Post #2471. 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McGregor Shirtless Daniel Craig Shirtless Colin Firth Shirtless Ben Affleck Shirtless Dermot O'Leary Shirtless Prince William Shirtless Jesse Metcalfe Shirtless Andre Agassi Shirtless Jon Rhys Meyers Shirtless Heath Ledger Shirtless Frank Lampard Shirtless Hayd Christensen Shirtless Prince Harry Shirtless James McAvoy Shirtless Craig Doyle Shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal Shirtless Ant & Dec Shirtless Travis Fimmel Shirtless Steve Jones Shirtless Jenson Button Shirtless Ioan Gruffudd Shirtless Paul Bettany Shirtless Andy Murray Shirtless Ben Shephard Shirtless Ralph Fiennes Shirtless James Blunt Shirtless Olivier Martinez Shirtless Ross Kemp Shirtless Joaquin Phoenix Shirtless Jamie Redknapp Shirtless David Boreanaz Shirtless Matt Dillon Shirtless Gordon Ramsay Shirtless David Duchovny Shirtless Jose Mourinho Shirtless Tobey Maguire Shirtless Joseph Fiennes Shirtless Josh Hartnett Shirtless Robert Carlyle Shirtless Jon Bon Jovi Shirtless Vince Vaughn Shirtless Freddie Ljungberg Shirtless Noah Wyle Shirtless Paul Walker Shirtless Chris Evans Shirtless Ben Fogle Shirtless Al Pacino Shirtless Ryan Phillippe Shirtless Denzel Washington Shirtless Billy Zane Shirtless Matt LeBlanc Shirtless Fortunately, this thing lets you save until you come up with something sensible. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:53 AM

Post  #2470.   Sorry about that.      I'm at the point in the relentless spiral into abject senility where it's still embarrassing to get into a mental confluction. Just today in a series of emails and telephone calls with various people .. well, hopefully they've all have moved on in their busy lives and it straightened itself out. Before too long I won't remember anything about it.

Maybe because of Breaking Bad, I don't know, I sort of picked a fight with the sister-in-law on the telephone the other night. Usually that's good for about a two-week pout, but she called me all cheerful two days later as if I hadn't been a complete asshole and unreasonable too. Maybe her phone list is shrinking. Hope to God not, but people do seem to be dropping like flies. Probably not the best way to put it, with all the sensitivities and whatnot.

Mentally added a few items to the Things I haven't Done List that I surely will never get around to starting. I've never seen a Rocky movie or any of the Freddy or Friday the 13th's either. I mention that because Jackie Earle Haley is the new Freddy Krueger. He played the homely skinny kid in Breaking Away. I clearly remember thinking at the time that there must be a very limited range of roles for somebody that awful-looking. Turns out he delivered pizza for a few years, then got re-discovered and has a terrific career going now, too much work to handle. The other thing I brought from the story is that no matter how ghastly or beautiful were our looks in our teens and twenties, we all end up looking pretty much the same. Unless you're a Matthew Broderick, one of many people who shouldn't go on HDTV, and you've obviously had a lot of work done to be 48 and trying to look 18. Then you just look embalmed.

Seattle folks are uncomplicated. They keep to themselves, are relentlessly polite, and don't fuss unless new people move here or someone tries to build something where they can see it. Now, when they post Craigslist ads for personal items and let prospective buyers come to their homes, they get robbed and murdered.

The most recent Powerball winner.


So much could be typed about this, kind and unkind. I'd go with kind and pretty much not type anything at all. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:56 PM

Post  #2469.   Oldies.      The music channels on cable sound better than any of my old playing devices did, even if they were real and not digital. Don't get me started. Saturday night is a good time to tune in Channel 924 and enjoy oldies. Who would have imagined there really would be nine hundred and twenty-four channels one day? And that's not "oldies" from the 1980's .. how ridiculous .. I'm talking about 50's-60's, true oldies. The visuals on the oldies channels show pictures of the vocalists and groups. I had no idea that many were black. There generally weren't any photo's on 45 record sleeves, and I think the music industry kept it low key. Would it have mattered back then, or would kids have still liked the music? Heck yes, of course we would. Not only that, had the voting age been lowered about 5-6 years earlier than it was, we would quite possibly have elected the first black President way back then. That would be about 50% because we believed we were so progressive and felt it was time, 25% because it would be so cool and 25% to freak out our parents totally. Pretty much like 2008.

In Seattle in those days, the same music was blasting from every window, lawn/beach chair and car radio, all tuned to KJR Seattle, Channel Ninety-five. And who was sending all those tunes out? None other than Pat O'Day, His Powerfulness, the Ultimate Decider of what is Cool, In, Happenin'. And so mellow about it .. amazing.

Oh, how things have changed. Now I see people walking around with wires plugged in their ears, texting. Always texting. I still don't get texting and it's pretty certain I never will. Typing away and listening to their lists, thousands of songs, categorized into the 500 "genres." Those I don't get either.

As for Pat O'Day. He's still around, doing television commercials for a substance recovery place. Looks about ninety-five years old, not that far ahead of the rest of us. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:15 PM

Post  #2468.   Easy for you maybe.      I remember when Daniel Tammet learned enough Icelandic in one week to appear on television in an interview. Reading about Eyjafjallajokull this week reminded me just how incredible that was. Can any regular person, that is, one who is not either Icelandic or an impossibly high high-functioning autistic savant enjoying monumentally vivid and complex synesthesia even pronounce that place/hill/glacier/volcano's name? Nobody I know, that's for sure. I can't recall a situation quite like this one with so many (important) people stuck out of position. How do you get the leader of Norway back to Norway anyway? Guess he'll have to start by flying the other way. Such a tiny country, Iceland, and so much trouble lately.

Had an argument with the sister-in-law today. She will pout for a week or two, so I'll have that much respite from the telephone at least. I kept thinking, "Chris Rock, you are so right!" as I struggled to extract some slight inkling of sense from the experience. It's amazing that women feel no need at all even to recognize the concept of logic when arguing. I've tried to go there myself, but I can't do it. It's like making up a publishable fairy tale on the fly.

The other amazing thing about women is that they feel no guilt or shame about anything they say or do when they're drunk. It's not as if they don't remember, they do, but they're like, "I got me a free pass for all that," only they don't even bother saying it. Unreal. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:05 PM

Post #2467.     The Searches.     Sometimes I'll take a look at my searchers and try to guess what they would have thought if they'd actually made it to my page. Like the young lady from Smith College who searched for Bear Grills Shirtless. I was a little surprised at that one. Why is that? Well, back when I would have supposed about a Smith girl, she would more likely have searched for a Candace Bergen or Henry Kissinger.

Then there was this one: "Humma Humma Walla." Kind of funny. See, this person was probably thinking about, and confusing, the words Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (the Hawaiian fish) and Hamma Hamma and Walla Walla (some places and rivers in Washington state.)

You're just putting in all those highlighted words to attract more searches. Is it that obvious? Duh .. yeah.

Anyway, the Humuhumunukunukuapuaa do not go swimming by in either the Hamma Hamma or Walla Walla rivers. And speaking of ... no, I usually don't use a discussion about rivers to rant about salmon, but I will just this time. The Walla Walla is one of many rivers which has lost its salmon run, however

A comprehensive program is being implemented which includes removal or laddering of diversion structures, screening of irrigation canals, irrigation ditch consolidation and conservation, instream flow enhancement, stream habitat enhancement and hatchery actions. The program will benefit spring chinook salmon, and ESA-listed summer steelhead and bull trout.

Structural fish passage improvements have included the removal of Marie Dorian Dam on the upper mainstem Walla Walla River and Maiden Dam on the lower Touchet River. New fish ladders and screens at Burlingame and Little Walla Walla diversions and a new ladder at Nursery Bridge Dam have recently been completed.

In addition, fish passage improvements at Hofer Dam on the Touchet River are scheduled in the near future. Bonneville Power Administration has provided most funding for passage improvements.

Well, isn't that just super! Coincidentally, I just got a notice that my power rate is going up .. that's power as from the Bonneville Power Administration. I would be fine with all this salmon-loving if ordinary people (like me) could actually afford to consume salmon or maybe even have one for a pet.

Article in the paper Just today pointed out blah ditty blah blah costs 17 kabillion dollars to raise one salmon only to get it probably eaten by a sea lion which it's illegal to even get rid of and oh screw it,
You'll be happy to know that I spent quite a bit of time researching and typing one of my periodic salmon rants, then I deleted it. It's still there; he just colored the font. Highlight it and see a salmon nutcase in action.Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:06 PM

Post  #2466.   Where no one has gone before.      It's very late, and there is a blonde on the television right now. She is reporting on the breaking news from Space, the fact that our Discovery shuttle is about to dock with the International Space Station.

I first became aware of "space" and the idea of building a space station and actually going there by about age 10 and was a space/science nerd from then on. That happened to be during the I.G.Y. (If you're old, you know what that was. If not, look it up,) an incredibly exciting time when the whole world changed. Sputnik had a hand in that as well. Fast forward about fifty-five years: We're "there," sort of. It hasn't gone exactly as I imagined. She, the blonde cable news reporter, is half reading, half winging, her explanation of what's happening up there. I suspect her knowledge of the thing amounts to how some really smart men shot something really shiny up in the sky and it stayed up and we can go there to visit it sometimes, like now and here are some pictures. Fortunately, it is still very late and, hopefully, none of our space neighbors are listening to us right now. Otherwise, this would be a little embarrassing.

I had hoped .. well, we did go to the moon. Then we just quit going. Okay, we were broke because of the war and all. For most of the past fifty-five years, I've been keen on the space station. Like the Hubble Space Telescope, you had to plan on living a long time to see these things through.

Yeah, I knew we were going to quit the space station too, as soon as we got it built, but maybe the blonde doesn't kn ... She knows. We're going to fly away from the shiny thing and leave it to the Russians and Chinese. Oh well. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 12:52 AM