Slaves of Fashion?
Your idiotic Fall Fashion section [Sept. 28] displays clueless, posey ninnies wearing dull, ludicrously priced (sports coat, $1,695; tweed bowling bag, $940) crap. "Style"? This is "style"?
Do people actually buy this shit? If so, where do people that stupid get that much money? I could afford the prices—but not the knowledge that I was an idiot to pay them.
Bootsy Holler and Steve Wiecking and Heffner Management (is that Hugh Heffner?) should be arrested for taking advantage of the easily influenced. Pathetic!
Gordon Anderson
Seattle
Think Locally
In front of me sits the issue of Seattle Weekly about Fall Fashion [Sept. 28], and I think: Seattle Weekly should have its own fashion show with local artists providing the music, the food, and the decor.
Tim Muck
Seattle
Mining Our Own Business
Re the article on the land-mine treaty and possible U.S. development and export of mines ["Future Minefields," Sept. 28]: To what extent do "self-destructing" mines still present the dangers the article notes (maiming children, lying dormant for years, etc.)? It seems dangers are noted for the old type of mines to justify opposition to the new.
Nor should one get carried away by the U.S opposing the "moral sense of the world" on this issue. Of the countries who ratify the land-mine treaty, how many have, might, or even could develop such mines? For how many is the use of land mines in their strategic interest? Which is to say, giving up something you either can't do or wouldn't want to do if you could does not seem like a moral statement. Sort of like touting one's lack of nukes if one is Togo.
Neither of these questions favors U.S. development of mines, but surely they are relevant to analyzing U.S. policy and its relative "moral" standing.
Kelly Scott
Seattle
WASL Outrage
The story about the WASL "trial" in Spokane was repulsive ["Testing Paranoia," Sept. 28]. I hope Debra Pearson has access to a good lawyer and seeks retribution from the Spokane School District for this, and that the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction sets things straight. How dare parents/teachers be put under such Orwellian ordeals; who is Big Brother trying to serve here? Certainly not the students.
Jessica Grady
Redmond
Monorail to Nowhere
I spend so much time scouring the media, forming and trying to express my opinions about the current state of affairs nationally and globally, that I haven't paid any attention to the proposed monorail ["Neither Dead nor Alive," Sept. 28]. When I see a headline concerning the monorail, I skip it and move right to some article on Tom DeLay. I had confidence that the people on the board were doing their best to wisely spend our money to devise a sensible plan. Today, though, the monorail topic was unavoidable. . . . It was a picture that caught my eye. It was the proposed route. Huh?
I have lived here for 30 years, and I have never been to Morgan Street in West Seattle. I have been to Ballard a number of times, and upon leaving thought, "What a quaint village. Gosh it takes a long time to get anywhere from here." Naively always thinking that the monorail planners would be trying to move thousands of people from where they are to where they want to go, I left them to their business.
Is this some kind of comedy routine? Let's solve the traffic mess from Renton to Bellevue. I know—let's build a monorail from Newcastle to Fall City! What is wrong with these people? They took an economical and efficient concept and planned it into absurdity. I would hate to know the total amount of money spent discussing and voting on this.
So now, one more vote? Should we spend billions to move people from where they aren't to where they don't want to go?
Cameron Castle
Snohomish
Whose Vendetta?
Wow—I must have been listening to the wrong album. Yancey Strickler's review of Vendetta Red's Sisters of the Red Death misses the mark entirely [CD Reviews, Sept. 28]. I was intrigued by what I heard from this album played on The End, so I picked it up, the first of theirs that I have bought. I agree that it's out there—and pretty scary stuff. But I've listened to it dozens of times and studied the lyrics, in the context of what the band has posted about the album on their Web site. It is a concept album about some sort of post-apocalyptic holocaust where women are finally in the ascendancy and take their vengeance against all males for the abuses visited on them throughout time—"For every one of our sisters tortured/A thousand of their sons will burn." Misogynistic? I think not; it's just the opposite. In fact, it's one of those things that could make you feel guilty for being male. Your reviewer must have given this album a quick once-over and made his pronouncements under some sort of time pressure—it sounds as though Strickler has his own vendetta against the band. The album is better than that and deserves a more thorough review.
