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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 what 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
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