Caregiver sentenced to 31 months in jail: Effie Tutor, a former caregiver at the Houghton Lakeview home in Kirkland, was convicted of a felony for neglecting an elderly patient so badly she developed bedsores down to the bone and ultimately died. Elder abuse just makes me sad.

Local food in local schools: The state created a Farm-to-School program in 2008 “to get more local food into school cafeterias.” The program is running into difficulties: the growing season peaks during summer vacation, prices are higher, and processing saves on labor costs.

State starts earmarking lottery revenues for college scholarships: This development would sound infinitely nobler if it was not a self-conscious rip-off of the Georgia state lottery, where revenues help pay for scholarships and people buy oodles of tickets. Encouraging discretionary spending on frivolities is such a responsible thing to do in a recession.

Seattle will have its own version of the Jon Stewart rally: The guy behind it is Jim Baum, a Maple Valley farmer who was once profiled on The Daily Show. Watching a bunch of his land get reclassified as wetlands, in part to protect Bigfoot, convinced him of the futility of anger.

Some segments of Gas Works Park shut down: The state is running sediment tests for the next seven weeks. Nothing to worry about here, just potentially carcinogenic muck.

The Gulf’s first smut shop: It’s in Bahrain. Veiled women don’t have to worry about eye contact. The most-sold items are “penis enlargement creams and edible underwear in a variety of flavors.”

Union actors told to steer clear of Hobbit films: Not because it might get you typecast, but because Peter Jackson and the gang prefer non-union contracts.

Another aid ship sails for Gaza: It’s only a ten-person ship and it’s sponsored by Jewish organizations, so this could be an interesting test of the blockade.

The Blue Collar Jeans Tour: Levi’s bases their new ad campaign around the Pennsylvania town so depressed and decayed it was chosen as the shooting location for The Road. The campaign “evokes the Depression-era photographs of Dorothea Lange and the handmade aesthetic of the Works Progress Administration.”

Defense budget now includes book-burning: The Pentagon makes good on their pledge to buy up all copies of a new Afghanistan memoir and destroy them. If you’re worried your first novel might suck, just throw in a bunch of classified info. First printing sold out? Check. All evidence of your juvenile prose gone? Check.

6 replies on “Morning News”

  1. I’m surprised the Morning News missed this juicy item:

    CONLIN KIDNAPS MCGINN, DECLARES SELF MAYOR

    City Council President Richard Conlin has kidnapped Mayor Mike McGinn and declared himself acting mayor, Conlin announced in a hastily scheduled press conference today.

    When asked if Conlin’s action is legal, City Attorney Pete Holmes responded, “The City Charter is very ambiguous about this. There’s nothing explicitly prohibiting the City Council president from kidnapping the mayor and declaring himself or herself acting mayor. I mean, you could make a case either way.” Continued Holmes, “I think we’re just going to have to wait to let the courts sort this one out. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to work with Acting Mayor Conlin.”

    When told of the turn of events, councilmember Tim Burgess said he would sponsor legislation making it retroactively legal for the City Council president to kidnap the mayor and declare himself acting mayor, but only under the following circumstances:
    1. The mayor is Mike McGinn.
    2. The council president determines that the mayor is acting like a dick or a jackass or a doofus, according to the council president’s discretion.

    Mike McGinn was not available for comment. City Hall sources speculate this may have something to do with his allegedly having been kidnapped by Richard Conlin.

    When asked if the state would initiate a search for Mayor McGinn, a spokesperson for Governor Chris Gregoire said, “Mayor McGinn? Don’t you mean Mayor Conlin? Haven’t you gotten the memo?”

  3. @2…and it’s a good reason to be cynical/depressed of anything you see on TV/youtube or rag alt-weekly that blows with the wind’s toxic zeitgeist. Advertisement finish’em Turn away or stay there Levi.

  4. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100925/tc_…

    A Paris court has convicted US search engine giant Google and its chief executive Eric Schmidt of defamation over results from its “suggest” function, a French legal affairs website has revealed.
    The new function, which suggests options as you type in a word, brought up the words “rapist” and “satanist” when the plaintiff’s name was typed into the search engine, legalis.net reported.

  5. I was about to say what @2 said. It was depressing even when the mills were operating. Without them…well, it’s a wonder anyone ever gets out of there without suicidal tendencies.

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