Green House effect

In a very special Higher Ground, our pastoral panel gets a week off as we focus on the first Hindu opening prayer in the 157-year history of the California state Senate. Our take: What took so flippin’ long? The answer may lie with Republican legislators biblically programmed by nutbars hellbent on making Christianity the sole religion among all levels of government.

Speaking of GOP state senators, they get the ol’ green-fingered salute in this week’s Editorial, which backs Attorney General Jerry Brown’s lawsuit to compel San Bernardino County to consider greenhouse gases in its new General Plan.

Speaking of Green House, that’s Sena Christian’s column debuting today. Every week, Sena reports on sustainable building practices through the greenovation of a certain North Sac structure. Her painstaking research uncovers sustainable designs, materials and systems that will be incorporated into the building. What makes her column in the Green Days section unique is that building’s future occupant (a certain hometown alternative newsweekly). Given the superpowers she lords over us, many staffers lobbied to call her column “Sena the Eco-Warrior Princess.” That notion was quickly quashed when Sena threatened to put the office composting heap next to our cubicles.

Speaking of comic-book heroes, Matt Groening’s Life in Hell is gone from SN&R after 18 years of solid service. The cut Groening gets from The Simpsons Movie should ease the sting. Taking over that spot is Ogg’s World by award-winning cartoonist, UC Davis graduate and Washington state resident by way of “The Gateway to the Delta” Antioch, Doug “Yes, That is My Real Last Name” Ogg. “As a kid, the only free signals from a civilized world that could reach Antioch originated in Sac,” Ogg tells us. “I grew up on things like Captain Delta, Geoff Wong’s Adventure Theater and KZAP.” His off-kilter comic is not overtly political or topical. “My focus is lunacy and anarchy, and with Ogg’s World everything is possible subject matter. I’ve found that readers [of the alternatives] have pretty broad interests. They appreciate the bizarre, the offbeat and the esoteric. Ogg’s World provides a nice companion to the type of editorial content that distinguishes papers like SN&R from the increasingly dull and ordinary mainstream media.”