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Sex in San Diego: Applying to Become a Sex Talk Operator

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by A feleségül

Last week, I applied for a job that might be the solution to my dilemma. I applied to be a Sex Talk Operator. You know – where guys – girls, too, I guess, call the sex line and become titillated by the female on the other end of the phone. I could do that, I think.

If I were a different kind of person I could enjoy turning men on, and then hanging up on them. But the Human Relations expert (?) I talked to warned me that I could not hang up on the caller – the cost is excessive – and billed to their credit card by the minute! I would be paid a small stipend, and the longer I talked to the caller the more commission I would make. (I guess I don’t want a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am situation.”)   [Read more…]

Wynola Wine and Restaurant Romp

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By Morloc

With Ramona wineries shuttered except for weekends, our day for a wine and food romp last Thursday was a washout for any place new. The regulars, Pamo Valley tasting room and Southern California Wine Co., were both too near in the calendar’s rearview mirror. So, it was a reprise in Wynola, just around the corner down SR-78 from Julian, for a wine and restaurant romp, friends Owl and Buzzard in tow.

First stop, since it was nearly closing time, was the sly and winsome doña of Country Cellars (4456 Highway 78-just steps away from the Wynola Farms Marketplace) for a take home of a Shadow Mountain “100% estate” 2009 Carignane (sic) at a quite reasonable retail price. Always like to see SoCal locals daring to bottle single varietal from the thunderously leaden pole of the grape spectrum.   [Read more…]

Why We Need More Poetry in Our Lives

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By Karen Kenyon

“We are hungry for the secret news about life,” said former poet laureate, the late Stanley Kunitz. He was speaking of the news that poetry delivers.

Most Americans just don’t get this deep soulful daily news.

We don’t know the names of our great poets.

We don’t pay our great poets much (the majority of poetry anthologies pay in copies — most very accomplished poets teach at universities or other schools, in order to survive). Poets’ paychecks are either nil or less than even an outfielder in a minor minor league. Even our Poet Laureates are only given a stipend of $35,000. They are not household names.

Thousands don’t fill a stadium to hear a poet here in America — unless that poet is also a musician — say, Dylan or John Lennon. It’s a different story in many other countries.

The poets often speak, or spoke, for the people.   [Read more…]

ACLU Sends Warning to US Attorney Duffy: “Stop the Threats” of Del Mar City Workers

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By Marcus Boyd/ Americans for Safe Access / August 6, 2012

San Diego, CA – In an ever increasing waste of federal funds to circumvent state medical marijuana laws, last month US Attorney Laura Duffy fired off this threatening letter to City of Del Mar employees. In response late last week the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties (ACLU) posted an article on their blog titled; “U.S. Attorney Shouldn’t Be Threatening to Prosecute City Employees” and fired fired this letter back to the US Attorney.

On their blog, the ACLU writes:

“The San Diego U.S. Attorney is treading dangerous legal ground with a legal opinion that seems to be threatening Del Mar city employees with prosecution if they comply with an ordinance on medical marijuana up for a vote in November.”

Duffy’s intensified war against the civil liberties of sick and dying patients caught the attention of ACLU Legal Director, David Loy, after the director received an email blast and supporting materials from San Diego ASA detailing Duffy’s attempts to threaten lawmakers with federal prosecution for adopting ordinances that regulate dispensaries.   [Read more…]

East County Communities Want Answers from SDG&E on “Mitigation Grants”

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Meeting August 7 in Deerhorn Valley on fire mitigation funds

By Kim Hamilton / East County Magazine / August 6, 2012

Deerhorn Valley–We are now well into a perilous fire season. SDG&E, in its guise as the “Sunrise Powerlink Fire Mitigation Group,” has notified some 1,300 at-risk homeowners along the Powerlink that they are “potentially qualified to receive grant funds for the creation of defensible space or structure hardening…” Up to $2,000 per parcel is being made available on a yearly basis.

Make no mistake: this is not done out of the goodness of their hearts. Nor will it eliminate the increased danger we now face from Powerlink. It was simply a requirement for approval. A “partial mitigation.”

We, the at-risk and soon-to-be-crushed (as our Governor threatened last week), need answers to some serious questions about these “grants”:
  [Read more…]

The Dark Side of the Rainbow

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by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Writing about prejudice can be a challenge. I was born into a happy little privileged space. I’m basically a nice white gal, a daughter of the hegemonic norm. What the hell do I know from prejudice, right? There’s racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism, ageism, a vast spectrum of “otherisms” — the dark side of the rainbow — all of them designating certain groups of people as “other.” And I write a lot about them, 25% of my columns, I just figured out, despite my pallid skin, humdrum heteronormativity, and prissily privileged class.

That’s not to say that one must be victimized to crave justice for all; neither does it suggest that I’ve never been the target of prejudice. My body parts of the female persuasion make me a daily bull’s-eye for the slings and arrows of misogyny. My advocacy for LGBT civil rights makes me a target for car window bashers. I once married a Puerto Rican and was promptly removed from several invitation lists (omissions admittedly devoid of disappointment). And I’ve witnessed the resulting issue of that union, my daughter, struggle with the rampant prejudice so freely expressed by the otherists in our Southern California community.   [Read more…]

Bulletin: Alleged Sikh Temple Shooter Former Member of Skinhead Band

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by Mark Potok / Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch
The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.

  [Read more…]

Hiroshima / Nagasaki Remembered – Veterans for Peace

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By Barry Ladendorf
In many parts of the world, people will pause to commemorate what happened 67 years ago on August 6, 1945, when the United States unleashed the most diabolical weapon in the history of mankind on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later on August 9th, the same hellish fire consumed the city of Nagasaki. It is estimated that 250,000 people died as a result of the bombs. As many as 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes. How will Americans remember this day?   [Read more…]

Reader Rant: The Chicken and the Cross

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Editors Note: Sometimes we get letters from readers that we think deserve a life of their own. So we publish them as ‘Reader Rants’. Send us your thoughts, and if we like them, we’ll run them. Be warned – the selection process is totally subjective.

The century of hate began with the prosecution of Oscar Wilde on account of his homosexual relations. No matter how brilliant or entertaining the writer who loved women but felt attracted to men, Wilde would be sentenced to prison. His homosexuality did not bother him, but the persecution destroyed him.

The hounding of gays continues to this day.

For some reason the treatment became greatly amplified during WWII.   [Read more…]

Why a Major Food Organization Is Teaming Up With Monsanto and Friends to Block Your Right to Know What’s in Your Food

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Big Food companies like ConAgra, Smucker, Hormel, Kellogg, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo want to block Proposition 37

[The California Ballot Initiative to label genetically engineered food is] “a serious, long-term threat to the viability of agricultural biotechnology. Defeating the Initiative is GMA’s single highest priority this year.”  — Pamela Bailey, President of Grocery Manufacturers Association, speech to the American Soybean Association, July 9, 2012

This November, Californians will vote for or against Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The outcome of that vote will likely determine whether the U.S. will one day join the nearly 50 other countries that allow their citizens to choose between genetically engineered and non-genetically engineered food through the enactment of laws requiring mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

  [Read more…]

Almost Half of All New War Vets Are Filing Injury Claims

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Military recruiters are known for minimizing the personal risk associated with joining the armed forces. They are very good at exploiting any sense of invincibility that comes from the average teenager’s lack of direct experience with death or serious injury. If necessary, a recruiter will admit to a young person that bad things do sometimes happen in the military, but they only happen to people who are too “weak” or “stupid” to survive the challenges of being a proud member of the U.S. (insert the military branch here).   [Read more…]

U.S. Border Patrol Gone Wild: “If the U.S. is not a Police State now, it soon will be!”

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By Herman Baca / President, Committee on Chicano Rights

The stopping, detaining, and the senior citizen abuse of 96 year old ex.-Governor (1974-77), of Arizona, Raul Castro along with his wife and Ms. Anne Doan (driver) by the U.S. Border Patrol raises legal and constitutional questions that the Committee on Chicano Rights (CCR) has requested the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate. The history of the U.S. Border Patrol… the agency was organized in 1924 and is the only national police force in the U.S.  The agency was created specifically to deal with persons of Mexican ancestry and was modeled after the infamous Texas Rangers that served as the private army for Texas cattle barons and agricultural business interests. Their primary enforcement job was to insure that no person of Mexican ancestry (citizens, documented, or undocumented) got to “uppity” and started to demand the same rights, wages or working conditions as their Anglo counterparts. Since 1924 that law enforcement job has been carried out nationally by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Bert Corona, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez, Cesar Chavez and numerous others have rightfully labeled the U.S. Border Patrol, “the Gestapo of the Mexican People.”
  [Read more…]

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