I assumed it was frogs. A plague of riled up frogs.

When I left work last night, and the night before, I heard a tremendous squawking and chirping coming from somewhere in downtown Bremerton. It was loud, loud enough to be a teenager's lovemobile, and sounded as menacing and sinister as Ashlee Simpson.

Anyone that has lived in the Puget Sound region during the springtime can attest to the hooting and hollering of sex-crazed amphibians, carrying on in a manner most unwholesome.

Being a prude, I shoved the thought out of my mind and went home, where I spent the evening organizing and reorganizing my silverware drawer (That's a lie ... I don't have a silverware drawer.)

But today my esteemed colleagues Chris Henry and Steve Gardner mentioned how when they left the building the past couple nights they heard it too. And instead of jumping to an erroneous conclusion and blaming innocent frogs, they investigated, and found columns of seagulls swarming like locusts. At least Henry investigated. She described them as five-stories high.

"I know it sound like an exaggeration," she said, convinced her eyes weren't deceiving her.

At first I feared they were coming for me as revenge for covering the Port Orchard Seagull Calling Contest last Saturday (you can watch the video made by super photographer Carolyn Yaschur here). A chill ran up my mammal spine.

This time I've gone too far, I thought. They're coming to peck out my eyes. Maybe lift me off the ground and drop me over the Port Washington Narrows like some South American dictator disappearing political dissidents. No one would hear from me again. No one would man the Bremerton Beat, for a day or two.

Henry said the seagull caucus took place near the Bremerton tunnel and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard main gate.

I called Mary Anne Mascianica, spokeswoman for the shipyard, and asked if she had heard any suspicious squawking, or maybe something about the amassed seagulls.

"Our activities aren't anything that particularly draw seagulls," she said. "They come, I think, where food is, and that's not what we do."

If anyone has any other theories, or heard the cacophony, drop us a line. We won't rest until this mystery is solved. (That's a lie ... I will rest far before the mystery is solved.)

Seagulls Are Doin' It For Themselves

The Bremerton City Council approved two contracts of note Wednesday evening.

I guess everything a city council does is of note, but these two caught my attention. They were approved as part of the consent agenda 8-0 (Council President Will Maupin was absent).

1 - The council approved a measure allowing the city to contract with the far-out hamlet of Forks to house municipal court prisoners. The reason they would go to Forks is because the county jail in Port Orchard has been raising its rates. Forks is like the Wal-Mart of jails. Not a great distinction, but, hey, what are you going to do?

Read the original story here.

Again, this doesn't apply to your garden variety murderers, rapists or burglars. It just applies to your garden variety drunken drivers, pot smokers and wife-beaters. Mostly it will be people who drive on a suspended license and get caught. The top sentence for these crimes is about a year in the clink. But because of state sentencing laws, people rarely, if ever, go away for that long.

2 - The more interesting item is a contract with a Seattle PR firm to promote the city of Bremerton.

More specifically, it allows up to $38,500 of lodging tax dollars to go to Nyhus Communications LLC to promote Bremerton Harborside events and build "public interest, excitement and attendance at summer and fall events in Bremerton through a proactive public relations program."

I, for one, would prefer a "reactive PR campaign," one that more closely resembles real life, where a reporter calls a "public relations professional,' asks a question, requests a call back and then is ignored. Those campaigns might cost a lot less, but I digress.

Under the heading of "Proactive Media Relations," Nyhus (known here as "consultant") prefaces the arduous task ahead of them thusly:

"Like most people, reporters prefer to work with sources they know and trust. Consultant has those relationships."

I was sitting in the council chambers when I read that line and laughed out loud. The other people at the meeting must have thought I was hallucinating, or talking to myself. I won't deny it, that happens to me at government meetings, but this time was different.

All right, Nyhus, listen up. You're going to learn something.

First - Reporters prefer to "work" with anyone who will talk to us. There is a reason we are often compared to maggots. We're not choosy.

Second - Reporters work with other reporters. We don't "work" with sources.

Third - As for trust, there's an old saw thrown around newsrooms. It goes like this: "If your mother tells you she loves you, go check it out." We don't trust anyone. We don't trust each other, we don't trust ourselves, we don't trust our own mothers. I'm not even sure I'm sitting at my desk right now. I could be a brain in a bottle, a thousand years in the future, being prodded by renegade alien scientists.

Fourth - The "Like most people" introduction is a little condescending. I appreciate that we are considered "people," and I understand you didn't intend for this document to be reviewed by reporters (!), but it implies we journalists are like carnies, or manimals, or some group of "others."

Despite what you've heard from public relations professionals who see the press as something to be controlled and manipulated, we're surprisingly similar to you, Nyhus. We just live in smaller apartments, go to public schools, drink American beer and are born with small tails that help us swim in bogs.

For my own edification, I would like to know the names of the reporters that "consultant" has befriended. Also, I'm curious to know what that kind of unholy courtship looked like. Flowers and candy? Or maybe a 40 ounce of malt liquor and two tickets to the gun show?

Either way, I look forward to your press releases clogging my in-box.

Given the bottomless well of creativity of Bremertonians, plus our flair for rudeness as illustrated by the comments on the KitsapSun.com, it might be a matter of time before someone expresses their displeasure with the city's new traffic cameras with selective nudity.

By "selective nudity" I mean mooning, that borderline obscene but very distasteful form of communication that involves dropping trou and smiling in the direction of the target. By "smile" I mean "show your bum" and by "expresses their displeasure" I mean, well, let's leave it at that.

Click here and read this story about a BMW owner who took the initiative, possibly received a crick in their neck and immortalized their nuanced views on the intrusion of red light cameras. It was forwarded to me by the Sun's spectacular North Kitsap reporter Derek Sheppard, who suggested I file a records request and get to the bottom of this story. Pun intended.

Some rear ends are prettier than others, some are downright scary, but if you feel like sharing yours with the poor police officer assigned to review the videos of drivers blowing through red lights, you should know that the cops won't be that surprised.

First of all, as police officers, nay, Bremerton police officers, they are fairly unflappable.

In addition to that, an officer I spoke to, who was watching the videos, told me they figured it was a matter of time before somebody got the idea to pull a stunt like this.

Again, this is not an invitation. Everything has a place, and the place for your butt is in your pants. And if you think the red light camera tickets are hefty, $124, imagine what happens to a person cited for disorderly conduct. Explain that ticket to your boss.

The final numbers haven't been tabulated, but court staff are bracing for a flood of residents contesting tickets for running red lights.

The city has placed six cameras around town to catch red-light scofflaws in the act, and the time to pay up or stand in front of a judge is coming. Read the last story on the lights here.

Theresa Ewing, Bremerton Municipal Court Administrator, said Thursday the court has yet to add up how many people are contesting their tickets, which arrive in the mail, but the first court calendar for the hearings has been set for June 10.

"We have a lot of people who are unhappy," she said.

Contested hearings will take place at 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. and mitigation hearings will began at 4 p.m., Ewing said.

Each calendar will have time for 10 defendants and each person will have the chance to view the video of themselves running, or not running, a red light, as the case may be.

"That's what the judge will see," she said.

If an hour and a half doesn't seem like a lot of time, it isn't. Will there be more calendars?
"Oh yes!" Ewing said. Although the final tally isn't known yet, officials say there will be lots of contested citations.

Municipal Court Judge James Docter will conduct the hearings, unless they become so numerous a court commissioner has to be sworn in.

"It just depends on the volume," she said.

Commissioners are sort of stand-in judges, unelected, but vested with the authority to conduct a court's business. Currently the court does not have any commissioners, Ewing said.

The primary complaint court staff has been hearing is people who didn't know they had to come to a complete stop at a red light.

Also, staff has heard people say it wasn't them behind the wheel.

"We have had quite a few of those," she said.

Because the Legislature prohibits the Redflex cameras from photographing actual people, it might seem like a good defense.

However, the Revised Code of Washington (in other words, the law) says that owners are responsible for their cars, Ewing said. There are a few defenses, but they include providing proof that the car was reported stolen or that a new owner of a car hadn't registered it yet.

Stay tuned as details become available. And if you're preparing for your day in court, and want to share your story, drop us a line.

By coincide, my hometown of Renton just announced the start of it's red light camera program.

Guv Grumpy

I learned the word "capricious" from disgraced Illinois Gov. George Ryan, R-Kankakee. Just before leaving office, Ryan commuted the sentences of all the inmates on the state's death row to life.

I was an intern in the Capitol press room in 2003 - No, I never interviewed Barack Obama - and talked to a man whose wife was brutally raped and murdered by one of the men Ryan spared.

Ryan called the death penalty "capricious," meaning it was doled out on the whim, usually to poor and minority criminals.

Some saw it as a cynical move by a shrewd politician. Others saw it as a shrewd move by a cynical politician. Ryan insisted it was from the heart, and mentioned the irony of how difficult he found it signing a death warrant when he found it so easy, years earlier, to vote to reinstate the death penalty as a state Representative.

(Ryan is a criminal - he's now in prison himself)

Another word might have been arbitrary, but I already knew that word. Capricious I had to look up.

Since then I've spent more time around courtrooms and lawyers, and I've seen what Ryan meant.

Except it's not just the death penalty.

Here are three stories from today, all dealing with federal courts:

1 - Famous actor gets three years in prison for failing to file tax returns.

2 - Philippines-based company caught ripping off the U.S. military's health insurance company for $100 million has to pay the money back.

3 - Man who helped Saddam Hussein divert money from the oil-for-food program intended for starving children got caught, admitted he made a mistake, ratted on his friends and received a $300k fine and probation.

Notice the only person our federal court system intends to send to prison is a guy who didn't pay his taxes.

I'm certainly no expert and have never taken a law class in my life. A good argument against this humble blog entry begins with, "Well, Andy, you don't know what you are talking about," or, "It's more complicated than that."

However, I am aware of a another funny word called "proportionality."

And another one: "justice system." Is "justice" the right word?

(For more federal government fun, see Diamond Steve Gardner's [Gardner's name corrected by Gardner] latest blog post here)

A story about veterans being trained at Olympic College for "green collar" jobs got a letter in response, saying that the program is vague and there is no market for people with these skills.

One commenter noted, before calling it a "some smoke and mirror liberal junket," that the only jobs that will be created are for the people overseeing the program. I know that sort of thing happens, and has happened to me. I'm a graduate of the University of Washington Department of Communications.

Here is the story, describing the move to create the curriculum for the program, which is a sort of Civilian Conservation Corps for Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

As for the job market, here is a story I saw recently describing what these jobs are, which goes into greater depth and might answer questions about the viability of a program tagged with a buzzword like "green collar."

I'm annoyed by buzzwords too, but just because something has an annoying name, like Andy Binion, doesn't mean it's entirely useless.

Also, as this article points out, the "green" movement has its share of charlatans. Think you're doing somebody a favor by picking the product with the "green" label? You are. Although it might not be the person you want to help.