Dear Union Leaders,

Here is why you guys claiming last Wednesday wasn't a General Strike really pisses me off:

1. A general strike is a strike involving workers across multiple trades or industries that involves enough workers to cause serious economic disruption. So uh, actually YES IT WAS. (Maybe you are just pissed because we can only organize a general strike amongst primarily nonunionized workers due to):
2. The Taft-Hartley (an act passed in congress) and union charter laws (i.e. contract laws unions themselves have agreed to) make it so that it's nearly impossible for unions to strike, and if members wildcat they can have their charters revoked and their assets seized and meanwhile you guys in union leadership are so busy using resources to kiss politician's asses that you've weakened your unions to near fraternity houses. which means that:
3. You are basically just jealous that the first general strike since 1946 was done with very little support or participation on your part, which will show the membership that you are worthless dicks and that the real power unions/workers have always had is in withholding labor, public demonstration and sabotage. And union leaders are not working for the membership, but to to control the membership for political interest.

Ever since unions have been working with politicians and allowing their actions to be sanctioned and controlled by the government, they have lost ground. I can't wait to see what happens when the workers take their unions back from you jerks.

Dissolusioningly,
Lauren

Dear Butt Bones,

Girrrrrrls, we need to work this thing out. Every day when I button up my my work shirt, roll up my pants leg, don my generic BMX helmet and bust a move to work, I can't be afraid to sit on my bike seat. It is not the seat of doom, it's just a piece of metal covered in foam. Is the fancy gel seat covering not enough for you guys? What about the awesome cushion of the my big, round butt? Jeez!






















I'm gonna need you to toughen up, ladies, or I'm gonna have to stuff my pants with ice packs when I get to work. And I really don't want to have my lumpy, icy butt detract from my super-radical bike ridin' legs.



Just sayin'.

Love,
Lauren
PS- no more commute posts, I swear!!

Dear Drivers,

When you slow to 3 miles an hour to make right turns when I am late to work, you make me want to eat my steering wheel.

Oh, and just a little PSA, the speed limit on the street my work is on is 40 miles per hour. Not 30, not 25, but 40. Only one of the days I drive to work is Sunday, so I can't really understand why you seem to think it's acceptable to drive 25 miles an hour in little packs on a main thoroughfare through town.

I hate to break up your little Audi teaparties, but my beat up old minivan has places to go!

Trying to get through the daily grind without losing my mind,
Lauren

Dear Billie Joe,

I understand you may be going through an identity crisis. It happens to all of us. You're getting older-- I get it. You have to appeal to a young, hip audience to maintain your relevance in the mainstream. Of course we can all understand that. But christ on a cracker, what in the name of electroschock therapy are you doing with your hair?

You're a grown man now, with a family, not a 13 year old emo kid.

You are not Dr. Frankfurter, and no, his look cannot be updated for the new millenium.

You are not in The Cure. You're in a band that used to play pretty good pop-rock music, remember?

Combining Sid Vicious' hair with the wardrobe of a 40 year old who scams on 21 year old girls at night clubs does not give you a slightly updated retro-punk look.

Now, I realize this was all because you were just trying to cover up this terrible hair don't, but uh, two wrongs don't make a right, buddy.

I know you want to rectify this whole hair business as soon as possible to limit the number of photos of yourself that you will be cringing at in a matter of months, so I wanted to give an image to meditate on:

Can we please bring it back to the old school, at least a little? I'm not asking you to give up your acoustic guitar or radio friendly, I-make-deep-and-serious-grown-up-music-now-give-me-a-Grammy songs. I'm just asking that you not embarass yourself on the red carpet at those Grammys.

And hey, lose the tie. I mean really. Borrowing Avril Lavigne's circa 2004 style? You're killin' me.

Your hometown girl who's hoping you google yourself,
Lauren

Dear People Blogging About My Kid's School,

Do you really think you're helping anyone? "Oh hey Internets! My kid gots a letter says they gotta go to a school fulla poor black kids near the projects and I'm too good for that school! You hear me internet!? My kid is too good for that school! You better make that school have more white kids and shiny new stuff or I'm gonna send the district a manifesto! That's right, Internets. A manifesto! That'll teach everybody to have a school near my house my kid's too good for!"

Please.

Not impressed,

A person who actually works to make stuff better at that school.

Dear State of California,

Since you don't see fit to provide my kid's teacher with surface cleaner or paper towels, tape or other basic teaching materials, I've decided I refuse to pay my taxes until you get it together. I'm spending more in supplying the classroom than I would in taxes, not to mention working there for free the better part of full time. So I figure that I'm doing you a huge favor by getting your job done for you. Clearly you all in Sacramento can't get it together enough to make sure these kids have what they need, so I'm going to channel all my efforts and tax dollars into the place YOU ought be channeling tax dollars.



















And by the way, you jerks seem to have plenty of time money to keep up the state capital and pay corrupt politicians huge salaries and ensure their kickbacks. It seems to me that you look after yourself, give public education basically nothing, and then punish the schools for struggling to meet state standards by cutting the funding they need to have the resources to get their test scores up and their kids educated. I'm sure it's no big deal to you since your kids all go to La Petite Snot Academy or wherever.

If you come looking for me to get your money, you can kiss the back of my Levi 503 skinnies. It's spent. On my child's "free" public education.

Bite me,
Lauren

Dear Mean Parents Across the Alley,

If you're going to use outdated parenting practices to bring up your little one, that's totally your prerogative, but when it affects me, I feel like I have a right to complain. I know you probably aren't thinking about the long term consequences of letting your little baby cry for hours on end. You are probably at your wit's end and really just need a good 6-8 hour stretch of sleep.

I understand that. Of course I do! The thing is that there are some people who are still in touch with their human biology enough to know that the yucky feeling adults get when babies cry and we just want them to be quiet exists because we are supposed to comfort our children when they are sad or lonely and feed them when they're hungry. Even if it isn't on our schedule.


You guys are the brainiacs who decided to have a kid. The least you can do is sacrifice a little sleep and sanity for the first two years so that your kid (and neighbors) are well adjusted. No seriously.

All this isn't really the reason for this letter though, dear neighbors. The thing is, while my milk is all dried up, the sound of a desperate baby wailing for an hour makes me feel like my milk is letting down. I can't concentrate on anything. I can't focus. My cortisol levels are rising as nature intended to happen when a baby cries. I'm a mama myself, so my body has been re-programmed by nature to respond to the sounds of a child in need to a different degree than your average non-parent (who still has a stress hormone response to crying, incidentally). And being a pack animal, I want to Spiderman my way across the alley and into your apartment and pick up your wee one and comfort it until it is quiet.

I'm serious, nearby parents, if I grab my boobs one more time expecting to find my shirt wet, I will go over to your building, let myself in, find you, and pick that baby up myself. You are effing with the hormones of the wrong lady.

With sympathy for your plight as sleepless parents and an overload of estrogen and prolactin,
Lauren

Dear MUNI narcs,

You are not cops. You are basically the same thing as a meter maid, which is one step below a high school security guard in the hierarchy of douchey narcs. Meaning you're bigger douches than the people whose job it is to harass 16 year olds for bringing their skateboards to school. You have a working class job in which you harass people who don't have proof of payment on public transportation. Guess who that is? Your fellow poor and working class humans.

You impose a tax on the poor of San Francisco by enforcing the fare system. MUNI was originally supposed to pay for itself and become free, sort of like the bridges. Since the local government screwed that up, the working class and poor of San Francisco, who can't afford cars and parking, are stuck paying exorbitant fares on public transportation so that the rich folks in St. Francis Wood and Seacliff can have nicely paved roads to drive their BMWs Prius' on.

So you know, way to go, making a living by selling out your demographic. I'm sure you can feel the integrity oozing out of your pores when you write a $50 ticket for a single mom taking her toddler to go apply for welfare or a homeless man trying to get to a cheaper hostel. I mean really, you are like, a cornerstone in the foundation of a civilized society. Glad to see you are out upholding our values. I'm sure you feel really good about what you're doing every day for work.

When you arrogantly ask to see my transfer as I exit Civic Center so I can walk through the Tenderloin to my studio apartment where I live with my child and I tell you that your job is a crock, don't be surprised.

Get a job that doesn't screw over the people who can't afford it. I don't owe you my transfer; I don't owe you anything. In fact, you owe me an apology.

No, I do not respect your sewn on "badge,"
Lauren

Dear David Caruso,

Your unbelievably stoic character, Horatio, on CSI: Miami is amazing. He isn't terribly handsome, yet he has the most beautiful Latin women in Miami all up on his jock. He doesn't really interrogate suspects, yet he gets the answers he seeks. Horatio doesn't do any crime lab work, but gets the credit for all the good finds, and he gets all the personal back story drama in most episodes. He's a tough guy who sees the world in black and white, legal and illegal, yet he comes off as incredibly sensitive even though he never shows any emotion whatsoever. He's a man's man.

Most importantly though, Horatio gets to voice Indiana Jones style one liners every 5 minutes. "After I find Lucia, [long dramatic pause] I'm going to shut down your 'corporation.' Forever." Ah-MAY-zing!

I don't know how you landed this gig, Mr. Caruso, with virtually no real acting and tons of perks, but I bow down to you. You've gone from obsolete naked butt guy from NYPD Blue to the hardcore Dudley Do-Right of CSI: Miami. Congratulations, I'd nearly forgotten you existed before this gig.

Yours in CSI addiction,
Lauren

Dear Academy of Art Students,

Art school is so cool, it almost hurts. That's why you have to make sure that every time you leave the house you have enough hip clothes on to look totally radical, but not completely like a hipster. You've got to rock slang that was trendy in the 1980s (since that's the retro cycle for the early 2000s,) but make sure that you use it ironically, even though you're not entirely sure what irony actually is. Your leggings have to dramatically clash with your skirt, because if you used complimentary colors, all the other art students would know you were referring to your color wheel again. Most importantly, your girl jeans have got to be nice and tight, perhaps even brightly colored.


When you're 19 and living in an art school dorm and too cool for life, life is hard. I mean, you really ought to be able to hang out in dive bars so you can look as angsty as you feel. Too bad none of the bars around your neighborhood of clustered dorms will let you in. To pass the time you throw eggs out of your dorm window and chain smoke on your front stoop, wishing that the world understood how hard your life is living in a $1500 a month shared room with aesthetically pleasing black buses shuttling you all over the city each day and mom and dad picking up the tab for it all. You try to get neighbors to spot you for Pabst because you heard it was the beer of angst ridden punk rock kids once upon a time.

In the morning, when folks in your neighborhood are trying to walk downtown to go to work, you are outside with 30 of your dorm mates, hanging around waiting for the bus. Remember when you were younger and your teachers made you line up before school and you thought to yourself, "This is so lame. I am not a sheep! Why's Mrs. So-and-so gotta be The Man all the time." And you were right. Lining up is like, hella oppressive. You're your own person! You stand where you want! Now that you're all grown up and your parents have sent you off to a prestigious university in a city known for being full of cynical, chain-smoking artists, you don't have to bow down to The Man and get in a line before class. Who cares that the people in your neighborhood have to get to work so they can pay their rent that is inflated because your school is taking over the neighborhood and driving up rents? Not you, that's who! Oh hey, there goes a dude you threw an egg at last night walking to a miserable construction job so he can feed his family. Did I just see you pull that hoodie up to hide your face better? Oh right, that was really because you're so cool.

Don't think I don't understand you, little art students. I do. I've been cynical and angsty my whole life. My wardrobe is full of black and skinny jeans and even some neon things from H&M! I've got your number. And I, for one, think it's great the you've decided to be so edgy that you don't give a flying french connection UK about your neighbors. Sure, I am one of them, but if living on a street covered in broken eggs and vomit from when you drink too much on your stoop that I can't freely walk down while class is in session is the price I have to pay for your self expression, I am so down with that. If my rent goes up and up and my landlord makes my life miserable because of rent control so that you can go to a school that buys up independent hotels and turns them into overpriced dorms that you'll move out of in a year, moving into a 300 square foot studio at the same price, effectively forcing me out of my neighborhood, well that is just swell. Anything I can do to help the younger generation. Really.

So keep on keepin' on, kids. Don't worry about being considerate neighbors while you support the largest landowner in San Francisco's drive to take over the whole city and amass millions and millions of dollars in the process. You won't be here in 3 years anyway, you'll be Emeryville working at Pixar or in Paris designing haute couture or something and really making something of yourself. Then you'll get to say that San Francisco is oh-so overrated, or that it's nowhere near as chic as where you've landed. You won't care that single moms like me were forced to move to Livermore or Fairfield, or that we had to pull our kids away from your messes on the sidewalk for 4 years. I mean, who even remembers their college days anyway?

You know what's cute? Even if any of you were reading this, I'm not sure you'd get the sarcasm. I'd pat you on the head and buy you a PBR if I could, kiddos.

Yours in totally mega radical ironic slang and skinny jeans forever (or at least until a new trend comes along),
Lauren