Four fire trucks just drove by me and stopped at 15th and Mercer. What is burning? Does anyone know? I hope none of you are on fire.

And this? What words in our fallen state can grasp this moment in (this concept of) eternity?

The next chapter in the endless Amanda Knox case happens tonight on the TV show 48 Hours Mystery.

The program hired two private investigators to get to the bottom of things. And what did they find at the bottom? One investigator, Paolo Sfriso, found things are looking not so good for Amanda. There's "damning evidence" everywhere. The other investigator, Paul Ciolino, found no piece evidence that adequately links Amanda to the moment of the crime. He thinks she has been railroaded by Italy's legal machine. I would have seriously considered Ciolino's conclusions if he had not made this statement:

Speaking on the program, Ciolino said he's convinced that young women such as Knox -- a Seattle Prep grad who made the UW honor roll -- don't commit murder.

"Jesuit-educated high school girls who are high honors students ... don't participate in orgies and homicides," Ciolino said. "They don't do it. And if you can tell me of one that does, I'd sure like to see her."

I think Ciolino fell in love with Amanda. She put a spell on his heart.

UPDATE!
Meredith's death was not caused by a loss of blood but by a lack of air, suffocation. But the report does not say if the suffocation was caused by someone's hands or her own blood.

Meredith was 'cut with two knives - but death caused by suffocation', post-mortem reveals.

British girl Meredith Kercher, murdered while studying in Italy, suffered wounds from two knives, according to a new post-mortem.

It also suggests that even though the 21-year-old had her throat slit, the cause of death was suffocation, according to leaked reports.

Police have said that Meredith, from Croydon, Surrey, whose body was found in her student house in Perugia in November, may have been killed after a sex game went wrong.

The latest post-mortem was ordered by Judge Claudia Matteini.

Its findings are to be made public next Saturday.

But, according to leaks, the report will say her neck wounds were from two different blades.

The Leeds University exchange student's American flatmate Amanda Knox, 20, Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, are being held in custody.

Music

Shellshag, Helms Alee, Akimbo at Comet

• See what else is happening in Music on Saturday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

^{Su-Mei Tse's L'Echo (2003), DVD video projection, 4-minute, 54-second loop}

At Seattle Asian Art Museum. (Gallery info here.)

posted by news intern Chris Kissel

Mbeki & Mugabe: Have a chat, realize there is "no crisis" in Zimbabwe.

Student loans: Teetering economy doesn't bode well for the college-bound.

Expelled: Some legal immigrants seeking citizenship.

Un-friended: Israel clamps down on Facebook.

Today in super-powerful surveillance satellites: Bush sics 'em on us.

Google Earth: U.N. to use Google's mapping technology to track refugees.

Tell 'em, IRNA: According to Iranian news agency, Iran denies picking on U.S. patrol craft.

Thurston County is PETA's worst nightmare: Rats and snakes overrun one woman's house, disturbing cockfighting ring uncovered in another.

Encampments: City decides to talk to homeless squatters before destroying their homes and throwing away all their possessions.

Amanda Knox: CBS-hired investigator raises doubts about Italian police.

Cash money: Gregoire and Rossi haul it in.

Dalai Lama: World's highest-paid motivational speaker kicks off five-day "love fest."

An open mic and a bunch of other things going on today in readingsville.

First, at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet, will read as part of the Seattle Green Festival, which takes place all weekend long. It will have significantly fewer funny costumes than SakuraCon.

Pari Noskin Taichert reads from her mystery The Sorocco Blast at Elliott Bay Book Company. Earlier in the day, the Seattle Journal for Social Justice will also be reading at Elliott Bay. Social justice is very important, but both of these readings bore the hell out of me just reading about them.

Also, up in the U District, Ann Bannon, the author of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, will be reading in conjunction with a performance by the Seattle Women's Chorus. I write about Bannon and her wonderfulness in this week's Constant Reader. She will also be reading tomorrow.

And, at the ungodly hour of 9 a.m. (on a Saturday!) at the Seattle Art Museum, Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade, will be giving a talk. She's here with her new book, The Real Wealth of Nations. This is a very smart lady, and this looks to be the most interesting reading going on today.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, here.

Also, if you haven't already, you should check out the nifty, brand-new books page, which has a ton more reviews and a mini-blog revue of the last week's books-themed Slog posts, over here.

Dear Kello O,

At this very moment, I am drunk off my ass--having consumed six shots of hard liquor plus a bottle of beer tonight. This is approximately six more shots than I ever have.

The perils of having a girlfriend who likes to go out dancing.

To combat a hangover tomorrow, in a vain attempt to be productive or at least conscious on what should be the very first really nice day of the year, I'm currently slugging down a pint (a half quart, a little less than half a liter) of my concoction. Specifically? 1 pint of water. 4 tsp of sugar. 1/2 tsp salt. A splash of lemon juice. It tastes salty--like the tears of the Irish starving from potato blight. I assembled this elixir while thoroughly smashed; for all I know it contains arsenic rather than salt.

Tomorrow, I will report back on my hangover status--none, slight, moderate, regrettable, unfortunate, epic, near death, death would be preferable.

I already regret this post.

Update! At 9:53am:

I awaken. No headache! Stomach fine. Ok, I do have a raspy voice--but that's about it! Hangover status: None to slight!

I actually managed to drink a full liter of my homebrew pediolyte (double what I posted above), plus a half liter of water before going to bed. And as the comments note, duh, it's all about keeping hydrated. Water alone won't cut it. I needed electrolytes. Like Brawndo gots!

There's been a bit of a shitstorm between Matt Taibbi and Erica Jong over on the Huffington Post today.

The background: Jong suggested, in a much longer piece about the media's misogynistic coverage of Hillary Clinton, that Rolling Stone writer Taibbi and several others are sexist because they writes about Clinton's physical appearance while ignoring male candidates'. In her typically loopy fashion, Jong suggested that male journalists' obsession with (and judgment of) Hillary's appearance stems from "a kind of Oedipal obsession with the bad mother -- to counter a boy's attraction to his good mother."

Predictably, Taibbi—a hot-shit young Rolling Stone reporter who peddles outrage for a living—lost his mind. In a bizarrely self-centered post titled "Erica Jong Thinks I Want to Do my Mother," Taibbi argued, somewhat convincingly, that he's also made fun of male politicians' appearance. He also called Jong a "hack" and an "eight hundred year old sex novelist." Jong responded, basically, by congratulating Taibbi for being an "equal-opportunity insulter," and added, "insults are not arguments." (If anything, Taibbi is relentlessly lookist and fattist--a point CJR writer Megan Garber makes here)

Things might have ended there, had Jong not ALSO gone on to compare Taibbi's description of Hillary's "flabby-armed wave" to the stereotypical depictions of Jews circulated by the Nazis--adding, "Similar caricatures were used against African-Americans. And against women."

Which, again predictably, gave Taibbi an aneyurism. Calling Jong both "silly" and "hysterical" (way to prove you're not a sexist!), Taibbi responded that Jong was calling him a Nazi and comparing him to the Ku Klux Klan.

Now, I'm not saying Jong wasn't off the deep end with the Oedipal stuff; she was. And her use of the Nazi analogy was just retarded. Moreover, Taibbi is hardly the worst of the male reporters covering this presidential race. (Though he did run enthusiastically the myth of Hillary's "manipulative" "tears" in New Hampshire.) But the fact remains: Had Jong been really trying (instead of just being inflammatory), she could have found plenty of examples of male writers covering Hillary in a way that's both sexist and fundamentally different from the way they cover male politicians. Jong's point was dead on; it's unfortunate that she resorted to pop-psych mumbo-jumbo and Nazi references to do it.

Update: Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann made Clinton supporter Elton John his "Worst Person in the World" for suggesting that sexism might exist.

(A few times a week, I take a new book with me to lunch and give it a half an hour or so to grab my attention. Lunch Date is my judgment on that speed-dating experience.)

Who's your date today? Devil's Cape, by Rob Rogers

Where'd you go? Quinn's

What'd you eat? Sausage sandwich with sauerkraut ($9) and fries ($3)

How was the food? I've now eaten at Quinn's three times. The first two times, I left feeling slightly nauseous--I think that Quinn's meat-in-every-item-on-the-menu strategy may be too much for me. I went this time expecting it to be my last trip, that I'd be finished with Quinn's for good. But this sausage sandwich, even with the sauerkraut that's been condensed and riddled with essence of pork, is amazing. This may be the best sausage sandwich I've ever eaten. It's not just the quality of the sandwich--the sausage is made onsite--but the whole goddamned thing was just so well put together that it was brilliant. I never thought I'd say it, but it's actually worth the nine bucks. I will eat this sandwich again.


What does your date say about itself? It's a science fiction novel about a city in Louisiana that was founded by pirates. The city's currently the home to a number of superheroes. It was given to me by a friend who, like me, has a weakness for reading books about superheroes--Soon I Will be Invincible, for example--but is always disappointed by them. He really liked the book, but was ultimately disappointed.

Is there a representative quote? "That was the last time anyone ever saw the Omega, at least anyone who would admit to it. It was as though he had disappeared off the face of the earth, or as though Devil's Cape had swallowed him whole. The site of his last speech is a regular stop on the city's popular crime tours."

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes, but just because it was recommended. The language is a little pedestrian--this is part of the Wizards of the Coast Discoveries Program, which is a contest put on by local publisher Wizards of the Coast in which amateur authors send in their sci-fi novels to WOTC and the best four are published, so that's probably to be expected--but the darkness and the strong sense of place seem pretty strong. I think it may be a one-night lark, but it should be a fun one.

There's a bunch of crap on my desk, including the arts section from the April 2 issue of New York Times. On the cover of the section is the headline "Like the Candidates, TV's Political Pundits Show Signs of Diversity," and under that headline an arrangement of photos of Donna Brazile (on CNN), Michelle Bernard (on MSNBC), Alex Castellanos (on CNN), Rachel Maddow (on MSNBC), Amy Holmes (on CNN), and a panel of four male CNN political commentators (Paul Begala, Jamal Simmons, Roland S. Martin, and Bill Bennett).

This has been sitting on my desk for a week and a half because I keep meaning to blog about the article, but I can't figure out what I think of it. It's weird. It's full of paragraphs like these:

Their counterparts at MSNBC include Michelle Bernard, a lawyer by training, who is black and conservative; Rachel Maddow, who is white and has a show on the liberal Air America Radio; Eugene H. Robinson, a black columnist for The Washington Post; and Joe Watkins, a Republican strategist who is also black. Last week Harold Ford Jr., a former congressman from Tennessee, made his MSNBC debut as a political analyst. Mr. Ford, a black Democrat, had been an analyst at Fox News.

Juan Williams, who is black and a National Public Radio correspondent, is a longtime regular on “Fox News Sunday,” which also uses minority female analysts like Angela McGlowan, a Republican strategist who is black; Michelle Malkin, a conservative Filipino-American journalist; and Linda Chavez, who is Hispanic and held positions in the Reagan administration. A recent addition is Laura Ingraham, a syndicated radio host who is white.

"It sounds like one of those Onion stories that goes, 'Man Who Saves Family in Fire Is Gay,'" said Jen Graves when I read those paragraphs to her just now. Graves, who is white, was paraphrasing this. (First sentence: "Near-tragedy turned to joy Monday, as area residents Phillip and Karen Widman and their two children were saved from their burning house on Locust Street by Kevin Lassally, a homosexual man.") That Onion parody is exactly to the point: all this obsessive labeling, while not bad or wrong or anything quite so strong as that, is just weird.

Then comes the weirdest word in the NYT piece:

A more saladlike pundit mix has been front and center in the last couple of weeks...

"Saladlike"? Really? The melting pot became stew became a salad? One can't but help remember the introduction to Seattle Weekly's Best of Seattle 2006, wherein "the editors" wrote:

In this 21st edition of Best of Seattle, we're flavoring our annual review with the freshest of ingredients: immigrant Seattleites.

Immigrants as "ingredients." Awesome. Mmm! These black and brown chunks are so peppery!

Hilarious: Black Flag's hair-line.

Moving: Everyday Music will move to Broadway and Pine in June.

Coldplay: Paul Constant loathes them, and he thinks of every reason why he will hate the new record.

Last Night: Talbot Tagora and Past Lives at Chop Suey.

I Dunno: Radiohead and the man who catches snapping turtles with his bare hands.

White Rappers: Eminem plays again, Vanilla Ice goes to jail, and Subtle mixes with lasers.

Today's Music News: Radiohead gets a hit (without doing anything), Mötley Crüe releases a new song, and this copyright shit is getting out of hand.

Playlist: The songs you heard at last night's Slog Happy.

Stolen: Karl Blau's guitar gets taken from the bus.

Tonight in Music: Cat Power, Eels, Wolves in the Throne Room, the Avett Brothers, and about 800 other options.

Prince's Payday: He's getting HOW MUCH to play Coachella?

There's more! Click here to see it all!

Ain't It Cool News has a link to Michael Chabon's early draft of a screenplay for Spider-Man 2. It's not bad--a little slow--but at least his Spider-Man tries to crack wise, which is something that the movies never really got a handle on.

This is also good inspiration for people who are doing Script Frenzy, the write-a-film-script-in-a-month exercise. If Chabon can write a rough script that weighs in at a super-unwieldy 250 pages, 100 pages in a month is no big damn deal at all.

(Thanks to Slog Tipper Brad Steinbacher, who I think just didn't want to let the world know that he reads Ain't It Cool News.)

Move It: Declining dollar shifts cocaine market to Europe.

Push It: McDonald’s free-latte Fridays.

Resist It: National D.A.R.E. day.

Always Worth It: Budweiser’s link to McCain.

“As Many Crack Offenders Are Freed Early, Will Crime Rise?” No.

Of Mice and Monkeys: Drug protects from radiation.

Rats: Marijuana linked to temporary lethargy and wimpy muscles.

Brats: Teen calls cops on mom for growing pot.

Stats: One-in-five scientists using mental performance-enhancing drugs.

In Unrelated News:

Three dead in suburban Vancouver house fire linked to marijuana grow-op

DELTA, B.C. — Police have identified three people killed in a house fire in the Vancouver suburb of Delta and now say a marijuana grow-op on the property didn't start the blaze.

News:

If you missed it Wednesday, the opening night film at SIFF this year is Battle in Seattle. I think it's a good choice, even though the film itself is bound to be disappointing. We're all so invested. The party will be full of people bitching about which direction the wind pushed the tear gas and whether it was a Starbucks or a Gap store that got its windows bashed. Fun times!

Pedro Almodóvar is starting a blog. Sample self-consciousness: "I get the impression that we’re skipping a stage in the natural process of 'living to tell the tale.'" (If you don't believe Almodóvar would say such-and-such a thing, blame the translator. The blog is also available in Spanish and French.)

A dish to whet your appetite for next week's releases: Wong Kar Wai talks about his My Blueberry Nights. Apparently blueberry pie is not, in Wong's judgment, cinematic. Good. I'm working on the review now and the word that keeps coming to mind is "rubbery."

Odds & ends: Will The Incredible Hulk suck? Will Iron Man be a juggernaut? Is Gillian Anderson's hair way too long in the new X-Files movie? Discuss.

Opening this week:

In On Screen this week: Smart People (me: "Smart People isn't reliably smart (even the most preternaturally talented college students don't get their first poems published in the New Yorker*), but it is extremely funny and sweet"), Chaos Theory (Bradley Steinbacher: "In this middling dramedy, Ryan Reynolds stars as Frank, an efficiency expert whose life is calculated down to the second. 'List-making is your harbor in the storm of life,' Frank's motto goes, and to help live up to it he scribbles incessantly on note cards."), Sex and Death 101 (Andrew Wright: "Daniel Waters's reunion with former muse Winona Ryder offers only trace hints of the satirical magic that once was"), Blindsight (Paul Constant: "One of the kids says, 'We are blind, but our hearts are not blind!' and you can practically hear the director moan ecstatically offscreen"), Street Kings (Steinbacher says it's "an unthinking man's cop movie, complete with a laughably dense protagonist"), Muriel (Brendan Kiley: "This chilly, melancholy portrait of sex and its discontents—jazzed up with occasional bursts of disorienting new wave style—is a vintage pleasure"), and The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (me: "With its pretty cinematography and the novel milieu of a Sao Paulo Jewish quarter in the 1970s, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is entertaining enough, but you won't remember much of it a week later").

You will remember this embroidered cutie, though:

Why are the most charismatic child actors always from other countries? It's so alarming when you haven't heard anything about them forever and then--remember that sweet child from Fucking Åmål? According to Wikipedia, she now has two kids.

Plus: Lindy West on The Ruins.

Limited runs are absolutely packed this week. The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is wrapping up this weekend with the Seattle premiere of Jellyfish and more. A Tibetan series kicks off at SIFF Cinema to coincide with the Dalai Lama visit. The Langston Hughes African American Film Festival starts tomorrow with two docs by St. Clair Bourne and continues through next week. Tron in 70 mm is returning to Cinerama for almost an entire week. If that's not enough stoner movie for you, try Super High Me at the Admiral--it's a spoof of Super Size Me (duh) with pot subbed for Big Macs. Three fairly obscure films (Irina Palm, starring Marianne Faithfull, and two special-interest docs) are playing at the Varsity; we didn't love any of them. We do, however, love Bette Davis, who's getting a retrospective at the Grand Illusion for the next month or so. There are plenty more opportunities to see Senator Obama Goes to Africa this week--pick the venue to suit your demographic. And for avant-gardists and microcinema fans, you have a bunch of intriguing options this week: Jon Behrens at Vermillion tonight, Janice Findley at Northwest Film Forum tomorrow, an LA magic lanternist/film restorer in a program called Keep Warm, Burn Britain! at the Rendezvous Sunday night, and a bunch of Apichatpong Weerasethakul shorts on Tues-Wed, also at NWFF.

* It has come to my attention that several talented college students have had their first poems published in the New Yorker, including Seattle's own Heather McHugh, Caroline Kizer, and (sort of) Elizabeth Bishop. But the movie makes it sound like getting a gold star on your homework or something.

The Sound Transit board is currently debating between a 0.4 and 0.5 percent sales tax increase for Sound Transit 2—which they may or may not take to voters in '08.

The idea behind raising the tax is to get more transit into the package so that Pierce and Snohomish voters (and board members), who won't exactly get much out of light rail to Northgate and across I-90 to (near) Microsoft, will have some tangible goodies to vote for—more bus rapid transit, more frequent Sounder service, and a streetcar in Everett.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword: The increase would bump the project from $6.3 billion to $7.5 billion, perhaps enough to turn off voters. And really, the extra goodies aren't so noticeable.

However, a last-minute light bulb from Rob Johnson, the political director at the pro-transit Transportation Choices Coalition, is making the rounds at ST right now, and it may actually convince voters to get behind a bigger package (enthusiastically). It may also convince board members like Aaron Reardon and John Ladenberg, the Snohomish and Pierce County Executives, respectively, who are currently cold and lukewarm on an '08 measure, to go for it.

The idea would even be hard for KC Exec Ron Sims—who is suddenly the biggest obstacle to ST 2—to turn down.

The idea is this: Use all the money from the extra 10th of a percent ($1.2 billion) and give it directly to the Snohomish, Pierce, and King County transit agencies. If you divvy that up by population, that'd be about $650 million for King, and $300 to $400 million each for the smaller counties.

Johnson's artful "Local Only" pitch is this: Let's give voters something for today (buses) while also investing in tomorrow (rapid mass transit).

In my opinion, that simple sweet tweak seriously improves the potential for passing a transit measure in November. And equally important right now, it will get some of the reluctant board members in the Yes column.

Is it legal? Does ST have the right to tax on behalf of KC Metro, Pierce Transit, and Snohomish County's Community Transit? Yes, according to ST—because they already have operating contracts with all three agencies, and it would just be a matter of updating the contracts.

Johnson has run the idea by Sound Transit and, so far, according to spokesperson Ric Ilgenfritz, the board hasn't bitten.

They should.

P.S. (and I might start doing a lot of this in the next few weeks, so apologies in advance): I've been interviewing Johnson and reporting on his work for several years now. I met him 5 or 6 years ago when he was just starting out—I think he still lived in the suburbs...at his mom's?—and he has turned into one of the true stars in the the political community. And I don't mean a star in the Reagan Dunn way that some grating young politicians can be, I mean, he's a true asset to the the public, and he's a gem in a reporter's Rolodex.

Whether we're on the same side of an issue (light rail 2008) or the opposite (Prop 1), he answers questions with out a grain of b.s., does an outstanding, clear job advocating his side, and is upfront when he may be off-base. He seems to savor tough questions, and always does his best to let you know exactly where things stand. He's courteous in an old-fashioned way, gets to know you personally without being a creep, and on the occasion when he loosens up a little, he's a blast to be around. (Genius Awards '05?)

If I stop covering local politics, Johnson is one voice I'll miss. And one you won't be able to. Guaranteed.

Bush is proposing major cuts to programs that are funded through the Victims of Crime Act and the Violence Against Women Act. Bush's 2009 budget slashes $120 million from the VAWA-funded domestic violence services and $2 million from the VOCA fund, which pays for counseling and other support for victims of crimes such as domestic violence, sexual assault and molestation.

Bush proposed cutting VAWA-funded programs in 2006 and 2007, too.

Via Bitch Ph.D.

King County Executive Ron Sims (last seen ranting bizarrely that a consultant who did a report on the sorry state of King County's animal shelters was a single-issue zealot who operated from an anti-euthanasia "playbook") has apparently had a change of heart. (Among other things, the consultant found kennels covered in urine and feces; sick animals that were “not provided the rudiments of food or water for over 24 hours and possibly longer”; bowls of food and water that stayed empty for days; piles of dog waste all over the dogs’ exercise yard; and dogs “languishing in [their] own waste.")

Yesterday, in what county staffers referred to as a "kumbaya press conference," Sims agreed to release $965,000 to improve the deplorable conditions at the county-run shelter in Kent. The county's animal control program had never spent more than $500,000 in donations it received to improve conditions in the program. The money will pay for improved shelter and medical care, new dog runs, and more staff. Yesterday's announcement should cool the temperature at next Monday's town hall meeting in Burien, which you can read all about here.

The story of a dog whose front legs were broken by boys with a baseball bat near Klamath Falls may have a happy ending.

The 5-year-old blonde long coat Chihuahua named Heather underwent surgery this week and is expected to walk again.

Kenya Davidson and her roommate spotted the dog when they stopped at a bank ATM last month.

They also saw three boys, about 10 to 12, standing by the dog. One had a baseball bat. They ran.

Davidson took the dog to the Klamath Humane Society shelter.

Efforts to find the dog's owner failed. But she will be available for adoption. Donations to cover her surgery are encouraged.

The Bush administration is about to find out:

The White House has scheduled a dinner next week in honor of Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to the United States, but one guest will be conspicuously absent from the proceedings: the pope himself.

There are no competing events listed on the pope's schedule, and the White House was unable to explain Benedict's absence from the dinner.

These tickets are free. New Year's Eve concert. It's Berlin and 1992, but still.

Renée Fleming, Frederica von Stade, and Kathleen Battle in probably the most affecting and beautiful moment in 20th century opera—the final trio from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier.

From my inbox:

I have been using Metro since I moved to Seattle last year.I had a 3 months old baby, now she is 13 months.She travels with me. Many times I had very unpleasent experiences with bus drivers, but I did not complain.

This time, I decided I can't take this kind of behaviour anymore...
On March 28 at 10.40 I took the bus from Fauntleroy and California to Bellevue. On the last minutes of the trip my baby started crying, and she cried few minutes.

Just before I got of the bus at Bellevue terminal bus driver stopped me and told me that he wanted to talk to me. He said, you know your baby made crying disturbing others. Luckily we did not have many. Otherwise I was going to ask you to leave the bus. I got very upset, and told him, she is a baby and what am I to do? He answered that I could have take two buses instead? By the way that day it was snowing and had a very heavy rain. I said, well, next time I will walk! I tried to get off and he said, u can not leave yet, I said why, he said I have more things to say! I said I dont want to listen. And left the bus crying, he yelled at me U are so kind!

Do I deserve this? Should I drug my baby so she would not cry? Besides, babies are not wellcome on the buses.

Many times while I was travelling alone bus drivers told me to fold the little light stroller , has not occupy any space.I said how am I to do it, I am holding the baby. One one bus driver told me to leave the bus.

There is no security for the babies on the buses.I always feel very nervous that I will drop her. Why do not you provide car seats on the buses? What is the difference of the babies than disabled persons? Nobody help getting on and off. Once me and baby fell down on the floor while driving.

I feel very upset about those incidents and I will report these incidents to all the news agengies in Seattle.

I believe it is time to secure the babies. Or do not accept the mothers with babies on the buses and let people know that babies are not welcome...

Sincerily Yours....

Deniz Oren

Photo via Flickr

Obviously, the main faux pas Obama made here (despite the fact that he's totally right) is that he comes off as condescending to working-class voters.

But there's another misstep. In Obama's list of misguided blue-collar notions—clinging to religion, guns— he includes "anti-trade sentiment."

But didn't Obama just spend a whole lot of time in Ohio (despite what his campaign aides did or didn't tell the Canadian government) saying that he's against NAFTA? (He also voted against CAFTA.)

So, how does he explain his own false consciousness?

There are a ton of bad book recommendation search engines out there, but this one seems pretty okay. First of all, I tried to enter a relatively obscure book that's confounded a couple of other book recommendation search engines, Stanley Elkin's The Magic Kingdom, which is an evil-but-hilarious novel about Make-A-Wish Kids visiting Disney World.

Some of the results ( Doctor Who: The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin, Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow) were insanely bad recommendations, but many of them were books that I'd loved (The Sot-weed Factor by John Barth, The Roaches Have No King by Daniel Evan Weiss). Of course, I didn't get any actual recommendations out of the search, but other searches on the engine have proven more fruitful. It's not perfect, but it looks like a good start.

At a San Francisco fundraiser, Obama gets maybe a little too honest for his own good while talking about the roots of rural behavior:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton brings up the Bosnia sniper fire mess all over again in an attempt to defend Hillary, apparently makes eight false statements in only 23 words while doing so, and gets politely told to keep quiet by Hillary in response.

"Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am," Clinton said.

Is that all he said? Of course not:

From evil robot 6

It's weird that I was talking just this morning about how authors don't often get to pick their book covers. On his LiveJournal, Matt Ruff posted some fan-produced covers of his books. Ruff has had some poor book covers, including this one and this one.

Of the three covers that Ruff posted, I like this one best:

After I got my first book deal I took my mom to Europe.

Mom always loved the New Year's Day Strauss concert broadcast every year from Vienna on PBS. We used to watch it together, and I was thrilled that I suddenly had the resources to take her, if not to the concert (tickets are impossible to get), then at least to Vienna.

We spent a few days in Zurich, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in Vienna, and then we took an overnight train to Munich. While in Munich my mother came down with what we thought was pneumonia. After a short visit to a hospital in Munich—which convinced mom that socialized medicine worked—she spent three days in bed in our hotel room, hoping she'd get better so we could enjoy the rest of our trip. She didn't. She never really did, not completely. She later concluded that the "pneumonia" she came down with in Munich was actually the first signs of the pulmonary fibrosis that would eventually take her life.

Anyway, she took this picture from her bed in Munich. On the back she wrote, "Mom's view of Munich, January 1997."

The one story we liked to tell again and again about our trip to Europe was actually about something that happened before the trip: When I arrived at my mother's house in McHenry, Illinois, the day before we were to leave I was shocked by the size of her bag. It was a rolling bag and it was... enormous. I could fit inside it. And it was heavy. I could barely lift it. Since I knew I would be carrying/rolling her bag through airports, train stations, hotel lobbies, and through tiny European towns, I felt I had a right to ask my mother to open her bag and show me what the hell all was taking to Europe. Inside her bag I found a two-pound bag of chocolate. My mother was taking chocolate—American chocolate—to Switzerland.

I assured mom that there was plenty of chocolate in Switzerland. She was unmoved. It was her bag and she was going to fill it with whatever she thought she might need—six pairs of shoes, three warm jackets, two rolls of toilet paper, two pounds of chocolate—and if I didn't like it she could stay home. We carried that bag of chocolate across an ocean and through three countries and back home again. Unopened. Because there was chocolate in Switzerland—good chocolate, chocolate mom liked—and some pretty decent chocolate in Austria and Germany too.

Anyway, I'm off to mom's wake. I'm bringing chocolate.

Local filmmaker and collector of all sorts of neato vintage television, sci-fi, and 1960's toy commercial footage Jon Behrens will be screening a collection of short films tonight at the Vermillion Gallery at 8 pm.

Here's one he made in 1987, using 180 rolls of Kodachrome 35mm slide film, set to a jolly little Throbbing Gristle jingle...

Complete details over at our Movie Times listings.

From YouTube cinema16

This is some great news. New Yorkers Dorothy and Herbert Vogel are giving away their art collection not all at once, in a great big pile, to an already overstuffed New York institution, but to museums all over the country—including Seattle Art Museum.

Fifty works—mostly minimalist and conceptual works, where SAM could use a boost—are going to a selected institution in each of 50 states. (This is all possible with the help of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.)

Here's what's coming to SAM (the museum only knows specifically about four works and has a list of all the artist's names, according to a spokeswoman):

-- Stephen Antonakos's Nov #2, 1986 (1986), colored pencil on vellum, 23 5/8 by 20 inches
-- Tony Smith's Untitled (1971), heavyweight paper, adhesive, and paint, 6 1/4 by 9 by 3 3/4 inches
-- Sol LeWitt's Untitled (1990), synthetic resin panels, adhesive, paint, and graphite, 12 by 8 3/8 by 5 1/2 inches
-- Terry Winters's Hand Line Reflection Method 15/100 (1995), ink on paper, 13 by 8 1/2 inches

And this is the artist list:

Stephen Antonakos
Will Barnet
Robert Barry
Lynda Benglis
Peggy Cyphers
Richard Francisco
Michael Goldberg
Don Hazlitt
Alain Kirili
Cheryl Laemmle
Ronnie Landfield
Sol LeWitt
Michael Lucero
Robert Mangold
Richard Nonas
Lucio Pozzi
Edda Renouf
Judy Rifka
Tony Smith
Daryl Trivieri
Richard Tuttle
Terry Winters

Here is the full story about why right-wing anti-immigration jackasses are boycotting Absolut Vodka. I'm working with one of my favorite bars right now to have a pro-immigration Absolut Happy Hour--more details soon--but the boycotters have sent out another goddamned press release. Bolds are mine, everything else (sic):

BoycottAbsolut.com Thanks American Vodka Brand SKYY for Criticism of Absolut!

April 11, 2008

Contact: ALIPAC, press@alipac.us, (866) 703-0864

History was made today when American made SKYY Vodka sent out a press release proudly supporting the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and criticizing Absolut for their offensive advertising in Mexico.

"This is the first time we have ever seen an American brand stand up, recognize, and support US Sovereignty against an import that is pandering to illegal immigration supporters," said William Gheen of ALIPAC. "We want to thank SKYY Vodka for showing themselves as a patriotic and top shelf alternative to Absolut."

The National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition (NIIBC) plans to incorporate the news from SKYY Vodka into their boycott website at www.boycottabsolut.com All coalition groups will be encouraged to share this historic news.

All boycott supporters will now be encouraged to try SKYY Vodka, as a show of thanks to the American brand for standing up for Americans!

"I like SKYY Vodka!", said William Gheen. "It is great to be able to have an occasional martini without contributing to a Global corporation, like Absolut, that is encouraging the invasion of my nation."

This is ridiculous. I was going to write, "This is getting ridiculous," but it was already ridiculous before. It's wonderful to know that SKYY supports the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but how do they feel about the Monroe Doctrine? What's Bacardi's stance on the Magna Carta? Does Budweiser support habeas corpus? Still and all, those who think that these people are idiots should probably put SKYY on their list of stupid-ass companies that don't deserve your hard-earned drunk-makin' money, right next to Coors.

Look closely at this skyline of the future and you find a tower designed by none other than Norman Robert Foster:
Yes, Seattle is on the way to possessing what must be Foster's only tower on the West Coast. The local company heading the project is Triad Development, and the location of the tower will be across the street from the west face of the horrible City Hall--between third and fourth. Shooting for a gold LEED rating, the tower, 520 feet high, will be one with the underground, the light rail station--apparently one of the main reasons Foster took an interest in the project. Also in the works is the production of a public space that could be what Westlake Center never became, a civic core. I'll write more about this project in next week's paper.

In a piece of writing I posted yesterday, I described an empty and black room. While walking home from work, the idea of this black room began bothering me. I knew it came from somewhere but could not determine its exact location.

At around dusk (King Street Station across the street; freight train rumbling under my feet), the location of the room was found. It's in David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, "Part Three." There Cleanthes, who makes an argument for what we today call intelligent design--back then it was called natural religion--presents several fascinating examples to support his position, the most fascinating of which is this:

[W]hen we hear an articulate voice in the dark, and thence infer a man, it is only the resemblance of the effects which leads us to conclude that there is a like resemblance in the cause...

The Times and the PI have been following up on the piece I wrote a few weeks ago about SPD's staffing problems.

The dailies have been trumpeting the department's supposed success of SPD's recent recruitment drive in New York, but things aren't going as well as SPD would have you believe.

From the Times:

SPD officials say they've received 750 applicants, including 163 of New York's finest, who will take the test April 19 at New York University.

The turnout is unprecedented — so much so that the department actually had to quit taking applications, said Officer Monique Avery, who said she had expected about 70 people to sign up for the test.

Seattle would like to hire 90 officers this year, and at least 65 each year through 2011, said police Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer.

From the PI:

About 200 applicants, including about 20 NYPD officers, have signed up to take Seattle's written exam, offered April 19 at New York University

In 2006, it took 33 applicants for SPD to hire one officer, so there's no reason the department should have stopped taking applications.

Two years ago, SPD received 2,173 recruit applications. Only 877 of those applicants actually took the department's written test, and only 412 passed. After additional testing and background checks, only 65 recruits were eligible for jobs, and SPD only hired 32 new officers from the original pool of 2,173 applicants.

So while 750 applications may seem like a lot, that only boils down to about 22 new officers, not even close to the department's goal of putting 90 more cops on the street.

The e-mails that the city of Seattle got through discovery (and wisely/gleefully/foxily handed off to the Seattle Times!) in its federal case to prevent the Sonics from breaking their KeyArena lease, prove exactly what City Attorney Tom Carr has been saying all along: Oklahoma-based Sonics owner Clay Bennett had no intention of keeping the team in Seattle and has been bargaining in bad faith from day one.

The balance of power has just shifted and Carr should be able to extract some serious money out of Bennett if the warring parties decide on a payout settlement that lets the Sonics leave before 2010. (Bennett offered $26.5 million in February. Carr turned that down. And rightly so. As I've written ad nauseam, the city, which revamped KeyArena for the Sonics in 1995 for about $75 million, has ended up picking up the Sonics' payments to the tune of $2 to $3 million a year. And we still owe more than $30 million.)

Here's what I like about today's follow-up story in the Seattle Times: Reporter Jim Brunner puts the spotlight on State Sen. Margarita Prentice (D-11, Renton). Longtime Olympia powerhouse Prentice—a moderate who's actually facing an election challenge this top-two-primary year from energized progressive Juan Martinez—has been Bennett's biggest apologist, sycophant, and booster in Olympia.

Last year, after the legislature scoffed at the idea of building a $500 million arena for the Sonics in Renton, Sen. Prentice told the Tacoma News Tribune:

“I know for a fact that [Bennett] wanted to stay.”

This week, Brunner got her inept response to the e-mails.

State Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, said she thinks Bennett gave Seattle plenty of chances, despite the latest reports about the e-mails.

The money Bennett's group spent on lobbyists and consultants to promote a proposed $500 million arena in Renton, Prentice said, convinced her that Bennett genuinely wanted the Sonics to stay here.

"I'm not making excuses for anyone, I only know what I saw," she said. "He was very disappointed when we didn't even get a decent hearing on the Renton site."

Asked about co-owner McClendon's e-mail in July 2006 — just after buying the team — celebrating "the OKLAHOMA CITY SONIC BOOM," Prentice dismissed it: "This just sounds like guy talk."

Well, Gov. Gregoire (and the other 6,395,797 people who are alive in Washington state) think it sounds like Bennett and Co. were lying.

Prentice, who kept dragging the legislature through hearings, owes her colleagues and the public an apology.

Although, I won't hold my breath. She still hasn't apologized for uttering this bit of wisdom in 2006:

For those who complain that millionaires would end up the being recipients of public dollars:

"Poor people don't buy teams," she said.

File this under "people are horrible and dumb." From an email sent by a student at the University of Washington:

I am emailing you all to alert you of an event that will take place on the UW-Seattle campus next Tuesday, April 15, 2008 from 10am-2pm. The event is called "Find an Illegal Immigrant Tag" and will be held on the HUB lawn. The UW College Republicans will be tabling from 10:00am to 2:00pm and the game itself will be held at 12:20. According to a message from the CR president, the event is intended to send a a "clear statement that we need to get serious and crack down on illegal immigration and secure our borders."

This is eighty kinds of fucked up. (Not least because it's obviously a juvenile provocation and it worked—I can't not post about it.)

First, because vigilante border loons are already dangerously close to taking up hunting immigrants for sport. See this NYT story about Arizona's "Sheriff Joe" who, under a federal program called 287(g), has deputized a 3,000-member "posse" to stage raids:

“By the way,” [the sheriff] said, “we do have a 3,000-person posse — and about 500 have guns. They have their own airplanes, jeeps, motorcycles, everything. They can only operate under the sheriff. I swear ’em in. I can put up 30 airplanes tomorrow if I wanted.”

Second, because scapegoating immigrants is idiotic. I don't know how many times we have to say it: the only way to stop immigration—legal or otherwise—is to have a shittier economy. That has been true everywhere and always. (You'd think free marketeer Republicans would get that.)

Third:

and

I'm tempted to "get serious and crack down" on something else.

Anyway, the protest machine is already in the works. Interested parties may contact Fatima Morales at fdelcm@u.washington.edu or Maru Villalpando at maru@washingtoncan.org for more information.

(Thanks to Adrian for the tip.)

Snickers Adventure Bar. I know, right? It's to coincide with the new Indiana Jones movie coming out next month. So to celebrate, they take a regular Snickers and put some coconut flavoring and "a cliffhanger kick of exotic spice" into it. I'm not exactly sure why.

You taste the coconut the instant you bite into it. It's weird, but not horrible. Then the spices come as the chocolate starts to melt--they're strongest as an after-taste. My boyfriend thinks I'm wrong, but I swear it's curry.

I'm pretty sure I never need to eat it again.

Drag

Varla Jean Merman at Re-bar

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It was nice to see many of you at last night's Slog Happy. Sorry I didn't get the chance to talk to everyone.

Some Topics Discussed: How to fist yourself on a statue, James Joyce, Alyson Hannigan's hotness, e-mailing penis photos to a stranger on Craigslist, which authors are assholes in person, how to get involved in short pornographic film production, how many chins I appear to have in a certain digital photograph (popular consensus leaned toward 23 chins), the relative attractiveness of men in the 1980's, and whether Chad Lowe looks like a hockey player.

I Saw You: Mr. Poe, heading outside and returning decidedly more, um, organic; Scary Tyler Moore, pointing at me and making the drinky-drunk motion with her hand; Original Monique, taking photos of everyone, no doubt with the nefarious intent of sticking faces onto pornographic photos with Photoshop; NaFun, wearing the greatest coat since Vin Diesel's scene-stealing giant fur monstrosity in XXX; Will in Seattle, looking quite dapper (did you do something with your hair?); Aislinn, telling the story of her shattered foot, which was injured in a fit of exuberance. Pretty Much Everyone But Me: Heading to Saint after leaving Moe Bar.

This Hangover-Free Morning (and also chins 16 through 19) Brought to You By:

DiGiorno's Ultimate Four-Cheese Oven Fresh Pizzeria Pizza. Motherfucking delicious.

^{Elatia Pearl's Sweet and Sour (2008), collage, 4 by 6 inches}

At Faire Gallery/Cafe. (Gallery info here; the opening is tonight from 7-11 pm, including a DJ and live performance.)

...but getting hit by a bike must suck almost as bad as getting hit by a car.

From Hot Tipper Jno (that is not a typo):

During yesterday's downtown rush hour, I was traveling south on 5th when I came to a red light at Pike. Waiting for my light to change, I entertained myself by watching the people on the sidewalks, and my eye was caught by a bicycle quickly traveling east up Pike. It seemed like the rider was rushing to make the intersection before his light turned yellow, and the next thing I knew, I saw the rider sail 10 feet through the air, sans bike, and come to a gasp-inducing skid in the middle of the street. He jumped to his feet (unbelievably), and turned to look at what he had hit: a pedestrian, dressed in a suit, who was now spread-eagle half in the street, half on the sidewalk. People began running from all directions to help, and even though my car windows were rolled up, I could hear the anguished cries of what I imagined was either the rider or the hit pedestrian. My light changed, and I had to start driving with my hand still over my mouth in shock, which I noticed was the same pose most people in the vicinity were holding. I called 911, and much to my relief, the EMS had already been alerted.

Holy crap. Did anyone else see this go down?

An open mic night and three readings for your entertainment if, like seemingly half the city, you're too hungover to hit the clubs tonight.

Author Ridley Pearson is at the University Bookstore. He's here with one of those young adult books written by an adult author. Besides the Chabon and the Alexie young adult novels, which are very good, most of these books scream "easy paycheck" to me. The facts that A) Person's book is titled Steel Trap: The Challenge, obviously making it the first in a series; B) the book is published by Disney Press; and C) the main character is a named Steven “Steel” Trapp all point to this being a ginormous stinker.

Karen Joy Fowler is at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. She's the author of The Jane Austen Book Club, which I haven't read, but which people have said is actually a pretty nice homage to Jane Austen. She's in town with Wit's End, which seems to be a novel about a bestselling mystery author's relationship to the internet, specifically blogs, Wikipedia, and fanfic. I think this looks interesting, kind of, but then, I'm a book guy and this sort of thing is practically designed to interest me. Your level of interest may vary.

And at Town Hall, Darius Rejali, who is "one of the world's leading experts on torture" according to press materials, reading from his new book Torture and Democracy. This is an important reading, and I highly recommend it because it should be thought-provoking. But, for just a moment, can we talk about the cover, which is up and to the left over there? It looks kind of like the cover you'd put on an anthology of erotic S&M stories, with its smooth back and weird sepia tones. And the font, too, seems oddly celebratory, or at least a lot...lighter...than the subject matter deserves. Or are they trying to attract general readers by toning down the content? Or is it just a poorly designed cover? If you go tonight, don't ask Rejali; authors almost never have control over the covers of their books.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, can be found by clicking on the words at the end of this sentence.

Also, if you haven't already, you should check out the pimpalicious books page, which has a ton more reviews and a mini-blog revue of the last week's books-themed Slog posts.

On the last Monday of every month, in the narrow, reddish, antique-looking theater of the Rendezvous, a performance happens that you aren't supposed to see. On those Mondays, host Korby Sears, wearing a navy blue suit with a shimmery white scarf, invites that month's performer into an enormous box on the small stage, leaves the theater, and hopes nobody shows up.

Strikethrough reverse-advertises itself each month with posters and print ads listing the date and location, who will perform, and a notice in bold: "NO ONE ADMITTED. No public. No press. No family. No friends."

But last Monday at the Rendezvous, I followed Sears up a ladder to the light booth and asked if my friend and I could go inside the theater. "Um," he paused. "Yes." ("Nobody had asked to go in before," Sears said the next day, sounding exasperated that somebody had pierced the veil. "When you asked, I gave you the wrong answer.")

My friend and I were the only people there. The theater was dark, with one red light shining directly above the enormous box. Three electronic tones—one short like a piano note, the other two droning, like sitars—played over and over and over again. Inside the box, allegedly, was dk pan, a performance artist affiliated with Degenerate Art Ensemble, Infernal Noise Brigade, and the Motel Project, doing... something. Strikethrough demands secrecy: Performers are not allowed to talk about their performances, not even with Sears. (A week before his Strikethrough debut, pan confessed he felt nervous about performing for an audience of none, more nervous than he'd felt in a long time. "I don't have to impress an audience," he said. "I have to impress myself.")

And that was it, for an hour and a half—the box, the red light, the electronic tones. "It's Schrödinger's Cat: the Musical," my friend whispered. Four more people arrived about halfway through, then left, then returned with fresh drinks. Inside the box, dk (or whomever) jumped (it sounded like jumping) for a few seconds. Then more nothing.

Life's too short for this kind of nonsense, I thought and then stayed for the whole thing. Watching the box, with the electronic tones playing, in a dark theater, was oddly relaxing. "It's sad," someone whispered, "but this is better than most theater I've seen lately." There's something admirably—and grotesquely—decadent about a performance that doesn't want your attention, love, or money. (Sears pays $75 to rent the theater; the artists don't get paid.) People won't clamor (or pay) to watch Strikethrough, but people would clamor (or pay) to do it. Sears may have invented a new kind of therapy.

"This whole series is about the artists, not the audience," Sears said the next day. "It's for their own goddamned selves." He insists there's no irony to Strikethrough, no punch line. "It's hard to talk about it without sounding cryptic, like I'm trying to play you. But I'm not. Really, I should just keep quiet."

The MSNBC headline says it all, in language even fourth-graders will understand: "‘Eww’ factor aside, anal HPV infection is a risk". Specifically:

Anal infections of human papillomavirus, known as HPV, appear to be as common as cervical infections, according to an article published in the April issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Half of the women in the multi-year study acquired new anal HPV infections during the trial period. Counting women infected at the start of the study, roughly 70 percent of women tested positive for anal HPV during clinic visits.

Full story here. (And yes, anal sex figures sometimes into the equation, but not always...)

The multifold dangers posed to society by urban professionals drinking glasses of chardonnay while attending cooking classes have been averted. The good old Washington State Liquor Control Board is taking killing joy to a new level, according to this email from Culinary Communion:

We were visited yesterday by a representative of the Washington State Liquor Control Board who informed us that there has been a change in the interpretation of the state liquor law. As a result, our practice of offering wine with cooking classes (like that of every other cooking school in the Seattle area) is now considered out of compliance with the law.

This comes as quite a surprise given that we've been operating for six years exactly as we were instructed to by the Liquor Control Board.... we have been ordered to cease and desist serving any and all alcohol on our premises; this includes tasting or drinking wine with cooking classes, and it also includes BYOB liquor....

We are shocked by this ruling and are working furiously to change it and/or bring CC into compliance as quickly as possible.

According to the Liquor Control Board, "The law (RCW 66.12.140) does not allow drinking alcohol during culinary courses. If someone wants to cook with alcohol during a culinary course, you must have written approval from the Board." If a culinary school wants people to be able to drink (or sautee mushrooms in vermouth without a note from Mom) during classes, they can either apply for a restaurant license and meet all the incumbent requirements, or they can apply for a beer/wine specialty shop license, which entails maintaining a $3000 wholesale beer and/or wine inventory.

Also: The Liquor Control Board visited Culinary Communion because of a complaint. What kind of a killjoy would complain about people drinking wine during a cooking class?

In possibly related news: The underground (and illegal) restaurant Gypsy has apparently been shut down.