Laziness and efficiency are just two sides of the same coin. Just don’t spend it all in one place
It’s time for a News You Can’t Use roundup. We do this periodically when we need to recover from a bug, or, as in this case, a pollen or pollen-like entity. Or when we are lame, or lazier than usual.
By the way, I’ve recently learned I am not the laziest human being ever. I let it be known that when I reheat coffee in the microwave I enter the time 1:11, so I can poke buttons all in one place and not have to move my finger except to push “start.”
It turns out that I am not unusual in that respect, but those of us who use 1:11 are over-exerting ourselves. Because I now know I have friends that are so lazy they instead push “:77”, equivalent to “1:17” but only needing two pokes in place, winding up closer to the “start” button. I have been outclassed.
Congress is lazy, too. First, there is the news that we are being allowed to have a government after all. Or are we? We get a government for a few months. However, in the course of being permitted the luxury of having the government do what we pay it to do, we found out that House Republicans, on the eve of the closure, changed the rules. They effectively made the House Majority Leader dictator of the House on issues pertaining to government funding, whenever the Senate declined negotiation.
That’s all very complicated, and I have no idea whether it made as much difference in the outcome as one pee in a pig sty to the stench of the whole thing, but I’m really sickened to know that anything like that could happen at all.
So they’re telling me that the democratic functioning of our Congress is now so fragile, so weakened by years of polarization and regulations designed to favor only the party in power, that now at any time it is easy for the party in power to put all its power in one man, even taking power from its own rank and file to make all compromise depend on the likes of an Eric Cantor?
I don’t want to say too much about the woman who “went steno,” as I’m calling it now, except that I foresee the day when the House Majority Leader will not be mocked.
Perhaps we could solve all our problems with continuing our little republic by just allowing the establishment of a triumvirate of, I don’t know, President, Speaker of the House, and House Majority Leader, and see who lasts the longest.
In local News You Can’t Use, we learned last week that a public toilet approved for Pioneer Square might be at risk because it is tied to a building development near Occidental Park that may not happen.
One block from the Real Change office, a sign announces the comment period for that development. I’ve been trying to remember when I first saw that sign. I believe men were still wearing bell bottoms in those days. My voice had not yet changed. I pass it every day of the week, and I’ve often thought, yeah, I’d like to comment on this development, sure. Here’s my comment, “Do it, already.”
I want to say something like that to the Seattle City Council, too. In all this time, this is the only toilet we can expect to see made public in the near future?
Why is it always the gleaming stand-alone space-age toilet? Can’t the city find ways to work with businesses to open existing toilets to public use?
Once or twice a week I pass through a building downtown on my way up a hill, using a public escalator provided by that building for a tax break. Isn’t that creative, now? Are toilets that much more expensive than escalators to run and maintain?
How much longer do we have to hold it in?