essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with california

Enjoyed a nice half day in Long Beach.

Went to two estate sales. One where Dr. Pookie picked up some more uranium glass. And the other where I got a handful of BCE science fiction books. Maybe should have got more when they gave us a pretty friendly price for the last day. The sign said $5-$10 for HB's and it was supposed to be half off. It was $6 for 4 books and small garden pot.

Then we parked on Ocean, and strolled along the ocean. Dr. Pookie tried out her new sandals, that have FUCK TRUMP etched into the soles. We slowly figured out the right texture and wetness to leave the best impressions.

May be an image of beach

We got some walking up and down the beach, and then to Gallagher's Irish pub for lunch. Kind of a sleepy 11:30 am vibe there, no doubt it's more animated at night, but they offer tots by the pound and have really fantastic onion rings.

I've been remiss. In no particular order:

Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett. Hey, it's a Discworld novel. It does what it says on the cover. I was never big into Discworld in its heyday, and I'm still not. The best parts, as is often the case, are little humanist asides. Chosen by work book club

The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum. Really a fascinating nonfiction look at the development of forensic science in the 1920s and 1930s in the New York coroner's office, bringing a professional scientific eye to something that had been slapdash at best previously. Also an interesting look at various poisons. Each chapter is devoted to a particular poison and there's a wealth of historical detail on famous criminal cases and horrific industrial accidents and mishaps. Very good.

19th century interlude...

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), by Jerome K Jerome: Three upperclass twits go on a boating holiday by mistake. Hilarity ensues. There are some laugh out loud moments, and it's generally amusing in a Dave Barry-esque breezy way. Two n-words appear as landmines in the middle. Anyway a sample:

[Travelling with cheese in a close railway carriage] And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. The remaining four passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.

...

Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

...

Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George’s, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh. And the more I looked from George’s wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.

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Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson: The book that brough so many Midwesterners to California in the late 19th century, a romance in Southern California as Mexico gives way to the United States. Race prejudice from white Americans to Mexicans to natives. Miscegenation. Hidden treasures. Missed connections. Horse thieves and gunplay. Plenty of tragedy. I'm not sure it really presents a pleasant picture that should attract people, but there are a few lyrical passages of description of mustard fields and hills and whatnot that really are part of the SoCal landscape and may have felt exotic in Dubuque cornfields.

Back to a more modern century

Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus: Female scientist in the 1950s has really bad experiences at UCLA, pretty bad experience at a Lawrence Livermore-esque lab, finds and loses love, has a second act as a TV cooking/chemistry host, and then a rushed final act where vengeances and come-uppances come up. Enjoyable, but a few cheats and gimmicks and dropped plot threads. On the last point, I'm thinking particularly of the host stating she's an atheist on her live TV show in 1960. Although there's a bit of a flap, the book trundles on and takes the express train to the finale without fully dealing with that.

That Librarian, by Amanda Jones. A Louisiana school librarian thrust into prominence when she stands up for a public library (not school library) being attacked by censors. She is vilified by some of the townsfolk, and ultimately sues a couple of the worst for defamation. She's be the first to tel you she's no saint or superhuman figure, and she's right about that. What I think is both charming and yet detracts from her reliability as the teller of her own tale is how much she indulges in some score-setlling with some of the folk in her own small town. It's petty and yet dish-y. There's some "I won't name any names, but everyone in my town will know exactly who this is." No, really:

Another huge disappointment to me was a local elected official whom I had thought was a friend. I will call her Katie, although people in my community will know the person I am talking about. I’m not bringing her up to settle a score—at least, I hope I’m not. I’m including her so that you know the whole story.

...[different person below]

I almost came unglued and wanted to ask her who was she to quiz me about religion, morals, and agendas when she had a very public affair while she was married, to a police officer who was also married, and both of their marriages ended in divorce because of it. I kept thinking that she had a ton of gall.

But on the good side, the book does do a good job of telling people how librarians deal (within the system) with challenges to books, and why that's probably an adequate and professional way to handle things, and the public can have its say. (And there's no need for grandstanding and running off to lawyers and politicians to start passing laws.)

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Space Chantey by RA Laffery: A tall-tale science fiction-y retelling of the Odyssey. Bonkers and genius in parts, but a little too bonkers. If Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius is NOT BONKERS ENOUGH for you, this might be perfect.

I found both of these in the LA Time list of books about Los Angeles in the speculative literature sublist.

After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley is a very odd work. Something like Citizen Kane smashed into The Last Coin with a chunk of mostly annoying philosophy crammed into the middle. While it skewers a certain vision of Hollywood as it may have been in the 1930s, it rides off on its own hobbyhorse quite too far to be recognizable as LA. A crass Los Angeles millionaire funds various charities and research activities, but his obsession is eternal life. I really have to wonder if Jim Blaylock is referencing this novel in The Last Coin, or if it's just a coincidence based on the longevity of carp.

Perhaps my favorite passage has a nice LA nod to a Forest Lawn-esque cemetary:

Was it possible, Jeremy asked Iiimself, that such an object existed? It was certainly not probable. The Beverly Pantheon lacked a verisimilitude, was something entirely beyond his powers to invent. The fact that the idea of it was now in his mind proved, therefore, that he must really have seen it. He shut his eyes against the landscape and recalled to his memory the details of that incredible reality. The external architecture, modelled on that of BoeckUn’s ‘Toteninsel.’ The circular vestibule. The replica of Rodin’s ‘Le Baiser,’ illuminated by con- cealed pink floodlights. With its flights of black marble stairs. The seven-story columbarium, the endless gal- leries, its tiers on tiers of slab-sealed tombs. The bronze and silver urns of the cremated, like athletic trophies. The stained-glass windows after Burne-Jones. The texts in- scribed on marble scrolls. The Perpetual Wuriitzer crooning on every floor. The sculpture . . . That was the hardest to believe, Jeremy reflected, be- hind closed eyelids. Sculpture almost as ubiquitous as the Wurlitrer. Statues wherever you turned your eyes. Hundreds of them, bought wholesale, one would guess, from some monumental masonry concern at Carrara or Pietrasanta. All nudes, all female, all exuberandy nubile. The sort of statues one would expect to see in the re- ception-room of a high-class brothel m Rio de Janeiro. ...
Statues of young ladies crouching ; young ladies using both hands to be modest; young ladies stretching, wnthing, calli- pygously stooping to tie their sandals, reclining. Young ladies with doves, with panthers, with other young ladies, ■with upturned eyes expressive of the soul’s awakening. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ proclaimed the scrolls. ‘ The Lord is my shepherd ; therefore shall I want nothing.’ Nothing, not even Wurhtzer, nor even girls in tightly buckled belts. ‘Death is swallowed up in viaory’ — the ■victory no longer of the spirit but of the body, the well-fed body, for ever youthful, immortally athletic, indefatigably sexy. The Moslem paradise had had copulations six centuries long. In this new Christian heaven, progress, no doubt, would have stepped up the period to a millennium and added the joys of everlasting tennis, eternal golf and swimming.

But on the whole not a winner.

Greener than you Think (1947) by Ward Moore turned out to be a delightful discovery. A much broader parody than After Many a Summer, it's a disaster story of a scientist who invents a tonic to make lawns grow. And does it ever. One lady buys the first batch and from one lawn springs an earth devouring monster of green. Not a lot of detail about Los Angeles, but a few namechecks that help Angelenos mark the spread of the grass:

The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard where every effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmost wandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrush and greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pass, the great artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, was threatened with disruption.

Oodles of casual sexism and racism, although often with a wry touch than seems to point the finger more at the haters:

Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen—in conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions—was at the bottom of the grass.

Our protagonist wears many hats in this somewhat overlong story, but spends much of it as a journalist covering the spread, who is ordered out by an editor that would make J Jonah Jameson happy with his level of smack-talk:

The Intelligencer picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your futile, lecherous pawings at the chastity of the English language, but out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul can have. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelessly decorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it is in session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whose possession I gravely doubt.

And one final epitaph for LA, courtesy of Time magazine:

Time, reporting the progress of the weed, said in part: "Death, as it must to all, came last week to cult-harboring, movie-producing Los Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest (pop. 3,012,910) died gracelessly, undignifiedly, as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell remained: downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling South and East sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs and liver were gone; swallowed up, Jonah-wise by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass

Like I said, a bit overlong, but pleasantly zany.

Prop 1 Abortion - Kinda Reluctant Yes

Certainly I support abortion rights, but this could have been better written. It bothered me as I read it that the plain language seems to suggest the state has no power to regulate abortion at all. I mean, that can’t be quite right, because I’m sure the state can still require that qualified doctors perform them, and so on. KQED spells out the issue:

“Californians will vote on the amendment in the form of Proposition 1 come November, but as the election approaches, lawmakers still do not agree whether the measure would merely enshrine abortion rights as they are currently articulated in state law, which allows abortion up to 24 weeks, or whether it would expand abortion rights, so as to permit abortions at any point in pregnancy, for any reason.

The polls indicate voters are not inclined to nitpick right now. Ziegler predicts that they’ll accept the ambiguity in Proposition 1 and let the courts sort out the details later.”

I guess I’m in the same boat. I figure that if it passes, and if it expands the right to abortion, abortion will still be ‘regulated’ by the medical ethics of the doctors who perform them. In some ways, this is what we aim for. The decision in the hands of the woman in consultation with a doctor (and any other personal advisors she cares to involve).

And if there does happen to be a slippery slope, well… I guess we just fix it next time.

Prop 26 Gambling - No

I don’t think gambling needs to be expanded in California. If you do, then I think this is the better of the two props on the ballot. It keeps things within the boundaries of entities (tribal casinos and racetracks) that we’ve already designated for gambling in the state.

Prop 27 Gambling - No

Opens up gambling to mobile and online gambling everywhere, likely run by out of state operations.

The guff about ending homelessness is just a shell game. We’ve seen it a thousand times in California. If a dedicated revenue stream for X is created by a prop, the legislature just lowers the appropriation for X by the same amount, so that nothing really changes.

Prop 28 Arts funding in schools - Reluctant Yes

I just got through saying I don’t like props that earmark money for a particular thing. But schools seem to have become focused on math and english test scores, and the arts have been neglected, so maybe this can bend the needle back. No argument against was submitted. Not even Howard Jarvis.

Prop 29 Diabetes - No

This is the same union-backed things we’ve seen several times in a bid to create more union jobs. If there were actual health risks involved, they should be able to point to the negative conditions the prop is intended to fight. But they’ve never shown us there’s a problem. So there’s no need for this solution. Usually I’d lean toward the union if the alternative was giant for-profit companies, but this is just needless.

Prop 30 Soak the Rich for the Environment - Reluctant No

This is a tough one. I support progressive tax rates, but again, setting this new bonus tax aside all for a few specific environmental purposes is not a great way to budget things. California is already aggressively pushing electric vehicles.

Prop 31 Confirms Ban on Flavored Tobacco - Yes

Anything that makes smoking less attractive to anybody is probably a good thing.

The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: a curious anthology of prose and poetry from fin de siecle Russia. Pessimistic Russians taking À Rebours and running with it. Some good some bad, but interesting. One of the curious themes that ran through several stories was the idea that the decadent world was going to come to an end, at the hands of conquering barbarians. I think a minor standout is the excellently-named Zinaida Gippius, mainly her poetry.

Song   (1893)

Above the earth my window is so high,  
So high.
 I see only the sunset in the sky,  
In the sky.   

And the sky seems so vacant and so dull,
So vacant and dull…  
My poor heart it pities not at all,  
Not at all.   

Alas, I am dying of desperate grief,  
Desperate grief,
I do not know what it is that I seek,  
What I seek…   

And I do not know from whence this yearning came,  
From whence it came,  
But my heart longs to be miraculously saved,
Miraculously saved!   

Oh, may something great happen, something new come to be,  
Come to be:  
Something wondrous the pale sky promises me,
Promises me,   

But I weep without tears: I don’t trust its word,
Don’t trust its word…  
What I long for so deeply is not of this world,  
Not of this world.

--

California Shorts. Perhaps I should have known when I picked this up remaindered at $2. But I'm a sucker for California. But the overall average quality of the stories wasn't good through the first half dozen. I agree with Florence on GoodReads.

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Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation

Christopher Kemp

Not a great book, but a good book, focusing on what we know and don't know about how the human brain (and a few other brains) navigates. Focusing a bit on what makes some people much better at it, and some people (like the author) very prone to getting lost even on well-known routes. One funny little detail is he asks all of his interview subjects how they rate themselves 1-10 on navigation skill. Most of them are neuroscientists studying the problem, and it's interesting to see how varied the reponses are. Anyway, some neat details about place-neurons and other things we've learned about how the brain navigates. It gets off to a good start, but I think it could have been a bit shorter.

I only took a few notes.

At the start of the study, Rimfeld had assumed that spatial abilities could be separated into their component parts. For instance, someone might be proficient at one aspect of it, like map reading, but struggle with another, such as mental rotation, or spatial reasoning. Not so, she says. All the separate components of navigation seem to cluster together into a single factor, which she calls, predictably enough, spatial ability. “There is no separable navigation factor, or mental rotation factor, or visualization factor,” she says. In other words, if you struggle with one component of spatial ability, you probably struggle with all of them. If your brain can mentally rotate objects, you’re probably proficient at map reading and memorizing a route.

--

As I'd long suspected, relying on GPS apparently atrophies some of your brain's ability to navigate. But one study found something of a workaround, and an interesting way this might be implemented in the future:

A third and final group of subjects received another set of [GPS like] instructions that included some personally relevant modifiers. For instance: Please turn right at the bookstore. Here you can buy your favorite book, Moby-Dick. Before sitting them at the simulator, Gramann had collected personal information from each subject about their favorite hobbies, books, movies, and so on. Subjects who received the modified instructions performed better than those who just followed GPS directions. Suddenly, with just these minor alterations, navigating by GPS didn’t have such a harmful impact on spatial memory. The subjects had become better at recognizing landmarks. This could be our future, says Gramann. “If you have all your social media on the cell phone that you use for Google Maps, you have your Friends list, you have your search history online: the system basically knows what you’re interested in,” he says. Imagine a future in which we give more power to technology, and let our smartphones sift through the data to generate directions that are meaningful to us in a particular and specific way. “Why wouldn’t you pull that kind of information out of the system automatically?” says Gramann. “If you could do that in a secure fashion, you could basically provide information in any environment, arbitrarily picking out buildings and aspects of the environment that could relay information based on personal interest.”

--

But my personal favorite detail is how to put mice in VR. For people you give them a headset and put them on an omnidirectional treadmill. But for mice, instead of a treadmill they use the Jetball - a styrofoam ball that rests on a cushion of air, and the mouse runs on top of it inside a personal little 360 degree projection (rather than a teeny tiny VR headset)..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DJOTEDBA2c

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood, by Sam Wasson

I guess I thought this was going to be more generally about 1970s film-making in Hollywood, but the book is very tightly focused on the production of Chinatown from inkling of a story through the whole process, focusing on writer Robert Towne, producer Robert Evans, Polanski and Nicholson. It does a great job of bringing that process to life, and the characters involved, although the book occasionally strays into fleshing out the details with some story-telling flavor. Lots of interesting details. Hard to imagine Jack eating at Norms. Or Jack dating Anjelica Huston at the same time that Jake is romancing John Huston's screen daughter Faye Dunaway. Or Jerry Goldsmith (who studied under Miklos Rozsa at USC) coming in at the last minute to score the film in less than two weeks, after Philip Lambro's score bombed in test screenings and with the studio.

--

Red Pill, by Hari Kunzru

A fictional tale of a somewhat feckless author type, who gets a prestigious fellowship at a German literary center, and as his life comes unglued, he also gets strangely attracted/obsessed with neo-Nazi types. And his life becomes more unglued. Does a good job of hinting at the maddening attractiveness that sucks some seemingly sane people into these bizarre undergrounds, but ultimately kind of pointless and doesn't quite deliver in my view. There's also a strange interlude as our feckless narrator interviews a maid whose story of East Germany is 10 times more interesting than his own life, but it seems very disconnected plotwise, even if it hits common thematic elements of paranoia and secrecy. I did appreciate the real-life references to Heinrich von Kleist woven in to the mix.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/972980.html

Odd to put Antiquarian cheek-by-jowl with Virtual.

52 letters from HPL to Frank Belknap Long. This is the collection that the HPLHS recently had a fundraiser to help purchase (with a tiny help by me) with the intent of donating it to the collection at Brown. The pricetag at the fair is $225,000. Apart from the two houses, probably the highest pricetag of anything I've ever bought a fraction of.

The same dealer also has the original pencil manuscript of Chambers' "The Messenger".

The Recipe Book of The Mustard Club [with] Mustard Uses Mustered [and] History and the Mustard Pot.

Items written for Colman's Mustard by Dorothy L Sayers during her time at an ad agency, experience that wound up in her Peter Wimsey novel, Murder Must Advertise.

The Hobbit programme for the New College School, Oxford production, 1967, signed by Tolkien

The production of The Hobbit at New College School was the second stage dramatisation of Tolkien’s seminal work of fantasy to be performed, but the first to be authorised by Tolkien.

Cats in the Isle of Man, by Daisy Fellowes

Rare novel by the French-American socialite and heiress (to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) who was one of the most well-known and influential style icons of her day. At one time the Paris editor of Harper's Bazaar, she was one of the most important customers/patrons of couturier Elsa Schiaparelli -- who created one of her signature colors, Shocking Pink, expressly for her. As one journalist put it, "she lived on a diet of morphine and grouse, with the occasional cocktail thrown in"

At any rate, it's got a fabulous Fantomas/Dracula-evoking jacket design, with a naked woman spreading her black cloak (which sort of resembles bat wings) as a dark-eyed stranger looms behind her. (And just for the record: none of the action in this book takes place on the actual Isle of Man, so I think we have to assume it's a metaphor, or something.)

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/971559.html

More a note to self than anything else.

Bowtie along the LA River

Valhalla in Burbank

Glendale

Zanja

Movie set or ghost town - why not both?

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/968700.html

As usual, I'm behind the times. The World Fantasy Convention just ended in Los Angeles, and the World Fantasy Awards for 2019 have been announced.

And here I am catching up with "Paper Dragons," which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1986. Originally published in Imaginary Lands, I have the standalone version from Axolotl Press with the intro by Blaylock's pal Tim Powers.

The story has a lovely dream-y feel of Northern California with a lot of what makes Blaylock Blaylock. Animals behaving strangely. People behaving strangely. And the petty foibles of human society -- like tossing tomato worms into a neighbor's yard. Not much of a story, but more a prose poem on the possibility of the magical being just around the bend, or behind a passing cloud.

--

The Sinking City is a Lovecraftian videogame. Lovecraft doesn't translate well to films or videogames, where most people just add tentacles to make it 'Lovecraftian'. But the Sinking City does a pretty fine job of capturing more of the spirit, so on that level it's successful. Your hard-boiled, ex-Navy diver investigator finds his way around a decrepit town beset by a flood (yes and the occasional tentacled monster). He's been told he can find the answers to his nightmares and visions, and various people around town are happy to pay him to solve their own particular problems.

Perhaps the most novel and 'Lovecraftian' gimmick is the Mind Palace, which provides a concrete game mechanic that corresponds to a mind 'correlating its contents'. Clues that you find on a case can be matched together two-by-two to form deductions that get you closer to the ultimate solution of the case.

Not very novel is a SAN meter that when it gets low results in additional visions and hallucinations. Sometimes, it's handled pretty ham-fistedly, but other times it creates some pretty vistas. I consciously avoided getting the sanity upgrades because I enjoyed the phantasmagoria.

Drawbacks are long load times and some glitchiness, and some extreme logic gates. You the player can have figured out where to go next, but unless your character has schlepped over to the newspaper morgue to confirm the location, the clues won't be there. They only magically appear once they've been unlocked by the schlepping. Sometimes you have to look at this clue before you look at that clue, or it won't give up all its secrets.

The combat system is not very good. If you're looking for combat as the point of a game, this is not it. But if you want some moody investigating, it has something going for it. Probably a C+/B- for a gamer, but an B+/A- for me.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/966141.html

Anthology of weird fiction set in California. I know it's my own personal hang-up, but I'm always looking for a strong sense of place -- at least in a place I know and love well, like my home state. The stories within are kind of a mixed bag in terms of quality, and a mixed bag in terms of Californianess.

Before diving into the stories, I'll give a shout out to the artwork and illustrations, which were mainly the work of Batt. Nicely done. You certainly win me over with an opening map of California as an island, an image I love so much we have one on the wall now. Lots of the other illustrations for each story are also arresting. On the minus side, the book is printed on paper with a sort of grey fake foxing pattern that obtrude a bit much.

Some of the early stories are a bit to gonzo for my tastes. So is Lance Shoeman's "All This'll Be Yours", but this episode of Hoarders gone wrong somehow won me over. Tim Pratt's "A Sea Monster in the Bathtub" has exactly that California vibe I was looking for, and a great tale, even if it hews too closely to a predictable SJW fable than a fantasy that might take us anywhere. Chaz Brenchley's "Uncanny Valley" had me hooked, but didn't reach a destination. James Van Pelt's engaging "Five Dollars for a Ticket" does arrive at a destination, or will shortly. Meg Elison's "In Loving Memory" makes me glad I've only visited Hemet for the sailplaning, and not grown up there. Ezzy G. Languzzi's "Naranjas Inmortales" gets to the climax a bit too fast and glibly, but definitely caught my attention.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/962110.html

( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/959933.html

California's social politics are pretty divided between the coast and the inland areas.

My Google Alert on 'atheism' dragged up some editorial feedback from Bakersfield.

A relatively tame editorial cartoon poking at the cognitive dissonance of the Trump Evangelical produced some pretty angry feedback from a couple folks.

TBC has really crossed the line on this absolutely defamatory cartoon. You are totally undeserving of the protection afforded you under the First Amendment. TBC has without a doubt totally embraced itself with the rest of the liberal scum media in this country. It is too bad the entire community of subscribers and advertisers can't boycott your despicable publication.

Your Last Supper cartoon was a totally blasphemous piece of (expletive), even for TBC.

The editor handled it all with aplomb.

Lower down, there is perhaps the more surprising feedback on the moral evils of interracial marriage:

Mr. Price goes on about how the Warren Court and equally liberal Burger Court forced Bob Jones University, a private very fundamentalist Christian college, to submit their longstanding Christian beliefs to the will of the court to desecrate and allow interracial marriages among their students by the taxing authority of the IRS. Thus precluding their exercising of their Creator's gift of free will to operate as they see fit.

They were forced to comply or shut down. Judicial activism today is a euphemism of social engineering throughout the entire judicial system that enslaves everyone under its jurisdiction to a hell of moral bankruptcy and hopeless, fearful resignation of big brother (government) knows best racketeering.

Hard to believe people will equate moral bankruptcy with interracial marriage, but that's how some folks are 'east of the 5' (in Jason B's phrase).

I would also note there are some factual differences between apparently what the paper wrote and the angry reader. Although BJU did lose its tax exempt status, it was clearly not 'forced to comply or shut down'. Or forced to submit to anything by the court. I suppose the reader would be happy to know that the school did the 'principled' thing and continued to ban interracial couples on campus, although it cost them the tax exempt status in 1983. It was only after candidate George W Bush spoke there in 2000 that the dating ban got catapulted into the national news, and the school changed its policy of its own accord.

But don't worry, they didn't really let standards slip at BJU. As a Post story notes of the change in 2000:

Jones did not back off of the school's anti-Catholic position, and he said his university would not keep a gay student in school, just as it would not keep an adulterer or thief. And he said students are not allowed to read plays by Tennessee Williams. "Garbage in, garbage out," Jones said.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/957013.html

Just got the phonebook for the June primary.

Before I bore you, a lot of the candidate statements for US Senate and Governor are sad/hilarious/scary. Let's take the four candidates on page 38-39:

"Constitutionalist" [complete text apart from URL]
"Atrocity of abortion-on-demand must end." [complete text]
"I am a follower of Jesus Christ."
"There is no such thing as 'transgender'"" [This one comes with a long rant on the same topic, and a link to TheyAreAttackingTheChildren.org (see also)]

'We are allowing the industry controlled FCC to microwave poison our children, families, homes and workplace" [emphasis in original]

So please read your guides cover to cover and make informed choices. And chuckle from time to time.

All 5 props were put on there by the legislature, but that's no guarantee of quality (though it is largely a guarantee of sanity). My quick takes:

Prop 68: $4B bond for parks and environment. Lean yes. It's only a wafer-thin bond measure, and has a $725M carve out to create parks in neighborhoods with few parks. On the minus side, it *is* a bond, and the state already spends about $5B annually on 'natural resources' of the type covered under this prop, so it's not that big a funding boost long-term.

Prop 69: requires transportation taxes to be spent on transportation projects. Lean no. Although it seems 'fair,' a lot of our problems in CA is that the legislature's hands are tied on so many things. There is less room for flexibility on spending where the spending is needed.

Prop 70: requires 2/3 vote to spend money in the cap-and-trade fund. No. I don't really see the reasoning. If it was going into a rainy-day fund that could be used flexibly (see above) that would be one thing, but the fund can only be spent on GHG mitigation type activities, and I don't see why the current majority vote spending rules are inadequate.

Prop 71: Props take effect 5 days after the SecState certifies the election results (as opposed to retroactive to day after election). Yes, I guess. To the extent that this may minimize confusion statewide about issues that may hang in the balance before official results are due, I can see how this will help. On the minus side, if some of your rights are restored by the ballot, you will have to wait. On the plus side, if some of your rights are taken away, you have a few days to consider what to do.

Prop 72: Allows people to do something good for everyone without being penalized. Yes.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/956320.html

Picked up at an estate sale for cheap, this book is a history of LA, told primarily in archive photographs from the 19th century up to 1950. Lots of good ones here, most of which I don't recall having seen (and many I'd like to show you all, but can't find online).

This is not the same image as in the book, but gets the point across.

"A favorite but brutal betting sport of the early 1850s and later was the correr el gallo. The roosters, their necks well greased, would be partially buried in the earth alongside a public road, with only their throat and head showing. Then riders on fast horses would dash by at full speed and try to grab the roosters and pull them out."

( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/952526.html

The House tax bill would lower the cutoff from $1 million to $500,000. That is, people with home loans bigger than $500K would not be able to deduct the interest from their income.

Doesn't really affect me. Or does it? Duh duh DAH.

The change doesn't affect current loans, so it doesn't affect me.

My loan isn't over $500,000, so it doesn't affect me.

But, and I know many of you will have to ready your tiniest stringed instruments for this, someday we may sell this place and property values being what they are, the new owner will be affected by this change, and it could have an effect on the price we realize.

Let's take an extreme case, how screwed is the person who finances $999,999 on their new house? How big is the deduction they're losing?

If they finance that jumbo loan at 4%, that's $40,000 of interest in the first year, which they'd be able to subtract from their income.

Looks like the new marginal tax rate for income between $45K and $200K is 25%, which is very convenient, so I'll use it. So that $40K of interest saves them $10K in taxes. And the next year it would save them almost $10K, as they ever so slowly pay the loan off. Except that that deduction is going to vanish. So the tax change is gonna cost them $10K a year, and total well over $100K over the loan.

How does that affect home prices? Hard to say. I don't know if many homebuyers explicitly consider the interest deduction, but I have no doubt the lenders do when deciding how much house people can afford.

It's going to affect people's abilities to buy homes right in the range where the median Los Angeles home buyer is buying. (And where the median home seller is selling).

(Our poor sucker will also get hit by the change to property tax deduction. The new plan limits it to $10K. In CA, property taxes total a bit over 1%, so that $999,999 house will have property taxes over the $10,000 limit.)

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/951614.html

Assuming you remember what phonebooks are, my fellow Californicators will be getting one for the ballot initiatives soon. Here's my regular dose of opinions to help influence the votes of people who don't want to do the research, thus magnifying my democratic power. Remarkably, I'm split exactly 50/50 on Yes/No, with one strong Maybe.

51 - SCHOOL BONDS. FUNDING FOR K–12 SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACILITIES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

$9 billion in bonds for schools. Bonds are not a great way to fund anything. This plan does not seem to be very focused. There's no doubt there's a need, but I don't like this solution. Neither does Governor Moonbeam. Nope.

52 - MEDI‐CAL HOSPITAL FEE PROGRAM. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE.

Seems like a messy shell game to get hospitals to pay fees to the state that are given back to the hospitals with matching federal funds. But it seems to work, and the NO argument (that this money is going straight to the fatcat CEOs) is just baloney. So if ain't broke, fix it in place permanently. Yes.

53 - REVENUE BONDS. STATEWIDE VOTER APPROVAL. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

"Under the California Constitution, state general obligation bonds need voter approval before the state can use them to pay for a project. State revenue bonds do not need voter approval under existing state law." This prop would change the latter so that revenue bonds (over $2 billion) would need voter approval. While I'm tempted to have another way to partially veto the ~~Monorail~~ high speed rail, I don't see this additional oversight being helpful. Nope.

54 - LEGISLATURE. LEGISLATION AND PROCEEDINGS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE.

Aren't there enough roadblocks to getting things done? Adding a 'waiting period' for legislation seems unnecessary. I mean, best case scenario, evil law is proposed, and in 72 hours, someone's change.org petition gets a bajillion signatures, convincing the legislature to not pass it. Anything that wicked will get erased off the books under the present system. Worst case scenario, legislators (and their shadowy funders) will add amendment after amendment to bills, each one taking an additional 72 hours of waiting before a vote ever takes place. Nope.

55 - TAX EXTENSION TO FUND EDUCATION AND HEALTHCARE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

Extends 'temporary' extra income tax on $250K+ taxpayers (Prop 30 in 2012) for another 12 years. Ooh, I'm really torn. If we could extend it maybe 6 years, I'd feel better. We could use some extra juice for the rainy day fund, and to really make use of the budget surplus to eliminate debt. I favored the more balanced prop 38 that would have raised everyone's taxes temporarily. Ummm. Eat the rich! Strong Maybe!

56 - CIGARETTE TAX TO FUND HEALTHCARE, TOBACCO USE PREVENTION, RESEARCH, AND LAW ENFORCEMENT. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE.

Triples the state tobacco tax (and adds equivalent tax to e-cigs). Most of the funding goes to healthcare or the existing programs funded by cigarette taxes. My favorite negative effect of the prop: "state and local governments would experience future health care and social services costs that otherwise would not have occurred as a result of individuals who avoid tobacco‐related diseases living longer." A pretty punitive tax, but I really hate that cluster of millennials smoking on the sidewalk when I walk by at lunch time. Yes.

57 - CRIMINAL SENTENCES. PAROLE. JUVENILE CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS AND SENTENCING. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE.

Allows parole hearings a bit sooner for certain 'non violent' felons than is currently the case. Despite the doom and gloom of the NO argument, all of these people will get parole hearings, and the parole board will decide whether it's safe to let them out, and when. I don't see any legitimate drawbacks here. Yes.

58 - ENGLISH PROFICIENCY. MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

Provides schools with more flexibility in establishing bilingual education programs, erasing some of prop 227. The goal is still to get students proficient in English. Schools should have more flexibility in order to find out what works. Yes.

59 - CORPORATIONS. POLITICAL SPENDING. FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS. LEGISLATIVE ADVISORY QUESTION.

A grandstanding advisory vote calling on California officials to work to undo Citizens United through Constitutional Amendment. Entirely futile, but yes.

60 - ADULT FILMS. CONDOMS. HEALTH REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

"Cal/OSHA Already Requires Adult Film Condom Use" (Not that compliance is 100%)
"Allows Individuals to Bring Lawsuits on Regulatory Violations."
I'll join Dan Savage in voting no.

61 - STATE PRESCRIPTION DRUG PURCHASES. PRICING STANDARDS. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

"would require all prescription drugs purchased by the State of California to be priced at or below the price paid for the same drug by the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, which pays by far the lowest price of any federal agency. "

This is why you see tearful veterans on the commercials urging a no vote, followed by the tenth of second summary of major contributors like Pfizer and Merck.

On the other hand, the drug companies don't have to sell us discount drugs. And yes, they could decide to raise prices on vets. Because of all the moving parts, and inevitable squabbling and lawsuits, I'm leaning towards No. I don't think this is the solution to the prescription drug price problem.

62 - DEATH PENALTY. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

Eliminates the death penalty (and resentences current death row inmates to life without possibility of parole). "These reduced costs would likely be around $150 million annually within a few years." Yes.

63 - FIREARMS. AMMUNITION SALES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

"Requires individuals to obtain a four-year permit from DOJ to buy ammunition ... Allows DOJ to charge each person applying for a four-year permit a fee of up to $50"

Really? I'm sure the laudable intent is to stop bad guys with stolen guns from getting ammunition, but as much as I'd like better gun laws, I don't think I can go this far. The legislature acted in July: "Specifically, under the legislation: (1) ammunition dealers would be required to check with DOJ that individuals seeking to buy ammunition are not prohibited persons at the time of purchase and (2) DOJ could generally charge such individuals up to $1 per transaction." That seems far more reasonable than what the proposition is calling for; and it is already law. No.

64 - MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

I don't like smoking (see 56), but it's definitely time to end our reefer madness. The bigger tax base and the effect on 'crime' are icing on the cake.

65 - CARRYOUT BAGS. CHARGES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

Directs 'fees' for paper bags at grocery stores to state environmental purposes. Currently these fees are just kept by the stores. Now, the bags cost the store something, so it's hardly fair to take all the money away from them. But then again, why do they benefit from our green awareness? If this is really a necessary source of revenue for retailers... they'll just raise prices on other things. And then this proposition is just a tax to support the environment. Which I guess is okay. Hmm. I really don't care all that much. I'm gonna just go with No, and whenever people point to California as being unfriendly to business, I'll point to how they get to freeload off our bag fees. See also 67.

66 - DEATH PENALTY. PROCEDURES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

"In addition, the measure changes how attorneys are appointed for direct appeals under certain circumstances. Currently, the California Supreme Court appoints attorneys from a list of qualified attorneys it maintains. Under the measure, certain attorneys could also be appointed from the lists of attorneys maintained by the Courts of Appeal for non-death penalty cases. Specifically, those attorneys who (1) are qualified for appointment to the most serious non-death penalty appeals and (2) meet the qualifications adopted by the Judicial Council for appointment to death penalty cases would be required to accept appointment to direct appeals if they want to remain on the Courts of Appeal’s appointment lists."

Death penalty cases are not like other cases. This prop is trying to grease the wheels by appointing unqualified lawyers to 'defend' poor inmates (and they can't refuse). Just no.

67 - BAN ON SINGLE–USE PLASTIC BAGS. REFERENDUM.

Enacts a statewide ban on plastic bags (similar to that which already exists where I live). I think it's been a good thing on the whole. Make it so, statewide. Yes.

We made a snap decision to take a road-trip. We started off in San Marino, hitting an estate sale where Dr. Pookie picked up more uranium glass.

Then out to Ojai.

The Post Office:

There is a ladder to the tower, but the door is locked. A sign says you climb at your own risk.

We had a nice lunch at Suzanne's Cuisine. Possibly inspired by the recent potato chip tasting at work, I opted for the Reuben sandwich (my least unfavorite of the four flavors).

The Museum has some historical doodads and taxidermed animals. One thing that caught my eye was a jug of Pixo Cola concentrate from the Pixie Flavor Base Co.

The address on the jug is on Vernon, less than ten blocks from our house. Sadly, the only thing I can learn about the Pixie Flavor Base Co is that it got in trouble with the FDA in 1943 for adulterating/mislabelling orangeade concentrate. "On October 5, 1943, no claimant having appeared, judgment of condemnation was entered and the product was ordered destroyed or delivered to some charitable institution."

But there was also a temporary exhibit of items from Sergio Aragones' personal comics collection. Not of his own work, but the work of others, much of it signed personally to him. Aragones is now a local resident, and actually next Saturday (and again on Sep 19) you can tour the exhibit with him for a mere $25.

I was impressed by it, but I'm sure my comic book fan friends probably would have gone bananas.

We stopped at Bart's Books, which is a local institution. Didn't buy anything, but it's got a lot of stuff packed into a crazy space. A house that's been eaten by a bookstore. Books on the exterior walls just stay there, and you're advised to drop coins in a slot to pay for them after hours.

We did a wine tasting and an olive oil tasting, and came away with bottles of both. And then pointed the car home. PCH was probably not a good choice on a summer beach day, but it was made worse by an accident that shut things down for a bit. Still more interesting than either the 101 or going back the way we came.

Prop 43 was removed and replaced with Prop 1, information about which will be supplied at a later date in a Supplemental Voter Information Guide.

Prop 44 was renamed Prop 2.
( And so on )

Grandma's celebration of life was last weekend. With all of the craziness of the house selling and buying, I couldn't make it there, but at least I could play another small part in the overall process. Although her urn was interred alongside Grandpa at the veterans' cemetery, a bit of her had a different fate. She had asked to have ashes spread at Laguna Beach.

Now, knowing the risks of the release of ashes on the Pacific Coast, we added our own wrinkle to the plans.
( Do you want to know more? )

... [and] the effects of climate change are branches hitting the windshield along the way.”

The Last Drop: America's Breadbasket Faces Dire Water Crisis - an eye-opening look at the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. I think the most mind-blowing fact is that, in the great state of Texas, water is not a public resource:

No other state’s water law allows such unfettered individual control. The danger, especially apparent as the Ogallala disappears, is that it favors an individual motivated to turn a profit in the present day above community needs of the future.

The Texas law allowed billionaire oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens to sell trillions of gallons of Ogallala Aquifer water beneath 211,000 acres surrounding his majestic Mesa Vista ranch, in Roberts County, near the Texas-Oklahoma border. In 2011, the now 85-year-old sold his water rights for $103 million to 11 water-impoverished cities nearby, including Lubbock and Amarillo.
...
Elsewhere, particularly in Kansas, farmers irrigating where the Ogallala is shallowest are required to meter their wells, observe water-use restrictions, and are fined for not doing so.

Landowners in the HPWD – even today – can choose to suck their portion of the Ogallala dry any time they like.

Whew! I'm sure glad California has no water problems!

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Journal of No. 118

Entries tagged with california

Long Beach

Catching up on books

After Many a Summer (Dies the Swan) - Greener Than You Think

2022 California Propositions

Russian Decadence, California Shorts, Dark and Magical Places

The Big Goodbye / Red Pill

Crazy stuff from the California Antiquarian Virtual Book Fair

Urban Walks

Paper Dragons, By James P Blaylock & The Sinking City

Strange California, edited by Jaym Gates and J. Daniel Batt

California Propositions

Dispatches from east of the 5

California Primary Season Yuks

Yesterday's Los Angeles, by Norman Dash

Yes, let's investigate the new Mortgage Interest tax deduction with math!

California Propositions 2016

Ojai

California Propositions, &c.

One last trip for grandma

“We’re headed for a brick wall at 100 miles per hour...