couldn't possibly live without. How could I post a simple post without telling the world the totality of these "works and days of hands"? I am a completist, if nothing else.

Had some bad days, too. Lot of bickering with my lady, as much as I love her. Almost drowned in the Tuolumne River. Big snows=big snow melt=getting sucked under a boulder the size of a Mini Car barely getting out.

Like Omar Hassan, which Google tells me is the name of the deceased President of "Kamistan" in Keiffer Sutherland's 24, "I just drink another beer and move on." It's that time. Time to just roll on the thing. This thing, that thing, every damn thing. If the rocks gotta go up the hill and back down until they lay me beneath the ground, so be it. I'll roll the rock up the hill. I'll rock the roll back down. Laissez les bon temps, and the big boulders, rouler.

So here I am, tall can of Sapporo at the ready, moving on. Speaking of which, in my absence, there have been great changes in the beer continuum. Upheavals, even. First, Coors has brought us the Cold Activation Window.

Yes, it's not enough for the MENSA members that drink the Silver Bullet to simply throw a twelve pack in the fridge or cooler and believe that, in a reasonable amount of time, their beer flavored water will be icy cold, as further evidenced by the thermally activated mountainscape on the side of the can. No sir, that would imply both an apprehension of sensory imput ("Hey, this can is cold" and/or "Look at the purty blue mountains, Bob") and some sort of higher, cosmic faith in the power of ice and/or refrigerant to transmute the baser lead of warm shitty beer into the gold of cold shitty beer. And faith, as Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins and all the other smug, loose-lipped acolytes of Atheism will tell you, is for total fucking retards. Which Coors Light drinkers most certainly are not. Aw hells no. Now they have a window which miraculously unclouds with the pure power of science, letting the average weight-conscious knuckle dragger know exactly when it's time to fill the beer bong.

But what if your bland suds just don't swirl right when you pour them out of the bottle? Because, of course, no one drinks fine American beer out of the can, everyone pours that crap into a frosty mug like in the commercials. Well, the MillerCoors megacorp has your back, champ. What you need is more motherfuckin' science:

"What goes in as a gob comes out as an amazing Vortex bottle." Which, according to the promo vid, is just so fucking amazing and magical that the gobs who drink Miller light will be astounded for hours...much like toddlers stacking Fisher Price concentric doughnut rings on a plastic spike.

As their commerical states: "its specially designed grooves let that great pilsner taste flow right out." The real trick for MillerCoors would be to design a bottle that kept the taste in.

Idiocracy is here, people. You don't have to wait for it. The snake oil salesmen and their medicine show have merely moved uptown to Madison Avenue. They have what you need, and you can buy it now--in bulk.

Don't believe me? My friend Marco recently posted a picture of these awesome Kirkland (read: Costco house brand) products on the Facebook:

While I merely found the beer revolting, at least conceptually, the Kirkland creche really threw me:

Welcome to Costco, I love you. And so does Jesus. Because who doesn't want to get their spiritual materialism on at the same place where you can buy twenty pounds of sliced ham and plenty pack of diapers big enough to last until your kid enters his first year of college? Really looking forward to the Kirkland Black Kali Ma figurine:

Instead of moving on to my usual 10,000 random photos and videos, I'll leave you with a couple quickies. I've got to get these bloggities out more often. Shorter, faster, harder, more. Here's a kook doing 86 in the Rollie Free superman position on a motherfucking moped:

While I'm no fan of 'peds, having travelled in the third world, I know that there are places where actual motorcycles cost a black market kidney or two. Clearly, this guy would take an R1 if it were in the realm of possibility. Maybe that'll be my new charity: motos for the the poor. I'll start with myself. While it's batshit to see someone risk his life on a vehicle that was designed to carry lazy Frenchies to the boulangerie at half the speed of a brisk walk, I have to say it's more entertaining than passing some hipster and his shoelace-headed girlfriend laboring up Haight Street hill on an overtaxed Puch while riding my bicycle.

And, in case you didn't catch the Rollie Free (best name ever?) reference, he broke the world speed record at Bonneville Salt Flats on a Vincent Black Lightning in said superman position, while wearing nothing but a bathing cap and a Speedo, hitting just over 150 mph:

Fuck a cape, yo. Who needs it?

Finally, in the spirit of improvisation embodied by Mr. Free and the Moped Maniac, but with a decidedly more relaxed pace, check this unnamed Senegalese cat get his flatland on while riding what looks to be the standard freestyle machine in Abene, Senegal.