As the State Turns

Sanders Visits PDX
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont cheddar fame held a rally on Sunday at Portland’s Moda Center. Did it go better than the Seattle rally where he was effectively ejected from the stage by protestors from the group Black Lives Matter? Well, that depends on if you were in the bathroom while Art Robinson painfully evacuated his bowels. Rumor has it that the event lasted upwards of 45 minutes and that dogs could be heard howling within a nine-block radius.

Sanders, the longest-serving Independent senator in U.S. history, is gallivanting from one liberal stronghold to another in order to close the gap between himself and Hillary Clinton in terms of viability for the democratic nomination in 2016’s presidential race. On one hand, his career has been highlighted by unending support for civil rights and climate change legislation, sharp criticism of the Patriot Act, support for student loan and immigration reform, and more (seriously, much more). On the other hand, he’s a Pope Francis throne-sniffer and undermines his entire progressive platform by constantly quoting what might the be the world’s biggest social policy hypocrite.

Still, everyone’s allowed to be stupid now and again.

In an incredibly unscientific and ultimately useless online poll of 536 Oregon voters by Portland’s DHM Research, it appears as if Sanders is trailing Clinton by about five percentage points. And uh… well, it doesn’t mean anything, so… ::whistles::

I guess it’s too early to bother talking about this stuff unless you’re one of those armchair politicians that bandies stats about and has mysteriously “called it” every previous election cycle.

Nobody Cares About Washington: Lake Edition
Vancouver Lake in Washington’s esteemed Clark County has had an algae advisory lifted. The lake, recently blemished by multicolored algal blooms that could seep into your skin and make you throw up out of your butt (perhaps this is what caused Art Robinson’s incident at the Moda Center), is at long last, swim-in-able.

Unfortunately, because this is Washington, nobody actually cares. Stupid Washington… we have our own disgusting lakes to worry about.

Shovel That Debris!
Remember that Japanese tsunami that had many of us worrying about poisonous, radioactive taint ending up in our Dunkaroos? Well, one million pounds of debris that went flying off into the ocean has now been unloaded from a barge in Seattle. Initially collected from a stretch of the Alaskan coastline where more debris continues to pile up daily, some items will be sent back to Japan, such as iPhones, HD televisions, and Hello Kitty notebooks. The rest will be recycled or dumped in the Columbia Ridge landfill, which is in the Oregon burg of Arlington.

If previous logic is to persist, now would be a good time to start warning your neighbors about the government conspiracy to irradiate us all. Unlike Oregon state Republican Art Robinson’s actual plan to irradiate us. (I’m not even kidding, Robinson thought this a good health measure.)

Coolest Thing to Ever Happen in Oregon Occurs in Corvallis
A short while ago I went to the local K-Mart in search of some sweet action figures, and on the way back to my car I realized that I needed a tomato. Why? For food, you fool. Anyway, I walked on over to Safeway, grabbed a delicious, ripe GMO globe of red, and left. No big deal, right? Right.

And then I saw him.

Pushing a long line of shopping carts over to the receptacle, I instantly knew there was something different about this Safeway employee. He had the look. And he backed it up, suddenly taking his shirt off in one smooth gesture, jumping up and starting a long series of pull-ups on the bar above the cart lane. Muscles glistening in the late afternoon sun, I said to myself, “Holy sh*t, this guy is really just gonna go for it like that, right there in the parking lot.” Before I could turn away, an eagle soared overhead and made that sound that they make when awesome stuff is happening.

Now back in my car, I wasn’t quite sure what I had witnessed, only that it had changed my life forever.

By Johnny Beaver

(Hey Beaver, if Pope Francis runs for prez, he has my vote ~ Ed)