Markasaurus was economically stimulated by George W. Bush this afternoon

So you finally got your economic stimulus check. I received mine this afternoon. Thanks to a very high social security number, I was one of the last people in the US to get “paid.” I’ve been looking forward to it for months, mostly so I could write this post. This was even more exciting than the last time our illustrious president attempted to bribe the American public, way back in 2001:

So now that you have your payment, what are you going to do with it? If you aren’t going to either buy groceries, gas or pay off (some) of you debt, what would be a good way to spend it? I’ve come up with a few ways you could spend it and not give in to the idea that handing out $600 checks will significantly revive our economy:

• Ride your bike or walk to Canada or Mexico or spend it on booze and strippers. Make sure to cash your check before leaving home. If you drive, you’ll get stuck paying for gas and tolls.
• Cash the check and buy something used on Craigslist. Make sure you don’t pay taxes.
• Frame the check as a keepsake. This (obviously) is not as fun as the first two.

What’s the best thing you could really do with your check? Invest it. In ten years you’ll have $1,420 if you get a 9% rate of return in the stock market. Or you’ll have over $3,300 if you keep it in the market for 20 years. Better yet, take it Reno and you can double your money in five minutes.

Okay, I admit I’m posting this a bit late. I have been really busy and we actually had some hot weather for the first time in about a year last weekend, so I haven’t been blogging. Last week, Caltrans (the California department of transportation) threw a festive gathering in front of my office to celebrate the new overpass that has been under construction on the other side of the wall at my office for the last year. They call it the “West Approach” because it is the west approach to the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The Governator showed up, but nobody actually saw him. He pulled up in an SUV on the overpass, out of site of the party, and gave a speech the was telecast to people standing on the ground about 200 feet away. Following the speech he drove away. It was completely surreal. Then, they served really awful (free) food including vegetarian baked beans that tasted like wet packing peanuts. Oh, and cupcakes. Sweet, delicious blue and orange cupcakes. Unfortunately the frosting melted instantly in the sun. Special thanks to my friend Angela and her iPhone for the photos.

As you may be able to see in this blurry photo I borrowed from the CNN website (and they apparently got it from the local KRON4 helicopter) the infamous Olympic Torch struggled to make its way through San Francisco today. While thousands of people on all sides of the China issue were gathered at the baseball stadium and the waterfront downtown (the official route), the Torch was being secretly run through several of the most unsuspecting parts of the city accompanied by the Bay Quackers Bus. What is this bus, you ask? It is a duck-themed amphibious tour bus for tourists. Thank God they upheld the dignity of the Olympics. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to cancel the whole thing before it even started?

You can check out my photos from the protests at flickr.

In a testament to just how ridiculous the ballot initiative process is in California, Proposition C on the San Francisco Ballot proposed to (somehow) obtain Alcatraz Island from the federal government and turn it into a “World Peace Center.” Sponsored by a bizarre fringe political party from nearby Marin County, this was a proposal for the City of San Francisco to buy Alcatraz from the National Park Service, tear down the historic prison and build some sort of monument on the scale of the Taj Mahal. While all the votes haven’t been counted, it looks like the proposition is going to fail by a margin of about three to one.

The extremely questionable part about this issue is the matter of how it arrived on the ballot in the first place. This group must have been able to get in the neighborhood of 10,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot measure… which means that 10,000 people in San Francisco must have thought it was worth the effort and expense to put this on the ballot.

I watched some of the debate on cnn.com tonight, and was almost bored to tears. I don’t think a debate should be a love-fest between a party’s remaining two candidates, but I guess that only goes to show how similar they are. If you need a diversion, why not purchase a used head from a wax museum?

I thought I’d follow up with my recent post on the Randall Museum. Not only was there a rabbit grooming a chicken, but there is a huge model train set in the basement. I got this photo of a plastic teddy bear that must be a stand-in for a grizzly, with a miniature man working on the wires:

The photo above was shown next to a Yahoo News story about the severe flooding that is occurring in Britain. I understand the need to put up signs when there is an unseen danger ahead, as in the case of a road sign warning of a sharp curve or an icy bridge. I’m not so sure that a sign that says “flood” sitting in the middle of a flooded street is quite as necessary. It almost looks like a Banksy piece, maybe more so if there were some artfully placed shark fins circling in the water (Banksy traffic cones image by Tom Coates).

In other news, the endangered species status of 8 animals is under review after it was discovered a former Bush administration political appointee had undo influence over the decisions. According to this article in the Contra Costa Times, the former deputy assistant secretary of interior Julie MacDonald had a financial interest in the habitat of one of the endangered species in question and also had no scientific training.