According to the [Los Angeles] Daily News via woot, real estate marketing has moved beyond staged decor and on to staged families.

Dallas-based Centex built four model homes, filled them with furniture, then took things one bizarre step further. The company hired four actors to play the role of a family, in a role that's half improv, half sales demo...

"Where does the reality end and the ... good God, reality begin?" mused Jim Garfield, a senior publicist for ... [the] public relations company that created Home Life.

On a positive note, the family is multi-racial.

It's been a while since I posted anything. Here are some things that amused me around San Francisco.

AAA Battery Delivery and Installation

I saw a truck painted with "AAA Battery Delivery and Installation". I commented to Keith that I thought everyone knew how to install triple-A batteries themselves.

Café Gratitude

A student and friend recently took me to lunch at Café Gratitude, a vegan raw food restaurant whose menu proclaims:

Café Gratitude is our expression of a world of plenty. Our food and people are a celebration of our aliveness. We select the finest organic ingredients to honor the earth and ourselves, as we are one and the same. We support local farmers, sustainable agriculture and environmentally friendly products. Our food is prepared with love.

We invite you to step inside and enjoy being someone who chooses: loving your life, adoring yourself, accepting the world, being generous and grateful everyday, and experiencing being provided for. Have fun and enjoy being nourished. Welcome to Café Gratitude.

The dish names are all inspirational. I ordered "I AM SENSATIONAL" (pesto pizza) and "I AM EFFERVESCENT" (house ginger ale), which were affirmed back to me by the waiter ("You are sensational and effervescent"). The food was delicious, the service warm, and the prices reasonable, and I plan to return, but I also can't help laughing at myself and thinking: "Only in San Francisco".

Systemic Discrimination

I am currently sunburned, despite liberal application of sunscreen before yesterday's Commencement at Mills College. I always joke that the outdoor ceremony is an example of systemic discrimination against faculty not of color.

According to BadCorp.org, which cites Behind the Arches:

In Japan, McDonald's faced "a fundamental challenge of establishing beef as a common food". Their President, Den Fujita, stated "the reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for two thousand years"; "if we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white and our hair blonde".

An Amazon search showed this story appeared on page 423 of McDonald's: Behind the Arches.

Via fark:

• White people are using DNA testing to claim affirmative action entitlements
• Texas man ruled ineligible for execution due to mental illness ordered by judge to take anti-psychotics so he can be executed

On Slashdot today, I saw a MSNBC article on product recommendations gone bad. Specifically:

When visitors to Walmart.com requested "Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series" on DVD, four other movies were recommended under the heading "Similar Items." Those films included "Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream/Assassination of MLK" and "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson."

While I'm firmly against racism, I have some sympathy for Wal-Mart, as I've written and deployed an automated recommender system, which had its share of humorous results, although fortunately no offensive ones that I'm aware of.

This also brings to mind Jeffrey Zaslow's classic Wall Street Journal article, What to Do When Your TiVo Thinks You're Gay.

From Snopes:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named Bush, Dick, and Colon. Need I say more?

This has been attributed to Chris Rock, but the exact origin is undetermined.

My opinion (in two words): beyond satire.

Black People Love Us! is one of my all-time favorite satirical websites. (Thank you to an anonymous commenter who gave me the correct URL.) A mark of great satire is the number of people who have trouble deciding whether it's funny or offensive, as shown by the letters sent to the site.