All my children 

Have a cigar. Here, take two. Several of my outstanding paternity tests came through this week, unless I’m a woman, in which case several of my outstanding maternity tests came through this week, and I’m proud to say that the Shredder family has expanded by two more boys and one more girl. Mazel tov.

For some reason, just looking at my beautiful, court-mandated babies lying in their cribs reminds me of new Los Osos Community Services District board member Julie Tacker. Maybe it’s because Julie and I will both be dealing with more crap than we’ve ever seen before in the days and weeks to come, only I don’t have the option of declaring my children 33 percent too big and trying to sway other people into agreeing with me and my attempts to move them somewhere else. Not that I’d want to, if anyone from Child Protection Services is listening, I’m just pointing
out differences, see me kissing my dear children?

Along with fellow CSD board winner Lisa Schicker, Julie stepped toe first into SLO County’s biggest cesspool when she clinched the victory on Nov. 2, and it’s hard to come up smelling like a bed of roses, or a bed of anything besides you-know-what, once you’ve got your foot in that mess.

For the past million years or so, all 15,000 Los Ososites have argued back and forth where all the nasty stuff should go after they flush it out of their houses. Some people, like CSD Chief Stan Gustafson, want to keep it in the middle of the city, like a town square or community park, only with less bums hanging around. I thought Santa Maria was doing its own downtown a disservice years back when it tore down all the pretty old buildings and built a mall that not even an optimist could say is half full, but at least it’s not pumping in gallons of raw sewage and calling it a job well done, nice work everybody, just make sure you wash your hands before you eat dinner tonight.

New board member Julie’s hatred of the downtown Los Osos sewer plant idea dates back to when she helped start Concerned Citizens of Los Osos. She left the group to run for office, and won, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet, and now wants to make a money issue out of the whole deal, since steaming piles of shit downtown don’t seem to be enough to get people motivated to join her side.

Chairman Stan, apparently shocked at Tacker’s victory, thinks that, as a board member, she shouldn’t be able to vote on sewer-related issues because, well duh, she’s against it, and she’ll obviously vote in a way that he doesn’t want her to. Are you people blind?

Meanwhile, those concerned citizens I mentioned earlier are suing the CSD for approving the sewer’s location without looking around for more options first, like, I don’t know, is there an uptown Los Osos? And newly crowned Julie and Lisa are hoping to sway board vice president Gordon Hensley to see things their way, which could prompt a tug of war over the poor man.

To top it all off, Julie’s disappointed in New Times for printing what she said about former opponent Tina Peterson being at home sucking her thumb. Saying something like that would be mean, Julie told us, and she would never be mean. I was just saying that if I were Tina, Julie explained, I’d be at home in the fetal position, which is clearly not mean, now excuse me while I go fight for the bigger half of Gordon.

While we’re on the subject of babies again, I’d like to give a shout out to all those people who gathered in Avila to burn a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush. Event organizers invited several media members to attend their party, then pouted when those journalists tried to cover it. Seems the Bush burners had a moment of panic and realized that perhaps, just maybe, some Republicans wouldn’t like the attack on their main man and would retaliate by winning more elections or making atheism illegal or whatever it is evil Republicans do. A TV crew and folks from the Tribune took off, but our own John Peabody stuck around.

Apparently the upset liberals stick firmly to the belief that a picture is worth a thousand words, since they had no problem with John stowing his camera and only writing down names and describing what happened, namely that organizer Monica Vincent and some other people all lit a cardboard cutout of the president on fire. Ooh.

If you invite journalists, Monica, they’re going to tell other people what you did, and I hate to say it, but many Republicans can actually read. Give them some credit, guys. Do you honestly think they’re going to remain calm just because there was no picture with the story? Your best chance is to hope that the conservatives won’t notice what you did because they’ll be so caught up in the anti-gay-marriage art installation at Cal Poly.

Seems Professor Beth Diamond encouraged her class to develop a project that would encourage discussion on a topic related to Bush’s re-election, such as gay marriage, and a group of her students constructed an outdoor art display that depicted a man marrying a man, a man marrying multiple women, and a man marrying a dog.

Perhaps learning a lesson from Monica and her Bush burners, the students wouldn’t identify themselves, but they did say that they didn’t expect all the fuss over what was just a benign attempt to spark debate, oh my, you mean there are actually gays right here on campus who might be offended? Next time, Beth, I’d suggest having your students set up their show somewhere else. I hear downtown Los Osos is a nice spot. ³