It's Been a Busy Day for The Squeaky Wheel

I just can't get angry --I'm simmering, potatoes!-- and stand by while NO ONE does ANYTHING. The City of Seattle and Seattle's Mayor Greg "B" Nickels have BOTCHED their handling of our recent Snowpocalypse (or Snowmare or natural disaster depending on who you ask) SO badly that it SHOULD be a NATIONAL news story to bring SHAME to the Nickel's "administration." Did anyone see the TWO tour buses FULL of YOUNG PEOPLE teetering over the broken edge of a freeway retaining wall?! Apparently, the Mayor missed that on TV from his bunker deep inside City Hall. Following the Mayor's brief 20 minute LIE CONFERENCE on Christmas Eve, I started a Facebook protest group called "Save Our Streets" to collect the stories of people impacted by the storm and to urge the City to salt at least the WORST hills. I wanted to create a central online space for information about the storm-response. Seattle needed a place to share information from citizen to citizen. The group has grown by word of mouth to over 80 members who have shared a lot of great (and scary) stories and photos from this storm. Mayor Nickels' assessment of the severity of the storm makes it VERY clear to every Seattle citizen that he did not live through the storm like the rest of us did. Mayor Nagin -I mean Nickels- has YET to answer any more questions about his bungling of this storm since his "B" grade LAST Wednesday. I'm NOT letting up on this issue! Today I was featured in a story on Seattle's "Big Blog" run by the Seattle P-I daily newspaper. The article is the "lead story" on the blog tonight. This squeaky wheel is going to keep on squeaking until Mayor Greg "B" Nickels comes out of his hiding place and apologizes to Seattle for his flippant, ill-advised, and insulting "B" grade and for taking away many, MANY people's Christmases this year. Mayor Knucklehead is the Grinch Who Stole Christmas (and a pasty bloated coward to boot)! The phone number to call the Mayor and tell him what YOU think of his lazy response to Seattle's WORST natural disaster in 2 years is on my Facebook group page. Please join if you haven't already. Let you voice be HEARD!

UPDATE: I will be featured on KOMO4 News at 5PM and Q-13 News at 10PM in Seattle for starting my Facebook protest page. Also, the Mayor is still really M.I.A. One of the reporters who interviewed me was on her way over to his house to "surprise" him.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Happy Winter Solstice, potatoes! Have you hugged a Pagan today?! If you live in North America, your days will be getting longer (yay!), and if you live in the Southern Hemisphere... bad news: your days are getting shorter. When it's winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun is directly overhead at noon only along the Tropic of Capricorn, on which lie such places as Sao Paulo, Brazil, southern Madagascar, and areas north of Brisbane, Australia. It hardly seems like the first day of winter here in Seattle! We've had day after day of snow all week. News of longer days couldn't come soon enough! Many, many cultures the world over perform solstice ceremonies. At their root: an ancient fear that the failing light would never return unless humans intervened with anxious vigil or antic celebration. I'll be anxiously waiting for the snow/ice to melt and I'll be engaging in antic celebration today with KUNG FU PANDA and the ULTIMATE FIGHTER FINALE. Here's the view from my window today.

Snowpocolypse Seattle '08

The Snowpocolypse that Seattle Weather "forecasters" missed by about 24 hours caught just about everyone off guard. I woke up (granted at 11AM) to an unexpected winter wonderland. Quincy wanted to run right outside and play in the snow. I'll post pics throughout the day. For "complete" coverage of the snow in my neighborhood you can check out the useful but woefully biased West Seattle Blog. I have a huge beef with the West Seattle Blog because they claim to be "new media journalists" but they are really just that annoying neighbor who is always up in your business without caring to get all the facts. The West Seattle Blog is a very lucrative ruse. Great pics, but don't be duped by their "articles" that are heavily weighted to favor the blog's sponsors and the blog owners' local friends even with regard to the actual facts.
That's the view out my front window. More pics to follow soon.

13th Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

Be sure to check out the closing weekend of the 13th Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. You do not want to miss ELVIRA MISTRESS OF THE DARK. Elvira will be there. For real!Sunday Update: Elvira looks AMAZING! in person. She's totally still got it. She rocked a full house with a hilarious Q&A after a 35mm screening of ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK (circa 1988). So many juicy details in the Q&A! She still owns the car from the film and has been known to take it out for a spin. She learned all her hair, outfit, and make-up tricks from drag queens. Joey Arias is in ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK. Her BFF is Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman). She was a riot! I wish she'd come to the party after the film, but apparently she signed autographs until every last homo had left the theater. If the film comes to a midnight movie near you, GO! I'm not kidding. I'm NOT!

Bassets For Obama

These guys (and their driver) go by my house at least once a week. They're so cute! I'm so glad that someone is finally trying to get the Basset Hound vote out!

Yes, It's Snowing In June

That's a (live) view of Stevens Pass just north of Seattle where it had been snowing in June as recently as Tuesday 6/10. You can probably still see bits of snow here and there.

Free Hugs

In a city where few people will even make eye contact with you when you pass them on the street (even if you kinda know them), the following video makes a case that not everyone in Seattle is a passive-aggressive introvert.

Pillow Fiiiight! Pillow Fight at Pike Place Market Seattle

Here's some video from the Seattle "Flash Mob" Pillow Fight today in front of the Pike Place Market. I got there a little late. There were almost as many people photographing and videotaping it as pillow fighting. The clip is just a snippet of the fight right before the end. It went on for 5 minutes or so. I'm glad I went. It was a very uplifting experience.

March Snow in Seattle

It's not sticking, but it's REALLY coming down. Click on the pic for a clearer view of the snow. The West Seattle Blog put up some snow video shot near my house.

No News Is Bad News

I'm once again fed up with my local TV news. Ever since the Bush regime's smack-down on speaking the truth, local TV news can't seem to get over the hump of realizing what reporters used to do before Bush. They used to dig for facts and they used to report in the interest of the viewers. Simple stories are always missing very vital information. No one is ever at fault, so the story is never about the facts. One example is the recent story about Seattle's new red light traffic cameras. Seattle is NOTORIOUS for having really messed up traffic light timing. It seems to stem from a 1960s era decision to retard the flow of traffic. Except now that traffic levels are quadruple what they were in 1960, the lights are still timed the same. And when new lights are added, they fall into the mess of the other lights. Most travelers are forced to stop at every single traffic light so no one can ever speed. (or get anywhere). In order to get through a few lights in a row, most Seattle drivers (who care about getting through a few lights at a time) speed up and risk running a few yellow lights or red lights. This situation has been brought up repeatedly with the city who denies the lights are improperly timed, and when people point out specific problems with light timing, the city always says, "We investigated the problem and found that the lights were out of sync, so we made an adjustment." Well, ALL the lights are out of sync, did you ever think of that?! Now, Seattle is installing many, many red light cameras to "crack down" on a deeply flawed system they created. Not ONE news report mentions anything about Seattle's screwy traffic light timing or the fact that red light cameras don't make intersections safer (accident rates don't drop). In fact, most TV news reports mention a "city study" that "finds" that "red light cameras make driving safer," which is simply not true based on reports from cities where they've had red light cameras for years. Even the newspapers dropped the ball on this story. No one even brings up the question of where the money from the red light cameras will go. The city is going to make a LOT of money off these cameras, but where will it be spent? Will it help to pay for re-timing all the other traffic lights in Seattle? Will it go to pay for another stadium we don't need? Will it go to pay for more light rail that will never open and goes nowhere? Reporters really need to dig a little and not just parrot the city press releases.

Snow! Snow! Snow!

People in Seattle tend to get excited about snow because it rarely ever snows here. Or, at least it didn't used to. It would go 2-3 years without ANY snow, and in the past 2 years we've had record snowfall over and over.

We had a very white Christmas, which I'm told by the TV Newsbots is a once-in-twenty-years event. My photo (top left) shows the midday snow squalls on Christmas Day. Not much stuck to the streets, but the sidewalks and yard got a healthy dose of powder. It didn't last long.

The BIG snow (so far) was on December 1st. (See photo number 2) I got stuck driving in this storm which stuck to streets and made hills a nightmare for a few hours. It took me about an hour to get home from a part of town that is usually about 20 minutes away.

It's snowing again right now for the third day in a row. Just in time for rush hour! Luckily just about everyone in Seattle is on vacation (or just not at work).