If you’ve not looked outside today, you’ll have noticed that practically all of Portland is iced in. I can’t speak for the lowest part of the valley, but I’m at 114 feet, and the streets are iced over. I’m going nowhere.

If you don’t know Tribe, you should. Premiere entertainment for really freaking cheap. I showed it to Mike when I was driving him back to his office after lunch. It’s on the corner of SW Glisan and 5th, right by Backspace and Fords On Fifth, and all those great stores.

I just (well, a while back, but only now got around to actually writing up in here) their list of events for January, and excluding what’s already happened, looks pretty much like this:

Update: Micah notified me of the fact that there was no number, and that the addy was wrong:
Corrected to: NW Glisan (but, as Micah pointed out, most Portlanders already would have known that) and the number is 503.227.3976
(more…)

You see the coolest stuff biking around this town. For instance, this past summer, I helped to carry the weight of the world on a late-night ride on the Eastside Esplanade.

Or today, on E. 28th and Burnside: the Meme-o-matic. Thanks to Steev who posted it to Indymedia.

Also today: I was tooling around the SE Division/Powell/99E Industrial Bermuda Triangle when I heard the warning toodle-oo of an approaching train. I briefly thought about skirting the gate to cross the tracks, but decided against it. It could have been one of those high-velocity Amtrak trains, you know? But it wasn’t. It was one of those freight trains that moves forward ever-so-slowly (clangclangclang! go the gate bells), stops, —p-a-u-s-e-s—, begins to move backwards ever-so-slowly, then stops again. What’s up with that? I had to re-route. It took me twenty minutes out of my way, and I must have waited for twenty minutes at the gate, thinking that it was going to start doing something at any moment. Trains? One of the not-so-nice things about biking. But still cool, though. I got to catch up on train graffiti, that’s for sure. Committed the tag “Silver Miner Larry” to memory, and guess what a quick web search pops up?

The Oregon Legislature started their session today. The body must figure out how to bridge a $1 billion budgetary shortfall over the next two years.

I have the solution. Repeal Measure 5 !!!

The roots of the problem go back to 1990, when Measure 5 was passed, severely restricting the use of local property taxes to fund schools.

The only practical solution to the intractable budget mess is for
Measure 5 to be repealed.

Is there a politician brave enough to propose such a
step? Is there an organization with deep enough pockets to fund a referendum initiative and pay for a campaign to neutralize the inevitable negative propaganda from the likes of social services resenters such as Bill Sizemore, Don McIntyre, Mark Hemstreet and Lars Larson?

Well, I think not.

The reason is clear: homeowners vote and renters do not. And the impression is that of a greedy and fearful landed gentry. They care more about their home values than the uneducated and the weak. There’s plenty of this money around: look at the going price of Pearl District condos, for cripey sake.

Looking out for themselves, rather than even allowing for a more than incidental concern for the weak and the vulnerable, our landed gentry view their increasing home equity as a hedge against falling 401 (k) equity and other economic uncertainties. A hedge that must be protected at all costs, even if it means closing schools, firing teachers, and pitching the physically and mental ill out on the street.

The result is that we, as a city, have rejected the notion that we are our brother’s keeper. I fear this insularity, this selfishness, will get far worse before it gets better.

Don’t even get me started on other key reasons for state budget shortfalls: health-care hikes due to unchecked markups by unregulated pharmaceutical companies, and the lingering economic effects of price-gouging, Enron-rigged, post-deregulation energy markets.

Not that the people who are most affected even notice. I once dated a self-professed, anti big-government Republican woman. She parroted Lars’ line about lazy people living off the dole. Then, her daughter had to draw unemployment. I questioned this woman, and all she could say was, “yea, but..”

“Yea, but,” my butt. That exchange is Reason Number 46 why I don’t date Republicans. There’s a breed of “me first” Republican who has no heart. It’s counterindicative to give your heart to someone who doesn’t have one of their own.

Seen today outside the Oregonian printing plant near the PGE Park Max station:

Two pigeons flew up to the fountain, and politely sipped a drink from the Benson bubbler. I gotta tell you, they exhibited better fountainside manners than most people I see slurping from that water source.

For all who are wondering what “Benson bubblers” are, back in 1912 lumberman Simon Benson donated $10,000 to Portland for 20 fancy water dispensers. Benson didn’t drink alcohol, and viewed his gift as a deterrent to those who would stop in saloons to soothe their thirst.

I’ll drink to that.

The Melting Pot is great, but before I tell you where it falls on my line of great places to eat, I have to explain the curve. Basically, it’s just a really fat bell curve. Really fat. 50% of the points are between four and six. Which means anything above a six is pretty damn good, and anything less than a four is pretty bad. I also rate things according to what they purport to be.

The Melting Pot purports to be a high-class, classy and elegant fondue joint. It doesn’t do too bad, but it doesn’t do excessively well either. The fact that there is no ventilation system to speak of means that the whole resturant smells of everyone else’s food. There’s also a perpetual haze over the whole place, and I can’t really tell if that’s a good thing or not.

The food itself is excellent. It’s really good. The service, on the other hand, sucks. My date and I were sequestered in a corner of the resturant, and not waited upon at all. As long as the dinner was, I would have expected to been visted by our server (Amanda?) much more often. However, and at this point it may just be stating the obvious, we weren’t.

But, service aside, everything else was outstanding. The fondue was prepared at the table, the broth cooked at our table as well, and the meat shortly thereafter. Everything tasted delicious.

I give it a rating of 8.5, overall, and I think it’s a bit generous. I had a really good night on Friday, and the Melting Pot benefits from it. That and that wicked 23% tip I gave.

Turns out the CIA has a front company here in Portland that runs a private jet the government uses to transport suspected terrorists to countries where it is okay to torture them for info.

Check out the whole story on news.yahoo.com, and notice that at the end of the story they give the tail number of the jet: N44982. A Google search on that will lead you to all kinds of fun reading, but nothing quite as spooky as the first Google hit: “Look up aircraft with registration number N44982″ on registry.faa.gov. Click that to get the FAA page and address of our hometown CIA front company: BAYARD FOREIGN MARKETING LLC at 921 SW WASHINGTON ST

Looks like this has been a hot blog topic for awhile. The Oregonian had a story on the 29th of December about all the blogging about the jet.

“For purposes of review and in the interest of the City’s Sustainable Paper Use Policy and sustainable business practices in general, the City encourages the use of submittal materials (i.e. paper, dividers, binders, brochures, etc.) that contain post-consumer recycled content and are readily recyclable. The City discourages the use of materials that cannot be readily recycled such as PVC (vinyl) binders, spiral bindings, and plastic or glossy covers or dividers. Firms are encouraged to print/copy on both sides of a single sheet of paper wherever applicable…”

- City of Portland, Oregon, RFP No. WTR032, PROFESSIONAL, TECHNICAL AND EXPERT SERVICES REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS for Miscellaneous Monitoring Well, Test Well and Production Well Groundwater Technical Services

I think it’s very hopeful that the City has a Sustainable Paper Use Policy. I’m pretty happy about it, in fact. Just wanted to share.

Methwatch is currently doing everything they can do to prevent pseudoephedrine from falling into the wrong hands. Apparently it isn’t doing a whole lot of good, even if they are effective.

Do you think there are better things to do with these kinds of resources? Someone had to form a committee, someone had to design that website, someone had to spend the cash, someone had to design the plan, someone had to help pharmacies enforce it. If the best they can do is twenty percent, isn’t there some alternative? With all those resources couldn’t you build some treatment centers or help people in some other way that might actually impact their lives?

(I’m not trying to be inflammatory or anything, I honestly want to know.)

As mentioned here before, rumor has it Sam Adams is going to start a blog. Well, his page doesn’t seem to have one yet. Hopefully it’ll turn up soon; I for one am interested in what he has to say. Maybe he’ll convince Tom Potter to start one too! There’s always a chance, I suppose.