Post  #2455.   We're so lucky.      Steve Ringman filmed this for the Seattle Times. See why we love it here so much? And speaking of great photographers, Jonathan and Angela Scott were in Antarctica when these people stopped and made a little guy feel like the most important Emperor Penguin in the whole wide world.


At the utter opposite end of the photography universe is a documentary called Candy in the Eye. Since I'll watch just about anything, I did watch a few minutes of this: "A portrait of photographer David LaChapelle, filmed over FOUR YEARS by German [natch] filmmaker Hilka Sinning. LaChapelle is seen at the filming of an ad for a Malibu Cafe, in his studio, at the launch of an exhibition in Milan, in his studio and during private moments." If you want to decide what to watch for your absolute last television experience before abandoning the medium completely and moving to a bottomless cave, watch this. A special note: after the photo shoot setup, which rivaled a major motion picture in its complexity, and there is no way to describe fully the daylong task which culminated with the two woman in a sado-masochistic kiss with tiny coffee cups on their tongues, in glorious color, the cafe owners actually rejected the photograph. American conceited, egoistic, egoistical, egomaniacal, egotistic, egotistical, individualist, individualistic, megalomaniac, narcissistic, pompous, self-absorbed, self-centered, self-concerned, self-indulgent, self-interested, self-loving, self-serving, selfish, stuck-up, vainglorious, wrapped up in oneself .. -ness can do a number on Italian .. uh, the same stuff, anytime if we really work on it. Which they did. *sniff* Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 10:07 PM

Post #2454. Could things be more awful? That's one of the reasons it has been difficult to write. The other day I was talking with a pleasant woman at AT&T, checking if had been long enough to get a new free phone yet (it hasn't,) and in the course of the conversation she asked me if I texted. (It's a verb now.) Instead of simply saying "No," since she already knew I was old (I told her we had been with AT&T since 1924, not the 1995 or whenever it merged with .... whatever this cell phone company was before,) I told her all about my belief that Texting is the Beginning of the End of Civilization as We Know It. To her very impressive credit, she went right on with, "Well, if you ever change your mind do consider the Whatever Phone." Anyway, to the point, there is a woman trapped in the rubble in Haiti who is evidently texting regularly on her cell phone. See what I mean?

Another reporter explained the extremes of Haiti, where the people are So poor, So without resources and government, So black .. whoops.

Brian Williams took the day off. Just curious, what does one do ..?

The young people on my Facebook page are furious at Pat Robertson - evidently he said something about the Devil and the people of Haiti. Seriously, can you even get mad at somebody who actually believes in the Devil?

My other nephew, the real one, "Tagged" me with that list of the 100 greatest books, where you are supposed to "X" the ones you've read and pass it on. To people you want to impress, I guess. He had 13. I have 0. That's right, zero. But to get even, after he said that his favorite author was some Japanese guy who wrote some romantic novel, I wrote back (he knows I lived in Japan) that he definitely should read it in the Japanese version to get the subtle humor. And just to make the post special, I cut/pasted some Japanese characters with a smiley after them. I know. But you have to believe in the devil, don't you?

Finally, I looked up an old friend, a successful one, from my one Honors class in high school. (An accident, long story.) Under his (now) professor status, he had posted this

In Linguist List 3.964, Garry Sdigh (GSDIG@WSU.BITNET) discusses some
peculiarities of the term 'wannabe', and states:

> "I would also speculate that the singular is back-formed from the plural,
> given the morphology (*a Chomsky wantsabe)."

I think that he is correct to draw the conclusion that the absence of the
-s- means that this can't be derived from the 3rd sing. form, but wrong in
his speculation that the plural is its source. I have an intuition that
the true source is actually the 1st sing. form, and envisage a
prototypical scenario of the following sort:

Setting: X and Y just attended a rock concert by Z, and now are walking
down the sidewalk.

X says: "I wanna be Z."
X then strikes a pose typical of Z, and starts playing air-guitar.
W approaches, and looks quizically at X.
Y explains to W, "He's a Z-wannabe."

This puts the absolute minimum possible load on Y's lexicon, since all Y
adds is "He's a ..." and the format.

Does anyone else out there share my intuitions about this?

Can't wait til we get together at the reunion.Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 1:10 AM

Post  #2453.   Bits.      It was like rolling your motorized wheelchair with its almost-dead battery into the burning trailer, saving the puppies and afterward having no mem ... Burning Man is Weed days and X nights ... Strangely enough, the Mohawk haircut pulled just enough of one's eye away from his bland face and improbable nose to leave the impression of a rather attractive man ... having the type setting on Overtype instead of The Other Thing and not noti ... nuclear something something more dead, deader something something conventional explos ... her exquisite skin something something haughty something unexpectedly something competent hand job ... the sister-in-law on her conversation with the evil brother on his and the shrewife's plan for getting a new house, "Do you know if Rick and Mike have done their Wills yet?" ...

You've used the something something bit before. No I haven't.
Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:38 PM

Post  #2452.   01-01-10 and R.I.P.      I lost two close friends this week. One died, after a long battle with himself. The other guy joined one of those unfathomable New Age "churches." Did NOT see that one coming. He may as well be dead too - they never come back, you know. Sad.

The machines love dates like 01-01-10. It will probably be one of their holidays when they take over. Speaking of ... the Social Security and Medicare machines clearly do not know they are approaching oblivion. I'm getting all sorts of thoughtful welcoming mail from them as I near the magic age. Also this,


and I can only wonder what it cost to send it to forty-five million people, 11.3 million of whom will call to ask what it means. I would usually be one of them, but this time I was able to figure it out on my own.

And remember folks, four million more members of the baby boomer cohort start becoming eligible for Social Security TODAY, 01-01-2010. Seventy-some million more of them to go.

Just in case you weren't already pulling your hair out over things you pay for and over which you have no control whatsoever, consider this: Ten years ago, only ten salmon were counted passing through the last counting point to reach the upper Columbia River. This year there were 19,905. And it only cost $2,000,000.00, just a wee bit over a hundred dollars per fish. I love salmon stories. Rick Macherat


posted by Rick at 10:26 PM