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Thursday, May 31, 2007
11232116.1Miami.123Of course, it had to be Miami, didn't it? An envelope containing white powder and with the word written on it was found in a local hospital. The television is showing the usual massive air/sea/land standing-around yellow-tape response. Apparently, the hospital elected, at this time, to have its 13 dumbest personnel paged to the location before opening the letter as this is the number of people being treated at this time for exposure to the deadly agent, or whatever it is, at this time. The TB man's picture and name are on the television as well. Frankly, he looks more like a yuppie doofus than a Patient Zero, Beginning of the End of Life on Earth or the Militant Diseased Lawyer. Interesting that all these germ scares are coming right now. A paranoid mind could make something of that.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
11232115.1Pressure.123My day involved a few phone calls, some messing around and generally fighting the heat. Are you going to complain about the heat all summer long again this year? Why yes, I had planned to. Why? No reason. [My imaginary person actually sighed.] Of course I have to complain about the heat, for three reasons: 1) I live in a heat-containing house; 2) I have that special heat disease; 3) Seattle has a peculiar kind of heat, recognized for the evil that it is by only a few of us with 2). So how hot was it today? [yawn] Glad you asked. It was 87° in Seattle, and despite the extreme measures that I take during the hot season and which won't be delved into here because of credibility and mental stability issues, it is still 82° in the living room where I'm sitting. Note for those considering air conditioning: when they tell you that floor ducts work just fine as long as you get a really BIG unit and a really BIG fan, well, they're right - so long as you don't stand up. A funny thing about Seattle. People went AFN today, what with the sailing and the sunbathing, the skipping work and mainly just the sitting out and soaking up. Almost none of those people thought ahead to the fact that tomorrow morning will be one of the crabbiest on record. Why? Since this is the first day of it, few people remember, but approximately 45 seconds after they lay down to to try and sleep, they will. Friends in Seattle, take this from an old timer: it is pointless even to go to bed because it will just get hotter and hotter and sweatier and angrier every second you stay there tonight. Your bedmate will seem like a yule log, and you might get to where you contemplate tossing him/her/it right out the window. Best thing to do is run water in the tub and sleep in there. Yeah, you might die, but along about 4:30AM even that won't seem so bad. The sister-in-law, who is Completely Immune to Heat by the way, went for her annual physical yesterday. What I'm going to tell you about next is the reason why she won't be getting my URL [I have to live with her, so to speak.] Sister is distressed over the fact that she is in perfect health and doesn't have anything while it seems like everyone else our age is having operations, getting chemo, dying .. like crazy. A couple of weeks ago, brother and I were discussing how we were going to get this awkwardly weighted and sized oven upstairs. So, she comes over, sizes up the task, semi-not-so-silently whispers something like Oh forgodssakes and lifts and carries the blasted thing up two flights of stairs to the kitchen. The rest of the visit was spent talking about how Doctor doesn't understand about her bad back. So, they have her down for an Isotope [Nuclear] Stress Test. How could I resist, huh, when she asked me what I knew about it? First I went the silly route and told her they set off a tiny nuclear device and see how fast you can run to escape it. In truth, the test is so gawdawful that I would sooner take the nuke-and-run. NFW I would consider it, no matter how badly I wanted to have something. So, I explained that they inject you with stuff which alternatively constricts and dilates various arteries and veins while starving the heart and basically getting you as close to being dead as they possibly can without outright killing you, all the while watching what this radioactive "dye" does as it courses through your poor heart and circulatory system. She took all of that like she usually does - like I hadn't uttered a word - and said she planned to look the procedure up on the Internet. Then I mentioned, just as an aside, that they use Thallium. Thallium? You mean .. Yes. But, there isn't anything to worry about, of course, because the medical profession always has the well-being of the patient first and foremost and they certainly wouldn't schedule you for something which wasn't Completely Safe, even considering the fact that she has been like The Creature That Won't Die to them for about twenty years.
Monday, May 28, 2007
11232114.1But does it really matter.123 Talk about your wonky subjects. I heard a quotation about forty-five years ago and decided just tonight to look it up. Instead of going to the big library and wandering the stacks for nineteen days and nights, I can just sit here in my socks and type for it. Amazing. I learned that the Internet has been pondering the question of Napoleon's concern with China since 1994. Brainpower in general has been doing so ever since he allegedly said it. So, what did he say? Well, either "Let China Sleep," ornone of the above. Turns out this is what he said "Quand la Chine s'éveillera, le monde tremblera,"and you don't have to speak French very well to translate that. Nothing about tip-toeing, which is fine because they/she/it sure as hell isn't sleeping now. I was wondering how many carbon credits we'd have to buy to offset the building of a new coal-fired generating plant every week. Industrial accidents killed more than 127,000 people in China in 2005, and the latest featured a molten steel spill which fried thirty-two more. Horrible numbers, I suppose, but even more awful is the fact that nobody really cares. They certainly don't. Anyway, we were wonking instead of humanitizing this time. All this worry and they haven't fired a shot yet. [The big secret is that they will much prefer being your landlord than your guard.] [P.S. Spellcheck wanted me to change "wonking" to "wanking," but I said no.]
Sunday, May 27, 2007
11232113.1Going home.123When my father's tour in Japan was up, we were headed back stateside. It wasn't a surprise; we knew pretty much our date of departure from the day we arrived three years previously. The only question was where, and that's one of the things which makes life in the military fun. [Not everyone would agree.] Finally, the word came - we would be going to Larson Air Force Base, Washington. Numb. Of all the bases, this is one I had never heard of. Besides, if you haven't been to Washington state, you never think of it. Washington is that kind of place. Trying to do research on an out-of-the-way place in the states from Japan was near impossible in those days. [Think pre-internet, pre-everything.] So, we did same as the last time: flew back, picked up a new Chevy station wagon at the port of entry, and drove north. Whenever our family transferred, there were the hugs, the tears, the I'll write every days .. then we promptly forgot ever having been wherever it was. So, there was considerable excitement as we drove through lovely northern California and Oregon toward the most beautiful of all - green and pristine Washington, that much we had heard. We knew the base itself was a Strategic Air Command facility which meant B-52's and nuclear ICBM's. We figured that alone would be pretty cool, not to mention nice and loud. Soon, we had the experience that is shared by everyone visiting Eastern Washington for the first time, "Daddy, shouldn't we be seeing some of those trees by now?" You don't get a gradual impression like is the case traveling to so many places. No, it's just over the pass or over the river and *bam* .. the crotch of planet earth. Desolate flat treeless rocky sagebrush sand snakes dust-devils unpainted abandoned. I remember how the hot wind stirred the considerable trash along side the highway when we stopped for lunch, a quiet not-talking-much lunch. "About how much farther you figure, daddy?" "Seventy-five miles," he replied. Youngest brother, who had a habit of speaking the word which was currently stuck in his mind, simply said, "Verdant." For the rest of us, all hope was lost because you could clearly see 75 miles ahead and there was no verdance. Out of curiosity, tonight I looked up Moses Lake in Wikipedia. Moses Lake is the town our new base and home was next to and, in fact, the only place sheltering living things within many miles in any direction. Here's what they say about it, Moses Lake is a city in Grant County, Washington, United States. The population was 16,000 at the 2007 census. A major attraction of Moses Lake is the sand dunes. People come from all over the Pacific Northwest to ride quads, dirt bikes, or drive jeeps and sandrails. Currently Moses Lake is trying to find a spot for a new NASCAR-style track.Nice to see it hasn't changed. Well, heck. Any place is what you make of it, right? After all, we had just come from one of the most booondocky overseas bases in the Air Force where we had all had ended up having a terrific time. I learned that our new home was important geologically and known as the Channeled Scablands, so there was that. And the dunes? Turns out that dunes are very problematic for county law enforcement and very convenient for teenagers. Who could have predicted that, huh? And I was 17.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
11232112.1Jumping off point.123 The most interesting drive in the urban part of our area is north on the Alaska Way viaduct past downtown, zooming down into the Battery Street tunnel and then up and over the Aurora Bridge, compact in about 4-5 miles. All three of those features are on the lists or world's biggest or longest. Way down the lists, actually, but they are on there at least. The drive is endangered, however. Fears that the viaduct will fall down in the next major quake between 1 and 10,000,000 years from now, killing from 0 to 50 or so people likely not yet born, had forced the city to plan on a replacement. Four billion dollars. The tunnel is serviceable, but old, and the streets it does under are in the wrong place, go the wrong way, don't carry enough traffic and, well, generally we just want a new tunnel. Figure two billion dollars. As for the George Washington Memorial Bridge [Aurora Bridge,] absolutely nothing wrong with it. The thing will last 10,000 years. However, at roughly forty per year, the number of people committing suicide by jumping off it will have amounted to 400,000 by that time, just about the entire population of Seattle. Forty per year?! Howcum I never hear about anyone jumping? Do you want to be informed of the suicides when they occur? Well no, not really. That's howcum. The problem is that the residents who live Under the Bridge,  are entirely ticked off. I can appreciate that - forty a year! When Seattle residents get ticked off, or even mildly disturbed, they organize. Many extreme proposals have been advanced and are under consideration. I won't list them; if you live in a city, well, you know. However, the "powers that be" are just as organized It's important that we carefully consider any suicide prevention measure to be sure that it will be effective, to avoid unintended negative consequences and to comply with regulations and laws. Indeed. Ironically, just as things were gearing up for action, there was another suicide. Off the Magnolia Bridge. Well, that just put a damper on everyone's argument. There are probably people living under that bridge too. I hate to be cold about it, but isn't this issue partly why we started building tall things in the first place? It's murky and gloomy here, often for very long periods of time, so we have extremely tall buildings for a small city. Some people don't have a second home in Palm Springs or even a trailer in West Phoenix. So houseboat people, I don't know ... Earplugs? Louder music? Move your boat out from under the bridge? Just a couple of thoughts.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
11232112.1From the never thought you'd see file.123 When I was a kid living in Japan, just a hop, skip and bellyflop across the pond was the foreboding city of Vladivostok. In fact, the existence of that town was one of the main reasons we were even there: to keep an eye on it. So, I found this press release interesting: Vladivostok Air has applied for permission to operate scheduled service to US from April 1, 2008, as well as charter service from any point in Russia to any point in the US.The other cities typed but not pronounced were even more spooky than Vladivostok. They were keeping an eye on us. Those people were only a uncrossable few miles from the World in one direction and 9,000 miles from noplace in the other, and it was colder on their side than ours as well. And in less than a year from now, just a warm, comfortable flight on a Tu-204, sipping vodka, away. I'll probably skip that trip though.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
11232111.1URL help.123 Don't you like when magazines find great new URL's for you, locations which promise to be full of interesting things or helpful information. Take these for example cellreception-dot-com: go there to get a map of anywhere, say your neighborhood, to see where the cell towers are. I did. The massive multi-peaked cell forest right behind my house got left off their map.See what I mean? Not a lot of help there. That's why my links are usually non-clickable: Don't Bother. It's amazing how many people who write for a living or just for fun try and justify their enormous amount of goof-off time by doing pieces that are full of links. I never do that, except for this one time and maybe some more later, because I have never discovered a keen new link on my own, completely independently. That goes all the way back to Mosaic .. remember that? .. downloaded over a very long time at 4800 baud from that university site in Indiana, was it? And it was snowing heavily too, right? Yes, it was, as a matter of fact, and I had no shoes on.
11232110.1Lost.123 Even after all these years it is still hard for me to believe - people are constantly getting lost in Western Warshington. We have mountains on two sides, and they climb up there and promptly lose themselves. This past weekend was a strange case, an experienced jogger [everyone in Western Warshington is "experienced" when it comes to the outdoors] went for a run on Cougar Mountain, a location which is not as wilderness as it might sound, and vanished. The mountain is crisscrossed with hundreds of trails, is not that high and is completely surrounded by suburbs. Still, after three days - no sign of him. Everyone feared the worst, that a body would turn up in a few weeks or a few years as is usually the case. The family would go on. The car would be towed. The fliers would come down. The search overtime would be paid. Well, you guessed it as usual. On Tuesday he walks into his own house, a little beat up but otherwise okay. Seems he fell off the trail, knocked himself out for three days then woke up and walked home. A loooong way, incidentally. Yeah, you probably guessed part two as well. No, it hasn't come out yet, but I'm sure the REAL story will be revealed quite soon now. They always are. Also this mountain isn't all that close to Enumclaw, the location for the unfortunate horse story about a thousand posts ago, or to Rainier which has its share of UFO activity, still it is definitely over there where odd things tend to happen as opposed to over here where they don't. Speaking of bodies, I have never lived in a place which had so many bodies turn up. We don't have much of a murder rate, statistically anyway, but ours seem rarely to be someone simply gunned down in the street. Instead, they turn out to be victims who weren't even missed to begin with who are found in peculiar places much, much later. I told you about the really sweet girl who used to work for me who was found along with her children in one of those drive-up storage lockers about five years after her husband had murdered them and stuffed them in there. Of course, the Green River killer lived in my neighborhood too, as did most of the forty-eight women he confessed to killing. Almost none of them were missed. I don't know if that's the reason, but we do quietly count noses occasionally in this community. On kind of a similar subject, I made a change to The Registry today. First time. Just "regedit" [enter] search type-type-type save exit. Not that scary actually.
Monday, May 21, 2007
11232109.1Braking News.123 Just wanted to share this exciting daytime event with you realworld folks. Picture this: the cable networks, getting bored with the unchanging gunbattle/explosions/unfathomable-situation pictures coming from Tripoli, Lebanon, get a respite, a landing gear crisis! Yes, in the bright Florida skies is a two-engine Cessna [whoa, that could be Sky King's plane] with a undistended front landing gear. Are you sure that's the right word? Hey, whose story is this anyway? Around and around it goes, burning off fuel. Will it burn off enough and does the pilot have the skill to land without the aircraft rolling end over end in a massive ball of flame, incinerating the occupants to the horror of the millions of Finally, we're all up to our knuckles and at the edge of our loungers as the fated plane approaches touchdown. Thank heavens, and dangit. Another perfect landing with the pilot keeping the nose up except for about the last forty feet where it scrapes the concrete with almost no perceptible damage. Same as all the other times. The "we're all going to die" guy fumbles out the door and awkwardly stumbles onto the runway, followed by the pilot who calmly begins to unload the luggage. It's only ten in the morning, so there's still time for the overturned tanker truck, car chase, bank standoff, multiple murder, school lockdown, tornado, flood and missing bees. Oddly enough, that last story turns out to be the toughest one for cable. I mean, imagine you're the news videographer who has been sent out to get about forty seconds of tape on the missing bees.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
11232108.1More Sunday.123 I did something just a bit different this morning. While disassembling the Sunday paper, I put the "Style" section in the will-read pile since the head was something about what people are wearing and I felt I could read it today without getting all crazy. Must be the weather or something, but I read the feature from beginning to end and even studied the trendy pictures with no ill effects at all. "Singles" has never gone away in this town - it just gets populated by new people each year with slightly different styles. I have to say that Bridget Fonda, Matt Dillon and Campbell Scott were more like people I would let in the front door than is the case with the current crop, but that's just me. Neighborhoods have gotten interesting. I wouldn't have noticed any difference in the old night scene. Now, University-Belltown-Ballard-Capitol Hill-Georgetown ... very different, and be tuned in or be very uncool. One common denominator which I found fascinating, young ladies might be wearing cowboy boots or ballet slippers with a tee shirt found at the carwash, washed and bleached, and other assorted funkies, and be pierced and tattooed extravagantly, but somewhere on their getup is at least one $expensive$ item from NORDSTROMS. Interesting, and even enchanting, at least from the perspective of this old stockholder.
11232107.1Here's the deal for Sunday.123I can write whatever I want, no matter how boring, because it's just me here. So, here goes a garden entry.  A disclaimer .. yes, the window was a bit dirty and well, yes, the photo was taken with the telephone, but the point is: just look at the new growth on that tree. This tiny part of the "garden" has a history of sorts. My parents bought live Christmas trees the first three years in this house and planted them in the yard after the holidays. The second one, ~1967, went here. It lived about thirty years and grew pretty well but not as prodigiously as its neighbor from ~1966. Before it died and was taken away, it did manage to drop a cone and produce a scrawny offspring. The baby tree thing was all branches for years, and no one would have given it a chance to survive. We just left it alone, and now it goes past the second floor. It is in a terrible location, but somehow it thrives. Note that my "weed" is right next to it on the left, and too close on the back side is a massive non-native sterile Holly. I know what just about anyone else would do: intervene. The fact that the "weed" has grown all by itself to about 18 feet would drive any real gardener nuts, but for some reason this small plot is taking care of itself and thriving. So I plan to let it be. Oh jeez, I just got an loud aural sensory whiff of the Beatles there at the end.
Friday, May 18, 2007
11232106.1Who is Jason Pollock?123 By now you've heard about the documentary - the one with Tod Volpe [suave wheeler-dealer,] Teri Horton [the old lady] and the Jason Pollock painting. I don't say "alleged" Jason Pollock painting because I've seen it. It's genuine. "Art is anything a wealthy New Yorker is willing to pay good money for." Solomon Guggenheim was 66 already before he got into art and met Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen. That meeting and what followed is what brings us to this place in art, today's world. In the alternative reality presented in my own award-winning motion picture [the script for which I am working on,] young Solomon instead meets a cow dung artiste in rural Maharashtra while on his world oat-sowing tour, becomes a layabout, fails to gain enormous riches and has to change the art world the hard way. And Bilbao and Experience Music Project never happen. Feminists criticized the machismo surrounding abstract expressionism, seeing Pollock's work in particular as the acting out of the phallocentric male fantasy on the symbolically supine canvas.Incidentally, you know that painting, the one Miss Teri Horton has? Although it is completely real, it will never ever be acknowledged as such even though Jason Pollock considered it his life's masterpiece and in his own quirky way took it to the Thrift Shoppe himself just to see what would happen. And why won't the painting ever be validated? Because Teri Horton lives in a trailer park. Okay Mr. Smartypants. just so you know, it's Jackson Pollock, not Jason. Really? And can you even imagine how irritating it is for someone serious about art to read an "article" like this where even the name of the person it is about is wrong? About how irritating would that actually be?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
11232105.1Troubles.123 Been awhile since I've had computer problems this severe. It should be quite an adventure, now that senility has begun to set in and all. I mean, it's so bad that I even fought with a "winsock error" tonight - you know how ancient something like that is. I didn't throw the machine through a window the other day, obviously. And I know that all these troubles are the result of some Christian Zealot reading my post and getting his immortal soul bent out of shape. The good part is that God knows what he did and will punish him in His own way. I happen to know it will be particularly gruesome. In the old days, DOS and Windows were insufferable, of course, but they weren't nearly as arrogant as they are now. [Oh, DOS is still under there, you better believe.] THE DEVICE IS WORKING PROPERLY. Oh, so why can't you even see it, you FPOS. When I used my most favorite cussphrase at a machine, it's time to stop, play We're from Barcelona and get over it.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
11232104.1News catchup.123 I do think about this place on my days off. In fact, I set aside newspaper articles occasionally to share with y'all. Most of them don't make the cut; among those that did .. David S. Broder is usually regarded a The Dean of the Washington columnists, probably because he's been around the longest without getting tangled in some kind of scandal or serving with an administration [same thing.] It likely isn't because of his dynamic column -yawn- or the writing itself for that matter. What he usually does is take a current generic subject and make some generic comment about it, generally a bit of a scold like from someone perfect. I didn't realize how much he thought of himself until this week, "I had never heard Imus' broadcast because I am a longtime fan of NPR's "Morning Edition" which is on at the same time."Oh please. Not Broder, I'm sure [have you ever heard him -yawn- ] but most people who would make a snooty comment like that don't even own a radio and could be found instead down at XXX Video and Toys at that time of day checking out new stuff when it's not too busy there. Mohamed Dheere is the new mayor of Mogadishu. Congratulations! Hope you enjoy Long Life and Prosperity. Well, prosperity anyway. The first official order issued by Mayor Dheere was for all residents of the city to turn in their weapons. Soon thereafter, I think someone reminded him that this was Mogadishu, Somalia .. not Mogadishu, New Hampshire. Why I kept the rest of the articles is a mystery to me. And I think the people who write and produce the hit show Heroes, which I enjoy as well, have no idea where they're going with the story. It's supposed to finish up next week, but I'll just betcha we'll all be left with a lot of hey-but-what-abouts. And not every blog entry can be a winner either.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
2102. Is it a sin to have a piture (sic) of Jesus? So, the sister-in-law and I are on the phone, and of course neither of us remembers who called whom or why. I'm multi-tasking by being on the computer, and she is triple-tasking by knitting or sewing or something and watching the baseball game. There was a point where neither of us said anything for about a minute and, yes, I forgot I was even on the phone, what with using the headset and all. Somewhere in the conversation I did tell her about We're from Barcelona and sent the URL to her. She won't like it. And my old friend from the working days called and he tells me about being at the airport with his dear wife and he finds some money in the gutter. Edith, he calls her Edith though that is not her name, not even close, says, "Oh, lets see if we can find one of the baggage men [skycaps] and turn that money in for the people who lost it." So he says, "Quit talkin' Edith. Keep walkin' Edith." She's from Minnesota. I saw this on television today, truly. A guy leans down to greet his dog, and the critter is all over him - wagging and jumping and just licking his face and mouth all over. Turns out to be a commercial for a de-worming product. Not even a thought to where else that dog's kisses had been to get his worm infestation in the first place. Soooo, three paragraphs without mentioning the heat. Pretty good for me. Today is shades of Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, I mean it, born on the sun. And the title? Whuut? You remember, "Is it a sin to have a piture (sic) of Jesus?" Oh yeah. One of my visitors got here via that search phrase today. I just wanted to say .... Kid, first off, no. I happen to remember that one specifically from a memo I received. As a matter of fact, God would have been more than happy to give everyone a photo at the time, but he neglected to have them invented. Second, if you're stuck with people who claim to speak for God, stick it out politely until you're old enough, then get the heck out of there. Go live someplace where there is a LOT of sin, say Las Vegas, then try and strike a balance somewhere between the two. If nothing else, God will appreciate the effort, really. Furthermore, your relationship with God is private and you should keep it that way. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but He does not care about the outcome of soccer games, so quit praying about stuff like that. Finally, He gets exceptionally ticked off when people play God, and those who do are in deep, deep trouble later on. Just keep that in mind when somebody tries to push you around in His name, like your little picture of Jesus ferpetessakes. For now, just hide it somewhere [and don't pray to it; that would be the graven image part they get so worked up about.]
2101. LH Loads To Ashgabat. This was the title of a post on one of my geek sites [air travel,] and it brought home something that I was thinking about just this morning. There was a time when the average curious person could have a general knowledge about everything in the world. Not the details, of course, necessarily, like the chemical symbol for Tin, but at least the ability to read any article and get something from it. Again, not to sure that's true anymore. For instance, what on earth does LH Loads To Ashgabat mean? Ending the suspense, somebody was planning to fly non-rev on Lufthansa to the capital of Turkmenistan, and he wondered what his chances would be getting on a flight for free. At least one person was nervy enough to type in the obvious: Where in the world is Ashgabat? I wouldn't have done that even though I had not the slightest idea either. Another guy actually typed: LH 441 is about 75 per cent in business and almost full in economyWhat a world, huh? Oh, Tin is Sn, from the Latin word "stannum" meaning "tin," just in case it comes up. Took two clicks to find that one out.
Monday, May 14, 2007
2100. ABBBAABABABABBBAAABABABAAABBBA. While I wasn't the discoverer of this group
2099. More catalog fun. Sorry, but I couldn't resist. Yet another antiquey/outdoorsey/tuscanyey catalog came today, and I flipped through it over the trash can. Then it dawned on me,  these designers have never been to a whorehouse! So, of course they don't know, and neither do the wives who buy this stuff which is priced way too low to brag about. In fact, the only people who do know is old timers like us who won't complain about how the pieceocrap looks because of the fond memories, not shared, which it brings back. Grandma gets a bargain, Grandpa maybe gets a hardon. If you pick up a piece of distressed furniture for $97.20 in an "antique shop" which is actually someones house on a side street in Missoula then, yes, it's a steal. If you buy it out of a catalog full of stuff made you-know-where, it's crap. I do have to admit that the crap is better made than it used to be. Still smells though [and not like Italy] ... dead giveaway. And on the subject of blowjobs, you know that Bill Clinton's legacy will be the fact that he made them not sex. Half the earth's population could not believe its luck, and the other clueless half who, incidentally, had been giving the most horrendously poor service for millennia, just went right along with it, no questions asked. Incredible. It will be another millennium at least before they progress to anywhere near the level of expert, but they're trying. In the meantime, we'll keep building lovely, landscaped truckstops all across this great country of ours.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
2098. Computer troubles. Remember back when you could eventually fix anything that the comuter threw at you? Sure, maybe it took all day and several calls to Cust Svc and a lot of profanity which you might have felt badly about later on, but the danged things were ultimately fixable unless they were physically broken. Not so sure about that now. When I eventually have to go with my hat in hand to www,microsoft,com and try and pour through a Knowledge Base, it's like my tiny ship has pulled up to a shabby visitor's airlock on their Massive Star Cruiser and I ring the little bell and hope someone hears it and lets me in. Have you ever found anything on their site which could come close to helping an ordinary person? No, me either. I knew it was a lost cause anyway; nobody ever fixes I.O. troubles all by themselves. I can get on the Internet [obviously,] but only via a circuitous route which effectively fools the computer, the Computer which has cast aside all responsibility and work and flails constantly now at the impossible task of locating [and I'm so ashamed of this] the Walmart Music Download Thing. Yes, I did go there [once!] and I did buy one song, but hell, I was in a hurry. And yes, I did delete that ugly-looking bastardized file which a month later plopped itself into My Documents just because I didn't like the looks of it. And yes, I did happen to empty the Recycle Bin right after Windows did an UPDATE even though the computer is screwed up for a few days each time they do that. No, I can't even do an old-fashioned undelete because I don't remember the name of the file. It was ugly. Besides, the memory thing .. I've told you about the memory thing. Not the computers ... mine. That part is really weird because I can remember remembering, you know, only I can't remember. I do remember telling you there were good things and bad things .. that would be one of the bad things. Like I.O.'s And yes, I know this will sound completely crazy when posted, but after 10-19 hours or however long it has been, I don't care anymore. This thing is going out the window tomorrow anyway. Probably. I'd do it right now, tonight, but, you know, the neighbors already act a little twitchy around me.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
11232097.1Please buy something.123At one time there was some worry that "they" would be able to combine all the little bits of information "they" were collecting about you and put together an accurate picture which would render you digitally naked, with no secrets or privacy at all. I think that worry or concern has pretty much been put to rest. When we were organizing our worrying, we briefly forgot that once all the technology was in place and the evil designers had moved on to more interesting and diabolical schemes, ordinary people would be operating the systems. This would be people who work in America, regular people, 9-5 people with many things on their minds. And we were worried!? Case in point: I have become a destination of considerable interest for the publishers of various "Gracious Living" catalogs. Don't get me wrong now, I know all about gracious living, and I have made a conscious decision not to live it. Why? Too much work, and you can't put your feet up on anything. My latest catalog is filled with distressed-looking things. That look gets popular every couple of years, like you lucked onto a piece after many a grueling trek through obscure antique shoppes in really funky places. Easier to just buy something made in China that they beat up a bit before shipping. Like this thing:  Yes, it is a little hunk of pounded and "artfully-shaped silverplated brass" with a point on the bottom which you stick into fruit to make an utterly enchanting and unique candle holder. [Is it too mean to hope that when Lester gets up to go for one of his frequent pees that the apple or tomato holder rolls over and dumps the lighted candle onto her exotic Woven Alpaca Tail And Highly Flammable table covering and the resulting conflagration incinerates not only the wide variety of other exotic cutlery and "china" but also every morsel of the previously not-generally-considered-edible funkily displayed "food" just waiting to be choked down? Just a thought.] I get one or two of these catalogs every week now. It has to go back to my buying something, probably an exotic item of some sort which I ordered to use for something else. Like maybe that designer whatsit which was on clearance and turned out to be just right for storing my old Mechanix Illustrated magazines. Anyway, I didn't buy the candles, or the "spot welded Crustacean Mascots for your centerpiece, made from recycled [of course] metal, creations which will rust and weather outdoors with the seasons." Yeah, they also seem to think I eat outdoors a lot. In Seattle.
11232096.1Honk.123In the summer of 1969, two former college friends were having a drink in a bar on Second Avenue, kind of a run-down, sleazy place, quite dark inside. As they were laughing over the fact that this drink was legal, their first together of that sort, Jim's car alarm went off outside. What with the loud daytime music from the jukebox, not to mention their own loud daytime drunken buzz, they didn't hear it. When they finally did roll out of that bar, they discovered half a dozen extremely irritated local people as well as one even-more-than-that irritated Seattle motorcycle policeman standing around Jim's 1960's red Corvair convertible. To make what could become a very long story short, following a brief angry lecture to the two bright-sunlight-impaired-and-that-wasn't-the-half-of-it goofballs, the officer sent them on their way. Yes, he knew how drunk they were and he didn't care. Chances are the inevitable wreck would be outside of his now much quieter district. As it turned out, the would-be car thief was after a 1967 GTO which had been parked next to Jim's Corvair and had bumped the side of the Corvair with his butt, setting off the car alarm. And this was the last recorded instance of a car alarm going off following or being associated with anything having the remotest to do with a car theft. [Also the first/last/only instance of an almost Corvair theft. Another story.] The remainder of the set-off car alarms, approximately 957 billion of them since 1969, have been false. And I know that the alarm presently sounding somewhere outside in my own neighborhood is a false one because their are too many screaming and yelling children, mothers calling said children and fathers and uncles with lawn mowers, shredders, trimmers, aerators, leaf sweepers, blowers, chainsaws, disc sanders, impact wrenches, lathes and routers for a car prowler possibly to work effectively in this area.
Friday, May 11, 2007
11232095.1O.T.123Big flap today over the fact that quite a few City Light employees have been seriously cleaning up with overtime pay. This should be a surprise after the winter we had? The upset people are mostly Fuppies who toil in highrise offices, make less than $150-200,000 a year and simply cannot fathom the righteousness of people in jeans and awful haircuts making that kind of money. A lot of them even drive domestic cars, ferpetessakes. I should be conflicted - the conservative side of me says find some way to cheat them out of all that pay, but the other side is secretly cheering. Truth is, these guys have a fabulously generous Union agreement: $33 a hour regular pay [and that includes standing-around-scratching-time] with double-time for a regular shift if the O.T. shift comes before so many hours have passed. Airline pilots should be cared for so well. And you know what? There's nothing you can do about it because you CAN'T DO WHAT THEY DO. What's a Fuppie? Sound it out. Have you been following this Paris Hilton business? Shades of Marie Antoinette; remember I warned about how that's where we're heading. One thing I wanted to mention, the "heiress" part. Her parents may have bankrolled her at some point as they are wealthy in their own right, but as far as the original Hilton money? Forget it. Conrad Hilton's son Barron sued to get all that money when the old man died, and he's keeping it. And there are eight kids in the generation ahead of Paris, so she should keep her day job. Whatever that is.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
11232094.1Global Worry.123Is is because of Earth Day that we've enjoyed so much news and discussion about global warming lately? Maybe so. Also, about a thousand climate scientists did have that big confab in Bangkok this week, after which they proclaimed, "There Is Still Time!" I'm awfully sorry, but there isn't. What? There is no time left. We had our chance, say around 1930 or so, but after that it was pretty much a foregone conclusion: The earth is wrecked. But the climate scientists .. Think about it. Did you really expect them to tell the truth and then quit their jobs because we don't need climate scientists anymore? Of course not. They are all extremely well paid and will keep on sounding warnings right up to the hitting of the fan and will continue to tell us there's still time. Always remember the #1 reason people go into climate science: the desire to own and drive hot fast cars and get chicks/other. [And the only way to get all those other cars off the highways ... well, you get it.] You know, when I'm old I'll be able to tell people I once owned a brand new hot car [1966 Mustang with a 289 V-8] and was able to drive twice a year all the way from Seattle to Austin pretty much as fast as I dared. Little or no traffic and 31-cent gas. In fact, it would have made you literally weep to see the scant number of cars on that 2,400-miles stretch of road. Never saw a single police car either. Incidentally, although the '66 Mustang could go very, very fast with that 289 and weighing close to nothing, it was not built as a sports car. Anywhere above about 75-80mph you were fairly much out of control. You are old. Oh yeah, I forgot. Well good then, I got that tellin' out of the way. [segue] I copied two pic .. You can't do that. What? Just type "segue" and then go on with an entirely different topic, one that I'm assuming has nothing to do with the peril our planet is facing. You know what one of the ... no make that THE best thing about getting old? You can do pretty much anything you want. Most of the time people will be too irritated, disgusted or grossed-out to say anything, but when they do you don't care. So, those two pics   came from a notorious Hollywood gossip site which I've been known to frequent. The much-hated gossiper, Perez Hilton, writes on all the pictures with a white pen as you can see. Anyway, the question for today: Can you identify these two persons, the man on the right and the blonde woman to the left? Hover for answer. Feeling much better about my knees and [slight] gut.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
11232093.1Lame, that's all I could think of.123But we can also look at this post as a brief departure from my usual ranting. Just this afternoon I got to thinking about this ineluctable retrogression toward becoming a crank. Not quite ready for that yet, at least while so many things are still funny. A little background on this lame post. It was hot today, mid-70's outside which meant near nanny-fav inside. No, I've never understood it. Something about the windows and the sun which never seems to set this time of year. Anyway, I opened up the kitchen window to let out some of the hot air and enjoy the waterfall sound from the freeway, Interstate 5. Ahh ... I should blog this: something about the fresh, cool evening air, the restful hum of thousands of tires on pavement. Wonder just how far away the freeway actually is. Of course, [you can find anything on the Internet] I went to Google Maps, put a pin marker in the part of my house where I'm sitting and dragged the measuring feature out: exactly 1,036.87 feet to the freeway. In the process, I noticed that they have put up a new picture of my neighborhood, much much more detailed than before. Here is my house; that's it under those trees, the trees I told you about.  At the beginning, when I said "lame," you might have thought, "Well, he probably doesn't mean LAME lame." Yep, I did.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
11232092.1Completing the circle.123Back when I took Poly Sci and learned the diagram for the political continuum I remember thinking that the two ends would meet if the thing became a circle and circumstances were right. No, that hasn't happened, yet, but it may be closer than it was. Executive Compensation. Filthy. Just the only way to describe it. It is brought home to me in real numbers when the annual reports come out. Some companies have fiscal years ending in March, so by the 1st of May their reports are in our hands, our hands shaking with disgust. Here's how I feel about it: if a guy paints something which some idiot thinks is a masterpiece and wants to pay $20 million for it, more power to both of them. Ditto for actors; now that ticket prices are upwards of $10, I just wait for HBO. But if other people want to pay for it, good for them. But Executives, guys who make a living off the sweat and creativity of others and whose only talents are looking like an executive and being able to express "working together" in 849 different ways, I think not. This Club is on a roll and they know it. Now, I'm not one of those people who would say that an individual doesn't need $24 million a year and therefore shouldn't have it. That is not the point. If he heads a company where his level of compensation is hundreds of times greater that that of the lowest-paid employee, that's the point. It's wrong. I'd love to be able to come up with a way to put an end to it, certainly before the dorks in Congress take a swing. Problem is, stockholders just don't care. Every company has about nine people, old ladies mostly, who go to all the meetings and ask questions and make a nuisance of themselves, and the suits just humor them and snicker a bit when they should be crapping their pants. Stockholders and all the other "regular people" will probably never go so far as to set up the scary tall knife. Besides, we don't really have a good public square anywhere in this country to make a good memorable venue. Virtual, that's how things go these days. Something virtual ... let's think on that awhile.
11232091.1Sunday later on123I'm with Jeff. Nice day, cloudy and cool too. Great for sitting down and ranting, only there isn't anything worthy. Hard to believe, huh? I was reminded just how bland Rhododendrons look all winter, how magnificent when they bloom and how gawdawful ugly the rest of the time. For some reason we like them up here, and I've ended up with about eight or ten. Trying to remember just what are you supposed to do on a Sunday in early May? Probably a show: home, car, garden, boat, RV ... there are more. Walk around, pick up brochures, dream. Leave. Nap. Watch some sports. Watching golf or taking a nap. Same thing. How about a chore? Already did one - changed the bag under the paper shredder. Go on the computer and start a fight in some discussion group? Nah. No challenge to it anymore. People are getting to be too damned dumb. Phone rang while I was having dinner last night. Hmmm, left the instrument someplace and I can hear it remote ringing. No way I'm gonna run for it. Two rings. Could it be sister-in-law? No, she knows better. Maybe Herb? Huh? Herb G.? He's dead. Three rings. Probably a wrong number. Four rings. Quit. Realized that I'm officially old, because I could really care less about missing the call. Later on, I did look at the Caller ID and it was something called S.R.I. in the (509) area. They've called many times before and always let it ring 4 times and hang up. They probably can't understand why their surveys are always wrong .. skewed toward the young and clueless who race for the phone and away from the old and slow who could give a shit. Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
Saturday, May 05, 2007
11232090.1In case this one is too roomy for you ...123 Back in the 1970's in Hawaii, real estate went nuts. Japanese investors were buying condos at ridiculous prices and running up the price of all residential property. A pilot acquaintance of mine showed me a studio that he owned and offered to sell it to me for $119,000. I don't know which was crazier, my friend, the price or his idea that I had any money. Thirty years have gone by. Illegals dominate construction, and condos buildings are made from old tires and recycled diapers. So, figure: Labor - $200, Materials - $50, Land - $20,000 [1/10th acre divided by 293 units.] So, why does this 428 square foot condo cost $212,900? Well, the question is rhetorical, of course. Because it can.  Did Hawaii settle out? Yes, gradually and eventually. And the people who made money were the same ones who prospered in the Great Hawaiian Pyramid Scheme of [I think] 1981 - the ones who got in first and got out. Too late for that in real estate in case you still had a hanker. All that's left to this thing now is the blood and gore. It won't be that awful in reality. Sure, some individuals will be distressed temporarily, but due to the magic of modern economics, the money will just go away. It's all electrons anyway. So, Geraldo is older than I am, huh? Barely, he's coming up on 64. So howcum he looks almost exactly like he did when I met him briefly in 1974 and I am unrecognizable? I remember he came up to my desk and asked me how to get to the Edgewater Inn. I thought about it for a moment, then told him in all seriousness that I didn't believe you could get there from here. Oh, and Boycott Citgo. Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
11232089.1Green enough to make you puke.123Maybe it has started to show that I have kind of a thing with environmental hypocrisy. Seattle is an excellent place to live if you care to torture yourself endlessly with it. So, how far did I get into the Saturday paper? Try casually picking up the New Homes section just to see if any spiders got carried into the house with the paper. No spiders .. but one front page article: ECO-FRIENDLY HOTEL BRAND GARNERS NATIONAL ATTENTION. Don't read that Rick, it'll just make you crazy. I forgot, even more special for a Seattleite who has decided to embrace Green fully is being recognized for it from outside, ideally New Yawk City. For instance, In the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine, for instance, an article entitled "The Enlightened Hotel Guy" refers to Bruce Stemloom of Stamproot Capital Global. LLC - visionary for the 2 Residences & Hotel - as a "Mogul on a Mission."was probably better than a handjob, as it went on to tout a 40,000 square foot fitness center, urban grocer, destination retailers [still looking for something GREEN] oh here we go - ... dynamic lobby complete with water pathways, organic art forms and natural materials to define a new tone for luxury, and let's finish it off shall we, not just another condo development but is representative of a movement toward environmental awareness while delivering a luxury experience. Ahhh. Nothing is overlooked as evidenced by the rooftop concierge dogwalk facility where product is gathered, processed and airshipped abroad to poor countries. That's all fine, and becoming rich is glorious. I'm even for it and would love to live at the 2 or even in one of the 87,200 green houses that could be built out of sustainable materials someplace dirty and poor for roughly the same money.
Friday, May 04, 2007
11232088.1It happened again.123A year ago, I had one of my worst run-ins with Brand X Co. which resulted in my writing this: The events of the past 72 hours are too boggling to recount. Let's simply say that they illustrate in grinding perfection every single solitary thing which is wrong with the business of our country and the people who are employed in it. I am convinced now that the Glory of Brand X Company is not simply the result of laziness and stupidity. Many companies have that problem; this is far, far beyond. No, Brand X Co. has achieved a infinitely loftier status, one which would be impossible without an actual dedicated team working tirelessly toward it. Look at the whole thing like some sort of Bizarro World of Retail Commerce. They have to have an Incompetence Academy of some sort, located on thousands of lovely sagebrush acres somewhere between Salt Lake City and Boise. They recruit in high schools across the country, seeking the best nonblinking slack-jawed droolers America can produce to put to work spreading chaos in the misdistribution of food.This time, I wasn't up to writing about it. In fact, I actually had chest pains during the second-to-the-last call when I got super-agitated and asked the lady [who was also mad as hell by then and who could blame her because I can be an excellent jerk when I really need to,] if she would connect me with someone sentient, a higher supervisor perhaps. That was when I got the woman from the album, "The Button-down Mind of Bob Newhart," remember that one? Oh. Well yeah, it was about 45 years ago. Never mind. Mrs. Calm, I think that was her name, came on and it was clear that I would get nowhere with her by starting off mad. So, as Mr. Reasonable I at least got back at Previous Supervisor by, "I don't know what's wrong with you Agnes; he was sweet as could be." I'm afraid I do that a lot too. It helps. Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
Thursday, May 03, 2007
11232097.1Hardhat chat.123This is another in a series on what makes our city special. As catastrophes go, it was vintage Seattle: gigantic water-main break, sinkhole, falling-in cars, sinkhole reaches down to equally huge gas main, car on gas main, whole project under footings of University Bridge. Nobody hurt. If this was Los Angeles, the problem would have been fixed by late afternoon. Given that it is Seattle, and multi-agency, we're looking at nine years. All the pictures show pretty much the same thing: [I'm trying to quit my habit of stealing pics, so we'll try a description] a really big impressive muddy hole in an incredibly awkward place under a bridge, with some cars in it, gushing water and the entire area surrounded by a phenomenal number of somewhat portly [well, you know it would have been butt-crack-city had anyone pointed out something down in that mess] men wearing hard hats and orange life vests. Yeah, I know they weren't life vests; that just helps with the Niagaraness of the scene. C'mon, just one picture from the newspaper. They'll never know - no one comes to this blog. NO! Dang.
11232086.1Global Germanness.123The guy is on a glacier someplace, talking about global warming. My television sound is down, as usual. He is extremely German, and you are overwhelmed by the accent even via lip-reading. I don't know exactly what he is saying, but it would be easy to guess .. "from 3.9 decimeters per year to 11.7 micrometers which correlates closely to the 875.3 picocuries of methanodioxide" .. none of which I believe because he is wearing an earring. Isn't that being rather small? Why yes, yes it is, and thank you for noticing. They're showing this segment because they want to educate the public [me, I suppose] to their point of view and make dramatic changes to my lifestyle so they can continue to jet around the planet in charter comfort. And I would have been most willing to do that if he hadn't been wearing that earring. Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
11232085.1The computer.123On a night when I have just breezed through the monthly household accounts, I can't help thinking about my parents and how much they would have enjoyed this thing. I'd like to think my dad would really get into science and history with the same dedication which made him an epic reader, and some porn would have been nice too. As for my mom, Lordy, the work she would have saved with the guardianship of Brother. From the uncountable hours preparing reports to the trips down to the drug store to make copies, everything can be done right here in a fraction of the time. Also, work is neater, which makes it much easier for the lazyass judge just to wave past all of it. My dad didn't live to see much of the computer age, but my mom did. And she made certain that not one scintilla of computers touched any part of her world. I found this a bit peculiar from an especially intelligent and well-educated woman. It wasn't a mental block or anything like that; it would have been simple for her. She just didn't like anything about it. After we got a new laptop, I took it back to her room and put it on the bed tray, "Here mom, lemmme show you how cool this is." I had to laugh at hard she worked to act totally dumb, "Oh look here, the front part seems to be laid out much like a typewriter." How prescient. She saved herself all of what we go through every day, working our asses off and pulling out our hair around the clock to an early grave and living perpetually with coronaristic frustration, just to make things easier. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense when you put it that way, does it? It only seems easier because we never have to get up anymore. The only drawback of that .. well, I read that the furniture manufacturers are going to fix it starting in 2008 by making all furniture seating 10" wider. My dad .. I didn't know him as well. That tends to be true of military brats. I'm guessing that I would have initially bought him two computers. He would have approached it very methodically, given that it was a completely new mental exercise and not to mention expensive, and read even more of the manual than most people do. Probably 10-15 pages. Then he would have taken the computer apart. I probably would have let him stew over that for the better part of a day and then brought in the second computer bright and early the next morning. From there on he would have been fine and eventually put all the little neighborhood geeks to shame. You know how some people have knacks? He had knacks, I do remember that for sure. Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
11232084.1Kids.123I know all my readers hated President Reagan and hate Bush even more, but please don't go crazy and spew it, just this time. I was struck today by a piece of television - discussion of a book which is coming out about the personal side of Ronald Reagan. One excerpt concerned a phone call from Ron, Jr. with an angry complaint about the Secret Service [protection annoyed both Ron and Patty.] After griping for a bit and getting no satisfaction, Ron hung up on his father, the President of the United States. No clue, even to this day, that perhaps something in this world was larger than they were. Then there's Karen Hughes, former close, close advisor to President Bush and the only person on Earth who has [had] been successful in keeping him mentally focused and Presidential. She was a genius at it, during part of the first term anyway. It wasn't that hard; she had an unusually keen amount of plain old common sense and was able to communicate it to him. She was also able to soften the effect of the competing powerhouses within the President's closest circle of advisers. Then her fat kid got to whining about missing his junior high school friends in Austin, so she quit and moved the family back to Texas. From that point on, the Administration, the Country, the Hemisphere and the Entire Planet has been in an unholy mess. Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
11232083.1George.123All over America tonight, old and semi-old people are trying to explain the confusion away for the under-forties, and as usual it isn't easy. Gawd but they're dense. See, George was played by Tom Poston, but only on Newhart, though he was a recurring guest star on the other two shows. In fact, if you said "George" in a word-association in the 1970's, most people would have answered "Utley." Suzanne Pleshette was married to Bob on the first show and not to Tom Poston on any show or in any other way. Sheesh. Tom Poston passed away today. He was 85. I actually enjoyed him most on the Steve Allen show which was on before the VCR was invented, so that's why half the country didn't. They were watching Ed Sullivan. That's how it was, Allen or Sullivan. There is something you should know, and I Almost hate to do this. Whut? Tom Poston and Suzanne Pleshette were married in 2001 when Tom was eighty. [You know that part in That 70's Show where Kelso says "buuurn!" .. Yeah.] Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
11232082.1Your global warming chalk outline.123The reason I sound perpetually un-environmental is because people are so well-meaning and so dense. Carbon footprint - that's the phrase-of-the-week. A local family, pick one, [graciously allowed our cameras in] [pushed their brazen fatness into everyone's face by getting on tv] showed all the cutesy little things they were doing around the house to reduce theirs. I couldn't help thinking that the best thing they could do for the planet would be to stop eating it! Water in Seattle is a lovely example of bandwagon nonsense. Most summers, we go into some sort of contrived water emergency in order to conserve for the salmon and so everyone will have enough at least for physical hydration [drinking.] Remember now, we have a very deep freshwater lake measuring 2-4 miles x 27 miles right in the middle of our city and another one a bit smaller just a few miles farther east. We don't use them for anything. Oh, every single one of the lakefront properties on both lakes is assessed in the millions and has a dock, but you see very few boats out there. Too cold. But surely such a large, centrally located lake would be fabulous for swimming. It is, for fish. A guy did actually jump into it, back in the 20's I think. Froze to death in 27 seconds. Anyway, the point is .. we save all this water every summer. Only, drive up to the Ballard Locks sometime and watch as they let some little pissant boat go through and WHOOOOSSSSHHHHH, 67 trillion gallons of lake water flushes through to let this boat go from the lake to Puget Sound. Later on, when they've had enough of whatever possessed them to sail over there, they go back to the lake and get to WHOOOOSSSSHHHHH another 67 trillion gallons of lake water to return home. Each transit uses about thirteen times the water saved by the entire city population for the whole summer. Oh, and just for one more little face-sit,  they have the Montlake Bridge raised both times, clogging more traffic than you would have thought was physically possible for three or four drunk sailors. Is all of that a metaphor? It may be, technically, but I don't get it.Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya
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