Today's Far Too Graphic

Eerily accurate, found online and slightly modified to ensure that all problems are "solved."

Nipped, Tucked, and Friarized...

"nip?" Well, 22 points is, if you think about it, only

eleven 2 point conversions
Three touchdowns (two missed extra points) and a field goal
More scoring than any soccer game has ever seen
George Bush's approval rating

nipped? NIPPED? NIPPED!!!!???

GAk! I'm off for a quick nip...

drink, young woman, or body part...

ESPN is insane..

Our title is from an excellent song “These Things” by She Wants Revenge. The song is full of truly lovely lines that each beg for explication ("I’m not a bad man, I’m just overwhelmed” is a very clever summation of the banality of evil), but the line that really caught me was

“This is the time of your life, but you just can’t tell”

That struck me. I look back on times I know I wasn’t all that ecstatic as some of the best times of my life. I mean, the 10 years I spent drinking, snorting coke and reading were certainly formative years. Just today the outreach-monkey was disgusted that I knew that Haile Selassie was a critical figure in Rastafarianism and asked how I knew "all this useless information." My answer - drinking, cocaine, Social Security checks, and reading - was clearly found wanting. In truth, that time I romanticise was also fairly lacking - money and hot chicks, among other things. Still, pretty much everything I've ever learned dates to that time.

As I walked on, iPod spinning lovely tunes (as it turns out I think that I have pretty good taste in music). I realized that things are pretty cool around here and perhaps the trick to get through life (if living long enough to die of old age actually constitutes “getting through”) is to accept this as you go along.

Which is why I enjoyed my walk to work this morning in excessive amounts…

For an old fat guy with questionable knees, I enjoy walking immoderately, and it was a lovely day. I tripped on the 50's era signs on Big Car Avenue (Stupid set of photos certainly in the near future), nibbled my bagel and sipped my coffee. I stopped at Major Retail/Housing Project to type some notes on my laptop and make use of their excellently clean restrooms.
I was late to work and no one gave a damn, I knew I'd chat with the techsupp boys later and the BAG would be coming around in the evening.

Not a bad day, really.

As Ice Cube might have said...

Even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp
And it read Ice Cube's a pimp
Drunk as hell but no throwing up
Half way home and my pager still blowing up
Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.
I got to say it was a good day.

Or, perhaps closer to reality...

"Keep Yourself Alive"
(bonus Wikipedia Link for MAF)

The Actual Thingie...

now.. NOW the checks can come pouring in!

I received a rather bulky parcel in the mail today and it turned out to be my Diploma!

Now I am the Master of My Own Domain, or something very much like it..

Turns out I got my thesis ok'd in time to graduate as of "the fifteenth day of July, 2007."

I suppressed a momentary urge to go out and get a beer, and watched a Simpson's episode instead. The BAG was going to come over tonight, but her suicidal move into the ghetto was not quite complete, so she switched to tomorrow night. Alas, it would have been a bit more of a celebration had she been around.

I suppose this really means that I could head to Korea at any time I want, now. Conversation at work revolves around the 'threat' that the chancellor is going to come and sweep us all out of our positions (well, not me, as I'm classified - and leaving anyway). This would be perverse in the way that all CC decisions are perverse. After all, for over a year (since the new management team landed) we have grown beyond all expectations, including dwarfing the growth of our sister college who, by all rights, should be swamping us.

but the paranoid logic goes something like this:

No good deed goes unpunished, and as our chancellor intends to make his statewide career off of his work at Swamp Valley College District, he needs to make the district "his." We are in one of those states exploding with young Hispanics, and the issue of the next few decades is going to be how to give access to this population. The chancellor, therefore, will need to make SVC a Hispanic Serving Institution and then claim an expertise that can move up to the statewide scale. This is certainly believable because the chancellor, while very effective, is also remarkably self-serving (at this level all adminstrators are). So far so good, but I am just naive enough to wonder why this would necessitate a wholescale elimination of management.

Our deans, certainly, have been indolent to the point of coma. Much of the growth we have accomplished has been with me cast in the role of Cassandra (at first) waving sheaths of paper in the air and yelling "I can predict what sections we can fill, if we would only open them!" But even the somnolent deans (well, most) have seen the reality of this and now when I look at local demos and past rosters they grudgingly listen and open (albeit at a fearfully conservative pace) new sections. Which fill. So we should grow. That I am doing the research and suggestion is reason enough to fire all the deans.

On the student-services side, all is not perfect, but all is way better than it was two years ago, and although there is deadwood it needs pruning not uprooting. The paranoids point to the fact that we have already had two new administrators come in who are Hispanic. Pointing out that they replaced two Hispanic departees is for naught.

Then there is the issue of academic inertia - it is hard to get rid of employees, even contract ones (primarily deans and administrators). Here at SVC everyone, with the exception of the anglos, has an ethnic identification that brings with it automatic local support. We have learned, in years past, that you let an employee go, and these ethnic identifications immediately conjure up support - and loud public support that the board really doesn't like to see. So the only way to force a contract employee out is to make their life so miserable that they want to leave. This is a fine line, however, as the threat of the "workplace atmosphere" suit always lingers in the air. And, indeed, SVCD has a longstanding and solid tradition of ex-employees winning lawsuits - sometimes retirement quality versions.

Instructors, of course, are protected by tenure and ultimately unimportant to chancellorial designs - not only that, they turnover at a glacial rate and only new-hires represent a way to change things. Classified are protected by union, and it is difficult to lay them off - certainly not in numbers that would constitute a re-organization. So one way or another it will come down to the contract admins, if change is to come.

I'll be interested in watching this play out. If I go and one other key person on the marketing team goes, the growth will certainly ratchet back a bit - the deans just haven't been pounded enough yet to be sensible. At that point, who knows? The re-org might come, heads might roll, and from very far away... say Korea.. I will point and laugh.

"But this is LA and you're rich and famous!"

The Lindsay Lohan story. ;-)

Monday's Money is Tuesday's .44 Caliber Breakfast

I'm reading this here blog SBFH and the blogger, quite seriously, says -

Is it odd that I've seldom had relationships with men in which I was treated with love and respect? I don't mean that as any type of dig against the other people involved.

I'm not sure how it could be a dig at the other people. The common thread in this is the blogger.

When I was a young and self-inflated lad, my uncle said to me that since everyone hated me for my snotty superior attitude and sarcasm, I must be a jerk or a genius (of the misunderstood variety), and that I should contemplate which was more likely based on the evidence.

I quickly figured that out.

Years later I noticed this on Springer ... people would say some version of "I gotta be me" and then not understand why everyone hated them... They tried to hold two thoughts that shouldn't go together..

1) I can act however I want and that is me.
2) People should love me despite what I do.

Einstein? If you don't act a way people like, how are they gonna love you?

If everyone treats you a similar way?

you're probably asking for it...

It boggles me that this simple understanding seems to evade people.

The only weird thing?

As it turns out? I AM a genius...

And all of you are jerks!

Run to the Hills

Aaaah.. a trip up to the Lovely Sister's pad to see the parents, in town from some island right off the shore of the country. The ride up was completely uneventful, although it took far longer than it should have. I was looking for a certain kind of Swiss Army Knife (SWAK) to replace one the the Replacement Dad had lost during airline travel. That alone is a funny enough story, as once at the airport RD realized he had the knife on his person and ran over to the airport folks to figure out what to do about it. They wrapped it up, bundled it in a box, and checked it into luggage. Upon landing, RD and Moms picked up their luggage, with the wrapped box intact.

Except now, mysteriously, it was empty. Which means that one of the fine TSA folks who protect us from terrorists (well, them and permanent incarceration without charges at Guantanamo, CIA torture, and the death of habeas corpus) now has a lovely SWAK.

But the RD didn't and so I had a task I had to perform.

As usual, I failed completely.
My attempt to find the "Explorer" model led me on a merry chase. Which means I stopped at ever sporting goods store, gun store, and camping store on the way from Big City to the hills. And they had lots of SWAKS.

Apparently Swiss Army makes something like 5-Brazilian (ask George Bush, the lesser) different models of knives. Heck, I learned that some of them even had two toothpics built in. This is in case you and a close friend ever both need toothpicks, but your friend is some kind of clean freak who won't use yours.

The stores I visited had the:

Discoverer
Mangler (every blade is the double-toothed saw. So is the handgrip)
Hunter-Gatherer
Murderer (Came with duct tape and plastic bags)

and every other knife known to man.

But no "Explorer."

Besides that, the only thing of note on the trip was two gas stations who had gasoline for under $3/gallon. This does not happen much in the Golden State and so I took a picture of the prices just to prove this to any sceptics out there.

Once on the hill, it was food and wine and party til nearly midnight. Past my bedtime really. But fun. The food was outstanding and I drank wine until about 10:30 and then guzzled as much water as I could until we went to bed about an hour later.

Slept in til 8:15 or so and spent the morning working with MLS on some political mailing pieces she is working with. The local folks have good intentions, but at the local office level there is no one with any marketing or design experience and the pieces they want to send out, unfortunately, show that lack.

Today it was all about wandering around the meadow-lake and bothering small insects, many of which I photographed, so that's the pictures.

Then, a return to the home of MLS and a bit of hanging out with the parental units. It is a pretty chill day if your big issue is whether or not you should stay home and eat yesterday's leftovers, or go down to the local greasy-spoon and soak up some of that good old-time charm that typically manifests itself in bland food that is too hot, bland women who are too cold, and beers at over $4 a pop.

It's an outrage, but it's a local one, so I suppose I am ok with it.

Tomorrow, the long ride back down the hill, and I shall leave as Aurora's golden fingers lightly open the doors of my eyes...

....and reveal my hangover. ;-)

Thursday Comicallness...

I am a man of unvaried routines. And each Thursday evening I check out two websites.

Well, two non-porn websites.

Get Fuzzy and The Comics Curmudgeon.

Get Fuzzy is obvious and I love all it's.. well.... loveable characters..

I am pretty much Satchel Pooch,

although I imagine myself as Bucky Katt


anyway... best comic around since Boondocks went out...

The Curmudgeon is a different critter. He (Josh) seems to like (if by "like" you mean make diminutive, snarky, and clever comments) all comics and damned if, during the famous Aldo Kelrast ("Stalker") discussion he didn't even make me love Mary Worth.

Well, in a non-stalking manner.

Man.. I love me some them comix...