My dad testified before Congress.

It’s on YouTube.

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So the budget deal is done, it appears.

I guess that’s some consolation.  Better something than nothing, and I suppose better than starting from scratch, as the honorable gentleman from Murietta proposed.

See, here’s my thing: why do we bother negotiating with people that openly tell us, from the outset, that they would, quite literally, rather blow up the building than negotiate? 

This does not, it strikes me, seem a wise course of action. 

To be fair, it also strikes that my personal solution to any budget crisis — lock the f*ckers in the capital, shut off the toilets, and reduce their rations to coffee and bananas — is also, perhaps, not precisely a wise course of action.

It also occurs to me that those solutions that I propose in my more “sane” moments (i.e., revising the 2/3 rule for passage of the budget, repeal of supermajority requirements for the passage of local tax changes) are not exactly “moderate.”  At least not according to the definition assigned to this term in contemporary California political discourse.

It occurs to me that contemporary California political discourse may not be either precise, nor correct, in its definition of words such as “moderate.”

It is at this point that I begin to wonder if it matters, really, that the kind of person who teaches political sociology to students attending the state college nearest the state capitol of the largest state in these United States evidently does not subscribe to the same definition of “moderation” as does, for instance, our esteemed representative from Santa Maria.

And, really, once one has made that leap — to suggesting that the person with whom one is engaging in negotiation is nothing other than a shill, a tool, a pathetic dumbass — really what is left?

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I got yur idiosyncratic right here, bitchez.

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Overheard at a “workgroup” meeting for a “task force.”

“Well, it’s all well and good to talk about public transit.  But you can’t really expect seniors to ride buses with all those rappers.”

……Sigh.  This is when low-man on the totem pole (moi) goes to the happy place where mermaids sing and balding men walk in white flannel trousers eating peaches on beaches.

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A word to the wise:

If you happen to work for a large government bureaucracy, especially one that happens to be furloughing people due to budget constraints and even might just happen to be looking for excuses to lay people off, here are a few handy hints about some things you ought not to do:

1.) Don’t print out job announcements for open positions (making roughly 50-75% more than your current pay grade, natch) at other firms on the office printer.  Especially don’t do this during work hours.  And for pete’s sake don’t do it on the printer that sits next to the capo de capo for your unit.   That’s what we have days off for, dumbass.

2.) While you’re at it, don’t have extended arguments with members of the search committees for said positions, on the office phone, during work hours, about the precise nature of the “documentation” you need to provide about your “transcripts.”   I mean, aside from the the fact that it’s in poor taste to do this on the clock it strikes me that arguing with the person who’s evaluating your qualifications is pretty much a straight ticket to not getting an interview.  Get a cell phone and scream into the ether like all the other bluetools, for all I care, but do it on your break, f*ckwad.

3.) And because this evidently needs spelling out (who knew?): when you’re sitting in a staff meeting, especially when you’re sitting right next to the capo de capo, try not to leaf through a magazine while he’s talking.   It’s f*cking rude.  Or didn’t you learn that at the fancy school the worth of whose transcripts are evidently questionable for even the dean-of-brownnosing search committee at cow-tip junior college district?

That is all.  You may now return to listening to opera at high volume, through the streaming media you’re not supposed to have on your government computer.*

*Dude, I can’t listen to N-P-fucking-R on my computer.  What gives with you and your streaming opera?

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I read this article and thought of someone we all know.

Who, thankfully, has worked through that particular issue and is now happily married to someone perfectly nice.

Boy am I glad I have a place where I can say such things out loud.

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Colleague: so, here’s a question that you’ll know the answer to.  How do you spell “yay?”

Moi: Do you mean: “yay, team?” “yeah, baby!” “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” or “Ja, und now is the moment on Sprockets when we dance!”

Colleague: um, yay team?

Moi: That’s Y-A-Y. 

Colleague: Are you sure?

Moi: Yes.  I have a Fowler’s Dictionary of English Usage*, if you want to double-check.

Colleague: No, that’s fine.

When did I become this person?  No, scratch that — I don’t want to know the answer.  Actually, I just want to know, is this the person I want to be?  Because really, it’s not such a fabulous thing to be the guy that you go to when you don’t know how to spell “yay!”

*This was a feint.  It’s not actually in Fowler’s.

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Say six ridiculous things before the break. 

So far I’m up to three.  Gotta keep ‘em laughing, right?

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When the New York Times does an article in the Style section on a trend, that trend is over.

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You attend an interfaith organizing meeting for marriage equality for gays and lesbians and…

The invocation consists of shamanic drumming.

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