11232249.1Is this the one you've had in your head?    It goes like this

BLACK AND WHITE
Alan Roberts / Earl Robinson

The ink is black, the page is white
Together we learn to read and write
Read and write
And now a child can understand
This is the law in all the land
All the land
The ink is black, the page is white
Together we learn to read and write
Read and write

The slate is black, the chalk is white
The words stand out so clear and bright
Clear and bright
And now at last we plainly see
The alphabet of liberty
Liberty
The slate is black, the chalk is white
The words stand out so clear and bright
Clear and bright

A child is black, a child is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A beautiful sight
And very well the whole world knows
This is the way that freedom grows
Freedom grows
A child is black, a child is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A beautiful sight

The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and it turns by night
It turns by night
It turns so each and everyone
Can take his station in the sun
In the sun
The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and it turns by night
It turns by night

but for heaven's sake do not hum or sing it as it will get stuck in there forev .. Uh oh, see what I told you?Rick Macherat Grand Âyatollâh Seyyed ‘Alî Hossaynî Khâmene’î President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad youtube imus expo myspace silverlight paris hilton nuffnang re-publica sanjaya

posted by Rick at 10:11 PM

11232248.1We think you might not have cancer after all. Sorry about that.    No, that isn't how it went, but it might as well have. The rest did.

"Oo-ee Jake, come and looky at this 'un. Ever see a Melanoma like thet afore?"

"Nossir, I never did for sure."

Me: "Doctor, is that serious?"

"Serious? Serious!? Har-har ... son, yur dead! Oh, we'll still cut it off and do all the fine and expensive medical thangs, but there really is no hope. Now, you just go on home and wait for this here biopsy, y'hear?"

So, over the next TWO WEEKS I call them a couple of times. No word yet. I mention something about how the camel caravans must be getting stalled out of Ouagadougou because of the sandstorms and she says, "Uh-huh."

Finally, I get an e-mail, the understandable portion of which went:

Although atypical or dysplastic nevi and even some seborrheic keratoses and basal cell carcinomas as distinguished from melanoma via the technique of epiluminescence for Prognostic Factors as evidence of nodal metastases ..

which I took to be good news. I still have to have it cut off, of course.

Long short, when you tell your blog you have cancer, something which I never thought I would do - oh, I figured I would get cancer all right but would certainly not tell the blog not after all the things I've said about people who do that - and then you end up not having it after all you kind of feel obligated to do an Emily Litella, you know .. never mind. Rick Macherat forced shaved bald hairsuts on women Bill Clinton's hair

posted by Rick at 9:39 PM

11232247.1Planet in Peril.    Oh my goodness, which one? This one. Yikes. Well, at least CNN is promising that quite a bit of footage will feature ANDERSON COOPER SHIRTLESS. Or was it ANDERSON COOPER SCARED SHITLESS. [No entries for "ANDERSON COOPER SCARED SHITLESS"] Well, not until now anyway.


as he works in the fields with poor farmers in the poorest places he can find. Also, expect DELETED, SORRY (Was also attracting pervs) to be more prevalent as the planetary peril continues. Experts are not sure why, but Dr. Sajay Gupta will weigh in with the latest research. Rick Macherat nude wimmin


posted by Rick at 12:10 PM

11232246.1Nelo.    While it's great to write about death and delete, I think it's time to get back to what this blog was about. Whatever that was, it'll come to me. Oh yeah, mostly complete and utter nonsense nightly. And music. Music? Since when? I added music for tonight because I ordered a debut album. Yeah me, an actual album, and I believe you should as well. Look up Nelo on the Internet, or if you're impaired go here. The guys are: Matt Ragland, Reid Umstattd, Stephen Goodson, Chris Hill, David Long and Mike St. Clair. Good, now those names are somewhere besides boring music press releases. Tough bizness. Enjoy, listen to the sample, buy the record and wait for them to become uber famous so then you can brag Oh yeah I knew them way back before you were born.Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:50 PM

11232245.1    Take a look at this. I clipped the article from my local paper. No, it wasn't from April 1st and appears to be a legitimate story.


Hard to believe it's been barely 25 years.Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:47 PM

11232244.1Upcoming posts at In the Day.    Be sure to check often as the following exciting topics will be rattling in here before you know it:

Deleted. Sorry. Was attracting too many pervs. Oh, a few pervs are okay, but not thousands.

I had no idea how popular delete was on the Internet.

All of this reminded me of a hotel business story, but as I reached for the first key I remembered telling it to you all before. Dang, it was a good one too. In turn, that reminded me of Hilton mailing me my new HHonors Club Card. [Their 'HH'] Oh no! I've been demoted to Blue. Not only that, if I don't use the silly card and rack up more "points" toward a Toaster from Target or some Beef Jerky from Oberto they will drop me altogether. Marketing. Always has been Hilton's strong point don't get me started. Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 10:27 PM

11232243.1Update.    Yeah, you can probably tell that your blog interest is waning when all you can come up with is "Update." This is the end of my first week .. well, more accurately the beginning of the second week, with cancer. Aside from the occasional mental ravages, day-to-day doesn't seem that much different. Trying the remember stuff that the guy from that show, "Run for your Life" did. Of course, he had unlimited funds and no responsibilities at all. I tried to get the specialist doctor to tell me about when I would go from being like this to "like that" (insert image of wasting cancer victim,) but he was too horrified by my calm to answer.

Aside from all that things are still pretty funny. Told the other doc, the regular one, about my trip to the Safeway. So gratifying to get a muffled laugh out of that guy when he's trying to be all .. medical. I probably won't write about cancer all that much. People get all weirded out over the death thing. Just stick to the usual stuff: buzzed haircuts on hot women and Hillary and Barack's secret torrid sex affair EXPOSED, stuff like that. Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:38 PM

11232242.1A little outing for Brother and me.    It had been a very long time, but I was ready now, for sure. The newly-batteried SUV started right up, and Brother was thrilled to see all the lights come on all over the dashboard. He really likes that part. I backed the car down our driveway very carefully since the surface had endured at least one substantial earthquake and several seasons of considerable ice, snow and freeze. Very bumpy - I made a mental note of still another thing probably never to get around to either. Then, off we went to the streets and eventually onto the freeway. Wheee - 65mph. I took the exit at South 246th Street, remembering that one as being fairly well lighted. It's interesting how quickly the eyes go, night vision first.

On to the 24-hour Safeway to play Lotto. Lovely store since they've remodeled it, and the few customers inside were every bit as deranged, furrin and scary as I remember the late-night shoppers at Safeway being. Me and Brother were the whitest people in there, except for the madman Albino guy who was standing still and staring at a post, and by far the most English-speaking. It had taken quite an effort to walk from our non-handicapped-parking space to the store entrance where we stopped briefly before moving on to the Lotto desk where I rested again on my crutch. No one there. Very not-in-service looking.

We looked around, the way people do who are flummoxed and lost. No point in trying to be "cool" in that Twilight Zone Establishment at that hour. Out of nowhere came this .. now that will probably type out racist because he happened to be black, but there is no other way to describe him .. very fine looking young black man, an assistant or night manager sort but wearing a classic suit which far outstripped that position. No pimp-suit for this man on the way up; no earrings either. He asked if he could help us. Momentarily I considered asking him what the hell he was doing in this store in this part of town at this hour and not at Nordstroms. I was simultaneously pleased and mystified that he chose us to approach though, out of all the people bouncing off the walls at that time.

Turned out the lottery desk was closed for the night.

"Closed?" I managed, stretching for all the pitifulness I could muster which, with my obvious appearance and pajama bottoms, might lead him to fire up the register and print a couple of tickets himself. "Gee, this was my first time out of the house in thirteen and a half years."

"Really?" he actually did exclaim. [Pause.. really, what does one say?] "So .. what brought you out tonight at last?"

"To play the lottery."

In all the years I've been writing the blog, I've never told you all anything about me. Not anything really about me, but now I will. My health has been declining, very rapidly, to the point where I could only take a few steps at a time and even washing a dish was hard and tiring. Then, a few weeks ago for no reason, it began to reverse almost at a rate of a year a day. I had no idea if I would be able to walk all the way into the Safeway, but I just kept going and before long we were there. Brother and I looked at each other in amazement as we have frequently for the past several weeks. Everybody pretty much figured I would die fairly soon, so they did what people do these days in that circumstance, they took off. I was left with Brother, the sister-in-law of course, and one friend from 25 years ago and another from almost 55 with whom I've kept touch by email but never discussed health, mine anyway.

So, where from here? Jeez, I don't know. You make plans, y'know, to croak and all and then you don't. Interestingly enough, my doctor sent me an email the Very Same Day, insisting that I take a referral to this Dermatologist he knows for a mole check. "A mole check?" Yeah, turns out he's worried about an itty-bitty one on my ear and another one someplace else that might be melanoma. Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 9:55 PM