EppsNet

USC in the foreground, downtown in the background . . .

It poured rain all the way from San Jose to Los Angeles . . .

“It’s a good day for cows,” I say to my son, as we drive by a field of happy-looking bovines.

“It’s raining,” he points out.

“I don’t think cows mind a little rain. They get to eat lush, moist grass. Instead of dry grass. Do you like to eat a dry salad with no dressing? You don’t, right?” No answer. “I’m trying to think like a cow here.”

“My phone would go out right in the middle of a text message,” the boy says.

“That’s awful,” I say in mock sympathy.

“It is,” he says. “It was a thoughtful, heartfelt text message.”

“How thoughtful and heartfelt can a text message be? Aren’t you limited to 160 characters?”

“Not to Verizon numbers.”

“Oh. Well, that is disappointing then.”

We’re driving past an agricultural area with nothing but four- to five-foot sticks in the ground as far as the eye can see.

“What are they growing here?” he asks.

“Sticks,” I say. “It’s a stick farm.”

When I pass trucks on the highway, I always signal before pulling back in front of them.

Most people treat truck drivers and their vehicles just as obstacles to be bypassed. I treat them as real people with real feelings.

I think it makes life better for everyone . . .

Steven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California since 1991, announced on Nov. 2 that he will retire in August 2010.

Sample is widely credited with bringing about an institutional rise at USC that is unparalleled in American higher education.

— USC News

I’m so proud of what USC’s been able to accomplish academically under the leadership of Dr. Sample. When I went to USC in the pre-Sample era, the conventional wisdom in Southern California was that the rich kids went to USC and the smart kids went to UCLA.

(No one in my immediate family is or ever has been rich. I was able to attend USC on an academic scholarship, although it must be admitted that my wife and I both have rich but not overly bright cousins who also graduated as Trojans.)

Since 1991 though, SAT scores at USC have gone up more than 300 points. They passed up UCLA years ago and the gap continues to widen, much to the chagrin of Bruin alums.

So the way it works now is that the rich kids and the smart kids go to USC, and if you don’t fall into either one of those categories, you might be UCLA material.

Thank you, Steven B. Sample!

FIGHT ON!!!

• RT @LACMA: The 5 must-see historic L.A. houses as selected by our Decorative Arts & Design Department Head: http://bit.ly/3yxuG3 #
• RT @GettyMuseum: Natural works of art @KCET28’s Flickr group of SoCal state parks http://bit.ly/KGSRn #

• Redwoods — National Geographic Magazine: http://bit.ly/xNBOV #

• The place is Southern California. The time is the present. These things never change… #
• Don't bring a shoe to a gunfight: Iraqi 'shoe-thrower' shot dead by US forces http://is.gd/3liJF #

California man suspected of murdering wife, dog arrested at Peace Arch

— Bellingham Herald

Hi everybody! It’s me, Lightning!

Here’s what I don’t understand: If a California man is suspected of killing his wife, why would they arrest a dog at the Peace Arch? It doesn’t make sense and it’s not fair to the dog.

I’m going to stop reading the news. It’s too upsetting . . .

— Lightning

I’m reading one of those “year in history” things for 1976 — Legionnaire’s Disease, Apple Computer founded, Hotel California released . . . wait a minute . . . Hotel California was released in nineteen-SEVENTY-SIX?! Oh my gosh . . . oh my gosh . . .

As a sidebar, I’m disappointed in the Eagles for signing Michael Vick. Does he even play an instrument?

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Jobless workers in Silicon Valley are giving up on the region’s dominant technology industry and trying to switch to other fields, as the area’s unemployment rate spikes above the national and state average.

Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate — which was below California’s average and largely tracked the national average last year — has soared, surpassing the state average in May. By June, the area’s unadjusted unemployment rate was 11.8%, worse than California’s 11.6% and the national rate of 9.7%, according to the latest figures from California’s Employment Development Department.

Many of the jobless techies are targeting new gigs in the clean-energy or health-care industries . . . Some are shifting even further afield, looking for jobs in teaching or financial consulting. People are leaving tech as “more tech companies are offshoring and some are shrinking, plus people are burned out and tired from having been there and done that.”

— Silicon Valley’s Jobless Unplug From Tech – WSJ.com

The median wage of a California state employee is $66,000 (source). The median wage among all Californians (including those state workers) is just over $36,000. The state employee can retire with a full pension in his or her late 40s or early 50s, which essentially means that the taxpayers have to pay for double the number of state workers that are required to provide current services. In addition to salaries that are much higher than private sector equivalents, the state employee has health care and other benefits that by themselves may exceed the total compensation of a full-time private sector employee. The reasonable question to ask is not “How did they run out of cash?” but “How was this ever supposed to work?”

— Philip Greenspun

California’s fiscal crisis has left the US state without courts and some administration offices were ordered to close on Friday.

A predicted 24 billion dollar budget deficit over the next two years has forced Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to order massive cost-cutting measures.

— California closes state offices to save cash

There is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here

— The Eagles, “The Last Resort”

All the economic news from here in California is bad and unfortunately the cry heeded by our forbears — “Go West!” — is no longer an option . . .

After a visit to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, we stopped by a Subway where an Asian woman with a strange accent made our sandwiches.

“Have you been to the Hockey Hall of Fame up the street there?” I asked her.

No answer.

“It’s great!” I said. “We came all the way from California to see it.”

“I came from Buffalo,” she said.

“Really? Where’d you come from before Buffalo?” I asked.

“I saw Niagara Falls,” she said.

It’s a warm early summer day here in Southern California. As I come back to the office from lunch, a colleague is setting up one of those windshield screens to keep the sun from shining into her car all afternoon.

Toughen up, sweetie. I like my steering wheel to be blazing hot when I return to my vehicle. The pain reminds me I’m alive.

AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

TIJUANA, Mexico — The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

— Associated Press

• I love California but if Texas secedes from the union, I might move there: http://twurl.nl/8wgzbz #
• At a stop light, driver in front of me starts making out w/girl in the passenger seat. Did I mention the driver is also a girl? #

Wednesday was national signing day for college football. Looks like UCLA got a good group of kids.

One of my Facebook friends, a UCLA grad, updated his status to say that he thinks UCLA will now rule the city in basketball AND football.

I posted a comment on his status: What about SAT scores?

And within minutes he had dropped me from his friend list, after sending me an angry email saying that USC is getting smart kids internationally and out of state while UCLA has to take California kids and besides that they’re manipulating the stats and blah blah blah . . .

To fully appreciate that, you need to know that traditionally the perception has been that the rich SoCal kids go to USC while the smart kids go to UCLA. In recent years though, USC has moved ahead in SAT scores, GPA, National Merit Scholars, etc., and continues to widen the gap.

So now the USC kids are richer AND smarter and the Bruins aren’t taking it well. Not at all.

FIGHT ON!

The first storm of the season is rolling through Southern California, which means it’s time to bring back the time-honored tradition of sending female TV reporters out to do live weather remotes.

I saw a woman on TV this morning standing in a blizzard to tell me that it’s snowing in the Cajon Pass.

Really?! It always snows in the Cajon Pass. She could have told me the same thing from inside a heated studio.

Some day, one of these women is going to get pneumonia or frostbite and sue this whole sadistic practice out of existence . . .

On Nov. 4, my fellow Californians and I will vote on Proposition 8, an initiative to ban same-sex marriages, which were made legal by a state Supreme Court ruling in May.

I know a guy — let’s call him Trog . . . Trog seems to have emerged from the mists of time untouched by human evolution.

Not surprisingly, Trog supports Proposition 8 and he feels strongly enough about it that if you stop by his office, you’ll see a fair amount of Yes on 8 campaign material.

Now I have to say that the idea of two people of the same sex getting married and making out with each other — provided they’re female and hot — does far less to tarnish my view on the sanctity of marriage than does the thought of some woman allowing this mouth-breathing ape to clamber on top of her and deposit his seed.

The fact that same-sex couples even want to get married is a stunning triumph of hope over experience. I honestly can’t think of a single heterosexual couple I’d describe as happily married — not one!

In fact, I’ve come to think of marriage as having very little to do with love, which I no longer believe in, and a lot to do with having someone other than yourself to blame for everything that’s wrong with your life.

To couples — gay or otherwise — I say don’t confuse “I love you” with “I want to marry you.”

My son and I are watching Monday Night Football when an ad comes on in which every somber, sallow-faced environmentalist in the state is telling me to vote No on Proposition 7.

I say to the boy, “You know, I don’t even know what Proposition 7 is, but if all of these sanctimonious pricks are against it, then I’m for it. GO HUMP A TREE, YOU PUSSIES!”

The dog, who, unlike other members of the family, loves to hear the sound of my voice, jumps up on the sofa and starts licking my face.

“That’s right, pup. Lightning says he doesn’t care about trees either, except that he likes to pee on them.”

My son sighs and says, “We need trees” — very slowly, like he’s talking to an idiot.

“Oh . . . well in that case, put me down as Undecided.”

A co-worker tells me that when she was growing up in Seattle, people did their own yardwork . . . not like here in Southern California where that work is done by Mexicans for hire.

I told her we used to mow our own lawns in SoCal too. In fact, if you like A Christmas Story, you would have loved our neighbor next door. He was like Darren McGavin, but instead of the furnace, he’d curse at his beaten-down jalopy of a lawn mower. And not in the basement — right out on his front lawn.

I mowed my own lawn at the first house I ever owned. Pride of ownership! And this was not in Irvine, where I live now and the lawns are the size of postage stamps, it was on a large lot in La Verne.

Of course, I soon tired of it and paid a Mexican to do it while I sipped a refreshing iced tea . . .