Doug Clark: Our wonders truly make you wonder

There’s a far bigger election brewing than Mager vs. Harris, Caruso vs. Tucker or even Flavel vs. The Voice of Sanity.

I’m talking about Easter Island vs. the Great Wall of China.

An Internet site wants the entire planet to vote for a new “7 Wonders of the World” with winners being declared on 07/07/07.

We need an updated list because most of the old 7 Wonders (The Colossus of Rhodes, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Spiro of Agnew…) have been converted into strip mall parking lots.

Only the great Pyramid of Giza is still hanging around from the ancient list. But quite frankly, the great pyramid, like Paris Hilton, has pretty much worn out its wonder.

Check out www.new7wonders.com. You will find the 21 hopefuls like Stonehenge, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal? Why anyone would count an aged blues singer as a world wonder is beyond me.

Learning about this got me thinking …

We residents of the Incontinent Northwest are a proud and easily deluded people. We should have our own showcase of timeless attractions.

And so I spent several minutes between naps coming up with the 7 Wonders of the Spokanistan area. This is not the final list. As always, I welcome reader suggestions along with the usual complaints from troublemakers who’d like to see me disappear like the Temple of Artemis.

City Hall of Ineptitude

This palatial former department store-turned City Hall has long been recognized as Spokane’s center for transforming strong mayors into weak and flaccid, one-term mayors.

The place is always busy. Yet nothing meaningful is ever accomplished.

It’s as if the entire building is under some sort of inexplicable Gypsy curse.

Oil-to-Water Transfer Station

A tribute to low-bid construction, the BNSF Railway Co. refueling depot was cleverly built to leak directly into the area’s sole source of drinking water.

The depot’s precarious location on the Rathdrum Prairie prompted a report on the contamination that could occur in the event of an earthquake. In response, the railway’s public relations department is working on a new ad campaign.

“The aquifer: It’s diesel-icious!”

Randy Shaw Mystery Mole

I don’t know why I included this.

I just like writing the words, “Randy Shaw Mystery Mole.”

Catholic Vortex of Vanishing Assets

This man-made sinkhole has been measured at two square miles and growing as the church pays and pays for the past perversions of pedophile priests.

Recently a crowd watched as the Chancery, the headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane, tumbled into the vortex and disappeared.

High Bridge Park of Indiscretions

Comprised of 200 woody acres near Peaceful Valley, High Bridge Park is home to dog walkers, runners, riverbank nudists, discarded underwear, empty lube packets, used condoms, drug deals and vigilant city officials checking up on the police.

Nighttime is prime time people watching.

Who knows? You might get lucky and brush up against somebody famous.

Great Garbage-Gobbling Goat

I see a day coming thousands of years from now when archeologists of the future will dig down into the radioactive rubble covering what was once Riverfront Park. There they will discover the perfectly intact and still-functioning garbage-gobbling goat.

And they will wonder:

Did the people of the past worship this insatiable beast? Was the metal icon used for human sacrifices?

Or could the ancient tourists who once wandered this land have really been so easily amused?

Met Tower of Legal Hourlies

The collapse of Spokane’s Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. left investors holding the bag on $480 million in bonds. The poor souls, some who lost their nest eggs, recently received an initial payment – of 6 to 9 cents on the dollar.

In the meantime, the Met mess has been an ever-rising tower of gain for lawyers and others who have so far collected $19.4 million in charges and expenses for untangling this disgrace.

As always in a bankruptcy like this, the professionals who pick over the bones get paid first.

Lawyers run this country. That’s why we call America the “Land of the Fee.”