The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Slog: At Large

Honey Badger Don't Care

Bethany Jean Clement — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:31:23 -0700

Thanks, Methuselah!

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Have You Seen Vinny?

Grant Brissey — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:03:00 -0700

Roosevelt/Green Lake

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Lunchtime Quickie: Ahmed Angel Is Planet?

Kelly O — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:35:01 -0700

Can someone explain why Ahmed Angel is suddenly planet? I am confused! Also, get a load of this guy. He paid a wizard $500 to make him invisible. Doesn't he know, being invisible doesn't make him planet?

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The Big Trees of San Francisco

Charles Mudede — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:33:23 -0700

It's really something else. It dominates Jefferson Square Park.

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Springtime for Hitler

Brendan Kiley — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:15:40 -0700

This just in from our man in Thailand (formerly known as "our man in Vietnam" and "our man in Myanmar"):

Our Man in Southeast Asia

Wikipedia says that Thailand was briefly allied with the Axis powers during WWII—mostly because they were pissed at the French colonialists—but I don't think this is about that.

I don't know what this is about.

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Friday Photo Fun: Summertime in Soap Lake

Kelly O — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:45:52 -0700

On this supremely gray day, I wish I could magically make it July, and make a run for the sun this weekend... More photos after the jump, and read more about my favorite Washington swimming hole right here.

Kelly O

And winner of BEST SUNBURN AWARD goes to... Steve!

All photos Kelly O

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SXSW: Endurance & Reincarnation

Josh Bis — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:05:32 -0700

Stevie Nicks takes a bow

Perhaps my favorite thing that happened yesterday at South by Southwest was when Stevie Nicks spent a good five minutes just recounting, in intricate detail, the major plot points of Joe Wright's film adaptation of Anna Karenina. This was in response to a question from Ann Powers, I think, about her songwriting inspiration and process, and was only one of many fascinating digressions in an hourlong afternoon interview that included a glimpse into her entry into Fleetwood Mac, the role of women in rock music (and her general outrage at a sense of modern-day setbacks for women), and negotiating the dynamics of taking breaks from a band to pursue a solo career. Other fun facts: she really loves Beauty and the Beast both the Jean Cocteau and television version) and always wanted/wants to be a witch for Halloween.

On Being Solicited for Sex

Jen Graves — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:40:48 -0700

The other afternoon, I was in the parking lot of a boarded-up motel on Aurora at 41st taking notes about a Grrrl Army mural on prostitution ("Do what you wanna do just know that you're not...alone"). A shiny black Passat pulled into the lot and sat there. I realized the driver was waiting for me to come over.

I'm just curious. So here's a question for the non-sex workers out there: How many times has this happened to you? Has it ever flashed into your head that you could just get in the car? What crosses your mind?

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Hotel Guests in LA Brushing Teeth with Remains of Missing Tourist

Dan Savage — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:57:27 -0800

Did some bored jerk add grapefruit to your breakfast order* in the middle of the night? That sucks. But your last hotel stay could've been a whole lot worse. You could've been brushing your teeth with the slowly liquifying remains of a missing Canadian tourist:

When a maintenance worker at L.A.'s Cecil Hotel opened the hotel's rooftop water tank to investigate low water pressure, he found something unexpected: a dead body. Investigators believe the remains of Elisa Lam had been inside the tank since January 31, when the 21-year-old was last seen. As police work to determine if her death was the result of foul play or "a very, very strange accident," the LA County Department of Public Health is investigating a more urgent matter: the potentially contaminated water, which hotel residents had, for several weeks, used to bathe in and brush their teeth.

Water from that particular tank was also used in the hotel's coffee shop and restaurant. So, um, yeah. The grapefruit isn't looking so bad now, is it?

* If you've already read Jacob Tomsky's Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality, then you know how easy it is to get things you didn't order removed from your bill—and things you did order.

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How I Spent My Winter Vacation: A Few Notes on Burma/Myanmar

Brendan Kiley — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:56:33 -0800

(Note: This song by Burmese hiphop artist Snare was in heavy rotation on our trip, especially by kids playing it on acoustic guitars in groups at night—electricity can be dicey around there, and the kids seem to love to sing, even when they're just walking down the street. So it might make an appropriate soundtrack to this post.)

On Christmas night, Bethany Jean Clement and I flew from Seattle to Thailand to get ourselves organized for our trip to Myanmar/Burma—we had to get lots of crisp $100 bills for changing (no ATMs for US cards), submit a slightly doctored work history for our visa (journalists are not welcome there), adjust to the time change, etc.

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The long line for visas at the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok.

Because the country's military dictatorship has recently held elections and seems nominally interested in honoring their results (last time they had an election, many years ago, they were surprised by now many non-cronies got elected and threw the winners in jail), the National League for Democracy, the pro-reform party with Aung San Suu Kyi as its figurehead, recently called off its travel boycott to Myanmar/Burma.

We wouldn't have gone otherwise. But Suu Kyi has gone on record saying that individual travelers should go to Burma, meet the people, patronize independent businesses, and see what's going on. (Package tourists and staying in the country's few huge resorts and hotels are discouraged, since that money goes to the military cadres.)

First question: What to call the country?

When Britain conquered the area, which had been a series of competing kingdoms with different languages and ethnicities for thousands of years, they called it Burma. So Burma is the colonial name. But in the mid-20th century, the military dictatorship switched the name to Myanmar, without consulting the populace (of course). So neither name is exactly precise, but Suu Kyi and other reform-minded people tend to call the country Burma, in a slight nod against the dictatorship's arbitrary name-change, so that's what I'll call it here.

We flew into Yangon on New Year's Eve. From the roof of our hotel, we could hear some kind of concert, so we walked through the streets—sometimes lit, sometimes not, sometimes pockmarked with craters that a person could disappear into—towards the noise. Turns out, it was a giant concert: the first public New Year's celebration the government had allowed in many, many years. (In past years, we were told by locals, students used to gather at a big lake/park on NYE and the police would often show up and break up/beat up the festivities.) It was, in fact, only the second major public gathering allowed in recent history, the other being a pop-music show a few months prior.

bjc
Drunk NYE revelers play hug-the-foreigner.

People at the concert were super-drunk and super-happy—we had no idea we'd be stumbling into a national-historic event that made international news. It was sponsored, ironically, by a wine cooler company called "Spy." When I went to have my photo taken beneath one of its posters, I was joyfully tackled by some exuberant partygoers.

Being accosted by Burmese people wanting to talk became a theme of the trip. In big cities, in the countryside, in farming villages, by children, by adults, by monks—people seemed very eager to practice a little English and talk to a foreigner. It wasn't like the constant come-ons I've experienced in North Africa or other Asian countries, where most of your conversation-initiators are touts working some kind of angle. People seemed genuinely curious (and, for the kids, sometimes shyly fascinated) by outsiders.

I predict that won't last—as more tourists show up, and with them the inevitable entitled jerks, the charm and novelty will wear off. But as of January 2013, everyday Burmese citizens seem like the friendliest people in the world. Burmese folks seemed especially happy that President Obama had recently visited to endorse the military government's nods towards reform. Others speculated that it was just an economic ploy: If Burma is going to become another member of the wild, wild East, somebody's gonna get there first. Chinese industries are already heavily invested in the area, and some observers wondered whether Obama's visit was just about the Americans trying to carve out their sphere of influence.

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More kids wanting to say hello.

It's also a deeply, deeply poor country. We saw a lot of agriculture—mostly rice and the bamboo that rural folks use to weave into their walls and roofs—but very few farm machines. It was just people, oxen, and water buffalo sweating it out in the sun with pre-industrial tools. In fact, most of the tractor-like engines we saw were used to power delivery trucks.

bjc
Tractor truck.

As one of our taxi drivers put it, "My country used to one of the richest in Asia" (which was true at one point, as it has massive natural resources), "but it is now one of the poorest." He said he was trained as a geologist but was now driving cab in Yangon because it paid better. He'd like to get back into geology, he said, but he couldn't support himself on that salary.

But you wouldn't know the poverty by the country's temples, which are often covered in gold leaf and serve as places for worship, commerce, and general meeting. They also are a stage for some political theater. Many of the temples have different displays for paying obeisance to one's astrological sign, depending on which day of the week you were born. At the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon—an enormous, technicolor explosion of hues and activity and light—the military government installed a conspicuous closed-circuit camera at the astrology-shrine that marks Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday.

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Shwedagon Pagoda

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Shwedagon Pagoda

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Shwedagon Pagoda

Even though the reforms look like they might have some real steam, the challenges are immense. We visited a monastery school—an alternative education system to the military government's heavily politicized, rote-learning "public" school systems, which are actually prohibitively expensive for poor folks because of all the fees for books, registrations, etc., etc.

Some monastery schools are trying to teach "critical thinking," a term the teacher-monks we talked with used in italics in their voices. The idea of encouraging students to ask questions, to absorb lots of information and then come to independent conclusions, is still an exotic idea to many educators there. Because of the historic respect for monks, the clergy has been the only reliable form of civil society, and some of the monasteries are trying their hardest to set up good schools near squatters' villages (one we visited, accompanied by some monks) and pay for themselves however they could—growing mushrooms to sell, making plastic bowls, and soliciting donations.

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Kids getting out of monastery-school class.

(If you're interested in US-based nonprofits working with education reform in Burma, check out Banyan Tree Reading Center and Educational Empowerment.)

But the headmaster monk, an old man who had not much education in his own life beyond Buddhist seminary school, yet was doing this work because he wanted the shantytown kids to have more opportunities than he did, was very clear about the dangers of relying too much on foreign influence. "Foreign donations are very important, but we must," he said (I'm paraphrasing), "not lose our own identities and our own community's way of doing things." All the education-reformers we talked to were acutely aware of the delicacy of their situation—if the military government lives up to its promises of reform, they are on the cusp of real, new nation-building. And if they get it wrong, it could have bad consequences for generations to come.

Some rambunctious kids on the beach of a fishing village on the west coast.

As we left the school, one of the monks—the new school librarian—was eager to show us something. He's also a traditional folk healer and fetched us a jar of pickled cobras, vipers, scorpions, and other venomous beasts that he mixes with alcohol and herbs to make medicine. We asked how he got the poisonous animals (none of them seemed beheaded or shot or damaged in any way) and the monk said he just found them around the monastery. Then he showed us some tattoos on his hands that, he said through the education-reform man who was translating, gave him a magic power to "kill" poisonous things. He said using it every day had cured him of two strokes. He rubbed some of his literal snake oil on our hands—it smelled great, like menthol and cedar wood chips—and wished us good health.

The rest of our trip was stroke-free.

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The librarian/folk healer.

There's much more to tell—about American micro-finance people helping young people set up bike-rental businesses, about ghost stories and abandoned temples, about me getting stranded in an arid plateau with a faulty bike lock and pleading with two very happy monks living in a two-man monastery to not try and fix it by smashing the lock to smithereens with a stone. ("Buddhist monks very helpful!" one of them chortled.) But I'll just include a few more photos and call it good.

A woven bamboo house with a first-floor bodega/shop.

Soon we'll get back to our regularly scheduled coverage of grand jury resistors, drug prohibition, and local theater. It was good to go, but it's good to be back.

Oh! One more thing: Perhaps the strangest thing I've ever seen on a stage, besides a man being sodomized with a 12-foot pole in Texas. Dig if you will, the picture: a nightclub in Bangkok designed as a German/Bavarian brewpub. It's a restaurant with a Vegas-style floor show—acrobats, singers, etc. The live band begins with a flourish that sounds Egyptian. A bunch of Thai performers come onstage in spangly, ancient Egyptian/pharaoh costumes.

Then they perform a very earnest, long version of "Hava Nagila." The cascade of cultural ruptures—Thai people dressed as ancient Egyptian slaveowners singing a Jewish folk classic in a Bavarian-styled brew hall???—was mind-bending.

bjc
I wish we had this game—a cross between shuffleboard and snooker—in the US.

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Did I mention the beaches on the west coast?

Houses along a canal.

bjc
Temple ruins in the north.

Another temple with more bats and birds than people.

In short, Burma/Myanmar is going to be a country to watch—it's facing enormous difficulties but has enormous potential. And it might be beginning the process of real, local nation-building. Whereas Iraq and Afghanistan have been a rocky and violent examples of forced national-building from the outside, Burma looks like it's poised to begin the process from within. (Though who knows what the military government will do six months from now, not to mention a year—there's still civil war and ethnic strife in the north, still lots of nervousness about how the government and civil society will interact in the whole of the country, etc.)

But ten years from now, as people look back on the nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan (that is coming, or failing to come, from the barrel of a gun) and the nation-building in Burma (that is slowly, tentatively growing from within), I'm guessing we'll have some deep and painful lessons to learn from both.

anonymous
We don't have a real digital camera, only disposable Kodak ones. I gave mine to one kid in a village and told him to take a picture of whatever he wanted. This was the result—the street in front of his house.

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Poja Watch

Grant Brissey — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:19:48 -0800

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Five Things You Should Know Before You Travel to Peru

Paul Constant — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:55:06 -0800

I spent the last two weeks in Peru for Christmas break. I'm not going to bore you to death with a slideshow or a blow-by-blow account of what I did, but I do want to make a couple of recommendations.

* If you've ever wanted to take a trip to South America, I highly recommend the Inca Trail hike to Machu Picchu. I was part of a group doing the standard hike—four days, three nights—and it kicked my ass, but I was glad I did it by the end of the trail. The tour group I traveled with was named Enigma, and I did the Classic Inca Trail package. It takes you along a trail of mostly stone steps to saddlebacks that are higher than Mount Rainier and swiftly descending staircases of 3000 steps that the guides refer to as the gringo killer. The landscapes varied tremendously over the three days, from gently rolling hills to scrubby mountain trails to lush jungle. (This hike was decidedly not roughing it; Enigma provided a team of porters who did the cooking, carried the equipment, and set up and took down the tents. Peru started cracking down on Inca Trail tourism around the turn of the century; you're required to have guides, and there are even laws insisting that the tour groups provide camping tables and chairs for their customers along the way. I think these laws are more for the good of the trail than the tourists; apparently, tourists just used to trash the trail when they were left to their own devices.) Machu Picchu itself was incredible and mysterious and weird and totally worth it. My group was there during the rainy season and so there were fewer tourist groups funneling through the city; my guide said that the crowds are so thick in July and August that you can barely move.

* If you're hiking the Inca Trail, or if you're even going to Cuzco, you'll want to take something to fight altitude sickness. I took Diamox the whole way through, but even then you'll want lots of coca tea and coca leaves for chewing; the high you get from coca leaves is not unlike a caffeine high, but it helps the oxygen circulate in a way that Diamox can't. (Coca leaf hard candy is a surprisingly good delivery system, too.)

* A person I know, who heard I was going to Peru for Christmas, informed me that she had been to Peru and her entire story was summed up in one sentence: "It's really dirty there."

Uh. Yeah. Lima has some pretty dirty parts. The beaches are unclean, and the sky is thick with pollution. But if you're the kind of person who sums up a whole travel experience by saying "it's really dirty there," you probably shouldn't be traveling anywhere that requires you to get shots first. Lima is a huge city, and some of the people who live there are very rich. Others are very, very poor. I saw some poverty on this trip that will rattle around in my head forever. I hope that the experience makes me a more responsible global citizen. If you're not willing to see poor people, stick to Disneyland.

* No, I didn't eat guinea pig or llama. And when I went to Iceland, I didn't eat the fermented shark, either. I'm all for eating local food, but at some point, you're just trying to be a low-rent Anthony Bourdain.

* Everything you've ever heard about South American drivers is true. Every time I got out of a taxi with all my limbs intact, I wanted to kiss the ground. I promise to not complain about Seattle drivers all winter long.

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Cockfighting: It's Kind of Like Soccer, But Bloodier

Christopher Frizzelle — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:29:26 -0800

WESLEY ALLSBROOK

Grant Cogswell's essay in this week's paper—about watching cockfights in Mexico in the middle of winter—begins:

My first night on the Oaxaca coast, the roosters kept me up till dawn. It is an urban myth—literally—of cartoons, cereal box packaging, and Dracula movies, that the male gallus gallus greets the sun with a sudden, singular cry. Truth is, they cry all the time. At midnight in Oaxaca in January, it is a wet 80 degrees. It is never cold here. The state of Oaxaca is where Mexico's belly sticks out into the Pacific, catching the deep, clean flow of open sea. You have never seen so many animals, so many fish. And this being Mexico, the nights are a storm of noise—the Catholic imperfectability of the world meaning no one ever yells to any person or animal to shut up. After midnight on the coast road southeast of Puerto Escondido, you can track the last lone pedestrians by the dogs going off like sensors and the roosters following, their humanlike screams propelled by their own tyrannical sperm count as if avatars through which the hard-ons in the boys' and bachelors' beds of Oaxaca were let sing. That sounds grandiose, but that's what I kept thinking about that winter, how the roosters' animal response vented what humans instead hold close or cook inside our minds into disorders that last long past when the people causing them are dead.

Keep reading >>

Meanwhile at QFC

Christopher Frizzelle — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:10:44 -0800

C.F.

If what you need is a gigantic chocolate chip cookie trimmed with frosting and frosting-flowers and frosting-cornucopias and covered in autumnal sprinkles, they have that.

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More on Why China Terrifies Us

Bethany Jean Clement — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:17:30 -0800

Charles slogged earlier about China's plans to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in just three months...

You should read this terrifying article.

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"Is a Frog's Ass Waterproof?"

Bethany Jean Clement — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:48:14 -0800

Inspired by Leslie Dean.

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"JUST GIVE ME MY STUFF BACK! THIS IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST"

Grant Brissey — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:21:28 -0800

Just give him his stuff back already.

me
click to read

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What Songs Make You Think Of Storms?

Kelly O — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:53:18 -0700

Weigh in. Also, get home safe Megan Seling!

What Is Going On In This Photo?

Kelly O — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:05:55 -0700

Tis' the season [but in downtown Vegas, you don't need a reason]. Click!

Kelly O

Caption This Photo!

Grant Brissey — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:36:50 -0700

Photo by Jason Lajeunesse

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New York City Shows Us How It's Done

Dan Savage — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:20:11 -0700

Sidewalk, curb, bike path, parking, traffic.

Of course we could never do this in Seattle. Because nothing that works anywhere else—even things that work everywhere else—works in Seattle. Our streets are too narrow (all of them), our hills are too steep (every street in Seattle goes oneway uphill), our weather is too rainy (except for the last six months), our cyclists are too crazy (totally crazy! totally crazy!), our drivers are too entitled (war on cars! war on cars!), etc., etc. Let's list all the reasons something like this couldn't work in Seattle—not even on wide streets, not even on flat streets—in the comments thread.

UPDATE: Whoops. I seem to have violated—brutally violated—Slog silence. In my defense, um, I'm in New York City and it's 1:30 PM here.

UPDATE 2: As Dominic wrote on Slog back in April, this is the kind of shit that ruined Paris.

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Find Nahla the Non-Spayed Diabetic Australian Shepherd/Husky Mix!

Grant Brissey — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:42:23 -0700

Click to read if your screen is big enough.

LOOK HOW GODDAMN CUTE THIS DOG IS. Nahla has been missing since September 27. She is a diabetic. She needs meds and special food. Yes, her owner chose not to spay her, which is stupid, and may or may not have left her tied up outside a bar at 45th and Latona. Sure, her owner also evidently has some spelling and penmanship issues, but don't be a jerk—you don't know all the details. One time during a party at our house on Capitol Hill, my dog Otto escaped. I spent all night looking for him. The next morning, I found him down the street with a bunch of meth heads who were using a belt for a leash, feeding him Keebler Elves cookies, and trying to hot-wire a 1980s Ford Mustang. I bought him back for $11. IT WAS A BARGAIN.

Full text after the jump.

NAHLA IS DIABETIC NEEDS DAILY MEDS and SPECIAL DOG FOOD
MISSING DOG REWARD!!!!!!!!
3-year Australian Shepherd/Husky mix named Nahla. Not spayed. Brown leather collar with red tag. Approx. 50 lb. Mix COLOR: Brown/grey/white
- Last seen on Sept 27 around 9pm at 45th Ave NE and Latona outside Kate's Pub
- PLEASE contact Mary at 719-216-3434 with ANY information or leads. Thank you.
More info: 1 missingalert.blogspot.com
OR Wally Pets: 206-547-0301

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I Love Sureshot in the U-District

Dominic Holden — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:20:29 -0700

The coffee here is pretty much the best, and their punk rock thing reminds me of the Black Cat, Puss-Puss, the Globe, and other much-missed Seattle dives. Right now, I'm loving my temporary afternoon desk:

There are a couple of "playing hints" printed on the table for folks who want to spend a quarter on Burger Time: "Passing over ice cream, tea, and fries gives additional pepper," and, "Drop burger part on enemy and squash him." Good to know.

Sureshot rocks and it's at: 4505 University Way NE.

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As Seen in Springfield, Oregon

Dominic Holden — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:45:23 -0700

These folks were hanging out in front of the Albertsons in Springfield over the weekend, and lots of drivers were smiling and waving at them:

I'd love to see Oregon's Coat Hanger Army come to Seattle.

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Walking in Los Angeles

Dan Savage — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:15:02 -0700

Walked past this sign first and didn't think much of it. Then I walked past this one...

...and I thought, um, no. That's not okay. Apparently there's a John Lennon version too. Which is also not okay.

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The Column In Question

Dan Savage — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:58:53 -0700

Here's one of the questions that was submitted to me by an audience member at my "Savage Love Live" Q&A appearance last week at the University of North Carolina at Asheville:

I read the question but wasn't able to answer it. Because I couldn't recall ever telling a reader who claimed that she was raped that she hadn't been raped. So I invited the person who asked the question to email a link to the column she was referring to and I promised to answer her question on Slog. And away we go:

Dear Dan: Here it is. I can't believe you don't remember this. I think it speaks to your character. Especially when you told us tonight that you don't know your own flaws. For all the good that you do, sometimes you really suck as a human being. Have a lovely night,

Lauren

P.S. People ask questions to you like tonight in an anonymous setting because they know that you just brush off any criticism. Being witty doesn't give you "A Get Out of Being a Human Being" card either.

My response to Lauren after the jump...

··························

Dear Lauren,

The question you submitted last night reads: "Regarding your column where you told a reader who claimed she was raped she might the lying… would you like to formally apologize? Have you already?"

I didn't tell the woman whose question I answered in the column you cite that she wasn't raped. Indeed, I told her that I hoped she had gone to the police and I urged her to press charges against the man who sexually assaulted her. Did you read the column? The fact that I didn't say what you claimed I said may be why this particular column, out of the thousands of columns I've written over the years, didn't spring immediately to mind when I read your question. (Also: the LW didn't use the term "rape" in her question, either, and the term "rape" doesn't appear anywhere in my response—but that's hairsplitting.)

In answer your question: No, I haven't apologized for that column and I'm not going to now. I stand by my advice to the LW. I may have been a little too blunt—perhaps I shouldn't have told the LW she was being a total shit—but I thought she was being selfish and cruel to her husband and I was trying to get through to her in my response. Rereading the column now I think the "selfish shit" line should've been cut—I should've pulled that particular punch—but I stand by the advice I gave the LW then and I stand by it now.

And I did not tell her that she was lying about being raped. Where on earth did you get that? "Reading comprehension fail," as the kids say.

I'm sincerely curious what would you would have advised the LW to do. I thought what she was doing was cruel and shitty, obviously, as that's what I wrote; and I thought she needed counseling, which I urged her to get. (And, again, I urged her to press charges—and why would I do that if I thought she was lying about being raped?) What advice would you have given her? Besides not writing to me and asking for mine, of course.

And the fact that LW did write to me and did ask for my advice is material. Remember, Lauren: it's advice, not binding arbitration. This LW, like all LWers, is free to disregard my advice. But, yes, I was blunt. Typically blunt. I'm always blunt. And people who write to me seeking my advice… well, they're reading the column, Lauren, otherwise they wouldn't know to write me and ask for my advice, right? And they know I'm blunt. They want me to be blunt. They're seeking bluntness. Also, there's always a lively debate about my advice—with people offering differing views, second opinions, referrals and research—in the comment threads attached to each of my columns. So every LW, including the one whose letter you cite, gets second, third, fourth, and many more opinions.

Finally, Lauren, if you knew this was the question you were asking about last night—if this was the exchange that you were so angry about—why would you misrepresent it the way you did? I'd love to know what you were thinking. Otherwise i'll have to conclude that you were being intentionally dishonest, misleading, and manipulative, and you baiting me in what was, judging from the response I got at UNCA, a failed effort to turn the crowd against me.

Best,

Dan

P.S. I was kidding about not remembering my flaws. I didn't rattle any off, true, but I was making a joke at my own expense. Rest assured: I'm aware of my flaws. Acutely aware of them. Most days they're pretty much all I think about.

··························

I appreciate the timely reply, thanks.

I know you weren't accusing her of lying, I just took the opportunity to send you this as well because it REALLY bothered me. I assumed you wouldn't open it unless I put some sort of catchy title. That's my fault. Sorry for being a little bit of an ass. It happens a lot. Re: this column...

I guess we have totally different attitudes toward processing things. I do find you funny and I didn't come just to heckle last night. That column is just a sore spot for me. I still think its damaging to someone who was sexually assaulted to call them a piece of shit especially when people who are survivors act irrationally to a lot of stuff. It isn't a good feeling to be in that place of distrust. There are always other things that may have influenced her irrationality, but it's not productive to kick someone when they're down. She does need therapy—I'm not referring to that—I'm referring to the fact that you accuse her of trying to get out of a relationship and not loving her husband. That's not cool to me. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't, but I feel that since she took the time to write and does seem concerned she still has an attachment. She does say that it hurts her, iirc. Have a nice weekend & sorry for asshattery

Lauren

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How Do You Interview a Muppet?

Bethany Jean Clement — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 08:02:29 -0700

The BBC sat down with the late, great Count von Count in December 2009... "The Count loved all numbers, but 34,969 in particular. Why?"

Thanks, Caitlin!

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Reince Priebus Is a Welfare Queen

Paul Constant — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:32:50 -0700

This infographic started making the Twitter rounds last night, and it is highly, as the kids say, relevant to my interests right now, because it's an accounting of all the money that's gone into the preparation for the Republican National Convention. Which basically means, it's all the money that the local and federal governments have spent so that Republicans can throw this party.

I dunno, this is my first convention, so maybe I'll experience some sort of an epiphany once the speeches get under way tonight, but right now, it's repulsive to me that this entire city has been temporarily disfigured, its downtown gutted, and its citizens more or less placed under martial law for a week so that cable networks can provide a few hours of video. And it's frustrating for me to realize that we're paying for this, especially when one of the major themes of the convention is lack of dependence on the government.

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Do You Know Who Pussy Riot Is? You Should.

Emily Nokes — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:19:51 -0700

Emily Nokes

Pussy Riot is an all-female feminist-punk art collective currently on trial in Russia for staging public performances in protest of their government. They are smart women. Frustrated women. And they are catalysts, reviving ideas of unapologetic feminism on a worldwide scale and proving that shit is still fucked up and there is so much work to be done. Their fight against the patriarchy is a literal one—after being arrested five months ago, three of them are now being put through a ridiculous trial, where the lines between church and state are blurred beyond recognition. Pussy Riot has no formal membership, tries to operate anonymously, and cites the riot grrrl movement as inspiration. According to a member of the collective: "We developed what they did in the 1990s, although in an absolutely different context and with an exaggerated political stance, which leads to all of our performances being illegal—we'll never gig in a club or special musical space." Now they face up to seven years in prison. I was in awe of Pussy Riot—and their focus on gender and LGBT rights and rejection of male dominance, not to mention their neon aesthetic—even before fully understanding what they were up against. In case you've just started to pay attention, here's Pussy Riot's story so far.

September 2011: Pussy Riot forms in protest of Vladimir Putin's third term as president, citing brutal corruption, poverty, and the loss of civil rights under his leadership. Putin has been either prime minister or president of Russia since 1999. To remain anonymous, Pussy Riot wear brightly colored balaclavas.

January 2012: Pussy Riot stages a performance on Red Square to a song with the lyrics "Revolt in Russia! Putin pissed himself! Revolt in Russia! We exist!"

February 21: Five members of Pussy Riot storm Moscow's main Orthodox church to perform a "punk prayer"—dancing, jumping, and shouting the chorus "Virgin Mary, become feminist/Virgin Mary, chase Putin away." Guards remove the women after less than one minute.

Greetings from Doe Bay: Photos from the 2012 Festival

Josh Bis — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:15:00 -0700

I hope it doesn't sound too cliche or dismissive to say that Doe Bay Fest isn't really about the music, but I submit as evidence that the festival's headliner was swapped out at the last minute and barely anyone thought to notice it or care. Surely part of this acceptance was that by the simple nature of their respective genres neo-soul pinch-hitters Pickwick almost certainly provided a much more upbeat and danceable mainstage finale than the previously scheduled Cave Singers. Another part seemed to be that while most everyone appeared to enjoy the string of solid, mostly thematically similar performances, the general mood felt like one of being pleased at being there: at the resort, on this particular weekend, with a thousand similarly-inclined relentlessly polite fans, for an event that very rapidly built its own mythology, in part to to its near-unattainability. And really, you'd have to be some sort of monster not to delight in a weekend on Orcas Island, let alone in near-perfect temperate summer weather on a gorgeous wooded coastal property with its own locally-sourced gourmet restaurant under clear skies in the middle of a meteor shower.