First, whoever lives in the basement apartment behind 14th E. with the monorail sign in the window? You made my morning.

Second, we have some guests coming tonight—they're only staying one night, so we're making up the bed in the extra room, and I just set some towels out for them. Now when I stay someplace for one night I typically don't shower. I'll take a shower before I leave, and I'll take one when I get home. And it's not a problem when I stay in a hotel—less mess for a grateful maid to clean up, I figure. But when I'm staying in someone's home, though, and they set out towels... I feel obligated to shower, lest they think I'm sort of non-bathing pigosaurus. I've gone so far as to run a shower, briefly, so the tub is wet, and muss up the towels, so that my hosts will think I showered, even though I didn't.

Third, everyone at Slog is aware that the New York Times profiled Seattle's Mark "Overcompensating for Something" Driscoll in today's magazine. I don't think anyone's linked it on Slog yet because no one has had a chance to read it. I'll read it at some point, post something, and in the meantime let's all keep praying for the Ted Haggard/Jimmy Swaggart/Jim Baker-crackup for which Driscoll seems predestined.

When Seattle became an island last week, the truck full of copies of The Stranger got stuck on the other side because the paper is printed in Yakima. Does this make us union-busting environmental-hate-criminals, per some comments here? Our production manager writes:

Yakima is a union press, owned by the Seattle Times and loosely affiliated with Rotary Press in Seattle, but under separate management. A few years ago we advertised for printers to submit bids to us, and went through a long process of weighing the pros and cons of each. We considered price, quality, scheduling, color capacity, paper size (some presses would have required us to change to a smaller format), geography, and management. There are not actually many presses large enough to handle our paper. Of those, some couldn't work us into their schedule with the turn-around and delivery time we needed, some lacked color, and one withdrew their bid because of moral objections. Yakima has a great press, they upgraded some of their imaging equipment to meet our quality requirements, they offered a great price, and they were willing to work with our schedule.

To those who offered to send a few bucks to defray the expense of re-printing last week, feel free. We could use a drink.

More importantly, what the hell are we going to do with all those copies of the paper when they finally get here? The best idea so far: Build a fort in Cal Anderson park. Crenellations! (And then, yes, RECYCLE THE FORT.)