Demographic sample hour: If you're NOT inside Seattle's city limits right now, readers, where are you?

[Update: The responses to this are fascinating so I'm moving the post up to the top again.]

Music writing isn't either, but at least no one's ever stolen my pants.

A new SLOG column! Every Tuesday. The best of the WORST tattoos in Seattle. Might as well start with this nice pink poodle, some What-The-Fuck?-Lettering, and MY own pride-and-joy "Tweety with a Mohawk".

I was just reading about students in Arlington, TX, who have been banned from wearing ear gauges and mouth grills at school. It's the same generational clash that all rebellious teenagers face: students cry "self expression� teachers preach "modesty� and "them's the rules�, but what really piqued my interest was the mention of mouth grills.

I had no idea what a mouth grill is, and I dote on teeth (and teeth accessories). Apparently, mouth grills are popular enough to be banned from schools; why haven't I ever heard of them?

A quick Google search led me to Mr. Bling, and Wow! Here's a set for $1,380:

And here's my favorite, for only $420:

It's gotta take guts and a pretty sharp sense of humor to pull off the flashy beauty and utter ridiculousness of the mouth grill. Shame on the Arlington school district for stomping on budding student creativity and oral pride. We know who's to blame if those fabulous grills are melted down for hookers and heroin.

Oh, and here's another reason kids are grand.

In response to Where Are You Right Now?...

Seattle. Seattle Weekly offices. Go ahead fire me.
Posted by: Go Ahead | July 11, 2006 11:13 AM

Dave, don't forget that the Northwest has its own cat man, Stalking Cat (legally Dennis Avner), who lives on South Whidbey Island where the (mostly artsy/lefty) locals have reportedly been "pretty welcoming." I saw him buying baked goods in Freeland last summer—a quick survey of the other shoppers' faces revealed sly glances and small smiles of amusement.

The Seattle Times published a profile and beautiful and jaw-dropping photo essay on him in 2005.

On an only-slightly related note, I saw a great T-shirt the other day.

You know what's worse than five kids—aged 10 to 17—drowning during a church outing?

When four of the five are siblings.

Dear God.

Today, Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine officially pardoned Grace Sherwood (aka the Witch of Pungo, obviously the best witch name ever—it totally beats the bat shit out of Starhawk) on the 300th anniversary of her conviction in a trial by water.

"With 300 years of hindsight, we all certainly can agree that trial by water is an injustice," Kaine wrote. "We also can celebrate the fact that a woman's equality is constitutionally protected today, and women have the freedom to pursue their hopes and dreams."

The good citizens of Virginia celebrated with a re-enactment of Sherwood being dropped into the river.

One group's answer to Anthony's million dollar question about the World Cup head-butt...

The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism issued a statement Monday quoting "several very well informed sources from the world of football" as saying Materazzi called Zidane a "dirty terrorist." It demanded that FIFA, soccer's world governing body, investigate and take any appropriate action.

The whitest major city in America? That would be Portland, Oregon.

The second whitest? Seattle.

So, the million-dollar question: What the hell did Materazzi say to make France's star, and arguably one of the game's all-time greatest players, lose his freakin' mind?

Theories? Wild speculation? Discuss.

Are there any Seattle metro-area soccer hooligans having a World Cup House Party tomorrow morning? You should invite partycrasher@thestranger.com, if only because I've never cracked a beer before noon.

Or, alternately, if you hate fun, today's the big day for The Pioneer Square Fire Festival. You'd better hurry on down, though...you've already missed the two-hour marching band extravaganza and the saxophone-led rendition of "The Girl From Ipanema." God help us all.

UPDATE: My coworker just came back from his lunch break wearing a child-size Bellevue Fire Department Fire Fighter's Hat. Looks like there's fun to be had in Pioneer Square, after all...if you broadly readjust your definition of 'fun.'

A long-overdue invention.

German women make much more sense to me.

"The most effective form of birth control I know is spending the day with my kids." —Jill Bensley

...has died.

In related news, he never got to fly.

1535, England: Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia and sometime Lord Chancellor of England, is executed by King Henry VIII after refusing to agree to Henry's attempt to separate the English church from the Catholic church.

1887, Hawaii: King Kal�kaua is forced, at gunpoint, by American and European businessmen, to sign the Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii, commonly known as the Bayonet Constitution, which stripped power from the Hawaiian monarchy, and repealed suffrage from all Asians, poor citizens, and most of the native Hawaiians.

1942, Amsterdam: Anne Frank and family go into hiding in the "Secret Annex" above her father's warehouse.

1944, Connecticut: The Hartford Circus Fire, one of America's worst fire disasters, kills approximately 168 people and injures over 700. It began during a performance of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. (From Wikipedia: "Bandleader... Merle Evans, was one of the first to notice and immediately struck up John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever, show-business code for a life-threatening emergency. Ushers spotted the flame and threw buckets of water on it, but to no avail. Seconds later, the fire reached the roof. At the top of the center pole, the fire split in three directions. The announcer at center stage urged the audience not to panic and to leave in an orderly fashion, but the power went out and he could not be heard.")

1967, southern Nigeria: Nigerian forces invade Biafra (a short-lived secessionist state), beginning the war that would kill between 600,000 and three million people, mostly through starvation and illness.

1974, Minnesota: A Prairie Home Companion makes its first live broadcast. There were 12 witnesses, most of them children.

1988, the North Sea: The Piper Alpha drilling platform explodes, and is eventually engulfed, in balls of fire. One hundred and sixty seven oil workers are killed—and only sixty two survive—in the world's most fatal offshore oil disaster.

Happy birthday, big guy.

Vladimir Putin clears up last week's spontaneous kiddie-stomach-kissing by explaining, "I wanted to stroke [that little boy] like a cat...there was nothing behind it.�

Which might be the most sensual, convincing reason for kissing bellies that I've ever heard. And there are certainly worse things in this world than raspberries bestowed by the president of Russia. Say, for instance, getting your chest carved up by a freak with a stolen power saw:

Via Breitbart:

New York--A man grabbed two cordless power saws off a subway station workbench and went on a rampage Thursday, swinging the saws at riders and slicing open a man's chest before running away, police said.

The 64-year-old victim, whose name was not released, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition. Police were searching for the suspect, described by witnesses as a thin man in his 30s, who had earrings in both ears and was possibly carrying a teddy bear.

Given the choice, I'm sure most people would opt to be "stroked like a cat" by a stranger rather than "carved like a turkey". Here's hoping the victim is doing as well as can be expected post power saw to the chest.

In less than one week, the new season of Project Runway begins.

Who's stoked?

Last night I was covered in electrodes, sensor bands, and more wires than I could count, then a plasic tube pumping air was strapped to my face and I was wished a good night's sleep. Is there a better way to relax before bed?

Continue reading "Further Adventures of Apnea Boy" »

According to this page on the BBC's site, people are reading about, in this order: North Korea, Israeli tanks in Gaza, the Hoff, dead Ken Lay, and—drum roll please—the "India skull man."

I can't believe this story didn't make the top five.

(And today Seattle makes its mark on the world with this quote: "When I got here, I said, 'Oh boy, this don't look like no treatment center.'")

A few minutes ago, this came up from the loud mouth of the man who lives in the apartment directly beneath mine: "Just plain old meat and bread, don't even put no cheese on it. I know your ass now; you just want to argue. Meat and bread--that's all. I don't want to argue."

I'm at Top Pot and the album the barista is playing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-titled debut album, and I realize this has already been said by a million different people—quoth the album: "We've already said it before in a million differen ways which are not quite right"—but let me keep the echo going: this is a very good album. It just ended in the store and now I'm playing it again, from the top, on my iPod. I realize that to all the people who know about music this Slog post must read to you like a press release from Mars—who doesn't already know about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? who is this guy? what year is it?—to which I say, it's possible to miss good things, and if you are one of the two or three Stranger readers who missed Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or who for whatever still haven't looked into Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, let me take the time to say, You are missing a good thing. This is brilliantly catchy.

To paraphrase Matthew Stadler, I like it because it is good.

Also, independence is good. How do you feel about fireworks? Brendan Kiley suggests:

Fireworks
(LIBERTÉ) You could cadge your way onto a friend's roof to watch the Big Explosions, or be a lame-ass and watch them on TV, or be a triple lame-ass and ignore them altogether, but you should be mingling with your brethren, preferably in the general vicinity of Seattle's finest intersections: Belmont and Belmont and Bellevue, Bellevue, and Bellevue. Nearby, you can find secret parks, nooks with simultaneous views of Puget Sound and Lake Union, and small bats that come out and circle at dusk. (Capitol Hill, 10 pm.)

Sexy muscle cars such as this '72 Chevelle:

Foxy, funny ladies such as Amy Sedaris:

Kosher hot dogs from Hebrew National:

And of course, the man who refused to let Ronald Reagan co-opt his song:

I'm sure our ever-opinionated Slog readers have a few of their own--do tell.

This image of a Sudanese immigrant was on the cover of yesterday's Seattle Times:

This paragraph is in the last and most famous essay, "Myth Today" (1956), of the most famous book, Mythologies (1957), of France's most famous semiotician, Roland Barthes (1915-1980):

I'm at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, with no color discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answers to detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with greater semiological system: there is the signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (black soldier is giving the French flag salute): there is the signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier.

The picture from the cover of yesterday's Seattle Times says something like this: "Although things are very bad in Iraq, the US is still the land of hope for the global poor and destitute, as exampled by this happy Sudanese immigrant. So, in the face of America's diminished international standing as the symbol of liberty, fairness, and prosperity, still be proud to be an American."

This image of another recently Americanized African, me, was constructed by The Stranger's art director Corianton Hale.
For other reasons, the image is as guilty as the one from Seattle Times.

Let's begin the little winding path of pictures and words with this image of global Pele:

With that image in mind, consider this: During a weekend email exchange about the globalization of Football and Pele, the editor of the South African journal Chimurenga, Ntone Edjabe, sent these words:

"For me, generally, discussions around the commercialisation of the 'beautiful game' have become as stale as talks on the blinging of hip hop. I think nationalism has been dead since Camus kept the goal for Algeria in the 30s, since di Stephano sold his right foot to the Franco-sponsored Real Madrid in the 50s, since the Mozambican-born Eusebio led the 1966 world cup in scoring, a tournament that had been boycotted by all African and Asian teams. We're talking stillbirth here.

If we swing back to the nearest tv screen, however, there's a new spin on the much publicised war of the worlds - only two contenders remain: Nike and Adidas. The pseudo third-worldism of Puma has been kicked off stage, along with Ivory Coast, Ghana, and other minnows.

The trajectory of Puma, over the last 5 years, in reconquering the world chests from the bottom (Jamaica's olympic team, Cameroon's football team, etc. and of course, da street soldiaz worldwide) so to speak, is an interesting take on the brand war."

Now consider the "pseudo third-worldism of Puma":
(The source of that image can be found here.)

The final item along the way is this email, which I received from a good friend who lives in Vancouver, BC and is a response to my recent post "Field of History":

Charles, I don't know if you read these words in Le Monde Diplomatique by Ignacio Ramonet before you posted about football and slavery: "The buying and selling of footballers is a perfect image for the state of the global market: the treasures of the South are consumed in the North, because only the North has the money to buy them. This market, full of traps for the unwary, generates a modern slave trade."

The Ramonet article is over here and worth reading not only in light of what I had to say about the symbolic significance of the Ghana/USA match, but the globalization of Pele and Ntone's comments concerning the "brand war" that presently dominates the international stage of football. It all comes together very neatly.

Got a student loan? Planning to get a student loan? First, the bad news:

Students across the nation will have to pay thousands more in college loans beginning Saturday, according to a series of reports released today by the research arm of the Campaign for America's Future. College students and graduates will be pushed deeper into debt as interest rates on Stafford loans -- the basic student loan -- rise from 5.3 percent to 7.14 percent on old loans and to 6.8 percent on new loans at the end of this week.

Second, some more bad news:

Tuition at the average four-year public university has increased by 40 percent since 2001, and nearly two-thirds of all four-year college graduates now have student loans. Students and their parents are going further and further into debt, creating a burden that is often unsustainable. Student loan debt already causes 14 percent of young graduates to delay marriage; 30 percent to hold off on buying a car; 21 percent to postpone having children; and 38 percent to delay buying a home.

And finally, a little finger-pointing:

Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage explained how Congress has carried out a raid on student aid through acts of commission and omission.

"The failure of the current administration and Congress to make college affordable for all qualified students is a disservice to the country,� said Borosage. "The Republican leadership has allowed interest rates on student loans to rise, increased the interest rate on loans that parents take out to help pay for their children's education and refused to allow a vote on a bill that would cut interest rates in half on new loans.�

Even though both of my parents have aged into Republicans, I was raised as a Democrat. (Now there's a mind game.) When Dukakis and Bush were debating on TV in 1988, my mother explained that the reason to vote Democratic was "because Democrats care about poor people." (Her political party of choice changed when she became a born-again Christian.) The reason I like reading about the president of Bolivia is because I was taught to admire the attitude he has toward those people at the bottom of the economy. I also think Bolivia is a beautiful word. I have been sitting in Vivace, with its huge windows looking into huge trees, reading about "a country that's seen 189 coups d'etat since 1825."

An impressive corpse, Detroit's Book-Cadillac Hotel:

Next time we're in Amsterdam, we'll be able to nibble a few hash bonbons and then wander through Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. For real: Dutch construction company BAM has partnered with the City of Amsterdam to create a $20-million-euro, 12,500-square-foot chocolate factory theme park, De Chokoladefabriek, in an abandoned loop of underground tram tunnel. Scheduled to open in 2009 at Ruijterkade 105-106, the Chokoladefabriek will cost 20 euros and include a Roald Dahl-inspired glass elevator and chocolate fountain.

This remarkable image, which is part of a collection of images taken by Michael Burns, a local photographer:

And this remarkable passage from Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche's last book before madness:

"The fatality of one's being cannot be derived from the fatality of all that was and will be. No one is part of an experiment to achieve an 'ideal person' or an 'ideal of happiness' or an 'ideal of morality'--it is absurd to want to discharge one's being onto some purpose or other. We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality, 'purpose' is absent... One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole--there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our Being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, condemning the whole....But there is nothing apart from the whole!"

These two things (one image/a part of a paragraph) are brought together by nothing else than the surface of my desk.

A friend of mine, an attractive, straight lady, is looking to take her cousin, another attractive, straight lady, out dancing tomorrow night. These are women any guy would want to flirt with. They are in need of a Fun Evening Out. They are in need of good music and the presence of cute, eligible, hetero guys. Mostly they are in need of a dance floor. I put it to you, Slog readers: where do attractive ladies who want to dance go on a Friday night? Is there anywhere that is not (a) gay, or (b) insufferable?

Your comments are greatly appreciated. The cousin arrives tomorrow.

For today's opening post, I offer this humble prayer by the Human League.

Im only human

Of flesh and blood I'm made
Human
Born to make mistakes
I am just a man
Please forgive me

(Quick note for my old school R&B heads: Though Loose Ends cold bite the Jam/Lewis Roland 808 cow bell sound, they brought it to perfection in "Contemplating.")

Yes! That is Vladimir The-KGB-Agent-With-a-Heart-of-Gold Putin rubbing his world-historical face in a little kid's stomach. I love the shocked and slightly disgusted looks on the other kids' faces. And the youngster with the baseball cap, scratching his head with an that embarrassed aw-shucks expression slays me.

(Check this site for a video in Windows or RealPlayer. I'm holding my breath for the YouTube version.)

Other notable events in Putin kissing history:

As a teenager, Vlad (known as "the Impaler" to the dames of St. Petersburg) dabbled in a little spin the bottle. As his ex-girlfriend recalls:

"Our kiss was short, true. I suddenly became very hot."

The Kremlin leader and judo champion has also been known to kiss the mat. (Warning: Not suitable for acid casualties—the freakily garbled soundtrack might give them flashbacks.)

(And, because sex is ever the handmaiden of death, here's the other Putin story of the day: The four Russian hostages in Iraq? The ones taken with an eye to strongarming Russia into withdrawing from Chechnya? They're dead and Putin has (allegedly) ordered special forces to assassinate the kidnappers.)

Our Ad Of The Day is for the "2nd Annual Freethinkers' Picnic," which will be on July 4th, between 3-8pm. A picnic ("BBQ, music and more") for nonbelievers? As an atheist, I find the absence of God to be a terrible realization. Those of us who have been forced to leave the warm and loving arms of God and walk toward death alone, under cold stars and meaningless moons, are not happy people. Being an atheist is no picnic.

Richard Dawkins's razor-sharp (and often inadvertently funny) condemnation of religion ("the process of nonthinking called faith"), The Root of All Evil, is available on Google video
(Part 1 and Part 2). The series originally appeared in January on Channel 4 in the UK. Each half is 45 or so minutes of adamantly atheist entertainment.

Iced tea containing cannabis is about to go on sale in the UK. The tea—C-Ice Swiss Cannabis Ice Tea—is five percent of hemp flower syrup but only contains a tiny bit of THC. Anyone who tried to get high drinking this tea would drown first. But the anti-drug hysterics are, of course, hysterical.

But British anti-drug campaigners say that selling the tea is dangerous because it will give young people the impression that cannabis is commonplace.

Yeah, we wouldn't want to give kids the impression that pot—the most widely used and easily obtained recreational drug on the planet—is, you know, commonplace or anything.

Glenn, I like lots of porn, and I'm glad to see you do, too. Remind me to send you my video.
But even I do not posit that the increased availability of porn is any way connected to a decrease in the number of reported rapes. As you point out, lots of things have changed since the 1970's. One might as well say that would-be rapists have been deterred by global warming. Let's not start down that path, because it's way too fraught with logical pitfalls.
I'm sure you mean well, but sweetie - don't try to help us, okay?