Scott Peterson

[Blaise (imported)]

The jury has found Scott Peterson guity of murdering his wife and child. Were they right or wrong?

[Riverwind (imported)]

sense I know little about this case I would need to go along with the jury.

why did you ask?

River

[Losethem (imported)]

Gee River--

Since you and I are both very familiar with Modesto (where Scott Peterson is from) you and I both know that if we had to live there we'd likely become murderers too. <ugh>

The town made him do it, I swear! Now he's going to San Quentin "Pound him in the ass" prison.

[Blaise (imported)]

sense I know little about this case I would need to go along with the jury.

why did you ask?

River Just curious. California is still a strange place to me. I lived for a few weeks in both San Diego (La Jolla) and San Francisco. That was 36 years ago and during the Reagan era. In 1972, I have visted the Central Valley. I never found why anyone would want to live in California. There is little ecological diversity. You can camp at Big Sur (and I have stayed at the lodge on a state park there for a bit) and name every plant there is less than a week. It's pretty but not interesting.

San Francisco is not as interesting as Chicago or New York. It is really pretty boring. We had ACT and some music, but not music up to New Orleans standards.

I would grow crazy if I had to live there for long. Remember, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the second one). The city at the end of the film is the real city.

:kittygray

[Blaise (imported)]

Gee River--

Since you and I are both very familiar with Modesto (where Scott Peterson is from) you and I both know that if we had to live there we'd likely become murderers too. <ugh>

The town made him do it, I swear! Now he's going to San Quentin "Pound him in the ass" prison.

Was Mr. Peterson the windshield or the bug? Well, he is the bug now.

California is a depressing place. I remember driving once from Santa Barbara to someplace in the Central Valley. I remembered thinking that I was driving from nowhere into nothing.

There was an aphorism about San Diego: San Diego is a city surrounded by

mountians for three sides, the ocean on one side, and by apathy on all sides. There are two things to do in San Diego--join the Navy or go to the zoo.

The attaction of San Franciso remains utterly a mystery to me. I find the place deadly dull after one lives or visits other cities.After living a few days in Manhattan, why would anyone but a homeless person prefer San Francisco? If you are homeless, California is warmer than the Big Apple. Otherwise, the West has little to commend it. San Francisco is for losers who cannot survive in the East.

Now Santa Cruz, I understand. Yellow biknis have their place.

:kittygray :kittygray

[Blaise (imported)]

Okay, it is Friday night. I have an allergic reaction and a fever. And nothing to do! Still, why do people love California? It was the most boring place where I ever lived. Short visits are oaky, but living there was boring. I visited many museums and parks. I tried many restaurants. I hiked and surfed. I sat in on classes at UC campuses. Boring. Two hours in Manhattan beats weeks in San Francisco.

A five month trial. That is crazy. Only really self-important people or extremely bored people have five month trial.

:kittygray :kittygray

[A-1 (imported)]

PETERson trial,

Yup! He did it!

Then he went and picked himself up this hot little BLONDE divorcee.

Honestly, it is crazy.

Californication is a GREAT place and if you have the money to hire the right attorneys, you can get away with murder. PETERson did not have enough money to get away with it.

A-1

[Slammr (imported)]

Was Mr. Peterson the windshield or the bug? Well, he is the bug now.

California is a depressing place. I remember driving once from Santa Barbara to someplace in the Central Valley. I remembered thinking that I was driving from nowhere into nothing.

There was an aphorism about San Diego: San Diego is a city surrounded by

mountians for three sides, the ocean on one side, and by apathy on all sides. There are two things to do in San Diego--join the Navy or go to the zoo.

The attaction of San Franciso remains utterly a mystery to me. I find the place deadly dull after one lives or visits other cities.After living a few days in Manhattan, why would anyone but a homeless person prefer San Francisco? If you are homeless, California is warmer than the Big Apple. Otherwise, the West has little to commend it. San Francisco is for losers who cannot survive in the East.

Now Santa Cruz, I understand. Yellow biknis have their place.

I lived both in the San Francisco Bay area and in San Diego, graduating from UCSD. When I lived by San Francisco, I would go surfing in Santa Cruz one weekend and skiing at Squaw Valley the next. There was always something to do. I even had a little airplane that I kept in San Jose.

I loved San Diego and the north county beach towns. San Diego was probably my favorite place to live. Many times I went to the beach in February-usually to Black's beach, a nude beach, which was by the university. I guess I should explain, though-I graduated from UCSD in 1974. The last time I was in San Diego was 1986. I probably wouldn't want to live there now. I couldn't believe how much it had changed when I was there in 1986. I probably wouldn't recognize it now.

I left the Bay Area in 1966. I worked in Redwood City-where Scott Peterson was tried. The Bay Area was so crowded then that it was almost unlivable. I can't imagine how it would be now.

LA has always been an abomination. I don't understand how anyone could live there. No job could pay me enough.

[Blaise (imported)]

When I first went to La Jolla, I found it enchanting. My friend took classes at UCSD. We had just been graduated from the University of Georgia less than a year earlier. I had a crush on her, I think that she had one on me for about five minutes once.

I attended some classes at UCSD in philosophy and physics. I was not impressed. TAs taught too many of the classes. The TAs for the philosophy classes were Hegalian-Marxists--not very bright but highly ideological. I can say that because I was a Romantic Marxist myself (for a few weeks) at the time and even less intelligent than the TAs. I admired the hatred of imperial America that some of the students voiced. Their theoritical stuff was foolish, however.

Students at UCSD seemed overly impressed with their intelligence and overly impressed that they attended that university. I wasn't impressed. Students at UCSD considered Elridge Clever a thoughtful intellectual. He wasn't. He was a spousal abuser.

I knew the wife of a retired Naval officer who was one of Herbert Marcuse's graduate students. Marcuse impressed me, though his mode of thinking emerged from a profound mistake in logic. Stuff like Zen and Hegalism seemed dead ends. However, Marcuse said prohetic things but from a flawed theoretical point-of-view.

Several times, I spent the night on Black's Beach. It is exciting to sleep between a cliff and an incoming tide. Also, I used to walk from La Jolla to Cardiff by the Sea along that beach. It was not a nudist beach in 1968. It was a beautiful, wild place at night. In moonlight it was enchanting. La Jolla itself quickly became oppressive.

San Francisco was dirty, loud, cold, and ugly. I liked some aspects of it. It seemed limited and limiting. Not many interesting buildings exist in that Bay area.

UC Berkeley was not the great university it was supposed to be. Well, it is, but it was oppressive. Pete Seeger's father had to leave it because of red baiting.The hippie shit was--well shit. It allowed creepy men to rape vulnerable young women.

Still, I enjoyed the people whom I met. They treated me well. Most of them were gay. I am in their debt. Most died later because of AIDS.



I loved ACT, but SF is, at best, a mini New York. I recall meeting a rock performer who had studied at the Curtis Insitute under Rudolf Serkin. He had not made it as a classical musician. He lived in a super clean house in the Mission area, but roaches ran up and down the walls. San Francisco had more roaches than New Orleans. Anyway, the guy was really depressed. I met many depressed people in that city. The natives I met wanted to move East.

I worked for an advertising company in San Francisco. That is really dull work. It is full of pretense and self-importance. Just awful. That probably ruined my memory of the city. The friend in La Jolla dumped me. That is also one of the bad memories.

I think that La Jolla must have been a fine place during the Second World and Korean Wars, but it was not much in the sixites. It was full of self-righteous Republicans.The Methodist Church built an awful building for a retirement home. The building ruined the skyline.

Watching boys become Marines who would risk and sometimes throw away their lives in Vietnam hurt. I met several young men who had completed college who enlisted in the Marines. Their lives seemed wasted in that damm war.

Anyway, my response to California is a personal one. It is not rational or one that I could defend.

When I think about the state, I think about people like Ronald Reagan and Pet Wilson and worst of all--that bastard Nixon. I admit that I forget about the good people like Pat Brown. I have very bad memories of the state.

Someone told me that the woman whom I adored became a clinical psychologist and a marriage counselor. I probably taught her how to deal with abusive and over possessive creeps.

The last time I visited La Jolla was in 1972. It was already dreadful. Of course it rained! I last visited San Francisco in 1987. I enjoyed the Exploratorium with my then wife. I enjoyed Big Sur much more than the city.

In 1968, airfares from San Diego to San Francisco were eleven dollars one-way. That was cheaper than busfare. The damm planes stopped at John Wayne Airport on the way but no one had to look out the window. The flights diverted over Big Sur were amazing. The glimmer that Todd Gitlin noted was there! Amazing.

I am being a bit over the top in my compliants about California. I really had a crush on my (long ago) friend. I did not respond well or with any maturity to her lack of interest. She treated me kindly. Unfortunately, I did not deserve her kindness and lost her friendship many years ago. Behind my divorce that is the next greatest disappointment of my life. Learn to forgive people changing their minds, my friends.

What any of this has to do with Peterson is beyond me, except that he was even more abusive than I was toward my former friend. Whether he killed his wife, he is a creep.

I am mostly kidding about California. However, there are better places to live. Joan Didion writes perceptively about being from there. Kevin Starr's histories still fasciante me. John McPhee's fourth volume of his long essay on geology also intrigues me. Flying over the Central Valley thrills me. I love Big Sur for the shere beauty of the place.

Boy, an airplane. I envy you.

[Dave (imported)]

Apparently the jury didn't believe the defense contention that it was a coincedence he went fishing 90 miles from his house the day his wife disappeared

and months later her dead body turns up in the same fishing spot.