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Robbie Hatley, Curator
This museum is dedicated to the children of the world, especially the abused, the neglected, the lonely, the sad, the homeless, the hungry. Treat children kindly, for the children of today will be the parents and teachers and leaders of tomorrow. How we treat the children of today will determine the future of our human race.
"Shining Out In Darkness"
Welcome, dear guest, to my museum! My name is Robbie Hatley, and the name of my museum is Midnight Moonlight Madness. For a information about me, see About Robbie Hatley and My On-line Résumé . For a brief history of Midnight Moonlight Madness, see About Midnight Moonlight Madness .
You may have noticed the motto engraved on the cornerstone of the building on your way in, right below the "Open 24 Hours" sign: "Shining Out In Darkness". This motto indicates my hope that this museum will be as a beacon of logic, sanity, compassion, and hope, shining out in the darkness of an often confused, insane, cruel, and desperate world. Such is my goal. As for what extent to which I've attained it, that is for you to judge.
To move around this museum, use the Navigation Bars at the top and bottom of each page to get to any of the seven main pages.
(Or if you prefer a graphical navigation aid, click the "Site Map" link at the top of any page on the site, to bring up the Site Map. This allows you to get to different parts of the museum by clicking rooms on a floor plan.)
Each of the seven main pages also has links going to still more pages. For example, "Poetry" has links to poems, and "Essays" has links to essays.
For technical information on this site (such as what browsers it works best on, and what technologies are being used) see Technical Notes.
Nedstat site statistics:
(My other counter seemed terminally busted, so I moved my Nedstat counter up here. It's much more accurate, anyway.)
Midnight Moonlight Madness is permanantly under construction, and will definitely continue to grow and improve as time goes by. Stop by often and check out the changes!
Robbie Hatley,
Curator,
Midnight Moonlight Madness
I welcome feedback! Please sign my guestbook and tell me what you think of my website:
Sign my guestbook View My Guestbook Get Your Own Guestbook
I also like email! (real email, not spam or flames.) Email me and tell me what you think about Midnight Moonlight Madness, or about me, or about you, or about life in general (or in major, or even in corporal). My address is:
lone wolf aatt well dott comI made the above address non-machine-readable to thwart spambots. To get my actual email address, replace "aatt" and "dott" with the appropriate symbols, and remove the embedded spaces.
If you want to send me a PGP-encrypted message, my PGP public key appears at the bottom of my essay on Public Key Cryptography.
Or you can chat with me in the evenings via IM (mostly by appointment; I'm rarely on-line these days due to time constraints; so if you don't see me on-line, contact me by email first to arrange a time to chat):
AIM: LoneWolfiNTjOr just call me on the phone at (714) 832-7084.
Again, it's been nearly a year since I'm updated my "news" secion. Tsk, tsk. Too many other problems in my life recently. The most annoying and consuming of which has been getting evicted! Yep, the one word that all renters dread to hear; the one word that send their adrenaline soaring just from hearing it.
My troubles started, really, when I got laid off from my job at Hortimax USA, in mid-2006. I got a new job right away, but the job was poison from akward start to ugly finish. The boss and I never got along well, the wages started off mediocre, then actually got WORSE in January of 2007. I should have quit then, but I procrastinated, due to my dislike of hunting for work. Bad move, because the economy was better then than it is now. When my boss fired me for ostensibly not putting in the hours and effort he desired (Hah! He wanted $80/hour of work for $15/hour!), it caught me off-guard. I was not able to find a new job (I'm still unemployed as I write this). I managed to pay the rent on my apartment for August, but I had no way of paying the September or October rent. So on September 15, my landlord filed an "unlawful detainer" suit against me.
In the state of California, if an unlawful detainer suit is filed against you and you file no reply within 5 days, you will lose your case by default, and you will be forcefully evicted from your apartment by a county sherif's deputy at gunpoint in 10 to 15 days. So, obviously, I filed an reply. Now, there are 3 basic kinds of reply: a "motion to quash" (which I should have filed, because the complaint had severe errors), a "demurrer" (which says "even if all the allegations are true, that would still not be grounds for the court to provide the requested remedy"), and an "answer", which denies some or all of the allegations in the complaint. I was under extreme time pressure, so I filed an "answer", using a "habitability" defense. (It is true that there are maintainance issues with this apartment.)
The next day, I contacted the Orange County Legal Aid Society. They scheduled me to come in the next Monday to one of their "unlawful detainer clinics". I came in and they helped me to complete an "ammended answer", properly laying out both the technical defenses (regarding the errors in the complaint -- more on this below) and habitability issues, regarding maintainance problems in the apartment. What I really should have done was contact them the very next day after receiving the summons and complaint; then they would likely have taken different action, such as a motion to quash. But I ran out of time and had to reply without advice. Live and learn: If sued, always seek legal advice immediately! Don't wait! Not even one day! Some lawsuits have very short deadlines, and evictions are in that class. Also: if a complaint against you has technical errors, file a quash motion or a demurrer, rather than an answer; that can force the plaintiff to drop and re-file his case, which will buy you precious time.
In the mean time, some friends of mine helped me find an apartment for myself and my mother to move into, in the community of Antioch, California. (The rents up there are much cheaper than in Orange County, California. In OC, most 2-bedroom apartments rent for $1200 to $1600 per month; in Antioch, they go for about $800 to $1000 per month.) I needed to go there in person to check out the new apartment, show my ID, sign papers, do a credit check, give a holding deposit, etc., I checked out airfares, but they were outrageous ($300 was the cheapest I found, and that was a meandering 6-hour multi-hop journey). I looked at Greyhound, but it was about a 13-hour trip and about as expensive as a train. So I decided on Amtrak.
I left home around 10PM, got to the Santa Ana train station about 11PM, picked up my reserved tickets from a Metrolink vending machine, and caught an Amtrak bus to Bakersfield at 12:10AM. The northern half of the bus trip, from Los Angeles to Bakersfield, was very dark. At one point, we were on a winding road lined with trees on both sides, and it was so dark that all the traffic was going about 35MPH, even though the posted speed limit was 55MPH, because even with high beams, we could only see about 30 feet ahead! Very spooky.
I arrived at the Bakersfield Amtrak station around 4AM. Amtrak train #711, Bakersfield-to-Oakland, was waiting there for us. The train left at about 4:45AM and headed northwest. Around 6AM, the sun rose over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which was a spectacular sight. For the next 5 hours, we traveled the length of the San Joaquin Valley from south end to north end. About 1.5 million acres of grapes, almonds, cotton, strawberries, boysenberries, apples, oranges, corn, wheat, and pastures of green grass being grazed by cattle. A large part of planet Earth's food is grown in this one valley. And I spent 5 hours staring at it. Fascinating trip.
I arrived in Antioch at about 11AM. The train station is near the "downtown" area, which is very old. Much like stepping back several decades in time. My apartment, however, is about 2 miles SW of downtown, in a recently developed area. I completed the necessary paperwork there, including application and credit check (which I passed, to my surprise). I stayed overnight at the Ramada Inn (ok, but a bit noisy because it's right on California State Highway 4)
I caught a train out of town at 11AM the next morning. Back through the Valley. More cows, bulls, wheat, corn, cotton, apples, etc. I caught an express bus from Bakersfield to Los Angeles Union Station, then the Pacific Surfliner to Santa Ana station. I walked north to 17th st, caught OCTA line 60, which took me home. Whew! Long journey; about 1000 miles round trip.
Since I now had a firm move date, I attempted to settle the eviction case out of court; but my attempts were rebuffed by the assistant to the attorney for the plaintiff, who insisted that the case go to trial.
The trial was on the morning of Friday October 17, 2008. As soon as the plaintiff finished presenting his case, I moved that the attempts of the attorney for the plaintiff to "ammend" the complaint's severe errors (falsely stating that I owed money for August when actually August was paid in full and I only owed money for September, and including a copy of a "3-day notice to pay rent or quit" from August instead of September) be rejected, and that the complaint be dismissed and the plaintiff be required to re-file. The judge was impressed; he raised one eyebrow and said "one of the better arguements I've heard from an in-pro-per defendant. I'll have to research this issue in my law books." He retired to his chambers.
The plaintiff and I had to wait a good half hour for the judge to return. When he came back, he said, "while this is one of the sloppier pleadings I've seen in my years on the bench, and while it is true that this complaint does have technical errors, the court finds that the technical errors are not of such severity as to warrant dismissal of the case, especially seeing as the defendant did not file a motion to quash or a demurrer, but instead filed an answer and an ammended answer." So there went all hope of delaying eviction any further. Since I didn't have time to develop the evidence for the habitability issues in my case, the judge found for the plaintiff.
So now I'm waiting to see when the sherrif shows up to post the initial eviction notice. After he does so, I'll have 5 days after the day on which the notice was posted in which to move. One week after posting the notice, the sherrif will return with the manager, a locksmith, and a gun, to force my mother and myself out and to confiscate all of our possessions to be sold at auction. I intend to be gone from here before that happens.
Now it's early morning, Saturday, October 25, 2008, and the sherrif still hasn't shown up. This is good. He's unlikely to show up during the weekend, and if he posts notice next Monday (or later) I'll be able to wait until the 1st before moving, so I won't have to put anything in storage, as I had feared. Now the only things left to iron out is renting a truck, and getting someone to drive it, and to help with loading and unloading. That, and transportation for my mother and myself from Tustin to Antioch.
So that's Robbie Hatley's big eviction saga, so far. I'll try to remember to update this, providing things go reasonably well and I don't end up homeless, or in jail, or dead, or worse. If this site goes off-line, then you'll know something bad happened to me.
No recent site changes. Too busy with other stuff.
That's all the personal and site news for right now, but check back later for more news.
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley,
Curator,
Midnight Moonlight Madness
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