Dominic Holden

This explains a lot.

Thank my parents I didn’t get toy number one as a kid.

Apparently, I was so satisfied with making paella that I haven’t updated this site in a long time. Loyal reader, if you exist, I am sorry.

So I’m back in the saddle and riding directly into the sun. I’ll post later this week on visiting my friends’ weddings—they’re all getting married at once—but in the meantime please enjoy pictures of my asphalt.

Last month I wrote a feature for The Stranger on Seattle’s threatened parking lots, the harp seal to the clubs of merciless developers. I took the pictures too, but not all of them made it into the paper. Here are a few of my favorite also-rans.

Now doesn’t that make you feel like parking?

I made paella this weekend. It turned out pretty good.

Photo by Nicole Kelly.

More details on the pot raid at the home of the Berwyn Heights mayor.

ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 obtained a copy of the search warrant authorizing the search and seizure, but it does not appear to allow the kind of ‘no-knock’ entry employed by the SWAT team.

Patrick Murphy, the chief of the Berwyn Heights police, has reviewed the document.

“There is no permission from the judge to treat this as a no-knock warrant. There is no affidavit of probable cause,” Chief Murphy said. “The mayor demanded that they show him the warrant and they never did so.”

…

Sources tell ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 reporter Brad Bell that police believe the mayor and his family had nothing to do with the marijuana. Investigators suspect the package was supposed to be intercepted by someone else, before delivery, according to the sources.

I’m not sure which of these elements is most important in this inconceivable wonderful, better-than-fiction report from Australia’s Northern Territory:

A TERRITORY man filmed himself speeding at 150km/h while masturbating at the wheel of his drug-laden car, a court heard.

His Holden SV6 was allegedly laden with 5kg of drugs, including two cannabis plants resting on the back seat, the court was told.

Brendon Alan Erhardt, 39, was granted bail so he could marry his girlfriend of six months before he goes to jail.



Prosecutor Sergeant Melinda Edwards said in court the father-of-three told police he “had masturbated while driving” just before he was stopped for speeding on the 130km/h stretch of the Stuart Hwy.

”(He) also video recorded himself masturbating while travelling at a speed of 150km/h.”



Sgt Edwards said Mr Erhardt — who was disqualified from driving — also told officers his act was “not dangerous” as the “only person he could hurt was himself”.

Darwin Magistrates Court heard Mr Erhardt was stopped by NT police 25km south of Daly Waters on July 16 for allegedly speeding at 147km/h on his way home from Adelaide.



Police noticed he was “visibly agitated”, and when they told him they were going to search his Holden sedan, he said “go right ahead”, Sgt Edwards said.

It is alleged that officers found 4.96kg of cannabis hidden in a blue esky in the boot, two cannabis plants on the back seat, two drug pipes and a loaded .22 rifle.



Sgt Edwards said Mr Erhardt was arrested and told officers he had “found” the drugs at a rest stop 100km north of Coober P Read the rest of this entry »

Over on Slog, Jonathan Golob writes that, “Every Visit to the Seattle Central Library Reminds Me of the Cheese Shop Sketch.” This is what I think of whenever I walk into a bear bar:

I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay, I sleep all night and I work all day, I cut down trees, I eat my lunch. I go to the lavatory.

On Wednesdays I go shopping and have buttered scones for tea.

Seattle police have named Brian Keith Brown as the alleged second-degree murderer in the traffic-circle punching death.

I’d hit it.

Illinois:

A Kewanee man was arrested and two pit bull dogs were killed by law enforcement officers during a raid early Friday morning.

As a result of the raid, Eddie Dearing, 42, of Kewanee was arrested. Henry County Circuit Court records show he has been charged with Class 4 felony possession less than 15 grams of a controlled substance containing cocaine, and Class A misdemeanor unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, a crack pipe.

Upon making a tactical entry into the residence, the Henry County Special Operations Squad encountered several pit bull dogs,” Dison said. “Two pit bulls were killed by officers as the dogs aggressively charged at the entry team. A third pit bull was injured as it charged officers but was eventually able to be secured and was later transported to a veterinarian for treatment of its injuries.”

Raiding a private resident with guns drawn–as I’m sure everyone is sick of me talking about–is a stupid way to apprehend a suspected nonviolent drug offender. Innocent people get shot all the time. But when two charging pit bulls are shot–well then, that could just be saving an innocent person down the road.

After Jobdango advertised on the streets of Portland using—the horror—sidewalk chalk, the city had to clean it up because sidewalk chalk, see, is apparently graffiti. Portland is now suing Jobdango.

The city is suing the online job classifieds company for $5,446, claiming that’s what it cost to remove hundreds of chalk advertisements drawn on city streets one night last September….

Though one might expect the rain to wash the chalk away in this soggy city, the graffiti was applied in September, one of the few months in which Portland enjoys steady sunshine.

The cleanup crew spent several hours removing hundreds of chalk advertisements, which were 2 to 4 feet long. They had to be power washed, then scrubbed by hand.

“Chalk is not as easy to dispose of as people think,” said Marsha Dennis, who directs the city’s graffiti abatement department. “While you’re waiting for it to rain, it looks messier and messier and messier.”

Oh, it’s so much messier. Just think of the ROSES!

Meanwhile in Seattle, the county public health department appears to be spray-painting excellent go-get-tested-for-HIV ads on the sidewalk. I just tested one with water and rubbed it with my shoe, and the chalk didn’t fade or run. But James Apa, spokesman for the county’s health department, says, “The material they use is regular chalk and on top of it they use an organic hairspray to make it last longer.” He says that the “Department of Sidewalks” has given permission to spray the ads given that the “store owner is okay with it and it’s not permanent.”

But unless you get permission, under city law, chalk and paint are equally illegal on Seattle streets. So the moral of the story: If you want draw on the street, make it a good campaign and don’t use plain chalk; use spray paint.

A federal court ruled that strip searching a 13-year-old girl suspected of having ibuprofen was illegal. Previously, a ruling in Arizona found the search hadn’t violated her Fourth Amendment rights because school officials have an interest in protecting kids from prescription drugs. That decision, however, has been overturned.

“Directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen, an infraction that poses an imminent danger to no one, and which could be handled by keeping her in the principal’s office until a parent arrived or simply sending her home, was excessively intrusive,” Justice Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the majority….

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michael Daly Hawkins wrote: “We should resist using our independent judgment to determine what infractions are so harmful as to justify significantly intrusive searches.”

“Seemingly innocuous items can, in the hands of creative adolescents, present serious threats. “Admittedly, ibuprofen is one of the mildest drugs children could choose to abuse. But that does not mean it is never harmful.”

Gum drops, candy bars, and, of course, cigarettes can be harmful to kids. That doesn’t mean it’s worth the indignity of a strip search. To the federal court, good job. And to the Arizona court, a belated fuck you.

The only way sports can be a legitimate form of civic pride is if the players actually represent the city they play for. I don’t mean that Seattle’s players have to be from here. Those hopes were dashed two years ago, when I went to my first ever NBA game, a Sonics game, and found that none of the players were from Seattle. But that’s fine.

Pro sports are an evolutionary throwback to tribal warfare, and, frankly, it’s just impractical to fracture our nation by going to Portland to kill them in the night. So we have metaphorical battles against our neighbors, but it’s still for our team. For our city!

So before I can shed a tear—or give a shit at all—about the Sonics leaving Seattle, I want to hear from the players, our warriors in the night. Where do they stand in the moving-to-Oklahoma settlement?

Kevin Durant, Luke Ridnour (it will have been very impressive if I got their names right without Googling them)—what do they think? Will they miss Seattle? Doesn’t this departure, after years of loyal support from fans, tear them up? Will they miss the half-full Key Arena? The Squatch?

If they can’t say anything, if they don’t care, then I don’t care and none of us should care that they’re leaving. If they don’t give a shit, then never really represented us anyway.

Oh, I can hear crowd of nagging voices. The players have a gag order. They have to be good sports. Fuck that nagging voice. They are gabby about the city in times of peace. They’re gabby when it’s time to sell jerseys. They’re gabby—inarticulate, always, but gabby—whenever it’s time to talk about how they did in the second half, or some irrelevant shit. Let’s hear them be gabby now that the game actually counts for something. If they really have been muzzled, if civic pride and spirit of the game (in court or on the court, har!) are trumped by big business, the civic pride had already left the Sonics players. Whatever we believed we saw in them was an illusion. We should be grateful that the smoke has cleared and the mirrors have been shattered.

At a savings of $30 in their lifetime, compact florescent bulbs are wiping incandescents off the market. But that hasn’t stopped the most environmentally conscious governments, such as California, from threatening to ban the old-fashioned Edison bulb completely. But would that even work? I haaaaaaate florescent lights. They make everyone look slightly ill, under a barely detectable flicker in a color only an insect could love. When the regulators try to yank incandescents’ warm, full-spectrum glow from art galleries and restaurants, we’ll see a backlash among the most green-minded among us. I’ll be among the backlashers. Give me a compact fluorescent that doesn’t make a dining room look like an operating room, and I’m all for it. Otherwise, I’ll hoard contraband old bulbs—until electricity bills reflect the real cost of energy. Then I’ll put those archaic planet poopers in the free box.

A great costume, made in America.

A great flag, made in China.

John McCain is in South America this week to show off his competency in matters of foreign-policy—by lauding, of all things, the success of drug interdiction programs.

“There is a long way to go to stem the flow of drugs into the United States of America,” McCain said. “The progress I’ve seen since previous visits here has been substantial and positive…”

How substantial? How positive? Oh, let the New York Times count the ways as it deconstructs GOP drug-war praises:

This enthusiasm rests on a very selective reading of the data. Another look suggests that despite the billions of dollars the United States has spent battling the cartels, it has hardly made a dent in the cocaine trade.

While seizures are up, so are shipments. According to United States government figures, 1,421 metric tons of cocaine were shipped through Latin America to the United States and Europe last year — 39 percent more than in 2006. And despite massive efforts at eradication, the United Nations estimates that the area devoted to growing coca leaf in the Andes expanded 16 percent last year. The administration disputes that number.
The drug cartels are not running for cover.

Washington spent $1.4 billion on drug-related foreign assistance last year — mostly to equip Colombia’s security forces and spray coca crops in the Andes. It spent another $7 billion on drug-related law enforcement and interdiction efforts at home and abroad. It spent less than $5 billion on education, prevention and treatment programs at home to curtail substance abuse.

Of course, it’s not that McCain is really in denial about the drug war. He knows exactly what’s going on. And here’s the video that explains it all.

It was a toss up between the work-horse of Broadway’s Asian food fare, HaNa (where last week I ate 31 pieces of sushi to celebrate turning 31 years old), or the Kimchi Bistro back in the the alley. HaNa was full.

Kimchi Bistro is a steal. And it’s pride is its namesake. For no charge—like bread in a French restaurant—the meal is preceded by kimchi. Six plates of it.

The best of the sextet was that one in the middle, a sprouted bean salad with a bit of crunch and the aromatic grace of sesame oil. I wolfed them all down before my bibimbap arrived, and asked for another round of my top four, saying I’d be happy to pay the cost. But when my bill came, there was no charge for the extra kimchi, even though at that point, I’d eaten ten plates.