ER visit

We were feeling a bit down last week, what with the slew of emails (okay, three) begging us to ease up on a certain well-endowed daily rag.

"Don't pick on the editor! He's very ill!"

"You know, she barely survived a car accident. You should cut her some slack!"

And our favorite –

"You stupid bastard! If you had to actually work here, you'd know how fucking hard it is and shut the hell up. Do you even have a job? You obviously don't have a life!"

True, all of it, as far as we can tell – certainly the "no life" bit rings the ol'accuracy bell – but we're used to that. In fact, we rather enjoy the odd tongue-lashing. We've even been known to attempt putting out fire with gasoline.

But adding to the suffering in the world? We abhor suffering. We change channels whenever we see it. We can barely suffer through the immature, convoluted and pompous writing eroding the our local rags like some unstoppable flesh-eating disease – a bottle of gin and a dose of the Dandy must be kept nearby at all times.

So we were understandably saddened to hear these dark tales. Rumor has it that a certain someone is on a bender (and we don't mean the redhead). Reporters are fleeing left and right (and we do mean the redhead). The salacious Christine Bensen-Messinger moved away... And with the boss out sick? Who will advise the governor? The president? We feared the free world and all we hold dear might collapse.

That's the pit of pain we found ourselves writhing in Friday night. But then, like the dawn of a new day... Saturday morning brought hope. "This Grand Jury report thing is all right!" we thought. Blue Lake Police Chief busted! Eureka Police trained to kill! Dog pound doing good! Yeah!

The kids'll be fine, just fine.

Which means we don't feel the slightest bit of shame in making fun of today's front page photo. What the hell? Dandelions? A rag? An intersection? Is this story about weeds on street corners? Litter? Loneliness? Despair?Was a mountain lion sighted near here?

Solomon's no O'Neill, but he's been giving it a decent go. Someone should remind him that a little relevance goes a long way.