Watchu Talkin Bout?: Washington State Troopers have issued more than 630 tickets for using a cell phone while driving, all in the past three weeks since it became a primary offense, for an average of 27 tickets per day. Seriously, what are you guys talking about?!
Don’t Tell the Tea Party: The U.S. dollar is no longer stable enough to be used as the main global reserve currency, said a U.N. report earlier this week, recommending “the emission of international liquidity,” fancy-talk for an international currency similar to that already used by the International Monetary Fund. The move is extremely controversial, not least for heralding the End Times predicted in Revelations. The beast is come!!1!!!!!
America Can Win?: The World Cup isn’t the only championship in gay international sport going down this weekend: Wimbledon happened too! Serena Williams won the competition’s women’s single’s title for the fourth time, for her 13th Grand Slam title.
I Guess They Can Quit You: The Seahawks abandoned their three-year fling with local business this week, dumping Jones soda for former beau Coke. They follow in the footsteps of Alaska Airlines, which made the same move in March.
Captain Obvious: Bush rated the worst of modern presidents, not by the biased left-wing media, but by even more biased left-wing academics. 238 of them (our “leading presidential scholars,” a club I would like to know how to join) said so, putting him as fifth worst in history as well. Strangely, they also rated the current president, whose first 16 months have already earned him the number 15 spot.
EPA Makes it Rain: The Environmental Protection Agency is sending $30 million to the area, to clean up Puget Sound and “support local projects.” Details coming next week on just how the money will be spent.
Lady Problems: Remember last weekend’s Kyrgyz constitutional referendum? 90% of the votes were in favor of the new constitution, but many problems exposed/caused by the ethnic violence earlier in the year remain unsolved. So, like Iceland before them, Kyrgyzstan turned to a serious lady for their serious problems: Rosa Otunbayeva became the region’s first female president in the region’s first parliamentary democracy.
The Lemmings Are Coming!: The first three GOP Senators have announced their opposition to Elena Kagan’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, despite her low-drama, high-humor performance this week, no matter how many times real U.S. Senators asked her mildly offensive questions about Thurgood Marshall and Twilight. Only time will tell how many votes Kagan does get, but in the meantime, Slate has a poll.
Local Legend: Seattle’s preeminent former strip club owner, alleged purveyor of prostitution, and convicted racketeer Frank Colacurcio, Sr. died yesterday of natural causes at 93. Local, state, and federal police pursued him throughout his life for various illegal dealings, including alleged ties to the mafia, and more recently for the 2003 Strippergate scandal.
There Were No Gays Before Stonewall: The FBI released its 947-page file on the 1950’s gay liberation group The Mattachine Society this week, in convenient PDF format! What better way to celebrate Independence Day weekend than by reading through evidence of J Edgar Hoover’s gay obsession the history of the movement’s true founding fathers (sorry, “sexual deviates”)?
Oh. My. God. Whatever you do, DON’T read the comments from that “Bush is the worst president” link… It’ll make your brain melt out of your head.
Maybe I’m all hopped up on sugar from that snitter, but “EPA makes it rain” is cracking me up.
Uh-oh, I already did read the comments. Maybe my brain just melted a long time ago. Fucking LSD.
@3 Off topic, but how do you make italics? I’m only slightly computer literate.
Washington State Troopers have issued more than 630 tickets for using a cell phone while driving, all in the past three weeks since it became a primary offense
Good. I’m sure a lot of people can drive responsibly while talking on cell phones but, unfortunately, too many of them can’t. The worst offenders, in my experience, are young women in SUVs.
we bought incredibly cheap gas from the remnants of colacurcio’s lake city way empire last night – just as he died. it was sketchy and bittersweet at the same time.
Vince, you use html tags. In the following examples, when you actually type your tagged word or phrase, replace the [ with < and the ] with >.
[i]Slog[/i] = Slog
[b]Slogger[/b] = Slogger
[u]Sloggest[/u] = Sloggest
You might also find this useful…
[blockquote]Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele suggested at a Connecticut fundraiser that Afghanistan is “a war of Obama’s choosing” despite the fact that it began years before the president took office.[/blockquote] gives…
Oh, those comments are par for the course. Teh sutpid all scream “liberal socialist dictator nazi,” and articulate people make their points calmly & eloquently that Bush supporters are idiots. This is a pretty good one:
“Bush gets a break because this is a criteria-based poll. When historians are simply asked “who’s the worst?” Bush sinks even lower. I saw a similar criteria-based poll last year that had Bush 37th. But when the same historians were simply asked their personal opinion, most said Bush was the worst. Let that sink in: MOST. Bush got more last place votes than all the prior 42 presidents COMBINED.” -oofloom
@4 Italics: < i > type stuff here < / i >
Bold: < b > type stuff here < / b >
Quotation: < blockquote > paste stuff here < / blockquote >
Except remove the spaces.
Looks like Roma beat me to it. Just make sure you close the tag (put the brackets and the “/” afterwards), or every comment that follows yours will be in italics, bold, etc.
I’m sitting at the Starbucks at the corner of Cyril Magnin and O’Farrell. By some strange inversion, SF seems 100 percent less gay than Seattle. Lots of high class ‘tang walking around.
And it’s sunny here too!
10, just trying to help out. It’s nice that Slog has a preview option so you can see if you failed to close a tag.
11, you reminded me of a fond memory from years ago. I had met a guy in Amsterdam who lived in S.F. and we exchanged phone numbers. I was in the Bay Area about a year after that, visiting my older sister, gave him a call and he invited me to a party that he and his roommates were having. I hadn’t been inside the apartment for more than about five minutes before four women came up to me. I laughed and said “I like this, but what’s going on? This never happens to me at a party in Seattle.” and they said “We could tell right away that you weren’t gay and it’s hard to meet straight guys here.” It’s always seemed to me that S.F. would be a pretty good place for a single straight guy to live.
RIP Frank Sr.
@12, having read @11’s comments here over the years I wouldn’t wish him on any woman. Not even women such as you describe, so crippled by homophobia that they’re blind to the kajillions of hot available straight San Fransciscan men. Women like that wind up easy prey for the likes of @11.
Gus, I’m not familiar with 11’s comment history.
I’m not sure what you mean, though, by women who are “so crippled by homophobia that they’re blind to the kajillions of hot available straight San Fransciscan men.” Straight women prefer straight men….how does that make them “homophobic”?
I like that commenter on the presidents article who insists that the Jews were behind everything. It reinforces the sense that my opponents are too moronic to survive in the wild.
Does the cell phone law exempt making an emergency call to 911 while driving?
Roma, 11’s nasty as hell, and has posted here under many names over the years.
The thing is, those women at your friend’s party were telling you their honest perception, but that is not the same as the truth. In statistical and empirical reality, straight men are barely, barely harder to find there than anywhere. There is a fractionally greater number of gay men in San Franscisco because of migration due to economic opportunity, legal protection and a relative freedom from fear, but it’s still a fraction. Any woman who can’t see all the lovely straight men, men who love San Franscisco, because all she sees are gays has her blinders on tight. People who keep their blinders on about the gays are called “homophobes” because their irrational emotional reaction, whether fear or anger, to seeing a wee bit o’ gayness hampers their ability to perceive reality.
Very, very few San Franciscan women share the views of the few you ran into. But there are Republicans everywhere, no?
Thanks for explaining what you meant, Gus. I would agree that perception does not always equal reality.
I don’t know why you’d jump to the conclusion that these women were Republicans, though. I don’t know about two of them but I ended up having a four-month long-distance relationship with one of them and spent some time with another one (because they were best friends) and they were definitely not Republicans or conservatives.
Anyway, like I said, regardless of what 11 is like, his comment just brought back that memory. It’s the only time I’ve had something like that happen (typically straight men have to initiate things with women) and it was nice.
There is a fractionally greater number of gay men in San Franscisco.
I’d be curious to know what the percentage of gay men in S.F. is compared to other large cities. Even if, as you say, it’s only fractionally greater that fraction could still make a difference for a single straight guy.
RE: Wimbledon
Both Venus and Serena Williams are nothing but power servers. Their footwork is mediocre, their agility is lousy, and both of them typically make twice as many unforced errors as their opponents in a match.
Without their power serves, they certainly wouldn’t win any open championships, and I’m doubtful they’d even rank in the top 100.
RE the fifth worst president ever …
Do 238 snooty academics stating this really really HELP anyone, anything, their cause … or whatever?
The hatred of Obama is not founding in any real policy action, it’s just principle … and that is the most disturbing thing ever.
One of the Senatorial idiots asked Kagan where she spent Christmas (this being the country where church and state are separate, of course). She said “Just like most Jews, in a Chinese restaurant” and laughed.
The thought of Kagan, Sotomayor, and Bader Ginsburg facing down those four rightwing Catholics makes me wish they televised SCOTUS.
Shouldn’t that be “deviants” and not “deviates”?
@23 today, yes, but apparently not in the 1950’s.
@17: yes, there are a few exceptions which Komo lists here: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/96104…
I feel bad for Jones Soda. I buy their sodas once or twice a year, which is as often as I drink soda. Maybe this is part of their problem – people looking to buy more ‘natural’ sodas probably aren’t the type to guzzle the stuff.