Post  #2630.   About A blog for Peace.       There is a kind of funny story to go along with that one.Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat

posted by Rick at 11:41 PM

Post  #2629.   Sleepy Hollow    When I remember being out at night in my wasted youth, sometimes it causes a little shiver. Especially when watching the late news with the sound turned down, in October. If you allow yourself to personalize the stories, some people have had very unfortunate luck and maybe one of their worst days ever. Bullet holes in the car tell one story. So does a picture of another car which evidently rolled over at least once. Imagine finally getting home after everything involved with an episode like that. Most events after midnight involve a car, like being shot at from one even. None of those things ever happened to me. I never got stopped, even with my head hanging out the window trying to remain conscious. Never hit, got hit or shot at. Yes, I am completely aware of the good fortune which smiled and am grateful for it every day.

Some virtual friends of mine have had a rough couple of months - all of 2012 really. Cars, products, sickness. I was going to leave a comment saying that their last illness sounded a lot like the beginnings of the male menopause - decided against. Why ruin their next two decades? Two decades? Yeah, they don't tell you that. The ladies get over it in a few years max, but for us it goes on and on and on with new things one after another for at least 25 years. Then we die. The good thing is that we don't get the moods. All through the entire epic torture, worry and misery we retain the good humor of our normal pleasant selves. Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 11:34 PM

Post  #2628.   A blog for Peace.         So, what about the Indians, huh? And then there was slavery. Not to mention Texas which we took. We're not always right. In fact we're hardly ever right as we bully ourselves around the world. People just want to be happy and give peace a chance. It looks like the U.S. is going to bomb all the Iraqi children, and one blonde, just so Bush (who wasn't even elected, btw!!) can get the oil. Well, if that happens, I'm not buying any more oil. Nope, just gas for my Mini. Saddam is evil and we need to let the inspectors find all the weapons of mass destruction so the Iraqi people can vote him out. We need to have the UN handle the wars when there need to be wars which shouldn't be very often. We also need to follow what the UN says because all the elected countries are there, even the small ones. What did the Iraqis ever do to us? Nothing. It was the Arabs who caused 911. If we went to any country and bombed it, that would be the one, but we shouldn't because diplomacy is better. Look how few wars the French get into, and it's because they are experienced at diplomacy, something we could learn from. The money we spend over there should be spent on the homeless and the poor. If we took all that money and gave it to the poor, there wouldn't be any more poor. It's that simple. When you keep all the money and take the oil, it's no wonder they don't like us. Peace.Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 1:26 AM

Post  #2627.   Flatware.      Yeah, I know no one comes in here, but just in case .. there is an American company still making table stainless steel flatware, barely. I bought some awhile back and I love it. So shiny.

So, go to Target or Silver Superstore and buy some. The company making the stuff is Sherill Manufacturing.Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 1:03 AM

Post  #2626.   Chase.     I got a little taste of how things are for them today, the other half. Our amnemonic mailman, bless his heart, makes his delivery each afternoon and then all the ladies and a few gentlemen from the various houses meet and exchange all the mail back and forth until everyone has what belongs to them. Sometimes this goes awry, as it evidently did when Chase Bank mailed me my last credit card statement. I never received the bill, though no one in the credit world would ever believe such a lame one, or care; I certainly know that. Today I got the zinger, the type of statement that deadbeats get, including a $39.00 late fee and a $4.68 finance charge [with an effective Annual Percentage rate of 16.99% they were kind enough to inform me.] Those readers who know me suspect that this turn of events did not go over well. I had a brief surge of the old me, the indignant, letter-writing gadfly, but I'm just too old for the nonsense anymore. So, I just paid it. Then I cancelled the card, without drama. You have to be kidding. No drama!? Nope, I just called up "Jeffrey" in Bangalore where it was beastly early in the morning, had a nice chat and cancelled it. Didn't even tell him why.

Mr. James Dimon became Chairman of the Board of Chase on December 31, 2006, and has been Chief Executive Officer and President since December 31, 2005. Just so you know who runs this thing.

So, my forty-some bucks got added to the assets of J.P. Morgan Chase which, at the end of 2006, stood at $1198942000000.00. [They round amounts off to the nearest million.] In the old days, the company which preceded the Thing which J.P. Morgan Chase has become would have cared about losing a customer. Now that banks have pretty much supplanted The Mob and small time Loan Sharks and become Trillionesque Ongoing Criminal Enterprises, they recognize that 70,000 people are added to the population of the earth every day and they needn't worry about the few who slip off the edge. Like me. Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 11:43 PM

Post  #2625.   This got lost back when it snowed.     I kidded around about the weather before, but it is feeling more serious tonight. Once the stories about last night got around, people were shaking their heads with wonder. Those football fans ... some of them didn't get home until morning, 9-10 hours after the game ended. And it wasn't simply because Seatleites are weather wimps. Hills. I would challenge anyone to master one of those hills. We can't even get our paper and mail.

Anyway, the rich part. They interviewed the Dept of Transportation spokesman. Amazing. He exlained, with a completely bland face, you know, the kind a typical oblivious governmnent employee would have, that the reason they had no trucks out is because their independent in-house weather service predicted rain. Later, of course, they could not get the trucks going because the tens of thousands of abandoned cars were in the way.
posted by Rick at 10:47 PM

Post  #2624.   A sad state of affairs.     Two words came to me today. The first one, BITCH used be applied when a very bad woman did or said something very, very awful. Now, it's just a synonym for woman. All women, any woman. The other one, BASTARD, was technically an unkind word used to define a person whose parents weren't married. Believe it or not, this used to matter. More generally, people were called that if they angered someone. Nowadays, if a teacher comes into the classroom and says, "All right, you litle bastards, time to get to work," technically this is very likely to be correct.Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 12:39 AM