PITY THE FOOLS… Squid’s morning ritual with the daily newspaper is probably not that different from those few landlubbers who still subscribe to the paper. You know, a solid 80 or 90 seconds to digest the obituaries and the high school sports and then coffee, keys and off to work.

Wednesday morning, however, The Salinas Californian’s front page almost sent Squid into hypoglycemic shock. The sweetness was overpowering. “Extra! Extra!” read a banner across the top left corner. And then, in bold, 42-point, deep red type: “GOOD NEWS EDITON!”

The six-page wrap of the paper’s regular edition carried a three-month-old story about the new rabbi in town, a nine-month-old report on the new executive at the Community Foundation and a four-week-old story about the Alisal Center for the Fine Arts. These are fine stories, but the pabulum in the publisher’s note ended up completely undermining them. It’s as if they didn’t quite qualify to be in the real newspaper, so The Californian had to wait for the annual cheerleader edition for them to see the light of day.

Squid realizes the Californian had just laid off its 15 pressmen and outsourced its entire printing operation the week before. And Squid buys the rumor on Gannett Blog that the Californian will become a twice-a-week publication in the next year. But still, Squid wishes the otherwise fine reporters over there had shown just a little of that one thing this beaked celephapod truly admires: a backbone.

GREEN MACHINERY… Squid’s dug deep to pay for instant-hot-water taps (to save water) and double-paned windows (to save heat). So Squid gets why the Monterey GreenFest, scheduled for its debut at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in a week, has been postponed: not enough green.

Organizer and former Weekly contributor Ray Napolitano concedes that he didn’t have enough game to gather enough sponsors to cover costs in time. With an unprecedented event and a chilly economic climate, he reports, folks took a “wait and see” approach.

While that works for the festival – which is now slated for spring, with Napolitano saying all the players remain on board, from the many chefs to the nonprofits to the politicians to the purveyors to the live music acts – the same logic shouldn’t be applied to our state laws.

Proposition 23 is barreling toward voters Nov. 2, on the strength of big-oil sponsors from Texas, looking to repeal the state’s landmark emissions-reduction laws because we can’t afford them at the moment. That couldn’t be farther from the truth: We can’t afford not to.