Julian's Parking Meters

Julian's Parking Meters

As everyone who drives through town can see, the project to remove the power poles in downtown Julian and replace them with ugly pipes running up the fronts of several buildings is progressing nicely. Several street lights have appeared giving us a taste of what the town will look like after the work is done. The only real surprise, other than the ugly conduit, is that evidently no one read the fine print of the undergrounding agreement and probably no one read even the bold print of the agreement, they just checked the box that said “I agree”. The county has been desperate, like all other government agencies that have loads of unneeded essential services that they dole out, for additional revenue. In the fine print of the agreement (I even had to take my glasses off to read it) there is the provision to recoup the funds used for undergrounding by putting in parking meters in Julian. Unbeknown to Julian residents, the meters have had county tax collectors salivating for years because they only visit in the fall to take the annual pie back to the office and increase a few assessments. They figure that if they mount them on a fake wooden post made out of metal and put a hitching post horse head on top, the locals will love them. What might not make the locals too happy is that the meters will take four quarters per hour up to a maximum of two hours and will be installed on every street in the townsite. Imagine the flurry of gas usage and fumes from unwarmed up car engines as everyone moves their car every two hours. The businesses will not be happy that they have to pay everyone a dollar more per hour just to get the employees to show up and give extra car moving breaks. We can only hope that the folks proposing the tunnel bypass (it’s really infra) will get their money from the bailout and strike a rich lode under town and give us our underground parking lot.

©2009 Eric Stamets

Mayor Now Says He Supported Obama

Mayor Now Says He Supported Obama

As you remember because he is an independent, Julian’s mayor attended both presidential conventions to both political partys’ dismay. Since the mayor’s stealth re-election and his January Inauguration (boy, will the attendees remember that party for awhile), the court proceedings on his indictment are grinding along slowly and he has been laying very low. The only thing heard out of him in the last few months was his public condemnation of ex-governor Blagojevich of Illinois for being more corrupt and greedy than most politicians. However, wanting to share in the fallout from the high approval ratings in the polls that follow President Obama, he has just now revealed that he supported the president in the November election but he didn’t want to say so at the time because he is an independent. He said, “Just to show how independent I am, I would have been willing to have supported McCain if he had won.”

©2009 Eric Stamets

Julian Secedes From Daylight Savings Time

Julian Secedes From Daylight Savings Time

Julian’s mayor has announced that he unanimously decided to have Julian withdraw from using daylight savings time. He evidently has this enormous cast iron biological clock that strenuously resists change and has been making him late all week and he also resents having to get up, in reality, an hour earlier each day. If that’s not enough, he certainly doesn’t like to deal with several people in town that have been grouchy as a result of the time change. He has garnered support from the schools because children have to ride the bus to school in the dark and are sleeping through the first hour of classes. “It’s good enough for the whole state of Arizona not to go on daylight savings and if Governor Schwarzenegger crams the sales tax on services through, I’ll be going to Yuma to find an accountant and mechanic anyway”, he said. Upon getting wind of the mutiny against daylight savings time, Governor Schwarzenegger has decided to create an essential state service that will allow any individual in the State of California to not go on daylight savings time if they pay a fee at the Department of Daylight Savings Time that was created to handle the onslaught of applicants. The Department of Daylight Savings Time is overseen by the Commission on Daylight Savings Time which meets twice a year and is made up of former state legislators who are paid $130,000 per year and cannot run again because of term limits. To make things more convenient for Californians, he is looking for local locations for the department that are near to DMV offices and will be staffed by employees that were laid off from the DMV to help balance the state budget. You will also be able to schedule appointments, but be sure to tell them what time you’re operating under when you get your appointment time.

©2009 Eric Stamets

Blagojevich Succeeds In Achieving Goal

Blagojevich Succeeds In Achieving Goal

The ex-Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich will finally achieve his goal of making as much money as he could from holding the office of Governor. That is one notch up from having a governor, like California, who is oblivious to everything. He had come to realize that he was in a dead end job when he wasn’t considered as the top choice for Secretary of State by the Obama administration in spite of also being from Illinois and having worked hard at the Kennedy hair. As Secretary of State he figured he could get into harvesting some real big bucks from foreign countries in exchange for foreign aid and influence at the presidential level. Since as governor he wasn’t going to move into something big, he concocted a plan to sell the Senate seat left vacant by Obama’s election but discovered he could only attract blustering egotists with no money. On the advice of his financial planner he arranged to have himself impeached as governor. The notoriety and last week’s book and movie deals that he has worked out as a result will make him millions, far beyond what he ever dreamed he could get from selling a Senate seat. He can now honestly, in his opinion, tell his daughters that he never did sell the Senate seat and took the impeachment hit only to provide for their college education and a house in the Bahamas. The book, announced in the entertainment section and coming out in October, has “Best Seller” written all over it (even I’ll read this one) and will be made into a movie starring, you got it- Tom Cruise because he so desperately wants an Oscar and it will take some serious acting to portray Blagojevich without breaking out laughing. Blagojevich promises to expose all the slimy Illinois politicians and who knows where that will go. It will be akin to the time a captured gangster unmasked the Mafia and we first learned its name was the “Cosa Nostra.” We’ve often wondered what the politicians privately call themselves that gives them the gall to do what they do. He has also been signed to do a TV talk show and he will receive a bonus if it is the first one done from a prison cell. In a call, he assured us that the fix is in, there will be a technicality problem in his prosecution and he will only have to do the show from prison for a short time and then will move into a TV studio in Chicago to do the Blago Show. When asked what he thought all the negative publicity would do for his popularity, he categorically denied being a wrong-doer and pointed away and yelled, “Look! Barry Bonds, A-Rod--steroids.”

©2009 Eric Stamets

Trying To Balance Budget, Schwarzenegger Robs Peter And Paul

Trying To Balance Budget, Schwarzenegger Robs Peter And Paul

This year in trying to balance the state budget, Gov. Schwarzenegger robbed Peter and Paul. When interviewed, Peter said that he was expecting it and it wasn’t anything out of the usual for him. He has been experiencing this every year for quite a while and can’t remember when it didn’t happen. He normally works real hard to get enough and then just sends it in just like the rest of us suckers. He just didn’t expect Schwarzenegger to pull up in a Hummer with an assault rifle and a cigar and demand the cash. However Paul, who experienced the same situation, was completely astonished and almost speechless. He said that this was the first time anything like this had happened to him and that he had been quietly waiting for the budget to be finished and had expected to get the refund that he routinely claims each year and another cushy high paid consulting job from the state out of it, both which have been cut. He was extremely disappointed because he was going to replace his old big screen TV with a new bigger screen TV and usually can even afford to have a Christmas in July for his kids. We asked him how he felt and he could only say “Humbug.” We have sent warnings out to Pat and Phil to watch out.

©2009 Eric Stamets

This year in trying to balance the state budget, Gov. Schwarzenegger robbed Peter and Paul. When interviewed, Peter said that he was expecting it and it wasn’t anything out of the usual for him. He has been experiencing this every year for quite a while and can’t remember when it didn’t happen. He normally works real hard to get enough and then just sends it in just like the rest of us suckers. He just didn’t expect Schwarzenegger to pull up in a Hummer with an assault rifle and a cigar and demand the cash. However Paul, who experienced the same situation, was completely astonished and almost speechless. He said that this was the first time anything like this had happened to him and that he had been quietly waiting for the budget to be finished and had expected to get the refund that he routinely claims each year and another cushy high paid consulting job from the state out of it, both which have been cut. He was extremely disappointed because he was going to replace his old big screen TV with a new bigger screen TV and usually can even afford to have a Christmas in July for his kids. We asked him how he felt and he could only say “Humbug.” We have sent warnings out to Pat and Phil to watch out.

©2009 Eric Stamets