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Arizona Sucks
Re: “Russians, Rockets and the Santa Ana River” (May 19): Three years ago, Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry came to our neighborhood asserting that small amounts of perchlorate in drinking water cause autoimmune thyroid disease. Given that tens of millions of people in Southern California and Arizona are drinking perchlorate-tainted water from the Colorado River, that is quite an explosive claim. If the lawyers can link Orange County's dramatic increase in thyroid birth defects to perchlorate damage of the thyroid peroxidase enzyme and connect Arizona's desert fever fungal epidemic to immune systems compromised by perchlorate-altered myeloperoxidase, then they are going to make a ton of money.
Larry Ladd
medical geographer
www.zerowasteamerica.org/Perchlorate.htm
Sacramento
PUNK and PROUD
I am part of the couple who took on X's “Los Angeles” at the punk-rock karaoke that George A. Paul spoke of in “Punk Rock or Puke Rock?” in LowBallAss Chatter (Music, May 19). So sorry to make him cover his already earplugged ears, but apparently he's not privy to what punk rock is all about. And what's with the earplugs, sissy? Last time I checked, I found that punk rock is not about singing melodically or necessarily in tune, but rather about screaming from the bottom of your heart, with feelings —whoa-oh-oh feelings. Perhaps Paul and his earplugged ears didn't stick around long enough to catch my solo act, when I did Fear's “I Don't Care About You.” Let me quote my favorite part of that song: “I don't care about you. FUCK YOU!”
J. Bond
via e-mail
SANTA ANIMAL
Victor Infante's “Santa Ana's Filthy Little Secret” (May 19) lays blame on the wrong people. If the staff is jaded, it is most likely due to being given an impossible set of tasks, all of which result in a lot more dead than adopted animals. The persons responsible for this are the citizens of Santa Ana and especially their elected officials. They don't want to spend enough money on animals. City officials seem ever able to find money, money and lots more money for things of interest to them. You could probably improve shelter conditions 100 percent with the vehicle stipends given city officials.
What would be nobler: travel funds for official junkets to other countries or taking adequate care of lost animals? Pick your own example of government waste.
It is all a matter of choice and priorities. Check the Santa Ana city budget. What jumps out at you: A humane attitude or government waste? As previous OC Weekly articles accurately demonstrated, the county animal shelter is little if at all better. What is the county's excuse? “We need the money for ANOTHER airport”?
“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
James Burns
via e-mail
MARXIST RABBIT
In your “Bad Rabbit” issue (May 12), Greg Stacy erroneously describes Bugs Bunny as a rodent. Rabbits are not rodents; they are lagomorphs. Also, did you know that the wisecracking hare was patterned, in part, on the late Groucho Marx? Just substitute a cigar for the carrot, and the similarities are obvious, down to the funny walk with the upper body tilted forward.
Dave Nolan
Mission Viejo
STARK RAVING UPSET
I was quite upset when I read Steven Mikulan's review of the British film Human Traffic. I've been raving since 1991 and still go out when the parties are going off. That probably makes me one of the world's oldest living Candy Kids. I can't see how someone—even someone who's not into the scene—could have disliked that movie. The movie explains better than any movie about any other scene why we do what we do. It explores the insecurity and isolation that makes E(cstacy) so attractive to so many people today. He talks about how the kids in Human Traffic imitate American hip-hop culture, but he should know that the styles in Human Traffic are pure English raver, invented in Manchester circa 1989. Above all else, the movie is screamingly hilarious. Anyone who does not laugh out loud at the scene in which the lead character's boss slaps a fiver over his mouth and proceeds to forcibly sodomize him (a dream/nightmare sequence) has never had to work for a living. In any case, please castrate Mr. Mikulan, or at least prevent him from seeing movies about subjects for which he feels such antipathy.
Mister Ecks
Aliso Viejo
lose rossmann
Having personally come into contact with John Rossmann, I can verify that he is the worst thing that has ever happened to Orange teachers, but it's important not to lose sight of that deplorable kangaroo court known as the Orange Unified School Board (“Dis-Union,” May 19). The prudent thing for the teachers would be asking Rossmann to step down and then concentrating on first a fair contract settlement and second electing a new school board. Rossmann is a general in the Orange Unified School District war, and he realizes that there is no need for a general without a war.
Christopher Koontz
Orange
