Oh my, where has the day gone? I meant to post this picture up when I got to the office this morning and now it’s freaking almost the end of the day. I don’t know what my boss is thinking of, giving me so much work that I can’t post. The nerve! Thankfully, Grey’s was a rerun last week so I didn’t have to fall down on the recapping job as well. Crazy, crazy.

In any case, I saw this dude at least twice outside my office last week and he made me wonder if aggressive marketing helps panhandling. Inexplicably there seems to be a good bit of competition on 7th and Pike in the evenings. I couldn’t tell if his scheme was scaring off potential donors or drawing them in. Either way, I see lots of signs from my office to the bus, and this might be the best, at least the most creative, so far, so I thought I’d share.

Oh, and if it’s unclear in the picture, his sign says, “A face only a mother could love.”

• West Seattle’s finest tricks and treats [wsb]
• Northwest Cable News scours Capitol Hill for strategic trick or treaters armed with tips from neighborhood weblog. [chs]
• In search of a square inch of silence in the Olympic National Park [sightline]
• Declining circulation numbers prompt a meditation on the advantages of weeklies, the slower pace of life in Walla Walla, the benefits of print, and the possibility of a free P-I [dailyweekly]
• Why limit your carving to pumpkins when there are so many other carvable fruits in your kitchen? [glitterpissing]
• Dan Savage hopes that China will add huggers to its list of thousands of political prisoners to execute this year [slog]
• Pondering the permissibility of blackface at Halloween time. Someone should really call in the Weekly’s new “Ask an Uptight Seattleite” [#] for a definitive opinion. [seattlest]

the p-i’s nifty “how to build a tunnel” infographic

Yesterday, some pro-tunnel people released the results of another public opinion poll. Like the one conducted by the Seattle Times earlier this month [mb], they show that when you tell respondents how you want them to answer, you can shift the results in your favor. The Times poll got a few people to change their minds about their preferred viaduct replacement by laying out the cost estimates.

Although voters surveyed in the latest poll originally favored the relatively thrifty (but ugly) viaduct option, the pro-tunnel survey group was able to get a majority to support the cut-and-cover option once they sold them on the benefits (noise, air, water pollution reduction; more enjoyable downtown; etc.) [p-i].

I’m guessing that they left out the part about the tunnel being built on the Seattle Fault [p-i, (with nifty graphics!)]. Although the prospect of a massive tidal wave flooding the highway sounds pretty scary, tunnel lovers will be consoled to know that such a catastrophic event only comes around every 3,000 – 6,000 years. By then, we’ll all be driving flying cars; so who cares about a little water damage?

Today in my downtown office building, someone found a life-size cardboard cut out of Antonio Banderas in a ladies restroom. No one knew how it got there or why it was there.

If it was yours, sorry for your loss but it’s gone to a good home now.

Rather than showing us their Halloween costumes, our pals in Redmond are giving the world a look at their packages. And not in an All American Rejects publicity stunt [bwe] way, gutter brains. Instead, Microsoft is showing off the curvy plastic shells that will bring their seemingly decades-awaited operating system to little John Hodgmanesque PCs around the world.

(via gizmodo [#], which has pictures of the whole fleet)

silversun pickups + viva voce // crocodile cafe // 27 october 2006 (with apologies for the late posting)

Seattle has a great big crush on Silversun Pickups. When I arrive, Viva Voce are playing and the show has sold out.¹ People are already spilling out of the showroom into the cafe and the bar section is nearly abandoned. Everyone’s attention is on the married Portland sort of classic rock duo. At one point, Kevin’s shoe is literally rocked off. Their strongest songs start quiet and strummy and turn surprisingly big. Along they way, they justify their profanity with important life-lessons (“We Do Not Fuck Around” [mp3]). There’s no shortage of appreciation for the band, but it feels both warm and mostly anticipatory.

It seems that the majority of crowd is there for Silversun Pickups. The Los Angeles band has been touring extensively, with several stops in Seattle over the past year. They played the block party this summer, opened for Voxtrot in the spring, and have found there way onto several other setlists throughout the year. Tonight, they’re collecting the dividends on their investment. Not only are they completely on top of their game musically, with confident stage presence, rolling guitar lines, and an incredibly high high hat, but the crowd is primed to adore every minute of it. In fact, often the breaks between songs are extended to accommodate all of the rambunctious applause, which seems persists for minutes.
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Have you seen a white Nissan Quest minivan with Colorado license number 221-LNK? Everett police are seeking Viktor Gidenko, who moved to Everett from Colorado a month ago and doesn’t speak English. He was taking his grandson to a school bus stop at Barbara and Beverly Lanes in Everett yesterday morning and has not been seen since then. His two young grand-sons are with him. Police don’t suspect foul play–they think he’s become “hopelessly lost”–but are eager to help the man and children get back home safely.

Viktor Gidenko is white, 5 feet, 8 inches tall and 160 pounds, with blue eyes and graying brown hair. He wore a black leather jacket, dark-blue sweat pants and a black hat.

Larry Karabut is 5 years old, about 55 pounds and was described as tall for his age. He is white, has brown eyes and hair and wore a red shirt, blue jeans, a dark-green fleece jacket, white Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles running shoes and a black Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack.

Jim Karabut, who is 3, weighs about 25 pounds. He is white, has hazel eyes and brown hair and wore a green T-shirt and matching blue, fleece pants and jacket.

If you have information that can help the Everett Police, call them at (425) 257-8400

Image, via deerfarmer

Alright, people, this is getting ridiculous and it’s time we addressed the problem. First, this summer, we had too many squid and they were possibly driving up the murder rate in this town–a murder rate that just keeps going up [mb, mb]. Then there were crazy urban raccoons that were killing housepets and chewing on their owners [mb]. And then! Lunatic ravens right straight out of Edgar Allen Poe, chewing on windshield wipers [mb]. (The fact that Poe’s raven had nothing to do with automobiles is neither here nor there.)

And now, now the newspaper says that deer are colliding with cars in Washington state more than ever before [P-I]. This is serious business, people. The animals are clearly mounting an attack, and I can’t say that I blame them. The outdoors are smelly [P-I] and the water is killing all the whales [P-I] and poisoning all the salmon [DOH].

All I’m saying is, watch your backs. It’s only a matter of time until they convince the housepets to get in on it to. I’ll bet those raccoons will make good heavies, and then we’re all screwed.

I opened the door this morning to grab the paper and YEARRRGH. Where the hell did the cold come from? And why was I standing in my bathrobe in this? Is the Seattle Times really worth it? (With their eternal obsession with the estate tax, signs are really pointing to “no.”)

According to the National Weather Service, the overnight low at Boeing Field was 30F. On top of the hill where I live, it was a few YEARRRGH degrees colder.

And yes, 30F is nothing compared to, well, just about anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. But in a town where I can count on one hand the number of times the low was less than 20F in the last 11 years, 30F is YEARRRGH cold.

And this leads me to this question: How do you know that the winter has arrived in Seattle? What signs are you looking for that tell you sorry, the days of sun and mid-60s are gone to their snowbird place in Phoenix?

Admittedly, once you get to Nordstrom building the Santa House and the Carousel going up in Westlake, you know the winter is a certainty. But what other signs out there tell you that the rain and cold and short-short days are here?

It wasn’t just violent weather afflicting Seattle this weekend: four people were shot and one person was stabbed in separate incidents Sunday. As the P-I reports [#] police had their hands full dealing with the aftermath of all this criminal activity.

Conditions of the various victims unknown at the present.