September 1, 2016

Here’s a Must-Read Tale of Quiet Suburbia

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My quiet little hometown of Irvine has been the site of a truly bizarre little scandal for the past few years. I’ve followed it off and on the entire time, and it’s an object lesson in how a seemingly ordinary couple can go completely off the rails and try to frame a neighbor over a slight so small most people would have forgotten it by the next day.

Anyway, now that it’s basically over, Christopher Goffard of the LA Times has written the definitive series about it. I was going to wait until it was done to recommend it to you, but the damn thing is six parts long. We’re up to part 4 today, so you might as well go ahead and start reading it now. There’s no political lesson here, but it’s one of those riveting tales that’s so creepy and outlandish you don’t want to miss it. It turns out that fictional suburbia is nowhere near as interesting as the real thing.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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