I made this little graphic to demonstrate my confusion at the recent weather reports for Seattle. Sometimes they’re a little off, but usually not this off!
Jun 022011
Dec 072010
My list of annoying busfolk has been updated with a couple of new, twatty entries. 
- The Compulsive Laptopper - Five seconds after they’re situated themselves in their seat, they’re unzipping/unbuttoning/ripping open their laptop bags and pulling out the ol’ workhorse. And no matter how bumpy or jerky the ride might be, they’ll insist on trying to get work done, even if it means correcting their typing 30 times a minute. No laptop is too large for the bus, either–if that 21″ screen actually has to rest on the leg of the person next to them, so be it! They’ve got pie charts to create, spreadsheets to edit, and emails to read, and it has to be done now! (Added 12/7/10)
- The Wide Stancer – You’ve seen this guy. He’s sittin’ there with his legs spread wide open, leaving little room for anyone to pass by, much less sit next to him. Usually he’s also slouching way down like he doesn’t have ass cheeks to hold him up. He couldn’t possibly close his legs, no! Why? Maybe he’s super, ginormously hung. Yeah, that must be it: he can’t sit comfortably with such an incredibly, mind-shatteringly huge penis without spreadin’ those legs alllll the way out. I actually like picking these guys to sit next to, because they look so irritated at having to bring their legs together to make room. Well excuuuuuse me, Your Hung Highness! Hopefully I’m not causing your staggeringly gargantuan junk too much trauma. *snort* (Added 12/7/10)
Oct 132010
We Seattleites will soon be able to opt-out of receiving the Yellow Pages. YES! It’s about goddamn time, too–personally, I haven’t cracked a Yellow Pages since the mid-90′s. The minute I see one on my doorstep, I walk right over and dump it into the recycling bin. It’s obsolete and wasteful, and it needs to go. In fact, I think they should take it one step further and send it only to those who opt-in. Let’s find out how many people actually still use this thing.
The City Council on Monday passed an ordinance allowing people to place themselves on a list to stop receiving yellow pages phone books, similar to the “no call” lists telemarketers must honor. The measure, sponsored by City Councilman Mike OBrien, is designed to cut down on the amount of unused books circulating around Seattle. OBrien says the unwanted publications are burdensome for the city to dispose of and not environmentally friendly.
OBrien says it costs the city about $350,000 a year to dispose of unwanted books.
As of April 1, publishers of yellow pages would have to get an annual, $100 special license to do business in Seattle. The citys public utilities department would establish an “opt-out” directory for people and businesses who dont want to receive yellow pages phone books.
via Seattle PI
Sep 132010
Yesterday I found some photos from last year I had forgotten to put in my galleries. They’re from a walk we took around Green Lake on a chilly winter day. It was bitterly cold but the late afternoon light was lovely, and a bizarre wedge-shaped cloudbank eventually overtook the sky. They’re online now but here’s one of my favorites from the bunch.
May 202010
I just updated my long-running list of Annoying Busfolk, this time adding “The Bulldozer” based on someone I encountered this morning. This bitch was on a mission, and nothing could get in her way!
Apr 162010
Sure, go right ahead and use that empty bus seat next to you for your giant ugly bag, lady. It’s not like the bus gets crowded for the morning commute or anything. And besides, it’s YOUR personal storage space, go ahead and spread your sizeable self out while you play Bejeweled 2 on your iPhone. No trouble at all, nobody really needs to sit there.
I actually prefer standing while riding the bus in the mornings, but there are plenty of people who’d rather sit. Eventually someone asked her to move her shit so they could have the seat, but they shouldn’t have to ask. People like this lady think that if they just focus their attention on their phone or out the window, people won’t bother them for the seat. That’s how most people are in Seattle: too timid to engage. And a lot of the time it works. But when I want a seat, I’ll just start sitting down and that purse/backpack/laoptop bag disappears amazingly fast.
Jun 232009
Seattle was rocked by yesterday’s announcement that lounging on railroad tracks for fun can get you smooshed by a train. Indeed, these are times of amazement and discovery! And just get a load of this brilliant quote:
We’ve got different amusements, different types of things that, you know, that kind of satisfy us and amuse us. We used to do this all the time… That’s why everybody’s in disbelief because, you know, like, we’ve done it so much that we didn’t realize that a freak accident would happen like this.
A freak accident, are you fucking kidding me? Dude, like, how high ARE you, anyway?? This was no freak accident, it was Nature scrubbing the gene pool. And if you’re going to mourn him by going back down to sit on the tracks, maybe you should stick around a while so Nature can finish the job.
Goddamn, people are stupid.
Dec 232008
Wow, what a freakish past few days it’s been. Starting last Thursday, it began to snow and it didn’t stop until Friday night. It then picked up again with a vengeance on Saturday afternoon, and soon we were looking at a foot of snow. The outlying areas got even more, especially in the mountains. I know, I know–it snows much heavier elsewhere in the country, so this is nothing compared to that. But this is very unusual for Seattle. Usually we only get an inch or two, if even that, so you can imagine the chaos it’s creating.
And boy, does snow make people around here freak out. “So much snow! The End Times are nigh!” When the warning came out about the Saturday storm, we decided to walk to the local grocery store (since our car was more or less stuck) and get a couple of dinners’ worth of stuff. The place was packed–people were buying food like Armageddon was just around the corner. They also don’t know how to drive in the snow around here. They just speed along as usual, then wonder why they have no traction. Stupid.
And speaking of stupid, one particularly nasty accident happened just down the street from my old haunts on Capitol Hill: a couple of tour buses, ignoring all common sense, went down a steep, icy hill and crashed through a guard-rail overhanging the I-5 freeway. They damn near went over the edge, potentially killing people in the bus and on the freeway. I used to walk up and down that hill every day, and while it’s nothing compared to other places in the city, you’d have to be out of your mind to drive a tour bus down it when it’s covered with ice. (See it for yourself on Google Maps.) What is it about snowy weather that turns people into complete idiots?
The city’s mass transit is one giant clusterfuck as well, which doesn’t
help things at all. The buses are only running half their regular
routes, leaving a ton of people with three shitty choices: 1) drive to work on solid ice, 2) walk to an arterial route that happens to
still have service and hope a bus actually shows up, or 3) stay at home and work from there if possible. The King County Metro website has also been hosed for
days, making it nearly impossible to get current route info. Oh yeah, and the airport and downtown Greyhound bus station have been shut down for the past couple of days, stranding even more people here. Shit, this city is totally unprepared for this kind of weather.
At the same time, a lot of Seattle folks know when to just dig in and have fun with the snow. People were out and in full snow mode all over town–sledding, snowballing, snowboarding, snowman-building, you name it. However, we saw a few twits tromping around on skis, and that’s where we draw the line. Sigh…how preciously pretentious, and very Seattle.
But now that we’re into our sixth day of this stuff, the “Yay, it’s snowing!” feeling has dropped off dramatically. I haven’t been able to get downtown to the office since Wednesday, and cabin fever has long since set in. Luckily I can work from home, but I don’t wanna! Today I decided I had to go to work, so I went out there and waited for nearly an hour in the freezing cold. Three of my buses went by, all of them completely full. Around 9:00 my bus stops running, and my only option is to grab one that runs through the University District. Normally that takes an hour, but a day like today would make it much more than that. So I gave up and came back inside. Again, sigh…
But I’ve managed to take a bunch of photos of the snowy goodness, so feel free to drop in and take a look if you’re bored and have nothing better to do.
Jun 062008
Three cranes operating in Seattle were recently shut down for safety reasons until they can be inspected properly. One of them happens to be right outside the building I work in! Yesterday it was so close to our admin’s window she could have reached out and touched it. The scariest part is that the construction company was warned about these cranes three months ago and they’re just now getting around to shutting them down. Can’t get too behind on building those ugly condos, hmmm?
Also, all three cranes were manufactured by the same Chinese company–and let’s face it, China isn’t exactly a shining example of quality and safety lately.
Aug 152007
Seattle recently made national headlines (well, maybe not since the internet transcends “national”) when a guy in a karaoke bar was walloped by a deranged chick during his rendition of Coldplay’s “Yellow.” She even fought with the cops when they showed up, bringing the brawl right out into the street! She said his singing sucked, and having seen far more karaoke singing than necessary, I’d probably agree with her. Hearing some tone deaf, half-drunk tool emoting to an overplayed song makes me want to attack someone.
Besides the guy getting attacked for his shitty singing, this is vastly amusing to me because the bar in question is none other than Changes Tavern. This is a teeny tiny gay bar in the Wallingford neighborhood, usually populated by ratty, flannel-draped Budweiser drinkers and other folks too lazy to make the drive to Capitol Hill where most of the homos go out. I lived Wallingford for a couple of years and have been to Changes a couple of times when desperately bored, and seeing it as the backdrop for this story is a little bizarre.