NATURE'S TERROR, and other news of the week.

[January 19th, 2005] WINNERS

Doomsayers and apocalypse nuts had something extra to savor with their Monday-morning whiskey shots. The Oregonian kicked off the week with a preview of the 9.0-mag earthquake that will someday turn Seaside into Tsunamiside and reduce Portland to smoldering ruins. Drink up!

Monster weekend for lovers of ice. Portland raked in big bucks as the fake sport of figure skating (sequins + subjective scoring + theme music = NOT A REAL SPORT) held its national championships at Memorial Coliseum. Meanwhile, a street-glazing winter storm ensured metro-wide cabin fever. (Charades? Anyone up for charades?)

Portland's legion of Bob Whitsitt-haters scrambled for their copies of Webster's Dictionary to look up "schadenfreude." On Friday, the not-so-dearly-departed Portland Trail Blazers overlord was fired from his post as president of football operations for the Seattle Seahawks. Buh-bye!

If fish had bicycles, salmon would have ridden them to Salem this week to thank Ted Kulongoski. Guv K threatened to sue the feds over their reluctance to improve spawning conditions at Columbia Basin dams.

LOSERS

After a year of big talk about how it was so ready for winter, TriMet stranded scores of the airport-bound when the ice storm scuttled the MAX Red Line. While they waited for shuttle buses to come to the rescue, travelers wondered why they didn't just Michelle Kwan their way to PDX.

The party of "moral values" was heard from yet again, as Republican heavyweights Mark Hemstreet and Gregg Clapper wound up on Johnny Law's bad side. Hemstreet, owner of Shilo Inn and an all-purpose right-wing moneybags, was cited for poaching game (classy!); Clapper, a GOP strategist, was allegedly caught with marijuana in the same investigation. So that's where they get their ideas!

MORE bad news for the Oregon National Guard: The Oregonian reported that fewer than half of the Oregon Guardspeople who returned from Iraq last April decided to re-enlist. Maybe they read that they're three times as likely to die in Iraq as reservists from other states?