In the comments of “This Week on Drugs,” unPC posted this sic-packed question:

Instead of posting humorous blogs, why doesn’t the STRANGER DO SOMETHING about the phony war against drugs and require all candidates to disclosre all epxeriences iwth drugs?

Rather than responding to unPC with something sarcastic - as a long-time drug policy reform advocate, I obviously agree with his sentiment - I’ll start by providing an excerpt from a 2003 article that shows the Stranger essentially does what unPC suggests—take a candidate to task for their hypocritical position on drug policy. It is the best thing written about Initiative 75 by Dan Savage and the worst thing ever written about Kollin Min. Enjoy.

I got the impression that night that Min might be a weasel. Then Min came in for an endorsement interview and my first impressions were vindicated: Min was definitely a weasel.

Asked if he was going to vote for I-75, an initiative that would make marijuana possession the Seattle Police Department’s “lowest law-enforcement priority,” Min said he would vote against it. Min had just made a lovely little speech about the plight of racial minorities in Seattle. When we pointed out that racial minorities get busted for pot possession at disproportionate rates, Min shrugged it off. Asked if he supported marijuana decriminalization, he said no, marijuana should remain illegal. Asked if he had ever smoked pot, Min paused. Yes, he said, he had smoked pot.

You can read the entire weasel-labeling article here.

So there you go, unPC. And while that’s great stuff (and here’s even more great stuff), bitch-slapping hypocritical candidates is just one piece of the puzzle. Before politicians can get elected on platforms to change drug policy, the public has to want them to change it. Right now, for instance, only around 50 percent of Washington voters support legalizing marijuana. So the real work is showing those voters that the drug war has been an ineffective, racist boondoggle—and there are more effective and humane alternatives. That’s a job for the press. However, mainstream news outlets make nary a peep that this seven-decade lock-up-all-the-drug-users-but-barely-fund-treatment campaign has been an unmitigated disaster. Not the Stranger. The article above by Dan is one of countless examples of the Stranger calling out bullshit and supporting better laws.

And by the way, the person who posted that “humorous blog” rather than being willing to “do something” was me—the leader of the I-75 campaign. Not trying to toot my own horn or anything, I’m just sayin’…

As predicted, the city is going after Tabella’s liquor license.

Nickels’s reactionary fit comes despite the evidence we’ve reported that the club is not to blame.

If this city wants to stop violence at clubs, especially hip hop clubs, they should help foster a nightlife climate in Seattle where more hip hop clubs feel okay opening.

The big crowds are pouring into Tabella because there are hardly any other clubs like it in town. Give the people what they want.

Methodist? Buddhist? Jew? Anabaptist? Wiccan-Neopagan-Universalist-Dingbat? Whatever? Sorry, suckers! The Pope says you’re all full of shit! The One True Poop, straight from the horse’s ass…

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

Well, at least that clears that up.

On this week’s installment of 710 KIRO’s Stranger News Hour, I’ll be talking about this revealing video footage I got my hands on and also—still more (to our host David Goldstein’s chagrin) on police accountability.

Erica C. Barnett will also be there to set everybody straight (including Goldy’s team of bloggers) about the mayor’s environmental record.

That’s 7pm this evening on 710 KIRO.

Orkestar Zirkonium (BALKAN BRASS BAND) By now, you should have heard of Orkestar Zirkonium, the 14-member brass band with Central European style, known for musical sneak attacks on bars, grocery stores, and galleries, goosing innocent bystanders with their happy honking. Theirs is the sound of dizzy joy. Today, they play in Cal Anderson Park with jazz composer Paul Rucker, improviser Gust Burns, and noise-jazz band Non Grata. (Cal Anderson Park, 1635 11th Ave, monktail.com/soundsoutside.php. 3:30 pm, free.) BRENDAN KILEY

More Stranger Suggests for this week.

Posted by Sage Van Wing

Serial Killer?: Tacoma police think their suspect in the death of Zinna Linnik may be connected to other murders.

Sparks Fly: Firefighters in Eastern Washington are kept busy by yesterday’s lightning storm.

Miserable Teens: Two teens charged in Long Island school bomb plot.

They’re Not the Only Ones: US meat found contaminated in China.

Just Fine Thank You: Al-Maliki says Iraq would do fine if US troops pulled out.

Spice Storm: Victoria Beckham takes on Los Angeles too.

Jon Fine, who writes a media column and media blog for BusinessWeek, posed this question on his blog yesterday: “Newspaper Triage: Which American Paper Will Be The First To Kill Its Print Edition?”

Fine goes with the S.F. Chronicle, but lays out a few other scenarios for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and Raleigh’s News & Observer.

He also calls for readers’ predictions.

A few pick the PI.

Seattle P-I will be the first to ditch the dead-tree edition.

Posted by: Tony at July 13, 2007 11:43 AM

and

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This one spans both Camp 2 and Camp 3. Major market (or so we tell ourselves), tech-savvy, strong online presence with the site, notably an emphasis on blogs both by reporters and readers.

But here’s the kicker: Seattle is still a newspaper town, thanks to a joint-opearting agreement between the Seattle PI and the Seattle Times. Each paper has its own editorial department, but they share marketing, circulation and advertising—all of which is provided by the Times. The Times’ owner has been looking for a way out for years.

There’s continued speculation that the PI might be able to float as a web-only—and the local environment is right for it to happen. The deciding point is likely when Hearst (PI’s owner) thinks it can float the online advertising revenues to support the experiment. I’ll give it 2 years or less, too.

Posted by: Nick at July 13, 2007 03:24 PM

Rainier Beach

The Rainier Beach Public Library (RBPL), normally troubled by overdue books and flagrant violations of the Dewey decimal system, has something new to panic about: gangs.

One librarian I spoke with yesterday, who asked not to be named, said large groups of youth between 11 and 21 years old were coming into the library after school hours, disturbing other library patrons and threatening any librarians who tried to intervene. “They’re coming here to get on their Myspace accounts, to watch rappers and their web pages and oftentimes to play games,” the librarian told me. “It makes it very difficult when the library is very crowded with young people who are… going up and down the aisles yelling and cursing. The community is avoiding going to the library when the kids are there.”

Things got so bad that a security guard was assigned to RPBL after, the librarian says, “gang members [started] flashing their gang signs and intimidating other kids. One young person with a history all the way back to 2005 finally had to be arrested.”

Things seem to have cooled off for the summer, but the security guard is only assigned to RBPL until July 17.

Asked whether or not she thinks things have gotten better, the librarian cautiously told me “you don’t want to jinx it. Security is a deterrent. If they see the security guard, they don’t come in.”

After the 17th, the librarian says she’s not sure what will happen. “We’re waiting for downtown to make whatever decisions they’re going to make. [When we have a security guard] we can do our jobs. We can be librarians and not authoritarians.”

An SPD officer I spoke with today dismissed the librarian’s concerns about gang activity in the stacks. I was told that the problems probably stem from “kids being kids.”

Stranger freelancer Michael Atkinson has a new blog, and it, like he, is awesome. True to the boys’ school rebellion referenced in the title, it’s very rabble-rousey. Come for the erudite film talk, stay for the “imperative beheading of Dick Cheney”: zeroforconduct.com.

And in an extra-long On Screen this week: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (hurried and sweaty, but almost saved by the fluffy pink genius of Imelda Staunton—if you haven’t seen Vera Drake yet, swing by the video store on your way to the theater)…

…. plus Rescue Dawn (actually, this time, skip the theater altogether—go directly to Scarecrow and pick up Little Dieter Needs to Fly), Joshua (a creepy kid movie done right; for the original, see The Bad Seed), Introducing the Dwights (Brenda Blethyn may not be quite the equal of Imelda Staunton, but she comes damn close; Secrets and Lies is your homework assignment), The Long Goodbye (awesome, naturally; insert your favorite Altman here), Broken English (skip it; for a more interesting take on painful privilege, see Sofia Coppola, or re-live the Parker Posey glory days (I know, I know) with Party Girl), Brooklyn Rules (fuhgeddaboudit; proceed directly to The Sopranos), and Manufactured Landscapes (it’s awesome, go! and watch Our Daily Bread, Let It Come Down, and The True Meaning of Pictures).

And in web-only content this week: An interview with the erudite Jennifer Baichwal, director of Manufactured Landscapes; and another with a documentarian-turned-narrative filmmaker, George Ratliff of Joshua.

And finally, Film Shorts claims such delights as L’Iceberg, Black Cat, White Cat, Infra-Man, Walking to Werner, and the retrospective The Films of Barbara Ireland. Find all your movie times needs at Get Out.

Santa Barbara, Baby: The City of Santa Barbara personally sued the woman behind a ballot measure to deprioritize marijuana enforcement, modeled after Seattle’s Initiative 75. Bu-ut…

Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle dismissed a lawsuit the city filed against Heather Poet, who sponsored the initiative passed last November.

“Police officers can still arrest those who violate drug possession laws in their presence. The voters have simply instructed them that they have higher priority work to do,” the judge wrote.

The court also struck down the city’s lawsuit on grounds that Poet was being sued for exercising her constitutionally protected right of free speech as an initiative sponsor.

So, like, right on. Maybe Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr, who could have sued me after voters passed I-75, is really cool and chose not to, or he is just smart and knew the case would lose. Either way, thanks, Tom. Meanwhile in California, the Die Bold machines used to count Berkeley’s pot-friendly Measure R have been ruled faulty, so the court may put the measure back on the ballot.

Rehab: Amy Winehouse has catapulted to fame faster than Fifty Cent tethered to a rocket, but bookies are betting she’s gonna crash.

Did the Next President Snort Coke, Smoke Pot, or Take LSD Jello Shots Off the Navels of Underage Callboys? Record your questions before July 22nd.

Giuliani to Cancer Patients: Fuck ‘em if they take a toke.

No Blues for the Traveler: John Popper’s Ritzville pot case dismissed.

From the Department of No Shit: Government finds pot bustees “coerced” into treatment by courts didn’t really need to be there in the first place.

Terrorism Sells: But would people buy this crap if you paid them?

John P. Walters, President Bush’s drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the [marijuana] gardens are terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the “Operation Alesia” marijuana-eradication effort.

“Don’t buy drugs. They fund violence and terror,” he said.

After touring gardens raided this week in Shasta County, Walters said the officers who are destroying the gardens are performing hard, dangerous work in rough terrain. He said growers have been known to have weapons, including assault rifles.

“These people are armed; they’re dangerous,” he said. He called them “violent criminal terrorists.”

Has he seen the pot growers of Shasta County? They’re armed with grocery bags and dangerous to ice cream trucks.

That’s Tom Tancredo in the sea of flags and podiums — the only GOP candidate to show up.

(Via Crooks & Liars.)

From Eric F, the ID of the Kringen:

hannon Kringen is the Goddess Kring, a public access channel feature of the 90s (and maybe still today?)

She’s an insane somewhat zaftig hippie who talked about herself while staring into the camera, then took off her clothes and danced. She signed up for every open slot on the channel’s schedule, so she was on all the time.

And from Spencer Moody, a detail from the painting of said Goddess:

Another political sex scandal: a politician in Indiana was found in a seedy motel room with a 15 year-old boy and drugs. Unfortunately he’s a Democrat.

I’m on vacation, and I don’t wanna get sucked into the Slog vortex… but I had to say something when a frequent—and frequently off-his-meds—commenter accused this here paper of promoting crystal meth. A few links:

This David Schmader piece is headlined “Abstain from Crystal Meth.” That seems pretty clear, huh?

Eli Sanders interviews Peter Staley, AIDS activist and recovered meth addict/anti-meth crusader.

In a “Last Days” column David Schmader says “no one should use crystal meth.”

I praise the organizers of International Mister Leather for pledging to call the cops on meth dealers in “Savage Love.”

Eli Sanders on a new strain of drug-resistant HIV in Seattle and the meth users that incubated it.

A Slog post I wrote advising gay men that they could lower their odds of contracting HIV by not sleeping with meth users.

Nate Lippens on crystal meth: “Not to throw out the kind of bullshit scare tactic that anti-drug campaigns traffic in, but here it goes anyway: Two of the people I know who used meth ended up homeless and one is now 25 and HIV-positive.”

Brad Steinbacher on crystal meth: “Do not do these drugs. Seriously. Crystal is addictive and it makes you insane.”

Blah blah blah. I could go on and on. Those were just the links I found quickly. The Stranger is a lot of things—some good, some bad. We most certainly are not, however, pro-meth. Far from it.

Okay, I’m heading back to my margarita.

From the comments in this magically metastasizing thread:

Fighting online is like racing in the special olympics; even if you win, you’re still retarded!

Carollani, ladies and gentlemen.

As KING 5 reports, Seattle activist Anwar Peace has been arrested and is being held on $150,000 bail for allegedly leaving numerous threatening messages on the voice mail of embattled Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske.

More to come, I’m sure…

Holy holy crap. There’s a brand new website where you can copy and paste any YouTube link into a player, and scribble captions, quotes and/or graffiti all over the video. Any video! It’s kinda cornball fingerpaint style, but once you finish, you can submit it, and a new URL is available to embed on your own blog, or email to your pals.

It’s called RAKUGAKI. If the site first appears in Japanese, you can click it over to English in the upper left.

- Some tips for better “scribbles” include hitting pause before you start drawing, and taking multiple passes on a clip. Each drawing will fade after a few seconds of video, and you can adjust the color, size and transparency of the brush to potentially achieve some cool effects.

I smell a SLOG contest. Maybe people want to add some comments to Walk it Out…

Or tell us why the Dramatic Chipmunk is so damn surprised? Or maybe Ecce Homo wants to add some commentary to Gays on Crystal…

Viva la YouTube Revolution!

The Week in Geek - Now iPhone free! (though partially written and researched on an iPhone)

Nabaztag/tag is the most cumbersomely-named robotic internet rabbit to ever sport an internal microphone and RFID reader. It’s freaking me out, and yet I can’t look away. “Hey! Someone has told me that that they are thinking of YOU!” Maybe that someone would like to buy me a $189 freakout rabbit? $189?!?

“Mileage Runners” game the system to score tons of frequent flier miles - “Mileage Running isn’t good for the planet.” That’s true. But neither is not mileage running, so you’re pretty much fine/screwed either way. I say go for it.

Pocket Rocket!

Pocket Rocket!

Pocket Rocket!

Socket Pocket!

I can see my mortality from here! - Man flies 193 miles in his lawn chair in Oregon, because he always wanted to jump on clouds.

CakeCubeBox360PS2 - Sorry, video game nerds, but this woman is now married. You missed your shot.

Happy Birthday, Computer Virus - It’s been 25 years since 9th grader Richard Skrenta wrote the first computer virus for his Apple II. Yay.

I know I said no iPhone, but fuck it. iPhone haters will love this anyway.

And finally, some perspective. You probably know that matter is mostly made up of empty space. The distance between your average atom’s nucleus and the cloud of electrons whizzing around it is vast, vast, vast relative to the size of its components. Vast. Some guy with a website was having trouble picturing this fact, so he made a web page to illustrate it. The page depicts a single hydrogen atom, with its single electron represented by a single pixel. The nucleus (a single proton) is 1000 pixels in diameter. The distance between them? 50,000,000 pixels. At the standards 72 pixels per inch, that’s 11 miles. Wow.

As the saying goes, “You ain’t shit.”

It’s official.

A cut-n-pastiche from the Guardian and the Seattle Times:

The last guests at the barbecue in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Washington were savouring the remains of a very fine bottle of Chateau Malescot St Exupery when a robber appeared in their midst, and held a gun to the head of a teenage girl.

“He said: ‘Everyone give me your money or I am going to start shooting. I am very serious about this’,” Michael Rabdau, the girl’s father, told the Guardian.

After what seemed an eternity, another guest offered the robber a sip of the bordeaux they were drinking. “He tasted the wine, and said: ‘Damn, that’s really good wine.’ And it really was,” Mr Rabdau said. The guests offered him a glass, and then the entire bottle. The would-be robber helped then himself to a piece of camembert.

“I think I may have come to the wrong house,” he said, looking around the patio.

“I’m sorry,” he told the group. “That’s really good wine,” the man said, taking another sip. “Can we have a group hug?” The five adults surrounded him, arms out.

With that, the man walked out with a crystal wine glass in hand, filled with Château Malescot.

In the alley behind the home, investigators found the intruder’s empty glass on the ground, unbroken.

“When asked what wines he liked to drink he replied, ‘That which belongs to another.’” — Diogenes Laertius writing about Diogenes the Cynic, the first philosophical clown.

The Cynic was also a forger and a thief and, obviously, the D.C. wine-robber’s hero.

Another story Diogenes L wrote about Diogenes C:

Plato defined man thus: “Man is a two-footed, featherless animal;” and was much praised for the definition; so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into his school, and said, “This is Plato’s man.” On which account this addition was made to the definition, “With broad flat nails.”

Plato hated clowns.

From Wired: The Etch-A-Sketch went on sale.

I just returned to work today from a weeklong vacation, a good deal of which was spent biking up and down Rainier. (Lake Washington Blvd. is nice, but it’s a goddamn slog to get to Columbia City up the hill.) Anyway, riding along Rainier a couple of times a day, I had ample opportunity to appreciate firsthand the “challenges” addressed in the city’s Rainier Action Plan, which Stranger news intern Rebecca Tapscott wrote about here.

Not surprisingly, the action plan reveals that failing to yield to pedestrians and cyclists occurs three times more frequently on Rainier than on equivalent arterials in Seattle. Also not surprisingly, the “action plan” is mostly talk: It focuses almost exclusively on efforts to convince drivers to drive more safely, instead of making systemic changes that would force them to do so.

For example, under the Rainier plan, the city will:

• Install one speed radar to track north-moving traffic on the south end of Rainier.

• Track DUI arrests with the state liquor board and target problem bars. (Mini-marts, probably a bigger issue, go unmentioned.)

• “Conduct red light running emphasis patrols,” whatever that means.

• Examine pavement markings.

• Install a camera at one red light along the corridor.

• Install one “your speed is” sign in each direction.

• Put up billboards and “develop education and awareness materials” to hand out to South Seattle residents.

The problem with almost all of these solutions, and others in the plan, is that they rely exclusively on voluntary compliance instead of measures that would force people to change their behavior. Changes that could actually make a difference, like adding bike lanes (a proposal that is “deferred to [the city’s] Bike Master Plan,” which in turn puts Rainier improvements off indefinitely, a fact the city’s transportation department could not have been unaware of), slowing traffic by adding or de-sychronizing signals, and changing land-use patterns to eliminate large car-oriented uses (like street-facing parking and multiple gas stations) on Rainier go unexplored.

The very best policy? Never feed the trolls. I know. I invented it. But forgive me, if you please, just this once…I have an itch to scratch.

Below you will find choice commentary gleaned from the comments thread following my earlier racist, racist post entitled Alabama Go Bragh! Frankly, I think pieces of the thread bare repeating, for many reasons, typos and all. Not that I’m one to talk about typos, of course. (Shut up.) We begin with comment #12, which goes a little something like this…

This is definately (sic) one of the most racist posts to ever blemish the pages of SLOG. You guys really are fucking bigots. Posted by ecce homo | July 12, 2007 10:45 AM

Indeed. I couldn’t agree more. However, we here racists over at The Stranger (of which I personally officiate as Grand Wizard) found a defender in “Matt”, who came to our rescue in comment #14 …

@12 Give it up asshole. Are you jealous that you don’t work for the stranger? Don’t you have other blogs to troll, or is the wait at the drive through you work at too long to navigate away from this page? Posted by matt | July 12, 2007 11:44 AM

My hero! (Now why didn’t I think to say something like that? )

Now, one might imagine that with that, that would be that. But one would be oh-so tragically wrong. (That, that.) “ecce homo” was just warming up, and soon rebutted thusly…

Matt: Racism isn’t funny, pointing at black people and laughing at their expense is racist and fucked up. Get a clue. Posted by ecce homo | July 12, 2007 12:25 PM

Of course he’s completely right. I couldn’t agree more. (“I jus’ wanna know where da’ gold!” BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Coloreds! They so silly! Point, point, point!) This post was immediately followed by the following wise, wise comment by wise “Original Andrew”, who wisely commented thusly…

ecce homo @ 16, Isn’t the real problem that you’re a racist? Posted by Original Andrew | July 12, 2007 1:40 PM

Now, at this point it’s clear that all of the above commenting was just the prelude…the buildup. The real fireworks went off when often-commenter and valliant Adrian-defender “Mr. Poe” chimed in…

Ecce is a self-hating fag with absolutely no sense of humor or intelligence to process that this post isn’t racist. He has successfully developed a nasty purple yeast infection in his vagina that is his face. He is a victim. Ignore him… Posted by Mr. Poe | July 12, 2007 2:01 PM

Well, that did it. And now we are forced to meet the meat of the matter, and our friend “ecce” protests, perhaps a bit too much (thanks for hanging in there)…

Mr. Poe, If your definition of self-hating is that I don’t subject myself to truly self hating (sic) “Seattle Homo Culture” then count me in. I live a normal life and queers like you give us all a reputation that a majority of us have to CONSTANTLY deal with. Believe it or not, but a majority of gay men don’t walk around sloberring (sic) over there own genitals, playing grab ass anytime they can, hating “straight society” because they wont embrace a deviant and promiscuous (sic) life (not being gay, but rather the disgusting life that some of the Seattle gay community - and the stranger - embraces) and snorting pounds of crystal meth. Yes then I am self hating because I am in a loving and commited relatioship (sic, sic) with my partner of 16 years, the proud parent of 2 children, work a full time job, and aspire to be what many on SLOG and in the Seattle gay community will never be - an upstanding member of society. I hear that you got a ticket for lude (sic) conduct up at volunteer park. (sic) Had your court date yet, Bug Chaser (sic, sic, SICK!)? Posted by ecce homo | July 12, 2007 2:16 PM

A “normal life”? Slobbering all over our own genitals? Snorting pounds of meth?

Well. Here’s what I wanna know: Does Seattle’s self-hating-bug-chasing-crystal-freaking “homo culture” have anything to say about that? Hmm?

Broken Disco (MUSIC) The fourth installment of this utopian club night features Swedish producer the Field, who composes gorgeous, transcendent music that justifies his grandiose album title From Here We Go Sublime. It’s pristine, orbital techno full of soft synths and airy vocal samples. Quietly energetic beats skate over flat, icy surfaces while murky sounds swirl underneath. Also tonight: a PDX showcase featuring the refined minimalism of Let’s Go Outside and the 8-bit maximalism of Copy. (Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, 324-8000. 9 pm, $12 adv, 18+.) ERIC GRANDY

More Stranger Suggests for this week.

As ABC News reports, “Trader Joe’s ‘Two Buck Chuck’ Named Best Chardonnay at Prestigious State Fair.”

To shush the critics of his non-profit group, Forward Washington, Dino Rossi likes to name check Lou Guzzo.

The criticism is that Rossi’s organization is actually a partisan campaign group. Guzzo is on Forward Washington’s “Idea Bank” committee—a committee Rossi has tasked with presenting FW’s ideas to the legislature. And Rossi thinks name checking Guzzo will quiet the critics because Guzzo once worked for Democratic Governor Dixy Lee Ray.

Sorry, Dino. That’s not too convincing. Dixy Lee Ray was a conservative Democrat and well… welcome to the world of Lou Guzzo. You will not believe the stuff this guy says. Courtesy of an e-mail I got this morning:

Guzzo (trashed here by Goldy) is not the only hotly conservative member of Rossi’s “non-partisan Idea Bank committee (trashed here by Postman.)

Yesterday, for example, I reported that committee member Matthew Manweller is also the Chairman of the Kittitas County Republican Party. I also reported that another member of the FW Idea Bank committee, Susan Hutchison, is a regular GOP contributor, including donating $500 to hard partisan Stephen Johnson, the former state Republican Senator who ran a BIAW-backed campaign for state Supreme Court. Olson also considered running against Mike McGavick in the GOP primary last year—she thought McGavick was too liberal— and, I just found out, she’s on the board of the Discovery institute.

In the present and most advanced stage of capitalism, corporations not only layoff workers but also customers:

The WSJ confirms earlier reports that Sprint Nextel is terminating the contracts of subscribers who call customer service too much (registration required). The 1,000 or so terminated subscribers called an average of 25 times a month — 40x times higher than average — according to a company spokeswoman, who also noted that a large number of calls from these customers were related to billing issues.

In the previous stage (the postindustrial stage), capital detached itself from labor, dissolved the gold standard, and magically transformed paper money into an ether of electronic information. The project for the present capitalist is to terminate its last real obstacle: the customer. No labor, no customers, no money exchanges, no problem—profits continue to grow. This is the system’s spiritual stage. Capitalism without customers is like Jesus turning water into wine.

Yesterday I spent running from one gallery to another, finding.

12:30 pm.

Francine Seders Gallery: Print Invitational

Group show, 11 artists, prints everywhere.
Surprise find: Anna McKee, an eloquent urban romantic in the tradition of pictorialist photography. Listen to McKee, Bonnie Lebesch, and Emily Gherard talk at the gallery Tuesday night (the 17th) from 6-8 pm.

These are by McKee (I love the filmic nostalgia of the top half of the second one):

And this, by Emily Gherard, is like a goth representation of Lead Pencil Studio’s Maryhill Double.

1:30 pm.

OKOK Gallery: Installation underway on Gregory Euclide’s I Have Been Remembering: Half Lives & Half Truths

At one point yesterday, there was a full vodka bottle and a hypodermic needle in the gallery’s front window. All for art, man. Euclide used the vodka bottle to collect water at Puget Sound, and he was using the needle to inject single bubble-wrap bubbles with that water—and with tap water and puddle water. The bubbles are mounted on the window first in rows, then injected from the top.

OKOK has a great space—about 1,800 square feet—and because of it and thanks to the imagination of its owners, Charlie and Amanda Kitchings, this is the first time that Euclide, a Minneapolis artist, has taken over an entire gallery to make an installation. For it, the painter cut out tiny, one-inch-diameter circles of paper, painted tiny imaginary landscapes on them, and then adhered a bubble-wrap bubble to each one, so they’re seen through the bubble. Seven hundred of those tiny paintings are lined up in parallel rows on the walls that run in rivulets onto the floor. So at the opening Saturday night from 6-10 pm, you’ll have to watch where you step.

In addition to those, Euclide made an installation that’s basically a storm of paper. On one long sheet, he made a painting of a 360-degree view from the gallery’s door (sent to him in photographs). As he often does, he washed the painting with water after painting it, so it’s mostly an aftereffect of itself. The paper is cut into squares; a pile of them on the floor are backed with stamp adhesive. The artist wants people to take them and attach them all over the city.

Since the show doesn’t open until Saturday, there aren’t images of it yet, but I’m going to attach the invite image so you get a sense of what the tiny bubble paintings are like. They’re for sale individually, and every time one is sold, a marker with the date will go up in its place, so the unspecific little landscapes will be replaced by the chronological facts of their disappearance, changing the installation with time.

Euclide’s traditional larger paintings are up, too. Here’s a sense of his painting sensibility from an earlier installation:

A detail from that:

The opening Saturday will include a sound component by Son of Rose. And in the future, OKOK is doing some cool stuff, including chefs working with artists on pre-opening night meals. Stay tuned to this gallery (showing five contemporary artists on portraiture in August).

3 pm.

Crawl Space Gallery: Diana Falchuk: Sweet Remains

Diana Falchuck (she of the I Love the USPS mailboxes project) works with what she calls “dead food.”

She goes to the grocery store, buys food, and lives with it for months, drying it and experimenting with it to create sculptures that have something in common both with Justin Gibbens’s adorable-scientific drawings of affable mutants and Jim Rittimann’s gory-gorgeous reanimated insects. (She also makes imaginative drawings that bring to mind Susan Robb, but they’re on mylar and hard to reproduce.)

Falchuk is better known for her work postering utility poles and affectionately washing mailboxes, but she has been semi-secretly working with “dead food” for years in her apartment. It’s no wonder the sculptures feel so intimate, even loved.

This weekend is your last chance to see the show; it’s open noon to 5 Saturday and Sunday.

(lemon, moss, and pink bumps from the bottoms of slippers)

(carrot and pins)

(sewn plum, salt)

4:20 pm.

The Anne Bonny (named after the lady pirate): The Theme is No Theme

Spencer Moody’s new store for art, home accoutrements, and dead people’s furniture is terrific. (Please don’t buy the golden chair before this weekend so I can still pick it up.) Upstairs is the gallery.

The standout in the current group show is a giant pink painting. Before I look at it, I’m drawn to the handwritten note on the pink table on the floor. It says:

Spencer, Here is a paintio painting of Shannon Kringen. It is called “A Skinny Shannon Kringen with an Ice Cream Cone.” I can’t imagine that anyone will buy it, really I jo just hope she sees it. Price it however you want, if you do sell it, send me enough money for a pizza. Oh, here are some books as well. I made them today, I have terrible allergies & a head cold. Take care, Derek Erdman.

Aww, he just wants her to see it. How sweet and romantic, like when Eddie Argos says he wants a bus full of schoolchildren to sing to Emily Kane—wait, this woman is hideous, all hairy and pig-faced and slack-jawed, wielding a vanilla waffle cone like a club.

Sadly, there’s no image available of her. (I took a phone picture of her, but I’m just lame enough that I don’t know how to transfer.) You’ll just have to go and see her yourself; you really should.

Kringen, what’d you do to this guy?

6 pm.

Quick stop at Platform Gallery, Ross Sawyers

Sawyers makes large-scale photographs of architectural models he builds. (It’s a not-uncommon conceit mastered by James Casabere.) Sawyers is fresh out of grad school and still figuring things out, including how to mount his work (this dry board-mounted tactic seems to flatten them). I was drawn to this diptych:

Coming up at Platform: Scott Fife with all new work in September; in October, A Spectral Glimpse, a group show with Platform’s first guest curator, the extraordinarily capable Jim O’Donnell.

6:15 pm.

James Harris Gallery: Rashid Johnson: Dark Matters

I’m writing about this one for next week, so I’ll be quiet here and just give you this link and this image.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Washlet.

(Mildly and temporarily NSFW, thanks to a row of behinds with smiley faces on them displayed during the intro. And thank you, Slog tipper Keith.)

The venerable Radar on “the long, sad decline of Robin Williams.” Sing it, sister.

No War?: Bush scoffs as House votes to bring troops home.

Less Sex: Teenagers report less sex, more condoms, less pregnancies, and more graduating.

More Sales: New FDA rules boost business for emergency contraception.

Less Smoking: More and more states enact outdoor smoking bans.

More Pay?: Congress targets sexist SC ruling on unequal pay.

No X-Mas Trees or Menorahs: Committee recommends Port should not display religious symbols.

Lower Ranking: U.S. News and World Report takes UW Medical Center out of top 10.

And of course, more poetry. The winner of the Washington Poet Association’s 2007 Poetry contest is:

Going up

by Ann Gerike

In my childhood, elevators lumbered.
A uniformed attendant perched
on a fold-down seat inside - a girl, my mother said,
because all the brave boys were off at war.

Continue reading "Morning News" »

Remember when conservatives insisted we just had to impeach Bill Clinton because, amongst other things, he took calls from politicians and world leaders while getting blowjobs? He defiled the White House, demeaned his office, and somehow violated all those innocent politicians and world leaders?

Well, well, well: Sen. David Vitter (R-Depends) took calls from the DC Madam in the Capitol Building when he was still a Congressman—and at least two of the calls came as he was casting votes. So he’s pretty much got to resign, right?

Of course not!

Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, doesn’t think we should be too hard on poor Mr. Vitter. Because when it comes to Republican sex scandals that “judge not lest ye be judged” crap in the bible apparently kicks in.

“We all think that we’re not vulnerable to something like that happening,” DeMint said, “but the fact is this can be a very lonely and isolating place to be away from your family. So I’m certainly not going to judge him because I don’t want that kind of pressure on me.”

Sen. DeMint voted to impeach Bill Clinton.

When in the course of human evenings it becomes necessary to find the answers to the questions in the Ketel One ad on the back of the current New Yorker, and it’s after midnight, it is something to know that Seattle Public Library is there for you. In a shifting, stricken, electronically connecting world, www.spl.org is at the ready. It’s true that long before midnight the librarians manning the quick information line (whom I love) have gone home, but the library has connections. It knows some people. It’s not a problem.

Before we go any further, here is the back of the current New Yorker (at least it’s dated this Monday—there’s probably an even newer one downstairs in the mail box):

In case you can’t see the image, it’s an all-white page with text on it. At the top it says “Dear Ketel One Drinker” and continues “Here are the answers to 10 commonly asked questions.”

The answers to the 10 commonly asked questions are:

Yes
George Washington
Briefs
Depends on who you ask
Down the hall, second door on your left
District of Columbia
86 Cents
The Nile (if you include the Blue & White)
114 Years, 211 days
93.2 million miles

OK, so I didn’t need an answer from Seattle Public Library. I needed a question. I needed the question that “114 Years, 211 days” was the answer to. Because I knew all the other questions.

The first answer, “Yes,” is clearly the answer to the question “Do you find Christopher Frizzelle unbelievably attractive?” “George Washington” is “Who was the first president of the United States?” “Briefs,” “Depends on who you ask,” and “Down the hall, second door on your left” are advertising writers having fun around a conference room table. “District of Columbia” is the answer to “What does the abbreviation in Washington, DC stand for?” “86 cents” is hard, but, with Google’s help, I’m guessing it’s either “Roughly how much do women make for every dollar a man earns?” (from one website: “Women make 86 cents for every dollar men earn in the District of Columbia”; from another: “Female managers in the communications industry made 86 cents for every dollar”; from another: “Asian Pacific American women earn 86 cents for every dollar”) or “How much is an Aussie worth next to a U.S. dollar right now?” The answer “The Nile (if you include the Blue & White)” is clearly the answer to “What’s the longest river in the world?” And “93.2 million miles” is “How far is the sun from Earth?”

But this “114 Years, 211 days”—this one isn’t easy. When I Googled “114 Years, 211 days” I got tables of numbers, pages of equations, databases full of dates. When I put “114 Years, 211 days” in quotes and Googled that, I got only one page: Some guys on a Google Groups thread talking about the “booze ad on the back of The New Yorker.” (I feel so much less alone!)

People weighed in to that Google Group with answers. But the only answer anyone posted—er, question—for “112 Years, 211 days” was: “How long was the 100 Years’ War? (Well, actually, someone else did pose another question that “112 Years, 211 days” could answer: “When will the Celtics hang up another championship banner?”) But Wikipedia says the 100 Years’ War was 116 years. Huh.

I went to the library to see if someone there could help. I went to www.spl.org and clicked on Contact the Library. Then I clicked on Live chat (24/7). Then I typed in my name, my email address, my question, and hit Chat.

Here is what I typed in:

OK. This is a little weird. “114 years, 211 days” is the answer to a question. I need to figure out what the question is. There’s an ad on the back of The New Yorker for Ketel One, and they have a list of “the answers to 10 commonly asked questions,” and “114 years, 211 days” is the only one I can’t figure out the answer to. The question isn’t “How long was the Hundred Years’ War?” because, according to Wikipedia, the Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years. Is Wikipedia wrong? Or can you think of another question “114 years, 211” days is the answer to? Help me out! thanks, christopher

I hit the button, that went off into space, and a new window opened with instructions to the left and, to the far right, in a vertical column:

Hello, christopher frizzelle
Thank you for your question. There may be a brief delay while we connect you to a librarian. While you wait, can you provide any more information about your question…

Two minutes later, the following text appeared below that:

Jasmine (24/7 Librarian): Librarian ‘Jasmine (24/7 Librarian)’ has joined the session.

Cool!

christopher frizzelle: Hey Jasmine.
Jasmine (24/7 Librarian): Hi Christopher

It was 12:12 AM, and I had this new friend, Jasmine.

Jasmine (24/7 Librarian): My name is Jasmine, and I’m a reference librarian with the QuestionPoint chat service. Your librarians have asked our librarians to staff this 24-hour service when they are unavailable. I’m reading your question right now to see how I can help you…

Two minutes passed, and she said:

Jasmine (24/7 Librarian): If there are slight delays, it’s because I’m assisting other patrons along with you, but I’m right here with you also.

Isn’t that sweet?

Another four minutes passed.

Jasmine (24/7 Librarian): Still searching, Wikipedia is not always accurate.

Look at Jasmine and I, in this together. She’s so right, Wikipedia isn’t always accurate.

christopher frizzelle: great, thanks.
christopher frizzelle: great, thanks.

[I accidentally hit the button twice. Slight delay on the site.]

Rather abruptly, Jasmine dumps me without so much as a personal goodbye. All I get is a message that says:

Librarian: Please wait a moment while I transfer you to another librarian

Jasmine, we coulda had something! We coulda been some people! You and me, baby. Why’d you have to go chang—

Two minutes later:

Raul (24/7 Librarian): Hi

Hey, Raul!

christopher frizzelle: Hey, Raul.

Raul (24/7 Librarian): I’m reading your question.

Raul (24/7 Librarian): I’m now searching.

And then, in a miraculous two minutes flat:

Raul (24/7 Librarian): On March 29, the Guinness Book of World Records certified her as the oldest living woman at 114 years and 211 days

Raul (24/7 Librarian): http://slick.org/deathwatch/mailarchive /msg01378.html

As this link appeared in the far right column, a web page—that very page he’s just given me the URL for—opened up automatically in the larger left frame.

christopher frizzelle: oh, awesome.

christopher frizzelle: did you just find that through google?

Raul (24/7 Librarian): Puerto Rican Ramona Iglesias-Jordan died on March 29 aged 114 years and 211 days.

Raul (24/7 Librarian): yes

A minute went by.

Raul (24/7 Librarian): Can I help you with anything else

I kind of wanted to keep talking.

christopher frizzelle: somehow google couldn’t find that for me. well, thanks. hey, just curious, where in the world are you? I’ve never used this service before.

But Raul was all business. A minute went by, and then:

Raul (24/7 Librarian): This service is monitored by librarians across the United States when your local library is not open.

So, like, everyone can see us, Raul, is that what you’re saying? They can see what we’re saying to one another? Before I could reply—

Raul (24/7 Librarian): Thank you for using our service. Please, contact us again if you need further assistance. Goodbye.

The whole thing took 16 minutes.

Then there was a pop-up survey about my experience. Under “The ease of using this online reference is?” I clicked “Very Easy.” Under “Will you use this service again?” I clicked “Very Likely.”

But in the “Additional Comments” field, I was honest about my feelings:

This service is excellent.

One thing: I wish I knew where my librarian was. Just for the sake of, I dunno, true global connectivity. It’s 12:29 AM in Seattle — dead of night — but it is, for example, 9:29 AM in Madrid. I picture the guy who just helped me sitting at a desk and eating a muffin, his blinds open onto a view of Madrid in the morning sun.

He’s a librarian, but he’s also human, right?

thanks again (whoever’s getting this, wherever you are),
christopher

It’s only now—now that I’m retyping all this for you—that I see that Raul told me the thing is “monitored by librarians across the United States.” So much for Madrid. Or the morning sun. Maybe he was eating a muffin.

Anyway: Raul, ladies and gentlemen.

The interweb has given us many things over the years, including leetspeak, embedded MIDI files of the theme from Small Wonder, and pictures of rabbits stacking things on their head. But now, I think, the zenith of radness has been reached. It’s over. It’s done. Behold: Every single money shot from the Friday the 13th series, in chronological order.

(Personally, I’m partial to #37. Yeeouch.)

NSFW, natch.

your college intern (she’s been handed the thankless, enslaved task of coordinating our ed board interviews) sends you a housekeeping e-mail that includes this sentence:

Hope you enjoyed the interview today— I thought it ran smoothly, but was much less impressed by the candidates than by those for the Port.. oh well.

There you have it City Council hopefuls: The intern thought the Port candidates put on a better show.

Indeed, we had a Port race in yesterday and one of the City Council races in today. Don’t want to say too much before our primary endorsement issue comes out in about 4 weeks (to synch up with when you receive your ballots in the mail), but so far, one candidate tried to bribe us with waffle cookies and carrot cake and another told us about Freud and tunnels and wombs.

Totally true.

Talking Points Memo has the police report that details Florida state Rep. Bob Allen’s bathroom cruising technique, quotes his pick-up lines, and puts to rest any questions about who was supposed to blow who for that $20.

Florida State Rep. Bob Allen—conservative Republican, married man, father of one, and campaigner against public lewdness and sexual predators—is an oral bottom who lewdly preys on police officers in public restrooms.

For those of you keeping score at home, that makes Allen a cocksucking hypocrite—not to be confused with U.S. Senator David Vitter, the diaper-wearing hypocrite from Louisiana.

Oh, and check this out—it’s a collection of David Vitter’s campaign ads from 2004, dug up for our enjoyment by those indispensable muckrakers at TPM. The first one is priceless.

Things tend to come in threes… so gee, I wonder who’s next?

Springfield

As you probably know by now, eleven US 7-11 stores have been temporarily transformed into Kwik-E-Mart’s to cash in on the upcoming Simpsons movie.

I’m a huge Simpsons fan, so I couldn’t help but get a little giddy when I heard the 7-11 on Denny —at the south end of Seattle Center— was one of the few stores getting made over.

Last Saturday, I drove down to the Kwik-E-Mart to check things out. As I pulled up, a swarm of mid-20’s frat-types —decked out in cowboy hats and flip flops— huddled in the middle of the parking lot snapping pictures of each other. It was waaaay busier than I expected at 1AM.

Inside, I quickly discovered my journey to dork mecca had been a complete waste of time. They were out of everything. No Buzz Cola, no Krusty-O’s, no donuts. It felt like a cop out to get a “Squishee” and I wasn’t about to pay $15 for the lonely Homer Simpson bobblehead on the front counter but I felt like I had to walk out with something memorialize my pilgrimage. I grabbed 22 of Becks and a packet of Skittles. Mmm…Skittlebrau.

I got home, tore open the package of Skittles (original flavor, or whatever) and popped the top off of the beer.

Everything went into a pint glass, which promptly erupted all over my kitchen counter.

If you’ve ever wondered what gritty, bitter medicine tastes like, well, it tastes like Skittlebrau.

While my first trip to the Kwik-E-Mart was pretty fruitless, I’ll be back to get my hands on some Buzz Cola or Krusty-O’s and I’ll report back later this week.

The Asshole-In-Chief decided to make fun of a 13-year-old girl who asked him a question about immigration, prompting the girl, who described herself later as “very shy,” to burst into tears.

He tried to make up for the faux pas by telling the girl her question was “very good” and bringing her backstage after the event. Yeah, like that’s going to put her right at ease. Via Pam.

I’ve always wondered what made Hum Bao so terribly delicious. Now I know.

BEIJING — Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and made tasty with pork flavoring, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.

Countless small, often illegally run operations exist across China and make money cutting corners by using inexpensive ingredients or unsavory substitutes. They are almost impossible to regulate.

Squares of cardboard…are first soaked to a pulp in a plastic basin of caustic soda — a chemical base commonly used in manufacturing paper and soap — then chopped into tiny morsels with a cleaver. Fatty pork and powdered seasoning are stirred in.

Mmm…fatty pork and cardboard.

Do you think I can get a dozen shipped here?

Via AP

The other day, a friend gave me a copy of The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcom which, I’m ashamed to admit, I hadn’t read before. “Read the first sentence,” he said, “and tell me you don’t want to keep reading.”

The first sentence goes like this:

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.

It gave me a warm, wistful feeling, the exact same feeling I got this first time I read this passage in Didion’s introduction to Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

I don’t know why, but those sad condemnations give me pleasure, scratch some deep itch—the kind of itch masochists must feel when they think about corporal punishment.

The people of Yap Island once made money from stone.

The coins in the picture are called Rai and were carried by two strong men.

The Snare: A Stolen Looper.

KUBE’s Crack Rock: “Party Like a Rockstar” Within Five Minutes? Yes!

Keytarded: Pleasurecraft on the Pleasures of the Keytar and Les Rhythmes Digitales.

Cradle Your Head: Get Down, Go to the Opera.

Vice Squad: Jonathan Zwickel Visits the Year 2080.

It Takes Two: The Saturday Knights and Girl Talk.

How Many Did You Take? Do You Need To Throw Up?: Jerry Abstract’s “Max Volume_Yellow.”

How Was Its of the Near Past: Remembering the Klaxons.

COME ON!: Feel It Already!

As part of their coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joel Selvin tracked down Owsley “Bear” Stanley during a recent visit to the Bay Area. Stanley is the first person to mass produce LSD in the mid-’60s—an estimated 1.25 million hits. He’s notoriously private, Selvin writes, rarely allowing his photo to be taken and spending the last couple decades living in isolation on the tropical coast of Queensland, Australia, waiting out the ecological disaster he believes is impending.

Owsley has subsisted on a meat-only diet for the past 40 years or so, even when things got really bad during a recent bout with throat cancer. Writes Selvin, “At one point, he was reduced to injecting his puree of steak and espresso directly into his stomach.”

Some of Stanley’s words to take to heart: “What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different.”

and

“Any time the music on the radio starts to sound like rubbish, it’s time to take some LSD.”

Read the whole story here.

Yesterday, Washington State Patrol troopers found 8-year-old Chandler Osman in the cab of a truck that had just crushed her grandfather to death underneath it. Larry Maurer, 63, was trying to repair the vehicle after it broke down by the side of the highway. How did the troopers console the little girl? By interrogating her, raiding her home, and arresting her parents.

You see, Chandler reportedly admitted that her parents, Bruce and Rainee Osman, grew marijuana – as medicine – in their Kent home. How did the pot topic come up? A routine online search under the parents’ names would have revealed the couple was busted for medical pot in 2005, but no criminal charges were filed because they were authorized by their doctor to cultivate marijuana under Washington’s Medical Use of Marijuana Act. Rather than trust records that the parents were abiding by the law, rather than investigate the case later to make sure the pot