Greetings From Yorba Linda

As punishment for my takeover of the Aerie (see Coup Archives) I have been named Foreign Correspondent and stationed in Yorba Linda, California.  My first major assignment is to do a sentimental retrospective on the life of Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States of America.  There are worse punishments I am sure but water-boarding has received such bad press lately that I think it was ruled out early on.

Now before I bury the lead on my first story . . .

Greetings

from

Yorba Linda!

Yorba Linda, California is 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles and 95 miles north of San Deigo.  The name comes from Spanish and translates as “Yorba” (moldy lettuce) and “Linda” (daughter of Ronstadt).  There my be a disparity in the idiom but that is close.

According to the U.S. census of 2000 the population of Yorba Linda was 58,918, 81% of which is white.  The African-American contingent in Yorba Linda–hold on to your hats–is a whopping 1.2% for a grand total of 688 blacks.  Ever wonder what being surrounded feels like?

And don’t you just KNOW that a large part of that 1.2% has got to be African-American only by genetics?  How do you keep from being marginalized as a culture?  Simple–abandon your culture in favor of the majority.

See Anaheim? It's a blond pubic hair south east of there.

Next highest in population is the Asian community with 11.1% followed closely by Hispanic with 10.3%.

Now the numbers don’t add up perfectly to a guy like me.  It seems that when you add all the percentages together you come up with more than 100% especially when you throw in all the little percentages for Native Americans and Pacific Islanders and Eskimos and Alabama immigrants and such, but then again I am not a demographer and I am sure that they have some way to make it all come out right.

Let’s not fool ourselves, ok?

Yorba Linda is in the metropolitan region of Los Angeles.  It’s not Topeka, Kansas folks.  91% commute to work.  A FULL 50% are in management or professional occupations.  FIFTY PERCENT in management or professional occupations and more than 9 out of ten of them work someplace else besides Yorba Linda!

Are we starting to get a picture of Yorba Linda yet?

Let’s talk about income.

66.1% of families made between $75,000 and $200,000 plus

26% of families made between $100,000 and $ 149,000.

These people ain’t poor.

BUT WAIT!!  NO POOR PEOPLE!?  Let’s look at the 2000 census reports again!  Well, as it turns out there are a FEW poor folks, but not many.  Not so as you could tell anyway.  It makes me wonder what they do for landscaping and household domestics.  And you KNOW that with that many rich people they are going to have a desperate need for housekeepers and gardeners.  My guess is that they come in from nearby cities and communities in the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area.  You betcha!  Anaheim might have some poor folk who are willing to clean the poop of rich people.  I ain’t gonna check Anaheim’s demographics right now, but I’d say that would be a good bet.

Yorba Linda is also the site of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.  It is where he grew up and where he is reportedly buried.

Richard Nixon grew up here.  Now I am not going to go into a big deal on Tricky Dick right now.  That is my primary assignment for being here and will get a report all of it’s own.  But as it relates to this post on Yorba Linda, it needs to be mentioned that his Presidential Library is  in Yorba Linda, and he is REPORTEDLY buried here as well.

I am not so sure that he is buried here.  This may be just my own personal paranoia, but I’m not even sure the sucker is even DEAD!  They never showed a photograph of him lying in the box.  The closest thing they showed was a closed box.  Maybe he was in it and maybe he wasn’t!

Anyway, I am assuming that the library, homeplace, and grave are great tourist draws for a place that doesn’t really need (or probably want) tourists.  Who wants a bunch of unbathed tourists with their loud clothing, funny hats and digital cameras visually polluting the wonderful fountains and golf courses of such a marvelously maintained center for the Peu Riches, Limousine Liberals and Neo Conservatives?!  How Gauche!

Finally, as a concluding note on this piece on Yorba Linda California, I would like to say,

Get Me Out Of Yorba Linda!

good night and good luck.

Cornelius Eugene Spots, Ph.D.

Eternal Recurrence

I’ve decided when I am reincarnated, that I am going to come back as Edward R. Murrow.  I don’t CARE if he’s been dead a long time!

Go ask Friedrich.

Can’t you see the resemblance?

 

Me. TOBACCO ADDICT!

Edward R. Murrow – TOBACCO ADDICT! Coincidence? I think not . . .

alles Gute zum Geburtstag

Happy Birthday

to

Gryphon’s Aerie!

Today is the first birthday for Gryphon’s Aerie.

It is NOT the first birthday for Gryphon!

Gryphon himself is 463 years old (give or take a score).

THIS is a Baby Gryphon!

Gryph as a toddler.

(linked)

I only include it here because this is a first birthday and first birthdays are usually associated with babies, and besides….. well never mind.

This is actually the first birthday of the AERIE!  The place where Gryph hangs his hat.

THIS is the Aerie!

Gryphon's Aerie

If you want to give Gryph a nice present, then browse the Aerie, read a lot of posts (a few will do) and make some very pithy comments.

Although it hurts me to say this I will do it JUST this once for Gryph.

And We Thank You For Your Support!

(ugh)

Cornelius Eugene Spots, Ph.D.

(Natasha, if you are reading this, come back to me my Love!  I’m stuck in Yorba Linda and going INSANE!)

good night and good luck.

The Red Carpet

Secretary of State Clinton and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza

Wasn’t it lovely for Peshawar to roll out the Red Carpet for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when she arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan?  Too bad that the red dye used for the carpet was from the blood of more than 101 Pakistanis killed in a bombing perhaps coincidentally timed to her arrival.  Perhaps not . . .

According to the New York Times,

The bomb tore through a congested area of narrow alleys and crowded stalls in Peshawar’s old city, killing as many as 101 people, most of them women, and wounding about 160.

I’m sure it had the speech writers scurrying around.

But then again maybe not.  By this time I am sure that there are MANY stock responses to atrocities of this sort.  Ya think?  How sad . . .

See the story here:

Deadly Blast in Pakistan Casts Shadow Over Clinton’s Visit

All we are saaaaaaaying

Is give War a Chance.………

(Well, New York Times?)

doc

Presidential Facts

John Quincy Adams

John Adams

I felt it necessary to come before you today to reveal some remarkably non-shocking details about a few of the previous inhabitants of the Executive Mansion in Washington, D.C.

Some of you may know that I am an amateur historian and among my special fields of interest, presidential history is not found.  It is for that reason that I feel it necessary to write today and reveal the following things.

I can find NO evidence that President John Adams was either cruel to animals or practiced auto-eroticism in courthouse lavatories.  Similarly, I can also find NO proof that his son, President John Quincy Adams, made duck noises in his sleep or smoked marijuana in the oval office.  INDEED, there WAS no Oval Office until the Presidency of William Howard Taft.

William Howard "Tubby" Taft

I must admit that I didn’t look very hard.  So while these things MAY be true, I found no

William Jefferson Clinton

evidence to support them–no matter how hard I failed to look.

It IS true however that President William Jefferson Clinton gave looooooong speeches and that his wife tried to become President and failed and instead is now Secretary of State.

There are a great many other items of presidential history that I could and perhaps will soon relate.  In addition, other facets of general U.S. history fascinate me.  For example, did you know that First Lady Martha Washington constantly had to remove wood splinters from her breasts?  Me neither, but it sounds perfectly reasonable to me if she did.

Thanks for letting me share.

Josiah P. Duck

doc

Into

Into the darkness we lightly creep.

“Beware of the ledge,” she whispered.

“The pit is exceedingly deep.”

ces

I Can’t Think Of A Damn Title!

This is more of what I started earlier this week, but couldn’t finish because of connection problems.  We had a coup here and that put things back and then Natasha insisted on me posting Lollipop, which I think was enormously silly but Natty has been such a great help subduing and then re-educating Gryph, that I felt like I owed it to her.  I’ll give you an update soon on the progress of reorganizing the Aerie and the re-education of Gryphon.  In the meantime if you want to get up to speed on the coup you may go to Coup Archives for a list of post links.

Once again and as always and with nary a “Howdedo” my source is the redoubtable and stingy-with-their-subscriptions New York Times. *tapping foot*

And Now For The News!

National and International Briefs

Challenge For Obama: Holding Iran To Its Word

Gryph's Bath Toy. His name is "Mahmoud."

“No one is certain Tehran will do what Western officials say it agreed to do.”  Did anyone believe differently?  This is supposed to be news?  This comes under the category of Ridiculously Obvious.  Iran is going to have nukes.  That is NOT a prediction.  It is a fact.  There may be an outbreak of a helluva of a war with them just before or just after the fact, but all the stern warnings of ineffectual “sanctions” is just so much hot air.

If we could find some way to harness all the hot air that is released in the political arena there would never be another question of trying to find renewable energy sources.  On the other hand, it may very well be that we can look to parliaments, congresses, diets and press conferences for the true source of greenhouse gas emissions.  Certainly smells like Methane to me.   Cow Flatulence my ass!  That gas is passing over feces of the Bull in the bovine family.

Moving on . . .

U.S. Commander In Afghanistan Requests 40,000 Troops

U.S. General Stanley McChrystal

And Obama is balking.

General Stanley McChrystal is miffed that he is getting put off.  He is put off that he is put off.  There is a lot of talk about what should be done instead but when it comes right down to it if the U.S. Commander had a name like “Sir Jock Stirrup” there would never be any debate at all.  The president would fall all over himself to give the General what he wants.

What kind of name for our chief in-theater commander is “Stanley McChrystal,” anyway?  I’ll tell you what kind.  It’s a sissy name.  That’s right.  I said “sissy.”  I am living now in the second half of my first century and I get to use words and have attitudes that may not be exactly Politically Correct.  Now don’t get me wrong folks—I am not saying that the good general actually IS a sissy.  It’s solely a matter of perception.  Whether or not he actually is a sissy is a personal matter and his sexual orientation is none of our business, but with a name like “Stanley McChrystal” growing up he sure had his work cut

British Air Chief Sir Jock Stirrup

out for him.  Even the spelling of “Chrystal” screams weak elastic underwear tops.

Now with a name like SIR Jock Stirrup . . . just the sound of it makes you want to march twenty miles with a 40 pound pack and jump out of planes and kill indigenous personnel and wear smelly socks and OTHER “jock” like activities.

That’s all you get for now.  I’ve got a lot more, but I’m tired and Natasha has fallen asleep on my bed and I have to roust her out to her cot on the back porch before I can lie down.

By the way “Obama is balking” is great writing.  It’s sublimely alliterative and superior diction.  Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

Good Luck.

c.e.s.

Lollipop

For some reason Natty likes this and I promised to post it for her.

I don’t understand and I don’t pretend to.

Enjoy.

New Page

I have added a new page called Coup Archives.

It contains links to the posts related to the coup in the Aerie.  The page is linked here and has a separate tab on the page bar directly below the header.

doc

Gryphon’s State

O.K. so the paper is a couple of days old, but I haven’t had a chance to get to the newstand since the takeover.

He’s fine.  He whines a lot but that’s about par for his course.  Natasha seems to be having a little too much fun humiliating him but in all fairness he doesn’t act like he minds too much.  Magic may be beginning.

Send 750 dollars for his ransom.  I’m not going to let him go but Natty and I could use the cash.  She’s been asking for new fatigues.  and I think my pinkie is getting infected.

doc

New York Times, what MORE proof do you need that I love you and deserve a subscription?  Huh??

ces