Good news everybody, we have an new editor, this one will specialize in the apostrophe. Only the best writers have this many editors, I bet Mark Twain only had four. Now I have to contract a lot of words so he has something to do.

The apostrophe editor gave me some advice about the blog. Apparently this is the sort of thing people will idly read at work because they don't want to be doing their work, so publishing it on Monday is the best time. And I should post it on Faceplant, and when I email it I should put a subject line so people know it isn't someone trying to sell them Viagra, it's only me complaining about Happy Hour and how people use too much plastic. So that's what I'm going to do. Another guest editor said I should post something every day and use more pictures. I could do that, but one wonders should I?

It's the first day of the Plastic Diet as it has become known. It's 9:30 and so far so good, the only one who has taken a hit is the cat. The canned food she has been eating comes in cans lined with plastic. I was doing some reading about that, I'm not sure why they started putting the plastic lining in cans but it sounds like it has some potential health issues for people I'm guessing cats are not immune either. I have already tried to stop buying it for humans, I just hadn't noticed it in the cat food. I'm going to take it away from her. She seems pretty unfazed by the news.

On the record, I haven't cheated by stocking up on things, I know I'm going to run out of hair spray, I have the little plastic pump bottle, I wonder how hard it can be to make? I'm not that crazy about my hair anyway, so I will cross that bridge when I get there. I will tell you this though, don't try to mix shampoo and conditioner in a bottle and shake it up to make Pert Plus. It makes some kind of mess that won't really come out of your hair and doesn't clean it either. 

You know what? Speaking of complaining about Happy Hour, the Weekly or the Stranger, (I R's they are independent newspaper tabloids in Seattle) had a whole edition devoted to Happy Hours and only one out of about 50 even mentioned a vegetarian dish. Jesus people. Too much meat.

I just read another Happy Hour review and now I am mad. It said you could get chicken quesadillas and for a dollar more, mushroom ones. Goddammit. You know why meat is cheaper than mushrooms? All I'm saying is read Omnivores Dilemma, Fast Food Nation and In Defense of Food, and you will go "Huh" It may not make you stop eating meat, but it will sure as hell make you think twice about where you get it.

I have no luck turning people into vegetarians, (imagine how hard it must be to talk someone into being gay), which is fine, but folks should know how their food is produced, because the consequences actually do effect everybody. I wish PETA wasn't such a stupid group. The most famous vegetarian group is so annoying that if I ever start eating meat again it's going to be a PETA member first.

And further more speaking of I R's, January's husband That One is from Canada so I should have a bunch of  Canadian IR's, but I'm not seeing them. He did tell me he wasn't going to read the blog, but he does once in awhile. The Other One, his cousin has some connections there too. Get cracking you two.

We were at January and That One's house the other night and we watched a show called Corner Gas, it's a sitcom from Canada, it's pretty good. They were talking about which episode to show us and they picked one about a guy who writes a blog, and people keep telling him to stop talking and to write it in his blog, it's funny, that happens to me too. January and That One were laughing and laughing, it was good but not that funny.

I have a paid advertisement and about time too, I expect to be paid in Bud Light, which is currency in my world.

Our awesome CPA / Financial Adviser Kirk Mills is someone you might want to get in touch with. The Comma Editor was doing the taxes because I made him, It didn't seem like the taxes should be that hard. It got quite tense as the Comma Editor hates doing taxes, which is where Kirk has always come in handy, so we finally caved and had Kirk do them. He literally got us a refund that was about 20 times what the Comma Editor figured out to that point. They were done in about 45 seconds too. Also, we are seeing our investments come back at a pretty snappy pace, so just in case you want to talk to someone about all your dough, here is your guy.

A good thing this week is, I needed some little pots to put bulbs in and at Fred Meyer of all places they have these little ones that are made out of bamboo and are meant to break down and compost after a couple of years, they come in cute colors and different sizes and they were pretty much the same price as any others, so we are getting somewhere there. Bamboo is supposed to be a very renewable resource, I know it's a bitch to get rid of in your yard, so I think this is good. I just hope we don't find out later it takes a bunch of chemical fertilizer or something, but we do what we can.

Next week I will tell you the two good things about hockey.

Go Canucks.

We Should Worry About the Big Things

Mans inhumanity to man is our subject this week. This is a tiny capsule of why there are wars later on, there is a direct link, indirectly.

January and her husband live in a suburb in the City Without A Soul. Some guy in the cul-de-sac had a truck that was kind of a mess, admittedly, parked in front of their house on the street. Someone called the Parking Nosy Parkers (they are probably really some sort of cops, but as they are shooting fish in a barrel here, they aren't going to get actual cop respect) and the truck disappeared.

In the meantime the whole "Oh my god, someone's work truck is in VIEW of my eyes mentality took over and apparently the Parking Nosy Parkers got all fired up and kept on patrolling and now January and her husband who is probably dying of the flu and therefore didn't take his car to work got a goddammit $40 parking ticket in front of their own house.

Here is the mans inhumanity to mans part. The reason they got a ticket in the first place is because the neighborhood has one of those deals where you have to have a permit slapped on your windshield to park on the street where you live. Because, WHAT IF AN OUTSIDER PARKED ON MY STREET?! Well really, who gives a shit. In this neighborhood it's not going to be drug dealers, worst case (pretty bad case) Jehovah's Witnesses. In a neighborhood where it likely will be drug dealers there are no window permits. Where did this weird territorial street thing come from? If there are cars lining the street, so what? In this case the neighborhood is close to Bellevue Square, (Owned by Kemper Freeman, the wealthy non recycler). The potential problem in this case is that people who work at Bellevue Square would park their cars in the neighborhood during the day and walk to work so they don't have to pay to park, which is total bullshit, those people make a ton of money at Orange Julius.

Lets examine. Most houses have garages or carports, so the homeowners cars are taken care of. There are households who have kids so there will be the occasional teenager cars parked on the street. Then perhaps a birthday party once in awhile in the neighborhood so there may be cars parked for a block solid sometimes.The lesson is cars come and cars go and how exactly does that actually impact your life.

It doesn't unless you can't get out of your driveway.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course. One of the characters in this drama, owned, a car 40 years ago so ugly that I am still traumatized. It was a red and white Rambler, and the space it took up and turned ugly is still to this day indescribable. Rust is our friend sometimes.

And furthermore I am personally driving a car so old and raggedy assed that it could be a modern art instillation but I don't think I should have to pay $40 because it's no longer beautiful. It's reducing reusing and recycling, and bonus the radio works so I'm happy.

MY SERIOUS SACRIFICE FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY

Next on the agenda is the plastic situation that I wrote about last week concerning the month without plastic. I would just like to point out that I got ONE vote, and that was in person. The cry goes 'round What the Hell is Wrong With You People For God's sake? I am not slaving over this for you all to not participate, you call yourselves the 20. Shame on you.

The decision is thus, I am going to go for a month without using or buying any new plastic. January (the mean one) has put in her two cents worth with the rules. I'm not allowed to have the Comma Editor buy something to get around it, and I have to tell Roselator "No" if it comes to that. That has the potential to be difficult. For example, we can't make cupcakes out of a mix because the powdery part comes in plastic. I will start on May 1st, if I had my shit together I would have done it today, because it's Earth Day, however my shit is asunder.

Another rule, I'm not supposed to devote a whole blog to it. The Mean One doesn't like bad news environmentally. Nobody does so it would seem. The Gray whale that died in West Seattle last week that has all the plastic in it's stomach kind of spurs me on. I think it's a good idea to know what's going on with the place we have to live, but that's just me. I'm learning that most people keep their heads down, and go out of the way to not know whats up. Alright.

WORDS

I have been meaning to point out that the word Blog is just foul. It's a bone lazy contraction of web log. I'm just saying. Captain Kirk would never have stooped to this level. The Star Date never became State, the Ships Log didn't become the Slog. Lazy asses.

Also orientate? When did orient get to be too blah? Talk about a slippery slope.

ENVIRONMENTAL GENIUS IDEA

This isn't my idea, we were on Lopez Island last summer and the person in charge had a stack of fabric napkins or some sort of squares of fabric in her kitchen to use where I would grab a paper towel. It took about 8 months for the concept to trickle into my brain, but I finally figured out that that is the way to go. For being such a pain in the ass about environmental issues in the home I have to admit that paper towels are my favorite thing. I wish they weren't made out of trees that have been bleached with Dioxin which is about the most toxic chemical on Earth (I'm not kidding), but they are, and I know better. I really think we all need to just think about it as our days go along and throw things away, so I am happy to report that now we have a basket full of cloth towels that we can use to wipe up the black granite counter top,(which is like having a piece of mirror for your counter, I don't recommend it) and all the other kitchen things that come up. Then they go in the washer and come out and then we reuse them and I haven't used a whole roll of paper towels in a month. We will not discuss now how unusual that is. We are all a work in progress.


So what have we learned? 1.Take your own container for leftover at the restaurant

2. Have a bunch of cloths instead of paper towels.

We make progress.

This week I would like to dedicate the blog to the long suffering Comma Editor and the More Jokes and the All the Rest Editor. Thank you for all your hard work.

Jeez.

The thing about having the editors is they are working harder at it than I am, now I have to go back and do a bunch of revising.

I have to say I'm feeling pretty vindicated about the blog right now, since a big part of it is on the topic of Who The Hell is Running the Show?

Indeed, how in the Sam Hill does one build a 25 story building so poorly in the 21st (I think that's right) century in Seattle WA that in 8 years you have to tear it down? International readers this is an apartment building with retail on the street level, that was so poorly constructed it has been determined that for safety reasons it will have to be torn down. IT IS 8 YEARS OLD, IT'S 25 STORIES IT IS IN DOWNTOWN SEATTLE.

A lot of people will lose their shirts and a lot of others will lose their pensions because it was built for the Carpenters Union Pension fund along with some other pension funds. We used to laugh and laugh at this kind of shoddy workmanship when it was in Communist Soviet Russia. This is just embarrassing for a whole bunch of people, but strengthens my point, which is, it's a bad idea to assume that smart people rise to the top. Obviously a lot of smart people do end up in a position of importance, but it does not appear to be across the board. It seems that a percentage of influential people ride to top based on their outfits. Hell if I know.

In this case once again, the rich white guys who will come out smelling like a rose are lawyers. They are suing everyone no matter how unrelated the work was to the fact that the building has the potential to fall down.

Anyway, the point of this whole comma ridden blog, the apex if you will is this: If this
is the best a bunch of rich white guys with all the marbles can come up with, one despairs.

WaMu executives are testifying before Congress this week, coincidentally, in a not so parallel universe. Not repentant really, just pissed off that they didn't get bailed out. They can't afford cable now.

MANNERS

As you know I have excellent problem solving skills. If you believe as I do that people who spit on the sidewalk are vermin I can fix them. Seriously, why would you think it's OK to leave revolting spit on the sidewalk after you?

The solution is easy, and two fold.

First, it has to be a primary offense, or whatever they call it, like talking on your cell phone while driving, so the cops can arrest you for it. Then, after the trial where the offender is found guilty, the convicted criminal is taken outside the courtroom right that minute by the bailiff and made to spit on the sidewalk. He then  (not surprisingly the vast majority will be male) has to get down and lick it up. Sentence served. Cheap, quick, a little cruel, a little unusual maybe but I think the Supreme Court will uphold it.

If that doesn't solve the problem completely, for the second offense, the bailiff  takes some random guy out of the County Jail and he spits on the sidewalk and the guilty guy has to lick that up. Then if the spitter is stupid enough to do it again you just give up and throw him in the Big House. The Republicans will like it because it's cheap, the Democrats may not love it, but I'm an almost bleeding heart liberal and I'd pay to watch. Then there is the bonus "Get Out of Jail to Spit Card" for the guy in jail. Pretty win win if you ask me. Problem solved.

RECYCLING

I have decided not to throw my plastic in the ocean after all. Although there is a floating bunch of plastic 1,000 miles wide across in the Pacific Ocean which is almost impossible to believe, but if you look it up it's true, so really what's the difference. And late breaking news, there has been a similar mass found in the Atlantic.

I get this email thing from the Seattle library every month about new books that are out, you can pick categories, like Do It Yourself or Biography, and somehow I have gotten a bunch of titles that involve "A Year Of..." One I read was by a woman who along with her husband went a whole year without buying anything they didn't actually need. It was OK, although the only thing I actually remember about it was the line about them going to some Frugal Meeting or whatever they call themselves and being fascinated with a guy who "had an apparently self inflicted haircut".

Anyway, where I was going with this is. I am thinking about trying to go for a period of time without buying or using any new plastic, not a year, but a month maybe? What do you think? I am already pretty intense about it, particularly packaging that is out of control but I still use it. This means I can't buy Bud Light in six packs because of the plastic rings, for example. You 20 take a vote and I will do what you decide.The great part is I haven't really thought this through. I didn't even think of the Bud Light thing, one of The Editors did, so it could be pretty interesting.

OK what else what else this week?

WORDS

There is no such word as NOTATE.

PRETTY GOOD THING

Anyway, there is good news all around, lets look. The Space Needle is great. When you go up to the Observation Level there are pictures and captions about building it. Turns out they didn't really know if it was going to work. They had to make prototypes of many pieces,well no kidding, you can't go to Granger and order Space Needle bolts. It's interesting that the engineers involved weren't that sure how it was going to work out and it is still perfect. Which brings me back to the 25 story building, oh never mind. Whatever. I love the Space Needle.

The More Jokes and All The Rest Editor has informed me that this will be the last time I'm going to get away with looking out the window to find a good thing, which takes the Arches of Science off the table for future use so I might as well throw them in now. (Really, doesn't it seem like there should have been a whole bunch of commas in that last sentence?)

Well what is so wonderful about the Arches is they light them up for special occasions, and we can see them from our living room. It's usually pretty easy to figure out what's going on, they were green for St. Patrick's day for example. The last time they were Husky colors, that was a little confusing. I think it was because the Women's Softball team won something. A softball game probably. I love the Arches and the Space Needle.

We have a new International Reader, he is stuck in Europe due to the volcano, hope to see you back here soon!

The More Jokes and Everything Else Editor said this one was unfocused. God shes mean. Dammit, it's not mean if it's true.

We Are Going To Call This A Bye Week

Well this week is just a mess from the get go. Did you know it's Thursday? Not Wednesday? This isn't good news for the blog, you would probably be astonished at how much time I actually spend making it awesome.

Apparently the new color wasn't that popular, I got some complaints, it would seem I screwed up the link thing. It's back to black as far as I know. My son said he didn't read the blog last week because the link didn't work. He works at Microsoft, I'm almost positive he could have gotten into it. You can't buy that kind of loyalty I tell you what.

Then I  have two editors, one wants more jokes and the other one wants fewer commas. I don't know, on top of everything else that's not working out this week I'm not furious about anything.

So to fill in the space for now I will tell you the story of the naming of the Blog, and some other stuff.

Once upon a time we were driving for a distance in the car with my then 5 year old granddaughter Roselator (Not her real name, thank God). Because I'm a nice guy and I knew it was going to be a long drive I started singing to keep her occupied. It was "You Are My Sunshine" as I recall. The reason I think so is because I can remember most of the words to it, also Jingle Bells and it was summer. Therefor by process of elimination it was probably 'You Are My Sunshine". So anyway I'm singing along and all of a suddenly from the back seat comes "You sing terrible." 

The thing is of course this is not news to me, I can't sing in fact I sing terrible but I was hoping to get a couple years farther down the road before she put two and two together. I said "Well that was kind of mean, you sort of hurt my feelings". I could tell she felt bad, and that she was backtracking to get us all out of this in one piece, and she said "It's not mean if it's true."

Of course it is mean if it's true, meaner usually. So that's that part. 

Now I will relate two stories about the GD Paula Deen thing. I seriously have had a bunch of people come up to me and say that we look alike. January and I were walking into the Georgetown Liquor Company, which is a really good vegetarian bar restaurant in Seattle and I really recommend it. The non vegetarians like it. Anyway there were two girls sitting outside because of the whole smoking thing, smoking, and one of them said to the other "She looks just like my favorite chef on the Food Network", so I said to January "Yeah I get that Paula Deen thing all the time and she said "How do you know she didn't mean Emeril?"

Then another one, I was talking to my son on the phone and he said something along the lines of "Guess who the grand kid, Roselator saw on TV and said you look like? (Not her real name) Well of course, I said "Paula Deen" and he said "Wrong gender" Well it was Jimmy Johnson from the pre game football show. So there you go. 

I probably need a therapist just from hanging around my own offspring.

It's now Saturday, I refuse to give up on this week. You twenty deserve it.

Both grand kids spent the night last night. We live in a tiny condo, as most of you know. (you twenty followers)  In order to make this all work The Comma Editor sleeps in the bed with the Three Year Old. We have a blow up bed that Roselator loves to sleep on, and I sleep on the couch. However this time we were watching The Prisoner of Azkaban when Roselator decided she was going to finish watching it with her eyes closed, and that was the end of her. She was sound asleep on the couch. I ended up on the blow up bed. I had had one other run in with it, which I guess is like childbirth if you give it long enough you decide it couldn't have been that bad.

To start with it's a twin size and about 3 feet tall so when you move it sways, if you have moved at all in your sleep you wake up clinging to it, so that you have to carefully slide back into the middle as to not fall out onto the floor. You can't actually turn over, you need to change position in place, which is good practice for spinning in your grave I suppose.

I don't understand the physics of it, but the air in the room is the Seattle indoor temperature, of 70 degrees more or less, but the air inside the blow up bed is actually from the North Pole. So the whole experience is as if you spent the night on a three foot high two foot wide slab of Jello.

The night wasn't going that well. But then all that changed. Hah, you wonder is it for the better?

We have a cat, named Gracie. She's a pretty good cat as they go. However she is nocturnal as cats are. One unfortunate habit she has is to hop up on the bed, purring and wanting  to get under the covers. Which is pretty annoying, but whatever. The thing is I am perfectly happy to lift up the blankets so she can go under because once she is in she will go to sleep. However due to the fact that she isn't that smart she tends to stand on top of the blankets. When showed up in the middle of the night on the jello bed, I picked up the blanket so she could get under and she just stood there, which since I wasn't real well rested annoyed me. I picked her up to shove her under the blanket and damn near poked out my own eye with my cat. Somehow her back foot/claw got caught in my eyelid. I am fine though, thanks for asking.

I am kind of irritated about one thing. We went to Veg Fest, which is as hippie as you can get, it's a kind of Costco sample thing but with all vegetarian food. This year they finally had compostable waste containers. I have always been puzzled by the lack of common sense disposal options at this deal. Now this is the thing. Say Seattle is the base of the pyramid, which is Liberal Land, and as you go up to the top of the pyramid passing Goddammit bicyclers and Prius drivers and hikers and raw foodies and patchouli wearing old Deadheads and whatever the hell kind of hippie dippy types there are in the world, when you get to the top, it's just the freaking cream of the bunch of bleeding heart liberals at Veg Fest. (Comma editor here. See what I am up against?) So I have officially given up on the whole preaching about recycling. I am not kidding you, even in that venue people couldn't or wouldn't figure out how to take advantage of the 4 recycling options. I may rent a storage unit to save all my plastic and rent a truck to drive it to the ocean to dump it in myself.

OK, good, I seem to be getting a little cranky!  See you next week.

 

Bad Times

Getting bad reviews, from the under generation.

I have been working myself to the bone and getting bony fingers. Wait, I've been working my fingers to the bone and getting bony fingers, that's right.

Not that I'm bitter, but I think the fact that I'm working all by myself to straighten up the entire world, just beginning with Seattle is going over the heads of these tots. I don't care if you do have kids and mortgages, I will tell you when you leave totdom. Boy spell check didn't like that one.

One of my critics (January) said there should be more jokes, apparently the dire state of the world is a problem to be corrected without my help. Fine.

Dyslexic guy goes into a bra.

That just used up the only joke I can ever remember, I hope you're happy.


I am going to try a new format, instead of doing a long thought provoking informative incisive piece every week, I am going to chop it up into bits.

• Traffic

• Radio

• Manners

• Restaurants

• Recycling/Environmental Shit
  

• Politics
  

The bullet points are getting annoying. At any rate the idea is that there will be a list of shorter, yet still genius bits every week.

This week for example we will begin with TRAFFIC. I have been working a temp job this week in Renton so I was trying to get back to Seattle.

There was a Sounders game at Quest, so the Seattle cops were out in force screwing traffic up as fast as their little arms could fly.

Would you like to know what makes me mad about cops directing traffic? WE HAVE TRAFFIC LIGHTS FOR THAT. What the cops do is stand in the middle of the street occasionally strolling into the path of the car at the front of the line to make sure traffic can't flow, and randomly letting pedestrians cross the street. WE HAVE TRAFFIC LIGHTS FOR THAT. It took me 20 minutes to go 3 blocks.

RADIO

I am devastated to realize that the radio topic is going to be a non starter.

One of my family members who has lived in Seattle for years and years and years, (yes that was uncalled for, but I'm pissed about the radio thing) said she had never heard of Dori Monson. I found that hard to believe, but I sucked it up and decided that perhaps if it isn't going to play with Seattle natives it sure isn't going to work for the International Readers. But it hurts.

I LOVE radio, mainly talk radio probably due to years of working in the nursery alone. The plant kind, not the baby kind, I could go most of the day, most of the week without a human sighting, so I bonded in perhaps an unhealthy way with radio.

Dori Monson is a Seattle talk show host who is becoming hilarious by way of his creeping right wing crazy. I used to like him a lot of the time, but now he is way nuts and snotty too, so that's too bad He is following the Dr. Laura/Tom Lykus career path. Are they still on the radio?

There was a recent incident where the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Washington State was pulled over for speeding and got popped for a DUI. Dori Monson was foaming at the mouth. This Is An Outrage. This man is supposed to be a role model. He was at the forefront don't you worry. Without Dori Monson the irony would have been lost.

Anyway, radio is going to come up, but I'll try to keep it at a dull roar.

RECYCLING/ENVIRONMENTAL SHIT

You can bring your own Tupperware thing to a restaurant and you don't have to use a Styrofoam thing for leftovers. I just reread that and it said leftover instead of leftovers, it was funnier that way, try it.

The stupid thing about that paragraph is I wasn't trying to be funny so the whole thing doesn't make sense, but I'm leaving it in.

MANNERS

I smoked for a really long time so I'm extremely qualified to comment on this one. Why is it that bar owners and smokers between them (if you think about it there are thousands of brains involved), can't figure out that there are no ashtrays outside of bars and clubs? It's been years since the law prohibiting smoking inside has been in place. In fact there was some indication (it was in the newspaper) that the law was voted on and passed and we knew the date that is was going to take effect, so my question is, how is it that the best solution so far is to throw one million cigarette butts on the ground? Every weekend.

The smokers are like goldfish who have a 12 second memory, it's all new every time. "I just went out for a cigarette and there was no ashtray, maybe this time there will be".

If you walk down First Avenue on a Saturday morning it's pretty disgusting. In front of the clubs there are thousands of cigarette butts on the sidewalk.


Seriously, is there not a single problem solving skill in all of Seattle? What sort of pigs can't figure out where to put a cigarette butt? And Club Owners, you collection of Einsteins, buy a Goddammit bucket and put some sand in it. Or an actual ashtray. All this shit is going into the storm drains. Stop being dumb asses.

POLITICS

I heard a pretty interesting poll result (talk radio, Dave Ross, he is the most reasonable radio guy in Seattle. He is very smart and not crazy) it was a Harris Poll, so I think reasonably reliable.

It's pretty fun because apparently a huge number of Republicans believe: (Shit here come the bullet points again).

• Barak Obama wasn't born here

• Barak Obama is a Socialist

• Barak Obama follows the tenets of the Nazis

• Barak Obama is a Muslim

If we are at the point where a pinko Nazi (how does that even work?) Muslim Peruvian(?) Scandinavian(?) dude strolls in here and gets elected president we have some serious border control issues.

In the defense of the Republicans the pollster pointed out that if you take into account the education level of the polled, the results were skewed.

If you want to call that a defense.

The criticism, to get back to the main subject, is being taken seriously, us artists have to take some harsh business from time to time. I was listening to a podcast today, Luke Burbank (it's great, I highly recommend the show, it's called Too Beautiful To Live) http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=93 he had Sherman Alexei on, who is a Native American guy who is a wonderful writer and, (who knew?) basketball player. Alexei is a critic of the current atmosphere of free everything on the internet. His bottom line is that art that's good is in trouble, but the lowest common denominator type art will thrive. I feel real good about that.

Now the last thing. We need to get some more people reading this, 17 followers is a good start. Someone asked me how to become a follower, and I just would love to be able to answer that.

The reason you want to get this going around the globe, (really as far as I know there is only one international reader, but he is really far away), is in your own best interest.

At the rate we are going dudes and dudettes each tee-shirt is now going to cost you about $12,000. They aren't even done yet, but I'm here to tell you they aren't going to be that good.

GOOD AND BAD THINGS ABOUT RESTAURANTS

The thing is I love restaurants, and I want to love them so it's just so goddamn wrong when they don't make me love them.

This whole blog started over Cafe Flora in Seattle. It's a place that has sometimes been wow awesome bomb on the one hand and terrible on the other. Since it's one of the few totally vegetarian places in Seattle it's calming and comforting for a vegetarian to be there. Carnivores hate it because the food is all weird, they don't know what anything is and no matter what there isn't going to be meat. It's payback for the refried beans made with lard and the soup with the chicken broth base, although that one is a rookie mistake.

So January and I have been looking forward to dinner there. When we got there it was fine. They seem to have some sort of farm/barn theme now, but it's cool. We were seated by the front window facing the street, so far so good.

The waitress brought the menus and I decided on one of the three beers that cost $4.5. There were some that were $9, which is just out of my league. I will pay that for Grey Goose vodka, but beer? No. Beer is more or less beer. Some beer is better than others (I will tolerate no But Light comments) but not that much better.

The first hint of trouble came when they were out of the beer I ordered. Seriously I know it's easy to say, but if you are in charge of wrangling beer and you can't keep track of three what does that say about your organizational skills?

I was on edge already because the last time we had been to this place it was January's birthday. It was a weeknight and we were expecting 10 people. Naturally we had reservations. We were mostly there on time, but there were a couple of stragglers. When you consider that we are in one of the most congested cities in the country it's a damn miracle anybody even bothers to go anywhere at night. The of 8 out of 10 present and accounted for it wasn't a bad average.

We sat there for 45 minutes without being able to order a drink or appetizers or anything. The waiter just hovered for a second then split. I was rendered testy.

As long as you have a captive audience the sensible thing to do is bring on the drinks. We are the ideal group. We don't start fights with the other vegetarians. We have a couple then leave. Losing money hand over fist to teach a lesson to the customers seems kind of stupid. What happens is, it teaches the customers that the employees are snots. I would add that the place was not full, there were no other parties waiting for a table. There was just horrible judgment and bad management.

So that's the background.

Back to the action. When the waitress left after taking my second choice beer order January said "They probably sold out at Happy Hour". The reason that joke is funny is Cafe Flora has had their new happy hour on their web site for about 6 weeks. When I called to find the details, hours etc. the guy on the phone said it wasn't really going on yet. I asked him when it got started was it going to be in the bar area only (the bar is microscopic) or what. He put me on hold and came back and said it was probably going to be all over the restaurant. He had no idea and nobody else did either. Soooo it would appear that they don't have a launch date.

Now here is the nice part. The reason I want happy hour is because they have the best thing. It's coconut tofu, deep fried. It comes with lettuce leaves and basil and you wrap the tofu in the lettuce with the basil inside and dip it in the dipping sauce and it's delicious. That's really all you need to eat, so imagine the happy hour, if they had beer (say). It's an idea they could develop. If they ever decided to give the happy hour concept a try.

So there we were, January and I next to the window and there is a window box situation that's new. It was part of the farm theme, I think. At any rate there were plants in the window box deal and here is the problem:

Plants are to make things look better, however you are not really supposed to notice them unless it's "My God have you ever seen such beautiful orchids!" or begonias or roses or whatever. Looking at the window display I couldn't help but think "You know if you are going to put plants in the window you should probably make it less obvious that they are still in the dirty gallon cans from the nursery and they are really out door grasses. It could have worked inside for awhile if there were three times the number so it didn't look sad and some sort of moss layer on top, however this is really a pitifully thin display". That isn't the look you want to cultivate. So to speak.

Then what happened was, we placed our orders. I wanted the french dip, they make them with portabello mushrooms and they are really good.

January ordered the spinach pizza, one of the three pizza choices, and you guessed it, wrong pizza. Honest to God.

I ended up with the pizza, because I'm a nice guy. The waitress was contrite up to a point. She ultimately took half off the pizza, which was a rock bottom compromise. I don't like pizza. The waitress kind of wandered off after that. I was going to order another beer, but she was having nothing more to do with us.

The point is, if you have a restaurant PAY ATTENTION. Walk around the place. Pretend like you have never been there before. Get off your goddamn high horse, and yes Cafe Flora I'm talking to you. You get to rest on your laurels for about 12 hours after a good review, then get back to work.

Now every one pay attention.

HAPPY HOUR

The correct way to have happy hour is to make all your appetizers half off, and then some lower drink prices and Bob's Your Uncle.

Do NOT make some minuscule ridiculous thing and charge $5 or $7 dollars for it and call it happy hour. Humus is good, but at $5 a tablespoon it does not make me happy. I'm talking to you Twist and a bunch of other places that I can't think of the names of right now.

The best happy hour of all is El Toreador in Redmond, they do it exactly right. You should go there a lot.

And furthermore you restaurants that have only one token vegetarian dish. Tom Douglass. Don't Make It Spicy. A lot of people can't tolerate spicy food. As long as we're on the subject I'm not impressed by how spicy your food is. Have 5 stars, I don't care.

You know where the best vegetarian thing in a non vegetarian restaurant is? Cyclops on First Ave. It's the Hippy Burger, it's great. It isn't good for you, I never said that. But it's fabulous.

What is up with the places that have a bunch of hamburgers and offer a vegetarian burger too, but the vegetarian one has lettuce on it sometimes a tomato. Just put on the menu that you can do it with a Boca Burger. And don't charge more, that just makes for a pissed off vegetarian.

I really didn't see the vegetarian sub plot coming, but it's good for all I think.

This is probably only the first installment of Restaurants. I'm kind of distracted.

GOOD THING OF THE WEEK

Cherry Street Coffee Company wraps up their pastries, bagels and whatever at the end of the day and they set them outside on the table or the newspaper box or wherever for homeless people. It's just a little quiet thing that's nice to do.

Now I'm only behind two!

Sharrows, sadly

When we got back from Costa Rica in November there were inexplicably bicycle icons painted up and down the streets of Seattle. Since they aren't in bike lanes, the purpose was unclear to me. I started asking around and nobody really knew. One person thought they were bike lanes, but they're not. Someone else thought they indicated where some bike rider had been killed, then another one thought they are to show a biker where to stop. That theory went out the window when it was pointed out that some of the icons were in the middle of the street, and some blocks had three so that wouldn't make sense.

I've gotten some information from the City of Seattle, which in turn causes more questions. I am noticing that the responses I'm getting are downright perky. These people are giddy over their bike policy.

The pictures of bikes that the City has been painting all across Seattle have a name. Sharrows. I'm not even kidding. It's like share the road arrows, get it? The function briefly is: bike riders are supposed to ride on the sharrows. Thank you City of Seattle.

This is the city response to my inquiry:

"It is the city’s goal, as stated in the Bicycle Master Plan, to triple the amount of bicycling in Seattle 'between 2007 and 2017, and to also reduce the rate of crashed by one third during the same time period.Starting a year ago, we’ve added shared lane markings (sharrows) to provide a visual cue to both cyclists and motorists that bicycles are expected and welcomed on the roadway. We want people to share the road. We have typically used them on arterial roads where there is not enough space for standard width bicycle lanes. We have used them to connect gaps between road segments that have bicycle lanes. The painting of the sharrows has been incorporated into our regular contract for street markings, so the additional cost is relatively modest. Thanks for your inquiry and let me know if you need any additional information."

I officially refuse to call them sharrow, I will however call them churros.

Some of the additional information I would like, and requested (no answer) is about the cost. Because I don't believe there was no additional cost, of course there was. If they were dragging the stencil around when they re-stripped lanes and did the churros then, maybe there was a small cost. I could live with that, but these were done independently of other work and I don't believe for one minute that the cost is minimal. Unless it was done by volunteers it cost too much.

Outside our condo the sharrows are in the right side of the lane, and the bike riders are advised to ride far enough away from the parked cars so that they won't be cold cocked by an opening car door. I don't know why we can't continue to use the natural selection method of solving that problem, but as my son once said "I'm a liberal just not a bleeding heart liberal".

One of the most interesting things I think, besides the fact that there is a bike policy in the first place, is that as part of the bike policy there is an avowed goal to increase the bike ridership to three times the number of bikes on the streets downtown. I couldn't have been more surprised if the city council was devoted to tripling the number of squirrels in the city by 2017.

As part of this plan I would seriously, seriously suggest the City of Seattle contact a bike club and get some volunteers to pump up the number of bikes downtown by three times for an entire work week and see what happens. I predict carnage. An interesting part of the bike policy is the cutting down the percentage of bikes being run over, however ending the "crashes" clearly isn't a realistic goal. No kidding.

The problem is twofold. The streets were built for cars. The official response states there isn't enough room for a bike lane, that's just a fact. Spending a bunch of dough on goddamn pictures of bikes isn't going to make the cars go away at least in numbers that matter. If we could get in the Way Back Machine and make room for bikes I would be all for it, but what with the parked cars and buses and pedestrians and the occasional crazy guy wandering in the street focusing on bike riding safety seems kind of pie in the sky. The part of the official statement that says bikes are expected on the streets has a certain reality, but they are not welcome. It may be good manners to say so, but they aren't welcome at all.

I would vote for putting the financial expenditure toward jet pack technology. It seems overdue.

So to finish my thought about the two fold part of the problem, (ADD shows up when it shows up) the people who ride bikes downtown and (I'm not saying all of them, but enough to cause a stereotype) ignore traffic laws. They weave in and out of traffic and run red lights like a bunch of lunatics, and then when they ride in front of a car, or turn right from the left lane and get run over they don't care for it. Well who does, they are like freaking mice, you usually just have to hope they don't run up your pant leg until you can get away from them.

If the goal is to get cars off the streets how about this?

I once heard a guest on a radio show who was an expert on traffic and whatnot and he said that if we took some of the money earmarked for roads and used it on free public transportation it would be a financial wash. That part is a little hazy. I don't actually remember any numbers, but it does make sense. So how about the city buys some natural gas or solar or wind powered or french fry grease or some sort of hippie vans and paint them bright green and have them run up and down the streets like buses, but more frequently and free. So you hop on one for 6 or 10 blocks and hop off and then why would you fire up your car? I'm only talking about downtown now, and the busier neighborhoods so it wouldn't be that expensive.

Public transit works for distances, but it's incredibly inconvenient for short trips. Some focus on that would be nice.

And while we're here, who's brother-in-law got the contract on those stupid parking meter machines. Did it seriously not occur to anybody that taking dollar bills would have been a good idea. And I don't want to hear a bunch of crap about how the technology wouldn't work. Yes it would.

What We Have Learned. I am a liberal Democrat, but apparently there is a point when Democrats go so far off the rails that we get a peek at what Republicans are about. Seriously, this is not money well spent. We are in an economic situation where decisions are being made about people having to to go without life saving public services. This isn't the time for painting on the streets.
I appreciate you all reading this, my own daughter didn't like it, but to be fair she has heard this before. A couple of times. Her name in the blog will be January. She's worried about backlash.

Has anyone gotten in touch with Bud Lite or Paula Deen yet? I haven't heard anything from either camp, but it's been a busy week. Also you need to sign up as a follower so Bud Lite and Paula Deen will know that this isn't some fly by night untrustworthy blog.

Next week I will try to find more common ground if you live in, I don't know, Miami.

I am now 0 for 3 on the good news. I'm keeping track don't you worry. It's mostly a technical problem, I have some saved up.