Jonas Mekas is doing this 365 project—365 video iPod-sized movies a year posted at his website—but until a freelancer (who’s also a filmmaker) reminded me about it, I hadn’t seen any of them. OOPS!

Today’s movie is actually by Pola Chappelle, with an introduction by the distinctively accented Mekas. It is adorable.

How to Draw a Cat starts at the 2 minute mark. Download the movie for free until midnight, and for $1.99 thereafter. You can watch them on your computer if you, like me, do not own a video iPod.

Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee

Me: That’s a big bag of nuts.

Nipper: It’s my nut sack.

In February, when the KC Council issued a righteous statement coming out against the Sonics subsidy , I actually went and dinged them.

It wasn’t that I disagreed with their stance (no money without at least a pubilc vote), but this was the same KC Council that overruled the public and built Safeco field. Indeed: This was the same KC Council that then proceeded, every subsequent opening game day, to cancel its public meetings and play hooky at the Mariners game.

I expected as much this year, but, evidently, with righteous Council Member Larry Gossett taking over as the new chair of the Council (from Larry Philips), the Council actually stayed at work on opening day today. That’s apparently more than some can say.

Sheeeesh, Dan.

From 04:46:30 pm till 04:46:58 pm, Charles Mudede sang—a capella—the first verse of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting,” with feeling.

What made it special made it dangerous.

Savage, knowing I’m stuck at work covering for him while he enjoys opening day at Safeco, sent me this pic, along with the message: “First beer of the season. It’s a beautiful thing.”

(In happier news, King Felix already has 5 Ks in just two innings of work. That, as they say, is nasty business.)

“Presbyterians” is an anagram of “Britney Spears.”

Thank you, Defamer.

From Japan, via Sullivan:

Basketball Jones: Set a pick for me at the freethrow line of life!

Exclusive Jesse Sykes Video: From her wolf-taming performance at the Tractor.

Justify my Pod: Zwickel listens to Tom Jones, and I make fun of him for it.

The Locust Live On: And they swarmed Neumo’s this weekend.

Classic: Feel five years younger instantly by visiting The Stranger’s archives.

Naked Hippies: The Trashies are still on tour, their stories are still crazy.

Local Nightclubs Need Your Help: Down with the proposed nightlife legislation!

More Volta News: Björk wanted some sort of “shaman sort of voodoo thing.” Nothing is shocking anymore.

And now, something cute enough to make me almost pee my pants:

Adam Nagourney, the political reporter from whom a lot of other political reporters take their cues, sees McCain’s first-quarter fundraising numbers as a big problem:

Senator John McCain of Arizona – who for so long has stood in the wings as the presumptive frontrunner for his party’s nomination, who is running for the White House for a second time – reported that his campaign had raised $12.5 million. That is less than Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Romney, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Edwards and – almost without a doubt – Barack Obama.

For the full Nagourney assessment of what this means for McCain, click here. But perhaps more important is what it means that Nagourney’s assessment is generally negative—that’s going to start a lot of the mainstream media moving in the same direction, which means even more bad news for McCain.

In case you were wondering:
Yes, the new Windows Vista television ad campaign IS ripping off this old feature of ours.

Rumors about who’s running for city council have started flying over the last few days. I’m on the phones trying to track down which ones are legit and which ones are fake; in the meantime, however, here are a few of the names I’ve heard as possible candidates in the past few days:

1. KCTS host Enrique Cerna, who has reportedly talked to consultant Cathy Allen;
2. Former monorail board member Jim Nobles;
3. Democratic Party veteran Noel Frame (who, at 27, would be the youngest candidate in any race);
4. State Rep. and perennial rumored council contender Phyllis Kenney;
5. Longtime civic gadfly and Historylink founder Walt Crowley;
6. City employee and political junkie Tim Durkan, who sought the open seat formerly held by Jim Compton; and
7. King County disease intervention specialist Carrie Shriver.

Of those, only Shriver has declared her intent to run (she’s seeking the seat that Peter Steinbrueck will vacate next year). More details and clarifications as they emerge.

The NYT was awesome this weekend. Yesterday, there was that preview of Zoo (which a certain someone keeps calling Farm, which is hilarious). And Saturday, Manohla Dargis wrote up the Warhol/Edie Sedgwick series at Museum of the Moving Image, occasioning the prettiest still from Beauty #2 that the internets have ever known:

The whole Edie slideshow is here.

In my profile of a Level 3 sex offender in this week’s Stranger, I mention the effect that news stories about high-profile sex crimes have on public policy. This story, making the rounds today, reminds me that stories about attempted sex crimes can also have the same effect:

Law enforcement officials in Polk County Fla., arrested 28 men for soliciting sex with minors after setting up a weeklong sting operation in a suburban home where undercover officers communicated with the alleged predators over the Internet. Three of the 28 people who were arrested told authorities they worked for the Walt Disney Company, which owns and operates several theme parks in the Orlando area including Walt Disney World. Among the other arrested suspects were a volunteer for the Orlando Boys and Girls Club and a student at the University of Florida.

Those arrested ranged in age from 17 to 55. Each arrived at the suburban house apparently believing they were going to meet with an underage girl.

Instead, they were met by a house full of armed detectives working a sting led by the Orlando County Sheriff’s Department, which conducted its second operation in less than a year to target internet crimes against children.

What I find most interesting about this story—aside from the employers of the people involved—is an assumption that the Polk County sheriff makes about the alleged offenders in this case:

“These deviants came to the undercover location to have sex with a child,” the Polk County sheriff, Grady Judd, said in a statement. “We stopped them.” “I don’t know any other way to say this,” he added. “We will not tolerate anyone preying on our children. We will not allow these criminals’ behavior to escalate to kidnapping or murder.”

Now, I’m not at all defending the actions of the people arrested in this sting. (For video of the sting, click here and go to the “news” tab on the media player.)

But after realizing, in the research for my sex offender article, how little is actually understood about the psychology of sex offenders, I find myself feeling a bit skeptical of Sheriff Judd’s suggestion that all pedophiles, if left unchecked, eventually end up kidnapping and murdering children. Again, I’m not defending the alleged pedophiles caught in this sting. The crime they are accused of committing is real, and serious, and should be prosecuted.

But there’s a danger in leading the public to believe that every sex offender—or even every pedophile—wants to kidnap and murder children. It makes it difficult for legislators to create laws and policies that are nuanced enough to deal with the wide spectrum of sex offenders, most of whom do not want to abduct and murder children. (And, although there’s a value in warning the public about the ease with which sex offenders can use the internet to pursue children, there’s also a danger in suggesting that this is the biggest danger facing the children of Florida, or of any state or community. Most sex crimes against children are committed not by a stranger lurking on the internet, but by someone known to the child—in almost half the cases, by a family member.)

More on this here.

As a native Houstonian, I grew up eating Frito pie: Fritos topped with chili (meat only, of course!) cheese and chopped onions. Traditionally, they’re served right in the bag, like so…

… but I always bought them at the school cafeteria, where they looked more like this:

Friends here have never heard of Frito pie. Often, they seem disturbed that I grew up eating this stuff—along with chicken-fried steak, pork tamales, and cheese enchiladas. (Were you just dirt poor? Were your parents abusive? Did you grow up in the time before the FDA?) But it got me to thinking: What regional specialties that others might find revolting did Slog readers grow up eating and loving? (Searching middle-school menus across the country, I find exotic delicacies I had never heard of in my palate’s formative years: Things like bagels with cream cheese on Long Island, chicken teriyaki in Virginia, and Philly cheese steak in Pennsylvania). Do your middle-school food memories inspire nostalgia or revulsion? And do you still make them for yourself?

News intern Jonah Spangenthal-Lee interviewed someone who works in the office where this morning’s shooting took place who reports that the victim was a woman named Rebecca Griego. Griego worked at Gould Hall at the College of Architecture and Planning as the Managing Director of Real Estate. She had a restraining order against the shooter. Our source, who also works at Gould Hall, Jad DeLisle, says the shooter was Griego’s ex-boyfriend.

UPDATE: Here’s Jonah’s report from UW Campus Security Assistant Chief Ray Wittmier.

At 9:31 a.m. the UW police recieved a series of calls from the third floor of Gould Hall. Five or six campus security officers responded in two minutes. On the fourth-floor, southeast corner office, they found two people with gunshot wounds. A man and woman. There was a handgun in the room. It appeared to be a murder suicide.

Wittmier said: “I think we will find they’re not students. It’s a woman in her mid to late 20s and a man in his 40s. There was definitely someone in the building that had a restraining order.”

Jonah also interviewed students who said the victim was a guest lecturer at the school and was a liason between the faculty and students. One student had heard about her restraining order a month ago, but says: “It could have been going on longer that. She had problems with this person before.”

UW Security says there are no security measures in place to keep people out of the building. And this morning’s news will not change that. They report that guns are banned on campus. Witmier “wagers that the man probably did not have permission to have a gun on campus.”

According to a custodial manager that Jonah just interviewed, pictures had been circulated to staff of the man with the restraining order.

Another custodial worker that Jonah interviewed hid in a closet on the fourth floor during the shooting and described the victim as a “very nice, quiet girl.” According to her, the “victim was being stalked.”

Legislation extending the deadline for clubs to install expensive sprinkler systems will get a hearing in the state senate’s Ways and Means Committee at 1:30 this afternoon. The legislation would push the current December 2007 deadline for installing sprinklers back to December 2009, giving clubs two more years to install the systems. Club owners say they need extra time because only a handful of contractors do sprinkler installations, and because they need time to negotiate with landlords over who will pay for the systems.

In addition to extending the sprinkler deadline, the legislation, HB 1811 (and its companion bill, SB 5832) would change the definition of “nightclub” to encompass only clubs with open floors (no seating) of 350 square feet or more. That would eliminate smaller clubs and clubs with fixed seats. The bill would also provide a business and occupation tax break to anyone who has to install a sprinkler system, including club owners who lease their space; the break would amount to half the cost of installing a system. Tim Hatley, lobbyist for the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association, says he’s optimistic that the bill will get out of Ways and Means today, the deadline for bills to make it out of committee and onto the Senate floor.

Sprinkler systems are expensive—anywhere from several thousand dollars for the simplest installations to $70,000 or more for large venues like the Showbox. The cost varies depending on the size of the venue (the larger the place, the more pipes have to be installed) and whether the club has a four-inch water main (upgrading from a two-inch main costs $26,000.) Many club owners say they may have to shut down if the deadline is not extended.

Okay, I’m trying not to get too obsessed or go too inside baseball, but here’s Rep. Brendan Williams (D-22, Olympia) last Thursday (in an e-mail to his caucus) predicting that Dem leadership was going to kill his homebuyers’ protections bill thanks to the BIAW.

From: Williams, Rep. Brendan Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:20 PM To: @HDC Members; @HDC Caucus Staff Subject: Please support Homeowners’ Bill of Rights! Importance: High

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee passed ESSB 5550: The Homeowners’ Bill of Rights.

In our state there is no statutory warranty protection for new homes – 9 other states provide this. Nor is there any right of action for negligent construction, a far more substantive protection – 10 states provide this (and DC provides strict liability). And 14 states provide a more enhanced implied warranty of habitability than does Washington – in Washington your only guarantee with a brand new home (and you must be the original purchaser) is that the foundations supporting the new home are firm and secure and the home is safe for your intended purpose in living in it. It need not even be fully-constructed.

ESSB 5550 would grant statutory warranty protections to Washington homebuyers effective July 1, 2008. Prior to that date, the bill would commission a residential construction committee to study remedies available to consumers and report to the Legislature by December 31, 2007.

We need the hammer of substantive protection for this study to be meaningful, or BIAW will simply run out the clock. Yesterday they attempted to turn the bill into a study only, and their amendment revealed their sincerity about protecting consumers: They would have reduced the civilian representatives on the residential construction committee to 6 – with 4 of the 6 representing builders’ interests, one representing the insurance industry, and just one representing consumers.

This was farcical. But BIAW has treated this bill as comedy because they believe they can kill it in House Rules.

Consider the source when it comes to BIAW’s alarums about the effect ESSB 5550 would have on the construction industry. After all, they claimed women are “eradicating manly jobs”; denied global warming’s existence; denied the Puget Sound ecosystem is imperiled; lobbied for U.S. Attorney John McKay’s firing (now under Congressional investigation); orchestrated House floor attacks this session on tribes; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Even Habitat for Humanity has been threatened over this bill!

Look at the facts: D.R. Horton is the nation’s largest homebuilder, and does business in the states that provide far more substantive protections to homebuyers. DR Horton is presently building a lot of homes in my 22nd Legislative District, too.

California provides statutory warranty protections, for example, and DR Horton has over 30,000 lots under development there. Of the statutory warranty states, DR Horton is building homes in all but Kentucky.

And BIAW would regard our allowing negligent construction claims as a “thermonuclear option” compared to statutory warranty protections. After all, attorneys could actually make money off of negligence (tort) claims. Yet, even in the states that provide negligent construction claims, DR Horton is building in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, and Oregon. Evidently it must be profitable to do so. The company made over $1 billion in profit last year.

If protecting homebuyers would destroy the homebuilding industry why is DR Horton doing so well in states where homebuyers are protected? What does BIAW know that the nation’s most successful homebuilder does not?

Buying a home is life’s greatest investment, and those incurring 30-year mortgages should have at least some meaningful, guaranteed protection for the quality of their investment over the course of that indebtedness. There is no better “message bill” for the middle class than this bill. Let’s give hope to all of those dreaming of buying a home that their dream of homeownership will not turn into a nightmare. Please share your support for this bill with leadership.

Because a caucus member gave to BIAW a previous internal memo of mine on this issue, I am sending this as an e-mail to make it easier to forward to Tom McCabe. :)

Rep. Brendan W. Williams

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a story I’ve been waiting to read for as long as I can remember: Michael Winerip’s quietly thrilling profile of Zach O’Connor, a Connecticut teenager whose coming-out experience—navigated with the full participation of his family—proves that the ongoing pogrom against gays is occuring in (and is perhaps a backlash against) a society where progress for gays is palpable.

My favorite chunk, showcasing the benefits of a prompt and purposeful coming-out for gay teens:

Now, as a 17-year-old 11th grader, Zach has passed through phases that many gay men of previous generations didn’t get to until their 20s, 30s, even 40s. “Eighth grade was kind of his militant time,” [Zach’s dad] says.

After reading the piece, I was ready to hail Zach O’Connor’s parents as heroes, for so forcibly and imaginatively taking the reins on their son’s coming-out experience. But the O’Connors are merely doing what all good parents should do: taking care of their kids as best they can, which is heroic in its own right.

Read the whole heartening story here.

A message from Grady West, a.k.a. Dina Martina:

Hey everyone,

PLEASE DO THIS TODAY! Re-bar, along with many other amazing places we love in Seattle (Neumo’s, the Crocodile, the Tractor, etc.), is in danger of closing at the end of 2007 because of a new bill requiring certain businesses to install expensive sprinkler systems by Dec. 1, 2007 or close. That wouldn’t be so hard to comply with, except for the fact that these sprinkler systems cost anywhere in the neighborhood of $70,000-$90,000. These businesses aren’t asking to be excused from installing the sprinkler systems, just that they be given sufficient time to get that huge sum of money together.

There’s currently a bill (HB 1811) in Olympia that would move the sprinkler installation deadline to Dec. 1, 2009, but if it doesn’t make it out of committee by the end of the day MONDAY, APRIL 2ND, it is dead and we’ll be stuck with the Dec. 2007 deadline, which would effectively close a lot of these important Seattle establishments.

If you want to help, below is a short paragraph I typed to the Ways and Means Committee Chairperson, Margarita Prentice, that you should copy and paste into a new email and send to her at prentice.margarita@leg.wa.gov. And don’t forget to add your name at the bottom!

THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE TODAY!!

Here’s the text West would like you to send to Margarita Prentice:

Hello,

I’m emailing you to ask you to please do everything in your power to help HB 1811—the sprinkler bill—to pass (which would move the installation deadline to 2009) because there are SO many establishments vital to the social scene and character of Seattle (character which has already largely disappeared due to gentrification) which would be forced to close. They’d be forced to close because the time they’ve been given to raise the necessary amount of money (anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000) to install a sprinkler system by the Dec. 1, 2007 deadline is inadequate. Many of these businesses would need at least another year to amass that kind of money.

PLEASE don’t let this happen. Thank you.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME HERE]

This was originally posted on Sunday afternoon, but I’m moving it up.

As Eli noted in Morning News, the first quarter fundraising totals are in for the declared 2008 presidential hopefuls—and Hillary Clinton raised a startling $26 million.

Here’s the more impressive news from Clinton, as reported by the NYT

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said that it had received contributions from 50,000 donors and that 80 percent had given less than $100 each.

This is just more evidence that self-hating elitist liberals who are nervous that Clinton is a turn off to the lumpen prole vote are clumsily misreading the lumpen prole vote as they (double reverse back flip) awkwardly try temper their own feelings to cater to the lumpen prole vote.

As I’ve reported before: HRC will get the Wal-Mart vote.

Now, if you don’t like her because she’s a hawk, well, that’s your own problem.

From the Seattle Times:

Two people have been killed in a shooting inside Gould Hall on the University of Washington Campus, according to the Seattle Fire Department.

University Police responded to the shooting around 9 a.m. Monday morning.

Gould Hall houses the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. It’s located at the corner of 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 40th Street.

You may recall that last week, John McCain declared Baghdad safe enough to stroll through unarmed. Yesterday he took a stroll through Baghdad — backed by 100 soldiers, three Blackhawks, and two Apache gunships.

In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed “walk freely” in some areas of Baghdad.

Dear Debra,

That’s some open letter you wrote me today on Salon. I’ve lost readers over the years, God knows, but never with quite so public a display of disaffection.

Your Savage Love sex advice column not only made me a better lover but a better person. You introduced me to people, places and things I would have never otherwise been aware of. You were my secret gay crush for five years. Or you used to be. But, sadly, this is both a fan letter and a Dear John, Dear Dan. It’s over and it’s better this way. You’ll see. No, please, Dan—it’s not you. It’s me. But I’m hoping we can still be friends.

Of course we can still be friends, Debra. Why not? You intend to keep on reading Savage Love, but only for kicks now, no longer for tips. I’ve never asked my friends for more. As for the particular column that made you fall out of love with me—the one about a certain diaper-wearin’ husband and the indulgent wife whose needs he was neglecting—I have to say that I’m surprised by your reading of it.

You trained me well, Dan. I know I should applaud my fellow savage for being so GGG (good, giving and game), but I don’t. I think she should have headed for the hills at the first mention of Depends. I know I shouldn’t think it. But the fact is that I do. Now, instead of regretting what I missed out on sexually, I’m terrified of what I might learn if I give the least hint of a sexual openness.

Oh, Debra. As a long-time reader of Savage Love, you should know that the appearance of a kink in the column—and there have been so many others, Debra, and so many worse ones—is not an endorsement, nor is it an indication that said kink has passed into the Must Go There Zone, i.e., it does not mean the kink has suddenly joined the list of kinks that an indulgent partner is expected to, well, indulge. It only means the kink… is. What to do about the kink, how to handle it, assess it, respond, and, if possible, incorporate the kink—that’s where the advice comes in.

You describe me as “a raging ‘mo with no boundaries,” Debra, which is sweet and, oh, how I wish it were true! All people have boundaries and limits and hang-ups (me too!), and I’ve hammered that point home in Savage Love over the years. But I am guilty of insisting that, yes, there are times when it is worth considering expanding our boundaries and limits —for a particular person.

Paris is worth a mass and sometimes “Dave from accounting” is worth a spanking, you know what I mean? That’s why I advise people to be “good, giving, and game,” to be up for almost anything. Because people are package deals—you have to take the good with the bad, the relatives you like with the relatives you don’t, and the desires that align neatly with your own with the kinks that sometimes challenge your ideas about what is and is not sexy. On a case-by-case basis, Debra, all of us will, over the course of our love lives, face moments when we have to decide if person A is worth engaging in kink B for.

When it comes to sex we sometimes mistake unfamiliarity for revulsion, and blurt out “no” without thinking. Really, how bad is, say, being with a foot fetishist? Is a little slobber on your toes too much to ask for love? Taking a hairbrush to someone’s backside now and then? Too high a price to pay for love?

But I’ve never ordered people to charge out of the trenches, Debra, and do absolutely anything asked of them, ever, by a lover, however twisted, however objectively disgusting. All kinks are not created equal. Some kinks are revolting. (And some people with revolting kinks are thin-skinned and shortsighted. Hello, poop fetishists? If you’re turned on because your kink is revolting and taboo then I’m helping to keep your kink hot by reinforcing the idea that it’s revolting and taboo. You’re welcome.) I describe a kink like a thing for poop as “a fetish too far,” and I’ve told people with AFTF’s that they should seek out like-minded fetishists online and refrain from springing their AFTF’s on unsuspecting vanilla-to-GGG types. (Thank God for the internet, which has removed poop fetishists from the general dating pool! Thank you, Al Gore!)

And Debra, Debra, Debra. Your column today at Salon implies that my sympathies always lie with the kinkster. Not true! I’m harsh on kinky folks who take their indulgent partners for granted, kinksters who fail to recognize how good they’ve got it when they find someone that, unlike me and Debra, will “go there” on an issue like diapers. And you have to know that’s my position, Debra, as it’s in my response to the woman with the diaper-lovin’ husband, a response that hardly reads like an endorsement of diaper fetishism—a response you don’t quote in your piece! Your piece on Salon reads like I suggested that diaper fetishism is wholesome and sweet and somehow browbeat the woman who wrote in about her husband’s kink. The diaper community—that’s right, the diaper community—didn’t see it that way. I got so much waa-waa-waa from adult babies for that column that I can’t walk down the Depends aisle at Walgreens without shuddering. Here’s my response, Debra:

Does your “baby girl” realize what he’s got in you? The world is crawling—literally crawling—with adult babies who are alone and single and miserable and always will be. While the internet has made it possible for adult babies to find each other, a shared interest in nappies and nurseries doesn’t guarantee compatibility. Plus, female adult babies are scarcer than folks who can read “my husband whines and cries and pretends to be a baby during sex” without hurling. Your husband should be doing everything in his power to keep you happy.

My advice: Take that break. Cut the brat off—no more baby games until he can successfully wrap his bonnet around this: Your pleasure matters as much as his does. He may not be interested in regular sex, but he better learn to fake it convincingly. And finally, BA, tell him that his continued failure to meet your vanilla needs is gonna get his diapered ass divorced, leaving him single and shit out of luck, sex-partner wise, for the rest of his adult infancy.

“Dump the honest foot fetishist,” I warned a woman a few weeks ago, “and I guarantee that you will marry the dishonest necrophiliac.” That’s the Karmic Rule of Kink. But vanilla partners are not the only ones subject to KROK. For kinksters lucky enough to be with generous vanilla partners, your somewhat-less-pithy version of KROK goes like this: “Drive off an understanding, adventurous partner by failing to joyfully accommodate his or her desires for vanilla sex and you will NEVER get your kinky rocks off again without having to pay a pro $500 an hour to put up with your bullshit.”

Frankly, Debra, I don’t see how you get from that response to this strange epiphany:

Now, instead of regretting what I missed out on sexually, I’m terrified of what I might learn if I give the least hint of a sexual openness. Now it’s me who’s on the down low, repressing my sexual fantasies for fear of what his might be. I’m the hall monitor geek in the coming-of-age movie who cuts physics for an orgy only to wake up with a persistent itch, a stalker and a big, fat secret to keep buried deep inside. I simply do not want to know what bland Dave in accounting keeps in his spare room.

It took a gay activist to convert me to don’t ask, don’t tell, and regretfully, I’m going to have to DTMFA. Hard as I tried, it turns out that I’m not so good, not very giving and definitely gone. I’m not dumping the column—can’t live without it. But I’ll be reading as a peeping Tom, not an acolyte.

And reading this in your column made me feel like all my efforts at Savage Love have been wasted:

Now, instead of regretting what I missed out on sexually, I’m terrified of what I might learn if I give the least hint of a sexual openness.

Sexual openness does not create kinks, Debra, nor can sexual closedness protect you from them. Oh, you can run from kinks but you can’t hide. Unless you intend to settle down with a Hitachi Magic Wand, odds are good that you will have to come to terms with a kink or two. You have a kinky appointment in Samara, Debra. Because people are kinky, and men are particularly kinky. Women, in my experience (all book learnin’, but lots of it), tend to get kinkier as they get older. Something about sexual peaks, which men hit earlier than women, makes people freaky. Our sexual energy—whether we’re male or female, gay, straight, or bi—has never fit inside the “normal” box into which we stupidly insist on stuffing it. Human sexuality bursts boxes—and, yes, sometimes diapers.

When you fall in love, Debra, please know that I’m still here for you. Hopefully it won’t be diapers or poop or beating off parakeets, but it’ll be something. And I’m confident that the lessons you learned reading about more extreme kinks in my column—lessons about kindness, compassion, mutual respect, a sense of fun, and being open to possibility—will apply.

So there’s still hope for you, Debra. You may be a wild child yet. I’ll see you in Samara.

Sincerely,

Dan

The most recent lobbying expenditure report for Tom McCabe, the lobbyist for the BIAW, the powerful building industry group that convinced House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43) to table the homebuyers’ protection bill according to bill sponsors, Sen. Brian Weinstein (D-41) and Rep. Brendan Williams (D-22), shows that McCabe hasn’t sprung for whole lot of schmoozing dinners this session.

Unless you count this one:

If you’re having trouble reading the fine print—on line two it says: Dinner at Ricardo’s Restaurant in Lacey with Speaker Chopp on February 13.

Politicians constantly scoff at this type of reporting. “It just doesn’t work that way, Josh!” Whatever you say, guys.

Ishmael Beah
(Reading) He was born in Sierra Leone in 1980 and by 1993 was a child soldier in a civil war that killed his parents and two brothers. It was “a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter,” according to the Publishers Weekly review of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Eventually, Beah fled to New York, graduated from Oberlin, and wrote this memoir, which Starbucks is currently pushing. Tonight you can see Beah read somewhere other than Starbucks. (University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. 7 pm, free.) CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Opening Day. A’s vs. M’s (first pitch 3:35 or so). U.S.S. Mariner declares Happy Opening Felix Day here. Seth at Seattlest breaks down A’s starter Dan Haren here.

In the P.I. Art Thiel declares:

If the Mariners sweep the A’s — Mariners go to the World Series.

If the Mariners win the series 2-1 — A contending team with a real shot at the division title.

If the Mariners lose the series 1-2 — Gather into the basement the elderly, the children and bring some bannock and hardtack.

Meanwhile, over at ESPN, only Enrique Rojas of ESPNdeportes.com thinks the M’s will take the AL West. And Jim Caple predicts Felix Hernandez will win the AL Cy Young.

And then there’s this post, also at Seattlest, which can be nutshelled like so: Whiney former transplant can’t get over 2001 season, declares Mariners and fans sucky on opening day of 2007 season.

Go Mariners!

Tsunami: This time in the South Pacific.

Seattle Living: Unaffordable for the average Seattle worker.

The Democrats’ First Quarter Fundraising: By the numbers.

Who calls 911 from a hospital? These guys.

Day 10: The British hostages.

Iran strike date: April 6?

Tommy Thompson: In the running.

No New Parks, and Nickels Cites… lack of enthusiasm?