It seems that last week on Wednesday morning, several representatives of financial houses such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Goldman Sachs flew into Jakarta to bid on assets and companies that the government was schedule to privatize that week. Later in the day, they were in a panic to get a flight back out, as riots erupted in downtown Jakarta. The prospect of vultures in three piece suits practically shitting their pants to leave Indonesia made me smile. Then I stopped to wonder why they didn't just dress down a bit and go join the looters, since that's what they were there for anyway. Of course, it wouldn't have been quite as efficient a use of their available looting time as normal, but think of the opportunity to pay off government troops directly...--Maria Tomchick

Is it funny or just sick? The surreal ad campaign adorning Nordstrom's new publicly financed consumer temple--er, downtown flagship store, in the old Frederick & Nelson building, is now heralding its August opening with the ad slogan It's not what you know, it's who you know. Hard to imagine a more perfect description of how Nordstrom's got the taxpayers, via our elected city sycophants, to foot so much of the bill for the building in the first place.--Geov Parrish

And speaking of funny/sick, reports from Oregon that the father of young spree killer Kip Kinkel, after the gun-fixated youth had been detained the previous day for attempting to buy a stolen firearm, had decided to solve the kid's "problems" by contacting (for possible enrollment) a junior program of the Oregon National Guard. (Kid also reportedly wanted to join the Army after graduating. Maybe on work release...) Hey, Army combat in Iraq did wonders for McVeigh. It's a mighty fine line, between killing indiscriminately for the hell of it, and doing it for the state.--G.P.

Republican Senator John Chaffee has introduced a bill called (I shit you not) the "Caring for Children Act." I'm opposed 'cuz I don't care for children. --Matt Asher

Dylan Clark, most recently familiar to ETS! readers as part of the UW student artist conspiracy that brought us the NEA Army, e-mailed and wrote to sound the alarm that Wells Fargo is introducing (taa-daa) its first-ever "cyber-branch" in the Northwest, at its Ave location in September. Tellers are gone, replaced by machines, but we're assured in the WF letter to account holders that "you will be able to access your accounts as you always have..." Yeah, right, and there was an ATM on that Wells Fargo stagecoach in 1866, too. Nonetheless, Dylan, get used to it; the banking industry, answerable (it seems) to nobody, has been merging with itself, paying out little in interest to ordinary account holders while soaking credit card debtors, hiking fees, and eliminating costly human contact with customers for some years now. This is simply the next step. And the Forces of Evil have much worse in mind; some would like to see the entire university reduced to a computerized transaction between student and graduate assistant, with occasional tenured faculty to oversee the corporate research grants the graduate students slave away on.--G.P.