The day: Friday

The mission: Disrupt the workplace as much as possible

Weapon of choice:

Durian, the smelly, oft-maligned member of the Malvaceae family, made a brief appearance on Anthony Bourdain’s TV show A Cook’s Tour many years ago, where I vaguely recalled him describing the “king of fruits” as “cheesy.”

Bourdain’s description intrigued me and I began researching the strange fruit. When I found food and travel writer Richard Sterling’s description of durian as being something like

“pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock,”

I knew I had to have one.

Yesterday, Ari and I concocted a super-double-secret plan to bring a durian into the office to see what would happen. A new Asian supermarket recently opened not far from my house, in the old Larry’s Market location, so I dropped by yesterday and picked up the heaviest, spikiest durian I could find. I left it in my car overnight only to return this morning to discover that my car, already a museum of strange sensory sensations, had taken on a bizarre “funky melon” smell. After the drive to work, I placed the bagged fruit on the edge of my desk. The countdown to stinky-town had begun.

11:45 - Ari Spool arrives in style, laying out a copy of another local “newspaper” on a desk in the middle of the offices, while I get down to business with a serrated knife. Our antics are immediately halted when Erica Barnett scolds us. Dan Savage sends us to another floor of the building.

Ari and I wander upstairs carrying a large ugly fruit, a 10-inch serrated knife and a camera. No one even notices. We plop everything down a large conference room table and get to cuttin’.

Continue reading "Adventures in Food with Ari and Jonah" »

Of course we’d rather be bringing you the alleged video of Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffers allegedly pissing on the Seattle Times front lawn, but while we wait (and hope) for the video, a Slog poll:

Which of the following P-I staffers do you think is most likely to have been part of the alleged piss parade? (We hear there were probably multiple pissers, including a woman who supposedly squatted to mark Frank Blethen’s territory as her own, but you can only vote once, so pick the person you think is most likely to have been in the pee group.)

…Americans are immersed in nonsense bourgeois distractions.

I mean, check this out: A Can cover night?

Can, if you don’t know, and it’s likely you don’t, was an early 70s experimental rock band from West Germany. Once upon a time, they had an album called Tago Mago that was supposedly influential.

A Can cover night?!? How do you even cover a Can song; much less have the time to learn a Can song? These songs, freak out improvs, typically clocked in between 8 and 20 minutes.

Fellow weirdoes! We are going down the rabbit hole if we are covering Can, and going to see Can cover nights.

Having said that: Burn on Osama bin Laden. That’s why Capitol Hill and freak zones like it all over the USA are great. I hope someone does “Paperhouse” from Tago Mago.

First, the news. The Cannes lineup has been announced. We probably won’t see these movies for a long time—in most cases, SIFF, which comes right on the heels of Cannes, can’t get its hands on anything. Last year, I believe only one film, A Scanner Darkly, showed at both festivals, and at SIFF it was a sneak preview screening. SIFF 2006 did, however, have a handful of Cannes 2005 films, mostly lower-profile or Eastern hemisphere stuff that hadn’t opened theatrically. So read it and drool.

There’s some loud buzzing around the fact that Cho Seung-Hui might have gotten the idea for his hammer photo from Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy. (Here was Andrew Wright’s 2005 review.) Not to point out the obvious, but if Cho had tried to imitate the hammer scene with an actual hammer, the carnage would have been significantly diminished. (See also response from Dave Kehr and Richard Corliss, via GreenCine.)

Opening this week:

Charles Mudede writes up The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a Cannes 2nd prize winner from last year: “The political message is here reduced to the function of being nothing more than a stage for the real star: the exceptional beauty of Ireland itself.”

Andrew Wright assesses Hot Fuzz, the newest from the Shaun of the Dead team of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Seems it’s kinda slow for an actioner.

And in On Screen this week: Year of the Dog (Bradley Steinbacher says it’s “comedy built mainly upon loss,” and it’s surprisingly good), Fracture (Lindy West finds it GUILTY! [tchung tchuung!]), The Cats of Mirikitani (you’ve never seen the story of the Japanese internment told like this before), The TV Set (saved by an excellent—“most likely overqualified”—cast, says Andrew Wright), After the Wedding (bourgeois dreck dressed up as an anti-bourgeois Oscar contender, say I), and In the Land of Women (it’s all about the cancer stick, contends Christopher Frizzelle, forgetting to mention that its star Adam Brody played a bit role in Thank You for Smoking).

You have 15 minutes to find one.

Happy 4/20, Sloggers.

Tonight from 7 to 10 p.m., the opening reception for new work in the medium of embroidery and hankies by Allison Manch at No Space Gallery, corner of Summit and Mercer.

This hankie, “Fools Gold” (2006), makes a plain white Club Room™ hankie from Macy’s look like a fool here.

From Mike Daisey:

Last night’s performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty-seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline.

Daisey’s offense? He said “fuck.”

I doubt I will ever forget the look in his face as he defaced the only original of the handwritten show outline—it was a look of hatred, and disgust, and utter and consuming pride.

Rest of the story here.

(Back in 1918, H.L. Mencken wrote in Damn!: “He’d be a much nicer fellow if he had a good swear now and then.” Obviously, Mencken’s wisdom stands.)

Best Song Ever (This Week): Zwickel loves M. Ward’s “Chinese Translation.”

Dig The Scene: Soul Train, eat your heart out.

Baby Mice: MM’s modest beginnings.

Club Easy Street: Record store hosts rock, serves booze.

More on DJ Struggle: Does dupstep clash with sunshine?

Where Were You When…: Seattle’s nightlife had five minutes of silence? Ari was at Tommy’s, Brendan was at Marcus’s, and I accidentally fell asleep at 9 pm. Oops.

More Tour Tales: Trent’s still out on the road.

Get Stoked, Geeky Goths: NIN to release an alternate reality game. Seriously.

Pop Conference Criticism: Kurt B. Reighley don’t wanna hear yer fancy words, ya snobby writers.

Awe, BFFs…

A famous album cover:
In his collection of essays, Small Acts, Paul Gilroy (the leading black intellectual of the 90s) writes:

In Britain…[Hendrix’s], portrait was banished to the interior of the Electric Ladyland sleeve by David King’s celebrated photograph of nineteen naked women. Eighteen of them are ‘white’: a lone woman sits vacantly in the right mid-ground, offering a striking image of Hendrix’s own displacement and isolation [in the UK] .

That is the main meaning and power of the image. The black woman is isolated, an island, a stranger in a strange ladyland.

30 years after the photo was taken by King, 1968, another photographer duplicates it for the music magazine Q. The image in this case has little power and meaning because the black woman is gone and Moby, a big star at the time, is in it. Not only is he in it, he is unbelievably disinterested in the women. Moby’s disinterest seems to say that the original had no meaning outside of this: nineteen naked and bored women are posing for a photographer. Hendrix is iced by Moby.

In 2004, an Italian rock star, Zucchero (which means “sugar”) remakes the image, and though he returns the single black women to her lonely place, he, like Moby, places himself inside of the image. Whereas the original image was about a strange land of women, this image is about a king, Zucchero, in the happy land of his women.

No injuries are reported in Houston, but the building is locked down and the gunman is probably still inside.

Lala is a 14-year old king penguin rescued from a fishing line by a Japanese family. After they nursed the bird back to health, it refused to leave their home. Now Lala the pet penguin wears a penguin backpack on his way to the fish market to pick up fresh seafood for his adopted family and grab a snack for himself.

Penguins got soul.

If a bunch of drunken Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffers pull up in front of the Seattle Times building in a rented limo and proceed to piss all over the lawn in order to celebrate the end of the Times vs. P-I court battle, does this uninvited lawn-watering get caught by the Times’s security cameras?

I wondered this when I heard about the recent “day-long, celebratory bacchanalia” that apparently ended in just such a golden shower.

And now I have it on good authority that there is, indeed, a Times security tape of the events in question. I’m told it shows a limo pulling up to the front of the Times building late at night. I’m told it also shows some people getting out of the limo and dancing around. Apparently, the security department is still reviewing exactly how much of the pissing itself was caught on camera.

Memo to the Times: We know you might not want to publish this decency-offending video, once it is fully reviewed, on your own web site. So we here at The Stranger stand ready to assist. Perhaps a copy of the tape could appear in our incoming mail. Or perhaps a digital video file could appear in my email in-box. Don’t worry, we’re old pros when it comes to handling unusual video submissions.

The Stranger: Ready to meet all your piss-video-hosting needs.

18-Year-Olds: Could be too young to smoke in Texas.

Seven-Year-Old: Discovers 89-gram crack rock in his pocket.

Outlaws: The only ones with fresh-scented refrigerators if Missouri restricts sale of crack ingredient, baking soda.

In Laws: Feds sued to restore aid for convicted students.

Priests: Say legalize medical pot.

Gram Cracker: Driver allegedly chews crack rocks.

Toppled: Truck spills an actual ton of cocaine.

Gouged: Canadian pot patients paying 1500 percent markup.

Caffeinated: Soap.

Hyyyyyaaaaammmered: Former SPD officer blows six times legal limit.

Tired of being murdered by psychopaths with easy access to sub machine guns? Worn out from dodging bullets on your way to class? The grocery store? The bathroom? Elder rock person Ted Nugent has the solution!

“Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I’ve about had enough of it.”

That’s right, America, get out there and arm yourself to the tits…Ted has had enough!

Now why didn’t I think of that?

I hung out with former state GOP chair Chris Vance this morning. He’s currently working as a Republican consultant—most recently working against the PBDE ban in Olympia. (He lost.)

Anyway, he laid out Dino Rossi’s strategy for 2008, which is: Bash Gov. Gregoire for expanding the budget by one third. He doesn’t have that quite right, but he’s not way off. If you don’t adjust for inflation, the increase between the ‘03-05 budget and the brand new budget is not a third, but it is nearly 26%.

The budget that Gov. Gregoire inherited, the ‘03-05 budget, was $25.5 billion. Her ‘05-07 budget was $29.6 billion—a 16% increase.

She’s about to pass a $30.1 billion general fund budget—an 8% increase. Obviously, that first 16% jump accounts for most of the so-called expansion, the aforementioned 26%.

But, keep in mind, the ‘03-05 budget was a recession budget, and when the economy came bouncing back, there was ground to make up.

And this isn’t the way you should compare budgets over time anyway. Indeed, the right way to do it is to look at what percentage the state budget represents of the overall economy. After all, as the economy grows, the state has a responsibility to service it and keep it humming by meeting education, transportation, health, and regulatory needs.

And the fact is: Gregoire’s budget is consistent with every budget going back 10 years. Including the Rossi/Locke budget. It’s about 6.1% of all income earned by Washingtonians, a common way of looking at the size of state government, according to this report by the Washington Budget and Policy Center. The Rossi/Locke budget clocked in at 6%.

Moreover, Gregoire is hardly “expanding” government. In fact, she’s still playing catch-up to meet our needs. Education is a perfect example. The $1 billion in “new” education spending isn’t really all new spending—the budget is just finally making good on long-standing voter initiatives 728 and 732 to reduce class sizes and give teachers cost-of-living increases. It also includes back-filling pensions that were supposed to be funded in the ‘03-05 budget, as well as the first installment of estate tax spending on education. These are all things the voters have demanded.

So, the onus bounces back to Dino Rossi and the GOP. If Gregoire has actually “expanded” government, what should get cut?

Why is it that while Democrats like Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire are convening task forces to discuss blueprints for possible future action on global warming, it’s Republicans who are actually doing something about it?

The latest action on climate comes from New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who plans to advocate more than 100 new proposals to slash air pollution, ease traffic congestion, create housing, and develop new mass transit. The proposals include charging drivers to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan, and creating zoning and tax incentives to encourage new home construction in the city. The Manhattan toll, similar to a $16 charge levied on drivers who enter downtown London, could go as high as $8; the money would be invested in new large-scale transportation projects. “Unless we considered the full range of challenges to our city’s physical environment, the progress we’d worked so long and so hard for might be at risk,” Bloomberg said at a speech last year. “And it became clear that to secure a stronger, cleaner, and healthier city for our children and grandchildren, we had to start acting now.”

Amen to that. Gregoire?

Dinesh d’Souza wonders where the atheists are…

Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing… What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil.

Maybe the atheists aren’t around because atheists don’t feel a need to insert themselves into other people’s lives? Maybe the atheists aren’t around because we’re not interested in telling other people how to grieve? Or hijacking other people’s grief for our own ends? Or maybe it’s because we don’t proselytize generally? Maybe we’re not around because we’re not the ones that see a potential PR bonanza in every tragedy? Or maybe the atheists aren’t because we don’t have to account for evil in the world because we don’t tell people they have an all-powerful imaginary friend/God that gives a shit about them, can works miracles, and answers their prayers?

Or maybe the atheists aren’t around because we’re not assholes?

We’ve just dug up, from the vault of Strangers published before the internet, one of the earliest things written about Modest Mouse—and also one of the earlier pieces written for The Stranger by then-music editor Kathleen Wilson. It’s her account of hanging out with them for an afternoon in 1996, when they were still in high school.

Here’s a random excerpt from a scene at a llama farm:

Isaac knows how to tell the difference between the “ladies” and the “men” among the llamas; according to his theory, it has something to do with the length of the necks. He cautions me to not get too close to the matted beasts, claiming a llama can hock a loogie backed with enough velocity to knock me flat on my ass. Because his llama-blend cardigan creates a certain solidarity with the beasts, Jeremy walks right up to a big ol’ “man,” offers him some grass, and escapes unbesmirched.

The whole thing’s here. Note the photo. All together now: “Awwww.”

Long ago and far away I wrote a history of the terrifying and deathy bathhouse Club Z, and one of the points I made in that essay was that, as AIDS really started becoming a problem in the mid-’80s, the ads Club Z was publishing in Seattle Gay News got bigger and sexier.

[In 1985], when the New York Times was reporting that 6,481 people in the U.S. had died from AIDS and 13,332 people were living with death sentences, Club Z’s ads had ballooned to full pages, with photographs of men on beaches, in wrestling rings, lathered in soap, beside swimming pools, glowing in the sexy bliss of life itself.

But there were also a slew of ads with weirdly morbid overtones.

Another ad in 1985 depicted a naked jock, his back toward you, with the words, “You’d better sit down for this.” That’s a butt-sex joke. It’s also what your doctor says to you when he has really bad news—and 1985 was a big year for bad news. Another ad that year asked: “Where Have All the Real Men Gone?” Hmm. The hereafter?

Well, the other day Savage came by my desk to show me the latest Club Z ad in the Seattle Gay News and, well, look at it.

Um. What’s being advertised here? Other than a decaying body? Well, let that red circle—not mine—guide your eye. Worms. Worms are being advertised. Come get a dead body and some worms. Mmm! Really puts you in the mood, huh?

(PS—Does anyone know why the Club Z redevelopment project never happened? No one returns my calls.)

‘Intertidal’

(Art) From his artist statement—”I see a world where blood and sweat mix with sunsets and snowdrifts”—Rhode Island photographer Jesse Burke sounds like a cheeseball. But his work delivers on the romantic promises he makes about depicting masculinity as both fragile and bloodthirsty. Never, never have shotgunning beer and looking out onto a lake through a curtain of flowers fit so perfectly together. And the salon installation is gorgeous. (Platform Gallery, 114 Third Ave S, 323-2808. 11 am—5:30 pm, free.) Jen Graves

Dina Martina: B-Sides

(World-Class Freak) When she’s not making Seattle audiences weep with nausea-tinged joy, chanteuse/raconteur/train wreck Dina Martina plies her trade for lucky audiences in Provincetown and New York City. Her new Seattle show, B-Sides, compiles the best treats from the P-Town and NYC extravaganzas, and anyone who appreciates so-bad-it’s-brilliant satirical camp would be stupid to miss it. Through May 26. (Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, 325-6500. 8 pm, $18, 21+.) David Schmader

Why I hate big-time screenwriters:

The Shawshank Redemption filmmaker Frank Darabont has hit out at movie mogul George Lucas for preventing Steven Spielberg from shooting his script for the upcoming Indiana Jones sequel, claiming his efforts were “a waste of a year.” Darabont wrote a screenplay for the highly-anticipated movie, which is still known by its working title of Indiana Jones 4, and insists director Spielberg was happy with it. However, producer Lucas didn’t think it was good enough. Darabont tells MTV.com, “It showed me how badly things can go. I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script. I told him (Lucas) he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.” He adds, “I have no idea if there’s a shred of (my script) left. It was a tremendous disappointment and a waste of a year.” And Darabont has no plans to reveal what his Indiana Jones script contains: “At this point, I don’t give much of a damn what George thinks, but I wouldn’t want to harm my friendship with Steven.”

A wasted year? Primo, you’d think he’d written Ulysses or something. Secundo, he was certainly paid a mountain’s worth of money for that year of very hard and earnest work.

Grab a calculator.

1. Key in the first three digits of your phone number (NOT the area code)

2. Multiply by 80

3. Add 1

4. Multiply by 250

5. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number

6. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number again

7. Subtract 250

8. Divide by 2

Recognize the answer?

Can someone explain to me—before I get stoned—how the fuck this works?

This happened two years ago:

‘Mafia-style’ killing · Corpse in concrete:

The case of two people arrested for the death of a man whose body was found encased in concrete, was postponed in the Boksburg magistrate’s court on Monday.

Superintendent Andy Pieke said Willie Theron, 28, and Desiree Oberholzer, 43, would appear in court again on September 5.

Theron said that he would be lodging a formal bail application.

The victim was found encased in concrete with only his feet and part of his legs sticking out in July, when a Boksburg resident forced open a dustbin left behind by a former lodger, allegedly Theron.

He was identified as Gisli Thorkellson, of Iceland, who had been living in the country since 1994.

Thorkellson was self-employed at the time of his death and he was also single.

His body was repatriated to Iceland, following the release of dental records from the United States confirming his identity.

A post mortem conducted at the Germiston mortuary found that he had been shot in the head.

Theron and Oberholzer face charges of murder, theft, fraud and defeating the ends of justice. - Sapa

Few sights are more amazing than that of a human corpses in concrete.

More recently, a ghost yacht:

‘Ghost yacht’ found off Australia.

The Kaz II yacht… was found with its engine running, and a table laid for dinner, but there were no signs of any people.

An air and sea rescue operation has been launched to retrace the yacht’s voyage, and pinpoint the search area.

The boat left Airlie Beach on Sunday bound for Townsville on the first leg of a voyage around northern Australia.

The 12m (40 foot) catamaran was spotted by a helicopter on Wednesday drifting off the Great Barrier Reef, but a rescue team only reached the boat on Friday, and confirmed that there was no one aboard.

The detail that gets the reader is: “the table was laid for dinner.” Remove that detail and you remove precisely what makes this disappearance spooky.

Puget Sound-area travelers can do something different to celebrate Earth Day on Sunday: travel free by bus…. “Rather than drive alone in your vehicle, just hop on a bus that Sunday to shop, worship or run errands,” said King County Executive Ron Sims.

Earth to Ron Sims: Riding the bus sucks. Earth day, non-earth days (?), free, $1.25—the fucking bus sucks. There’s nothing celebratory about being stuck on a fucking bus.

People don’t ride public transit to be altruistic, do-gooders. They ride public transit to get from Point A to Point B. To compete with cars, Ron, public transit has to be faster, easier, and more reliable than driving. There’s a tiny number of smug, stupid assholes out there that will get on a bus because they get to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m saving the planet!” to themselves. And most of those assholes are already on the bus, content to sit in a pool of urine left on their seat by some bum that got on and off the bus in the downtown “ride free/rolling homeless shelter zone.”

If we want to get people out of their cars—and we do—then we need to build a mass transit system that’s faster and more convenient than driving. Guilt trips—excuse me, free trips—on Earth day ain’t gonna do it.

It’s something that’s confused and disgusted me ever since I was a kid in Texas, where there are too many barbecue joints with jolly cartoon pigs as mascots to count: Depictions of animals excited about being eaten, or, as the masterminds behind this website put it, suicide food:

What is Suicide Food? Suicide Food is any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed. Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise. Suicide Food identifies with the oppressor. Suicide Food is a bellwether of our decadent society. Suicide Food says, “Hey! Come on! Eating meat is without any ethical ramifications! See, Mr. Greenjeans? The animals aren’t complaining! So what’s your problem?” Suicide Food is not funny.

Even if you don’t share the Suicide Foodies’s opinion that meat is murder and thus suicide-food images are murder porn, you’ll want to check out their richly disturbing gallery of classic suicide food, including come-hither ribs, self-saucing hogs, and, uh, this.

Thank you, MetaFilter.

FREE LEGAL ADVICE

If its true, as described in “Trash Across America,” that everyone’s favorite shit-band was pulled over just for a random drug check and confessed to the drugs, they should know their rights and check out the Supreme Court’s ruling in City of Indianapolis v. Edmond. The ruling: while it’s okay to do random checkpoints for DUIs because they are a real threat to other drivers, the cops cannot pull you over just to check for “ordinary criminal wrongdoing” (i.e., weed in the glove box). Unfortunately, if you’re pulled over for some kind of traffic infraction, they can legally get the K9s out for a quick wiff. Also, when I lived in Missouri the dick sheriff used to set up signs on I-44 that said “K9 Drug checkpoint 1 mile” a quarter mile from a freeway exit only a few hillbillies used. Even college boys with some leftover stems would get scared, see the exit and pull off, only to get nailed at the end of the exit. The act of getting off the freeway was considered enough probable cause for the search. The lesson here: next time you are trashing across America, stay on the highway and don’t give up your stash during any kind of random search.

—Chris

Via Newspeak.

Death of our biosphere? Bring it on! Fashionable footwear is the answer!

Indeed, expensive shoes will spare us all from the terror of global warming…and fill chilly European city squares with fun and cheerful Fruitloops birds! (Follow that nose!) We are assured of this via this jaunty DIESEL ad, which I’ve ripped from some wretched style rag that I don’t read…

So, fret not, sad world! Shoes! Shoes are the answer!

Doomed. That’s what we are. Pull out your Visa card and kiss your ass goodbye.

The key to Joseph Conrad:

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!— hidden out of sight somewhere.

This key passage from Heart of Darkness opens all that Conrad had to say about the world which his novella closed when it first appeared in 1899. Indeed, this passage might be the key that discloses the entire 19th century.

The key to Li Po:

From a pot of wine among flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me—
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.

Is there anything else this Tang Dynasty poet ever said? There is even a story that he drowned after a drunken attempt to embrace the moon’s reflection in a river. (Li Po’s fame in the Occident comes by way of Ezra Pound, who translated a number of his poems into English from the odd distance of a Japanese translation of the original Chinese poems.)

The key to Hegel:

Consciousness knows and comprehends nothing but what falls within its experience; for what is found in experience is merely spiritual substance, and, moreover, object of its self. Mind, however, becomes object, for it consists in the process of becoming an other to itself, i.e. an object for its own self, and in transcending this otherness. And experience is called this very process by which the element that is immediate, unexperienced, i.e. abstract — whether it be in the form of sense or of a bare thought — externalises itself, and then comes back to itself from this state of estrangement, and by so doing is at length set forth in its concrete nature and real truth, and becomes too a possession of consciousness.

This key passage, which is in the key preface to Phenomenology, is one of the many keys to all that Hegel has to say about human development: first there is simple consciousness; second, consciousness is alienated, third, it returns to itself, and subject and object becomes one. Hegel says nothing else. And it drives me crazy that I’m well aware of the fact and yet still read his time-devouring books. Borges had a similar effect on me a decade ago.

Oregon extends civil rights protections to gays and lesbians…

Oregon is the 18th state to adopt a law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. Those states account for nearly half of the nation’s population, said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force based in Washington, D.C. California has an anti-discrimination law, and Washington’s went into effect last year.

No one expects a spike in discrimination complaints in Oregon, just as no one expects a spike here in Washington. Oregon’s most populous counties, Multnomah and Benton, as well as Portland, Salem, and eight other Oregon cities, already have anti-discrimation laws on the books. Increasingly the passage of state civil rights protections for gays and lesbians are largely symbolic victories—unless, of course, you’ve been discriminated against and are unlucky enough to live in an areas that isn’t covered by a city or county’s gay rights protections. Then these laws matter very much—provided you’re out.

You can’t access the protections afforded by gay civil rights laws if you don’t want anyone to find out you’re gay—you can’t sue your boss or landlord without getting your name in the papers, papers that your mom and dad might read. People living out in the boonies are not only likelier to be discriminated against, they’re also less likely to be out. So… the laws are important victories. But the total amount of good a gay civil rights bill does versus, say, passing civil unions or gay marriage, is relatively minor.

But the point is moot—Oregon is on the verge of passing a civil unions law that would grant same-sex couples all marriage rights the state has the power to grant. So Oregon is leapfrogging past Washington state, which passed limited domestic partner benefits this legislative session.

This Sunday should be “the last Earth Day,” says Alex Steffen* of WorldChanging, the ordinarily sunny-side-up sustainability web site. His argument: Earth Day accomplishes virtually nothing, and lulls us into a sense of complacency about the very large, very real changes we need to be making in our everyday lives:

The biggest problem with Earth Day is that it has become a ritual of sympathy for the idea of environmental sanity. Small steps, we’re told, ignoring the fact that most of the steps most frequently promoted (returning your bottles, bringing your own bag, turning off the water while you brush your teeth) are of such minor impact (compared to our ecological footprints) that they are essentially meaningless without larger, systemic action as well. The strategy of recycling as a gateway drug — get them hooked on it and we can move them on to harder stuff — has failed miserably. We can do better.

[…] What may be worse is the recent plethora of “green issues,” “green guides” and special Earth Day sections that have blanketed our media. A decade ago, we would have been excited to see green ideas (even lame ones) given such prominent play, but these days, such editorial eco-ghettos strike us more as an admission of skewed priorities, with ecological sanity presented as a product feature, like a well-designed cupholder, rather than as a fundamental strategy for avoiding widespread collapse.

Much more, including ideas for what you can do to make more than a symbolic difference, here.

*AKA my significant other, hence the conflict-of-interest tag.

A gay teenager is taking a boy—another gay teenager, thank God—to his high school prom. It was big news when it happened in Chicago in the early 1980s. And it’s big news when it happens in Fargo, North Dakota in 2007.

Prom is about grand dresses, sharp suits and tuxedos, and good times with friends and classmates. Jakob Paper and Steven Goering hope to add acceptance to the list.

Paper, a Fargo South High senior, and Goering, who is getting his high school degree from the North Dakota Division of Independent Study, plan to attend the South High prom Saturday at the Fargo Civic Memorial Auditorium. The 18-year-olds will do the Grand March together as boyfriends and be introduced on stage in turn with the other couples.

“Nobody’s ever done it as far as I’m aware,” Paper said of two gay men attending a local prom.

Paper has been open about his homosexuality since eighth grade. Goering, who recently moved to Fargo from Mayville, N.D., said he told his parents four years ago. He told most of his friends in January.

The right-wing haters can spew—and they’re spewing on the website of the Fargo-Moorhead Forum—but I don’t see how you can set the clocks back to the 1950s if gay teenagers are coming out to their families at 14. In North Dakota.

UPDATE: As commenters have pointed out, not everyone at the Forum’s website is spewing hate about the gay teenagers going to prom. If anything, these kids are getting more supportive comments than they are slams. Another reason for hope.

Thanks to Slog tipper Kim Winnegge.

The stronger the pot, the likelier you’ll wind up making out with someone you really shouldn’t be making out with.

Pot: The gateway drug to some deeply freaky shit.

Originally posted on 4/19, moved up to 4/20 for all the obvious reasons.

Holy hemp-huffin’ hippies… Friday is 4/20, the official day to get stoned. I know what you might be thinking—it’s stupid to recognize a holiday for stoners who already get stoned all the time to sit around and get stoned some more. But consider this: We have lots of alcoholidays, such as New Year’s Eve, Cinco de Mayo, and St. Patrick’s Day for drinkers to get drunker. And they’re awesome. So let the stoners have their fun.

If you’re one of them, please take note as we correct a few myths about 420:

Myth #1: “The term ‘420’ originated from some police code for ‘pot smoking in progress.’”

Fact: That’s totally bullshit, just like these other half-baked theories. The real answer is that 420 started in the ’70s when a bunch of high-schoolers in San Rafael started referring to getting high as “Four-Twenty Louie.” Boring but true.

Myth #2: “420 is only celebrated by hippies who crawl into moldy basements and wallow in their own filth while passing around greasy chillums.”

Fact: You don’t need to be a basement hippie to wallow in your own filth (gone to the Comet lately?) or to hit the hobbit leaf. In fact, millions of fastidious soccer-mom types smoke pot just so they can chill the fuck out. Keep it up, filthy hipsters and stony neat freaks!

Myth #3: “An underground Nazi police force named April 20th a holiday so they could take over the free world on Hilter’s birthday, when we’re all too incapacitated to resist.”

Fact: That’s fucking insane, you paranoid hippie.

Myth #4: “The best place to celebrate is in the City Attorney’s Office at City Hall, because Tom Carr is totes into your funky junk.”

Fact: Not so much.

Myth #5: “The 4/20 munchies can only be cured by consuming megadoses of Cheetos and strawberry Fanta.”

Fact: Pot could make dog shit delicious, but you’ll still feel like crap after eating it. Best to prepare in advance by ordering pizza. Please note, über-stoners that have to get stoned at 4:20 on 4/20, Hot Mama’s won’t deliver before 5:00 p.m. Harsh toke, I know.

Now go forth, informed readers, and enjoy your pot holiday however you see fit—as longs as you do so safely and responsibly.

Originally posted on 4/18, moved up to 4/20 for all the obvious reasons.

The end of the legal battle between the Seattle Times and Seattle Post Intelligencer seems to have unleashed the pent-up pranksters at both papers.

First, some P-I reporters go for a boozy limo ride and piss on one of Frank Blethen’s lawns. And now comes a suggested new logo for the P-I, which I assume has Times staff fingerprints on it somewhere.

Senate Judiciary Committee Vs. Gonzales.

Senate Majority Leader Vs. the war.

New Drug, Lybrel Vs. that time of the month.

The State of Vermont Vs. President Bush.

Even More Incriminating Revelations Vs. Wolfowitz.

Insider Trading Laws Vs. former Qwest CEO.

Joint Terrorism Task Force Vs. Somali-owned Travel Agency in Tukwila.

Renters Vs. Seattle-area market.

Hackers Vs. government computer networks.

John McCain Vs. Iran.

The British Vs. the Americans. On April 20, 1775 the 11-month siege of Boston begins.

Do not yawn.

Finally, thanks to the PI’s big scoop (without public notice, public review or a public vote of approval by the Commission, Port Commissioner Pat Davis okayed a $340,000 severance package of one year’s salary to outgoing Port CEO Mic Dinsmore), this year’s Port of Seattle elections are going to be interesting.

Tonight, for example, the 46th District Democrats called for an investigation and subsequently, possible resignation of Commissioner Pat Davis (and any other commissioner who was privy to this kooky $340,000 severance package deal). I’ve linked their resolution below the jump.

Two commissioners are up for reelection this year: Conservative Bob Edwards and liberal Alec Fisken. Fisken has voiced his disbelief and outrage at Davis’s weird move. He told the PI:

This is outrageous, and I can’t imagine where it came from. Pat said we had approved this, but I have no recollection of it at any meeting — it would still have to come to a formal vote for payments to be made.

Edwards has not condemned Davis.

Fisken, a meticulous reformer is facing a stiff challenge from a well-funded Republican and export consultant Bill Bryant.

Erica C. Barnett had reported on Bryant’s GOP credentials last month:

Port Candidate Hearts Republicans

Port commission candidate Bill Bryant, who is challenging liberal commissioner Alec Fisken, quotes Democrat Barack Obama at length in a recent campaign mailing. He also cites preserving “family wage jobs” and cleaning up polluted Elliott Bay as his two top priorities. So he’s a union proponent and an environmentalist, right? Actually, no—he’s a Republican. Since 1999, the waterfront trade consultant has donated thousands to conservative Republicans, including former U.S. Representative Senator Slade Gorton ($1,000), President George W. Bush ($3,000), Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike McGavick ($4,200), Republican Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell ($1,000), Republican gubernatorial nominee Dino Rossi ($1,500), and Republican gubernatorial candidate John Carlson ($500), among many others who aren’t exactly environmental and union stalwarts.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Edwards is facing a challenge from a tough-as-nails liberal, Gael Tarleton, who works for UW’s Office of Global Affairs.

Both challengers, obviously, are poised to ride the wave of this scandal.

However, it would be bad karma if a reformer like Fisken got unwittingly swept out by angry voters .

Look for Fisken to continue being critical of Davis. I’ve heard that he and fellow reform-minder Commissioner Lloyd Hara and even the more status quo John Creighton may call for Davis to step down.

It’s not clear what Edwards, who may be caught up in the Davis scandal as well, is going to do.

(Edwards is also being challenged by Burien City Councilman Jack Block Jr.)

Read the 46th District Democrats Resolution below.

Continue reading "This Year's Port of Seattle Elections are About to Get Interesting. I Swear." »