I've Found Something New to Be Annoyed About

In case you thought I'd gotten mellow and maybe more accepting of the world around me, I wanted to let you know that I have a new pet peeve. It is the use of quotation: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results."

I'll admit that the first time you hear this quote, you might think "HA! Isn't that clever? And so true...." but in reality, it is rarely true or even descriptive of the event under consideration. This particular iteration of this nonsense is attributable to Meg Whitman, criticizing Jerry Brown's decision to run for Governor. Say what you will about Jerry Brown and crazy, but this isn't actually him repeating himself, expecting the same results.

Another context in which I heard this quote was a meeting at work where someone was bemoaning the failure of program to reduce workplace injuries. The program was never actually fully implemented. I practically bit the woman's head off, and had to restrain myself from giving a lecture about the failure of LBJ's Great Society or War on Poverty or whatever and even now I don't know what that means. In other words, if you don't do something, you can't turn around and say that you did the same thing over and over again.

On reflection, this is just one quote that people use to sound smart and pithy and right without actually having to be thoughtful and articulate and creative. Which describes the use of quotes generally. So I am going to amend my pet peeve to include the use of all quotations in verbal communication.

Berzerkley Parents, East and West

Sorry that I've been gone so long. I haven't had much to blog about, plus my tiny random thoughts tend to get put on Facebook. If you are desperate to know the minutia of my life, I suggest you join me there. Otherwise, enjoy the respite from my nonsense while you have it.

Then yesterday I got a one-two punch of stupid parenting stuff. First, from the West Coast, a listserv post from the mother of a one year old:

Is there a spot on Kindergarten applications that asks what preschool your child went to? If so, does the preschool affect the chances of getting into said kindergarten? Is Preschool a pre-req for some kindergartens? As in, you absolutely can not get in unless your child has attended some type of preschool?

I'm starting to feel like my need to find the perfect preschool is similar to my hunt for the perfect hospital to deliver my baby at, then realized that I could just do it at home. (but if I follow that analogy, homebirth didn't work out that well, so maybe homeschooling wouldn't, either, but if I'm really considering ALL my options...)

ARGH. And this isn't even unusual, right? But in case you East Coasters are feeling smug and thinking, "ahhh, ha ha! All our preschools are feeder schools for Harvard!", I came across this article in the Food section of the, yes, New York Times, Soft Serve and Jingle Jangle Moms.

A few observations about this article: First of all, the NYT really knows it audience. Second, a really sad percentage of people do not know how to parent, meaning that when your kid wants ice cream, you either just buy it or you say no, and deal with the aftermath, including the tantrum. That's how kids learn self-control (or how to get shit their parents don't want to give them). Third, Mr. Softee employees know more about parenting than your average New Yorker. Finally, a few parts that speak for themselves:

• New York City principals received letters from the advocacy group Asthma Free School Zone, urging them to keep trucks from their buildings. “Sometimes you’ll see a child in a stroller parked right next to the exhaust pipe of the truck,” said Lori Bukiewicz.
• As a new mother, she said, people coach you on potty training and what to feed your child. “But the ice cream truck, nobody ever mentions that,” she said.
• Jim Conway, a vice president for Mister Softee, said the company encouraged vendors to be sensitive to customers’ complaints. But parents, he said, are different from when he was young. Those who dislike the ice cream man, he said, tend to be “New Age parents whose kids can’t seem to do anything without them.”
• But the complaints are not just coming from effete organic-food zealots with too much time on their hands. The 18th Ward in Chicago, which banned ice cream vendors, is made up of working-class African-American families. Ms. Reiley is a stay-at-home mother. Ms. Heidel-Habluetzel is a real-estate agent who is an active volunteer at her children’s school. And Ms. Sell owns and runs a restaurant in Brooklyn with her husband, a chef.

That last part is so offensive to me. "It's not just effete organic-food zealots, it's Black people, too!" because of course those two categories do not overlap, ever! And the idea that a real estate agent or a restaurant owner is "working class" is galling. Is it because they're African-American or because they live in the 18th Ward? Does anyone with any sense at the NYT read these things before they are published?

UPDATE: h/t to my old law school classmate who found this article, "Irate" Ice Cream Mom Knows a Few Things About Sugar Pushing Herself. Zing! And the race was on!

Bay Area BS

It's been awhile since I ragged on my region, but the bad weather in the rest of country made me feel like I should remind my friends why they don't live here. People are crazy, is why. The balmy weather makes these people barely tolerable. Four examples:

1. I was at Target today, which has mechanism that runs between the escalators to bring your shopping cart to the second floor. Handy. Two GENIUSES had put their carts on the cart-scalator with their babies still in the child seat. And I mean babies. Like twin eight-month olds. The store staff were yelling at these two women, and another woman and I were so surprised, we were literally standing there with our mouths open. The signage is clear, in English, Spanish and illiterate (a picture of someone doing this with a red circle and bar across it). 

I realize that this is just universal stupid, not Bay Area-special brand of dumb.

2. My next example will be in the form of a short poem:

If its yellow

let it mellow

doesn't apply

at the Y

3. My sister reports seeing, during a recent trip to SF, graffiti from the window of the train that read, "Ira Glass." Now either Ira has a really ill-conceived viral marketing plan or liberals now tag West Oakland. I can't say. Neither is a good idea.

4. People in Berkeley have a tendency to turn everything into a Free Speech zone. Or rather, the whole town is a Free Speech zone and you have no right to be free from other people's speech, even where it might endanger your life. For example, there is a particular overpass on Highway 80 in Berkeley which is particularly attractive to people with "something to say". Here's a picture of it. It's dangerous to protest or whatever up there, because drivers slow or stop and look up to read your dumb-ass sign, rather than minding their business on the road. If you scroll down on that page I linked to, you will see a hideous statue which was recently added at one end of the overpass. It's huge, and, let me say again, hideous. And very distracting even when there aren't people with Free Mumia signs up there. But what's interesting to me is that the figures in the statue are holding empty signs that are not just blank, they're empty. EXACTLY.

So, snowed-in Midwesterners, freezing New Yorkers and DCites-who-are annoyed-to-be-called out-by-Obama-for-a-snow-day-when-he-has-the-Oval-Office-temp-at-like-72, revel in the common sense of your neighbors, and enjoy the seasons while you still have them.

Stuck in My Craw

So here comes what may the boringest blog post ever. Bear with me or not, I need to get this off my chest. I promise, you will be disappointed.

Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of the D.C. public school system has gotten a lot of press lately over her proposal to create a two-tier compensation system in the District. See, for example, Time Magazine. She proposes to pay teachers up to $130,000 a year (salary and merit bonuses) if they will agree to drop tenure. In her system, tenured teachers would make their standard salary (around $65,000) in order to keep their job security, while other teachers would gamble on the higher pay by opting out of the current system. The Washington Teachers' Union has not brought this proposal to a vote, allegedly because they believe a generation gap among current teachers would create an unbreachable division.

Supposedly, Rhee's proposal is being watched with bated breath by most in the education world. She acknowledges that she wants to break the union, and nationwide, school districts are waiting to see if she can pull it off. Supposedly, her efforts are necessary because teachers just cannot be fired, because their unions always fight, and win, to keep them in their positions.

My gut reaction to this, after eight and a half years of being a union-side labor lawyer, is that this is utter and complete bullshit. I willingly acknowledge that unions occasionally (and in some cases, often) champion unpopular employees to vindicate political positions or procedural details. But that doesn't make bad employees un-fire-able. Let's look for a moment at the Washington Teachers' contract as it pertains to discipline.

3. Suspensions or discharge

In the case of suspensions, or discharge, the official taking the action shall provide the employee with advance written notice of the charge[s], which shall include a specific statement of the evidence supporting such charge[s], no later than ten (10) school days prior to the effective date of the discipline. At the option of DCPS, an employee shall either remain on the job or in pay status for the entire ten (10) day period. Within five (5) days of the receipt of the notice, the employee has the right to review all documents related to the charges and to provide a written reply along with supporting documents against the charges. The decision shall go into effect as stated unless upon consideration of all relevant facts by the official taking the action, the action is to be modified, at which time the employee and the union shall be so notified in writing of the modification. The disciplinary action or discharge shall not take effect until the requirements of this article are satisfied. All suspensions shall be administered in a manner which causes the teacher to lose no more pay than the actual days of suspension.

C. The initiation of the disciplinary action
shall be taken no later than thirty (30) school days after the supervisor’s knowledge of the alleged infraction. In cases requiring an investigation, any investigation conducted by or on behalf of DCPS into the alleged infraction shall be completed, with any investigation report provided to the employee involved and to the WTU within thirty (30) days after the supervisor’s knowledge of the alleged infraction. This time limit may be extended by mutual consent, but if not so extended, must be strictly adhered to.

There are a number of procedural hurdles described in these two sections, but I want to say two things about them: (1) they are pretty standard, although more favorable to employees than many collective bargaining agreements; (2) much of what is included is based on U.S. Constitutional law. 14th Amendment due process requires notice of intent to discipline and a hearing of the reasons for the decision (public employees have a property interest in continued employment).

The timelines are strict, but intended to prevent the employer from pissing around; if you want to take action, take action. Shit or get off the pot. It means the employer bears the burden of doing their job. And that's the rub. Much of what is described as a problem with the teachers is actually a problem with the supervisors, the district and even the precious new chancellor. If Michelle Rhee wants to know how to get rid of bad teachers, she would be well-advised to read her contract with the union. It's all spelled out there in black and white. Step one, step two, step three. The reason that the steps are particular is that the things teachers are accused of doing are highly subjective. For every complete idiot of a teacher that I have had, I can guarantee that there are 25 students who thought that teacher was brilliant. Should Ms. Mancini have gotten fired because I thought she was an utter imbecile? Maybe. But probably I was a 14-15-16 year old asshole (I had her three years in a row), and, gosh golly, here I am an educated person, and she's either retired or still teaching somewhere.

If you look at that contract, the careful steps do not apply in cases of corporal punishment, sexual harassment or abuse of a student. Mediation and respect are called for in cases involving complaints. These are appropriate. If that District doesn't want to exercise its own rights - by telling teachers that they must be in their classroom before class starts rather than at the bell, and disciplining people who fail to follow the rules - why should individual employees suffer?

This is one of the topics that kept me up late. In my disturbed half-sleep, I thought of many prescriptions for Ms. Rhee and the WTU. But now that I have read the contract, I see its all laid out for her. That Time article strongly suggests that she's only recently bothered to read her contract. If she understood it, she'd learn that employees must file their grievances within 10 days of the discipline (harder than it sounds for many people), that arbitrators are not bound by the formal rules of evidence in hearing each case, and that individual employees have no personal right to arbitration. She'd also understand that basic principles of fairness and respect underpin that relationship. It's all in there, if she only knew where to look.

Another Gift, and On the Same Day!

Yesterday, a neighbor brought to my attention this LA Times article. The Berkeley Bowl is imposing lifetime bans on people who "sample" the food without buying it. Good for them. Even the offenders admit its stealing.

Store manager Larry Evans says the policy is a fair response to doctors, lawyers and college professors who help themselves to bags of cookies, nuts and vitamins, stick their fingers in pies and guzzle from bottles of sake, assuming the rules don't apply to them.

"There's a sense of entitlement to this town," Evans said. "People think, 'If I want to do it, I'll do it, just try and stop me.' "

This does not mean that I will go to the Berkeley Bowl again (its been over 5 years since I last shopped there) but I will hate them one iota less for attempting to impose some order on the mayhem of Berkeley.

Some Days, You Get a Little Gift

The Tree Sitters are being fined for the costs associated with their nasty little public disturbance. You remember the Tree Sitters: I blogged about them here and here. You'll need to chuckle for a moment, because my next Berkeley story may make you sick to your stomach.

A woman I work with (who lives in Bkly) has a unit on her property that she rents to another woman. Let's call the first woman "A" and the second woman "B". In preparing to have the unit renovated, A learned that B was a horder, and it took some doing to get the place cleared out enough to have the work done. Fast forward. After completing recent electrical work, the electrician reports to A that she has some water damage below her bathroom. A calls the plumber. The plumber investigates, and notifies A that the toilet has not been used for years. Literally years. The toilet is bone dry, most of the works are missing from the tank, and the rubber pieces have cracked and crumbled from years of aridity.

What's that about? Where's the, you know, everything?

As for my annual Burning Man screed: I am worried about my blood pressure, and if I write about such infuriating topics I might burst a blood vessel. But you can find earlier posts here. I will tell you this: I was talking to a woman who works for a high profile, well-regarded non-profit which works to safeguard the Constitution (hint: it rhymes with A-C-L-goo) and she told me that they went to Burning Man to protect free speech. That galls me more than their defense of Nazis and guns. Of course, no one there wanted to trample free speech because people who hate free speech don't want to poop in the desert with idiots all week, so they were sort of bored. She did feel that they did protect the 4th Amendment, since drug busts are the primary occupation of law enforcement at the Festival. Which makes sense, since drugs, and not "free speech", are the point of that stupid affair.

Nana Shows How Its Done

If you read the comment to the prior post, you are probably worried that I might be in a whole heap of trouble with my mother-in-law. And I may be. But Nana's post points out exactly what's wrong with the Boomers in "Just Don't Call Me Granny". Most important difference: Nana is unashamed of being a grandmother, and she's a good one. She happens to go to hear bands on Saturday nights not because she is trying to capture her youth but because, well, she likes music, dancing and doesn't need to be in bed by 10 p.m. the way I do. Nana is NOT the problem.

Its not engaging in youthful activities that is annoying about Boomers, its when they pretend they have a monopoly on youth that is annoying. Another operative piece of Nana's comment is the fact that she works. Nana also owns property, makes prudent financial plans, and looks out for her offspring in very clearheaded ways. I.e., she's an adult. She doesn't smoke pot with her kids or divulge the details of her sex life. Thank God. But since my teen years, I have known parents who do those things, failing to understand the boundaries between their own youthful experiences and their children's lives. I can 100% guarantee you that our parents did not have friends who got high with their parents. Boundaries, people.

And now that we are older, they are also refusing to cede territory in the workplace and in politics. This was a bigger problem I had with Hillary and Bill than many other things. They could not grasp that they were not the Hot New Thing, and their sense of entitlement was totally galling. Anyway, that's just one example. As I said yesterday, I can't really pull all the strings together. But don't worry Nana, or Mom, you are NOT the problem. Actually, you might be the solution.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Venture Near

Sometimes B will call on his way home from work and say, "How are the kids?" and I will say either, "They are great," or "The monkeys are flinging their poo." That makes the kids laugh hysterically and Q will say "poo" over and over again.

But I'm kidding when I say that. My children know better than to use their feces as a projectile. And - we've worked on this - biting isn't allowed either. But its uh-mazing the number of Trustafarian parents who don't teach their children these lessons. So then you have these problems:

BERKELEY — After tree sitters hurled buckets of human excrement at arborists who cut traverse lines and removed wooden platforms Tuesday, the raucous day came to a head when a tree sitter bit an arborist so hard he was sent to the hospital with an arm wound.

The biter goes by the name Millipede. This is unusual. According to experts at Texas A&M:

Millipedes do not bite; but when disturbed they can produce an irritating fluid (using repugnatorial glands opening at the base of the legs). This fluid can irritate eyes, blister the skin, produce an unpleasant odor and cause allergic reactions in venom sensitive people. Some species can squirt their fluids several inches.

That sounds about right. Enjoy lock-up, Millipede.

Some Final Notes on the Campaign, National Edition

Sami asks an intriguing question in a comment below. He asks whether any of these women exist, these women who purportedly will not vote for Obama because he beat Hillary and because of the sexism of the campaign, but will rather vote for McCain. Frank Rich argued in his column yesterday that these women do not exist. Or rather, that the Democrats need not fear that, by November, these women will not have come around. And I think he's right. The women who are fiercely loyal to Clinton are also fiercely loyal to reproductive rights, and feel strongly against the war and for the environment. So at the end of the day, they will vote for Obama or stay home. The stay-at-homes may, in the end, be a small enough part of the liberal base not to affect the election.

However, they are a very vocal minority. Today's example is the "outrage" over Obama hiring Patti Solis Doyle. The WaPo reports Clinton insiders feel "shock" and "a slap in the face" over this move, supposedly intended to signal that he will definitely not be considering Clinton for the veep slot. Last week, the NYT reported that Clinton donors are waiting-and-seeing, for I don't know what. (one commentator pointed out that as soon as the big donors realize that their precious dreamed-of ambassadorships are slipping way if they don't step up, they will get on board).

What do these things mean? It means that there is a group of Hillary supporters who cannot shake their sense of entitlement about Clinton's candidacy, and feel the need to vent it publicly in a way that can only be described, in a sexist way, as a hissy fit. (While the phrase hissy fits is "gendered", I don't think that the act of throwing these public tantrums are the sole terrain of the white women who support Hillary. But I will save my Baby Boomer rant for a separate post).

Let me back up a little here and tell you that last Friday, Mr. Scob and I saw Susan Estrich speak. Estrich is the author of a book The Case for Hillary Clinton (which is discounted at Amazon down to $7.99). Since Estrich herself was pretty indignant that the media had highlighted such petty details as Hillary's voice and style of dress, I won't describe hers, except to say that a) Jackie Mason called, and he wants his schtick back and b) she never met a Marlboro Light she didn't smoke, I think. Anyway. The woman is one of the most accomplished public intellectuals in the country and hinted ever so slightly that she actually has a more nuanced view of gender in America than she let on, BUT I completely disagreed with her on 96% of what she was talking about.

Specifically, she is still aggrieved by the fact that there are only a few Fortune 500 CEOs who are women, and that women are still a minority in the partnerships of major law firms, and there are only 12 female senators, and that worst of all, we still need to wait for a woman POTUS. This is all predicated on a belief that the world would be a more just, kinder, better run and more equitable place if women were in charge. I happen to not agree with that underlying assumption but putting it aside, since neither of us have been able to test our hypothesis, she is basically saying this: If only all of the people in charge had certain physical attributes, the world would be a better place. Sorry to be so dramatic, but how is this different from eugenics, or Nazi anti-semitism or any other racist system? I don't support the status quo, but I also don't see how gender characteristics alone will change society.

Of course, I am not sure that Susan Estrich or Hillary Clinton want to dramatically change society. They want to change the social order - so that women will have the power. But they don't want particularly to upend the hierarchical model. Estrich said something particularly telling (imagine this shouted through gravel): "Well, sure, it's all equal at the bottom!" Actually, its not. Its an intense pecking order "at the bottom", where everyone is trying to reassure themselves that they are not, in fact, at the bottom, by shitting on other people. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, are much more pronounced "at the bottom". It's "at the bottom" where you really feel what it means to make 63 female cents on the male-earned dollar.

And so yeah, Sam, I do think there are women who exist who think that somehow its more in their interest to either vote with the political elite or withhold their own power in protest against interests of others. Five months is a long time, of course, and by November these folks will remember what their broader values are, but they won't like it. This was supposed to be their election and now it isn't and they are going to pout.

Yup, I Still Hate Theater

As part of our Arts Trek: NYC Edition, B and I went to see August: Osage County on Saturday night. The reviews for this play were so over-the-top (for example) that I thought it could be the one to turn me around on not liking plays. Not so. Here's what I didn't like about it, and why it supports my generally dim view of plays.

1. The acting, while better than most plays, is broad and exaggerated. Acting in a theater calls for techniques that enable every person in the audience to understand the gestures and dialogue on the stage. But sweeping movements and Keystone Kops antics, along with shouted sotto voce remarks, are totally unnatural. This makes even likable characters and good actors unbelievable.

2. The show was long. Three hours and 20 minutes. It moved surprisingly quickly, for the length, but still felt to me as though the playwright was self-indulgent. There were too many plot quirks thrown in, and it came off feeling like secondhand Faulkner or Tennessee Williams crossed with One Life to Live: Osage County.

3. There was a mythical Native American character, Johna. It's baffling to me why she isn't referred to in the NY Times review. Her presence in the show is beyond irritating and offensive. She is intended to be the soul bearer of the father, and she is as pure and righteous as a Dime Store Indian. There are two minor points in the play that are intended to diffuse the obnoxious stereotyping but I didn't think they were effective in the face of Johna's inexplicable goodness and fortitude. Why would she continue to work for these people? Which leads to my next complaint about plays: They traffic in Big Ideas. The medium doesn't do the ideas justice, however, so instead they seem like childish points to score extra credit on a philosophy exam.

4. The audience REALLY annoyed me. They laughed far louder than the jokes warranted, and were far more invested in the characters than they probably are in their own families. At the end the second act, when the oldest daughter yells, "I'M IN CHARGE NOW!", a man actually yelled, "YEAHHH!!" I hated them all except the guy sitting next to me.

So why is this play nominated for 8 Tony's? Here's my guess for the categories in which it was nominated:

• Tallest Set
• Most Number of Drunk Characters in a Drama
• Slyest Reference to a Taboo Sex Act
• Most Overbearing Mother Character
• Best Representation of Academics in a Drama
• Most Boring Wardrobe
• Most Inexplicable Use of Eric Clapton as a Plot Device
• Most Sheeplike Audience

Why I Hate the Things I Hate

UPDATED at 11:44 a.m. (I KNEW I could count on Ella to help me out here)

BD and I are going to NYC this weekend, and he wants to take in a play (I hear that’s what you do when you go to a play – you “take it in”), and that got my thinking about how much I hate plays. And then my cousin mentioned that he knew I hate plaintiffs’ attorneys (which I don’t), and I thought: There’s a lot of misinformation out there about what I hate and why. This calls for a blog post.

1. Theater – Its true; I hate Theater. This is based on my dual aversions to strong emotions and bad acting. I am not crazy about Art Films for the same reason. Mind you, I am not a stoic. I feel emotions very strongly. Plus I am the Queen of Willing Suspension of Disbelief, which means I feel strong emotions very easily. But afterwards, after I have cried and feel all emotionally wrung out, I feel used and a little dirty. For example, I cried through all of Little Man Tate. I just felt like an ass after that. Really? Little Man Tate? I feel like a cry-whore just remembering it. Okay, so that’s not Theater, and its not Art Film, so my point isn’t being made very well. BUT. My first roommate in college starred in a production of Agnes of God, which was both Theater and Art Film, and I felt like crap after watching it. Big Themes, Moving Story, Heartfelt Performances. Yuck.
2. Soup – I have a love/hate relationship with soup. I will eat soup and often think that a specific soup tastes good. But I don’t think soup is a meal and it annoys me when people treat it like a meal. I do hate cold soup. Just the word Gazpacho makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. On the other hand, I like the soup party. A part of me wishes that we had an annual pulled pork party instead, but you take your husband for richer and for poorer, for soup and for pork.
   
3. Sandwiches – This is a corollary hatred. I don’t think sandwiches are a meal. I also think they have too much bread (no matter how little bread they have). That said, I eat sandwiches almost every day, because even the popularity of the Atkins diet has not convinced me that its acceptable to eat just salami and cheese right off your lap with your fingers.
4. Burning Man
5. Berkeley - there are too many posts to even add one single link here. If you need evidence, just look there to the right and read the categories Bay Area, things that annoy me, and BPN. Smile Rockridge might have some material on this particular hatred, but it would be a more general dislike of things that are Berkeley-esque, as opposed to be specifically about Berkeley.
   
6. Baby Boomers
7. Sideways
8. Chinese Food: Its not Asian food that I hate, its Chinese food. Because I love Japanese and Indian, and occasionally crave Thai. I am not crazy about Korean food, but the issue just doesn't come up that much. But Chinese food is shorthand for "don't feel like cooking, don't feel like eating out", and it almost universally has too much sauce on it. Goopy sauce. Dare I say, it's soupy sauce. Also, my mom dated a Chinese man for several years and I ate a lot of Chinese food during that period and I feel like I had my lifetime supply already.
   
9. Short Stories: Yeah, its true. I think that this is due in part to the Theater/Art Film phenom, which is that short stories are intended to Make a Point, usually by being shocking or sad. When they are funny, they are essays, not short stories (see David Sedaris and Ian Frazier, both of whom I like). I like long books, because if you see something sad coming, you can either put the book down for a little while until you are ready to deal with it, or the book keeps going after that, so you know that not everyone will be dead at the end.
   

What Did I Missed While I Was Away?

The preliminary answer to that question is, not much. Our block did have its first Neighborhood Watch meeting while I was away, but I am not sure I would have attended that if I was here. The post-meeting email to the rest of the block did contain this advice, in the context of areas of concern:

Gas. I would also expect an increase in people siphoning gasoline from our cars as the price of fuel continually rises.

Really? I was skeptical, so I did a Google News search on this topic. It does appear to be a problem in York County, SC. How about here in CA? So far, its just a problem in Modesto. But Mo' is like the meth capital of the Central Valley, so it probably has some industrial use and isn't actually a widespread problem.

Here on Thomas Avenue, there don't appear to be any meth labs (knock wood), and the houses are literally less than 10 feet apart, and there are lots of them. It seems to me gas siphoning takes more than a few seconds, and requires some dubious, not to mention obvious, acrobatics to get it done. I promise that if I see anyone with a funnel and tubing and their car backed up to another, I will call the police. Til then, I am seriously not going to worry about this problem.

This reminds me of a joke that I knew when I was young. I left one part blank because I have heard at least three iterations of the joke, referring to different ethnicities.

Did you hear about the _______ who tried to blow up a car? He burned his lips on the tail pipe.

Funny stuff.

Why the NLRB Should Be Abolished

In case you doubt that being a union lawyer has been an almost totally futile exercise during the Bush administration, I thought I would share this story with you. An employee is talking to her co-workers during their lunch break in the hospital cafeteria about her support for the union. A manager tells her to leave, as she cannot be on the hospital premises on her day off. The worker refuses to leave, and security is called. The security officer arrives with a German Shepherd by his side and orders her to leave. The union filed a charge against the Employer for threatening, intimidating and harassing the worker for engaging in union activities. The NLRB dismisses the charge:

The Region has authorized dismissal, absent withdrawal on this allegation. The investigation failed to reveal that the guard made any threats (or statements for that matter) to the employee. There is no evidence that the dog made any motion or threatening gesture toward the employee. Finally, there is no evidence supporting a Section 8(a)(3) violation.

That's the way it works these days. The only advice we can give is, next time, put your hand in the dog's mouth so it bites you. Now excuse me, I need to return to banging my head on the table, since this brief respite to blog has permitted the blood on my forehead to clot.

The Self-Righteous Shall Inherit California

I heard a piece on NPR about this fool and his solar panels. I thought you'd like it.

Off The Rails

The title of this post refers to this blog, not to the Obama campaign, which I will get to in a second. I started off the year fearing that I would hardly post at all (see, e.g., December 2007), and here I am blogging my butt off. Only not about my typical whimsical and lovely nonsense. I have been very centered on the Democratic primary campaign, and I have more to say. On one hand, I recognize that this may be boring-ish for some people, but (on the other) I think I know my readers, and you are as rabidly interested in this as I am, or else we wouldn't be such dear friends. So, back to New Hampshire.

First of all, this is hardly a loss for Obama. Less than a few weeks ago, he was down by double-digits, and instead he lost be 3 percentage points. Isn't that less than the typical margin of error in a statistical poll? Right on, Obama! And as I said before, I think that if Clinton is going to win this ultimately (although I hope she doesn't), she needs more of a trial than she was prepared for. I gotta say, I am SO annoyed by this idea that her little teeny fake nervous breakdown gave her a bump among the Women Exactly Like Her voting bloc. She can cry on command! What a skill for our President to have. You may recall, I am NOT down with the "Girlfriend in Chief" model of campaigning. Please don't tell me that "women" love this, or I may forsake my gender.

And as a tangential correllary*, this reminds me how much Baby Boomers annoy me. Don't ask me why I thought of this. Those of you who also hate Baby Boomers probably understand instinctively where I am going with this, and also can't quite articulate what the bridge is. Here's the bridge: Hillary. She's Woman. She's Boomer. The world is hers for the taking. She has so many "good opportunities" - she's just bursting to unload them on us. I am so tired of that generation (most of whom disavow the rest strongly) claiming they can fix things in this crazy mixed up world. No, you can't. Its messed up. Stop pretending you are a realist and then feeding us horseshit.

Okay, I have clearly lost my train of thought here. So back to an even more annoying obsession of mine: The Wire. Season 5 debuted this past Sunday, and I didn't even mention it because I figured, if you don't watch it yet, you probably aren't going to start now. And that's your damn loss. I will accept you back into my good graces if you watch just one other season of this show without me having to harangue you further. Then I will give you my generous and brilliant thoughts on this season 5. (Actually, I can't, because I watched an episode ahead, and I would feel bad if I accidentally spoiled it for you, so Mr. Scobie will just have to suffer my brilliance alone).

* Mathematicians: Can something be both a tangent and a correllary? Or are they the same thing?

Just Wrong

I just saw a license plate that said JRNYR(heart)X (Journey Rocks), and the plate holder said "I Would Rather Be At A Journey Concert".

Not acceptable.

Even More Irritating!

As I mentioned a few days ago, I don't keep up much on the BPN Newsletters these days. But today, something caught my eye. A poster complained that her local precious market uses a marker to mark their organic produce. She is outraged by the ignorance and toxicity of this method of identifying produce. My first thought was, get over it. But of the seven responders, only one said, "Frankly, I think you're going way out on a limb on this one."

The other six people chimed in with various suggestions for community action, "vote with your dollar" nonsense. Seriously, has anyone in the entire world traced an illness, or even a bad taste in their mouth, to a dot of marker on the outside of their melon?

This one's even better:

The other thing is that at Monterey Fish market they use a very strong smelling, seemingly toxic magic marker to mark the outside of the fish package. I'd like to just pop the wrapped package into the freezer but always feel compelled to ditch the paper as soon as possible. I don't even like it being there during the trip home. This has always bugged me. I would be all for instigating a change if there was a community friendly way to do it.

Escalating Stupidity

I was thinking the other day that I hadn't posted about inanities of Berkeley lately. I don't have to go there very often now that L doesn't go to Broccoli Montessori. I can't even bear to read the Berkeley Parents Network Advice newsletters because they are all so long and redundant (does every new mother need to despair that her 3 week old nurses too much/little, poops too much/little, sleeps too much/little? and can't every new mother just read the voluminous back issues for their answer?).

That leaves only the mainstream local press as a source of Berkeley news, and I don't see much of that. Oh, except for the tree sitters. Here's the latest. Several folks were arrested yesterday. According to a man named "Ayr" (it took me a sec to get that too):

"We went to deliver sage and tobacco and water to the tree-sitters, because we had heard earlier that (police) were denying them food and water and threatening people helping them with arrest," Ayr said. "We got the stuff up to them and we were doing some chants and songs when one of the tree-sitters came down and started cutting the fence."

Ayr said the group included Native Americans who believe that the grove was a burial ground for Ohlone Indians. UC anthropologists have said there is no evidence that is true.

I don't think we need an anthropologist to tell us how the grove grows, if I can paraphrase. Remember:

All but a few of the trees were planted by the university after the stadium was built in 1923.

This is all such a tremendous waste of trust fund dollars. These tree sitters could be planning their next Burning Man project if they weren't busy spilling buckets of urine and feces all other eachother. Or (*snap*) maybe that's IT! This will be great at Burning Man! I mean it's no suicide, but it could really work! (whisper whisper) They've already spilled buckets of urine and feces on eachother at Burning Man? Hmmm. Okay, back to Ye Olde Oak Grove. . .

Ya Got No Creep To Ya

- Kima Greggs, episode 2, season 1.

Yeah, that's right. The Wire is back, On Demand. It does not matter that we have it on DVD. I watched two episodes tonight making Liam's Halloween costume. Which costume does NOT include the following:

Heh heh.

And then finally, have you wondered what you might hate more than Blackwater USA, the mercenary contractor responsible for untold numbers of Iraqi civilians deaths and Godknowshowmany propped-up dictatorships? And how about those irritating sound effects in NPR stories? You know, the laughing children on the playground, the birds chirping, and then you have to change the station before you lose your mind? Do you hate that more, or less, than military contractors in Iraq? Well, I briefly got an answer to that question the other day when I heard a story about protests at Blackwater's training center outside of San Diego. The owner of Blackwater came out to address the protesters, but was quickly shouted down. He got back into his vehicle, and the tape catches a protester angrily yelling, "Oh, you drive a HUMMER?? What about the environment? You gas guzzler!!"

Like the owner of Blackwater gives a shit. Like he should be driving a Prius.

And for a brief moment, I felt . . . I don't know what. Sorry for how lame the protesters are. Sorry that I have to listen to NPR's pitiful filler-in-lieu-of-news every day. Sorry that the best argument that can be summoned to yell at the owner of Blackwater, just hours after 17 Iraqi citizens were killed, is that he's a gas guzzler.

Black Hole for Your Soul

I hate Burning Man so much that I usually don't even write about it. But a guy committed suicide by hanging this week at Burning Man this week, and revelers below him didn't tell officials for two hours because they assumed that it was an art piece. That festival is such a complete vaccuum of humanity.

I realize that I am sounding more conservative with each post but the squandary* of energy and morality that is pwogwessive politics and culture these days irritates me beyond explanation.

Speaking of "Art", there's a group of artists who have a web project "which aims to buy Google with funds generated via Adsense." Now THAT'S Art.

*I made up this word.