Careful with those chopsticks, mister

Way back in January 2003, there was John Seth the Seattle guy who left his parking lights on and returned to his car to find a $28 dollar ticket. Seth was miffed, and even the SPD legal counsel said he wasn't aware of a law against leaving the lights on. Of course, that couldn't be the end of the story. Almost 50,000 readers clicked in on the saga.

	1,385 pounds of pure, prize-winning pumpkin

January will also have to be remembered as a sleepy month; when a Seattle high school decided to let its pupils sleep in, you clicked. When the Sea-Tac airport screener got fired for napping, you clicked. And that mummified man whose body was found in a noose? Click, click, click.

The news you couldn't resist was a little quiet after that -- all right, February was the month Playboy went in search of willing bare-istas at Starbucks, and there was more fun to be had at Sea-Tac in March, when a war-protesting passenger discovered a surprise left inside his suitcase by an inspector. March also brought us the mall thief who went on a panty raid (now, what was so interesting about that, you 14,000 readers?) And, many of us got caught up in the April story of the Seattle Municipal Court magistrates who got caught playing hooky in Maui, when they were supposed to be attending a conference. It made it easier to argue our parking tickets with a straight face.

Next year, we're going for the yam with marshmallows soda

But nothing could compare, all year, in fact, with those high school kids whose field trip to Seattle included a stop at a strip club near the Pike Place Market. There's a tale to tell behind this particular posting. It may have been up on the site for all of two hours when a note came from the Managing Editor of the paper, in response to a reader's complaint. "Do you really want this on the site?" was the tone, and we decided probably not. In the meanwhile, a little Web site called the Drudge Report picked it up; these things happen on the web, and the story took on a long life of its own. May, it was our #1 story. June, too. Still right up there in July. About a half million people read that two-hour post. You crazy clickers.

By mid-summer, you were a bit more interested in the success of Friendster and arrival of that Playboy Starbucks pictorial. Imagine our surprise, then, when August brought big numbers to the story of a soon-to-be-married couple who planned to kiss for the first time on their wedding day. (They were glad they waited, in case you were curious).

Romance must have been in the air, because the engagement of a Microsoft consultant to Danish royalty in September made your keyboards fly, as did the DSHS rule against office romances.

	Paris Hilton: hotel heiress and so much more

Come October, the big news was BIG, all right. And in November, eyeballs were torn between reports of the tab for a Bill Clinton speaking engagement and the arrival of naked sushi in our fair city. We swallowed that news along with our Jones turkey and gravy soda.