I moved out to San Francisco in September 1999 and Man In San Fran started out as a way for me to keep all various friends around the world updated on my nefarious activities. I'm both a huge email fiend and a strong believer in the power of communication. It went out roughly fortnightly to around 20-25 of my close friends and family, although that number has increased over time. Essentially I'ma lazy old bugger and couldn't be arsed to write to everyone individually.

Over the weeks and months, misf began to mutate. It became less of a "what I've been doing" and more of a running commentary on American life in general. That meant lots of piss-taking of US television, descriptions of the wonderful landscape this country has to offer, transcripts of my conversations with Frisco's various nutballs, and numerous extended essays examining the cultural significance of the greatest game in the world - American Football - surely the most conclusive piece of evidence for the existence of God. These gridiron dissertations pissed off a lot of my female readers although doctors found use for them as cures for insomnia.

I never intended these commentaries to be seen outside of my immediate circle of friends - and certainly not by my American friends! As I allegedly make a career as a "journalist", I've always been very careful and highly fastidious about what I write and how it is presented to the world. But not really with my misf emails. These reports aren't finely-honed pieces of journalism - they're more like freeform streams of consciousness, rambling in places, lean and taut in others.

So all I ask of you is that if and when you do read them, please do so in the spirit in which they were written. They're just a few postcards from the edge, undulating missives from the Pacific gateway, alien transmissions from a stranger in a strange land. I hope you enjoy.

Peace,

Kieran

PS. Of course, major props to Nigel Blunt for hosting these archives and to TBB Online for the HTML wizardry. Check out Nigel's fantabalocious homepage at: www.baretunes.com

PPS. New misf reports will hopefully be going up every fortnight or so. E-mail me direct (spangled@freeuk.com) if you want to go on the mailing list.

PPPS. Dan Marino is God.
 

He was born with a gift of laughter
and a sense that the world was mad.

Rafael Sabatini