The Stranger should buy the Uncle Sam Billboard in Chehalis. It has a history. It can't be missed. It's up for sale. The founder of the billboard, Alfred Hamilton, died some 25 years ago, and the sign's cranky, ultra-conservative messages were occasionally maintained, at least according to Wikipedia, by the grandson of the original crank. Though the billboard lost much of its quirky force over the years, some citizens in Chehalis were so fed up with it (bad for tourism) they attempted, in 2020, to have the whole damn thing torn down or challenged with a "[megasized] welcome sign." The statements (none of which are related to reality, and many of which bordered on the surreal—"Non-communist straw for sale"), however, continued, but now in drips. The most recent message, "How many Americans will we leave behind in Ukraine," has been up for ages. 

You can now own Washington's famously weird-looking Uncle Sam for $2.5 million. And by "you," I mean the paper I work for, The Stranger. We could put on the billboard the kind of messages that would make old Hamilton turn forever in his grave. "Drag Queens Make America Great!" Or: "When Will Affirmative Action for White Men End? It's Been Going On For Like Ages."

A new lawsuit points a finger at Boeing for the death of a whistleblower. Yessiree, John “Mitch” Barnett's family wants to fulfill his dying wish: “I pray Boeing pays.” Those words were in a note Charleston, S.C. police officers found a little over a year ago (March 9, 2024) next to a body whose life was brought to an end by a "self-inflicted gunshot wound." Barnett was 62. He was in a truck. He believed to the very end that Boeing was crooked. Will his prayer be answered?

What is this? U.S. House representative Adam Smith is now doing what? Blaming Seattle progressives "for killing Democrats’ brand." No, it's not that the US failed to put behind bars a man who attempted on live TV, for all to see, a coup d'état. No, it's our "fringe rhetoric and well-publicized failures on crime, drugs and homelessness." And, of course, he has to raise the specter of Black Lives Matter. Smith be about prisons, cops, and an America that revives its devotion to white men. A lot of Seattle voted for this guy, which is why now more than ever we need that Uncle Sam Billboard. We can put on it something like: "Adam Smith Can Eat Shit."

We have, it seems, four more days of temperatures in the excellent, soul-soothing space between the low 50s to upper 40s. Come Monday, however, we enter the 60s, winter's great betrayer. That temperature range acts like it's keeping it cool but, in truth, it's not really with us, the vampire class, but with our true enemies: the 70s, the 80s, and even that cold-crushing monster, the 90s. As for today, it will be about that "falling on my head like a memory." 

Seattle Times is appalled that "King County food permit violations surged in 2024." Worst of all, "last year’s record will likely break in 2025." Word on the street has it that people even wait in very long lines for the delicious food served at "unpermitted hot dog carts, taco tents." What is this world coming to? The nerve of some people. Read all about it.

Mainstream media, I honestly don't give a rat's ass about Americans who voted for Trump and now have come to regret it. This is nothing but a great waste of our time. I never cared about what rural yo-yos in bumfuck lord knows where had to say about "the land of the free." I don't care one dot if the scales have finally fallen from their eyes. Fuck em; and you, mainstream press, go fuck yourself and the can of beans that fucked you into existence. And let's put that on our Uncle Sam Billboard.  

Another banger by The Needling:

Parks Dept. Says Cybertruck Fires Must Be Put Out By 10 p.m.: tinyurl.com/5n8nd2dk

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— The Needling (@theneedling.com) March 18, 2025 at 7:21 PM

The BBC reports that "close to 70,000 South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US following Washington's offer to resettle people from the country's Afrikaner community." This is actually a very small number when one realizes that there's something like three million Afrikaners in South Africa (4.5 million whites altogether). What gives? Why aren't they running for our border in hoards? Because what the richest man in the world, Musk, a child of Apartheid, failed to tell Trump, a knee-jerk racist, is that white people still have it so good over there. If they moved to the US, they would actually have to do things like: put away their dishes, wash their clothes, make their own beds. In the US, most white people have to actually work, and, worst of all, work for peanuts. How can you afford a garden boy or house girl on peanuts? In fact, those 70,000 who want to come to America are likely so sorry that they failed in a society that gave white skin more affirmative action than the eye can ever see. Guess who's coming to America.   

Vitamin D's 50th will happen at Chop Suey this Saturday. You don't know who Vita is? Where have you been? He is one of the key beat architects of the Seattle sound. He also produced a beat for De La Soul, the group that countered hiphop's addiction to James Brown with samples from the yacht rock school. Jake One will be rocking this event, as well as Stones Throw Record's J Rocc. Let's end Slog AM with the Vita-produced "Bigger."