Which is better? October or November? I'm deeply attached to both months, though most of October 2022 was (in the Pacific Northwest—usually the best place on Earth) pretty awful. But these short days and long nights are nothing but enchanting. I was in Los Angeles last week, and though I found the food, particularly Mexican and Central American, to be just wonderful beyond words, I found its relentless sunniness to be a drag. I also hated passing through Beverly Hills: bloated houses, lifeless streets, and a bright sun to make the miserable more miserable. I once walked through Skid Row and was as disgusted by it as I was by Beverly Hills. Both are horrifying. The city is lots of people, lots of small businesses, and some decay, and some innovation. Did you know the oranges in California are dying?

Four of Issaquah's young and furious ended up in the hospital after their cars crashed during a car race on "Highlands Drive Northeast at Discovery Drive." Two of the teenagers in one of the three crashes "were thrown from the car." No matter how you feel about this maddening disaster, do not blame these teens. Blame only the culture that has so utterly conditioned them.

The question for our region is no longer whether there will be a recession or not, but how long will it last and who will it hit the hardest. And so we find in the Puget Sound Business Journal this story: "Economist Dick Conway foresees 'shallow' recession for Seattle region." Based on his models: "...the local economy is in for a shallow recession followed by a period of slow growth." But why is a recession a given? Or, more deeply, why is it even important, even in capitalist terms? One must remember that between 1947 and the early '70s, recessions were regular but so mild that they did not grip the news. Indeed, is an economic downturn of any importance if its impact is only mild or occasional? But here is the deeper question: Billionaires are claiming a crash is in the offing. These same billionaires, however, failed to see the crash of 2008. The weight of this assertion is supposedly found in the idea that there is some terrible imbalance in the economy that soon needs a painful correction. But correction has never really been a market disaster. Correction is not, in the standard economic sense, a bad thing. A crash, on the other hand, is just that: a system-wide crash. And it often happens when billionaires are promoting rather than demoting an economy that ends in this way.   

These workers will lose sleep for your cars. Your endless, endless cars. How exhausting.

Yes, I had some unpleasant things to say about Bruce Harrell's obsession with graffiti, but I very well know that Harrell and Tiffany Smiley are not the same political animal. Smiley is pure MAGA in the most rinky-dink moderate drag to ever step on the stage of Washington's politics. Those in the Safe Seattle should know they have everything they want in Harrell. Smiley, on the other hand, is playing with fire. The quality of life for reproductive women is at stake here. Harrell would never go that far. Smiley will. Know your animals.

Brazil's MBGA president, Bolsonaro, went full Tropical Trump today. He refused to concede (he lost the election by 2 million votes), described the coup attempt by his supporters as "indignation and a sense of injustice," and then quietly told his chief of staff "to begin the transition process with representatives of leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva." What does all of this come down to? Lots of money to bilk after he is out of the office. Trump did exactly this. It's not that he believed he lost 2020—but the golden eggs on top of the beanstalk that rejected the election's result far surpassed those on the one that accepted it.

But for real, are Bolsonaristas more possessed than our Trumpers? If so, we have not seen the worst of MAGA yet. Indeed, it's not impossible that the January 6 participants will, in the near and more fevered future (post-2022), actually look like tourists.  

The Supreme Court decided to say no to Sen. Lindsey Graham's raw attempt "to block a subpoena for [him] to testify in front of an Atlanta special grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia." Even the husband ("pubic hair on my Coke") of a January 6 conspirator (“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!") did not publicly "dissent from the order." Ginni must be sending someone to "the doghouse" tonight. So, howler, in the immortal words of Hank Williams: "Move It On Over."

Let's end PM with this noir-as-jazz, jazz-as-cinema by the incomparable genius of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, "The Inflated Tear."