Well, no obvious solutions after 7 hours of actively trying things, so I'll restore from backup. 

For those interested, I deleted files from /var/lib/dhcpbd, and this allowed me to get new IP addresses, but all within the faulty subdomain of California.  I tried on another wireless networks, and still my machine tries to assign me an IP within the California domain.  I reinstalled my entire networking software (short of a kernel recompile), and deleted and remade any network configuration files I could find that might be relevant, and still the problem persisted.   I used wicd to assign myself static IP and DNS with known values that are functional, and then the network was recognized, but I could not access anything. 

I have a backup of the current system, so if anyone is really really interested in this subject, I could restore and toy around some more.  But I have to recommend against using macchanger without a very recent backup of your system.  I'd file a bug report, but what would I say?  I don't know what file was actually being affected, so I can't offer any useful insight.

~daid