Post  #2493.   A little planning ahead.     We're going into the city. Don't do that much anymore. What used to be trips for partying, cavorting and sometimes even shopping have become lawyering and doctoring. Ugh. So I'm thinking over what we need to take for a busy day of apppointments and traveling around. Oh yes, a thermos of coffee. Don't want to get stuck without cof ... oh good grief, how could I forget? We're going downtown. Downtown Seattle perpetessake. Jeez.Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:32 PM

Post  #2492.   I rest my case.     Can you imagine the guffaws from say, back in 1957, if a lovely new car girl raised her arm and stepped aside as the curtain went up and the music swelled and right there slowly rotating in the middle of a shiny stage sat


this thing? Dave observed, "Golly Lar, do you realize we could drive all the way around the world for about $13.00 in gas money?" "More like $131.00," replied Larry, who was better at math, "but it would have to be done entirely at night so no one would see us ferchrissakes!" Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 9:31 PM

Post  #2491.    The most awful thing I've ever said.   Sardonic? That's maybe what it was. Judge for yourself. My other brother died a little more than two weeks ago. He was married to the Sister-in-law about three wives and four husbands back, or the other way round. Hence our relationship of forty-plus years. Think that's confusing, consider all those poor kids. Good grief! Half of them don't know who the hell they are. At least they're all legitimate. Most of the relatives think Sister-in-law and I should have been married. Maybe so, what with the level of psychological combat over the last half-century and what-not.

I told her. Had to eventually, so I just said it, malignant/stage-four blah-blah, explained the whole medical shitstorm. It was really, really tough on her, I knew it. Especially coming Right After my brother's untimely death. The rest of the afternoon eventually relaxed. We've been through it all, so things got on to practicalities, discussing Brother, Other Brother (the dead one,) as well as My Condition. At one point she asked, "Did you get the death certificate yet?"

How could I resist? Really? I replied, "No. I have to die before they'll issue one."

If there's a place in hell for that sort of thing, well, I probably just bought myself in. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:45 PM

Post  #2490.    Notes from the real Twilight Zone.    My entries may be short for awhile, only because for the first time in decades I am busy. Seems that news of my CANCER has spread to people who thought I'd been dead for years. I have to confess, dealing is tough. The cancer too.

The PET-CT scan is fairly new, and I am to have one. So far, I find people in the PET-CT scan business to be a bit huffy. Since I am sometimes .. direct, this might get ugly. I've promised that I'll really try to tone it down. Those people could put me in that cyclotron of theirs and fry me into a lump of coal, and no one could ever prove foul play. And they'd do it too if you pissed them off enough. Which I could quite innocently do. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 12:12 AM

Post  #2489.    Some bad news.      It's hard to come up with an appropriate email subject when the content is going to seriously mess up the recipient, but it became necessary to write several this afternoon. Ugh. The news I got today was that I have Stage 4 Malignant Melanoma, and that's not all. The rest of the numbers/letters, measurements and qualifications that go along with the diagnosis are all at the top of their respective ranges as well. Except for survivability of course.

So, there we are. I made a point of stopping by a mirror on the way over to the computer to look at myself and say out loud something to the effect of wow I really am going to die. Soon. And Badly. I almost added a little more, like "Holy Shit!" but decided against it. No sense in overly annoying Anyone Upstairs at this point, y'know? Oh jeez, this isn't going to turn into one of those DEATH BLOGS is it? Actually, I think not. You've probably noticed I'm not that brave melancholy, redemption, nice sunset kind of writer. Besides, it's pretty much been done to death, don't you think?Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 1:02 AM

Post  #2488.   Nine years.      Young people don't ordinarily interest me, but they are on my mind today, nine-eleven. A lot of them are writing about "that day in third grade" or "while we were watching cartoons on television." Sure, the world changed forever that day, but they'll never get the chance to know what it was like Before. And that is very sad. I don't even try to tell them about it anymore because they just look at you like the kindly befuddled old man telling fairy tales.

Did you know that there was never a better time to Invest In Gold? That's what the ad says, pointing out that the price of gold has gone up by almost four times in the past ten years. And people will go for it it, never realizing that the best time to buy gold was maybe ten years ago and the ad is being run by people who figure now is the time to unload it?

Pierce Brosnan is in that movie, Mamma Mia!. I caught a little of it last night, just enough to realize that as an actor you do not want to anger the cinematographer! It's clear the Pierce must have done or said something to the guy, maybe dissed him in some kind of regal Hollywood way, because his facelift scar in all its glory is shown about eleven feet high in a shot looking past his ear. Additional note: those things do not tan, so keep that in mind when you go in for your lift. Scarves, think scarves.

There was a program on the World is Ending Channel the other night. They pointed out how the warm current would be disrupted and Europe would enter a new Ice Age if Greenland's 91 billion cubic feet of ice were to melt. Again with the numbers. Do it for yourself: a cubic mile contains 147,197,952,000 cubic feet, and Greenland covers many thousands of miles (836,109 actually) with very deep ice. This is why so many of us reactionaries get frosty about climate change. Numbers. Always the numbers. The original FACT happens to be true: if Greenland melts, the climate changes. Then, they put in a nonsense number and the argument evaporates.

Oh, we're going to get climate change all right, but so long as there are concerned people with credentials who need paychecks, there will always "be time if we act now!" Truth is, there ain't a danged thing we can do about it anymore, so stop worrying and get on with life. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:05 AM