Thursday Yaya's.

It's the pre tax doldrums and I am once again trying to drum up enough business to keep my leaky boat from capsizing. The town about now, looks like the scene from high noon where everyone clears out and leaves Gary Cooper in the middle of the street. I have two shows in the next two weeks and will try to square my jaw and kick some sort of ass, like Cooper or the Duke, or little Allan Ladd with his lifts in his shoes. Like squeezing water from a prune, or is that now a dried plum?

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We woke to find out that SDGE is changing out all of the power poles in the valley. We were never notified of course and the $64 dollar question is "do we lose all of the food in the fridge and freezer before the lights come back on?" Nice of them not to let us know.

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Don't ever meet up with someone that you met on the internet. I can't go into it, but just don't. Years ago when the whole internet was in it's early "Well" stage, I befriended a minor 60's luminary, Art Kleps, who turned out to be a raving extortionist psychopath. I guess I didn't learn my lesson, but I am afraid I will have to discuss it over a drink.

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I was talking to a friend about the finer points of suicide the other day and I asked if he thought that the Bay Bridge was miffed because everyone takes their final endo off it's citified cousin, the Golden Gate. Give the poor old girl a complex. My friend, who travels the bridges frequently says that the Bay Bridge doesn't have a real passenger walk but that it is getting a bike lane so it should have a chance to catch up. He did inform me a little known fact, 95% of the suicides off the G.G. are facing the city. What are the psychological implications of that?

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I saw my dad the other day up in raisin country. He is starting to misfire synaptically but was better than I thought. I asked him if he could play cards and he managed to beat me at Gin Rummy. I am a hardcore rummy player and there are a lot of cognitive choices involved in the game. Just grouping coherently takes more brain power than you might realize. So I feel much better about him. He did get dressed in the middle of the night and read the paper and did a couple of other strange things but what the hell. Viva le difference. His hearing has gone to hell and he hates the other people at adult day care. Says they are stupid.

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Speaking of family, I got a note out of the blue from a great uncle I haven't seen for over thirty years. He has been looking for my father for decades and somehow found me through my genetics pursuit, specifically the gentleman that my father named in habonim so many years ago. I don't know how they put two and two together but they did.

So I had a great talk with my Uncle Ralph, who my father lived with in Detroit when he got off the boat in the thirties from Palestine. Ralph was my paternal grandmother Pesa Szcarlat Kaitz, sister Malka's son.
Six sisters, three brothers, they were from the Polish town of Wyzkow. Richest family in town, owned the lumber mill. He tells me some stuff that I never knew and I need to go see him for more.

The Szcarlat's, Ralph tells me were was originally from Holland, Von Shcarland or something like that. In World War I, in Wyzkow, the wealthy family sheltered and took care of some germanic officers who were in the Russian army. Wyzkow is on the Vistula River, near a big forest. They loved them and got along swimmingly. When the second world war broke out, they said, "these people are our friends, it is cool, we will be fine" and were subsequently wiped out. Only two survivors, maybe a third. So what is the moral, you just can't trust Nazis?

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Couple more stories this week about looney right wingers doing dumb stuff. Guy in Texas wrote a letter to the DA, saying he had the legal right to kill abortion providers and try and stop him. They did. Fox News viewer decides to kill Nancy Pelosi. Mom said he was fine until he started watching all that television  and became so durn "fair and balanced." Now we hear about another angry man who planted 36 pipe bombs because of his displeasure at the guvmint.

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Speaking of Germans, Bush voter suppression expert Herr Hans Von Spakovsky is back at it in Virginia.

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A Wisconsin DA is threatening to arrest teachers if they instruct their students about contraception and birth control.

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New mind reading technology by Intel. Freaking great. Like our wives don't already know what we are thinking.

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Interesting fracturing going on in the marijuana community. Just when a legalization proposition comes on the docket, a whole bunch of hooey starts dividing the community. Many people don't think it should ever be taxed. I don't have a problem with it. Booze and cigarettes are taxed. Why would pot be exempt, especially when we are in such economic straits? Don't feed the hand that bites you, one activist told me.

Then there are the growers that are afraid prices will come down. That legalization will harm the underground economy in bastions of bud growing like Humboldt.

As a person who indulged long before he had a medical reason to do so, I think that people need to chill. Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Act like adults and find a pragmatic middle ground. Be honest, Prop. 215 was a subterfuge for many stoners. The criminal justice system, whose engine seems to run on anti drug funding, has a strange incestuous relationship with the criminals, neither seemingly wanting to upset the apple cart. Now an end of prohibition is in site and a bunch of radicals want to screw it all up.

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A horrible story in the local paper yesterday describing how our local DA refused to go after a man who was harassing his neighbors. After many repeated threats, he ended up killing them last week. Our District Attorney, Bonnie Dumanis, being far too busy fighting sick pot smokers to attend to such things.

Speaking of Dumanis, the D.A. is refusing to return Eugene Davidovich's belongings without a court order. This includes his passport and backpack. Davidovich won a unanimous jury trial last week and the Prosecutor is obviously still sore. Allegedly called him a stoner when he requested his stuff on the phone. A request he has made at least five times. They are going to drag it out and make him suffer more, like he hasn't been harrassed by them enough. Sore losers. Quite petty.

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Bravo to Don Nelson for breaking Lenny Wilkens NBA wins record. I listen to KNBR when I'm in the Bay Area and get to hear Don talk a lot. Lovable guy, his teams play no defense. Sort of a sadsack, always blessed with marginal personnel. But you have to like him.

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The dickhead from Qatar (pronounced cutter) who tried to smoke in the bathroom of the plane and then cracked about lighting his shoe on fire. I believe the people around him who heard the s.o.b. get wise. While it would cause a diplomatic rumpus to draw and quarter him, the thought is very appealing.

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Loved the Iowa congressman King who recently accused the Humane Society of being a radical front for nasty vegetarians committed to tearing down the god given American way of life.

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The Republican Party appears to be in it's own battle for the soul of the Confederacy.