Courtesy of Slog tipper Matt…

…for watching porn in a dark room with a bunch of strangers.

We’ve gotten a few letters like this…

I can’t make it to a HUMP screening this weekend. No tickets, no desire to stand in line. I would like to purchase a DVD but can find no information about doing so on your website.

And this…

Can copies of your short films be purchased?

People make and submit films to HUMP! We make one master copy and one back up copy of the films chosen to be shown during the festival—Seattle’s oldest, largest, and only amateur porn festival!—and return all original copies to the filmmakers. We police screenings to prevent people from using recording devices. (We’ve never had a problem, but just to be on the safe side.) After the last screening we destroy our two copies on stage in front of the final audience. We don’t keep copies of the films, we don’t sell copies of the films. HUMP! allows people to be porn stars for a weekend not for life.

So, no, we can’t sell you a DVD of HUMP! 4. If you don’t make it to a screening of this year’s HUMP!, you miss this year’s HUMP! These people lined up for the 4 PM screening are going to see HUMP!…

And there are three more screenings today—at 6 PM, 8 PM, and 10 PM—and some rush seats may be available. But the only way to see the films in HUMP! 4 is to get your butt down to On the Boards for HUMP! 4!

Pretty brilliant…

From The National Review, we have the Republican version of “I’m moving to Canada if their side wins”:

Canada or Galt’s Gulch? [Lisa Schiffren]

So, what happens if McCain really does pull it out and win? After the urban riots, might this be the year that all those libs with Bush derangement syndrome actually make good on their threat to leave the country? What if Canada had a special policy to lure them in? (Win-win-win situation —them/us/Canada )

…

Of course conservatives don’t threaten to leave the U.S. as a rule. However, on more or less the same subject, I haven’t heard so much about John Galt since …well, ever. (And objectivists were thick on the ground in D.C. during the Reagan administration.) I suppose, with all the projections of the Obama administration and its confiscatory tax rates on people and businesses, subordination of the productive to the dependent, public schools turned into training camps for radicals and legions of speech/thought police — i.e. — the end of liberty as we knew it — it might be time to start thinking about the mechanics of Galt’s Gulch. Actually, this is probably a great time to buy property in the Rockies. Love to see the video for that…

10/24 08:27 PM

For those of you who are unaware, Galt’s Gulch is where all the world’s libertarian intellectuals flee to in the novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. In the novel, the resulting lack of intellectuals and competent businessmen causes the rest of the world to nearly die in an apocalypse of mediocrity. I’m willing to take the gamble that it’s not going to work out that way in the real world, and I implore the conservatives to move to the Rockies and start working on their conservatopia. I’ll even donate to a fund in their honor.

“I was at Gregoire’s fundraiser [with Al Gore] yesterday and they played a sweet video about her accomplishments,” writes Slog tipper Pam. “It’s online now at YouTube. They should put that shit on TV.”

Slog ain’t TV, but it’ll have to do…

Via BBC.

Two large Japanese food manufacturers have found insecticide in their instant noodles, triggering a food scare.

First, Nissin - which invented the instant noodle - recalled 500,000 pots after a woman became ill. She had eaten from a cup containing insect repellent.

Now another Japanese food giant, Myojo, says it too has found the same substance in two of its own pots.

That’s bad timing—a ramen panic just as global markets are “diving,” “plummeting,” and having a “meltdown.”

Instant ramen was invented for economic depressions—during the food shortages after WWII, Nissin founder Momofuku Ando saw people lining up to buy bowls of soup from black-market street stalls. And voilà. He became a millionaire and dead last year of a heart attack at the age of 96. When I lived in Japan, my neighbors told me not to eat instant ramen because the flavor packet was poison that would kill all my sperm. It’s population control, they said, to get rid of the poor people.

Ramen became popular in the west during England’s economic depression in the 1970s. (In Mexico, they combine the poverty food from both hemispheres by cooking instant-ramen noodles in the orange glop you get in instant mac ‘n’ cheese.)

The first time I ever saw ramen was at my elementary school in a New Orleans. Justin Rambo—a tough-ass Cajun kid whose dad once came to class to give him a whupping after the teacher called to say he’d been acting up—would step on the plastic package to break up the noodles, then open it and pour in the flavor pack, then eat the little chunks. Soon, all the kids were eating ramen during recess.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going rogue” recently…. McCain sources point to several incidents where Palin has gone off message, and privately wonder if they were deliberate. For example: labeling robo calls “irritating,” even as the campaign was defending the use of them and telling reporters she disagreed with the campaigns controversial decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to now be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser, “she does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party.”

Seconding John Aravosis: Oh please, GOP, anoint this woman—this comically corrupt politician, this blithering idiot, this pro-life extremist—the leader of your party. Pretty please with Bristol Palin’s cherry on top?

My bus stop has a row of newspaper boxes, with the Stranger and Seattle Weekly at the end. One day I saw that someone had set a fire in the Weekly box. There was a large pile of ash in it, and its plastic window was warped and drooping. The Stranger box next to it was untouched. I mentioned this to my teenage son, and he asked the question I’d been wondering, too: “Why would someone burn the Weekly and not the Stranger?”

Franz Amador

Three hundred people lined up outside On the Boards before noon this morning for the first screening of HUMP…

It’s going to be a long day for me, Caroline, Lane, Ross, Sarah, Audrey, the Department of HUMPland Security, and the rest of the gang. We all got here at 10 this morning and we’re going to be here—taking tickets, checking IDs, counting ballots, and serving drinks—until after midnight. But, hey, you’re worth it, Seattle. You deserve the alternately sexy, hilarious, disturbing, and ennobling porn being shown at HUMP this weekend.

After reading this passage in the NY Times…

Presidential nominees typically start preparing for transitions before the election, but Mr. Obama’s plans appear more extensive than in the past and more advanced than those of Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent. Mr. McCain has also assigned confidants to prepare for a transition but instructed them to limit their activities as he tries to rescue his foundering campaign, Republicans said.

Posted by News Intern Aaron Pickus

Team Obama: Jinx?

“Refound Capitalism”: Venezuela invites world governments.

China Satellite: The Star Wars we’ve been waiting for?

Ashley “B On My Cheek” Todd: $50,000 bail.

Palin Tension: She’s now “relying on her own instincts.”

Lieberman on Palin: “Let’s hope she never has to be ready.”

Traffic Problems: McCain’s brother drops out of campaign after calling 911 to complain about traffic.

Feds Criticize I-985: Could cost state millions.

Mariners: Can Zduriencik make you care?

Alaskan Way Viaduct: Inspection declares Viaduct stable. Jonah reports on a piece getting knocked off earlier this week.

I’m putting this post up early for very selfish reasons: At 11 o’clock today, I will be at the Richard Hugo House, interviewing Matt Ruff about everything under the sun. You should throw on some clothes—you don’t even have to shower until later today; I won’t tell anyone, I promise—and come on down to the Hugo House to watch. Ruff is local, but he doesn’t make a whole lot of appearances in town. And his body of work—a multiple-personality love story, a fucked-up spy story, a sci-fi rebuttal of Atlas Shrugged—begs all kind of questions. I hope to see you there.

Later in the day, Michelle Goodman reads at Elliott Bay Book Company from My So Called Freelance Life. This means there could very well be a roomful of freelance writers, which is kind of a scary idea.

Then there are two readings by lonely ladies. Theo Pauline Nestor is at the Ballard Branch of the Seattle Public Library reading from How to Sleep Alone in a King Sized Bed, which is an allegedly humorous book about divorce. And Wendy Kays reads at Newberry Books from her book Game Widow, which is a book for women whose husbands spend too much time playing video games. Perhaps these two authors should do a tag-team reading and figure out who is worse off. I think maybe they both spend a little too much time thinking about men, for what it’s worth.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Our families…

Winning: Massachusetts initiative to decriminalize marijuana leading by 19-point margin.

Whining: Drug Czar—the one who claims he looooooves treatment—he’s campaigning against treatment in California.

Supersizing: This guy has a new anti-obesity drug.

Searching: Service rents out drug-sniffing dogs to find pot in your kid’s bedroom.

Saving: Meth head saves fellow inmates life.

Harshing: Man sentenced to three and a half years in prison for smuggling cigarettes into the UK.

Grounded: Drunk pilot arrested at Heathrow.

There are five sustained complaints in this month’s report from the Office of Professional Accountability, which handles internal investigations for the Seattle Police Department.

Three of the charges were against one officer involved in a domestic violence incident. Another was against an officer who failed to file a use of force report.

The best one (and by best I don’t mean good):

An SPD dispatcher, while off duty, apparently picked up a 16-year-old boy—who was a runaway—took him home, gave him alcohol and had sex with him.

OPA reports do not include information about employee discipline.

In this week’s paper: Jonah Spangenthal-Lee talked to a one-woman crusader against military recruiting at Seattle parks facilities; I busted a prominent Democratic consultant for doing work for Republicans on the side; Eli wrote about your election fears; and I took a closer look at the “nonpartisan research group” that’s been blasting light rail (their board is made up exclusively of—surprise!—Republicans).

On Slog:

• I did an analysis of Metro’s proposed cuts to bus service on Rainier Ave. S (which I also wrote about in detail here).

• Eli Sanders took a look at the college-degree-related accusations and counteraccusationsflying back and forth between the Burner and Reichert camps, and concluded that no one came away from the silly debate unscathed.

• Except maybe the Seattle Times, which I charged did everything it could to make Reichert look good and Burner look bad.

• I reported on the mismatched debate between Kemper Freeman and Greg Nickels over Proposition 1, the light-rail measure (and laughed at a campaign flyer that was probably only funny to me).

• Eli reported on some poll numbers that look good for Gregoire, bad for other Washington State Dems.

• Dominic Holden reported on the failure of the 37th District Democrats to endorse Prop. 1, which would fund new transit access in their district.

• I reported on some help Democratic candidate Reuven Carlyle’s been getting from two big-business organizations.

• Dominic wrote about an innovative project by the developers who did the buildings housing Cafe Presse and Osteria La Spiga.

• Jonah Spangenthal-Lee reported on the death of a concrete ramp used by skaters at the Wall of Death, an art installation on the Burke-Gilman Trail.

• Dominic got all hot and bothered about the defacing of a historic downtown building, which could be replaced by yet another tower.

• Nudity: OK indoors, not OK in the great outdoors.

• Jonah wrote about some drunk dumbasses (or dumb drunkasses?) who played golf in the street and got arrested.

• I posed the timeless question, “What the hell is wrong with South Dakota?”

When he announced his plans to deal with a projected county budget deficit of $93 million, King County Executive Ron Sims put $10.5 million of those cuts in a category he called a “lifeboat”—programs that will be cut on June 30, 2009, unless the county comes up with a new long-term, stable funding source to pay for them. The “lifeboat” programs include critical health, human-services, and public safety programs.

Although the proposed cuts to public safety have been drawing the bulk of media coverage—thanks in large part to KC Sheriff Sue Rahr’s relentless PR campaign—cuts to other county programs, including transit, health, and human services, strike at the very core of what county government is about. Food banks, aid to homebound seniors, domestic-violence services, programs to help struggling mothers, disease control, and public health centers all would be eliminated or drastically reduced.

Some of the specific cuts and changes, culled by reading the budget itself (YOU’RE WELCOME!) follow.

• Mental Health Court. King County’s mental health court has been extremely successful in getting mentally ill convicts out of jail and giving them access to treatment, job training, and other services. If permanent funding isn’t found elsewhere, Sims’s proposed budget would eliminate mental health court completely by 2011.

• Domestic Violence Programs. Sims’s budget would (again, if the “lifeboat” programs aren’t funded elsewhere) eliminate the county’s domestic violence and sexual assault prevention programs. This includes the Step-Up program for violent teens at risk of becoming violent adults and all other county domestic-violence programs.

• Drug Diversion Court. Another “lifeboat” program, drug diversion court offers nonviolent defendants the chance to go through treatment in lieu of jail. If no money is found, drug court will go away by 2010; according to a 2006 study, each graduate of drug diversion court saves the state $14,848 due to reduced prison costs.

• Cuts to Discretionary Jail Programs. In addition to public-safety cuts, the county jail will save money by cutting the number of inmates in psychiatric housing (putting them instead in “community programs”); ending funding to the Central Area Motivation Program, which provides food, emergency shelter, job training, and housing; eliminating county funding for Sound Mental Health’s prisoner re-entry program; and ending King County library services at county jails. And that’s just the immediate cuts; long-term (as in, next year), cuts could include the Community Center for Alternative Programs, which provides classes and treatment to reduce recidivism; the Helping Hands program, which hooks ex-inmates up with community service; and the Learning Center, which provides job, literacy, and life-skills programs to former inmates.

• Chemical Dependency and Detox Programs. The county’s budget could also eliminate or cut a number of programs aimed at helping former inmates with chemical-dependency problems, including chemical dependency classes for work-release inmates, housing vouchers for former inmates who get out of jail and have nowhere to go, help and supportive housing and detox case management for people who go through the county’s sobering center and detox facilities.

• The Racial Disparity Project. The executive’s budget would eliminate funding for the Defender Association’s Racial Disparity Project, which helped kill a controversial Seattle impound law that disproportionately impacted poor people and minorities.

• Public Health. Public health is one of the areas hardest hit by Sims’s budget proposal, in part because most of its programs are legally considered “discretionary.” Sims’s budget could reduce the county TB control program; eliminate a program that provides street outreach to pregnant women with substance-abuse problems; close the White Center Family Planning Clinic, which serves 2,500 clients, half of them uninsured, and eliminate family-planning services at two other public-health centers; eliminate or cut several programs that investigate communicable diseases like Hantavirus, bird flu, and hepatitis; eliminate all school-based dental health prevention programs outside Seattle; close the county’s Northshore clinic, resulting in more “unintended pregnancies, more difficult pregnancies and more babies born underweight with associated health and developmental problems,” according to the budget; eliminate visits to isolated seniors with chronic diseases in rural King County; and end vaccination services at some county health clinics, among many other cuts.

It’s far from clear, of course, whether all the budget cuts Sims has proposed will actually be implemented. King County Council member Larry Phillips, who is thinking about challenging Sims for executive, may come out with a competing budget of his own. And there remains some mystery about how the county got in this crisis in the first place; three years ago, Sims declared the “turnaround complete, [the] county transformed,” asserting that “Cost control, stable revenues and prudent management has put us on the verge of solving the structural deficit we faced these last few years.” Two years later, the county budget has ballooned from $3.35 billion to $4.9 billion—a 50 percent increase. Could that extra spending help account for why the county currently finds itself in a budget crisis?

Second, Sims’s proposal assumes county unions will make a number of large concessions, including accepting smaller cost-of-living increases than they agreed to in their contracts. So far, however, the unions have not agreed to any actual concessions, and some union members reportedly worry that reopening contract negotiations will lead to a major labor dispute.

If this report is true, then how did McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director know all the “facts” of the Ashley Todd story before they were out?

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

First, the bad news:

Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck will miss his third consecutive game, coach Mike Holmgren said on his radio show this morning on 710 AM (KIRO).

That means Seneca Wallace will start his second straight game, in San Francisco on Sunday. If Seattle loses, it will be 1-6 for the first time since 1992, a year the Seahawks finished 2-14.

I think I’ve figured out why the Hawks’ season is as fucked up as Willis McGahee’s eye:

God’s wrath.

Mack Strong already got his ass smote last season. I guess it was Hass’s (and everyone else’s) turn. This is also why Leonard Weaver never gets the damn ball.

See also: Peyton Manning.

Brady Quinn, you’re next.

God is a democrat. Fact.

A slideshow for the ages.

Tonight: Talking with Spirits with Chantelle! At the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries:

Meet one of Seattle’s most talented sensitives.

A Clairsentient all her life, Chantelle has an ability to communicate to the other side. Ask your questions about life, career and those that have passed on. Come meet what people say is Seattle’s scariest lady and see for yourself—if you dare! $5 sugg. donation

She DOES look scary! Her coffeemaker in the background: not so scary looking. The big question: Will she “disgorge a cloud of white stuff like a medium in an oldfashioned seance”???

We have more details on the MJA Building, a 1914 building on Second Avenue and Stewart Street that crews stripped of its terra cotta trim yesterday. It was defaced to erase the building’s historic status, tenants and neighbors say, thus potentially allowing the site to be developed into a tower.

The building was nominated for historic landmark status in 2004 but failed to achieve the designation after nearly half the Landmark Preservation Board missed the meeting, the Department of Neighborhoods reports. Seven votes from the 12-person board are required to designate a landmark. But only seven of the members attended, says Sarah Sodt, coordinator of the Landmarks Preservation Board. Five voted in favor of declaring it a landmark and two opposed.

Although the five absent members of the board may have also dissented against declaring the building a landmark, if they had attended the meeting and two of them voted for it, the MJA Building would have won landmark status in 2004. But Sodt says there is no requirement for the Landmark Preservation Board members to attend the meetings.

Five years are required between each landmark nomination. “When next April rolls around, someone could again nominate it,” says Sodt. “But they slipped under that five-year timeframe.” Now, the owners have removed terra cotta—the very feature that qualified it for landmark nomination the first place.

The current owners, Iowa-based Principal Global Investors Limited, purchased the building in March 2007. The company had no comment today about why it was removing the terra cotta frieze work and trim (a spokesman did promise to call back next week). But a spokesman for Collins Woerman, a local developer, said the company was hired one or two years ago to study plans for a 20-story office building on the site.

I’ll update when I hear more from the owner, and from the Department of Neighborhoods—are they doing to do anything to prevent this from happening again, like require the Landmark board to actually show up at meetings?

The Seattle Urban Golf league has apparently been dissolved and several golfers may face criminal charges after a bystander was hit with a foam golf ball during a drunken game of golf on Capitol Hill over the weekend.

Seattle Urban Golf has been around for about three years. Participants bring their own putters and swat foam golf balls through the streets in a 9-hole course, drawn with chalk. Each hole is conveniently located near a bar.

During this weekend’s event, police were called to Boylston and Pine around 8 pm after a golfer struck a bystander with a foam golf ball. The golfer has since posted a lengthy apology on Craigslist.

I was playing my way to the final hole, in the street between the BMW
dealership and the mini-mart on Boylston.

My swing was good and connected squarely with the ball, and for the first time that outing I got some decent loft - unfortunately my technique was far from perfect
and it began to hook. My ball flew over an obstacle and hit a man on a cell phone squarely in the face!

I was embarrassed, and flustered, and, since it was nearly the last
hole, I may have been a bit hasty in my reaction. I offered to pay for
any medical bills, but apparently this was taken as sarcasm.

According to Eric, one of the golfers who was arrested, at least four squad cars showed up after the man called 911, and police rounded up about 20-30 golfers.
“I was just putting my way down the sidewalk when a bunch of police cruisers swept in,” he says.

Eric—who asked that we not publish his last name—was not involved in the golf ball “assault,” but he says he was arrested for obstruction after he refused to show an officer ID—earlier today, a Tacoma judge ruled that refusing to show ID is not a crime. At the precinct, Eric says he saw two other golfers in holding cells. He was released after about two hours.

This isn’t the first time Seattle Urban Golfers have gotten in trouble. Eric says police were called to an event in Georgetown last year after someone hit a car with a golf ball.
Still, Eric says, golfers try to play safe.

“Yes people get good and drunk but there’s a pretty major emphasis on don’t jaywalk, don’t block traffic, don’t piss off the neighbors, always use foam balls and plan on having a safe ride home,” Eric says “[But] there’s a credible effort to mitigate the recipe for disaster that is 100 drunks wandering around Capitol Hill with golf clubs.”

Eric has contacted the ACLU and will be filing a complaint with SPD’s Office of Professional Accountability.

“I think [this is] a predictable lesson in what happens when you get a large group of people together to drink, swing golf clubs and walk around the neighborhood together,” Eric says.

HUMP! is one of Seattle’s largest annual arts events. Two days, eleven screenings, each and every screening sold out. Tickets being scalped on CL. Is there another arts event on this weekend that can say the same?

Obama is Osama!
Obama is Stalin!
Obama is Hitler!

From HuffPo’s also-excellent slideshow of post-debate PDA moments.

(And even gay old me must salute the awesomeness that is Michelle Obama’s butt in the second shot.)

Posted By News Intern Aaron Pickus

I came across a revealing voice-mail message while investigating possible party plans. If you choose (for whatever subversive reason) to call the McCain/Palin campaign headquarters in Bellevue, you will be treated to this message:

The mailbox of the person you are calling is currently full and cannot accept new messages. Please try your call again later. Thank you.

Dial tone.

Maybe it’s a measure to protect from getting torn down by Poster Giant.

Thanks for the photo, Matt Hickey.

Thank you, Slog tipper Dirty Danny.

UPDATE: Dirty Danny reports the above photo comes from this Huffington Post slideshow. Notice the various injuries of delicate Cindy. (You’re not fooling anyone, junkie bitch. Or maybe you just keep walking into doors…)

In the comments to Paul’s post about the girl who beat herself up for McCain, Slog tipper cochise. brings up a wonderful point:

Filing a false police report = Class D Felony

Class D Felony = No Vote.

lolzies!

Oh I hope this is true.

From a McCain rally today in Denver.

Thank you, Slog Tipper Rainbird.

Via

Bad news, freeballers: the Seattle Parks Department is “revising” its policy on nudity to make sure no one has to look at your junk in a public park.

Although that’s pretty much been Parks’ stance all along, there’s been a push by, well, one dude—who just so happens to be groundskeeper for Parks—to get the city to allow nudity in public parks.

On November 13th, the Parks board will meet to firm up the city’s park nudity policy but according to Seattle Parks Department spokeswoman Dewey Potter, nudity is (still) “going to be allowed indoors but not outdoors.”

Parks took another look at its policy after receiving complaints about an unauthorized naked bike ride in a Seattle park last June. Last year, a nudist group also made several requests to rent an outdoor parks facility, all of which were denied.

Potter says that after examining the state’s indecent exposure laws and looking at other cities policies, the Parks department will allow groups to rent indoor parks facilities for nekkid parties but cannot rent outdoor facilities like Colman Pool to “keep nudity from disrupting enjoyment of parks by the general public.”

Never fear, pantsless parkgoers. While you may not be able to have an officially sanctioned event in a Seattle park, you can always have a spontaneous, unapproved event. “We’ve never permitted [a nude event],” Potter says, “but they take place all the time.”

hey dan your a big cocksucking queer, roughly how many dicks have you had stuffed up your asshole????

italiandon

I get fewer letters like this than readers might expect. But I get enough of ‘em that one deserves, at some point, to be the SLLOTD. Congrats, italiandon!

Now I’d like to draw the attention of less hateful readers to the jealousy that seethes just beneath the surface of italiandon’s note. Most straight boys admire men who have a lot of sex partners; men that get a lot of ass are players and studs. But straight men, being men, intuitively realize that it’s much, much easier to rack up large numbers of sex partners—sometimes ridiculously large numbers, health-imperiling numbers—if you sleep with men. Convincing the average male—straight or gay—to have a one night stand or NSA sex or an anonymous encounter is infinitely easier than convincing the average straight woman to do the same. (This is one reason—one legit reason—why we should admire the hugely promiscuous straight guy: he’s achieved something, he’s triumphing over the long odds, etc.)

But some straight guys who don’t get laid much—pathetic wannabe studs like italiandon—are swamped by feelings of insecurity and inadequacy when they ponder the fact that there are huge numbers of gay men out there having way more sex than they ever will. But they can’t let themselves admire homos, of course, because we’re homos, you see, and homos are contemptible. So they accuse us all—every last one of us—of being cocksuckers and assstuffees. Since the thought of sucking dick, as opposed to getting your dick sucked, or having your ass fucked, as opposed to fucking (lady) ass, repulses the average straight boy, convincing themselves that gay men only get to do these two things that repulse them—suck cock, get fucked—it suddenly doesn’t matter how much we get laid. All the sex we’re having is gross, it’s all sex that italiandon here would take a pass on, so having lots of it doesn’t make you a stud. It makes you a cocksucking queer.

But riddle me this, italiandon: If all gay men suck cock and get fucked… gee, whose cocks are we sucking and who’s stuffing sicks up our assholes?

The gay male top—the gay suckee, the gay fucker—doesn’t exist, that man has to be wished away. Because italiandon, despite his homophobia, might be jealous of that guy. Hell, he might want to be that guy.

For the folks who saw yesterday’s pets in costumes and said more more more:

And a bonus pic for fans of the cute.

(Thanks again, Slog Tipper Grace.)

Near the intersection of Broadway and Madison:

Women who don’t like Palin are just jealous because they want severely disabled babies of their own.

German glitch-rock band The Notwist has made Nintendo Wii remotes part of their on-stage rig for their American tour, which stopped at Neumo’s last night. I compare that to the crap that is Wii Music in my Line Out concert review.

You can tell they’re German because they spell it komputer:

While the city considers ways to preserve the historic buildings in the Pike-Pine neighborhood, current rules promote knocking those buildings down and holding back developers from restoring them.

But Scott Shapiro and Liz Dunn aren’t waiting for the city to act. Over the past few years, the developers have gutted drab warehouses on 12th Avenue and renovated them into neighborhood icons. Café Press, Osteria La Spiga, Retrofit Home, and others are in their portfolio. Now they’ve set their sites down the barrel of Pike-Pine.

Two adjacent warehouses on Melrose Avenue lay low, an unmemorable olive green. But in February, Shapiro and Dunn will begin renovating them into restaurants and stores—injecting life into a historically dead wedge of the neighborhood.

“It’s a serious investment, but it’s worth it for us,” says Shapiro. “As long-term local owners, we believe we are creating something unique to a neighborhood that values creative and unusual spaces.”

These sorts of projects are labors of sacrifice. Choosing to limit a building to one or two stories represents potentially passing on millions of dollars in revenue because zoning rules through most of the Pike-Pine neighborhood allow developers to build up to 65 feet. Moreover, renovating these spaces—sandblasting the massive fir beams and bringing century-old buildings up to modern standards for retail spaces—costs even more.

“Some other developers are tearing down buildings that housed some really great places that people on Capitol Hill and the rest of Seattle value,” says Shapiro.

But existing city regulations work at odds this sort of renovation and restoration. Shapiro says the code requires many upgrades that may be unnecessary, such as throwing out old windows and purchasing new ones. While the new materials are more energy efficient, discarding the old material in a landfill and manufacturing new material is a net environmental and financial burden, he says. “That makes a new development cheaper because a developer doesn’t have to deal with the hassle and cost of the restrictive land-use code,” he says. “It would be great if there were more flexibility to allow a building to keep its existing character.”

But High School Musical 3: Senior Year opens today. I saw it on Wednesday (review forthcoming).

But while it is bigger and shinier and makes exactly the same amount of sense as HSM1 and HSM2 (that is to say, NONE SENSE), nothing in HSM3:SY comes close to surpassing this:

Which, obviously, remains one of the most perfectly entertaining pieces of entertainment ever created. FUCK I COULD WATCH THAT FOREVER.

The cafe is temporarily closed, to reopen with Murphy—she of raising pigs to kill and eat them (and blog about it), and the mastermind of not only Brasa but Burning Beast—managing. The food at the cafe has been pretty atrocious for a long time, so this is brilliant.

^{From Burning Beast: Matt Dillon (of Sitka and Spruce/The Corson Building) sewed two small goats into conjoined twins and stuffed the cavity with more meat.}

P.S. Feeling poor? Brasa’s happy hour rules.

There’s no better feeling than getting WHAT done?

^{Happy HUMP!-ing Seattle!}

…is Charles Fried, one of John McCain’s advisers, who has already voted for Obama. He claims the Palin choice was the biggest factor in his defection. This man is a major conservative thinker and he used to be a rabid McCain supporter.

Slog tipper Maggie informs us that Sherman Alexie will be the guest on the Colbert Report next Tuesday, November 28th. I can’t wait.

Here’s what I was alluding to earlier: in day three of what some are calling “Resume-gate,” the campaign of Darcy Burner has turned up a transcript from a Congressional hearing that shows Republican Congressman Dave Reichert failing to correct a fellow congressman who introduced Reichert, on April 10 of this year, at a meeting of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrrorism, and Homeland Security, as a man with “a bachelor’s degree from Concordia Lutheran College.” (In fact, Reichert only has an A.A.)

Our second witness will be the gentleman from Washington, Congressman David Reichert, who currently is in his second term in Congress. In addition to his notable work on the Green River task force, he has over 35 years of public service to the people of Washington. He has a bachelor’s degree from Concordia Lutheran College…

Part of this somewhat comical (and completely exhaustive) hunt for proof of resume-inflating is about each candidate being seen by his or her base a bare-knuckled brawler. And, you know, Burner’s base is definitely going to be pleased by the unearthing of this statement from a long-forgotten committee meeting that otherwise would never have been heard about again. It shows Burner can take an oppo-research hit, and give an oppo-research hit right back.

The band plays the Showbox at the Market Thursday, October 30th. Head over to Line Out to find out how you can go for free.

When we read a report like this…

BACKGROUND: Plants seem like the most peaceful of organisms, but they nonetheless have their own form of defense mechanisms: they emit toxins or volatile chemicals in response to plant-eating insects…

THE BEST DEFENSE: Proteins already present in the plants are eaten by the attacking insects. Digesting the proteins, the insects convert this food into a new type of chemical, which is in turn secreted back onto plants in later feedings. The plants recognize these secretions as a type of ‘SOS’ signal, and launch their telltale defensive chemistry. Although researchers have long known that some plants can distinguish between different insect attackers, they had not been able to fully describe all the potential interactions…

Reading this report about the tactics of plants brings up a fragment from the depths of the Pre-Socratic world:

We must recognize that war is common and strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity.
Heraclitus

Did someone mention “your inner Beavis” a couple posts ago? Huh-huh-huh.

The presidential dance-battle I didn’t know I’d been waiting for until I saw it.

Thank you, World of Wonder, which is also hosting an exhibition of political art in its storefront gallery. Two samples: Sarah Fawcett Majors and Condoleeza Rice.

This McCain volunteer lady, who says she was beaten up and had a (backwards) “B” carved into her face by an angry black Obama supporter:

Admits she made the whole thing up:

Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.

Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.

Authorities, however, declined to release the results of that test.

Investigators did say that they received photos from the ATM machine and “the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction.”

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.

Wonkette did a fine job of keeping tabs on the story, from her degenerating truthiness to her Twittering of the assault. This is the most fucked presidential campaign in the long history of totally fucked presidential campaigns.

UPDATE: As people in the comments keep pointing out, the VP of Fox News said, before this whole story unraveled:

“If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.”

I eagerly await the McCain/Palin concession speech, later this afternoon.

This is juvenile. It’s dumb. In fact, you probably shouldn’t watch it, because, if you do, you’ll see a fart in infrared.

Can this be real? Jen Graves says it goes overboard with the “second puff.”

Thanks, tipper NaFun.

There’s a whole lot going on tonight.

Abigail Carter is up at Third Place Books. She’s the author of a book called The Alchemy of Loss, which is about her experiences as a 9/11 widow. We’ll have to see if the 9/11 Truth people decide to show up.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Michael Daley and Tim McNulty will read. Daley has just written his second poetry collection in 25 years. McNulty writes both poetry and prose.

Up at the University Book Store, Greg Melville reads from Greasy Rider, which is about his cross-country road trip in a vegetable-oil powered car. I have gotten many copies of this book, and I just can’t bring myself to care. Maybe you do. That’s why you should go to the University Book Store.

But speaking of road trips, the Hugo House is hosting an event tonight called Road Trip. I don’t think it has any relation to the surprisingly good 2001 movie of the same name, but it does have Matt Ruff, who is a Seattle-area treasure, and Aimee Bender, who is one of my all-time favorites. There is also a poet named Marie Howe, and a musician named Laurie Katherine Carlsson. I don’t know anything about them, but they could be the worst performers in the world and Bender and Ruff would still make this worth attending. All will be reading/performing new work on the theme of road trips.

Here is an interview I just recently did with Aimee Bender. A snippet:

An Invisible Sign of My Own felt different than your short stories—it felt more rooted in reality in some certain way. Did the writing of the novel affect the story that you told?

Yes—I had a more magical character who was a whittler who carved his fingers into flowers. He may end up in a short story someday but he didn’t fit the tone of the novel so I had to cut him, which was ultimately a relief. But he hung around in many drafts like a sore thumb, um, literally. I remember thinking with Invisible Sign that I wanted it all to be possible—not quite reality, but not full-blown magic either.

Check out the full interview here.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

If you, like us, are supporting the Mass Transit Now campaign, now’s your chance to do more than just vote for 36 miles of light rail and 100,000 new hours of express bus service. This weekend is full of opportunities all over the region to volunteer with the campaign.

In King County:

The campaign will be dropping literature in the Green Lake neighborhood starting at 10:00 this Saturday morning. Volunteers will meet at the Green Lake Starbucks. The campaign recommends bringing a bag for literature and comfortable shoes; the lit drop will go for about two hours.

Later that same day, from 3:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon, they’ll be handing out stickers and literature outside Husky Stadium. Meet at the bus stop in front of the UW Hospital at 3:30.

In Pierce County:

The campaign will be doing a rally in Tacoma on Saturday morning, followed by a lit drop in the 27th legislative district. The rally will feature Tacoma City Council Member (and Sound Transit Board Member) Julie Anderson and light rail supporters from the Tacoma and Pierce County Chamber of Commerce and the Tacoma Streetcar group. Rally starts at the Tacoma Dome Link Light Rail Station at 10 am; lit dropping will start right afterward and go for about two hours.

In Snohomish County:

The campaign will be passing out stickers and literature to shoppers attending Galapalooza and Skate America in Everett on Saturday afternoon. Meet at the corner of Hewitt and Broadway at 1:00 pm.

For more information on these or any other campaign volunteer opportunities, contact volunteer coordinator Rebecca Hansen here

Seattle’s biggest, best, and only amateur (and locally produced) porn festival kicks off at 4 PM today at On the Boards. All eleven screenings are are sold out, but some rush seats may be available at each screening. If you don’t have a ticket your best bet is to line up for rush seats at least a half an hour before a screening. You’ll have better luck getting rush tickets to the 4 PM or 6 PM screenings today, or to tomorrow’s noon, 2 PM, and 4 PM screenings, than you will getting rush tickets to one of the 8 or 10 PM screenings.

See you at HUMP!, lucky ticket holders!

I’m in love with this artist right now.

^{Olaf Breuning’s Why Can You Not Be Nice With Nature? (2008), mounted c-print on 6mm sintra, 60 by 75 inches; Fire (2008), mounted c-print on 6mm sintra, 60 by 75 inches; Miami Sphinx (2008), graphite on paper, 11 by 8 1/2 inches; Helicopter Hair (2008), mounted c-print on 6mm sintra, 60 by 75 inches.}

At Metro Pictures in New York. (Gallery site, with more images, here.)

A story in this morning’s Seattle Times includes new information about Republican Rep. Dave Reichert’s own exaggerations about his college degree. Seven different web sites, including Reichert’s own Congressional web page, claim Reichert graduated college with a B.A.; in fact, he graduated from a small religious junior college in Portland with a two-year associate’s degree.

So it looks like the Times is finally taking a look, however brief, at Reichert’s resume exaggerations. That’s nice of them. But it doesn’t erase the fact that the reporter, Emily Heffter, seriously fucked up in her initial story, in which she reported, erroneously, that Reichert’s opponent Darcy Burner had falsely claimed to have an economics degree from Harvard. In fact, she has a computer science degree with a concentration in economics. That’s a double major; another way to describe it would be a “computer science and economics degree.” The Times splashed the story, to which it dedicated a lavish 700 words, on its front page, under the headline “Burner Falsely Claims Economics Degree.”

Contrast that to the 400-word, web-only follow-up about Reichert, initially headlined, “Burner’s Campaign Says Web Sites Misrepresent Reichert’s Resume” but later changed to “Web Sites Misrepresent Reichert’s Resume.” In it, Heffter takes every step possible to exonerate Reichert, noting almost apologetically, “None of the Web sites with the wrong information are affiliated with Reichert’s campaign. His congressional office was taking steps to correct the errors this afternoon.”

On the Politics NW blog—the Times’ lackluster replacement for David Postman’s Postman on Politics—Heffter was even more explicitly defensive, writing, “I did find one Web site that misstates his degree. This congressional directory lists that he has a B.A. He doesn’t.” She added, “The Congressional Directory is a government site managed by the Office of History and Preservation … None of the [other five] web sites [with false claims about Reichert’s degree] are affiliated with the Reichert campaign.”

So does Heffter really believe that Reichert has no power to change his own Congressional web page (on which the other five web unaffiliated web sites based their information)? Or is she just unwilling to admit she made a huge mistake?

A recipe for boiled eggs Vladimir Nabokov wrote in 1972, after he had moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he would stay until his death.

Boil water in a saucepan (bubbles mean it is boiling!). Take two eggs (for one person) out of the refrigerator. Hold them under the hot tap water to make them ready for what awaits them.

Place each in a pan, one after the other, and let them slip soundlessly into the (boiling) water. Consult your wristwatch. Stand over them with a spoon preventing them (they are apt to roll) from knocking against the damned side of the pan.

If, however, an egg cracks in the water (now bubbling like mad) and starts to disgorge a cloud of white stuff like a medium in an oldfashioned seance, fish it out and throw it away. Take another and be more careful.

After 200 seconds have passed, or, say, 240 (taking interruptions into account), start scooping the eggs out. Place them, round end up, in two egg cups. With a small spoon tap-tap in a circle and then pry open the lid of the shell. Have some salt and buttered bread (white) ready. Eat.

Take another and be more careful!

For those who still think this race is wide open…

(CNN) — A new Republican ad appears to suggest that Barack Obama has all but won the presidential race, an argument several vulnerable Senate Republicans may have to reluctantly embrace with only days until Election Day, an expert in campaign advertising said.
Some Republicans are already planning on a Barack Obama presidency.

Some Republicans are already planning on a Barack Obama presidency.

Aimed at Kay Hagan, Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s surprisingly strong Democratic challenger in North Carolina, the 30-second spot from the National Republican Senatorial Committee warns voters against Democrats holding the White House and Congress, and flatly states that if Hagan wins, the party will “get a blank check.”

“These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis, all branches of government,” the ad’s narrator states. “No check and balances, no debate, no independence. That’s the truth behind Kay Hagan. If she wins, they get a blank check.”

How about the $22,800 makeup job? When you add that to the $150,000 shopping spree, the $21,012 worth of travel expenses Palin illegally billed to the state of Alaska, and the $17,059 Palin collected from the state of Alaska in “per diem” charges for 300 nights she actually spent in her home, Sarah Palin starts looking like one really expensive—and really corrupt—date.

But, hey, she’s opposed to socialism and welfare, according to the McCain camp’s latest attacks. Contrast that with Obama—that dude thinks the government should pay for everything.

As Towleroad reports, “Anger management issues apparently run in the family. John McCain’s brother Joe placed a call to 911 earlier this week because he was stuck in traffic in Alexandria, Virginia.”

Astounding news report, including the instigating 911 call and its bizarre follow-up calls, below.

Yes, it’s been around, you saw it two or so days ago, and so and so on. But for those who might have missed it…

The Fonz is the best part.

The critic and philosopher Steven Shaviro is often right about the causes or consequences of cultural events/emergences/happenings in the domain of postmodern/global society. Recently, however, he got something wrong:

…I don’t think the current crisis [in the markets] marks the end of neoliberalism and market fundamentalism. For the sole aim of all the government intervention that is happening now is precisely to restart (reboot) the currently clogged market.

Even the guru of neoliberalism, Alan Greenspan, is sobering up to this reality:

But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

It’s not the end of the world. It’s the end of a form of economic exploitation.

From our friends at Fox News:

Palin Look-A-Like Strippers Vie For Title

Winner Gets To Go To Washington For Inauguration

LAS VEGAS — There has been no shortage of Sarah Palin imitators since the Alaskan governor became Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential candidate.
But Thursday night brought a new twist for Palin look-a-likes.
Tina Fey is enjoying new-found celebrity status playing Palin on Saturday Night Live. What’s good for Fey is also good for dancers at Club Paradise Gentlemen’s Club.
It was uncanny how some glasses and a little bit of makeup transformed some Las Vegas dancers into Palin look-a-likes….

This is fitting. Palin’s role in the election was wrought and is propelled by sexism (see the piece in this week’s New Yorker about how she got on the national radar because a bunch of conservative magazine gentlemen visited Alaska on a cruise ship and thought she was hot). She wears red patent fuck-me spike heels. Dudes love her. Does her failure as a tactic—as a distraction, as human Viagra for the GOP—signal the failure of sexism or its success? The latter: She’s set smart AND sexy women back immeasurably by being a goddamned cartoon.

I’ll be on KUOW’s Weekday this morning, discussing local levies and who’s voting for them, bachelor degrees and who in the 8th District congressional race has mischaracterized them, the election and who might or might not steal it, plus lots of other news from this eventful week.

94.9 FM if you want to listen. Anything else we must discuss?

UPDATE: For those of you griping about my Burner-Reichert coverage in the comments… You’ll want to listen to this show. I’m running out the door to head to the studio right now, so I don’t have time now to post what I’ve just been sent about Reichert’s B.A./A.A. claims, but I’ll talk about it on Weekday. (And will post here as soon as the show’s over.)

Don’t Call It a Comeback: For the first time in 30 years, companies looking to build new nuke plants.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back to the Gas Station: OPEC may cut oil output.

But Will He Get the All-Important Weekly World News Endorsement? New York Times endorses Obama.

They Wouldn’t Be In This Mess If She’d Just Worn Animal Pelts: McCain comments on Shoppinggate, prattles on about how Palin’s clothes will be donated to charity.

This Can Only Be the Result of Abstinence Only Education: 50 students at Missouri high school may have contracted HIV.

Double Burn: Darcy Burner pushes ahead in the polls, Dave Reichert’s resume now in question.

Ballin’: City wants to divert hotel-tax money to attract a new NBA team.

Told You So: Rays tie things up, win game two of the World Series.

Watch this again. And weep.

Bonus: This one’s for you, Cookie W. Monster

We’ve got very important candy bars to cover—and costumed dogs and defaced landmarks and fallingGOPstarfuckery—but this really does deserve a mention: John McCain announced today that he will not be attending his own “victory” party on election night. Why? Space limitations, according to the McCain campaign.

Instead of appearing before a throng of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4, the Republican presidential nominee plans to deliver postelection remarks to a small group of reporters and guests on the hotel’s lawn.

Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was due to space limitations and that McCain might drop by the election watch party at some other point.

Space limitations? You mean, uh, you can’t turn away a volunteer or two to make room on the stage for the candidate? Might drop by the party? At some other point? What? The? Fuck?

Jinx Alert! Read no further if you believe that having optimistic thoughts may rain down terrible ruin on the world. Seriously, Dan, stop reading.

The latest from fivethirtyeight.com…

This is not the time when John McCain can afford a bad polling day. And yet he’s had perhaps his worst one of the year.

Here’s the fun composite of fun 538 graphs. (Now with histogram!)

3.7%!!! Suck it, McCain! Here are the rest of today’s polls.

My own personal paranoid worry focuses on that little blip in the histogram right around 280. It was taller yesterday, though, so that’s good news, and it’s still a winning number, but it’s too close for comfort.

Here’s some more inspiring photos from an Obama rally in Richmond, via John Gruber, who notes that “the people in this photo slideshow all *seem* to look like real Americans.”

I claim all credit for this.

That’s me and Scott backstage after appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher together. I asked him who he was endorsing for and he said he wouldn’t be endorsing McCain and I said that was a default Obama endorsement and he said maybe so and I said he should actually endorse Obama and he said maybe he might. Oh, Scott was coy. He didn’t say he was for Obama. But he didn’t say he was against Obama. But I just kept hammering drunkenly away at the fact that not endorsing Obama was a copout since a non-endorsement of McCain would be read as an Obama endorsement anyhow so why not just endorse Obama? I was drunk, and maybe Scott was too. And surely Scott talked about this with other people. Smarter people. Better people. Soberer people. But we talked about it—for a half an hour at least—backstage at Real Time. Maybe I don’t deserve all of the credit, but I want some.

And good for you, Scott!

Canlis got a new chef—Jason Franey, the executive sous chef from Eleven Madison Park in New York (Frank Bruni loves on that place here)—and held a press conference, with a live webcast, about it this morning. (Slog commenters were underwhelmed.)

The Virginia Inn got a new chef—Josh Green, the executive chef from Ponti—and merely emailed about it. The last time I ate at Ponti, it was not very good; however, Ponti’s lounge menu, which is more like what the V.I. serves, has always been fine. And the last time I ate at the V.I., it was pretty terrible.

This ought to work out well on both counts.

My least favorite conservative blog is Atlas Shrugs. The blogger is a batshit crazy, Muslim-hating Ayn Rand fan. So of course, because I hate myself, I read the goddamned thing every day.

She’s been pushing this bullshit Obama’s-not-an-American-citizen narrative since Obama won the nomination. Today she’s making her readers e-mail a judge who’s hearing some phony-ass case about Obama’s citizenship. And she also links to Andrew Martin’s blog post, which says “Barack Obama is not Barack Obama,” but is rather the son of someone named Frank Marshall Davis. The post continually refers to “negroes,” so you know it’s impartial and objective.

Apparently, Martin is in Hawaii to file for Obama’s “real birth records.” Hawaii is where Obama’s sick grandmother is. Martin says:

Obama suddenly announced Monday his grandmother had been gravely ill for weeks. He has his own plane. All he had to do is tell the pilot to file a flight plan for Honolulu and take off. He’s the king of his own armada.

But instead of rushing to his grandmother’s bedside, Obama is waiting until I leave Honolulu before he lands.

Ask yourself, “What would I do?” What would you do if you had your own plane and mom or dad suddenly took ill? Would you tell the pilot to set course for Hawai’i, or tell him to wait three (3!) days before coming to your relative’s bedside? How sick is she if Obama is will to delay his “emergency” for three days?

This entire episode is becoming curiouser and curiouser.

But you can’t win for losing: The Atlas Shrugs lady, of course, thinks Obama’s grandmother is a sissy for allowing Obama to visit her:

Obama dropped everything in the last two weeks of a heated Presidential campaign to visit his sick grandma in Hawaii today (any grandma worth her salt would have said, “don’t be silly, win the presidency and visit me in two weeks).

And her commenters have more to say: “Did Hitler have as much help from the news media of his day as Obama is getting from our corrupt MSM??” They also link to an essay by Orson Scott Card (who, incidentally, is a hateful homophobe, and a diehard Republican McCain supporter) that was read by Rush Limbaugh on the air today. The Card essay claims the media is “the public relations machine of the Democratic Party.”

Here is the moral of the story: There is no moral of the story, but conservative blogs are totally losing their shit.

As you read this, crews are breaking off the terra cotta trim from a 1914 building at the corner of Second Avenue and Stewart and throwing the pieces into Dumpsters. Stripping the building of its vintage details will erase the building’s historic status, tenants and neighbors say, which will potentially allow the owner to redevelop the site into a tower.

“Our guess is that it had to do with taking down what would have been the historically significant portion, which is the terra cotta,” says Joe Woods, an architect at Hummel Architects, a tenant in the building. “[The owners] would have their hands tied if the historic process got further down the line.”

The two-story MJA Building is a product of the downtown building boom of the early 1900’s, which was spurred by the Klondike Gold Rush. In 2004, a historic resources survey found that the building “appears to meet the criteria of the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Ordinance.” But for reasons that are unclear, the building didn’t become a historic landmark.

New owners, calling themselves MJA Building LLC, bought the property late last year. Under zoning rules adopted by the city council in 2006, a new building on the site could be as tall as 400 feet. Until this week, it looked like this:

But today, Slog tipper Christine alerted us to the carnage occurring under the scaffolding that wraps the building. Construction workers are “taking the terra cotta off in such a way that there will be no way to salvage the actual material,” she says. The owner “is replacing it with one of those hideous fake stucco products.” She sent this photo of how it looks today:

“We are just trashing our history when we do stuff like this,” says Jeff Hummel, owner of Hummel Architects. “These buildings are our heritage.”

The property-management company, KG Investment, sent a notice about plans for stripping the exterior to the building’s six commercial tenants two or three weeks ago, calling it a “seismic retrofit,” says Hummel.

“They have been framing this as a seismic retrofit, which is total bullshit,” says Hummel. “It is not.” If it were a retrofit, he says, the owners would also reinforce entryways, the skin of the building, and other components of the frame. Building owners could retain the historic facade and still build a tower on the site, he argues, much like the Cristalla a few blocks north.

KG Investment and MJA Building LLC have not returned calls to comment.

Cover art by Slava Mogutin

Lindy West on her first-ever HUMP!:

Although I’ve been associated with this dirty, filthy rag for a few years now, I have so far stayed away from HUMP!, the annual amateur-porn contest and jewel in The Stranger’s dirty, filthy panties. Maybe it’s because I’m admittedly skeeved out by public displays of sexuality (e.g., the time I went to the strip-club lunch buffet and then had to dry-clean my own brain), and so sitting in a room with a whole lot of clandestine man- and lady-boners watching my neighborhood barista get pleasured with the business-end of a bicycle pump didn’t exactly sound like my cup of unidentifiable fluid. But this year, as film editor, I have certain duties and responsibilities. Duties and responsibilities that involve your genitals. Hooray for us all.

Eli Sanders on Stranger readers’ election nightmares:

Will they actually let Barack Obama win? Will Diebold steal the election and give it to John McCain instead? Will martial law be declared so George Bush can be self-appointed to a third term? Will conservative thugs at polling places suppress minority turnout in the very swing states where the minority vote could really make the difference for the Democratic ticket? Is this shit I’m reading in Rolling Stone about voter-purging true? Because it’s terrifying. Hold me!

HOLD ON.

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on the one-woman crusade to keep military recruiters out of Parks Department events:

Last April, Barker, who sits on the board of Washington Truth in Recruiting, which provides students with alternatives to military recruitment, fired off a letter to the City Council and the parks department after army and navy soldiers showed up to a teen event at the Delridge Community Center in Southwest Seattle in a shiny black Hummer.

“[The parks department had] been advertising a teen-appreciation day [with] basketball, swimming, a DJ, and a barbecue,” Barker says. She says the woman who alerted her to the recruiters’ presence “pulled up with her kids and saw two guys in army fatigues in a black Hummer. She wanted them to go away and they wouldn’t.” Barker says she’s also heard of recruiters showing up to events with climbing walls and video games.

Rebecca Brown on two Hawthornes: Nathaniel, and the California suburb where Beach Boy Brian Wilson just released his tenth solo album:

In the chapter entitled “The Recognition,” Hester Prynne, condemned to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her dress, is leaving prison with her newborn love child. Someone, Hawthorne narrates, “the eldest clergyman of Boston,” calls “Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!” and exhorts her to confess, repent, and name the father of her child. This speaker is, like many characters in Hawthorne’s work, based on a real person, in this case a leading Puritan divine, John Wilson (1591–1667).

Look, I’m not saying this Wilson was an ancestor of our California-bound Wilsons. On the other hand, don’t we all believe, as our Puritan ancestors did, that if we go back far enough, we all go back to the same old Adam and Eve?

PLUS!: Megan Seling on Seattle’s best cupcakes; Sean Nelson on Mike Leigh’s new comedy; Jen Graves on surveillance-camera art; David Schmader on bad, drunk-ass puppetry; me on Democratic consultant Cathy Allen’s work for two prominent Republicans; election endorsements; and more.

This story is a couple of days old, but worth reviving—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other defense-industry heavyweights have been dumping disproportionate sums into the symphony in Johnstown, PA (pop 24,000).

Why lil’ ol’ Johnsontown? Because, the New York Times article suggests, Representative John Murtha’s wife is a major booster for that symphony and Rep Murtha (D-PA) heads a Congressional committee that “hands out lucrative defense contracts.”

“She [Ms. Murtha] just loves knowing that we have an orchestra that is the quality of a larger city orchestra,” the symphony executive director, Patricia Hofscher, said of Mrs. Murtha. “Her friends have come here and been impressed by the quality of the orchestra in a geographic and economic region that, let’s face it, are not on the beaten path.”

For the first time, corporations and their lobbyists are being required to disclose donations they make to the favorite causes of House and Senate members, and a review of thousands of pages of records shows the extent — and lavishness — of this once hidden practice.

During the first six months of 2008, lobbyists, corporations and interest groups gave approximately $13 million to charities and nonprofit organizations in honor of more than 200 members of the House and Senate. The donations came from firms with numerous interests before the Congress, such as Wal-Mart, the Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods and Pfizer, and were received by charities including prominent organizations like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, as well as local groups controlled by members of Congress or those close to them.

This kind of corporate giving is actually an investment in the business’s future profits—I wonder how the new disclosure laws, coupled with the flailing economy (and, for Seattle, Boeing’s plunging stock prices) will put the screws to Seattle arts organizations?

(Read the rest at the NYT.)

In the form of a movie trailer script for something called AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHIC: THE MOVIE:

JOE THE PLUMBER: Hello, fellow small-business owner. I’m Joe the Plumber, and I’ve successfully plumbed your bathroom. I’m relevant to national politics for some reason.

SMALL-BUSINESS OWNER: What do I owe you?

JOE THE PLUMBER: More than $250,000 a year. Despite my name and salary, I’m neither a Mafia boss nor a porn star.

(JOE THE PLUMBER exits the store and drives off in a van made of Stradivarius violins and children’s laughter. Shortly, we hear a ding as ELDERLY JEWISH VOTER enters the store.)

I just opened up this:

to find this:

WTF, Kit-Kat!? You are a chocolate candy bar. Chocolate is not orange. Let me repeat: CHOCOLATE IS NOT ORANGE. I don’t expect my mass-produced supermarket candy bars to be crafted by monks from the finest quality organic ingredients (if you’re going to make a 5-cent peanut butter cup, you’re going to have some wax shavings and asbestos in there), but come on. At least pretend like you are made of food.

Is there a Nobel prize for dressing up your pet for Halloween yet? Because whoever’s responsible for the costume above should win it.

Runners-up here, here, and here.

Thank you, Slog tipper Grace.

…endorsing Obama.

McClellan, President Bush’s former press secretary, has made this decision because he, like Powell, is black.

I wonder when McCain is going to try use these endorsements to link Obama with Bush. That will make an interesting turn in an already interesting race.
Obama is a terrorist.
Obama is an Arab.
Obama is George Bush.

Last weekend it was Joe Biden in Tacoma. A little while back it was Bill Richardson in Spokane. And tomorrow it’s Al Gore, in an event announced just today, speaking at the Seattle Sheraton as a fundraiser for Gov. Christine Gregoire.

That’s what you get when you’re in a tight race (and when the party wants you to win).

Slog tipper J. sees the hand of God in the latest poll data on Prop 8 coming out of California. FiveThirtyEight.com is tracking the poll data on Prop 8. At first the polls showed Prop 8 failing, then it pulled ahead, and now the race is tightening again. And here’s what the data looks like as a graph:

“Is it just me…” asks J., who sends along this image…

FiveThirtyEight’s Prop 8 fish reminds J. of the “fetus seen in Hurricane Katrina.” Coincidence? Or another inscrutable message from the Almighty? And if God keeps this shit up, is he in danger of losing his tax-free status?

Weird Tales, the sci-fi horror magazine, has just started posting a series of one-minute weird tales on YouTube. Here’s the first:

A fifth option, proposed by Slog tipper John: “The sudden erection John McCain gets whenever he sees a man in uniform; first noticed by McCain when he was a teenager watching old newsreels of General Omar Bradley in World War 2.”

Yesterday, the Bellevue Downtown Association—perhaps the group most closely associated with light-rail opponent Kemper Freeman, the largest landowner in downtown Bellevue and a BDA board member—voted to endorse Proposition 1, the mass-transit measure, striking a blow to its most prominent member. Freeman reportedly convinced the BDA to put the Mass Transit Now campaign through extra hoops to get its endorsement.

According to the campaign’s press release,

The BDA said Proposition 1 was a necessary step in providing near and long-term transit solutions for the fast-growing number of downtown Bellevue workers, residents, and visitors.

“Our ability to grow and thrive as an urban center is linked to accessibility,” said BDA Board Chair Jill Ostrem. “We approached this decision asking, ‘What’s best for Downtown Bellevue?’ Connecting downtown with the region through safe and reliable mass transit is essential to our community’s future success.”

This is a pretty astonishing endorsement. It shows that Freeman—a guy who, 13 years ago, declared private cars the victor in the war against transit—is out of touch with the very business establishment he helped establish. Bellevue’s moving on, and Kemper isn’t keeping up.

The Sprocket Society’s Secret Sunday Matinee, which I recommend because it’s totally fun and weird, is at a special time this Sunday: 4 pm. But in the print edition this week, I forgot to change the time. It says it’s at noon. It is not at noon!

Special time, special movie. From the Sprocket Society via e-mail:

This Sunday’s 4 PM matinee will be a great show, literally a once-in-a-lifetime screening. The Secret Feature is a spectacular 1950s Russian fantasy classic by the great director Alecsandr (Alexander) Ptushko, who lets his imagination and lush colors run riot in one of his most famous films…Extremely rare on any film stock, this particular 16mm print has never once been run through any projector or machine until this Sunday. On low-fade Anscochrome film stock, it is a mint copy stored well since it was struck in the late 1970s. I spliced it together tonight from the original lab cores.

Fancy!

Anyway, sorry everyone!

Your election nightmares (as submitted via this Slog Post last week), graded for actual terror-worthiness.

P.S. I am quite enjoying, in the comments attached to my story, the various attempts to explain why Barack Obama’s birth certificate is actually a FORGERY.

This:

Burner’s talk of college degree murky

Does not say the same thing as this:

8th District congressional race turns on degrees

The first, from the Seattle Times, implies that Burner is falsely claiming she has a college degree; the second accurately portrays the real story, which is that Reichert attempted to smear Burner for misspeaking about her computer science and economics degree from Harvard (she called it an “economics degree”), while falsely claiming to have a four-year college degree himselfon his Congressional web site and in campaign literature. (Reichert, who claimed repeatedly to have a B.A., actually has a two-year junior-college degree from Concordia Lutheran College in Portland).

So here’s a question: Given that the Seattle Times splashed the Burner story across its front page, when will we see a similar story about Reichert’s outright lie?

What is it my mother always used to say? “A man is not a plan”? Still, according to a new report, single women are hit hardest by economic downturns:

According to analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for individuals 25 to 61 years old, female-headed households have twice the likelihood – 13.5% - of seeing a 50% greater drop in their income than male-headed households’ probability – 6.6% - of such a drop. The probability of a major income drop for female-headed households has risen in the last two recessions.

Female-headed households are at a distinct disadvantage in recessions because they have fewer savings to draw upon. In an analysis by Harvard Professor Mariko Chang of the net worth of all unmarried women, he found that their median net worth was $12,900 – less than half the $26,850 for unmarried men. He found that the wage gap is the primary cause of this inequality of wealth – accounting for 39% of the disparity for never-married households and 18% of the disparity for divorced households.

More than half of all poor adult women - 54 percent - are single with no dependent children. Twenty-six percent of poor adult women are single women with dependent children

For more on the wage gap, see the Center for American Progress’s October 2008 report, The Straight Facts on Women in Poverty.

Whatever, Jonah.

That shit is great, but “gold standard”? Nopes. Plus, everyone knows that Judge Reinhold’s finest role was Honorable Judge Reinhold in the secretly awesome Clerks animated series:

And also, to the commenters who brought up 1976’s original Freaky Friday, that’s my personal favorite too. I linked to it in my original post, but in case you missed it:

BARBARA HARRIS 4 EVER.

And whether it’s the gold standard or not, I stand by my original assertion that:

“Big was received with almost unanimous critical acclaim, and is considered by many critics the gold standard of movies in which a child is trapped in an adult’s body”

Okay, I’ve totally lost track of what we’re talking about here. Big American Party! Everybody disco dancing! Who is driving? Oh my god bear is driving! How can that be!?

Wha—Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

First the Army brigade reassigned from Iraq to the U.S. to deal, as the Army Times put it, with “civil unrest or crowd control,” and now this, from The Hill:

Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest.

Cities that have suffered unrest before, such as Detroit, Chicago, Oakland and Philadelphia, will have extra police deployed.

In Oakland, the police will deploy extra units trained in riot control, as well as extra traffic police, and even put SWAT teams on standby.

Democratic strategists and advocates for black voters say they understand officers wanting to keep the peace, but caution that excessive police presence could intimidate voters.

“If [Obama] is elected, like with sports championships, people may go out and riot,” said Bob Parks, an online columnist and black Republican candidate for state representative in Massachusetts. “If Barack Obama loses there will be another large group of people who will assume the election was stolen from him… This will be an opportunity for people who want to commit mischief.”

Whether we’re talking election theft, manufactured crisis, or old-fashioned race rioting, this bristling of batons in cities is a little unnerving.

^{Photos from the RNC in St. Paul by dk pan.}

(UPDATE: Eli posted this yesterday, but I’m leaving this one up. If I didn’t get a chance to read it—Slog’s hauling ass these days—maybe you didn’t either.)

This Lima…

…still dominates this Lima…
…on the first pages of a Google image search. We must thank the gods of the universe that Sarah Palin’s name is not Seattle Palin.

…and Sarah Palin still can’t actually compose a sentence in her head. Here they are on elites:

Amid all the talk about the so-called “bike bailout” included in the recently adopted financial rescue package (which is actually a tax break for employers who choose to subsidize biking to work), one employer—cash-strapped King County—is actually talking about eliminating a $20-a-month subsidy for bike commuters, for a total savings of $37,000 a year. That’s approximately .04 percent of the county’s projected $90 million budget deficit, which could cost several hundred county employees their jobs. The King County Council will consider legislation to eliminate the subsidy on Monday, November 3.

You are totally off the mark on the smoking thing in your column this week. I would love it if my wife would quit smoking, but I would never consider dumping her for not.

To “Do Not Use My Name”: You can have your squeaky-cigarette-clean girlfriend, and here’s hoping she fools around on you because the stress of not smoking makes her crazy. Better yet…

Girlfriend? Find a more tolerant guy.

P in Ottawa

I stand by my advice to DNUMN: If smoking is a deal breaker for you, then make sure your trying-and-failing-to-quit girlfriend understands that it’s a deal breaker. Period.

And to everyone who wrote in to say that DNUMN’s girlfriend could just brush, floss, gargle, chew gum, refrain from smoking inside the house, etc., etc., you people don’t get it. For those of us with smoking on our list of deal breakers, the problem isn’t just smoke in the air or on the breath. Cigarette smoke permeates everything about a person—it fouls the taste of their bodily fluids, it seeps through their pores as they sleep, the smokers smells of smoke even after they’ve brushed, flossed, gargled, chewed gum, etc.

Some non-smokers can hack it; some non-smokers don’t care. But for those of us that regard smoking as a deal breaker, “good” personal hygiene and the considerate “consumption” of cigarettes won’t cut it. That’s why it’s a deal breaker—duh.

Obama country?

I’m sorry, but it has to be said: Big is sooooo NOT the gold standard for movies in which a child is trapped in an adult’s body.

That honor belongs to the brilliant Judge Reinhold/Fred Savage extravaganza (Savageaganza?), Vice Versa:

It’s a small thing, but there’s a funny burn on former transportation secretary Doug MacDonald in the latest pro-transit election flyer. MacDonald (who, for the record, I’ve always enjoyed debating and whom I totally respect) is a HUGE opponent of Initiative 985, the Tim Eyman-backed proposal to open HOV lanes to everyone… and an equally huge opponent of light rail, which he contends is a waste of money compared to buses.

Anyway, here’s the latest anti-985 mailer:

And here it is again—this time, the opposite side.

I may be the biggest transit nerd in Nerdville, but this makes me giggle every time I look at it.

Some stupid fucker in Oregon is banning The Book of Bunny Suicides from her kid’s school library by not returning the book to the library. She kind of reminds me of this stupid fucker from two days ago, in a stupid-hateful-fucker kind of way.

Video is here.

“Big was received with almost unanimous critical acclaim, and is
considered by many critics the gold standard of movies in which a
child is trapped in an adult’s body.”

(The silver standard.)

Begging the question: Do you think Short Circuit is the gold standard of movies in which a robot believes he is people?

Two can play at this game. The latest from the campaign of Darcy Burner:

The campaign of 8th District Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner today discovered the Republican incumbent Congressman Dave Reichert is falsely claiming on the official biographical directory of the United States Congress to hold a four year B.A. degree. The claim to hold a four year degree is made here.

This claim is untrue. Reichert holds only a two-year A.A. degree from the college in question.

“Congressman Reichert and his Republican allies, with the assistance of credulous reporting from the Seattle Times, has been trying to discredit Darcy Burner with a technical gotcha about how she has characterized her degree from Harvard, which, as she has repeatedly stated — and has now been confirmed by a Harvard Dean — is a B.A. in computer science with a special field in economics,” said Burner campaign spokesman Sandeep Kaushik. “Meanwhile, Congressman Reichert has misrepresented himself in his official congressional biographical directory as having a four-year degree that he apparently does not have. And that false claim has been posted for years, and has spread onto a host of other web listings, without Reichert ever correcting the record.”

Kaushik added, “Congressman Reichert owes the an immediate public apology for his false claim, and should correct the official biographical record today. And he owes Darcy Burner an apology as well for yesterday’s mudslinging.”

Now here’s a fair question: Will the Seattle Times, if it can confirm the Burner camp’s claim, do a story about Reichert’s B.A./A.A. discrepancy and give the story equal play to today’s piece on Burner’s undergraduate education?

(More examples of Reichert being identified as having a B.A. here, here, here, here, and here.)

Moby Dick has been designated as the official state book of Massachusetts. What would Washington state’s official book be?

(Cough-cough-
-cough-cough.)

And the new Gphone doesn’t seem to have an e-reader on it yet, but Galleycat points out a neat function it does have:

“Barcode Scanner allows you to ‘scan’ a book’s barcode using the phone’s camera, then brings up its Amazon page or a nearby retail location on Google Maps. We tried it on a few review books we have lying around (including some that aren’t out yet), and it worked every time.”

That’s a great idea.

A scene from the rally outside.

I rode my bike out to the University of Washington yesterday to catch the debate on Proposition 1, the mass-transit expansion measure, between Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and Bellevue land magnate Kemper Freeman. Freeman was so outmatched by Nickels on charisma, statistics, and general coherence, however, that it seems almost unfair to call it a “debate.”

Traffic jam.

Almost. This is the man, after all, who has poured more than $100,000 into the effort to kill Proposition 1; who put twice that amount into the campaign against last year’s roads and transit ballot measure; and who once, according to legend, refused to set foot on a bus that had been chartered to give him a tour of East King County—just, you know, on principle.

So—however doddering he seemed yesterday, however out of touch, rambling, and just plain inaccurate his arguments—it’s hard to feel too sorry for the guy.

Yes, that’s a weird bandage on his nose. No, I don’t know what it was doing there.

Freeman’s main argument seemed to be that light rail doesn’t serve enough people, and that buses and lots of new freeways would. (Never mind that he also supports Initiative 985, which would clog all those wonderful bus lanes Freeman envisions with single-occupancy drivers—or that freeways aren’t exactly cheap.) “This proposition is about one in 200 of us who are not using transit today using transit in the future,” Freeman said, a phony statistic he also pulled out at last week’s CityClub debate with King County Council Member Dow Constantine. “They are pretending that we can somehow solve our transportation problem with public transit, and in fact it is impossible.” Freeman even charged that the only way light rail will serve as many people as Sound Transit says it can—up to a million trips per day—is if “you hire people to shove people in like they do in Japan.”

Freeman also argued that because Seattle isn’t as dense as New York—an example he brought up half a dozen times—light rail won’t work here. “I’ve studied Portland… I spent three days in Portland … I saw buildings [along the light rail line] that were totally empty, that had gone bankrupt. I saw retail spaces that were totally empty.” It wasn’t the first, or the last, time Freeman would refer to his extensive (and expensive) work “studying” transit systems in other cities, only to find every single one of them lacking. Finally, he argued that light rail was a dirty technology because it runs on electricity, and “over 40 percent of the electricity in the US is made from burning coal.” Nickels quickly eviscerated that fish-in-a-barrel argument, pointing out that the Puget Sound region’s electricity is almost exclusively (clean) hydropower—something Freeman presumably knows.

On his game.

In contrast to the jumpy Freeman, Nickels appeared relaxed, comfortable, even funny. Maybe it’s that he really feels strongly about light rail, or maybe he just shouldn’t read his speeches, but Nickels was more on game than I’ve ever seen him. He noted, first, that light rail boosters aren’t trying to solve all the region’s transportation problems—they’re just trying to make it easier for people to get around during the busiest times of the day. “The trips that we’re particularly concerned about are the trips into and out of our major urban centers, like UW and downtown Bellevue and Northgate,” Nickels said. “This will not eliminate congestion. … What it will do is create the capacity for up to a million people a day to take light rail rather than get on the freeway in their individual automobiles.” Freeman, bizarrely, made the same point in arguing against light rail, noting that trips to and from work “are less than one fifth of our trips in this region. Our public leaders have been leading us down a wild goose chase and we can’t do that,” Freeman said.

But that, Nickels noted, was exactly the point: Transit is supposed to serve people at the most congested times. “The problem is that we all try to get to and from work and to and from the university at the same time every day,” Nickels said. “We wouldn’t have to put down another cubic foot of concrete if all those trips were spread out throughout the day and night.”

As for the ultimate number of people the system could serve, Nickels acknowledged that a million is on the high end. (Officially, Sound Transit predicts there will be about 300,000 light-rail boardings daily by 2030.) But, he noted, Nickels’s and Freeman’s car-dependent generations are being overtaken by younger people who want new ways of getting around. “As we shape our cities and our region around transit, and as young people replace those of us who grew up totally dependent on the automobile, I think that those models vastly underestimate what we’re likely to see happen,” Nickels said. “I expect that the actual use will far outpace what the models show today.”

Seattle Public Utilities is looking to rebrand itself and is taking suggestions for a new tagline. Which is probably a mistake, but whatever.

There’s an online survey here where you can rate SPU’s service and suggest a new tagline—I suggested “Soylent Green is people!!!—so we don’t end up with something embarrassing like “recycling 2.0” or “waste not Seattle.”

Sloggers, get to work.

HEY STRANGER: Thanks for your article of 21 October on “Ending the Occupation.” I just want to say that I am pissed off at military recruiters. They are quite possibly the most corrupted human beings on this planet, with the exception of Dino Rossi and John McBush. They lie to children (like they lied to me when I was 17), and how the city of Seattle can allow them free-roaming access to teen events on public property is beyond me. If the city allowed carnival workers to set up recruiting tables and harrass teens at their events, there would be a major shitstorm. (And carnival workers don’t even make you do pushups).

Seattle needs to wake up and see military recruiters for what they are: vultures selling our children into servitude. Take this Iraq veteran’s word for it: Once you let the army set up gimmicks and violent videogames in city parks, you are only a step away from getting calls in the middle of the night from your children while serving multiple tours in Iraq. Don’t believe me? Ask my mom.

Peace,
Evan Knappenberger
OIF 05-07 Veteran

A “Savage Love” reader writes…

I’m a California-bred Brooklyn resident aching over my home state’s seeming support of Prop 8. I decided to start a picture blog called “We Are Not The Enemy.” It’ll simply consist of photographs of LGBT couples holding a sign that says “We Are Not The Enemy.” (Similar to sorryeverybody in 2004.) I hope to give people a quick, simple, visual look at the great range of couples affected by harmful legislation and discrimination. So I’m looking for couples (or LGBT pals) who want to participate!

We Are Not The Enemy is here, and you can submit a photo by emailing it to wearenottheenemy@gmail.com.

The site only went live a day or two ago so there aren’t tons of photos up yet. And I doubt that WeAreNotTheEnemy will reach its presumed target audience the same way that SorryEverybody.com did. SorryEverybody.com was created for citizens of other countries around the world who couldn’t believe that we had just (re)elected that asshole in 2004—they visited the site to remind themselves that not all Americans were stupid enough to support Bush in 2004. And Americans who voted against Bush visited the site too—I did, and the damn thing had me sobbing my eyes out in a downtown coffee shop—because it made us feel less estranged from our fellow citizens.

But will people who hate and fear gay couples—the people who need to be told that we are not, in fact, the enemy—spend time on this website? Probably not. But it couldn’t hurt and there’s something sweet and moving about the small handful of pictures posted so far.

Check it out.

Entering this crime that involves an American (who has German blood), a Brit (who is part Indian), a Congolese gentleman (who is married to a Polish woman), a man from the Ivory Coast (who thinks he is black American), and another man from Southern Italy (who looks like he’s from Northern Italy), and the king of Hades, Diavolo…

…now the Japanese vampires enter:

A Japanese comic featuring vampires inspired a suspect in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007, an Italian prosecutor has said…

An Italian court heard this week that Miss Kercher had 43 knife wounds…

…Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini claimed a “manga” magazine, featuring vampires and found in Mr Sollecito’s house, inspired the murder.

Manga comics are often associated with science fiction and fantasy, commonly with violent or explicitly sexual content.

The crime was committed on November 1, 2007, the day after Halloween, the day after Meredith Kercher (the murdered woman) was herself dressed like a vampire.

American photojournalist Christopher Morris is having a show at London’s Host Gallery of his icy-cold images from the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns of Bush, McCain, and Obama. (Above is one of his Republicanbots.) I’m not sure how effective these images are, but the show is called My America, and The Guardian has a video interview with him here.

Here are some more of his images.

The problem: The Earth is going to die.

The Sun is slowly getting warmer as it burns the hydrogen in its core. In about 5 billion years, the Sun will begin evolving into a bloated red giant. Its outer gas shell will swell up, engulfing the Earth by the time it reaches its peak size and brightness 7 billion years from now.

But long before that,, raising average terrestrial temperatures to around 50 °C (120 °F). That will warm the oceans so much that they evaporate without boiling, like a pan of water left on a sunny kitchen counter.

The solution: Move the Earth, with a humongous, solar-powered kite.

That danger could be avoided by using a giant solar sail, says Colin McInnes, a mechanical engineer at the University of Strathclyde.

Solar sails are thin, mirror-like films that are propelled by the weak pressure of the sunlight that falls on them. McInnes’s idea is to put a free-floating solar sail at a point near the Earth where the pressure of solar radiation essentially balances the Earth’s gravitational pull.

His analysis shows that the reflection of sunlight from the sail will pull the Earth outwards along with the sail – in physical terms, increasing the Earth’s orbital energy and accelerating the centre of mass of the system outwards, away from the Sun.

A sailor’s life for us.

In one minute, at 11 a.m. P.S.T., Canlis is holding what their P.R. firm is billing as a momentous press conference. Take it away, press release:

CANLIS RESTAURANT TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE

SEATTLE – Oct. 22, 2008 – In its 58-year Seattle history, Canlis Restaurant has been no stranger to being credited with “firsts”: team-style service, designing an open kitchen, pioneering what has become Northwest cuisine. Now, in a bold statement about how much the restaurant has evolved and its envisioned future, the Canlis family is holding its first-ever press conference to share momentous news.

You are cordially invited to join brothers Mark and Brian Canlis for this event….

They offered to fetch me by car service (thanks, guys!), but I can’t make it. But will there be a live webcast? Yes, indeed! Take it away, live webcast:

Free Webcam Chat at Ustream

UPDATE: Apparently they got a new chef, Jason Franey, the executive sous chef from Eleven Madison Park in New York (Frank Bruni on that place here). If only you could live webcast free champagne.

At this point in the election season, I know that the only thing that matters is the electoral map. And the map says Obama is leading by a wide margin—nay, a gaping chasm.

But I’ll be damned if this morning’s poll of likely voters from Gallup—the same firm that showed Obama ahead by 10 points only two days ago—doesn’t cause me to involuntarily Kegel.

Number 13?

The Greek columns:

By mid August, Barack Obama was being mocked by John McCain as a celebrity Messiah, whose ego and presumption exceeded his abilities and experience. So imagine the glee of the press pool who got a sneak preview of the stage at Invesco Field in Denver, the scene of his grandiose convention speech to 76,000, when they saw the stage flanked by Greek columns.

Did Obama think he was a political Adonis, or was he trying to provide a backdrop with echoes of the neo-classical designs of the White House and the US Capitol? After 24 hours of mockery, it didn’t matter. The speech, his most detailed, if not his most passionate, appeared to answer the questions of doubting voters and steady the ship of a campaign that had seemed like it was beginning to wobble.

Go here to see 13 to 25.

^{Bob Helm’s Literary Evening (1996), oil on panel and wood inlay, 22 1/2 by 18 by 2 inches}

This one goes out to Jack Dollhausen. For years Dollhausen and Bob Helm have been friends and compatriots, artists happily spending evenings on their Eastern Washington porches rather than chasing down notoriety in big-city scenes.

That all changed Tuesday, when Helm, only 65, died at Pullman Regional Hospital after just a brief illness. (Dollhausen, too, has been ill lately but is on the mend, according to Beth Sellars, who spoke about the two friends at a public art talk last night.)

The painting above is hanging in Century 21, the current exhibition of Washington artists selected by Seattle dealers (at Wright Exhibition Space). Helm was chosen to be in the show by Jim Harris, the Pioneer Square contemporary dealer whose style is marked by a certain delicacy and minimalism. (Harris shows Jeffry Mitchell, Claude Zervas, and Mary Ann Peters, to name a few.) If it is still possible to talk about beauty without getting all gummed up, then it’s fair to say that the aesthetic of James Harris Gallery is the most beautiful in the city.

Which is not an underhanded way of saying it’s dumb—not at all. Harris’s choices show heart and mind. Helm is a perfect case. His paintings (here’s a striking example) are quiet, gorgeously refined, and extremely personal. They feel like locked boxes of secrets edited over a lifetime.

Here’s some more information about Helm.

Something special appears in the pages of Graham Harman’s short essay on the ideas of Bruno Latour and Manuel DeLanda:

To use one of DeLanda’s own examples, a city has a certain infrastructure that can be viewed as material, but also has facades and skylines, an excessive surface unnecessary for their current functions. The term “skyline” is so nice that it ought to be made into a technical term in philosophy: objects are not just hidden material strata, but each has a skyline with which it greets the others.

How does one turn this…

…into a term like “ontology” or “hauntology” or “ontic”? What could a science or theory of the skyline do for us?

We have a novel that is “reminiscent of…The English Patient” up at Third Place Lake Forest Park, a fantasy novel at the Science Fiction Museum at the EMP, and a bunch of non-fiction-type readings tonight.

In the U District, Joseph Miller reads from his memoir,The Wicked Wine of Democracy, which I think is a great title. It’s about his life as a “a political operative and practicing lobbyist.”

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Diane Wilson reads from her long-titled memoir Holy Roller: Growing Up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus. Ten bucks says the Q&A on this one leads to election talk.

At Town Hall, Edward Miguel reads from Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations, which is about the “dark side of economic development.” Some days, it feels like there are no bright sides of economic development.

And at the Hugo House, there is a release party for the lovely locally produced literary magazine Filter. This newest issue includes lots of obfuscation, gorgeous poetry, and beautiful artwork. There will be a Suggests box popping up soon, but let me reaffirm:

This is the reading you should go to tonight.

Anyone who has complained about how Seattle doesn’t have its own great literary magazine needs to come and take a look at the new issue of Filter. Seriously.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

First, there’s a new SurveyUSA poll that shows Democrat Darcy Burner four points ahead of Republican Dave Reichert. That’s the first independent poll I’ve seen showing Burner ahead in this race—ever—and if her lead sticks that’s a huge change in the political dynamics of the contest for the eastside’s congressional seat.

Second, and far more explosive, is a controversial Seattle Times report that says Burner has been exaggerating the truth about her Harvard degree:

In recent weeks, congressional candidate Darcy Burner has touted her Harvard degree in economics when talking about the nation’s financial crisis and her opposition to the bailout package passed by Congress.

At two debates this month, she brought up her academic background in her opening statement.

“I loved economics so much that I got a degree in it from Harvard,” the Democrat said at an Oct. 10 debate at KCTS-TV. “Now everywhere I go in this district, the only thing people want to talk to me about is the economy.”

She made an almost identical statement at a debate on Oct. 8.

But while Burner studied economics at Harvard, she doesn’t have a degree in the subject.

This has touched off a furious response in the liberal blogosphere—including this and this from OpenLeft’s Matt Stoller, who went to Harvard and says Seattle Times reporter Emily Heffter doesn’t understand how the degree system there works. (Stoller also notes, with some satisfaction, that the Seattle Times decided to change its headline from “Darcy Burner’s claims of a Harvard degree in economics aren’t true” to “Darcy Burner’s Harvard econ degree an exaggeration” after the campaign and people like him started complaining.)

McJoan of DailyKos weighs in here, with Goldy at HorsesAss adding that in his opinion Heffter is (or is being used as) a “partisan hack.”

Heffter does note in her current piece that “Questions about Burner’s degree originated with the National Republican Congressional Committee.” Which strongly supports the idea that there was a political motive (the committee’s, not necessarily Heffter’s) involved in the genesis of this story.

Here’s one problem, though, with all the pushback against this news story. Yes, the timing of the story, and the fact that it was planted by the NRCC, is more about politics than anything else. But the fact is, Burner did say that she had a degree in economics from Harvard. You can watch video of the statement here.

This is the Republicans’ attempt at finding a “Maccaca moment” for the Burner-Reichert race. And, you know, since one of the raps against Burner is that she has a confidence in her abilities that’s not rooted in actual public service experience, it has the potential to stick. It’s on tape. It fits with the Republican theme—true or not—that Burner isn’t as qualified as she claims. And, to repeat, it’s on tape.

You can be certain that if the shoe were on the other foot, and Reichert had misstated or exaggerated or clumsily described his Bachelor’s degree, on tape, that Democrats would be having a field day. Every blog that’s now pushing back on the Seattle Times story would be posting a YouTube video of Reichert’s “lie.”

Which is simply to say that this kind of political “gotcha” is completely standard, completely predictable, and completely avoidable. That was one of the things about Sen. George Allen and his Macacca moment. It showed that beyond perhaps being racist, he was also a sloppy campaigner who didn’t get that the world had changed and everything was now on tape and YouTubable in an instant.

Burner, the darling of the Netroots who worked at Microsoft and understands the power of the internet better than most candidates, should get this. She should know that if she misstates, or exaggerates, or clumsily describes her Harvard degree it will eventually be caught on tape and she will eventually have a moment like the one she’s having now. To not protect herself against that possibility was just plain sloppy campaigning.

If there’s a genetic component to homosexuality—and there is—wouldn’t natural selection eventually do away with us? Maybe so, Mr. Darwin, but there’s one obvious reproductive advantage to homosexuality: back when our ancestors were being picked off pretty regularly by lions and tiger and bears, having a few childless grownups around conferred a reproductive advantage on the whole breedin’ clan, if not the non-breeding gay individuals. Gay people were, in this theory, not just qualified to adopt, but the original adoptive parents.

But there’s a new theory about the reproductive advantages of those gay genes: they don’t just make some of us gay, they also make straight people better breeders.

In a paper to be published soon in Evolution and Human Behavior, they suggest the advantage accrues not to relatives of the opposite sex, but to those of the same one. They think that genes which cause men to be more feminine in appearance, outlook and behaviour and those that make women more masculine in those attributes, confer reproductive advantages as long as they do not push the individual possessing them all the way to homosexuality….

There are also data which suggest that having a more feminine personality might indeed give a heterosexual male an advantage. Though women prefer traditionally macho men at the time in their menstrual cycles when they are most fertile, at other times they are more attracted to those with feminine traits such as tenderness, considerateness and kindness, as well as those with feminised faces. The explanation usually advanced for this is that macho men will provide the sperm needed to make sexy sons, but the more feminised phenotype makes a better carer and provider—in other words an ideal husband. And, despite all the adultery and cuckoldry that goes on in the world, it is the husband who fathers most of the children.

As far as masculinised women are concerned, less research has been done on the advantages that their appearance and behaviour might bring. What data there are, however, suggest they tend to have more sexual partners than highly feminised women do. That may, Dr Zietsch speculates, reflect increased competitiveness or a willingness to engage in unrestrained sexual relations (ie, to behave in a male-like way) that other women do not share.

Men with a touch of the gay—more attractive to women most of the time. Women with a touch of the dyke—more sexually aggressive all of the time.

For real.

From the BBC:

Scientists in the US say they have developed the ability to selectively wipe out uncomfortable memories.

In experiments with mice, researchers from the Georgia College of Medicine were able to eliminate memories without any damage to the rodents’ brains.

They suggested that the technique which works on a particular protein in the brain could, one day, be used to help humans overcome traumatic events.

Time photographer Callie Shell has posted a series of candid campaign-trail shots of Barack Obama, who remains as freakishly photogenic as ever, but it’s the family shots that kill me.

See the whole series—complete with Callie Shell’s brief but illuminating captions—here.

“I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks”: Sarah Palin’s $150,000 mistake.

School’s Out Forever: US missile strike hits school in Pakistan.

2,500: That’s how many people are on the no-fly list.

Don’t Worry, Rays Fans, the Curse Will Kick In Soon: Phillies take first game of World Series.

Mayor Nickels Hates Skateparks: Why else would he vote “no” on the parks levy?

Burn: Seattle Times claims Darcy Burner lied about her Harvard degree, Daily Kos calls bullshit.

Think of the Children: Seattle School District might close more schools.

Broken Axl: 17 years and $13 million dollars later, Guns n’ Roses will (allegedly) release a new album next month.

I’m totally hanging out with this dude on Saturday:

I cost Barack the election.

…rodent mind.

Targeted memory erasure is no longer limited to the realm of science fiction. A new study describes a method through which a selected set of memories can be rapidly and specifically erased from the mouse brain in a controlled and inducible manner….

“While memories are great teachers and obviously crucial for survival and adaptation, selectively removing incapacitating memories, such as traumatic war memories or an unwanted fear, could help many people live better lives,” says Dr. Joe Z. Tsien, brain scientist and co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine.

Add memories of failed relationships to that list, doc.

They’re not comfortable with each other yet—McCain and Palin. So says an NBC analyst about the network’s joint McCain/Palin interview tonight. No chemistry yet? Didn’t McCain once call Palin his “soul mate”? Indeed he did. NBC’s analyst adds that they know they’re losing, and speculates that McCain may be blaming Palin for that fact, and Palin may be blaming McCain. The wheels are coming off…

This clip is… delicious. Fucking delicious. Why not enjoy it again.

The Hugo House has announced its new interim Executive Director. His name is Cory Sbarbaro, and he comes from a non-profit/executive background, not a particularly literary one. The release says “His areas of expertise include organizational assessment, planning and strategy formation, executive transitions and board development.” Part of his job description is finding his replacement.

Sbarbaro has worked or is working with organizations like Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits & Philanthropy, Pacific Northwest Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute, and the United Way of King County. This is called “playing it safe.” The full press release is after the jump, although there’s not really any reason to check it out (spoiler warning: Sbarbaro is “thrilled” to have the job!).

Continue reading "Now Define "Interim"" »

Since the 49ers fired head coach Mike Nolan earlier this week, there’s been a shit-ton of speculation that, outgoing Seahawks coach Mike “The Walrus” Holmgren (pictured below) might jump ship to the 49ers next season.

Well, according to NFL Network blogger Adam Schefter, Holmgren—for better or worse—won’t be setting up shop in Candlestick Park anytime soon.

Even before the 49ers dismissed head coach Mike Nolan this week, speculation had run rampant that Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren could surface in a Bill Parcells-executive-type role in San Francisco next season.

And it might happen one day.

But one day certainly does not sound like next season.

One source close to the Seahawks said Wednesday that, short of the 49ers offering Holmgren a stake of ownership in the team — and even that might not change the circumstances — Seattle’s head coach will not be working for San Francisco next season.

“Under no circumstance could I see him doing that — zero, none,” the source said. “It would be absolutely shocking to me. It would be extraordinarily difficult for (Holmgren) to ever entertain that idea.”

Holmgren has worked for the 49ers, watched how they have operated, and is well familiar with the York family that owns the team. Right now, according to those that know him, Holmgren has little desire to work there again.

Holmgren even has vowed to his family that, after this season, his last with the Seahawks, he will spend 2009 out of football. What happens for the 2010 season is a different story and issue. But who can say what one man will be thinking two seasons from now when it is difficult enough to get through this season?

The only thing certain about Holmgren’s thinking is that he will not wind up with the 49ers in 2009, despite the rampant speculation to the contrary.

Who knows how good Schefter’s source is, so take what you will from that what you will, but the Hawks definitely need to make some changes soon, lest this season get any more embarrassing.

Owen Schmitt for quarterback!

PS-The Mariners hired Jack Zduriencik as their new GM. Baseball is still boring.

I’ll be on the radio tonight at 9 pm—on Luke Burbank’s new show, Too Beautiful to Live—talking about the 10 Things article. (150 comments and counting. Favorite so far: “Your articles are worthless, pretentious, uninformed, completely masturbatory and damaging to the arts community.”)

It won’t be nearly as fun as Luke’s recent interview with baseball Hall-of-Famer George Brett, who told him all about shitting his pants the other night: “I’m good for that about twice a year.”

But Burbank and producer Jen Andrews are lovely, funny people. Too Beautiful to Live is, obviously, the best thing about KIRO.

It’s good to know Democrats are all on the same page.

A glossy mailer arrived at my house a few days ago heralding endorsements from Southeast Seattle’s 37th District Democrats. It was generally predictable—donkey, donkey, donkey—but two things jumped out. They endorsed Lt. Governor Brad Owen, who is as much a Democrat as I am a lesbian. Then they endorsed initiatives and such: Yes on Death with Dignity; no on the Eyman initiative; yes on Parks; yes on the Pike Place Market… and curtain.

But what about that proposal for a HUGE MASS-TRANSIT LINE running through the 37th District? Prop 1? There’s a light-rail station proposed in the middle of the district that would connect residents to the Eastside and the rest of the city in minutes. Why don’t they have an opinion on that?

They should have an opinion on it. The Washington State Democratic Party platform, passed earlier this year, explicitly outlines support for measures like Prop 1. One resolution on climate change called for to “develop alternative transport systems such as bike paths and mass transit.” Another one called, “A resolution to address transportation problems” says the “Washington State Democratic Party supports immediately identifying and prioritizing transportation problems…” So how does a party chomping at the bit to build mass transit fall asleep at the wheel when, in two weeks, we vote on miles of new light rail?

“We understand the parks. We understand the [Pike Place] Market,” says Rob Holland, chair of the 37th District Democrats. “But paying for an expansion on transit … there was just a concern that they have got to find another way to fund the project.” He said district members over 60 years old strongly opposed the measure because they fear increasing property taxes. Holland thinks the “other way to find the project” is to “elect Barack Obama. Put federal dollars toward it.”

Holland says that members under 40 overwhelmingly supported Prop 1, but were outvoted (probably because most of them miss the meeting while they are at work and raising kids). However, they did manage to persuade the group to switch from a “no” vote to remaining neutral. Also under 40, Holland says his vote for Prop 1 will fall along the same age lines. “I’m not overly excited about voting for it, but you gotta keep things moving.”

So this isn’t Holland’s fault. But it is the fault of the Metamucil happy-hour crowd in South Seattle. And it’s is the fault of people like me: Folks under 40 who vote with a sip of wine and wafer, but don’t go to their district Democrat meetings. If we did go, we could outnumber the set who can’t wrap their brains around light rail.

But Charlie Cook, of The National Journal, says it’s over:

The metrics of this election argue strongly that this campaign is over, it’s only the memory of many an election that seemed over but wasn’t that is keeping us from closing the book mentally on this one.

Dominic posted earlier today about tonight’s public meeting about the proposed Capitol Hill Sound Transit station art.

Here are some updated images fresh from ST of the designs by Mike Ross and Ellen Forney. Both artists will be on hand to explain how these evolved from their early iterations.

Continue reading "The New Fighter Jets and the Specific Forney Hands" »

This time using people like Jerry Stiller and Danny DeVito in a new ad that’s airing in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania:

I’m biding my time until the mayor’s debate with Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman at the Cafe on the Ave., where, from the looks of it, the kids aren’t feeling the recession much—I’m eating a bagel with butter ($2) while the studious folks around me all seem to be able to afford full $10 meals. Is college no longer a time of privation anymore?

Anyway, amid all the Obamamania and panic over Prop. 8, it’s easy to overlook another important election going on in South Dakota: A vote on whether to completely ban abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman. Even if McCain—the guy who put mocking air quotes around the “health” of a woman, to indicate he thought health exceptions to abortion bans allow frivolous abortions—loses, reproductive rights everywhere are still threatened by measures like South Dakota’s. The proposal, if enacted, would force women to bring pregnancies to term even in cases where the fetus will be stillborn; put doctors at risk of criminal charges because of extremely vague language defining a woman’s health; and would force doctors to file a report stating that their patient was raped, including the name and address of the rapist, to criminal authorities before they could use the rape exception. The argument for this, cited by Feministe, is that “if it is truly a case of rape or incest, we’re doing a disservice to society if we don’t do that,” according to one of the ban’s proponents. It also requires the doctor performing an abortion in rape and incest cases to take DNA samples from the woman and the fetus, to prove that the pregnancy was really the result of rape or incest (and, anti-choice proponents claim, to help prosecute rape and incest cases.) The supposed argument for this latter requirement is that rapists use abortion to cover up their crimes. Prove paternity, and you’ve stopped the rape or incest.

Cara at Feministe effectively eviscerates both arguments. The first:

Firstly, shifting the burden of reporting from the victim to the doctor would only change who the victim must report the crime to. She would still have to provide all of the relevant information needed to file a police report. It’s the same exact process. Also, if police are actually going to try to catch the perpetrator based on this report, as Ridder emphasizes, they are certainly going to want to talk to the victim at some point anyway, meaning that any potentially traumatizing line of questioning isn’t going to be avoided. It further bears noting that the trauma many rape victims experience from reporting isn’t necessarily due to treatment by police, but treatment by their family, friends and community. […]

Additionally, if this new fabulous method of rape reporting is so much less traumatizing to women, why aren’t these really concerned activists working to give this right to report to a doctor instead of police to all rape victims? Should a victim have to be impregnated by her rapist to access the supposedly least traumatizing form of reporting? I’d think not. So, could the issue be that these people don’t actually care at all about rape victims, but are really concerned with how to most effectively restrict their access to health care?

As for the last quoted sentence from the immensely compassionate Dr. Ridder, what exactly is he insinuating with the words “if this is truly a case of rape or incest”? Because if and truly imply that a victim might be lying. Certainly, that’s not doing any favors to his claim that reporting a rape to a doctor is far less traumatizing than reporting directly to police. Then he moves onto how not reporting a rape is doing a disservice to society.

The fact is that victims don’t owe us anything. I’d like to see more victims report rape, but first we’re going to have to create a society where those victims can reliably find compassion and a fair, non-rape apologist judicial system. The answer is not to force women to report. Women who choose not to report do so for their own reasons, usually very logical ones, and they are not doing a disservice to society with that choice. How about we start looking at the rapist who is doing a disservice to society by raping people, rather than pointing fingers at the victims who they’ve made too fearful to report?

And the second:

As for the anti-choice arguments, there is an inherent logical fallacy here. If rapists in cases of ongoing abuse, like incest, are using abortion to cover up their crimes, doesn’t that mean that the rapists are therefore forcing their victims into having abortions? If this is the case, then surely under this law, rapists would just stop forcing their victims to get abortions, and would instead force the victims to hide the pregnancies or blame them on someone else, make them to carry to term, give birth, and then surrender the baby for adoption. You know, just like in pre-Roe days. It would only make sense for rapists to stop using abortion to cover up their rapes when they only way to obtain an abortion is for a rape to be reported, so they’d find alternatives to ensure that the reporting still doesn’t happen. Simple stuff. […]

Clearly, those supporting the ban don’t care about those slutty women who got pregnant from consensual sex and whether or not they hurt/maim/kill themselves with illegal and unsafe abortions — but surely they care about making sure that harm doesn’t befall rape victims, right? That’s what they want the public to believe, and this is why no one ought to buy it.

Over two excellent posts, Jen, one of the many wonderful women I met while in SD, talks about her own rapes and what the SD law could have meant for her under different circumstances, and why forcing her to report would have been so cruel. In a world where rape survivors are routinely mocked and laughed at simply for telling their own stories — and I should know — it’s downright sadistic to force women to tell their stories simply so that they don’t have to give birth to their rapist’s child.

Daily Kos recently added the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which is fighting the ban, to its Orange to Blue fundraising list—an indication, perhaps, of how important this fight is not just for women in South Dakota but for women (and those who love them, or fuck them, or just don’t want them to be forced to have kids) everywhere. You can also donate directly here.

If you’d like to know what’s going on in Afghanistan, all you need is 22 minutes and to click here, to a Bill Moyers interview with Sarah Chayes from February.

If you want to know in more detail, read Chayes’s book The Punishment of Virtue. It details her attempts, among other things, to get the local warlord in the southern center of Kandahar fired—instead he was promoted by Karzai. (If you’re pressed for time with this book, you can skim some of the historical sections without missing much.) Given the news lately, this ought to be a popular Christmas gift.

Choice bits from the interview?:

The U.S.-backed Karzai government is “basically a criminal enterprise.”

Pakistan, which receives $1 billion a year from the U.S., is a Taliban factory: “It’s actually U.S. taxpayer money paying the insurgency.”

That’s only the beginning. Really. Just 22 minutes.

The missing component from this post I made just over a year ago (September, 28, 2007):

If art criticism is to become invulnerable it must be grounded not in economics but in the body, the head, the physical brain itself. The critic must argue that this or that thing is good because the biological processes that made it happen are good processes. But how does one do this? Neurology offers the critic a solution.

What I lacked at the moment of presenting this solution was any knowledge of mirror neurons. I learned about them by accident on July 16, 2008. I was surfing cyberspace when I came across the enchanting (almost Borgesian) words “mirror neurons” (I would also have been enchanted by the words “maze neurons” or “haze neurons” or “twilight neurons”). And what are mirror neurons (which can also be called echo/dub neurons—but that’s for another post)? This is how I described them in a recent book review:

Mirror neurons are neurons in the brain that fire when a primate sees another primate perform an action. Meaning, the action (grabbing a cup, caressing a nipple, making a face) is not simply seen, it is also experienced within the head of the perceiver. Furthermore, it is experienced as if the primate had committed the action him/herself. Ultimately, learning, talking, acting are the products of direct, even crude, imitation, or, to use the language of Iacoboni, simulation. We not only learn from others, we are others.

In another post, The Future of Criticism, I wrote:

Mirror neurons in the brain fire when, for example, your finger caresses the tip of someone’s nipple. Mirror neurons also fire in the same way if you happen to see another person’s finger caressing the tip of someone’s nipple. This means the inside is no different from the outside. How you experience your own body is also how you see another human experience their own body.

My point: Discovered a decade or so ago in Parma, Italy, mirror neurons are the gateway between to two socials (or associations): the human body and human culture. With mirror neurons we can finally connect cultural processes to biological ones. Cultural developments are no longer something special or exceptional or independent but continuous with organic developments. Not only that, culture impacts its base, the body. The whole Marxist edifice of superstructure and base crumbles. The movement between the body (bios, base, production of life) and culture (ideology, superstructure, production of codes) is not one-way—it’s both ways. Culture changes the brain; changes in the brain change culture, and what binds the social of the body to the social of a community are mirror neurons. Language is not just language and art is not just art. These are the productions of natural imitation, and must be understood as having that point of departure and point of return.

It’s October 22nd, and you know what that means, kids: it’s the 13th Annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality! Yay!

There’s a rally today at Seattle Central Community College at 4pm and a march at 5:30. I have no other details as 13ANDPSPB’s site is conveniently broken working for everyone except me.

_{So close to the crown and sash, yet forever so far away.}

Five Thirty Eight says that the McCain campaign’s allegations that “the real Virginia” is Republican has pissed off Miss Virginia:

“What offended me and made me sad about those comments,” said Glakas, a resident for many years in northern Virginia, “is that I’ve been to every county, every part of this state. What’s best about Virginia is its diversity. The people, the geography. We have every class, every race, an amazing immigrant population… Virginia is the birthplace of America. To say that part of Virginia is not part of the real America is just offensive.”

In sadder Miss news, Miss Teen Louisiana was arrested for dining and dashing with a pocketful purse full of weed. She has been stripped of her crown.

Yesterday, Dan posted that someone at the city had installed a strip of rocks along a concrete ramp at the Wall of Death, an art installation along the Burke Gilman Trail which has been used as a makeshift skatepark for years.

Well, It looks like we’ve figured out who killed the Wall of Death: the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT).

“SDOT was responsible for installing those rocks,” says SDOT spokesman Rick Sheridan.

Sheridan says SDOT—which maintains the Burke Gilman—decided to install the rock work after receiving “a number of complaints from users about skateboarders” in the last few years.

According to Sheridan, SDOT has received seven complaints about skaters and in August, a skater and a cyclist were involved in a “head-on collision.” That’s when SDOT decided to install the rock barrier.

“[When] we have a crash on the heels of a number of complaints we just couldn’t ignore it anymore,” Sheridan says. “We decided we couldn’t’ wait any longer.”

Skaters have already begun emailing city hall about the loss of their makeshift park and there’s rumbling on some skater message boards about installing a ramp on top of SDOT’s rock work.

Sheridan wouldn’t comment on the possibility of makeshift ramps being installed at the Wall of Death. He did say, however, that any DIY construction “would undermine the safety of the trail.”

You may recall that Mike Ross’s plans for kissing fighter jets in the Capitol Hill Sound Transit Station nearly incited a riot in spring. Well, designs for the station—including those pastel jets—are now 90 percent complete. So you better start liking them.

Tonight Sound Transit will unveil a near-final draft of art by Ross and the talented Ellen Forney, who is creating a mural for the station, as well as station architecture, green-wall landscaping, and the art installations they’ll be planting in storefronts while they get ready to build.

Writes Forney:

I’m hoping people come so they can ask their questions to Sound Transit instead of to me: what Broadway is going to look like between now and 2016 (dunno!), if Mike is going to buy his planes directly from the defense department (no), why they’re excavating (yawn) instead of burrowing under the ground (neat-o).

Check out the open house from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. in room 4106 of Seattle Central Community College, 710 Broadway. Forney says there’ll be big displays on easels, computer-generated movies, and free water.

On Seattle Mystery Bookshop’s blog, there’s a fairly long post that touches on a more and more frequent problem with author readings:

This morning, we got a message from Dana Stabenow. Her publisher was making the offer to send her to shops who could guarantee 100 ‘pre-sold’ copies of her new hardcover by Jan. 17, 2009.

Their response was both emotional:

On one hand there is the feeling of loss. We were the shop that hosted Dana’s first signing for her first mystery. In fact, it was our founder, Bill Farley, who told her she would win the Edgar with it, and his words were prophetic — she did indeed win Best First Paperback Original. That has allowed us to feel somewhat proprietary about her, as we do all the Alaskan authors.

and thoughtful:

Publishers and publicists have no right to place such demands on shops. I can understand how the expenses of author tours are eating them alive and that they need to do something different. Fine, I’d be happy to make some suggestions.

It’s a great post about the future of bookselling and readings. I think this practice of forcing independent booksellers to guarantee sales of a book are complete bullshit. I hear that James Frey’s publisher was demanding that bookstores order ridiculous amounts (something like a couple hundred copies) of his new novel, Bright Shiny Morning, to get Frey to appear at a reading. Of course, he only pulled a couple dozen people to Town Hall when he actually did appear here. Good on the Mystery Bookshop for making this public.

This sculpture of a woman at the Kentucky Derby with a shot of Maker’s Mark in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other is just one of many alcohol-inspired masterpieces that will be on display at Seattle Art Museum the same week the museum opens its first-ever major survey devoted to the art and culture of the native people of this region.

It’s a crude coincidence.

SAM didn’t actually curate the Maker’s Mark exhibition and isn’t giving it any gallery space—the show just bought the credibility of the museum’s name and location by renting a room in the museum for the one-night Northwest stop of its national tour, a tour put together by Maker’s to advertise the Kentucky-brewed whisky without seeming to be advertising at all. Instead, the exhibition, titled “The Mark of Great Art,” is supposed to be a showcase for “incredible Kentucky artists,” according to its web site.

Right.

In a press release, Maker’s says “Seattle Art Museum will host” the show. (A SAM spokeswoman says, “We have nothing to do with it.”)

Maybe SAM needs the rental money, but yuck. Seattle is the only American city on the show’s tour where it actually finds a home in an art museum. I guess the Guggenheim and SFMOMA were booked?

“Why I Blog,” by Andrew Sullivan.

However! The ten-or-so minute video interview version takes only ten minutes (or so), and includes discussion of the blogging vs. thinking divide, the “Bataan Death March” of campaign trail coverage, the interns who help Sullivan keep his blog humming, and the “neurotic” nature of blog-readers (and why bloggy neurosis might be justified in these times).

I always knew those crunchy florets were packed with something.

(This latest round of Things About Advertising That Can’t Possibly Be True brought to you by Bread & Honey blog.)

This endlessness that is Palin:

The comments came in an interview with Colorado TV station KUSA in response to a third-grader’s question, “What does the Vice President do?”

“[T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom,” Palin said.

The comments have drawn criticism from Democrats and liberal blogs which note the actual role of the vice president when it comes to the Senate is simply to cast a tie-breaking vote in the event of a stalemate. According to Article I of the U.S. Constitution, the vice president is the “President” of the Senate, but has no executive position when it comes to presiding over the chamber.

This is Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, which stands in Red Square at UW. Four versions of it exist, one in Houston. Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones today provides a reminder of the obelisk’s political life.

In Houston in 1969, city officials didn’t want it to be a public memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. in the wake of his assassination.

The proposal to treat it as a prominent King memorial was put forward by the famous art collecting family the Menils. (Their museum complex currently houses the sculpture.) In another version of the story told here, they initially responded this way:

After being told that city officials would reject a public memorial to King, the de Menils proposed that the sculpture be placed in front of City Hall and that the base bear the words Forgive Them, for They Know Not What They Do.

The story about the obelisk as a sign of race relations is something to keep in mind as you pass this thing by on the eve of the election that may give us our first black president. Are black voters going to be held back at the gates again (like in 2000)? Is the obelisk going to fall all the way this time? Or maybe the obelisk is a totally outdated symbol of race relations at this point; what would a new one look like?

Broken Obelisk represents more than one broken system: public art is another. Newman said he intended the obelisk as a beacon of hope—a sign that things, even broken things, could get better. But part of what’s so great about the sculpture is that it has an equally dark heart. It represents something already fallen, but only halfway. This present state of grace feels like its bounce moment, the moment its tip hits a ground point before the whole thing crashes down to pieces.

Public art with a dark heart is rare these days. The obelisk reminds me of something Seattle artist Dan Webb recently wrote in an essay called “I Heart Public Art” in which he critiques both the gallery system and the public art system (published in La Especial Norte and available at galleries):

Conceptual art has become the new orthodoxy, rooted in something that was hard won, and enduring, and has since evolved into something that is too frequently facile and rote. Hard won principles become short cuts to lesser practitioners; many artists today seem content to be merely clever.

Public art is in quite a bubble as well. It is fixated on trying to be art, without the teeth. When Brian Eno was asked his opinion of New Age music, which he is generally credited with inspiring, he said he didn’t like any of it because it lacked a sense of evil. True that. When public artists voluntarily dumb things down, erase the evil, they ultimately come across as condescending.

At least according to this new McCain ad:

Via Ben Smith.

Via TPM, word that the National Republican Congressional Committee has laid down serious cash to defend eastside Republican Congressman Dave Reichert against the challenge from Democrat Darcy Burner:

The NRCC, which has held on to its much smaller war chest until the home stretch of the campaign, spent $4.1 million, with the biggest payment going for over $450,000 to defend Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA).

So, for comparison, what did the DCCC spend to help the Burner campaign over the same period?

I have a call in to DCCC to find out, but I’m pretty sure it’s not as much as the RNCC spent to help Reichert—the same TPM report says the DCCC’s biggest expenditure was $450,000 to help defeat a Republican in North Carolina.

Do you think you might be reduced to prayer, secret, silent, or otherwise, on behalf of an Obama victory on election night?

Devoted Slog tipper Reggie sends the day’s second weird story out of Sweden. From Sweden’s The Local:

A church minister from Strängnäs in central Sweden has resigned from his post after his porn-surfing habits led to the spread of a virus that knocked out the local church network, Metro reports.

But the most fascinating bit is tacked on at the end:

The number of sex-related cases involving men of the cloth has skyrocketed in recent years, according to Metro….A pastor in Gothenburg recently came under scrutiny for moistening post-it notes with his penis and sticking them up in an office.

Even better, the moist-wanged pastor was allowed to keep his job. Full story here.

My mom found this in the bottom of a drawer:

Maverick.
Joker.
Plastic Coated.
Made in U.S.A.

Is Reuven Carlyle, one of two Democrats seeking the open state house seat from the 36th legislative district, really a Republican in disguise? Supporters of his opponent, John Burbank, have been pushing that theory for a while—sending out color-coded emails, for example, implying that Carlyle’s record is “red” while Burbank’s is “blue” and calling Carlyle “the candidate of the banking industry” and “big business.” Carlyle, in response, has protested that his business background (he made his money in the wireless industry) doesn’t make him a conservative or a shill for big corporations.

Still, it’s Carlyle, not Burbank, that big corporations have thrown their weight (and money) behind. Earlier this month, the Realtors Quality of Life PAC—the political arm of the Washington Association of Realtors—did a $15,000 independent expenditure on Carlyle’s behalf. Most of that money paid for cable TV ads—an unusual move in a low-profile race like the 36th. And last week, another business-oriented PAC—“People for Jobs,” which is wholly funded by the conservative group Enterprise Washington—spent an undisclosed amount on Carlyle’s behalf.

The Realtors’ PAC donates to and spends money on behalf of both parties, but their expenditures skew heavily toward Republicans. This year, for example, the group has donated to or done independent expenditures for Democrats (including Carlyle’s $15,000) worth $36,600, according to disclosure reports; Republicans, including Dino Rossi, have received $210,000 from the group. Contributors to Enterprise Washington, meanwhile, include Weyerhaeuser, the Restaurant Association, the Master Builders of America, Safeco, Bank of America, Chevron, Premera Blue Cross, National Federation of Independent Businesses, Phillip Morris, the Retail Action Council, and the Washington Food Industry Association.

The Realtors’ PAC didn’t return my call, but Enterprise Washington president Erin McCallum did. When I asked her why the group was supporting Carlyle, she said, “It’s very clear to us that of the two candidates that came through, he is the one who would, if elected, go to Olympia with an understanding of private-sector issues and what the private sector means to the Washington State economy. … Reuven’s experience demonstrates that he will go down to Olympia and have the ability to think critically of legislation that could impact eveyrone’s livelihoods in this state.” Officially, Enterprise Washington is “nonpartisan”; in reality, the group is supporting just four candidates in Washington State this year: Carlyle and three Republicans. Unfortunately, searching for anything on the PDC’s web site right now sends you to the dreaded “Error Path” (but thanks for the zillion-dollar upgrade, guys!) so I can’t give you exact numbers, but suffice it to say that Enterprise Washington is spending in the upper tens of thousands on each candidate’s behalf. On its web site, the group defines labor unions and “environmental groups” as “the competition.”

Carlyle claimed both expenditures came as a complete surprise—the Realtors’ expenditure showed up on PDC reports last week, and Carlyle said he didn’t know about the Enterprise Washington expenditure until I told him about it yesterday. “I literally have not had a conversation with [the Realtors] other than [the endorsement] process,” Carlyle said. Asked why the Realtors’ PAC might be supporting him, Carlyle said, “my platform has been driven by my central priority, quality of life, and they were responsive to that. … Homes don’t sell if there aren’t jobs.”

As for the allegations that he’s not really a Democrat, Carlyle responded: “I am a passionate, progressive, lifelong Democrat. My capable opponent has not attacked me on one single policy issue. His entire pitch is guilt by association— the insinuation that you can’t be a progressive Democrat and be pro-economic growth, pro-jobs, and pro-strong economy.”

As you know by now, I bring a batch of advance reader copies to Slog Happy for everyone to enjoy, with the caveat that the person who reads (or tries to read) the book has to review it for all of us here on Slog.

Today’s reviewer is the lovely and talented Aislinn. Aislinn is reviewing The Senator’s Wife, by Sue Miller. Anything you don’t like about this review no doubt is due to the editing process and not at all Aislinn’s fault and you should blame the editor. I am the editor.

So, you’re really smart, right? And, being really smart, you probably say the word apercu all the time. For instance, when you’re talking to your very good-looking, college professor/author husband (who apparently married you because you’re so damn smart), you might say it as many as three times in one conversation, and then think it again shortly thereafter. Because, well, that’s just what really smart people do, when they’re not busy secretly reading their elderly neighbor’s personal letters, or lactating sexually* for said neighbor’s stroke-suffering, estranged husband. Whoops, spoiler alert!

I began The Senator’s Wife with the intention of liking it. Or, not hating it.

Being from a small New England town, I love it when books are set in small, New England towns. I also like family secrets, and, sometimes, chick stuff like marriage and babies and thoughtful gift baskets. This book has lots of those things. Unfortunately, it also has the one thing I hate most: old people copulating. I can tolerate subtle references to the elderly sharing intimate moments, but sentences like “They made love the first night, after Delia stroked him to a half erection and helped him come into her,” are completely unacceptable.

Icky mental images aside, Delia is the best part of the story, as the other main character, Meri (the one married to the hot professor), is so busy being Smart and Disaffected it’s impossible to care about her at all. The blurb on the back says that the book “brings elegance, gravity, and emotional power to her most transfixing themes: the meaning of loyalty, history, forgiveness, and grace itself.” If I was allowed to write such things, I’d replace that with: “One main character says things like “natch” and “apercu” and loves to talk about how lonely she is, while the other main character gives her septuagenarian husband halfies. The perfect gift for that sassy older lady in your life!” At least then, people could know what they were getting into.

That said, there is one chapter that is absolutely stunning, and should have been published alone as a short story. It’s one of two chapters set in Delia’s past (it’s better for having no mention of insipid, milky Meri), meant to better explain the intricacies of her marriage to “the senator,” Tom, and why, twenty years later, they live apart and see each other only occasionally for trysts. That single chapter touchingly and realistically explores the relationships between Delia and her recently-grown-up children, as well as the quiet pain of a woman betrayed—an over-covered subject that is infrequently worth revisiting. Sue Miller’s exasperatingly thorough detail (smells, sounds, and what tabletops are made of are all faithfully reported) is cloying over the length of a novel, but in the small dose of this chapter it’s an effective tool for fostering involvement and sympathy for a woman experiencing a boring, conventional kind of family dysfunction. (At Christmas, no less).

Many thanks to Aislinn, who has now done two of these and is becoming the star Slog Book Reporter. I know many of you out there have your second books already, and you should get to it. Aislinn’s making you look bad.

Continue reading "Slog Commenter book Report 7: Aislinn Ogles The Senator's Wife" »

Sunday comes early with the New York Times’ web publication of the Sunday magazine’s cover story, “The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate.”

It’s long and thick and worth it, revealing insider details on shit we’ve all been scratching our heads over for months, from the nonsensical invention of the “Team of Mavericks” to the terrifying mystery that is Sarah Palin.

Here’s a sample quote, from one of McCain’s advisers to the NYT:

“John can be really resistant. He’s always worried about being put in a box. He’s got a very sensitive nerve about it. A lot of times I would hear him say: ‘Don’t control me. This is my campaign.’ But I think Steve [Schmidt, McCain’s chief campaign strategist] has convinced him that we’ve got to do this if we’re going to win.”

Sarah Palin will live on as an eternal joke, but John McCain is a tragedy.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Gawker.)

Posted (the old fashioned way) outside The Stranger offices:

And playing hooky from work? You should go to the Arboretum. It looks like this right now:

This photo was taken on Saturday, but today the sunshine will make the trees look even better. We wouldn’t suggest that you take a flask of brandy because that would be illegal.

Photo by MaxineToo on Flickr.

Courtesy of Slog tipper/superstar Fnarf…

HOCKEY GAME DELAYED BY DILDOS

And you gotta love this photo…

Unfortunately it’s all about mocking a Swedish athlete who likes getting pegged. More at With Leather.

Literally. Lunchtime quickies for married people. I thought Sugar Daddy was wild. Miss Ashley raises the bar. Wow.

Perhaps Sarah Palin—who is doing serious damage to McCain’s chances, what with her depositions, wardrobe malfunctions, suspect billing practices, and general implausibility—is a highly-placed, top-secret mole working on behalf of the Democratic party.

What other explanation is there for this:

Oregon:

The former youth pastor at the Baker City Nazarene Church, who previously worked for four years as a Baker County juvenile counselor, has been charged with sex crimes related to his role with the church.

Dean B. Barnes, 34, of 3100 H St., was arrested by Baker City Police at 10:30 p.m. Monday at his home. Barnes is charged with five counts each of first-degree sexual abuse and second-degree sexual abuse involving a 16-year-old Baker City girl. Police Chief Wyn Lohner said in a press release issued today that Barnes subjected the victim to “multiple incidents of non-consensual sexual contacts” between March and August of this year….

Barnes had been on a trip to Israel with a missionary group not associated with the Nazarene Church until Monday night, Lohner said.

“We tracked when he would be back and last night when he returned we contacted him and arrested him,” he said.

West Virginia:

A circuit judge has dismissed the criminal case against a former Chesapeake youth pastor accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl, but her mother is hopeful he can still be brought to trial.

Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Drummond said the state would present charges again to a grand jury to get a superceding indictment against Timothy C. Edmonds, 37, a former pastor at Chesapeake Apostolic Church…. The girl associated with both lawsuits and the criminal case is described as “functionally disabled.”

Judge Irene Berger agreed with Sullivan that the state had taken too long to bring an indictment against Edmonds and said she was dismissing the case.

The girl’s mother, Debra Green, said the family planned to attend the trial next week.

“It’s very frustrating, but I’m not giving up,” she said. “We have DNA and witnesses. We’re not dropping the charges. He is guilty as sin.”

Tennessee:

Tyler Ray Kesty was issued a citation for Drugs - Simple Possession of Marijuana on HWY 111 when he was stopped for no seat-belt. Mr. Kesty stated that he was a youth pastor at the Pentecostal church in Livingston and that he had no knowledge of the contraband the K-9 found in his glove box. Mr. Kesty said that it was probably left by someone else but he also said that his finger prints might be on the bag.

Tyler’s MySpace page is here.

A new AP poll finds what other polls aren’t finding—which means someone’s very wrong.

WASHINGTON - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

She’s a piece of work, huh?

Gov. Sarah Palin, already found by one investigation to have abused her power, will take time from her vice presidential campaign Friday to give a deposition in a second inquiry into her firing of the state’s top public safety official.

It will be the first deposition in the affair by the Republican vice presidential candidate. Palin wasn’t subpoenaed to answer questions in an investigation by the state Legislature, though her husband, Todd, gave an affidavit in that probe.

Film

‘Trouble the Water’

• See what else is happening in Film on Wednesday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

Slog tipper Peter writes:

I know that Dino Rossi doesn’t want folks knowing that he is a Republican, preferring GOP Party instead. But did you know that he has jumped onto the change wagon and is now linking himself to Barack Obama as seen on the electronic billboard along I-5 in Fife, just by the bend after Federal Way? I have seen this billboard for the last month, but was only able to stop and take pictures yesterday (this may be old news already!).

I did know this—I drove by the billboard (really a giant electronic reader board) on my way to the Joe Biden rally in Tacoma on Sunday. But Peter has pictures, and I thought Slog readers who don’t make regular drives down to Tacoma would want to see:

From a reader in California…

My absentee ballot arrived today and I immediately filled in my “NO” vote for the abhorrent Proposition 8. I have attached a photo of the freshly completed ‘decision’.

It seems more often than not, I vote for the lesser of two evils or find myself choosing between two options, neither of which really seem to please. This was not one of those times. There was a clear right and wrong way to vote on the matter, one that left me without the slightest reservation that I had cast my ballot appropriately.

I hope very, very much that my (meager) financial contribution to No On 8 campaign will buy enough ad space to convince people that it is not okay to be a bigot, that it can sway enough people to do the right thing and treat other human beings like human beings. Were but it not necessary to buy ads to tell people that discrimination is wrong. Were but it not necessary to remind others that treating all as equals before the law is the right thing to do. But it appears that in 2008, it is still where we are.

I KNOW that my vote matters, though I wish very much that it did not. I wish very much that public opposition to same-sex marriage was so low that measures like Prop 8 had no chance to pass. But that is not where we are, so I do what I can and hope that what I have done is enough.

Use this as you wish. I’ve absolutely no qualms with my ‘secret ballot’ or my identity being made public. It was without a doubt the only conscionable action. I am not gay, but I have a vested interest in the outcome. We all have a vested interest. We are all human.

Jason Eshleman

A Democrat staffer is assaulted at a GOP rally in Missouri.

Vote on November 4.

From the National Review:

Alison is a 48 year old Harvard graduate who is now director of American Revolutions (snazzy title that!) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland—one of the largest repertory companies in the country, which produces 11 plays a year.

“You cannot tell the story of the United States without including the story of conservative political and social movements,” said Alison Carey told the New York Times.

You’re not looking very hard, Alison. Didn’t David Mamet just shift his allegiance from “brain-dead liberal” to half-baked conservative? (Or was that just a late-career publicity stunt?)

Neil LaBute might count in a classical Hobbesian, war-of-all-on-all kind of way.

Other than that, you’re out of luck. Conservatives who love theatrics either work for Fox News or the clergy.

There’s a hell of a lot going on tonight, including a story about ice-bound explorers, sustainable housing, and a cocktail party for a cookbook up at Third Place Books the Women’s University Club, and many others that I’m about to tell you all about right now.

At Seattle Public Library, it’s time for the Washington State Book Awards, which I rather cruelly described in the reading calendar as “the Oscars of the Washington state literary community—without all the glamor, good looks, or excitement.” But really, how many chances to get to an awards ceremony do you have in any given year? Here’s a list of the winners. I assume that many or all of them will be there tonight:

FICTION Matt Ruff: Bad Monkeys POETRY Samuel Green: The Grace of Necessity HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY Coll Thrush: Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place GENERAL NONFICTION David R. Montgomery: Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations SCANDIUZZI CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD Picture book: George Shannon: Rabbit’s Gift (Laura Dronzek, illustrator) Book for middle grades and young adults (10- to 18-year-old readers): Sherman Alexie: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

There are two readings at Town Hall tonight. Russell Shorto will read from his book about the conflict between science and religion. Shorto! I feel like when I say that aloud, I should get a super-power of some sort. And Dave Zirin chimes in on the crazy new “sports” fad that everybody’s talking about with A People’s History of Sports in the United States.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Jonathan Carroll, whose website defines him as a “hyper-fiction” author, reads from his newest book. Carroll is heavily endorsed by Neil Gaiman. I haven’t read his new one, but if you’re a Gaiman fan, you should check out Carroll either tonight, or at his reading tomorrow night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

How to Beat Up Anything is what it says it is, offering detailed information on beating up Olympian Michael Phelps, legendary Greek warrior Achilles, an apple-throwing tree from The Wizard of Oz, and beloved actor Tom Hanks, among others.

Valuable information for troubled times. (And thank you, MetaFilter.)

Author Dave Zirin, being interviewed on KUOW right now, just pointed out that the owners of professional sports teams have given six times as much money to McCain than they have to Obama. Wonder what the breakdown looks like for the owners of the Ms?

This neat little article convincingly corresponds the recent expansion and contraction of Starbucks with the real estate boom and bust that triggered the current economic crisis:

This recent crisis has its roots in the unhappy coupling of a frenzied nationwide real-estate market centered in California, Las Vegas, and Florida, and a nationwide credit mania centered in New York. If you could pick one brand name that personified these twin bubbles, it was Starbucks. The Seattle-based coffee chain followed new housing developments into the suburbs and exurbs, where its outlets became pit stops for real-estate brokers and their clients. It also carpet-bombed the business districts of large cities, especially the financial centers, with nearly 200 in Manhattan alone. Starbucks’ frothy treats provided the fuel for the boom, the caffeine that enabled deal jockeys to stay up all hours putting together offering papers for CDOs, and helped mortgage brokers work overtime processing dubious loan documents. Starbucks strategically located many of its outlets on the ground floors of big investment banks. (The one around the corner from the former Bear Stearns headquarters has already closed.)

And:

Like American financial capitalism, Starbucks, fueled by the capital markets, took a great idea too far (quality coffee for Starbucks, securitization for Wall Street) and diluted the experience unnecessarily (subprime food such as egg-and-sausage sandwiches for Starbucks, subprime loans for Wall Street). Like so many sadder-but-wiser Miami condo developers, Starbucks operated on a “build it and they will come” philosophy. Like many of the humiliated Wall Street firms, the coffee company let algorithms and number-crunching get the better of sound judgment: If the waiting time at one Starbucks was over a certain number of minutes, Starbucks reasoned that an opposite corner could sustain a new outlet. Like the housing market, Starbucks peaked in the spring of 2006 and has since fallen precipitously.

Actually kinda beautiful…

And this was one of his bad days…

John McCain Accidentally Left On Campaign Bus Overnight

The Huffington Post treats us to a slideshow of Palin’s fabulous outfits—the $150,000 worth of clothes purchased for Palin and her family by donors to the GOP since August. Be sure to check out the picture of Palin taken in a supermarket in Alaska before she was selected as John McCain’s running mate. See what happens when Palin picks out her own clothes? Not having to look at outfits like that on the news is worth 150K, if you ask me.

And you gotta love this picture of some “Palin Dudes” at a rally…

That’s one powerful woman—I mean, if she can get those boys into pink shirts… but, um, where are their right hands?

The Chicago Tribune went with Obama, but Al-Qaida has endorsed John McCain.

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier,” the message said. “Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush.”

Kinda makes Obama’s “association” with William Ayers seem kinda piddling, huh?

A lot of people have been murmuring about the possibility of riots in some big cities in the event that Obama loses while polls are still projecting a win for him. But here’s something I hadn’t heard until now: according to the The Hill, police departments are also preparing for riots if Obama wins:

Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors.

^{Claire Cowie’s The Peacock (2008), watercolor, sumi color, ink, and pencil on paper, 48 by 68 inches}

At the Wright Exhibition Space.

Back in 2003, Cowie was a bright-eyed young artist heading off to her first show in Los Angeles, of slightly disfigured but very lovable figurines placed in careful relationships on a tabletop. In the five years since, Cowie has sized up her figurines, making them larger-than-life sculptures that themselves contain paintings. Now she has transferred the careful relationships from the tabletop into an unusually large painting called The Peacock at the Wright Space, and simultaneously she has a nearly silent installation of tiny painted moths on pushpins gathered around the light above the stairwell at Western Bridge.

I’m considering asking Cowie to tell me what has happened for her in the last five years, how she has made the subtle transition from hot young artist to scene-staple. The Peacock got me thinking; it is a seriously good painting that moves Cowie forward in small but noticeable ways. (I wish I could offer you a zoom feature here.) I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Fellow artist Joey Veltkamp asked her some questions about it himself.

Many yeligious types will tell you that there’s this higher power, a supreme intelligence, and that, in the case of Christianity, this higher power loves you and died for your sins and is the savior of all mankind and the prince of peace and the lamb of God and your loving father and wocka wocka wocka—and if you don’t believe them and accept Him as your personal savior—or even if you do but live in a way that He, according to them, condemns—then your loving father is gonna cast your ass into hell after you die, where you will suffer unspeakable torments at the hands of Satan and his devils. In hell you will suffer extravagantly—and suffer eternally—all for the unforgivable sin of having rejected your lord and savior in this life.

Because, really, what is life but a great, big, cosmically cruel trick question? Okay, class: Which religion is the right religion? Pick the right one and you go to paradise; pick one of the thousands of wrong ones and you go to hell. Want some help determining which religion is the right religion? You could ask some of the religious people threatening you with eternal damnation for guidance, I suppose, but since all religious people maintain that their religion is the right religion—the right answer to the big trick question—and all other religions are the wrong answer, you’re not going to get much unbiased guidance from the religious people threatening you with eternal damnation, torment, roasting-on-spits, etc.

Anyway, many of these religious people—the ones always going on and on about how much their higher power hates your sinful ass, and all the unspeakable things their loving/monstrous God is going to do to you in the afterlife if you don’t placate them and Him with your love and devotion here and now—get damn upset when people who don’t believe in God express their opinions with anything approaching the same aggressiveness. Telling you that you’re an evil sinner who brings hurricanes down on our heads? That’s fine. Telling them that their God probably doesn’t exist? Hateful!

Via.

UPDATE: I couldn’t find it immediately—you Google “John McCain” and “Cunt” and try to sift through the hits—but here’s John McCain earlier this year explaining that the good people of America don’t need to hear that kind of language:

Nicolai Ourousoff gives Zaha Hadid a tongue-lashing for her complicity in this Chanel consumption-vomitorium in Central Park, designed to house artworks made in homage to a quilted Chanel bag.

That’s just gross.

Survey Says: Obama’s got a 10-point lead on grampa.

Housing Market Mess: Will a foreclosure bailout work?.

I’m Voting for Scarlett Johannsen: WSU study says celebrities DO impact voting trends.

Fly Me to the Moon: India gets in to the space travel business.

Proposition K: Measure to “legalize” prostitution in San Francisco goes to voters next month.

“It’s a Recipe for Disaster”: King County Council Member Reagan Dunn warns budget cuts could cause a crime wave.

Want to Buy That Special Someone an Endangered Species for X-mas? Look no further than the internet.

Now here’s a raccoon stealing a doormat.

“That’s probably the best game I ever invented: it’s called Give a Bum a Nug.”

American Thinker, a conservative blog, started promoting the idea that Obama is employing something called the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

The idea is now taking off like mad in the rightest-wing conservablogosphere:

Deliberate, crippling immigration policy, systemic fraudulent voter registration (such that eight of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote), multi-generational welfare dependency and the culture of entitlement it both stems from and creates and, of course, using the taxpayer to guarantee home purchasing for people who could not afford to purchase houses and here we are today.

Basically, the idea is that for decades now, Obama and his deputies have destroyed America (the economic collapse, immigration, maybe 9/11, probably even Katrina somehow) in order to get elected and turn the nation into the USSR. And it’s got a crazy name like the Cloward-Piven Strategy, so it sounds totally believable. Can we create a new internet law that whenever your elaborate conspiracy theory involves 9/11, you’re just as bad as those people who bring up Hitler in every argument?

In other news, John McCain has a sign generator on his website for all you Joe the Plumbers out there:

There’s a new Elway Poll out today and it has good news for Gov. Christine Gregoire (with continuing good news for Barack Obama).

Gregoire 51, Rossi 39

Obama 55, McCain 36

Perhaps the Red Scare should not be scaring Washington Democrats after all? Perhaps. But the report on the poll notes that its findings, as far as the governor’s race is concerned, are somewhat anomalous: “Other polls have the [Gregoire-Rossi] race closer.”

And, further on down the ticket, the poll shows Republicans still ahead in a couple of key contested races.

Attorney General: McKenna 48, Ladenburg 29.

Lands Commissioner: Sutherland 37, Goldmark 33.

John McCain has spent more money on makeup than Sarah Palin—oh, and the RNC spent upwards of $150,000 “outfitting” Sarah Palin and her entire family since McCain yanked Palin out of his ass back in August. Politico:

The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74. The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

Says John at Americablog…

Gee, Marshalls and Target are too good for Mrs. Joe Six Pack?

Oh, Sarah Palin is now voters top “concern” about John McCain—they don’t think she’s qualified. But, hey, she looks nice—and that RNC money cleaned Levi up real good too, huh?

Getting someone to announce who they’d like to be president isn’t too hard. One of the trickiest things for a pollster to do is predict who among the people they’ve sampled will actually go and vote.

An Obama blowout, or even a victory, is dependent upon his ability to get voters enthusiastic enough to turn out and actually vote. He was successful in the primaries.

The more conservative (mathematically, not necessarily politically) pollsters tend to be skeptical about whether or not people will show up at the polls—asking questions like “did you vote in 2004” to help sort out the true likely voters from the chaff.

But, thanks to early voting (in some States) we have data to answer this question:

…pollsters are finding that some voters whom they considered “unlikely” voters have in fact turned out to vote. Zogby gives Obama a 21-point lead nationwide among people who have already voted, and SurveyUSA and Civitas peg his advantage among early voters in North Carolina at around 20 and 30 points, respectively.

(Via FiveThirtyEight.)

Where allowed to do so, more people are voting than the conservative pollsters had expected. And by an overwhelming margin, early voters are voting for Obama.

Updated:

Remember, this only a teeny amount of the total electorate—more of a way of answering a technical question about polling than a victory lap.

Please, please vote if you haven’t already. Volunteer if you have voted. (I’m haranguing my relatives in Michigan.)

Remember, there are more races than the presidential one this year—races that are unbearably tight.

I’m terrified of waking up to Governor Rossi in fifteen days.

Remember when Rep. John Murtha got in a little bit of trouble for calling people in his western Pennsylvania district racist while discussing the upcoming presidential election? It’s the kind of thing a Republican presidential candidate who’s courting western Pennsylvania could make some hay out of. If only he could get his words right:

Drunk #1: “Where the ffffuhck did the coffee place go?”

Drunk #2: “They closed. I guess—I guess they got tired of throwin’ us out, I guess.”

Drunk #1: “I’d say that’s a good guess.”

Seattle’s Best Coffee, Johnny Rockets, Stone Cold Creamery, that second-floor porn shop—all attempts at classing up that block seem to have failed.

In my post on bus service changes in Southeast Seattle yesterday, I mentioned in passing that it seemed like Metro was planning to cut an awful lot of routes that currently run on Rainier Ave. South. Although all the Metro staffers who might know exactly how many routes run along Rainier are busy hosting two public meetings on the bus changes at the Holly Park Community Church today, I used Metro’s route list to get a sense of what kind of service will remain on Rainier if all Metro’s route cuts go through. First, here’s a (probably noncomprehensive) list of the routes that run on Rainier: the 7, the 7 Express, the 9 Express, the 34, 39, the 42, the 42 Express, the 48, the 106, and the 107. Of those, only the 7 and the 9 would be unaffected by Metro’s rerouting proposals. (Like yesterday, I’m ignoring the changes Metro says it may consider “depending on resources available,” such as more-frequent service on the 9, on the assumption that a bunch of resources aren’t going to fall on Metro from the sky any time soon.) The 7 Express would be eliminated; the 34 would be eliminated; the 39 would be either eliminated or shortened; the 42 and 42 Express would be eliminated; the 48 would either be shortened to exclude most of South Seattle or no longer serve Columbia City; the 106 would be moved off Rainier; and the 107 would be moved off Rainier. So that’s eight bus routes that currently run on Rainier that Metro is proposing to eliminate, shorten, or move away from Rainier.

Despite all those cuts, Metro is not proposing to increase service along other routes on Rainier; of three potential new all-day routes, only one—the new one-way loop, Route 108—is partly on Rainier. And it’s in Renton.

Lest you think access to transit is a simple matter of walking to the nearest light rail station, think again. Light rail will do a great job of serving people who can get to MLK by bus, bike, or on foot. But if Metro doesn’t greatly enhance bus access from points east of the light rail line, they could be leaving whole neighborhoods without easy access to transit service. Right now, Metro’s proposing exactly three new bus connections that would only improve access to light rail for residents of Mount Baker, Rainier Beach, and Seward Park. That isn’t enough. Rainier and MLK aren’t close together in most of the Rainier Valley, and there are lots of neighborhoods east of Rainier besides Seward Park.

In the comments yesterday, someone suggested that Metro might have targeted Rainier for so many cuts because of a “road diet” it had planned for Rainier that would reduce the number of lanes in the road. Not true. According to a letter written by Seattle Department of Transportation planners Tony Mazzella and Eric Widstrand and posted on the Columbia Citizens web site, SDOT has abandoned plans to shrink Rainier, because doing so “would result in very significant delays on Rainier for transit and all other traffic.” Instead, they’re widening sidewalks near bus stops, improving striping, and adding—you guessed it—sharrows. A better solution would be to get rid of all the on-street parking (it slows traffic, right? so SDOT should like that) and turn those “extra” lanes into bus-only lanes or lanes for buses and bikes. But, this being Seattle, pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders get lane markings, “bus bulbs,” and “special signs in business districts.”

Incidentally, while I was looking up bus routes, I came across Metro’s real-time bus tracker. It’s pretty cool, if utterly useless unless you’re sitting at a fast computer. (And actually even then—it’s not like you can make the buses move faster WITH YOUR MIND). Anyway, I grabbed a screen shot that illustrates the problem with bus service on Rainier as it currently exists: Four 7s, all lined up a few blocks away from one another. Somewhere down the line, someone has been waiting a long, long time for one of those buses to show up.

…roughly 21K.

Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

The Palin effect on English:

“That’s been my forte as the governor of an energy producing state and as a former chair of the, of the energy regulator — entity up there in Alaska,” she said.

“[I] look forward to that and that’s a matter of national security and, and our economic prosperity opportunities.”

Seattle Public Library has unveiled its 2009 choice for the Seattle Reads… program, the thing that used to be called “If All Seattle Read the Same Book.” This year’s choice is My Jim, by Mount Baker author Nancy Rawles.

I’m not sure how many of you out there play along at home with the Seattle Reads program, but some people love it. The author reads at just about every Seattle Library branch there is. This year’s readings will take place between May 20 and May 23, 2009.

My Jim is the story of the wife of Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I haven’t read it, but I do wish that SPL had picked Huckleberry Finn before they picked My Jim. In my bookstore days, I would get a lot of customers coming up to me and asking if they had to read that boring old huge book before they read My Jim.

Anyway, every branch of SPL will have many copies of My Jim available for readers to take out. If you’ve read Twain, it’s probably worth your time.

In part, it appears, from his grandfather, Stanley Dunham:

Full, indisputably adorable picture here.

(Via Sullivan)

In 2006, Charles Mudede wrote about the infamous death of Kenneth Pinyan and how bestiality came to be illegal in Washington State:

^{Photos by Rob Devor}

The absence of a law banning bestiality was never more apparent than it was on the day James Michael Tait—the man who, according to the Enumclaw Police Department, filmed the exact moment that the horse’s monstrous penis fatally ruptured Pinyan’s colon—stood before a judge last November. The prosecutor’s office wanted to charge Tait with animal abuse, but the police found no evidence of abused animals on the many videotapes they collected from his home. As there was no law against humanely fucking a horse, the prosecutors could only charge Tait with trespassing. At the time of Pinyan’s death, Tait lived in a trailer on a 39-acre lot next to a ranch that breeds Arabian stallions, and at night he and another man would, according to the “Charges in Enumclaw Horse Case” document filed by the office of the prosecuting attorney, “repeatedly visit the [farm’s] barn and have sex with several of their [neighbors’] horses.” Because the owners of the violated farm “were not aware that [Pinyan, Tait, and others who connected with them via the internet] were repeatedly coming into their barn and having sex with their horses,” the prosecutors decided to file criminal trespass first degree charges against Tait. The other man was not charged because he wasn’t on the videotape that captured Pinyan’s last night on earth.

Read this story and others in The Stranger’s “Best Of” archives.

I just got this e-mail from the Obama campaign:

You can play an important role in making sure voters know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will bring the change we need — especially on issues important to the LGBT community like expanding hate crime statutes, fighting workplace discrimination, repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and achieving full equality in the eyes of the law.

Now is the time to raise your voice.

Use our Letter to the Editor tool to write a letter to your local paper.

We’ve made it easy. We provide you with a list of local papers and some important background on the issues to help you get started.

We’ll even send the letters to the papers for you.

So I followed the link and checked out the Letter to the Editor tool. It is, in fact, super-easy to use. You can just pick which gay newspaper you want to send by clicking in the little box next to the name:

Wait! What’s that at the end of the list?

Why, it’s us!

Though the site advises to “Simply share your story—the most powerful voice will be your own,” it’s got talking points for people who don’t know what to say:

So I wrote a letter:

And in the fifteen minutes it’s taken me to write the letter and then write this post, we’ve gotten 5 letters—mostly from lesbians, curiously enough—from the Obama/Biden Letter-Writing Tool. I can pretty much assure you that we won’t publish these letters. Please, Obama-supporting gays: These letters are a huge waste of time. Donate your time in other ways.

Responding to my post yesterday about the city’s destruction of a famous and much-loved skate spot, Seattle Parks spokesperson Dewey Potter writes…

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your phone message yesterday. Seattle Department of Transportation, which owns the property, did the work because the number of complaints and incidents of cyclists and walkers being hit made it clear it was a safety issue.

Parks recently opened a new skatepark at Woodland Park, and we’re working on new skateboard parks at Delridge Community Center and Playfield in West Seattle, at Dahl Playfield in northeast, and at Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill.

Dewey

My response…

Dear Dewey,

Can you provide me with some documentation—police and emergency reports—of incidents where cyclists and walkers were hit by flying skaters? Do you have any proof that there was a safety problem at the Wall of Death? I’d like to see it, please.

It has been my impression, as a frequent user of BGT, that skaters there, like skaters at skateparks, are very conscientious about when it is and isn’t safe to “drop in.” I ride the BGT on my bike several times a week, and I’ve never seen an accident or even a near miss. It is also my impression that the Wall of Death skate spot is used—excuse me, was used—more frequently by skaters in the winter and rainier months, when the BGT isn’t being used by many cyclists or walkers.

And as cyclists and walkers are primarily menaced and harmed by drivers, can I look forward to the banning of cars from our streets?

Please respond about when I can expect to see some documentation of the safety problems at the Wall of Death. Thank you.

Dan Savage

We’re filing a public disclosure request with the Seattle Police Department about any incidents involving skateboarders colliding with cyclists and walkers at The Wall of Death.

So, Halloween will soon be upon us, and that means costumes.

I’m still trying to decide between sexy judge and commercial for abortion.

In the meantime, delight yourselves with Best Week Ever’s list of 2008’s Top Ten Humiliating Pet Costumes. (Dressing your dog up as Goofy is just wrong.)

If you happen to like both Halloween and reading, The University Bookstore is having a Literary Halloween party, inviting folks to come dressed as their favorite authors or literary figures. Here’s what I’ll be wearing:

On Sunday night, Sarah Silverman made her London debut with a show at the Hammersmith Apollo. It lasted 40 minutes, consisted of almost entirely recycled material, and ended with Silverman being forced to “give a Q&A session as an encore after admitting she had no other material prepared.”

It sounds uniquely squirmy, and I look forward to YouTube evidence. In the meantime, here are reviews from the BBC and the Times.

If you and your ex-lesbian wife hold your marriage up as “living proof” that gays and lesbians—excuse me, “persons with same-sex attraction”—can change, that we can “marry and be happy,” then what does your divorce prove?

Josh, blogging over at Horse’s Ass, has an update on KOMO’s “loan” of $180,000 in free air time to Republican US Rep. Dave Reichert. Apparently KIRO, too, has agreed to run Reichert’s ads on credit—an unusual practice that may not be illegal but sure looks like a campaign contribution. (FEC rules bar corporations from donating to candidates.) The Burner campaign, Josh writes, says they’re “exploring legal options” on the ads.

I try to avoid doing this, but this Daily Show report from Wasilla about “The Real America”is pretty amazing:

…before, during, after, or any where in the vicinity an Obama rally—if it happened in the same time zone as an Obama rally—Drudge, FOX News, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, et al, would make damn sure we heard about it. John Aravosis thinks it’s only fair, then, that we hear about the giant American flag that was dragged on the ground after a McCain rally in Missouri yesterday. Video of flag desecratin’, America hatin’, McCain supporters here.

Among other things, he’s a man who paid more than $8,500 in September for make-up services from an American Idol make-up artist.

Nothing but cheap shots…

…but I still laughed.

Launching Chandrayaan-1:

Following in the footsteps of regional rivals China and Japan, India will launch its first unmanned moon mission Wednesday morning.

The unmanned rocket Chandrayaan-1 is scheduled to lift off at 6:20 a.m. local time Wednesday (8:50 p.m. ET Tuesday) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the island of Sriharikota off the Bay of Bengal.

The rocket, which cost 3.86 billion rupees ($94.4 million) and has a take-off weight of more than 1.3 tonnes, is scheduled to orbit the moon on a two-year mission.

The rocket will carry 11 scientific payloads: five from India, two from the U.S. and one each from Britain, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria. India’s space agency said the probe will map a three-dimensional atlas of the moon and study the chemical and mineral composition of its surface.

This is the second space race.

India will become the third Asian country to send an unmanned mission into lunar orbit, as Japan and China both successfully launched lunar probes in 2007. The United States, Europe and the former Soviet Union have also previously sent probes that have orbited or landed on the moon.

As you know by now, I bring a batch of advance reader copies to Slog Happy for everyone to enjoy, with the caveat that the person who reads (or tries to read) the book has to review it for all of us here on Slog.

Today’s reviewer is Joh. Joh is reviewing The Army of the Republic, by Stuart Archer Cohen, a thriller set in the near future. Anything you don’t like about this review no doubt is due to the editing process and not at all Joh’s fault and you should blame the editor. I am the editor.

I have to say, right out of the gate, that if you love books with ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE ENDINGS, then The Army of the Republic is for you. And you suck. The end is trying very, very hard to be Citizen Kane, but comes out more like Mulholland Drive. It’s completely disorienting.

I know that those are both film references. What a segue! Cohen makes a theme out of “Pictures” versus “Words”. What makes that so trite is that this book almost reads like a screenplay. It’s got pages upon pages of detail about the most inane bologna, then when the action happens it skips around like a 7 year old on meth. It feels like he is trying to force the idea of a movie adaptation to anyone who even smells the ink on the paper.

The story is told from three viewpoints. The first is that of the young political freedom fighter-cum-quasi-terrorist Lando. He’s calculating, funny, and terribly boring for a protagonist. The next player is James Sands, macho corporate fat cat and owner of a privatized national water business. The third is Emily, some random lady who works for a civil organization group. She is quickly made into a caricature of social progress, and then becomes less interesting as the book wears on.

Now that I’ve said everything negative about the book that I can think of, I have to say that the story in and of itself is well thought out, and downright disturbing. It’s a look at what could be a very plausible political climate in the near future (especially if a certain gun-toting Alaskan whack-job makes her way into the White House under some act of Satan). There are corporate death squads running about killing off dissenters. A whole election is called off due to “terrorist threats”. There is a huge movement advocating paper ballots to counteract voting fraud.

So my recommendation is as such: if you read the book, stop about 10 pages short of the end, close it and make up your own ending. Mine involved baby penguins, a unicorn-fronted Heart tribute band, and James Gandolfini participating in the Iditarod.

Thanks very much to Joh, and you should totally consider retooling your ending into a whole new novel next month for National Novel Writing Month. I’d read it.

Everybody loves MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow—her new show is absolutely kicking ass. But I didn’t fall hopelessly in love with Maddow until last night when I read this in The New York Times Magazine. Profiled in the “Domains” column, Maddow answers a bunch of questions about herself and her home in Massachusetts. I swooned when I read this…

Favorite place to shop: Not applicable. I don’t shop.

I know that she’s a lesbian and I’m a fag and the lives-to-shop stereotype applies primarily to boy homos and not girl homos, but reading that made me feel a little less alone. Spending money to go places and do things? I’m always up for that. But going places just to spend money and acquire things? No thank you.

Here’s another binary opposition to throw into your binary-opposition machine.

Late-19th/early-20th-century Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin described two opposing styles: the Classic and the Baroque. (The title of his study in Swiss German was Renaissance und Barock. See how we bring it back to Barack?) By Classic he meant High Renaissance (roughly 15th into 16th century). By Baroque he meant Baroque (roughly 16th into 17th century). Even more specifically, he pitted Dürer against Rembrandt.

By Wölfflin’s system, the Classic style was linear, with scenes arranged parallel to the picture plane, using closed form, emphasizing the multiplicity of the parts or forms as much as the whole, and engaging in absolute, almost sculptural clarity. The Baroque was painterly, with scenes receding into unbounded open or flexible space, unified and dominated by light (light over form), and endowed with only relative clarity. When you think of Rembrandt and Dürer, the terms come clearly to mind.

In sculpture, an easy example is Michelangelo’s David versus Bernini’s.

I’m partial to the Baroque. Just drawn to it. I admire the Renaissance but love the Baroque. Plus, Baroque is the underdog. For years the word “baroque” was not a category in art but an insult. In some ways, Baroque has gone down in history the way women have: as mysterious and not entirely serious. (I caught a glimpse of a James Elkins book the other day in which he posed the question: Why is serious always better than silly in art? What are we overlooking when we make that assumption? Seems worth thinking about.)

So this season I’m voting Bernini, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio over Michelangelo, Mantegna, and architects like Bramante and Sangallo. You?

I’m writing this letter on behalf of three of us (although all of us worked on editing it). I’ve been in a relationship with my partner (we’re both women in our mid-20’s) for about three and a half years. Six months or so ago, we started a three-way relationship with a guy. It started when I kissed him at a party (with my partner’s knowledge and OK). The guy and I hooked up a few times, then my partner joined us. We never expected it to turn into a long-lasting relationship, but we all were having fun and enjoying each other, so we kept it going. It’s more than just sex—we’re good friends, we hang out, and we call him our boyfriend.

The problem is this: Whereas our boyfriend and I have an easy and fun time with the relationship, my partner has found it much more difficult. My partner and I have a great relationship and for the most part having a boyfriend hasn’t caused problems between us—the problem is more between him and her. She sometimes doesn’t feel a strong connection with him, and even though she really adores him, doesn’t always feel quite as loved in return. We’ve talked about it, he feels like his love is spread equally and he’s trying everything to make sure she feels good about it. It seems to be this intangible thing—she just doesn’t feel the I’m-into-you vibes coming from him sometimes—and we’re not sure what can actually be done about it.

Anyways, most of the time we have a blast together. Then about once a month my partner feels overwhelmed by the emotional insecurity of not knowing bone-deep that he really is that into her and she gets really upset. Last week was one such meltdown and the three of us made a mutual decision that this was causing too much pain for her, and we should split with our boyfriend (my partner and I are staying together).

But… this just doesn’t feel right! We all love each other, we all really want to be together, and when it’s good, it’s really really good. We don’t wanna split up, it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, but we just don’t know if there’s a way to make it work and no one wants to put my partner through the emotional wringer any more. Do you think there’s any way we can make it work, or are we just dragging out an impossible situation and making it more painful in the long run? We are very much open to any advice you have.

Trio Has Relationship Ending Early

Splitting up with your boyfriend, at least for now, is absolutely the right thing to do. Your partner needs to see that, first off, she’s your top priority. You came to this party with her, you’ll leave this party with her if she wants to go.

I doubt that her insecurity is really or entirely about not feeling as close a connection to your boyfriend; I suspect it’s wrapped up in feelings of insecurity about your connection with the boyfriend and fears of losing you to him. By splitting up with him—for now—your girlfriend may come to understand, bone-deep, that you two are the foundation, the rock, the cake, and he’s the addition, the moss, the frosting. Then she will be able to relax and feel more secure about this relationship—and by “relationship,” of course, I mean the original relationship, the two of you, not the three of you.

Now about your three-way relationship—your triad—there are always real or perceived imbalances of affection and connection in a triad. And those imbalances can shift—you may feel on the outs one day, or he may, if you three get back together and stay together long enough. A perfectly balanced triad is impossible; you’re three people, not three legs on a stool. If a person can’t handle imbalances and fleeting feelings of jealousy and/or panic, if she can’t handle the emotional crosscurrents created by imbalances of affection and power and sexual connection, if she can’t be zen about it, and accept that an imbalance isn’t a bug, as they say, but a feature, and be at peace with it, blah blah blah, then it’s best to avoid triads.

If your girlfriend can’t hack it unless she’s always feeling that things are absolutely equally balanced—that her connection to you is as intense as yours is to her and his is to you and his is to her and her to him and wocka wocka—then your triad is doomed.

David Sedaris on the undecideds.

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?

…this press release seems to indicate otherwise:

SEATTLE— Intiman Theatre announces the addition of Shakespeare’s Othello, directed by Artistic Director Bartlett Sher, to its 2009 schedule. This will be Sher’s first production of Shakespeare’s tragedy and his fourth production of a Shakespeare play at Intiman, where he has been Artistic Director since 2000.

But Sher’s exit strategy, intentional or otherwise, has been masterful. Rumors about his departure have been greatly exaggerated—and they’ve circulated so many times that when it finally happens, people will barely notice.

In other news: The Seattle Rep suggested I host a public forum on the contentious 10 Things Theaters Need to Do article. It’ll happen Monday Oct 27 at 7:30 pm. The format is old Shitstorm style, for those of you who remember those tipsy, occasionally harrowing pub meetings at Rendezvous—I’ll talk for a few minutes, someone will rail against me for a few minutes, and we’ll open the floor for general discussion. Booze will be plentiful and cheap. People will shout. People will have their feelings hurt. And everyone will leave a little bit wiser.

UPDATE: I am a fucking moron who apparently can’t read a press release:

In addition to his continuing leadership of Intiman, Sher has also recently been named Resident Director of Lincoln Center Theater, where he will consult with LCT Artistic Director Andre Bishop on artistic matters and direct one LCT production each year.

Film

Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

• See what else is happening in Film on Tuesday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

Not her personally, of course. Just the stupidity and close-mindedness that she so ably personifies.

Via Sullivan.

Those dead telecommunication thingies have been removed from the top of King Street Station!
What a difference! The tower looks much, much better. It almost looks alert and handsome. But, still, why has the progress of this and other improvements been so slow? Slower than a snail. Slower than a glacier. So, so, slow.

Note: the images are by Bellen Drake.

A little while ago, I wrote about someone donating two gay-themed kid’s books to the Wasilla Library. Those books weren’t put on the shelves, but it’s not what you think:

The Wasilla library does have children’s books dealing with homosexuality, including one title, “And Tango Makes Three,” about two male penguins raising an egg together.

[Library Director K.J.] Martin-Albright said the titles Petrelis donated failed to make it on library shelves because they are poorly constructed, lacked engaging illustrations and seemed to lack the ability to engage young readers. The books also appeared unable to stand repeated use, and would have likely fallen apart eventually.

“It really doesn’t have anything to do with the content or lack of content,” Martin-Albright said.

The donated books will go to Friends of Wasilla Library, to be sold during a future book sale. The money generated from those books sales goes to funding projects at the library.

It looks like, as someone commented on the intial Slog post, that Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate aren’t the go-to books on the subject anymore. I can say from personal experience that that Tango book was all the rage with Seattle parents at Christmastime a year or two ago. It’s heartening that there are actually good books for kids about homosexuality now, instead of just token books, and the Wasilla Library already had the books in stock.

^{Albrecht Dürer, Six Pillows, c. 1493}

Just keeping it simple for a minute.

There’s a whole lot going on tonight.

At Seattle Public Library, Julia Glass, who wrote Three Junes, which is a novel, reads from her new book, I See You Everywhere. A local bookseller, someone whose reading tastes I have great respect for, loathed Three Junes. She thought it was way too cutesy and manipulative. She never loathes any book completely, but Three Junes, to this day, makes her hand-shakingly angry. And that is why I’ve never read it.

Up at the University Book Store, Rick Wartzman reads from Obscene in the Extreme, which is about an attempt to censor The Grapes of Wrath. Let me repeat: people tried to censor The Grapes of Wrath! This is kind of depressing to think about, but Sarah Palin has proven that book-banning is still in fashion with certain particular douchebags.

At Town Hall, Antonia Juhas reads from The Tyranny of Oil, which is about our oil dependence. Did you know that we’re dependent on oil? Shocking!

And most importantly, at Elliott Bay Book Company, Miriam Toews reads from her new novel, The Flying Troutmans. I really enjoyed The Flying Troutmans, which is about a family of eccentrics going on a road trip to find their lost father, although I was a little put off by the dust jacket, which equated the novel to Little Miss Sunshine. Books that compare themselves to independent films are not first in my heart, ordinarily, but it’s a good book about characters who are not too eccentric to be real.

But the Toews (roughly pronounced “Taves”) book you should read is A Complicated Kindness, which is an earlier novel of hers that is now available in paperback. It’s about a teenage girl growing up in a strict, fundamental religious town, and it’s her best book yet. You should go and listen to Toews read from her good, new book and then buy her better, older book and wait for the new book to come out in paperback.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Bill Donohue’s Catholic League pimped out—excuse me, pumped out—a press release this morning attacking Fox’s animated sitcom Family Guy:

In the October 19 episode of Fox’s “Family Guy,” characters Brian (the family dog) and Stewie (the family child) travel in a time machine to rescue Mort Goldman (a Jewish family-friend) from the Nazi invasion of Poland. After Brian and Stewie disguise Mort as a priest to get him out of the country, a Nazi officer asks Mort, “Are you sure you’re a real priest?” Stewie replies, “Yeah, yeah, I can vouch for him, he’s real. He’s molested me many, many times.”

The headline of the press release? “FOX’S ‘FAMILY GUY’ SLANDERS GAY PRIESTS.” Someone needs to let Bill know that slandering gay priests is the Vatican’s official position on the Church’s sex-abuse scandals.

Boris, the mayor of London, is for Obama.

Two days after receiving the backing of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has received the backing of another politician who might have been expected to support his Republican opponent John McCain - London’s Conservative mayor Boris Johnson.

Defying the unwritten rule that politicians don’t interfere in other countries’ elections, Mr Johnson told readers of the right-wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph that Barack Obama seems “highly intelligent” and that “unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences.”

…[Boris Johnson’s] comments will undoubtedly have annoyed the Conservative Party, in particular its leader David Cameron who praised Senator Obama’s Republican rival John McCain earlier this year. The British Conservative Party traditionally support the Republicans, and Senator McCain spoke at its annual conference two years ago.

Defamer hosts video of what it calls “the dumbest batch of Wheel of Fortune contestants in history,” who find themselves stumped over the kitchen-based phrase ”_OOD BURNING STOVE.”

Okay, that’s pretty dumb, but I still grant top dummy honors to the mid-’80s Wheel contestant trying to solve the phrase “_T TAK_S ON_ TO KNOW ON_”, who in desperation spat out a sentence that’s been burned in my brain ever since: “E.T. takes one to know one”???

McCain is reportedly giving up on Colorado and New Mexico.

Which leaves him with what options to get to 270 electoral college votes?

Not many, and all of them seem to count on Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania? Where McCain is down by at least 10 points? And which hasn’t gone to a Republican in like 20 years. Really?

I mean, there’s still two weeks until the election, anything can happen, two weeks is a lifetime in politics, yadda yadda yadda, but (and with apologies to those who fear jinxes and such) if some special McCain-saving thing doesn’t happen, and if the “lifetime” of this next two weeks doesn’t turn out to be long enough, then simple math tells you where this is all most likely going.

This vs. That is the theme of the day.

So… the whole MAC vs. PC thing? Totally played out? With Apple now making fun of Microsoft’s ads which make fun of Apple’s ad that make fun of Microsoft, yeah, pretty much played. And now New York’s musical-theater/stage-combat/blood-and-gore-special-effects geeks deliver a final, fatal blow.

It goes on about, oh, three minutes longer than it needed to. And at the end? Are they MAC and PC zombies or what?

Because there’s this pro-pot infomercial I’d like to get on the teevee. And, hey, since you’re giving free commercial time to Dave Reichert, why not to me too?

I’m not sure I get this video—winks versus blinks?—but it brings together two of Slog’s all-time favorite subjects. And, hey, any excuse to hear this gorgeous version of “Danke Schoen” is welcome…

Detour: Obama cancels campaign events to visit ailing grandmother in Hawaii.

The Good, The Bad: Plummeting oil prices may disrupt Iran, Venezuela and Russia’s plans for world domination. Oh, and that oil price slump is also hurting the alternative energy market.

Hot Terrorist Phone Sex: NSA investigating whether government eavesdropped on phone sex, intimate conversations between soldiers, aid workers, journalists.

But Did They Include A Deposit Slip? Five Chase banks receive threats, white powder in the mail.

Burst Bubble: Woman suffering from “environmental illness” ordered to leave her bubble house.

Maybe He’s Setting Up A Vacation Home: Bush decides to keep Guantanamo open.

Best Heist Ever: Jamaican thieves steal a beach.

Get Ready For Another Dino Attack Ad: Gregoire’s budget freeze could have an impact on state’s universities.

The Replacements: Seattle U’s basketball team to fill in for Sonics at Key Arena.

In Case You Hadn’t Noticed: The Seahawks are fucking terrible this season. With 49er’s coach Mike Nolan gone, could The Walrus be headed back to San Francisco? Internet speculation has already begun.

And because I’m tired of posting ‘08 videos, it’s time for some cute animal clips!

Just in case your eyes aren’t bleeding from my zillion-word post on bus route changes, here’s another transit post—this one about another good reason to vote for light rail. In brief: It creates neighborhoods in a way that buses don’t and can’t. Dan Bertolet:

There have been buses running down Rainier Ave. for more than half a century, but development over those years has been unfocused and highly car-dependent. The difference between buses and fixed guideway transit is that a decade from now the oceans of asphalt parking lot surrounding the McClellan light rail station will be gone, replaced by the mixed-use residential buildings and open spaces of a vibrant new urban village. Over in Bellevue we can expect to see a similar transformation in the Bel-Red Corridor if Proposition 1 passes.

Pretty much any time light rail is proposed anywhere in the U.S, people will impugn it by reducing the total investment to a cost per ride that sounds expensive. Left out of their equation, however, are long-term, systemic and transformative effects that are not easily quantified, but are substantial nonetheless. Others deride the “light rail faithful” for supporting a transit system that doesn’t provide the direct benefit of a stop right outside their own front doors. Similarly, what’s missing with this gripe is the insight to grasp that most light rail proponents recognize the big picture benefits, and are willing to be unselfish.

The benefits of light rail aren’t just for the people who ride it. Transit transforms cities, directs neighborhood development, and makes it easier for everyone to get around—not just the people who live a block away from a transit station.

Slog Tipper J. directs us to Crooks and Liars, which has two audio recordings of voice mail threats left at ACORN offices. They’re chock full o’ racist slurs and death threats and ignorant hate. Here is the transcript of the less offensive of the two:

You liberal idiots. Dumb shits. Welfare bums. You guys just fucking come to our country, consume every natural resource there is, and make a lot of babies. That’s all you guys do. And then suck up the welfare and expect everyone else to pay for your hospital bills for your kids. I just say let your kids die. That’s the best move. Just let your children die. Forget about paying for hospital bills for them. I’m not gonna do it. You guys are lowlifes. And I hope you all die.

You’ll note the sudden concern for natural resources and the sudden lack of concern for the lives of children. Also note that liberals come from outside the country somewhere—maybe France?

Anyway, here’s video of John McCain praising ACORN back in 2006. It starts at 1:30:

I know this video isn’t new, but it needs to circulate just as much as the vile McCain-inspired hate speech we’ve all been hearing over the last few days.

Big changes are underway for bus service in Southeast Seattle, where King County Metro plans to re-route, reschedule, or eliminate more than a dozen existing routes. (Details and route maps available here). I got my flyer in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a rundown of the proposals, along with some observations (I’m ignoring the “potential service enhancements” on the theory that Metro isn’t going to have a lot of discretionary cash for a long, long time).

1) Get rid of the Route 7 express, which runs infrequently between Rainier Beach and downtown during morning and afternoon rush hours, and extend service on the Route 9 (Rainier Beach to Capitol Hill) to serve the Rainier Beach light rail station. As a frequent Route 9 and non-express rider, I won’t actually benefit from these changes (I would benefit from one of the fabled “potential enhancements,” “more frequent service on Route 9 express,” but I won’t get my hopes up); but it’s a no-brainer to improve access to light rail from points east of MLK. However, if Metro improves access to Rainier Beach without making it easier for everyone else in the Rainier Valley between Othello and MLK to access light rail too, they aren’t going to see many people leaving Rainier for light rail; it doesn’t matter how fast it is if you can’t get to it.

2) Extend Route 14 (Mount Baker to downtown) to serve the light-rail station at Rainier and MLK (the “Mount Baker station.”). From here, the Mount Baker proposals break into two options. Both would eliminate the Route 42 on MLK (which duplicates light rail), and both would eliminate a small segment of the 14 between the Mount Baker station and S. Hanford Street. Plan A would extend all 48 trips to Rainier Beach but eliminate service to Columbia City along S. Alaska St., and eliminate service between Beacon Hill and SoDo on the 38. Plan B would create a new route 109 between Skyway and Mount Baker, but would basically eliminate service on the 48 to the south end. It would also eliminate the 38. Both plans seem like mixed bags for South Seattle residents—the first one screws Beacon Hill who need to get to SoDo and Columbia City residents who want to head west (to light rail, for example); the second might improve travel times on the 48 for north end residents, but for southenders, it creates a new milk run that could be as slow and unreliable as the 7.

3) Eliminate the Route 34 between Rainier Beach and downtown, and either: a) also eliminate Routes 35 and 39 and “replace” them with a new, infrequent (every 30 minutes to an hour) Route 50 serving Seward Park and the northmost end of Columbia City; or b) keep the 39 but end it at Othello instead of Henderson in Rainier Beach. It’s hard to see why cutting a route entirely and replacing it with one that serves fewer people is better than cutting it somewhat but serving almost everyone.

4) I don’t know enough about Renton/Skyway transit issues to speak fluently on them, so I’ll just tell you what they’re proposing: Eliminating service on the 7 between Henderson and Prentice Street, and either: a) extending the 107 from Renton to serve the Rainier Beach rail station; moving the 107 off Rainier and onto 62nd Ave. S., eliminating service for some riders; and creating the Route 109 mentioned above; or b) rerouting the 107 even further east, along the route of the 109 (not included in this proposal), and making it longer; and creating a crazy-looking loop Route 108 to serve Rainier Beach, Skyway, and West Hill.

5) No more route 32 from downtown to Beacon Hill and Rainier Beach (who knew so many bus routes ended up in Rainier Beach?), and a shorter, all-trolley Route 36 that would only run to the Othello light rail station (instead of, once again, Rainier Beach). A longer Route 106 would pick up some of that slack, but it would no longer serve Rainier Ave. S. Is it me, or does an awful lot of service on Rainier get eliminated under Metro’s plan?

6) Cut the 194 to the airport, which light rail would duplicate, and replace it when light rail isn’t running with a new Route 195. This seems like a totally common-sense move that no one except anti-rail zealots could oppose, though I suppose someone will try to prove me wrong.

A few observations from other places. Seattle Transit Blog points out that Metro’s proposals miss a big opportunity to link the Rainier Valley to other parts of South Seattle—in other words, it still assumes, like the current bus system, that you’re trying to get downtown—and not, say, between Beacon Hill and Rainier. As nice as it will be to get to points north without having to go through downtown, sometimes you just want to go from Georgetown to Columbia City (which is currently more or less impossible).

The Rainier Valley Post has (uncharacteristically) little to say about the changes, but commenters there note that what Southeast Seattle needs is more bus service, not less. Given that Metro’s recent “service improvements” failed to provide a minute of additional service in Southeast Seattle, I’d say that’s about right.

Scott at the Central District News is psyched about the changes, noting optimistically, “it would be nice if this all worked out as planned.”

I agree. And I’m optimistic. I hope Metro will find the money, political will, and vision to create a bus system that works with light rail and makes the whole city easier to access without a car.

If you want to learn more about changes to bus service in Southeast Seattle (or to share your thoughts or concerns with Metro staff), Metro is holding a series of community meetings on the proposal. The first one was last week, but there are still seven more to go; information, including addresses and times, below the jump.

Continue reading "Big Changes Coming To Bus Service in SE Seattle" »

Just read your latest column where you had mentioned that someone sent you several dozen digital photos of he and his wife engaged in “poop play.” Can you forward them to me? Just peaking my morbid curiosity. Thanks!

J.P.

Yeah, it’s just your morbid curiosity—right.

Regardless, J.P., I didn’t save those photos. Even if I had, I couldn’t and wouldn’t share them with you or anyone else. I don’t take much seriously, kids, but I do keep the confidential bits of the mail I receive at “Savage Love”—real names, email addresses, incriminating photos—confidential.*

* Well, I have been known to let my boyfriend take a look at the occasional photo. Spousal privilege.

Nate Silver, the wonky head of the mathematically rigorous election projection site FiveThirtyEight.com, has a computer model that uses all of the available polling, weighted for accuracy, demographics and the rest, to run through ten thousand possible elections every day. Each one of these simulated elections pops out an electoral vote total for Obama.

What’s the best way to display all this data? A histogram.
Here’s Nate’s:

Along the bottom, on the horizontal, are the possible electoral vote counts for Obama.

For each one, from zero to five hundred thirty eight, on the vertical are the number of times this Obama electoral vote count happened during his ten thousand simulations. The tallest peaks are the most likely outcomes during the simulation. The low tails are things that are possible, but not very likely.

Many of the closer followers of FiveThirtyEight.com, like the Stranger’s own Anthony Hecht, tend to focus more on the big Obama victory pie chart. Over the past few days, Obama’s number has drifted down a bit, from a peak around 96% to the low nineties today.

Look at Nate’s histogram for today:

McCain is all tail, no peak. The peaks are still strongly skewed to an Obama blowout.

The histogram tells you, in much more detail than a number or a pie chart, the chances of the different outcomes in crisp (and this case comforting) detail.

I love histograms.

Hitchens says on Slate today…

At numerous rallies where the atmosphere has been, shall we say, a little uncivil, Gov. Palin has accused Sen. Obama of accusing our forces in Afghanistan of simply bombing villages. Only a moment’s work is required to discover that the words complained of were never uttered in that form and that they occurred in a speech that stressed the need for more ground troops as opposed to more airstrikes…. Did Palin know that she was telling a lie? Or did her handlers simply assume that she would read anything that was put in front of her, however mendacious? And which would be worse? And when will she issue the needful retraction? There seems no way of putting her in a forum where these points could be raised. So, continued media coverage of her appearances is no better than lending a megaphone to a demagogue, the better to amplify her propaganda.

…what I said on Slog back on September 23…

Maybe it’s time for the media to pull all reporters—print and television, photographers and videographers—off the McCain campaign. Entirely. Press coverage of a campaign is supposed to be a two-way street. The candidate wants to get his mug on television, he wants his rallies and speeches broadcast and written up, he wants to use the media to reach the voters. In exchange for allowing themselves to be used, the candidate is supposed to make himself available to reporters and anchors, answer questions, hold press conferences. The McCain campaign isn’t holding up its end of the deal. It’s using the media to reach voters without making Palin and, increasingly, McCain available for questioning.

Why should the media play along? The media should pull reporters off the McCain campaign and refuse to cover rallies or speeches until McCain and Palin start holding press conferences. Period.

Those chocolate body spreads sold in sex shops?

Ugh.

Do we really need to incorporate the consumption of chocolate into our sex lives? Surely we get enough chocolate in our diets as-is. And there’s nothing particularly erotic about someone smearing chocolate on your body and lapping it up—and, I’m sorry, but someone with brown gunk smeared all over his face looks like… well, there’s no nice way to say this: he looks like a scat fetishist, even if he smells a bit better. Chocolate body spreads—all flavored “sensual” body spreads—are ridiculous pseudo kinks offering up false sensuousness. Body spreads allow the sexually bored and/or desperate to “mix things up” without having to either reveal their actual dark & disturbing kinks to their sex partners or admit to themselves and their sex partners that they have no kinks and just need to make the most of the vanilla sex that they truly enjoy and stop feeling self-conscious about being vanilla and stay the hell out of sex shops.

Want another reason to avoid chocolate body spreads and the people who think they’re hot? Some of them, it seems, are made in China and—surprise!—tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.

Thanks to Slog tipper SeattleBrad.

The “Wall of Death” is a piece of public art under University Bridge. It’s also the nickname for a famous skate spot—it was the nickname for a famous skate spot—under University Bridge. For years skateboarders have been doing tricks on the steeply sloped concrete ramp that faces the “Wall of Death,” a ramp that abuts the small segment of the Burke Gilman Trail that cuts under University Bridge. Skaters would wait for a lull in bike/jogging/walking traffic, and drop in. In the winter, when it’s wet and cold and few people bike, skaters had the spot pretty much to themselves. You can see skateboarders riding the “Wall of Death” here (@ 3:28) and here (@ :36) and here. This blurry screengrab from one of the YouTube videos above shows you what the “Wall of Death” used to look like:

And here’s a picture I took yesterday showing what the “Wall of Death” looks like now…

The city—SDOT? the parks department?—recently tore up a three-foot wide trench in the ramp and set large rocks in concrete. There could only be one reason to do this: to prevent boarders from skating the “Wall of Death.” Here’s a close up of the city’s handiwork. You can see in my “after” image that someone has placed a piece of plywood over the rocks in an effort to make the ramp skateable again.

I put a call in to the city to find out why, after all these years, they felt that they had to destroy this famous skate spot.

In the meantime, skaters, it’s clear the city wants you to find a new hobbies, something else to do, some other way of occupying your time. Perhaps the city would rather you all take up, oh, tagging? There’s a whole fuck of a lot of blank concrete under the University Bridge that you can’t skate anymore, and the place obviously isn’t landmarked or anything—otherwise the city wouldn’t have altered it they way they did—so, hey, if you’re looking for something to do…

As we get closer to the final day, we can expect to see an escalation of this sort of madness:

CULLOWHEE, N.C. (AP) - Police at Western Carolina University say a dead bear cub was found dumped on the campus draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reported that Tom Johnson, chief of university police, said maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. Monday finding the 75-pound cub dumped at a roundabout near the Catamount statue at the entrance to campus.

Johnson said it appeared the bear cub had been shot in the head, and that two Obama signs had been stapled together and stuck over the animal’s head. Johnson was not available for further comment Monday evening.

University police called in state Wildlife Resources officials to remove the body and help in the investigation.

Bear season is under way in western North Carolina.

There can be no denying it: Sarah Palin is perfectly capable of walking around in a swimsuit and heels (which is more than I can say for Dick Cheney).

I particularly love the inclusion of a “rear view.” It takes a maverick to show ass on command.

Thank you, Radar.

…to a metal box on the street in Providence, RI:

I blame Lovecraft.

On Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, Pat Buchanan goes there.

And if Obama—who has always insisted that his campaign isn’t about race—wins, what do bet Buchanan and company will be on television claiming Obama brought up the race issue to get elected?

In case you haven’t seen it yet, check out this interview with Powell after he appeared on Meet the Press. He shreds McCain’s campaign and provides more reasons for supporting Obama, none of which are related to skin tone.

I think I’m in love.

Eli, your theory—that tons of Obama voters are registering because a text message from the candidate let them know today is the last day to register to vote in person—may or may not be true (I tend to hope, perhaps optimistically, that the massive GOTV effort by the Obama camp in this state had its biggest effect in the months and months before the final day to register). In any case, it points to a major, huge, glaring, nay overwhelming flaw in the voter-registration process in this state: You can only register to vote online or by mail until a month before an election. (Today’s deadline, 15 days before the election, is for people who want to register in person at the county elections office in Renton).

This is bullshit, although hardly unprecedented—of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., only a handful, including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, and Vermont, have significantly shorter voter-registration deadlines, and only five—Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin—allow registration at the polling place on election day. (For a full list of deadlines, see here or below).

Why do registration deadlines matter? Because every hurdle you place in front of a potential voter—whether it’s a poll tax, a literacy requirement, or a deadline to fill out a form and register by mail—makes that person a little less likely to vote. The longer you give people to register (and the easier you make it for them to do so), the more you lower the barrier to entry and increase voter turnout, particularly among first-time voters, minority voters, and the young. (See, for example, here and here.)

But, you may say, who cares whether ignorant people have the right to vote? I knew I was supposed to register, and I managed to do it on time. There are a couple of problems with that argument. To say people ought to know better and register on time ignores the fact that information isn’t distributed equally throughout society—just because you happen to work downtown, for example, and get accosted by voter registrars on a daily basis, doesn’t mean everyone else is in the same circumstances. Many people—first-generation immigrants, for example, or single moms with two jobs—have to work much harder to get access to that same information. A truly fair system would allow everyone to register in person at the county elections office, and online, right up to election day—including at the polling place. Anything less disenfranchises some people who want to vote, which is more than we should allow.

Continue reading "Re: Registration Persuasion" »

“(F)ried steak, hot metal and…welding a motorbike.”

A distilled version from the BBC:

Copies of LittleBigPlanet are being recalled from shops worldwide after it emerged that a background music track contained two phrases from the Koran.

The music in question comes from a Grammy award-winning Somali artist and is known to have been available through online music stores for months.

In an e-mail the [Muslim] gamer who spotted the Koranic phrases warned that mixing music and words from Islam’s most holy text could be considered deeply offensive by Muslims. He suggested producing a software patch to remove the music.

Media Molecule said it did produce a patch but, following consultation with Sony, decided to go further.

“We decided to do a global recall to ensure that there was no possible way anyone may be offended by the music in the game,” said a Sony spokesman.

In June 2007, Sony apologised to the Church of England after setting scenes in a violent video game inside Manchester Cathedral. On that occasion the game was not withdrawn.

So what’s behind this story? Is Sony afraid of violent Muslim radicals? Or a boycott? (Does the Muslim world really make up that much of their sales percentage?) Or is it just a case of someone being so open-minded that his brains fell out?

And a couple lines in a song by a Grammy-winning singer is nothing compared to, say, setting violent scenes inside Mecca. (Which, at least, would be historically accurate.) So why the disproportionate response from Sony?

This recall doesn’t smell like sensitivity—it smells like fear.

Two facts: MOHAI is moving. And there is a museum in Las Vegas that’s the art equivalent of S&M cuisine, where you are basically punished rather than served.

Erin Langner says these two dots should be connected. She wonders, in this essay on the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, whether you wouldn’t like to suffer just a little more for your art.

The Neon Museum is not accessible. I learned of it on a blog, followed a link to the museum’s website, and found that registering for a tour in advance is mandatory; this became clear after I realized the address for this place was not posted anywhere on its website. Once in Vegas, I gave the cab driver the address. He started on his way toward downtown with confidence but soon began corresponding back and forth with dispatch, trying to determine a landmark near the museum. After a long pause from dispatch, the driver said he thought he knew where it might be and pulled onto the highway. Fifteen minutes later, I was dropped off at an empty intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard.

Before me was the museum: two sandlots surrounded by a chain-link fence. A tour guide waited across the street from the museum, offering everyone water and an umbrella. No one took him up on it. The group stopped in front of a gate wrapped in a massive knot of chains and Master Locks. The neon signs protruded from behind the fence—the head of a king, a pool player bending forward, horseshoe arches, dollar signs—invading the otherwise barren downtown landscape.

The guide congratulated anyone wearing closed-toe shoes in anticipation of the broken glass and metal throughout the grounds. He mentioned the occasion when a visitor left requiring five stitches, having backed into a piece in the collection while trying to take a photograph. As we stood listening in the shade of the only tree in sight, the error in the group’s collective refusal of the umbrella and water became apparent; everyone was already drenched in sweat.

The nickname of this place is the Boneyard.

And thanks to a comment left on the story by 007, here’s the cool satellite view of the Boneyard.

For more of Langner’s writing, check her blog Peripheral Vision, on which she recently compared Jeremy Shaw’s intense video of a fight in the middle of a mob at Seattle Art Museum with Suzanne Opton’s censored photographs of American soldiers’ faces lying down.

Rock Band 2
Harmonix/EA/MTV Games (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)

While trying out Rock Band 2, I’ve enjoyed not having to review it. It’s the same basic concept as Rock Band 1, which was already Guitar Hero on steroids—two people on fake guitar/bass, one on a USB microphone, and one on a four-pad drum kit play along to popular rock songs from the ’60s to today. Play songs to unlock more songs, along with trinkets for your virtual egotists.

There are improvements, and I’ll get to those, but by nature, RB2 is decidedly similar. New songs, same play. So I’ve paid more attention to the way people digest it.

Perhaps you have a posse who loves the game, and your dedicated foursome racks up RB scores by memorizing complicated song passages. That’s a different review. My experience has been mostly with people who stumble upon the game—showing up at the wee hours with a buzz, seeing plastic instruments strewn about, and figuring they may as well give ‘em a shot.

For these players, it’s a rush to the drum set, which plays 1:1 with the music. You are banging along to a real beat; even if it’s on a plastic kit, it’s still the most successful portion of the “be a rocker” experience. Then somebody grabs the microphone—they’re drunk, they wanna sing along with the Go-Gos or Journey. Whatever. The mic picks up your pitch, but not your words, so you can mumble-hum your way through songs. The plastic guitars get picked last, which control the same as they did in 2005—so they still don’t control like real guitars. With five buttons, rather than a real guitar’s endless array of notes and chords, the play becomes percussive (though certainly less intimidating for a party’s sake).

In a perfect session, everybody’s taking turns and trying it all. It’s not typical. Somebody doesn’t want to sing. Sometimes, they’re insecure. Most of the time, they’ve run out of songs they’re comfortable singing—this is not a karaoke kind of selection, which means less Neil Diamond, more Sonic Youth and Grateful Dead. Casual singers have been underwhelmed after burning through the game’s obvious hits.

Meanwhile, other people hate playing the fake guitars—either the feeling of them or the whole “press a button, then strum” mechanic. Even with the new, welcome no-fail mode, and even with intoxication in the mix, some people do not budge in the face of RB’s party potential.

On the other hand, when you have a group that’s on a roll, the play turns mechanical. Not so much laughing at bad singers and people faux-strutting with their stupid guitars. Instead, everyone stares at the screen to keep up with constant note patterns. You shouldn’t pay $190 for four people to gang up and ignore each other—why not make interaction more inherent with this new iteration?

I did find the sweet spot for some of my play. With the right mix of experts and novices, we laughed it up, made fun of each other, got the hang of the fake-rock system, and found ways to interact even when the game didn’t make that inherent. The song selection is pretty broad, balancing its duds with party-perfect fare (and you can borrow someone else’s RB1 disc and, for a $5 fee, pump those songs into the new game, which doubles the game for newcomers). RB2 has enough tweaks, if not massive changes, to make this near-essential for anybody who already blew cash on the old instruments last time—slicker interface, 84 new songs, new online modes. Hell, what else are you going to do with those old instruments?

But the full instrument+game pack is $190, as is the same pack from Guitar Hero World Tour, seeing release in a week or so. People will soon nitpick over which fake band setup is better—GHWT has slightly better drums and a make-your-own-song studio, while RB2’s new wireless gear is quite solid, and its song selection is larger (though before dropping cash, hit Wikipedia to compare the games’ song lists). Flip a coin if you’re concerned about the slight differences; I’m more interested in when the virtual-rock bell curve will start dipping. With so few new features here—and nothing to compel players to interact with each other in-game—I’m guessing sooner than later.

First, a text message I received this morning from Barack. (And hey, I would totally post text messages from McCain too—if I ever received any.)

It’s the LAST DAY to register to vote in WA! Tell friends to visit their country auditor’s office to register TODAY. Locations at WA.BarackObama.com/WAEV Fwd msg

Next, an email from a Slog tipper currently in line outside a King County Elections office:

This is the line outside and going into king county elections… people who have waited til the last minute to register to vote. this is only part of the line…

My guess is that more than a few of the people standing in line received the same text message I did. And if I’m right, it’s another sign of how much of an advantage Obama has gained by using new(ish) technology to reach less-likely voters.

…right now, outside my window.

It’s not my critics that matter; it’s my supporters, one of whom just sent me a link to these incredible images:

My supporter, Martin, wrote:

Hello Charles,
Long time reader and admirer. I saw this photo today, and thought that it is definitely something you should see:

Yes, yes, it is something I should see. But wait a minute. Don’t go there! Don’t go to where my critics have already landed. This has nothing to do with sex. Nothing to do with some cheap, psychological reading of what’s darkly happening in this summer swimming pool (the tiger as a form of compensation or a phallic something or other). What we see is not a type of sex but a type of attitude.

Let’s think about these images in the light of this splendid story:

The dwelling place of the maiden [Gretchen] whom [the German man] had long been courting without success stood on the bank of some lake or other, and there she would be every evening sitting on her balcony and doing two things at once: knitting a stocking and enjoying the view. My German [man] being sick of the futility of his pursuit finally devised an unfailing means whereby to conquer the heart of his cruel Gretchen. Every evening he would take off his clothes, plunge into the lake and, as he swam there, right under the eyes of his beloved, he would keep embracing a couple of swans which had been specially prepared by him for that purpose. I do not quite know what those swans were supposed to symbolize, but I do know that for several evenings on end he did nothing but float about and assume pretty postures with his birds under that precious balcony.

Nabokov used this story to illustrate the essence or condition of the Russian word “poshlost ,” which means super cheesy. One could also illustrate the Russian word with these wet women and their wet tigers.

^{Scott Griffin’s Green Dress, encaustic on wood, 32 by 19 inches}

At Garde Rail Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

I was down at Garde Rail on Saturday and caught a little show of these fading, modest things. They’re paintings in wax (encaustic), but the encaustic looks thin on the scrap wood. The outlines are fugitive; buxom, ’50s-styled women and dapper men are dancing and disappearing. Artists often describe their works as “dreamlike,” and I rarely find works of art actually to be dreamlike, but these are.

Rudy Ray Moore is no more.

More Dolemite gems after the jump.

Continue reading ""Dolemite, Motherfucker"" »

A British man has been sentenced to life in prison because he killed his wife after she changed her Facebook status to “single.”

The day before the murder, he called her parents and complained about his wife’s Facebook entry which he said “made her look like a fool”, the court heard.

I’m really posting this because I have a Facebook etiquette question: Would it be creepy and weird if I joined the Facebook group for Slog fans?

More bad publicity for the neoliberal program (near total dependence on the market, weak state, weak tax system, weak regulations):

Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

But that is not surprising. What’s surprising is the new effort on the right to connect socialism with Obama. And it’s not a matter of whether this accusation is true or not but, bizarrely, that the very tools Bush is currently using to save the economy are in essence socialist tools. This can only mean one thing: socialism for many Americans has a meaning that’s extremely limited. For the (less than) average American, the word “socialism” mirrors the word “welfare” (public housing, food stamps, public transportation, and the like). Cut programs for the poor, you are not a socialist; authorize the government to take control of huge, private financial institutions, you’re still not a socialist.

One other thing. Obama has become the universal negative for the far right. He is an Arab, a Muslim, a Negro, a commie, a socialist, a terrorist, a radical liberal (he wants five-year-olds to learn about sex), and elitist snob. We instantly see the problem: there is no coherence in this collection of evils. Being Muslim and pro-choice are not consistent. Nor is being a watermelon-loving Negro consistent with being cosmopolitan or an Arab. This confusion, this lack of coherence finds its reflection in McCain/Palin’s inability to shape one clear and consistent criticism against Obama. The next line attack? Obama is lazy and needs to “go get a job.”

I was never really that into Cute Overload! :). Too much baby talk. Too many hamsters.

But ZooBorns I can get behind—“the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world.”

BABY ARMA-GODDAMN-DILLO!!!

It’s like cute stuff meets David Attenborough! Oh, and what’s this? “Tiny Ocelot Kittens Born at the Woodland Park Zoo”? If I enjoy your kitten photographs, ZooBorns, maybe I will just go down to my neighborhood zoo and HANG OUT WITH THOSE TINY OCELOTS IN PERSON!!! Get back to me when you can personally invite me to that guinea pig’s birthday party, Cute Overload.

Last week I asked for a list of your scariest artworks, and I linked to a collection of contemporary artworks that use flags. Well, this morning it all came together in this disturbing work of video art by Pittsburgh-based artist Eileen Maxson, posted by the Houston Chronicle’s Douglas Britt (via MAN):

No, they’re not a hot new rock band (though Christian Nymphos is the greatest band name this side of Stigmata Handjob). They’re married Christian ladies filled with the spirit of horniness!

Each one of us who posts on this blog is a Christ follower. We all believe that God came down from heaven and was born of the virgin Mary…his name was Jesus; he walked this Earth performing signs and miracles, but mostly trying to get man to see the love that God had for him. He was crucified, died and buried. On the third day he rose again, ascending into Heaven, where He rules at the right hand of God the Father as part of the three-part trinity. We believe that his death and resurrection are God’s free gift, our Salvation, which we can never possibly earn except by believing that Christ died for our sins. We believe that His return is imminent, can happen at any moment and we anxiously await the day we are reunited with our Savior in Heaven.

We are women with excessive sexual desire for our husbands! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, God wants us to be madly in love with our husbands. He wants us to keep that fire burning in our marriage beds! We have the Song of Solomon as a perfect example of a Christ honored union where the two people are obviously intoxicated with each other.

Good for you, Christian nymphos. (And thank you, MetaFilter.)

H+ Magazine just launched. It’s apparently the world’s first transhumanist magazine.

Wikipedia defines transhumanism as follows:

Transhumanism (sometimes symbolized by >H or H+),[1] a term often used as a synonym for “human enhancement”, is an international, intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and overcome what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as disability, suffering, disease, aging, and involuntary death.

There are several articles about cell phones implanted into the human body, Botox parties, and attempts to defeat aging. And there are reviews of transhumanist fiction, too. I’m not sure if H+ will be the standard-bearer of transhumanism—some of the design is pretty bad—but I know transhumanism is only going to get bigger as we move into the future.

A 25 foot piece of concrete guardrail fell off the Alaskan Way Viaduct earlier this morning after a hit and run accident.

According to Washington State Department of Transportation engineer Ron Paananen, a large vehicle—possibly a delivery truck— hit the guardrail on the Seneca Street offramp, knocking a sizable piece of concrete to the street below.

“It was a solid piece about 25 feet long or so. It’s an old piece of guardrail,” Paananen says. “The railing is not built to the standards we would build railings to today.”

WSDOT crews have removed the piece of guard rail and will close a lane of traffic at some point to install a temporary barrier.

The viaduct was closed over the weekend for a safety inspection.

Photo by cliff1066 via Flickr

“We live in a scary world.” - Megan the Neighbor, Fairfield Ohio

Comic Book Movie reports that viewers of a Portland advance screening of the Watchmen movie are disappointed with the ending, which is different from the comic book. I’m not going to get any more spoilery than that, but I do think the ending of Watchmen was the weakest part. It’s potentially the only part of the movie adaptation that could improve on the comic, and so this is not necessarily bad news.

…15-foot chunk of concrete falls of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Everyone who submits a film to HUMP! gets a pair of tickets to a screening of their choice. Another good reason to make a film for HUMP! But making tickets available to all filmmakers—whether or not their films make the cut—means we have to hold back a number of tickets for all HUMP! screenings until the filmmakers pick the shows they want to attend. Now that the filmmakers have their tickets in hand, we’re able to release about forty extra tickets we were holding back. Which means that additional tickets for choice screenings—Friday at 8 and 10; Saturday at 4, 6, and 10—are available for purchase here.

Illinois:

A former basketball coach at a Baptist school in Downers Grove will spend time behind bars for having a sexual relationship with a student.

John Puga, 36, of Aurora was sentenced Friday to serve one year in the DuPage County jail with work release privileges after he pleaded guilty to molesting a 17-year-old girl. He also must register as a convicted sex offender.

Puga had an inappropriate sexual relationship with the girl at Marquette Manor Baptist Church and school from November 2001 to May 2002. Authorities charged him in March 2006 after the girl told a counselor. The two also knew each other through another church where Puga served as a youth pastor, according to court documents.

Indiana:

A former youth minister who was convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in jail and another three years of probation. Tyree Coleman, 29, was arrested in August 2006 after a 15-year-old boy said Coleman forced himself on him.

The boy said the incident happened as he spent the night at the Temple of Refuge Church.

Indiana:

Nearly 100 young people attended the Saturday reopening of the expanded Lafayette Community Skate Park on the Faith Baptist Church campus. For Matt Figueroa, 14, the skate park gives him a chance to use his skateboard on new ramps in a safe environment next to the Faith Community Center….

Youth pastor Andy Woodall of Faith Baptist Church was all smiles as he watched the activity in the skate park.

Music

Garth Knox

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The highly reputable and influential Las Vegas Penny Press dissects the true secret of Barack Obama’s success:

Barack Obama’s speeches contain the hypnosis techniques of Dr. Milton Erickson, M.D. who developed a form of “conversational” hypnosis that could be hidden in seemingly normal speech and used on patients without their knowledge for therapy purposes. Obama’s techniques are the height of deception and psychological manipulation, remaining hidden because one must understand the science behind the language patterns in order to spot them. This document examines Obama’s speeches word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients. Obama’s mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because “Obama is the greatest leader of a generation” who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically “inspires” by giving speeches. Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.

Read the whole wonderful thing here.

This clip from The Simpsons…

…got it wrong. This happens—it’s happening—but in West Virginia.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk’s office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

“When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain,” said Matheney, who lives in Kenna. When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge “responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail.”

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

How’s that piece on liberal paranoia about Republicans stealing the election coming along, Eli?

Bookninja has a contest going. Contestants have used their (sometimes quite shoddy) Photoshop skills to make wildly inappropriate book covers for classic or much-beloved books. Like this:

You should go check it out, and vote for your favorites. I quite like the Necronomicon one, and To the Lighthouse is pretty great, too. But since it’s almost election time, I’ll give you one more:

Ladies and gentleman, the opening moments—the totally SFW opening moments—of Larry Flynt’s porn homage to the GOP’s brightest starburst.

At Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium yesterday:

^{Photo, and more photos, by E.S.}

(Due to a flu that knocked out damn near all the editorial staff, including me, this week’s Week in the News is a Monday edition.)

Last week’s print-edition news section was devoted entirely to election endorsements, including our handy, printable, set-it-next-to-your-ballot-when-you-vote cheat sheet. Elsewhere in the paper, Eli Sanders wrote about the distinct possibility that Washington State will elect Obama—and still send several Republicans to high state and federal offices.

Meanwhile, on Slog: I posted video of the Stranger Election Control Board’s interview with Tim Eyman; Dominic Holden reported on a lawsuit filed by Magnolia NIMBYs to keep housing for the homeless out of Discovery Park; I wrote about yet another bizarre kerfuffle among the 36th District Democrats, this one about the language on the sample ballot; Dominic gave props to City Council Member Sally Clark for moving forward on two important housing bills; I reported on Bellevue land mogul Kemper Freeman’s $100,000 contribution to the anti-mass-transit campaign (which has all of ten contributors); Dominic reported on layoffs at innovative architecture and development firm Pb Elemental; I wrote about King County Executive Ron Sims’s announcement of major budget cuts and layoffs at the county; Dominic reported on efforts to preserve historic buildings in the Pike-Pine neighborhood; I gave a brief guide to some important, but low-profile, races on this year’s ballot; and Eli went to Tacoma to cover Joe Biden’s 12,000-person rally at Cheney Stadium.

Oh, and Jonah Spangenthal-Lee was on vacation.

Yes, yes: I’m an asshole—have I ever disputed that point? To the contrary, I’ve cheerfully admitted to being an asshole in more columns than I care to count. But re-read this post—am I being an asshole to poly people? Does that Slog post drip with anti-poly animus? Am I hating on the poly lifestyle? Here’s the post…

I’m not a big proponent of monogamy, as most everyone is certainly aware by this point, and I’m generally pro-polyamory, even if “many loves” aren’t for me. I had a hard enough time conning one dude into putting up with my shit; I can’t imagine that I could possibly con two or three dudes.

But at the risk of sounding polyphobic, I have to say that this event sounds like hell on earth…

The event that sounded like hell on earth? Not the entirety of New York Poly Pride Day, but, as the post made clear, one item on the NYPPD agenda: “The Super Massive Cuddle Party.”

Participants were invited to engage in “multi-person, multi-gender activity,” and “rediscover non-sexual touch and affection.” As friends, co-workers, and that woman who tried to embrace me in the waiting room at LAX last Friday afternoon are well aware, I don’t like to be hugged. Hugs makes me uncomfortable. If you’re not my boyfriend, my kid, or a member of my immediate family, I’m not interested in rediscovering non-sexual touch with you. Period. If Satan himself sat up nights designing torments for me in hell, he couldn’t come up with better/worse than a “Super Massive Cuddle Party.”

But, hey, like I said: I don’t have a problem with poly relationships (not for me, but I’m pro-poly), and I don’t have a problem with poly people (some of my closest friends…), all I have a problem with is hugging, cuddling, and embracing strangers. Now read these two reactions from members of the poly community. First up…

Dan Savage is an asshole. I know that’s not news, but his latest “slog” post in the Seattle Stranger demonstrates his common tendency to crap all over people and events just for the misanthropic fun of it.

It doesn’t matter that he is generally pro poly. His is the last opinion I’d value on that question. What does matter is that his toxic, scornful cynicism leads him to step on his own dick while at the same time slandering others and poisoning the minds of his readers against them.

So… when assessing someone’s opinion on all things poly, it doesn’t matter if he’s generally pro-poly. All that matters is that he signs off on every last event a poly pride celebration. Maybe the organizers of NYPPD could put that in their press releases next year? “Nothing but compliments, please. Remember we’re poly—our skin’s so thin we bleed in the rain.”

Here’s another reaction:

Dan Savage, ardent defender of the kinky and gay, is slamming a celebration of an intimate lifestyle that encourages communication, honesty (both social and individual), and is open to all walks of kink and sexual/gender affiliation…. I’d like to hear some more on why Dan Savage doesn’t like poly being out in the open in this fashion.

Who said anything about not wanting poly “out in the open”? When and where have I condemned the “intimate lifestyle” of poly people? Look, self-appointed poly spokeswhiners, I didn’t slam your celebration, or your lifestyle. I slammed your stupid cuddle party. If being pro-someone’s-intimate-lifestyle means having to sign off on every last event on its pride celebration calendar, then I guess I’m anti-gay. Because I spent a whole chapter in Skipping Towards Gomorrah ripping apart Gay Pride parades—I pissed all over the concept of gay pride.

Sheesh.

A new MoveOn ad attempts to target Sarah Palin…

…but maybe only helps her with hunters?

(Via Ben Smith)

Gorrillaz going at it face-to-face:

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have released the first known photographs of gorillas performing face-to-face copulation in the wild. This is the first time that western gorillas have been observed and photographed mating in such a manner.

“It is also interesting that this same adult female [Leah] has been noted for innovative behaviors before.”

Hot diggity damn, is it good to be back.

Unfortunately, there aren’t so many exciting readings tonight. There’s an open mic and David Knibb, the author of Grizzly Wars, is reading at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. On initially scanning the title, I thought that Grizzly Wars would be a kick-ass science fiction novel, wherein warring countries would fight using cybernetically enhanced bears as their proxies. This is not the case.

According to the book’s website, it’s actually about “the policy and political issues involved in managing and attempting to save any species, especially one that can pose a grave danger to human beings. The author looks at the grizzly bear recovery areas on both sides of the border, from the North Cascades to the Northern Rockies.” It sounds good, but not quite as mind-blowingly awesome as my sci-fi idea.

If anybody would like to steal my idea and use it for National Novel Writing Month, which starts in two short weeks, feel free. Just remember to thank me when the book gets published.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

It’s not impossible that Powell’s endorsement of Obama was timed to coincide with the release of a movie that presents him as the sole decent and honest member of Bush’s original inner circle. In W, Powell, played by Jeffery Wright, is the only one who argues for patience, diplomacy, improved intelligence. He wants Iraq the sequel to be like the first Iraq, a war that was properly designed and executed. Rice, played by the Thandie Newton, almost has no lines; Dick Cheney, played brilliantly by Richard Dreyfuss, wants war and more war. Powell’s moment of shame in American history was his UN presentation of the weak WMD evidence. The endorsement of Obama has much to do with clearing/reversing some of that shame.

A growing number of right wing ideologues, however, are claiming the endorsement had everything to do with race.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We just found out that former Secretary of State General Colin Powell has said he’s going to vote for Barack Obama. Big impact?

WILL: Some impact. And I think this adds to my calculation — this is very hard to measure — but it seems to me if we had the tools to measure we’d find that Barack Obama gets two votes because he’s black for every one he loses because he’s black because so much of this country is so eager, a) to feel good about itself by doing this, but more than that to put paid to the whole Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson game of political rhetoric.

“I got the new Alaska state quarter the other day, but I can’t see Russia on it.”

…single.

Christian Broadcasting Network: On Constitutional marriage amendment , are, are you for something like that?

Palin: I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage. I’m not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can’t do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that’s casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it’s the foundation of our society is that strong family and that’s based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

Sarah Palin doesn’t want to tell you what you can and can’t do… she wants to amend the United States Constitution so that it tells you what you can and can’t do. See how that works? If we could just write intolerance into the Constitution, ya know, then Sarah Palin can go back to being so gosh darn tolerant of all of her many, many gay friends. John McCain—Sarah Palin’s running mate—opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). But McCain does not, as Log Cabin dopes would have you believe, oppose the FMA he is tolerant or brave or a supporter of marriage equality. McCain believes that marriage is a state matter—and he has endorsed efforts to amend state constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. Check this ad out.)

Via JoeMyGod. Palin video after the jump.

Continue reading "Sarah Palin Likes Her Gay Friends Like She Likes Her Teen Mothers..." »

Sullivan:

As expected, one reason Proposition 8, stripping gay couples of marriage equality, is still viable in California is because of strong African-American support. Black Californians back the anti-gay measure by a margin of 20 points, 58 - 38, in the SUSA poll. No other ethnic group comes close to the level of opposition and black turnout is likely to be very high next month.

All this makes it vital, in my opinion, that Barack Obama strongly and unequivocally oppose Proposition 8 in California, rather than keeping mainly quiet as he has done so far. We need him to make an ad opposing it. This is a core test of whether gay Americans should back Obama as enthusiastically as they have in the last month. If he does not stand up for gay couples now, why should we believe he will when he is in office? And if black Americans are the critical bloc that helps kill civil rights for gays, that will not help deepen Obama’s governing coalition. It could tear it apart.

Memo to Obama: make an ad. Speak loudly. Defend equality. Defend it when it might actually lose you some votes. Show us you are not another Clinton.

That’s Peggy Noonan writing about Sarah Palin in The Wall Street Journal, and of all the recent sanity/heresy from the right, it’s the most eloquent about the fatal failure of leadership that was the selection of would-be Vice President Palin:

Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she’s not a big “egghead” but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? “I’m Joe Six-Pack”? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—”palling around with terrorists.” If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously.

In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can’t be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush’s style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don’t, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing.

But the Chicago Tribune gets points for bluntness:

McCain failed in his most important executive decision….Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin’s exposure to the public. But it’s clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment’s notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.

How Healthy Is Your Candidate? The NYT digs into McCain, Obama and Biden’s medical records.

Colin Bomb: Colin Powell endorses Obama.

Some Serious Change: Obama raises record $150 million in September.

And You Think Waiting Room Lines Are Long Now: China plans to provide universal healthcare to 1.3 billion people by 2020.

Catch Me If You Can: FBI’s white collar crime division reportedly undermanned, may not be equipped to investigate fraud linked to current economic clusterfuck.

Sorry, Joe, That Smell Doesn’t Wash Off: 12,000 people flock to Joe Biden rally in Tacoma.

You Can Stop Hiding Your Money Under Your Mattress Now: Suspected serial bank robber turns himself in to Seattle police.

Sox Knocked Off: Tampa Bay Rays beat stupid, stupid Red Sox, head to World Series.

Now, here’s footage of John McCain’s brutal interrogation. By David Letterman.

The Windermere listing of former WaMu chief Stephen Rotella’s Capitol Hill home doesn’t include an address or a picture of the front of the $6.25 million house. But a Slogger teased out the address—1642 Federal Ave. E.—and so I rode over and took a picture. Nice place, lots of “curb appeal.” Can’t imagine why they didn’t include a photo of the front of the place.

Oh, and there’s not a “For Sale” sign out front either.

There were, according to the Obama campaign, about 12,000 people in attendance at the Joe Biden rally that just finished up down here in Tacoma. It was one of his largest rallies ever, if chatter in the press area can be believed.

Cheney Stadium certainly seemed packed, and its name, of course, provided Biden with several joke opportunities, including a line about how if it had actually been named after Dick Cheney it would be hard place to hold a rally, since it would be… an undisclosed location.

Biden was introduced by Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and by Governor Christine Gregoire, who got a lot of mentions from Biden. He described her as someone who’s been subject to the same kind of Republican attacks that he and Barack Obama have been facing, and he made it a point to say that Gregoire has delivered, and will continue to deliver, real change. (An implicit jab at Dino Rossi, who has been trying, with some success, to grab Obama’s “change” coattails.) He also had a few kind words for Darcy Burner. I managed to lose my notebook, but I remember them pretty clearly: “Good luck, kiddo.”

The setting was perfect for the aura that Biden has been trying to cultivate for himself. A smallish outdoor baseball stadium in a working-class part of a working-class city. The crowd, filled with what they call “hard-working Americans,” loved him. And he clearly loved being there:

I’ll post more about the event tomorrow, I hope, but for now, here’s one thing that the crowd really loved: Biden’s declaration that the Democrats had, finally, found a bumper-sticker formulation of their plans.

In his telling, it goes something like: “Returning our economic security and restoring America’s place in the world.” Maybe a tiny bit long for a bumper sticker, but pretty succinct for Joe Biden.

From Friedman’s column in yesterday’s NYT:

Some mortgage broker in Los Angeles gives subprime “liar loans” to people who have no credit ratings so they can buy homes in Southern California. Those flimsy mortgages get globalized through the global banking system and, when they go sour, they eventually prompt banks to stop lending, fearful that every other bank’s assets are toxic, too. The credit crunch hits Iceland, which went on its own binge. Meanwhile, the police department of Northumbria, England, had invested some of its extra cash in Iceland, and, now that those accounts are frozen, it may have to reduce street patrols this weekend.

While we wait for Joe (and Christine, and Maria, and Patty), some photo-blogging of the down-ticketers. First, Peter Goldmark, who’s running for state public lands commissioner against Republican incumbent Doug Sutherland. He was introduced by Congressman Jim McDermott:

Here’s John Ladenburg, who’s running for Attorney General against Republican incumbent Rob McKenna:

Here’s Congressman Norm Dicks and Congressman Adam Smith introducing eastside Democratic congressional challenger Darcy Burner, who’s running against Republican incumbent Dave Reichert:

And here’s who everyone’s waiting for:

That song is another Obama rally standard, and it’s playing here at Cheney Stadium while we wait for more of the warm-up speakers to show up. But it reminds me: On the drive down, I passed a huge electronic reader board, somewhere close to Tacoma, that read:

Voting for Obama?

We need change in Olympia, too.

Vote for Dino Rossi.

Speaking of tactics that have Washington liberals on edge, and what those liberals are doing about said tactics: Congressman Norm Dicks just finished speaking, and during his speech he seemed to confirm something I’d supsected. He said Pierce County is the “central battleground” in the governor’s race. Which, to me, goes some way toward confirming what the Obama campaign won’t say—that Gov. Christine Gregoire is the reason Biden’s here today.

I’m here at Cheney Stadium, an outdoor baseball field in Tacoma where the air is quite chilly and the infield has been converted into that familiar Obama campaign rally scene:

I’m wishing I’d brought gloves—who knew that Cheney Stadium was open air?—and I’m also feeling a little wistful. I’ve been to more than a few presidential campaign rallies in the last year and a half, some of them in Washington State (Hillary inside that hot, hot hangar down at the Port of Seattle, Obama at Key Arena right before the caucuses, Obama at Showbox SoDo way back before he was taken seriously) and some of them in other states (Obama in Iowa, Oprah in Iowa, Kucinich in New Hampshire, Ron Paul near San Francisco, Obama at Mile High Stadium in Denver).

I’m feeling like this may be the last big rally I see before Nov. 4. I don’t imagine Biden will be back here after today. I can’t see Obama himself coming to Washington before the election. And I really can’t see McCain or Palin showing showing up in a state where Obama is ahead by 10 points.

So, hello Cheney Stadium, hello “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” playing once again and giving me Iowa flashbacks, hello giant American flag…

…hello Obama enthusiasts….

…hello certain-to-come talk about the Tacoma Rainiers and other heroes of working class heroes….

And, sniff, goodbye presidential campaign rallies. I’m gonna miss them.

Maybe you’ve heard of the “Barns for Obama” campaign in rural Ohio…

This morning, on my way down to Tacoma for this afternoon’s Joe Biden rally, I noticed Shelly Farnham embarking upon the urban equivalent near the intersection of 12th and John—call it garages for Obama:

And here’s a video of the rural counterpart to her project:

So… Mike Lundstrom of Fairfield, Ohio—a proudly bigoted McCain supporter—isn’t “shy about his views.” But he is afraid to show his face on camera because that might hurt his employer. Which makes you wonder: How hard could it be to find out where Mike Lundstrom of Fairfield, Ohio, works?

John Aravosis points out that the Obama ghost/effigy/whatever hanging in Lundstrom’s yard has a Star of David on its head—because Obama is… Jewish? And a Muslim? Huh? Wha?

Entering this crime that involves an American (who has German blood), a Brit (who is part Indian), a Congolese gentleman (who is married to a Polish woman), a man from the Ivory Coast (who thinks he is black American), and another man from Southern Italy (who looks like he’s from Northern Italy) is someone from the fiery depths of hell…Diavolo:

Italian prosecutors accused American student Amanda Knox, 21, on Saturday of fatally stabbing her British house mate in a Satanic rite and asked a court to put an alleged accomplice in prison for life, defense lawyers said.

Curious what percentage of Obama’s record-shattering $150,000,000 September fundraising total your donation accounted for? Math.com will crunch your numbers. I’m proud to say that my boyfriend and I kicked in 0.0006666666666666666% of Obama’s total September haul.

I’m not sure why the Seattle Times failed to include a link to the real estate listing for former WaMu chief Stephen Rotella’s home in their story this morning about its sale. You can check out Rotella’s former digs here.

Art

‘soundings’

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Sarah Palin’s supporters will say that her appearance on last night’s SNL proves that she can laugh at her self, that she has “poise, humor, and strength” (seriously, poise?!). But all I saw last night was someone who has wanted for her whole life little more than to be on television. This is when Palin appears happiest: reading the teleprompters under the bright lights. All her politics is merely a means to this end.

Oh, and she was less funny than the goat.

This would be funny if it weren’t so insanely fucking un-funny: On SNL last night Sarah Palin—who hasn’t held a single press conference—says to Lorne Michaels that SNL’s opening skit—which featured Tiny Fey playing Sarah Palin taking questions at her first press conference—wasn’t “a realistic depiction of the way my press conferences would’ve gone.”

Gee, Sarah, how about you host a couple of press conferences then—you know, for the sake of comparison?

Writes a reader at The Corner:

I watched Governor Palin on SNL last night. Though I was uncomfortable with all the slams against her as she stood and sat there during the skits, I came away with even more admiration for her. She can stand with those that are vehemently opposed to her, yet show grace, humor and strength. That is exactly the kind of strength, poise and conviction of values that we desperately need in the highest office of our land.

How sad. How Horrible. How absolutely horrible! The whole business with Palin was unwatchable. And one so desperately wanted Tina Fey to return and continue her blows and slams on that most ugly and uncouth human being.

One of Palin’s real Americans attacked one of Obama’s fake Americans in Wisconsin.

Police in Caledonia are investigating the assault of a campaign volunteer as she was canvassing for Senator Barack Obama Saturday afternoon. In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.

“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”

The New York Times has a front-page piece today about the “Palin Dude” phenomenon—all the fine young men flocking to Palin rallies around the country to cheer their “baby.”

While there are plenty of women, including wives and daughters of male fans, at Ms. Palin’s appearances, they acknowledge they are outnumbered. “This is not a ladies campaign,” declared Linda Teegan at a rally in Weirs Beach, N.H., on Wednesday. She was taking a crowd snapshot. “There seem to be lots and lots of guys here,” she said. “I’d guess 70-30, maybe 65-35, men to women. It’s quite noticeable to me.”

The dudes tend to make themselves noticed. “You tell ’em baby,” a man yelled out at a rally Wednesday night on a high school football field in Salem, N.H.

Of course, Palin appeals to a lot of these guys because, as Anthony pointed out earlier, Palin is no feminist. A lot of the guys turning up at Palin rallies are there to cheer on a powerful woman who wants to use her power to make sure that their woman don’t get too powerful—who wants to make sure that their woman don’t get, say, equal pay for equal work, or get to make their reproductive choices, etc. That’s change—as in “changin’ back”—that “Palin Dudes” can believe in. Not a ladies campaign, indeed.

Anyway, the NYT illustrated their story with this photo of eight bare-chested dudes at a rally with the word “MAVERICK” spelled out on their chests, college-sports-fanatic style. I would like to volunteer to fuck some sense into the dude with the “V” on his chest. Just doin’ my part. That leaves seven Palin dudes in need of good sense-inducing assfuckings, Sloggers. A size queen might to jump on “M” (big hands), and “A” and “E” are bearded and slightly beefy, for Sloggers that are into that sort of thing. Have at ‘em.

The editorial board of Salt Lake Tribune writes:

The next U.S. president will lead a nation that remains embroiled in two wars and is beset by an economic meltdown more severe than any since the Great Depression.
By necessity, the country’s next commander in chief must also be its mender in chief, capable of inspiring his angry and divided constituents to join together in a recovery project to restore the peace, prosperity and self-confidence we once knew.
We fear that a lesser effort may be insufficient to reverse America’s slide toward economic, political and societal chaos. The times require dramatic and comprehensive change.
The presidential candidates know it, and have made it their mantra.
Most Americans know it, and, in growing numbers, are demanding it.
The countries that have long depended upon the United States for enlightened global leadership long for it.
For the sake of all, and for those who follow us, we must have it.
The editorial board of The Salt Lake Tribune believes that Barack Obama can deliver it.

While attempting to stoke the fires of the “scandal” of tons of people giving small amounts of money to Obama’s campaign this morning, John McCain let this one fly, when asked about Sarah Palin:

“As a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased,” McCain said, calling Palin “a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America” and asserting “she’s the best thing that could have happened to my campaign and to America.”

So, just so we’re clear: If you call yourself a feminist and/or you supported Hillary Clinton, and you are now supporting John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are an utter fool.

Yesterday we watched people vote with their feet in St. Louis, when more than 100,000 people marched down to an Obama rally. Today we learn that people were voting with their checkbooks throughout September…

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced on Sunday that it had raised more than $150 million in September, a record-shattering amount underscoring again the unprecedented amounts of money he has attracted.

Mr. Obama’s contributions in September more than doubled the $66 million he collected in August, which had already far exceeded what any previous presidential campaign in history had raised in a single month.

Obama has 3.1 million donors, and their average donation is $86. Says Joe at Americablog…

My guess is the money started pouring in during the Republican convention and never stopped. Sarah Palin did a lot to help. Keep in mind, September was a trying month. McCain surged into the lead after his convention and kept it for much of the month. That helped to invigorate our side, too.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of Obama donations by zip code. I’m wondering how many of Obama’s donors live in “real” Virginia, or those “pro-America” parts of the country we keep hearing about, compared to how many live in the parts of America where we pal around with terrorists, kill babies with our bare hands, and can’t be bothered to go to church unless there’s a big gay wedding going down.

Posted by News Intern Aaron Pickus

Powell Endorses Obama: It begins.

Obama Raises Record: $150 million in September.

McCain Alleges Scandal: GOP presidential nominee says there are a “lot of strange things going on in [Obama’s] campaign.”

Communist Obama: Florida Senator calls Obama a communist.

Senator Stevens Testifies: Ornery.

Voter Registration: Thousands incorrectly rejected from registration rolls. Double-check your registration here.

Ex-WaMu CEO Selling House: $6.25 million on Capitol Hill.

Nickelsville Must Move: City threatens U-District church.

Amanda Knox Claims Innocence: Closed-door hearing.

Prehistoric Glue-Sniffers: Trippin’ in the Caribbean.