…is peripherally involved in the latest fabricated memoir scandal.

…a few days since we last met. But here are some recent events in the nooze:

• A plan’s been announced to keep the Sonics, or move in some other NBA team to replace ’em. Yeah, it involves public arena subsidies. But the arena in question would still be our good ol’ KeyArena/Coliseum. And private interests would pick up a huger share of the tab than in any previous scheme. Of course, there’s the li’l matter of convincing current owner Clay Bennett and NBA commissioner David Stern (who hates Seattle even more than the Seattle Times editorial board does).
• No matter how much money the UW raises in its many assorted fundraising/begging programs, it just keeps on making tuition ever-less affordable. Congress doesn’t like it.
• Some self-styled radical environmentalists want to preserve exurban forest lands from sprawl. Their solution: Set fire to an unoccupied cul-de-sac, a fire which, if set at some other time of the year, could conceivably spread and burn said forest land.
• The first televised Mariners game of the pre-season is on local cable at noon today (Monday). I know it’s a game that doesn’t “count,” but hey, neither did the Ms’ last 20 or so games last season.
• Once you start looking into Port o’ Seattle corruption, it can truly become a bottomless pit.
• How to get high school kids interestedin reading newspapers: Run sensational surveys of students’ oral-sex experiences. (Hey, it’s the taste sensation that’s sweeping the nation!)
• Airbus, with a domestic company fronting for it, got the Air Force tanker plane contract Boeing really really wanted. Next stop: litigation.
• Here’s what to do the next time you see a bus with an unconscious driver heading your way.
• Since certain right-wing radio guys have no qualms about using or misusing people’s names in order to make character-assassination implications, let’s compare Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor/flunky Dimitry Medvedev with the locally based GOP-talk spewer Michael Medved: One is a sniveling, butt-kissing toady to a ruthless, anti-democratic despot with delusions of godhood. And one is the new President of Russia.

The National Review founder and Firing Line TV host wrote in 1986, “I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?’ I couldn’t think of anyone.” Some of the issues he was “so right” on included the civil rights movement (emphatically against), Joseph McCarthy (for), the Vietnam war (for), US support for “friendly” homicidal dictators (for), and rock music (against).

His early opposition to the John Birch Society was mostly tactical and cultural; he wanted a more respectable right wing, with a clear, one-way flow of power from Wall Street to Main Street. Similarly, his latter-day opposition to the Iraq war can be interpreted as a plea to put some brakes on a conservative movement heading inexorably toward a train wreck.

…your Starbuckless evening. Now on to a new day!:

• Did you know Seattle’s got a waterfront maritime museum? Well, you better see it now, while you still can.
• Seattle U to students: We wanna become the undisputed top private college in the region. To do that, your tuition’s going up.
• A local politician is heeding the siren call for capital-C Change. It’s Republican Dino Rossi.
• Real headline: “Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report.” I’ve been around the Seattle music scene too long to think of “a Tad” as something small.
• Jus’ for fun, let’s take a look at who’d like to buy the Seattle City Council.
• Urban townhomes: Could they possibly look any less dorky?
• Did a honeymooning hubby really invite two strippers to his and his bride’s hotel room, or was it all, as hubby now claims, an unsolicited break-in?
• The European Union’s fined Microsoft $1.3 billion. To put it into perspective, that’s enough to pay Bill Gates’s household expenses for almost a day.

…your UW taxes don’t pay off. Why, a research at the grand old You-Dub’s working toward hi-tech superhuman vision!

The locally based, globally minded music mag No Depression is calling it quits, effective with the May-June issue.

Cause of death: A dying music industry, whose endemic issues are finally reaching indie labels, who can’t afford to buy as many magazine ads as they used to.

For 13 years, ND has been the greatest chronicler of “alternative country,” “Americana,” and assorted other essential US/Canadian homegrown musics.

The big irony here: An institution dedicated to honoring longstanding or lost art forms, and to celebrating contemporary artists who keep those forms alive, is itself becoming history.

…couple-O-daze for yr. o’b’d’n’t web-scribe. I did a marathon temp gig in exotic Renton. (It’s now ended.) I was there, methodically shoving pieces of paper through a machine, when my Evening Magazine segment aired. (They’d promised they’d tell me when it would run; damn.) You may be able to see it at this link.

Other things have happened as well.

• Wednesday started locally with P-I political writer Joel Connelly grousing that John McCain’s been getting a free ride from the mainstream media. The day ended with the NY Times regurgitating rumors that McCain allegedly had an affair, eight years ago, with a woman far younger than he, who worked as a lobbyist for telecom firms and broadcasters—including for Bud Paxson, of the “family friendly” Pax (now Ion) network. (Pax, you may recall, in 2004 was the chief TV conduit for the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” the guys who were paid big bucks to tell lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam service.)Personally, I don’t care about his past affairs, just as I didn’t care about those of Bill Clinton (whose impeachment McCain supported). But I do care about the other half of the NYT allegations, that he’d bestowed legislative favors upon Paxson and other friends-of-friends whilst promoting himself as Mr. Let’s-Clean-Up-Government.
• In good, potentially great news, the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board decided to pursue saving Ballard’s beloved Manning’s/Denny’s building! And somebody’s already proposed a scheme to save the building, as a restaurant, while building complementary-looking housing on its parking lot.
• Discover U, the longstanding for-profit offerer of reasonably priced self-help classes and group events, has suddenly shut its doors. Now, where will Seattleites learn how to cleanse their colons, find love at any age, or start an eBay business?
• HD DVD, RIP.

…to mass culture? You know, those shows everybody saw, those records everybody heard, those books everybody claimed to have read? Gone the way of boutique-size bookstores, three-channel TV, and single-screen cinemas.

• “Skitch”: Once, it was the name of Johnny Carson’s first bandleader. Now, it’s a dangerous X-treme sports stunt.
• The historic building that houses HistoryLink is getting upscaled, beyond the fiscal reach of many of its current tenants.
• One group’s plan to help solve the debate over a new 520 bridge: Put an on-ramp where the Museum of History and Industry is now.
• The NY Times discovers one small slice of Boeing’s employee-club culture. Wait ’til they discover the Boeing employees’ psychic fair…
• Now available to the future-conscious who’ll become part of the past: “Eco-friendly burial options.”

…I’m skipping the morning-headlines thang on days when there’s not much interesting to pass on. Today, we’ve got a few items:

• Certain Pokemon valentine cards were recalled, after some of the heart-shaped lollipops attached to them contained metal fragments. Looks like Team Rocket has finally won a battle.
• Could the world’s oceans soon become beyond saving?
• Real headline: “State patrol to drivers: 911 not a traffic hotline.”
• Evergreeners: Not all as passive as the old stereotype.
• The state’s new plan for replacing those four obsolete ferries? Replace them with three new, smaller boats.
• Your help is needed in a one-time census of Puget Sound octopi.
• Sleazy corporate lawyers want access to a car-crash victim’s old MySpace page.
• A Starbucks barista plans to donate a kidney to a loyal customer. Let’s hope this doesn’t get into the next employee manual.

…rolls along, even into primary states. Elsewhere:

• Ron Sims would really like all King County agencies to solve socio-economic inequality. (Hey you: Stop scoffing. What if they could really do it?)
• A Seattle swimwear designer’s creations are featured in the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; as are the (fully costumed) Seafair Pirates.
• Please: If you must steal porn, use BitTorrent, not armed robbery.
• Jones Soda becomes the official fizzy drink of Alaska Airlines.
• Old nudist magazines used to sport such wholesome titles as Sunshine & Health. Now, some doctors claim a lack of Vitamin D-bearing rays really could weaken us.
• Gay-bashing attacks on Capitol Hill—on the rise.
• State GOP boss Luke Esser: Playing favorites or just incompetent?
• More fun news from my ol’ hometown: America’s first tribal TV station, streaming online.
• And the TV/movie-biz writers’ strike is over. Now Leno can go back to having other people to blame for his lameness.

…here’s what’s happenin’:

• Remember in ’04, when the WashState GOP was all a-flutter over trumped-up allegations of ballot miscounts? Now they’ve gotta answer to the Huckabee campaign’s similar charges.
• Starbucks to give in to pressure from the indies and offer free WiFi, sort of, with a lot of conditions.
• The city council’s allocated a $350,000 fund to help limited-income tenants of apartment buildings that turn condo. Mayor Nickels isn’t spending a dime of it.
• Internet “server farms” don’t employ many people (except in construction, while they’re being built). But they could be worth millions in tax breaks for the companies that run ’em.
• Some in Seattle would really like more transit to the Eastside. Some Eastside politicians would rather just have more highway lanes.
• Bremerton woman mistakenly deposits meth in an ATM. Arrest-arity ensues.

…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.

…there’s gonna be a segment about folks trying to save the Ballard Denny’s/Manning’s building, and why it should be saved.

…blogged about Friday’s huge Obamapalooza at KeyArena. Allow me to interject a few thoughts of my own.

First, it was a spectacularly attended event. Here are about half of the people who didn’t get in. KeyArena was filled above its official capacity, far surpassing any SubSonics crowd this season. They’d said the doors would open at 11. I’d shown up at 10:15 a.m. The line was still snaking around the Seattle Center grounds. I barely made it into the upper nosebleed seats.

They all showed up for what turned out to be a simple, direct spectacle. The Obama campaign showed some of its commercials on the DiamondVision screens. Local musician Jake Bergevin showed off the pro-Obama music video he’d made with Pat Wright and Matt Cameron.

Warm-up speakers were kept to a brief, all-local lineup of Mayor Nickels, Rep. Adam Smith, and Gov. Gregoire.

The Sen. Obama gave the 50-minute version of his current stump speech. No podium, no graphic “slides,” only a few strategic banners. He essentially said what he’s been saying these past months: “It’s easy to be against something. But people want to be FOR something.”

You already know what he says he’s for: Peace, prosperity, affordable health care (sans mandates), unions, civil rights, competent government, choice, economic fairness, eco-sanity, gay rights (though perhaps not gay marriage), people coming together to work for a better tomorrow.

Some pundits have claimed the biggest differences between Sens. Obama and Clinton right now are their personalities and their brand images. If so, the question then is which of these personalities, which of these brand images, is most capable of trouncing Sen. McCain and the walking ghosts of the Bushies.