Washington State is, to put it prosaically, a mess. Unemployment hovers at an unsustainable 8.7 percent; the real estate market continues to lie bloodied in the gutter; and the commutes of American citizens are being held hostage for an outrageous sum if they dare to navigate the SR 520 bridge, with exorbitant bills sent to their domiciles as though they were victims of some kind of elaborate kidnapping scam. With 10 full months between now and the election of Robert McKenna as the governor of the state of Washington, we need to begin addressing these problems without the help of government. It is time for the fourth estate to come to the rescue of a desperate populace by delineating the problems we face as a society and by publishing the strategies of captains of industry to set this capsized frigate right again. This is an opportunity for Seattle's media to shine.

So, naturally, The Stranger concerns itself with whether a handful of fancy lads can legally marry each other. ELI SANDERS launches the fusillade, penning a turgid ode to the intricacies of the legislative process replete with profiles of minor state legislators. He even proposes that Stranger readers harass these legislative nobodies to enforce the "right" of same-sex marriage. While this level of research shows an admirable effort from the famously lazy Mr. Sanders—perhaps an unpaid intern did the heavy lifting for him?—it is bountifully unclear why he bothered. Even if it were to pass, this inane bit of legislation would be shot down by the voting public lickety-split, meaning that Mr. Sanders has embarked on a fool's errand, which perhaps we should consider officially redubbing a Stranger errand.

Turning away from insults against matrimonial normalcy, we are confronted by BRENDAN KILEY fawning over a Lebanese "performance artist" who does not, in fact, perform anything. While for once in his misbegotten career, Mr. Kiley has removed his theater coverage from Capitol Hill, he appears here to be idolizing a man for his origins rather than for the quality of his work. This amounts, then, to a typical fit of xenophilia from a so-called newspaper that, in truth, esteems only its own two-block radius, with its incumbent homosexual/orgiastic causes, and things dramatically, titillatingly foreign—see also, in this very issue, JEN GRAVES's overexcited babble about a new "world" art gallery, whatever that means, and a likewise exotic photographer. It must be exhausting to harbor such fetishes.

Elsewhere, quickly: VISUAL ART: incomprehensible meandering on whether photographs should be staged or not, without even the barest consideration of the far more pressing question of whether photography should be considered art at all... BOOKS: a mash note to a disgusting little book written by a disgusting little man... CHOW: inexplicable praise for what even the authoress must (barely literately) call "just kind of a place"... MUSIC: much "oh-look-I-know-a-'cool'-person-and-that-must-mean-I-am-a-'cool'-person" wankery... and, horrifyingly, more. Exhausting, indeed.