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Need a Lawyer? Don’t Hire Sandra Fluke

Mar 6

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I know you have heard of Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law School student who recently testified to members of congress about the subject of birth control. She has been a prominent media fixture this week as a figure of public mockery and an example of the “sexism” of the Republican party. To be clear, I hate it when women are called sluts and whores. But I do think that the Fluke story is relevant because it highlights something far graver than sexism or her inability to pay for birth control. Through her testimony, Fluke proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Georgetown Law School is offering a substandard education and thus must be churning out some incredibly incompetent lawyers. Here are five obvious infarcts in the Georgetown Law School education curriculum as revealed by Sandra Fluke:

1. To be an effective lawyer, you need to be able to negotiate. If you are a woman, let alone a female law student, and you aren’t adept enough to negotiate with a man to get him to pay for the birth control for intercourse he will partake in, I don’t know what to tell you: guys are pretty much willing to do anything before they have sex with you. It’s really not a fair fight. If you can’t get the guy to pay for an expensive dinner with wine, three months worth of birth control pills, condoms, lubricant, a scented candle, bath salts and make him cuddle with you and listen to you for at least an hour as you spout your inane man-hating femino-statist ideas while making him apologize for his penis, don’t have sex with that guy let alone become a lawyer! You need to find a profession where you can constantly be a victim and whine about not getting enough: for example, why don’t you become a New York or Los Angeles public school teacher?

2. Good lawyers need to be able to lie effectively. Fluke’s testimonial exaggerations were what got her made fun of this week in the first place. Fluke had a whopper of an estimate that birth control costs her and her peers at Georgetown Law around 1,000/year. Anyone who is at all familiar with birth control knows that is a ridiculously high estimate. Fluke’s laugher that the price of birth control and the health effects on women who do not receive it seem more akin to the scare films of the 50’s like Reefer Madness than Johnny Cochran’s famous, “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”: which was a whopper but an effective whopper since the gloves with dried ex-wife and waiter blood sitting in police custody for a year getting crusty really didn’t fit. Fluke’s inability to prevaricate effectively is a shame to her aspired profession. Watch Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, any press conference with Gloria Allred or any speech by Bill Clinton or John Edwards if you need further proof about how necessary lying is as a skill-set for an attorney.

3. Lawyer knows how to manage their time effectively. A lawyer has to fit 26 hours of work into a 24 hour day. If Fluke and her peers are telling the truth about these figures, they are having sex around three times/day instead of doing something called studying. If they can stay in school and not study, that does not bode well for the demands put on them by their Georgetown Law School education.

4. A good lawyer has enough gumption to do research and work the system. In her testimony, Fluke presented a dire picture of what has happened to her and her peers because they can’t afford birth control: her peers at Georgetown law school are “losing ovaries” and “maybe even dying of cancer” due to their inability to pay for the pill: some of them have had to make the ultimate sacrifice and can no longer have sex (interestingly, none of them have gotten pregnant or contracted venereal diseases, the two reasons most people use contraception in the first place) because they are not able to afford the steep and punitive price of birth control pills. Ms. Fluke told of a peer from Georgetown law who is married and can no longer afford to have sex with her husband. With the barest research you will find that Target and Wal-Mart offer birth control to the uninsured for $15/month: they don’t want their customers reproducing any more than the rest of us do. I have been poor. I have been to many a free clinic in Sacramento and Los Angeles. I paid $10 /month for the pill and took the free condoms that were offered in overflowing glass fish bowls all around the clinics: I could thus afford the double protection of birth control pills and condoms for $10 /month. If you saw some of the guys I have had sex with, you would see why I would want double protection: I even sprung for the luxury of having some of the more dubious guys wear two condoms at the same time. Through the free clinics I have been to, I have had a cyst on one of my ovaries removed as well as gotten a biopsy on my breast: they even offered to remove the lump for practically free. I just had to find the clinics and fill out the proper paperwork to prove that I was poor. I am an actress and a graduate of a California state school: if I could figure the system out I would imagine that the intellectuals at Georgetown law could. On a different note, what kind of nutless loser did Fluke’s friend marry that the guy can’t figure out how to come up with the $15 /month for his wife’s pills so he can have sex with her? He’s so impotent and feminized, he must be a Georgetown Law student too.

5. A good lawyer should know the law better than I do. In her testimony, Ms. Fluke referred to a peer from Georgetown who is a rape victim. The victim thought she had to pay for the rape kit if she reported the rape to the police. How are you a law student and not know the law well enough to know that rape kits are free?!!!!!!!! I know rape kits are free and my entire law education consists of watching the six episodes of Law and Order that TNT shows a day (I’m an Orbach girl but the Jeremy Sisto ones are growing on me: he’s really handsome when he has the beard and his round round face is camouflaged) OK: I doubted myself and did research just in case: yes, rape kits are free in Washington DC: because, I assume the police want to CATCH THE RAPIST!

Ms. Fluke has been accused of calling out her peers at Georgetown’s Law School as sluts for revealing that they are going broke because they are having so much sex that they can’t afford birth control. Again I disagree with that assessment. However, I do accuse her of calling out her peers at Georgetown Law as bad lawyers. The next time I need a lawyer, I will make sure not to get a lawyer who went to Georgetown: I would probably wind up getting the death penalty for a shoplifting charge. The women at Georgetown Law should be less angry about having to pay for birth control and more angry that they are paying a ridiculous amount of money per year to get a substandard education: basic cable is around $40 /month. If you drop out of Georgetown and watch Law and Order on TNT six short hours a day, you will be able to afford all the birth control you want, have more time to use it and be a better lawyer more capable of doing the job and earning a living. I hope these tips have been helpful and will act as a useful supplement to the obviously lacking curriculum in the Georgetown University Department of Law.

 

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Occupation: More than Just a Mental Disease

Nov 17

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My brother in law, who goes to USC, contracted mumps. Which was crazy to me because isn’t mumps a rather obscure disease? I mean, didn’t it kind of go extinct in the 1950’s?  According to my pediatrician, an outbreak of mumps has occurred in Downtown Los Angeles.  Upon further research, I have found that an outbreak of mumps has also occurred in Berkeley.  I don’t mean to jump to any unscientific conclusions but both Berkeley and downtown Los Angeles are at the center of the “occupy movements” in California.

Could the occupy movements be more than a mental disease in our country?  I mean, what other obscure diseases are afflicting the occupy protesters and could we become afflicted also?

According to my research, there is an outbreak of tuberculosis at the Occupy Atlanta site. Occupy Wall Street in New York has had to make up a name a name for a disease that they are calling Zuccotti Lung which is comprised of coughing and wheezing.  STD’s are of course running rampant.  There was nothing about the Los Angeles mumps outbreak when I looked which means there are more diseases out there that aren’t common knowledge.  There is even a guy who had been dead for two days in one of the tents which begs the question, “how bad does it really smell there?

You can’t say that the people of Occupy Wall Street aren’t aware of the hygiene problem.  There are feeble attempts to hand out condoms and hand sanitizer but in the wake of the unsanitary conditions it is like throwing sewing needles at King Kong. Speaking of needles, they can however give clean needles to heroin addicts.  There are even people such as Jordan McCarthy, 22, who has been assigned to be part of the Occupy Wall Street sanitation (I know) crew.  Jordan seems astounded that the ladies and gentlemen who are occupying Wall Street might be less than hygienic.  He complains that they urinate in bottles and throw their scrambled eggs and orange peels outside of their tents instead of garbage cans. I mean, just because you don’t shower doesn’t mean you’re unclean, right?   All I can think of is that someone as naïve as Jordan might be rube enough to be fooled into being part of the Occupy Wall Street sanitation team. Talk about being an unsung hero.  That man is Sisyphus in the flesh:  every time you’d pick up a used hypodermic needle or a hot dog bit there’d be ten to take their place. His attempts to clean up the area must be about as useful as giving a breath mint to Larry King to take away the smell (Larry King really is touting a new breath mint with his wife Shawn:  the commercial is the funniest thing I have ever seen.)   Whoever convinced Jordan to be part of the cleaning crew is wasting their efforts hanging out around Occupy Wall Street.  They must be the best salesman in the world.   What could the pitch possibly have been?  “Hey, Jordan:  you know how New York usually only smells of blue cheese and urine?  Now it smells like a democrats sphincter. How about you try to do something about it?  I think you’re just the man to clean it up.  There will be no pay.  Really you will be doing nothing to change anything:  actually it will be a lot like the Occupy movement itself only if you accomplished something everyone in America would appreciate it.”  Jordan’s response probably is “Uhhhh—could I just clean up after the tea party?”

I hope the diseases don’t spread around to us, the people Obama houses in General Pop:  I was never vaccinated.  One thing this teaches us is that we human beings have a lot more in common with indoor cats than we think:  like them, we constantly stand on the precipice of losing our ability to be tame.  We are one month of living outside from becoming feral. So I would reconsider my summer plans of going on that one-month camping trip in the Everglades.  You might never come back:  with all your teeth, anyway.

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The End of the Rule of the Professionally Offended

Nov 10

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For over twenty years a group of people have ruled our lives. These people have told us how to act, what to say, and even what to think. They are a group of people known as The Professionally Offended. The Professionally Offended have had so much power over all of us, all they had to do was to fold their faces into a scowl, wrinkle there nose like they smelled broccoli-fueled flatulence and look at you accusingly and say, “I find that offensive” and you would whither in shame. Judging from the reaction to the accusations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain, it’s becoming clear that the rule of the class of The Professionally Offended is over. We, the quiet majority of the non-offended have taken back power.
Last night at the GOP debate the audience booed the CNBC panel for asking the question, “Mr. Cain, do you think your integrity is now in question?” The majority of people don’t seem to be jumping on the press’s bandwagon to define Herman Cain as a dangerous sex offender. To them, like to me, the jury is still out. The general public is being rational, not offended.
You see little signs of the weakening of the stronghold of The Professionally Offended have had over our thoughts and lives. Chaz Bono said the week he was voted off of Dancing with the Stars that he was offended by how he was treated: that Kirstie Alley never had to endure the fat jokes like he did, being called Ewok and Penguin. A few years ago, this story would have made big news. Bruno Tongioli, one of the Dancing with the Stars Judges would have been known as a transgender-phobe or whatever phrase The Professionally Offended would make up to attack him, and then The Professionally Offended would go on a rampage finding other examples of transgender-phobes in Red State America. The very reporting of Bono’s statements means that the press tried to carry on the rally cry of The Professionally Offended, but a deafening silence to The Professionally Offended’s call to arms followed Chaz’s whining.
The press continually makes charges of racism against those who would dare to think differently than Barack Obama and democrats nationwide: these charges work with a small amount of people. These charges always will, because there will be a small amount of people who will not want to let go of the pious superiority that being offended gives to them. For the most part, it’s clear that we,the non-offended, are dominating this argument: the non-offended say that they don’t care about the color of Obama’s skin, they just don’t like his policies. It seems that the general public agrees with the non-offended not The Professionally Offended.
These Herman Cain charges are the same thing: the press is trying to get us offended. Boy, are they trying! Gloria Allred is trying to get us offended. But the non-offended are standing strong. If it ends up that all of the charges against Caine are true, then the non-offended won’t be offended: we’ll want justice because Cain will have been proven to be a liar and a man who committed a violent criminal act while on a date with a woman. That is a different thing entirely, although even the worst of the charges just sounds like a bad date to me: half the guys I’ve gone out with in LA are criminals if what Cain did is considered criminal.
I am optimistic for the future: I foresee a time when someone will say, “that offends me” and I can say, “oh yeah? Well, too bad.” The non-offended now rule once more. We will say what we want and not become withered by charges of racism or sexism or homophobia. I’m not saying that we should hurt each other’s feelings or that rudeness should be acceptable: I believe in polite discourse. However, if I’m right and this tiptoeing around every single word we say, this fruitless game of adhering to the rules of the continually changing semantics of The Professionally Offended what freedom I would feel. Imagine if I could say to my husband, “your song is really lame” and not be told that I’m a lame-a-phobe. Or tell my brother that his shirt looks gay without being told I’m a homophobe. I’ve been around people who were so beaten down by The Professionally Offended that they would say, “do you know Sandy?” and I would say, “she sounds familiar: could you describe her?” and they would say, “voluptuous, dark hair, brown eyes….” “no”, “she was Dorothy for Halloween” “no” “wait—is she the black girl?” and they shut down and get really embarrassed and say, “yeah: but you shouldn’t say that” only the racist Professionally Offended would think that calling
someone black is an insult: being inoffensive can be so inoffensive that it circles around to become offensive like some quantum physics problem. Maybe there will even be a time when a man and a woman can have a conversation without the man feeling anxiety of the consequence over every single word, or a time when we can joke around or compliment each other in the workplace again without the fear of being fired: call me a dreamer, but I think it’s possible. “Imagine there’s no more Professionally Offendeds: it’s easy if you try, no PC hell below us, above us only sky……”

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Dancing with the Stars

Oct 27

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As you my loyal fans may know, I have really bad taste in television.  I love to watch the worst, most brain dead stuff. Now that I’m pregnant, it’s gotten worse.  I’m the only person in the world excited to see the new Adam Sandler movie, Jack and Jill.  I have not gone so far as to savor the NBC show Whitney, but give me time because I am sure that it will grow on me.  The fact that I keep trying scares me.

I love to watch ABC’s Dancing with the Stars.  I love the pomp, the circumstance the fact that the show is like a bunch of activists from GLAAD playing a practical joke on straight men.  These straight male stars dress in poncy costumes and nance around the stage while gay men who are the judges tell them that they need to be “more masculine” “like a panther on the hunt” and “act more like a man” (wtf???)  I mean, what other show would have Nancy Grace’s boob popping out of her costume on national television?  Hilarious!

However, one thing about this show has stuck in my craw a little bit this year. The judges on Dancing with the Stars and I seem to have different definitions of what a hero is.  They say it is heroic to have started gender reassignment surgery and appear on national television.  I say it is brave to do that but it is heroic to have served as a soldier, had your face blown off in Iraq and then appear on national television.

Let me back up a bit:  I love that Chaz Bono is on the show.  In case you are really good at avoiding pop culture, Chaz Bono is Cher’s son.  He used to be Chastity Bono who was Cher’s daughter until he underwent partial gender reassignment surgery and is in process of becoming a female to male transgender.  He seems like a sweet man.  He seems like anyone would seem if you grew up as Cher’s child:  overwhelmed, a little depressed, very henpecked and very pessimistic.   Anyone who goes out there on national television and does something they’re not good at is brave.  Chaz not only has absolutely no talent for dancing and is incredibly unathletic but has an entirely new body and raging hormones that are making him go girl crazy. The combination has made for some very uncomfortable looking dances: to say that Chaz’s movements are a bit stiff is an understatement. Chaz’s movements remind the DWTS viewer of Frankenstein but only after the monster has been sitting on a plane for sixteen hours. In coach!

The judges have been laying it on thick about how “heroic” Chaz is as a person, saying things like,  “Chaz, you are my hero” and  “When I see you dance, something inside of me is touched so deeply” to the standing ovations of the crowd.  I’m glad that Chaz was getting all of those good strokes:  as Cher’s child you know there were not many of those coming his way.

However, there is another contestant, JR Martinez, who has had his share of adversity to:  he sort of challenges the DWTS judge’s definition of a hero.  He was a soldier who served in Iraq.  He drove a Humvee one day and it hit a landmine and he sustained smoke inhalation and burns over 40% of his body.  I cannot imagine the incredible pain of that, but it gets worse:  his face was blown off. He has to draw on his left eyebrow.   One of his ears is missing and the burn scars on his face will never go away. That was seven years ago, so the accident happened when he was 21:  imagine not having your face from the time you were 21.  He is the pluckiest guy you’d ever see:  he is happy and optimistic and energetic.  He is such an amazingly optimistic person you forget about what he looks like within the first minute of seeing him.  It even looks like his hot dancing partner, Karina Smirnoff is falling in love with him:  usually she’s dead-fish cold with her partners, but she really is tender with him.  Maybe I’m just projecting.  Not only that, he has serious dancing talent and an infectious joy of life that makes him fun to watch.  He is the very embodiment of a hero no matter how a person would define the term.  Yet, the DWTS judges rarely make reference to JR being a hero or possessing the quality that they call bravery.

The point about all of this is that Dancing with the Stars, which is the number one show on television right now reflects our culture and our attitudes. It’s a good reflection of our society that someone such as Chaz is getting national acceptance.  However, I find it a striking omission that JR is not getting the strokes that he should be getting for his heroism.

It reflects the modern American phenomenon of totally misplaced affection, gratitude and worship. In both of these circumstances, the use of the word hero is trivialized. A deeper problem is that ides of myth, legend and story hold a society’s culture together. The concept of the hero is central to these. By misapplying the hero label and refraining from using it when needed takes our culture in the wrong direction.

I hope we can recover the sense of propriety about who we call a hero and what they did to be considered brave before it’s too late. A society without real heroes can be lost really fast.

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Dr. Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson

Oct 20

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Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, was a couple of weeks ago.  It immediately made me think of Michael Jackson and the Conrad Murray trial.  The press is trying to push the involuntary manslaughter trial of Michael Jackson like it’s the sequel to the OJ trial.  The media  breathlessly report new developments every day.  What sickens me is how Michael Jackson has been canonized and grieved for by the press during this process.  I’m relieved Jackson is dead. He was a child molester! He was a horrible person! Dr. Murray got Jackson off the streets. That’s something law enforcement was never able to do.

I know Michael Jackson was never actually convicted of anything, but as a collective are we really that naïve and dazzled by celebrity?  It’s obvious Jackson was a child molester:  he took children as dates to awards shows, was always being accused of the crime and was always paying people off for their silence but even more than that, what do all guys spend their money on?  Getting laid. A guy will spend his last cent on getting laid:  dinner at Maestro’s steak house, expensive cars, clothes from Barney’s: a guy would spend $10,000 on ground up frogs if he thought it would make women engage in intercourse with him.

Michael Jackson spent all his money on the Neverland Ranch, a child’s fantasy world:  it had everything:  monkeys, ponies, roller coasters, a really big bed and adult alarms:  it was like Disneyland without the exorbitant charge and the liability disclaimer on the back of the ticket but with some personal lubricant.  Children flocked to it.

If you think I’m over the top in my bitterness against Michael Jackson, I’ll just say that I have unique insight into who and what Jackson really was.   I know people who testified for the prosecution at the Michael Jackson trial. I know the young accuser and his family.  I hate to namedrop, but I have even had the excitement of watching some friends be re-enacted on the Michael Jackson trial re-enaction on the E Network.  I even had a friend who was a re-enactor, come to think of it.

I know that the Accuser was molested by both Michael Jackson and Jackson went out of his way to ruin the kid’s life.   He had a really hard time going back to school:  once the kids found out who he was, they constantly accused him of being gay.  He is scared that everyone will always think he is gay. Right after the trial, he ended up moving to another state and living and on the edge of poverty.  He and his mother became estranged.

His time during the trial was really difficult:  child molesters in general tend to victimize children from chaotic families:  the child is more vulnerable and in the courts, the family has less credibility.  Jackson was good at that.  At the time Jackson found the young accuser, he was very sick with cancer.  His mother is a childish histrionic controlling narcissist. They were very poor.  The Santa Barbara police and DA begged the mother of the young accuser not to pursue the prosecution of Jackson:  he was too rich.  He had offered the family a very generous settlement for their silence, as he was apt to do.  The mother of the young accuser was so crazy that she turned down the money to “get justice” for her son.

She was also so crazy there was very little public sympathy for the family.  Michael Jackson is a dangerous guy.  Although he liked to cultivate this childlike Peter Pan image, he surrounded himself with thugs who protected him and did his bidding.  These thugs constantly harassed and threatened the family at their home and at the young accuser’s school.  The family was incredibly poor and had no protection:  they moved from shabby hotel room to shabby hotel room to hide from the thugs.

Ultimately, the family lost the trial:  Jackson was so powerful he molested a kid with cancer and got away with it.

Michael Jackson is the victim of nothing more than his own negligent doctor shopping. A wise friend of mine said that Conrad Murray is a perfect example of the kind of person Jackson chose to surround himself with. I think of Murray as a horrible doctor     who should most likely go to prison.  However, when you think of the hundreds of children Jackson has victimized, I think of Conrad Murray in an indirect way as a hero.  The vengeful part of me hopes he is found not guilty.  If there is anything Murray is guilty of, it is letting Jackson die too painlessly.  He deserved a much more agonizing death. Michael Jackson, in my mind, deserves no forgiveness.

Just to make it clear, the “Young accuser” is an incredible example of a survivor and a remarkable kid.  He now goes to college (the first of his family to do so).  He does his best to maintain a good relationship with his mother and his family is no longer in poverty. I admire his resilience more than I can say.  I know that he will come out on top and am so happy for him that he has fought and won the battle to live a good life and I hope that he knows never to be ashamed of what he went through: only Michael Jackson and his enablers should be ashamed.

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RIP Steve Jobs

Oct 6

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Yesterday Apple CEO Steve Jobs died. When I learned of his death, I immediately burst into tears. For him and his family, of course but also for me: he has done so much to make our lives better. I am not a person who ever understood computers. I am horrible with them and am even a bit technophobic because they are so beyond me, but Steve Jobs made technology accessible to me. I have grown up using Apple products. I have written this piece on my lovely Apple MacBook Pro. I use my ipad and my iphone every day. My daughter Lucy is not even two years old yet and is addicted to my ipad and my iphone and her own ipod Touch. These products save me and other diners in restaurants in LA as my daughter stays quiet and sedate as she uses these things to entertain herself: she was the best baby at Rosh Hashanah services because of my iphone. I was crying not just for what he did but for what he wont be doing in the future. Apple supposedly has three years of products from the Jobs era in the pipeline but after that: what will become of Apple or of any of us? We have seen what Apple was like without Jobs: it was horrible. Those were dark years. What will it be like after these three years? What new innovations are we all going to miss out on? What new advancements in technology?
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple from the ground up in Silicon Valley, soldering circuit boards themselves until they turned their “Little Kingdom” into a huge empire which has revolutionized computers, software and media. They are a great American success story: they literally created something wonderful out of nothing.
In the midst of my mourning I realized something very important: Steve Jobs is a billionaire and a CEO. According to Barack Obama and the protesters on Wall Street, he’s the villain. Apple is the most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of over $353 billion as of this morning. They have more cash on hand than the US government. According to every value of the current Democrat Party, we’re supposed to hate people like Steve Jobs, not mourn him. I’m a middle class person. According to the democrats, Jobs has stolen from me. He has taken advantage of me and everyone else in my economic strata and below by constantly making something new so I have to buy something new, by constantly selling us his upgrades which made his other products obsolete and constantly making such cool new products that you can’t help but greedily covet and then buy and buy and buy! Which constantly separates me and every other innocent middle class consumer from our hard-earned money. He is the ultimate villain they have been fighting against. According to the Wall Street Protesters, we should be glad Jobs is dead.
Instead, I hear that some of them are holding candlelight vigils at Apple Stores. If they acknowledge the sadness of his death, don’t they have to acknowledge that he is the very vermin that they have been fighting against? He is the greatest example of modern capitalism personified in a human being? Or will the rich kids protesting on Wall Street, keeping in touch with their iphones, keeping themselves amused with their ipads acknowledge the fact that his death is a great loss to us all and that maybe CEO’s and billionaires have changed all of our lives for the good? Maybe the Wall Street urchins should accept the fact that there are CEO’s and billionaires who deserve their position and their money and if there are some, maybe many, if not most, of them do. And if most of them do, maybe capitalism isn’t that bad after all?
I am crying again: the world has lost a great innovator and a great humanitarian. Because maybe being a great humanitarian isn’t just singing songs to African AIDS victims and donating money to the poor by buying Gap “Red Label” clothes (barf.) Maybe being a great humanitarian can also mean changing the lives of the normal person for the better. Jobs did that for me: in huge ways he has changed my life for the better. So, Steve Jobs, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will miss you terribly and to you creeps “occupying” places in your unshowered state…PISS OFF AND GET A JOB!

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Insanity on the loose in Malibu

Sep 22

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The Malibu High School football field needs lights for night games.  There should be no controversy about that:  after all, who wouldn’t want their kids occupied with wholesome school based activities that parents and school officials participate in on Friday nights?  Currently, they only play afternoon games and most parents can’t watch their kids play those games.  Few issues are this open and shut.  But it is Malibu, so this has become a two-year controversy.

You might have heard me talking about how crazy LA has become before and have been skeptical about the depth of the crazy.   I have some letters to the editor about the football field lighting controversy from The Malibu Surfside news, one of the two major local Malibu papers.  This is just from one week.

I’ll read some of the letters to you just so you get an idea of what I live around and why I have so few friends in the area.

POLLUTION

Editor:

According to the Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, excessive night lighting is now recognized as a form of pollution.

There are so many reasons not to have night lighting at Malibu High School, I thought I would write some of them down. I’m sure many people may have not heard of the Western Conenose Bloodsucking Bug, which is prevalent in the Malibu High School area. These parasites feed on the blood of squirrels, wood rats, and other rodents in the area.

Especially in the spring these bugs fly out towards bright lights at night to feed. Humans are a favorite for the Conenose, but we do not have an evolved immunity to the secretions of their bites. When they bite a human, with their stiletto-type mouth parts, the Conenose inject substances like an anesthetic which will cause drowsiness so they can feed on their victims blood undisturbed.

These substances can also produce anaphylactic shock and even death. A mayor of Westlake died of a bite. At best a mild reaction produces a hot, red, swollen goose egg on the skin. Lights at the Malibu High School might just be inviting hordes of this pest into the neighborhood, which could be a public health issue as well. One may not be safe indoors either, since the Conenose can enter through crevices in a home.

Another would-be problem could be rabid bats. Bats feed on the many moths and insects that are attracted to the lights. If there is plenty for them to eat, they will start to roost in the neighborhood. This summer alone, there were at least 12 rabid bats found in Moorpark, and one man was bitten in his driveway while walking to put out his trash. Bats will also bite dogs, cats and livestock.

With the bright lights, we could also have an issue with bird migrations along the coast at night. Night traveling birds navigate by the stars. With the bright lights, they could get confused or dazzled by the lights.

Another negative impact is that the annual cycles of growth and reproduction in trees controlled by day length can potentially be altered by supplemental lighting. This night pollution could affect the diurnal pattern of natural light that trees use as seasonal cues. It has been known since the 1940’s that it is the duration of uninterrupted darkness during a 24-hour cycle that governs developmental processes in trees, such as dormancy, shoot growth, and flowering.

With all of these concerns and more why should we be lighting up the night skies of Malibu?

Linda Joslynn

Now, I don’t want to say that Linda Joslynn is crazy but bloodsucking moths that killed a mayor?  12 Rabid bats?  Confused birds? These lights are going to kill all of the plant life around them.  These vampiric moths can get into the crevices of your home:  none of us are safe.  North Korea has it right: we should ban all lights in America.  We’ve all been living in grave danger and have not even known it!

Michael Brown, in a second letter to the editor, gives us even more reason to be terrified of the illumination of a football field for six nights a year:

Here is the second one.

Editor:

The Malibu residents who want night lights at the high school are right to want to create a spirit of community and an opportunity for youth to play sports. Everyone wants these, but at what price?

Is it worth dividing the community over? When Westmont College decided to install similar 18-foot-tall stadium lights for night baseball, the residents of Montecito and Santa Barbara said, “No,” and the college dropped the idea.

When Palos Verdes Peninsula High School decided to install stadium lighting for night games, local residents said, “No,” and the school board voted to prohibit night- time football.

The reason coastal residents don’t favor stadium lighting is because we live with low clouds and a marine layer which causes light to reflect back to earth. This is termed sky glow pollution. This means that while a group of persons under the stadium lights is enjoying themselves, a group of persons 20 times that size is blinded by the immense sky glow pollution that destroys their views of the ocean, mountains and night sky– eliminating for possibly 100 nights a year the very reasons they moved to Malibu.

There are lots of ways to create community spirit and provide sports for youth without blasting wildlife out of their nests and destroying ocean and mountain views for residents for miles around.

Michael Brown

It’s funny:  in my experience, lights have helped me see the ocean and mountains through illumination but I stand corrected:  not only will the birds and plants be blinded by these lights, and Malibu will be destroyed but so will we!

There is only one solution:  Michael and Linda are right, but I think we should go one step further:  we should tear down all of Malibu High School and build an insane asylum:  we need to get these people off the street.  These ideas can be contagious:  and children might hear:  after all, without football, they have nothing better to do.

I’ll include a link on my website with a link to the Malibu Surfside News  if you need a laugh, go through the archives:  the “against” outnumbers “for” 10 to 1! The letters are on page 9 of the pdf file.

If you don’t believe me about the tone and the substance of the letters to Editor, you can view the letters for yourself here:

http://www.malibusurfsidenews.com/archives/09152011.pdf

 

Babysitter Blues

Sep 1

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I have to say that I really admire the California legislature.  I really do.  I am in total awe of the imagination it takes them to find ways to get crazier and crazier but they have managed to outdo themselves yet again.

There is a bill pending in the senate now dubbed “the babysitter bill”.  The bill was written by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco.  It has passed through the assembly and doesn’t look like it will have any opposition from the Senate:  not one Republican has supported it but that really doesn’t matter as Republicans have no voice in the California political system.

It is now Senate Bill 889 and there are conflicting reports about the requirements in the bill (the actual text of the bill reads like the health care bill: dense with big words and legalese to be vague and confusing and thus pointedly vague) but the bottom line of the bill is this:

If a parent hires a babysitter for the night who is over the age of 18:  we’re talking a part time babysitter, not a full time nanny, the parents are now required to do a myriad of impossible things.

First, you have to give the babysitter a bi-weekly official pay stub and an accurate itemized statement in writing showing gross wages earned, total hours worked by the employee, the number of piece rate units earned and any applicable piece rate if the employee is paid on a piece rate basis:  I don’t know what a piece rate is so I don’t know hard this will be, and all deductions, provided that all deductions made on written orders of the employee can be aggregated and shown on one item, the dates the employee is paid, the name of the employee and his or her social security number, the name and address of employer, and all applicable hourly rates during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate by the employee.  You have to pay them overtime pay and pay them a least minimum wage. You have to provide them with workman’s comp insurance if they are injured on the job.  These are crazy, but the craziest one is that you have to give them a 10 minute break after either 2 or 4 hours of work (I keep getting conflicting reports on this one) and give them a half hour lunch break after either 4 to 5 hours of work, which means you’re either going to have to keep coming back or provide a second person to relieve the first person.  At least they took out the provision that required an hour of paid vacation time for every 30 hours worked!  Yay!).   Basically, as a parent in California, we are never going to go out again if we want to do it legally.  They of course don’t take into account that with a baby I am too sleep deprived to do math, let alone figure out how to do entirely legal pay stubs. Plus, basically it looks like I’m hiring a babysitter so that I can get away to fill out all of these forms.  Great.  And I need to get away sometimes:  you have no idea.  I’m basically a shut in with a bossy midget.  My idea of a good time is watching Lifetime movies:  I’m looking forward to getting back to The Stranger Beside Me later today, God help me.  Why can’t California let me go out and be an adult for more than four hours without major consequences???

Tom Ammiano is a gay former schoolteacher who lives in San Francisco.  I don’t know what his angle is.  Is he incredibly out of touch with the needs of normal parents or did he work with so many parents he hated during his tenure as a schoolteacher that he is finally able to exact his revenge on all parents with this bill? Or maybe this is just being done so that both the employee and employer have to provide taxable income and the information that pertains to it to the state so that they have more of our personal information. Or maybe it just backs up what Hilda Solis said from the department of labor:  from Obama’s Dream Act, if you’re an illegal alien and an employee, you can stay in the United States:  is this thus just a way to get more illegal aliens to stay in the United States?  I don’t know. I can’t tell if California is out of touch or nefarious but all I know is yet again they are directly inconveniencing me, a member of their population.  What will they think of next?

POSTSCRIPT:

If you think this story is too bizarre to believe, here are some links to the story and the actual legislation

http://www.theunion.com/article/20110830/BREAKINGNEWS/110839991

http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_889/20112012/

 

 

 

A Disgruntled Letter From My Uncle Herb re: My “Celebrity Baby Naming Foolishness” Blog Post

Jun 26

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Herb in happier times

Francine,

It has come to my attention that you’ve published, not on your social media page, but on your professional website, some very unkind and untrue things about my sister and myself.

http://finigoodman.com/?p=116

Text of story below.

I have no idea what motivated you, or how you reached the conclusions that you did, especially in light of the fact that over the course of the last 25 years we have probably spent less than four hours in the same room together.

Your writing is libelous, hurtful, and brings disgrace to the entire family.

Please remove these statements immediately.

Virtually yours,

Herb Goodman, Professor

Chair, Art and Design Department

Eastern Kentucky University

x09 Campbell Bldg.

x21 Lancaster Ave.

Richmond, KY 40xxx-xxxx

xxx.xxx.xxxx

“First we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us”

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Comedy Club Context

Jun 26

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Recently Tracy Morgan, one of the stars of the sitcom 30 Rock, had a less than stellar comedy set that turned into a major PR crisis.  Morgan was in a comedy club ranting about homosexuality.  Morgan said that if he ever had a gay son that he would tell him to “come home to him and talk to him like a man” or he would “pull out a knife and stab that “Little N-you–know-what-word” to death”.

A report of Morgan’s rant was posted on Facebook by someone in the audience that night who called the post “Why I No Longer ‘Like’ Tracy Morgan.”  Newscasters became rabid with glee at a new celebrity scandal and zealously reported on Morgan’s lack-of-good-taste-and-judgment gaffe.  Morgan has had to do an apology tour a la Michael Richards, making numerous press statements pandering to gay activists and lamenting his lack of sensitivity.  He even has to go back to the Nashville comedy club where the incident happened to apologize directly to audience members who may have been offended. Bob Greenblatt, his boss at NBC, has alluded to the fact that if something like this happens again, Morgan will lose his job on 30 Rock.

Has society gotten so idiotic where we can no longer do comedy anymore? Has our collective IQ gotten so low that we can no longer listen to satire which is supposed to exaggerate reality to make a comic point and not take it literally?  If I say to my husband, “I’m going to kill you if you eat too much garlic again” I hope that people who may overhear me do realize I’m not actually threatening his life:  I’m exaggerating to make the point that the resulting body odor emanating out of my husbands skin pores and sweat glands following his garlic consumption is very displeasing to me.   Where has context gone?  Tracy Morgan was not saying these things on the Court House steps or at a press conference about homosexual eradication strategies or from the Oval office during a presidential address on national TV outlining official policy:  he was doing a bit in a COMEDY CLUB! We are even hearing the bit out of context:  we are hearing the most inflammatory parts of the bit with no set up and then judging them:  sort of like if you just overheard me yelling at my husband “I’m going to kill you” in regards to his garlic consumption and calling the police on his behalf without having a scintilla of evidence that his life is in danger from my rage.  I am particularly disturbed by how Morgan’s co-workers (some of whom happen to be fellow comedians) are piling on him.   Tina Fey (Morgan’s executive producer which may explain he newfound lack of a funny bone and costar of the show 30 Rock and the person who openly said that she mocked Sarah Palin mercilessly so that she could destroy her political ambitions) made these comments about Morgan:  she described what he said as, “disturbing…at a time when homophobic hate crimes continue to be a life threatening issue for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.” Really Tina Fey?  You really think that Tracy Morgan is calling up anti-gay troops to murder homosexuals? Has your fame made you into such a humorless shrew?  It does explain why 30 Rock has jumped the shark this year. Her comments are so ignorant: while gay people around the world are facing real danger from Moslems, Fey chooses to fret over the danger posed to gays from Tracy Morgan fans? Are you kidding me?

Fey is…-er was a comedienne:  she should at least understand that to be funny one has to go “too far” since by definition, that is what comedy is: exaggeration. Fey’s parents are Republicans.  She whined in her book that even her parents told her that she had gone “too far” with her Sarah Palin imitation.  Even with the death threats that Sarah Palin’s family received during the height of the Palin derangement syndrome, Fey didn’t censor herself: she became even more brutal on Palin, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Sarah Palin and her family including young children were facing very real danger. Palin, not being a humorless shrew, actually appeared on Saturday Night Live with Fey and made fun of herself.

I’ve always thought of the ability to laugh at oneself as a sign of intelligence and strength, and the ability to laugh at our leaders as a sign of freedom.  America has divided itself into two different groups of people:  those who can laugh at themselves and their leaders and those who cannot.  Not coincidentally, America has divided itself into two groups:  those who want to impose political correct speech and conduct codes resulting in the loss of our freedom, known as the democrats and those who want to preserve it who are known as the people who vote against democrats.  I guess each of us will have to decide what side we are on. The very future of laughter is going to be at stake. In the old USSR, in Cambodia and in Red China, there was not a lot of humor and smiles. I hope our society becomes less like those tyrannies, not more.

 

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