Ladies and gentlemen, I must admit to a grave error. Some time ago, after being harassed one too many times on my way to the Stranger offices by a man demanding I give him some "real change" (rather than the clippings from the "help wanted" section that I usually disseminate among wastrels on the street), I decided to take action. I put the man in a handy choke hold I learned during the Battle of Algiers and demanded he tell me the names of his superiors. A spot of hand-to-hand combat ensued and was promptly followed by his complete surrender. After which I learned that his superiors were in fact a consortium of brilliant businessmen. They cajole homeless people into hawking worthless papers for $1 each, collect a bounty from easily guilted liberals, pay the homeless vendors a few pennies per paper sold, and turn a handy profit. That very same day I walked into Mr. Keck's office and proclaimed: "Hoboes are the future!"

Next thing I knew, DOMINIC HOLDEN had been scraped out of some gutter somewhere and offered a few cents an hour to convert his logorrhea into written form. He looked great on the balance sheet, and he had the desperate eagerness to please of a true pauper, but I somehow failed to predict the inevitable outcome. If you hire a homeless man, he will inevitably write things like this week's feature, which attempts (part 3,024 in an interminable series by Mr. Holden) to undermine Tim Burgess's benevolent plan to round up the city's homeless and give them warm beds and clean toilets—inside the proper confines of a jail cell. Do not waste your time with Mr. Holden's feature. It is merely the unfortunate blowback from a business plan gone awry.

In other regrettable events, ELI SANDERS appears to have made his annual journey off of Capitol Hill, this time visiting the "heathens" on the other side of the mountains. I am not sure why he bothered, since the only thing he "learned" over there is that all the horrible prejudices he already held about conservative country folk were—try to contain your shock—absolutely correct. Ostensibly, Mr. Sanders, while on this junk-journalism junket, explored the Yakima Tea Party movement and whether it is responsible for some crazy man calling Senator Patty Murray's office with a few poorly phrased but fundamentally spot-on criticisms. If by "explored" we mean pre-tried and pre-convicted by the kangaroo court inside Mr. Sanders's pea brain, then I suppose this exploration was successful. But for any thinking man, it is another sign that Mr. Sanders should have his gas money revoked.

As always, the ladies of The Stranger provide a small—very small—respite from the lunacy. BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT says some inconsequential things about sushi, which has long been a Steen Fishing Industries—approved food; JEN GRAVES babbles in a somehow more relaxing way this week (as long as you do not pay attention to what she says, the babbling comforts like a mountain stream); and ERICA GRANDY's column photograph remains, for obvious reasons, a most comely attraction, indeed.

Follow A. Birch Steen at www.twitter.com/strangerslog.