Mold pie with mouse turd topping

Still haven't heard anything about the Accreds. Sheesh! There's a rumor, though, that Saddleback College has received its report--i.e., a draft to be corrected only for errors--but mum's the word, apparently.

A coupla days ago, Earl P came up to IVC to check the mold and stinkwater situations. He brought a clipboard or something.

I showed 'im to my office. I pointed to the corner under the window. I told 'im that big puddles of stinkwater form there with every rain, right under my computer. Earl seemed pretty interested. He scratched something on a piece of paper.

Some biology faculty emerged and patiently explained that it ain't enough to check the air, cuz the air can be fine when the vents are clean. But that's consistent with the carpet being seriously moldy. See?

The mold monster is sneaky, boy. And squirrely.

Earl nodded. So did the other guy, a contractor, I think. Snappy dresser.

The Bio people made their point because, a coupla weeks ago, some guy showed up to do some fancy tests on the "air." Then, a few days ago, we were told that the results were in. Then somebody announced that the air in A200 is "clean of mold."

Some of us showed Earl and friend some of the other horrors of A200, e.g., the hideous flood stain near Frank's office and the rotting cheeseball next to the photocopy machine. We told tales of "sloshing" and sniffling and rescue ropes.

I do believe a tear formed under Earl's left eyeball.

One lively colleague who had failed to perceive the somber mood of the proceedings kept walking by whilst coughing and wheezing and stumbling most pathetically. Julie nearly kneed him in the gut. Her look said: "Cut it out or I'll give you somethin' to wheeze about."

Near the end of Earl's investigation, somebody wheeled out a lovely pizza and a prodigious tray of mold fashioned into a delightful pie. The pies were almost identical.

"Which do you wanna eat?" we asked. The contractor ate the mold pie. Earl sniffed in disgust.



(Did I mention the rodent sighting? Halfway through Wednesday's "Humanities & Languages" School meeting [in yet another building--A400], a mouse scurried haltingly across the light fixture lense immediately above us. We looked up briefly, noting the mouse's progress. Then, without comment, we returned to the meeting.)

I visited with Red recently--he hides, you know, deep in the Santa Ana Mountains, near Madame Modjeska's old barn--and he showed me his new pal "Debbsy." Here's a pic.

Reb can get pretty peevish, so I'd better show a pic of her special beastly pal too. Here's "Paco," a stunning striped feline:


I'm runnin' out of feline brats, what with the passing of Jack the Cat. Loved that cat.

But I shouldn't complain. Cuz here's a recent pic of my niece Sarah, who's about to turn three:


Have a nice weekend. (P.S.: I made up the part about the cheeseball. No cheeseballs have been found, unless you count certain faculty. --CW)

Delve into our storied past!

Check out the UFOs!

1. IT'S IRVINE-TOWN, JAKE. You couldn't miss the "vote" signs all over campus (at IVC) today. So, at about noon, I followed 'em. They led me to the top floor of the marvelous "Student Services Center."

The signs then led me to one of the rooms reserved for student government. I entered the room that was prepared to handle a stampede of voters.

Nobody was there except two pleasant middle-aged ladies who were just staring at each other in silence. There were ten or twelve fancy-schmancy voting booths. They looked pretty high-tech.

But there were no voters. Not one.

I asked, "Anybody voting today?"

"It's been kinda slow," said one lady.

We stared at each other in silence for quite some time.

2. UFO SIGHTING. Whilst wandering the campus in search of voters, I spotted a strange white object in the distant eastern sky. I quickly retrieved my camera from my moldy office and returned just in time to take a picture of the apparition. I really couldn't tell what it was. Here's how the picture looked on my camera's little screen:


You can kinda see it there near the middle and a little off to the right.

When I got home, I blew the picture up a bit. Here's what I got at first:


That wasn't much better. So I blew it up some more:



GOOD LORD!

3. IT'S OFFICIAL: NO MOLD. As we reported a week or so ago, some guy came around with fancy equipment to test the air in A200. He had a sky hook, some mirrors, and a ball of wax.

Well, we've been told that the results are in and there's no mold problem in A200. It's "scientific."

Yeah? I still think the furry glass tells you everything you need to know:


4. ACCRED REPORT: IT'S IN THE MAIL. I've been told that Deborah Blue has communicated with college officials, and she's told 'em that she sent the report for Saddleback yesterday. Looks like the report for IVC will be sent late today.

I'm not sure what "send" means here. Probably snail mail.

Wags around here figure that when the jury stays out this long, it means a "guilty" verdict.

In any case, we'll find out pretty soon. My prediction? Districtular spankage.

UPDATE (Wed., Dec. 7):

People seemed to respond favorably to my UFO photograph. I was talking with a colleague about it today, and I said something about "that UFO," and he said, "Waddya mean 'that UFO'? Doncha know? There were two of 'em!"

Two of 'em? I then remembered that I had taken two photos yesterday, and I hadn't yet developed the second one. For all that I knew, the second photo was of a different "object"! Maybe the second object is even more hideous than the first one!

I ran home and developed the other photo. Here's how it looks in normal size:


You can kinda see the "UFO" right in the middle of the photo. You can't really make it out.

So, naturally, I blew the photo up a coupla more times, and what I got....

Well, let's just say that I'm seriously weirded out:




Good God Almighty!

The 450

We’ve heard from our friends in the classified union, who’ve been negotiating a contract for the 450 classified employees of the district.

The good news: after many negotiating sessions, most issues have been resolved.

The bad news: there remain serious sticking points, and negotiations have bogged down. There’s been little progress over the past several months. People are mighty frustrated. And peeved.

If you’ve been to recent Board meetings, you know what I’m talking about!

THE “JOHNSON & ASSOCIATES” STUDY:

Have you heard about the “Johnson and Associates” study? Eighteen months ago, the board agreed to hire J & A, an independent contractor, to develop a “classification and compensation plan for all positions in the classified bargaining unit at a cost not to exceed $98,500.”

$100K! Jeez, after spending that kind of money, one might suppose that the Board would listen to J & A’s advice!

Ha!

(The Board has a history of responding to pricey studies by tossing them in the trash or even acting in defiance of their recommendations. It’s like the Bush administration: if they don’t like a study’s conclusion, then the study gets deep-sixed, and that’s that. It doesn't matter how good it is, or how much taxpayer money has been spent on it!)

J & A’s study addressed all classified positions. Employees were asked to complete a twelve page detailed description of their jobs. These descriptions were then sent to supervisors, and then to area managers, for their input. The results were sent to J & A, which then interviewed employees.

The upshot of the process was a re-titling or re-definition of classified employees in terms of standard roles and jobs. After some adjustments and corrections, J & A then compared existing classified jobs in the district (with the new titles) to similar positions in local school districts.

Seems fair.

Based on these comparisons, J & A produced a list that identified “equitable” salaries for all of the new (standardized) job descriptions.

This list included a very few positions that would freeze in pay until the cost of living rose to meet recommended compensation. Many other positions showed a 2.5% raise recommendation ranging up to three positions with a 31% raise. Most of the actual dollars per month increases hover under $100 with a few spiking up from that.

While there is some dissent regarding the recommendations, overall, employees are pleased with Johnson and Associates’ reclass study.

28 CLASSIFIED MANAGERS:

Here’s one reason that classified employees are hopping mad: over the next five years the cost of the classified managers’ raises will be roughly $1.9 million!

That’s for only 28 employees!

(You’ll recall the curious timing of these raises. A year ago, as the Board approached a decision re Mathur’s contract and Raghu couldn’t scrape anybody up to speak on his behalf, these stunning raises suddenly materialized. Classified managers—some long known for their low regard of the Chancellor—then showed up at Board meetings to sing the fellow’s praises!)

From the perspective of classified employees, the classified managers’ raises were arbitrary. And they did not reflect the findings of a comparison study done by The Hay Company.

DISTRICT LOWBALL:

In negotiations, the District has offered the classified staff “next dollar” raises, to be implemented over the next three years. Are you kidding?

CSEA’s calculations indicate that classified employees can secure “equitable pay” in terms of the J & A study for a cost of $1.7 million.

That’s for all 450 employees!


DISTRICT NEGOTIATOR a WEASEL:

Negotiations have at times become pretty rocky. At one point, unbeknownst to the Board, the J & A study was taken off the negotiations table by lawyer Steve Andelson (the Chief Negotiator for the District).

When Board members learned of this, unsurprisingly, they were surprised. (Same old story. Those people get their info from Mathur.)

In view of the raises that have been bestowed upon all other constituent group in the district—and the recommendations of the J & A study—fairness surely demands that the district come through with a decent offer.

In addition to compliance with the Johnson study, classified negotiators have pressed for a cost of living raise equivalent to the state mandated COLA for the next three—plus continued complete medical coverage.

Wanna support our classified brethren (and, um, sistren)? Talk to ‘em. Come to Board meetings wearing red. Speak up!

(Note: the "sexy" photo above is from a recent issue of the Lariat. --CW)

Friday Updatery

1. ACCRED STRING ALONGITUDE. Weeks ago, the Accreds said they’d send us drafts of their reports—i.e., their responses to the two colleges’ responses to the Accreds’ recommendations.

It was Accred maven Deborah Blue, I think, who said the drafts would arrive by Nov. 17. Well, the 17th came and went, and nothin’ materialized. Jeepers! Then Blue, or somebody, promised to have the drafts to us by this week. As far as I know, that hasn’t happened. Dang!

2. PRESS ZERO, GET ZERO. This morning, a friend wanted to contact Rebel Girl here at IVC, but he couldn’t remember her phone number on campus, so he called information, which yielded a pleasant recorded voice that yammered a while about menus and such.

The yammerage ended with: “To reach the operator, please press zero now.”

So he did that, but then he got another recorded voice, this time a man’s voice, and it yammered a while too. At the end of the yammerage, the voice said to hold on and “an operator will be with you momentarily.”

But no operator got with ‘im. The line just went dead.

He tried this twice. Nothin’.

I was with Rebel Girl when she heard about this—hours later—and so I went to my office and tried the “info” number myself. In the meantime, Rebel Girl headed to the information desk in A100 to see what was up over there.

Naturally, my attempts to get to a real person yielded squat. Like Reb’s friend, I spent a good while expiating my sins during two courses of menu yammerage purgatory, and then, finally, I was told to hold:

“An operator will be with you momentarily.”

But, again, the line just went dead. It was like a joke or something.

Right about then, the Reb returned and reported that there was nobody at the “info” desk.

“Jesus,” I said, “squirrels run this college.” (I'm not blaming Kathy. I'm sure the problem lies elsewhere.)

3. SH*THOUSES AND TORNADOES. Also, today, Rebel Girl insisted on giving me a tour of the interior of the notorious “Community Ed” Building, which is better known as “the Sh*thouse” for reasons having to do with leaf eruptions, dilapidation, and general metaphorical stinkitude.

So we went over there and opened a fun-house door—all twisty and disconcerting. The Twilight Zone theme played in my head.

In one room, we found a window with a big gap between the pane and the wood (balsa, I think). The gap was filled with three old beach towels.

Festive!

The floor outside of the distorted entry doors was pretty holey and rotten—a litigation magnet.

In general, the building interior matches its exterior re crapulence and decrapitude, er, decrepitude.

Plus you wouldn’t want to be in it during a tornado. It would just explode into splinters and cows.

That reminds me. I once saw a tornado at IVC. This was years ago. I was sitting at the bus stop waiting for the bus—I did a lot of that in those days—and I saw this tornado over to the north, maybe a quarter-mile or a half-mile away. It wasn’t huge, but it was definitely a tornado, and I could barely believe my eyes.

I remember looking around to get somebody else to witness it, cuz I figured right away I’d be telling this story and getting lots of dubitude 'n' peevitude, but, in those days, I was the only guy in Irvine who took the bus, and so there I was, alone, looking at a gosh-darn tornado here in Irvine.

It was pretty special, like getting’ in your car, turnin’ the key, and then suddenly finding yourself in a pumpkin.

Later, I told people about it, and, sure enough, everybody thought I was tellin' a yarn or something. “No,” I said, “I really saw a tornado.”

“There are no tornados in Irvine,” they asserted.

Then, a few days later, I read a story in the Irvine “World” News about a tornado, yes a TORNADO, that had done some real damage on the roofs of a few homes—not far from where I saw the dang thing.

So when I tell you something, you’d best believe it. I’m not makin' stuff up. I don’t do that, and neither does the Reb. And we’re saying that the Community Ed building is a real sh*thouse, like those flimsy shacks ‘n’ sheds they used to stick those Marines in over in El Toro and Tustin. I used to feel sorry for those guys, cuz I taught philosophy classes over there, and it used to get hot and humid and noisy and stinky in those lurid buildings that we would teach in, and you kinda hoped that a tornado would come along and take you out of your misery, or send you back to Kansas.


Well, the "community ed" building isn't quite that bad. Have a nice weekend. —Chunk

Legislating from the Stench

This afternoon, the IVC Academic Senate voted to endorse Senate Bill 55, which, upon passage, would require community college district boards of trustees to agendize and discuss any Academic Senate votes of “no confidence” in college presidents or district chancellors.

As you know, Raghu Mathur received a vote of “no confidence” (74%) in 1997, a vote of “no confidence” (90%) in 2000, and a vote of “no confidence” (94%) in 2004.

The first two concerned Mathur’s performance as president of IVC. The third concerned his performance as chancellor.

Each time, the Board essentially ignored the vote.

To learn more about this bill, go to:

http://democrats.senate.ca.gov/
templates/SDCTemplate.asp?a=2022&z=
121&cp=NewsArticle&pg=article&fpg=
sennews&sln=Lowenthal&sdn=27

(Google +Lowenthal +"SB 55" and then click on the 3rd entry.)

Kick 'em to the curb!

I sometimes realize that I haven't got a clue what goes on in the lives of my students. I kinda know what music they listen to (as long as they’re listening to the White Stripes). But I have no idea what TV they watch.

They sure as hell don’t watch what I watch. You know, Nova and Medium and Meet the Press.

A couple of days ago, the IVC community got an email from Roquemore’s secretary about a "casting call" for some MTV show called "Next!" Attached to the email was a poster. (See.)


Evidently, the show is produced by the same people who brought us "Date My Mom," whatever that is.

I asked some of my students about these shows. "What's 'Next'? What's 'Date My Mom'," I asked.

Naturally, they knew all about ‘em. In fact, they regarded me as if I had just confessed to never having heard of Christina Aguilera! Gawwd!

I found the show’s website, and I checked it out.

—Let's just say that, if you like the idea of stupid surfers representing students and "hotties" representing the raison d’etre of education, then you’ll just love "Next!" representing dating.

Here’s how MTV describes the show:

Ever wish you could bail in the middle of a bad date? Well, NEXT is the MTV show that lets you do just that. We'll set you up on 5 dates. The minute you get annoyed, angry or just plain bored, simply kick 'em to the curb by saying "NEXT", and start over with someone new. Don't feel too bad for the ones you give the boot. They'll get cash for every minute they last and the one who makes it to the end gets a chance to turn the tables. They can choose to go on a second date with you or take the money and run. So be careful what you do, because sooner or later you could be the one hearing the word "NEXT." (My emphasis.)

I watched a video clip on the website that allegedly captures the “best moments” of the first season. It’s exactly what you’d expect (I'm going from memory, so I might not have the dialogue exactly right):

CLIP: a gal, maybe 18, walks up to a seated young guy who’s checkin’ her out. Even before she says anything or her butt hits the chair, he rolls his eyes and buries his face and shouts “Next!”

What a gracious fellow!

We get a shot of the girl’s expression. (Funny, eh?)

CLIP: a young guy is looking at his “date,” but he looks worried. She scrunches up her nose and says something like, “You kinda stink.” He says, “What do you mean?” She says: “Maybe like cat piss.”

What a gracious gal!

The camera cuts back to the guy’s forlorn face. We’re having a good time!

CLIP: a woman in her forties is getting a back rub from some young guy. Supposedly, she’s trying to convince the guy to date her daughter, but it’s more like she’s tryin’ to get into this kid’s pants herself! She says, “I like it rough, really rough!” She barks or grunts or something. We see the young guy’s face; he’s looking into the camera. He’s looking into the faces of young people like himself--apparently, the only people who exist. His face is saying, “God, as IF I’d EVER play hide the salami with this geezer!” (Ha ha ha ha ha!)

--Well, that last one was from the clip reel for “Date My Mom,” not "Next!", but, after a while, all these shows seem the same.

I Googled “Next!” and found a clip from the show “Talk Soup,” a program that dispenses snideries and cheap shots at the most embarrassing moments of each week’s “reality” programming. This particular clip showed Talk Soup playing ten seconds of “Next!” in which two young people are at a bar on their “date.” The girl says she’s very nervous. The camera then cuts to the floor beneath her, which is wet with beer.

–No, not beer. Urine! She gets up off her stool and we see that she’s so nervous (I guess) that she’s peed herself. The guy looks at the stool and yells, “Next!”

What a gentleman!

He stands back. He says, "Are you nuts?" The camera cuts to the girl’s horrified face. (Ha ha ha ha!)

Let’s face it. These kids watch some sh*tty TV. And their TV watching doesn’t seem to be balanced with some opposite kinda TV. What would the opposite be? CSI?

I don’t want to campaign against this crap. It exists, and there’s nothing I can or would do about it.

But we’re a college. Shouldn’t we at least refrain from EMBRACING it?