Grave humor on the way to coffee

Interesting sightem on the way to pick up morning coffee - San Francisco Examiner headline in newspaper box. "Fall off ___ kills tourist in North Beach," with a sub-caption about how the shocked community, etc. The blank in the headline was a space on the glass covered by one of those graffitti-scribbled "tag" stickers," which was made for a little mystery for me to ponder in the space of the block I had to walk before I saw a paper box with the full headline. Golden Gate Bridge? Coit Tower? A cable car? That last always strikes me as a distinct possiblity, what with the way people do hang off the cars going "look at me," as if they aren't just monkeying around on the outside of a several-tons-heavy vehicle made of cast iron surrounded by speeding cars, and the selfsame speeding cars, who whip around the cable cars at close range as if they were particularly annoying and extra-slow schoolbuses. SF traffic is horrendously dangerous, although better now than during the "dotcom" boom. (My personal stereotype of the dotcom yuppies always including a particular tendency to drive like Grand Prix racers through narrow one-way streets whilst simultaneously talking on cell phones and drinking lattes, usually taking a moment to scream at pedestrians who got in their way. As one of those pedestrians, I frequently fantasized about having the ability to destroy SUVs with laser eye-beams.) At any rate, it always suprirses me that we don't hear more about tourists ending up as door prizes on the cable car. Talk about an embarrassing epitaph. "I left my heart in San Francisco"? Yeah, right.

Anyway, the missing word turned out to be "roof." Roof? What a tourist is doing up on a roof is a good question to start with, so no idea what to make of that - I haven't read the actual story. I can't help but feel terribly sympathetic to whatever no-doubt heartbroken relative has to digest this bad news - see above for epitaph note - because it can't be fun to have that thought in the back of your head while being bereaved, and as a frequent childhood bereaver, I can attest to how one's brain coughs up little absurdities like that. I was reminded again of the SE Asian earthquake all over again, how holidaymakers there sure didn't see that one coming, and how that's the punchline to a lot of life's little grim stories - the fate you didn't expect.

I've avoided talking about the quake thus far, partly because it occured to me, more than once, that looking at those images might darn well be looking at my future - after all, as our local news was quick to remind us, there's a comparable style of fault north of Calfornia, off the coast, and Toys and I live in the flatland avenues of SF, no more than two or three miles from the ocean. Our neighborhood could easily be underwater in a heartbeat. This occurred to me while out buying beverages for New Year's Eve, actually, trudging through a heavy rain/hailstorm - nice weather we were having, related, do you think? The Pacific Ocean here is also very cold.

This post turned out quite dark, didn't it? I'm sure everyone feels more comfortable contemplating the specter of the Grim Reaper - gosh, I know I do. ((apologies))