Protection from force and fraud.

I have said this before, but I realize I have skipped some details. When I actually was a fresh faced lad, I was registered as Libertarian. This means that in 1976 when I voted for the first time, I cast my vote for Roger McBride, the Libertarian candidate, instead of for the eventual winner Jimmy Carter.

I thought the Democratic Party was too soft on Nixon's worst offenses. If we had any Democratic senators today with the cojones of Frank Church, it would be a dream come true.

I went to a Libertarian meeting, and that one exposure soured me on the party. I had read some of the literature and I understood the first principle of libertarianism at the time, which was that government should protect the people from force and fraud. Hard core libertarians believe in police, prison guards and soldiers as valuable government employees and everyone else is just taking up space. I was upset about illegal wiretaps and the war on drugs. There were some people in the room who could get just as worked up by the idea of the government running the post office. I asked about environmental protections. I was nearly alone in the room in considering the loss or degradation of our common needs, like clean water and air, as force. I didn't go back.

Roger MacBride wasn't an idiot. Seeing that the Libertarian Party was going nowhere, he rejoined the Republican Party in 1983 to form the Republican Liberty Caucus, a group devoted to promoting libertarian ideas inside the Republican party.

Unfortunately, MacBride the non-idiot would never have a significant fraction of the influence of the idiot Ronald Reagan, lionized beyond all recognition. I will grant you that George W. Bush may be duller than Reagan and Reagan did not get us into two wars he did not know how to end, but because Bush's legacy is under such a cloud, I still rank Reagan as the worst president of my lifetime.

George W. Bush is the turd the Republicans flushed. Ronald Reagan is the turd they worship.

Avuncular, well practiced in front of the cameras, Reagan could deliver a line, I will give him that. One of his most revered witticisms is "These are the the nine scariest words in the English language: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

He repeated this many times at many campaign stops.

As a former Libertarian and past, present and future logician, I could figure out what this really meant.

Government is force and fraud.

Cops, firefighters, teachers, janitors, nurses, construction workers... all just a bunch of parasites that need to be eradicated.

This is the logical conclusion of what Saint Ronnie said, and the Republican Party at the local, state and federal level are following that statement without question today, in the executive, legislative and - possibly most frighteningly - judicial branches around the country.

The worst ideas of the ugly, cancer-ridden cult leader Ayn Rand have become the unquestioned marching orders of one of the two parties in the alleged greatest experiment in democracy.

Some people might view this as class warfare.

To them I say, "Fucking A."

Better class warfare than class genocide. We can't match their money, but as it stands right now, we have a hell of a lot more ballots than they do. We have to use them every chance we get. Until the conservative movement has a better idea than "Fuck you, I've got mine", they deserve the undying enmity of everyone who works for a living.

Here endeth the lesson.

Redefining nightmares.

Nightmares are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, nightmares were about fear. Wake up with a scream, go in to mom and dad's room and ask if you can sleep with them.

You know the drill.

As I got older, nightmares were not so much about fear as anxiety, especially the inability to solve a problem. When I was in college, I would sometimes have dreams that there was a bureaucratic screw-up and there was no paperwork proving that I had passed fifth grade. So I'd be pulled out of a class on topolgy to go into a room with little individual desks, learning about the Louisiana Purchase and long division.

Worse yet, no milk and graham crackers.

Grr.


I had a couple very vivid dreams this week. In one, I was in the middle of your standard zombie apocalypse.

You know the drill. Lots of zombies, very slow, unrelenting, usually ineffective against flamethrowers or even a sturdy baseball bat.

And I have this feeling like, okay, this isn't good, but I can handle it. Somehow I got this far and sure, life sucks, but this is a manageable level of suckitude.

You might think this is a metaphor for being a part-time teacher in this economy.

You might very well think that, but I couldn't possibly comment.

Okay, I'm out fighting zombies, trying to find a safe place, when the military comes in, surrounds us non brain-eating civilians, beats the hell out of any zombies stupid enough not to run away and takes us to safety.

This is often when the credits roll in a zombie movie, but in my dream, not so much.

I notice that the officers look more or less normal, but the grunts are kind of grey and steroidal, and they actually grunt a lot. Sometimes they start fighting each other viciously, and the cure for all problems with these huge, armed galoots is to feed them something called "moorehead". It's a grey glop, kind of the shape of meat loaf, sometimes cooked, sometimes served cold in sandwiches. Civilians are advised not to eat it.

Clever me, I understand the plot devices in my own dreams. These guys are some kind of zombie hybrids and they still eat brains. I don't know if it's cow brains and cat brains or people brains, but I'm thinking I might not be as safe as I'm supposed to be, so I start looking for ways to escape.

I find my way to the edge of camp and look for some way exit. There is an attack on the camp by people who are clearly not zombies. They kind of look like the better looking people in a Mad Max movie (here exemplified by Virginia Hey, as in "Hey, who's the new girl?") and their leader is going on about "pure blood" and re-building the human race". I understand that he's talking about the zombie hybrids, but these people are also kind of steroidal with some Nazi-like undertones that don't make me particularly comfortable.

And then I wake up. I'm not screaming, my heart isn't racing. I'm thinking about this like a teacher reviewing a student's first draft of a story. Plenty of plot points, but who is our likable character? While we have obstacles, is there a chance for redemption? Are there people pulling strings behind the scenes?

In other words, is this a two hour movie, a mini-series or the start for a role playing game?

But then there's what passes for a nightmare in my boring, middle aged brain. I'm someplace far from home, maybe in Santa Cruz down south or Sonoma up north. Obviously, I drove here, but when I come out to look for my truck, it's gone.

I search the parking lot. Nothing. Maybe I got turned around, so I check another parking lot.

Nothing.

Shit. My truck was stolen.

And then I wake up. Pissed.

Shit! My truck was stolen! What am I gonna do now? Will insurance cover it? How am I going to get around?

Then I think, wait... where am I?

I'm in my room in Oakland.

How did I get back to Oakland without a truck?

I don't own a truck.

Did I borrow my dad's truck?

No, I'm in Oakland. I just dreamt I was far away and my truck (or whoever's truck) was stolen.

So instead of waking up scared, I wake up pissed, that kind of pissed you get when something is stolen and you have no one to blame but the world in general. Even after I knew it wasn't real, I was still feeling pissed for about ten minutes.

It was very odd to have this emotion lingering on when I knew nothing real caused it. Maybe I should talk to my sister Karlacita! about this. Emotions are her thang nowadays.

Still, if I ever get a hold of the guy who stole that truck...

Wait.

No zombies. No zombie soldiers. No steroidal pure bloods. No truck. No trip to Sonoma or wherever.

Dreams.

Okay, now I feel better.

Matty Boy lends a hand to the American economy.[Finally.]

I don't like shopping. I tend to buy stuff and use it until it wears out, then try to figure out how to use it in its decrepit and flawed state.

When I finally decide to shop, I have a three step process.

1. Do I need something?
2. If the answer to question #1 is yes, can I afford it?
3. If yes to both questions #1 and #2, do I know where to get it?

If yes to #3, mission accomplished!

Because of a favorable work situation at long last, I am in the unusual position of having a few nickels to rub together, which means I can ask the Three Essential Questions of Shopping™ about what is euphemistically known as a Big Ticket Item.

The recliner I bought early this century is no longer truly usable and I need a new one.

So we have a yes to question #1 and I can make a budget to say yes to question #2. The thing is, I am not clear on question #3.

Wednesday was my birthday, and my dad, bless him, bought me a birthday lunch as usual. I asked him if he had time to drive me over to Sears a few blocks away to look at recliners and he said yes.

We went. They had one recliner on the floor.

One. And it sucked.

As my friend Mina put it so well, Iron Curtain levels of service at Western democracy prices.

Okay, that didn't work. My dad, wise in ways younger than his years, advised me I should look online first, and he suggested Big Lots, which sells a lot of stuff at low prices.

Thursday, I took BART down to BayFair and walked over to the Big Lots. Much better selection than Sears and much lower prices, but the stuff wasn't that good.

I sleep in my recliner. I need a good one.

So comes the third step in what is usually a one step process for me.

On Friday, I went to the La-Z-Boy showroom in Emeryville.

Oh. My. Lack. Of. God.

La-Z-Boy is the leader in the industry, so you might think you are getting the Toyota of recliners, but the selection is absolutely astounding and if you sit in just the right one, you will know you are in the Cadillac of recliners.

I could have written "Mercedes" instead of "Cadillac", but La-Z-Boy is an American company that still makes their product in the good old U.S.A., and they definitely know what they are doing. The quality is good, the service is impressive and the sales staff was knowledgeable and low key. I was walking around looking for chairs and I saw other customers in their perfect and near perfect chairs doing everything they could to keep from drooling.

It's reeeeallllly nice.

I have no idea what percentage of people walk into a La-Z-Boy showroom and leave with a product. I have no idea what percentage of bugs wander into a Venus Flytrap and end up lunch. I suspect the numbers are just about the same.


I sat in a lot of chairs that were in my price range, but the one I liked best was the Maverick. I went in with the idea that I didn't want a rocker, but the mechanism of a La-Z-Boy rocker is significantly better than other rocker recliners I've tried, so I was debating between the rocker and the non-rocker, which they call a Wall Saver. There were two versions of the Maverick right next to each other. The salesman who greeted me, a nice fella named Aaron, walked me away from these Mavericks across the showroom floor to a non-rocker Maverick with leather upholstery.

I sat down. I did everything I could to keep from drooling. I may not have been entirely successful.

This was the only attempt to up-sell me. It was about $300 more and I decided, with an itty bitty tear in my eye, the leather Maverick was not for me, even at the end of the year sales prices.

I am now the proud owner of a La-Z-Boy recliner. It will be delivered on Tuesday. If the ownership experience is even half as nice as the shopping experience, I am going to be happy for many years to come, especially given how little I usually like the shopping experience.

If you need a recliner, you should take a look at their selection. I perfectly understand if it is out of your price range, but if you decide to go with someone else, at least you will know what you are missing.

Just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true.

I live frugally. Being a broke-ass mofo will do that to you sometimes, though some people's mileage may vary. I remember reading Calvin Trillin's tribute book to his lovely wife Alice, and she had a phrase about people that was not meant as a compliment.

"He lives like a grad student."

That still applies to me.

So I sometimes have mac and cheese as a meal. Usually, I chop up some celery, put in some frozen peas and add in some form of animal protein, quite often tuna. But this time at the grocery, I thought I'd splurge and try something else as the meaty goodness and bought some Canadian bacon. I looked at the package and though it was more expensive than the cheapest tuna, the amount of calories and fat weren't that different if I cut up just a few slices.

The package said the back bacon needed to be cooked, so I chopped it up and fried it in the pan, poured out some of the fat and put in some milk, butter and prison sauce to mix in the cheese packet, then mixed in the peas and celery.

It was really delicious. I'm sure the deliciousness is not caused by healthy ingredients. My best guess is it's the sugar they use in the curing process, but there's no denying it was tastier than usual.

And to repeat the title of this post, just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true.

Learning to believe.

I watched Religulous this weekend. Didn't care for it much. Seeing it was a chore to be performed so I can call myself educated. I watched Passion of the Christ for the exact same reason. These movies helped me re-learn things I already knew. The Mel Gibson mess reminded me I don't like torture porn. The Bill Maher mess reminded me I don't like comedy based on embarrassing people.

Maher says he wasn't the best candidate to become a skeptic because he was raised Catholic by his father, with no noted objections from his Jewish mother, until one day his father stopped going to church when Maher was a teen. Actually, when he talks about how much he hated church as a kid, he sounds like an excellent candidate.


In all modesty, I am a better candidate for skepticism, though I tried Christianity for a few years as an adult. My parents were not churchgoers, but they didn't forbid us to attend if friends asked. I tried it a few times, but I didn't like it at all.

And yet I believed in the unseen, in forces greater than myself. They were called dinosaurs, and it took some faith to accept their existence, seeing as they had been extinct for millions of years before humans walked the earth. My parents bought me a bunch of natural science books, including the one pictured here, the cover art by the most famous dinosaur artist of the day Rudolph Zallinger, best known for his Age of Reptiles mural which is still on display at the Peabody museum at Yale. The museum asks folks not to reproduce the enormous painting, and that request makes sense, in large part because no reproduction can convey the sheer size of a painting 110 feet wide.

The quibbler in me can't resist this. The painting above is from a bygone era and our beliefs about the dinosaurs have evolved. We know longer think the Brachiosaurus (not a Brontosaurus, different shaped head) was a swamp dweller and most paintings today of an Allosaurus (like a Tyrannosaurus, but smaller) would make it a lot thinner and not putting any weight on its tail, using it instead as a counterbalance to stay low.

I didn't just love dinosaurs. I loved all kinds of natural history. I learned about the mammals that wandered the earth after the dinosaurs went extinct. Most people would know a few of these species, notably the Mastodon and the Sabretooth Tiger (Smilodon), but I read about many more, sloths the size of bears and massive rhinoceri from Asia who were as tall at the shoulder as the top of the head of a modern day giraffe. Maybe my love for the big girls is an extension of my love for big creatures in general when I was a wee lad, I don't know. The only small critters I can remember from the Age of Mammals were the a prototype species of horse about the size of a small dog and a small pig-sized ancestor of the elephant.

And then there were the creatures who went extinct during the Time of Man, often because of man's hunting or sometimes due to man's heedlessness. Everyone knows the Dodo, a flightless bird about the size of a turkey but related to the pigeon, but only a few will know about the Moa, the Elephant Bird, Steller's Sea Cow, Ivory Billed Woodpecker and the Tasmanian Wolf. Many of these animals were hunted out of existence but others died because their habitats were destroyed. It was just over 100 years ago the species known as the Passenger Pigeon ceased to exist. Humans hunted the creature for food, but there were so many of them there would not have been enough bullets to kill them all. The widely accepted view today is the destruction of their habitat caused by the westward movement of Americans in the 19th Century brought doom to this species.

These creatures were like my own self-made catechism. I gladly committed to memory the particulars of their lives, when they lived, how they died. And they instilled in me a faith that lives to this day, a awesome feeling of both respect and disgust for the power of human heedlessness. Einstein is given credit for the clever quote "There are only two infinite things, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the first one." I think it's wrong to call it stupidity. It's more like a character flaw that the bad things we have seen are not going to happen to us, that we are somehow the exception to the rule we have seen repeated over and over again.

There are some social conservatives who believe that we cannot destroy the earth because God promised us it wouldn't happen again after the Great Flood. My catechism teaches me a different lesson. Human heedlessness is a force greater than a hundred hurricanes a year, and unlike hurricanes, it has no off-season.

It will exist for as long as we do.

Gittin' Paid (a little) and Not Gittin' Paid (a lot)

My summer session is now over and my hefty paycheck that is supposed to last me three months will be in my hot little hands tomorrow. The district was paying for office hours during the Fall and Spring semesters, but it doesn't pay for them during the Summer session, so as usual, I was working several hours for free this term. Because of budget cuts, there's talk that part-timers will not be paid for office even during the regular terms this next academic year.

You might recall me whinin' during the recent Week O' Whinin about not gittin' paid the so-called parity pay. That is a completely separate act of theft by my major employer against some of its most vulnerable employees, while the upper management gets by on pay in the low six figures. That situation may get resolved in favor of all the part-timers some time in the hopefully not-t00-distant future, but lawyers are involved, so it's anybody's guess how it will be decided or when.

As of this writing, the Peralta Community College District has ripped me off in the past four weeks to an amount in the low four figures, with promise of more theft to come this Fall.

Not good.


So what is good? Gittin' paid for blogging!

Matty Boy FTW, as the young people say!

Over at The Other Blog back in late February, I reported on Us Weekly's story about reality TV star Kristin Cavallari possibly going to drug rehab. Just this week, someone saw this post and decided it would be a great place to put a link to the website of their very nice rehab center in Southern California. They thought it was such a good idea, they even agreed to pay me for the link! Yes, someone is giving Matty Boy a check in the high two figures for a link on his blog!

Things are looking up!

Of course, this means I may never get a chance to blog for my country in the Olympics now that I've turned pro, but

1. I don't recall that anyone asked me and
   
2. the rules for Olympic status have become more lax since Avery Brundage died, so even that minor downside may be avoided.

To re-iterate, if you have a drug dependency problem AND you are in the Palm Springs area AND you have several nickels to rub together, choosing this rehab center looks like a very good option. I don't know if this even remotely describes any of my readers, but if it does, go ahead and click though the link.

And I'm not just sayin' that 'cos I'm gittin' PAID.

That would be wrong.

Week O' Whinin' 2010: Second post on grand theft

I work several jobs during the usual year, but right now the only work I am doing for pay is for the Peralta Community College District, the umbrella organization which includes Laney College. As I mentioned before, being an adjunct means the district gives you nine checks a year. They might have some small interest in how the 600 adjuncts that work for them pay the rent in July, August and September, but they really don't want to pry. If you are lucky like me, there's work in your department in the Summer session and that means a good size check at the end of July that might see you through to that next paycheck at the beginning of October. Still, there's that problem of the rent in July.

A few years back, the union for the part timers negotiated parity pay. In the Peralta District, that's a line item of $400,000 to be distributed to about 600 people, which means an average check between $600 to $700 at the beginning of July. I get a fair amount of hours during most years, and my parity pay check has been slightly above that average at around $900. This year, the Board of Supervisors at Peralta found a lawyer that thought he found a way to steal that money from us. No parity pay was distributed, with the excuse that it only had to be paid if it was a specific line item in the state budget. The Supervisors used the money for other worthy goals, I'm sure.

One small problem. Parity for all the community colleges WAS a line item in the last state budget passed. So now lawyers are involved, and we know they will get paid. How soon the 600 people who got robbed by their employer will get paid is an entirely different question.

The name "parity pay" is another ridiculous slap in the face. We are in no way at parity with the full time staff, who get twelve checks a year and fully paid medical insurance. We clamor for those full time jobs, but they usually only come open when a full timer retires or dies, and then guess who decides who will get to fill that position? The full timers.

I'd call the situation a fucking joke, but I don't hear anyone laughing.

Tomorrow, more about the priorities in the Peralta district, which means more reasons for me to whine.

I guess I like Facebook well enough.

I caught up with some folks I haven't been in touch with for a while. That's nice.

Sometimes I get friend requests from people I don't know from Adam.

Or Eve for that matter.

But then there are those annoying ads for who Googled me.

Lots of cute girls have Googled me.

I might be understating that.

Dozens of hot girls I never met in my life are Googling me.

Googling me night and day.

Shouldn't I be flattered?

But, I'm not. I wonder why they aren't doing something more valuable with their time.

I am, by my nature, a suspicious person.

Too good to be true, I naturally assume, isn't actually true.

So, cute girls, go Google somebody you've actually met once.

Maybe someone more age appropriate.

I'm not old enough to be your grandfather in California, but I might be in West Virginia.

Yay, Flags of Many Lands! Yay, Guadeloupe!

The Flag database says the official flag of Guadeloupe is the French flag, but they also have this cool logo, so maybe I should say...

Yay, Logos of many lands!

Happy Easter to all. Even the hot girls I've never met who are Googling me.

Wonders of Science news!

Once again, people interested in obscure vinyl from the 1980's have found out about The Wonders Of Science through that modern wonder of science The InterTubes, and someone has contacted me about my old band and the records we pressed. Sadly, the Padre and I don't have any extra copies of the the first record we made together, the EP entitled The Record Of The Same Name, but I still have copies of our single The Big Picture with B-side My Only Desire.

The person inquiring this time is a nice young fellow named Josh Cheon, a native of New Jersey now living in San Francisco. He wants to make a compilation album (on vinyl, naturally) and I gave him a copy of the single. It would be easier for him if we had the master tapes, but I lost mine many moves ago. After all, we only recorded this stuff 27 years ago!

In any case, if Josh decides to include our stuff on his compilation, he might go with the B-side My Only Desire for brevity's sake. LPs sound better if each side is held to less than about 22 minutes.

I will keep you informed of any progress.

Moving forward in a backward sort of way.

So I went out yesterday and bought my first new computer in several decades. I was worried about how many chowderheads were claiming that Windows 7 was their idea, so I decided to buy a computer from a company that admits they write their own operating system.

I got the Mac Mini from the Apple Store in Emeryville. The purchasing process was fairly straightforward and it took me less than a half hour to set the thing up. Transferring over data took a little longer and currently the Mac Mini doesn't recognize the modem because it doesn't have the Earthlink software. I'll make a call today to get that situation rectified.



When I say I bought my first new computer in decades, it's not like I've still been using something from the Stone Age all this time. Friends have bought me computers or given me hand me downs, and the laptop I'm using to write this post was part of my pay for writing the Pascal's Triangle website about six years ago.

I'm not sure it's the most recent computer purchase I made, but the last computer I distinctly remember buying was a Mac 128K back in 1984. I probably spent $2,000 for it, and then I had to pony up for a second floppy drive port. Remember when companies thought one floppy drive was enough external memory, or 128 K of RAM was enough internal memory?

If you do, you are both old and a nerd. I don't mean to be harsh, but there it is.

I will keep you posted on my first impressions of the modern day Mac. I am full of fun facts about it already. For instance, did you realize that the screen is now separate from the rest of the machine and it's in color? Golly, it's like living in the future.

One degree (and 25 years) of separation

As I have mentioned before, back in the 1980s Padre Mickey and I formed a band called The Wonders Of Science. It was just the two of us who recorded our first EP The Record Of The Same Name, but when we decided to go on stage we added some members so the music wouldn't just be the two of us and a drum machine. From left to right in the picture, we have the Good Padre, yours truly, the crooning Travis Hunt and Lexi, our drummer. We recorded two records on our own dime, made a music video, but we were a local band playing mostly in the South Bay Area from San Jose to Palo Alto with a few gigs in San Francisco.

When I left the combo in 1985, the rest of the guys recruited a lead guitarist, Steve Swayzee, and made a major change in musical direction. Instead of a synthesizer band, they were now a guitar combo and changed the name to A Cruel Hoax. They also put some of their songs on vinyl, and their gigs ranged further afield, from Chico in the north down to Hollywood. But still, A Cruel Hoax played their last gig in 1989, local heroes who never got a recording contract, much like The Wonders Of Science.



You might think the story of two garage bands that played back in the Reagan era would just be a fading memory, but one of our contingent, our young drummer Lexi, later changed his name to Lex and gained some national recognition on the first major reality show Survivor. His blond swoopy hair was replaced with dark spiky locks and he went for several piercings and tattoos. He was still drumming with bands, and in 2005 hooked up with some guys from the band Smash Mouth, a San Jose band that had a couple hits in the late 1990s. The new band is called The Maids Of Honor, and their songs have been heard on the network TV shows Mercy and Dirty Sexy Money. Their first album was released last month on the Halfway To Hell label.



Best wishes to The Maids Of Honor on their record release and especially to my old band mate Lex. Nice to see hard work and persistence pay off.

If I were to pray to the God of Machines...

today would be as good a day as any and better than most.

Friday afternoon, my computer crashed. I usually don't turn the machine off, just put it in sleep mode, but Friday morning I shut it down and when I came home from class, it wouldn't turn back on. I took it to the shop and they said they'd have a look at it, but some of their equipment was on the fritz, so there won't be any word until today.

The good news is that the data appears to be retrievable, and if the problem is just the power supply the fix will be fairly easy.

If not, I may be in the market for a new computer. I haven't bought a computer in probably 20 years, maybe more. The one I used back in the 1990's was a gift from my friend Kevin; it still works for writing homework and quizzes, but is way too slow to hook up to the Internet today. My upgrade was a laptop I got as part of my payment for writing the Pascal's Triangle website, and that's what I'm using to write this post. It's slow and there are keys that don't work, like the Ctrl key, which slows work down considerably. The computer in the shop was a second hand computer from my friend Alan, a major upgrade over the seven year old laptop. I'm thinking about what I will buy if the news is bad today, but I'll wait for the verdict before deciding my next step.

As you can see, the illustration is from a O-L-D science fiction story about a computer-reliant alien race. Those wacky SF writers! Where did they get their crazy ideas? A race reliant on computers indeed! It sure would suck to be them.