THE 2008 SACRAMENTO MAYORAL PRIMARY: BLANK IS THE NEW BLACK

The 2008 campaign for mayor of Sacramento, California.

Really, who gives a fuck?

I’m leaving that section of the ballot blank. The only reason I’m even showing up at the polls on June 3rd is to vote on Propositions 98 and 99. More about that in a moment.

But first, here’s my take on the prospective candidates, and why they completely neglected to win over my vote.

ADAM DANIEL – First off, he’s a self-described conservative. Next.

SHAWN ELDREDGE – Shawn actually came close to getting my support. Seems like a nice guy. Fellow Midtown supporter (note to out-of-town readers: the area of Sacramento in which I live, not the band.) Has some well-thought out and well-expressed views on what Sacramento needs. But if the Republican Party goes out of their way to endorse a mayoral candidate in a non-partisan election, something’s up. Scratch.

RICHARD JONES – Wants to increase salaries for teachers and firefighters. That’s nice. Otherwise, he seems like just an average retired guy who jokes that his wife will let him run for office, but won’t let him spend any money on campaigning. In a way, I envy Mr. Jones and hope I’m that together by the time I’m 73. Unfortunately, I don’t think that those qualities would qualify me for mayoral duties either. Thanks for playing sir. Let’s move on, shall we?

LEONARD PADILLA – I think that, with the scattering of Padilla campaign signs on lawns around Midtown, this guy may have a chance of being the reason that a runoff vote will happen in November. If this election was dependent upon the most entertaining candidate being the most qualified, Leonard Padilla would have my vote. But this is a city election, not “American Idol”, so fuck that shit. In the next spot, we have…

MURIEL STRAND - Wants to turn Sacramento into one big 'ol eco-village (read: hippie haven) with chickens running wild on the streets of Sacramento. Or something like that. Peace out. On to...

ROBERT DRUMGOOLE – Running as a write in candidate because a tree fell on his house and the structure had to get torn down. He claims that the city did nothing to help him. That sucks. Good luck with that. Hopping right along…

KEVIN JOHNSON – Speaking of running for mayor because you have a personal gripe with the city regarding your property problems… Cornel West, someone I respect greatly as an intellectual and scholar, is set to endorse Johnson for mayor. But, to quote West (from a Starbucks Coffee Cup saying - The Way I See It #284 to be exact,) “You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people." Agreed. And as someone who can be described as “the people” (re: member of the proletariat), I don’t see Kevin Johnson serving me very soon, if ever at all. If West means the slumlords, developers and pork barrel dippers, then, yeah, Kevin Johnson would definitely love and serve. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the latter was not what West meant. See ya, Kev.

And that leaves us with the incumbent…

HEATHER FARGO – I can’t really find too much fault in Heather Fargo’s job as mayor of Sacramento, but on the other hand, I can’t really find too many reasons to vote for her either. Whenever I see her on the news I can remember only two things that she has expressed re: the city at large:

1. Downtown isn’t unsafe;

2. Downtown has some really cool places to eat.

Since I live in Midtown (which is definitely by any fair description safe – for now at least) and don’t get into fou-fou dining like Lucca (one of Arnie’s fave hangouts) or 4th Street Grille, there’s nothing I can hear in those statements that make me declare, “Yuh! Go Heather!” or something like that. She seemed to do a lot more in her previous role as a City Council member, so if there is anything Fargo’s accomplished in her years as mayor, it is demonstrating exactly how powerless and insignificant the duties of Sacramento’s mayor really are.

So there it is. Seven candidates, no oval dealiebobs marked by my precinct-provided Bic pen. But like I mentioned earlier, I will be showing up for the sake of the ballot initiatives, which are both simple enough for me to decide upon:

PROPOSITION 98 (Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property.
Initiative Constitutional Amendment.)

FUCK NO! This is a great initiative if you are a slumlord, but if you are a renter (like me,) you need to vote against this. Supposedly it protects property owners from government property seizure, but in reality, it has provisions written in to eliminate rent control , the fair return of rent deposits, and 60 day notices. Hopefully more renters than property owners show up and vote this dog down.

PROPOSITION 99 (Eminent Domain. Limits on Government
Acquisition of Owner-Occupied Residence.
Initiative Constitutional Amendment.)

HELL YES! This one will actually protect good property owners from the government taking your property for purposes of, for example, kissing Walmart’s ass in order to give them a location to build a new Supercenter in town. It will maintain purposes of eminent domain in order to do stuff like shut down crackhouses and tear down toxic houses contaminated by use for crank labs, and although it still keeps eminent domain powers for road and airport construction, how the fuck often does that happen? Exactly. So this proposition doesn’t screw over renters, and gives homeowners as opposed to corporate pigs protection.

So that’s my take on the ballot. That’s what voting your conscience is about: if you don’t support anyone running for the office, why would you vote for anyone at all? Because SOMEone has to hold the office? To me, that’s not a good enough excuse.

And don’t EVEN get me started on the school board campaigns…

UTAH PHILLIPS 1935-2008

It's been reported now that folk legend U.Utah Phillips passed away on Friday, May 23. Utah was a genuine performer of the people, champion of labor and overall Hell Raiser First Class. Utah's brand of grass roots activism and "walking the talk" will be missed but hopefully carried on by the members of future generations upon whose conscience he has left an indelble mark upon.

Utah's family is requesting memorial donations to the homeless shelter Phillips helped create, Hospitality House, P.O. Box 3223, Grass Valley, CA 95945, (530) 271-7144. If you prefer to make your donation online, Click Here, Pilgrim

Below, here is a video tribute somebody posted on YouTube which was soundtracked with one of my favorite Utah songs, Daddy What's A Train? which, IMHO, gives a fine tribute to the man and his musical legacy.

NOW I CAN CORRUPT YOUR MUSICAL TASTES AS WELL

I've done it! I've finally joined the swelling ranks of net denizens who want to force their musical tastes on you through the miracle of streaming digital audio!

See the lil' gizmo over on the top right side of this page? That thar is a streaming "radio station" based solely on the approximately 1800 tracks of various free form crap I have loaded onto my (brand name refused because I don't want to get trapped into any fake viral marketing) audio player! (Think I'm kidding? I even lost the goofy white earbuds from the day I started using it! No sorry, Steve, you can't turn my ass into a walking billboard, brother!)

Here's the scoop, Pilgrim: in that lil' right corner of the player (the arrow square thing next to the "view profile" sign) you can open the player into its own little window and won't have to feel embarrassed when one of your goofy ass trendy friends walks by your laptop and sneers "Ew! What are you reading HIM for?" So open it up, blast my favorite all time hit parade of bands from all over the musical map, scare you boss, family, neighbors, etc. and yeah!

I'VE MOVED, AND WHAT'S MORE, I WANT MY DEPOSIT REFUNDED IN FULL

Dear Yahoo,

I sincerely apologize.

Had I known that my decision to pull out of GeoCities and (finally!) open up shop on my very own website (www.michaelpsycho.com)would negatively influence Microsoft's decision to buy you out, I may have waited at least a day or two to say bye-bye and start to redirect folks from the old place to the new one. Or maybe not. Well, probably not.

Anyhoo. What's done is done and I gotta admit, after our 10 years(!) together I just can't figure out why I haven't done this sooner. It's not like I've been a brokedick for the past few years. Actually, I couldn't believe how cheap domain registration and site hosting has gotten nowadays. Oh, sure, I'll admit that I might look back with bittersweet nostalgia at your funny lil' GeoCities quirks.

Like the times I tried to put MP3s of my music (or even high-resolution pics of my paintings) on my site, only for my visitors to be greeted with a "Sorry, This Site Is Temporarily Unavailable" page instead on my usual mainpage layout. Yeah, I must have been acting pretty selfish, considering that the whopping 4 megabytes of data transfer that you offer GeoCities Free users must be thought of as a pretty magnanimous act on your part.

And I must say now that I might miss those hilarious attempts to place targeted advertising in that cheesy embedded frame only occupying the entire right end of my pages from top to bottom! Why, just checking my old page to see what pops up, it offered me the complete seasons of ER 1-13 on 72 DVDs and another ad was trying to entice me to "Find out when designer bags & shoes go on sale in your size."

Wow, you folks sure do know my demographic, DON-cha now?

Yeah, yeah, I know, I got what I paid for right through all of those years. And apparently Microsoft changed their mind about what they were getting if they had paid for it. Don't lose heart, Yahoo. Plenty of people still like stuff like your email and such and maybe Google will make an attempt to suck you up in due time. IMHO, I would consider that kind of takeover attempt not just merely logical but a match made in Heaven. Because, just like your good fortune in the previous decade, I have just as much of a hard time trying to figure out why the fuck they made all of that money in this decade.