THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO INDIA… Last week, Monterey County Herald managers delivered crappy news to the paper’s advertising production department: Their jobs are being shipped to India, and quickly. The “transition,” as the paper’s higher ups are calling it, began Monday. Outsourcing isn’t new to the MediaNews Group empire, whose 45 California newspapers include San Jose Mercury News and Santa Cruz Sentinel. But while Squid isn’t surprised, Squid can’t shake the sense of loss, both for the pink-slipped Herald employees and for the quintessentially local art of ad design. The outrage from former Herald employees (and a few current advertisers) was palpable on Facebook, where one noted that outsourcing the ad work was just the beginning of a plan to send more design functions to India. One business owner asked, “Does this mean I should be charged less to advertise in the Herald?”


Squid’s birdie relayed a sob story from a laid-off graphic designer for Contra Costa Times, another MNG paper whose production was shipped overseas: A client asked for an ad featuring a girl with pigtails in her hair. The ad came back with a photo of a sweet girl – with severed swine tails in her tresses.


Squid will take this moment to be grateful. The Weekly’s designers not only know what pigtails are, but look adorable when they choose to sport them.


ON THE EDGE… The news hit Squid like a freezing tide. Almost a year to the week after Rachael Short was tragically paralyzed in a late Halloween night accident in Big Sur – the vehicle swerved off the road, pitching her from her unbuckled place in the back seat – there was an accident on the tail end of last weekend’s Big Sur Food & Wine.


But this ain’t your average sad or snarky Squid story – because this wasn’t the average descent down the Partington Ridge for Toby Rowland Jones, founder and director of BSFW. He admits he never buckles his seat belt until the ridge road reaches Highway 1. This time he did, so when fog helped his Nissan truck slip off the edge, tumble 10 feet to a shelf and roll three times, he was able to climb out the top of the side-turned truck with mostly just a bruise from the printer he had on the passenger seat. 


After a neighbor’s winch and some teamwork, his totalled ride was back on his property and he was off to Henry Miller Library to clean up the remains from a blockbuster weekend. He even doubled back to host the closing barbecue at his house, where Jonathan Roberts, aka PigWizard, proposed to his girlfriend Nicole. And that might not even be the most heartwarming part of the weekend. That came from a radiant Rachael Short, whose moving amount of dexterity during an appearance Friday night showed her rehab, work ethic and spirit remain inspired, and inspiring.