For the past year and change, I’ve been getting involved with two groups in Santa Monica that are working to stop a series of proposed massive hotel/condo/retail projects scattered around Downtown Santa Monica. The first of them is the Fairmont Miramar, the hotel on Ocean and Wilshire; its owner, Michael (Dude, You’re Getting A) Dell wants to tear down the current structure and replace it with a giant retail area, more dining space, less hotel space, and 120 condos all crammed into a 261-foot (21-story) tower. There will be some new underground parking, but not enough to cover the 800+ spaces that are required by city ordinance for staff, visitors, and residents, which means a lot of spillover parking in the surrounding neighborhood. Oh, and the current plan will also dump a parking entrance onto California Avenue, right in the middle of the bike lane. Plus, more traffic right at the California Incline, more pollution, and, I think, more crap that the edge of the city that we don’t need (like we need more high end retail? Isn’t that what Santa Monica Place was for?). I am not against the Miramar fixing itself up; I am against it turning into a condo development that’s being tacked on so the builders can start with their budget in the black, much to the detriment of the neighborhood.

This is the trial balloon, and if it goes forward, it’s going to set a precedent with the City Council and Planning Commission that it’s okay for more of these 20+ story developments in Downtown, with the potential for more scattered all over the city. Even with the addition of the Expo line in a few years, these bloody great towers are going to mean even more traffic, which is going to make riding our bikes that much hairier, and it’s going to mean the streets will be even less safe for our kids, and it’s going to mean the skyline from the beach will look more like Miami than Santa Monica. I think this sucks, and I want to stop it.

That is where you come in. On Thursday, May 16, there is going to be an important meeting at the Main Branch of the Santa Monica Public Library at 6.30pm to discuss the Miramar’s environmental impact report, which is a key step to getting legal approval for this monster development to advance. This is where we, the citizens of Santa Monica, the people who live here and run here and play here and eat tacos here, can give our public comments and tell the city that we want alternatives to the proposed condo/retail/bike-lane-interfering/dogs-and-cats-living-together scale. Anne and I are getting a sitter for Grace so we can attend and speak, and I would like to invite you all to attend. If you do, I will have cookies for you. Freshly baked, delicious, politically active cookies. All you have to do is show up and make your voice heard; or, if you can’t, you can send comments your comments to the City Council and Planning Commission, via the addresses at the bottom of this email. (Note: emailed comments may result in your cookies not be as fired up and ready to go as the ones at the meeting.)

Thank you reading. I hope you can attend. I hope we can kick Michael Dell’s ass.

-A.

To contact the City Council, just send an email to council@smgov.net. To contact the Planning Commission, you’ll have to contact the commissioners individually:
suehimmelrich@gmail.com
andersonsmpc@yahoo.com
jenniferfkennedy@gmail.com
richard@richardmckinnon.com
gnewbold@gmail.com
parryj@gte.net
Jim_Ries@hotmail.com

In your email subject, please say something about “Miramar EIR Scoping” (if you really want to know the nuts and bolts, email me and I’ll fill you in on all the gory process details). In the body, please tell the recipients who you are, where you live, how long you’ve lived in Santa Monica, that you are a registered voter in Santa Monica (if you are), and that you have concerns about the scope of the current Miramar development plans and that you would like the EIR to include alternatives that include a) doing nothing (ie keeping the whole place as a hotel of the same size), b) moving all large development toward Wilshire (instead of clustering it all along 2nd and California), and c) that you want studies of the impact of any development on the current bike paths on Ocean and California (apologies for sounding like a broken record, but I loves me some bike paths that don’t have driveways in them).

COOKIES OF JUSTICE AHOY!

What do I want this city to be like in five years? In ten? In fifty? What do I want to change right now if I could, cost and public wishes be damned?

Let’s start big and absurd and work down from there.

If cost and public opinion were no object, I’d lower the streets by two stories. I’d pay for every construction crew in the continental US to come here, dig down down thirty feet, moving pipes, wiring, the whole kit and kaboodle. I’d make it so every garage in the city had elevators or ramps that shot straight down to this magical network of trenches. All streets that lead into Santa Monica will turn into tunnels, descending into the rich bowels of the earth. Then I’d make double-decker underground streets, with all of the wiring and piping easily accessible, and cover them up. Housing, ventilation units, pedestrian paths, bike tracks, and tram tracks will go into this newly liberated space. The miserable hulking parasitic devices known as automobiles will be banished to the underworld. Bam. Traffic circulation, housing shortages, and unemployment solved, all preserving the urban village feel that I and the city’s marketing department like.

Also, since I am Benevolent Dictator With An Infinite Budget, I close the airport, rip out the concrete, connect it with Clover Park, creating a massive public space for all to enjoy, including cyclocross racers, because fuck you Parks Department, we’re riding our bikes on your grass and you’ll like it.

Also, all future Downtown development proposals that are more than three stories high will result in both the architects and the developers thrown into stocks that I will set up at Wilshire and Ocean, where they will be mocked for their greed and hubris by the public, who will be able to pelt them with scale models of their monster buildings made out of sponge cake.

What else that’s impractical yet would be awesome? No more chain stores. Montana, Main Street, and Downtown become Special Economic Entrepreneur Zones, where people can set up their pop-up stores, restaurants, boutiques, whatever. They have a year to make a go at it, rent-free, and the ones that have the most cash and votes from the public get to stick around, though they’ll now a) have to pay rent, though they’d know that would happen when they first moved it and would have planned for it and b) have to make the citizens of Santa Monica shareholders in their business. It wouldn’t be a huge cut, and the shareholders wouldn’t have voting rights, but they could choose to collect their dividends or sign them over to the city’s Public Awesomeness Fund.

Hotel taxes are tripled, except during the Rose Bowl, when they are quintupled, because I’m sick of all these Wealthy Midwestern Alumni strolling around the farmers market, getting in the way of my winter produce. Same with AFM, too, because you’re keeping me from the butternut squash, you badge-wearing wank.

What else? Well, since I have infinite budget, I’m going to finally solve the county’s homeless problem by providing proper goddamn mental health for a start, right at St. John’s, because fuck you St. John’s for your parking idiocy. So, everyone sleeping on the streets gets fed into a fully funded, professionally staffed facility that will set them up with recovery, meds, counseling, job training, all that. And, if none of that works, if all they want to do is drink or get high, then they can live out the remainder of their days in wet housing, which I will build in Beverly Hills, because fuck you Beverly Hills.

There. Now that I have my outrageous ideas out of the way, here are the less outrageous ones that could be enacted this year that would make the city a better place. No, I don’t want your input, because you did not talk me out of drinking this cup of coffee this morning.

Traffic sucks because there is too much traffic. How do we reduce traffic? By making it expensive and annoying. If you don’t live in Santa Monica and can’t bring yourself to ride a bike or take the bus or aren’t excited about the Expo Line because you like driving yourself and only yourself in your car instead of taking the time to get to know your fellow workers and carpool with them despite their cultural/political/personal space differences, you’re going to pay for it. Non-residential congestion pricing starts yesterday, suckers. Closed circuit cameras go up at every intersection on Santa Monica’s borders, and they are aiming right at your license plates. Optical character recognition software reads the plate and checks it against a DMV list of residential car registrations. If you don’t live here, you’re paying for it. We’ll say $5 a day, $4 if you buy a day pass the night before, $3 if you buy a block of twenty weekdays every month. All that money goes into the city’s transportation fund, which will pay for infrastructure and the Big Blue Bus. There will be income exemptions based on tax returns, though if you try and use any accountancy tricks to weasel out of it, the city will bring the hammer down on your ass. The city can’t do anything about state and federal oil subsidies, but it can sure as shit making driving into Santa Monica more expensive than bussing, training, or riding.

All future development follows the LUCE, period. No DAs except for current development, and that’s only after passing strict EIRs that show any redevelopment won’t have a negative impact on pollution, traffic, or any quality-of-life issues. Yes, DAs allow for flexibility in the case of disaster (if the Big One hits and One Wilshire collapses, I think they should be allowed to rebuild their current structure), but that flexibility comes with costs. Land is expensive in Santa Monica, sure, but there’s no reason except greed for getting us to subsidize developers’ bottom lines.

We do like Zurich did with parking and instate parking maximums. We crank up the parking rates at every structure and parking meter in the city. All the cash goes to bike infrastructure and the Big Blue Bus. Santa Monica will become a car minimalist city. Car culture is dying, and I’d rather it evolve into something healthy instead of having Road Warrior death spasms. Car dealerships: gone. No more business licenses for you, because cars have no place in the next hundred years of Santa Monica or any healthy American city. Parking prices change to meet demand and go up because they’re too cheap and YOUR CAR SUCKS. Ride a goddamn bicycle, you complaining, hyphen-abusing idiots on Patch; you’ll probably all feel better. Same for you, Bill Bauer. YES, BILL, I’M USING YOUR NAME; SEND YOUR SOCK PUPPETS AND SHOUTY MAN AVATAR AT ME, I DON’T CARE BECAUSE I’M FITTER AND SEXIER THAN YOU ARE.

High speed internet for everyone, subsidized. (I’m finally getting tired and running out of steam, so deal with it. Spitballing and bullet points from now on. Shut up. COFFEE.) Free wifi everywhere except at the big hotels, because see points above. City staff, city council members, city commissioners all have to eat their own dog food on every idea they present, so no free parking, no taking over red curbs, you all take buses or ride bikes or carpool to the max (which I know some of the city staffers I’ve met do, and I think you guys are awesome. I just want everyone to do it). Personal trainers have to pay for licenses to use any parks or beaches for classes or clients; the citizens of Santa Monica don’t create that much wear-and-tear on the grass nor bring boom boxes or shouts to the parks, kids. You want to use the land, you pay for it.

We will have a goddamn Santa Monica Triathlon. It will be a sprint, and it will be on a Sunday, and it will be awesome.

Oy, up in five hours, what else…

Oh, no more door hangers for menus, businesses, or political whatevers. Any PACs that spend money on any Santa Monica elections have to disclose the source of every cent, including names and addresses. Candidates may only campaign during the month of September, and then they shut the hell up until the Saturday before Election Day, when they’re allowed one more reminder campaign day. SMRR has to disclose their leadership, their funding, everything, as do every other group in the city.

DOUBLE PARKING IN THE BIKE LANES GETS YOU FINED SO MUCH THAT YOU’LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN I’M TIRED OF SWERVING AROUND YOU LAZY ASSHOLES.

The library gets to hire however many librarians they want. No, I don’t know where the money comes from, but the library is awesome and it gets what it wants.

Okay, I’m finally exhausted. Cars and tall buildings suck. Santa Monica shouldn’t. I love you. Good night.

Desolation Road.

The Overheating Greenhouse Future.

You will put these things into your brain, and the book that you will want to read will be the result. Don’t stress. Finish your work, let it stew, have a curry. It will all work out in the end.

Hoboken is home to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I’d submitted a short story entitled “Oh Give Me A Home” back in September, and I’d included a self-adressed, stamped envelope, as per their guidelines. This was not my envelope. It had a printed address label. Maybe my envelope got soaked from Hurricane Sandy, I thought, though a tiny voice in the back of my head said, …or maybe not.

I handed the envelope to Anne. She opened it and looked at me with a big grin. “There’s a check inside,” she said, holding it up along with a contract.

Am I stoked? Hey, man, are fish tacos awesome?

I have no idea when it will be published, but I’ll be sure to let everyone know. And thank you to everyone who read and critiqued it; you helped me make a better story.

tl;dr Holy crap, I sold a story to F&SF!

There is too much at stake in the next thirty to forty years to leave the hard decisions up to pundits who hop from one cable show to the other, or candidates who are only interested in hoovering up contributions. We need to make serious concrete plans on how our society is going to deal with climate change. We need to make sure that the runaway costs of health care get reined in before our parents retire and crush the system. We need to make sure that women have control of their own bodies, that their health problems don’t get sidelined so someone can get subsidized boner pills. We need to kick our addiction to carbon. Anyone who talks about anything else is a distraction and should be ignored. I’d like the second half of my life to be a good one, and I’d like all of my daughter’s life to be excellent.

Vote, because your life does depend on it. And then we’ll get to work on the next round.

If I’m having a slice from Grey Block Pizza, I remember the first time I ate there, back when it was Abbot’s. I was taking accounting at SMC, right across the street, and I’d leave work early enough so I could park, take the shuttle, then cross campus to get two slices of Wild Mushroom for dinner. I’d bring along a copy of Fantasy & Science Fiction, because that was the year I had decided that I was going to be a writer. Being a writer meant studying the markets, and that was the market I wanted to crack. I’d eat my pizza, read stories, and realize that I so did not want to learn accountancy, not when I could be writing, dammit. That was eleven years ago. I’ve only got the one sale, but I’ve got two novels in the can, one ready to get sent out on the Agent Dance Circuit. There’s a new one I’m working on. All of this started in that grungy place, with two slices on white paper plates. I have some Wild Mushroom, and I’m back there.

Thai food brings me way back, to late nights at Harvey Mudd, when we’d pile into someone’s car for a trip to Sanamluang. Thai food was exotic and sophisticated and exciting, even though it was in a run-down restaurant in a run-down strip mall in a run-down city. I can still taste the ka nom pa kard, a dish that only Sammy’s makes. You shred daikon, make a thick paste out of it, then you fry slices of the paste with cilantro, bean sprouts, and brown sauce. When I went back to Mudd for the fifteenth reunion, I had a plate, and it was heaven. I remembered going to Sanamluang after gigs with the band I played drums for. I remembered the relief at having a real meal after I’d gotten horribly sick my sophomore year. I remember falling in love, and I certainly remember having it all blow up in my face.

I taste Carb-Boom gels and Accelerade, and I’m racing. I Ragin’ Cajun, and I’m back at Realtime. It’s always the cheap food, the everyday food, the stuff I’d have out of habit that ties me to somewhen. I can remember fancy meals, but I can’t recreate them. I can have a strawberry donut, and I can remember all kinds of things.

I had a crap race today. It was hot, and I’m out of shape, and I just couldn’t hack it. I stopped. I walked. I would have been better off staying home. But I drove out to Chino, came in last place, and I decided I wanted a burrito from El Pavo in Montclair. It was a bit out of the way from Mudd, but there was something about the place that stuck with me. I think it was the way the women behind the counter would put the tortillas into a steamer with a giant lever on its side. One of them would slam the lid, lean on the lever, and the tortilla would be flash-steamed–light and fluffy and sticky and, oh. It was comfort. I needed some comfort, even if it was out of the way.

El Pavo, I found, after winding my way through Chino and Ontario, past one taqueria after another, is now closed. Somewhere in the last fifteen years, it had turned into Alberto’s; the shadow of the old sign was still on the boarded-up storefront. I didn’t bother to get out of the car. I didn’t want to see if any of the old equipment was still in the kitchen, if there was an old menu floating around. It had been turned into a shell a long time ago.

Sometimes, you just want lunch. Sometimes, you want to remember comfort. Sometimes, you want both.

Dear Mr. Brock-

I am an Eagle Scout.

Whenever someone would ask me if I’d been a Boy Scout, I’d smile and say that. I am an Eagle Scout. Never was. That implied that the award was a milestone I’d walked past, something I was supposed to put behind me on the road to adulthood. My Scoutmasters taught me that wasn’t the case. Everything I learned, from my merit badges to my service project to my recitations of the Scout Oath and Scout Law, they became a part of me, and I was to carry those lessons with me the rest of my life.

I am an Eagle Scout.

Until now.

I am returning this medal and these patches to you, because I can no longer keep them. They are symbols of an organization that has taken its basic ideals and twisted them in the name of bigotry. By excluding LGBT adults from leadership roles and by excluding LGBT Scouts, the BSA has shown they are not friendly, courteous, or kind. By hiding the names of the committee who decided to keep the BSA’s discriminatory policies in place, the BSA is not brave.

You are cowards, and bullies, and bigots, and I won’t have anything to do with you.

From now on, when people ask me if I was in Scouting, I’ll tell them I was an Eagle Scout. And then I’ll tell them why.

Sincerely,

Adam R. Rakunas
Troop 339
Costa Mesa, CA

This is not a slight against Mike. Back in high school he was whip smart, had a razor wit, and was a lover of fine meat products (namely In-N-Out).  We fell out of touch after high school, ran into each other a few times, then reconnected on Facebook.  I knew that he’d become an attorney, and one who ran (and ran in) some pretty powerful circles. I figured we’d probably get together again over a fine meal at Haven or The Playground or any of the other fine OC gastropubs that I’d recently sampled (and that he’s a regular at, apparently), and that would have been great.

And then I had to be stupid and get involved in local politics.

There’s this group, the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition, and they have bugged the hell out of me for the past five or six years.  It started with calling my neighborhood “Wilmont,” a name I’d never heard until I got their newsletter, and I’d been here for a good ten years before that.  Once a year, the group (Wilmont, they called themselves, after our neighborhood…I mean, who comes up with this crap?) sent out peppy notes in envelopes with the City of Santa Monica’s letterhead, and they would talk about all the awesome things they’d done for our neighborhood, and that they were looking out for our neighborhood, and it would be so great if I joined and got involved (for a minimal fee).  I would get this newsletter, and I’d look at the school across the street, where a dozen parking places had been turned into a student loading zone that the parents never used, and I’d look at all the staffers from UCLA Santa Monica Hospital who would steal all the parking spaces in the neighborhood, and I’d look at all the vacant storefronts on Wilshire and Montana, and I’d think that Wilmont was a bunch of self-serving, useless wankers who were using city stationery to feel important.  I would throw the thing away and think nothing more of it.

Until the Fairmont happened.

The Fairmont Miramar is a hotel complex that takes up the entire block between Ocean and Second Street on Wilshire.  It’s big.  It’s expensive.  It’s old and a little run-down on the edges, and I once pool-crashed the place with my kid and a friend and her kid when the pool at the Y was closed (in our defense, my friend’s grandmother was staying there…but, yes, we totally crashed the place and used their towels and drank their fancy water with orange slices floating in the carboy).  It was one of those places in Santa Monica about which I could not give two shits, because it was out of my price range, and would always be so.

The Fairmont is owned by a group that’s owned by Michael Dell, and, like any other budding young capitalist, he wanted to maximize his investment.  And, like any budding young capitalist-cum-developer, he wanted to maximize his investment by knocking down everything, digging a bloody great hole in the ground for parking, and jamming a new hotel, retail space, and condominiums into that one block.

I was not thrilled with this idea.  A lot of people in the neighborhood were not thrilled with this idea.  Wilmont, apparently, loved it.

The Santa Monica Mirror, one of our local papers, landed on my doorstep one Friday in spring, and there was a big ad from a group calling itself Friends of the Miramar (or something to that effect).  The “revitalization” would bring all sorts of benefits to the community.  It would provide jobs.  It would provide parking.  It would provide a new public park right across the street from a whole lot of other public park, albeit this public park would probably be patrolled by rent-a-cops and free of sleeping bums and the heady perfume of urine.  It would be eight kinds of awesome, and the Friends of the Miramar wanted this Unicorn Farm and Rainbow Factory to happen.

One of the signatories was the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition.

Well.

Longtime readers and my South Korean fan club will know that I can’t stand idly by when bullshit is being flung about.  I posted a bunch of comments on various newspaper articles and on Wilmont’s website, and then I joined the group.  If this organization was supposed to represent my neighborhood, and this kind of crap was going on, I had to get involved, and I had to get involved the proper way.  In May, I sent in my ten bucks and got a peppy letter welcoming me to Wilmont.  The annual meeting was on June 9.  Please join in!

Oh, yes. I would.

Except that Anne was training for Vineman Half Ironman Triathlon, and June 9 she had a long run scheduled.  So, I stayed home with Grace, loaded up a bunch of local news sites, and wondered what would happen.

A whole mess of trouble, that’s what happened.

The upshot of all the hullaballoo is that a new board was voted in, and the old board said, “No, you weren’t,” and then a lawyer got involved, and a bunch of cease and desist letters got sent.

I got one of them as Anne, Grace, and I were en route to Vineman.  I was a little preoccupied with keeping Grace calm and dealing with the collapsing underpanels on the car, so when my phone pinged with this email, I was a mite peeved. It said that a) I was kicked out of Wilmont because b) I’d taken place in an illegal election and c) people didn’t feel safe around be because of my behavior during (b) and that I was “further cautioned that:  (1) any attempt to mislead the Organization’s membership, the media or the public that you are a member or an elected director of the Organization; (2) any unauthorized use of the Organization’s name, its confidential membership information; or (3) any other false, misleading defamatory, libelous or slanderous statements or acts made against the Organization may give rise to criminal or civil action against you, and you are advised to refrain from any such activity.”

This little love note ended with: “Please govern yourself accordingly.”

So, like any good American citizen who’d just been bullied by a lawyer, I did govern myself accordingly.  I forwarded the C&D to Santa Monica Patch, the Santa Monica Daily Press, and Santa Monica City Councilman Kevin McKeown.  I told all of them that I had never attended any meetings of Wilmont, and I had just been kicked out.  I spoke with two reporters and got a reply from Councilman McKeown (who said he’d look into it).

I also posted a bit on Facebook, and that’s when Mike, or, rather Michael R.W. Houston, Esq., contacted me.

There’s a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Jailbird” that I’ve always liked.  Vonnegut wanted to use Roy Cohn as a character, and received Cohn’s permission, provided Vonnegut “present him as an appallingly effective attorney.”  When Michael and I spoke, I couldn’t help but realize that the guy I had gone to high school with, the guy who wore the same snappy polyester blend band uniform as I did, the guy who used to hop around at school dances with me…well, he was now an appallingly effective attorney.

And, luckily for me, this stuff was right up his alley.

We talked a bit over race weekend, and I told him the whole story, and I think the C&D offended him professionally more than anything.  He cranked out a letter that took the C&D apart piece by piece, laid out those pieces on an iron rack, and beat them senseless with the California Corporations Code, the California Bar Rules of Professional Conduct, and a smattering of righteous indignation.  It is an awesome letter, and I mean that in both the traditional sense and the Jeff Spicoli sense.  You ought to read it.

(If you don’t, it boils down to three points. First, under the Corporation Code, I am entitled to certain rights of due process, and the terms of the C&D violated those rights. Second, the reasons for the termination are false because I wasn’t at the meeting. Third, threatening me with criminal or civil action is a violation of the Bar’s Rules of Conduct. The entire thing is a beautifully crafted, lovingly detailed, double-barreled middle finger to the C&D.)

When we got home from Vineman, Michael then forwarded on a transcript from a voicemail that Wilmont’s attorney left with his office. This was the first time my anger turned to pity, because the C&D sounded like someone who’d tried to scare me off with a barking dog, only to find that I’d returned with an atomic-powered, laser-guided attack wolverine.  That line about “simply responding to facts” when there was nothing factual about what the C&D said about me sounded like someone who was trying to save face.

Jump a few days later, and Michael calls me.  He’s spoken with Wilmont’s lawyer, and, after the two stopped dueling and started talking, my appallingly effective attorney made it clear that Wilmont had screwed up in roping me in with the rebel group (and, special note to the Wilmont Board: Sweet Cupping Cakes, guys, do you have any idea how much you’ve done to legitimize your opponents by suing them and calling them rebels?  You realize how much people love a rebel in this country, right? I swear, I should run for the Board just to make sure boneheaded PR moves like this don’t happen), and that I would take nothing less than a restoration of my membership, a full retraction, and an apology.  And, what do you know?  I got them all.

So, now what? For starters, I’m bloody well going to make a point of going to every one of Wilmont’s board meetings, though my Spidey sense is telling me that it’ll make my time as CCC rep look like Burning Man.  The kicker of all this is that Wilmont doesn’t have any real authority in the city. They don’t pass laws, they don’t hire and fire police or city personnel, and whatever resolutions they may pass probably don’t mean squat to the everyday life.  They may crow about getting permits for this neighborhood or shutting down that shitty sports bar on Wilshire (and the Parlor was a shitty sports bar, no matter how you slice it), but there are still bums sleeping in Reed Park and pissing all over the place, and there are still tags in my alley, and there are still maniacs driving without any regard for human life on my street.  And, let’s face it: the Fairmont is going to get what it wants. Money doesn’t just talk: it demands, and the more money one flashes in front of a city desperate for cash, the more one’s demands are going to be met.  Michael Dell is going to get his bloody great development, and the traffic around that block is going to suck, and the edge of my neighborhood is going to become a great, big mess.

The best we can do is speak up and fight, even if all that fight does is make sure the groups that are supposed to represent us and look out for us actually do their fucking jobs. I can’t wait to look at Wilmont’s finances, as is my right as a member, and I can’t wait to do what I can to make sure the rebels eventually get back into the fold, the chair’s snits be damned. Democracy is messy, but chaos is messier, and chaos that benefits some wealthy assholes who don’t live in my neighborhood is the messiest of all. There will probably come a time when I wish I’d just been kicked out and gotten my ten bucks back, but, for now, I’m going to stand up and make my voice heard.

And, if you live in the neighborhood, I think you should make your voice heard, too. If anything, just so I’ll have some company at the meetings.  The Board meets tonight at 7 at the Ken Edwards Center on 4th between Broadway and Colorado.  I’ll be the guy in the back, taking notes and wondering when I’m going to learn to keep my goddamn mouth shut.

Courtesy of the Keep Calm-o-matic.

Brad has a new book out, The Straits of Galahash, and he’s doing an epic contest to promote his latest work: go here to enter, and you might win some hardware. Like, a Kindle. Or a Nook. Epic.

Go enter, and get the book. And tell Brad to be gentle on me next time, please.