• There goes the most-recent great hope for cooling down the heat of violence in Pakistan and vicinity.
• The bus tunnel’s open again. But the SLUT has been stalling intermittently.
• Do Wash. state Republicans stand a ghost of a chance of survival, let alone renewed relevance? The Seattle Times would like to think so. As for me, I think the local GOP will come back only when it can again field candidates of an Evans (or at least a John Spellman) level, and actively try to appeal to those of us who believe evolution is real and wrestling isn’t.
• It’s the law: Don’t text and drive.
• Starbucks is experimenting with sugar-free latte syrup.
• The good news about Puget Sound’s housing market? “Not as grim as rest of U.S.”

• That temporary passenger ferry between Seattle and Pt. Townsend? Some folks would like it to be a little less temporary.
• Meanwhile, some guy’s hoping to start a commercial passenger train between Bellevue and Snohomish—just the thing for bringing new customers to my mom’s antique-mall spaces there!
• One way to annoy the sandals-and-wool-socks voting block: Propose mandatory licensing for bicyclists.
• The bus tunnel: Still shut.
• The American Stasi is on the watch for peculiar behavior at airports. Insert your own joke here.
• The White Christmas thang sure looked damn great yesterday afternoon, whilst I was returning to Seattle from northern realms. Could we get an encore?
• The local holiday ended in typical fashion, with the ceremonial State Patrol officer shooting a naked guy who was walking across I-5.
• Idaho police academy students got to choose their own graduating-class slogan: “Don’t suffer from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], go out and cause it.”

…archives aren’t posting on this site properly. I’ll have to look under the hood after the holidaze and see what’s (not) going on.

• Wash. state insists on giving kids “medically accurate” sex-ed info instead of the federally-mandated abstinence-only nonsense, loses federal funding.
• MS and Amazon decide they’d rather fund Democrats, at least for this cycle.
• Would you like the King County Courthouse to continue looking like a poorly “modernized” ’60s efficiency-architecture victim or have it restored into the stately authoritative edifice it once was?
• A UW frat member was arrested for shooting a gun at tin cans in the frat house’s basement. Hey, at least he wasn’t aiming outside.
• What??? Evergreen State Coll.’s actively soliciting students from in-state???
• Huckabee (hearts) regressive taxation, Wash. state-style.

…post-shopping-season Sunday. This means the Sunday paper’s a much more compact product, stuffed with far fewer flyers and far easier to carry. Still, there is some news today:

• Who wouldn’t love a fancy home holiday display, depicting a full-size Santa on a cross?
• The American Stasi wants to know everything about you.
• Another old ferry has potential problems.
• Capitol Hill’s delightfully delapidated “Undre Arms” Apartments might give way to yet another mixed-use whatever blah blah blah.
• And my Belltown Messenger colleague Mary Lou Sanelli has a nice li’l essay, summarizing some of her thoughts about the novelty of urban living.

• Downtown Bellevue’s getting a bowling alley again! The last one, Belle Lanes, closed 15 years ago; Barnes & Noble’s in the elegant arc-roofed building now. In a separate deal nearby, an 11-screen cinema megaplex is being turned into offices.
• To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Amazon.com announced it’s moving its HQ to south Lake Union. The dot-com may occupy parts of as many as 11 buildings sprawling over six blocks.
• A sports blogger insists KeyArena’s not so bad a joint, as long as you’re not a greedy team owner.
• The grocery biz is more efficient than ever. That means, among other things, fewer surplus products going to food banks.

…I hope, this evening (Friday), 6:30-8:30 p.m., for the fantabulous next book event starring yr. loyal web-author. It’s at Not A Number, an artistic and subversive gift and card shop on N. 45th in wondrous Wallingford.

IN OTHER, LESSER FRIDAY NOOZE:

• A shop after my own head, Bernie Utz Hats (sometimes inexplicably spelled “Byrnie” Utz), may or may not move next year. Seattle’s last downtown specialty hat store has been at Third and Union for 68 years.
• The next big thing, NW music-wise: That’s the current hype for Kimya Dawson, she of the K Records singer-songwriter stable, now featured on the Juno soundtrack.
• The bus tunnel is still shut.
• The Port of Seattle just got some worse news, in the form of a state audit questioning its spending and construction-project oversight.
• In the “DUH!” department, experts report that more commuters means worse traffic jams, drunk driving is a bad thing, the Bushies are stonewalling tougher fuel-economy standards, and the Okies want a pro basketball team.
• Willie Nelson’s giving $40,000 to charities in Vancouver USA, where he worked as an itinerant DJ back in the 1950s.
• Dumb criminal of the week: A guy who not only allegedly has sex with minors, but videotapes it, sometimes on public property.
• Feds are investigating whether Washington Mutual Bank deliberately used inflated property appraisals in selling mortgages.
• No Crocodile news, except for a benefit show for ex-employees on Sunday the 30th.
• The Neah Bay/Makah region along the Washington coast doesn’t just have rogue whalers. It’s also got ocean waves, which some believe can be used to make electricity.

• There’s finally enough funding to fully restore/rebuild the landmark Hat n’ Boots gas-station building in Georgetown. Yay!
• City officials now insist forcibly destroying homeless people’s camps is good for them.
• The bus tunnel was closed all day Wednesday and will remain closed Thursday. The culprit: The new computer system Metro installed to control all the tunnel’s systems. It’s not running MS Vista, is it?
• Is it really so bad for Port of Seattle cops to make a homemade music video showing off their anti-speeding radar guns? If it was made on public time with publicly funded equipment, maybe so.
• Nothing new on the “save the Crocodile” front.
• We DO know that the Comet has a new owner. We just don’t know who. (Let’s hope the new mgmt. hires less-unnecessarily-violent bouncers.)
• The Seattle School District wants to efficiently site a high school and middle school at the same location. Just think of all the ways the “tweens” could learn from the older kids: “You call that a beer bong? Let me show you how it’s really done.”

• What to do with the historic, shuttered Seattle INS building? How ’bout selling it at an online auction?
• Would a fence deter potential Aurora bridge suicides? And if so, why hasn’t it been proposed ’til now?
• Gov. Gregoire’s budget proposal would keep more than $1 billion stashed away in the state’s “rainy day fund.” Gee, didn’t we have a few really rainy days this past month?
• A double-hulled fuel barge ran aground near the central waterfront. No spills have been reported as of yet.
• Onetime gym-equipment king Nautilus Inc. is now losing wads of cash, and is the target of a takeover attempt. The company’s fate was to have been decided this week, but now won’t be.

…and occasional rock star Sean Nelson’s got a handy guide to the worst movie endings ever.

• As the Crocodile’s sudden closing gets its much-worthy big splash coverage, the Seattle City Council finally passed tougher new nightclub noise laws, for which the Belltown condo crowd had particularly lobbied. Any Croc buyer might have to put some dough into extra soundproofing.
• Gov. Gregoire and Legislative leaders are proposing a big affordable-housing push, packaged in with a bill for flood relief.
• Seattle to White Center: “Maybe I still like you after all.”
• Madrona Creek has been “daylighted” after a decade-long volunteer effort to get the stream out from underground pipes.
• Meanwhile, King County’s trying a different kind of answer to recurring floods—don’t fight ’em, at least in yet-to-be-developed areas.
• Those state ferries that got abruptly retired, after having been used years past their pull date? The state had been selling “depreciation rights” to the boats, one of those weird derivative investment schemes that have been going around lately. The state may have to pay off the investors, to the tune of $2.73 million.
• Some Beacon Hill kids apparently think it’s fun to set elaborate traps in the road, with hidden spikes that cause instant flat tires.
• The Olympia Oyster House: It’s not a drive-thru restaurant. Someone apparently didn’t know this.

…to purchase a freshly autographed copy of Seattle’s Belltown or Vanishing Seattle will occur this Friday solstice evening, 6:30-8:30 p.m., in the exotic Wallingford district at Not A Number Cards and Gifts. Can you say “last minute gift ideas for the impossible-to-please”? I knew you could.

…this totally fictional (for now) ad would show up. (I found it at Seattlest; it’s been poppin’ up all over the local blog-O-sphere.)

As far as reality, there’s little more to report Croc-wise. The joint’s still closed. Stephanie Dorgan, its owner these past 16 years, isn’t talking to the media. At least one potential new ownership group has apparently shown up, but a lot of behind-the-scenes haggling would need to be done. Shows had been booked at the Croc into January (some touring gigs had been booked into next April); new venues or cancellations will be announced one show at a time.

I’m trying to figure what to say about the beloved, loud, crowded Croc, it of the tasty bar grub and the long lines, the way past-their-pull-date ceiling hangings and the exterior windows still (partly) commemorating the place’s 10th anniversary in 2001. The opening party for Loser took place there in 1995; I took care to place hand-scrawled signs at the door, warning that it wasn’t a secret Pearl Jam show.

I fell in love several times in that building, and out of love at least once. Darn, I hope someone figures out how to revive the place.

• Seattle to White Center: “Maybe I don’t want to hook up with you after all.”
• All those new jobs that were gonna result from Wash. state giving Boeing huge tax breaks? Not so much.
• I’ve only eaten at five of the Public Health Dept.’s 10 most-cited local restaurants.
• A new home for Opus: Woodland Park Zoo’s thinking of building a big new penguin habitat.
• You know those inflatable indoor playground thingies? Two adult males fell out of one, landed on a three-year-old, and accidentally crushed the lad’s skull.
• More nasty rumors about the Crocodile Cafe: Could they be closing up for good?

…in today’s SeaTimes for Dr. Vernon Skeels, who passed on last month at age 89. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Skeels and his family since 1982. He was one of the genuine ones, a gentle soul with a bright wit and a manner of quiet elegance. He’ll be missed.