Yokels, Get OUT!

If I have to wait for one more Cletis exiting the 405 to gather enough courage to merge with Wilshire traffic, I'm going to scream! There's a solid line there! You're not supposed to cross it! You're supposed to turn right and keep straight until the line breaks, THEN start making your lane changes. Don't just sit there and wait for Wilshire traffic to die down so you can make your three lane changes stress-free. I don't care how little time you have to make it to your left turn on Veteran. Grow some cajones and GET OUT OF MY WAY!

Look, I'm not an aggressive driver, but I will assert myself if I have to make three lane changes within several hundred feet. I do it all the time. In fact I got so sick of waiting for one of these namby-pambies that I went into the right lane to bypass them, which meant I had to make four lane changes instead of three. But guess what. I did it! I made all of my lane changes in time to turn left on Veteran and I did it in the pouring rain where my visibility was compromised. It may have been foolish, but I did what I had to do and I didn't back up the entire Wilshire off-ramp in the process.

I don't get it. If you're too afraid to change that many lanes in such a short time, make a right on Veteran and then do a U-turn. Or just keep straight, make your left when you can, and then back track. Do ANYTHING but sit there! Why do these people drive like they've never been to the "Big City" before? I see nothing but California license plates on these cars. Where are they from? Yuba City? Wheatland? Needles? Happy Camp (WTF!)? Some other town I had to Google because I never heard of it before? (BTW: I'd bet my life-savings the people in that last town enthusiastically refer to themselves as "Happy Campers." smdh)

Are these the same people who insist on driving slowly in the fast lane? Ugh! Now there's a class of cretins conspiring to raise my blood pressure. I don't understand the mentality of driving 40 mph in the fast lane. What would ever possess anyone to choose the fast lane of all things to take their leisurely stroll? Are they clueless about what that lane is for? Are their speedometers malfunctioning? Are they distracted by their cell phone conversation? Are they eating? Drinking? Filling out a crossword puzzle? Are they concentrating on their
executive board presentation? Are they practicing for a movie audition? Are they making sure no one holds them up even if it means holding everyone else up? Did they--for variety's sake--draw from a hat to choose which lane to drive in and the fast lane was the lucky winner? Do they want a closer view of traffic headed in the opposite direction? What is it!

And since I'm in a complaining mood, what is it with pedestrians who don't push the button to cross the street and then stand around looking perplexed when they don't get the "walk" signal? I swear, if I don't see them push the button with my own eyes, I'll always walk up there and push it myself. I don't care how closely they're standing next to the button. If I invade their space or come off as distrustful of their common sense (or lack thereof), TOUGH!
I can't just trust these people. There are too many bumpkins walking and driving around this city for me to take any chances. I just wish to God someone would clue them in and tell them if they can't function properly in an urban environment, they should make like Changing Faces and G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T.!

ARG!!!

I Don't Know about This One...

I understand the environmental motivation behind this and I'd welcome any measure that would prevent further layoffs. But I wonder if now is the time for this.

Unless I absolutely NEED to buy something in particular, I generally won't patronize a business if a parking fee is involved. Before my office moved to Westwood, I rarely did business there for that very reason. Businesses in Westwood are notorious for having difficulty staying afloat, mainly because of the expensive lease payments their owners have to pay. But I wonder if part of the blame lies with people taking their money elsewhere to avoid the concomitant $8 parking fee, like I would regularly do.

With the economy still in the red, a spontaneous drive to Baskin Robbins to buy a $5 sundae is less attractive when there's an additional $3 parking fee tacked on. The dissuasion from shopping caused by high parking fees could be mitigated, in part, by a robust public transportation infrastructure. However, public transportation--in L.A. anyway--is laughable at best. I hope this move doesn't inadvertently encumber commerce in the state even more than is already the case.

First Ammendment Rights for Corporations?

I haven't had time to research and really understand this. Proponents of this Supreme Court decision argue that corporations deserve free speech rights when it comes to campaign contributions. (I think!)

I can't say I understand how this benefits American democracy. But what I can say is how alarmed I felt when I heard this ruling could allow foreign holders of American debt (i.e. China) to have an increasing say in how things are run in this country.

I know I promised to give the NWO conspiracy theories a rest, so I'll just say this: while I'm gravely concerned about this ruling (and even a bit scared), I'm not exactly surprised.

Piracy as Pay?

So I've been listening to my friend's collection of songs from Rihanna's latest album, Rated R. I describe it that way because it seems like less of a CD and more like a collection of randomly acquired songs downloaded to the same iPod. What tipped me off was the fact that the songs are out of order and there's a mix of tracks with either explicit lyrics or censored lyrics, which wouldn't be found on the same album.

I'll give my friend the benefit of the doubt and assume she bought the songs off iTunes and simply didn't pay attention to which album she was downloading each song from (assuming both a clean and raunchy version were available at the time). At any rate, in order to get the fully intended listening experience I had to do a little research to find the correct track order and organize the Rated R "collection" accordingly.

During my research, I learned that my personal favorite "Rude Boy" had been slated as the next single to be released from the album. Interestingly, it will replace "Wait Your Turn" as the third released single, making this the second time that "Wait Your Turn" was pushed back. ("Hard" usurped it the first time, becoming the 2nd single to be released after "Russian Roulette.")

With my previous raving about "Rude Boy," it's probably no surprise that I fully support this move on the part of the record label. And apparently I'm not alone. When not listening to my friend's iPod, I tune in to the RihannaRatedR YouTube channel, where I've noticed that this song has been getting the most views (over 1.5 million as of Jan. 24 PST). "Wait Your Turn" has a much lower number (just under 600,000). This could be because there's already a video for the latter song and people are watching the video instead. However, "Wait Your Turn" is also ranked lower than "Rude Boy" when you sort by popularity in iTunes. Is this why it keeps getting pushed back? "Stupid in Love" is looking pretty popular right now too. Is it next in line?

Maybe I'm late to the party in figuring this out, but are the record labels monitoring sites like YouTube and iTunes to make their decisions on which singles to release, based on information the public is giving away for free? If so, then I guess I can't blame them for using whatever tactic they can to get an edge in the sinking ship that is the music industry. Still, when people volunteer their preferences like this, it saves the record labels from spending money on focus groups, market researchers, and other "suits" whose salaries would lower their profit margins, which seems a little like cheating to me.

So if my friend did "acquire" the tracks through unsavory means, should she be faulted for pirating their music? I, of course, would NEVER condone such a thing! Still, if people are essentially working for free to fatten the pockets of record executives and recording artists, shouldn't they get something in return besides an overpriced CD or an ephemeral download from iTunes? Just saying....

Who Will Be the Grownups?

A recent Time article described the difficulty teens are having finding employment. Today only 17% of high school students have jobs, whereas only 10 years ago, as many as 45% of teens were working. In the 1970's, 9% of the people employed in the U.S. were teenagers. Now the number has dropped to 1/3 of that value.

The main culprits are adults who, by necessity, are out-competing teens for jobs. Of course, the implicit tragedy in all of this is that adults--many with families and crippling financial obligations--are now working the lower-paying jobs without benefits that formerly went to teens. All-around it's a bad situation for everyone involved as well as for society as a whole.

The article gives interesting statistics about people's future earning potential based on the economic climate during their first job. Basically, if you started working in a rotten economy, you'd most likely earn less money than if you had started in a thriving economy. The article also explains some of the negative social consequences of teen unemployment, such as higher rates of teen pregnancies and single-parent households. The only upside to all of this is that teens are staying in school longer than ever before, either to build technical skills or to gain higher credentials. Having better-educated adults in society is the only silver lining in all of this mess. Or is it?

According to an essay from a recently published book entitled This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future, extended schooling prolongs the helpless, dependent stage that humans go through as children. Author, Alison Gopnik, describes childhood as a time when flexible, limitless learning yet helplessness and dependence on caretakers occurs, whereas adulthood is when less learning, but more planning and active mastery of knowledge (as well as independence) takes place. The positive result is that all this learning may result in the Flynn Effect where we'd see an increase in absolute IQ scores across the population. But if all this learning arrests independence and the ability to plan and act on mastered knowledge, Gopnik believes there may be a negative consequence to all of this and thus ends her essay by asking, "When we are all babies forever, who will be the parents? When we're all children who will be the grown-ups?"

I'll tell you who: The trust fund babies whose parents' connections can secure them positions of influence and wealth or whose allowances can support them until they can financially support themselves. They'll become the so-called "grownups" making the decisions for the rest of us so that the gap between the have's and the have-not's can widen even further.

That's who! Isn't that how the system was designed to work?

Now It May Be Cold on the East Coast, but on the Other Side of Town...

I flew in from Boston on Monday where it was bitterly cold and snowy. The weather was so bad that it caused delays in flights from both ends--Boston and Los Angeles. I'm an L.A. girl through and through so I literally can't comprehend temperatures that go below 40 degrees. I couldn't wait to get back to L.A. where we were boasting 70-degree weather less than a week ago. After an exhausting 10 hours of travel--3 of them added on because of weather-related complications--I was ecstatic to be home again.

And then came Tuesday. In my best Ricky Ricardo voice: Wha happened!

I drove in to work at around 11 a.m. and actually had the wipers going full blast, which is rare. Once I arrived at work, I couldn't park in my preferred space because there was this huge puddle threatening to swallow my feet whole and give me pneumonia. I swear that parking lot gets so many deep puddles, I should seriously consider investing in a pair of galoshes just to get to the front door of my building. (I'm not exaggerating, by the way.) It's a veritable obstacle course in that parking lot trying to find two cars that are not only spaced far enough apart for me to fit through them, but also lack an ankle-deep puddle in between them.

Once I got past all the cars, I came across what was essentially a river rushing southward down the last aisle of the parking lot. I literally stood there for 10 seconds trying to figure out how to cross it. When I finally made it to the front door, there was this massive waterfall plunging down from the roof onto the keypad where we punch in the code to enter the building. My God! At 11:30--which is late even for me!--I'm already having to force myself to go to work after an exhausting day of travel. Now I'm faced with the prospect of drowning in a oil slicked puddle or getting electrocuted?

It's days like this that jolts L.A. natives like me back into reality because, in all honesty, it does rain in Southern California. Sometimes really hard! It's easy to forget this when we only get 35 sporadic days of rain each year. I remember when the O.J. Simpson trial was televised. It was the lead story of the 11 o'clock news every single night--which was completely ridiculous, but I digress. The only event that could ever bump it out of the lead was, as you've probably guessed, the RAIN. Even if it simply drizzled for 5 minutes in one small remote section within the greater L.A. area, we found out about it before hearing the details of that stupid trial. Rain in Southern California makes the headlines because it's so infrequent. It catches people off-guard here and lulls everyone (here and abroad) into believing that it never rains here.

Which probably explains why Tony Toni Tone (and others?) could get away with a song like "It Never Rains (in Southern California)." I love that song, only because I like to sing it every time it does rain here. It always tickles me for some reason. I may have a weird sense of humor, but apparently I'm not alone. Some D.J. on KJLH decided to relish in the irony of that song by playing it on the air during my rainy commute today. I couldn't help but chuckle at our shared sense of humor. It put me in just enough of a good mood to keep trekking towards work, in spite of the exhaustion from yesterday's flight and the dreaded anticipation of those torrential rivers and waterfalls waiting for me in the parking lot.

Ay que lluvia!

Senate Democrats Lose Their Filibuster-Proof Majority

Why don't people realize that filibusters means nothing gets done in this country?
The American electorate is useless. What a waste of voting privileges! Grrrrrr!