My dad was born and raised in Lucinda, Pennsylvania, a small town in the western part of the state where a fair percentage of citizens are named Schmader and where my family visited every other summer over the Fourth of July.

A perennial highlight of these trips was a visit to the home of Morgan Jones, a friendly mad-scientist type everybody called Morgie. Morgie was known for his vast collection of explosives, many of which were self-invented, some of which were for sale. (Over the years my dad bought some truly frightening fireworks custom-made by Morgie.) On the night of the 4th, Morgie welcomed visitors to his property, for whom he'd put on a small show, featuring the annual firing of his homemade cannon and various other kaboomy delights.

Yesterday my dad forwarded me the news story from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

A Clarion County man who the FBI charges is an officer in a Western Pennsylvania militia will remain in custody at least through the weekend as his federal detention hearing Thursday was continued until next week. Morgan A. Jones, 64, of Lucinda is...one of five people arrested Sunday on weapons charges by the Pittsburgh Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Yocca said Jones is a captain of the 91st Warrior militia, one of three groups under the umbrella group Pennsylvania Citizens Militia that investigators first infiltrated in October 2006. Militia documents introduced in Jones’ hearing included a Pennsylvania Citizens Militia manual, “Get America Up In Arms” pamphlet and a document titled “Defenders of Liberty, Territory 91.”

Testimony from four hearings over two days revealed that Jones hosted annual flamethrower parties on his property. Attending those events, Yocca said, were militia members, gun enthusiasts and neighbors who watched Jones fire a homemade flamethrower and cannon as well as a lightning-making contraption inside a barn.

Good luck, Morgie.

In other weird news news: A couple years ago I met this judge when we both attended my best friend's wedding. Good luck to him as well. GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!

My favorite new phrase, picked up while reading this timely New York Times article over the weekend—an article that also introduced me to my second-most-favorite new phrase, "e-mail apnea."

Friday, 13 June 2008

Dear Prayer Warriors,

Today I will travel to Alabama to be inducted into the Calhoun County Hall of Fame. Please pray that God will be glorified during the ceremony. Please pray for safe travel and that I feel good physically on the trip.

Thank you!
Pastor Hutch

This week's Last Days brought the following eyewitness

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 "Dear Last Days," writes Hot Tipper Bradford, placidly commencing the creepiest report of violent Metro-based bigotry since that psycho clocked that blind lady a couple weeks ago on the #18. "This afternoon I was waiting for the #8 Metro on Capitol Hill. Waiting with me was the homeless Native American transsexual I've seen around the neighborhood. I call her Two Spirits. She was engaged in her usual self-contained commotion when she spotted a midget and another gentleman waiting for the bus. 'I hate midgets!' she started yelling. 'FUCKING MIDGET! I'LL SLIT YOUR FUCKING THROAT! I'M TRIBAL POLICE!' The gentleman replied, 'That's fine, but it'd be great if you could make the bus come on time.' Both man and midget entered the bus unscathed." Dear Hot Tipper Bradford: Thank you for noticing and sharing. Also, I don't mean to look a gift Hot Tip in the mouth, but "midget" isn't really a word but a slur that's gained currency due to pervasive use. Go with "little people," which may sound odd and comparably insulting, but is the preferred term, no matter what Trapped in the Closet says.

Yesterday brought the following email from Hot Tipper Erin:

As a midget/dwarf/Little Person/whatever-you-want-to-call-me who lives (way too) close to Broadway, I was not at all surprised at this act of violent verbal assault placed upon my fellow LP at the #8 bus stop on friday, June 6th. I myself have been the subject of an array of insults being hurled at me out of car windows, impromptu camera phone photo-ops, and many other ridiculous, horrifying examples of ignorance and hatred for the larger portion of my adult life. (Though none has come so often as when I moved to Capitol Hill, which I have chronicled in my blog, thelowlifeseattle.)

When you consider that this is no different than gay bashing, or calling a black person a nigger, I could only think that people like me have the same legal recourse as those being discriminated against for their ethnicity or sexual orientation. So out of curiosity, I called the Seattle Police Department and asked the on-duty police officer what actions I could take the next time something like this happened. Unfortunately, there's not much. The most I could do was file a complaint (different and lesser than a report) in order to give the area's unit a heads-up that there's a crazy person out there verbally attacking innocent people on the street. If anything, the person may already have a warrants which could hasten any criminal proceedings and get them into the jail/nuthouse where they belong, but that's it.

I am sorry for the person who had to go through that and I hope that they'll do something about it next time. That kind of behavior is completely unacceptable, no matter how crazy, homeless and 'helpless' the person doing it is. By shrugging it off, victims are only saying to people that's it's 'ok' and gives the opportunity for more.

Thanks for the tip on the homeless Native American transvestite, I'll have to watch out for that one...

And thank you, Erin. Everyone else: Please refrain from threatening to slit each other's throats, no matter what size you may be.

As none of you may remember, my Xbox 360 up and died a few months ago.

I shipped off my console and, after a few long weeks, got another big white box in the mail. Of course, my new xbox was terminally ill and it wasn't long before it started grinding, freezing and doing other generally unpleasant things.

Again, I called Microsoft and requested another replacement. MS told me they'd try to send me a console with an HDMI connection and instructed me to send back the console AND the hefty power brick. Done and done.

Two weeks later—that's today—my new console arrives...with no motherfucking power brick. I call customer support and they tell me it's going to take a week to get me another power supply. A fucking week. Awesome. They say they're going to try to ship one sooner than that, but I'm not holding my breath. Grand Theft Auto isn't going to play itself.

Microsoft, we need to talk.

I just don't think things are working out between us anymore. We've grown apart. We're too different. You're a giant company who likes to break my heart every few months, and I'm a busy, casual gamer who's sick of being hurt by you.

Your sleek, sexy console can be a heck of a lot of fun sometimes, but it's just not what I'm looking for. It's loud and it regularly passes out right as we're about to get busy.

Right now, 100% of the Stranger's editorial staff has broken Xboxes. Brad—whose machine went to shit last week—has purchased a PS3 and says it's been very good to him. I'm seriously thinking about making the move.

I think it's over between us, Microsoft.

Sorry about the herpes.

-Jonah

I just got off the phone with Peter Francese, founder of American Demographics Magazine, former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, now the demograhphic trends analyst for Ogilvy and Mather, New York.

I was interviewing him for a story about death and he went off on a tear, an awesome Sister Peter Francese Explains It All for You moment that went like this:

You do know that 105 baby boys are born for every 100 girls, right? And at conception, there are 110 boys for every 100 girls. There have to be more guys because guys are weaker, and also dumber. Death rates for teenagers way higher for boys than girls.

After age 30, there are always more women than men. By the age of 80-plus, there are twice as many women as men. In order for the preservation of the species, men are needed for about 20 minutes, maybe a little longer if they can bring food. They’re genetically bred for speed and short lives. Women are bred to live longer lives and to care for small children.

Natural selection selected stronger, more aggressive men and women with longer lives. And here we are, a million years later, and guys still want to go out and run around, but they get stuck in offices. Their blood pressure goes up and they get angry and they go postal. Or something. But the point is, excessive violence by men trying to be acculturated by a society that didn’t exist when these traits were evolving—well, you can see the problems.

And what do parents with hyperactive young boys do? They stuff them with Ritalin. They drug them so they’ll sit still and behave. The last time I read a number, Ritalin prescriptions were at least 3 to 1, boys to girls. But I don't like to look at the numbers because it makes me too sad. It appalls me that parents would feed their kids pharmaceuticals. People managed rambunctious kids for centuries—just take them out to do stuff.

He went on, but my notes sort of dissolve at that point.

This NYT article about the limits to free speech pretty much everywhere except the U.S. is fascinating. Love this quote:

Jason Gratl, a lawyer for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, which has intervened in the case, was measured in his criticism of the law forbidding hate speech.

“Canadians do not have a cast-iron stomach for offensive speech,” Mr. Gratl said in a telephone interview. “We don’t subscribe to a marketplace of ideas. Americans as a whole are more tough-minded and more prepared for verbal combat.”

It seems to me that American kids learn the "freedom of speech" excuse very, very early. It's easy to assert a right that's given in such plain language. Canada's "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication" just doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue.

David Brooks has an interesting column today in which he talks about "the deterioration of financial mores" in America and breaks our culture down into two groups:

On the one hand, there is what the report calls the investor class. It has tax-deferred savings plans, as well as an army of financial advisers. On the other hand, there is the lottery class, people with little access to 401(k)’s or financial planning but plenty of access to payday lenders, credit cards and lottery agents.

Which makes me wonder, as part of my continuing wonder about who all you Slog people are: Which group are you in?

I mean, I read A. Birch Steen religiously, so I know that he firmly believes that anyone who reads what The Stranger produces is either a welfare queen, a mooching couch surfer, or an incompetent crook of some sort. But perhaps he doesn't really know our online audience? Or perhaps he knows you better than you know yourselves? (As I'm sure he would contend.)

In any case, enlighten me.

Are you in the investor class or the lottery class?

When I complained earlier in the week about the cold and the rain, lifers, old-timer and natives lectured this recent transplant—I've only been in Seattle for 17 years, after all—about how I needed to wake up and smell my location, that Seattle is always like this in June, blah blah blah. Well, it looks like I'm not crazy...

It's colder here than in Siberia! Or, um, one cherry-picked city in Siberia, at least. We are, however, enduring the coldest June on record—but our records only go back about a hundred years, of course, so there could have been a colder June 105 years ago for all we know. But it's freaking cold, gray, and wet, and I've had it. At least in Aspen—where it's still snowing—they've opened the mountain to skiing and snowboarding this weekend. I wish the Pass—which has also been getting snow—would reopen for some freaky-ass June snowboarding.

...that you could forget to wear pants?

Photo sent by heroic Hot Tipper Nara, who snapped the pic in late May and submitted it with the following:

At around noon on Friday May 30th, I was walking down north Broadway with my husband and a friend, when we noticed a couple walking ahead of us. Both were tall women, and one was wearing a long skirt, boots and a sweater. Her girlfriend, however, didn't seem to feel the need to cover her netherparts. We couldn't tell if she was wearing a t-shirt-dress that was unfortunately short, or if she was sporting her thong (and accompanying buttcheeks) on purpose. Whichever it was, her girlfriend didn't seem to mind, as they were kissing periodically.

It's great to be back on Broadway - we moved to New York recently and it just isn't the same.

Thank you, Nara, and thank you, real-life Dina Martina.

I think I ate a tainted tomato last weekend and spent most of yesterday sweating, shaking, and watching unspeakable things heaving themselves up from the depths of my body. Back when people were all worked up about bird flu, Annie Wagner said she wanted to die of a pandemic, to "die a historic death." I never understood what she meant until yesterday.

Yesterday was a long, hazy, solitary misery until someone told me I wasn't alone—that there were others, that our suffering was making headlines, that we were kneeling in bathrooms separately but together, in solidarity, as part of the long, sweaty fever-dream of History.

I didn't just get food poisoning—I was part of a movement.

I know, I know: We're all supposed to pretend that all this rain and these fifty degree temperatures in fucking June don't bother us a bit. But this shit is getting to me.

Full disclosure: The woman in this video happens to be my best friend, Linda Dahlstrom.

But I'm pretty sure that the greatness of the video—a testing of the Hula Chair, which retails for $129.95 (and builds muscle, blasts fat away, and even relieves hemorrhoids, according to the manufacturers)—goes beyond my bias.

(If you want more, this is part of a series Dahlstrom edits where she and other MSNBC writers test outlandish products, like naked yoga. No. There is no video of her doing naked yoga.)

Hot on the heels of this comes the following delight from the current Last Days:

FRIDAY, MAY 30 "Hi, Last Days," writes Hot Tipper Amelia, casually commencing the greatest Hot Tip since last week's Value Village soggy-denim nightmare. "In an effort to stay out of the bars tonight, my friends and I decided to attend the 12:30 showing of the Sex and the City movie at Meridian 16, along with about a million high-school girls in uncomfortably fancy outfits. Carrie and friends appeared onscreen to squeals of delight—but about 10 minutes into the movie, a nondescript, non-bummy-looking girl across the aisle from me started vomiting, loudly and continuously for what seemed like eight minutes. It sounded like she was bailing out a sinking rowboat onto the concrete theater floor. The weirdest part was that in an incredible example of mob apathy, no one alerted the rent-a-cop or any other movie authorities. We were all punished for our silence 20 minutes later, when the puking girl's friend (who'd been calmly watching the movie) suddenly dropped trou and started pissing on the floor. She steadied herself with one hand on the seat in front of her and took a seriously long drunk pee. The whole time she was doing it, she was defiantly staring at the people across the aisle from her. Then she went to sleep and started snoring like a lumberjack. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. When I finally told the usher what happened, he looked to his partner, a good-looking African-American SPD officer, and said, "Washington, it's fun time." The two reappeared from the theater with two incoherent, vaguely Asian-looking young ladies, both wearing summery white dresses covered in vomit and urine. The movie was pretty good."

I just got back from Olympia, and in case you were wondering, there is no whipped topping on the Greyhound bus, non-dairy or otherwise. There are, however, still people who insist on interrupting your reading. On the ride down to Olympia, I had my headphones on, my hood up, and was reading last week’s New Yorker article about the architecture of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, “Out of the Blocks," when there was a tap on my shoulder. I ignored it. There was another tap, so I pulled back my hood a bit and pointed to my headphones. Still, the tapper, seated behind me and across the aisle, asked, “What blocks is they talking about?” Rather than explain to him that the title seemed to be a pun referring both to the Beijing Olympics' "outside-the-box" architecture and the starting blocks of a foot race, I turned to him, headphones still on, and said, “I’m sorry. I’m reading, and I’m not interested in talking to you about it.” He got riled and snapped back, “Don’t give me no attitude, I’ll whip your ass…” before trailing off into some threats I couldn't quite make out over my music. The leg room was merely adequate.

Netherlands — Utrecht police say a 21-year-old Dutch man is recovering after a "mooning" that went horribly wrong.

A police statement says the man and two others had run down a street in Utrecht with their pants pulled down in the back "for a joke."

It says that at one point the 21-year-old "pushed his behind against the window of a restaurant" that broke and resulted in "deep wounds to his derriere."

I'm on vacation and won't be slogging much this week. Still: What kind of world makes Oscar-winners buy their crack on the street?

What's next? Dianne Wiest busted for public urination?

About a year ago I went to a transracial adoption event at Seattle University. It wasn't for couples who wanted to sign up, it was just a public conversation between adult transracial adoptees—meaning, basically, black and Asian adults who were adopted years ago by white parents. About halfway through, I realized I was witnessing something amazing, and I wished the whole city was there to hear it.

There were about 15 people in the room, mostly adoptees and a separate handful of unrelated white parents. By the end, almost all of the white people there were crying. They said they had no idea how painful it could be: In every case, the pain of the original rejection that led to the adoption was exacerbated terribly by the loss of any real connection to the adoptee's racial community.

About half the adoptees sounded like they had conservative religious assholes for parents. But the other half simply had white parents who didn't recognize, or refused to recognize, that their children would experience the world as black or Asian whether or not the family treated them "like they were white." The fantasy of colorblindness was blinding the parents.

The organizers showed a video about this (which is what originally got the white people crying). In the video, a black woman announced, "Don't think you can make black friends after you adopt a black child. If you don't already have black friends, you shouldn't be adopting a black child."

I may live in the Central District, but please. I'm a white person living in a white world, meaning that I'm someone who deals with the issue of race only when I feel like it. But what the workshop participants were saying is that white parents of children of color can't play by those rules. They can't be lazy when it comes to race, or their kids will pay for it one way or another.

I asked only one question: Would any of you adopt children, and if you did, would you want them to look like you?

One guy said yes to both. After all these years of sticking out at family events (he was also gay and transgendered, so it was particularly difficult for him), he wanted another family member who would look like him—and with whom he'd be able to share certain experiences particular to being Asian.

Some of the adoptees wanted to end transracial adoption altogether. (Granted, this group was self-selecting. One supposes just as many transracial adoptees were out having happy lunches with their white parents that day, but that doesn't make these experiences any less real.) One guy said that although he struggled, he was grateful to have been adopted at all.

When I told friends about this, many of them emphasized that this was a tiny group of people and that, hey, at least they were adopted by families who wanted them. But the grateful adoptee's logic—that beggars can't be choosers—is still a tough place to begin life from. What's the role of loss in the lives of adopted kids, even if their situations are perfectly happy? How does race complicate it? I wanted to learn more.

So I called the organizer. But she didn't return my call. I didn't hound her, thinking maybe these people don't want their business spread around. Then, this week's news—here's a report from CNN, wondering whether white parents need training before parenting black children—got my attention again.

Basically, I want to write about what went on in that room, but in much more depth. I want to contact the participants, but I don't know any of their names and the organizer hasn't responded to another call this week.

Were you there? Do you know someone who would want to talk to me? Are you the Asian woman working to end adoption from Korea? The gay, transgendered man who would want to adopt? Any of the white parents who were there? I'm looking for you guys. I want to learn more.

Send me an email.

Remember all those flayed Chinese corpses that came to Seattle two years ago?

Remember how people wondered where, exactly, those corpses came from?

Well, New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has just announced that Premier Exhibitions can't prove, to his satisfaction, that they aren't "the remains of individuals that may have been tortured and executed in China."

So he's shutting them down until they can prove the provenance of their corpses.

Cuomo said his office had reached a settlement with Premier that he said will "bring an end to Premier's practice of using bodies of undocumented origins in their exhibitions."

Some members of Congress also take exception to the Bodies exhibition. From the NYT:

This month, 21 members of Congress, led by Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, signed on to a bill that would ban the importation of plastinated human remains.

Bonus: "Cuomo also said 'all prior visitors' to Premier's body exhibition in New York City are eligible for a full refund of the price of their ticket."

In reality, it seems unlikely that the Bodies bodies came from murdered members of Falun Gong. A totalitarian state that practices political assassination would do anything with its victims (burn them, bury them, sink them) before handing them over to doctors from other countries for examination and display.

But ethics is ethics, and the burden of proof lies with the shysters (I mean, educators) over at Premiere Exhibitions—who, according to Cuomo, have made a fortune off of Bodies at the South Street Seaport.

Bodies Seattle was presented, oddly, by the nonprofit Seattle Theatre Group. To reminisce over a conversation recounted in this edition of Theater News two years ago:

Josh LaBelle, executive director of STG (which runs the Paramount and Moore Theatres and, until now, has dedicated itself to performing arts), noted that Bodies is educational and that STG's mission has an "education" component.

I noted that STG's mission actually has an "arts education" component. "Well, that's true," LaBelle said. Seattle Theatre Group normally presents Broadway musicals, dance companies, and bands, but, LaBelle continued, "this is us exploring a new direction. What becomes art and what becomes art education?"

That's a big question, but the answer probably isn't an anatomical exhibition.

Yesterday I went to talk to fourth- and fifth-graders about writing. During the Q&A, one of the kids asked if I'd ever had what I thought was a little story grow into a big story, and I told him how my obsession with the creation and dissolution of Michael Jackson spring-boarded into a national news-ish story when Jackson faced new criminal charges in 2005.

After the class, one of the fourth-grade boys came up and told me he'd written a story about Michael Jackson, too. Even better, he gave me a copy.

The full text of Booger Boy and Snot Boy Versus Michael Jackson is after the jump.

One of the many gifts of the story: Confirmation that no adult has ever been able to accurately impersonate childishness (except for her and her).

Continue reading "Everyone Likes a Good Michael Jackson Story" »

I know I have an especially affecting Last Days Hot Tip when the Stranger copy editors hunt me down and berate me for torturing them.

They did just that after reading Friday's item in this week's column.

FRIDAY, MAY 23 Today brings a valuable lesson from Hot Tipper Caroline: "I was browsing for jeans yesterday in the Capitol Hill Value Village. I found a cute pair, but they didn't have a price tag on them, so I thought I'd try them on and if they fit then I'd ask someone for the price. I draped the jeans over my arm and continued going through the racks. While browsing, I smelled the distinct odor of pussy. Then it got stronger and became the distinct odor of pussy and piss. I looked at the jeans draped on my arm and, hating myself, leaned in slightly to see if the offensive odor was coming from them. It was. I hurried to get the jeans off my arm, only to realize they were soaking wet from the crotch through the thigh with still-warm urine. Obviously, someone had wet their goddamn pants, gone into Value Village, put on a different pair of jeans, and hung their piss-soaked jeans back on the rack. It's been almost 24 hours and I still have a grimace on my face. What continues to haunt me is that, in total shock and horror, I put the jeans back on the rack. Ladies, beware."

Caroline: My thanks.
Copy editors: My apologies.

So announced MetaFilter back in early May, when they linked to Connors' amazing five-part series for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Beyond Rape: A Survivor's Journey.

I've been meaning to direct Slog readers to the series ever since, but didn't get around to it till today—and Memorial Day seems as good a day as any to acknowledge an experience a hideously large number of women are forced to survive. As for Connors, her attack is just the tip of the iceberg, instigating a decade-spanning saga of reflexive racism, ambitious forgiveness, and the sweetest story of a "mom tattoo" I've ever heard. It's an amazing read.

The email (from Slog tipper Matt Hickey) reads: "Educational video or how-to for pedoophiles? You be the judge! I dare you to watch the whole thing without looking away. If you can, you're a fucking pervert."

To the kind soul who sent us a case of Ensure which expired in 2006: Paul Constant's guts thank you.

To see more of Mr. Constant drinking things he shouldn't, click here.

I couldn't help but notice that your pendulous cotton nutsack is showing.

An elderly woman died Monday afternoon after her car crashed into a downtown Seattle utility pole and landed upside down.

A couple weeks ago in I, Anonymous, a man implored his female friends to stop making him listen to conversations about their sex lives. This weekend brought a response:

To the royal D-bag who wrote in two weeks ago to complain about his three gal pals who "can't keep [their] mouths shut about opening [their] legs": get over yourself and grow up. You're a misogynist in the truest sense of the word. It seems the only mistake these women have made is thinking that you're a friend, and as such, someone they can talk to about their lives, sex included. As for your alleged "guy friend" who claims that a woman who talks about her sex life "either wants to fuck you or piss you off," tell "him" this Seattle 2008, not Podunk 1958; get over the virgin/whore dichotomy. Women are people, just like you (giving you the benefit of the doubt). We like to have sex and then we like to talk about it with our friends. You're an immature, self-absorbed, fleck-of-fecal-matter frat boy. The reason you can't get a "quality date" or a "quality fuck" in a town filled with awesome, sexually "liberated" women is that you don't constitute either yourself.

Zing and then some.

(Still, who isn't occasionally sick of women talking about their sex lives?)

Today is Starbucks Bike to Work Day:

Most cities in our region do not know how many cyclists use their roads because they do not count them. Cascade Bicycle Club wants to see official bicycle counts become commonplace around Puget Sound. But until then, the number we tally each year on Bike to Work Day has become the default indicator of our community's growing size and strength....

Throughout Puget Sound, riders can stop by Commute Stations to pick up free schwag, snacks, city and county maps, bicycle commuting information and to have bikes checked for free by our fantastic bike shop station sponsors. This is your day to be counted and recognized by the city!

Wow, swag! Contribution to a meaningless statistic!

I commute every day, rain or shine year round, by bicycle. And I have news for you, I don't recommend it for most. Why? The incredibly shitty traffic engineering informed by outright anti-bicycle, pro-car, policymaking by SDOT. Most bicycle commuter routes in the city are dangerous, far more dangerous than they need to be.

Waving free cups of coffee, inane contests and yet-to-be-implemented master plans in the faces of potential bicycle commuters is insulting. What are we, children? Until the city--SDOT and the police, in the very least--takes the safety of cyclists seriously, why should anyone even consider it? Keep your free coffee. At this point, I'd settle on the city paying for catastrophic health insurance for committed bicycle commuters--taking responsibility for the inevitable severe injuries that result from encouraging people to use actively hostile infrastructure to commute outside of a car.

So much of what frustrates both cyclists and drivers alike is not crappy cycling or driving--the majority in both groups are at least competent and sane--is the shitty traffic engineering. The horrible design of the city's streets favors assholes and idiot drivers and cyclists alike.

Examples.

1. Whose bright idea was it to put big, red, flashing stop signs only for cyclists where the Burke meets Brooklyn Ave NE? Are the dim bulbs at SDOT aware that using a crosswalk where cars are not required to stop is more dangerous than jaywalking? Proven so, in Seattle, by researchers from UW. If the cars don't have to stop, pedestrians (and, by extension cyclists) are nearly four fold more likely to be struck when using a crosswalk, as opposed to jaywalking. Why? Some drivers, spying a crosswalk without a stop sign for them, speed up to avoid having to wait.

The proper design, if you valued the safety of pedestrians and cyclists at all, even when it comes at the expense of slightly inconveniencing drivers, is to make such crossing four way stops, forcing asshole cyclists and drivers alike to be sane. And then the four way stop must be enforced by the police.

For another example, see where the Burke crosses Pend Oreille Rd.

2. Why does the bicycle lane on the Northbound lanes of University bridge simply disappear as the off ramps for Campus Parkway and 40th St NE start, with no marking for drivers seeking to exit the bridge (often at 40-50mph) to yield to cyclists continuing straight? Every basic traffic engineering textbook demands such markings. Where are they? This isn't some back route for cyclists.

Enough. I could literally go on all day with examples where the convenience, often very minor convenience, of drivers is prioritized over the safety of cyclists.

You want the city streets to be focused on the ease of drivers over all else? Fine. Just don't blithely encourage people to use these same streets as cyclists. It's irresponsible.

Slog tipper Matt Hickey writes:

Could you please remind the readers that just because it's way nice this weekend that it's still no excuse to wear fucking flip flops everywhere? I'd like one summer of not having to look at people's ugly, ugly feet.

Thank you for the public service.

Matt

It's like you're reading my mind, Matt.

This just in from international Hot Tipper Brent:

It's been a while since I checked in with the War on Public Grooming, but thought I'd relate an incident that occurred the other day, marring an otherwise perfect afternoon on a Barcelona beach. I trudged out onto a nice spot of sand on a Maresme beach (a little north of Barcelona proper and thus more insulated against the usual flotsam and jetsam) for a brief break from a bike ride and took a seat roughly 30 yards away from two guys well into their afternoon sun. About five minutes into a nice nap I awoke to what sounded like an electric razor, and sure enough, when I sat up and looked over, I saw that the two guys were heavy into their leg-hair maintenance. One was working on his thighs with a Remington of sorts while the other was grooming sans power with your standard Mach-something. I stared and stared and stared some more, the trauma seeping out in sighs and asides. When the men looked over, I shook my head and let my arched eyebrows stand-in for a poorly-formed Spanish admonition.

...somebody went ahead and parodied all of those Belltown crackhead videos.

There's maybe twelve seconds of funny in this three minute video, so don't feel like you need to watch the whole thing.

Hm. Maybe there's something to this role model crap after all. The kid came down for breakfast, saw the headlines on this morning's PI about the Seahawk Lofa Tatupu's DUI arrest yesterday, went back up to his bedroom, and took down a poster of Tatupu that he'd hung over his bed.

...from Slog commenter Gurldoggie:

This one relatively innocuous posting has sparked displays of rage at local businesses, national chains, meat eaters, vegetarians, religious believers and poor spellers. What is up with you people? Fried chicken doesn't get your blood pressure up half as fast as an average Slog post. You people have got to get another hobby—this one is killing you!

The free-ranging fight about everything forever continues...

Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Thank you so much for praying for last Sunday's services! It was a great day—mothers were honored and God used Romans 1 to explain the only two choices we have which are to glorify God or to not glorify God. Not glorifying God leads to destruction and glorifying God leads to victory!

Please continue to pray for next Sunday as we finish up the verses and learn how to eliminate destruction in our lives and why it is important to stay away from the homosexual lifestyle.

Pastor Hutch

The Robbins half of Baskin-Robbins departed this mortal coil one week ago today. That's him on the right:

Ol' Irv Robbins grew up in Tacoma. He and Burt Baskin were brothers-in-law. He ate three or four scoops a day. His favorite: Jamoca almond fudge.

Selections from Baskin-Robbins' Fun Facts:

-Famous former Baskin-Robbins scoopers include presidential candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
-Howard Hughes once became quite fond of Baskin-Robbins Banana Nut ice cream, so his aides tried to purchase a bulk shipment for him. Sadly, they discovered the flavor had been discontinued. They put in a request for the smallest amount the company could provide for a special order, 350 gallons (1,300 Liters). It was shipped from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, where Hughes lived at the time on the top floor of the Desert Inn. That’s the hotel he bought after they tried to evict him. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced he was tired of Banana Nut and only wanted French Vanilla ice cream. The Desert Inn ended up distributing free Banana Nut ice cream to casino customers for a full year until the 350 gallons were gone.
-Sean “Diddy” Combs got his first break by starring in a Baskin-Robbins commercial at the age of two.
-Throughout the years, we’ve honored important American events and cultural trends by introducing premium ice cream flavors, such as Lunar Cheesecake, Sesame Sweet, Beatle Nut and Green Monster Mint. [Who--or WHERE--is this Green Monster???]

This weekend I received the following Last Days Hot Tip, announced with the subject line Hot Tip! (booger eater):

On Saturday, May 10, at around 1 pm, my girlfriend and I were on the 358 Metro from Greenwood to downtown. When we got to around 60th and Aurora, a young man (early to mid 20's) got onto the bus and sat on the bench across the aisle from me. He proceeded to vigorously pick his nose, inspect his findings, then eat his boogers. This went on steadily for 10 solid minutes, after which his pace simmered to a pick-and-eat every couple of minutes. Attached is photographic evidence of this man's booger-eating. Also, he was wearing a magic mushroom t-shirt.

The emailed tip did indeed feature photographs of the man in action, and if the subject of Hot Tipper Wellington's Portrait of a Booger-Eater had been Ken Hutcherson or Tim Eyman or John Curley, I would have posted it with glee. But the subject is just some dude caught doing something hideous in public. If you're a man who rides the bus, digs for gold, and enjoys the booty (ugh ugh UGH!), it could be you. Let this be a lesson to us all.

I got a lot of nice emails, cards, and letters after my mother died on March 31. But this one, which arrived in the office on Friday, is perhaps my favorite.

Thank you, A Once In A While Reader. That was very thoughtful.

And is the New York TImes trying to kill me? It's my first motherless Mother's Day and both columns in today's opinion section about moms are about losing your mother. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman writes of his mother's death; and Caitlin Flanagan writes about losing her mother. This chunk of Friedman's column ruined my morning/mourning:

Whenever I’ve had the honor of giving a college graduation speech, I always try to end it with this story about the legendary University of Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant. Late in his career, after his mother had died, South Central Bell Telephone Company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial. As best I can piece together, the commercial was supposed to be very simple—just a little music and Coach Bryant saying in his tough voice: “Have you called your mama today?”

On the day of the filming, though, he decided to ad-lib something. He reportedly looked into the camera and said: “Have you called your mama today? I sure wish I could call mine.” That was how the commercial ran, and it got a huge response from audiences.

So on this Mother’s Day, if you take one thing away from this column, take this: Call your mother.

I sure wish I could call mine.

When dogtags meet dogs:

The Pentagon is recommending changes in the handling of troops' remains, after it was revealed that crematoriums contracted by the military are used for both human and animal cremations.

In other corpse-disposal news:

Now a new option is generating interest: dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain. The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.

Happy weekend, everybody.

From Scientific American:

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not—can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments.

An August report by the Justice Department showed that in 2005, blacks represented 13% of the U.S. population but accounted for nearly half of its murder victims. Most of the black murder victims — 93% —were killed by other black people.