HOT TICKET ITEM… Squid’s talking about the new series of PACIFIC GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT’S COLLECTOR CARDS, “featuring the officers from the department in various poses and backgrounds.” The cards, according to a recent PGPD press release, were first issued in 1993, and 12 years later are still a big hit with the kiddies. “Once people found out the cards were being issued, the department was inundated with requests from all over the state and country,” reads the press release. “The front of the card is a glossy picture of the officer, with name and rank. The back has a bio, accomplishments…and an inspirational or safety message.” Awww. How sweet.

Oh, well, it’s silly enough—and paid for by local businesses and individuals, not city taxpayers—that Squid can poke fun, and entertain Squidself all afternoon, brainstorming what Squid’s “inspirational or safety message” would be, if Squid were Sgt. Squid. How about: You care about your safety? Then back away from Sgt. Squid.

PLAYING HARDBALL… With MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL man-breast deep in the steroids scandal, Squid hears that Marina nearly had its own minor league brouhaha break out. When a female softball player recently asked to play in the men’s recreation league, Rec Supervisor DAN GIBSON told her that women “weren’t allowed” in the men’s league, citing rules handed down from some unspecified “supervisors.” Let’s just say Gibson may have underestimated this female softball player’s passion for the game. Long story short, after a quick call from Squid and in lieu of a major discrimination suit, Gibson rethought his flippant, unsupervised decision to ban women from the league, called this softball player back and told her it had all been a misunderstanding. Good call, ump. Now play ball.

PAPER CHASE… Squid’s sources tell us that the newsroom at the HERALD got all kinds of unpleasant feedback about its shoddy number-crunching in a page-one piece about NPS a week ago Sunday. The story, which ran the day before the BRAC committee met here, claimed that the cost of educating students at NPS was inordinately high. Unfortunately, the piece got the number of students at NPS wrong, and it got the dollars spent in educating them wrong. A math expert contacted by the Weekly put it in precise technical terms: “It was simple division—and basically they got the numerator and the denominator wrong.”

(The piece was quietly removed from the newspaper’s Web site following a watered-down correction, which copped to the bad numbers, but said nothing about the story’s mistaken premise, which was based on those numbers.)

Imagine Squid’s dread when Squid found out this week that the Herald is venturing into a couple of side projects where math skills matter. According to flashy promotional flyers and full-color ads, the Herald will be hosting both the “Ultimate Yard Sale” and an online auction, called “Bid and Buy,” next month. Forget about why a newspaper is suddenly competing in the secondhand merchandise market, and let’s just focus on the important point: Who’s gonna run the register?