8:35 a.m.: Arrives at the office. Fills coffee cup. Enjoys the first sip of coffee. The highlight of the day.

8:56 a.m.: Calls wannabe prospective concert reviewer and tell him his services are not desired, in light of the fact that said wannabe prospective concert reviewer became verbally abusive with the Weekly World Central front-desk goddess, for no good reason, the day before.

9:03 a.m.: Get second cup of coffee.

10:42 a.m.: Receives phone call from a chemtrails conspiracy theorist. Unlike most chemtrails conspiracy theorists, this person is actually polite. She insists, however, that she's not a conspiracy theorist, and that soil samples from pristine areas prove that "they" are spraying us all with aluminum-chloro-whatever or something. When asked who "they" is, polite chemtrails conspiracy theorist says she doesn't know the answer to that, and concedes that she probably should have found that out before she called. Editor lets out a heavy yet silent sigh from the depths of what is left of his soul.

11:03 a.m.: Calls back a gentleman who called earlier in the morning and left a message on AHCCCS cuts. He is a single, childless man, and a former (perhaps current?) homeowner, upset about the fact that he has had to pay for everyone else's children to go to school all these years. He asks us to look into a theory that he says he has heard on talk radio: The government in Phoenix, you see, doesn't like "queers." And they figure that men, like the caller, who are single and childless must be queers, even though many of them, like the caller, are NOT queers. And that's why the government is freezing AHCCCS enrollment for childless, single adults ... they figure they're all queers, you see.

12:18 p.m.: Receives word from the assistant editor that a film-marketing company has received a credentials request from someone claiming to blog for the Tucson Weekly. However, nobody around Weekly World Central has heard of this alleged blogger, who reportedly told the film-marketing company he was working on a summer movie preview. Editor asks assistant editor to get contact info for the alleged blogger from the film-marketing company.

12:21 p.m.: Says "fuck it!" to dieting and heads across the street to Los Betos for a steak breakfast burrito.

12:48 p.m.: Returns to office and enjoys steak breakfast burrito, along with a third cup of coffee.

1:02 p.m.: Receives information from film-marketing company on alleged blogger. Calls alleged blogger and leaves a message.

1:35 p.m.: Receives phone call from alleged blogger. Alleged blogger seems very apologetic and a little freaked out, and says there must have been a misunderstanding. Alleged blogger insists he made it clear in his credentials request that he was blogging on his own, and NOT for the Weekly; he says he referred to the Weekly's summer movie preview only to show the style he was aiming for, in his own preview. Editor says he believes alleged blogger, and that he'll let film-marketing company know.

1:50 p.m.: E-mails film-marketing company and lets them know about conversation with alleged blogger.

2:02 p.m.: Receives e-mail response from film-marketing company—containing the actual credential-request form from alleged blogger. It's clear that alleged blogger was, in fact, claiming to be writing for the Tucson Weekly. What's left of editor's soul is officially declared dead.

2:30 p.m.: Realizes that he's been stood up by a prospective intern who was supposed to be coming in for an interview.

2:46 p.m.: After editing a few blog entries, editor starts to edit copy for next week's issue, seeing as the word "edit" is part of the title "editor."

2:49 p.m.: Decides he really does not want to edit Free Will Astrology, and decides to dream of bourbon instead.

3:06 p.m.: Starts writing a blog entry titled "A (Particularly Batshit) Day in the Life of an Altweekly Editor." Keeps dreaming of bourbon.

—30—

While the world focusing on one British wedding this weekend, let's take a moment to think of those who aren't quite so lucky in love, including Misery Bear.

As a helpful service to the readers of the Arizona Daily Star (and to the Star itself, so they don't have to waste the column space), occasionally we will provide a space on The Range to cover corrections that need to be made to one of their stories. No judgment, we all make mistakes in this crazy business. We just want to get the correct information out there. The first installment isn't a correction, per se, but a bit of clarification.

First up, Josh Brodesky's column on Sunday complaining about how expensive eight artsy shelters for the forthcoming downtown streetcar project will be. Brodesky, always thinking of the little guy, was upset because Tucson "can't afford to put bus shelters on the streets for people who actually need public transit" and "lets young mothers bake in the sun, and elderly riders soak in the rain."

While as a bus rider, I am sympathetic to the plight of my fellow passengers, Brodesky aptly mentioned that these shelters are part of a city requirement to spend 1% of capital projects on public art from the project's budget. It makes sense that Brodesky might be upset by the very nature of the stipulation passed in 2006, but that's a separate issue from the streetcar project that would need to be revisited by a vote of the City Council. You're going to need shelters, and the city is require to get some art of the deal, so why not make the shelters art? Put a bird on it, as it were.

Also, while Brodesky was concerned by the city spending "$590,000 for eight shelter stops that have yet to be designed", as Councilman Steve Kozachik's newsletter today mentions, there will be an extensive vetting process to ensure that none of the art pieces will be "chosen sight unseen." Plus, while there will be more than eight stops on the route, and not enough artsy stations to cover all seventeen stops, even that came from a logical place that Brodesky seemingly wasn't aware of. As Councilman Kozachik put it, the decision was made "because the stops are located very close to one another and the decision was made to enhance those locations anticipated to have the heaviest traffic." Can't just put fancy stops everywhere, makes more sense to spread them out, right?

To summarize, we get it. After the Rio Nuevo debacle, any seemingly absurdist city spending sends us into a fit of outrage too, but it's important when you're writing articles for the front page of a newspaper to make sure you're getting mad over the right things, or even that which can actually be changed.

This story about Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's new "Mugshot of the Day" program has been making the national media rounds. From NPR:

The top picks so far aren't unexpected: They're the most disheveled, unusual looking people among those booked into the downtown Phoenix jail.

Sheriff Joe is turning the prison system into a sideshow act. Ummm, wow.

There’s a great episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns decides to run for mayor and, as a campaign stunt, has dinner at the Simpsons’ house in front of TV cameras.

The entire thing is, of course, completely choreographed by Mr. Burns, who has supplied the Simpson family with the questions they’re supposed to ask him.

Lisa’s scripted question: “Mr Burns, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a run-away freight train. Why are you so popular?”

Mr. Burns responds: "Oh, a tough question, but a fair one. Lisa, there’s no single answer. Some voters respond to my integrity. Others are more impressed by my incorruptibility. Still others like my determination to lower taxes and the bureaucrats in the state capital can put that in their pipes and smoke it!"

I was reminded of the exchange (which you can watch here) as I read Meghan McCain’s laughable interview with Donald Trump. Meghan, the daughter of Sen. John McCain, has managed to use her family’s connections to get the obligatory book deal, Daily Beast column and whatnot, but the interview reveals that she’s a ditz when it comes to journalism.

Dave Weigel pounces on the interview in Slate, but I thought I’d share a few of the highlights from her “tough but fair” interrogation:

This morning, the front page of the Drudge Report had Obama at 49 percent and you’re at 34 percent, and you haven’t even announced. Why do you think you’ve made such an impact already? Why do you think you’re catching on in a way that Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty really aren’t?

What’s interesting about you and your candidacy, I think that some people think it’s some sort of joke or publicity stunt. But even at dinner last night I was sitting with my friends, and it’s like the more people talk about it the more interested they are and the more convinced they are that you could be a nominee for the Republican Party. What I’m looking for is someone who’s not going to take bullshit, not going to let the media run them around, and who is going to give it back to Obama. And you seem to be the only person who’s really doing it right now.

If you run for president, will you hire me for your campaign?

Why do you think this birther thing still has such legs?

Are you really ready for this?

And so on. They talk about GOP campaign strategists and blah, blah, blah. And she complains that she didn’t like the questions that George Stephanopoulos asked Trump on Good Morning America, which you can watch above. Maybe because Stephanopoulos didn't ask Trump for a job?

There's a lot to grumble about with the Time 100 - Blake Lively was great in The Town, but I think Mohamed Bouazizi's self martyrdom that kicked off the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring in general might have been slightly more globally influential - but still, the list is an interesting look at the world we live in.

Regardless, Barack Obama's blurb for Gabrielle Giffords' inclusion on the list is a nice tribute to someone who we all wish were on the list for different reasons:

The violence in Tucson earlier this year was made all the more shocking by the quintessentially American scene that it shattered: folks of different backgrounds yet part of the same community gathering to share their hopes and ask questions of their elected representative. To put it simply, they came to do the daily work of democracy.

Before that morning, Gabrielle Giffords may not have been a household name. But the reason she has long been admired by people of all political stripes is that she embodies the best of what public service should be: hard work and fair play, hope and resilience, a willingness to listen and a determination to do your best in a busy world. As hard a battle as Giffords, 40, now fights every day, she's got a strong partner in her husband Mark Kelly, who visits her daily while training to command the space shuttle Endeavour. And she's got the prayers of a nation rooting for her, a model of civility and courage and unity — a needed voice that cannot return soon enough.

The New York Times Magazine has a long excerpt from an upcoming biography of Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, including an the above adorable photo, which might be proof that Obama is stealing money from the rich and burying it on an island somewhere.

The president’s mother has served as any of a number of useful oversimplifications. In the capsule version of Obama’s life story, she is the white mother from Kansas coupled alliteratively to the black father from Kenya. She is corn-fed, white-bread, whatever Kenya is not. In “Dreams From My Father,” the memoir that helped power Obama’s political ascent, she is the shy, small-town girl who falls head over heels for the brilliant, charismatic African who steals the show. In the next chapter, she is the naïve idealist, the innocent abroad. In Obama’s presidential campaign, she was the struggling single mother, the food-stamp recipient, the victim of a health care system gone awry, pleading with her insurance company for cover­age as her life slipped away. And in the fevered imaginings of supermarket tabloids and the Internet, she is the atheist, the Marx­ist, the flower child, the mother who abandoned her son or duped the newspapers of Hawaii into printing a birth announcement for her Kenyan-born baby, on the off chance that he might want to be president someday.

Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times (who it might be worth mentioning is seemingly not above working for a paper that receives a significant amount of revenue from concert promoters adversely affected by the Sound Strike) really is doubling down on his pro-Sound Strike rhetoric today, going after Salon's interview with Rialto booker Curtis McCrary:

[Full disclosure: I am an occasional freelancer for the Phoenix New Times, and I once worked in the same building as Lemons, but haven't really met him.]

Music fans are suffering according to Grant and McCrary. Well, bestill my aching liver. The pair should explain their alt-music angst to the Hispanic families that have fled Arizona because of Senate Bill 1070, or the kids whose parents don't come home at night because they were caught up in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-immigrant raids and sweeps. And then there are those who've suffered severe injury at the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Surely those who die of thirst crossing the Sonoran Desert will feel the agony of all those iPod-bearers who won't be able to see their fave indie acts while sipping on a delicious micro-brew.

Maybe the immigrant woman whose arm was broken while in MCSO custody will shed a tear for them. The undocumented lady who got her jaw busted during one of Arpaio's operations? Perhaps she could do a fundraiser for these lame-sters.

Sorry, I have little patience with all this petulant kvetching coming from folks whose main dilemma in life is figuring out which to do first: download a Kings of Leon album, or catch the latest gossip on the FB.

Is that really helpful? Knowing quite a few of the people in this city trying to ward off the boycott, they're far too busy actually working, trying to keep their businesses open and worrying about their employees to "catch the latest gossip the FB", but at this point, I guess this what it's come to. Instead of actually trying to figure out the most effective way to change government policy around here, let's just broadly characterize each other. Personally, I'll live if I miss shows by one band or another, I just think the boycott hurts the wrong people, people who didn't have anything to do with SB 1070.

Instead, Lemons gives Sound Strike organizer Javier Gonzalez a platform to throw the term "hater" around again and lump Cypress Hill not playing Arizona in with the larger economic boycott, so that it can seem like all the effort is worth it. What's most funny/sad/frustrating to me is when Gonzalez writes that he's been waiting around for Arizonans to call him about putting together benefit shows. From multiple conversations I've had with promoters here, those calls have been coming in since before the election last year, so maybe it's not that no one is trying to set up shows, but that the Sound Strike isn't seeing what's in it for them to make those concerts happen.

I'd love to see fewer border crossing deaths. I'd love to see a sane immigration policy. I'd like to think, however, that we'll get closer to those goals by doing something, instead of defining the artists' response as playing San Diego one day sooner and endangering the livelihood of Arizonans who also want Russell Pearce and his ilk to go away.

Robot journalists are making technological advances, at least in the world of sports writing, which probably doesn't bode well for my career as a blogger. While I'd like to think there's a specific human touch to posting photos of otters hugging or wistful recollections of soon-deceased soap operas, but sooner or later, they'll figure out a way to digitize that too. Oh well. I should enjoy the work while it lasts.

While I'm generally not too excited to link to this city's daily newspaper, when Al Melvin gets an outlet for his disjointed angry rantings, that's always a good time. Turns out while I think the Weekly still occupies the top spot on his media enemies list, it's encouraging to see that the Star is going to keep it competitive.

You lament the cuts that have been made and the fact that I did not pursue higher taxes as a solution to our state's budget woes. You suggest that letting criminals out of jail earlier would save us money. And you refer again and again to "the children" as victims of the budget that was passed, particularly in the area of education.

Your advocacy for liberal solutions is not a surprise.

You have endorsed my liberal opponents in every race I have ever run. You were a cheerleader for the big-spending policies of then-Gov. Janet Napolitano that dug the hole that Arizona now finds itself in.

You have a knee-jerk reaction against the education reforms that would provide parents with more and better choices for their children's education, denying them a better education for less money.

You ignore the inefficiencies that are present in our university systems that increase the cost of an education without improving the quality of that education. In many cases, these are expenses that often have nothing to do with the education of the students.