UPDATE: Here’s a vintage FFFF post from several years ago. I promised to re-run it once in a while. It’s been about 28 months so here ya go!

Dear Friends:

The other day we got an e-mail from a thoughtful friend who said that he agreed with much of what we post about here, but is pained to hear folks attacked for “style and presentation” rather than policy, and that in the end we “have to work together to build a better community and the personal attacks only make that process more difficult in the end.”

I have to chuckle just a bit when somebody says “your attacks are personal.” That’s another way of saying we name names, express our outrage colorfully, and want accountability, something that has been sorely lacking in Fullerton for as long as I can remember. And I, for one,  take that personally. Nobody likes to be called stupid, but when you act like you’re infallible and yet keep doing stupid or thoughtless things you not only invite ridicule, you deserve it. We use satire, sarcasm, and attempts at humor because these are good tools to get our points across – something you can’t do being brushed off at a council meeting twice a month. We want to get people’s attention – everyone’s.

And so I set out to tell the Fullerton story from my perspective, and the perspective of others who felt the same way I did, and those who had been effectively excluded from the decision making process. We decided that we would tell the truth, as we saw it by describing facts and presenting the names of people who took bad decisions or who acted in their own interests instead of the interest of the public. That sounds like taking on a pretty big responsibility, and I didn’t do it lightly, nor do I believe that I am better than any one else. But I have this forum and I intend to keep up the pressure on our electeds and their staff to take responsibility for their actions. We have invited comment or correction from anybody – something you’ve never yet seen happen at City Hall.

In closing, it is our intention to help build a better community for Fullerton’s future. But we’re going to do it our way. Sometimes you’ve got to knock over a few Sacred Cows to clear the road.

We've got a pretty sweet gig here, and we're not moving on our own!

Friends, greetings from my lonely and dusty compound way, way out on Screech Owl Road – past the meth labs and the Boho Sci Arc schtickers.

Two year’s ago FFFF published a Thanksgiving message from one of our errant bloggers, the original Harpoon. It was just so doggone pithy and pleasant that I  figured it would be better to reproduce it than write my own. So here it is.

Dear Friends, Happy Thanksgiving. Some of you may wonder what an old, crusty, salt-bitten sea gherkin like the Harpoon is thankful for (some of you may not, and may not care).

I am thankful for being part of  a society in which I can hurl my outrageous barbs (i.e. my current working version of the truth) at powers-that-be, and not get locked up;

I am thankful for having a bunch of fertile words and ideas bequeathed to me by people a lot smarter than I am, who happily deigned to bestow their gifts, Bodhisattva-like on the rest of us;

I am thankful for our Friends – a rare few who are able to view the socio-political terrain, and realize that we can do better – a lot better, and who are not terrified by the thought of criticizing the Chimps in Charge.

I am thankful for all the inert Clumps in the dead, sterile center, who peer out to the fertile, incubatorial edges of their paltry weltanshauung and start to sweat yellow fear pellets; for without them we fringers would have no frame of reference ourselves.

And so, from the cold, green-gray waters of the Sea of Japan, I wish one and all of the Friends a Happy Thanksgiving.