new bear-iff in town
new bear-iff in town ERIK MANDRE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Metro can’t keep up with transit demand: Transit! It’s the hot new thing! Unfortunately, King County Metro can’t put the amount of buses on the street that people want. They can’t hire and train drivers quickly and there isn’t space to expand the fleet. There has been a huge jump in ridership recently and Metro is scrambling to meet the demand. Adding more buses isn’t always the solution, but adding “transit lanes and signals to keep buses moving” could solve the issue, the Seattle Times reports. Also, a fun fact in that story: “a single bus hammers the pavement as much as a concrete mixer, or 3,000 passenger cars.”

Which bear is best? Ask Ryan Zinke. The Interior Secretary doesn’t hate all nature after all. Yeah, he still wants to drill off our coast, but he’s keen on restoring the grizzly bear population to the North Cascades. They were pretty much all killed off by 1968. Zinke is working on an environmental impact statement for grizzly restoration. There hasn’t been a bonafide grizzly sighting in this area since the 90s. To boost our grizzly population, we’ll have to take bears from somewhere else.

Today’s a scorcher: I’m not kidding about the sunscreen, guys. Lather up.

Smugglers caught! If your get-rich-quick scheme is to smuggle drugs between Washington and Canada via the ocean, you might want to rethink it. You should probably rethink it for a number of reasons. Maybe you should talk to someone. But, for the purpose of a smooth transition, don’t do it because you might get caught by the hottest duo patrolling the seas, the American and Canadian Shiprider program. They caught two guys running a drug operation and “seized 55 kilograms of cocaine, 47 kilograms of meth, one kilogram of heroin, 15 firearms and more than $150,000 in cash,” according to KING5. Crime doesn’t pay (for long)!

A faster way to smuggle drugs to Canada: I was almost going to write “easier” but that’s probably not true. Big news, though! The seaplane service from Seattle to B.C. kicked off yesterday. Gov. Jay Inslee and Microsoft President Brad Smith were there. The two leaders of our state. Inslee made a crack about how it was easier communicating with Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, than it is communicating with President Trump. It’s probably because of how nice it is to look into Justin’s eyes. Flights start today.

Mandatory marijuana pesticide tests worry smaller growers: Marijuana business owners want regulators to require mandatory pesticide testing on crops. Small growers don’t know if they’ll be able to afford it; a single test costs $300. The tests haven’t been approved yet, but the idea is they would bolster consumer confidence and sales.

Here’s why you were stuck in traffic last weekend: The I-5 closures are just getting started. This weekend’s construction has been postponed due to weather. Yep, it is inclement. Construction is cool!

Bremerton shipyard worker allegedly pimpin’: The real life NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) investigated Christopher Edwards, 32, because he was using his phone in a restricted area. They thought he was spying. Turns out he was communicating with the three women he was pimping out. Talk about a side hustle.

Hey, they caught the Golden State Killer: You’ve heard about this, right?

It’s curtains for Ronny L. Jackson: Trump’s nominee for Veterans Affairs director is out for the count. A plethora of accusations made by dozens of current and former colleagues from the White House medical staff went public. Obviously, according to Jackson, the accusations against him were “false and fabricated.” The accusations included “hostile work environment, the improper dispensing of prescription drugs to White House staff and reporters during official travel, and intoxication while traveling with the president,” the New York Times reports.

Scott Pruitt heads to the chopping block: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is facing two congressional panels today. He’s going to be grilled all day about his “ethical infractions and lavish spending,” according to the New York Times. The first one starts at 10 a.m. eastern time so basically, as I’m writing this, right now. The next one is at 2 p.m. eastern time. I’ve hyperlinked the live streams.

There was an important basketball game last night: It was game five between Cleveland and Indiana. Lebron James carried his whole team. Check out his last play:

Here’s a recap from my only friend who watches basketball: He loves basketball.

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He really loves basketball.

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North Korea’s main nuclear test site collapsed: That’s what leading Chinese geologists are saying. The stress of the explosions has caused the mountain above the test site to collapse making it unsafe for further tests. Maybe that’s why North Korea is ceasing its testing program.

Facebook didn’t read the terms of service: See? No one does it. Not even Facebook with the app that caused the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle. And look where that got them. Is this is a “moral of the story” moment? The app, created by Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University researcher, collected data on millions of Facebook users and then shared it with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook apparently didn’t check the terms of service until after the Guardian reported the data harvesting, Kogan says.

What is dragon energy? No one knows. Kanye West is tweeting a lot these days. It’s not all good. In fact, most of it is bad. Worrisome, even. Basically, Kanye West and Trump “are both dragon energy” [sic] and there’s apparently not a goddamn thing we can do about it.

Everyone is angry. Scratch that. Everyone is angry except for white supremacists. Weird times.

New Blabbermouth Podcast! Putting the “Crisis” in Masculinity. Listen now!

An update from my alley:

I was preparing a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios when I heard a scraping sound from outside. I peered out my kitchen window to see a man wearing a rock climbing helmet scraping away dirt and debris with a wooden sheet. There were three suitcases clustered around him. I finished my cereal and went to talk to him.

By the time I got there, the asphalt was clear of dirt, trash tucked into the nearby ivy was gathered in the center, and the shattered glass from a recently-broken car window was in a neat pile. Scotty was cleaning, he said. He travels from one place to another constantly. He’s been doing it for 20 years. Wherever he rests he feels he ought to clean up to give back. He said he’d have this place cleaned in 20 minutes.

Scotty is a meth addict. He told me that as he erratically jumped from one topic to the next. He told me that life was a horse race and his horse hadn’t gotten the memo, he was stuck on some completely other track running in circles while the winner was striding to the finish line. Then he told me he needed to buy seven brushes to clean his fingers and toes.

“It’s all on me to get out of this,” Scotty said. He didn’t want handouts. Other people were being successful (he brought up the horse race analogy again). He could do it, too. He had ideas. Like a new world religion.

He rifled through one of the suitcases filled with things he had found. Things he planned to sell. They were stepping stones out. Or, back in. He mentioned he needed more stimulants to be creative. He pulled out the nice shirts he had found. There was one wrapped around a decorative Dio de los Muertos skull.

“Huh, this is cool,” Scotty said, holding it in one hand and pondering it. He looked like Hamlet coming face to face with his own mortality.

Alas, poor Yorick
Alas, poor Yorick NG

Tonight’s best Seattle entertainment options include: The second of two screening nights at Cadence: A Video Poetry Festival, an open mic opportunity to share your most horrific rendezvous at Bad Date Storytelling, and KNKX’s BirdNote Podcast Live!

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Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...