The Bell Curve

City Paper's Quality-o-Life-o-Meter

- 5 Lynne Abraham says "local gangs and marijuana growers everywhere are positively overjoyed" at current D.A. Seth Williams' move to handle marijuana possession cases more leniently. As are local taxpayers who no longer have to pay to try non-violent stoners. Know what, Abe? Why don't you and Dick Cheney go spoon in a bunker?

- 5 Police use a Taser to apprehend a teenage Phillies fan who ran onto the field at Citizens Bank Park. Here's to you, cranked-up batboy cop, you're living the dream.

- 1 Anthony Williams releases a negative attack ad against gubernatorial opponent Dan Onorato. If you haven't seen it: Imagine a Care Bear cursing out a stick of butter.

- 7 Gov. Ed Rendell announces that the state is wracked with a $1.1 billion budget shortfall. Also: "I'm going to lunch."

- 8 State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe proposes an illegal-immigration bill modeled after the recently passed Arizona legislation. For an encore, he climbs to the top of the Constitution Center and takes a crap down the side.

+ 1 The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board allows a Sheetz in Altoona to sell takeout beer. Because nothing brings into clearer focus the necessity for draconian laws than their random enforcement.

0 Steve Wynn, the gambling mogul who withdrew from the Foxwoods Casino project last month, says "we backed out of a deal, rather than backing out of Pennsylvania." Adding: "Which we are also doing."

0 Philadelphia magazine's editor, Larry Platt, gives departing food editor Ashley Primis a photograph of a cyst removed from his testicles. Which themselves had been removed when he took the job.

0 The new owners of the Inky and Daily News choose former Newsweek president Gregory Osberg to be their publisher and CEO. And the editor will be this poster of a kitty hanging from a branch. Hang in there, kitty!

This week's total: -25

Last week's total: 5