In the day |
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Post #2444. From an ancient blog ~1580. When Michel de Montaigne first wrote, The man who is happy is not he who is believed to be so but he who believes he is so ,in high school, he got his paper back with a big red "AWK!" written next to his attempt at the "Write an Aphorism" assignment. Years later, he dragged it out and got it published during the flowering of a time when worthy thinkers were seeking new truths. You young writers, keep that in mind.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Post #2443. Nicks. Back in the 90's, Ken Griffey installed nicknames for his Seattle Mariners teammates, and most of them have stuck: Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez, Randy "Big Unit" Johnson, Jay "Bone" Buhner. A theme? We'll never know; what happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse. Fast forward to 2009, A-Rod is having "Millennial Moments" in the World Series, and a news report indicates he has not one, but TWO, paintings of himself as a Centaur hanging above his bed. So, remember youngsters, you can have absolutely everything you prayed for and dreamed about and still end up a prick. Rick Macherat
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Post #2442. The auspicious day arrives. I'd better type fast or this machine will make it November 2, and no amount of powers known to me would be able to change it. I'm starting to get real, real nervous about machines, and watching a Discovery Channel program about how very, very hard the mad scientists are working to create nanobots .. well, that only made it worse. Haven't those guys ever heard of Wesley Crusher? The auspiciousness about today is the fact that two of my three most major moves were made on this day, November 1, 1959 to Japan and November 1, 1978 to Hawaii. Crossed a lot of water on those two dates, and in the process I LOST both of them. The first was because of the International Date Line, and the second was a result of the World's Absolute Worst Hangover. I partied the night before until 3:30am, then went home and packed, slept about 43 minutes and just made the flight. Because of all the auspiciousness, new job and all, I had purchased a First Class ticket. However, I passed out the instant my head hit the seat back and slept all the way to Hawaii, awakening with a not-exactly-first-class drool and completely missing all the first-classness of the experience. I know, I told you all this before, but since "Archives" and "Search" don't work, you can't see any posts before #2241 Danged if he didn't do it again. Rick Macherat
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Post #2441. An auspicious day coming up. A survey from a company that I do business with came today, and the cozy letter which accompanied it was from their "Executive Vice President, Engagement." Isn't that precious? I say a little prayer each day that I am out of the workforce, hopefully forever. Why do I think that when this particular job title proliferates across industry, and it will, the position will always be filled by very high-energy women in their mid- to late thirties and never by crusty old men coasting out the last few years before retirement? This is his second bout with testicular cancer. This isn't funny, of course. Cancer is Not Funny. But I don't think he'll have to worry about a third bout with testicular cancer, will he? More about soccer. I watched a sports news segment tonight - our very, very longstanding sports director was doing the piece. Nothing much going on actually: we have no NBA team anymore, of course; it's a bye week for our football team; as for the Mariners - they've been playing golf for weeks, and what is there to say about Philadelphia vs New York? So, that left soccer. He should get an award for his spirited coverage of our Very First professional soccer playoff match. Qwest Field was filled to capacity, all lime green. It was about a two-minute segment, with clips of people bumping into one another, balls sailing into the stands, lots of running, lots and lots of running. Kind of the way my little brother used to run madly about with his eyes closed. Finally he revealed the score: 0-0. Zero-Zero, or naught-naught as they say. Sixty-seven thousand people filed out, shouting, singing soccer songs, yelling soccer things, clearly thrilled by the experience. As for me, I've typed about six sentences describing my feelings about it and backspaced each one of them out. (Have you ever seen Night of the Living Dead?) As if that wasn't enough ... Rick Macherat
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Post #2440. The STR Rate. Remember back when the rate for a hotel room was posted on the back of the door? Later, they took that off and replaced it with the floor evacuation map. These days the rate can change by the hour. It's crazy, and we put up with it. I do have a confession to make on that, like the one about office cubicles. See, I invented made-up room rates. Back when I was desk-clerking, people would come in and ask how much a room was. "Nineteen dollars plus tax," I would reply. After a number of people walked away, I started asking if they were traveling on business or pleasure. There is no wrong answer! I would then set them up with our "STR Rate" for which they were qualified via any demographic they came up with. Sometimes it was $14.00, but late at night when I could see they had a honey waiting out in the car, I would go to $10.00. I called that my "Have a heart, guy!" rate. Our auditor did not care for my doing this, though I've lived long enough to see that it eventually caught on. Rick Macherat
Friday, October 23, 2009
Post #2439. Rubble. The most memorable present from my 14th birthday was a subscription to National Geographic, and I have every single issue published since then plus about six years of earlier issues given me by a friend. A few weeks ago I finally finished the shelving of these hundreds and hundreds ..  and the photograph doesn't begin to capture the extent of wreckage. I'm probably going to be hard to live with until this one is fixed. No idea when that might be.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Post #2437. Google poked me. After an unprecedented length of time without a post, there was a hit from the googlebot. That sort of answered the question for me about what happens when you die virtually. Evidently, Google checks on you periodically for awhile, then it erases you. I would imagine without any ceremony. Sometimes I wonder about those supposedly bright people back east in the government. Seems they plan to squeeze a couple hundred billion dollars worth of waste and fraud out of Medicare, for starters. I wonder if they've thought about the people, many many thousands of people, who are making good livings off that waste and fraud, not to mention the multiplier effect. Classes in How to Start a Medicare Durable Medical Device Business are taught all over the developing world, and the industry itself is likely one of the largest in the country, after marijuana cultivation of course. Putting a sudden stop to it could throw us right back into a recession. Fortunately, they will never put a stop to it because the folks at Medicare would have far less work to do without all the phantom claims to process. Sister-in-law is on another cruise. She has emailed friends and family to watch when the ship transits the Panama Canal. There's a website with streaming video. We've all assured her that we'll set our alarms for 4:30 am to be sure we're up, computers running, in time to watch her wave, along with the other 2,500 pax. And she will be waving frantically, I know, completely thrilled that everyone back home is watching. zzzzzzzzzzz Saw an ad for this ..  much more my speed.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Post #2436. I do not like this person. Michael Moore has the wisdom and wit of an impacted stool. Michael Moore is the Bernard Madoff of film making. Michael Moore was on CNBC's Power Lunch. They could have warned us. They probably did. You had the sound turned down. Oh yeah. Still, I don't do well when sudden unpleasant things happen. What do you say or do when someone like Michael Moore is so gross that he actually defies description in just about every language but Ket, and even if Michael Moore spoke Ket you couldn't say anything Ket enough to hurt his feelings? Tnila ammokn ket nnakarnagra sakdak nu maknitu. Hey, good one.Rick Macherat
Friday, September 18, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Post #2434. Rethinking Facebook. You've probably read about how oldsters are taking over Facebook. It's true. I'm on it, and it seems that a number of my acquaintances are too. I originally went on to look up names of people I knew to see who was still alive. The SSDI isn't always accurate. I wasn't there long before people started finding me. Women mainly, seems that's what they do from a certain age onwards. It's never mentioned, but likely things are starting to get a little boring around the house. Rather than hit a few cocktail lounges at lunch and/or on the way home from work, like the old man does, these ladies hit the keyboard. Let me share just two recent sets of posts, first from a somewhat younger one, says don't go see Julie & Julia on a day when you are on a restricted diet! You will want to go home and eat BUTTER and chocolate cake. I can't have any carbohydrates until after a test they're doing tomorrow ... but tomorrow afternoon ....And from the other one, a lady my age, is having her colonoscopy tomorrow, so it's nothing but clear liquids from now on. Wish me luck. .and on and on and what's more each of them has a gaggle of other lady friends who chime in with messages of support. And their pages are just like these it turns out. The only old male friend I've managed to land has a new dog. He is totally absorbed in this dig. I don't think any of his children, grandchildren and great-granchildren for all I know had the emotional impact equal to the arrival of this dog.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Post #2433. Some more auspiciousness. With today being oh-nine, oh-nine, oh-nine, something should be written. Pause. Okay, what? I did read that the number nine is an auspicious one for the Chinese, something about the emperor and it being the largest single-digit number. I thought it was the number eight and am beginning to believe they regard all numbers as auspicious. Which is fine. I was mentioning to Brother today about how 09/09/09 would not occur again for another century, and his disinterest made me realize that the whole thing is an artifact of our having so few months. We could easily have 39 months if we wanted to, except there would be a lot more paperwork. So much for that. I've mentioned it, typed rather aimlessly about it, so now I'm covered. A Melanoma Moment,  Honey, why don't you come in from the sun for awhile ... I can joke about Melanoma because I have it. Anyway, did I ever tell you about the first, and only legitimate, traffic ticket I ever got? It was right here,  where I had missed my exit off the freeway, driven a bit farther and exited the wrong way UP the entrance-ramp. This wasn't exactly downtown LA; this was so far in the boonies and the next exit was so many miles down the road that it was almost a necessity. It probably made the day for the State Trooper waiting on the overpass for speeders as he likely hadn't seen a car at all for an hour or more. Long story short, my dad made me go to court to be confronted with my crime as he was very unhappy about it. I didn't understand you could just mail in the fine. In court, the judge was flustered and impatient, could not understand what the ticket was about despite my explaining several times, and he dismissed the charge. Whuu-uuut? What's even more astounding about it is the car had four teenage boys and you would think virtually a 99% guarantee of some beer aboard, (these days it would be weed) but the officer didn't ask or check. That's how lucky I was in those days. Blessings, yes I count them often, believe me. Thirty years later I got another ticket in a wholly different time and place, a totally bogus one, and I paid the $77 fine by mail. I've boycotted FEDERAL WAY, WASHINGTON ever since. Nasty little town, don't go there. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Post #2432. Pizza Night. I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and found a stray piece of sausage, caused me to think: just how far has this bit of .. whatever, come since it last oinked? This was a frozen pizza from Safeway. I don't even want to think about the process which brought that oink from the pristine field where it grew up to my tv tray. One of the things we're going to discover when it hits the fan is that we have no clue about food - where it comes from, how it gets to us, etc. All we'll know is that the Safeway is out, then we will riot. What else would there be at that point? Learn to farm? I like to inject meaningless observations into conversation sometimes, like, "When I was growing up, we used to have great fun climbing the artichoke tree. We built a great tree house and fort up there." Does anyone ever challenge your nonsense? Almost never. Speaking of old guys who knew how to do things, my father was a member of the greatest generation, a pilot and a four-sport letterman, so he could do anything. My brothers and I, on the other hand, were complete morons. That wouldn't be so bad except it was still true when we were well into our late thirties. Anyway, as youngsters, we would be digging in the everything drawer in the kitchen, and he would say, "What are you boys looking for out there?" "We're trying to fix the mumble-mumbliddy, dad." Pause. "Oh, well come in here and I'll show you how to get that thing working." (How did he know? Turns out it didn't matter.) "See, what you do is .." and the rest was all hands and expressions like ".. these gizmo's usually have a flanged niblick on the anterior derivative, and what you want to do is.." and some more with the hands. Old guys and their hands, huge gnarly hands, and when they're pilots, well, forget trying to have a clue. Eventually, he would make the finger one hand go into the closed finger circle on the other and I so wanted at least once before he died to say, "Dad, what does fucking have to do with it?" but I never did. Anyway, so we thank him and go out to resume repairs on what of course we have by then completely lost interest in. "Did you understand any of that?" Brother #2: "No." Brother #3: "Of what?" What's strange is that I'm already twice the age he was then and he STILL seems like an old guy.Rick Macherat
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Post #2431. Flu. The news just showed a fat girl walking down the street, coughing into the crook of her arm. There was no one near her. I think she was a student at my alma mater, Washington State University, where the H1N1 flu has hit hard - 2,000 cases. Hey, they're all doing it, there goes another one. I must say that the learning habit has really picked up at WSU since I was there. How far in the boonies is Washington State University? CNN reports this morning that there are hundreds of cases of H1N1 Swine Flu in the east and southeastern United States. Next to none out west. Pullman is a loooonnnnng way from nowhere. I bet it could get nuked and no one would know about it for a couple of months - probably until around Thanksgiving when students started not coming home with three months laundry. Rick Macherat
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Post #2430. Noblesse oblige Madonna went to Romania, where she observed (to 60,000 people at her Sticky and Sweet concert,) "It has been brought to my attention ... that there is a lot of discrimination against Romanies and Gypsies in general in Eastern Europe. It made me feel very sad."Brought to my attention? Her audience generally did not care for the comment and booed her. I can understand this. Romanians would likely be ambivalent about Madonna: sure, she's filthy; but on the other hand she doesn't steal. Also, given Romania's awkward history with rulers, one might expect some annoyance with a fake aristocrat. Time magazine quotes Shiv Shivakumar, managing director of Nokia in India, "In the West people have gone from the PC to the converged device. In India, people will skip the PC and go straight for the converged device." Now, right off the top, I've never heard of a "converged device," but it's pretty easy to figure out what it is. I bought one of those Big Shoe cellphones early, way back when, and I've had about ten of them since. But after awhile all these technological advances start to wear you out. Really. That, and the providers and contracts. And customer service. One of the manufacturers, I forget which, has announced a Converged Device which has a tiny, motorized roll of Charmin on board. Now, that's just too converged for me. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Post #2429. Is this the beginning of the end? Let me explain. I don't know anyone now who remembers the Great Depression, so there's no one to ask. You'd have to be over eighty. So, tonight when I mused to the sister-in-law about the state of grocery produce during that era, she wanted to know why. I explained that my produce has been crap for two weeks now: no decent oranges, apples mushy (and this is in Washington State!) and worst of all the bagged salads are gawdawful. Almost no lettuce, and what there is looks like it came out of the dumpster. Incidentally, this was from Fresh Express Incorporatedabout which the following news report came out on Jul. 15 -- Chiquita Brands International has brought in its own fresh-cut fruit expert to lead Fresh Express, the Salinas-based bagged-salad maker it acquired last month for $855 million.Wonderful. At least we know what happened. I bet Tanios doesn't have to eat garbage lettuce. Back to the sister-in-law. When I told her of my produce concerns, she explained that it was the same all over and was because of the recession. Seems enough people are scaling down that the retailers are as well. Get used to it. See, when the sister-in-law says something like that, I pay close attention and believe, because she is an Olympic Athlete of Shoppers. If there is only one ripe tomato in the greater Seattle metro area, she will find it and buy it, but not before she haggles the price down. That's silly. You can't haggle at Safeway. Pay attention; I said she was Olympian and I meant it. Safeway would be a slow sprint for her. I even saw a produce manager tremble at Whole Foods, and that's saying something. Those people don't kow-tow to No Body. They've all got bags of wet weeds for salad and mushy fruit. She'll be among the last ones left, you know, after it hits. After what hits? It. What does it hit? The fan. She can eat anything, and she'll roust up a campsite in no time with little or no supplies and make it comfortable enough for a week's stay. She would have made a great wife, I sometimes say, if only she wasn't completely insane. Rick Macherat
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Post #2428. What I'm Reading. A lot of bloggers do that, to show off mainly, so I will too. It's Michael Rowan-Robinson, COSMOLOGY (Oxford University Press, 1977.)I wanted something which came before 13 dimensions, "Branes," and the other current theories explained so casually on the Discovery Channel. I plan pretty much to ignore the  stuff. So far, so good, but I'm only on page 5. Rick Macherat
Post #2427. Back to school. So, it was a Saturday night and the football game was going poorly for us, so I surfed, ending up way up there in the channels. It was educational, looked like a symposium from the University. Oh good, IT. I listened for a bit and so the task of the manager living in that environment is more, and more, trying to put .. "Here is a situation that I have or a conversation that I have about a particular issue. Here is, here's some really important facts and kind of here is my theory right now on that," and you're continuously doing that, and what you're also, you know, what we do with another classic case is, and we try to communicate to students to work on. One is undergraduate MBA's, you know, the Executive Education. The other is General Management. There are general managers out there today that literally do not, you know, they're still playing IT as a spectator sport and not as a participatory sport. They're leaving it to their "tech guy."Well, if I had been taking notes, that would have probably gone down as "we're important too." Frankly, after about 17 years now with a personal computer, preceded by many more with the messy infancy of computers in the workplace, I'm still not sold, not even close. Had to laugh, thinking back .. a few years after our hotels went computer, first reservations then a property management system of the whole shebang, headquarters got the idea of putting a PC on the desk of every General Manager. They even went so far as to fly them back to the mothership for a little class on how to turn it on, etc. My boss, and 99% of the bosses, never touched the dang things. Which was good since they had no choice but to believe us when we now blamed most of our frequent regular catastrophes on "the computers went down." In other news, " .. had to be identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants .. " might represent the ultimate thin edge, as Sir Humphrey might put it, the thin edge of the inevitable obliteration of civilization as we know it. Knew it. They were winners on Megan Wants a Millionaire. Television tonight is identifying him as an on-the-run STAR of that program, and murderer, and her the apparently disassembled murder victim. Here they are:  I rest my case. Incidentally, the murderer/dismemberer has now made his way into Canada, thus assuring the "death penalty is off the table." In fact, you might not know it, but there is a special lane up at the border near here marked DEATH PENALTY EVASION LANE - EXPRESS. Though to be honest, the only problem I have with that is our local prosecutors try way too hard to get the worst killers back.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Post #2426. A squib for the times. It was reported: Investors jittery about consumer confidence. Think about it. Business-channel writers usually cite something coincidental, but I have to assess that one as a poor toss indeed. Back of the line for you, squibber. Every afternoon at the same time, "Turkey in the Straw," signals the approach of our neighborhood ice cream truck. This is not my childhood ice cream truck. It's a Toyota pickup with a freezer on the back, with a rather America's-Most-Wanted-looking Hispanic man driving at about 20 m.p.h., so I can't imagine how he would get any business. Not that mothers in this neighborhood, or in these times, would let their children out of the house to chase a truck down the street anyway. Poor guy, somebody really saw him coming. Wonder how much of his probably quite small remaining resources he had to sink into that loser. On the positive side of the Bad Times, good prices and excellent service have finally arrived. Even though my own income is down quite a bit, I've taken advantage of it and am buying as much stuff that I will never need as I can. I knew this recession had reached its depths when the (polite!) cable customer service agent offered to credit me for 24-hours without service for a minor outage not nearly that long. Maybe it was because I was nice. I've been working on that. My head is still spinning a bit from earlier tonight when I watched the NOVA episode on Fractals. Especially since I missed the first part where presumably they told you what fractals are and how to do them. Kidding .. I know what they are, or what it is, but no clue beyond that. Okay, I'm back .. went to a page on Mendelbrot and Julian Sets and, it's true, this stuff was all invented long after I took any math. And, as soon as I saw the word "sets" I pretty much quit reading. Suffice to say that if nature uses it to make stuff work, I'm good with that. Just hope to Whatever the dad-gummed computers never get hold if it. Rick Macherat
Monday, August 10, 2009
Post #2425. The Facebook. Yeah, I'm on it now, but I haven't typed anything yet. How about this: Rick went to the mall and bought some rubber bands. Then he came home and took a nap. I've come up with possible ideas on two of our most pressing, and LOUD, current problems. First the Looming Health Crisis, easily solved. We simply encourage all the people without health insurance to hook up with and become a "dependent" of someone who has coverage. Was that so hard? Okay, maybe the government would resist an official condoning of sham marriage/hookups. So if the experts are aghast at that idea, why can't we simply do it virtually? Think about it. As for the other one, the Looming Spectre of Inflation, I have no solution for that since it's going to be pretty much like a tsunami, but I can give some advice to folks who want to get through it with as little damage as possible: SPEND NOW. Spend til you drop. Run your credit cards up to the max, then get more cards. They will be easy to pay off in a year or so. This is all because the crap you buy now for, say, $1.99, $50.00 or $1,500.00 will be worth $2 million, $100 million and $1.5 billion once the Mega-inflato really gets rolling. I first became a believer on this subject back when I was about 10 and briefly collected stamps. In Germany by November of 1923 a stamp for a first class letter cost 800,000,000,000 marks. Think how you'll clean up at your yard sale! Rick Macherat
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Post #2424. Doing my part. For the past several weeks, my grocery delivery has included a complimentary package of three-gallon kitchen composting bags, 5-each, green (of course.) Inside the city of Seattle, composting food scraps is mandatory, but it is still optional out here in the suburbs, at least for now. I debated saving them, but instead I got in my car and drove all over the south part of Seattle, throwing them out of the car. Wasn't that a callously unenvironmental thing to do?! Not at all. Indignant people will literally fight one another for the chance to pick them up and then go home and rant about it, either in person to a significant other or in a well-written online exposition. It will make them happy. Rick Macherat
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Post #2423. Best to call first. Me: Hello?Rick Macherat
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Post #2421. Kids. They let the ten-year-old watch cable. Mom's upset that the kid wants the Dexter action figure. Dad's unhappy that he wants a dolly. Me, I know the great-grandson and I'm not worried about him. What worries me is that there is such a thing as a Serial Killer Action Figure (dolly,) and youngsters whine and scream until their parents buy it for them. I liked this, (may have to enlarge to read it)  another bit of evidence that we don't have to worry about the machines just yet. That machine "read" the text and "realized" it said something about UPS, so naturally it loaded a UPS advertisement. Caution: although we don't have to fear them yet, don't forget that they are our enemies, they intend to take over and get rid of us and they make little inroads every day, e.g., Kodachrome film, Twitter, etc. Several recently discovered lovely names for our file, Bokeem Woodbineand some special people having birthdays this month: Gloria Stewart - 99How about that, huh? Bless their hearts. It was reported recently that President Obama has an affinity for Urdu poetry. That was a surprise to me since Urdu poetry can be so grim, especially when read in Urdu. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Post #2420. Sloopy. The other night I happened to see a slice of concert by The McCoys, performing their megahit, "Hang On Sloopy." Every so often the camera would pan over the audience as they sang along, and most of those faces were not even close to old enough to remember the actual Sloopy Event in the last century. I have many happy sloppy memories of Sloopy - street dances and other crazy nights. Wonder why they don't make fun silly songs anymore. The music seems so serious, at least I think it's serious If it was only the outer voice of skythough only a twenty-something would be able to tell for sure. Back to the McCoys - they were so desperately old, standing up there trying to rock on. Reminded me of how hard the 60's and 70's were on all of us, but how is it they can still draw crowds? It would be like my going to a concert with music from the Roaring Twenties. We were so self-absorbed that nothing earlier than 1958 or so had any earthly relevance at all. Speaking of words that escape me, get a load of this book review in Time magazine The title nods to her love of duality, but how could this measure up to the quiet audacity of that novelistic one-two punch? By working in opposition, it turns out. If her paired novels demonstrate that - e.g., a retelling - can be more, Both Ways shows how less really is too.Whuuuuuuut!? Is this what the summer girl laying out there on the park grass is reading? Oh sure, mosey over and strike up a conversation why dontcha. You are aware that you're a complete Cave Man? Yes, yes I am. Rick Macherat
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Post #2419. Nice to be back. My excuse is that if one could not type something good about Michael Jackson, then one shouldn't type at all until a decent period of time has passed. I know this is just plain awful, but with the video of the burning hair and all and it going all smoky when he spins around, well, in a way it's kind of funny like that judge getting shot in the face by Vice President Cheney. I mean "kind of," like teenage chortling, that sort of thing. Not funny to me, or us, of course. Tonight's cartoon shows some teenagers of the future, our children's children actually, racing across a lake in a powerboat, throwing beer cans and plastic bags over the side. Laughing their asses off at us. The first one shouts over the noise of the oil-and-smoke belching engine, What a bunch of dorks, huh, our parent's parents? Another replies, Sure were. They shouldda known the sun was going to become a red giant and toast us right along with all the crap we threw away. Whoopee! Pass me some more bags. Rick Macherat
Monday, June 29, 2009
Post #2418. Like flies on a steaming turd. Will the news ever return to wars, mayhem and politics? Probably not. This, and by this I mean the last three days, is evidently what we want and they, and by that I mean the media, would know. Michael Jackson around the clock until there was just the briefest pause ... during which Billy Mays had the extraordinary good timing to die, thus assuring himself of a place in history. We won't know exactly where that place is for around a thousand years when some future social scientist takes a look at this period. A black man buys three white babies. Then he changes himself into a white woman, fakes Lupus to get pain drugs in huge amounts for life, charges hundreds of millions of dollars to get stuff with no inclination to pay for any of it, and the world is pretty much okay with the whole fandangle. I have to think at least some black people have privately noted this with considerable amusement. Rick Macherat
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Post #2417. The end of Day 2 without Michael. And the sadness continues seemingly without end. I wrote this last night before finally drifting off to a fitful sleep, I'll always remember Michael Jackson for the children. It was always really For the Children, wasn't it? He always wanted to do something special just for them, and now he has. He died. And now they're safe. Well, the boys anyway.Yes, things won't be the same now that .. The gravytrain has derailed .. Yesterday, when I awoke from my nap, turned on the television and stared in bewilderment at the scrolling information, interestingly enough a single thought came first to my mind Crap. Now we'll never learn how this freakorama ends.See, this passage was never on the program. I feel quite certain that Michael had planned something much more lavish. This was so .. so LupeValezsque. Just imagine Michael Jackson dottering into his sixties and seventies, still fooling most of the people most of the time. Not only that, there was still unimaginable amounts of money rolling in every day and, since Michael didn't believe in paying bills, just think of the future scenarios which might have played out. The London concerts would have to be put off forever, since one cannot sing without a nose, and the machinations to accomplish that alone showed considerable promise. So many questions. Now that the payroll truck has gone off the cliff, who will talk first? Doctors, lawyers, accountants, victims? Pharmacists? Pharmacists? Why Pharmacists? Michael apparently accomplished something no other human being in the history of the word has managed: Credit at the Pharmacy. He stiffed his local drugstore for $101926.66. Imagine that. Rick Macherat
Monday, June 22, 2009
Post #2416. Big Bang. I was watching that show, The Big Bang Theory, and got to wondering if the guys CV's were on the Internet. Well, of course they are. Everything is on the Internet, including a detailed summary of the plan by the European Union to standardize the documentation of a CV to allow for trans-border checking and evaluation. They don't miss an i or a t. Those Euroes. Also on the subject of that show, did you know it was syndicated in Albania and Fiji, plus about thirty other countries? There was a flap awhile back when translators in Italy "dumbed down" a number of references to make them more understandable to their audience. For a nerd, something like that would really sting. Scenes from next week's Life After People program show the Space Needle falling down. I like this show but question some of their conclusions, like the Space Needle for instance. We all love to show the Space Needle falling down. It won't, ever. Oh sure, it will be consumed along with rest of the planet else when the sun goes supernova, but until then it will continue to stand there, overcharging everybody. I saw a man taking his cat under water wearing its own little kitty scuba gear. I wonder what type of and how much meds he had to give that cat. Then there's the guys who take flightless birds like chickens up for some hang gliding. I have mixed thoughts about this stuff. I could provide some "enjoyment" or entertainment for a chicken, or eat chicken, but not both. Comedian Bo Burnham has to be the funniest, cleverest 17 just turned 18-year-old in the history of the world. Yeah, you bring up Mozart .. but was he funny? I hope he doesn't get ruined. With a youngster like that, you sort of hope he looks around one day and sees how crappy life has become, how shallow and awful the hangers-on are, and just bugs out. That's enough fame, sex, drugs and money. Back to college and Anthropology. You have to wonder .. but is she really happy?  Even though I'm fairly conservative as political leanings go, I'll admit to some stirrings of latent liberalism from time to time. Nothing wrong with the getup, face, nose, jewels, breasts, gown, of course. Someone else would have purchased the emeralds anyway. Still .. There are several Asian families on our street. One of them that I'm acquainted with is the Wongs. They have two boys, Wordsworth and Watson, and a girl, Winnemucca. Mrs. Wong told me she loved the sound of of "Winnemucca" when she first heard it while watching Tales of the City. I didn't have the heart to tell her, you know, about Winnemucca. Television went digital. It was somehow reassuring to hear that quite a few people were staring at their sets when they went to noise and snow, and they had no earthly idea what was wrong. By the thousands they called somebody, mainly the tv stations, but there were banks of operators standing by just about everywhere it was believed those people might call. On the newscast reporting the changeover, one of our local stations recorded it: KONG-TV has been paid a fee for this progr zzzzzzz-t buzzzzzz. Things like that tend to mark this era for me. Another is the announcement that Kodak is discontinuing the production of Kodachrome film. Think about that. Just about everything will be finite from now on, exactly the way the machines want. Just think about that for a bit and decide if you like it. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Post #2416. DB's. Both of my parents saw a person die while they were each quite young. My father was 12 when he witnessed another child slip and fall while running at a swimming pool, splitting his head open and dying instantly. My mother saw a young boy's jugular cut when a bottle rocket exploded. She watched in horror as he bled out too quickly for anything to be done. She was ten years old. That incident figured prominently in some cautionary behavior the rest of her life, and the same is true of my father. Naturally, since they told me the stories when I was about the same age, I have been similarly affected/afflicted ever since. I never run at the pool, and I don't do too well around blood. I was lucky though, never viewing a dead body until I was thirty-nine. Pretty lucky. It was a Sunday, I had the duty (hotel,) when the security #2 called me, DB on the beach. He was a man of very few words. Very effective security man though, as I remember. There was nothing for me to do, of course, except make an appearance. Unfortunately, the new Big Boss has recently and ignorantly put all of senior management into jackets and ties, and it was in that garb that I went out to the beach to inspect the body. Yep, dead all right. And based on the amount of bloat, possibly for awhile. I can still relive the scene in my mind as if I'm right there: about a hundred near-naked gawkers, one bloated dead body, temperature in the high eighties and humid, and me in a jacket and tie. I would not have thought a human being could sweat that much. Between the heat and the setting, I started feeling a little woozy, so I placed Jim (the security guy) between the body and me so I couldn't see it and told him to talk. About what, sez he. I don't care, Jim, Just talk. Talk like you never talked before, then get me the fuck outta here. Good old Jim, bless his heart. He probably said more than he had in years until I was safely away from there and into the shade, and I think he understood very well that it definitely would not do for me to go crashing into the sand at that particular moment. It really didn't bother me that I was in the clear minority of hotel execs regarding death and the staff knew it. Most of the top managers love the adventure of it. My boss would pause a major boinking in the middle of the night to go and attend a mortal event. Especially suicides. Not me, boy. If I got a call while asleep from the night manager, it would go something like this, my end anyway. (Sleeeeeep.) (RING!) Hello.. (Listen, listen, listen)He would have fabricated an imaginative account of how I appeared shortly after the event and quickly took charge of the situation and written it all down very expertly in the Manager's Log had I asked him to, but I didn't. Wouldn't. He was a good guy, all of them were. I miss them.Rick Macherat
Monday, June 15, 2009
Post #2414. General Motors. The inevitable letter arrived. It was from Troy A. Clarke and included an attached coupon, "Owner Appreciation Certificate," worth some money toward the purchase of a new GM vehicle. Troy's letter said, in part, As you may know, GM is using an expedited, court-supervised process to accelerate the reinvention of our company.Yes, I thought so too .. we used to call comments like that mealy-mouthed. Here you have the greatest single failure in the history of the world - I considered the Third Reich briefly, but there was a time when General Motors could have bought the Reich - and they are recording it pretty much like taking care of a parking ticket. Frankly, I expected better. Some falling-upon-swords would have been nice, some kind of drama at least. Now, I've been in business situations where .. uh .. mistakes were made and maybe people got financially roughed up a little and there were meetings about it and, yes, public comments were pored over and reviewed and made to sound as mealy as possible and the key was above all DON'T MAKE IT WORSE, so I understand. It's just that this time was special, and the world won't get a chance to gawk in horror at a failure of this magnitude for awhile. Probably not until the U.S. itself goes down the tubes, which might not be that far off actually, and by then you have to wonder if anyone will even bother taking the time to do a statement.  a note: And The Google saw that he had typed about GM and It thought, "Look, he has typed about GM. Let Us send him an ad about that. And It did. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Post #2413. Observations from a recent outing. Had some stitches removed, then went shopping on a terrific, postcard Seattle day. When you shop on a Monday during a deep recession, customer service is fairly good. Not as good as past recessions, but that's only because the notion of "service" is anathema to Generation Z. They haven't learned that you serve when you're young and poor so you can get-served when you're old and rich. Will they figure it out - I'm not so sure about that. Their parents were almost as indulged as they are. Prices have a ways to come down yet. It's almost as if the retailers don't realize how close to death many of them are. Hey Guys! Look at the strip mall, see all those empty stores? I shop 99.999% online, so this trip was solely for Brother's benefit. He's getting a new computer for his birthday, and he wanted some hands-on. No exaggeration, Employees:Customers was at least 20:1 at Best Buy. I re-booted their system while doing my own hands-on. They weren't too upset about it that I could tell, although they did send the girl out to get the old geezer off the computer. Did you hear about the Cuba espionage case? It went on for over twenty years, and now the State Department is going to conduct a thorough investigation. If everyone involved wasn't so damn dumb, they'd be embarrassed. I mean, really .. what secret would we bother to keep from Cuber? I actually uttered this statement today, "I have too much money in my checking account." What I meant, speaking with the extremely Asian bank customer service woman, is that I wanted to transfer some funds from Checking to Savings but the machine wouldn't let me do it. Thinking back, I had to laugh. When I was younger, when would that remark ever have been remotely accurate? FOX News actually had this line on their news scroll: FUTURE DRUG STRATEGY TO FOCUS ON U.S. - MEXICAN BORDER. Must have been intern day at the news desk. Speaking of, have you noticed that television newsrooms are filled with people working away at computers? So, what could they possibly be doing? At most, cable news does 5-6 stories per half hour and the evening news not much better. And most of that is simply rip 'n read. I have a feeling all those "newspeople" are just folks they've pulled off the street and paid minimum wage to sit there and look busy. Now it's a Compensation Czar. Seriously, is "Czar" the right word? The guy in charge of a catastrophically failed economic system which came before a more recent catastrophically failed economic system? Another peeve, probably just me. I was a military brat, you knew that. Our family went through two long separations while we kids were pretty young. For me, it involved all of first grade and half of of the eighth and ninth. And the idea of my dad coming into a class I was in after being away for a year or so and staging a reunion in front of everybody PLUS a television audience .. unthinkable, insane, would/could never happen. Thank God. Our multi-zillion dollar Rem Koolhass PUBLIC LIBRARY and HOMELESSATORIUM has had to make some new rules. First, they've cut back on the shopping carts full of crap that the presently-unresidenced-visitors bring in. Second, security wakes people up more often, at least those who appear not to be doing any work at all (possessing a book for instance.) Third, and most draconian of all, the penalty for starting fires or selling drugs has been an increase in the expulsion time from one to two years. Now that's some tough love, Seattle style. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Post #2412. This was pretty funny. I enjoy reading Columns, the University of Washington alumni magazine. There is so much active brainpower in that part of our city that I think the local temperature actually runs a few degrees warmer up there. Sarah DeWeerdt writes columns for the magazine, and I was reading "Orca's Best Friend." We're totally into whales and salmon around these parts.. anything that swims for that matter, so I wasn't surprised to learn that a UW professor has been doing research on Orca scat. As is my bad habit, I scanned the intro without really reading it or absorbing anything until I got down to To find orca scat in the water, Tucker stands at the bow of the boat and sniffs the wind. When he catches a whiff, he becomes animated, straining over the edge of the boat. Then, the boat tacks back and forth as dog and humans play a collaborative interspecies game of getting-warmer and getting-colder, racing to spot the sample and fish it from the water before it sinks.Wow, I thought, gee whiz, this prof is really into his whale stuff, one of those amazing people at the university, completely unknown outside of their brainy circles. (I missed the intro and "dog," an offshoot of my last ministroke, perhaps.) Eventually, as always, I re-read things and discover .. Oh, Tucker is the dog; the professor is Samuel Wasser. He's the researcher along with grad student Katherine Ayers. Another hilarious mis-reading adventure.Rick Macherat
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Post #2411. Something must be done about these gangs. Just tonight on the late news, shootings in two locations. Down in Tacoma, one car full of gang members encountered another and the first car blasted away with too many rounds to count. Two gangsters got hit, both survived. About the same time up north of Seattle, another big shootout in a parking lot, but all we viewers were shown was the collection of 14 numbered cards on the ground. Evidently, this depicted the number of shots fired, still no one dead. Dudes .. hombres, a little pride, huh? Go down to the gun club and get some practice ferfookssake. If the rest of us are supposed to cringe in our basements from dusk to dawn so you can own the streets, at least accomplish something out there and thin out the ranks some for a change, yo? Rick Macherat
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Post #2410. Simile of the day. Getting old is like being run down by a speeding, overloaded garbage truck and then dragged for a mile or so and, unfortunately, surviving. For another twenty-five or forty years. There, anyone young who stumbled in here will recognize the status of the typer and quickly click out. Old people are irrelevant, especially these days. he twitted. It's true about the garbage truck, you know. Funny, our parents and grandparents didn't complain nearly as much as they could have. (Or as we do.) Of course, we have great insurance which enables the System to discover many, many more maladies to treat, maladies which would have killed most of us off much more rapidly in the past. I have to sympathize with X and Y here; it must be gawdawful to find the golf course and about everywhere else you might want to go just overflowing with bald but muscular 80-year-old men and their blonde and stretched wives. It's only going to get worse. Wait til the money situation improves. Most of us are staying home at the present, saving money. That's what we do. As soon as we can roll some of these lousy CD's into brand new 8% Jumbo's, watch out. Dust off the scuba gear! Here's an excellent picture of our mayor and the challenger. Repeating, this is a  good picture; most of the time both of them are really, really scary looking. It probably isn't very kind when I refer to them as Commissar Nichols and Comrade Drago but, geesh, look at that picture. With every year that passes, we add about four million sets of eyes to watch television, and none of them realize that the cable channels were not always like this. In fact, it wasn't until Gulf War I that they began to scroll information along the bottom of the screen. Believe it or not, The War was on 24/7, and they evolved the scroll to handle the other news at it happened. CNBC had this scroll one day last week, .. BREAKING NEWS .. HP 3Q EPS .89 vs. .88-.90 forecast .. Jim Norton, a comic, did a bit on the Comedy Channel where he made fun of the Kennedy assassination. It was graphic, mocking the President's head when struck by the bullet and Mrs. Kennedy's climb onto the rear of the Lincoln. The audience roared. They loved it. I wonder ... will 911 be that hilarious by, say, 2055? Probably. There was an ad for a Saturn (presently a car made by GM) featuring zero down and 72-months to pay. Seventy-two months! Will GM even be around that long. Uh .. not too likely, as of this morning. Hayell, will the country even be around in 72 months? I just mention that in passing as I'm watching two blondes and four legs bare to the crotch and prominently displayed discussing the Korean Situation. Speaking of the news, I was watching cable on Memorial Day when it came time for the Moment of Silence at 3pm EST. I caught me off guard since I was planning to be silent at around 3pm Pacific Time. During the moment, the scene moved from John King to some appropriate images starting with Arlington and a panorama of the rolling hills of graves, then settling at one grave with a heavyset woman standing in front with flowers and then .. Oh Good Lord, for once please don't zoom in on her ample ass just as she bends over to lay the fl .. they zoomed in. As they always, always do. Am I the only one who rails at news videographers being drawn to fat-women-bending-over like bugs to a summer porchlight? I believe you are. Let it go. Okay, one more thing then I will  This is a room full of ladies picking out the nicest cherries for you. There are thousands and thousands of them in the food industry, and they do not make $50,000 a year. This is what farmers would have to pay Americans to do this work, so this is what it is really worth. Your cherries would therefore cost a lot more, as they should. You would not be able to buy as much other stuff as you do now, because your overall food bill would be a great deal higher. As it should be. Sometime, fifty to a hundred years from now, people are going to look back and judge us for this, and it won't be kind. Most of us would get all indignant and argue that this isn't anything like slavery. But it is.Rick Macherat
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Post #2409. Climate Leadership in Action. Our Governess, Christine Gregoire, is way out front on this. She did an executive order which accomplishes the following • Develop emission reduction strategies and industry emissions benchmarks to make sure 2020 reduction targets are met.In other words, Do Absolutely Nothing actually, except keep about 25,000 cubicle-dwellers down in Olympia busy for many, many years. Talk-Environmentalism in Action. We need much more of this in order to get climate change off the ground. Don't you mean the Fight Against Climate Change? Oh, that's right, of course. Against. Following the announcebration, there was scheduled a dawn-to-dusk Question/Answer/Blather/Whine session with representatives from EPA. A rally outside was also planned. And a repeat from an old entry, just because I liked it, The reason why I'm completely and utterly and every other adverb you can think of cynical about Climate Change and Global Warming? Because is has only about 1% to do with science and climate and 99% to do with the young American suburbanite female driving a 2.5 ton SUV with 2.5 spoiled children in back, going somewhere (in her own world.) It might seem hard to understand because we see (endure) the phenomenon every day, but to the rest of the world it is a wasteful, moving, dismayingly expensive carbon-dioxide spewing example of everything that is America and its excess. And up until now they (the squalid rest of the world) has been unable to do anything about it. Yes, they have voted, and in two years they will have another meeting and THEN they will do something about us. CARBON IS THE ENEMY. DO THE PLANET A FAVOR: SEQUESTER YOURSELF. THANK YOU.Rick Macherat
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Post #2408. The Forbin Project. Amazon.dot.com sent me a book recommendation, "My Forbidden Desire," by Carolyn Jewel, An exciting escape into a world of dark enchantments, powerful images and fiendishly sexy immortals. It appears we've been given a respite from the computer takeover if Amazon's otherwise brilliant machine is under the impression that a cranky old geezer would be interested in this book. Now, if had been Suniti Namjoshi's, "The Conversations of Cow" [The Women's Press, 1985,] a witty and sharply satirical dialogue between Suniti, an average middle-of-the-road lesbian separatist, and Bhadravita, a Brahmin lesbian cow, well then it would have had me pegged for sure. There has been a lot of publicity lately about Brad Pitt's humanitarianism. For instance, he has lent himself, his time and his face, to a fund-raising effort for those houses in New Orleans. Evidently, he was touched by the recent removal of so many of them. I can certainly understand that - imagine having numerous houses all over the world and then learning there are people who don't even have one. Most of us would be anxious to write a check. Or at least make an appearance, smile a lot, be photographed and encourage other people to do so. There was breaking news, sort of, at least to the extent that publication of a paper on the environment can be breaking news. It seems, now follow me here, that melting of the Antarctic peninsula ice sheet will raise sea levels planetwide by 10 Feet instead of the 20 Feet previously described. The real significance of this announcement was more in the area of scientist's retirement planning than actual science, i.e., 20 feet would mean the end of life as we know it for 67& of earth's population and therefore the end of any need for environmental science. Ten feet means there is hope, and much more research is needed. Think about it- as long as there are environmentalists employed, there will always be hope. Do you know what a blivet is? Either (1) (also known as a poiuyt,) an undecipherable figure, an optical illusion and an impossible object, OR (2) Computer slang for an intractable problem or a crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed, OR most clearly, (3) Ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag. These have always been the standard blivets. However, I think we have to add (4) National Health Policy. That is unless the two parties give up, as follows, Party A - the health system: getting rich; Party B - the patients: getting well. When that happens, we'll be back to having only three kinds of blivets. Have you noticed that almost everyone of a celebrity nature has ultra-white teeth now, just like Ross's, only his were supposed to be a joke? From Wikipedia: Athol Guy (born 5 January 1940), is one of the members of the Australian pop music-folk music group The Seekers. Guy played the double bass. He was characterized by his wearing of black horn-rimmed glasses. During live performances, Guy also often acted as the group's compere in between songs.The Internet has also given Special thanks to Pete Sanfacon with the New England Anti-Mascot Coalition for help in providing school mascot information in Massachusetts. The mascot for Athol High School is this  fellow. Frankly, I think the kids who attend, and who are going to be graduated from and bear the mark of, Athol High School for their entire lives, ought to be allowed to have an Indian mascot if they want. But that's just my opinion.Rick Macherat
Friday, May 15, 2009
Post #2407. Dennis Miller. Dennis' epistemological question, Can you tear someone who is one a new one? has only shown up on the Internet about six times. I thought it might do better than that. Dennis has carved out an interesting niche for himself in the world of lofty intellects with genuine wit (pretty sparsely populated up there, by the way.) I admire him a great deal for his simile involving a trout anticipating the inevitable urge needed here and all that. Time magazine came out with its 100 Most Brilliantest people, or whatever they call it. I've skimmed up to about #75 or so. They let Bono do George Clooney. Didn't Clooney do Bono the last time? He would have had to, for I believe the two of them are the only persons on earth who don't realize they are both monumental phonies. If that wasn't awful enough, they had Aston Kutcher write the section on Twitter. Time made this choice because they regard Kutcher either as the Number One Twit, or the next C.P. Snow. I would go with the latter as we move rapidly toward Eloi World, way before AD 802701, you can be sure of that. Rick Macherat
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Post #2406. The Economy. A conversation between the sister-in-law and me. I've been thinking about economics lately, like a lot of other people.Okay, you guessed it, the sister-in-law and I never had this conversation. She doesn't care where the money comes from. We both care about where it goes, to some extent anyway. Remember the episode of a few days ago, the Transportation Department management fiasco? Well, there have been developments. First, and I dearly love Nicole Brodeur, our Section 2 columnist, even though she is appallingly liberal, wrote a piece on freedom of expression where she talked about anonymous commenting. The column was a good one, but I was interested in her mention of all the fat comments about the Snow Removal Guy, and another point where a reader just wished the conversation could be elevated above the fourth grade level. Truth is, we may not be able to have this discussion for much longer, as the level of intelligence in our country is rapidly approaching that of the 4th grade. I wonder how much longer Jay Leno can do "Jaywalking" before people don't get it anymore. Besides, our youngsters have no use for newspapers, which are too much like school. Second, the Fiasco has now been elevated to Catastrophe (by the public, not the principals; they haven't a clue.) Get this, in addition to the $515,000.00, Council approved an additional $800,000.00 for the consultation into ways of fixing management problems in the Snow Removal Department and settling employee harassment claims. I wonder how many teachers/police officers that would save from the layoffs. On the celebrity front, while Amy Winehouse might have been named a United Nations Ambassador for World Peace, we have our own local achiever. Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCeady testified at the state legislature for better public restroom access, including employee restrooms, for people like himself (Crohn's Disease) who suffer from inflammatory bowel disease. Representatives were impressed and made new law. Of course, one has to possess a special card or a letter from his/her doctor in order to be granted explosive access to these otherwise off-limits facilities. An unkind person could possibly make unkind comments about spic 'n span little men, but I won't.Rick Macherat
Monday, May 11, 2009
Post #2405. Odds. I went to the dermatologist again last week and had another melanoma growth excised (that's what they call gouging it off.) Kids, watch your sun exposure. They give you a lot of pain shots, so you don't feel anything, but when they go especially deep .. WOW, you get to know how steak feels. Then I made the mistake of asking, "Say, how's about letting me take a look at that thing once you cut it all out." Kids, don't ask to see the things they cut out/off. Anyway, the point of mentioning this is the ice cream. I asked brother if he wanted some after dinner, and of course he did, and I even had some myself. As I was scooping it out, I thought, Say, why am I scooping out only 1.5 scoops of coffee-with-chocolate-chip when there's also some Breyers vanilla in there? So, I scooped some more, quite a bit actually, eating it right now between types. Melanoma .. biopsy will take at least a week .. why the hell not. Reminds me of my grandmother one summer when I observed her serving herself a massive dish of ice cream, she with BP of something like 280/180 and 100 pounds heavy, "Grandmother, should you be eating so much ice cream?!!" "Don't worry, honey," she sez, "It's just the way it sits up in the bowl." She lived to be 80. Hey, I'd settle for 80 any day. Rick Macherat
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Post #2404. Snow. Seattle. Roads. A topic with all kinds of potential for hilarity, but you'd think that after 156 years of it we would have exhausted just about every angle. It seems we have not. Our city has 27 snowplows to take a swing at the occasional snowfall. What I imagine they have always done is plow real, real good the route from the mayor's house to City Hall, and not much else. Evidently, someone got wind of that, an investigation got going, and all hell has broken loose. The investigation widened, morphed .. into accusations of poor management, discrimination, the usual things, involving this individual, frankly  not entirely the most sympathetic-looking person to have the task of defending. His supervisor, the lady seated between him and the sleeping gentleman decided to commission a report/investigation which ended up costing $515,000 and running to 8,000 pages. That's EIGHT THOUSAND PAGES. The brief summary of the summary of the Executive Summary summarized by saying their were "management issues." Then she promoted him. That's her defending the decision. At a pause in the furor which arose, is arising .. and I hope if enough people write about it will arisify into a mob of pitchforks and torches .. at the pause, the City Council and Mayor announced they were going to hire two consultants to look into the matter. Consultants .. taxes Consultants .. taxes Consultants .. taxes one might begin to mutter madly. Our city has a 62-story Municipal Office Tower  next to City Hall, filled with .. administrators, and apparently not one (or two) of them is capable of "looking into" it. Since I don't pay taxes in Seattle, I'm only crazy about this in principle. Oh, and further to what I reported a day or two back, these were some the programs on last night Channel 500-something "The Condemned"Not that tough of a choice there, though occasionally the cable mild porno channels will feature a combination murder/porno which can be a nice change of pace I guess. Read somewhere yesterday .. "so great was their love that she (Julia Roberts) agreed to work for scale when she appeared with him (Benjamin Bratt) on that episode of Law and Order." Discuss. Guess what the very first thing our former Gov. Gary Locke did once he was sworn in as U.S. Commerce Secretary: released 53 million dollars (which we definitely don't have) for salmon (which people with access to government money believe we don't have enough of and no amount is too much if it saves even one of them.) I just put that in to see if I could type a salmon story without going all nuts on it. So far so good.Rick Macherat
Post #2403. Hooray hooray for the 8th of May! It's outdoor intercourse day. I was washing dishes and happened to look at the clock a few moments after midnight, then the calender. My-oh-my, have I gotten that old? How could I have forgotten? Once, long ago, Washington State University appeared as a footnote in Playboy's List of the Greatest Party Schools, something about WSU being in a class by itself and partying a "field of study" as much as anything else. See, in those days WSU was 90% residential and the women's living groups were segregated far from the nearest male and had strict closing hours. This was serious business. Few people had cars, there were no motels - as if anyone could afford that - so, basically it was outdoors or not at all. And, by the 8th of May, it was finally WARM ENOUGH!! And this site explains it all. See the comment by "Mark" too. I was saddened to note that in 2009 WSU not only was put in the rankings, it was in 16th place. Surely not. Have they ever been to Pullman? Rick Macherat
Monday, May 04, 2009
Post #2402. Gun violence. A couple more Indo-Canadian teenagers were kidnapped and murdered this week, their bodies found in an abandoned car. The Canadians are shocked, though it helped when they indicated that the town where this happened, Abbotsford, is quite close to the United States. Whew. However, I would like to point out  that a great deal of Canada is quite close to the United States. I included that map and information because it was in the article. Really. All this mayhem hasn't cost the Canadians their sense of humor. I occasionally enjoy their standup comedy shows on CBC, which we get up here because in Seattle we're practically Canadian. Sometimes it's nice to laugh like it's 1953 again, but I do draw the line at Red Green which is just waaay too Canadian. Tonight, the show came from Winnipeg, which can be awfully funny by just being there. The host came out, and the audience went wild. They obviously knew him, a man in unbelievably thick glasses who behaved like he was mentally challenged. I was starting to feel uncomfortable because he clearly wasn't a "retard," though he was talking like one and the audience was loving it. First act up was a mixed-race person doing .. mixed-race jokes. The punchline of his last one had his Japanese mother mispronouncing some word with an "L" in it. Then came the blind guy doing blind jokes. I stuck around because I hadn't heard any hilarious blind humor lately. The story about how his walker had pointed him in the wrong way in the restroom almost brought the house down, apologies to people who were just washing their hands. Finally, the man destined to be the star performer arrived; I figured this out by the audience reaction. I'm not sure if he had Cerebral Palsy or had been victim of a stroke, more likely the former. That was enough. I hit the remote when he explained how he learned to cross himself in (Catholic) church was by making the Mark of Zorro wildly in the air with his hands, which he demonstrated. They loved it. Me, not so much. Rick Macherat
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Post #2401. Successful cropping. There's been a lot of controversy over "megahomes" going into older neighborhoods. As far as I'm concerned, it's none of one person's business what someone else builds on their property, but that opinion isn't shared by many. At least this house, though gignormous, is generally of the typical grandmotherly style of the neighborhood,  and seems to fit all right. Let's move out a bit and take a wider view,  Uh-oh ... hello neighbor! Okay, maybe we could talk about some minor adjustments to the lot size requirements. Last night, I clicked through the following channel lineup Channel 6 - "Dead Like Me"and of course the cable channels were all death and megadeath over the Swine Flu (which is doing a Roseanne Roseannadanna today by the way.) So, I just watched the early local news to catch up up the weekend shootings with dead bodies, drownings and looking for dead bodies, lost in the mountains and still no dead bodies found, and sports. Rick Macherat
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Post #2400. A landmine of sorts. Reaching 2,400 posts calls for some kind of pithy observation. Wish I had one. What brought me in tonight .. kind of a long story: I checked the counter, and a search engine had directed a student to my blog with his query, a conclusion for an essay in agreeance with offshoring from a managers point of view. That in turn led me to a discussion of the word or non-word "agreeance," which after several more in turns led me to the Internet's apparent acknowledged expert on proper usage, Professor Emeritus Paul Brian from my alma mater, Washington State University. Go Cougs! So, it's nearly 11pm already because I've been reading his staggering Vita and trying to figure out why I don't know him. Then it hit me: he arrived after I graduated and has retired already so he must be old, and that means I am too! Jeez, what happened to forty years anyway? (I was going to type "was graduated" because this is about usage and all. Nah, sounds too fussy.) I love the word "agreeance." My first secretary (in Hawaii) insisted on doing dictation because she wanted to practice. I thought dictation was stupid and a waste of time. I always felt it was invented solely to permit bosses to strut back and forth with their crotches at eye level of a subservient female. Anyway, I gave in, and we did dictation for awhile, up until agreeance. See, it is a word in Hawaii and in the OED, but pretty much nowhere else. No, I'm pretty sure I said "agreement." You did, but I changed it to "agreeance." She won that one too, and my letters went out slightly in pidgin (Hawaiians do possessives and tense a bit differently also.) She eventually got bored with it, and I could go back to typing my own drafts. Hawaii has a way of letting you not worry too much about things, like the way your letters back to the world look and sound. You might wonder how she was able to "win" things since I was supposed to be the boss. Well, that was just Hawaii too, and her especially. More on her sometime. Rick Macherat
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Post #2399. The Shooting, con't. This is actually a continuation of post #2398 which I can't very well go back and re-title, "The Shooting," since that part was more or less an afterthought. There has been more news, however. Our paper revisited the incident to report that the lady has been released from jail pending charges. Prosecutors said they need more than 72 hours to review and decide about an incident which took probably less than a minute in real time. Details released by the paper include the facts that the lady shooter is 30, attends community college, lives someplace we're familiar with, has been cited for "brandishing" in another state, disembarked from the bus with four children and her partner and this partner subsequently left the court "in tears." Well, we know her residence is in the Projects, and men don't leave in tears (they "appear to have been crying.") So, basically the image design of this story seems to have morphed from a vagrant getting all over an apparently defenseless woman with her small children on a public bus who then administered a little frontier justice, to ... possibly a hard-edged, life-weary black lesbian blowing away some dude who gave her attitude, maybe about all them kids. It's all in how it's typed, huh? Rick Macherat
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Post #2398. House shopping #31. Yes, I have made fun of houses for sale in Seattle, but it's because they're precious just like we are. The first one started with an ancient building which is totally totally?! [What can I say; it's totally.] your grandmother's house in the Midwest or back east, only it's been yuppified so grievously .. well, take a look:  Of all the pictures I could have shown you, this one just called out, Show me, show me!! Yes, it is the wine-tasting room. Can you imagine a hyphenated urban couple sitting there, staring at the blank wall two feet away, enjoying an extremely rare vintage, musing .. Yes, yes I can. I think I can too. After all, if they spent a couple of million dollars for that house only to do this  to it ... oh well. The second house is over where Bill Gates lives. In fact, newer homes like this one might be part of the reason some people are moving out. Hard for Bill to move, however, what with the market for $125,000,000 properties these days. Anyway, this is indeed a house, priced at over Four-Million Dollars, and not a motel.  According to the ad, they were going for Nantucket, with a splash of a few other things. Surely they have a wine cellar in there somewhere too. A slobby sort of character got onto a #27 bus here the other day and began to harass a female passenger. Words were exchanged, then he followed her off when she departed, presumably to continue what had turned into an angry argument. So, she pulled out a gun from her purse and shot him. Right there in the street, Third and Nice St., in front of scores of [I imagine] horrified passengers. This might not be the right thing to say, and she was indeed arrested and locked away on high bail, but I think I might have applauded the scene briefly. I say briefly because the disapproving stares would have been fierce indeed. For a moment today, I thought I was listening to the President of the United Federation of Planets proclaiming a Global Emergency, but it was just the lady from the WHO doing a Swine Flu update in a fairly dramatic tone. We have that going on, not to mention a runaway $quadrillion financial meltdown, yet few if any of us are exceptionally bothered by it all. Why is that? Nine-eleven, of course. We're inured. Rick Macherat
Friday, April 24, 2009
Post #2397. The letter. These days there is usually only one or two pieces of mail, a symptom of one of the many things wrong with our country: when government isn't making enough money, it raises prices, eventually killing the service. This envelope came today,  in fact it was the only piece of mail in the box, and it says so much. First, I know what's inside before opening it. It's a letter notifying me that My Government is giving me stimulus money, though less than they gave last year. Even with the multiplier effect, this plan will not have a noticeable effect upon the economy. It will have a slight measurable effect, but in terms only appreciated by economists. People who eventually receive a check will remember cashing or depositing it, for a day or two maybe. If you get it via direct deposit, chances are you'll notice when you open your bank statement and then move on. Think back, what do you remember about the $400 you got last year? I thought it was $800. See what I mean? Second, and most important, the envelope. We keep telling ourselves that we are the most productive nation on earth. We really believe that, when in fact most of the gains in productivity come from transferring work from the "workers" to the consumers. Like this dad-blasted envelope. Social Security no doubt saves $X million a year by one-step printing these abominations, freeing up valuable hands to do .. whatever it is they do, while transferring the task to 113 million pair of other hands, most of which are arthritic and gnarled by the way, eliciting uncharacteristic profanity and frustration while opening them only to find out it isn't money after all but rather a notification about some money which they already knew about. The reason I get agitated about things like this is because My Government should be working on other matters, like Swine Flu. Am I the only person who thinks it's terrorism? Yes, very likely you are. Well, it just might be. A Friday night, perfect time, absolutely no one is paying attention, anywhere. Washington already had its big event today, a private plane accidentally entering restricted airspace. We know how to handle that: shut everything down on a Friday afternoon until the all clear. Happy Hour began three hours early. Flu cases are popping up in widely dispersed locations with zero connection to one another, or to swine for that matter. We have a spectacularly mutated virus with characteristics of several flu strains, some lethal. And to top it off, there's the Mexican connection which, once this thing gets traction, will make it all the more awful by bringing in the ethnic angle. We do love the ethnic angle. I can see this catastrophe unfolding just like a typical disaster movie, except in disaster movies you have to get to the third or fourth commercial break before fights break out in the Safeway, people run red lights and smash in to one another or neighbors start eating neighbors. Unfortunately, every single one of us has this slightly repressed 911 PANIC GENE which will switch on at the first sign of something strange or scary and cause the whole country to go insane and then shut down completely. Then again, it might be nothing at all. Rick Macherat
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Post #2396. They caught me feeling very 1791-ish. This is annual report season, the time when corporations send out their dressed-up versions of the catastrophe which was last year's performance. I get a few of them, and I always vote. Especially now that you can do it on the computer. Sure, maybe it's always My Shares: 39 votes AGAINST .. Capital Plundering Corporation: 212,887,502 shares FOR, it's the principle. I hang in there. So, tonight I read [skim this, save your brain] Since Article Thirteenth of the 1987 Restated Articles has been eliminated as unnecessary historical information, the provision added as Article Fourteenth in 1990 is numbered Article Thirteenth in the proposed Amended and Restated Articles of Incorporation. Article Thirteenth differs from former Article Fourteenth in the 1987 Restated Articles only in that the statutory reference in Article Thirteenth is changed from Section 415-48.5 of the State Revised Statutes to Section 414-222 of the State Revised Statutes. Section 415-48.5 was the provision of the State Business Corporation Act (Chapter 415 of the State Revised Statutes) in effect in 1990 that related to the ability of a corporation to eliminate or limit the liability of directors by a provision to that effect in its articles of incorporation, and Section 414-222 is the counterpart provision in the current State Business Corporation Act (Chapter 414 of the State Revised Statutes), which became effective in July of 2001.Can you believe a person actually wrote that crap? And is it just begging for a vote the OPPOSITE of what the Board recommends, or what? What I always do anyway. 39 shares AGAINST, 4 billion shares FOR. That's okay, I'm patient. I was talking with Customer Service recently, a nice young fellow, not that swift actually. I was going to ask him why on earth he took a job like this, but as the conversation progressed it became pretty obvious. Along the way, he made a small mistake which I pointed out. "Thanks, man," he said. "I wouldn't want to get coached." "Get what?" I asked. "Coached .. you know, by the supervisor." I couldn't help it, I laughed right out loud. So that's what they're calling it these days. Coached. Good God. And I've spoken with his supervisor before, a Woman, mean and a real ball buster. Glad I saved the kid a visit with her. This particular business, by the way, is going out of business next month. Their computer called me yesterday afternoon with a recorded call just as mealy as their entire leadership has been. They never had a clue. Tremendous, wonderful line employees, point-of-service people who gave more than 100% every day, and the worst management in the world. It was management and the computer which killed the business, the two legs which they still no doubt believe were the heart and soul of their Grand Idea. Oh well. Seen on Channel 44 one day last week: The Situation Room, with Wolf Blitzer. New - in High Definition. Cool. Just what the world needed. Incidentally, my typing was more interesting back in 2007 before the mind started to go. Try going to the bottom/end of this page and scroll up instead of down. Reads better.Rick Macherat RMacherat
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Post #2395. Dream? My father fought in World War 2, then he came home, worked forty years and raised a family. He mowed his lawn, avoided church scrupulously, voted regularly and died shortly after retiring, leaving everyone safe and secure. Had he known this was going to happen,  I suspect he would have just said fuck it.Chrysler Jim Press Fiat 500 New York Auto Show Mark Lennihan Rick Macherat
Friday, April 10, 2009
Post #2394. There's no hope. I posted in a forum where the topic was possible expansion of San Francisco International Airport. As might be expected, there is a great deal of opposition from people who want to fly everywhere, of course, and experience no inconvenience or delay, but who definitely do not want an expansion of the airport. One of the arguments advances was that filling in more land in San Francisco Bay would cause the level of the entire bay to rise, thus endangering wetlands. Think about it. (HINT: San Francisco Bay is open to the Pacific Ocean.) So, I had to type, naturally, and I offered that the opposition would likely be joined by citizens of Kiribati. So far, at least one more poster has agreed with me. Speaking of the Sea .. the United State Navy is sending more warships to the Great Pirate Standoff near Somalia. Is this the international crisis that President Obama was going to face sometime in the first 100 days? If so, it's a shabby disappointment. Somalia, of all places, good grief. I wish I could send a message to the 5th Fleet, in case they haven't been notified, that it is Perfectly Okay to shoot those khat-huffing tweaked-up Somali pirates and dump their scrawny bodies in the Indian Ocean for the sharks. Countries have been doing that for over 500 years. No one will care. This ongoing incident wouldn't agitate me so much if the cable channels weren't (1) trumpeting "breaking news" and replaying it 3, 6, and 9 hours later as if it just happened, or in this case didn't happen and (2) in the absense of actual news, breaking every three minutes for that fat guy with the red beard who wants to help you with your I.R.S. problems. Isn't there a solution in here someplace where we trade him to the pirates?Rick Macherat
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Post #2393. Headline: Twitter and Facebook used to rally Moldova rioters. Revolt of the Twits! Oh, I'm sure their cause was just, though. It's interesting how these new media hula hoops are working. As you can see with our own politics, it takes no time at all to make an individual into the ultimate viral villain, even though the vast majority of the agitated haven't read anything and have no idea about the actual issue. Try talking to one sometime, an under-30. Scary. Grocery day for brother and me. I accidentally ordered three pounds of potato salad, so I'll have to come up with meals that it goes with for the next two nights. Had deli sub sandwich tonight. yumm. Interesting thing,  now I don't know whether the potato salad lady at the deli was having a lovely fine day in this glorious Seattle blue skies and sunshine, or she is the Happy Face Killer. She drew a happy face on all three of my containers. If it doesn't end up killing us, I think it was a real sweet gesture. You'll know if there is no post #2394. Question about the pirate attack off Somalia last night .. incidentally, the cable news coverage on this one ranked right up there among the all time stupid moments on television .. this ship was American owned, crewed and flagged, right? So, how many of those do you figure are sailing within a couple hundred miles of Mogadishu at any given time? 580? 49? Try 1. One U.S. ship, carrying urgently need food, charity food. Why, then, was the United States Navy destroyer 300 miles away as this ship lallygagged its way into pirate waters? And did you hear the 2nd Mate on the phone with the CNN news anchorette? Huh!? No, that was his quote, then, I gotta go. Great moments in seapower, however this turns out. Speaking of cable, I had to grab the camera and record this Cable News Newman Moment:  In fairness, I should point out that if she does uncross, the darkshot will be obscured by the product-placed Apple computer, mostly. No, it's just me, one of my pet peeves about the perceived demographic that the news organizations seem to lust for. And then the follow-on question, why do they bother with the news? Diagnosed with NSF? You may be entitled to compensation. Huh? Okay, NSF is a disorder, apparently one with appeal for lawyers. It is also the National Science Foundation as well as part of the name of an online join-n-rant group which hates Republicans and conservatives. Judging by the logic and spelling, I would make that a young join-n-rant group. If you're old, really old like me, NSF means one thing: the dreaded NOT SUFFICIENT FUNDS.Rick Macherat
Monday, April 06, 2009
Post #2392. The other shoe. Let's hope this story only has two legs and goes away quickly. You've probably heard about the man who shot and killed all five of his children in an Orting, WA trailer park. Well, the mother appeared today because she wanted to set the record straight: She was not having an affair. The only way this thing could be more dreadful than an episode of Sordid Lives would be if .. oh my Good Lord, she did it. The mother spent the day between the murders and her coming out before the cameras having tattoos of all the children's names, birth and death dates put on her body, with swirly lines. To their credit, the local television stations covering the performance, held at the "growing impromptu memorial," and attended by many, many people in pickup trucks who, as was reported, didn't even know the family, did so with unusual dispatch and then moved quickly along to other murders. We have a lot of these in Washington. I don't know why. We'll also have a lot of these in Washington, but I know why.  I imagine returning to the late 1950's, as before, and showing this picture to people in the market for a new car. I do that just so I can briefly enjoy a bout of raucous, uninhibited laughter before returning to 2009 and acknowledging that this car will be very popular indeed. Just in case you think I'm a total crank, I fully expect the people from 2009 who go with me to have a real hoot at all those fins. Gad, we loved fins back in the day. Gas .. 19¢ a gallon, cigs ... $1.76 a CARTON at the BX. Sigh. One more mention of local television. Several of our stations have been covering girl's rugby results lately, often and with particular attention to the zoom-in to the scrum. I have to tell you that the girls who go out for rugby tend to be a little on the chubby side and are not generally the most attractive, to be candid about it. These highlights are on regularly enough that I'm starting to understand the rules and goals. Why girls would want to play rugby and why local television would spend so much time taking pictures of them I haven't figured out yet.Rick Macherat
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Post #2391. It would be more fun if my voice sounded older. My cellphone rang. I was already crabby from reading the paper, so I answered the incoming call from 800-219-7425. No surprise, a recorded Car Warranty reminder from a boiler room. I pressed "1" of course, I generally do when I have the time. The young man was so polite, I almost hated to do it, but this is my calling after all, saving one person at a time from being scammed. The longer I can keep him on the phone with my inanities, the fewer calls he can make. simple as that. Besides, the recordings are a big hit down at the Home. This one went really well, and I still had him even past where I revealed I do not actually have a car and cannot have one because of the cruel grandchildren taking my keys and license for "no reason a-tall" and just past the point where I thought the call was all about getting me a New Car with the warranty. It still amazes me how fast they can get off the phone once they realize they've got a nutcase on the line. I called Brother on the intercom and told him dinner would be ready toot-sweet because the North Koreans launched the missile. No way was I going to be either vaporized or else lie leaking for days in nuclear rubble on an empty stomach. The networks were completely flummoxed, naturally. They probably all had top notch teams standing by to run hot with this story had it broken during the week. But Saturday Night? Fox had Geraldo, so you can guess how that went. CNN punted and ran their MLK thing, and MSNBC did the same with more prison adventures, This week: Sodomy Stories! Well, it's past 11:00PM and it hasn't hit yet .. Guess I'll keep typing. OBAMA MOTORS. That popped into my head sometime today. Was I the first person to think of it and maybe put it in a blog? Hardly. I would have been 5,331st, according to Google. Gotta move fast these days. I've noticed that Giving has become big business in Seattle. For instance, this is going up,  a million square feet for the Gates Foundation. Then there's this one, just a few blocks away,  which just recently had a major portion of its space leased by PATH. PATH's mission is to "create sustainable, culturally relevant solutions that enable communities worldwide to break long-standing cycles of poor health." Can you imagine an organization more precious and more Seattle than that? They definitely need hundreds of employees and a shiny building. Located nearby in equally magnificent and greeny buildings is a staggering collection of medical research facilities which employ thousands of people making gorgeous salaries and pumping out too much groundbreaking science to list, all of which will be ready for actual health in "four to six years," as "more research is needed." Goodness, you are a crab. You think? Too much maybe? Okay then, there's this for something uplifting: Washington State lethal injection team quitsEvidently, it has to do with the death penalty and unhappy death row prisoners or something. So, what are we supposed to think about that? Whatever you want.Rick Macherat RMacherat
Friday, April 03, 2009
Post #2390. Trash Management. Just watching the garbage truck out my front window. I wonder at what point in life the garbage man realizes that this is it - I'm a garbage man for life. Up and down the streets, lift it, dump it, ride 40 feet on the truck, repeat. For 40 years. Retire. Drop dead. Grim. At the complete opposite end of the musing spectrum, Ben Bernanke was speaking to a group of .. people who evidently understand moneytalk in Charlotte, North Carolina. Brother and I listened over our breakfast. (I'm glad I never had Bernanke for a Prof. He never slows down to let your brain rest for a second.) Brother could not possibly be less interested in Money, but when Ben was finished I asked what he thought. "Sounds like things are getting better." That was pretty much what I got too. Sister-in-law is contending with her own garbage issues. Living inside the limits of Seattle, she falls under the mayor's mad initiatives as he channels Planet Saver Man, starting right here. The latest is kitchen scraps - they get recycled now too. Not only that, the Trash Police are out looking for people who put them in the regular trash. And, not only that, for some not clearly understood but evidently essential reason, 30% of the trash pickup schedules citywide have to be changed. Can you imagine? Some people have been putting out the trash on a certain days for 60, 70 years and now they have to change. That has been more disruptive than any other part of the process. Finally, when the truck backed into the parking lot behind her apartment building at 2:30AM and started making a great deal of Trash Noise, that was it for the sister-in-law. She called the city and eventually was multiple forwarded/directed to Dumpster Complaints. See, here is where the sister-in-law and I part. If I were to have a dumpster problem and learn that Trashco has a specific Dumpster Complaint Section, I accept and give up. Not her. I've written enough about her that you can figure how it went and, yes, I heard every single word of it retold, ending with, And she totally understood what I was talking about and why I was upset and said she would definitely look into it. It was fascinating to witness a case where she had at last met her match and was blissfully unaware of it. I must meet this Garbage Woman. Anderson and Tim finally had that interview,  and it was better than I expected. Sure, they did each talk at 720 words-per-minute, but they even look a bit alike. Both are very, very preppy and have eggy-shaped heads. On the rapid-speech, I'm beginning to think it's something which came out of the fancier eastern schools in the 70's/80's, sort of an east coast valleyboyese. Interesting. Unintelligible, but interesting. Greta said the North Koreans were going to launch their missile "any minute." Still waiting. It's ironic that we (in Washington State) were just barely out of range the last time the country was threatened with an imminent nuclear strike (1962;) this time we're the only part of the continental U.S. that is in range. I remember that I was completely disinterested in the Cuban Missile Crisis and busy being a teenager. Brother said, "Oboy, I remember all of us sitting around the TV, watching President Kennedy and, hold on, you weren't there! Where were you anyway, Rick?" I was busy not doing nuclear annihilation, probably named Budweiser. Actually, it would for sure have been OLYMPIA BEER, but no one reading here will remember Oly and "It's the Water!" and that might be the saddest part of all. Did I tell you I had over 144 four-dotters? It's true. And I never had the chance to turn them in. Rick Macherat
Monday, March 30, 2009
Post #2389. Dancing with the stars. The sister-in-law called at 11PM. I tried to pretend that I had been asleep, not that it would have mattered. It didn't. She had gotten home after an evening out with friends, at least of one of whom she can't stand, and discovered that her VCR had not recorded Dancing with the Stars. Friends, the next 39 minutes took everything I had, and I'm sure you can imagine the Q&A Re: her five remotes, the recent digital box installation, the grandson's (age 3) electronic curiosity, and the probably missed dancing performances themselves. Fortunately Letterman came on and she hung up to watch it. Now, I can't stand Letterman, but this time - thank you, Dave. Rick Macherat
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Post #2388. Soap Sayings. Try this one, Making the very simple complicated is easyand thus Ivory introduces you to its new version of soap. If that isn't classy enough for you, they even translate it into French. I composed a third line, Taking fetid factory and barnyard products and making them soapy and smelling like a warm summer breeze wafting over roses is miraculous.Aren't you being a little hard on Ivory soap? I wrote to them, you know. Never answered. All I wanted to know was if they stashed any of the old Ivory, the Legacy Ivory, Classic Ivory, True Ivory (for the search) somewhere, so old true users might have just one little innocent lather before they pass on. Money no object, as if that would matter. It's clear to me now, the Top People at Ivory stashed plenty of Classic Ivory all right, in their private vaults two levels beneath their safe rooms at hideaway apocalypse estates far up in the hills. Tons of it, for them and their progeny until the end of time. Meanwhile, I vigorously rubbed up the last few feeble bubbles of my last bar today. It was so .. soapy .. sweet, and unscented, just like a baby. Or like a baby used to be. From now on you will close your eyes and instead of precious babysmell you'll get a snoutful of China. Rick Macherat
Post #2387. House shopping. I wasn't going to do any today, but  this house just cried out, literally. On a street famous for somewhat different and even quirky turn of the (last) century homes, this one was ordinary. That is, until the present remodel/sellers got ahold of it. Come on by, make an offer above $1,998,000 (not kidding,) bring paint. TIME is going with "The End of Excess. Why this crisis is good for America" this week. I haven't even opened the magazine and have already taken a position. No way. Heck, I'm certainly not finished with excess. Why, even last night I blazed the house inside and out with lights during the "hour of darkness" or whatever the greenweenies called the latest exercise in saving doomed planets. I looked out to see if our house was alone in a sea of conforming candlelight, but it wasn't. The entire neighborhood blazed as it does every night. Boom boxes, screams, sirens, gunfire .. the usual. All well-lit. The Post Office is as old and stolid as the country. Perpetual, forever. You do the Civil Service exam, get hired on by the P.O. and you're set for life. Do the same thing every day for 40 years, get fat, retire. Only it's going away. We haven't accepted it yet, but it's true. This latest move of cutting jobs back from a bit over a zillion to a bit under a zillion won't work. It requires just as many people to handle a kazillion pieces of mail as it does .. a number considerably smaller than that. And, being the P.O., it takes just as long. Just like everything else since the new psychology has sent in, call it the Post-911, the slow decline and eventual closing down will slide by without a lot of falderal. Oh, we'll spend a ton of money and do endless studies and make proposals and consider alternatives and last ditches, but it will still go away and in the end the people who might care will be the ones who bitch about everything anyway and never did get clued into email. Or tickle. Did you mean Twitter?. Yeah, that's what I meant. Twitter, as in for twits.Rick Macherat
Friday, March 27, 2009
Post #2386. He doesn't look like a Commie. There was a show on television where they had rows of washing machines lined up It was a commercial. What? It was a commercial for Maytag washing machines. I knew that. Anyway, two parallel rows of Maytag washing machines were set up, about 25 in each. Then, they took a Monster Truck and drove it right up and on top of the line of machines. I had the sound down, but the Maytag repairman appeared and gestured with appreciation and agreeance so I figured it was all about showing how sturdy the washers are. I called down to brother and told him to get the hand cart and that we were going to roll our washer and dryer out and .. crud .. what comes on the screen but a note which said Do Not Attempt. Can you believe it!? I tell you, they're trying to take the fun out of everything. Just look at the number of things you need a helmet for these days. You will note, by the way, that there are no helmets on Jackass at any time. And, yes, "agreeance" is a word, in Hawaiian Pidgin. Big Love. While we're on the subject of television, I do not believe that the creators of Big Love plan to write Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton) out of the show quite this easily. And I haven't heard that Stanton has other work offers which might cause him to leave. Even the Wikipedia page lists him as "deceased." Not so fast. The old man has survived being shot, evil nursing and the criminal justice system. Joey has been pretty much a failure his whole life, so depend on him to leave Roman unconscious but with a thready pulse. I'd be willing to bet that Adaleen races into the the room and performs life-saving CPR at the beginning of next season. Watch and see. Take a look at this picture ..  It is as you have probably guessed, the Dressing Room in a very expensive house. A house that obviously was never lived in. Designers. Think about it, how many times would you have to stub your toe on, trip over, walk around on your way to pee .. that stupid statue in the middle of the room before tossing it into the koi pond? And how about those closets, roomy huh? Of course, you'd have to nudge the couch out of the way every time you wanted to get into the one on the left. Before winter is too far behind us, and with a bit of snow even forecast for this weekend, here is a small reminder why driving in snow in Seattle is not exactly like driving in snow in some other places.  That, and the fact that 99.87% of people in our city have no idea what to do with their automobiles when it snows. Let's see, was that turn IN to a skid, turn OUT from a skid or just let loose of the wheel and scream? And finally, I ran across this,   Imagine, some machine took the time to translate this site address into Arabic. And knew how! Every once in awhile I imagine traveling back in time to an interesting period in history, say 1952, and showing someone, or myself, a little snapshot of life in the 21st century. Like these television set/typewriter things which contain all the information in the world. Something else. Sorry, about the topic, "He doesn't look like a Commie" .. I lost interest before it ever got going.Rick Macherat
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Post #2385. Enocomics. I did a little research today to refresh my mind from when I actually took Econ about 45 years ago. It was even more daunting than Physics, which we all know has changed in a big way. Hasn't it? More on that another time. Money Supply had been nagging me, so Conclusion: Thus the true money supply [we shall call it M(t)] is defined as follows:And, in case you worried over what Retail Sweeps might be “At its start, deposit-sweeping software creates a “shadow” MMDA deposit for each customer account. These MMDAs are not visible to the customer, that is, the customer can make neither deposits to nor withdrawals from the MMDA. To depositors, it appears as if their transaction account deposits are unaltered; to the Federal Reserve, it appears as if the bank’s level of reservable transaction deposits has decreased sharply. Although computer software varies, the objective is the same: to minimize a bank’s level of reservable transaction deposits, subject to several constraints."We're just going to let that go and figure that MDMA has something to do with it, okay? So, what's the point of all this ecomonics? It is very hard, but don't feel bad. Rep. Maxine Waters is about where you and I are. She got to ask Tim a few questions today, just the two of them (well, plus Barney and Manzullo who doesn't count) in an otherwise completely empty hearing room. What a three-way exercise in antidisambiguation that was! I knew I was in the Twilight Zone for sure when Barney made a joke and got a big smile out of Tim while Maxine shuffled her papers some more and pretended to be there. And I thought, Whoa, these people are deciding what to do about THE MONEY. Speaking of THE MONEY. Dick Cheney only spilled half of it when he remarked that Deficits Don't Matter. What he meant not to say was that Inflation Makes Deficits Go Away. Just one of Bill Clinton's better years made the Civil War go away, and another did the same with WWI. Just like that; I told you Enocomics was Magic! That's the good news. What's the bad news? The Chinese are starting to catch on. Rick Macherat Barney Frank Tim Geithner Maxine Waters Don Manzullo Paul Robin Krugman "Paul Robin Krugman"
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Post #2384. Mixed feelings. I watched some more Committee Television today. The only thing good about it was when Chairman Ben Bernanke lobbed a juicy wet cowpie right over onto a swarmy Congressperson who was being a jerk. Way to go Benny. Er, sorry, Professor Benny. The other person in the dock, Maybe-on-his-way-out Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, didn't fare as well, and there's where I have my conflict. This poor guy is working his ass off trying to save the money and is getting no credit at all. His only problem, well three problems, are (1) People don't like him; (2) He's scarily smart; and (3) Perhaps most serious,  I know, but fortunately most people won't get it. Even though he eerily resembles far too much that really, really mean and probably insane murderous closeted homosexual polygamist and Mormon Pretender Prophet, the beating he has been taking on late-night, in Congress and by the public in general has been unfair. I did read today that Geithner has put his New York house up for sale. So you gotta give him that, he's an optimist!Rick Macherat
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Post #2383. Some ridiculous things. Two weeks ago, a young mother left her home and two small children and hasn't been seen since. The front door was open, her purse and all her things were inside, and the car was in the driveway. Two weeks ago. This morning, a large number of teams with search dogs gathered to look for her. The team selected by our on-the-spot news crew was made up of real bloodhounds, led by a lady who looked like a British Birder. I know, nothing wrong with that. She explained to us in detail how things work as she unloaded and prepped the dogs for the search. We've all seen it: Sniff-sniff, go boys, find, find! The last part was how if the dogs don't get any scent whatsoever they will just stand there and look around (much like any of us would do, I suppose.) Of course, that is exactly what the dogs did, all of them. The lady explained it was probably because of all the recent snowfall (feet,) rain (inches and unending) and wind (perpetual in that area.) Left unsaid, and I couldn't help but think, was the notion that maybe it was BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN TWO FRACKING WEEKS. But I didn't say that. I finally heard someone say what I've been thinking for awhile, "If it's too big to fail, then it was too big to exist in the first place." Makes sense, doesn't it? I think the guy was a conservative, so that notion will likely fall by the wayside. Not exactly in favor these days, conservative things. He was talking about A.I.G., but it could have been Citi or any number of concerns. Citibank has $2 trillion in assets. That's $2,000,000,000,000.00. Nobody can get a handle on that, not even Bill Gates. Bill couldn't lift his all money even if it was transferred into the largest denomination of currency we print, and that figure is far beyond there. He too is feeling a bit less flush these days, with the stock down to the mid-teens, a quarter of what it was at the peak. Who would have thought? Think about the last time you stayed in a hotel and were just coming out of the shower, drying your hair, when the phone rang. Likely you sat down on the edge of the bed and took the call, likely bare-bottomed, likely in the same exact spot, perpendicular to the night table, as the previous 27 to 491 guests since the last time the bedspread was cleaned. Or, you tussled romantically with the wife or the current #2 in your hotel party of 2, starting at the foot of the bed, just about where the Chinese gentleman placed his bag, a bag which had spent the night before on the floor at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. I didn't really think all that much about things like that until I spent a few years in the hotel business. Next up: the Food and Beverage Industry. A truck overturned this afternoon in some place no one ever heard of. Five thousand people had to be evacuated because it contained 80,000 tons of Sulfuric Hydrochloral Monoxide, or in that general range of story facts anyway. There will be an investigation. No trucks carrying diapers, cars or soup seem to have overturned anywhere today as all of their drivers knew how to drive. Rick Macherat
Friday, March 20, 2009
Post #2382. Eureka! The sister-in-law called tonight, two minutes before the start of Battlestar Galactica. I know, but it was okay this time. I was recording it. No way I could watch the final episode cold and risk missing so much as a word of classic/anxious/historic dialogue. After about 45 minutes of catching up on the day and trying to figure out the economic crisis, she says, "What are you doing?" Naturally, I answer her with, "I'm talking to you on the phone. What are you doing?" Annoyed, she comes back, "No. What is that awful noise?" I was compacting all of today's cardboard and paper in order to recycle like any good Seattle boy, and I told her so. "Well, it hurts my ears and is driving me crazy. If you have to do that, then I'll wind this up and go to bed." "Oh, okay. Nighty-nite." Now all I have to do is make sure I have Lots of cardboard and paper on hand and near the phone from now on. The Black American Express card. I've had them all - green, gold, platinum, back to green (sensibly,) but I had never even heard of Black. So, I read up on it to see if there was material for the "This is so almost 1789" file. Good grief, what an exhibit for all that is excessive and unholy. You have to have and dispose of a genuine frackload of money even to get this card, no inflating the income here. There is even a website which lists known cardholders, mainly the rich and dreadful, along with stories from clerks and other minimum-wage types who have actually handled the card and observed and dealt with cardholders. Yes, definitely for the file. Oh, and Bono has one. Google gives 403,000 returns for -Obama "Special Olympics"- now. In addition, the MSNBC site has 15473 related articles. I think I'm beginning to understand "viral." Or is it "antiviral" as in non-Bush? Hard to know in this dizzying world, but if it's possible at all, Bush will end up being to blame for it. Anyway, since Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the founder of Special Olympics, and her son Timothy heads it now, and a very special apology has been offered, dispensation was granted. Sorry folks, this one will linger with me for awhile, and I think you will understand. I'll refrain from any more typing about it though. Do you realize that the smartest person in the world in, say, 1952, would not have understood what this was about, Blogging software creators and blog hosting websites have not agreed on a standard format for permalink URLs. Some within the blogging community feel that standardization would lead to the practice of meta-information about articles being mined from the URLs themselves rather than an associated RSS stream or meta tags stored within the content.but an average 9th-grader would today. Sadly, I am not a 9th-grader.Rick Macherat
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Post #2381. Bloopers. The President has a problem tonight, and I'm writing about it now because I have no idea how it is going to turn out. Frankly, later in his term when hearts have hardened, as they inevitably do, this would be juicy as all getout for the opposition. But, it's been what, 60-some days? And we happen to be in a crisis. Yawn. Yeah, when were we not in a crisis this millennium? Still, is this the right time for half the country to get offended/disgusted/angry/pitchforked/opportunistic and go all nutso and take its eye off the ball? Well, of course it is. Anyway humor. Being President and Leader of the Free World is easy. Comedy is hard. President Obama evidently made a crack about his bowling and the Special Olympics on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Uh-oh. On the one hand, they can edit it out; they do that regularly. But .. people already know about it, so the editing-out could end up being as bad as running it, maybe worse. I don't know, but I'll probably leave the TV off for the next few days. Except for the business channel. Do you think the business channel will be covering it for the next 72 hours too? We'll see. Update at ~midnight, PDT. Over 201,000 references on Google already. Washington Post article has 1,451 co-references. If only we could harness something like this for useful purposes like making electricity, saving the world or stopping the demolition of the Aging Comics Retirement Home in Bel Air. Really. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Post #2380. AIG Outrage. Sorry, I don't have any left, but since that is what everyone else is writing about today .. My reason is that I got outraged-out long ago. Those guys will always steal our lunches, because we're lallygagging and they're cockroaches. People are drinking, too. Called my friend Bruce .. drunk, late afternoon. Got an email from my brother, the evil one .. drunk, early evening. As for the sister-in-law, I can't tell. She hasn't lost that much money either, though she believes she has. I don't think we've seen the worst of this yet. People, money, greed, unfairness - it could get ugly. I wonder just how well our civilization would handle something like a genuinely angry mob getting out of hand and doing something truly awful to some unlucky financier. In any event, I've completely lost interest in my own losses and am more focused on the sociology now. Andrea Mitchell was interviewing Congwmn. Jane Harmon. Heaven help us, two aging "blondes," and I mean painfully aging, as in painful to look at. Harmon mentioned Iran's development of nuclear weapons and suggested we should get them to stop it. She is the Chairwmn of the House Homeland Security Committee and pretty much what is standing between us and another stunningly horrific attack upon our country. My name is 777-444-222-55. At least I think it is since I regularly get rejected the first few times when communicating with a machine. Has it occurred to anyone that it doesn't make sense for us to accommodate them instead of the other way around? Especially now while we're still somewhat in charge. Two of the most popular shows on television this very week are a couple of the best scf-fi offerings of all time, and I don't think it's any accident that both involve machines gone amok. I don't mean "amok" like a little local mayhem either; these have wrecked the planet and are coming after Us. As they say at the end of most Discovery Channel programs: It isn't of question of if; it's a question of when. That reminds me, I've been meaning to write to the Discovery Channel and tell them how annoyed I've become at hearing that all the time. Another of my cartoons. (I really should try at least to do a stick drawing for these.) A very secular funeral. Relatives, acquaintances and Facebookers of the departed are gathered around the Hole in the Ground. Person-in-charge is having a few remarks, ending with .. And now we sequester his carbon. And still another sign of the times, our second daily newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intellingencer, folded today. Posters on Craigslist were selling final isues for up to $30.00 a copy. So there you go. Call it a noisy, annoying toilet lid drop on one of the final dumps of our culture. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Monday, March 16, 2009
Post #2379. Ah, electron memories. As the Electron Economy tries to recover this morning, actually UP on a day when you would expect profit-taking, I got to thinking about the electrons themselves. I first discovered them in 1967, Johnson Hall, brand new then. They're tearing it down, by the way; another rant for another time. I remember taking a stack of cards over there to run through The Computer, woooooo. How utterly Star Trekkian. Also new then. The one aspect which sticks in my mind was being careful not to drop and reshuffle them. My, we've come a long way since then, haven't we? I'd put in the HTML for sarcasm, but this thing refuses to recognize it. Then the 70's happened, wheeee, and later on, I bought some Microsoft when it went public. Sounded like they might be on to something. Pretty good electrons there. Skipped the next few years of electrons before signing up on CompuServe. Remember them? And alt.fan.celebrities, where a weird guy named Matt Drudge posted stuff? Fast forward. 2009. Are we better off? All my money is electrons now, except for the token amount in my wallet. It can disappear anytime. (See WAMU rant.) The bored lady at the cancer place calls with results if the electrons remind her. They don't. I really don't care, but I pretend to for their sake. The grocery wants to know what I eat over a period of time, so they give me a card to get food for less than the outrageous price showing. I don't care about that either. In my old place of employment, if the electrons stopped working they would now be completely lost, unable to accomplish the simplest task. You might hope that situation would cause panic, or at least disdain. But it wouldn't, we know that. Sorry, computer's down. Thinking back, my blood pressure might be more reasonable if we'd had something like that: Sorry, I don't give a shit. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Friday, March 13, 2009
Post #2378. Sorry it's a little crooked. How depressing is this?  It was advertised for just under a million. That's a million DOLLARS. What is it, maybe 20-24 feet wide? Less than a doublewide. And just imagine waking in the middle of the night in your magnificent Master Suite and having to stumble through a long, narrow, obstacle-ridden corridor for a raging pee. Reminds me of a living unit on that overcrowded planet the original Star Trek crew visited. The one where people walked calmly into the disintegration chamber when selected for population reduction suicide. Someone will buy this condo. Maybe to get one on a high floor and jump out of it. Watching The Office and wondering why some guys use "Michael" and other go by "Mike." Pretty obvious I guess. Anyway, that thought led me to "Michael rowed the boat ashore," and a stunned, Whuuuuut!? Let me explain. For what, forty years, I've thought the lyrics to that song went "Michael rode the border shore." I've sung them alone, sung them along, hummed them even. And now, in the year 2009, all of a sudden the true lyrics pop into my head. Why? Why now? To be sure, I looked them up on the Internet, seems I'm far from the only one on this thing, and there are more. I think my getting it wrong was better than the usual one. And it was The Highwaymen instead of PPM. Just another adventure with the mind. Spooky though. Rick Macherat
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Post #2377. Losing your grandmother. I had to tape up my wallet today, and that really brought it home. My grandmother gave me that wallet. In fact, she gave me every wallet I've used in my whole life. So now what? I have no clue how/where to get a new one. Oh sure, Men's Furnishings, I'm not that dumb, but which one? Nordstroms? Penneys? And how on earth do you pick out a wallet? Sorry to hear about your grandmother. When did she pass away? 1976. See what I mean about grandmother wallets? Thirty-three years it has lasted, and with this tape job it might even go a few more. We tried Thursday shopping today. Much better. The traffic was sensible, and the stores weren't full of Monday Women. One very pleasant lady struck up a conversation with us, something which never happens to Brother and me. It took only a few moments to realize she was completely insane. Bless his heart, after she wandered off, still talking, Brother said softly, "Nice lady." The world is a very different place for Brother than it is for me. Now that I'm getting older and beginning to show just the subtlest bit of senectitude, I have to be even more careful about things going on around me. I'm aware when people "accommodate" me, something I probably won't notice much longer. I have no idea how Brother regards it all - he is impossible to read. He puts on his impassive "going out" demeanor and best behavior, the downside of which is complete obliviousness to danger or harm. At the same time that I'm trying to pay more attention to it, the world is slowly fading into a vast symphony of white noise. Then there's driving .. oboy. That sure went downhill in a hurry. Let's not talk about it. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Post #2376. Reminder. You know how I've marveled at how anything can be found on the Internet? Well, tonight I was looking for a small downloadable app to remind me with a single "dink" of a bell and a little notice at certain times. Like this very evening, for instance, when they put on Demitri Martin at 10:30pm. How is someone, let alone someone with a failing mind, going to remember that with all the pressures of today and the economy and whatnot? Why can't there be a little thing on the computer which pops up with a noise and a little note at just the right time? So, I searched the Internet, and one of the first suggestions was Reminder 1.07. Just the ticket, right? It had a description: Reminder, a very simple & utility assistant for your working, studying & living. When the matters should be deal, they can auto remind you on their own initiative, you need not to remember what matter you should do now from a lot of your matters. so that to avoid forgetting or disorderliness, thus raise your working & studying efficiencies.And don't forget, they will also be taking over everything else soon. I didn't buy it. Sorry, Demitri. Have to find another way. Have you listened to the new U2, "No Line on the Horizon?" Me either. Looking forward especially to their Let me tell you how precocious my rapture is sometimes. Chic store adapts to spur shoppers to buy. That was the headline in the business section. Yes, we still have a business section, but it has been reduced to two pages at the back of Section A in our soon-to-be-only daily newspaper. The other one closes down in about a month. Don't read it Rick. The story will only annoy you, that voice said. I read it. The lady, owner of Mercer store, said the stacks of $250 7 for All Mankind and Citizens for Humanity jeans used to fly off the shelves. No more. So she has scaled back on that stuff and is now carrying mid $100 jeans for more price-conscious shoppers. Honestly, the story did say that, and I believe it. There really are people that vacuous, lots of them, blondes mainly. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Post #2375. Phone it in. This is something I would definitely use  Sometimes I miss the old way. Life was a bit less convenient, true, but so uncomplicated. Of course, pay phones generally worked. Before too long, younger people will not know what a pay phone is, like now with the Operator or the Dial. I tell people about Operators, and they simply refuse to believe it. What do you mean they did everything? They did everything. Not only that, they did it without drama or emotion. Nothing at all like today's 911 call receivers who feel they have to perform, as if the call is going to be replayed on one of those shows on at 7pm. Which they frequently are. And while we're on the subject, I've been meaning to mention those advertisements for Brinks home security. You know the ones - bad guy breaks into a house, alarm frightens him away, Brinks calls to reassure frightened girl. I want to throw something at the tv every time that thing comes on. Number One: audible alarms do not scare crooks. Neighbors ignore them. Police ignore them. Okay? Second, see if you can name the LAST thing you want to do right after some scary-looking meth freak has thrown a lawn chair through your patio window and the alarm is going off in the driving rain and you're cowering for your life on a corner .. Somebody answer the phone?!! Run to the phone and answer a bunch of questions from a call-handler in Hyderbad? I think no. Maybe I'm that way because I'm a bit of a nutjob about the phone. You're doing something or talking with someone and the phone rings. They run to answer it. My question is WHY? Is that call potentially about something more interesting than us, what we're doing? I say no. (You always say yes.) I frequently let the phone ring. Just don't answer it. They way I look at it, this is the exact same thing as not being at home. Same with the door. If I am not expecting someone, I never answer the door. True, this has caused me to be viewed as being a little ... odd in the neighborhood. Scruem. There is absolutely nothing to be handled at the door which cannot be done over the phone. Except petitions, donations and Mormons. And you can probably guess where I stand on those. Even with Big Love being my 3rd favorite show. What are one and two? I'm an aging geek, T:TSCC and BG of course! And, speaking of SciFi, Michael Okuda has never gotten the full credit he deserves in the Advancement of Science. Though every geek knows his line, from TIME magazine, Q: "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" A: "They work just fine, thank you." Rick Macherat
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Post #2374. How do you title a death thing? I haven't had to do it yet, email-notify a group of people about a death, but I received one today. It was a cc, and it annoyed me greatly. More, it illustrated how perfunctory and shallow life has become. An entirely appropriate response for me would be to send an e-card, making the entire dispatching of a person a matter of clicks. I may go one better and ignore the message and then claim I sent an e-card when the inevitable follow-up comes in. Just one more thing telling me I no longer belong. This morning I was reading a discussion about environmental sustainability at one of my regular sites. They were debating the merits of granite countertops, and I came that close to typing something about how my Formica© has served perfectly well for 45-50 years so far. Stopped just in time - I knew they wouldn't want to hear it. If you read carefully, you can usually detect rolling eyes through the keyboard. These youngsters (under fifty) have been force-fed Environment all of their lives and are completely immune to sensibility. So, we go through the motions with the LEED and whatnot and save some water here and there to keep them happy. Does anyone know how Your Healthcare Professional got slipped into the vernacular, and any ideas on how to kill it? Rick Macherat
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Post #2373. All pau. That's what they say in Hawaiian, means "all finished." Sounds better, I always thought, adds a touch of satisfaction to it. That's how I feel tonight, having finished the annual guardianship reports and the income taxes for brother and me. Only, it's after 10pm on the west coast and almost everybody else in the world is in bed. I can just see me waking Arlene and Fremont to tell them I'm done with my taxes. What a joke, huh? With a $6,500,000,000,000 budget, does my little contribution help? Do any of us matter? Of course not. And as for that number, you can make up any number you like; no one is paying attention. The tv tried to explain a trillion tonight, with Anderson Cooper in the lead, employing all of his cleverest similes to bring wisdom to the morons out there/here. Sorry Andy, none of them worked. Nobody stacks money up in tall piles like that anyway. Trust me, they would fall over long before they reached a third of the way to the moon. Only the Chinese understand A Trillion. Sister-in-law and I decided that by our age we should probably have an idea about our monthly budgets, especially with The Economy and all. Everything is "especially with The Economy and all" these days. She was working on hers, and I planned to do the same with mine. Her completely piles-of-papers non-mathematical way makes no sense to me, but somehow she comes up with a figure in no time. I am $9,000 off. How can someone have no idea what they did with $9,000? It's right there in the numbers, but it appears I no longer possess either the discipline or the acuity to figure it out. It's a lot of money, and I did give it two good hours. I'll just try and be a bit more thrifty this year. As for the sister-in-law, well, I'll have to express a desire for some financial privacy, be astonished about what things cost these days and blame especially the economy and all. Oh, and my annual reminder for folks who don't scroll all the way to the bottom:  Rick Macherat
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Post #2372. A sorry realization. Sometimes I'll read back over the last few posts, just to see where I'm at. This time I discovered a recent odd preoccupation with superior intelligence, and not a good one. Lately, I've been meeting, running into, stopping to talk with .. a lot of sixty-somethings. Maybe we're all seeking one another out in some desperate attempt to reconnect with sentience, since one of the first questions one will ask the other is, "Are you forgetting things?" And the answer with invariably be a relieved, "Yes! You?" Then we compare notes, laugh and feel better, only the feel better doesn't last for very long. We're falling apart, and our minds seem to be going first. It's a peculiar affliction. I don't feel dumber, but I am. Just the other day at the grocery, a different one, I had to stand back for a few moments and study the checkout routine since it appeared to be all backwards from the Safeway. I was like, "Whoa .. if I push the cart in there like she did, where do I go then? She walked way around the other side. And that fat lady, is she my checker or is it the one facing the other way? Do I have too many items? And why is that bagboy staring at me so intently? Probably thinks I am casing the checkout to rob it." That whole grocery trip was a trip. I already avoid shopping any day near payday or welfare-check day. Made that mistake once, and it was like being a refugee in some really awful country. I've now added Mondays, the day that Serious Women go out. Watch out. They have no patience for doddering, slowpoke old men. Seattle is becoming insufferably Green, and we don't need to be. Our power comes from dams built decades ago, we have water up the yingyang, critters abound, trees grow anywhere there is an open patch for a week or so, and huge salmon swim in the road when it rains fergoshsakes. Still, our mayor wants to set the pace for a Green Urban Paradise across the world instead of filling potholes like he's supposed to. Just about everyone is jumping on the conservation trolley, and it's all completely phony. We all act as if we're the only ones thinking, "Yes! As soon as we get that transit in and all these other cars are off the road, I can run the Lexus up to 120 and there won't be another car in sight. Whoopee!"Rick Macherat
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Post #2371. I wouldn't make it in New York. Take Lev Grossman for instance. Now, you've got your Jason's, Justin's, Joshua's, Joel's, and I forget whatall, the young cutesy writers at TIME, then there's Lev. Since the powers-that-be seem to give Lev any page he wants, up to three in a row ferpetessakes, it sounds to me like he can pretty much write about whatever he wants. I don't think there is ever any, "Grossman, read this big book and give me 350 words by Friday." No, he chose to read a 581-page major biography of  Yeah, me too. Let me risk ridicule by coming right out and saying that I have never heard of Donald Berthelme, and I have nothing but wide-eyed admiration for anyone who could read a 581-page biography of him, to say nothing of the person who wrote it, Tracy Daugherty. "While some critics find Barthelme's "plotless marvels" both depressing and demandingly difficult, other readers find his explorations of postmodern sensibility oddly consoling." I probably never will read any Donald Berthelme. Lev sez, speaking of Berthelme, He confabulated his stories out of different strains of language--philosophy, psychology, scientific jargon, advertising, adventure stories--which he then crashed into one another, demolition-derby style, to demonstrate how hilariously inadequate they were for describing the world around us. ... He was restless and rebarbative, full of jittery, sarcastic energy and the kind of confidence that forms only around a tiny seed of insecurity. Whoa. To be able to write stuff like that, and mean it, and not have to look up "rebarbative" because you already know the word and actually use it from time-to-time in just the right place, such as this one, well, that's all part of being New York. My mother took 17th century English Lit in college and was given the option of writing a paper for an A or reciting 1,000 lines of Milton in four 250-line sessions. She chose the "easier" one, the memorization, and as late as her early eighties she could still reel off stretches of it. We've kept all our books, going back about a century, and my mother's Milton text is still downstairs. Once, I actually took it down to see if I could even read 1,000 lines of Milton. My record: 13. No, I'm better off way out here in the forest, Seattle, a little wet and a little dumb.Rick Macherat
Monday, February 23, 2009
Post #2370. Dr. #88271. There was a thing on about Ted Kaczynski. The fact that simply typing that name instantly identifies the person and his infamy illustrates one of my phobias: letting the names of bad people survive. I wish there was a way we could just go to a number after the individual is relegated to history. Ted could be #88271. Manson .. how about #87994? Anyway, 88271 wrote a Manifesto which has been repeatedly characterized as "genius." Furthermore, Wikipedia identifies all three of his names after "Dr." and reminds us he has a Ph.D. Okay, we'll go with #88721, Ph.D. Did you transpose on purpose? Hardly. I just decided not to correct it just to annoy him mathematically. I read the Manifesto and soak up some genius. Ted had an I.Q. of 167 and while he wowed people with his math, Writer Henry Holt notes that Kaczynski's writing, despite its irregular hyphenation, is virtually free of any spelling or grammatical error, in spite of its production on a manual typewriter without the benefit of a word processor or spell-checker.I feel he should have stuck with numbers. The Manifesto reads like a term paper. Oh it's a smart one all right, but the most likely TA comment on it would have been Too Long!. That would have really made Ted mad. Probably would have blown him up too. I read the Manifesto on Rahul Kumar's site. If you follow that link you will experience some of the "old days" of the web, that marvelous time before cute colors and graphics when we were just discovering Links. Oh, and I don't want to get extra credit undeservedly for claiming to have read the Entire Manifesto. I only read far enough to realize it was entirely about William Ayers. The lead-off story for the 11PM news tonight went: RESIDENTS OF THIS NORMALLY QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD WERE RELIEVED WHEN THE ARREST OF A RELATIVE FOR THE MURDER MEANT THAT IT WAS NOT RANDOM.Two more of my [word for things which drive me absolutely fracking nuts] in one sentence. There have been a lot of murders in our neighborhood, it isn't quiet here, and I intend to say so if I'm ever out in the street in my curlers while the tv crews are there filming the body bag loadup.Rick Macherat Lev Grossman
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Post #2369. A memory. It occurred to me that since the visitor count has fallen off somewhat, probably due to the economy, I could write just for me tonight and no one would notice or care. It's about this house,  one which we were fortunate to live in for about a year a very, very long time ago. I'm pretty sure it is even still there, at least it appears so in a blurry Google Earth shot. When you're young, time passes slowly, so the three of us packed many memories into that year, like gathering frogs and tadpoles from the forest and raising them in a tub in the huge basement. We still had that tub, by the way, at least up until the 2005 rat disaster. My room was the one with three windows in the middle, second floor, with all the ivy. We have ivy here too, though it is not benign like that shown in this placid photograph. Our current local ivy is malignant and invasive and has every apparent intention of taking the house and all the trees. My bed was right under those windows, and one night while I was awake late, looking out and thinking about all sorts of 8-year-old things, a burglar broke into our car. I was shocked: an actual crime in progress and I was witnessing it! I woke my dad who grabbed his .45 pistol and charged down the stairs. The perp escaped, and with him went a pair of my sneakers. Crime victim. Brother had some developmental issues in that house, some funny (discovering that Mary's fanny goes all the way around, and others more disastrous (learning how to take things apart.) Memorable anyway. He still feels guilty about some of the destruction, so I remind him that he was seven and no one is mad anymore. The house had two "go-arounds," a feature which placed several of our houses at the top of the long list. A go-around is when a number of rooms connect, forming a circle. The obvious use of such a feature was employed only when the Head of Our Household was not present, as he had a serious problem with noise. A mysterous attic accessed by a separate set of stairs was fascinating to me. One small room next to the stairs had no evident function except to contain a closet under the stairs. My interest in architecture began there with that magical use of space and with the rooms which were contained brilliantly inside the roof! I think our rent was $60 a month. What I wouldn't give for a couple of million now and a chance to buy that house and live there forever. Rick Macherat Kohlseeweg Buchschlag
Friday, February 20, 2009
Post #2368. The wreck. I still maintain that this song exists, and I more or less assert that it was written and performed by Ray Stevens. Perhaps they took it off because it was too violent. By "they" I mean the people who do anonymous things, and "took it off" refers to when things disappear. Great grammar. Hey, it's casual Friday. Anyway, the song describes a motorcycle rider, Charles, who goes very, very fast with his girlfriend, Baby, holding on for dear life. At some point she yells, I'm cold, Charles! and he tells her to put the motorcycle helmet on backwards. They wreck. Some small children, southern and black, are on the scene, hair, teeth and eyebrows all over the highway, when a cop arrives - cue sound of radio aerial going whoosh-whoosh as the police car screeches to a halt. Words, words .. then, Whap-whap! Don hit me no mo' officer, I'll tellya whut happen'd. Now, Mistah Charles, he were killed outright. But, Miss Baby, she was all right 'til Julia turned her head around. I did not make this up, but the Internet, which seems to have every thought ever written down listed somewhere, has no record of it. So, in the remote event somebody else goes a looking for the words, this will tell them they are not alone. Locally,  in this photo by Mike Siegel, you see a very dangerous man. Yes, it's intended to scare you. As is evident by the restraints being employed for his latest trial, this character is a real-life Hannibal Lechter without the style. He's just mean and wild, a rapist and murderer. A jury let him out instead of sending him to the "special confinement facility" after his first 15 year sentence was up, and it was after that when he committed the most terrible crimes. He's had so many trials and so many sentences are pending that it's impossible to keep track. In the meantime, any single woman's most horrific nightmare just gets wheeled back and forth, scaring the crap out of everybody and loving every minute of it. The only person I believe is Not Frightened is the officer to his right in the photo, and we can only hope that at some time in the course of this legal fiasco he is left alone with her if only for a few moments. And how I would love watching her rip his arm off and beat him to death with it. Further on the "special confinement facility." A number of states have some variation of this now, a place where hopeless sex offenders are committed after their criminal sentences are completed. Horrifically expensive, and one other thing: the residents still have rights, the principal one being free use of the telephone with no monitoring. Yes, you guessed it. They are calling women, threatening them, and even calling their former victims, and we can't do anything to stop it. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Post #2367. I may have S.A.D. For heaven's sake, don't tell anyone. I'd never live it down. It's just that nothing seems funny, or at least it doesn't stay funny long enough to type about it. My friend K, my email pal who I haven't seen since we were kids, sent me a zinger last night: a scan of the Valentine's Day card I gave her in, get this, 1953! I don't remember it. She does, of course. Awkward. Big news on the prostate front. Right in tune with my mood. Seems they've found [oh go read it, it's in all the papers, search sarcosine] and nobody will die from prostate cancer anymore in almost no time if this pans out. Only, I could have written the second half of the article: more research is needed, greater funding, more tests, better sampling, vaccine, cure, three to five years ... horseshit. You will never hear another word on the subject. Oh, and just try and ask your urologist for a simple test for sarcosine in the blood. Any junior chem major should be able to do it. Number one, it won't make it into official lab protocols for years because [oh just insert government rant] and number two, doctors get real pissy when you read stuff in the papers that hasn't made it in the journals which they are months behind on anyway. I'm going to annoy my doctor about it on Friday. I'll let you know how that goes. Lisa Lampanelli has a new HBO special, recorded at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa. Now, I love Lisa and her extreme filthiness, but it just struck me funny thinking about the good people of lovely Santa Rosa and their gleaming Center for the Arts which I am sure has all kinds of artsy stuff year around and in and out to raise the cultural awareness of the community and contribute to the advancement and refinement and on and on and then someone goes and books Lisa Lampanelli. There's a show on one of the 500's channels called Iconoclasts. I watched part of it one night when they had Tony Hawk on. Yeah, Tony Hawk, the coolest guy alive if you're between 9-14 or ever were, but an iconoclast? I can only imagine they never told Tony what the show is about. Whatever that is. This week they did Carmen Diaz. Folks, if you go on a show called Iconoclasts, then you aren't one. Did I ever tell you that we have 3,000 body piercing businesses in this state? Can you imagine how much disfigurement that represents per day? There was a picture of a piercing client in the paper, and I noticed that the studs she was having inserted in the area between her upper lip and nose, itself full of hardware, set off her zits nicely. Her Pierceologist had Ubangi ears with black disks already the size of a lid on a can of soup. Come on up to Washington and watch our freaks as they age and sag. Toys for Tots was a flop this Christmas because the Marines couldn't make it through the snow [Seattle snow by the way] to pick up the toys. Now, the guy at the toy storage made it there to observe that there were no Marines, and the television station made it there to take pictures of .. no Marines, so the Marines got blamed for the poor kids not getting any toys. I was also going to write about the Cornholia County Jail and then pass on an incredible, gray story about a truck ramming and emptying a cement storage silo in a driving [Seattle] rain but, again, S.A.D. It's just plain awful, though I can at least recognize that those might have been pretty funny.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Post #2366. Sorry, but Geithner scares me. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner had a very bad day today. He got it from the Left and Right. Strangely enough, even with his staggeringly lofty intellect, I suspect he went home completely oblivious to the reactions being shouted from everywhere. Side note: can you imagine a conversation between Geithner and Anderson Cooper? I can hardly wait for that. Stoners will think someone has f-fwd'd their tv's. No, what bothers me is the Vulcan part, note the ears and eyebrows,  on Mr. Geithner as well as the face of the man seated behind Senator Graham,  who I believe is also an alien but perhaps not Vulcan. In any event, both of them certainly are on the same side of whatever is really is going on. Surely it isn't our money they really want. It has to be the water, air or .. us. They're calling the woman who gave birth to all those babies Octumom, and more than one commentator (with O'Reilly wildly in the lead with pitchfork and torch) accuses her of channeling Angelina Jolie. If you'll let me insert one cranky item - I watched the interview on 60 Minutes with the Coldplay guy. Chris Martin. He seemed unusually normal, hard to visualize him morphing into the wildman on stage that the audiences enjoy so. But he's a complex character indeed. His down home boy image doesn't jibe exactly with the trophy wife. As for the music, it made my heart throb to hear him insist that the words mean absolutely nothing at all. See, we of the fifties and sixties had silly music too, but the difference was we didn't take it seriously. Purple People Eaters do not exist. We knew that. Such a song today would induce gigastrokes of comment and sheer madness among fans seeking meaning. And if the band was smart, they'd hint it had something to do with Bush and win a Grammy for it. Rick Macherat geithner.jpg
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Post #2365. To be young again. I happened upon a short new blog from another's blogroll. I'll probably never have Blogroll here. Anyway, here's what he wrote: Corporate LifeIsn't that wonderful? No, I was never that young, sadly. For copyright issues and just plain politeness, here is the source of that entry I lifted verbatim. A beautifully-designed page, by the way. I'd love to steal it if I only knew how. Annoyment. Alice Park. Douglas Melton. Stem Cells That Kill. The TIME cover whispered it to me, Don't read this. It will just end with 'more research is needed' and annoy you. Like always. And, like always, of course I read it. Yeah yeah yeah - brilliant and driven researcher, personal angle, amazing, breakthrough, FDA, four years. It's always four years, isn't it? Blah blah. I love science and hate science. All this breaking through but nobody ever gets cured of anything. But that wasn't what annoyed me about the article; all-in-all it wasn't that bad, uplifting even for people who can still get uplifted I guess. No, it was one little cutesy part that just irritated me to the point of ... well, typing this two whole days later, that's how much. Inspiring researcher teaches at Hahvadddd, a class on medical ethics which is chock full of young eagers who want to hear how stupid and bad Bush was among other things. (We'll have about ten more years of that, so get used.) By the way, I'm completely pro stem cells and then some. They can put children up to age 18 in the blender if it will help science and it'd be okay by me. Anyway, Prof. Melton brings Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to class to present arguments against the field. Melton asked Doerflinger if he considered a day-old embryo and a 6-year-old to be moral equivalents; when Doerflinger responded yes, Melton countered by asking why society accepts the freezing of embryos but not the freezing of 6-year-olds. I imagine the class loves it. "Buuurrrrnnnn," as Kelso would say. HA, you got nuthin against that do you, Mr. Catholic guy. Now, I'm extremely not Catholic either, but I'd like to think that a student, a Hahvadddd student especially with a hs-gpa in the low 4+ range and dazzling SAT's, OR wealth, would interject DONTCHA THINK WE DON'T BECAUSE WE CAN'T YET AND THERE'S NO REASON TO? Don't what? FREEZE 6-YEAR-OLDS. And, as soon as we CAN and there's A REASON TO, WE WILL? No, no one will say that. Do that. You know how I know? I've already tried it out, the whole story, the logic, on three people, and all three stared back at me blankly. One said she didn't know I was a Reactionary. Back to putting children in the blender. Just so the reader doesn't go screaming from the page, no, I don't think we should grind up children for science. Yet. I'll tell you something which you won't believe for about 35-45 more years: our position on "life" will be quite a bit different when there are 9 billion of us. I won't be here. That is, unless they find a cure for old age in which case I'll still be typing away in 2034 along with 13 billion other people, and we'll try almost anything to get that number down someway somehow. Whoopie. Rick Macherat
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Post #2364. An interesting journey to this entry. I won't tell all of it, however. Simply, for a long time I believed that Chlorophyll and Hemoglobin were exactly the same except for one atom at the center of the molecule, magnesium vs. iron. It gets worse. Not only did I believe this, I was also under the impression that it was not widely known. So, before writing the blog entry which would reveal this amazing chemical miracle and speculate on the many possible chemical ramifications, scientific and sociological, it seemed a good idea to do a little research, you know, just to refresh my mind on details of the chemistry part. Well, it seems A science project book claimed chlorophyll and hemoglobin each contain 137 atoms and replacing one atom changes hemoglobin into chlorophyll. That is not possible because chlorophyll a has a molecular weight of under 900 daltons, whereas one subunit of human hemoglobin has a molecular weight of 16,000 daltons. The grain of truth is that chlorophyll and hemoglobin both contain a similar ring structure with a different central ion: magnesium in chlorophyll and iron in hemoglobin.Again with the Metric System and those dueling daltons. And another frail memory fragment dashed, one which enabled me to enjoy The Thing From Another World (1951) and even more so, Swamp Thing guilt free because, after all, there was Good Science behind them. So, back to the lab everyone, nothing to see here.Rick Macherat
Post #2363. From the other quotes. "You know, most of those aphorisms I dreamed up were pretty much just a zillion ways of saying the same thing." - HENRY DAVID THOREAU Rick Macherat
Post #2362. The EMP. I noticed that the trees are coming along nicely, and before too long the Experience Music Project  will be fairly well disguised, at least from street level. Now if we can just get some Giant Sequoias planted around the Main Library and City Hall. I don't know what these out-of-town architects had against Seattle, dropping giant turds like that upon our fair city. Of course, to be fair about my criticism and put it in perspective, I still think the glass monstrosity they put in the middle of the Louvre is awful, while most other people have accepted it. Even some local people here dearly love the EMP and the Library, and of course newborns are growing up with them. As for me, well, at least they will eventually be great locations for low budget sci-fi pics. Rick Macherat
Post #2361. March 28, 2009 at 8:30 p.m. You know what day that is. No? It's another event by the enviroweenies. These are the people who are so thoroughly invested, careerwise or simply emotionally from being force fed through 12 years of public education, in the notion that we can do something about climate change. If they simply accept and admit the truth, that we're doomed, what are they supposed to do with the rest of their lives? That's the problem. So, they have "days," in this case: EARTH HOUR Day. I know, Awk, but it's their day, not mine. The plan is for everyone to turn off their lights for an hour to illustrate .. something, it was green, I remember that much anyway. Of course, I plan to have every light in the house blazing as a form of counter-protest. And yes, things will be frosty on the street for awhile, at least until Night Out for Crime Night Potluck and Chat, or whatever they call it. This is Green Lake, a truly lovely part of Seattle.  Around the lake is what would be known elsewhere as a "path" or even an esplanade, but ours is multi-laned, enthusiastically policed, with lanes follows:
This is all serious business. And as a caution to visitors: do not expect lane regulations to be relaxed during rainy episodes. Rain makes no difference in Seattle. Once a month, the City Council reviews the designations and takes input from any present or future impacted group. As a result, lanes are frequently changed and there is chaos. We live with that. 2030 hrs 28MAR09 also 3/28/2009 also Eurostyle 28/3/2009 Rick Macherat
Monday, February 02, 2009
Post #2360. Doctor. Brother made an extraordinary comment today. I mentioned that Doctor is coming by later this month and he said, "I like him." The reason it is unusual is that he rarely volunteers anything, especially feelings. He has been interested in medicine all of his life and is uncommonly knowledgeable on the subject. Of course, no one knows that but me since he goes into clam-up mode whenever he's around other people. Sometimes, I'll go, "Ow!" expressing one of my frequent pains. He'll ask me what that was and I'll reply that it was just a sore vein or something. Then, just beneath my hearing he will mutter something. "What was that?" I'll demand. "Nothing." "No, I heard you say something. What was it?" "Acute promyelocytic leukemia," he'll say. "Whuuut!? Then I'll get all George Costanza and off we'll go. With Doctor, however, they never get beyond the stethoscope and his using it to measure my BP, and invariably Brother will feedback to Doctor's kindnesses and act interested and happy to learn something new. When all along he could go into a lengthy history and description of the sphygmomanometer and stethoscope if he felt like it. I can't say too much about Doctor since I may be obliged to reveal the location of this blog one day. Doctor-Patient, you know. He's a character too; he confessed once that he's a bit of a germ freak. I thought that was pretty funny. And, under You Go, Girl, I wanted to mention the new mother in California and her production of Octuplets. In addition to her major accomplishment in the birth department itself, she has managed to unite both ends of the political spectrum: they're all mad at her. Conservatives are angry about her lack of responsibility and foisting the huge medical care expense and eight more mouths upon an overburdened taxpaying public. Liberals are aghast at the overpopulation implications and future consumption of resources, not to mention a missed opportunity to rack up eight abortions at once. Me, I think it's great. Not only that, she's going All American already in demanding $2 million for rights to the story. All just in time to tie in with the Superbowl. Are we the greatest, or what? Rick Macherat
Post #2359. VP of what? An article in the paper today about a Google Vice President of "search products and user experience" got me thinking about the world of work in general. And why I am so glad not to be remotely involved with it anymore. The business channel was running stock footage of employees in cubicles while voicing a report on some business thing. Just think about it: millions upon millions of people sitting in those things, typing away, with maybe a stuffed animal and some family pictures nearby to give some illusion of life to the experience. Each day that passes means fewer people like me who think this is all unnatural and more people like them who are quite comfortable with it. Just this weekend I was telling someone, a young someone, about traveling to the airport in the day. You know, how you drove up, parked at the curb, walked out to the gate, greeted your arrivee, picked up bags and left. Elapsed time: maybe 40 minutes, of course that included a stop for a drink at the bar where you could watch the planes for a bit. Oh, and everyone was well-dressed and not the least bit hurried or stressed, even though their chances of ending the day in a flaming plunge from six miles high was about 1,000 times more likely than it is today. But we do have cable. And cell phones. Oh, and don't forget porno, plenty of porn 24/7, so there's that. Rick Macherat
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Post #2358. Is has happened again. Another teenager killed in a senseless accident, senseless in that they were racing and everyone involved is denying it. Naturally, a roadside memorial has been set up, a pitiful collection of balloons and candles in the dirt next to a guardrail. Fat girls in jeans seem to be tending it, at least they seem to be bending over and tending it whenever a television crew is taking footage. Isn't it a little ridiculous still to be racing in this day and age? With the price of gas and gawdawful traffic, it has to be more of a nuisance than fun. In my day, gas was running about 33¢ per gallon, and we were able to race quite comfortably out on the Interstate. It was easy to get in a few heats before a big rig truck would come along and everyone had to clear off the roadway, temporarily. If you've ever seen American Graffiti, the racing scene in that movie is right on the mark. I imagine it isn't anything like that today. Seatbelts, sobriety, condoms. Besides, the police seem to be taking a dim view of it. The only place to race in the Seattle area is out in the industrial barrens, those miles of brand new, wide empty streets in the manufacturing parks. Not as empty as the freeways used to be when we were doing it, however, and that's the problem. I got all of that need for car-muscle out of my system long, long ago and am now completely ready simply to drive at electric golf card speed from here on. Where is there to go anyway? Oh, and I happened to write down another in the list of amazing Asian alliterative names: Ferrick Fang. Isn't that a beauty? It happens to belong to a brilliant doctor-professor who specializes in infectiousness. I was watching him conduct Grand Rounds on the educational channel. MRSA. You do not want to get it. In fact, I've decided to stay out of the hospital entirely until they produce a vaccine, something which isn't looking very promising at the moment. In the meantime, carry a pint (okay, LITER) of 91% with you at all times!Rick Macherat
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Post #2357. A worst nightmare. I know where this is,  and it actually makes me sweat just imagining being there in the dark, in the rain, in a car not involved in the massive wreck. The victims (mainly uninjured) were at least hauled off the bridge before dawn. Dunno about the rest of those poor slobs. The sister-in-law received her first Social Security check in the mail today. I had told her several times over the past few years about how wonderful it is, getting that magic, seemingly free money, but especially the first check. Well, Sister is incapable of saying, "You were right," so she went with, "I was smiling today." I congratulated her for being so underwhelmed and encouraged her not to spend it all before the weekend. I know her. The impulse purchases will gradually increase over a period of time, and she will claim they haven't. This is the same person who insists she hasn't had a bite to eat all day when I can clearly hear crunching. You might think that going on Social Security is a real downer, but it definitely is not. This is because it's a reward, a reward of more than money. See, turning fifty is cool, you are at the absolute peak of everything. Making the most money, having the most friends, best health (usually,) best sex (sometimes,) valued for your wisdom, etc, etc. Ten years later and it is all gone, trust me. You might feel just fine, but to the rest of the world you're used up, worthless and not looking so great either. No one cares what you think. That's a tough one. And then, out of the blue, you get a PRESENT to compensate you for all that abuse (plus working your ass off for 45 years) in the form of a Direct Deposit. You can do whatever you want with it. Found money. And it comes every single month, without fail, on the same day. There is no worry whatsoever about it stopping because the machine that prints it is perpetual. Even if the nukes eventually fly, that machine is programmed to keep churning out those ... well, now they would be electrons ... electrons until the end of time. Incidentally, being old on the Internet is the kiss of death as far as getting readers is concerned. I know that. I used to care.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Post #2356. Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Additional details on MILF later. In the meantime, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates mentioned today that picking people for high level jobs had become increasingly difficult, given ethics concerns and the small number of individuals with the needed experience. In other words, the cadre of capable persons who aren't crooks or otherwise depraved is becoming smaller all the time. That's not too encouraging. Someone really should set up a business just to process immigration documents for the household help of high-profile individuals. If not the appropriate cards, at least good, plausibly deniable forgeries for heaven's sake. Let's get moving. That new Treasury Secretary, I just don't like him. Something about college. Didn't we all know a go-getter like that who managed to talk himself out of trouble and took credit for everything? There's a reason people go into government, you know. Not the top guys - they're already successful and just need some adoration to pile on top of the loot. I mean the grunts, the ones who are going to be doing all the dealing out, like cards. They do government for the pensions and because they would never make it in the real business world. And we're giving them $850 billion to play with. Lord help us all. We can only hope that some of the $850 billion falls out onto the floor and ends up doing some good. I'll probably get off this in a day or two. It's just the $850 Billion that hurts so bad. Nancy keeps calling it the $850 Thousand. Cartoon for today, picture this. A co-production of the Discovery Health Channel and the Discovery Moving Gigantic Shit Channel. Ambulance pulls up to the Emergency Department entrance with a very sick man inside. The moving crew of guys with fat guts and gigantic machines gets to work and raises that entire 1000-bed hospital up in the air. Then they drop it on the sick man. In the last frame, everyone gathers around to see if that made him better. Rick Macherat Frederick Loren Irgens
Friday, January 23, 2009
Post #2355. A perfect SNL bit, missed. The new U.S. Senator from New York was introduced this morning/afternoon in a ceremony so bizarre and unreal it had to be seen .. only very few people actually saw it. She, Rep. Kirsten Gillebrand, is from a place so far upstate in New York that they are evidently unfamiliar with television. It was her big shot, and she took it. And took it, and took it. The sheaf of papers she waded through as she went on, and on and on reminded me of Student Council and other Kirstens long ago. You know what I mean, when lunch was only 45 minutes! In the case of New York, evidently lunch is endless, or at least it's fairly certain that all of the top officials of that state have nothing else to do for hours, and hours and hours at a time.   Along the way, the poor governor began to itch and scratch, shift from foot to foot, tug at his buttons and lapel, stifle yawns, and he finally looked terrified to the point of requiring intravenous Paxil. People in the back rows, having ordered coffee, were passing it around and looking at the lunch menu. You'll think I'm making this part up, but I'm not: about 10% of the way through her speech, President Obama called. The governor whispered that information to her, and she asked, "Can I finish?" "Of course," he replied; he had no idea. The President eventually hung up. Muuuuuuch later, the governor made a joke about it, but the comment went right over the blonde's head. Didn't I mention blonde? Oh yes, blonde, so very blonde, and she is now headed to the United States Senate with her 397 point Action Plan for the Speaking of giving blondes trillions of dollars to shop with, I started taxes. Started to the extent of looking up what's new for 2008. Along the way I wondered, why are we paying taxes anyway? Is it because the Chinese insist we throw a token amount of money towards we we owe, just so the entire process can mimic something real? Is that it? Because if it is, I don't need reality that much and would just as soon skip the whole thing if it's all right.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Post #2354. See what I'm talking about? You take two of the most brilliant men on the planet, give them the simplest of tasks to perform, and they muff it. First, President Obama, his mind obviously on the fact that he is going to utter his middle name and all the nonsense, inanity and insanity which will flow from that, interrupts the Chief Justice of the United States who then gets thrown off his his own game and forgets the words to the Oath of Office. Miss Teen Carolina smiled at that one. Rick Macherat
Post #2353. Honeymooners. So .. one day down and nothing blew up. That's pretty good, isn't it? There was some white powder sent someplace, but news of that pretty much got lost in the stampede of activity this morning. Sorry, scary dudes, it's going to take more than a little ANTHRAX to I woke up and discovered Tim Geithner on every channel. The tax man. (See: SNL this weekend.) He is part of a new cohort, only distantly reminiscent of the Clinton people. These men and women are born after 1960, have no memory or scar from Camelot, and they are really, seriously, mind-bogglingly smart. So smart that they must speak very rapidly in order to get the brilliance fully expressed. You'll want to hurry and get used to that. As for the $trillion, I'm getting better, feeling better. As soon as the million or so people who have their eye on it are successful in stealing about a $million each, the money will be used up and we can move on. Net effect will be the same; it will just get spent in two stages is all. Rick Macherat
Monday, January 19, 2009
Post #2352. Pop quiz. The WASL is being X'd. That's the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. It flunked. Either the test totally failed to measure anything close to the performance of the present cohort of students in this state, OR that cohort didn't learn a blamed thing. Extremely embarrassing for all concerned, so the new guy has tossed the test completely and will present suggestions for a new one by 2010. For the average 4th grader, this means there is a good chance of getting all the way through graduation and into a decent college without ever having to take a state test. Whoopie! Oh sure, there's the SAT but it's a snap compared to the WASL which was about 100% cultural politics and approximately 0% about learning. (When you write about cultural politics and/or learning, especially in Washington State, you should use "about" and "almost" just to be on the safe side.) Problem is,  if you give this test to 1,000 people, selected via a completely random distribution of every trait you can think of, 14 will hand it in blank.for we know that a very reliable percentage of all persons have some form of test phobia and frequently cannot get anything right. If you've been to school, you know these people. You prepare for the test together, and your study partner knows it twice as well as you do. Just amazing. Next day, scores are posted, and you get an 82 and they get a 39. Review the test together afterward and it's all, "I knew that." "So, why did you put 'B'" "I don't know. I just do not know." Happily, they get into a state grad school anyway and end up making $100k before age 30. What about you? I got a fabulous score on the WASL. Rick Macherat
Post #2351. Lesbian lament. Local cable news has been running a piece on the sperm bank all morning. Seems when the economy is down, more lads make the trip to the bank for some cash. For some unfathomable reason, the client they selected to make a pithy comment for the story was .. picture George Costanza, only 50-60 pounds heavier, goatee and mustache, balder and, oh yes, effeminate and speaking fluent Valleygirl. The fisher is a North American marten, a medium-sized mustelid. For those of us who don't speak critter science, it's a cute little, well, this ..  Some of our local animalogists are introducing the fisher into Olympic National Park. This caught my attention when they showed one being released - all those little animals react the same way when the door to the cage is opened: a brief pause when you know they're thinking, Whoa, is this for real or are they up to some new shit? and then they take off as fast as they can go. I can't help wondering how we would like it if aliens drugged and snagged us, then did perverted stuff for a few days before setting us loose somewhere thousands of miles from where we belong. Not only that, they attach some sort of recording device which tracks us every second until we die. And not only that, at least one of them follows us around, collecting our poop. Speaking of critters, and I do think of them more than when I was young, how about the beaver, huh? Try and describe the evolution of their dam-building instinct, keeping in mind what the final result is for all that activity and how purposeful it seems to be, without drifting into teleology the slightest bit. Can't do it. Been watching a little Discovery Channel instead of all Obama all the time? Yeah, a little. Rick Macherat
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Post #2350. Update. RE: #2349. They're better. Film at 5:30. And 6:00. And 6:30. And 11:00. On every channel. This time it makes me more sad than disgusted, for this family is about to enter the whirlpool. Leave it to Jon Ostrower to find this little gem in a global trove of mis and overinformation: Airbus models have a ditching switch:  Read about it here.Rick Macherat
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Post #2349. They'll be at your street too before long. Awhile back, I showed you the Google Earth shot of the front of my house. So far, they've been doing only the larger cities, though I was surprised how thoroughly. You'd have to drive a very long way to get to the boonies from central Seattle, and in fact I've never been that far out, but Google has gotten to Southeast 437th Street and 235th Avenue South to take this shot,  and good grief but isn't that an outhouse? I saw a young woman at the Safeway, struggling to load groceries and at least three, perhaps four, children into her SUV. My heart raced as I saw all that future FICA, and I seriously wanted to hurry over, give her a big hug and load all that stuff in the car for her. I didn't, of course,  since this is the 2000's and you just don't do things like that anymore. In the midst of the Financial Crisis, greatest Downturn since the Great Depression or whatever you want to call is, a new Aston Martin dealership in town. They're calling it Park Place Aston Martin. I'll save the crack about Monopoly money. The dealer was on television, showing a model that "goes for two forty-five." You'd be a commoner, even a dork, and show it if you asked, "Thousands?" To put a point on just how tough times are, they're offering 1,000 shares of MSFT with a new car sold. Hmpfff ... priced MSFT lately? What a ripoff. Neil Cavuto was fit to be tied. At the end of his show, one which evidently had had a number of technical problems, he let loose. He does that sometimes, gets a little pissy. I didn't care about the technical problems, it's television after all and magic. What I did notice was that while he was talking, the scroll beneath his chubby little face said: Obama spending 150B on inauguration. No one noticed. No one cared. There was a small child killed last night at the Monster Truck Show in The Tacoma Dome, in a freak and gruesome accident. A part came off a truck, no one even saw it, and it flew into the stands and hit him. People were interviewed, yeah, somewhat trailer-parky people I have to say, lots of them, the company made a statement, organizers withdrew the truck, the family, although "too upset to appear on camera," had a written comment, and that was that. Well, except for the lawsuit and some massive wealth to be forthcoming. The show went on tonight, only there were a ton of television newscameras filming all the excited, waving fans as they filed in. Life and Monster Trucks go on. And I know it, I just know .. that somewhere inside the Tacoma Dome tonight, probably in the dirt at the edge of the track, there is a memorial of flowers, candles and balloons, and that memorial will remain there until, well, until Motocross, anyway. They'll have to bulldoze it before then. Could you be more cynical tonight? I probably could, want me to give it a few more paragraphs? No thanks, that's enough. Rick Macherat
Friday, January 16, 2009
Post #2348. Click here for
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Post #2347. So, how bad is the economy really? Consider this: according to rapidly spreading local rumors, Microsoft is planning to lay off up to 10,000 employees. Now, "lay off" as applied to your regular 9-5 clock-in clock-out blue-collar company is not the same thing as this since MSFT has a number of classifications of employee, purveyor, contracts, etc., but the feeling is that there will definitely be people gone. lots of them. Microsoft, with truckloads of cash on hand even after disposing of billions in every way possible, could simply keep these 10,000 redundancies on the payroll for about 31.7 years, but they won't. That's how bad the economy is. You never really get credit for things that don't happen. For instance, as one of many final kicks in the pants for Geo Bush, most pundits are arguing that those $600 stimulus checks last summer were a complete waste of money and had no effect at all. Not so, says this pundit. Those checks prevented what's going to happen now from happening then. It's going to be ugly. You keep saying that. Yeah, I also kept saying that internet stocks with no earnings, no visible business plan, no prospects and no hope cannot be trading for upwards of 100 times nothing, but they did. Until they crashed. I also said that you couldn't borrow 125% against the value of a house which was already overpriced by 200% and in which you didn't have a dime of real equity, but people did. That crashed too. Next up: mortgages aren't the only thing that got bundled, collateralized, derivatized, then sold to greedy rich bastards who chopped them up and pawned them off on morons like us. Stay tuned. And brush up on your diffy-Q. And speaking of crashes, how about that wonderful US Air crash into the Hudson River today? What a breath of fresh air for the east-coast-media-elite. ECME, that's a noun now. After covering the replacement of Geo Bush for 7 years and 51 weeks, they finally got a chance to go all newsmad over something cool and massive and potentially gawdawful and to blurt out any made-up factoid about aircraft and the marvel of flight itself that they could possibly muster because no one will bother to check. Right in New Yawk City even! I can't see it as anything other than a deserved reward for enduring Omania all this time. But one has to ask, what about the birds ... ? Rick Macherat
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Post #2346. I liked this one. Tom Spilman, KeyBank South Sound District president, outlined the effects of 200 layoffs occurring in the bank's Tacoma call center. "The layoffs 'will be transparent to clients' and will not affect the bank’s 146 branches in the state," more or less said Tom. What he meant was the layoffs would be transparent to Management, because companies that have call centers never actually call their call centers. I know this because I call call centers. A lot. I am an expert on call centers because I have the time. "Due to an unusual volume of calls.." has been on the call center recording of a certain F-500 company for nine years. I remind them of that about once a week. I also complain if the waiting music is objectionable or scratchy. Some companies have their main telephone system mixed in with the call center access. So, if you get hung up in the voice mail, try dialing a random number, e.g., 2556, and see whom you get. I ended up with a VP/Sales once who evidently didn't receive all that many calls and was happy to help fix my problem. In any event, always try "0" at least once. Many companies haven't wised up yet. Next to being a crack whore, the job of call center talker has to be the worst there is, mainly because of the abuse. That's why I am always polite and kind when I speak with them. I think call center talkers prefer talking to old people anyway because we offer a wealth of historical perspective which they cannot get elsewhere, and we enjoy staying on the telephone for a long time. It helps them by cutting down the sheer number of calls handled and reduces stress. That's my theory anyway. Almost all the centers I talk to these days are overseas, in Costa Rica, the Philippines and, of course, India. Most people think we offshore these jobs to save money - not so. Companies do it because the foreign employees are poor and live in dirty, crowded cities and we don't care about their feelings. Remember though .. gee, this didn't start out to be an advice entry, but when you're old that's how you get .. anyway, remember that there is only one PURPOSE for an offshored or outsourced Call Center: to keep you off the Company's back. They have no authority to do anything, so you have to be patient, wear them down and keep asking for supervisors until you ultimately get switched to the main site. They can do that, though the first ten or twelve levels of answerers won't admit to it. Hope this helps. Rick Macherat
Monday, January 12, 2009
Post #2345. Drugs. I watched The Big Bang Theory tonight. I'm not so hard on television; it was a good enough way to spend half an hour. When they broke for commercials, which turned out to be practically endless, illustrating just how awful the financials are for networks, I was curious to see who would sponsor a program like this one. First up was an ad for CYMBALTA®, a medicine for depression. That alone was the best laugh of the evening - sitcom sponsored by a depression medicine. Okay, the show is kind of funny too. They should be able to do a lot with the nerd humor. Then there's ARICEPT®. It "may help with Mild and Moderate Alzheimer's." There are side effects. Scenario, Doctor: So, how are we feeling today, Mrs. O'Leary?There we have it - another wonder drug passes the test!Rick Macherat
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Post #2344. Dire. If you put up to 13 inches of warm rain on top of three weeks of snow, well, dire is what you get. The good news is that if you do not live within, say, a mile of any of these rivers Puyallup Riverthen you don't need to evacuate.Rick Macherat
Post #2343. The Negro "Presented himself well" Senator Harry Reid, in his usual oleaginous manner, praised not-incoming Senator Roland W. Burris for his politeness and neat appearance. Burris, you might recall, Federal bank examiner, c. 1963-64; began at Continental Illinois National Bank, Chicago, IL, 1964, left in 1973 as vice president; Illinois State Department of General Services, director, 1973-76; elected state comptroller for Illinois, 1978, re-elected twice; elected Illinois attorney general, 1990-94; Jones, Ware & Grenard (law firm), Chicago, managing partner; Buford & Peters (law firm), Chicago, of counsel; adjunct professor, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 1995-.did indeed look quite respectable. In related news, Senator Reid seems determined to set the legal precedent (heretofore reserved to courts, incidentally) of giving Secretaries of State pocket veto power over unindicted sitting Governors, evidently not considering situations wherein these individuals might be of different parties and/or bent on other types of mischief. Rick Macherat Rod Blagojevich
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Post #2342. Snowing again. A lot. Talked with the sister-in-law today and tried to explain to her that this weather is simply a return to normal in the Pacific Northwest. Neither niña nor niño. She wasn't buying it and is convinced it is something abnormal. I suspect she may be a closet climate changeologist. Sister-in-law is also franatically pro-choice but is also extremely exercised about a case which erupted today over a local 16-year-old girl who had a baby boy and threw him in the trash. Authorities are searching the megatons of picked-up snowbound trash for the body. I started to argue that it sounded essentially like an extremely late-term to me, then thought better and completely let the subject drop. Just think of the rampaging blood pressure spike I saved both of us on that one. I need to go easy on her anyway - she had another car wreck on News Year's Day. Her fault, and absolutely no way she can rework it in her mind or arguance to make it not so. Why I decided to write some tonight in the first place was to mention a few topics which didn't get their airing, such as: • Anderson Cooper: Faux-populist crusader.I decided that they all pretty much write themselves. Rick Macherat
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Post #2341. Why fuckups happen these days. Back when I was starting in, workplaces had old hands. I suppose they still do, but rookies were smart if they paid attention to them. I worked with one, a real battleax. She had definitely chewed up and dispatched her share of up-and-comers over the years. Funny, in our three or four years together, we ended up as close as mother and son, though I really doubt either of us would have recognized it at the time. I knew more about some things than her own kids did, like the old man's prostate trouble, and she knew about my episode with the Tequila and the twins. One year she gave me a beautiful bound Bible for Christmas. Hell, I didn't even know she was religious. Probably wasn't. More like she was concerned I might need a little slowing down at that point. I was 25 after all. Point is, old timers not only know how everything works, they truly have a sixth sense about when they don't. Ours was the hotel business, and my partner could look at a reservation which was nothing more than a slip of paper with some fourth-hand information on it, and KNOW whether the joker was going to show or not. It made a difference when you had one room left and there was some dude at the desk with a $100 bill and a babe out in the car. There was absolutely nothing in it for us if the hotel sold out or not, but we busted our butts to get it done anyway. Management had not the slightest idea about the adventure and intrigue which went on in the wee hours. She even rented out the couch in the lobby one time. When we got the computers, Laverne, yeah, that was her name, Laverne, never touched them. Fortunately, the Night Audit was still manual and remained so until she retired. Problem was, instead of being represented by a gigantic wall of filed-by-date color-coded slips of paper in racks, Reservations were now all in the computer, humming nonchalantly away, in charge of everything. We learned to depend on it to keep track instead of the sixth sense of someone old like Laverne who could scan the rack and note there was trouble looming on July 8th, seven weeks away. No, computers do not make mistakes, but people do. And if a person sets the room count control to 1,370 on a particular day instead of 137, a disaster will happen and you will have no clue about it because no one is paying attention. That's what can happen in the tiny hotel. Later on when I moved to the giant hotel, the mistake numbers grew to be really gigantic too, but that's another story. And that's how the current financial crisis happened and how a missing FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS could have been not noticed. No one pays attention anymore because all the numbers are in there and it's keeping track and we don't have to worry about anything. And I can just see the look on their Laverne's face when it happened. Hmpfff.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Post #2340. Energy. This has happened before. I'm wide awake and tearing around at one in the morning. Is that the other "pole?" Don't know, don't really care. Point is, I'm getting a LOT done. Brother is asleep. Everyone I know or am related to in this time zone is either asleep or passed out. Same for the other 22 time zones with people in them that I may still know or are still alive. All asleep. Great time to get things done. No one will bother me. As if. I put on the oldies station, loud. Yeah, this is polar alright. At least I don't dance to them. Clearing out a drawer in my room so I can put away shirts that have been hanging to dry in the clothes-hanging bathroom for ... months? Washing some more. Dusting. There's that Troy Shondell song, This Time. That was Linda Shipley's song. She loved it. We danced to it then. That was a century ago; how did I remember it when I don't remember whether I? Linda, if you surf, I still think of you often. Busting up boxes for recycling. I truly enjoy that for some reason, taking rubbish which occupies a great deal of space and reducing it nearly to zero. Just in case there ever is a question,  there was indeed a White Christmas in Seattle in 2008. Interestingly enough, when Brother and I compared notes, even considering the awesome snow places we have lived, this was the first White Christmas either of us has ever had. Okay snow, you can stop anytime now.Rick Macherat
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Post #2339. Digging out. We're going to resume normal living tomorrow, try to anyway for the three days of this week. Then we lose four more, and after that come taxes and rain. Proper gloom and misery will finally return to our town. Of the many pictures taken over this several weeks of white, this is one I liked a lot. Seasun made the photograph, but I call it We don't waste any space around here.  One nice thing about getting old, I recently discovered, is that while I worry about a lot of things I used not to, other issues no longer concern me at all. Like the mail. Eleven days, newspapers too. Didn't miss any of it. And while I'm not what you would call "green," it was disturbing to see that huge pile of former trees sacrificed in a failed attempt to interest me. Maybe I shouldn't see it as a matter of age, as this story about my dear neighbor might show. She is from Snow Country originally, Minnesota, and while she is very energetic generally for her age, 81, SNOW propels her to a whole new level. First, the fact that we got our mail and papers at all after only 11 days was because she brought them to us at the end of her snow hike. Technically, her driveway is considerably less steep than ours, but still .. it seemed a little weird when she called and told us she had left a little surprise on the porch. Her husband, 83, seems similarly afflicted. He shovels the walk and driveway fergodssakes. Nobody in Seattle shovels. In fact, they are the only people I've ever known here who even own a snow shovel. So, the other morning I saw him out shoveling, and a bit letter I heard this clumping sound at the north end of our house. Ah, now he's loading up logs for the fireplace, I thought, remembering that is where they're stored. Later on, I gave her a call and remarked, "There's just no stopping the old boy, is there." "Nope," says she, "I let him do whatever he wants." Unsaid: We've had 63 years. I added, "I heard him busting up wood after he finished the driveway." Pause. "He didn't bring in any wood today." So, I asked her what that thumping noise was at the end of our house. "Oh, that was me. I was clearing snow off the roof." Clearing snow off the roof at age 81. Imagine. I was really impressed by that as I headed down the hall for my nap. Okay, one more from Seasun. The pickup driver managed to clobber the only two cars  in sight as she challenged this hill. Note the glare of ice and the angle of the apartments to the left. Possibly not passable, but she went for it anyway. Rule #231 from Seattle Driving School: When entering an intersection and all you can see over the hood of your car is blue sky, and it has snowed, best not to proceed. Rick Macherat
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Post #2338. Poll. I was called for a major poll. This was the second time for me, the last being about twenty years ago. I won't tell you which one it was, just that it was major and I was a good boy. Looking at the sample size on the released version and the population of the U.S., I figure I represented about 205,172 of you. If you noticed a bit of a sproing from the usual trend of our cultural spiral, that was probably me. Rick Macherat
Friday, December 26, 2008
Post #2337. Trying to contact Ivory. I haven't given up on my quest to find pure, original Ivory soap. The scent of that new stuff is so awful that I feel like lathering my hands in dirt instead, then rinsing them off. Also, it feels really stupid using dishwashing liquid in the shower. I decided to write them. Oh sure, they offshore all their customer communications just like Albertsons, well, former Albertsons, with whom I had a lot of contact before they forgot how to do groceries and sold the company ... anyway, they send all the writing to places like India where people with zero authority to do anything type up an answer for you. They are awfully nice and write far better in English than we do. Don't bother getting a back-and-forth going, for you will never get a reply from the original fake name again. So, I went to Proctor & Gamble. Yes, it still exists, but who knows where, Belgium most likely. They give you a form, but FIRST you must navigate a field of 90-some FAQ's so they can limit your question to the least bothersome topic possible. Then, you fill out an FBI interrogation with your life history and information. Once you've passed all these checkpoints, you get this - may have to enlarge to read it:  and the punchline: it never takes. That screen has been on my computer in its own window for three days now, in "pressed down," waiting mode. I know it will never go; I'm just waiting to see if it has a timeout somewhere beyond 72 hours. I wish there was a way to contact P&G's research department, assuming they still even have one. Somebody seriously needs to get, buy, steal or duplicate that unearthly scent stuff the Chinese put in the Ivory Soap to make it not stink quite so bad. Especially at times like Christmas Day when your whole house could use a good dose of it. It's a tossup: a roses tossed in cesspool smell of Ivory, or the original and ubiquitous Scent of China on everything else. Rick Macherat
Monday, December 22, 2008
Post #2336. Real. One of our best local photographers made this one today:  and it truly captures My Seattle. Soon as I'm finished typing here, I'm going over to check out the rest of his photobucket. Rick Macherat
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Post #2335. Happiness. (Nevermind about that disaster thing) I used to live in Hawaii, and the weather there makes people happy. So does the first week of snow in Seattle. Last night, everyone was happy - you could feel it everywhere, people just loved everything and everybody. No worry about jaywalking tickets tonight. Seattle police are usually very fussy about jaywalking. But they stay indoors when it snows, allowing everyone to be 12 years old again. I actually saw this today: a white-haired lady driver looking completely placid as her little car did several slow 360's coming down a very steep hill. The car came to rest facing forward at the bottom of the hill, whereupon she put on her turn signal, waited for the light and proceeded to make the left turn and drive away. My feeling was that she had done this before. Tomorrow is Monday. Whole Nuther Thing. Rick Macherat
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Post #2334. Disaster Update. Snowing now. Wind has picked up as well. The End cannot be far off now. I've spoken on the phone to all my local significant others. No one at long distance, however, no point in worrying them needlessly if .. somehow it isn't as epic as we're being warned. Well, we were warned in nonstop, continuous coverage on all local channels since sometime yesterday until 7pm when all of local tv seems to have realized it was Saturday night. Time for everybody to go out so we can complain tomorrow about all the insane people who were out in this stuff. If we didn't go out then we wouldn't know just how many nutcases there were out there tonight. Driving, can you believe it? People doing 45 like there wasn't a sheet of ice under that snow. And drinking, can you believe it, people drinking like it wasn't 18 degrees out? Unreal. Can you even believe it? No way. Of course, I got 4WD and only have two beers usually. This was one of the better events of the day,  though there were a lot of them. As I've mentioned before, Seattle does snow like nobody else. Also traffic. I wonder if they've figured out yet just why those two buses (would have been three, but locals stopped the last one,) thought that Thomas Street went through to the bus station instead of ending abruptly at the freeway. There are no through streets in Seattle, just 45 degree concrete slopes that end urgently. Must have been out-of-towners, a ski-jumping bus circus or something like that. Just so we don't lose power, that's what everyone is hopRick Macherat
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Post #2333. Snow XXVII. Yeah, I've written a few about snow. Type "snow" in the search box (above) and they'll all appear, even entries from the archives which are otherwise unrecoverable. I love it, even more now that I don't have to go anywhere unless I have a stroke or worse. Just sit back and watch the human hilarity of Seattle Drivers in Snow. People here don't even try with the old, "Well, I drive on snow just fine, it's all those other people who don't know what they're doing." Zero Seattle drivers have any idea what they are doing in snow and are not reluctant to admit it. They even tell the television reporters what they were doing before the car did ... well, just pan over there to see the unbelievable results. This was the type of day where I had swirly flurries with a bit of sun, alternating with the blackest sky you've ever seen - while the television showed Redmond with gigantic, fat flakes so thick you could scarcely see five feet. I love both of those. In fact I love every one of the 999 types of snow. I went to high school on a remote air base in Japan where we had "lake effect" snow from Kamchatka. Epic. I took driver's ed with chains on, though it wasn't much use for later skills since we drove on the left. I have a 4WD which turns out to have been a waste of money since I haven't even driven to the bottom of our hill to pick up mail for six days now. You suppose the mailman might think I'm dead or something? Naw. That would require inquisitiveness at the very least. Speaking of Redmond, only one guy made it to work at Microsoft. Can't say what effect that may have had on the electrons of information worldwide. I saw him on television too, riding his bicycle, all the way from Woodinville. That would have been about an eight hour car drive today had anyone completed it. And mindful of the coming financial catastrophe, note how few people absolutely, no excuse, positively had to make it into work today. Very, very few in our mainly service and electron economy. Something to think about.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Post #2332. IVORY Soap. Why ........?!!. It's true. I can even visualize the corporate session room where a slick thirtysomething wooed and wowed the suits with the knockout presentation. A full twenty-nine per cent of our product's sales are to nursing homes where the users only experience it on Bath Day and, gentlemen, he roared, You do not want a visualization of bath day! This point was emphasized every bit as greasily as the Shamwow Guy - just try and imagine Vince in a suit and an M.B.A. and maybe being a woman. He continued, And those old folks are going to die soon, and then who will buy our shit? Huh? Who exactly? We hope young people, don't we? Young people who believe shit better smell good, that's who! I'm down to my last bar, folks. It's from the emergency kit in the car. After that, I don't know. The ivory.com site even shows a partial picture of the old bar, as if they even still made it, but just try and find it anywhere. Even ebay. Yes, I looked. Oh it SAYS traditional Ivory, but the accompanying picture is all  Un parfum subtile. Yeah, "subtile" like my last cab ride in Paris. So, what gives? If you ever buy a bar of this stuff again, by accident like I did only three twelve packs in my usual buy tons of everything at one time habit, you'll notice two things: (1) it has a very slight rose scent which will gradually nauseate you a bit more each day until you run screaming from your bathroom and (2) it isn't 99 44/100 pure anymore. So, why all this you might ask. China, of course. All they put on the bar is "Imported." Cute. "Imported" means "MADE IN CHINA" from any ingredient they can root up out of the barnyard or off the factory floor plus a wide assortment of various industrial waste products and Lord Only Knows What Else with the brilliant part being a mild scent added from their most notorious scientific facility which completely masks the deathly odor of the entire concoction. Rick Macherat Proctor Gamble scented unscented grandmother fresh clean it floats
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Post #2331. A HA! A little buddy of mine just landed the scoop of the millennium. Okay, scoop of the week at least. If you live up here and have been sick to death of what those filthy French get away with decade after decade well, then, it's nice to see some merde pointed out, that's all. Sorry for getting so agitated, but it's just nice to have been right. (Boeing 787 Lessons Learnt Airbus Head of Engineering Intelligence Burkhard Domke 20 October 2008 BOEING PROPRIETARY design weight engine certification production and schedule issues Dreamliner - just for searchers) You mean they have people inside? Well, hayell yes they have people inside. Have had forever. Imagine you're French. Got it? Now, would you have someone inside? I rest my case. Rick Macherat Jon Ostrower "Jon Ostrower"
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Post #2330. Try this one. For Sandy, Utah schoolperson. Check out this picture:  In the process of researching this one, I discovered that Amazon's book previews are text-searchable. Is that new? In any event, it sure opens up a lot of additional stuff to look for. And to spend time on the computer with. Which is just what I need, another site to look into historical meanings of things they're for no other reason other than there their. Like "Station in the sun." Rick Macherat
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Post #2329. Searching. Someone who may have been a youngster came to my page today. He used this search phrase: Reading-Comprehension Test 10th Form. Unit 2 Martti Ahtisaari wins Nobel Peace PrizeIt would have been okay, except my site was the only return he received. Uh-oh. It disturbs me to think that someone went forth with the notion that my place is the focus of any sort of logic or fact. In fact, I've often gone out of my way to make it unintelligible. So kid, if you come back, and he was from Russia to make it even worse, kid .. I was only kidding about Martti Ahtisaari. Really, he is very high up on the peace charts, the Not-Bush Prize Notwithstanding. I've been getting more cynical every day (new subject) about our tawdry infatuation with celebrity. Every day brings something new - take Anderson Cooper. Please. I didn't watch that Celebraganza thing on Heroes he did on CNN, but I did catch the peculiar bit on 60 Minutes with Michael Phelps where he accomplished several of his current whimsicalities at once: insinuating himself yet again on a program previously associated with journalistic integrity, performing a mini-outing of Phelps while raising his own titillation level and exposing another tease of his own shirtlessness. Then there's Noah Wylie and the sad polar bears. Did you know a tragedy is unfolding in the world today? CNN had a story (another subject) following up on the Mumbai attacks. "The leader of the state which includes Mumbai resigned today." Sorry. That just irritated me on a cross morning. It's okay to say Maharashtra; if the viewer doesn't know where that is, well too bad. He can change the channel to MTV or something. Ditto with "West African nation of Gabon." Even The Newshour adds the modifier. Sorry again, like I said, it was a cross morning. Speaking of Mumbai, Jon Stewart seriously stepped across a line last night by making the attack/massacre the subject of a riotously hilarious comedy bit. I really wasn't all that surprised, since there were mercifully few English and American casualties, the majority being .. just Indians. How long before 9-11 gets to be funny and the War on Terror becomes a sitcom? Note: today's 7th graders have no memory of it and will be regular SNL viewers in about three years. Think about that. Oh well. Tomorrow at least will be worse more than likely. Plaxico Burress may accidentally shoot himself in the leg or something crazy like that. 52 women will name their babies Plaxico.Rick Macherat Kate Beckinsale Parminder Nagra Cyber Monday Jeff Richmond Gina Carano
Monday, November 24, 2008
Post# 2328. A huge mess. It started at first with a siren, that was nothing. Two sirens, three, still nothing. Three sirens might be something, but it won't make the news and you'll never find out what it was. Then a helicopter, loitering and loitering. None of this attracted anything besides my second-hand attention so far. Then the "Riptide" chopper arrived. I call it that because it sounds like that ridiculous-looking pink one from the television show with Perry King, Joe Penny and Thom Bray (Murray 'Boz' Bozinsky) back in the early 80's. They called her the "Screaming Mimi," (thanks to the Internet; I had forgotten that,) and is evidently now owned by Channel 4 - KOMO-TV, Seattle. A plug. This helicopter is so obnoxious that you are driven to find out at any cost what the event is, and every time I hear it I am also reminded of Thom Bray as a dork back when "dork" was a recognized condition. Naturally, there was nothing on television local cable news or even on the radio. No one really does "news" anymore. I'm starting to believe they think it is too scary for us. Long, short .. it turned out to be this:  which I think we'd all agree is one beauty of a freeway wreck. Note the backup. As luck would have it, the bus was carrying a high school football team to the state tournament. Who better to get bounced around, all on and off one another? No one was seriously hurt. Would you just look at the Standing Around. That alone set a record, I believe, for sheer number of employees on local, county and state payrolls as well as for duration. I'm not sure on the latter - an avalanche rollover, with kids, might go 48 hours. Pretty light snowfall so far this year as compared with '07 and '06 though. The wreck was caused by a car, following too closely, slamming on its brakes when a ladder fell off a pickup in front, causing the bus, following too closely, to slam on its own brakes to avoid the car and instead flying out of control, going off the freeway and rolling over. Lots of citations. I knew a guy named Bray once. Dave. Nice kid, not a dork at all. And he turned out to be extremely normal considering all the hee-haws and what not.Rick Macherat ray finkle tim masters white christmas movie sam bradford charlie wilson's war
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Post #2327. Oh, the humanity .. 4-hour lockdown in Nordstroms. When shots rang out at The Westfield Southcenter Shopping Centre of Tukwila, also known as "Southcenter," many of the thousands of people inside must have instantly thought, "OMG, it's another Dominick Maldonado!" That would be the shootup of The Tacoma Mall where the perpetrator first called 911 and told the operator what he was going to do and to "just follow the screams." I think Dominick's over-the-top performance is what got him 140 years instead of the more typical twenty. Today's event turned out to be nothing more than a beef among several gangbangers, killing one and wounding one, but it put a movie quality cap on a November Friday afternoon and evening. The performances ... first rate, from the girls streaming out of Nordstroms and tearfully reuniting with frantic moms in Escalades - Hold on, wouldn't Escalades be more Bellevue Square? - you're right, just make that waiting moms, probably not all that frantic; this is South Seattle after all, and Southcenter has sort of turned into a modern day O.K. Corral. From all that to the Harborview Hospital emoting/wailing lounge and gang survivor/revenge waiting area where the television cameras while kept at a distance were nonetheless able to capture the quotidian drama well enough for continuing newsbreaks late into the night. Yeah, I know, hard-hearted. I realize that this kid misses out on a few years of drug-dealing and drive-by's, but in the long run we save the expense of one more jail cell. And if his friends find the shooter before the cops do, well, there you go. Two cells we won't have to build. But what about the chillllldren? The Food Court was filled with children. Lady, don't worry about the kids, they do lockdowns all the time and are much better at getting the doors locked, drapes closed and under the desk with someone cute than we'll ever be. Remember the 50's, when everyone was all freaked out over nukes? Nuke drills were a picnic for us. I used to work at Southcenter, the year it opened in fact. Buck-sixty an hour, and almost nothing happened the whole summer except that one false fire alarm where everyone just sort of stood around. I sold shoes. Career note: you do not want to sell shoes.Rick Macherat
Friday, November 21, 2008
Post# 2326. It's gonna get ugly before it's pretty again. It felt like 1789 as Congress grilled the auto executives. Suppose the Honorables really didn't know that CEO's take private jets everywhere they go? Of course they did; this was all just symbolic torches and pitchforks. I wanted to relate some goings-on from my own state. For instance, the president of my alma mater, WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY, is taking a $100,000 pay cut. Not to be outdone, the president of the other state school is giving back his latest raise. Folks, these two gents make $725,000 and $905,000, respectively, plus mansions. The one I can figure: Seattle is big time, and precious. But Pullman .. how could anyone ever hope to spend $725,000 a year in Pullman? You could buy the whole store. What store? The store - Pullman has a store. When WSU was established, they knew it would be smelly and attract mainly the type of students who wouldn't be comfortable in towns with, say, streets, so they put it in the far, far corner of the state, as distant from Seattle as possible.  Okay, it isn't that far in the corner, but only someone who had spent time at WSU would be able to find it on a map. Okay, half of us probably. This economic thing is going to get awfuller and awfuller, just wait. The good part is now that we're inured, it won't really bother us all that much. Just another catastrophe. In addition, Customer Service should improve dramatically. I remember the last one when for a brief time the customer was semi-right for awhile. Deflation is really bad, the economists tell us, but you won't hear us seniors complaining as we stock up on Depends and give the cat food to the cat!Rick Macherat Washington State University President Elson Floyd University of Washington President Mark Emmert
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Post# 2325. The Sooz. There is no other reason for doing an entry today than to share a picture, this one:  Seattle Times photographer DEAN RUTZ captured the Suzzallo Library magnificently. We can longer build things like this.Rick Macherat
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Post# 2324. All choked up. The salmon have returned! No, I am not kidding. Watch this movie and see the miracle for yourself. It is part of the
Friday, November 14, 2008
Post# 2323. Now appearing in Seattle Parks: The Aristocrats! I reckon this one will more or less write itself. Nudists nekkid nudity bareass .. fountain .. public parks .. children .. Parks Board .. complaints .. overruled .. hairy .. approved .. discretion .. no problem .. cover eyes .. freedom. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Post# 2322. Epiphany would be a stretch. You'll be glad to hear that last night I typed a rambling trip to nowhere, re-read it, then deleted the entire thing in disgust. Not that today will be any better, but at least there won't be two stinkers in a row. Worrying about the economy. Paulson was on again today, looking and sounding grim. It must be strange to have a job which you know is going to vanish in two months and still act like you care. There is so much going on that we'll never know about. I just hope some young historians are taking good notes. Normally at a time like this, I would be buying. Not a lot, just things which have been driven down excessively. Not this time. This feels like "The Big One," an earthquake country metaphor that is never far from our thoughts. Just think, for a kid born around 1994 or so, terrorism, endless war, endless preparation for the last awful thing which won't happen again, awful things, screwed-up economics, buying everything from China even though it's poisoned, and having Arnold Schwartzenegger as (a successful!) Governor of California is all completely normal. Junior High 2008 is even normal. Rick Macherat
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Post# 2321. Cynical observation #527. My house is assessed for about $100,000 more than it could ever possibly fetch in the most freewheeling economy one could imagine and Eleven Times what I paid for it. There is this other house, however, my lottery house,  beautiful isn't it, which recently sold (dang) for $5,800,000. Despite that lofty transaction, the latest assessment has it as $4,400,000 a year later. Magic, huh? Not really, just gettin' things done. Those rich folks are saving about ten times the amount I am overpaying every year. All for a (probably) brief trip downtown to the right office with the right high priced (worth it) lawyer. That's how it works. So, in case you were worrying about the tax burden to be shifted enormously to the wealthiest among us by the new Administration, Don't. They'll be okay. See, the super-rich never have to (ugh) touch money. Everything that comes in is channeled elsewhere - trusts, foundations, offshore and other "venues" which you and I haven't even imagined yet, and things they If President Obama isn't going to get all that additional money in taxes from the rich people, where is it going to come from? Deficit spending, blame it on Bush. Should work for about a term and a half. Even though everyone makes fun of Cheney's "deficits don't matter," deep down we all know he was right. They don't. A few years of vigorous inflation and we pay can pay the National Debt off like a minor earmark, assuming we ever bother. That's the beauty of debt. The interesting thing about economics is that money doesn't behave like other elements of science and math. That's why Economics is Magic, and not a science, and why we can do all these nutty things with it and still the world doesn't explode. Pay close attention, watch the next year and take notes. If Economics is Magic, why don't you use it to fix your property valuation and taxes? Because we're ants and it doesn't work for us.Rick Macherat
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Post# 2320. Home of the week. In case you were wondering where on earth would someone purposefully design and live in a place like this,  that would be Seattle. Yes, the ceiling is indeed bare, unfinished, raw, as-poured concrete, or at least very carefully and expensively designed to look that way. I called my cousins in New Mexico to ask if the chairs were the ones from the bus station in Gallup, but they're sure their chairs are still there. That object by the artsy is a working lamp. The view from this unit is (1) Experience Music Project, (2) Space Needle. Do you know that there are people who purchase property specifically to have a view of those two structures? Not only that, you can put it in your real estate ad - unobstructed view of EMP and the Needle, Studio, $2,950,000. Do you ever get the odd feeling that you may actually have died some time ago and this is really Hell? I do, sometimes. One thing I always wonder about when studying featured homes in the Sunday supplement is what the heck do those people do all day? They have no Stuff. Modern homes and condo's have no storage at all, so it couldn't just be put away. In the example above, that thing on the glass coffee table is their book. One of the owners is shown in another photo reading it. In a chair by a bare concrete wall in sort of a corridor. Is it all Zenny and that's why I don't get it? Is the rain and I'm not depressed enough? If you want to experience something totally Seattle and unfathomable on a massive scale, check out our new Four Seasons Hotel. To be profiled here in the near future, for sure. Rick Macherat
Friday, November 07, 2008
Post# 2319. Another of my many peeves. We're moving into Flood Season this week, and it's always a joy to experience with the newer reporters the joy of mispronouncing names of our numerous rivers. See, when immeasurable acre feet of ocean moisture slams up against mountains and it's kind of chilly out, rain falls giganormously. You have to see it to believe it as all that rain eventually rolls downhill to us. Mainly into the streets and houses of people who have recently moved to Washington from California, flummoxing them completely. Tonight, JIM FORMAN, one of our most battle-rigored television reporters who has covered every gawdawful nighttime news story you could imagine, from the Green River Killer to hellish forest fires, snapped. For some unfathomable reason he decided to put on a cutesy small child to tell what she thought of the floods. Arrrrgggghhh. No, I have nothing against small children, with some qualifications like having to see or hear them only very rarely and when I'm in an excellent mood. Why people let them be shown on television is beyond me. She allowed that there was a reawwy wot of water, or something like that. Right after that I understood why her parents raced out in the rain with her in tow as soon as they saw the TV-truck and lights: they have named her "Trinity." Of course, in remembrance of the Atomic Test Site. (Or the FatherSonandHolySpirit, one of them anyway.) A child that auspicious must be on TV I guess, even if it's just for the annual floods. I listened to part of the President-elect press conference today. It seems we're planning to help a lot of people. That's swell. In fact, I'm detecting a frantic race toward victimhood all across the country, making me a little nervous what with 1099's just around the corner. My house is paid for, and I don't even have a credit card balance, deliberately. I hate paying interest even more than taxes. What a waste of money, though I wish I had felt like that a few years earlier. That sucking sound you heard from Wall Street this week was all the Obama supporters bailing, taking their gains and looking for other places to hide the money for eight years. (The McCain crowd did it a few weeks ago.) I suggest mattresses. Finally, in other election news, our area passed a $17 BILLION or thereabouts issue for  mass transit. Trolleys. "Don't call them trolleys; they're Light Rail." Trolleys. And not a moment too soon. Of course, we haven't a clue as to how we're going to pay for it. They tell us that that ridership will cover operating costs and pay back all the development money in no time at all, and the roads and freeways will be wide open once again. Everybody likes that notion because "everybody else" will be riding the trolleys. Sorry, Light Rail. Rick Macherat President Imanutjob
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Post# 2318. Cleaning up. I opened up a new bottle of Seventh Generation dishwashing liquid. This stuff has no scent, but there's even more: non-toxic, biodegradable, hypo-allergenic and even follows the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy. Besides all of that, it works real good on the dishes. See, I can be earthy too. Nice thing about environmental products is that you can use as much as you like, and I do enjoy using a lot of dishwashing liquid. I recycle too, and not just because I live in Seattle and you have to. They inspect the trash, you know, and I enjoy the challenge. We put the trash out just this morning. It is Brother's main chore, has been for over forty years, and he loathes it so very much. First we find out that Paul Klugman, the Nobel Prize winner in
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
11232317.1270 to win. Everyone should write something tonight because it's, like, historical. I was listening to Carl Bernstein this evening doing just that, very eloquently. At least until The Shirtless One interrupted him to say something surreal. He likes surreal things, I guess. Still, shouldn't it be 197 to win? We go through this charade every time with all the pundits trying NOT to say it, but the West Coast is a given, folks. So subtract 73 and call it around dinnertime instead of making everybody stay up on a schoolnight. I went with CNN for the climax just to see if they let Wolf or the new kid do it. Wolf still has the better agent, so it was the Monotone of the Endless Sentence who rang in the New Age. The vibe between those two guys is palpable; they do not like one another. Meow. Probably not too many people were watching when Bob Schieffer did call it about an hour earlier. He made the obvious statement to Miss Katie who looked at him blankly. (Little weak in the math department there.) But what about the election itself? The politics, the change, the historicality, the future? Oh yeah, there was that too. Remember though, it was basically just just the ultimate reality show. New episode starts tomorrow: INDECISION 2012!! Rick Macherat
Monday, November 03, 2008
11232316.160 Minutes. I did say that I would never watch 60 Minutes if the old man retired. Well, he did, and I did, and after about a year they have regained their footing and are producing good pieces again. The old man wouldn't have let Katie Couric and Shirtless at CNN on his set though. Lightweights. Whenever she makes an appearance it irritates me, because I think she should stay over at The Evening News, working overtime to improve that program. Then I think, whoa, it's probably better when she takes the day off. It isn't that I don't like her, everybody likes her. We like her on daytime television with lots of people screaming outside in the background and getting on television with their signs. Still amazes me - how long has tv been around? So she does her little piece, only they Make Sure to photograph her FOX-Style, all crossed bare legs at crotch level, then a slow, provocative Camera 1 slide in. I call it The Fatal Attraction shot. Only she's 50+ fracking years old! Do they really think there are armies of slobbering Newman's at home just panting for that uncross and wet shot who will then rush out and buy whatever the sponsor is pushing? If so, they're insane. No one watches the ads on 60 Minutes. A pee before Rooney is one of America's most enduring traditions. Rick Macherat
Sunday, November 02, 2008
11232315.1Nicole. Spain has done it again. This is clearly one country which does not care what others think of it. A judge has ruled, and the process has moved forward accordingly, to sort out the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. Mass graves are being dug up, and they are doing a search for any surviving members of the Franco regime who may still be alive in order to conduct appropriate justice. Let's see, in order to have any kind of significant position in government, a young Francoite would have had to be, say, at least twenty at the start of the war, making him 92 today. Round 'em up and string 'em up boys! Incidentally, Franco, the Generalissimo himself ... still dead. You probably saw Nicole Kidman on the front of Parade this morning. Smiling away, as if the many people who work for her and cater to her whims have assured her that she is prettier than ever.  Nicole, in case you get this, you aren't. Sorry, not any more. But why would the people at Parade do this spread on me and write down me saying how my ability to notice things and respond to things is more profound than it was now that I've learned to handle life's challenges which have been sent my way and .. because people wanted to see just how awful the botched mouth job really looks. Rick Macherat
Saturday, November 01, 2008
11232314.1Some more folks got shot. Yes, two more. The rain pretty much washed away the impromptu gutter memorial for the youngster shot Thursday as well as much memory of him having ever having been among us. These new shootings will probably be remembered for longer, perhaps even beyond the next ones which will likely be this evening with it being Saturday night and all, because the people were somewhat whiter and less poor. Also, they were standing in the street in a much better neighborhood. Also, and I don't know this for an absolute and true fact but only supposing because of years of experience, but the circumstance of white people getting shot downtown only a few blocks from five television stations would have drawn every Medic One unit for miles in all directions, whether they were CPR'ing some old lady, scooping a bum out of the lake or whatever. So there's that. I'm guessing this yet another thing you're bitter and cynical about? You'd be guessing about right. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
11232313.1Kids. Sarah Silverman was on the Tonight Show, so I stuck around after Jay's monologue to see her. I really wanted to learn if she's ever "normal," you know? She isn't. Sarah told a joke about being trapped briefly in an elevator and having to do a doodie in the corner. That made me think of my neighbors, he is 82 and she is 80, who would likely also be watching Jay before turning in. They would definitely not have thought the joke funny, but on the other hand one of them might have turned to the other to observe that Sarah is enthusiastically for Obama too, along with Sandra Bernhard. Just a little cognitive dissonance for me, that's all. And then there was this, sorry .. What you want to do is head out east on 659th Avenue, past the sugar beet processing plant, then watch for The Boulevard. That's the entrance to our subdivision.No reason at all for writing it except that the exchange popped into my head while I was washing dishes. Another for the unusual names department, consider Wang Mang Mang, reporter for CCTV. Reminds me of a excellent insult I heard in high school, by one Vernon Gravert as a matter of fact, which is too filthy to type into the blog, of course, though it involves Walla Walla, Washington if you've heard it. I mention Vernon because I was the only person in the entire school who could get away from calling him that instead of his nickname without getting smashed to a bleeding pulp, and to this day neither of us can remember why that was. Also because I thought he should be recognized on the Internet for his brilliant use of language during those years instead of being on a list of USDA-approved AMS representatives/graders working at various slaughter lamb plants who are authorized to certify slaughter lamb carcasses for criteria according to subparagraph 31 B which is what he is doing now. Hey Vern! (In case he ever looks himself up.) There was a special candlelight memorial vigil for the teenager shot dead in the street in a really lousy neighborhood last night. They mentioned that right after the report on the teenager shot dead in the street in a really lousy neighborhood tonight. The special candlelight memorial vigil for tonight's murder hasn't been scheduled yet, but balloons and heartfelts are welcomed at the street site. Candles are not recommended due to the rain. Rick Macherat
11232312.1Another fish story. I was sailing along in the paper, so much on schedule this week that I was actually reading today's edition. Crime, crime, scandal, more crime, trials, more crime then, whoa, salmon!. "Don't read it. It will only make you crazy." Yeah, yeah ... the little voice keeps saying that and it never happens. It always happens. Okay, so what now? I'll tell you: they're going to tear down another dam, the Gold Ray Dam on the Rogue River in Oregon in order to replace it with some world-class kayaking rapids and remove the last remaining barrier to the salmon returning to the Cascades from the sea. See, a lot of people don't realize that the salmon have been waiting out there at sea all these years, in this case since 1904, for the dams to come down so they can resume their runs. As for the kayakers, well, they've been waiting for what seems like forever to a self-absorbed accessorized-up adventurer yuppie puke. What was that dam for anyway? Electricity. And what are they going to do for electricity now? Oh, just build another coal-fired generation plant. There's lots of coal in the northwest, just lying around actually. (Black sooty burning coal pollution doesn't affect salmon since they're underwater.) And once the salmon return at last to the Upper Rogue River which they've remembered so fondly ever since they left in 1904, they will spawn and die. Assuming they get past the bears (protected,) sea lions (protected,) cute seals (protected,) Orca whales (protected) and Native Americans (protected,) that is.Rick Macherat RMacherat
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
11232311.1My acting career cut short. Brother comes up to the kitchen and out of the blue recites the line that I supposedly had in a school play in 1957. Brother: We've got some mighty nice ten-cent stamps.Sometimes it can be a little unsettling living with a person who remembers EVERYTHING. Everything that ever happened. If he doesn't remember, he just makes stuff up. Who would ever know?Rick Macherat
Saturday, October 25, 2008
11232310.1Looking for that sure thing. It doesn't have to be an 87% return per year, insured by an agency of the federal government, blah, blah. I was just looking for something reasonable, and this squib attracted my interest. One of our more affluent local communities discovered that it had a park and is proposing a local bond issue to renovate it. How about 5.13% for 20 years? Tax free municipal, my favorite. The article went on to point out that the bond issue would cost the owner of an average $1 million home approximately $117 per year. Now, this community has a history of approving their bond issues, but I balked. (1) Would they approve and continue to pay for a park none of them had ever been to and only one in three thousand had ever heard of? I mean, when you have a million dollar home and presumably beautiful grounds and a couple of Mexican groundskeepers, do you go to the park? I wouldn't know. (2) What kind of financial situation will those $1 million home owners be in after 20 more years? Their property taxes already have to be in the five figures and should go to six by then. (3) If Orange County can go broke ... This entry is so far off my usual. I have no idea where it's going. This particular community, incidentally an island, an island with its own express lanes to the city from a landscaped lidded freeway across the tip so they have access but are not annoyed by it, has some pretty nice homes. Doctors live there. The high school is about at the level of your typical small college. Like I said, I don't know. I'll be fairly insane for the next week or so, given Halloween and The Election. I wonder, afterwards, will we return to normal life? Will there be news again? Will we hear anything about that island that vanished during the volanic eruption, obliterating everything? What island, what eruption? See? No, answering my own question. There will be the recriminations, the new cabinet, speculation about our direction, reaction from abroad (yaaaaaay!) and moving vans, lots and lots of moving vans. Eight years is a long time, even in Third Millennium years.Rick Macherat
Friday, October 24, 2008
11232309.1Birmingham, bottom, Biden, burglars. Perhaps not in that order, depends on the memory which as you know has proven unreliable at times. Birmingham International Airport in the UK has presented its annual report. In it, they included a photograph  which I believe was intended to illustrate the effectiveness of their ongoing security program in its relentless fight against terrorism. Probably not to highlight the travel accessories of modern British ladies. There was something about Joe Biden but dang if I can remember what it was. Sometimes when a television commercial truly, truly drives you mad, you just have to type about it. Mine is the Brinks Home Security System. Young woman, home alone, and suddenly an evil-looking man bursts through her door, intent upon ... what? One can only imagine the horrific crime he has planned. But wait, an alarm goes off, and a calm person who is sitting at a computer monitor, perhaps many time zones away, all headphoned and keyboarded up, receives the signal and leaps into action, calling our victim on the telephone. She has the presence of mind to interrupt her "running for you life" mode and revert to "somebody get the phone" mode and presumably explain to the nice man what has happened and to thank him for his distant reassurance. And for calling the police. Of course, in our story neither of them, nor the perp for that matter, is aware that the police fairly much ignore home security alarm calls. Unless it is to write someone a ticket for having more than one of them in their lifetime. My, this does drive you mad. Did something happen? No, I don't have a home security system. My neighbor does though. Where is the bottom? This market is insane, some say. Some get so agitated about it, and everything else in the news for that matter, that they have begun to talk faster and faster and faster, almost to the point of unintelligibility. Some would be Anderson Cooper, the hopefully soon-to-be shirtless someday dreamboat and global news anchor, owner of this quote [from CBS News;] Cooper says Vanderbilt was not like anyone else's mom. "She would show up at, like, report day at my school where...parents have to go in and get the report card, in sort of like a beaver skin purple Zandra Rhodes coat. And I'd be like 'Mom, you know, can't you just like wear tweed or something? Just like, tone it down?' And now I'm very happy and proud that she doesn't, and she's completely unique."which impressed me for if nothing else the precocious fashion sense of a young schoolboy. So, Anderson is wondering aloud and repeatedly and faster and faster one evening, "Where is the bottom?" and the television screen seems full of faces from all over in various windows and in one of them is Richard Quest with all those teeth, and Richard just so seems to wanting to shriek, "Right here, honey, right here!" but Anderson seems not to notice. Yeah right. My own theory is that Andy is talking faster and faster not because he's on anything but because he realizes down deep that this thing is so going to blow up one day, don't know exactly how, but is it ever and he'd better get in all he has to say while there's still airtime. Like, my theory anyway. Oh yes, the Biden thing. Does Senator Biden even have a wife? Kids? Do they purchase clothing, belong to any gun clubs? Perhaps someone will ask. Eventually. You know, my hoping that Sen. Obama wins is only the first half, that being the fact that this country will be a totally unlivable steaming gruel of mass chagrin, despair and whine if He he doesn't. The other half is that Vice President Joseph Biden will supply ENDLESS material for all of us. Bank on it.Rick Macherat
11232308.1Modern Times. I thought of my grandmother and her times this morning while reading the paper. She wouldn't know what to make of a lot of it, though I'm sure she would have taken it in stride. The politics would have no doubt been a little unsettling. Grandmother was pretty much a Democrat for Life - Franklin D. Roosevelt, you know. I guess one has nearly to starve to appreciate that sort of thing. We haven't, not even close. It wasn't politics today, though; it was this that caught my attention in the paper:  Yes, that would have been a problem. She probably would have said, "Land sakes!" or something like that, not "WTF!?" like a modern grandmother. Would my grandmother be voting for that cullud man? I believe she would. Oh, lots of people might believe their grandmother would have been an Obama supporter, but I'm quite sure about mine. She wouldn't put up signs or anything like that, but she would definitely assert herself with a few words and a laser glare. No one would fuss with her. They'd probably sneak back that night and burn down her house, but they wouldn't fuss with her. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
11232307.1A nasty controversy. Several professors at Washington State University are annoyed at having being tagged as "plastic bag radicals" and are speaking out. In particular, Wilmott Gibbons, Professor of Agronomy, took out an ad in the local paper to express his support of plastic and remarked, Frequently, I'll even ask for a few extra, and the folks at the IGA have always accommodated me. I think it's important to set the record straight on these things. What is so often obscured in these discussions is the great science being done to combat the ravages of an excessive human presence on this planet. For example, in Elmo, Indiana, a home scientist named Ray Rangle has perfected a method of rehydrocarbonifying plastic bags. For about a year now, Mr. Rangle has been stuffing ordinary grocery bags into the gas tank of his tractor and getting about 8 miles to the gallon off them. Why do these things go unreported? Some conspiracy maybe? I would NOT be surprised. In a related musing, a stealth move by Bill Gates, and any news regarding a new business being started by Gates which only fires up about 1,130 hits on Google would definitely be called stealthy Maybe you just mixpelled it. The new venture is called bgC3 LLC, and you would think legions of the fiscally concupiscent, having missed out on becoming millionaires the last time, would be all over this one. Sadly, as Bill [probably] put it, BTDT. [Deleting usual whiny line about the MSFT I sold in 1986.]Rick Macherat
Monday, October 20, 2008
11232306.1Whoa mite. There is a feature in our Sunday supplement about how businesses are adapting to the needs of Generation Y or whatever this one is called. It seems they are indeed very needy, and in order to keep them happy and keep them at all employers have had to redefine everything from top to bottom. Reading it was enough to make anyone a bit older puke, I kid you not. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that the entire piece centered around our largest and most prominent HOSPITAL. Yikes. It was scary to read about just how much hand-holding is involved here - not the patients, the professional staff including doctors and ICU nurses. Just wait until the recession gets fully blown. Most of these people have never worked through one, or rather scratched and fought to keep working through one. Yes, I know .. what about the dot-com bust? As Crocodile Dundee might say, "Recession? You call that a recession mite? This is a recession." Oh, it is so coming, and for people like me it is a dream come true. For a few quarters, service will improve dramatically, from the "Service" department at the auto dealership to snippy waitresses everywhere. Even the blood pressure and flu shot clinic will have time for you now. When times are good and money is fast, it's "Get outta the way grandpa," because us grubby old feeble pensioners can't possibly bring along enough money to keep up. But soon it will be "May I get that for you sir?" That's because despite times getting real lean, we just plug along still making the same as before. Recession, what recession? Hope you get work soon, sonny, and be sure and keep that W-4 current, y'hear? Hank-u, hank-uvurmuch. heh-heh.Rick Macherat
Thursday, October 16, 2008
11232305.1Missing: One Provost. This was a strange case. The Provost at Washington State University, Steven Hoch, got into an altercation with a faculty member after a particularly stormy meeting, someone got shoved and the Provost vanished. Sent an email out to a few key people and went back to Kentucky. Some said the endless loess and wheat fields drove him out of his mind,  but I doubt that. Skipping to the end of the story, he went back to WSU, but as a Professor of History instead of Provost. The Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine will take on the additional position. (Note from an alum: it shouldn't keep him away from his critters all that much.) Still, some questions were left out there: Why does Washington State University have a Provost? Doesn't that job have something to do with academics?Seriously folks, the World Class advertising campaign is far more embarrassing even than having an Academic Administrator get into a brawl, leave town in a snit, then come back and take up a cushy job paying more than what the Governor makes. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
11232304.1Terry cloth mother. The Internet is a wonderful potion for the onset of senility. I don't know about later on - will I still remember there is an Internet? I was musing tonight and somehow traveled from Brutish Architecture, Albert Speer, the new Seattle Library and a brilliant critique thereof by Keith Pleas and finally to the terry cloth mothers used by ... in his groundbreaking experiment on nurturing and his construction of the science of love. So, who was it? Dang. It's been 43 years since I took Psych 416, so failing to remember is probably not true senility, but it seems so to me because it feels just like all the other things I can't remember. Like what happened today for instance. Quick to the Internet and a well-formed search query, and PRESTO: Harry F. Harlow, pictures and about 500 words. Caducity temporarily overcome. Cauducity is a better word anyway since almost no one knows it. I probably click on Google a minimum of 25 dimes a day, kind of the price you pay for talking to yourself a lot. I talk with Brother a great deal too, but that's a whole nother thing entirely. None of this likely would have transpired this evening, at least not with as much vigor, had it not been Presidential Debate Reality Show in America III night. Is it just me? Yes, you're the only one. Everyone else is watching. CNN is already re-running it, and they will do so again and again over the weekend and so will everyone else just in case someone managed to miss it, say some rescued-just-in-time spelunkers. The worst part about it is that the whole monstrous phenomenon appeals tremendously to young people, and once they find out that it doesn't cost 50 cents to vote, they will do so in vast unprecedented numbers. And Lord only knows what the result of that will be since we've been used to our grandparents determining the outcome of elections for so long. The other thing we seem to have made into a toy is the economy. Down 733 today. Does that make any sense at all? Someone said it had to do with a report of decreased something or another. Oh, well that clears it up. We'll be up tomorrow. Ford is $2. Royal Bank of Scotland is $1. Did you ever imagine that such things could be possible? You can buy a couple of thousand shares of either of those and make a nice little profit over the course of a morning. And a lot of people are doing just that. That only leaves religion. Thank goodness it is still intact and going strong, right? Rick Macherat
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
11232303.1President Bush's popularity declines. You already know my theory on this Presidency: when Karen Hughes left, George Bush lost his rudder. It's too bad he could never speak properly. This has allowed even the most ignorant people to believe they are smarter than he is. One person who isn't ignorant but is less intelligent that he believes is Matt Damon, American actor and philanthropist (not kidding) and poster boy for edacious ambition. He has gone from creating and playing brilliant underachievers to becoming one in the popular culture. It's all Cliff Notes, but who cares anymore? I mention Matt because he doesn't think President is smart at all. Sarah Palin either, especially Sarah Palin. I don't know about either of them myself, but I don't want people in the White House who are too smart. See: President Bill Clinton, 1993-2001; Karl Rove: 2001-2007; Matt Damon: in his dreams of saving the world while not really trying. The Not Bush Prize in Economics (also known as the Nobel) was awarded to Paul Krugman, "one of the great popularisers of economic ideas and a trenchant critic of the Bush administration. However, the prize was awarded for work done almost three decades ago in developing what is known as “new trade theory” and “new economic geography”. Not really. It was awarded for the first thing. The Peace Prize was given out last week - former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari. Observers were puzzled because Mr. Ahtisaari has an exceptional lifetime record of actually promoting peace and reconciliation around the world without being on Larry King Live all that much if at all. Furthermore, he has no opinion of Bush one way or the other. I think he deserves it, don't you?  If for no other reason than having to put up with stuff like this over all those years. Incidentally, Paul Krugman got into economics in the first place after reading and being enthralled with The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. So, maybe I shouldn't be so snarky about him after all.Rick Macherat
Monday, October 13, 2008
11232302.1Economic thing, III. I was teaching Brother about banking today. Funny when you go back to the very basics and think about how things (are supposed to) work, you can experience some real clarity. For instance .. you'll remember that buried in the middle of the current economic mess is a lot of noise about extremely complicated financial instruments that are so brilliant that they were designed and understood by mathematicians and physicists. That should have been a clue. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, but if you throw enough science at some shiny parts you can make a case that you've got one, and there it is right now, running away magnificently as it will for all eternity. Invest on the dotted line please. People get swept up and buy in. Guaranteed, works every time. Trouble is, it's all hooey. All those mathematicians and physicists are just taking plain old money and making it look like magic. IT'S STILL JUST MONEY. NOT MAGIC. The only difference between this and every other scam throughout history is that these days it takes more and more brainpower to fool all the people some of the time. So be warned. It could happen again, and again. It will happen again and again. All you have to remember is there is no such thing as magic and you'll be okay. You know how most people hate to say I told you so? Not me - I love to say I told you so.Rick Macherat
Saturday, October 11, 2008
11232301.1BDA. That's what they called it during the First Gulf War: Bomb Damage Assessment. Actually, they had been calling the mayhem of an aerial assault by that acronym for some time, but by 1990 the rest of us were into it. Yeah, I caught the BDA on the CNN brief this morning. Looks like we hit the Republican Guard real good overnight. Incidentally, that was back when we kicked butt in our wars. I'm not real sure what's going on in this one. It would probably help if we were bombing more stuff. Tragically, the expression seems to have a bit more meaning when applied to the present State of the Economy. I've noticed that nearly all of those in the know are seriously playing down what is going to happen, perhaps not wanting to be the one blamed for setting it off. I'm not worried about that; no one reads this blog. (Sorry Robbie, almost no one.) The sister-in-law is on (another) cruise. She emails me that the rich people are all talking about it. There's the first bomb: the rich are going to be the first to get hit. Many already know it, others won't until they open their October statements. The reaction will be very shrill, but painless. Some maids and lawn men will be let go. The SO of sister-in-law gets a magnificent State Pension. He believes it is Safe and Eternal like the pensions in, say, the state of Illinois. Isn't Illinois one of the states that can't pay its bills at the moment? Yes, sadly, but I'm sure everything will be all right. After all, pension funds are invested in the safest instruments, A or higher. I'll let you imagine the rest of this scenario. The funds will be getting their reports at the end of October too. Sorry. I mentioned Illinois because it figured in a side story I saw today. A huge contracting company went out of business there this week, let all of its staff go and was auctioning off the equipment. There wasn't anything wrong with the business; the State of Illinois simply hadn't paid its bills, and the company went to their bank for an ordinary bridge loan in order to cover its own bills and payroll. You guessed it, the bank turned down the very routine and previously safe loan. Now, multiply this sort of thing about eight million times and you get an ugly picture of just where we are headed. You've seen those exhibitions of falling dominoes? People you count on every day to be at work, doing whatever they do for you, won't be there. Phones will go to voice mail for everyone just as they do now, only no one will call back. The Safeway will get real ugly real quick as will every other business for as long as it's open. Hang on, and learn how to pluck a chicken. For that matter, you had better learn how to choke/pluck/trim/dress/cook, whatever, (like I would know) just about anything that walks around and bleats, honks or barks!Rick Macherat
Thursday, October 09, 2008
11232300.1This economic thing, II. The average SOB doesn't understand, or care, what is all about with TARP, AIG, HOLC or RTC. We care about our 401k, our SEP - I think that's the same thing don't mess with me while I'm thinking bizness - our IRA, things that we get in the mail which have dollars in them, dollars which (used to) belong to us. We've lost trillions in a few short weeks. Some people are upset. Somehow I have a problem with Anderson Cooper of all people leading the Second Storming of the Bastille that CNN Nightshrill is trying to stir up. All three cable news channels have abandoned all pretense of impartiality, but CNN is the most disappointing because they take themselves so seriously. I guess we're to believe that Mme Vanderbilt is home making banners and torches for les enfants de la patrie. How could this happen, and how did it happen to coincide with the critical weeks before a U.S. election? Have you thought about that? The ultra-sophisticated financial instruments you keep hearing about and which no one except the geeks and computers who created them understands were designed so they can not fail within statistically imaginable economic circumstances. In other words, the housing crisis, bank failures, confidence meltdowns - things like that are figured in; there are mechanisms to accommodate them when they get out of synch. Not even deliberate nastiness by the likes of el Hugo, Ahmanutjob or Yobo-boy could accomplish this much damage. No, it could only be done by someone with multiple billions of dollars in free assets, the pure intention of bringing the system down by making completely counterintuitive money-losing moves, the ability to move with stealth across many borders, and a total disregard for all personal cost and risk downside against an unfathomable upside. Now, who might that be?Rick Macherat
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
11232299.1They care. They really care! CNN has gone global, coming up on 1:00 AM Pacific time. The rest of you are probably asleep .. or at least partying. Certainly not watching business news, I hope anyway. CNN only does that and puts on real news, with anchors in London and their gawdawful Channel4speak, when something big is happening, like a tsunami. They're all worried to death: Dubai, Japan, Indonesia, worried that we might go poor and stop buying their shit. Awww. Oh hold on, they've gone to Richard Quest ... hard to listen to Richard without wondering just a bit, you know, if he's wearing anything uhhh special. Anyway, Richard explained, in about 525 words more than necessary that where the U.S. government is buying debt, the British government is buying the BANKS. Blimy! Stay tuned. It's going to get much uglier.Rick Macherat
Sunday, October 05, 2008
11232298.1Alt. When I was in my mid- and late twenties, I knew just about everything OR at least everything except the things I would never know, but at least I knew what they were. Celestial Mechanics for instance, Sanskrit, jazz. No more. Take mass education, mass communications, mass media and freedom, give all that to nearly seven billion people and you get what we've got: cluelessness. Furthermore, we don't even realize how clueless we really are, young people especially. They think the way I did at that age. You remember my example of a chicken in a future apocalyptic starving Seattle - a Seattleite would still want to adopt it. Few would have any idea how to kill, cook and eat it. At the other end of inanity, a $200,000,000 executive signs on to a Plan he can't possibly comprehend and the only thing he knows is that it won't work but the shit will hit the fan after he's gone and he believes he will get away with it only he won't. We're going to make sure of that. Now there's alt. What? Alt. It used to be, well, this: stupid conformist kid 1: hey your wearing lacoste! your such a chav!the spelling and gram just making it more real, but now Alt has morphed. Think of it as anti-Alt. I came across it after a whole wave of page hits in response to the little "poem" by Prophet of 50 Cent, who is sadly now banned. Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks he's white, only I think he's ultra-white whereas the gang at the ARG-dot-com teen network only thinks he's like them actually - disaffected, typing away on their $$$ system late at night in totally tricked out rooms in their parents' magnificent multi-gabled cul-de-sac quad-garaged and fireplaced home. I believe Prophet is even whiter than that. He might even be old. Say it ain't so. Old as you even? No, not that old. Anyway, he gives it away via an inability to mixspell properly. At the totally galactic opposite of the realm of unknown-to-me knowledge lies everything2-dot-com. What do they have? Everything. That is everything in the way of thinking, then typed out very intelligently. Kind of like an online Mensa Club but where they're so brilliant that they don't even bother to crow about it, which is unusual. I do wonder what happened to everythingone-dot-com. Maybe I could have kept up with that one at least. The point of this is that I used to feel comfortable. Okay, I already know all of this, I'll eventually learn that over there, the rest is too hard and I'll never get it, but I know it's there. Now I'm just floundering, treading water and making little headway in a sea with no known dimensions. Occasionally, I'll climb up on a little island and quickly find I don't like it. So, we'll see.Rick Macherat TylerSmash Thor "Ace of Spades 117" grambobabambo Rekks Njord Revellion sleasterguy
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
11232297.1Local Government Run Amok, II. It's been said that Washington, especially Seattle, is about Process. We're proud of it and the fact that everyone is included, all points of view are welcomed, everyone has a seat at the table, everyone has an office in the Tower. What Tower? This one  Looks nice, doesn't it? That is sort of what we thought our new Seattle City Hall was going to be - soary, dramatic but classy, green of course etc., the architecturese alone on it was worth $1.8 million. Then it got built  and as any gardener could probably tell you, green gets brown sometimes. There were some unkind comments about an Airstream trailer in a rundown trailer park. That's okay, because the building only looks really shitty from the offices of the people who work in city government, here  Arghhh, Mein Guter Gott im Himmel! What is that building? How big is it? That's the Seattle Municipal Tower at 57 or 62 stories. It has the distinction of being the most grandiose such structure on the planet, especially for a city of barely 500,000 population. People work there Arts Commission -- 40th floorThere are more. Many, many more. Soon, there will be a new County Building next door. Fifty stories. Counties are big, you know.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
11232296.1College memories. Awhile back I wrote a little about the Road to Pullman. Found it: It's hard to describe the road to Pullman. Think of those movies set in the west, 1930's, with an arrow-straight road shooting off into the nothingness. That's the best I can do, plus sagebrush. During the several times a year when there is a mass student migration, drivers generally treat it like two lanes of a four-lane freeway, so you do not want to be traveling in opposing traffic. About 80% of the way over you zip through the town of Dusty, WA. It has a B&B, and that is where they (this was about some friends traveling to WSU for a game) plan to stay. I'm not kidding; no one could make up the fact that Dusty now has a B&B.I bring it up tonight because of this:  a Google Earth image of Dusty, WA. Small, but completely clear and viewable to anyone on the planet who might be interested. Now look at this image:  Without the label, who would guess that this is Pullman Washington and the Washington State University? Very dear to me, obviously, but literally, deliberately and callously left off the map. To make it even worse ..  How could such a thing happen, and continue to happen? My own theory is that more than a few people at the competing Big City institution across our state, THE GRANDE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, have their fingers in the computer. You might remember Jim and Malvin from the UW computer department in the movie, Wargames. Well, they're still there and are a lot smarter than they were in 1983. Still sneaky too. I looked all over the Internet for an explanation. The only mention of it was some kid who noticed WSU was "fuzzy" and wondered why. His entry in a forum about fuzzy things went unanswered. That was years ago. So, I guess the truth is that the folks at WSU are still blissfully oblivious about their position on the earth and pretty much everything else except the next kegger, same as when I was there. Rick Macherat
Monday, September 29, 2008
11232295.1A candy issue. Readers who have been coming to this space for a long time are aware that I am reluctant to take a position, slow to anger, loath to make a fuss .. We get it, wtf happened now? It's the chocolate, Cadbury. I don't even especially like chocolate all that much and besides, I have a nasty cut on the end of my right typing finger. (Another kitchen mishap; see many previous posts on subject.) But I'm going to type this tonight anyway for all those chocolate lovers who are too devastated to do so themselves. They all have blogs too, you know. You can spot them by looking for hearts, smileys and other pretty and lacy things mainly in these colors:  I borrowed the logo from Cadbury to illustrate. Folks, when someone has a hankering for chocolate, specifically Cadbury, this phrase would never be heard, "Oh my. That looks delicious, but it is far too expensive." Never. Wouldn't happen. They will pay, okay? Anything. Whatever you want to charge. Nothing else matters. Who hasn't knows a Chocko Wacko? So why, why I have to ask, would the geniuses at the firm offload to manufacture of chocolate to CHINA, CHINA of all places, just to save money? Why!? Didn't they know that they Chinese put all kinds of crap in products whenever they believe they can get away with it? They do it to babies, for fergodssake! First we have the economy going tits up, then this. What's next already, an alien invasion?Rick Macherat
Sunday, September 28, 2008
11232294.1What noise. While rinsing a few dishes, I opened up the window above the kitchen sink to take in some wonderful late summer freshness and listen to the gentle sounds of dusk. They were somewhat muted for the moment because of the Boeing 747 taking off, but the roar eventually tapered off and before another one departed I could hear a fire engine screaming out of one of the three stations near my house. Four if you count the airport fire department. The siren grew louder and for a few moments drowned out the roar which rises from the 12-lanes of Interstate 5 freeway just over the lip of the hill. I am generally unaware of that white-noise sound unless there is a major wreck which stops traffic in both directions. Then it's spooky. Spooky because the shrill air raid scream of the little girl who lives across the street can come all the way around the house to the back side where the kitchen is, and I can hear her and all the other illegal immigrant noises which emanate from her household of seventeen persons and thirteen cars. This little girl has been at the 4-year-old point where a scream lingers just at the frequency of pain for three years now. She begins as early at 6am and can continue on Friday nights during the fiesta or whatever the hell they are doing over there until as late as three in the morning. Although the extended illegal family has a lot of cars, it is the other family of mysterious origin, mainly Asian and scary, which has the loud ones. I believe these vehicles are secondhand funny cars which have had no maintenance whatever since they were stolen. As soon as these neighbors finally get their cars started, they try to get them up to 100 mph before reaching the stop sign at the end of our street. One of the people living in this house, and we have no idea how many there are, works. Not only does he work, but he ride-shares, and his ride arrives at 12:30am. That guy then honks the horn of his wreck of a car until his partner wakes up and comes out. Everyone else within a block is awake by then too. Except me of course. The family directly across from us is pretty regular. They have a grown son who works some, but I have to mention his two 7,000-watt audio systems, one in the car and one in his house. When the parents aren't home he runs both and medicates. I'm not worried about that situation lasting much longer as he will soon retire from the present with a permanent case of Jellybrain. The "family" on the other side of them makes no noise at all. Dead still 24/7. That is because they are immigrant smugglers. Did I mention the dogs? Every single house in every direction for as far as the ear can hear has one. And every one of them leaves the dog out all day. About half leave the dog out all night. Every one of those dogs is neurotic and lonely, but the kids are inside playing video games. So the dogs bark. All the time. Sometimes I bark back and they all stop. That's a little weird. The construction project has actually muffled a lot of this while it has been going on, at least in the daytime starting at 6:59am. Especially the jackhammers and pile drivers. They are building three five-story condo buildings with 96 units right behind the houses across the street. Yes, the backs of those buildings and half the units will look right down into the yards of the noisy neighbors, approximately 35 feet away. Under current market conditions, I figure people will be grabbing up those non-view condos for ~$325,000 each, and on the morning of the first day in their new homes they will hear. Unless they move in on a Friday when they won't be going to sleep in the first place. You sound like all this awful noise doesn't really bother you. What?Rick Macherat
Saturday, September 27, 2008
11232293.1Some bricks fell down. We're very proud of our scores here in Seattle: High in livability, sophistication, worldliness, money (which we are far too classy to discuss,) brilliance, breeding, caring .. should I go on? Low in poverty, mobile homes, tawdry crime (we make the distinction since we are Very High in skilled mass murder,) Republicans, provincialism.  So, it was a joy to watch the fuss made over a wall which semi-collapsed in the "International District." That's what we call Chinatown now that other Asians besides Chinese live there. The wall was on a very old building, and when it fell down the city had to evacuate the inhabitants, the youngest of whom was probably in her eighties. All were white-haired and stooped, of course, and carried massive loads of belongings. For three days, the news covered the story: endless pictures of bricks on the sidewalk, endless tape of old people trudging up or down the hill. Endless interviews with people who heard it, just missed being hit by it as they walked by just yesterday or even that morning, were driving by, knew someone who died and thankfully missed this tragedy, and on and on and on. Point is, we are provincial and will always be, thank goodness, when the attention of an entire region of four million people can stay riveted for the better part of a week on a wall that fell down and sounded/looked/smelled/seemed like an earthquake. You can actually do this: drive North on West Snoqualmie River Parkway Southeast, then head East on North Lake Sammamish Boulevard Southwest,  and if you find that then you can continue on to the open house for this magnificent estate which is available for just under $5,000,000.00. It's only grotesque in the daylight, so no problem with lots of company and entertaining - just have them come over at night. I watched a commercial where a young man was checking out a young woman; both were gorgeous, a little beyond human actually. He followed her from club to club, their cars racing through the rain slicked streets. Her beguiling looks, his dazzling teeth, her lips, all the glam, the dancers, the mileage. The whole thing virtually carried me aw .. the mileage ? Yeah, it was a car commercial. Getting good mileage is everything these days, no matter how debonair one might be. Washington Mutual failed this week. It has taken me two whole days to get where I can type about it, and even now it has to be squeezed in the middle of some other rambling. I am one of those "other" concerned, a stockholder, and I lost more money than I ever thought I would have. Meaning that when I was your age, imagining forward to when I was my age, how much money I might have actually accumulated by then, now. The television news always shows a guy who has walked down to the bank to check on his paycheck or passbook savings, like it is actually in there. I had very snobby feelings and thoughts when I saw him, so I probably deserve to lose all those electrons. But to be completely, 100% honest and candid with you, I'm having trouble caring about it at all, and that's a little scary too. The debates. I figured it out and it isn't pretty. Have you noticed how unbalanced our entire society has become, leading up to these three nights of talking? How everyone was scared to death that the annihilation of the world economy might delay them? How not only was it on 17 channels live, they re-ran it tonight on about 12 of them? And all of that doesn't even mention the Spin Cycle which went on all day and evening and still goes on as I type. It's a frenzy, bigger than any .. any .. any .. and then it hit me, any reality show. That's exactly what we've descended to, a mortal addiction to American Campaign. Come this January, I understand they're going to release Campaign 2012 which can be mainlined right into your veins. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
11232292.1Much better now, thanks. So anyway, about the terminal cancer patient who was abandoned by his paid caregivers and was partially consumed by feral puppies as he lay on the floor ... he died. Authorities were moving to investigate whether the poor soul died of cancer or as a result of the dog attacks. In the meantime, the caregivers have been arrested on suspicion of "criminal mistreatment and obstruction of justice." Possible sentence there: 3-6 months. There was also a large amount of missing medication. So much for any relief from the cancer pain or being eaten alive. I don't believe in Hell, unfortunately. But I would be in favor of our looking into building one, you know, should anticipated revenues, permits and all of that make it possible.Rick Macherat
11232291.1It's safe now. The title was going to be Depressives, don't read this blog today, then I was going to continue and type about some of the more gruesome recent local crimes. Fortunately or unfortunately, I took my meds and am no longer able to do that. Instead, all I feel like doing is telling you how wonderful everything is. Don't worry, I won't. And I'll be back to normal by tonight. Seattle is very Liberal, as you know. I'm not, as you probably also know. (Maybe a little bit, about trees, small critters and a few other notions, but I keep it low-key.) Seattleites have a cute little telephone or meeting signature that is injected up front like, "Not like Bush, thankfully," or "Things will be very different come January, won't they, once Bush is out of there." I've been surprised to hear it literally within ten seconds of first contact and in no context at all, like right after, "My those apples look good, don't they?" in the grocery store. After they do their Bush, I try and come back appropriately, "Indeed. And Jesus will sure be glad when a new administration takes office." I actually quit caring about three years ago when I realized that this will never end, certainly not on January 20, 2009. It will just switch sides.Rick Macherat
Saturday, September 20, 2008
11232290.1Are we there yet? I'd gotten a little behind on my newspaper reading, what with all the excitement, so I just got to Monday's morning edition last night. Not a mention of the crisis in the Business section, not one word. So, it must have exploded on Tuesday and was all done by Friday. Not bad. This must mean that tomorrow can be devoted entirely to hours and hours of pointing fingers and directing blame, most on George Bush of course, then by Monday morning we can go back to missing blondes. Right? Don't forget about the election. Dang. The election. You know, regardless of who wins, the other half of the country is going to be pissed and stay pissed for eight years. Before I decide I need to figure out which side will be less obnoxious to live with in my declining years, then vote for the other guy. Politics and the Economy are both ultimately boring and soul-destroying, so it will be good to be typing about something else soon. Rick Macherat
Friday, September 19, 2008
11232289.1Numb. I've been sitting here for awhile this morning, numb, listening to a couple of blondes on one of the cable channels explain derivatives to me. They've finished that and are moving to bailouts. Talk about uncharted territory. At least we common folk were spared the insider look back in '29, and many of the perpetrators had the good manners to jump from upper floors. No such luck today. In case you're concerned about the $8,621 per taxpayer that this is going to cost .. don't worry. We usually end up making money in the long run on these mishaps, then the government takes the cash and throws it on the conflagration of deficit in an attempt to put it out. Oh, in case you're concerned about the National Debt, don't worry. A little patch of sturdy inflation and we'll be able to pay it off in a fiscal year. So, you're saying we don't really have to worry about anything? Not if you don't want to. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
11232288.1Is it the worst of times?. Heck no. Those are coming. There is a picture on the front page of our business section showing a couple of Lehman Bros employees in London. He is consoling her with a kiss on the head. What is it with those Euroes and the head-kissing? The same type of photo circulated around here for weeks after that girl-next-door local college coed got involved in a murder in Italy - boyfriend kissing her on the head while he rubbed her shoulder. Then they went to jail. Still in there, by the way; I guess in Italy they don't have cowboy bail bondsmen who need publicity. I couldn't help notice that the blonde in the London photo is wearing about a six-carat diamond ring and her consoler has on what appears to be a ~$4,000 fine English suit. So, it's a relief knowing that they will be able to get by for awhile. In case it doesn't show, I am totally Mme. DuFarge on all of this. They can keep their heads, but they had better figuring on hocking everything else. Think of our latest financial outrage as a game of musical chairs. Everybody knew what was going on and that eventually the music would stop. Incidentally, if you're wondering what happened to all of the money .. the people in the chairs get to keep it. Rick Macherat
11232287.1Paranoid view of the economy meltdown. "Paranoid" always sounds like such a crazy word, doesn't it? Trouble is, there ain't no other way to describe this mess. If you are listening to The Gang all talk at the same time on the business channels, you might be picking out a lot of words like assets, liquidity, bond ratings... Don't worry about that stuff. It's all just electrons, and they really have no idea what they're talking about. Could this fall apart, just like 1929? You bet it could, and a lot faster this time. Back then, they at least had an idea what was in all their filing cabinets, but now we trust the humming gray boxes. Keep in mind that the people in those tall buildings do not care about you, and the gray boxes don't care about anything. You're scaring us Unca Rick. Good. [Note to new visitor. Yes, I had a visitor! Chris, I don't know how to get old posts to come up aside from doing a search for something. Try typing "indians" in search and you'll see some ancient posts where I actually had comments.]Rick Macherat
Monday, September 15, 2008
11232286.1And in politics today. The College Humor site caught Lindsay Lohan out shopping:  I just mention this because it can only help amplify her endorsement of Barack Obama which was announced today. Miz Lohan had particular criticism for Republican VP nominee, narrow minded-media obsessed-homophobe Sarah Palin, with a special piece of advice, "Don't pose for anymore tabloid covers, you're not a celebrity." Wow, that's telling her. She then tripped over a trash can and punched a photographer whom she believed was at fault. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
11232285.1wankstaz. Just a brief announcement that I now know what it is. This was accomplished indirectly, since I was actually researching high-end condominium projects. Long story. Ordinarily, I might be concerned with copyright issues when control-C control-V'ing something off a webpage, but in this case I feel pretty safe. From "Prophet of 50 Cent" .. Angst kills mo' people every dayEven someone as far out of it as I am can tell that the writer of this jewel is white. Not only white, but suburban white, up north white, having both original parents still white, huge allowance and late model car white. But that's okay. Idealizing the black gangster culture is a notion I don't quite get, but it's most likely a natural counter-rebellion to the rebellion of the 80's generation rebelling against their 60's rebellious parents. I mean, if you're a kid these days, where the heck are you supposed to go anyway? The future looks crap, daily life is pure hypocrisy and it is still almost impossible to get a good lay. Oh, bad lays are ubiquitous, so there's that, but they're no better off in the good lay department than their great-grandfathers. So, poetry .. way non-emo.Rick Macherat
Monday, September 08, 2008
11232284.1"Sarah Connor" "Sarah Palin" Just curious as to just how many people have been thinking about these two names together, or at least thinking about them enough to take the time for typing on the Internet. 24,100 so far. Make that 24,101. We had another rampage mass murder. You wouldn't have heard about it because of the hurricane that flopped and the convention. Bad one, real bad. It just made me think how many we have in this state (Washington.) Has to be the weather. Currently, we have one case post-sentence in the usual endless final appeals. He killed 15 women, and he's scheduled to go this month. Won't happen. Another one just finished sentencing, but he will be paraded around the west for years being tried for additional murders. I think most of the players hope he will be killed by other inmates in one of the jails since his rampage was so terrible. Children. We can always hope. Still another, the "Cousin It" killer hasn't gone anywhere yet. She is still hiding behind her hair and playing psycho. Fat girl, unhappy, killed her whole family. Christmas. There are more. It's Lawyer Heaven here.Rick Macherat
Monday, September 01, 2008
11232283.1Notes. John Edwards used the word falsities when he was making one of his final brief television appearances on this earth. I thought at the time, "How stupid is that, anyway? Falsities isn't a word." It is. Middle English c. 1225-75 AD. Means just what you think it does. The City of Olympia, Washington, our state capital, has voted to emancipate itself from being a nuclear-free zone. No one had noticed either way, and I'm sure the U.S. Navy had gone right ahead hauling whatever nukes it wanted right through town. The Biography Channel ran a retrospective of the 30th anniversary of Animal House. I didn't watch it. In a related thought, the channels all around MTV seem to do a lot of programming using human debasement for entertainment and humor. Do you suppose there is anything that people won't do either for money or to get on tee-vee? During our recent one-day heat wave, a massive fire was started out in the boonies somewhere incinerating what looked like several years' worth of collected urban yard waste. All that work .. collecting, squashing, bagging, hauling. For the environment, you know, instead of just plowing it back into the yard like I do. All that, just burned up. On the positive side, since the fire occurred during a heat inversion layer, that colossal cloud of pollution was recycled through the lungs of greater Seattle's human population. So there's that. Business headline c. 2036: Ringtones, Inc to join Dow 30 industrials. Names - have you noticed that a lot of peculiar names are cropping up? I remember most of the names of people I knew during my growing-up years, and these were not among them: the Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers is named Fuld. There is a professional golfer named Furyk. One of the players on our Olympic volleyball team is Reid Priddy; great serve, btw. I saw a guy named Dan Quandt with the sound down. MSNBC had a Tuna Amobi on, reporting on something. That's one reason why I will never appear on TV - I have one of those names and, no, I'll probably never tell where it came from. You wouldn't believe it anyway. Besides, I wouldn't want some dingbat television intern typing my thing on the screen: Disagreeable old man complains about .. whatever.Rick Macherat
11232282.1Hiltons. Senator Obama gives every impression of being a decent man, and I'm sure that he is. However, it certainly does not help the cause to have the great "out there" supporting him. That would include Hollywood, partygoers, fabulously rich and other assorted dregs. An example, Perez Hilton spews, She may be a homophobe and an anti-feminist, but….That's pretty hardcore, literally, but there are millions of votes there - if they vote.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
11232281.1Loser High. Is is okay to call it that just once, before school starts? After that it can go ahead and be Southlake High School for the Unpromising. I was going to head this post, "It's enough to make a senior citizen insane," but I remembered that there are already 382 posts with that one. At least it's pretty,  for $14.1 Million and 156 students, and you can bet it has every do-dad and amenity they've thought up yet for the science of Loser/Pregnant/Expelled Ed. I think they even tattoo a big "L" on the kids' foreheads the first day just in case they forget. We used to have another alternative high school, John Marshall. It was a disaster and remained so for years until finally someone got up the nerve to fire the principal, himself a walking epicenter who was virtually 100% responsible for the failure of the school to achieve anything whatsoever. Quite the accomplishment. Even with that, it cost us a $200,000 So, Southlake opens with a lot of glass and a lot of hope. Not a moment too soon. It seems that after four dynamic years of preparation for the next round of tests, the latest 4th graders have FLUNKED. It took almost a year to get the achievement tests graded and scored (they must have spent that time trying to find a way out of publishing the results,) but, sure enough, they came in well below last time. Go-Southlake-Go. Lose-Southlake-Lose!Rick Macherat
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
11232280.1Relaxing. I was looking at some furniture with an eye to re-doing the Living, Dining, Media Room and Study. Comfort is important, but style must come first. This is Seattle after all. I've narrowed the finalists down two each, at least for the chairs:  I like one of the top two for the living room, the middle ones for dining, the brown one is a pick for a chair in the study, and one of the two loungers for watching television. I think the green thing is a lounge anyway. It was kind of hard to tell from the photographs and the text was in Swedish. Anyway, it's either a lounge or a potted plant. Finally, I've saved the best for last:  Are you ready for this? A true National Geographic bookcase. Heck, I've only been waiting since the fifties. Looks like I'll need about ten. Now, where to put them ... gosh but this is fun.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
11232278.1Oil. Brother asked me if he was ever mentioned in my blog. I told him that he was but always anonymously, same as the sister-in-law. "Oh," he replied, face brightening as it always does when he's about to come up with something brilliant, "like "poetic security!" You know, there really is no hope with this oil thing, or with your gas price. I say your because I don't fill up but once or twice a year, if that, and I never have paid attention to what it costs anyway. Ever since gas passed 30 cents a gallon I figured the game was fixed. The problem now is that the general public is ignorant to begin with and then misinformed and outright lied to by those they should be able to trust to look out for their interests. Bottom line, as they say, no one looks out for your interests, no one but you. For instance, the argument against Drilling is that it won't help gas prices now, that being the furthest into the future the average American can see, or about four days. The truth is that every speculator and trader has his greedy quivering finger poised about an inch above the "get out" button, ready to drive it home the instant the U.S. announces it's going to drill. Drill where? Anywhere, dork; the keyword is Drill. The result of that would be an immediate drop in crude on MSNBC of about forty dollars. Maria would be going orgasmic, so anyone who happened to have the sound down at that moment would not miss it. I was going to type out that whole scenario the way it played in my head, complete with the drone of the newscast announcement starting with, "THE UNITED STATES HAS ANNOUNCED A GO-AHEAD FOR DRILLING..," and then the shrieks and all the carrying-on as the price plummeted and then, "... FOR OIL IN VERMONT," and then all the wtf's and whatnot would happen and it would be too late, but I was watching the women's 50 freestyle semi and decided not to. Jeez, she's amazing, isn't she? And so is he. Every four years I start off completely disinterested, then Michael and Dara come along. Wow. Anyway, do not believe a word you read or hear about oil from or by anybody. But me. Rick Macherat
Thursday, August 14, 2008
11232277.1This calls for planetwide distribution. And I say that only because it is so stupendous for our little town. It seems we have a Swinger's Sex Club, a real live one, right in our extremely modest and subdued suburb. Very, very lively BDSM parties, especially on weekends and well-attended by up to eighty persons from legal to age eighty. Indoors, outdoors, spilling over into the neighborhood .. and that is what sort of caused the problem and the front page article, the spilling. This is a picture of the individuals who were in charge, my neighbors, [by ERIKA SCHULTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES]  and that's pretty much all I was going to type about it. fourstate.blogspot.com
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
11232276.1Just Listed! One of those real estate postcards came in the mail today, announcing that this lovely local home was being put up for sale. $287,500.  The address seemed familiar, so I looked it up on the mapper. Yup, right on the Green River Killer's street all right. So, this crappy little house with a carport and dirt lawn, on a street too scary even to get near (for me anyway) is going for more than a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS. And they'll get it. And that is why the world is totally fracking insane. Rick Macherat
Sunday, August 10, 2008
11232275.1Huh? What is he typing about? We have a lot of airplane crashes here in the Pacific Northwest, so many, in fact, that they never make the national news. It's kind of surprising to see CNN go all Breaking News over a small plane crash in Florida on a day when we may have had several. They are covered locally, of course, in great gruesome detail. I was watching one just this morning on the local cable news channel - anything to get away from Wolf Blitzer and his neverending sentences. Given a chance, I'm sure he could carry out a single sentence for the entire duration of the Russia-Georgian War of 2008 and would jump at the chance to do so. Today's crash could simply have been a rerun from the archives for all anyone would know. They showed the mangled remains of a single-engine private plane, completely unrecognizable as a flying machine or anything else which might have worked at one time. Switch then quickly to the daughter who did a little emoting, then back to the plane - another angle (still unrecognizable,) then to the middle-aged fat son. Why do fat people just have to get on television and even go so far as to wear clothing and position themselves to look as fat as humanly possible? We'll never know. From there it was on to the impromptu crashside memorial, located in some weeds just off an old farm road. Candles, flowers and signs. Tricia we HEART you forever! Somewhere in the coverage they will typically show an individual in uniform poking around. There will be an investigation. The Chinese don't really have private plane crashes, but you can bet they'll have lots of them eventually. As soon as they have private planes. I expect the news approach will be different, like with the pollution issue. After reading National Geographic, and watching a lot of Olympic coverage this week, I've reached a somber conclusion: They just might not be that worried about all the premature deaths which will come from the epic pollution they are presently spewing out. Think about it: 1.4 billion people now, and who knows how many millions about to retire and live long, long pensioned lives before the one-child-policy cohort eventually predominates. Wouldn't it be in everybody's better interest if .. how to put it .. maybe lifespans weren't all that long for awhile? Just like our own "millennials," I don't think young Chinese are that keen on taking care of their oldsters, especially since each of them will be responsible for up to six or more by the time they are middle-aged. So, all things considered, the air and water thing will probably get a lot more study. Rick Macherat
Saturday, August 09, 2008
11232274.1Because they can. Got a piece of mail from HSBC, the financial megaconglomeration. Standard rate (bulk) postage. I started to toss it but reconsidered and opened it. Seems I am a customer of theirs somehow, probably a bankcard, and they wanted to send me the obligatory privacy notice and an update to the rules. No one ever reads either of these things, but a quick scan of the rules-change, written entirely in Lawyer, proved that I was right in shredding that card in my Deluxe cross-cut shredder, (what a machine .. horsepower!) then pulverizing the remains in the blender and feeding them to the cat. One would not want to become indebted to the HSBC. I wonder how they can get away with sending a notice standard rate? Answered my own question - who's gonna stop them? Michael Phelps is in the pool, just drifting around, readying his mind and soul for the first Gold event. [Channel 5] Athletes do all kinds of mental things these days instead of just waiting. I make fun of it, but the level of competition is so stratospheric now that it is far beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals. And look at the bodies. Are those women in the relay really female? Even close? I saw a lady volleyball player who actually scared me a little, and she was an American. Michael doesn't know that he already won the event [Channel 99 live, Vancouver] This happens every Olympics and it still spooks me. In some of the events you really have to ask - how can somebody be insane enough to do this sport? Each Olympics which comes along leaves regular humanity further and further behind. Look as those ribbed abs (on the women!) and just think of how many fat people are watching tonight. Me included. Anyhow, I do wish the Chinese well. Not in the events necessarily but in pulling off a good Games. I think a lot of participants, us 'mericuns especially, went there hoping they would fall on their faces and just prove again how inferior they are. Well, they won't and they aren't, and they do deserve some credit for once. Also, it can't hurt to have said something nice, you know, for when they take over. JK!Rick Macherat
Friday, August 08, 2008
11232273.1Auspiciousness. Indeed, 8/8/08 verry auspicious, yes? Sorry to have to type something totally opposite: Another celebrity reproduces and believes he is among The First to do so.. Oh Lord, which one? Matthew McConaughey, the man you'll remember for some acting roles as well as appearing undressed, bronzed and sweating everywhere at any time. Brand new illegitimate son, named Levi. He was on CNN today, talking about the event with Dr. Gupta, another obiquitousity. Paraphrasing, ".. now her and I, we have something together, something that only we know, tribal .." Yes, and the eight million or so CNN viewers. There were more words in there, but I didn't catch all of it while madly banging the MUTE key, burying something out in the back yard...? The last thing I heard him explain about himself is that his next project will be a multimedia extravaganza production of him taking a dump. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
11232272.1I'm (still) annoyed at my credit score. Well, immediately after typing that title I remembered having written the same complaint before. (Tuesday, August 23, 2005) So, I'll tell a short story about Brother instead. He was doing laundry, a chore he detests, but he tries to make me feel better about making him do it by insisting that it's enjoyable. Last night he came in to tell me about a small problem: seems that when he opened the washer during its violent SPIN cycle (twice,) it immediately started to make a loud, shrieking sound. Then he mimicked that sound, sort of a rapid meep-meep-meep. It was so hilarious that I cracked up and couldn't possibly get mad. We'll probably go to Lowes and buy a new machine next week. Heck, the thing was at least 25 years old anyway and had the labels worn off so we had to guess at the TEMP (hence the look of our clothes,) so it's no big deal. I'll charge it on my Sears plate. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
11232271.1Focus. What do you think of when you hear the word "Change" as the theme of a political campaign?"Rick Macherat
Friday, August 01, 2008
11232270.1A perplexment. I got a bill in the mail today, and I'm trying to decide just how much of a jerk I should be before finally paying it. Long-short, I had a do-dad removed a-la Senator McCain, only mine was behind my ear. They sent it out to be biopsied since it was "apparently" a melanoma. (Melanoma gets bolded and italicised.) Three months go by and this bill comes for a service a month after the surgery. For $568.00. I'm indignant, and here's why: 1. Three fracking months? Aren't melanomas, you know, like serious?!Of course I'll end up paying it, we always do. In any event, thanks to Battlestar Galactica, as always, for some wurds.Rick Macherat
Thursday, July 31, 2008
11232269.1Breaking news. Have you noticed that there hasn't been any lately? That hasn't stopped the cable news networks from "breaking" news. They'll flash the urgent words up there so all the millions of people tuned in with the sound down - I mean who in their right mind can stand to listen to Tony Harris try to be .. regular? - will turn up the sound to listen to the "news" that Hillary is going to speak at the Democratic Convention. Really, they did that. We were counting blondes that day while having breakfast. I think we saw twelve, though Brother tried to count Heidi Collins as #13. I argued that Heidi is not only not blond, she is not a blonde. In fact, she is quite sharp and Tony must drive her nuts too. What I wanted you show you tonight was this photograph taken by Mark Harrison for the Seattle Times. If there ever is a tsunami which obliterates Western Washington up to about the 9,000 foot level of Mt. Rainier and bears down on a group of cowboys and cattle grazing in the peaceful eastern highland sagebrush steppe,  this is pretty much what it would look like. For a few seconds.Rick Macherat
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
11232268.1It's too late. Getting up there in years, plus-forty or so? Thinking about that dream acreage out west, a place to park the arr-vee (when we get one?) I've been checking real estate listings out here for you for quite awhile now, and just tonight I came to a sad conclusion: way too late now. The listing that finally convinced me was one for a subdivided property: 533802 North Glacier Rim Parkway, .17 acre of view land for $85,500. Now, I happen to know where 533802 North Glacier Rim Parkway is and, just for reference in case you were interested, the last 12 miles are accessible only by sled dogs, then arctic climbing gear. The view is pretty good from up there though. Down here in the flats it's even more ridiculous. The only house I found where the price was halfway sensible turned out to have some fire damage. They were dumb enough to include a picture. If I remember right it was $399,500 and "subject to inspection." If that was "fire damage," I don't know what "burned to the ground" would be. The problem is that we're greedy, of course, and we've jumped about a generation and a half ahead on ourselves. Like we always do cause we're 'mericun. By the time the thing that futurists tell us will probably happen actually gets here, we've long since priced it in, run it up, gotten scammed and our grandkids are trying to unload it. There is a certain element of magic in the science of Economics; yes, they continue to call it a science. I guess you couldn't really get a Ph.D. in it if they blabbed about the fairy dust. I started to realize that in Econ 201 when it became obvious that about 70% of the people in the large lecture class simply did not get it. Eventually, most learned how to do the formulas and color in the correct circle on the multiple choices, but they never did believe that it works. Economics .. a lot like Statistics only far more so. Essay questions even. They, we, grew up. We bought homes and other things and now here we are with yet another money crisis that no one understands. Oh, Phil Gramm understands it, but he made the mistake of forgetting what innocent children we all are. Phil, Phil, Phil ... do not try and make it simple; it only still works while it is unfathomable, like God sort of. You'd think he'd remember that.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
11232267.1Hold on to that candle. The move by a group of Australian and Canadian investors [aka Greedy Furriners] to acquire Puget Sound Energy needs some explanation. This gas and electric utility is the only source of home and business energy for much of Western Washington, including most of Seattle's suburbs. Just so we don't get confused, these folks want US to buy OUR utility with OUR money and then give it to THEM. The reason for this is to IMPROVE ACCESS TO THE CREDIT MARKETS. And just to avoid any risk of further confusion, access to credit markets (which would be THEM) is typically improved by paying more interest (that would be US doing the paying,) which is pretty much the plan. Not that it matters anymore in the greater scheme of things, fellow losers.Rick Macherat
Saturday, July 26, 2008
11232266.1Just for the sister-in-law. She's been calling me a little more often lately - the S.O. has been back just long enough that they're squabbling big-time now. I get to hear about it, her side. That's me, the perpetual sorority sister. I put a new recording on the home phone line this afternoon, Hello! (cheery) .. [pause] .. (that always ticks her off because she forgets and starts talking) .. Sorry, I'm not able to answer right now as I am either not home, asleep, dead drunk or heck, maybe even dead. Why not call some other time? Or whatever. Oh, and this is with the Pointer Sisters playing and in my Texas accent. WHY do you do things like that?Which reminds me of the Bushes. Bushes know oil, so there has to be way more oil in Iraq than anyone suspects. I know, they dabbled in oil a bit before politics but what makes me think they "know oil?" Because everybody in Texas knows oil. It's in the blood. Geez, didn't you ever watch "Dallas?"Rick Macherat
Friday, July 25, 2008
11232265.1Ichiro. There is a piece in today's Seattle Times about Ichiro's glove. In it, Brad Lefton quotes The One, speaking of the man who crafts his glove: "The Master can only listen with his ears to my demands about my glove," Ichiro says with reverence. "It's not like I make a sample that helps explain to him what I want. The ability to craft a tangible, high-precision object solely based on the information he hears is the definition of a master. Ordinary people can't do that. The feeling that I'm trying to capture when I put on a glove is different than another player's he might be making a glove for. So it's this uncanny ability to so precisely craft an object from an image that exists only in my mind that makes him a true virtuoso."He's been here for like 6-7 years and had previously spoken about nine words in all that time. In any language. Incidentally, Ichiro does not translate in Japanese as "The One." It comes close if you're somewhat fluent in A.P Alley Japanese, like me.Rick Macherat
Saturday, July 19, 2008
11232264.1Friend of the Family. That was the old slogan, back when it was Washington Mutual. Warm-feeling and sounding, don't you think? I always did. Now they're WAMU. Soulless. Corporate. A little clumsy with the money. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but it isn't just another company. Although they don't have any of my money, Thank God, I am a stockholder. Much worse actually. Also, my parents bought this house with a mortgage from Washington Mutual. Three Hundred and Sixty monthly payments. 360. My father didn't live to see the end of it, though it was all his money. My mother was bedridden toward the end, and I wrote the checks for the last few payments. One day, I tore off the final coupon and mailed that last check in. Showed it to my mom and she smiled. In the old days, a banker would actually come to the house and there would be a mortgage burning ceremony or something like that. In case you are paying a mortgage, I should tell you not to expect that in thirty years or so. Instead, you'll call the bank after about a month and get a very foreign person who will look up your number and inform you that, indeed, the loan balance is now zero and Was there anything else, sir. No? Then thank you for calling Wamu. Have a good night, sir. And you'll probably thank her too and wish her a nice morning there in steamy Cebu. Tonight I had occasion to call Cebu again, because  I get annoyed when computers go down to begin with but especially so when it's the bank. You expect them to have redundancies upon redundancies. Miss Cebu was very nice, and so was I, as she asked twice for my credit card number (this was after the recording had asked for it three times) and I refused to give it and it was good to win that one because it became evident that a supervisor was listening in when she suddenly informed me it was all right not to give the credit card number for a general question such as this, but it was also obvious neither of them knew about any computer outage. Her superb English began to fail her as she got a little rattled at what by then was becoming my stubborn elder American senility. Sometimes that works, sometimes not. What I got was "one to two hours" and then "sometime after four a.m. Pacific time" which would be about nine to ten hours. I let it go; she was sweet and trying so hard. I did ask her permission to blog the adventure and she said yes with what might have been just the weeist bit of a giggle when I explained that I like to blog about companies with pleasant young ladies running interference for morons in suits at the top. Rick Macherat
Friday, July 18, 2008
11232263.1News from Nigeria. I can't share it with you right now because several minor administrative issues remain to be worked out, but there may be something wonderful to report here very shortly (hint: financial.) In a related bit of news, according to the World Almanac and Book of Facts, published with every attempt at accuracy since 1868, the population of Nigeria will grow to 356,523,597 by the year 2050. Furthermore, it is expected that every one of those Nigerians will have Internet access.Rick Macherat
Thursday, July 17, 2008
11232262.1Daily McCain report: "Aristocrat" joke bombs at NAACP Convention. Anyway, I got an e-mail from my stockbroker this evening. In fact, it popped into the inbox about 9:30pm. Sure, like he's still down at the office working out all the ways to make me money. More likely his poor assistant has a 10,000-person list of names to input the same crap to. In part, his glossy message to me said: That's swell and all, but I retired .. let's see, this is 2008? .. 23 years ago. They (the brokerages) love to package up these phony "Plans" and then fit the one Just for You into your category. From what they've been sending me, they are under the impression that I'm a rising middle-aged player with a wee bit of a risk-taking bent but otherwise a long-term growth perspective. Growth? Growth!? How about some INCOME once in awhile, huh? Over the years (45?) that I've been with this brokerage, and they shall remain unidentified except for mention of the giant bronze bullshit in their front plaza, I've probably bought half a dozen things they recommended. And every one of those items has been the "junk" each new broker is referring to when they come on and tell me, "We need to get rid of some of the junk in your portfolio." Truth is, I don't dislike this latest broker because he's dumb, which he is, but because he looks so much like my last boss, Old Fishface. So, why do I stay with them? Because the assistants, the woefully under appreciated ladies who do all the work, are so nice and take such good care of me. Especially when I get my occasional senility attacks. What about McCain? Who? John McCain from the title of this thing, and the NAACP? And what is the Aristocrat joke? Sorry, there's no way to type that.Rick Macherat
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
11232261.1And while I think of it. You all might have noticed that I occasionally mention going to Dennys. A lot of the time that's a crutch - I just don't remember where I did go. Worse yet, Brother and I went out about a week ago and specifically chose a particular K-Mart because there is a Dennys on the way back and you'll never guess what. It was Gone! Not just closed, but gone, scraped right down to the dirt. Now that's harsh.Rick Macherat |
