Albuquerquephobia—As you probably know by now, I have wandered out into the vast southern desert (Alamogordo) and embarked on a magnificent quest to add weight to my rather skimpy résumé. I hope to one day earn more than a crack whore and attain worldwide fame.

Indie 101.5 struggles on, though it can't outrun consolidation

Three Santa Feans made a break for it last year, severing ties with corporate radio and declaring their independence on July 4 [See: Profile, "A Signal Apart," Dec. 21-27, 2006]. Ellie Garrett, Sam Ferrara and Michael Warren co-founded Indie 101.5, a commercial station run on idealism, on the hope that listeners would support a for-profit radio station playing more than just the few hundred tunes Clear Channel's been spinning.

Eric J. Garcia

Dateline: Japan—A gold bathtub worth nearly $1 million has gone missing from a resort hotel in Kamogawa, south of Tokyo. A worker at the Kominato Hotel Mikazuki notified police that the glittering tub was missing from the hotel’s guest bathroom on the 10th floor. The round tub, worth $987,000, is made from 18-karat gold and weighs 176 pounds. Flanked by two crane statues, the tub had been a main feature of the hotel’s extravagant shared bathroom. Visitors were allowed to take a dip in the tub, but it was only available a few hours a day for “security reasons,” the hotel’s website said. According to local police, someone cut the chain attached to the door of a small section of the bathroom where the bathtub was located and made off with the fixture. “We have no witness information and there are no video cameras,” said a police official. “We have no idea who took it.”

Investigator quests after real info on our myths and monsters

A woman came to Benjamin Radford a couple years ago with proof of the supernatural, a recording of a child ghost. You've got to hear this, she said. Radford's response: How do you know what a child ghost sounds like? "I wasn't trying to be nasty or facetious," he says. That's just his job.

Letters

The mayor’s right on this one

This might hurt. I am going to say something highly complimentary about Mayor Martin Chavez. To get there, I need first to tell John D.’s story.