Post #2481. Dear Googlebot. I will be typing something new soon. Promise.
I asked her to tell four-year-old Colin not to yell and interrupt when she is on the phone with ex-step-great-great-uncle-in-law-thrice-removed Rick, but she wouldn't do it. Nor would she give the phone to him so I could. Of course, once word got around that I said that kid will be stealing cars before you know it, well, now they're all upset.
My niece, or more accurately my ex-step-great-niece-in-law-thrice-removed, Colin's mother, had a friend die this week. Suicide. The family is evidently not hushing it up as is usually done; the obituary suggests donations to the Teen Suicide Prevention Thing. Facebook and some other online places that I'm distantly familiar with are handling the memories and expressions. There will be a memorial which no one will dress for. Being summer, that means flip-flops, halter tops, jeans and shorts. Except for the minister, if there is one. Maybe he's online too. One thing there will be a lot of is hugs.
Hugs and high-fives. You know how hard it is to move about in this world and avoid them? It's hard.
I did learn something new and interesting. For some time I've wondered how the Universe expanded out to ... wherever, 14 billion light years or so, in 14 billion years, and then the light from the farthest reaches has taken another 14 billion years to reach us. Wouldn't that make the age of the Universe 28 billion years, not 14? No, it seems not, and Planck time explains it. If you want to calculate some Planck time, use this:
Note the c to the fifth part. Planck time is boggling indeed. Kind of like a Googleplex only less. I feel a lot better now. Of course, I'll be typing it
PLANK TIME just to drive the smart kids bonkers.
Rick Macherat
posted by Rick at 12:15 PM
Post #2480. The System. A man in our town was arrested on four counts of assault and mischief but was released on May 10 by posting a small portion of his bail. After that, he failed to check in, return calls or appear in court at all. A month later he was arrested again and charged with assault and child rape. He made bail by posting $9,000 and agreeing to make payments. He made no payments. In November, he was charged with assault and child rape again and made another bail arrangement, this time with
Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.
Shortly after getting out of jail this time, he shot and killed four police officers in cold blood as they sat in a coffee shop.
Rick Macherat
posted by Rick at 12:06 AM
Post #2478. Rerun: What noise? While rinsing a few dishes, I opened up the window above the kitchen sink to take in some wonderful late spring freshness and listen to the gentle sounds of dusk. They were somewhat muted for the moment because of the Boeing 747 taking off, but the roar eventually tapered off and before another one departed I could hear a fire engine screaming out of one of the three stations near my house. Four if you count the airport fire department. The siren grew louder and for a few moments drowned out the thunderous reverberation which rises from the 12-lanes of Interstate 5 freeway just over the lip of the hill. I am generally unaware of that white-noise sound unless there is a major wreck which stops traffic in both directions. Then it's spooky. Spooky because the shrill air-raid shriek of the little girl who lives across the street can come all the way around the house to the back side where the kitchen is, and I can hear her and all the other illegal immigrant noises which emanate from her household of seventeen persons and thirteen cars. This little girl has been at the 4-year-old point where a scream lingers just at the frequency of pain for three years now. She begins as early at 6am and can continue on Friday nights during the fiesta or whatever the hell they are doing over there until as late as three in the morning. Oh, and as of last Easter, they have a rooster. A very loud, horny, maladjusted rooster.
Although the extended illegal family has a lot of cars, it is the other family of mysterious origin, mainly Asian and scary, which has the loud ones. I believe these vehicles are secondhand funny cars which have had no maintenance whatever since they were stolen. As soon as these neighbors finally get their cars started, they try to get them up to 100 mph before reaching the stop sign at the end of our street. One of the people living in this house, and we have no idea how many there are, works. Not only does he work, but he ride-shares, and his ride arrives at 12:30am. That guy then honks the horn of his wreck of a car until his partner wakes up and comes out. Everyone else within a block is awake by then too. Except me of course.
The family directly across from us is pretty regular. They have a grown son who works some, but I have to mention his two 7,000-watt audio systems, one in the car and one in his house. When the parents aren't home he runs both and medicates. I'm not worried about that situation lasting much longer as he will soon retire from the present with a permanent case of Jell-O-brain.
The "family" on the other side of them makes no noise at all. Dead still, 24/7. That is because they are immigrant smugglers. I can't prove that, of course, except for the fact that blacked-out vans arrive frequently, (not long after after the Manila, Taipei and Seoul flights) and drive around to the back yard. In the middle of the night, the vans return, go to the back yard again, then leave. Probably nothing.
Did I mention the dogs? Every single house in every direction for as far as the ear can hear has one. And every one of those houses leaves the dog out all day. About half leave the dog out all night. Every one of those dogs is neurotic and lonely, but the kids are inside playing video games. So the dogs bark. All the time. Sometimes I bark back and they all stop. That's a little weird.
The construction project has actually muffled a lot of this while it has been going on, at least in the daytime starting at 6:59am. Especially the jackhammers and pile drivers. They are building three five-story condo buildings with 96 units right behind the houses across the street. Yes, the backs of those buildings and half the units will look right down into the yards of the noisy neighbors, approximately 35 feet away. Under current market conditions, I figure people will be grabbing up those non-view condos for ~$325,000 each, and on the morning of the first day in their new homes they will hear their new neghborhood. Unless they moved in on a Friday when they wouldn't have slept a wink in the first place.
You sound like all this awful noise doesn't really bother you. What?
Rick Macherat
posted by Rick at 12:11 PM
