We don't need no water...

...let it burn yo, burn yo. Darryl Strawberry also once said that he wouldn't mind Los Angeles burning for awhile. Bad Religion wrote a song about it. Sadly, there are millions of inhabitants that are bothered by it, and not just due to the air quality issues.

I will not make light of the plight of the Angeles Basin, as two brave souls lost their lives when the fire truck they were working in slid down a hill, killing them both. I will never disgrace the memory of people who fight Mother Nature on behalf of those of us who like civilization. Pray for those two men and their families.

I will note, however, that people in Los Angeles and its surrounding areas whine incessantly about having to rebuild their houses after natural disaster, or about having to pay more taxes for firefighters and police. I hate taxes. Hate. Despise. Deplore. And I will give those people all that they want, since they do our dirty work without complaint, and they rarely try to hold the public hostage via strike. Pay the people, even at the expense of something else you may hold dear. These are the people that allow you to hold those things dear at any significant level.

Another example of this is the recent rediscovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard, a young woman who was abducted, at age 11, while waiting for a school bus in central California in 1991. She recently was taken into a parole officer's meeting with her abductor, one Phillip Garrido. Garrido is a convicted rapist and child molester, yet somehow remarried (a lady who assisted in the abduction, btw) and then made some sort of child bride out of Ms. Dugard, making two babies of their own with her, one while she was about 15.

A brief look at the wreckage of this guy's (alleged) actions:

*The stepfather of Dugard was long seen as the main suspect, causing his marriage to end (in all probability).
*The parole officer who did not inspect this guy's compound thoroughly enough to find a tent city in his backyard with three people living in it 'like they were camping', with extension cords running electricity out, plus a makeshift shower, will probably not have a job pretty quickly here.
*The mother, who has no faith in anything anymore, as her baby was swiped and she wrongly (it seems) blamed her new hubby for it.
*The girl.
*The girl's babies, who may never have seen a doctor or have been schooled.

This one dude's alleged fixation, and this does not address whether he molested his children with Dugard, has already wrecked a half-dozen lives, plus affected many more outside of the immediate circle. But I am not too worried about him anymore. Either God or an angry and horny inmate will handle him for the rest of his life. The same for that enabler he married. Karma or another source of justice allows me to not sully my hands with their messy existence. My concern is for Jaycee and her kids.

The mother is not going to know how to reconnect with her now 29-year old daughter. No one has been a part of structure for the two children, one of which is now about 15. As a member of society, plus one that lives not too far away from where this frightening sequence took place, I have a mad case of the creeps about their future.

Apparently Jaycee (or Allissa, as she was going by) was helping Garrido run a printing business, even as the nutbag went further and further down the religious extremism path. People have interacted with her on the phone and ordered letterhead, not knowing the woman helping them was herself a prisoner and sex slave. This will not go over well at the Placerville Chamber of Commerce, I suspect.

The question now is the future of these innocent three. Is there any way they can live healthy lives? Will they be able to be part of a society they are not so familiar with? Will the children go on to reproduce and create children bent on vengeance for lives unfulfilled? This is the long-term affect of that loser's actions on that day in '91. Quite the pyramid scheme of Hades. Bernie Madoff would be proud...

The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is a place steeped in history, known for a high-quality education and a proud sporting tradition. Many of their alum speak fondly of the Big House and the various student-athletes that have roamed their campus. (Disclosure: I married one. I can be sure that they have a healthy sense of pride in their alma mater) This kind of exposure leads me to today's item of interest...football head coach Rich Rodriguez.

When Rodriguez came to Michigan before the 2008 football season, he was already under the gun. He left the University of West Virginia under a cloud of controversy, yet having built them a solid football program to thrive on for years to come. Michigan had just watched a favorite coach (Lloyd Carr) retire from a program of dwindling success and needed a big-name coach to keep winning the recruting battles with Ohio State, their hated rival to the south. Rodriguez' recent success was the perfect fit for the proud university.

News broke over the weekend from a player who transferred away from Ann Arbor and a player still there who may have been passed on the depth chart that Rodriguez ran practices too long, a violation of NCAA protocol. While not necessarily a major infraction, it is something that the NCAA does not take lightly, as they must maintain the illusion that some of the student-athletes are actually students. The potenial penalties would not affect games play as of yet, but would stain the prgram, making it more difficult to keep good players away from the violent college town of Columbus, OH.

Noting that two players are complaining about the length of practices only brings one thought to mind: sour grapes. No teenager likes working hard, and hearing that they found a loophole to get back at their coach should not be a surprise to any adult. It actually brings back to mind a delightful dislike for any authority figure in my life from before the age of 25 or so (sorry bosses at FOX. You guys did suck, though). If anyone expects a transition from playing for a beloved (if flawed and potentially racist) coach like Carr to playing for a hard-nosed coach that runs a different type of team to be smooth, then that person is not getting good advice on how to live life. Change happens, and it will happen all over your face if you are not ready to work hard and take control of your surroundings.

It should be noted that these two players, er...'sources'...are choosing to remain anonymous. Outing themselves would effectively end both of their collegiate careers, as no coach would want a locker room snitch on the squad. Of course, the coaches would just yank the scholarship under false pretenses, but that would only be yet another life lesson these kids are trying to avoid.

Getting cited by the NCAA for something that every football-factory college does is part of the game for Michigan's program. To stay prominent enough to attract top-tier talent and keep the school's name in the newspaper is essential to many schools. A storied program in football or basketball can attract students that will not play sports, if only by improving the reputation of the school. Michigan, while esteemed in many fields outside of sport, is no exception to this tendency.

These two students may actually be wanting to act in the best interests of their fellow student-athletes, but history and their lack of accountability by remaining anonymous suggest that they are only out to serve their own purposes. This makes them nothing of note. I hope they use their free $100k-plus educations provided by these evil masters of football to become better than that...

Last note: The SPCA is an organization that represents many things politically that I have never connected with. My upbringing has taught me that charitable works should be done with as little fanfare as possible, as one does not wish to draw attention away from the work itself. The SPCA and some similar groups (i.e. PETA) have done themselves a disservice in their actions over the course of my life by concentrating too much on being the all-knowing beings of good, and having too much of a footprint in the social politics of our day. The SPCA by me has recently provided our home with a beautiful dog that desperately needed a home. The staff and vets on site were wonderful and diligent in making sure their animals go to good and loving homes, plus provided us with information that will help us to be better pet owners. I hope that other branches of the group treat you this same way when you visit, and encourage you to do so. Then, after that, I hope the group starts to mind their own damned business on a national level and spends their time and resources supporting the local shelters instead of grandstanding for self-promotion based reasons.

Cheers!