Too soon for ?

Kinda hard to imagine the two phrases 'too soon for' and 'cease fire' making any sense whatsoever in the same sentence.

Trouble right here in River City

I suppose I'll have to go to the durned Taxi Commission meeting tomorrow night. Big Trouble in little SF TC recently. The Commission fired the "Executive Director," Heidi M. Reasons: she was carrying out her own agenda, completely apart from what the Commission had in mind, her so-call "employer." She went on a vendetta after Jim Gillespie, GM at YC these days, but mgr at Lux before that. In the works, per Commission vote & recommendation, is/was (it's passed now) a Board of Sups resolution granting cab company managers an exemption from the bloody driving requirement. JG has never tried to hide his non-driving status (like many many others who never drove, aren't driving, will never drive - there's Richie's ex-wife, a trauma nurse at UCSF Med, a sheriff in Marin Co., etc), and the measure had been hammered out at the TC over many weeks. JG felt he was having communication difficulties with Heidi, and as GM of YC representing 2/3 of the cabs in town, he requested and received an audience with hiz honor, GN. The day after that, Heidi sent her personal team of auditors to pull all of JG's waybills, (none, cuz he wasn't forging them like the above mentioned.) and brought him up for revocation for not fulfilling the DR. Then there's the matter of her bosom buddy, (isn't this a name for a '70's (1870's!) melodrama? ) Tristan Bettancourt, who she hired as her assistant at the TC (was her roomie for 10 years, also hired by her as assistant in her *last* Civil Service job (water dept., IIRC) TB is a former YC driver. Convicted in 1987 for robbing his taxi passengers' homes after he'd dropped them off at SFO or the theatre. During the late '90s he did internet scams - lots of news about that on line! Now he has access to all our personal info. Presumably he'll only try to scam out the upper income ones among us, leaving me out heh heh heh. Every bleedin' media rag in this town took the story from the Heidi perspective: "The company's wanted me fired, because I was enforcing the rules." Hmmmm. As I recall, Mary McGuire (a Commissioner fired for her vote against Heidi)had been raising the subjects of company financial reports and waybill audits being lacking, overdue or non-existent - from approximately the 2nd meeting of the TC 7 years ago. It's all on tape somewhere. Channel 7 Eye Team -Dan Noyes- did a bit on it tonight, I learned on the TaxiL. Lots about TB, including interviews w/vics. The cameras will be at the meeting tomorrow - might even be pictures at 11 - but 'twould be surprising if the meeting concluded the "rehiring" (agenda Item) of Heidi, (or NOT) by 23:00

As I was Saying . . .

He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t
By DANIEL GILBERT

"Research shows that while people think of their own actions
as the consequences of what came before, they think of
other people’s actions as the causes of what came later."
NY Times bit

My darling 'daughter,' as her deceased mother, my good friend Carol, called her, did another one of her "I'm coming home" things last night. Cried a little bit, got 'yelled' at a bit - not nearly covering all the items I meant to cover, as I planned this rant, went to sleep, got dropped off on Mission, and. . . . She has a full 24 hours sober she says. But she's not coming home tonight.


a "'diplomatic move' by the Bush administration." Isn't that an oxymoron

15 minutes- stretched

"Most of all, it was the kind of fame -- that peculiar blogosphere kind of fame -- that made Congdon's fans feel they knew her intimately" (Not that I'd ever heard of this person til I read the online CNN bit).

OK, that explains it. Why I have always felt the bloggers I read regularly are personal acquaintances. Perhaps they 'get it.' I'm sure they get emails from tons of people who address them as tho they were brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. Oh BTW, tylenol can kill you. Violent video games w/Christian message. CNN again. I need a cigarette.

Ah ha - it's those gosh darned "Left Behind" folks, again. Reading one of those books (well, the small part I was able to consume before becoming 'full' of babble)remind me strongly of Ron Hubbard's pretense at sci fi.

"The people came out of a very large building, with multiple windows on the ground floor, and a variety of balconies above. Balconies which were variously made of concrete, different kinds of wood, such as pine, maple, mahogany, oak. These people were young and old, fat and thin. The young children were walking more slowly than the adults. A parent sometimes had to stop and wait for the child to catch up. Some of the people had red hair, some were sporting long black hair; some with blonde hair, which might have been long or short. They wore multiple colors; some were in blue, some were in green, some were in pink, some- - - -" etc. etc.

etc. Using every possible word that could be used, inflating the text to cover the maximum pages, with really very little substance involved. Hmmm L. Ron Hubbard, heh heh, the man who told a Sci Fi convention in the 1920's that the ideal way to make as much money as you could would be to set up your own religion.

And so he did. The rest, as they say, is history.

I was thinking, last night, of how extremely screwed up our government is these days. Industry insiders being appointed as overseeing regulators of their own industry, courts packed by right wing nuts ruling against our very own Constitution; president 'w' (small 'w') with his evil twin executor (the anti-Christ, Cheney)- all beginning to remind me very much of a couple of Robert Heinlein books written in the 50's. One in which the trend toward total minority employment in government offices led to a society ruled by the 'bureaucrats' who were all of colour, and loftily condescending toward all the fairer folk they oversaw: a simple extrapolation of the times. (ad.)At least three other books (one was a trilogy - can one say that?) which posited a far flung starry Empire ruled by or being attacked by a People of MiddleEastern Muslim heritage. Since they were always the villians, the most radical form of Sharia played a part in at least one of these imagined universes (universi?) IIRC, these were spawned in the late '70's, when the West was experiencing its first oil shortage, ie., gas prices skyrocketing, wide spread shortages. Who else could we vilify? Amazing isn't it, the human animal, either individually or in nation wide groups, can always find the "other" to blame for what every ill visited upon it.

Other books less clearly remembered, paint pictures that merge in my musings with the current events in our government.

Beam Me Up

I find it beyond incredulous that NASA cannot develop or find a foam product that will not crack with minor temperature variations. {{ok I get it - much more than 'minor' temp differences what with the liquid nitrogen/oxigen.}} How can this be? Was it contracted out to one of Cheneys co-conspirators? The miniscule variations on the planet shrink in comparison to the difference between here and Space. I keep shaking my head and trying to form a different question here, but it is what it is. A piece of insulation with 30 years of research behind it's composition and deployment, which curiously enough, never failed in 10 or so years of flying that bird - till over Texas, Feb. 1 of 20??. What's really going on here?

I'm tired, and leaning toward conspiracy theories tonight. Gavin Newsome trots out Gay Marriage just in time to bring all the right wing nuts out of their states of denial to vote the Shrub back in, (or rather 'in' for the first time legally)(that's a whole 'nother conspiracy). Of course, Rove kick started anti-gay marriage initiatives in several states - 4 or 5 IIRC. Plan for The New American Century. They're serious, folks. Read it and weep - or get active!

I gotta go off and find the Analog Boards- someone there may have a perfectly sane explanation of that :?)