Travis Isaacs

First one's always free, kid

​"Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax -- you're goddamn right I'm living in the fucking past!" -- Walter Sobchak.

Starting Friday evening, a campaign largely spread via Twitter, Facebook, and all things new media wants you to do something counter-intuitive. It wants you to log off from Twitter, Facebook, and all things new media. Close your laptop. Stop checking your e-mail. Leave the house without your cell phone -- intentionally. Interact with real people -- for a whole 24 hours. No, there's no app for that.

This 24-hour period of Luddite zen is the "Sabbath Manifesto," a project of the Jewish think-tank Reboot. But, just like Levy's Jewish Rye, you don't need to be Jewish to enjoy the benefits of putting away the goddamn iPhone for a spell and looking your significant other in the eye when he or she is talking again.

Reboot is a New York-based organization -- but they've got their eye on you, San Francisco. It's you they're thinking of when they ... you're not paying attention, are you. You're checking into Foursquare. See what we're talking about?

"People get on their laptops, they're surrounded by technology, and they go on Facebook and say 'I'm at this cafe!'" said Tanya Schevitz, Reboot's San Francisco program coordinator (if you recognize her name, it might be the 12 years she spent at the Chronicle. Thanks for reading!). "In the olden days, people would bring sick friends soup. Now they post on Facebook: 'Sorry you're sick.'"

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Dan Balsam' s favorite Monty Python sketch, bar none...

​Note to the world: Dan Balsam is tired of his wife receiving e-mail messages promising her a bigger penis. And he has no interest in getting larger breasts.

How much does the San Francisco lawyer hate spam? Enough to initiate the DanHatesSpam.com Web site. Enough, he says, to leave a marketing career and go to law school so he could find a way to stick it to spammers.

Earlier this week, he did just that. A San Mateo County Superior Court Judge ruled that Redwood City's Trancos, Inc. violated a 2004 anti-spam state law, and owe Balsam $7,000 -- $1K for each offending e-mail -- plus legal expenses, "which are significant." You can read the ruling here.

The legal tripping point for Trancos -- which will almost certainly appeal this ruling -- were terms like "your business" and "paid survey" on the "from" line of the e-mails. State law forbids unsolicited e-mails that misstate their source. Garbled subject lines are also not kosher; Judge Marie Weiner ruled one Trancos e-mail promising $5 if a survey was completed to be misleading.

Balsam said that one of the reasons fewer individuals are using the 2004 anti-spam law to file suits like his is that spammers don't exactly flaunt their identities.

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Quick! Run to the computer!

​"Amazinggggg" (yes, that's five G's) is how one man described a recent sexual encounter in San Francisco. "It was freaking great!!!!!!" another man wrote about his Feb. 19 outdoor rendezvous with his male partner. Both used the Web site IJustMadeLove.com to broadcast to the world where, when, and in what positions they did the deed.

Part Twitter, part Google Maps, I Just Made Love! is the brainchild of Cyprian Ciećkiewicz, a  26-year-old programmer in Poland who got the idea for the site in May of last year. While driving home one night, he started wondering what it would take to create a Web site with flashing notifications representing locations people have exchanged bodily fluids.

"I wanted to achieve (a) smile on people faces," Ciećkiewicz wrote via e-mail when asked what he hopes people will get out of the site.

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Thomas "Epic Beard Man" Bruso, the hulking senior citizen who gained Internet fame for hammering the bejeezus out of a fellow AC Transit passenger, evidently has set his sights on a new fight he'd like to partake in: politics.

Former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin confirmed rumors we'd heard that Bruso approached him while he was having coffee with radio producer Paul "The Lobster" Wells last Monday at Caffe Trieste. Eyewitnesses told SF Weekly that Bruso -- who also gained notoriety by getting tased last year at an Oakland A's game -- got the former politician's attention by bellowing "Peskin! You're going to be the next mayor!" at the top of his lungs.

At this point, the man Trieste regulars know as "Tommy" and "Vietnam Tom" pulled out a huge wad of $100 bills and said "How much you need?" Peskin politely declined the generous contribution. "Tommy's been throwing money around," confirmed a regular at the cafe. Bruso can also be seen flashing a massive wad of cash in this entertaining video, obviously shot in North Beach.

Interestingly, Wells is the producer of the Will and Willie Show -- that'd be Will Durst and Willie Brown. The latter, in his Chron column, denied he was pulling any strings to be interim mayor should Gavin Newsom be parted from our fair city. But Brown did say that "A.P." and "A.A." were hard at work doing just that. That's a pretty obvious reference to Peskin and less straightforward mention of Angela Alioto or Art Agnos. And the former said it's just not true. 

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Dammit, this is all Craigslist's fault

​It's amazing how far into adulthood some guys retain a taste for fraternity-basement douchebaggery. Who would have guessed, for instance, that a bunch of grown-up dairy workers in Southern California would solicit anonymous gay sex on a married co-worker's behalf? (Get it? Because he's not actually gay! Snicker.)

Yeah, well, turns out this shit does go on. An unnamed plaintiff is suing California food-products giant Foster Farms and classified-ads Web site Craigslist in San Francisco Superior Court, asserting that his barn colleagues harassed him by posting solicitations in the site's "casual encounters" section, where folks cruise for sex partners. To wit: A post on March 16, 2009, said the future plaintiff was "seeking a hot stud for first timer... recently divorced from my wife, have come to terms with my homo sexuality [sic], and need someone to teach me the right way, and be gentle at the same time, age, race not important..."

The plaintiff's phone number was included in the ad, and over the next two days, according to his lawsuit, he received a number of calls at home -- some overheard by his wife and daughters -- from men who "asked for sex and made highly offensive and graphic sexual comments and invitations."
 
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At my desk where I never use my work computer to look at porn. Except when I do.

​The front page of the Datebook in Monday's Chronicle offered a photograph of a pair of hands bound by the cord of a computer mouse and the headline "Putting Lives on the Line for Porn."

The story opens with what the writer assures us are "real life examples of pornography addiction" such as: "A 50-year-old married physician views Internet pornography for hours at home, masturbating five to seven times a day, then begins surfing porn sites at the office and risks destroying his career."

Okay, we're hooked.

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All images | Alexia Tsotsis

Say my name! Say my name!

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Epic first-round knockout of Sonny Liston
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Mocking hipsters is, well, right now. The definition of what constitutes a hipster is as murky as that of pornography -- but, like porn, you know it when you see it. Absurdly large and unnecessary glasses paired with a surplus of tattoos? Hipster. Tights for pants and a kitten T-shirt worn for ironic effect? Hipster.

A glut of blogs have cropped up to provide a platform for hipster mockery: Look at This Fucking Hipster, Sad Hipsters, and now Hipster Kitty and Hipster Puppies. The trend shows no sign of stopping, and nothing (in Ray Bans) seems safe from ridicule. Thus we give you what seems like the inevitable end result: Look At This Hipster Everything.

​Look at this hipster eraser.
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It's tough to be a single woman on Feb. 14, so we've compiled a list of Valentine's dating ads from Craigslist that may appeal to you. If you don't have eyes like Superman, you can always click on the images for larger versions. The first one we've got for you happens to be from Minneapolis, but based on his heart-shaped chest hair alone, it's clear he's worth worth the trip.

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Okay, okay. So it's a little to late to be buying plane tickets to Minnesota. We'll give you some San Francisco options. More >>