Post  #2676.   Shamelessly copied from somewhere.      Breaking or b-boying is generally misconstrued or incorrectly termed as 'breakdancing.' Breakdancing is a term spawned from the loins of the media's philistinism, sciolism, and naïveté at that time. With no true knowledge of the hip-hop diaspora but with an ineradicable need to define it for the nescient masses, the term breakdancing was born. Most breakers take great offense to the term.

So there. Please update your file. Incidentally, This machine underlined the word "sciolism," asserting that it is not a word, not in its universe anyway. In the Day blog would like to point out that sciolism indeed is very much a word, meaning, "a superficial show of learning." Appropriate, don't you think, to this particular moment and our lame times in general?Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 12:47 AM

Post  #2675.   Nine-eleven officially over.     "Rudy Giuliani, whatever you think of him, is held in high regard by many Republicans." - Jake TapperRick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 12:15 PM

Post  #2674.   Schul.     The Lakeside School (with the inevitable interjection that Bill Gates went there) has an enrollment of 484, of which 111 are Seniors. They produced 23 National Merit Semi's this year. Last year they had 30. In comparision, the twenty-one high schools in my neighborhood (south) with an average enrollment of 1,400 students had a combined total of 15 semi-finalists. This is not too good.

In a related story, there was a massive air traffic fiasco yesterday, affecting the southwestern United States. The radios at the Los Angeles Center went out, and for several hours the controllers were unable to communicate with any of the hundreds of aircraft on their screens. There were several very near misses before they were able to get the work-arounds going via other control centers. Most of the cities in the southwest enacted a ground stop, and a large number of inbound aircraft were diverted.

The investigation proceeded rapidly and revealed: " .. a required 30-day maintenance check was not performed. This system turns off if this check is not performed."

Furthermore, the backup was not configured to deal with that contingency.

Is it just me, or was this plain insane? Couldn't they put a bell on it instead? Listen, you guys, remember me when some day not too far off you can't get your refrigerator door to open because some yayhoo in Cairo or someplace tried to put chicken bones down his disposal. Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 12:52 AM

Post  #2673.   An afternoon at Cousin Lucille's.     Brother and I had travelled back to Virginia with my mother. It was August. Virginia. Was I insane, or what? This was about our third trip back there in as many years, so I had concluded that all the motels in town were now owned by East Indians. That was fine; they were clean and the Air Conditioning worked. Most days I could take Mom wherever she wanted (in the rental car which I had made sure had nice loud and powerful east coast air conditioning,) leave her there for as long as she needed and race back to the motel where I could change shirts and sit in front of the room air conditioner until time to fetch her.

Then came Sunday. Mother's double first-cousin Lucille (this was Virginia,) and I've always just assumed that this made her my double-second cousin, was having a get together at her home, a chance for relatives and old friends to see Mother all at one time. The family itself was so enormous that we would have had to stay back there several years to see everyone (again, Virginia.) Most of them were anxious to see me too, as it turned out, since I was after all, "the most beautiful baby anyone had ever beheld," or "laid azz own," so they all said. This should probably give you a clue as to the average age and gender of the invitees. So, I kissed an awful lot of chubby, rouged cheeks and smelled a great deal of old lady perfume until I got almost woozy from it and sat down next to the window air conditioner. The turned-off window air conditioner.

See, neither Lucille or any of the others present would dream of turning on the ay-cee when it was only 96° with humidity around 175%. Even though just about every one of them had truckloads of money now, they had all grown up in the very poor district just downhill from the poorer outskirts of Poortown, during the Great Depression, and no way were they going to waste money running thet thang. So, there I sat, beyond hot and almost back to cool in a way as my clothing was completely soaked through, down to the socks, listening to what seemed like hundreds of southern voices, old lady voices, all talking and laffin' at the same time about how darlin' I had once been, as my mind slowly left my body and I wondered if this was what it was like when you dad.

I remembered the episode so vividly today even though it isn't that hot at all around here.Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 11:44 PM

Post  #2672.   An auspicious day.     An auspicious day coming up. A survey from a company that I do business with came today, and the cozy letter which accompanied it was from their "Executive Vice President, Engagement." Isn't that precious? I say a little prayer each day that I am out of the workforce, hopefully forever. Why do I think that when this particular job title proliferates across industry, and it will, the position will always be filled by very high-energy women in their mid- to late thirties and never by crusty old men coasting out the last few years before retirement?

This is his second bout with testicular cancer. This isn't funny, of course. Cancer is Not Funny. But I don't think he'll have to worry about a third bout with testicular cancer, will he?

More about soccer. I watched a sports news segment tonight - our very, very longstanding sports director was doing the piece. Nothing much going on actually: we have no NBA team anymore, of course; our football team .. well, you know about that; as for the Mariners - they've been playing golf for weeks, and what is there to say about Philadelphia vs New York? So, that left soccer. He should get an award for his spirited coverage of our Very First professional soccer playoff match. Qwest Field was filled to capacity, all lime green. It was about a two-minute segment, with clips of people bumping into one another, balls sailing into the stands, lots of running, lots and lots of running. Kind of the way my little brother used to run madly about with his eyes closed. Finally he revealed the score: 0-0. Zero-Zero, or naught-naught as they say. Sixty-seven thousand people filed out, shouting, singing soccer songs, yelling soccer things, clearly thrilled by the experience. As for me, I've typed about six sentences describing my feelings about it and backspaced each one of them out. (Have you ever seen Night of the Living Dead?)

As if that wasn't enough ... Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 2:43 PM