11232206.1uh-oh.    When Jeff wrote that he had to come up with five people to tag (Meme tag,) I figured I was pretty safe. After all, he and his Meme-tag team would be fairly highbrow whereas I ... well, you know. Yes, you guessed right, I have been tagged. This is my first time, and my instinct of course was to search this house and go through all the books and find the coolest one ever, something so obscure and odd that everyone would be amazed at my highbrowness. Coming down to earth, I quickly realized that no one would believe I was actually reading a 1905 First Edition Precious Bane, by Mary Webb. (Unique narration, in dialect, by a young girl with a harelip; set in rural England in the early 1800's; it's romantic but it's much more than a romance; beautifully written. Quietly suspenseful yet the plot's actually more character-driven, which I love.) So I put down what I was really reading, The Sky's the Limit, by Steven Gaines, a book about luxury living in Manhattan. Page 161,

He certainly was refreshing - exuberant, enthusiastic, full of energy and "wild charm" but his "not being a slave to conventionalities" might have been something of an understatement.

Now all I have to do is remember five people that I know who read (and are on the internet.) Let's see, there's Jeff .... Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:39 AM

11232205.1Cruising.    The sister-in-law is in Antarctica. No really, she's on a ship which is spending several days cruising the coast of Antarctica before heading around the tip and up the other side of South America. She sends me an email every day about tanning, food and her jewels (vs everyone elses.) I feel like her sorority sister. Now, if she would just learn to spell Antarctica.

What is it, a little after nine in the morning? Second cup of coffee, not dressed. But there are tens of thousands of people in downtown Seattle already, watching the Macy's Day After Thanksgiving Parade. It's 33°. Some people have as many as five children along. Everyone who is not along the parade route is in a Mall. Are they all insane? Macy's has bought up just about every department store chain in America, I guess. We had a perfectly good one here before. It featured nice things which were overpriced. Macy's is similar, only with crappy things which are overpriced. Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:22 AM

11232204.1Microsoft Invents Workspace of the Future.    The newspapers have devoted a bit more attention than usual to The Company lately as Microsoft moves forward with their campus expansion. The campus has been emblematic of all things Microsoft when compared with more garish companies [notably Oracle,] that is, understated. While being somewhat modernish, the overall impression was Beetle Bailey's Camp Swampy. Now that Microsoft has to compete with everyone else for the brief attention-span of the Millennium generation, God help us, they're updating.

This picture is illustrative of Microsoft at work, reinventing workspace for the 22nd century: [Steve Ringman, Seattle Times]


Careful inspection shows the worker sitting on a utilitarian chair, typing into the notepad computer on her lap. Gone is the entire "desktop" notion. Similarly, doors are out, replaced with sliding glass, modestly frosted at the bottom. The greatest single innovation in my opinion is the elimination of filing cabinets entirely, replaced by cardboard boxes in the hall, accessible to everyone. Once again, Microsoft Rulz. Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:16 AM

11232203.1Are we fully dumbed down yet?    Funny how one little article in the paper will annoy you to the point of typing. I used to write LttE, quit that. Cranks. Oh, I'm still a crank, just don't do postage any more. You can send LttE's via email now. Did you know that? I did, actually, but it just doesn't have any oomph.

So, I was reading the business section, something that doesn't take too long around here what with the paper reluctantly giving business at most 4 pages. Business is a little like other personal habits for people in Seattle: we all do them, but it isn't polite to discuss things like money and work. This particular article noted that the McClatchy Company had reduced the estimated value of its minority stake in the Seattle Times by 80% from the calculations of only a year ago. The writer [Eric Pryne] took the time to contact Professor Frank Hodge at the University of Washington, and he selected this portion of whatever the professor said to include in his article:

"This is a big write-down, said Frank Hodge, a University of Washington accounting professor who specializes in financial-statement analysis. They [McClatchy] now feel this investment isn't worth nearly as much as they thought it was worth before."

Really? Is it that complicated? Glad I stayed out of business.

The paragraph sounds mean .. not intentional, really. Just our town. We're green, and yes, weenies and kind of clueless as to where the fark all this money came from. Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:03 PM

11232202.1Books.    You probably already knew our town was book-nuts, or wouldn't have been surprised at it anyway. We're quite proud of that, our circulation numbers and all. Especially on a cool, drizzly fall day, there just isn't anything cozier than a book in Seattle.

However, nothing ever ends there, does it? We recently approved hundreds of millions of dollars to improve and expand city libraries, and the project is well under way. Somewhere in all this reading frenzy I think the idea may have gotten a bit confused. For instance, an article in the paper describes the frustration of a man who was on the waiting list for Clerks, the movie, for over a year. Other people, numbering in the 700's and more, languish for months on waiting lists for new novels. Are these things what libraries are for, and did I miss something? Clerks is on the Indy Channel at least four times a year, or one could even buy it at amazon-dot-com. Ditto with new releases. It just wouldn't have occurred to me to go to the library for the latest Danielle Steele and put down my name as #743 to wait for it.

I had been afraid to ask, what with the breastfeeding station, homeless wakeup hygiene facility, Charles Simonyi Mixing Chamber, talking books lounge for neonates and 13 Starbucks, whether our new Library Monstrosity


even had regular shelved books. Turns out it does. Macherat


posted by Rick at 8:37 AM

11232201.1The divide.    Richard Zoglin (not familiar with him) writes about Tom Stoppard in Time. To tell the truth, Time is getting harder to read all the ... well, time. Too many youngsters writing and being At All Times completely cool. Zoglin writes, "Stoppard, who rolls his r's with a continental flourish that somehow manages not to seem affected .."

In his picture, he just looked pretty much like an old, tired lesbian to me. Whether or not that's an affectation, I couldn't say.Macherat


posted by Rick at 12:12 AM