WTF

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's really no point in complaining or even commenting about the weather in Central Oregon. It's just to predictably unpredictable.

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.

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 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.