For awhile on election night, as the minutes ticked by and every other county in Washington released early voting totals, those of us who still live and die by the print deadline started to sweat.

Had swine flu jumped species and infected Pierce County computers? Did ACORN workers drop off several bags of late ballots? Did the auditor mix up the voter registration and dog license databases? The county finally coughed up the first results at 9 p.m. – a half hour late, but still early enough to let Auditor Jan Shabro get to bed by 10:30.

And while the Tacoma mayor’s race threatens to drag into another Gregoire-Rossi or Karzai-Abdullah affair, a couple things are certain enough to run through the ol’ sniffer.

Godspeed, ranked choice voting. We hardly knew ye. It must’ve been a cool experiment, because the former bass player from Nirvana loved it.

But when marking that extra ballot, was anyone else reminded of an annoying automated telephone system, minus the Muzak? “If you’d like a good candidate, press 1. If you’d like a mediocre candidate, press 2. If you’d like a bad candidate, press 3. If you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or are too lazy to make a decision, press all three buttons and you’ll be put on hold for 17 days.”

Le Schnoz doesn’t condone violence, despite the fact that a letter writer this week compared us to “the kid who hung around with the schoolyard bully and ridiculed the kids the bully beat up.”

But, oh, to be a fly on the wall during Tuesday night’s scrum at the county Election Center between Ken Miller and Ronnie Bush. Miller is a scrappy supporter of Tacoma mayor hopeful Marilyn Strickland; Bush is the matronly-looking campaign manager of mayor opponent Jim Merritt.

Words were exchanged, physical contact was alleged and a politician broke it up. (See Political Buzz item, page A4.)

Memo to Miller: There’s an important lesson we learned in grade school. It’s one thing to hang out with bullies, but never, ever, pick a fight with a girl. Especially if she’s from Brooklyn.

Heaven help us, it’ll be crazy in downtown Seattle this weekend when about 600 atheists and agnostics gather for the annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

One of the highlights will be Saturday’s “nonprayer breakfast.” It will open when conventioners hoot, holler and tap on water glasses to protest all those insulting moments of silence they’ve endured.

These folks know how to party. We trust police will order extra patrols around the godforsaken event.

Put a few too many drinks in ’em, and they just might replace the Bibles in the hotel desk drawers with copies of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.”

Here’s how the Red Lion workers can tell an atheist from an agnostic this weekend. When the atheist wakes up with a hangover, he won’t believe how much he’s spent on room-service booze. The agnostic won’t care because there’s no way to prove it was him.

There will be no youth basketball this season in the Place Without a University. Maybe no baseball either. But if you like extra-inning action, you shoulda been at this week’s UP City Council meeting.

It took 51/2 hours for the free-for-all to grind to a close at 12:18 a.m. Tuesday. The council had to watch the clock and vote to extend the meeting four different times.

Good thing this crew pays itself a salary instead of an hourly wage. Most of ’em probably would put in for time-and-a-half overtime.

A talented high-wire dancer from the University of Puget Sound class of 2002 is featured in the autumn issue of Arches, the UPS alumni magazine.

Her name is Kate Law Hoflich, and though she now has a dance company in San Francisco, she gives Tacoma a little love from above in one of her aerial acts.

It’s called “Skimming the Tacoma Narrows,” and it’s set to an original piece of music by the same name.

The article doesn’t mention the cost to see the show. We’re guessing four bucks – $2.75 if you have a Good to Go pass.

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