Category: Seattle

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Democratic Presidential debates and The Human Scab™

Today the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition hosted eight of the nine Democratic Presidential candidates in a forum hosted on C-SPAN today. I loved Howard Dean’s straight-talk, Dennis Kucinich’s fiery speech (which will probably make him unelectable) giving me chills, and John Kerry’s record. My prediction is the primary will likely result in a Kerry-Dean outcome. Bob Graham was a no-show, and Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman put me to sleep. Al Sharpton was powerful and hilarious at times, in sharp contrast to the subdued Carol Moseley Braun. Some notable quotes:

“We have too many elephants running around in donkey jackets.”
Al Sharpton on the Democratic Party

“Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction.”
Dennis Kucinich on the Bush administration

I covered Gephardt and other candidates for my high school newspaper in 1987.

Howard Dean (who announces his formal candidacy tomorrow at 10am) appeared on Meet the Press this morning, and endured an hour of tough questions posed by Tim Russert. He handled Tim rather well, and gave a decent, honest reply to his son’s recent trouble with the law involving the theft of alcohol from a country club, noting “he’s more than grounded — he has to face our government’s judicial system”.

Today while walking on Broadway, I saw the person referred to as “The Human Scab” in The Stranger. I came quite close to losing my lunch, and it’s going to take a while to remove that image from my mind. He needs serious medical attention.

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Boeing, Store Wars, The Messengers

On Thursday, Northwest Cable News had a one-hour special on Boeing, its new 7E7 plane, and the likelihood that the airline company will have the plane built somewhere other than Seattle. Governor Locke plans to reward Boeing’s behavior and its frequent layoffs with a $3.2 billion tax break over 20 years.

“It’s like Elvis… there’s [been] a lot of sightings all over the place.”
King Abdullah of Jordan on Saddam Hussein’s whereabouts

Get PBS to run Store Wars in your town. It’s about a West Virginia town that fights an incoming WalMart plan.

Nightline had a special called The Messengers, about a preaching competition held at the infamous Bob Jones University. A compelling story, but a bit creepy, as most of the contestants, around 18 or 19, looked very 1950s in appearance.

Bush waters down an EPA report, watering down references to global warming.

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Get your war on sex after death

The Webby Awards were held online this time, a far cry from the lavish Academy Award-like parties they used to have during the dot-com boom. The best humor site: Get Your War On, the best comic strip you could ever make with office clipart. The best political site: MoveOn.org, proof that the Internet can be used as a powerful social movement tool, like the efforts of the IMC.

My friend Clara and I saw Sex After Death at Consolidated Works. All of the theatre patrons stepped inside what looked like a cross-section of a hotaired balloon — large vinyl panels from floor to ceiling that formed a circle around us — with pillows on the floor. The actors performed behind the panels in silhouette, in addition to puppets and transparencies with illustrations to tell a story about a wet nurse and a little girl who descend into Hell to find a little boy and a dog, and the beings they encounter along the way. While slow in stretches, it had some genuinely funny moments and the originality of the presentation made it worthwhile.

Dr Samuel Waskal, founder of ImClone, was sentenced to prison today. Martha Stewart pleaded not guilty. While several other companies and individuals have been brought up on charges, none have been sentenced. Waskal is the first person to go to prison based on the almost-two-year-old wave of accounting scandals.

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Camlin Hotel becomes a Trendwest resort :(

A Seattle landmark has been purchased by Trendwest Resorts: the Camlin hotel is to be turned into an exclusive vacation hotel, and its famous piano bar and one of my favorite lounges, The Cloud Room, is to close. I hadn’t heard either that one of the best laundromat-cafes in Seattle, Sit ‘n’ Spin, has also closed. When I first moved to Seattle in 1994, it was a favorite spot of mine, and as Belltown became trendy, it, like The Vogue, looked increasingly out-of-place with brand new construction and pricey condominiums and Starbucks/retail complexes.

I don’t play it, but it turns out a group of people in the online community/game The Sims Online has created their own mafia to fill a leadership vacuum in their virtual city.

It looks like legal proceedings against Bernie Ebbers can continue with a report to be released Monday showing Ebbers had a direct role in Worldcom wrongdoings.

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SIFF, media concentration

I finally got to check out a couple of films from SIFF: Direct Order, about the Anthrax Vaccine, its ties to Gulf War Syndrome and US military denials; and then ‘Unprecendented: The 2002 Presidential Election‘ talked about the many suspicious activities surrounding the Florida recount. The Florida constitution forbids ex-felons from voting. That a disproportionate number of ex-felons are African-American and a high majority would likely vote Democratic, what might have been the outcome of the race if tens of thousands of eligible voters hadn’t been removed?

The FCC voted to loosen media concentration today. More crap, fewer voices. People say the Internet and cable will keep those voices diversified, but if they’re also owned by the same five or six companies, it really makes no difference. Independent viewpoints have a much smaller forum in which to be heard. There’s going to be an abundance of lawsuits, though: media companies say the legislation doesn’t go far enough, while citizen groups and the NRA (!) say it’s gone too far. Congress had even spoken up against this, and spoke up again after the vote had ruled in favor of loosening the restrictions.

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Smoking ban smoked

Wow. They’re tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein. I wonder how this will affect the protest movement. I learned today that the non-smoking ban bill in the State House was killed. Yuck. I hate cigarettes. I can’t wait to sing in San Francisco again, and keep my lungs free.

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Crappy and gray

Getting back into a cleanse again seems to be a no-brainer, although I didn’t wake up until 10am today. It’s a crappy and gray, cold day – perfect for isolation, eating raw organic fruits and vegetables, and getting down to business and finishing up this thesis. And then there’s the Stephen Hawking paper – I love his plain language, filled with dry humor.

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Potlucks for Peace? Meh.

The Seattle Times front page headline says, “US Commanders willing to pay ‘very high price’ to take Baghdad”. Of course, none of their sons and daughters lives are on the line – not only had the diplomacy been a failure, the war plan seems to be heading in that direction, too.My friend Jillian’s in town for a couple of days with her friend Carrie from New York. I met three people who are moving to NYC in a few weeks. When I asked them why, they said “Seattle has a populace that’s hard to get excited. There’s so much apathy and complacency.” While he’s right about the first part, I strongly disagree with the rest. We had WTO, and although most of the protestors were imported, it set the stage for a mostly-peaceful protest environment.

A local writer, Clark Humphrey, opines: “Around here we don’t have to escalate Bush-bashing protests into disruptive confrontations, because we’d rather try to send a more positive message out to the world.”

He might be right, but it seems that having “potlucks for peace” is too passive a stance to take with a world at war.

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The jealous boyfriend

This cleanse, the war, and the weather are affecting me in sluggish ways. I went out for pizza and karaoke last night with my brother and his wife. The atmosphere of the bar was really depressing, and offered me new insight to whether this is the best use of my time.Tonight I met a gentleman, and when I use that word, I don’t mean that at all. I would characterize him as extreme-low-self-esteem-and-jealous-boyfriend-man. At a birthday party tonight, I talked to a woman tonight, for the sake of conversation, without realizing I was under the watchful eye of her jealous boyfriend, who let me know rather directly that she was off-limits. He was almost mob-like in his delivery – and waited to tell me later on in the evening because he wasn’t sure if I was gay or not. He asked me if I was, and I honestly thought he was gay – and when I said no, he let me know that she was with him. I still had a great time with everyone else, but the experience reminded me that there are men out there like that, and that there are women who probably don’t know another alternative.

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Passive-aggressive SeaTac

I was accosted by a lady on the bus who was sitting by the window, and I was sitting at the aisle. She said that the airport was her stop – I said it was mine, too, but didn’t get up right away. That’s when the elder woman, who had spent most of the trip next to me quietly, scribbling recipes onto paper from a cookbook, shoved me and started yelling. I got up and said “Relax!”. I don’t think she was playing with a full deck – and while my initial response was anger, I felt sorry for her after awhile. She’s likely a very lonely woman, set to her habits – quiet until slightly riled, and like a majority of passive-aggressive Seattle, a mental time bomb waiting to go off.