Proving once again that she is first among feebles when it comes to filling up the feature section, this week finds JEN GRAVES spending 3,000 words on the subject of views. Yes, those things that you see when you stand on a high spot and open your eyes. Apparently having run out of traditional art objects that could act as excuses for her endless bloviations (or perhaps just between paychecks and having run out of gas for her car?), Ms. Graves reports from her living room, her memory, and a nearby construction site and determines—news flash—that views are nifty.

Those of you unused to the terrifying intellectual emptiness that permeates story meetings at The Stranger might wonder how such an idea was ever thought up. As I am forced to sit through such depressing exercises as a result of my contract (soon to be renegotiated), I will tell you exactly how such an idea was thought up: It arose from the weekly "Shit, what do we do now?" discussion that the members of this confoundingly solvent rag have whenever they discover that they have not, finally, destroyed the business model with the past week's idiocy and outrage. Someone, through the haze of bong smoke, says something like: "Hey, what about views, dude? They're, like, really deep." A circle of bloodshot eyes turns to the visual art editor. She pauses from wrestling with Charles Mudede over rights to the last of the boxed wine, and says: "Shhhlurr." Another Stranger feature born.

As with anything born of such inebriated desperation—half the staff here, for example—this feature exhibits some seriously unfortunate tendencies. The first and most egregious, as suggested above, is the belief that views are worth such lengthy exploration. As someone who has succeeded well enough in the appropriately brutal world of modern capitalism to possess a view of both Mr. Allen's yacht and Mr. Keck's wooden dinghy, I will tell you, in just a few words, what a view represents: It represents the vantage point earned by the kings of the jungle. That is all. The creature who has clawed and clubbed his way past all competitors and now rests with his back against a high mountain ledge, overlooking calming waters and his prey on the savanna below, is a creature of power and leisure. A creature at ease.

I can understand how it might be in the interest of the creditor-hunted basement dwellers and safety-net-testing brick-wall watchers who read and produce this silly distraction to complicate the idea of views—to make them merely an excuse for some dark coffeehouse nattering rather than the mark of manly success and evolutionary triumph that they are. If it makes you feel better, Stranger readers and writers, keep thinking real hard about aesthetically pleasing vantage points. In the meantime, I will continue to look down on you from mine. recommended