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Monday, March 30, 2009
Post #2389. Dancing with the stars. The sister-in-law called at 11PM. I tried to pretend that I had been asleep, not that it would have mattered. It didn't. She had gotten home after an evening out with friends, at least of one of whom she can't stand, and discovered that her VCR had not recorded Dancing with the Stars. Friends, the next 39 minutes took everything I had, and I'm sure you can imagine the Q&A Re: her five remotes, the recent digital box installation, the grandson's (age 3) electronic curiosity, and the probably missed dancing performances themselves. Fortunately Letterman came on and she hung up to watch it. Now, I can't stand Letterman, but this time - thank you, Dave. Rick Macherat
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Post #2388. Soap Sayings. Try this one, Making the very simple complicated is easyand thus Ivory introduces you to its new version of soap. If that isn't classy enough for you, they even translate it into French. I composed a third line, Taking fetid factory and barnyard products and making them soapy and smelling like a warm summer breeze wafting over roses is miraculous.Aren't you being a little hard on Ivory soap? I wrote to them, you know. Never answered. All I wanted to know was if they stashed any of the old Ivory, the Legacy Ivory, Classic Ivory, True Ivory (for the search) somewhere, so old true users might have just one little innocent lather before they pass on. Money no object, as if that would matter. It's clear to me now, the Top People at Ivory stashed plenty of Classic Ivory all right, in their private vaults two levels beneath their safe rooms at hideaway apocalypse estates far up in the hills. Tons of it, for them and their progeny until the end of time. Meanwhile, I vigorously rubbed up the last few feeble bubbles of my last bar today. It was so .. soapy .. sweet, and unscented, just like a baby. Or like a baby used to be. From now on you will close your eyes and instead of precious babysmell you'll get a snoutful of China. Rick Macherat
Post #2387. House shopping. I wasn't going to do any today, but  this house just cried out, literally. On a street famous for somewhat different and even quirky turn of the (last) century homes, this one was ordinary. That is, until the present remodel/sellers got ahold of it. Come on by, make an offer above $1,998,000 (not kidding,) bring paint. TIME is going with "The End of Excess. Why this crisis is good for America" this week. I haven't even opened the magazine and have already taken a position. No way. Heck, I'm certainly not finished with excess. Why, even last night I blazed the house inside and out with lights during the "hour of darkness" or whatever the greenweenies called the latest exercise in saving doomed planets. I looked out to see if our house was alone in a sea of conforming candlelight, but it wasn't. The entire neighborhood blazed as it does every night. Boom boxes, screams, sirens, gunfire .. the usual. All well-lit. The Post Office is as old and stolid as the country. Perpetual, forever. You do the Civil Service exam, get hired on by the P.O. and you're set for life. Do the same thing every day for 40 years, get fat, retire. Only it's going away. We haven't accepted it yet, but it's true. This latest move of cutting jobs back from a bit over a zillion to a bit under a zillion won't work. It requires just as many people to handle a kazillion pieces of mail as it does .. a number considerably smaller than that. And, being the P.O., it takes just as long. Just like everything else since the new psychology has sent in, call it the Post-911, the slow decline and eventual closing down will slide by without a lot of falderal. Oh, we'll spend a ton of money and do endless studies and make proposals and consider alternatives and last ditches, but it will still go away and in the end the people who might care will be the ones who bitch about everything anyway and never did get clued into email. Or tickle. Did you mean Twitter?. Yeah, that's what I meant. Twitter, as in for twits.Rick Macherat
Friday, March 27, 2009
Post #2386. He doesn't look like a Commie. There was a show on television where they had rows of washing machines lined up It was a commercial. What? It was a commercial for Maytag washing machines. I knew that. Anyway, two parallel rows of Maytag washing machines were set up, about 25 in each. Then, they took a Monster Truck and drove it right up and on top of the line of machines. I had the sound down, but the Maytag repairman appeared and gestured with appreciation and agreeance so I figured it was all about showing how sturdy the washers are. I called down to brother and told him to get the hand cart and that we were going to roll our washer and dryer out and .. crud .. what comes on the screen but a note which said Do Not Attempt. Can you believe it!? I tell you, they're trying to take the fun out of everything. Just look at the number of things you need a helmet for these days. You will note, by the way, that there are no helmets on Jackass at any time. And, yes, "agreeance" is a word, in Hawaiian Pidgin. Big Love. While we're on the subject of television, I do not believe that the creators of Big Love plan to write Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton) out of the show quite this easily. And I haven't heard that Stanton has other work offers which might cause him to leave. Even the Wikipedia page lists him as "deceased." Not so fast. The old man has survived being shot, evil nursing and the criminal justice system. Joey has been pretty much a failure his whole life, so depend on him to leave Roman unconscious but with a thready pulse. I'd be willing to bet that Adaleen races into the the room and performs life-saving CPR at the beginning of next season. Watch and see. Take a look at this picture ..  It is as you have probably guessed, the Dressing Room in a very expensive house. A house that obviously was never lived in. Designers. Think about it, how many times would you have to stub your toe on, trip over, walk around on your way to pee .. that stupid statue in the middle of the room before tossing it into the koi pond? And how about those closets, roomy huh? Of course, you'd have to nudge the couch out of the way every time you wanted to get into the one on the left. Before winter is too far behind us, and with a bit of snow even forecast for this weekend, here is a small reminder why driving in snow in Seattle is not exactly like driving in snow in some other places.  That, and the fact that 99.87% of people in our city have no idea what to do with their automobiles when it snows. Let's see, was that turn IN to a skid, turn OUT from a skid or just let loose of the wheel and scream? And finally, I ran across this,   Imagine, some machine took the time to translate this site address into Arabic. And knew how! Every once in awhile I imagine traveling back in time to an interesting period in history, say 1952, and showing someone, or myself, a little snapshot of life in the 21st century. Like these television set/typewriter things which contain all the information in the world. Something else. Sorry, about the topic, "He doesn't look like a Commie" .. I lost interest before it ever got going.Rick Macherat
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Post #2385. Enocomics. I did a little research today to refresh my mind from when I actually took Econ about 45 years ago. It was even more daunting than Physics, which we all know has changed in a big way. Hasn't it? More on that another time. Money Supply had been nagging me, so Conclusion: Thus the true money supply [we shall call it M(t)] is defined as follows:And, in case you worried over what Retail Sweeps might be “At its start, deposit-sweeping software creates a “shadow” MMDA deposit for each customer account. These MMDAs are not visible to the customer, that is, the customer can make neither deposits to nor withdrawals from the MMDA. To depositors, it appears as if their transaction account deposits are unaltered; to the Federal Reserve, it appears as if the bank’s level of reservable transaction deposits has decreased sharply. Although computer software varies, the objective is the same: to minimize a bank’s level of reservable transaction deposits, subject to several constraints."We're just going to let that go and figure that MDMA has something to do with it, okay? So, what's the point of all this ecomonics? It is very hard, but don't feel bad. Rep. Maxine Waters is about where you and I are. She got to ask Tim a few questions today, just the two of them (well, plus Barney and Manzullo who doesn't count) in an otherwise completely empty hearing room. What a three-way exercise in antidisambiguation that was! I knew I was in the Twilight Zone for sure when Barney made a joke and got a big smile out of Tim while Maxine shuffled her papers some more and pretended to be there. And I thought, Whoa, these people are deciding what to do about THE MONEY. Speaking of THE MONEY. Dick Cheney only spilled half of it when he remarked that Deficits Don't Matter. What he meant not to say was that Inflation Makes Deficits Go Away. Just one of Bill Clinton's better years made the Civil War go away, and another did the same with WWI. Just like that; I told you Enocomics was Magic! That's the good news. What's the bad news? The Chinese are starting to catch on. Rick Macherat Barney Frank Tim Geithner Maxine Waters Don Manzullo Paul Robin Krugman "Paul Robin Krugman"
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Post #2384. Mixed feelings. I watched some more Committee Television today. The only thing good about it was when Chairman Ben Bernanke lobbed a juicy wet cowpie right over onto a swarmy Congressperson who was being a jerk. Way to go Benny. Er, sorry, Professor Benny. The other person in the dock, Maybe-on-his-way-out Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, didn't fare as well, and there's where I have my conflict. This poor guy is working his ass off trying to save the money and is getting no credit at all. His only problem, well three problems, are (1) People don't like him; (2) He's scarily smart; and (3) Perhaps most serious,  I know, but fortunately most people won't get it. Even though he eerily resembles far too much that really, really mean and probably insane murderous closeted homosexual polygamist and Mormon Pretender Prophet, the beating he has been taking on late-night, in Congress and by the public in general has been unfair. I did read today that Geithner has put his New York house up for sale. So you gotta give him that, he's an optimist!Rick Macherat
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Post #2383. Some ridiculous things. Two weeks ago, a young mother left her home and two small children and hasn't been seen since. The front door was open, her purse and all her things were inside, and the car was in the driveway. Two weeks ago. This morning, a large number of teams with search dogs gathered to look for her. The team selected by our on-the-spot news crew was made up of real bloodhounds, led by a lady who looked like a British Birder. I know, nothing wrong with that. She explained to us in detail how things work as she unloaded and prepped the dogs for the search. We've all seen it: Sniff-sniff, go boys, find, find! The last part was how if the dogs don't get any scent whatsoever they will just stand there and look around (much like any of us would do, I suppose.) Of course, that is exactly what the dogs did, all of them. The lady explained it was probably because of all the recent snowfall (feet,) rain (inches and unending) and wind (perpetual in that area.) Left unsaid, and I couldn't help but think, was the notion that maybe it was BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN TWO FRACKING WEEKS. But I didn't say that. I finally heard someone say what I've been thinking for awhile, "If it's too big to fail, then it was too big to exist in the first place." Makes sense, doesn't it? I think the guy was a conservative, so that notion will likely fall by the wayside. Not exactly in favor these days, conservative things. He was talking about A.I.G., but it could have been Citi or any number of concerns. Citibank has $2 trillion in assets. That's $2,000,000,000,000.00. Nobody can get a handle on that, not even Bill Gates. Bill couldn't lift his all money even if it was transferred into the largest denomination of currency we print, and that figure is far beyond there. He too is feeling a bit less flush these days, with the stock down to the mid-teens, a quarter of what it was at the peak. Who would have thought? Think about the last time you stayed in a hotel and were just coming out of the shower, drying your hair, when the phone rang. Likely you sat down on the edge of the bed and took the call, likely bare-bottomed, likely in the same exact spot, perpendicular to the night table, as the previous 27 to 491 guests since the last time the bedspread was cleaned. Or, you tussled romantically with the wife or the current #2 in your hotel party of 2, starting at the foot of the bed, just about where the Chinese gentleman placed his bag, a bag which had spent the night before on the floor at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. I didn't really think all that much about things like that until I spent a few years in the hotel business. Next up: the Food and Beverage Industry. A truck overturned this afternoon in some place no one ever heard of. Five thousand people had to be evacuated because it contained 80,000 tons of Sulfuric Hydrochloral Monoxide, or in that general range of story facts anyway. There will be an investigation. No trucks carrying diapers, cars or soup seem to have overturned anywhere today as all of their drivers knew how to drive. Rick Macherat
Friday, March 20, 2009
Post #2382. Eureka! The sister-in-law called tonight, two minutes before the start of Battlestar Galactica. I know, but it was okay this time. I was recording it. No way I could watch the final episode cold and risk missing so much as a word of classic/anxious/historic dialogue. After about 45 minutes of catching up on the day and trying to figure out the economic crisis, she says, "What are you doing?" Naturally, I answer her with, "I'm talking to you on the phone. What are you doing?" Annoyed, she comes back, "No. What is that awful noise?" I was compacting all of today's cardboard and paper in order to recycle like any good Seattle boy, and I told her so. "Well, it hurts my ears and is driving me crazy. If you have to do that, then I'll wind this up and go to bed." "Oh, okay. Nighty-nite." Now all I have to do is make sure I have Lots of cardboard and paper on hand and near the phone from now on. The Black American Express card. I've had them all - green, gold, platinum, back to green (sensibly,) but I had never even heard of Black. So, I read up on it to see if there was material for the "This is so almost 1789" file. Good grief, what an exhibit for all that is excessive and unholy. You have to have and dispose of a genuine frackload of money even to get this card, no inflating the income here. There is even a website which lists known cardholders, mainly the rich and dreadful, along with stories from clerks and other minimum-wage types who have actually handled the card and observed and dealt with cardholders. Yes, definitely for the file. Oh, and Bono has one. Google gives 403,000 returns for -Obama "Special Olympics"- now. In addition, the MSNBC site has 15473 related articles. I think I'm beginning to understand "viral." Or is it "antiviral" as in non-Bush? Hard to know in this dizzying world, but if it's possible at all, Bush will end up being to blame for it. Anyway, since Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the founder of Special Olympics, and her son Timothy heads it now, and a very special apology has been offered, dispensation was granted. Sorry folks, this one will linger with me for awhile, and I think you will understand. I'll refrain from any more typing about it though. Do you realize that the smartest person in the world in, say, 1952, would not have understood what this was about, Blogging software creators and blog hosting websites have not agreed on a standard format for permalink URLs. Some within the blogging community feel that standardization would lead to the practice of meta-information about articles being mined from the URLs themselves rather than an associated RSS stream or meta tags stored within the content.but an average 9th-grader would today. Sadly, I am not a 9th-grader.Rick Macherat
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Post #2381. Bloopers. The President has a problem tonight, and I'm writing about it now because I have no idea how it is going to turn out. Frankly, later in his term when hearts have hardened, as they inevitably do, this would be juicy as all getout for the opposition. But, it's been what, 60-some days? And we happen to be in a crisis. Yawn. Yeah, when were we not in a crisis this millennium? Still, is this the right time for half the country to get offended/disgusted/angry/pitchforked/opportunistic and go all nutso and take its eye off the ball? Well, of course it is. Anyway humor. Being President and Leader of the Free World is easy. Comedy is hard. President Obama evidently made a crack about his bowling and the Special Olympics on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Uh-oh. On the one hand, they can edit it out; they do that regularly. But .. people already know about it, so the editing-out could end up being as bad as running it, maybe worse. I don't know, but I'll probably leave the TV off for the next few days. Except for the business channel. Do you think the business channel will be covering it for the next 72 hours too? We'll see. Update at ~midnight, PDT. Over 201,000 references on Google already. Washington Post article has 1,451 co-references. If only we could harness something like this for useful purposes like making electricity, saving the world or stopping the demolition of the Aging Comics Retirement Home in Bel Air. Really. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Post #2380. AIG Outrage. Sorry, I don't have any left, but since that is what everyone else is writing about today .. My reason is that I got outraged-out long ago. Those guys will always steal our lunches, because we're lallygagging and they're cockroaches. People are drinking, too. Called my friend Bruce .. drunk, late afternoon. Got an email from my brother, the evil one .. drunk, early evening. As for the sister-in-law, I can't tell. She hasn't lost that much money either, though she believes she has. I don't think we've seen the worst of this yet. People, money, greed, unfairness - it could get ugly. I wonder just how well our civilization would handle something like a genuinely angry mob getting out of hand and doing something truly awful to some unlucky financier. In any event, I've completely lost interest in my own losses and am more focused on the sociology now. Andrea Mitchell was interviewing Congwmn. Jane Harmon. Heaven help us, two aging "blondes," and I mean painfully aging, as in painful to look at. Harmon mentioned Iran's development of nuclear weapons and suggested we should get them to stop it. She is the Chairwmn of the House Homeland Security Committee and pretty much what is standing between us and another stunningly horrific attack upon our country. My name is 777-444-222-55. At least I think it is since I regularly get rejected the first few times when communicating with a machine. Has it occurred to anyone that it doesn't make sense for us to accommodate them instead of the other way around? Especially now while we're still somewhat in charge. Two of the most popular shows on television this very week are a couple of the best scf-fi offerings of all time, and I don't think it's any accident that both involve machines gone amok. I don't mean "amok" like a little local mayhem either; these have wrecked the planet and are coming after Us. As they say at the end of most Discovery Channel programs: It isn't of question of if; it's a question of when. That reminds me, I've been meaning to write to the Discovery Channel and tell them how annoyed I've become at hearing that all the time. Another of my cartoons. (I really should try at least to do a stick drawing for these.) A very secular funeral. Relatives, acquaintances and Facebookers of the departed are gathered around the Hole in the Ground. Person-in-charge is having a few remarks, ending with .. And now we sequester his carbon. And still another sign of the times, our second daily newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intellingencer, folded today. Posters on Craigslist were selling final isues for up to $30.00 a copy. So there you go. Call it a noisy, annoying toilet lid drop on one of the final dumps of our culture. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Monday, March 16, 2009
Post #2379. Ah, electron memories. As the Electron Economy tries to recover this morning, actually UP on a day when you would expect profit-taking, I got to thinking about the electrons themselves. I first discovered them in 1967, Johnson Hall, brand new then. They're tearing it down, by the way; another rant for another time. I remember taking a stack of cards over there to run through The Computer, woooooo. How utterly Star Trekkian. Also new then. The one aspect which sticks in my mind was being careful not to drop and reshuffle them. My, we've come a long way since then, haven't we? I'd put in the HTML for sarcasm, but this thing refuses to recognize it. Then the 70's happened, wheeee, and later on, I bought some Microsoft when it went public. Sounded like they might be on to something. Pretty good electrons there. Skipped the next few years of electrons before signing up on CompuServe. Remember them? And alt.fan.celebrities, where a weird guy named Matt Drudge posted stuff? Fast forward. 2009. Are we better off? All my money is electrons now, except for the token amount in my wallet. It can disappear anytime. (See WAMU rant.) The bored lady at the cancer place calls with results if the electrons remind her. They don't. I really don't care, but I pretend to for their sake. The grocery wants to know what I eat over a period of time, so they give me a card to get food for less than the outrageous price showing. I don't care about that either. In my old place of employment, if the electrons stopped working they would now be completely lost, unable to accomplish the simplest task. You might hope that situation would cause panic, or at least disdain. But it wouldn't, we know that. Sorry, computer's down. Thinking back, my blood pressure might be more reasonable if we'd had something like that: Sorry, I don't give a shit. Rick Macherat RMacherat
Friday, March 13, 2009
Post #2378. Sorry it's a little crooked. How depressing is this?  It was advertised for just under a million. That's a million DOLLARS. What is it, maybe 20-24 feet wide? Less than a doublewide. And just imagine waking in the middle of the night in your magnificent Master Suite and having to stumble through a long, narrow, obstacle-ridden corridor for a raging pee. Reminds me of a living unit on that overcrowded planet the original Star Trek crew visited. The one where people walked calmly into the disintegration chamber when selected for population reduction suicide. Someone will buy this condo. Maybe to get one on a high floor and jump out of it. Watching The Office and wondering why some guys use "Michael" and other go by "Mike." Pretty obvious I guess. Anyway, that thought led me to "Michael rowed the boat ashore," and a stunned, Whuuuuut!? Let me explain. For what, forty years, I've thought the lyrics to that song went "Michael rode the border shore." I've sung them alone, sung them along, hummed them even. And now, in the year 2009, all of a sudden the true lyrics pop into my head. Why? Why now? To be sure, I looked them up on the Internet, seems I'm far from the only one on this thing, and there are more. I think my getting it wrong was better than the usual one. And it was The Highwaymen instead of PPM. Just another adventure with the mind. Spooky though. Rick Macherat
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Post #2377. Losing your grandmother. I had to tape up my wallet today, and that really brought it home. My grandmother gave me that wallet. In fact, she gave me every wallet I've used in my whole life. So now what? I have no clue how/where to get a new one. Oh sure, Men's Furnishings, I'm not that dumb, but which one? Nordstroms? Penneys? And how on earth do you pick out a wallet? Sorry to hear about your grandmother. When did she pass away? 1976. See what I mean about grandmother wallets? Thirty-three years it has lasted, and with this tape job it might even go a few more. We tried Thursday shopping today. Much better. The traffic was sensible, and the stores weren't full of Monday Women. One very pleasant lady struck up a conversation with us, something which never happens to Brother and me. It took only a few moments to realize she was completely insane. Bless his heart, after she wandered off, still talking, Brother said softly, "Nice lady." The world is a very different place for Brother than it is for me. Now that I'm getting older and beginning to show just the subtlest bit of senectitude, I have to be even more careful about things going on around me. I'm aware when people "accommodate" me, something I probably won't notice much longer. I have no idea how Brother regards it all - he is impossible to read. He puts on his impassive "going out" demeanor and best behavior, the downside of which is complete obliviousness to danger or harm. At the same time that I'm trying to pay more attention to it, the world is slowly fading into a vast symphony of white noise. Then there's driving .. oboy. That sure went downhill in a hurry. Let's not talk about it. Rick Macherat
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Post #2376. Reminder. You know how I've marveled at how anything can be found on the Internet? Well, tonight I was looking for a small downloadable app to remind me with a single "dink" of a bell and a little notice at certain times. Like this very evening, for instance, when they put on Demitri Martin at 10:30pm. How is someone, let alone someone with a failing mind, going to remember that with all the pressures of today and the economy and whatnot? Why can't there be a little thing on the computer which pops up with a noise and a little note at just the right time? So, I searched the Internet, and one of the first suggestions was Reminder 1.07. Just the ticket, right? It had a description: Reminder, a very simple & utility assistant for your working, studying & living. When the matters should be deal, they can auto remind you on their own initiative, you need not to remember what matter you should do now from a lot of your matters. so that to avoid forgetting or disorderliness, thus raise your working & studying efficiencies.And don't forget, they will also be taking over everything else soon. I didn't buy it. Sorry, Demitri. Have to find another way. Have you listened to the new U2, "No Line on the Horizon?" Me either. Looking forward especially to their Let me tell you how precocious my rapture is sometimes. Chic store adapts to spur shoppers to buy. That was the headline in the business section. Yes, we still have a business section, but it has been reduced to two pages at the back of Section A in our soon-to-be-only daily newspaper. The other one closes down in about a month. Don't read it Rick. The story will only annoy you, that voice said. I read it. The lady, owner of Mercer store, said the stacks of $250 7 for All Mankind and Citizens for Humanity jeans used to fly off the shelves. No more. So she has scaled back on that stuff and is now carrying mid $100 jeans for more price-conscious shoppers. Honestly, the story did say that, and I believe it. There really are people that vacuous, lots of them, blondes mainly. Rick Macherat
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Post #2375. Phone it in. This is something I would definitely use  Sometimes I miss the old way. Life was a bit less convenient, true, but so uncomplicated. Of course, pay phones generally worked. Before too long, younger people will not know what a pay phone is, like now with the Operator or the Dial. I tell people about Operators, and they simply refuse to believe it. What do you mean they did everything? They did everything. Not only that, they did it without drama or emotion. Nothing at all like today's 911 call receivers who feel they have to perform, as if the call is going to be replayed on one of those shows on at 7pm. Which they frequently are. And while we're on the subject, I've been meaning to mention those advertisements for Brinks home security. You know the ones - bad guy breaks into a house, alarm frightens him away, Brinks calls to reassure frightened girl. I want to throw something at the tv every time that thing comes on. Number One: audible alarms do not scare crooks. Neighbors ignore them. Police ignore them. Okay? Second, see if you can name the LAST thing you want to do right after some scary-looking meth freak has thrown a lawn chair through your patio window and the alarm is going off in the driving rain and you're cowering for your life on a corner .. Somebody answer the phone?!! Run to the phone and answer a bunch of questions from a call-handler in Hyderbad? I think no. Maybe I'm that way because I'm a bit of a nutjob about the phone. You're doing something or talking with someone and the phone rings. They run to answer it. My question is WHY? Is that call potentially about something more interesting than us, what we're doing? I say no. (You always say yes.) I frequently let the phone ring. Just don't answer it. They way I look at it, this is the exact same thing as not being at home. Same with the door. If I am not expecting someone, I never answer the door. True, this has caused me to be viewed as being a little ... odd in the neighborhood. Scruem. There is absolutely nothing to be handled at the door which cannot be done over the phone. Except petitions, donations and Mormons. And you can probably guess where I stand on those. Even with Big Love being my 3rd favorite show. What are one and two? I'm an aging geek, T:TSCC and BG of course! And, speaking of SciFi, Michael Okuda has never gotten the full credit he deserves in the Advancement of Science. Though every geek knows his line, from TIME magazine, Q: "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" A: "They work just fine, thank you." Rick Macherat
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Post #2374. How do you title a death thing? I haven't had to do it yet, email-notify a group of people about a death, but I received one today. It was a cc, and it annoyed me greatly. More, it illustrated how perfunctory and shallow life has become. An entirely appropriate response for me would be to send an e-card, making the entire dispatching of a person a matter of clicks. I may go one better and ignore the message and then claim I sent an e-card when the inevitable follow-up comes in. Just one more thing telling me I no longer belong. This morning I was reading a discussion about environmental sustainability at one of my regular sites. They were debating the merits of granite countertops, and I came that close to typing something about how my Formica© has served perfectly well for 45-50 years so far. Stopped just in time - I knew they wouldn't want to hear it. If you read carefully, you can usually detect rolling eyes through the keyboard. These youngsters (under fifty) have been force-fed Environment all of their lives and are completely immune to sensibility. So, we go through the motions with the LEED and whatnot and save some water here and there to keep them happy. Does anyone know how Your Healthcare Professional got slipped into the vernacular, and any ideas on how to kill it? Rick Macherat
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