Should I Keep This Up?

National Blogging Month really makes a gal focus on the important things. Like, should I keep blogging? I haven't really felt inclined most days. Plus, I went back to the beginning of this blog, and it was way better then. It used to have silly themes and random stories, and attempted at originality. Barely any of that exists now. Most of my snarky one-off comments have moved over to Facebook and Twitter, or I just keep it to myself because I am too worried that someone I work with will find this blog and it will be a disaster for my career. As I "mature" (and I mean that in a bad way), I worry more and more that this blog might be a platform for some terrible self-destructive revelation that triggers my downfall. Not like I am a big celebrity or anything, but that happened to a guy I tangentially knew, so I am paranoid. Add in the fact that I barely ever read new books, watch new movies* or buy new music - much less stalk the Montgomery Advertiser or Nelson Marans - and there is practically nothing to say.

Here's what I thought I would do. I thought I would do a poll of my various options at this point and let you, the readers, be the judge of this blog's fate. But then I decided that I was too lazy to figure out how to add a poll, so instead, I will just list the options, and you can comment on them. Be aware, if I don't get comments from certain people, I will assume that this blog has lost its core readership, and I may not continue it.

1. Stop blogging; I follow you on Facebook.

2. Stop blogging; I follow you on Twitter.

3. Stop blogging at this website; I will follow you onto a software platform that is easier to post to.

4. Keep blogging here. **

5. If you get fired from this or any future job because of any content or revelations on this blog, I promise to employ you at your last rate of pay ad finitem to continue this blog.

6. Yo no leer en Engles.

* We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World last night, and I really liked it. Best line from a tertiary character, "Their first album is so much better than their first album."

** You will need to add some vaguely flattering remarks if you vote for this one, as I am feeling very down on the quality of the blog at this time.

Musings

A lot of people think that the internet is speeding up information - that by having the internet available we can get information overload. I'm starting to find it has the opposite use. I'm not unique to notice this. Many critics argue that, on the internet, you never get exposed to alternative perspectives, or get news that's outside your interest, because you stay exclusively on sites that share your world view. I'm noticing a different kind of filter. Rather than only visiting sites that have content that I already care about, I am using the internet to block real time information that I might find upsetting. Like I can't watch this miner rescue on CNN, even though the TV is about 30 inches away from me. I'd rather have it filtered and screened by the internet, just in case something terrible happens.

And speaking of terrible things happening, did you know that squirrels can get depressed?!?!? Thanks to my mother-in-law who vigilantly reads the Bay Area news so I don't have to, I can now worry about renegade animal shelters. And what is the word where you believe certain species have a greater entitlement to rescue then others? Species-ist? That's me. DON'T RESCUE SQUIRRELS AND RACCOONS. It's called natural selection, bee-otches. Get used to it.

And speaking of Bay Area news, I strongly encourage you to read the Bay Citizen. They have some sort of strategic synergy etc etc with the NY Times, which has greatly enhanced the NYT's California coverage, and they are miles better than the SF Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune, truly two of the most craptastic papers in any major metropolis. If in fact that's what this is.

Other things you should read:

Sassydotnet: River Heights - My friend Beth is reading all the Nancy Drew books sequentially.

Irons in the Ring of Fire - My friend Edie is in Bali

Skin and Scares - My friend Jason covered True Blood all season for Slate and I didn't pay any attention but if you're the kind of person who is going through withdrawal for that show, then have at it.

One of these days, I will do an endorsement post, Oaklanders, I promise.

Internet "Hiatus"

Unlike my sister, I can't maintain a blog and read an actual book at the same time. In fact, I can barely read books at all anymore, blog or no. The last book I remember reading was Netherland. I am sure there has been one since but if so, I can't remember what it is. So I am dialing down all non-work internet time to read Freedom by Jonathon Franzen. Good so far. More news as events warrant. This means I will only be able to update my Twitter feed like once every other night.

Trying to Explain a Couple of Things

My previous post inspired as much commenting as I typically get around here, and it seemed to be focussed on "why Twitter?" I thought I'd take a whack at explaining it. As Beth noted, blogging is like long-form Facebook - a regular status update for your far-flung friends and family. In other words, Nana, Facebook is short-form blogging, where you can follow the musings of your far-flung friends and family. I agree that if you don't really care what your sophomore year chem lab partner thinks about the weather/healthcare reform/her asthma, Facebook might not really be your bag. My answer to that is, unfriend her; I find the format to be easier to navigate than jumping around to people's blogs.

Twitter is like that, on speed. With a 140-character limit on posts, you really get bare minimum updates. Which is why Twitter isn't really for updates. At least not of the sort it was originally intended for. "Having coffee with no sugar this morning." "My hip implant is itchy!" and "ayn Rand R cool!" don't tell you much. Twitter is interesting as an exchange of ideas and the rapid fire news update. I learned about Michael Jackson's death, the Fort Hood shooting and the passage of healthcare reform faster on Twitter than from any other news outlet. In that regard, it's only useful if you follow the right number of people. Too many and you really can't follow what people are thinking. Too few and you don't get the "cloud" effect of everyone expressing themselves simultaneously. So what is the "right" number?

I have 325+ friends on Facebook, and only 35 followers on Twitter. I follow 99 people on Twitter. I estimate that only about 40 people regularly read my blog. That might be generous. In any case, I had to blog tonight and thought I would speak in defense of social networking for some reason. Mr. Scobie thinks that all these things are akin to being in the Matrix by the way (he encouraged me to "take the blue pill" today) but I think they just are what they are.

What I Blog About When I Blog About Blogging

Apparently, November is National Blog Posting Month. In order to counter my extreme inertia w/r/t the Internets, I thought I would informally participate. Not sure why. But it means I will try posting at least once a day through the month of November.

The title of this post doesn't mean anything, by the way. It's a riff on What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, which I just finished reading. That title is itself a riff on What We Talk about When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Chandler, which I haven't read, and probably won't, since they are short stories and I don't read short stories. But anyway, the Murakami book was pretty good. I don't really like him as a novelist but he's very approachable and likable as a memoirist, and I am trying to turn myself into a runner so I liked the sustenance it provided in that regard.

And so why am I doing that?, you are probably wondering. Or actually, you are probably thinking, Why are YOU doing that? And I don't think I have any particularly novel reasons. I wanted an efficient exercise option, and I got myself strong enough to do it, so in August, I just started. And I like it, and it feels good, and I want to keep doing it. And in order to take it from just an exercise to something that I keep doing, I feel the need to give myself the new identity of runner. Because if you call yourself that, you have to do it. If you call yourself a runner and don't run, then you are really just an a-hole, and lying.

It also feels good to get to age 35 and find that you have new things inside of you that you can be. I want to keep finding new things inside of me. It makes me feel young, which strangely I have been feeling a lot of lately. I thought that I went through "so much" as a kid, and thought I was "so mature", but now that I have rounded the bend of this decade and see 40 on the distant horizon, I feel like I've had a pretty great life and not experienced much at all. At least not many bad things. And in order to keep having new experiences, you have to keep yourself open to being a new person, or at least having new parts of yourself. All of this dawned on me this weekend because I finished Murakami's book, and its sort of about that, and also because a friend tricked me into running 4.5 miles on Saturday, and it wasn't that hard, and it felt great, and it almost felt like I had run through a wall (3 miles) that I didn't know I had put up for myself. Which means there are other walls that I can run through, if I just let myself.

Oh, And

Thanks to Jon Stewart for hooking me up with Men Who Look Old Lesbians. Don't know what happened to the Lindsey Graham pictures. . .

Oh, and, this blog is FOUR years (and 1 week) old. Wow, that's older than one of my kids. I've written 776 posts. Thanks for reading.

I Am Very Busy Being Unemployed, Thanks

My absence from this page is due not to any actual busy-ness on my part. However, my mom visited last week, and my computer is in the room where she stayed, and the kids are drawn to her like little fireflies at all times, so I couldn't really sit down and think much. It was great to have her, especially to celebrate my 35th birthday, which was largely uneventful. 

I did make the mistake of looking at this book, The Book of Ages, in a bookstore. This book has a list of all the important things that have happened when various famous people were a certain age. By age 35, many famous people had done many important things, and some of them were listed at "35" only because they had died at that age. Merriwether Clark committed suicide at age 35, for example. Van Gogh cut his ear off. These are things for which people are remembered, and so of course I had an existential mini-crisis about how I haven't done anything for which I can be remembered, and don't even seem on track to do, unless one of my kids turns out horribly terribly wrong and I have to sit behind him for a 6-month televised trial. 

Can't dwell on it though.

Other stuff: I have interviewed for one job FIVE times, with 10 different people. Hopefully I will hear about that this week, in which case I will be able to step up my car purchasing. That is to say, if I get the job offer, I will accept it, and then we will need a reliable car for my job-related use, and our family's comfort. Currently, we all wedge ourselves into a two-door 1997 Honda Civic that has no radio and no leg room. Its awful. So what car to get preoccupies me. As I have said before, I want the VW Jetta Sportwagon TDI (it's a clean diesel engine). Mr. Scobie alternately prefers a Prius (for the internal space) or something with 4 Wheel Drive and a third row, because of all of the trips to Tahoe we will no doubt soon be taking with all of our kids' friends piled in the back.  A friend has suggested the Honda Civic GX, which would require installing a Natural Gas pump in our garage. Since I have this kind of time on my hands, I have not only considered it, but I have read up on starting a Natural Gas filling station franchise.  JOB NEEDED.

Because its unlikely I will write another post immediately after this one, I will go on. The other new thing I am into is Kiva, which is an on-line community/non-profit organization that does micro-lending. I had heard about it awhile ago, and then read an endorsement from that incredibly hot African economist who Deborah Solomon interviewed in the NYT Mag yesterday. Wow, is she awesome or what? Probably not even 35.  Anyhoo, so then I went and checked out Kiva, and made one $25 loan. Loans go fast; apparently its competitive to make a loan because so many more people are interested in lending than groups can get loan recipients connected. Anyway it seems cool. Check it out. 

Finally, did anyone else read this "cautionary tale" in the NYT yesterday about how Japanese frugalness during their recession contributed to the economic malaise they suffered in the 1990s and still depresses growth? (or something. I am not totally comfortable with all these terms myself). What struck me was how all the of the things which are "bad habits" of the depression are actually sound environmental measures. Using gray water, driving less, drinking less, eating all the available food rather than throwing it out? Let me just say that is fucked up that those things would be discouraged in order for there to be an economic recovery.  Our reckless and wasteful lifestyle may be an "economic engine" but it surely means that we can only get through another couple of economic cycles before we are at a environmental end-times scenario. It seems like these things should not be irreconcilable. There must be ways to make money from re-couping gray water, for example. 

That's what's going on with me these days? How are you? Oh, and check out my cousin Zoe and the review of her dance company in the Boston Globe.

Allison

Most of my readers are friends and family who know one another, so a couple of people have asked about the new commenter Allison. By way of introduction, Allison and I went to high school together, at which time she went by Claire. I don't know why, other than there were literally 5 Allisons in our class of just 55 girls. There were also 3 Karas. I think Allison would agree with me when I say I have almost no memory of having any class with Allison/Claire or engaging in any social activity with Allison/Claire.  I should say, Allison/Claire has no knowledge of my memory; she probably would attest to the underlying truth of that statement. So yeah, its a little wierd that Allison's a regular commenter on my blog. Also, we diverge on certain topics which are dear to me, so that makes her an even less likely regular. That said, I really appreciate that Allison comments on my blog at all, along with Anonymous the Neighbor, Anonymous the Cousin, my sister, and my mother in law.  Bloggers LOVE comments. It fuels the enterprise (at least, on blogs that don't take advertising). So if you have even the slightest reaction to something I write, please share it. And then jump over to gringosenica so that Carl and Angie know that the gringos en America are following along with their adventures. Thanks!

(chirp, chirp)

I guess it isn't cricket season (that being the insect season, rather than the sport) but it has been quiet around here. With the kids around all day, and me at home and basically trying to vacate (staycate?), I haven't had much room to blog. In fact the only vaguely bloggable moments have been Q's awesome turns of phrase, usually shared at 5:30 am. The other day, he said, "My eyes are real but Wee-um's eyes are fake." He confirmed this repeatedly when asked but offered no explanation. In response to B shaving his beard, he said, "Daddy, your voice sound different with no beard." It's like having our own wee Yogi Berra. 

But preschool is back in session, and my unemployment begins tomorrow, so stay tuned for much more blogging unless I am quickly employed by a far less tolerant entity. Happy New Year, 

The New What

I started a blog for Liam so he'd have a website that keeps all his favorite things in one place. It's called Fungus Everything. He named it himself. Don't worry, I won't write it in his voice, unless he dictates it to me, in which case I will note that. I think its annoying when people write blogs in their children's and pets' voices. More annoying than wierd, given how common it is.

This blog is really for him, so at some point, I might make it a members' only website. But on a trial basis, feel free to check it out.

One piece of technical advice that I need: Blogger does not let you publish .pdf files. Typepad does, but I am cheap like that and don't want to pay to have an account. So how can I post Liam's drawings without converting them to a .pdf? Can I scan his drawings as .jpgs? If so, how do I do that? Thanks for any assistance you can give me on this one.

Welcome to My Headspace

I have been feeling wicked low about this blog lately. Maybe it was boring myself to death about the DC teachers' contract that was the nail in the coffin, but even before that, I had some form of blogging flu. My blogging is sluggish, nauseous, I throw some stuff up there on the screen and then go back to bed. It's not good. Certainly no way to maintain my teeny readership. But the honest truth is, if I blogged about my life as it was really happening, you'd tell me I wasn't better yet, go home til this thing has run its course.

My experience is, you have to blog through these moments. Just type til something funny or interesting stuff strikes. Its hard to know what to write when the Blagojevich Criminal Complaint is on the floor next to my desk, beckoning me with its ribald humor and mockery of the democratic system. If David Simon had invented Blago, we would have shook our heads, saying, "This guy isn't real." Instead Simon had to invent the more toned-down Clay Davis to fill the role of the pay-to-play, horse-trading criminally greedy politician. Sheeee-it.

Anyway, my life is overwhelmingly pre-occupied with issues too boring to discuss. E.g., the washing machine is broken, so I have to spend my non-working hours beating our clothes against a rock in the backyard under the hose. The kids seem to think Santa is coming this year, so I am trawling E-Bay for a tiny guitar for Q, who also wants a "cooter". That means scooter. Only 21 days left at my job. Soup party menu to plan, soup dislike still left to grapple with. Adding 4 goldfish to the family has turned out to be a lot more responsibility than I bargained for. Schools for kids. Should we get another car? Gar gar gah gar gar gar. That's a pirate song. This is my boring, satisfying breeder middle class happy life, and there's nothing to write about.

Poor me.

Something about Nothing

One of our secretaries is doing GOTV work in New Mexico, and she's blogging about it at Jilala for Obama. She got the shake Obama's hand on Saturday night. How does he manage to be so sincere after nearly 2 years on the campaign trail? It's amazing.

That said, I am super-ready for this election season to be over. I am very anxious and almost sick of my own candidate. The closest feeling I can conjure is the way I felt in the days leading up to my wedding. For those of you who were there, you may recall that I was basically a basketcase, I was so nervous. I have never really figured out why. Anyway, in the days before, I was so excited and anxious that it made me mad at Mr. Scobie. How dare he make me this happy!? Obama being elected would not exactly be as awesome as marrying BD, but in the context of our current political/economic environment, its pretty awesome. And I feel like crap being so excited.

I joined Twitter today because Laura Ingalls twitters. After trying it out a couple of times, I think I have social networking system overload. I am now on blogger, facebook, linkedin and twitter. I don't bother with friendster. And sadly, I never even get to hang out with most of my friends. It bums me out. A dude with 700 facebook friends held and party, and only one friend came. Too depressing.

Various and Sundry

Having little in the way of wit or surplus charm today, herewith is today's blog post:

1. The formal structure of the previous phrasing arises from the fact that I spent this evening writing a, what was it called, First and Final Account and Report and Petition for Final Distribution and For Statutory Compensation. I would say, "Just shoot me" but then some other luckless chap will have to write one for me. It's a probate case.

2. For a good preview of what its like to debate Sarah Palin. I love the phrase "glittering generalities." I think I need to learn to speak in those too.

3. I changed the look of my blog because I was bored with the way it was before. I don't know how to write html so I have to use the blogger templates. A buddy recently recommended typepad (another software "platform" I think is what its called), but I fear change, so I will impotently toggle templates til my brain re-engages with the actual content of this blog, and then the color scheme won't matter again.

I Said I Would Blog About It, So. . .

I promised last week that I would blog about my job. In fact, what I will blog about is that I am leaving my job. Tuesday was my 8-year anniversary at my job, and I am ready to do something different. Not sure what, and I am open to ideas. Very open. I am thinking about political stuff, since I loved the campaign, or non-profit work, since it feels simpatico (good work, slightly dysfunctional). I have stayed at my job longer than I wanted to out of loyalty to my co-workers, whom I love and respect tremendously, and my clients, whom I respect and feel that I serve very well. But loyalty doesn't get you all the way to retirement anymore.

One thing that has been mentioned a couple of times is that I should just blog full-time. I don't think I am suited for it, and frankly, I only have about 40 regular readers. But purely out of curiosity, would you, my readers, accept efforts on my behalf to do this blog thing more economically?

Truly Random Thoughts

Today's Most Unsettling Headline: Mukasey Pledges Vigilance on Elections. The dude is a scary Skeletor (okay, so its not exactly Separated At Birth) and the word "vigilance", in the wake of Mugabe's recent "get out the vote efforts", is not what you want to hear from one of Bush's henchmen.

In other news, I have nothing else to report in the way of random thoughts. What's on my mind lately is not random at all. In In increasing order of time spent thinking about each topic, I am preoccupied with:
1. what I should blog about;
2. my car;
3. the Presidential election;
4. my budget;
5. why we have no beer in the house other than Miller High Life and should I have a scotch instead?;
6. my job.

I have these things to say about these topics, respectively:
1. It's evident from this post that I have nothing to blog about.
2. My car is fine now.
3. I really don't have a big problem with Barack Obama's faith-based initiative stuff, and I will explain later why this is, and its not just because I am big sucka for everything BO does and says.
4. It continues to require my participation on the "income" side. As long as that happens, there is nothing to worry about.
5. It's left over from the NASCAR trip, and we ran out of drinkable beer, so yes, probably.
6. It breaks a rule of mine to blog about this topic.

Let me elaborate:
1. Yes, I do.

2. There's a pump that pumps coolant to the hybrid battery and it broke, but they replaced it so now the car won't think its overheating unless it actually is.

3. Obama's faith-based initiatives are not rooted, unlike Bush's, in a desire to end government and spread Christianity. I think he has very explicitly described why his plans do not infringe on separation of church and state, and I think he will be good about enforcing that (dare I say, he'll be vigilant?). The Saul Alinsky model of community organizing encourages the organizer to make coalitions with all willing allies, even if it's just issue-based. In Chicago, churches, mosques and synagogues play a prominent role in alliances for political change, social justice and social services. Obama's ideas grow out of that tradition, not out of the missionary tradition of the evangelical church that Bush paid lip service to. An important component of Obama's program is not that its faith-based, but that it wants to support community organizations. This leads to. . .

My second reason for being interested in his approach - and I will be referring to The Wire in a moment - is that the existing frameworks for delivering services and making social change either don't work anymore or never worked. In The Wire, Bunny Colvin helps implement this school-within-a-school at Tilghman Middle School, where they take the worst kids out of the classes and give them intensive instruction. It helps the wild kids and it helps the other kids to have the disruptive children out of the classroom. But when Bunny and the professor plan to go to the mayor to pitch it on a broader scale, they get shot down by the school district woman and left out in the cold by the mayor's staff, who file their report in the circular file cabinet. If small projects work, why not fund them and let them work? We don't need to make them national. They don't need to be made into their own bureaucracy. Just fund them and see how far they can get on their own steam. Contrast Bunny's project with the No Child Left Behind/teach to the test model implemented in the rest of Tilghman and you will see where the real progress happened. To be corny about it, maybe we don't need a social security blanket, we need a social security patchwork quilt.

6. Knight of Nothing recently asked, "Why do bloggers abandon a post?" It's a good question. (He also inspired me to write the above on Obama). In response, I articulated some rules I have about this blog:

The main reason I abandon a piece is that I have written something that violates a rule of mine, and I can't figure out how to say what I want to say without violating the rule. The rules are things like, speaking ill of someone who can be identified to others, talking about work, talking about my husband or kids in too much detail (so that they could be identified to a casual reader). I also abandon when I have forgotten my point or am failing to make one.

As you can see from the present post, I don't always abandon a post when I tread on a rule. Arguably, this post has violated nearly every rule I have, especially that last one.

The Occasional Grab Bag

Its been hard to blog lately, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I am obsessed with politics, both national and my own local race, and since I can't gauge the enthusiasm of my readership for this topic (I think that pork roll got more love), I don't want to bore you to death. For next, I have been spending a lot of time in the car, and in anticipation of the coming illegalization of driving with a cell phone, or whatever, I am trying not to type and drive at the same time. Trying is the operative word but by July 1, I hope to be weaned from this nasty habit. Other reasons: the kids are less adorable now that they talk back; work is boring (there, I said it): no one has tried to unload clarinet instructions in months and the Afghan for Afghans plan is so far advanced, I can't make fun of it for fear of offending every last person I work with. The Wire has been off the air for months. Nelson Marans has been having some trouble getting published.

So what does that leave me?

1. Well, there's a new baby giraffe at the Oakland Zoo which, at least in the photos, is freaking adorable.

2. My older child now says things like, "If the astronauts want to travel to a new place, Mars is their best bet", " If we kill all the fish, it will hurt the planet", and "What's Buffalo Soldier?" This is a lot of stuff to answer to, and that was all basically in the 20 minutes before dinner tonight. Junior Jr. also has a lot of say, but it's in Spanglish, so we are still in the new exchange-student phase of communication: lots of smiling, nodding, waving of hands, and proclamations of joy when we understand one another. Then we repeat the understood phrase back to one another for a few minutes and all share a good laugh over it.

3. Michelle Obama lists Sudoku as an interest on her Facebook profile.

4. Our slate mailer went out on Friday and it looks great. I have gotten over 96,000 Google adword impressions and its only cost like $16. (In other words, if you live in my area and do a search for certain keywords, an ad promoting my candidacy will pop up).

4. We had 25 people distributing flyers on doorsteps on Saturday and "dropped" over 2000 flyers. Remember, only about 50% of people who will vote in June will even vote in this race. I really just need people to see my overlong name a couple times and then they will vote for me out of pure "that is a long-ass name" psychology. (That's an actual term of political science art, just ask Gov. Schwartzenegger)

5. I went to Redwood City today and gas was $4.49 a gallon. Holy crap.

Countdown (up?) to 500

This is my 497th blog post. I have a couple of things to write about, and I was tempted to do one post per thought to hit 5 hondo today, but I think it should come more naturally than that.

Hunter has a good essay at DailyKos about the stoopid media coverage of the Campaign for First Buddy. You may recall that I ranted many months ago about how annoying I found Clinton's push to become the Girlfriend in Chief. Obviously, she went with Grizzled Political Combat Veteran instead, but it ain't working out so well. I wonder what could have been, if she'd just gone shoe shopping with every woman in America instead . . .

Does anyone know if there is any danger to being addicted to milk? Because both of my kids are each drinking a ton of milk these days. At all hours, they wake to yell "milk!" or "baa-baa!", depending on their linguistic skill level. I fear that calcium tablets will form in their stomachs, obstructing the way for food.

I am so busy that I can't really even get anything done. That may bode well for the blog. We'll see.

(Shaking My Head)

Today's Stuff White People Like concerns San Francisco. So accurate that I can't really even laugh.

Where have I been, you wonder? Most recently, like all weekend, we've been easter egg hunting. L had so much sugar this morning that at one point he clutched his heart and said it hurt. It was pounding terrible hard. Now that The Big Case has wound down, B is El Futzo, and so new plants have been planted, lists have been made, skis have been loaded into the car, and the guys are off for the mountains. And by guys, I mean B and L. Qu and I are going to stay close to home, maybe go out to dinner tonight alone.

Aside from work, I am actually ramping up on this wierd campaign I'm on. Once we (my slate) get our website up, I will blog more about it, but for now, its all too ephemeral to even talk about.

Some Changes

No one commented on the name changes. I tried to shake it up, but alas, no one cared. It's just St. Scobie's to you.

I added FreeRice in the Links. Addictive for nerdy do-gooders, I promise.

And some changes to contemplate: I made it onto the June 3 ballot to run for Democratic Party Central Committee. Will my political career spell the end of my freewheeling blogging? Will you have to attend committee meetings at the Fremont Library the first Wednesday night of every month to hear my bon mots and droll criticisms? I just don't know. I think it probably depends on if I win. If you live in or near my county, expect to receive an email soon asking for support of the Vote For Me type.

Wrap-Up

My internets are working again. In brief:

1. The campaign for Central Committee is off to a slow but successful start. I need a couple more signatures to get on the ballot. The problem has been that half of all the people I know are either Decline to State or Green Party, neither of which can sign my petition. So if you are a Democrat in Albany, Berkeley, North Oakland, Richmond or anywhere else in California's 14th Assembly District, give me a shout!

2. I forgot to mention that St. Scobie's has gotten me entangled in a bit of legal, well, litigation. It involves Dentist-gate. If you are wondering if HIPAA offers any privacy protection, guess again. My blog post was discovered by The Dentists, and, in discovery, my identity was discerned. Thusly, I was contacted. Sheesh. Mr. Scobie all but said I told you so. But he never explicitly warned me that blogging would ensnarl me in the litigation of others, so he couldn't credibly say that. I would love to know how many billable hours were spent in the discovery of my identity, when all I could do was confirm the truth of the blog post.

3. Ugh. Hillary was just called by CNN as the winner in TX. I was really hoping this election cycle would wind up tonight. I am going to go donate some more $ to Obama right now.