No; this is not a trend but I am having fun with our continuing End of the World Tour (I like that — it has a very "Douglas Adams" sound to it)...

This is more of a localized Smoke 'Em, beginning with our Coachella Valley. My prediction of rapid valley overpopulation seems to be coming true, alas, as hinted at in this article on garbage:

"It's going to be good for us," said Robert Leonard, operations manager at the transfer station.

He said the amount of trash from Indio and Coachella that is processed at the facility has increased from 500 tons to 700 tons - 400,000 pounds - in the last year due to the area's population growth.

Indio has 71,654 residents - with about 11,000 moving to the area since 2004. The city's population is expected to surge to more than 120,000 by 2015.

Coachella's population grew by 5,000 from 2005 to 2006 alone, according to the state's Department of Finance.

I wish they'd listed Coachella's current population, and not just the difference figure, but I suppose that that "71,000" figure for Indio (when most old-timers think of Indio as a city of 40-50 thousand), followed up by the 120,000 projection (a city the size of San Bernardino) was probably deemed too alarming without throwing in another figure on top of it. Lessee... oh, here it is:

As of the census of 2000, there were 22,724 people [in Coachella]

... and that was a few years ago.


Now, expanding our horizon to California politics, let's take a look at this:



"California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, center, walks with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, left, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom Tuesday along 16th Street in San Francisco." — courtesy the Press Enterprise

Let's all get together, in a bipartisan (or, as we Californians would say, a "multi-partisan") way and agree on one thing:

when you look at that photo, above, as a concerned Californian, can't you just imagine that just out-of-frame, at Villaraigosa's right hand, is this guy:



That would complete the set, wouldn't it?

SIIIIIIGHHHHHHH...