Doug Clark

I’ve never been much for censorship. If adults want to get their hair cut or their coffee served to them by some nearly nude chick with self-esteem issues, well, so be it.

Once again, winter is poised to crush the entire region like the anvil that falls on the dumb coyote’s head in all the Road Runner cartoons. But exciting news broke last week.

Cannabis is not normally associated with a word like “energy.” It’s one of those oxymoronic contradictions in the nomenclature, as in military “intelligence,” say, or Spokane “strong” mayor.

The Spokane City Council has been rocked by a seismic shift in the balance of impotence. The council’s right-leaning rube majority has been replaced by a preponderance of lunks of a more leftist persuasion.

Hanging out on a downtown Spokane street corner, smokin’ ciggies with my new best buds, Tony and Rock. When I heard the bus Plaza (aka The Garage Mahal) was going to drop 70 large on restoring the smoking area that was taken down awhile back, well, I thought I’d help speed the process along by getting some decorating ideas from some of the nicotine fiends who’ll actually be using it.

What’s going on around here? First it’s bikini baristas.

It takes a lot to shock me after nearly 40 years of journalism. I once had to conduct an interview while standing next to a charred corpse that lay among the scattered wreckage of a plane crash.

Halloween, which for some reason falls on a Thursday this year, has turned into Big Business worth almost $7 billion annually. That’s according to a boring website I stumbled upon the other day when I took a breather from watching Internet cat videos.

Luck, a wise soul once observed, is the residue of good design. In which case I’d like to thank the Toyota Corp., its American and Canadian auto parts manufacturers, its Texas assembly workers and anyone else who had anything at all to do with my very first pickup that I bought about a month ago.

On Friday I set out on a downtown quest to determine the street value of Spokane’s newest mode of currency, the Condon Coin. Haven’t heard of the Condon Coin?

I’m not trying to upset anyone’s personal belief system, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that astrology is not the exact science it’s cracked up to be. Before we get to the evidence, I’ll admit up front that I’m no expert on the matter.

If the Internet excels at anything, it’s the ability to share instantly the craziest stuff with thousands upon thousands of people who appear to have nothing really better to do than spend their time looking at crazy stuff on the Internet. Case in point is an ancient, sections-missing metal fire escape in Spokane that became a topic du jour on Reddit – a popular website that serves as a bulletin board for social happenings, entertainment and news of the weird.

The plot sickens: We’ve got this Spokane fire captain, Kevin Smathers, who supposedly kept illegal brass knuckles in his city vehicle and stored city-issued firearms in his personal safe.

Spokane Mayor David Condon faced the City Council the other night to deliver his annual “statement of condition and affairs,” speech, also known as the October Mayoral Corn Maze. Being fluent in the ancient language of political doublespeak, I transcribed much of the mayor’s message off an Internet video stream and then (after downing a half-bottle of ibuprofen), I painstakingly transcribed some of the salient parts.

What would it take to get George McGrath to stay home and watch Monday Night Football? Or maybe take a vow of silence?

We’re living in the craziest times. The federal government can’t function. Meanwhile, any 17-year-old counter worker at Dick’s can take the burger orders from a busload of basketball players without using a notepad.

It’s a commonly held belief that the public couldn’t care less about government. But that’s only because government is almost always dealing with such dull and boring stuff, like annexations, solid waste management or allowing Wal-Mart to build one of its megastores in some poor sap’s backyard.

I figured the last word had been written on Dutch’s. After all, Spokane’s near-century-old downtown pawnshop and music store will be closing its doors forever at October’s end. I was wrong.

According to loons who sound off on this radio talk show I listen to every night while brushing my teeth, there’s a very high probability that the planet will explode before you finish reading this … BOOM!!!