Creepological postings (in the past year)

     What with Tom Fuentes being named Dissent the Blog's “SOCCCD creep of the decade,” I thought it might be nice to gather together some of the factoids that explain his creepimorphic infamy.
     Below are posts concerning trustee Fuentes that appeared on DtB in the last year or so. They paint quite a picture. Of a Creep. (I might add earlier posts.)
     (Rebel Girl, it seems, is annoyed that Fuentes got the nod before our little poll (at right) was quite finished. I think she was figurin’ on Dave Lang as our SuperCreep. But C’mon! The people have spoken! Mostly.)

• Tom Fuentes at age 34: "consultant"
• Tom Fuentes: professional schmoozer, circumventer of open processes, and THUG
• Was Tom Fuentes a shill for LFC re the Coast Rabbit Island sale?
• Tom Fuentes: ubiquitous paid consultant
• Fuentes, Williams, & LFC: new documents
• Tom Fuentes and LFC/Lange
• LFC, Fuentes, and Williams: oh my!
• New charges filed against one of Tom Fuentes’ former advisees
• The long and lurid FUENTESization of the SOCCCD
• Tom discusses tomorrow's commencement
• Low in the Fuentesphere (where it's always low)
• History question: who argued that college Poli Sci professors should teach the Board’s political views? Guess!
• Old boys, young boys in the OC GOP
• A new board majority? Fuentes gets hopping mad

Tom's "poll guards." Remember?

OK, this isn't about Tom, but I just like it so much that I'm gonna show it again.

The Fair Political Practices Commission and Tom Fuentes

     Months ago, DtB noted the curious fact that Trustee Tom Fuentes did not list LFC (Lang Financial Corporation) on his economic disclosure forms. In fact, Fuentes has flatly stated that he has no financial interest in LFC. DtB, however, found seemingly clear indications that, at least until a few years ago, Fuentes was a Senior Vice President with the firm.
     Today, the OC Reg reports that, according to Fair Political Practices Commission officials, Fuentes seems to be violating the law:

Should public official have disclosed business relationship?

     Should a public official disclose his status as an officer of a company that does business with public agencies, even if he doesn’t get paid?
     The Fair Political Practices Commission says yes.
     Tom Fuentes, former chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, long-time trustee of a community college and senior vice president of a Newport Beach auction house called LFC, says no.
     Fuentes maintained an office at LFC for about three years beginning around 2004, he says. As recently as this week, he was still sending out emails on an LFC account.
     But as our colleagues over at Voice of OC have reported, Fuentes never mentioned LFC on any of the economic disclosure forms he was required to file from 2004 to 2010 as a trustee of the South Coast County Community College District.
     That’s a potential violation of state law, punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 for each violation, the FPPC says.
     Fuentes’ relationship with the auction house and with Public Administrator/Public Guardian John S. Williams, who uses LFC for land sales, has drawn the interest of county officials.
     Williams’ office was criticized in two Orange County grand jury reports in 2009, and has come under renewed fire since August. That’s when former state Assemblyman and county supervisor Todd Spitzer was fired from his post at the Orange County District Attorney’s office after he started asking questions about a conservatorship being handled by Williams.
     Fuentes and Williams served together on the community college district together for years until Williams resigned last month.
     Williams also gave a testimonial for LFC on the company’s website, praising LFC’s Internet-based auction program and highlighting its work to help Orange County out of its bankruptcy in 1990s.
     County officials worry that this is all too cozy; the supervisors have ordered a review into the Public Administrator/Public Guardian’s Office along with its dealings with LFC.
     In an email obtained by The Watchdog through the California Public Records Act, Fuentes explained to Williams his relationship with LFC. Williams had asked him to write the explanation, Fuentes told The Watchdog.
     Fuentes acknowledged in the Sept. 28 email he had maintained the office space and had access to a company email account. But Fuentes maintained “I have no financial interest in LFC, nor do I receive any compensation from LFC.”
     Fuentes reiterated that claim in an interview with The Watchdog.
     “I’ve never been on their payroll,” Fuentes told us. “I have no fiduciary interest in LFC.”
     As for his Statements of Economic Interest, no disclosure was made of his relationship with LFC because no money was changing hands, he said. And the title of senior vice president was merely a courtesy title given by the owners of LFC, who are lifelong friends.
     The California Political Reform Act says that public officials who hold a title with a for-profit company are required to disclose the relationship on their Form 700 Statement of Economic Interest.
     Section 18703.1 of the Regulations of the Fair Political Practices Commission states that “a public official has an economic interest in a business entity if … The public official is a director, officer, partner, trustee, employee, or holds any position of management in the business entity.” A pamphlet published by the state explaining how to fill out an economic disclosure form states that officials are required to “(d)isclose the job title or business position, if any, that you held with the business entity, even if you did not receive income during the reporting period.”
     In other words, if you have a title with a company you have, by definition, a business interest in that company and are required to disclose it, said Roman Porter, executive director of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state’s political watchdog.
     Porter said disclosing such relationships are important, even if no money changes hands, because it “makes the official and the public aware of any potential conflicts of interest.”
     Porter, speaking generally about the law, said failing to disclose a business interest carries the same penalty as any violation of the Political Reform Act: a fine of up to $5,000. He noted, however, that determining whether a violation occurred requires some investigation. Sometimes the specifics of a case may mean there was no violation.
     The law firm hired by the county to investigate Williams and his agency is expected to make a report of its findings to the county CEO in mid-January.
     It is unclear how much of that report will be made public.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "remembering mine"

In this morning's New York Times, Michiko Kakutani weighs in on the recent, uh, revision of Huck Finn which replaces the term "nigger" with the word "slave":

excerpt:

Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.

Mr. Gribben’s effort to update “Huckleberry Finn” (published in an edition with “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by NewSouth Books), like Mr. Foley’s assertion that it’s an old book and “we’re ready for new,” ratifies the narcissistic contemporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, plays and poetry from other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s democratic ideals. It’s like the politically correct efforts in the ’80s to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the canon because their work does not feature enough women or projects colonialist attitudes.

Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property, whether a book is a classic or not. Tampering with a writer’s words underscores both editors’ extraordinary hubris and a cavalier attitude embraced by more and more people in this day of mash-ups, sampling and digital books — the attitude that all texts are fungible, that readers are entitled to alter as they please, that the very idea of authorship is old-fashioned.

Rebel Girl considered this in the context of yesterday's reading of the Constitution by members of the House of Representatives.

The version offered up was the amended version, not the full original text with its three-fifths clause, which deemed "slaves" as less than full-people for population counting purposes as well as other references.

This desire to shut the door to the past reminded her of a poem by the late poet Lucille Clifton:

why some people be mad at me sometimes

they ask me to remember


but they want me to remember


their memories


and I keep on remembering

mine

To read the rest of Kakutani's essay, click here.

(above: Thomas Hart Benton, A Social History of the State of Missouri: Huckleberry Finn (detail of north wall), 1936, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Missouri State Museum.)

*

Tom Fuentes: DtB's SOCCCD "CREEP OF THE DECADE"

Tom thinks he's Tom America. But he's really Freddie Beelzebub

Tom is well-known for building and maintaining his machine, though he was eventually compelled to hand over his wrench

A more pious man you'll never meet

Tom really likes to hang with the boys, especially at the BBC

Tom in his element: doin' somethin' mean to somebody

Here's Tom fully engaged in his pre-prayer warmup, which is quite involved. I don't think Nancy thinks much of it or him.

Part of our popular "King Kong" series

Occasionally, we illustrate Tom's wild years

No doubt Tom fantasizes about a return to his lapsed simian glory

I friend sent this video. Pretty good, I guess.

Irvine Valley College "Hometown Hero" Mike Carona heads to prison

So much promise, but then....

O.C. ex-Sheriff Carona headed to prison (OC Reg)

Former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona is headed to prison, after a federal appeals court on Thursday upheld his witness-tampering conviction.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford did not abuse his discretion when he declined to grant a defense motion to suppress evidence based on alleged prosecutorial misconduct…..

     On the 4th of April, 2003, the Irvine Valley College Foundation issued this press release:

...The Board of Governors of the Irvine Valley College Foundation announced today that Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona will be the guest of honor at the annual IVC Foundation Awards Dinner, to be held at the Irvine Marriott Hotel … The theme of this year’s dinner will be “Securing the Future.” “We are proud to announce that Sheriff Carona will receive our Hometown Hero Award and will be acknowledged for his contribution to the community” ….

At IVC: treated like a rock star

     That Carona was corrupt was already evident in the late 90s: see. In the new millennium, the sense of corruption surrounding Carona only grew, though it was overwhelmed for a time when, in the course of the Samantha Runnion kidnapping case, Larry King dubbed the camera-friendly Carona "America's Sheriff." His (meretricious, engineered) celebrity was such that President Bush felt compelled to name Carona as a member of his Emergency Response Senior Advisory Committee on Homeland Security in 2003. We all felt much safer, I'm sure.
     You can thank TOM FUENTES for the "hometown hero" business and for so many other things that have tarnished the reputation of the SOCCCD and its colleges.
     That's why Tom is DtB's SOCCCD "creep of the decade"!
     I believe that Carona's last "heroic" (and pious and patriotic) appearance at IVC occurred three years ago, just six weeks before his federal indictment on charges of corruption. (See.)

At IVC, three years ago: 9-11? Sure. But also: a fine photo op. Behold the piety, the patriotism, the abject goodness on display. The Lord must have been pleased.
Pictured: John Williams, Raghu Mathur, Dave Lang, Mike Carona, Don Wagner, unidentified official, student trustee, Glenn Roquemore

"It's craziness, pure craziness...."

Which colleges restrict free speech? (Higher Ed Daily Report)

     A new report from a national free speech advocacy organization found most of the four-year universities it surveyed had speech codes that substantially limit students' freedom of speech, including dozens of colleges in California.
     In its annual report, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education surveyed speech code policies at the top 100 national universities and top 50 liberal arts colleges from U.S. News and World Report, along with 237 colleges the organization labeled as "major public universities."
     The "Spotlight on Speech Codes 2011" report gave colleges a red-, yellow- or green-light rating based on how much their policies restrict free speech.
     Of the 390 schools reviewed, 67 percent got a red light, 27 percent got a yellow light and 3 percent got a green light. Another 3 percent got no rating because they were private institutions that flatly stated they hold certain values above a commitment to free speech, such as Pepperdine University in Malibu.
     Of the 33 California universities the organization rated, 64 percent got a red light, including San Diego State University, UC Santa Cruz and Claremont McKenna College. About 36 percent got a yellow light, including UC Berkeley, Occidental College and San Jose State University. No California college received a green light.
     As defined by the report, a red light means the university's policy clearly and substantially limits freedom of speech or bars public access to speech policies on the web. Three colleges got the red light label for requiring a password to view speech-related policies – including Stanford University….

Journal’s Paper on ESP Expected to Prompt Outrage (New York Times)

Typical believer (Uri Geller)

     One of psychology’s most respected journals has agreed to publish a paper presenting what its author describes as strong evidence for extrasensory perception, the ability to sense future events.
     The decision may delight believers in so-called paranormal events, but it is already mortifying scientists. Advance copies of the paper, to be published this year in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, have circulated widely among psychological researchers in recent weeks and have generated a mixture of amusement and scorn.
     The paper describes nine unusual lab experiments performed over the past decade by its author, Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell, testing the ability of college students to accurately sense random events, like whether a computer program will flash a photograph on the left or right side of its screen. The studies include more than 1,000 subjects.
     Some scientists say the report deserves to be published, in the name of open inquiry; others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review of research in the social sciences.
     “It’s craziness, pure craziness. I can’t believe a major journal is allowing this work in,” Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University Oregon and longtime critic of ESP research, said. “I think it’s just an embarrassment for the entire field.”
. . .
     So far, at least three efforts to replicate the experiments have failed. But more are in the works, Dr. Bem said, adding, “I have received hundreds of requests for the materials” to conduct studies.

The Chancellor's Opening Session: chirpy, sans Elvis

Typical marmot

     [Update: be sure to check out Tere Fluegeman's official update of the Opening Session, which includes cool photos, especially the one with a fox jumpin' on Bob B's head!]
     I went to the Chancellor’s opening session this morning—foolishly, for I have a cold, and my perspective is both odd and unreliable, like that of drunken marmot. Everything I experience inspires slumber or abject irresponsible snarkitude.
     I showed up (at the Irvine Valley College Performing Arts Center) late and sat front and center. Nancy Padberg was saying something, girlishly. Don’t know what. I think I went to sleep.
     On my way in, a friend accosted me and informed me that Padberg, our new board president, had tried her best to emasculate the morning’s prayer, to move it to the merest of generic spiritual genuflakitudes.
     “Did she call anybody a ‘heathen’?”, I asked.
     Not this time. Dang!
     It was odd attending an opening session devoid of the usual lurid Mathurian, Wagnerian, or Fuentean elements. Cognitive dissonance, man. Nancy said something about new leadership in the district and how that was a good thing. (She was trying to be good, not bad.) Chancellor Gary Poertner got up and said wise and modest things. He said he’d probably been chosen for the job because he can work with people, all kinds of people. He heaped praise on his temp predecessor, Dixie Bullock, and described the positive change in climate between the time he left the district and the time he returned.
     It’s pretty clear that the district community is happy to have Gary as Chancellor. And Gary seems happy with his job, too. It’s all terribly positive. A chirpy situation.
     A student suddenly appeared to tap-dance in a performance that featured (beyond her face and feet and the lighting design) a red door, from which she hung upside down at one point. (I espied her navel.)
     It was about knockin’ down doors or something. Very symbolical.
     The Geek Twins—Bramucci and Gaston—briefly discussed new programs and coming technologies. They even offered a bit of their usual techno whiz-bangery and cornball visual humor. (At one point, the Brammster showed a photo of a woman and her pet raccoon. “Why?”, he asked.)
     Marcia Milchiker showed up, but I think that she was it, trusteewise, aside from Nancy. (When she was pointed out in the crowd during the subsequent FA meeting, Marcia gestured like Lucky Lindy in a ticker-tape parade.) Evidently, Prendergast was off doing his thing at his high school. Don’t know about the others.
     New administrative hires were presented or at least mentioned. People applauded. I fell asleep again.
     Some kid played Chopin on the piano. He was very good, I think. His performance didn’t seem to symbolize anything. Gary liked it.
     Gary offered some remarks about the dismal state budget and how at some point desperate politicians and officials might start eyein' the money our district gets via basic aid. So watch for that, but don't be frettin' about it. Gary ticked off a few more low-boil zingers, getting’ real quiet and real real—you could hear a pin drop—and that was about it.

* * *

If you have to ask why, you wouldn't understand

     This time around, it was decided that the Faculty Association (union) meeting would be held almost immediately after the opening session (normally, the meeting happens when folks are tyin’ on the feedbag in an echo chamber), so, there we were again, twenty minutes later, waiting for Lewis Long and the union gang to squawk their usual union squawk.
     That went pretty well, I guess. Lewis (or Bill Hewitt?) underscored the importance of the 2012 trustee race, which would involve four trustee seats: Williams’, Fuentes’, Lang’s, and Jay’s. By then, of course, Williams, who resigned as of a week ago, will have been replaced. Likely, that newbie will run for reelection (in 2012). However, said Lewis, two of the others might choose not to run. We all hoped that that was a reference to Fuentes and Lang. Dunno.
     Anyway, the union boys were quite right to emphasize the importance of the 2012 race. GET THAT? They noted the opportunity to sign up for automatic paycheck deductions, blah blah blah.
     Soon, evidently, candidates for Williams’ replacement will be making their case before the board. The final decision will likely be made at the next board meeting, which is two weeks away. (One assumes that the union is all over this. Sure hope so.)
     Lee Haggerty discussed contract negotiations. Dry stuff.
     The guest speaker was the President of the CCA, a fellow named Ron Reel, a half Cherokee, half-Irishman, evidently. Reel explained that, by virtue of membership in the CCA (the Community College Association), Faculty Association members are CTA members. And by virtue of the latter membership, they are members of NEA, the world’s largest union.
     Was he tryin’ to make us feel bad?
     Reel announced that likely CCA will merge with the CCC—the Community College Council, an affiliate of the Cal. Federation of Teachers—and that will mean that 94 (?) of the 112 California Community Colleges will have their faculty represented by one union.
     Reel seemed to think that that was epoch-shatteringly wonderful. I’m not so sure. You can read more about it here. (I think that voters will increasingly regard the CTA as the Great Satan of the war on educational incompetence. You wait.)
     The luncheon that followed seemed decent enough. Biscuits, lasagne, chicken, etc. I spoke briefly with our new Dean of Controversy. She seemed nice. I told her that IVC was a great place, and I meant it.
     Rebel Girl made me get drugs, and so I’ve taken ‘em. Hope they work.

TigerAnn says "hey"

"Polyurinated" —January, a year ago

     Regular readers of DtB might be wondering why we’ve posted so little in recent days. Well, the main reason is that I’ve got a bad cold. With luck, in the morning, I’ll be well enough to go to our new chancellor’s “opening session.”
     Maybe not. I still feel like crap.
     I was hoping to write a piece reviewing the events of the past year, as reported by DtB, but I’m not up for that. So I settled for a brief piece about what was going on a year ago (i.e., the month of January 2010).

POWERFUL RIGHT-WING HOMOPHOBES:

Typical Mathurian "keynote speaker": PRI's Lance Izumi

     A year ago, Raghu Mathur was still Chancellor, and the Spring “opening session” featured a presentation about our economic future by one of Mathur’s Republican cronies, Chris Harrington, a VP at Toshiba America Info Systems. That went pretty well. But it irked me that, over the years, so many of these events featured noted Republicans and “business leaders” with close ties to the GOP. At least Harrington wasn’t pushing a right-wing agenda, as was Pacific Research Institute’s Lance Izumi, a foe of public education. [Correction: as an officer of PRI, Izumi undoubtedly is a foe of public education, though he wasn't attacking public education during his visit.]
     Remember those crazy Ugandan politicians who pursued a bill that would permit the execution of “homosexuals”? We wrote about all of that a year ago. Turns out they were brought to their level of focus and enthusiasm re the “homosexual” menace by a series of wacky Americans evengelical Christians, including one Scott Lively, a self-described expert on “curing” homosexuality.
     That name rang a bell, and so I did a little research. Sure enough, Lively is among the religious nuts who’ve been pushing the “homosexual Armageddon” notion. He’s part of a crowd that includes David Llewellyn, who has long been up to his eyeballs in evangelical homophobia.
     Llewellyn, of course, is one of the chief attorneys defending the district (against a crew of “heathens,” to use Nancy Padberg’s term) in the ongoing Westphal v. Wagner “prayer” case.
     Tom Fuentes’ pal Howard Ahmanson, Jr. has been a big contributor to some of Llewellyn’s anti-gay and evangelical efforts. Not long ago, the Ahmansons gave a big chunk of change to Rick Warren (of OC’s own Saddleback Church). Warren is among the evangelicals who has visited Uganda in recent years, giving some Ugandan lawmakers peculiar notions about homosexuality (which Warren has compared to pedophelia).

Saddleback Church's Rick Warren

OUR RIGHT-WING LUNATIC TRADITION:

     A year ago, I did a little looking into the namesake of Saddleback’s strangely fortress-like Utt Library: Congressman James B. Utt. According to an old LA Times article,

James B. Utt … helped Orange County gain a national reputation as a hotbed of archconservatism…. "Utt the Nut," his enemies called him. He was elected to Congress in 1952 and handily won reelection until his death in 1970. Each year Utt introduced a bill to eliminate the federal income tax. He also tried to pass a constitutional amendment which would recognize Jesus Christ as America's authority figure. He opposed all civil rights legislation, but gained national fame, however, when he argued that rock 'n roll was a communist plot.

JOHN WILLIAMS AND LUNCH MEAT:

     We’ve long tried to get Jennifer Muir of the OC Register to take a look at trustee John Williams’ longstanding practice of spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on trips to Orlando and the like. She finally came through with an article.
     She also dug up a curious factoid: “the district has spent $12,184 for catering during the board meetings over the past two and a half years.”

THE PURITAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT (more homophobia):

     An item on the January agenda for the SOCCCD meeting of the board included a recommendation that our colleges’ TV channels only broadcast programming—including student film and TV shows—with a PG rating. Evidently, the request had something to do with an earlier incident: trustee Nancy Padberg had noticed a broadcast of an award-winning student documentary about an older woman “coming out” and going on a cruise (“88 Years in the Closet”).
     Evidently, Saddleback College’s Channel 39 has broadcast programming within the less restrictive PG-13 standard, which the student documentary passed. It would not pass the PG standard.
     Naturally, the usual suspects in the affected programs came to the January board meeting to plead their case to leave the broadcast standard where it was—a change would mean that many student projects could not be broadcast. Further, Saddleback’s faculty senate leader, Bob Cosgrove, warned that this sort of censorship/micromanagement might have serious accreditation consequences.
     Nevertheless, the recommendation was pursued. In the end, officials for the relevant programs agreed to voluntarily limit broadcasts now to programming satisfying the PG standard.
     I tried to get readership riled about this, but—nothin’ doin. When the accreds finally arrived, I mentioned this event as an instance of board micromanagement. But I doubt that they heard me.

DID HE RESIGN? OR WAS HE FIRED?

     From the board room on January 25, I reported that “Mathur was out." I quoted the reading of board actions in closed session:

“In the closed session, the board approved an agreement with Dr. Mathur persuant to which Dr. Mathur’s service as the district chancellor shall end on June 30th, 2010, and provides for his retirement from the district effective June 30, 2011.”

     It was pretty obvious that Mathur had been forced out. He no longer had four trustee votes, especially after some fresh infamy (occurring some time earlier) at the expense of Don Wagner.
     But the district sold this thing as a decision by Mathur to retire—to spend more time with his family, etc.
     Naturally, I ignored that blather, and it was pretty clear that journalists, too, knew what was really going on. But the official word was that Mathur had decided to resign.
     Eventually, the always-stupid John Williams inadvertently spilled the beans. For a Register article, he was quoted as saying: “…You work for an elected board and you need a majority of those board members to vote to keep you. In this case, the majority of the board felt they wanted to have a change, so they voted to.”
     Gosh thanks John. You’re an idiot.
     I reported the fact that the district paid ethically-challenged GOP lawyer Phil Greer $25,000 to help Mathur to negotiate his exit. (He got a pretty sweet deal.)
     That’s pretty amazing, if you ask me. But few were amazed. Greer is also John Williams’ lawyer. He was Chriss Street’s lawyer. He's a typical friend o' Fuentes: corrupt, unethical, slimy. Don't it all make you proud?

WILL THE FIX BE IN?

     We ended the month of January with a post that asked: Will the fix be in—again? We were referring, of course, to the search for Mathur’s replacement. Eventually, Don offered strong assurances that the process would be clean. (In the end, despite a huge expense [a professional search firm was hired] and the efforts of a blue-ribbon committee, the board rejected all candidates and instead reached back for Gary Poertner, a safe [and probably excellent] choice.)
     Also at the end of January, I skimmed the cream from a New York Times piece about funny malapropisms and such. The examples mentioned were pretty damned funny. So here it is again:

SEVERAL LARGE BOWELS OF PASTA
     Yesterday, the NYT’s “Schott’s Vocab” zeroed in on malapropisms. Having been raised in an immigrant family, I own a brain that is hard-wired with dozens of malapropistic configuroons. I think I even got some of ‘em through the umbiblical “chord,” though, really, that’s a mute point at this stench in time.
     First, the malapropism upon which much of my parents’ fame rests:

“He died because of a blood cloth.”

     Sometimes, I will look right at them and say, “There is no such thing as a ‘blood cloth.’ You mean a ‘blood clot.’”
     Always, they look right back at me with immediate and utter incredulity.
     Here are some examples offered by Schott’s readers:

HE'S VERY EGOTESTICLE

• Someone I know is a genius at this. She spoke of a woman who had her hair up in a buffoon; saw my new shoes and said, "My, aren't you the fashion plague"; and recently spoke of a man who is very egotesticle.

• my favorite poem is "allergy in a church graveyard".

• My aunt always said, "I can't have anymore children because I've had my utopian tubes tied.”

• My father, noting the first hint of fall in the air, sighed and said: "Soon it will be time to fart stars in the fireplace.” [This seems to be something of a Spoonerism.]

• A busy woman: "Sometimes I get so stressed out I have to go to my room and decompose for an hour."

YOU DRIVE MY NUTS!

• A co-worker's little son announced that "you drive my nuts!" My daughter once wrote that our cat Butter Boy jumped on Frenzy when she was "least expectant." My grandfather deliberately invented examples like astosbestos for asbestos and nutneg for nutmeg. Another relative admired the singing of Ethel Murmur and the talents of Shirley Dimple. This becomes a way of life. It's dangerous to be exposed to it when young! [God, this sounds like my upbringing. Pretty whackitudinal!]

• i cannot decide which music i like better, R&B or flip flop

• "lead us snots into temptation...."

• My grandmother was famous for her malaprops; when asked if she would like to take a flight in her friend's new airplane, she gasped "Absolutely not, I like it right here on Terra Cotta";

• At a restaurant: Clams on the half shelf and a cup of chino.

• ". . . government takeover and mandation of healthcare . . ." --Sarah Palin

• Here are selected favorites from my wife:
1. This is the tip of the ice cube.
2. Security in schools has been tighter since 7-11.
3. The right foot doesn't know what the left foot is doing.
4. The swine flu has reached the pandemonium stage.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TURTLE

• At work, our team had been working on a project that had been progressing at snail’s pace with no end remotely in sight. One day, we had a breakthrough, and one of my colleagues excitedly announced at our weekly meeting, “There’s light at the end of the turtle.”

• Our church secretary always refers to the annual report to the denomination as the Sadistical Report.

• A friend with a medical condition consulted a doctor at "Cedars Cyanide"

• "I am impressed by the enormity of the universe."

• I've been tracking these at work:
Someone who is frustrated: "I've been pulling my head out over this one!"
Working through a problem: "I'm just talking out loud here."
Suggesting something: "I don't mean to speak out of tongue, but..."
Rehashing: "I feel like I'm beating this with a dead horse."
Feeling a little disoriented: "At this point, we're running by the fly of our pants."
Is in a bad mood: "He's got a craw up his butt."

• "This is a bare-bones specification, let's flush out the details later".

• After a staff party at which pasta was served, we were reminded that several large bowels of pasta were left over in the refrigerator. None of us went near the fridge as a result.

HAD HIS KITCHEN FLOOR POLYURINATED

• A few years back my father, who is now nearing one hundred, proudly announced that he had recently had his kitchen floor polyurinated.

• The late Bruce King, governor of New Mexico for many years, was famous for having said of a legislative proposal that it would "open a whole box of Pandoras."

• One of my son's college roommates, an ROTC cadet, dropped out of the program just as the Iraq war was starting. "This is not a good time," he opined, "to be thinking about joining the Army corpse."

• "Be sure and put some of those neutrons on it." –While ordering a salad.

COULDA KNOCKED ME OVER WITH A FENDER

• "You could have knocked me over with a fender."

• "We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this country hostile or hold our allies hostile." –George W. Bush

• Explaining lethal injection: "First, they give 'em a needle to seduce 'em; then they give the legal injection"

• Friend referring to his relationship with his wife, "...like two ships that go bump in the night."

• "Those kids were able to Flea-Bargain their way to a lesser punishment."

P.S.: My ex and I, having had more than our share of exposure to my nutty family, have always enjoyed, and have been inspired by, endless malapropoidal Bauerific incorrectitude. To this day, when I speak with her, she'll note the "flaw in the ointment" or how the night is as "dark as a bat."

And then we'll just laugh like hell.

Dummy

My sister sent me this. Pretty funny.

"Meg" like "egg"

I read about this series, called "Office Hours," in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Not bad.

Who most deserves the title "SOCCCD creep of the decade"?

creep |krēp| n.
informal: a detestable person.

     (Participate in our poll at right!)  
     I offer three chief candidates:

Candidate #1: TOM FUENTES 

     Fuentes, already the long-time chief of the local GOP, brought a huge sack of “creepage” (i.e., creep baggage) with him when he joined the SOCCCD board in the summer of 2000 (to replace resigning Holocaust denying trustee Steve Frogue).
     Had he been, as the politically ambitious Nathan Rosenberg had angrily blurted during a 1986 political debate, Ronald Casper’s “bagman”? Fuentes was executive assistant to Supervisor Caspers, who died under mysterious circumstances off the coast of Baja in 1974. Upon Caspers' death, Fuentes entered a seminary. Six months later, he left the seminary and became a "consultant." As near as I can tell, he was and is some sort of lobbyist. By '84, he was OC GOP chair.
     To explore the curious question of what Fuentes does for a living, see O.C. Company's Gift-Giving Gets Attention (LA Times, 4/11/93) and Tom Fuentes: professional schmoozer, circumventer of open processes, and THUG (Dissent the Blog, 10/6/10).
     Long before the summer of 2000, Fuentes had attained a reputation as a thuggish boss of a powerful political machine that tolerated no divergence from Pooh-bah Tom’s narrow conception of Republican values. (Businesses that gave to both political parties, he opined to his pal Robert Novak, are “whores.”)
     On the SOCCCD board, Fuentes quickly fulfilled his nature as a doctrinaire and dogmatic foe of public employee unions. He publicly trashed faculty with dubious "facts." He openly contemned the Accreditors. Ever the fan of red meat tossing, he led an (at first, successful) effort to discontinue Saddleback College’s Spanish “study abroad” program owing to that country’s pulling its troops out of Iraq!
     From the start, he was Raghu Mathur’s most inveterate supporter. That he lost the struggle over Mathur with trustee Don Wagner—who was running for the state Assembly at the time—probably reflects Fuentes declining stature and pull in Republican county politics.

     Disagree? We welcome your input!

Candidate #2: DAVE LANG

     Irvine’s Dave Lang arrived on the scene during the infamous trustees campaign of ’96, when (then-)corrupt SOCCCD faculty unionists made a pact with a group of ultra-conservative candidates (Williams, Frogue, Fortune, and Davis) in a successful effort to gain control of the board. (Lang beat Davis, but, thanks to the union’s homophobic flier, Williams, Frogue, and Fortune prevailed in their races. Lorch, the fourth majoritarian, was not up for reelection.)
     For years, Lang, an intelligent albeit fiscally conservative moderate, joined with trustees Milchiker and Hueter to combat the Neanderthalic “board majority” (Frogue, Williams, Fortune, and Lorch). Owing also to his strong and consistent opposition to union Old Guard- (and Board Majority-) favorite Raghu Mathur—the pompous lickspittle who had become, first, the President of IVC and then the district Chancellor—many faculty, especially at IVC, campaigned hard for Lang in ’00 and ‘04.
     But then, all of a sudden, Lang pulled a switcheroo. In the course of a lengthy board battle over renewal of Mathur’s contract, Lang inexplicably switched sides, joining the decidedly non-moderate Fuentes, Williams, and Wagner in supporting Mathur, who also received a big raise. (Faculty supporters confronted Lang, who offered no intelligible explanation.)
     Then, as board president, Lang openly took on the role of Mathur’s mentor. The idea seemed to be that Lang would help Raghu become a decent (or, anyway, a less offensive) person.
     What!?
     Long-time Lang supporters couldn’t believe their eyes and ears.
     Why did he do it?
     A rumor surfaced that Lang had switched sides in order to satisfy diehard Mathur-supporter Fuentes, who (according to the story) would reciprocate by assisting Mr. Bean in his efforts to become OC Treasurer (in the election of ’06).

     It was that office that the seemingly Milquetoastian accountant really coveted.
     But that was the year of the rise of Fuentes and crews’ latest star, Chriss Street, who, despite his hinky handling of the Fruehauf Trailer bankruptcy in the 90s, allegedly deserved Jeremiah cred re the OC bankruptcy. According to the old boys of the OC GOP, Street would vault the County to new and wonderful heights of fiscal health!
     Whatever Fuentes might have suggested to Lang, he was really behind his new boy Street.
     By a year or so ago, the rumor seemed to be validated, for, with Street seemingly going down in litigious Fruehauf flames (not unlike earlier Fuentean star Mike Carona, who was ultimately convicted of a felony), Lang signed up to run for Treasurer. (Less than a year ago, Street was found to have committed fraud most foul in the Fruehauf business. He thus declined to run for reelection.)
     Despite Fuentes’ endorsement and Lang’s huge campaign spending (including over $100K of his own dough), Mr. Bean went down in flames, coming in third in the primary. According to some Republican observers, Fuentes made no effort to rescue the campaign. There were no special events at the Balboa Bay Club.
     One wonders, then, why Lang continues to march to Fuentes’ drum.
     What’s Fuentes promising now?

Candidate #3: RAGHU MATHUR

     From the moment of Raghu Mathur’s arrival at Saddleback College North (the future Irvine Valley College) in 1980, he angled and schemed to become an administrator. But the fellow was incompetent; further, he was a notorious schemer and a liar, and everyone knew it, and thus his efforts were repeatedly thwarted.
     District-wide, among the disgruntled and "oppressed" (including various faculty who routinely got away with appalling misconduct, thanks to growing union muscle), Raghu promoted a theory according to which most or all problems were attributable to the dark machinations of the alleged Morrison/Burgess cabal at IVC. (Utter nonsense.)
     Naturally, conspiracy nut and SOCCCD trustee Steve Frogue embraced the theory and, armed with a dubious petition, got Mathur (illegally) appointed as interim IVC President in 1997. Soon thereafter, the board (again illegally) reorganized the district, exporting "offending" (according to unionists) Saddleback deans to IVC and eliminating equally offending IVC faculty chairs (including yours truly). Soon after that, the ever-defiant board (again illegally) appointed Mathur “permanent” IVC President.
     Especially at IVC, it was downhill from there.
     I won’t repeat the familiar litany of Mathurian and related outrages that followed. Let’s just say that, despite two powerful votes of faculty no confidence, and with utter disregard of approved district processes, the board majority appointed Mathur Chancellor in 2003.
     Mathur’s conniving, officious, and autocratic ways led to a district-wide faculty vote of no confidence (93.5%) in 2004. That only served to bolster our rogue board’s resolve to support their man.
     Still, by 2005, Mathur had managed to alienate former supporter Nancy Padberg (who had arrived, along with Don Wagner, thanks to union and Education Alliance support in 1998), and it appeared that he no longer had the four votes necessary to remain Chancellor.
     Dave Lang’s sudden and mysterious switcheroo took care of that. (See above.)
     Among Mathur’s outrages: he took the lead in changing the procedures for faculty hiring over the protests of the faculty senates (and thus, as it turns out, in violation of the law--according to the courts). He went along with the board’s meddling in the Accreditation process, which led to dire warnings and then a Wagner-led effort to do whatever necessary to prevent accreditation Armageddon.
     In the end, Mathur was undone by his conniving ways, which, coming once-too-often at the expense of the stunningly ill-tempered Don Wagner, led to an unstoppable Wagnerian jihad. By mid-2010, Mathur was gone for good.

* * *

Eventually: contra Mathur/Fuentes

What about Wagner and Williams?

     • Well, Wagner, governed by his enduring hot-headedness and arrogance, did get rid of Mathur. And that wasn’t easy.
     Plus Wagner ended his days on the board thwarting Tom Fuentes’ agenda—admittedly, a consequence of the rift caused by his anti-Mathur jihad.
     So, though he's certainly a creep, he ended up an anti-Mathurian and an anti-Fuentean. He’s thus disqualified for this honor. Or so it seems to me.

Poop for brains

     • Williams is simply too stupid to rate as an important creep. In my estimation, he is undoubtedly a creep; but he is a mere creep.
     "Creepwise, what he amply possesses in hair loss, he sorely lacks in gravitas." You can quote me.

     • Lang, too, lacks gravitas, but he makes up for it by being the special kind of guy who would betray good people for the sake of mere self-aggrandizement.
     In some circles, that makes him a shoo-in for Creep of the Decade—or, anyway, future resident of Hades' basement.