Mediocre Merman/Downtown/Fri Oct 19/11:00 pm: A man attending an exclusive party at the Seattle Aquarium entered a secured area and began to swim with the sea otters. This violation of the aquarium's rules caused "human contamination," reports Officer Diaz. The aquarium's biologist in charge ordered the man out of the sea otter water and shut down the party. The suspect/swimmer was at first rude, but then apologized for being so drunk and, along with the other party members, left the aquarium. Officer Diaz gave the Seattle Aquarium a case number.

Cloud's Magic Mirror/West Seattle/Sat Oct 20/6:30 am: When West Seattle resident Ms. Cloud was awakened by a sudden noise, she walked to her bedroom door and observed a reflection of a face in the glass of a picture hanging in her hallway. Ms. Cloud saw the face clearly and thought the person was looking into her house through a south living room window. Ms. Cloud's windows are 10 feet off the ground, so the image in the mirror seemed to be suspended in the air. The reflection of the stranger vanished, and Ms. Cloud cautiously walked to the living room window and found "no indications of a ladder." She then went downstairs and outside and found no shoeprints in the dirt under the window. Ms. Cloud was advised by Officer Matsumoto to call the police if the apparition appeared again.

An Evening with the Nymphets/Sat Oct 20/11:10 pm: Officer Lee writes: "I observed both girls fall onto the ground and appear to be wrestling with each other, giggling all the while. I told both girls to get up and get out of the way of the traffic. But they stayed on the ground playing, wrestling, and giggling. Again, I told them to get up. One complied while the other remained on the ground, giggling. [I arrested the disobedient girl.]" Police Beat had no idea that police work could be so much fun!

Death at Ye Olde SeaFaire Inn/Sun Oct 28/2:40 pm: This afternoon, a dead man was discovered in the room of a motel whose name is just one letter shy of being SeaFaire (its real name is the SeaFair Inn). Officer Buxton was assigned to the case, and this was his official report: "Examination of the victim indicated that he was studying/taking notes from medical texts. The victim was lying on the floor, face up, with head toward the door. Victim was wearing a gray T-shirt tucked into khaki short pants. 1/2 of a Subway sandwich was on the floor by the left hand, his right hand was holding the Subway plastic bag. The unwrapped remaining half was on the dresser next to the body. No signs of injury were noted. The room was otherwise neat and orderly."

Notes on the SeaFaire Inn Death/Capitol Hill/Tues Oct 30/1:29 pm: One death is the apocalypse. One death is six billion deaths. Every second of every day an entire universe implodes and enters utter darkness--the total void, the eternal blackout. We fear collective death, the extinction of the entire human race, but that is precisely what happens when you die, even in the comfort of your motel room with 1/2 of a Subway sandwich rolling off the tips of your lifeless fingers. A single human death is an Extinction Level Event: a fiery comet wiping out everything; a thousand nuclear bombs reducing the blue planet to the black rubble of an asteroid belt. We don't recognize the universal finality of death because it occurs in the world; we see it as an object ("[the body] was lying on the floor, face up, with its head toward the door") amongst other objects--"medical texts," "Subway plastic bag," "the unwrapped remaining half [of the Subway sandwich] on the dresser." But death in and of itself is the end of the world.

There is no such thing as a little death, but always a massive death the size of a galactic black hole, sucking into its eternal throat all time and life. The whole world came to an end in the "neat and orderly" room in the SeaFaire Inn.