…got to pout n’ protest against California’s supreme court when it upheld that state’s anti-gay-marriage initiative.

As I wrote here last fall, it’s always fun to snipe about the state that thinks it’s so superior to the rest of us.

(Of course, longtime readers know that when I snipe at Calif., I also snipe at people here whose only idea how to improve Wash. is to blindly copy everything that’s been done there.

As if everything done there would always work here.

As if everything done there even worked there.)

But, as speakers at Tuesday’s Westlake Park rally asked, why don’t all these local protesters do more to get legal gay marriage in this state?

Well, some are.

We’ve now got the great compromise that is “civil unions.”

(And as one Daily Kos diarist put it, Tuesday’s Calif. ruling seems to pave the way for a similar compromise there.)

But plenty of activists insist that “the legal equivalent of marriage under another name” just ain’t the same thing as marriage.

And they’re right.

…a whiff of the jargon, but it’s nice to know somebody acknowledges the existence of “Pacific Northwest English.”

…around here, that were merged into Verizon in 2000, will now be sold off to Frontier Communications. The AP story hereby linked refers to Frontier as a company that focuses “on serving small towns and rural areas.” As if Redmond and Lynnwood still fit that description.

…“What’s a green job anyway?”

…of complainin’ and protestin’ all the time about that dumbheaded Prop 8 down in Californ-i-yay, you all could do something to support improved domestic-partner rights in our very own state. Like right here.

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready tells state legislators about his gastrointestinal sufferings.

(Apologies to Lynda Barry): A coalition of local government and nonprofit groups has issued its fourth triannual Communities Count report, documenting how King County residents live and/or survive. The full report’s online; a highly condensed version was issued as a tabloid circular in Thursday’s local dailies.

A lot of it’s not pretty, as seen in these headlines from the report’s newsprint version:

“The gap between rich and poor continues to grow.”

“Almost half of all jobs available in King County do not pay a living wage.”

“The richest fifth earn nearly half of the county’s income.”

“Public transportation doesn’t work for working parents.”

“Too many lack health insurance.”

“Domestic violence continues to be a major problem.”

These research-backed statements are based on long-term trends that far predate the current crap in the “larger” economy. The material lives of non-zillionaires have sputtered, stuttered, and slowly sank WHILE the urban condo towers and the suburban McMansions sprouted, while the financial markets boomed, while countless purveyors of “luxury” products and services emerged, while upscale slick local magazines came into print hawking fabulous leisure lifestyles.

…with phosphates: Remember, when Cascade is outlawed, only outlaws will have sheeting action.

A kind reader recently gave me a 1927 hardcover book, Who’s Who in Washington State. (I’ll show a scan of the handsome cover as soon as Blogger lets me.)

It was published in Seattle by one Arthur H. Allen. His preface calls the book “the story of human activity, the successes and failures of forward-looking individuals who have not only conceived projects but have had the courage either to successfully carry them through, or to lay a ground work which resulted in final completion.”

He also promises, “An effort will be made in the next edition of Who’s Who in Washington State to list the names of more women.” As far as I’ve been able to tell, there wasn’t another edition, at least not by Allen; later books by the same name were apparently published in 1949 and 1963 by others.

The tome’s 240 pages are crammed with tiny-type, one-paragraph bios. Most of the subjects are businessmen and lawyers, with a few doctors, government officials, and educators added into the mix.

The Fisher family (then of Fisher Flouring Mills, now of KOMO and related properties) is handily represented. William Boeing, however, is listed alone, with no relatives. Such pioneer family names as Yesler, Boren, and Denny are missing altogether. So are druggist George Bartell, banker Joshua Green, and the shoe-selling Nordstroms (though the families behind Frederick & Nelson and The Bon Marche are duly included).

Those who are in the book, and whom I’d heard of, include real-estate titan Henry Broderick, longtime P-I sportswriter Royal Brougham, nursery owner Charles Malmo, UW prof Edmond Meany, naturalist/writer Floyd Schmoe (whom I’d met in his old age), lumbermen Charles Stimson and John Weyerhaeuser, Seattle Times publisher Clarence Blethen, PACCAR cofounder William Pigott, and seed packager Charles Lilly (his firm later became Lilly-Miller).

But it’s the names I’d never heard of that particularly fascinate me.

Names like Alice Rollit Cole (“teacher of expression and dramatic reader”), Walton Lindsay Fulp (“supt. Carnation Milk Products Co., Kent”), O.H. Woody (“Mgr. and publisher, the Okanogan Independent”), and Anna Elisibit Green Grant (“owner S.O.S. Placement Bureau”).

These are some of the people who helped made this state great. They, and a few million others even more obscure. It’s fun to open the book to any random name (say, “Fleming, Howard Glenn, v-p. Snoboy Fruit Distributors”), and make up an imagined full life story for the person, complete with parents, spouse(s), children, likes/dislikes, triumphs/frustrations, hopes/fears, and ultimate life’s regret, if any.

…could possibly resist the clarion call of Obamamania? Douglas County, that’s who.

In other nooze:

• As you probably don’t recall, the reason WashState has both caucuses and primaries is because Bush pere‘s people cried foul after Pat Robertson’s people swamped our ’88 GOP caucuses. This time, it’s Huckabee’s people crying foul.
• Your Museum of Flight: Singlehandedly bringing back the stewardess fetish.
• Note to KEXP main man John Richards: You can host a local Seattle show, or you can move to NYC. Choose one.
• Developers’ plans for the part of First United Methodist that won’t be saved: One of them angular, reflective glass towers you see in 60 Minutes segments about emerging Far Eastern capitals.
• Doesn’t anybody wanna buy Getty Images?
• Actual headline (for the print version of this story): “How far will Microsoft go to overcome Yahoo’s rejection?” Some handy tips: Chocolate, self-esteem classes, regular gym workouts, a ‘pity party’ with friends, a nice cry, then get on with your own life.

…And in the nooze:

• The local biz world would be a less poppin’ place if out-of-staters take over WaMu.
• Affordable-health-care advocates have picked their current local target business—not some big-box retailer but the venerable 13 Coins restaurants.
• The Wash. State Legislature— America’s second gayest.
• Metro’s got more riders than ever. Don’t worry; the Eymans and Reicherts will keep insisting on car-only transportation solutions, no matter what.
• Coyotes are so 2007. The new feral menace in Seattle: Exotic cats.

…in which we can tell you of the following recent events:

• With all the talk about the new Legislative session being all about “safety and security,” and fiscal restraint, you’d think we didn’t have a bunch of Democrats running the joint.
• First came the highly publicized, potentially legally shady sting operation at Seattle nightclubs. Now, the bar employees charged as a result of the sting claim the city’s trying to throw the proverbial book at ’em, for no good reason.
• Different cops are being assigned to different patrol districts these days. In other public-safety news, the city promises to finally do something about the infamous Pine Street “zigzag,” in which pedestrians heading downtown have to cross Pine twice, due to only-one-side sidewalks that suddenly switch sides.
• You can now become a registered voter online.
• Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo claims it now has a safer tiger enclosure. You can test it if you want to; I think I have to wash my hair today.
• An Eastern Washington couple has been accused of running an Internet diploma mill, selling some 6,000 bogus degrees.
• Only in Alaska: “Most of the 30 bald eagles who survived a disastrous dive into a truck full of fish guts are close to recovery.”

• 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.

• 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.

• You won’t love it at Levitz anymore. The discount furniture chain, which has teetered in and out of insolvency for several years, is finally throwing in the seat cushion.
• Safeco Insurance has fulfilled its duty to propping up the downtown real-estate biz by moving into two existing downtown Seattle office towers.
• I-5 in southwest Washington is slowly reopening in stages. Meanwhile, receding floodwaters leave what P-I headline writers call a “Deluge of sewage.” Say that five times fast.
• A Federal Way sixth grader has invented a device using kitchen gloves and semi-porous plastic bubbles, which can inject medicines into the body without needles. Just the thing for squeamish junkies everywhere.
• Yep, King County’s fully, officially, joined the housing-price bubble “pop.”
• And there’s a fun story about professional horse’s ass Tim Eyman getting into a hissyfit at a Yakima city council meeting and getting forcibly removed.