GO AHEAD, MAKE MY MANTRA… Sometimes Squid stands in front of the mirror, all steely-eyed and sneering, doing the world’s best imitation of a tough former Carmel mayor threatening punks with guns. (No, not Sue McCloud – she’s still in office.) Still, imagine Squid’s surprise upon finding out that movie-screen tough guy and real-life Renaissance man Clint Eastwood, along with director/philanthropist David Lynch, British bad boy comedian Russell Brand and a host of others were helping launch Operation Warrior Wellness, a national initiative to teach 10,000 veterans and their families a simple meditation practice for preventing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The program officially started on Dec. 13 at a conference on Transcendental Meditation for PTSD at the Paley Center for Media in New York. Add TM practitioner to Eastwood’s long list of accomplishments – while he wasn’t at the conference in person, his office confirms he sent his karma through the airwaves via video.

HIGHER (L)EARNING… Squid can’t wait to see Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job at the Osio. The documentary is supposed to be a thorough breakdown of the global financial crisis. Seniors in the economics class of Seaside High School’s Jason Fatz, though, are getting their own education on how Wall Street works (or doesn’t). As part of their curriculum, 46 teams of two-to-four students each were given $100,000 in faux bucks to make stock purchases through a tool called The Stock Market Game. The kids have been competing since September with 17 other area schools, and they’ve followed the real stock market as they bought and sold shares of Nike, Apple and other companies. At one point, one of their teams – Francis Nguyen, Kayla Limpiaco, Kaitlyn McKenzie – was ranked second in the contest of 620 teams, beating the S&P 500 by 13.9 percent. But Fatz allowed that that could change in the span of a week. “[The kids] realized it is a little bit like gambling,” says Fatz. Wish Squid had taken Seaside High’s investing course before taking all those clams to the seahorse track.

ORANGE CRUSH… One of Squid’s pals was strolling the beach near Spanish Bay when a fellow bi-ped made a request: Find out what’s behind the spread of orange plastic fencing near Spyglass and the Pebble Beach Lodge. The Pebble Beach Company’s Mark Stilwell reports the fencing represents dreams of what the company wants to build and what areas would be impacted. Considering PBC has been negotiating those plans with the California Coastal Commission for 20 years, as Squid’s pal puts it, “Homes spring eternal.”