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We're observing Slog silence from now until 11 a.m. while we have an editorial meeting, but look—we made an entire paper's worth of stuff for you! Here's what Birch has to say.

Somehow, a grown man who prefers to scribble his little partisan diatribes under the sobriquet "GOLDY" has fathered a child. Unlike the rest of The Stranger staff, then—take a moment to thank your lucky stars, as I do weekly, that The Stranger's staff is primarily made up of those rendered sterile through marijuana consumption and those rendered childless by choosing to take on exclusively same-sex partners—Mr. Goldstein is highly concerned with Seattle's public-school system. It should go without saying that his meager Stranger salary, which I understand is made up primarily of junk food and movie coupons, does not allow him to invest in private-school education for his daughter. And so the leading piece in this week's news section is a dull and (intentionally?) confusing article about charter schools, which I believe Mr. Goldstein stands against. The notion that anyone would accept a Stranger writer's opinions about what is best for children is completely laughable.

In the "feature" section, The Stranger continues its long obsession with Mars Hill Church, recipient of profane Stranger potshots for more than a decade now. The enterprising young pastor Mark Driscoll started with nothing but a dream and built that dream to stupendous levels, expanding his church to various Seattle neighborhoods and, more recently, to other states. Simply by preaching from the heart about the love between a man and a woman, this man has drawn more followers (and, it must be said, more financial success) than The Stranger could ever dream of achieving. The effete BRENDAN KILEY has been carefully manufacturing a take-no-prisoners, bare-knuckled Hemingway persona over the last few years. But the only shocker in Mr. Kiley's narrative is that Mars Hill expects its worshippers to adhere to a code of conduct and that they punish those who fail to meet it. This is news?

Elsewhere, quickly: VISUAL ART: Ugh. Who cares?... BOOKS: A glowing bit of a puff piece in which the writer boasts about spending a few minutes with an author whose work inspired that embarrassing Occupy fad that swept the nation for a few weeks last autumn... THEATER: Two women with no theatrical experience between them review a couple of local productions, to the great joy of... let's see... absolutely no one... CHOW: The mediocre mind behind the aforementioned puff piece churns out a nostalgia-soaked paean to the bad old days of the 1990s. You're showing your advancing age, Mr. Mudede... MUSIC: The decline of the McGinn administration continues with an edict that rock-and-roll musicians play a concert at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The Stranger, as has become its custom with McGinnish matters, is torn between mocking the obvious stupidity of the idea and cheerleading for its good buddy Mike. The resulting tripe is basically unreadable.