LND has the poop here.

A reader writes:

Like your blog.

Anyway, in December, 2004, days after I separated from my wife (when she said, "As far as I'm concerned, this relationship is over"--Merry Christmas), I would console myself by going to the Old Lompoc.

One night, feeling especially sorry for myself and seeing Christmas lights, a man came up to me.

His truck broke down. He was trying to get back to Welches. They stole his tool box. Give me your e-mail address. Have some faith in humanity.

Um, and so on.

Line for effing line.

I gave the bastard $40 and congratulated myself on finding someone more miserable than I was. By God, I was a Good Samaritan.

Six months later, I see and hear the guy in front of the downtown Nordstrom, speed-rapping his way through the spiel with a yuppie couple who had kids in tow.

Until that moment, I thought that the guy was legit.

I walked up to them and said, "This guy is a con artist. Run!" or something like that.

Anyway.

Are you familiar with the little old lady in front of Nordstrom? She, too, is particularly insidious. She looks like your perfect little gramma with cookies baking not far away. VERY sincere.

Another one bites the dust.

Runners do the craziest things. Here are a couple who behaved enough like terrorists that they got themselves locked up.

The Seattle Mariners' new manager is making some bad choices in pitchers lately, and it's got this fan a tad cranky.

Doggone it. Homer, Dike, Gerding and the boys got your neighborhood's transportation money. Especially shafted: Southeast and outer Northeast Portland. Thanks, Sam and Vera.

Next they'll be stealing it for the Burnside-Couch couplet and the east side streetcar. Enjoy those unpaved streets in Cully, and the new parking meters on Hawthorne. The fat cats will be laughing it up at Bluehour, and the joke's on you.

And rightly so -- she's quite a newsmaker this week.

We know the chances are good that we are going to dislike greatly whomever the Chimp nominates to be the next attorney general. But Slade Gorton? Wow, that would really be up there on the old detestation scale. I tend to give 80-year-old geezers the benefit of the doubt, but not that guy.

What a creep.

Dave's going on Oprah. It's about time. (Via Bean.)

More free muni wifi plans onto the scrap heap. A Portland big idea that, surprise, just doesn't work.

I can't say I was paying all that much attention, but here's something I didn't know about.

On your gall bladder operation.

The Portland City Council has noticed that small businesses are having a hard time with all the red tape and other hassles they have to deal with at City Hall. Lately the council's taken a few steps here and there to make life easier for the little entrepreneurs that give their passions and ambitions a shot in the Rose City. And it's a smart move -- small business plays a big part in making Portland Portland.

But the saga of Fireman Randy's new spray paint lockup ordinance -- did it pass yesterday? -- shows that the city still has quite a way to go to become truly small-business-friendly. The idea of requiring hardware stores and other retailers to keep all spray paint locked up, and to get and record identification from everyone who buys it, is supposed to reduce graffiti in the city. But the merchants, particularly the smaller ones, have howled, saying that the burden on them outweighs any likely public benefit.

I'm an enemy of graffiti taggers -- they're all mentally ill, in my view -- and so I tend to sympathize with any effort to combat that particular form of vandalism. But I can also understand the hardware stores' concerns. Look at it from their perspective. They'll have to make some fairly significant physical renovations of their stores to get the paint locked up, and all the ID checking and other folderol that will now come with selling a can of paint is going to eat up employees' time and attention. While they're busy jotting down information from some grandmother's driver's license so that she can pick up a can of Rustoleum for that garage sale patio table, some kid in the back of the store is going to be stealing the place blind. So what are the shopkeepers supposed to do, hire more help just for the spray paint rigamarole?

In this case, it would have been quite helpful for the council (and the public) to have a decent estimate of just how much, in hard dollars, the hardware store folks are going to have to spend to come into compliance with the proposed new rules. And as best I can tell from where I'm sitting, that data was never compiled; at least, it was never publicized. Could it be that city had no solid estimate of the costs of the program -- much less any ascertainable estimate of the reduction in tagging that the ordinance is supposed to bring about?

I think the city should have to compute and publicize the private costs of laws like these before the vote on them is taken. The same for actions taken by city bureaus, for that matter. And there's a perfectly good model for requiring the municipal government to do that. It's a longstanding federal law regarding the environment. Before any "major federal action" is taken that might have a deleterious effect on the environment, the agency that's about to do the hacking has to prepare an "environmental impact statement," in which it is required to predict just how much damage to Mother Nature the proposed program is going to inflict.

There ought to be a similar law in place on behalf of small business in the City of Portland. Before the city plows ahead with something like the spray paint lockup ordinance, it should have to prepare and publish a "small business impact statement," showing how much the proposed law is going to cost small businesses in town. Defining what a "small business" is isn't that difficult, and figuring out what a "major city action" affecting such businesses might be is another manageable task. If the city fathers are really serious about nurturing entrepreneurs, the least they could do is quantify the hurt they're about to put on the little guys and gals when they pound the gavel on their latest groovy idea.

It was exactly one year ago this morning, right about this time, that this blog disappeared as part of a fiasco with my extremely crooked web host at the time. Since then, we've gotten back on our feet, but that was a morning I don't think I'll ever forget. Thanks again to everyone who was around back then and pitched in to help resurrect everything.

Don't forget to drop by Congressman Blumenauer's office over by Lloyd Center from noon to 2 today for the weekly pro-impeachment picketing. Let him know that we're not going to let him go all Brian Baird on us.

And this time, the news ain't good.

The famed house of sounds on NW 23rd Avenue in Portland closes Friday, but not without a nice sendoff. Lots of memories in there. We must redouble our resolve to spend some dough every now and then in their surviving store, on East Burnside just outside the Laurelhurst gate.

Remember Johnny Huang? This time around his name is Norman Hsu. Hillary's literally got fugitives running around raising cash for her.

Yeah, that's going to win the Presidential election. America doesn't mind the crookedness. Sure.

I am not making this up: Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her dog. (Via TaxProf Blog.)

Here's a man with the right idea.

They're borrowing a lot of dough to buy Wild Oats. Is that a limb they're going out on?

The City of Chicago has blown up its plans to install free wi-fi service around the Windy City. It seems that the private providers of such municipal systems have wised up, and realized that they're not viable unless the city promises to front a bunch of dough up front. Cities aren't willing to do that, and so the whole concept appears doomed.

Portland, of course, got in on the action before this realization occurred. The problem for us -- besides the fact that the technology we picked doesn't work for most people -- is that the company providing our service, MetroFi, is playing out an untenable business plan. Today's Willy Week reveals that troubles have arisen between MetroFi and the city, over MetroFi's demand for discounted electrical power.

Look for those weird wireless nodes on top of Portland's traffic signals to be turned into fuchsia planters real soon.

First telegrams went away. Now the Time Lady.

Thank goodness you can still call this guy.

Scientists (including some at Oregon State, which Nike founder Phil Knight did not attend) are working on developing edible films and powders that will be spread over the foods we buy. The films and powders will fight mold, kill pathogens, and extend shelf life. They might even add flavor.

Ewwwwwww!

As told by Larry Norton on the O's Old Town blog.

I see that the Portland Beavers minor league baseball team has narrowed down potential new names for the team to a handful. They're all lame. In a survey that was posted here (and sure didn't last long), they listed these electriftying options:

• Green Sox
• Sockeyes
• Thorns
• Wet Sox
• Beavers

Ick! They must be joshing us. Inertia's got something to be said for it. Go, Beavers. (Via the OregonLive Beavers blog.)

If you have the dirt on Obama, please get it out on the table now. Don't wait until after he's got the nomination nearly sewed up to start slinging the mud. If the guy's got baggage that needs to be aired, let's get it done now. For the sake of the party. Please, please don't blow this.

Here's a bad guy who was sentenced to using Windows.

Sic him!

But alas, no Pacific Northwest stop, this year at least. There's a Friday night show in Oakland, Oct. 26; it's a one-nighter, like the whole schedule released today. Tickets for that one go on sale two weeks from Saturday.

Is it true that the Portland City Council is going to vote on Fireman Randy's spray paint lockup ordinance tomorrow, with only three council members present?

Man, if a Burnside Bridgehead Home Depot store doesn't put the little hardware stores out of business, goofiness like this will. If it results in even a slight reduction in tagging in Portland, I'd be shocked. And how many city bureaucrats can we afford to pay to enforce it?

Coming up next for Portland: Crisco by prescription only. It's bad for you!

I did. It was eerie, just as they said it would be. The earth's shadow passed over the moon's surface, bathing the entire orb in a reddish-orange glow. It was a little clumsy peering at it through a thick filter so that I didn't go blind, but I got quite a good look at it.

I tried to take some photos of the event with my ancient digital camera, but they all came out pretty poor. Here's a Photoshop-enhanced version of a shot I took from our back deck around 4 o'clock:

Not much, eh? But just so that readers of this blog don't feel deprived, here is a high-powered computer simulation of what it actually looked like:

Awesome stuff. But I'm still feeling a bit tingly.

Brian Baird, the Vancouver congressman, is getting his chops royally busted by many of his constituents for his recent declaration that the United States needs to keep a large force in Iraq for a long time. I'm not the least bit surprised. Those of us who rejoiced at the election of a Democratic Congress last fall are getting mighty restless waiting to see some results, on just about anything having to do with the war. So far, we're hearing one excuse after another about why we can't come to our senses and get on with the inevitable bloodbath in Iraq, without first wasting time with a decade-long (or longer) half-a*sed occupation. If Democratic representatives were smart, they'd either get with the program that the party voters clearly want, or go into hiding. Baird hasn't been smart enough to do either.

Somebody, somewhere in our federal government needs to be working on a plan that starts a serious withdrawal now, and gets it done with the minimum amount of damage (which will be substantial nonetheless). America needs to get ready to see the dancing in the streets by the terrorists, and to take the months of insults from around the world about what losers our war makers turned out to be. We need to do what we can to help contain the chaos that's coming, but as for losing, it's going to happen, and let's face it, given whom we put in charge, we pretty much deserve it.

Baird's still engaged in the extreme delusion that we're going to "win" something in Iraq:

"I have to believe that there is a quiet majority of people out there who think the war has been a terrible mistake, but they sure don't want to see us lose," he told The Columbian editorial board earlier Monday.

The sudden intransigence on the part of the entire Democratic "leadership" on this issue has many voters boiling over with anger. I suspect Messrs. Blumenauer and DeFazio are going to hear some of the same loud catcalls if they don't get off their bike pants and get something done in the direction of a pullout pretty soon. Then there's Hillary, whom so many people would pay good money to heckle, just on general principles.

Want to screw up the 2008 Presidential election? The Democratic Party is well on its way. Another Nader fiasco could be right around the corner.

What was supposed to be a quick trip to the curb with the weekly recycling turned into a bit of a diversion, as we stopped to read several interesting items we encountered in yesterday's New York Times:

- An extensive backgrounder on Fred Thompson -- especially his days as a Capitol Hill lawyer during Watergate. Compared to now, those were the days.

- A full-page display ad accusing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals of killing more animals than Michael Vick -- with a link here. I have no idea what to make of the accusations.

- An op-ed piece about the difference between classified information and secret information. Which contains the sobering revelation that even some Times op-ed pieces get vetted by the CIA before publication. We Americans brag about our freedom of the press, but there are some glaring exceptions.

- A story about a California pedophile, recently moved down there from Washington State, who's now looking for a new state in which to live because of restrictions placed on him down south. He's been legally enjoined from, among other things, publishing pictures of little girls. Now that the internet has made publishers out of so many of us, that prohibition really means something.

- Finally, a musical note. A big bucks New York law firm had its promotional song leaked into (and ridiculed in) the blogosphere, and it's not happy about it. But its reaction didn't exactly put out the fire.

Next to the alternative, he's starting to look pretty good.

Cousin Jim offers up an image of pure beauty. The interplay of light and object captures his Polish ancestry (same as mine) perfectly.

Tonight at 3. Ah-ooooo!

It's been a heck of a day for the Republican Party.