THE NEWS TODAY

WAITING FOR A PARK

Still waiting for fiber optics?  You can relax now.  Your very own Macroneurotic is launching a new business -- venture capitalists please take note.   This will be a carrier pigeon service, AKA Carol’s Cold-Blooded Carriers (CC-BC).  Our service is designed for people carrying on illicit love affairs, secret committee meetings, and/or engaged in private conversations with politicians, wink wink. 

Our pigeons deliver messages anywhere on land, on sea, or in the air.  Whatever message you want kept secret, we can handle it.  Our birds are swift and tell no tales, even when tortured by the likes of Donald Trump. 

The CC-BC fleet can fly over the highest walls & through barbed wire fences; they carry no viruses nor can they be hacked.  Our secret revolutionary encryption method (© ™®) is simple: we break your message into three parts and use three pigeons flying three different routes, so even if they get one bird, what are the chances of catching all three? 

How about that!

Ladies & gentlemen: this is the most secure secret message transmission method that exists today; better than Apple, who by their own admission could create a back door if they wanted to.  Our pigeons have no back doors; they’ve got wings and tails and they know how to fly.  Best of all, they reach destinations without use of the internet or PG&E.   

Please ask about our soon-to-be-released highly skilled trained flock of drone pigeons who carry remote controlled cameras & other surveillance appliances – latest technology, of course. 

Our pigeons will always nod in agreement; they are proud to please.

OLD NEWS (JANUARY) BUT GOOD HISTORY – MEA CULPA

NOT GUILTY!  What did I say about entertainment in Vallejo?  You just can’t beat a Tuesday night special meeting of the City Council for high drama.  On one of those nights earlier this year, in the raw painful wake of exposing MISDC (secret committee for helping Orcem & VMT dredge the river), I watched a series of events that could have been lifted right out of a Hollywood movie. 

Here’s how it went: a certain ex-vice mayor committed a lengthy tearful reverse-auto-da-fe, denying guilt over and over, all the while refusing to apologize, pleading with the peanut gallery to feel sorry for him, telling us we could not possibly imagine what it feels like to sit up on that stage and be publicly vilified for more than four and a half hours, for something of which he is completely innocent. 

I felt no pity for the fellow, and besides, nobody asked him.  His tirade showed up at the start of the meeting like a bat out of hell; out of order and off the wall, but no one stopped him.  He simply had to get it off his chest.  He’ll probably play that monologue in his mind for a long long time.  I wonder if late at night he watches re-runs of that meeting when the citizens of Vallejo accused him of wrong-doing, over & over like strokes of a whip.  Does he feel like Capt. Queeg?   

Nor was I moved by the blonde at the end of the table who also elicits pity; she’s really so sweet, and her golden locks sparkle under the spotlights.  What I imagine about her is she just does what she’s told.  Anyone out there get a different impression? 

Best of all, for me, Miss Katie, who took the same ethics course for Public Officials that I did, and repeated the words I’d directed at the mayor only one week before: the perception of wrong doing in the eyes of the people is enough to make you guilty.  Whatever he’d done to make so many people mad enough to come down to city hall on a cold blustery night in the middle of winter and tell him about it, is wrong and he should not do it even if he thinks it’s right.  That ethics course, incidentally, taught that the consequences of such wrong-doing could be fines, jail time, and public humiliation, but there was no talk of the first two in our city hall under the watchful eye of our legal hawk. 

Then the public spoke: a homeless mother of six addressed the council; claimed a city employee hung up on her when she asked for help.  No one knew what to say.  As she walked back to her seat the silence in the house was deafening. 

Things got worse.  The lover of cement factories on precious waterfront property put in his two cents, and it was all we could do to remain in our seats.  He accused us of being against business, and not interested in what’s good for Vallejo.  I bowed my head and hissed.  Yes, I did. 

Our own brilliant AC, the best, most eloquent, intelligent & informed citizen activist in town, and my own personal heroine, was vilified for characterizing Filipino people as being “respectful of the law,” a quality she found lacking in a council woman who’s ever-changing lipstick colors I always find stunning. 

There was a well-spoken MMD owner who told the council that the secret committee meetings had destroyed all her respect for our government and they had lost the trust of the people.    

Somebody got up & told the Vallejo City Council we the people were fed up seeing the same 4 – 3 votes on motions; time and time again, the same people voting together the same way.  We also don’t like that they don’t get along among themselves, let alone with the likes of us.

McConnell, who should have been vice-mayor but lost in a 4-3 vote, suggested the council create an ad-hoc committee and hold open discussions about the recent debacle in order to learn how to do better and try to regain the public’s trust.  The mayor said it would be wasting time making new rules & regulations when we already had perfectly good ones in place.  When it was pointed out that he himself had broken the rules he called that “a mistake,” and even excused the blond at the end of the table for making the same mistake.

That’s what my ex-husband called it when I caught him cheating.  A mistake. 

But the city manager advised the mayor to do what the good councilman suggested, which must have really bugged his honor big time seeing as how he and the white-haired knight are always duking it out up there on the dais in front of the hoi-polloi.  I wonder how they behave when we’re not around.

I was embarrassed when our legal eagle corrected one of our most outspoken activists, who’d given the impression that his website, exposing the secret committee, had been pulled by the city staff when it had not.  I’m not happy with him because I want us to be better than that.  Ditto about the recall efforts, which I’m glad to see have come to an end – for whatever reason.  There was something insidious about that movement & I’m glad it’s over.  And who could ever forget screaming like a banshee at the mayor.  Puleeze!

We’ve got to be better than that.  We’re on the side of right and must maintain the high standards we require of our leaders.  Here I am bashing my friends and colleagues so I need to say something about myself to cut me down to size & put me in my place.  OK.  I confess to a weakness for bad boys; smart ones; preferable sharp dressers.  Nuff said.