You think it's hard not to giggle now when a Cleveland police cruiser pulls up and flashes one of those department logos that looks serendipitously like a cartoon pig? Well, try keeping a straight face when you see one of them logos on the side of one of the department's two new Segway i2 community policing transports.

But try to run, and see who's giving the piggyback rides now. No matter how many free doughnuts Officer Jetson is balancing in his cardio-challenged arms, the i2 will compensate with pure technological prowess, able to turn on a dime and switch from a walking speed of 3 mph to a sprint at 12.5 mph in less time than it takes for Joe Perp to swallow his rocks.

The department tested out the models a few years back and have now committed two to permanent airport duty at a price of about $6,000 a pop, allowing officers patrolling the concourses to 1) chase down particularly speedy idiots with futuristic abandon and 2) pretend they work for one of those truly progressive cities like Chicago or Atlanta, which jumped on the bandwagon years ago with entire fleets for faster, more efficient community policing.

Chip MacDonald, Segway's spokesman, referenced a Department of Justice study that revealed a community police officer to be the Segway's best partner: "One officer in the study, he'd been in law enforcement since 1975 and said that, bar none, this was the greatest community policing tool he'd seen in that time. It's putting a lot of officers on foot to mingle with the community and have conversations that you can't have in a car but it also allows them to move and react much more quickly" - three times the speed of old-fashioned gum-shoeing.

It's unclear whether the department has plans to expand its Segway fleet, however. For now, the city will have to be content with its airport community being policed more effectively while neighborhoods continue to be crushed under the weight of the Way Things Are. It's like the single wind turbine at the Great Lakes Science Center: more for the tourists than Cleveland. — Dan Harkins

SEARCH FOR AN HONEST DEMOCRATIC LAWYER COMES UP SHORT

Last week, Gov. Ted Strickland announced his replacement for Attorney General Marc Dann, who resigned amidst a scandal chockful of sex, nepotism and greed. It was a chance to clean up the image of the state Democratic party before the fall elections. Unfortunately, he appointed Nancy Hardin Rogers, an attorney with a serious conflict of interest - her husband works for a law firm that receives more than $1 million in contracts from the AG's office each year.

It gets a little more complicated. To avoid any appearance of impropriety, Rogers has said she will keep her name off legal proceedings until all the ethical quandaries are ironed out. First Assistant AG Thomas Winters' name was used instead. But Winters once worked for the very same law firm at which Rogers' husband is employed, Vorys, Sater, Seymore and Pease. By the way, Winters was once a lobbyist for Tom Noe, the dude who invested Workers' Comp money into his rare coin collection - a scandal that Dann used to beat Republican Betty Montogomery. (Just before deadline, Rogers demoted Winters and promised not to award her husband any more contracts.)

After appointing Rogers, Strickland was forced to release a list of potential candidates for the AG seat who are being considered for the job, thanks to a public records request filed by the Columbus Dispatch. A couple local names appeared on the short list: Congressman Tim Ryan (who, the Free Times revealed last week, allegedly paid political consultant Tim Russo through a video editing company in order to keep his infamous name off campaign finance reports) and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason (who has yet to indict his college roommate, disgraced former county Recorder Patrick O'Malley, for offering a bribe to his political opponent).

Here's an idea: Why don't we just give the job to Matthew Barrett, the Democratic state representative who resigned in April after he accidentally showed nude pictures to a high school class - and then blamed it on his son - only to confess later that the pictures were his? At least we'd have something interesting to watch during PowerPoint presentations. - James Renner

ASK A BASTARD

Dear Bastard: My girlfriend isn't fat, but she isn't skinny either, and she keeps buying clothes that are tight and revealing. I've kept quiet about it because I'm pretty sure I know how that conversation would go. But she just ordered a bikini and I wonder if she thinks she's going to look as hot as the model in the catalog. Because she's not. What should I do? By the way, I'm no model either, but I don't walk around in tank tops and Speedos.

Dear Captain Crisco: You have body-shame, your S.O. doesn't. Does your self-consciousness really have to extend to her? She's clearly fine with her form, but you're not, at least as far as her appearance in public goes, though I'm guessing she looks good enough for you to wanna fuck her. Do you have any idea how dickish you're being? This is on the verge of being controlling behavior. It's not full-fledged yet, for you have kept quiet about it, which I applaud, but you want to say something, which is disgusting. Fuckin' A, if you can't handle how someone you presumably profess to love dresses in public, don't be seen with her in public. Let her go so she can find an S.O. who's not such a shame case.

Dear Bastard: Do you buy into the concept of "reverse racism"? Long story short: A friend of mine is complaining that he's suffering from it at work. Part of me wants to laugh in his face and/or smack him in the head for being ignorant. But he's a good guy and I've never known him to be irrational.

Dear Grand Wizard's BFF: I love how the questions about bigotry are always about "a friend of mine." But whatever, you've given no meaningful details, so I can't give much of an answer. But since I've heard all the angles of this kind of shit before from dumbfuck whites who refuse to acknowledge the reality of white privilege, I'm going to go ahead anyway: The person your friend presumes to be an Affirmative Action hire who got the job he wanted might have actually been more qualified than him. Even if not, AA exists because minorities are systematically fucked every day and in every job in the USA. Sorry your friend feels he got hosed, but his problem isn't as big as the hideous societal problem that continues to make AA necessary. As for the term "reverse racism," when discrimination against white males in America becomes as widespread a problem as discrimination against our browner citizens has been for as long as they've been here, your asshole racist cracker bitch friend can then draw such equivalencies. But not one second sooner.