Bad sign when I'm super-cranky and I haven't even finished the A section of the LA Times yet.

1) I discovered today that if I wish to return to my morning in-class tutoring job next year, I'll have to re-interview and be re-hired. Why? Because then they can count me as a "new hire" and not have to give me a raise, as per university rules for workers who've been there for more than a year. I responded, "That's unethical," and was given the "we're a nonprofit, blah blah blah" speech. "I understand that it's a state college, not a corporation, but how many hundreds of thousands of dollars does the head of the university make per year? And they can't give an extra buck an hour for experienced tutors?" And they wonder why turnover is so high.

Moral: Nonprofits are bloodsucking corporations like any other; most of the good people are at the bottom of the org chart.

2) Waiting in the longest Big Lots line ever with an elderly cashier who moved slower than Snoop Dogg before he "quit" pot. Then the woman in front of me with a million items had to write a check. I saw her loading her car as I returned to my car, and her ride was a Jaguar. What is someone with a Jaguar doing at a closeout store?

3) On the way home, I made a left onto a local street as the green arrow (or was it yellow?) was turning to red. This beat slamming the brakes and having the car behind me rear-end me. However, I was soon greeted by the flash of the Culver City Traffic Light FascistCam that entrapped Rick (long story involving strobe lights) at that same intersection last year. Goddammit! That was *so* not my fault. I'm taking an unpaid day to fight this ticket in court, when it arrives in the mail in a few weeks, as it surely will.

4) Mr. B told his math class today that they are not allowed to do homework for other classes in his room, but that they *are* allowed to sleep if they feel like it.

Saving graces:
1) The boy I talked to about the importance of finding a way to do one's homework, regardless of what may or may not be going on personally or at home, has done his homework since. At least in the two classes where I see him.

2) My afternoon tutoring job finally seems to be getting off its ass about giving me a work schedule.

3) One of the winners of this year's $500,000 MacArthur grants owns a barbershop-turned-bookstore in Southern California and is an advocate for Latino literacy. No disrespect to all the science geniuses -- after all, I wouldn't mind Rick picking up half a mil for his work someday -- but it's nice to know that at least one guy who's devoted himself to making sure people get educated got a reward that's both karmic and monetary.

Oh, right. Celebrities live here, too.

(Rick, write your own account of this before you read mine so we can have dueling anecdotes!)

***

Some time back, Rick and I were driving along and I saw a billboard that screamed, "Val Kilmer is Moses."

"Real, or the Onion?" I said.

Real, of course. This is LA. And if a musical about the Ten Commandments opens in LA, of course it's going to have a movie actor at the helm.

This was ha-ha funny and funny-strange both at once, and that's about where it ended for me, until I found myself with a ticket to opening night. (Long boring story deleted). So there Rick and I are in front of the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, where they host the freakin' Oscars, standing in a sea of humanity trying to figure out how the hell to get into the building. We see signs for press, VIPs, will-call, and are looking around in a confused manner when a staffer unlocks the gate and asks anyone holding tickets in their hands to come forward.

We do. "I haven't seen ones like this before," the bouncer says.

"Uh. I bought them from Ticketmaster," replies Rick. The bouncer looks again and waves us through.

This is about when we notice that we're standing on a red carpet, flashbulbs are popping all around us, and papparazi are crying, "Andy! Andy! Over here!" because Andy Dick is standing in front of us mugging for cameras.

Rick and I share a panicked look and scurry towards the building.

"What just happened?" I say. "Did we accidentally go in the VIP entrance?"

"Maybe that's why he's not used to seeing Ticketmaster tickets."

"But this does seem like the main entrance to the theater."

"Well, let's just keep on walking until someone stops us."

We continue along the red carpet, trying not to betray ourselves as the un-famous rubes we are, and soon enter the theater. The theater is inside a mall (!!) and while the path upstairs to it is roped off, the side areas by the stores are full of tourists with cameras. Taking pictures of *us*, like we must be famous because we're there.

This seems like a good time to mention that we're dressed corporate casual, as would be appropriate for the theater in Boston. Nine out of ten people around us are in full suit/ballgown formalwear.

"Everyone will just think we're so rich and famous we don't care how we look," I say, hopefully.

"Not everyone's dressed up."

"No, that guy's wearing Chucks, so I guess we're alright." At which point, someone with the Chuck-clad guy turns around and says, "It's okay. He's a rock star."

Facetious? True? Wishful thinking? No way of knowing.

There was really nothing else to do before the show except stand around the lobby people-watching like a couple of starf*ckers, still disoriented by all those camera flashes. Soon, I was to utter the LA Quote of the Night:

"Think of it this way. While 99% of the people here have more money than we do, I can only assume most of them aren't famous...although there's Gary Coleman."

Yes, this was a veritable cavalcade of the B-list. Rick also saw some actors he recognized from, no lie, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Since opening night tickets weren't any more expensive than any other night, part of me wants to try this again with some other play and see if it's a similar experience. Most of me, however, is simply very glad I'm not famous. Even if some tourists from Kansas now think I am.

Whoa, I need to calm down

I just had a total freak-out (which my RSS-reading users will see) about supposedly being purged from the voter rolls, until I looked again and saw that the name that someone looked for and couldn't find on the rolls was "Jen," not "Jennifer." (The latter being what it says on my birth certificate).

I guess I'm just that convinced that this election is going to be stolen that I'll freak out over any indication of it.

I'm going to re-register to vote anyway, just in case.

On the way to the store yesterday, I passed a can of white paint on the sidewalk under an underpass, near a homeless encampment. It looked like it had been dropped there and splattered somewhat. "Odd," I thought, and didn't ponder it too much.

On the way back, a man was near the can. Specifically, a man with white paint all over his face and head, and splattered down his body, as though he'd turned the can over his head. He was crabwalking along the sidewalk looking like a scene out of a David Lynch movie, and none too friendly to boot.

It was too late to cross the street, so I pondered whether I'd just fight him hand-to-hand or brain him with my heavy backpack first, when I realized he wasn't getting up. As I passed, I heard him moan, "I had too much to drink..."

I reckon he had.

The October Country

NameTheOctoberSurprise.com: I invite readers to submit entries to the "Name the October Surprise" contest by answering this question: "What do you think is a possible October Surprise that Bush will announce in order to try to win a close election?"

I've been thinking about this for a while now. Possible candidates:
1) We'll "capture" Osama bin Laden (or someone who looks like him). Rick notes, however, that the Bush administration currently wants us to forget Osama ever existed, so maybe not.
2) Some "injury" or "illness" will befall someone in the Bush family, preferably one of the daughters. Then, if you vote against him, clearly you hate American families in their time of need.
3) Someone will leak Kerry's divorce records, and there'll be something unfortunate in them. Or, more likely, Massachusetts Law Clerks for Truth or somesuch will just run a bunch of commercials alleging whatever the Bush campaign wants us to think.
4) Stability in Iraq (oh, if only they could...)

A quick web search reminds me of plenty I'd forgotten about: we "find" WMDs in Iraq, there's a new terrorist attack on US soil (or Ridge tells us there will be and jacks the warning level to red), we go rattle sabers in Iran or North Korea or Syria...joy.

Personally, I'd like to see gas cost, like, $5 a gallon all during October, as long as Kerry is able to spin it as being Bush's fault somehow. It'd be worth it.

Any publicity is good publicity

Security god Bruce Schneier, who I used to cite as a tech journalist, cited me last month. Not for anything tech related, but because of my rape safety tips for college women. You see, I'm one of those folks who recommends that women in certain circumstances be careful about where their drinks are coming from and who's handled them:The Real Facts About College Rape

I know Schneier was talking about one idea in general, and not my article or me in particular, but humor me and allow me to personally respond anyway.

Schneier says (in part):
"GHB is gamma hydroxybutyric acid; a date rape drug. An attacker (presumably male) slips the drug into a woman's drink, and then rapes her after the effects of the drug set in. Not a common attack -- there are fewer than 40 reported cases in the U.S. each year -- but horrible when it happens. (To be fair, this number is widely believed to be an underestimate, but it seems clear that it's a small fraction of all rapes.)

[To be even more fair, it's a fraction of my writing about date rape prevention, too.I put much more stock in basic self-defense.]

"One suggested countermeasure is that women carry their own bottle opener into a bar, and make sure that no one else handles their opened drink. The general principle illustrated here is that of a trusted third party. If a woman opens the beer bottle herself, then she is not forced to trust anyone in the bar.

[While a scumbag can dose a drink in a crowded bar, it's harder than at a house party, and I never said "bar." Since the focus of my article was rape at college, I'm not so much talking bars -- though I suppose plenty of college students get fake IDs and go to them -- as campus parties.]

As with the threat of drugs or razors in Halloween candy (which, unlike GHB, is almost completely phony), risk assessment is often based on scariness rather than prevalence. That is, people are having an emotional reaction to the threat rather than a realistic one. And they end up with a countermeasure that makes no sense from a security analysis perspective, but a lot of sense from an emotional analysis perspective. Sure, carrying a bottle opener is easy. But the constant vigilance that this countermeasure requires is not. And someone so focused on this countermeasure is more likely to ignore other threats.

Do I carry a bottle opener on my keychain? Yes, because I like beer, and I like being able to open my beer at parties without having to scrounge for the host's opener. I don't use it for security reasons, but then, the only people other than a bartender who ever hand me a drink are my husband or my friends. I'm also out of college, which was the focus of the article: American colleges have a very different culture, and require different precautions, than the world at large. "Constant vigilance" in certain environments is not necessarily excessive, and the steps I recommend are really quite simple (and free). A young woman at a frat house with people she's known for a week should be more careful than a 40-year-old woman at a bar with old friends, just like you should be more careful in unfamiliar neighborhoods with high violent crime rates than you are while walking your dog at home.

I would also argue that, unless you take your computer files *very* seriously, it's difficult to compare a tech security breach to waking up with a strange man on top of you. What's excessive in the computer security realm may seem reasonable when it's your body, not your hardware.

Furthermore, I wonder about Schier's qualifications to judge the security risks for college women at fraternity parties -- has he been to one lately? Has he ever had his drink doctored between the pour and his mouth? I have. It was speed, not roofies, but I attended a party my first year of college where all the drinks were dosed, even the nonalcoholic ones. I only had one, so no harm done other than a bit of hyperactivity, but it's embarrassing. I was very cautious that year, and it still happened. I'm only disclosing it to the universe here because apparently there's a need for firsthand evidence that dumbass college students really do put foreign substances in the drinks of dumbass freshmen, and they do it more than 40 times a year if even I ran into it.

Yes, I was very cautious as a young single woman. Perhaps overly so. But it did not affect the quality or depth of my friendships with men, my eventual college relationship, or the amount of fun (or booze) I had at parties. My caution did not affect where I went or who I got to know. When I think of my college years, I don't think of paranoia -- in fact, I didn't worry about my safety any really measurable amount, because I felt well-informed, able to avoid problems when possible, and equally capable of handling them if/when they occurred. Even in LA's more criminal neighborhoods, I *still* don't worry -- I just stay alert.

I'm sure I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but aren't we all.

(Where's the link to Scheier's original writing? Google it if you want it, or ask me to send it to you. I don't feel like linking to it and possibly starting a back-and-forth with security wonks. It's bad enough I've mentioned Scheier by name.)

Is there a doctor in the house?

It wasn't bronchitis. Well, it might have been in the beginning. Now it's a good old fashioned sinus infection.

Or tuberculosis. Given the quality of my current health care, it's hard to tell.

I spent NINE HOURS at the clinic yesterday, arriving at noon and finally walking out with a prescription at 9pm. Nine hours. Even I can't read for that long, even though I had figured on a five-six hour wait and brought two books. It's also hard to read when an intercom announces names and room numbers loudly and in Spanish every two minutes. (Somehow, a foreign language is even harder to tune out than your own.) Plus, there is no "now serving number 35" system -- like at, say, your basic deli -- so you don't know where in the queue you are, and the paperwork, visit, and precription all have several steps that are distributed over seemingly random intervals of time, and you don't want to miss your name being called, so you're effectively trapped in the waiting room for the duration.

If you thought that sentence was long, try reading it for nine hours.

Of the million and five patients who got seen before I did (and no, this wasn't an emergency room), two seem emblematic:
1) The diabetic woman who turned out to not feel well because her blood sugar was 600. Hello?
2) The man who wandered around the waiting room holding his stomach, occasionally bending over and making horrible, deep, LOUD retching noises. I've never heard anything like it; granted, of course the person I've most often heard retch is myself, and I'm not a large man. At least he made it into the intake area, behind a closed door, before actually spewing anything.

What's an otherwise healthy young woman with a cough and a cold, really? A nine hour wait, that's what. Well, what do you want for $65?

In further indignities, the doctor prescribed me antibiotics without telling me they interact with birth control pills, and the pharmacy gave me an inhaler instead of the nasal spray they were supposed to. Of course, I didn't notice the latter oversight until I got home, so I get to go back to the damn place.

Is this what socialized medicine is like? If so, maybe I don't want it after all. (I will accept answers from people who are currently living in socialized medicine countries and using the public services, not from crazed US libertarians, wealthy Republicans, or people with private insurance who've heard the public stuff is really bad).

Meanwhile, I've been up for over an hour draining all the liquid in my body out my nose. You're welcome.

The most disturing Bush "gaffe" yet

Reuters: "We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."
-- U.S. "President" George W. Bush.

Ewwww.

Rook points out a Washington Monthly article that reads, in part, "It's fine to hammer away on domestic issues with specific target groups. It's fine for John Edwards to focus on the two Americas. But anyone who thinks the primary message of Kerry's campaign should be anything other than national security is just deluding themselves. To paraphrase James Carville, 'It's 9/11, stupid.'"

It's a sad statement that our society is prioritizing risk management over improving quality of life. Even more so because all we do in America, it seems, is reactive (not proactive) risk management. Getting interested in homeland security after an attack, not in response to warnings sitting on the president's desk, for instance. Why don't we try and look ahead, to what's going to be f'cking up our country in few years, not just at what f'ed it up in 2001?

But what do I know? I'd like to hear about a campaign issue other than war once in a while, so obviously I am out of touch with the American electorate.

For one, today's Doonesbury seems spot on:


And just a quick glance at the Letters to the Editor section in even a "blue" state shows the public's growing indifference towards health care (got a societal problem? Blame immigrants!) and public schools.

Generations from now, everyone but the super-rich will be undereducated, underinsured, and underemployed -- but gosh, we sure will be SAFE!

Nine weeks to go. Let's grow some priorities. Fast. Even talking about Iraq instead of Vietnam would be a massive improvement.

Indignities of the week:
1) A job interview that consisted of a personality questionaire (hobbies, favorite restaurant, etc.) and no actual interview. Unless my theory is right, and the video cameras in the place were recording us four applicants chatting while we waited, and that was the interview.
2) On the way out of said interview, a roofer dropped a piece of roofing on me. It was lightweight, but still.
3) I've got bronchitis. I can tell. Crap.
4) Two shifts washing dishes at an old folks' home. Welcome back to the temp agency, here's a really prime gig... (As Beck once sang, "Give me what I got to get so I can go, 'cause I ain't washing dishes in a ditch no more." This works even better if you think of the San Fernando Valley as a ditch. Which I do.)
5) The Republican National Convention.
6) Where I'm going to have to go to get my bronchitis looked at. Ew, clinics. I suppose getting my bronchitis looked at by the UCLA student health center wouldn't be much better, which is part of why I can't justify springing the hundreds per month for "good" insurance through Rick.
7) Let's just give the U.S. healthcare system its own dedicated talking point here.
8) The RNC. Again.

Feh.

In better news, I've been offered a part-time job, which would nicely replace the literacy gig with the company that just fired everyone in LA. Due to my history, however, I'm not getting excited until I'm sitting in the office on Tuesday signing paperwork.