ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Counting The Days

First off, I LOVE ETS!, and anxiously await each issue. Second, the MicroBoeing Watch is a truly inspired bit of work which deserves to be duplicated in every company town.

Nonetheless, am I missing something, or do the "Total in Paper" numbers never add up??

Thanks,

Barry Rueger, CKCU Radio Carleton Inc., Ottawa/Hamilton, Ont.

Ed. reply: Geez, always a mathematician in the crowd...okay, follow along. First, the "front section" totals include the stories on the first page, which are also listed separately so you can tell how much emphasis the stories get.

Second, there are stories which appear in sections other than the front and business--like local news, lifestyle features, travel, sports...(You think we're joking. We wish!) If the totals of the different sections exceed the total in the paper, you've found a problem, and are hereby given permission to flog the editors several times with a wet penguin flipper. If you can find one. (An editor, that is.) Normally, the totals of each section will be equal to or less than the overall total in the paper.

"In The Event Of Loss Of Cabin Pressure You Will Suffer A Slow, Agonizing Death. Thank You For Choosing Air Clinton."

For 40 years the U.S. government sponsored an exercise in genocidal mass murder as vile as any performed at Auschwitz: the Tuskegee Syphillis Study. Now President Clinton wipes a crocodile tear and says, "I am sorry," and we're supposed to applaud and believe he really cares.

Well, sorry doesn't shine my shoes! Mr. Clinton fed Lani Guinier and Jocelyn Elders to the wolves when the going got tough. His committment to universal health care lasted only as long as it was politically useful, and he recently signed legislation gutting 50 years worth of attempts at progressive social policy.

This is the man who bought his election with the life of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded convict who barked like a dog, and who saved the dessert from his last meal "to eat afterwards." Gov. Clinton allowed him to be executed to prove that he was Man Enough to be President. I haven't heard him tell Ricky Ray's parents "I'm sorry."

At this moment, the respected journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal sits on death row, and hundreds of more men are awaiting execution to feed the public appetite for cold-blooded, legally approved, racially motivated lynchings.

In this light, "I am sorry" doesn't cut it. Not when the sponsors and executioners of the Tuskegee Experiment are collecting government pensions. I don't want to hear how sorry the man is. I want to hear about reparations.

--Tom A., Tacoma

Better Ballots!

I received my voter's pamphlet in the mail today. Is it me or is this "special election" just plain boring? "A stadium? Is that all?" I asked, as I leafed through the pamphlet, wondering about printing and mailing costs. "Seattle's becoming controlled by computer geeks--a nerdsville, a virtual city," I muttered. "Dull, dull, dull! A city where a Special Election is only a yes or no vote to build a stadium."

To liven things up a little, we ought to provide people with some entertainment for making the effort to get off their butts and go out to vote. Let's give them a few more interesting choices besides just "yes" or "no." With that in mind, I redesigned the ballot selections as follows:

Yes, I love billionaires and wish I could be one, too.
Yes, because Paul Allen looks like a wookie (ain't he cute?!)
Yeah! Go Seahawks! (Oops! I mean "don't go!" Without you, I wouldn't have a social life!)
Yes, absolutely. I'm a businessman/politician/building contractor, and I'm gonna make a killing on this deal.
NO. Is this some kind of a joke? I thought we already voted on this stadium thing!
No, because Paul Allen may look like a wookie, but he acts like Jabba The Hutt.
No--what happened to the Jimi Hendrix Museum, anyway?
No. We should build a monument to Bill Gates instead. Maybe a giant cheeseburger with a retractable bun.
No, because I want to vote on it again at the next election, where we'll see it retitled as the "Soccer Stadium For Seattle Schools" initiative.
Undecided.
Would prefer to use this ballot for toilet paper.

Wouldn't this make for a truly Special Election? And don't worry if the stadium is voted down. The Seattle City Council and the State Legislature may already be engaged in high-level talks about combining the stadium with the Seattle Commons project, and how to build them both without requiring voter approval first. They could call it the Seattle Common Erection Project.

--Maria Tomchick, Seattle

1-800-JACKHAMMER

Hi,

I appreciated the article about traffic in Seattle in last week's ETS!. Is there really a Road Kill & Garden Society? And if so, how can I get in touch with them? I've been advocating the same idea for a while. Let's tear up some pavement!

--Heidi, Seattle native, never had a driver's license

Ed. note: To contact the elusive but totally cool RK&GS, call John at (206) 632-1656.