Fire and Brimstone

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE… Even if Squid isn’t covering an election in Monterey County Squidself, Squid still likes to research candidates running for local office to catch anything Squid’s fellow journalists may have missed.

While looking into Vicki Nohrden, a candidate for Monterey City Council’s District 2 seat, Squid stumbled on her 2008 book: Breaking the Shield of Minerva: A Closer Look at California’s Destiny. Squid couldn’t tell what the book was really about, but according to the description on its cover, “This is a book about spiritual warfare and California’s history, both written and that which is yet to be recorded!”

Under Nohrden’s bio, it states that she is “President and Founder of Wind and Fire Ministries, a prophetic and apostolic ministry voice to the nations. Vicki’s passion is to train, equip and encourage the body of Christ to stand up and take their place in the kingdom.”

Squid was still confused by the cryptic wording until Squid saw that Squid’s old friend, Shredder, at New Times in San Luis Obispo had reviewed the book during Nohrden’s failed Assembly campaign against Dawn Addis in 2022. Shredder points out that in her book, Nohrden decries same-sex marriage and “Basically, she claims drought and wildfires are God’s wrath for letting The Gays get married.”

Squid then shook Squid’s head and decided not to fork over Squid’s hard-earned coin for a used copy and to take Shredder’s word for it instead.

LONG TIME COMING… Squid lives life to the fullest – oozing to a dance party here, observing a bad take at a city council meeting there. After all, cephalopods have a lifespan of about five years.

Mayflies have it shorter. Once they reach adulthood, they only have a few hours to explore above their waters and have sex before they die. They wouldn’t even survive through one Marina City Council meeting.

That the council has meetings that frequently extend to midnight is nothing new. But the council on Sept. 1 decided to do something about it by talking about it… for an hour and 20 minutes.

The council reviewed its meeting procedures in a discussion that was originally scheduled for May, but kept getting punted down the road because, well, the meetings were too long. They came up with some ideas, such as having a three-minute timer for each council member, and limiting the number of times each member can speak on an item.

It may shave off some minutes, but to get to an agreement, it will require more long meetings. Squid will quickly run out of appendages to count how many generations of mayflies died before the council makes a decision.