From Baratunde by way of Twitter, I got this link. Rock on Alaska chicks, rock on with your bad protesting selves. Turns out Palin may not be every woman’s favorite candidate. I kind of like the sign that asks about abstinence only education, “How’s that working out for you, Sarah?”
Technorati Tags: 2008_Campaign, Alaska, Barack_Obama, campaign, Campaign 2008, elections, feminists, Vice_President, womenSarah_Palin
We visited the place we are thinking about offering cash money to buy. A 1950s GI Bill tract house very near the Pacific Ocean and chock l modern, upgraded goodness. (As a couple, M. and I aren’t really looking for the handyman special.)
It may even have my California fantasy fruit tree in the back. But, I don’t know. What the fuck is this? Botanists? Horticulturists? Anyone, Bueller?
Help me.
Man, oh fucking man. Today was one of those days when shit didn’t stop and a late start meant I wasn’t no never catching up.
My own damn fault on the late start, too. I woke up the same time as usual, but I had left my car at work and had to hoof it. A ten minute ride is a lot shorter than a 45 minute walk
The plus side (and it’s delusional) is I haven’t yet talked to anyone impressed by old Sarah Palin. The delusion part is due to my chunk of the United States being about non-wedge, non-swing as you can get. I’m pretty sure when the ballots are counted the Bay Area just might swing left.
We need a summer place in Toledo, so we could vote where it might matter.
We’re maybe kind of sort of closer to deciding whether to buy a house. We’re getting in real tight to the rental/mortgage break even point. Better yet, thanks to fucked up corporate greed and mismanagement in housing, the now government owned Fannie and Freddie, we’re looking at the possibility of a measly 5-6% interest rate.
Holy smokes. This might be the second time in my life I might ride the misery left behind in a Republican Bush presidency into personal success. Holy Fuck. I hope that does mean I have to join the GOP.
I definitely should have my head on the old pillow now. Especially as I need to rise and shine all early like to walk to work, not because I think my walking will help our slow slide to Armageddon. Nope, the Rapture, she’s a coming or Peak Oil or food shortages. Name your favorite hell.
Nah, M. and I had an appointment with the real estate agent, who was walking us through everything in case we get a hankering for offer making and don’t want to get hung up. He picked me up, and I’m sans a four-wheeled vehicle. (Don’t get me started on my scooter woes.)
We are close to thinking about an offer. It’s a 50+ year-old place, but it was gutted and completely remodeled before going on sale.
The backstory is the daughter is selling off the house from the estate and had the work done in order to sell. Hmm. Imagine a parent letting a house go enough you’d have to remodel to sell. Why, yes, yes I can imagine that. (I really do kind of think it was a lucky break that Pat set her house ablaze. It meant she could live a while in a nice place once the insurance was done transforming it from a serious fixer upper to a stylish abode.)
I feel better about an estate sale (well not in the sense of joy at someone’s “passing,” as they say). It’s just that I was feel all happy inside that mortgage interest rates are plummeting, and that’s only because of all of the misery out there in the world. Other people’s inescapable mortgage problems, including the Fed, might be our sunshine beach cottage.
Until I asked him to stop, M. was watching the History Channel’s 102 minutes of raw video from 9/11, which felt more like 201 minutes. It was compelling, but horrible and kind of weird and surreal and repetitive. I’m not sure repeated viewings of bad things at different angles doesn’t just make you kind of comfortably numb. I started to crack.
But the point of all of this meandering is in the end, I got to watch some of the candidate’s forum while OD’ing on political weblogs and twitters. I am just completely dumfounded and uncomprehending on how this election went from slam dunk to clusterfuck for the Democrats.
Of course, I never did sort out how 2004 happened. Why listen to me, though. There are celebrities.
Craig Ferguson gets my vote (see that little joke I slid in there). It’s pretty tragic that the folks left with the passion for democracy are the immigrants. And, you know, Lou Dobbs et al. Sad. Ironic.
Ah, Pam Anderson. She has tits and a vocabulary. Guess she’s not a card-carrying member of the GOP, or one of the aging white career women they keep polling. (See there, another sly joke, Pam Anderson and polling. Wink.)
No joke for Matt Damon. How did we never meet in Cambridge? Why are you not mine to campaign with Matt? Absurd is correct.
I should be sleeping.
I stayed up late last night lamely getting caught up on fucking spreadsheets. Maybe it’s my mood, maybe it’s the spreadsheets, maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but here’s one lesson I think I’ve learned in this here working life.
(I just edited myself for public harshness.)
The bottom line point (and I’m making a shitty pun on bottom line, because I’m tired of bean counting spreadsheets), the thing is I just don’t see eye-to-eye with folks who choose to go into an office Accounting department kind of gig. I mean, I really think I could do it, in that my ‘rithmetic rocks and my understanding of projections and line items and costing is better than serviceable. But, I couldn’t do it, because I’d leave in a straight jacket or more modern indication of loopiness, maybe a fistful of antidepressants.
I should have gone to bed to rest up from my numeric exhaustion. But, the ship has sailed on commonsense and good healthful practices.
In my not sleeping, though, I did discover that FEMA has a handy web tool if you are thinking about buying a place near an ocean, or in our case near an ocean and a creek. Go ahead, see whether your house is on a flood plain.
To end on a high note — I’ve only met one Hillary supporter who felt she had to look deeply into McCain/Palin before making a decision. The majority of Hillary folks give me hope with a response to my question of voting McCain, “Seriously? Naaaahhhhh”
Technorati Tags: accounting, America, work
I got an email this morning inviting me to get in touch via Twitter. I’m actually rather socially awkward on the socially networking, much like life. But, I did just set it up to track about 5 thousand and 12 news services. I’ll know everything about the presidential campaign before it even happens.
On the possibly even more mundane existence of my actual existence, today was pretty much eaten up entirely by both open houses and tooling around Pacifica, CA with a real estate agent. I’m disappointed. When I looked for a condo in ’95 it was non-stop visiting of jesusfuckingchrist-do-people-really-live-here fixers. I could end a day knowing that I hadn’t found a house, but I was tickled by the freakishness of the human race.
My two favorite visits back then included the single gal (as the agent pointed out, just like me) who really maximized the space by putting a full-sized chest freezer in the master bedroom’s walk in closet. Imagine that dinner party, where the charming hostess keeps ducking into her bedroom and coming back with loins and cutlets and bags of peas and the fixings for her fabulous baked Alaska. In my mind it was a great way to save the trophies from my kills.
The other favorite was more about the cheap thrill. Another place with another female owner of my own vintage or so, who was home and encouraged the real estate agent and me to check out the back bedroom. I’m not sure who was more surprised, the possibly Middle Eastern fella in the very skimpy black, polyester robe standing next to a mussed bed in a room that truly needed a good airing out of the prevailing funk, or us.
Now, likely because of the economic realities of a sinking housing market providing incentive for folks to put their best foot forward coupled with our looking at places 10 times more pricey than I sought back then, the homes were all lovely and staged. Except for one.
The special place was a “short sale” property at risk for foreclosure. It was wonderful in all the wrong ways. It too needed a good airing out like that back bedroom of over a decade ago. There was a decidedly piquant aroma of frat house and men. The oversized yellow and black leather sofa and love seat really kind of spoke of no female influence in the decor.
The best feature of that place was the approximately one-foot square of falling and broken off tiles in the center of the shower wall no longer covering black and water damaged drywall. By way of explanation the owner’s nephew, and I believe chief resident of the house, noted it was where his housemate had hit his head. I do believe there is much, much more to that story.
A couple of places were rather cool. With the top contender of the moment about a five minute walk from this fog-drenched beach. The Taco Bell is the only one on a beach, according to guidebooks and Wikipedia.
The house doesn’t have a view of the beach. Nah, just a kick ass view of the mountains from a picture window in the living room and the rather large front deck. These pics aren’t the view, but they are the beginning of said mountains.
Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, beach, California, surfer, fog, fruit_trees, home_buying, mortgage, San_Francisco, social_networking, softball
Inside Edition just had a tease about women rushing out to get Sarah Palin’s glasses. The hot new trend-spotting accessory, apparently, for that 40-something mother of five who needs just a little bit more going on. Based on Google.com, IE isn’t the only one touting the latest fashion.
I love glasses. I can’t imagine getting contacts (never mind that they’d suck up pollen that could kill me). But, fucking please.
Who dresses up like politicos? Who dresses up like politicos who were former beauty queens who now are so fucking obviously trying for a more mature, dare I say more authoritatively frumpy, look?
The day I play dress up by emulating a republican will be exactly never.
By the way, is the teased bump up-do that leans toward bouffant a throwback, retro thing? Or did fashion just never make it up there to “America’s largest state,” as the GOP is blasting meme-wise.
As a bit of an aside, this fashion posting isn’t sexist, double-standard female bashing. Nope, it’s a bitter note more about her being the same age and gender as me, and causing all our compadres a little more scrutiny. The Boston Herald online, for example, doing a little reportage on the hair. I gather long hair after 40 has a whiff of desperation. Sigh. Better go get my perm and hair helmet, fitting the regulations of my advanced age.
By the way — WHAT FUCKING EVIL DEVIL’S PACT HAS RUDY GUILIANI SPEECHIFYING AGAINST SEXISM?!?! Fucking, seriously. What a tool.
Technorati Tags: campaign, Campaign 2008, Politics, Republicans, GOP, United_States, Vice_President
As M. and I have been majorly occupied with scouting houses, I’ve been waiting irrationally for a sign. I mean with housing costs so high (about as high as my fear of commitment), you don’t want to be eating government cheese on a granite countertop in a cozy nook of a regretted purchase.
Actually, we found a condo with a small back yard, a seemingly non-retarded Homeowners’ Association at reasonable rates and a huge garage the current dwellers have tricked out with a work bench and some fitness junk. I can totally grok inside my mind’s eye my crafting away on the work bench getting all artsy messy, while M. does manly pull-ups on the rings suspended from the ceiling. Totally doable, livable, if we got a fair price.
But, it’s definitely, definitively, qualifiedly, certifiably the suburbs. The second to last house on the border between upper, upper middle-class, braggable school districts and the genuine capital-G ghetto. We dig that juxtaposition actually. But, the true and true, red, white and blue, ‘burbs. We still could call that place home.
We scratched our heads and thought about what would a couple of double-income no kids folks like us need with pure suburbia. Maybe, there was another niche between the city and the suburbs, and M. thought one up — THE SEA. The actual ocean, that she devil, not the bay that gives the Bay Area its name, tamed with landfills and split-level ranches and developments. No, the wild cliffs and not at all pacific Pacific Ocean side of the coast. The full on left coast, she is a wild mistress, the sea.
Monday, we dined on fried sea food at this little burg just south of SF on the ocean side of the Peninsula called Pacifica and had ourselves a look around.
Plug the town Pacifica into a search engine, Google it, as the young might say, and the single most prominent characteristic would be fog. Like John Carpenter’s The Fog. (The good one from 1980, not the crappy one that M. and I saw together at the moving picture shows this millenium.) But, presumably, without the leprous, revenge-seeking ghosts, although I’ll have to read up on town history.
I thought the movie might have been shot there. Some places nearby definitely and the “Northern California town” with ocean and fog could have been a whole lot of places. But, in my research, I realized something better. In fact, flipping through Youtube.com, I realized how I’m living in the midst of film greatness all around me.
One of the world’s best fucking movies ever was filmed up and down the places I go every week. And, the ultimate scene was filmed in the backyard of the town we are considering. I love this movie and through it I realized I came to appreciate Pat’s quirks and how there was more going on inside that head than mere teacher/mother white-bread complacency. It was the only movie I remember her quoting or retelling.
Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby’s masterpiece. I have it downloading on iTunes right now, because I realized I should own it (which I may have done on VHS, but my tape player is far, far gone and possibly still sitting in a Boston comedian’s den or family room).
The cliffs to which Harold sacrifices his Porsche hearse very well could become my view in a daily commute.
Technorati Tags: California, comedy, Harold_and_Maude, fog, John_Carpenter, home_buying, mortgage
This little description I’m about to describe here in is taking up some storage space inside my skull, so I’m writing it down.
The other night, M. and I went to the grocery store to grab some dairy products for our coffee and toast come morning. Right behind us a young man, maybe late 20s/early 30s at the most, bellied up to the conveyor belt and started to unload.
– A six-pack of Michelob
– Two different pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream
– A large bag of Kettle potato chips
Nice little haul for a kind of special Labor Day weekend. The icing, as it were, on my cake of contemplating his purchases? Six boxes of generic facial tissues. He didn’t have the sniffles, near as I could tell.