This Goes to 11 Turns 1,000

This is our 1,000th post. One Thousand mostly inane, silly and offensive posts. Oh...except for Michele's very tasteful and well-written offerings....

For our 1,000th post celebration, I was going to find the silliest and least tasteful youtube I could find and post that....but then I ran into this story, which is as silly and stupid as anything I could dig up:

To hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.

But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.

Photo stolen from the Seattle Times

"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."

The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can't: melt it.

The city's patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even with tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding on foot, according to a West Precinct officer.

So Seattle's drivers (and police) must skid around town...or just stay home...because salt it just too expensive?

Not exactly. Seattle's Department of Transportation moron chief Alex Wiggins:

"It's tough going. I won't argue with you on that," he said. But here in Seattle, "we're sensitive about everything we do that impacts the environment."

Chief Wiggins brilliant solution? Use sand. That's gotta be better for placating ecoweenies than salt, right?

"We never use sand," said Ann Williams, spokeswoman for Denver's Department of Public Works. "Sand causes dust, and there's also water-quality issues where it goes into streets and into our rivers."

I've contemplated Seattle and the lunacy of people who would want to live in a cold rain 300 days a year. So I suppose I can't expect much from a city which just months ago was going to ban beach fires because of their effect on global warming.

Basically Seattle...you suck. But thanks for the coffee...and Nirvana: