Bon voyag-ee, Cosco Busan! And don't come back! The leaky Cosco Busan ship that contaminated our beautiful bay with oil is expected to get clearance to get the heck outta Frisco, setting sail at noon today to head back to South Korea. We kind of have this vision of the ship disconsolately listing off into the sunset, leaving a trail of oil behind it, like when Wile E. Coyote hits something and walks off screen......

-- Girl fight! [KGO] -- Barney's -- like its irritating X-Mas holiday window display this year -- is full of green, self-righteous crap. [Curbed SF] -- Mark Zuckerberg might be the next Bill Gates, but he's not nearly as dreamy as early Microsoft-era Bill Gates. Then again, who is? [ValleyWag] -- Star of India fire kills two. [SFoodie] -- Roundtable Q&A with Lust, Caution (Se, jie) director Ang Lee and star Wei Tang. [Pixel......

Since February, that's $670,381.39. It's been a busy month for lawyers: Muni's conceding $131,695.06 (about the cost of a bribe to Ted Stevens, or one foot of collapsed-bridge repairs, or a single union employee, or an English teacher in Seoul, or your very own hair salon) in settlements for August in nine separate cases. The biggest payout is $47,500 to a guy who broke his ankle when the bus lurched forward before he could......

June is busting out all over! With lawsuits, we mean. Added to the total from a few weeks ago, we're up to $456,565.92 in Muni claims since February. Wow, that's a lot of money. Sure would've gone a long way toward hiring a few more drivers, or repairing a few more buses, or buying a few more NextMuni signs. Oh well. Some of the cases are pretty standard -- personal injury, property damage, etc etc......

Some fights seem really really important to the folks involved, and utterly mystifying to everyone else. You know like when you see two pigeons fighting over a hamburger bun, and you can't decide which one to root for because it seems like they both want the same thing and they'd just be better off sharing? Or another example: the unnecessary feud going on at the Cable Car Museum. Yesterday we mentioned a book by......

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get......

What was long rumored is now true as the Beatles and Apple settled their trademark issues over the apple trademark. They are now both expected to sue Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. What this means is that Beatles songs could be showing up on iTunes any minute now. Bloggers everywhere like this deal because when you give them a cute, Brangelina like nickname, it's still Apple....

The battle over that athletic center at Berkeley took another turn as a camp out in the oaks that was set up to support all protestors up in the trees was rousted by the cops this morning. According to reports, around 6 or so, the cops came to chase everyone away and then came in and swept up all the camping equipment and supplies, supposedly including people's laptops. Now that's just mean. ...

You know that totally obvious idea of creating some sort of general pass that works on the plethora of public transportation options? And you know how it's so obvious that you want to bang your head against the table that it hasn't happened yet. Well, it's happening, finally. Or at least a trial run of it....

One good thing about being the area known as having the most-liberal, terrorist loving court system is that we get all the fun lawsuits happening here. Which would describe a lawsuit filed a couple of days ago against the Federal Government at the US District in San Francisco for slacking on a global warming report. ...

That eavesdropping case we've been following took another step to eventually seeing the light of as an appeals court has decided to review the decision by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that the lawsuit should move forward despite the whining of the Federal Government. The eavesdropping case, for those who don't remember, was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the Government and AT&T for reading things they shouldn't be reading. Of what, we don't know but its super serious and of utmost importance to the War on Terror. And porn. We're sure somewhere they're checking out porn. ...

Yeah, we know, totally obvious title for the post -- they can't all be winners, okay? But you know who can all be winners? Apple and Creative Labs, who claim to have come to an "amicable" $100 million settlement of Creative Labs' claims of patent infringement against the iPod's technique of navigating through your songs (you know, push the middle button a bunch of times, and then scroll with your finger until you overshoot the......

We want to take this opportunity to make an early toast to Mr. Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the single most important item in the history of mankind. We are speaking, of course, of television, and tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of its inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth. Few know his name, and he never got the credit he was due during his lifetime, but oh, do we owe him some......

Okay, here's an update on that lawsuit against AT&T and the Federal Government for illegally snooping on people's phone calls and e-mails. Basically, there are about seventeen similar lawsuits out there in the midst of the legal world and because they're all sort of similar-- whiny Al Queda supporters suing the telecoms and government for doing something unconstitutional, they've been mashed together into one big lawsuit sandwich. That sandwich will be heard in San Francisco's very own Federal Court by one U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. The reasoning is because out of all the various suits out there, the AT&T one is the most advanced. Bully to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation and how awesome would it be if they started their own University just so people could say they go to EFF U?) and the ACLU for being on the ball. ...

The Gavster reemerged from hobnobbing with Scientologists to announce that he was going to try and have a court rule whether or not a 1997 measure calling for the building of a new Candlestick park and other development still holds. The measure was passed back then, but was put on hold after Eddie DeBartolo got in trouble with the Feds and after people realized that the measure was just as sucky as most people thought. If it can be sent to court and if the court says "yay", speculation is that the city will start building the sucker, despite the fact the measure is almost ten years old and, as everyone seems to be pointing out, goes against the normal process of city governance. ...

Well, if you were looking for material to parody lefty activists, look no further than the recent strife over at KPFA's offices in Berkeley. Want your lawsuits, your conspiracy theories, your anonymous mudslinging and accusations of being a goverment and/or corporate coup by agent provocateurs hell bent on destroying the station? How about if we told you there's alleged sexual harassment, thrown chairs and threats to go mano-a-mano? Oh yes, it's a sordid mess......

Note to Selves: next time we try and get one of our buddies elected to run a commission, don't attack an entire sex. Two weeks after the infamous meeting of the Building Inspector Commission in which Gavin's candidate Amy Lee was attacked for being female and pregnant, the Commission voted 4-3 to install Lee as the Head of the Department of Building Inspectors. The 3 ½ hour hearing was as fun as the previous one as it included members of the commission attacking each other, women's rights groups testifying in defense of Lee, and a whole parade of women testifying that the RBA really does love their women. The whole thing moved Monique Moyer, the head of the Port Department, to say that the hearing "has made a farce of our great city and of our departments." Made a farce? This city has passed farce years ago. We’re post-farce. Anyhoo, at the end of the hearing, defeated head of the Residential Building Association, Joe O'Donoghue, told the Commission "you're all just a bunch of political hacks, but not very bright ones at that." O'Donoghue also vowed to continue the fight by filing lawsuits against the Commission. ...

Things just keep getting worse and worse for Ms. Anna Ayala, the woman who purportedly bit into a fingertip in her Wendy's chili last month. So not only was her house raided, it also turns out she has a long history of filing lawsuits, including suits for food poisoning, claims that tires fell off her car, and a claim for sexual harassment against a former employer. This of course led to some skepticism when she brought out her 13 year old daughter wearing a sling and started ranting about police brutality (though we hope the daughter's arm feels better soon and all that). And today! Well, so not only has she decided to drop her claims against Wendy's entirely, her lawyer also quit. The lawyer, however, denies that his quitting has anything to do with this latest incident in Pahrump, NV, broken by the SJ Merc News. What incident, you ask? Well, in Pahrump, about an hour away from Vegas, where Ms. Ayala lives, a woman was attacked by a mountain lion. What part of the woman was attacked, you ask? Funny -- the lady's fingertip was bitten off, and later returned to her in a cup of ice. The picture of that fingertip looks suspiciously similar to the fingertip found in the chili. The fingertipless woman has not returned calls to the police. Picture of the Wendy's in question from KGO 7...

Although it’s been awhile since we’ve had non-cubicle related jobs, we often occasionally look back not so fondly at our manual labor type jobs. One of the things we remember was how the highlight of the day usually centered around lunch break. Not necessarily because we were hungry, but because it gave us a brief respite from the soul-crunching, mind-numbing dreariness of the job (as opposed to the soul-crunching, mind-numbing dreariness of our office job).......

Jamison, who's always got his finger on the pulse (yum!), just alerted us to some shaking up at the Human Rights Campaign. Cheryl Jacques: Out. As in, out-of-work. Details are sketchy (in fact, the HRC is silent on the matter at the moment) about what exactly went down, but we imagine that endorsing Mr. No-On-Gay-Marriage for president didn't make Cheryl many fans; nor did sending Ms. Cho a disinvitation. And then there's that thing......

Previously on Proposition It, we learned how Proposition 65 begat Proposition 1A, how Prop 60 begat Prop 60A and Prop. 62. We also learned that there’s a really cranky lawyer in Mountain View. In today’s installment, we take on frivolous lawsuits, unique tax schemes, and hi-tech gadgetry. Not to mention those crazy Indian Gambling bills. As Lionel Richie would say “Karamu, fiesta, forever/Come on and sing along." Proposition 63- Mental Health Services Expansion, Funding. Tax......

Here’s a total shocker- the man who “caught” Barry Bonds’ home run ball #700, Steve Williams, is now being sued over possession of said ball. Remember in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory how whenever one of the kids got the Golden Ticket, that creepy Slugworth guy with the scar would quickly grab them and whisper sweet nothings in their ear to tempt them into telling him all of Wonka’s secrets? Why do we have......

New overtime lawas and how they might affect YOU....