Jennifer Terran is one of my favorite musicians. She’s a Santa Barbara local, and I’ve been to some beautiful concerts at her special performance space in the foothills. Her version of Que Sera Sera has been featured in a commercial for Dell computers:
Congratulations to Jennifer for this cool exposure of her formidable talent, and prayers and blessings on the birth of her second child.
I’m cheesed off at Mother Jones magazine.
Tonight, I watched Extreme Makeover Home Edition, as I often do on Sunday night. It was pretty cool. They built a home for a family in Vermont with a very disabled two year old kid. And as always, they did a great job. Beautiful house.
Not 2 minutes later, I open an email from Mother Jones about how bad and nasty the show is, how tasteless and crass because they go overboard in building stuff for people that’s too nice. No kidding, I’m not making it up. Moronic.
A few people try to make a difference for others. I don’t care what their motivations are, or what they get out of it, or how much or little they give relative to what they have. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re involved in making the world better for anyone besides yourself — better in any way when the sun sets than when the sun came up — you get an A+. Automatically, top of the class.
Because most people don’t do anything to help anyone else. They just sit there, not giving a wet slap. They get a C. You don’t have to care, but you just get to pass.
Some people steal and hurt and even kill others. They get a D-, right? There’s still some hope of reform.
If you want an F in my book, just sit there on your fat butt and do nothing except badmouth somebody who does good. Tell me they could give more, or differently, or question their motives. That’s how you really piss me off. Criticize someone who gives something away; stuff or money or time or anything.
Oh, it makes me mad. I could go on all night. I think I’ll make some tea and try to calm down.
Y’all don’t be sending me any links to Mother Jones, thank you kindly anyway.
“WASHINGTON — President Bush’s plan to slow the mortgage meltdown could help prevent hundreds of thousands of people from losing their homes, but many others would get no relief — and the plan’s effect on the broader economy remained a topic of sharp debate.” — Los Angeles Times
More reading on the topic, if you’re interested.
Bush mortgage plan would freeze rates – Los Angeles Times: “Bush administration will release a plan today that is expected to block many mortgages from adjusting to higher rates for as long as five years.”
It’s a pig in a poke. Even if it staved off recession, which it won’t because not enough mortgages would be able to qualify, it’s doesn’t help people. It just helps money. Perhaps the most silly part of the plan is the requirement that equity has been gained.
The five-year freeze will be offered to borrowers who live in their homes, are current on their mortgage payments, have accrued at least some equity in their homes and whose income indicates they cannot afford higher payments.
That means the value of the home has to have increased since the owner purchased it. A few years ago, I would have said Cool, they should’ve gotten some equity in about an hour and a half. Not anymore.
Millions of people bought at the height of the housing bubble, borrowed 100% on an overpriced home, and instantly were in upside down. Houses that sold around here for a million are worth $750K now. Where’s the equity in that?
The lending industry got people into this mess, and the lending industry needs to shoulder the burden of getting them out. It’s nothing but abject studpidity to loan hundreds of thousands, or even a million bucks, with no money down, secured by nothing but a single family home.
The solution is simple: restructure the loan to a fixed APR, and spread it out over 30-50 years, so the borrower can make the payments. It’s a win for everybody, because no one has to lose his home, the bank isn’t stuck with a house in a falling market, and the investors behind the bank don’t take it … badly.
I’m interested in the small details of everyday life, the little intangible, tragic, joyous, sanctified or profane habits that make us who were are. In fact, such are the fine focus of poetry and good writing; the intangible motes that make the shaft of light we writers throw on an otherwise mundane universe.
I almost always put my left sock on first, sitting on the edge of the bed, and then the right. The shoes later, on the way out. I keep them by the front door, kick them off when I come in.
In my story Winter Angel, it was very important to me that the man, when asking his wife to bring him more tea, does not pick up his cup from the table. It leaves it resting, and tilts it toward him, looking in. It was essential, somehow, to his reality, so it’s vital to mine.
Now I am drinking tea; Constant Comment, as they were out of my favorite Decaf Vanilla Chai at the store. This time of year, I like a spicy tea at night. Something to put me in mind of mulled wine. With my vitals well warmed, I can tell you, because it matters, that my old canine friend Tasha would come from any distance at the sound of a kiss, as well as a whistle.
The little things matter, because they are what we remember, and we are made of memory.
But I digress. I started off on this post because I wondered this thing, apropos of the socks and such:
Let’s say you’re working in your study, late of an evening as am I, and you decide to make a cup of tea. It doesn’t have to be this effeminate stuff I’m slurping; imagine anything you like. Do you boil the water, return to your desk, go back and pour the tea, and then let it steep beside you as you work? Or do you leave it to steep in the kitchen, and make another trip to fetch it, maybe adding sugar or lemon, when it’s ready?
Me, I do the latter, about 80% of the time. I don’t like to put the sweetener in with the tea bag, and I like to let it steep with a saucer over the cup. I imagine, despite the lack of evidence, it gets stronger that way. So it’s easier just to leave it, and set the timer on the microwave for 5 minutes or 10, and go back. Otherwise, I forget it, and it’s sitting there cold in the morning. A sad thing to wake up to.
Don’t tell me it just doesn’t matter, because, as we’ve seen, the dog is in the details.
A little something for my cat loving friends.
Courtesy of Aunt Julie.
“Southern California got a break from its dry streak Friday with an unexpectedly powerful rainstorm that clogged the freeway commute, unleashed some small mudslides and forced officials in Orange County to evacuate canyon communities hit by October’s brush fires.” | Los Angeles Times
Hey we need some rain in SB too, dudes! Quit bogartin‘ all the disasters. Dang.
Kidding.
But we do need rain.
as the writers’ strike drags on.
“‘Some people were crying. Some people were screaming,’ said one employee speaking on condition of anonymity. NBC declined comment on the firings beyond a brief statement that it had ‘regretfully informed the people who work on ‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’ and ‘Late Night With Conan O’Brien’ that their services are not needed at this time due to our inability to continue production of the shows.'”
Leno had told his people not to worry, that they wouldn’t be fired. I’ve been there, lied to by management: “Don’t worry, there won’t be layoffs in your department.” Then, wham. That’s evil.
I can’t help but wonder if there’s something we viewers can do to help put pressure on the producers to show more good faith and fair dealing. I’m not watching any of the reruns of nightly shows like Leno’s. Their advertisers won’t get my attention during this debacle.
“If one sins against the laws of proportion and gives something too big to something too small to carry it — too big sails to too small a ship, too big meals to too small a body, too big powers to too small a soul — the result is bound to be a complete upset. In an outburst of hubris the overfed body will rush into sickness, while the jack-in-office will rush into the unrighteousness that hubris always breeds.”
-Plato
I was going to write a blog post about, you know, literature or consciousness or something. But I decided it was in the best interests of national security and humankind if I just chill in my big chair and watch Deadwood videos until I fall asleep. Sometimes the world of art is just bent that way.
Here, watch a video about a toaster.
Neurotically Yours – Amityville Toaster – The top video clips of the week are here
If you miss my more inventive side, sorry. Maybe I’ll write something Deep tomorrow. It would help if somebody gave me an idea, because watching Deadwood is the best one I have at the moment.
Metaphor 