our 76th weekly open mike
Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
4/18/2026
Anything goes: 4/18
22 responses to “Anything goes: 4/18”
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I may have to unfriend a new Fb friend. I looked at her page and everything is so kind and wonderful with all these appreciative friends and family being nice to each other. Sorry but that is not real. I suppose if I actually looked at others’ pages I might have a similar reaction. I don’t need to see all those positive self-congratulations, how about some reality, some angst?
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Was there once something real on Facebook?
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(Fifteen years ago I had a friend who would unfriend anyone on Facebook if they used the term “lol.”)
LOL
What can you say or do when a third of your friends (ie, one person) types out “lol,” the last time in response to me telling her I had fun at the Trade Fair? Jeez, “lol” was uncool and ridiculous over ten years ago, which I realized immediately and have never used that vestige of “internet or text-speak,” not even ironically, whatever that means.
Whenever I see it from her on a text I’m annoyed. She also says “enjoy” everyday which I also abhor, much like when my (English teacher) father grimaced on his deathbed when once again I couldn’t say lay, lain, or laid correctly.
What should I say, or just shut up as I have the last ten years I’ve known her? It’s lazy-speak, instead of “lol” she might have to spend some time, virtual seconds, coming up with a different response which actually says something, umm, like what? “Nice.” “Wish I’d gone.” “Alright!” Or what else?
Now I’m realizing that not only being an idiotic response it’s an insult to me, though sure I’d consider giving her a pass if she actually was “laughing out loud,” but I doubt it.-
Maybe she didn’t type it? Last time I used Gmail, it was offering pre-written replies like LOL. Which is why it was the last time I used Gmail.
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What Is Cool
Here on my 70th birthday I’ve come to the realization that I might finally be cool, and that is the best present of all, right? (As you know, I’ve long been one of those uncool people waiting for “uncool” to become cool again.)
“Well, at least you’re not boring,” a friend told me the other day, in a review of our proceeding phone call.
“That’s the nicest thing someone could say to me,” I said.
Yes, there are many levels of coolness, I’m occupying the bottom rung of “starter coolness,” but why did I have to wait until my 70th birthday to realize this state of social grace?
Can you be both cool and uncool? If you’re just a little cool does that make you cool regardless? Can you be cool, yet all the other uncool things you do outweigh your self-proclaimed coolness, for example are addictions and obsessions proof of coolness or the opposite? Do the numerous issues on my “intervention list” count against coolness or are another level of cool?
Can you be cool if no one knows it? If you are the only one proclaiming your alleged coolness does that negate it, like when you donate money or help someone and then announce it to the world? (Yes, we know you’re on stolen land and have a rescue cat/ dog/ gerbil.)
It’s fine to proclaim you’re cool but what about the uncool characteristics?
Does being politically incorrect make me cooler or the opposite? (I would say it’s cooler to think for yourself, rather than echoing what your “tribe” approves of, which doesn’t seem so cool, right?)
Is it cool to eat very healthy food, or uncool that it tastes so boring?
Is it cool to have a beautiful home on the river or uncool to stress about all the stuff cluttering it up?
Is it cool to be able to buy whatever I want, or uncool that I have about twenty-two coats, jackets, and hoodies in the closets?
Is it cool to have readers of my columns or uncool that I have no active friend to do anything with?
Is it cool to have this big birthday cake, or uncool that I’ll probably eat most of it myself?
Is it cool to ponder what is cool, or very uncool?
Is it cool that I’m going to drive around looking for someone to take to breakfast, or uncool because that’s a borderline stalker?
Is it cool to go to the Woodrose for birthday breakfast, or uncool that I have no one to go with?
Is it cool to have these huge sunflower plants on the deck, or uncool that the containers are too small, they get wilted every day before noon, and need to be watered every day?
Is it cool that I can have this nice relaxing summer at home, or uncool that I can’t get out of the house?
Is it cool that I have this very cool river to swim in every day, or uncool that I’m only in it for just one lap, about three minutes?
Is it cool that I know everything going on in the world, or uncool that I’m hopelessly addicted to television and the internet?
Is it cool that I dance twice a week in my living room, or uncool that I have no one to dance with?
Is it cool to have great orgasms or very uncool to talk about them?
What is cool? (Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Trump is probably cool and Biden isn’t. Biden is White Bread and Trump is Greasy Cheeseburger.)
Is it cool that I have this nice life in a peaceful area, or uncool that the rest of the world is going to hell?
Is it cool that I look pretty good for 70, or not so cool when I take my shirt off?-
Got me chuckling by around the 6th paragraph. Pretty cool.
Woodrose, I’m guessing, is a local restaurant? Is it cool?
And happy birthday, dude, if you believe in birthdays. Cake me!
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Yes, it was the go-to restaurant around here since ’77…
the beginning of my story:
Woodrose Scenes
The iconic Woodrose Cafe in Garberville, California started in 1977 and was our unofficial community center for forty years, a local institution which is still going strong. At her thirtieth birthday party the owner and founder Pam Hanson did a strip dance on the counter. Sitting in there with coffee and breakfast I first heard on the restaurant radio the news about the Jonestown Massacre in November 1978 and nine days later that San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been assassinated.-
Love a good local cup of coffee & breakfast. Doublelove it if the owner strips.
Jonestown, Moscone, and Milk. Those were the days, my friend. 700 miles north, here in Seattle, the headline was that the mayor of San Francisco had been killed, and I don’t know if Milk was even the sub-head. But it was Milk who mattered, of course, and now Moscone is sort of a trivia answer.
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After hearing some criticisms, #SKYKING turned out to be a fairly decent documentary.
https://time.com/article/2026/04/13/skyking-richard-russell-true-story/
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Bummer that he died — didn’t see that coming. And then the big reveal, that he was a fucking ‘conservative’, which is worse than being dead.
Hey, there’s Campus Crusade for Christ — a mainstay of Christian kookery in my timeline.
Also, there’s some Time-level journalism, saying “As of 2026, Washington’s minimum wage is $17.13. That’s kinda moot, since SeaTac Airport is in the town of SeaTac, where minimum wage was $20.17 per hour effective January 1st, 2025, and might be higher by now.
Putting the movie on my list, thanks…
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I was listening live during his flight with tens of thousands of others, it was one of the craziest online communal experiences I can remember. It’s been annoying watching the right try to claim him as a hero, and then those kind of ridiculously partisan journalists try to “debunk” him. Saying Billy The Kid was a half-starved lunatic is maybe true but also beside the point. His co-worker and friend says it plainly: the only thing he complained about during the flight was the shittiness of his job and how they treated him.
I didn’t know SeaTac was its own town but it makes sense. A major point is that the “ramp rats” (as pilots disparagingly called them) made below Seattle’s minimum wage for grubby, un-unionized jobs. Would fit if the “town” of SeaTac had a lower minimum wage, even though workers would be compelled to pay for housing and services up against higher paid Seattle workers.
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> His co-worker and friend says it plainly: the only thing he complained about during the flight was the shittiness of his job and how they treated him.
So he’s a working class hero? I remember the original events so vaguely, I think I totally missed the plane. Thought he was just another American gone insane for no particular reason, or more accurately every reason (which swear to god I’ll never understand why it doesn’t happen more often). But no, there was a particular reason, and it was the job?
Yeah, gotta see this so I’m downloading it now… and the very first words on-screen are: “This film contains distressing themes related to mental health. Viewer discretion is advised.” Well fuck man, I’m all about the distressing themes, lay it on me baby…
What is life, if not a series of distressing themes ending in death?
SeaTac is a victory in concept. The airport came first, and then came the town in 1990, specifically to increase worker wages (or at least that’s my understanding or misunderstanding). The airport was vehemently opposed to the town’s existence, of course, but what are they gonna do, move the airport?
It’s the only municipality I know of with such a good-guy pedigree, and minwage in SeaTac is $20.74 now. Of course the airport is the town’s dominant feature, so it’s an absolute fucking hellhole, but it’s a hellhole with near-livable wages.
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OK, now that I’ve seen the movie, I have questions. Like, what the hell strings did the airline pull to pay ground workers less than what’s universally described as “minimum wage”? Paying below the minimum puts the lie to “minimum,” doesn’t it? I am bewildered by that.
Also, how did you listen to this live as it happened? It only lasted an hour or so, right? That’s wild.
More organized & possibly intelligent thoughts later…
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I was on some site and the news broke, and someone posted a link to air traffic control on Broadcastify, where you can listen to fire and police scanners and shit. You flipped over to the SeaTac air traffic control stream and there’s this funny-voiced guy saying “Nah, I think I’m going to go take a look at the Olympics,” meaning the mountains. I seem to remember the second pilot who scrambled and flew near Russell having a lot more to say than he does in the recordings in the documentary, but his voice didn’t sound much different than the air traffic control guy and I could have been confusing the two. The F-15 pilots making very short statements to ATC was pretty ominous.
Nobody listening seemed to pick up on the suicidal hints in his chatter, though. Even after the crash I don’t remember thinking this guy did it to commit suicide, it seemed like a knob going on a crazy adventure with a very high probability of death, sure, but I don’t remember giving any significance to “I didn’t really plan on landing” or however he put it. If we knew we were listening to someone’s last hour on earth, well we probably still would have listened because we’re sick people but it would have been a different sort of experience. It’s a real man and a real incident but these things become transmogrified as a shared experience, it’s less about the actual protagonists than the people watching.
It is a m a z i n g to me that the baggage handlers and ground crew are not organized. I really can’t understand that other than nodding to the ever weakening union movement, but still, strike and dare them to hire scabs in a place like Seattle, I dare you.
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Entry-level jobs are impossible to organize, I guess. Walk out and they’ll replace you, and these are workers who can’t afford a week without a paycheck so they got em by the balls.
I’ve only seen #Skyking once & will watch again, but what’s suicidal mean anyway? If it means wanting to be dead, I don’t think that’s him. Like he said, even if he’d managed to land the plane, all he’d have to look forward to is life in prison, and choosing death over that seems perfectly rational to me.
Btw, seems obvious to me that his “I’m white” line was a joke, not a significant revelation of character or some shit like the right-wing morons imagine.
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I think when he went up he had no intention of coming down alive, I think it was a “go out in a blaze of glory” moment which is certainly suicidal intention. He apparently texted his wife during the flight and apologized and said she deserved better than him, according to the FBI investigation (they declassified a ton of stuff about it surprisingly early).
I looked it up around the time I heard about this, the Teamsters and SEIU both represent baggage handlers… but it’s still renown as an incredibly crumby job, so maybe I should shut up about it because they don’t seem to have done much good. Given the power of that position (and the legal barriers to scabbing in many blue cities), you’d think it would be a chokepoint, like garbage collectors. But it seems like a bad job no matter where it is. And badly paid no matter how many dues you pay.
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Bad as any job might be, guess it’s gotta be at least slightly worse without a union. But what’s the internet for, if not spouting off about things we don’t really know?
You know more about Richard “Beebo” Russell than I do, and if you think he was suicidal you’re probably right.
I can imagine a grey zone, hypothetically, where someone might want/need/plan and then do something that’s extravagantly dangerous, something that’ll probably leave them dead, something they knew would probably leave them dead, and it’s just something they goshdarn had to do, not suicidal like a pistol to the forehead.
Like aiming that pistol and opening fire on, oh let’s say, Hitler. You know his guards are gonna shoot you dead, but gotta do it anyway. Is that suicidal, or just a matter of priorities?
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Ever since Mom entered the rehab dump a month or so ago, the insurance bastards have been announcing every 3-4 days that her coverage for rehab has ended. My sister Katrina ‘appeals’ it, through their increasingly complex process, they say OK, and in 3-4 days she gets another coverage-is-ending notice.
Pretty sure they never talk with Mom’s doctor, because Mom never sees her doctor either. She’s still fuzzy-headed, but physical therapy is going OKish, and Mom can walk, long as two professionals are holding her gait belt with every step.
And this time, the insurance company has decided to deny Katrina’s appeal, so Mom comes home tomorrow. Since the surgery a month and a half ago, Mom has been unable to stand up from her bed, or from a chair, or take a single unassisted footstep, so sending her home seems nutty to me.
Katrina and Mom live together, though, and Katrina thinks this’ll work, and she’s twice the responsible adult I’ve ever been so I yield to her judgment, but…
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Incredible to think that they’ve likely spent 2x as much money as it cost to care for your mom on trying to not care for your mom.
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The rehab staff says uninsured patients pay $500 p/day. Which means, they have no uninsured patients. The insurance company presumably gets a substantial break on that price, but even if they don’t, Mom’s been there a month, so that’s $15,000.
Only wish it was more.
She’s been paying premiums since long before I was born.
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When my mother needed 24 hour care we tried to do it at her home in shifts.
One day later we realized we couldn’t handle it and
off she went to a “home” in Tacoma. where she lived the last three years…-
Had a friend who tried and failed similarly. It is entirely possible, even likely, that this won’t work. Mom walking, even with her walker, is a prayer in the wind.
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In defense against spam and bots, comments with attachments or multiple links require my approval, which might delay things.
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