Do you remember when your mom, dad or grandpa put you on his or her lap and let you, just a child, steer the car down some vacant rural road? Yeah, a lot of us have that memory and for the most part, it was probably hardly dangerous. Such behavior is probably more frowned upon now – thanks a lot Bin Laden – but then it was just good, clean fun. Yeah, well it wasn’t fun and/or funny last weekend when a convicted felon in Prineville got all hammered and let a 10- year-old steer the car…on the friggin’ highway. Needless to say, things went awry and the vehicle crashed, injuring both the kid and the moron who facilitated the danger and is now in jail. Jeez, way to ruin a perfectly good childhood memory, pal. WTF?

 

So Doitchin Krasev, the dickhead formerly known as “Jason Evers” is in jail. But here’s the thing: He’s soooo in love with his girlfriend that he wants to marry her. Cute, right? Never mind that he has no identification as Doitchin Krasev and is being held in Portland on federal passport falsification charges and that he might get deported back to Bulgaria – he’s in love. But if we’re going to have laws in this country about who can and can’t get married, people sitting in jail on federal charges accusing them of being identity-stealing a-holes should be on the “not allowed to marry” side of things. That means you, Doitchin. WTF?

 

In looking at the preview coverage of the now-underway Cascade Cycling Classic, we saw the name Floyd Landis listed among the competitors. This couldn’t be that Floyd Landis, the guy who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France win after he was found to have been doping? Yup, it certainly is and he’s riding solo without a team. But here’s the bonus: a crew from ABC’s Nightline will be following Landis during the competition, so at least Bend gets spotlighted on national television for something other than pregnant men or record foreclosure rates. Yeah that’s cool, but Floyd Landis? Seriously? Wow, WTF?

 

So you’d think if someone is arrested on suspicion of DUII and subsequently handcuffed and placed in the back of a law enforcement vehicle, that he or she could safely say their night was over, right? But wait! You’ve yet to meet Carla Charley, the woman who, although handcuffed, escaped from the back of a BLM vehicle after being arrested in Maupin and, at the time of this writing, is still on the loose. Oregon State Police are still trying to figure out how she got out, and so are we, but think David Blaine might want to study this chick’s methods. WTF?

 

It’s hard to list the number of important subjects that have gone virtually unnoticed in this city, which is all but defined by its political apathy.

War in Iraq: Sorry I’m late for Happy  Hour!

Massive oil spill in the gulf: Thanks, but I just topped of my tank!

Foreclosures at a new record high and homelessness is rampant: Yawn.

The parks district wants to thin the marauding goose herd in downtown: Wooah! Not so fast.

Quick, start speed dialing every elected official in Central Oregon. Organize a letter writing campaign! Hold a vigil for the “murdered” geese. Cover yourself in goose poop and chain yourself to city hall.

People, get a grip. WTF.

 

If you were down at the Bite of Bend, you probably ate some delicious food, got your mind blown by the dual sonic explosion that was Rubblebucket followed by March Fourth Marching Band and you also may have paid $5 to try to ride a wacky bike for ten feet in the hopes of winning $100 bucks. You didn’t win the $100, because that bike – with its reversed steering mechanism – was impossible to ride, except if you were the dude running this operation, of course. If you’re like us, you want to figure this out, but seriously, what sort of witchcraft is being employed here? WTF?

 

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Like a lot of Bend businesses, we belong to the local chamber of commerce – you know the one “The Bend Chamber of Commerce, Make You A Promise… We’re Taking Care of Business… Yeah, We’re Taking Care of...” But we digress. And like a lot of businesses, we often find ourselves scratching our heads at the positions that the chamber takes – remember the equal rights ordinance?

So we were relieved when the chamber with its unabashedly pro-growth agenda got out of the business of endorsing local candidates. Unfortunately, since that time though the chamber has been outsourcing its politics to its political action arm, the Bend Business PAC, which has long looked like nothing more than a front for the conservative chamber board. When we got our most recent bill this week it confirmed just how little the chamber distinguishes itself from its ostensibly independent PAC.

Have you seen this smoking baby? Of course you have. You probably had to blow off all your Memorial Day weekend plans because you couldn’t pull yourself away from the YouTube clip of that little pudgy bastard puffing away like he’s Marlon effing Brando. Now, there’s a story about some woman who is going to help the two-year-old smoker kick the habit. Here’s an idea: just take the cigarette out of the kid’s mouth and don’t buy him any more. Easy. Done. Let’s move on. What? There’s a 30-story-deep sinkhole in Guatemala? WTF?

It was back in the heady boom days when Bend’s duly elected officials found themselves faced with an offer that they couldn’t refuse. Plunk down a few million bucks for a piece of real estate on the north end of downtown for a fancy new city hall that the city didn’t need. The deal even came with a set of drawings. (Woo-ee! Would ya look at that!) Sensing opportunity, they jumped, knowing they could always bail. After all Bend real estate never depreciates, right? They should have grabbed a parachute. Instead they got a balloon—payment that is, to the tune of $1.2 million which has now come due. They’ll be refinancing the rest of the $3.6 million debt, swallowing the interest while praying that they can unload the property on someone as easily duped as themselves. Where’s a snake oil salesman when you need one? WTF?

 

He’s got ads on the radio, he’s got yard signs, he’s turned up at the county commission work sessions. About the only place you won’t find a trace of Ed Barbeau and his campaign is with the Secretary of State’s Office where Barbeau lists only a single expenditure, $450 for a booth at the Karl Rove event. Candidates have seven days after incurring an expenditure to file a report with the SOS’s office.

You know, there should be more signs like this around Central Oregon. Whenever we see something ugly on the side of the road — like this cell phone tower that looks a lot like a robot tree — we can pull over, pull out an “UGLY” sign and place it near whatever ugly-ass thing we’ve stumbled upon. Come to think of it, we could use all sorts of signs like this – why stop at “ugly?” We could have all sorts of adjective-only signs around the community. It would be like Facebook comments, but in real life.

 

That’s the number of notices of default or loans going bad in Deschutes County for the first quarter of the year. The number is a record for Deschutes County and represents a stunning 32 percent increase from the last quarter of 2009 when home buying incentives, including (artificially) record low interest and tax rebates—thanks, Barack—helped to fuel an illusory recovery. The truth is: There’s a bottom down, we just haven’t hit it yet.

 

There’s really no point in complaining or even commenting about the weather in Central Oregon. It’s just to predictably unpredictable. Summer one day and winter the next. But one meteorological phenomena continually leaves us scratching our heads and that’s the inevitable snowstorm that follows springtime reminders to get our studded tires off our cars and our beleaguered roadways. It never fails. Every year as studded tire deadline approaches a storm rolls as if to punctuate the folly of a winter without studs. Even in this El Nino year where the grind of studs on bare pavement has become a constant backdrop in Bend, the four winds see fit to throw a nearly weeklong winter storm. We’re not a holy bunch around here, but we’re starting to think that the Good Lord Above is a minority partner in a certain formerly Prineville-based tire franchise.

 

That’s the percentage of Bend homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages, meaning that they owe more on their homes than those homes are  currently worth in the post-bubble real estate world. The number was good, or bad, enough to put our town on the list of the ten most “underwater” housing markets in America, right behind Greeley, CO, (45 percent underwater) and Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. (39 percent) Topping the list that was compiled
by U.S. News and World Report was Sin City where a whopping 81 percent of
homowners are drowning.

 

The amount of money that the City of Bend is seeking in earmarks from the federal government. Chided in the past for not seeking government handouts, the city is asking Oregon’s congressional delegation to help the city fund federally mandated upgrades to its drinking water system and its sidewalks, many of which have been found to be inadequate under the American’s with Disabilities. The city is also seeking $750,000 to help pay for its long discussed dredging project on Mirror Pond and funding for an “applied research center” to help incubate high-tech business here.

Mmmm. Is that pork we smell?

 

The number of dollars that Bank of America has agreed to pay the SEC to settle claims that the banking behemoth failed to disclose to its own shareholders the massive bonuses and mounting debt at Merrill Lynch when B of A acquired its rival. The revelations of Merrill’s debt in the wake of the deal sent B of A stock tumbling and the company scrambling for a $20 billion dollar bailout.

 

 

 

 

Did you hear? A pack of polar bears escaped from the Greater Vancouver Zoo and have put the city, which is packed with tourists and foreign heads of state for the Olympic Games, on a code red bear watch? No, this didn’t actually happen (not yet, at least) but this is the sort of news we expect to hear coming down from Vancouver, given how things have gone thus far. With rain and spring-like temperatures looming over the nearby mountains, snow has deteriorated at several of the event sites, leaving freestyle mogul races pushing through slush before hitting an artificially refrigerated jump, flipping about like a drunken Harry Potter, then landing on even slushier slush. But slush aside, the Vancouver games have had some other slip ups, including a malfunctioning torch tower at the opening ceremony, which thankfully didn’t affect a performance by Canada’s slam poet laureate, but did leave Steve Nash, Wayne Gretzky and two women you’ve never heard of standing there like morons. Oh yeah, and a luger died before the damned games even began. Who knew that global warming was such a buzz kill? Man, WTF?

 

It’s no secret that Oregon’s prison spending has been spiraling out of control. Now comes the latest evidence that Oregon has its priorities backward at a time when it’s slashing spending on education, healthcare and other social safety net programs. A report from a national group of state budget officers places Oregon at nearly the top of the list of states that are spending freely on prisons and corrections. According to the report, Oregon spends almost double what most other states do for prisons on a per capita basis. Overall, we came in second in the nation on prison spending as a percentage of our state budget. Contrast this news with another non-partisan report that gave Oregon an F on teacher evaluations. That report found that Oregon was doing little, if anything, to ensure that teachers are being effective in the classroom. So WTF Oregon where are our priorities?

 

 

We saw you, sir. You in your black Hummer, us leaning against a mighty Mt. Bachelor snow bank watching in embarrassed silence as you spent more than twenty minutes sending your majestic tank into semi-controlled spins – tires rotating ferociously like grounded jet turbines atop the recently fallen snow. You cared not for the safety of the other vehicles in the lot nor did you obey the newly instated cell phone law as you seemed to be on said phone for several of the 167 donuts you so courageously and high-octanely performed. You have a Hummer and that’s all that really matters. But WTF, man?

 

There are no astrological indications that 2010 is the Year of the Destructive Moron, but here in Oregon this week we made a damn good case for such a declaration. Only a destructive moron would be ripe with sort of Voldemort-like evilness required to leave a pug puppy in a plastic garbage bag on the side of a rural road north of Bend. The shockingly cute puppy was rescued, but veterinarians said it had nearly suffocated in the bag. Then, out in the cheese-laden coastal town of Tillamook, equally destructive morons shot out the windows of the town’s historic lighthouse. In the process, the wackadoos destroyed the more than 100-year-old French lens of the lighthouse’s beacon. Wow, WTF?