PETA HEARTS MILITARY… Squid wondered why People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals activists were suddenly interested in Monterey’s Defense Language Institute. Did they finally make the connection between war and animal welfare? Did they object to the fact that our military men and women– even the multilingual ones– participate in a system that routinely blows up people and their pets in the name of U.S. freedom?

Nope. Turns out they were just lusting after Lt. Col. Bob Lucius, the hard-bodied DLI Dean of Students. Lucius, who volunteers at the local SPCA, is the Marine branch winner in PETA’s Sexiest Vegetarian Soldiers list. He tells PETA he’s avoided meat ever since he saw a dog butchered for food in Vietnam. What a beefcake.

While taking a break from praising the nonviolence of America’s salad-eating soldiers, PETA reportedly turned its wrath on Pacific Grove Hardware for its cute Christmas-themed window display. According to Squid’s informant, the store had played off the line “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” with an arrangement of toy mice caught in mousetraps. A band of high schoolers showed up at the store with a PETA petition denouncing the mousetraps as inhumane. The display disappeared faster than Santa up the chimney.

TRIPPING OUT… Around the holidays Squid tends to get a bit tipsy from eggnog, and then stumble into a Christmas tree or bump into a Nativity set, but keeps its imbalanced incidents on the down low– unlike Salinas Police Chief Dan Ortega and Mayor Dennis Donohue. Ortega reportedly broke his ankle recently after falling off a ladder while hanging Christmas lights. Now that he’s the department’s very own Tiny Tim, Squid guesses he’ll have to think twice about booking those plane tickets to Hawaii. Speaking of vacations, mounting gang violence and a gaping budget deficit didn’t stop Donohue and a large (albeit, mostly self-funded) contingent of Salinas officials from visiting Guanajuato, Mexico, for an international Sister City festival. Squid is awaiting the tangible results of this trade mission, besides Christmas gifts of hand-painted trinkets for the delegation’s relatives. Donohue surely made a lasting impression after an artist’s booth collapsed on him, shattering a fluorescent light on his dome. “I want everyone to know, the booth attacked me,” Donohue quipped in a city press release. “I did not attack the booth.” (He was less amused by the reaction to his mishap, blogging: “I will not dignify such comments… the rest of the bait I will not take!”) Squid wishes both a speedy recovery and hopes they keep a safe distance from all forms of lights in the future.