Why no post yesterday? I was away from home, and my laptop decided to go on the fritz.

Now that that’s fixed, why no real post today? Because now my home Internet is down. My wife tells me that it “just stopped working” earlier today. (I’m posting this from my iPhone.)

Oh, and by the way, my back yard gate latch needs to be repaired too.

More soon.

Last night from the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium here in San Francisco where my family and I are visiting, I emailed a picturesque postcard of Kimberly Gordon the pop-eyed woman to a couple of friends. They got the text — but no image.

And so I say curses to these merchant heirs to Robert Ripley! He traveled the whole world and collected and preserved incredible artifacts that were testament to the ingenuity of humankind — and they can’t even do an email correctly!

Given the position they’re in — and their expressions — I’m not sure this is the best tagline.

Radio host and comedian Stephanie Miller just came out as a lesbian. I find this very surprising, given how openly she desired me a couple of years ago when I emceed an event honoring her. I’m thinking maybe she finally just gave up.

Bryan Ferry + Phil Manzanera + Flea + Nile Rodgers = “Avalon”-era Roxy Music meets the dance floor.

My daughter, watching “Tom and Jerry” in our hotel room: “Oh, Tom. You will never win.”

(About 10 years from now, she’ll be saying, “Wake up. Godot is NOT coming.”)

I’m staying at a hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf with my family through Sunday. San Francisco, being very San Francisco, always gives me strange and interesting dreams. Last night before finally turning in I was reading an appreciation of Timothy Geithner in The New Yorker; I haven’t finished reading it yet, but the main thrust is that Geithner and the Obama administration took the right steps in saving the U.S. economy — and are now paying the price for it. Says Geithner:  “We saved the economy, but we kind of lost the public.” This gives succor to my fear that Tea Party bottom feeders are going to get elected in November.

In my dream, I’m at a State Department function having a discussion with a senior official. I’m telling her that I supported Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary not just because I liked him and his views, but because I couldn’t abide Hillary Clinton. “She was running on experience. But what experience did she have?” I asked. “Not much more than he did in the Senate. Before that? First Lady.” Then I went on to say that on top of that, I just didn’t like her:  she seemed brittle and humorless and overproduced and, worst of all, entitled — as though this presidency thing was supposed to be hers, and who was this guy to try to steal it away? Then I went on to tell this state department official that I had to give Clinton credit, though, because she was proving to be a good Secretary of State. But wasn’t getting much credit for her accomplishments. (You see the tie-in with the article I was reading before bed.) She smiled and nodded and then I woke up. And then I realized two things:

1. That this hadn’t really happened — it was just a dream.
2. That the woman in my dream had been Hillary Clinton.

Here’s my feeling when you’re in one of the most glorious cities in the country and you’ve been having a dream about Hillary Clinton:  It’s time to get up and get out into the day. So that’s what I did.

iPhone users get laid more often.

My good friend Doug Hackney emailed me this story. It seems that in Ottumwa, Iowa, where he was born, the town hopes to rebuild its economic prosperity off its new self-proclaimed identity as home to the “International Video Game Hall of Fame.” What is the linkage between Ottumwa, Iowa and video games? Nothing. There is none. Where will the funding come from to build what board vice-chair Dan Canny calls “the most complete archive of video-game history” in this city of 25,000 people? No one knows.

This is a cautionary tale, a parable for our immediacy if we don’t reclaim the aspirational future America has always pursued. Where middle America once produced things, now we produce a lust for the past:  reliving the heyday of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man and Defender.

Something else Mr. Canny misses is this:  When he quotes the “$58 billion global gaming industry,” that is apportioned toward two streams:  platform games like “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” and “Gears of War” that are played at home on console units; and freemium games on social network sites, most especially Facebook, but also on mobile devices.  His hall of fame — to games from the early Reagan era — has no relevance to that industry. And the people who actually work in that industry have no interest in these “Back to the Future” games — they weren’t born yet.

You can’t build the future by focusing on the past.

What we have here is an ad for Starbucks Coffee ice cream, “coffee free.”

Three questions:

1. Who would want ice cream from Starbucks? Wouldn’t you rather have ice cream from someone who is really good at ice cream (say, Baskin Robbins or Breyer’s)?
2. Which is it:  “Starbucks Coffee” (note the logo) or “coffee free”? This is like “7-Up — now with no 7!”
3. Just, overall:  Huh?