If you want to do some good reading right about now forget this lowly blog and head on over to Moonbaby’s Meanderings. Full disclosure: Moonbaby is my Aunt Debbie and now that she’s married off her oldest son and moved out to the farm she has a little time to share her thoughts. It’s good reading so get yourself on over there.
I’ve written here many times that one of the main reasons Celeste and I moved the family to North Carolina was to escape the traffic hell that is Northern Virginia. It really is a draining lifestyle. Well, I just stumbled across some data that offers a little more proof that the situation in NoVa is pretty extreme. From the City-Data website comes this list of 101 top cities that people commute from (largest daily daytime population change due to commuting) (population 50,000+) and I’ll paste in a couple of the results for you:
Guess which two places we lived in or next to from 1993-2004? So It wasn’t my imagination that I was fighting a virtual tidal wave of people every time I tried to make my way towards, DC and it’s suburban business centers.
FYI, suburban Maryland also has a few towns on the list, which does not bode well for the DC area in terms of livability.
Remember the bankruptcy law that lenders lobbied so hard for two years ago? According to this article on Bloomberg it’s biting the banks in the butt:
Washington Mutual Inc. got what it
wanted in 2005: A revised bankruptcy code that no longer lets
people walk away from credit card bills.
The largest U.S. savings and loan didn’t count on a housing
recession. The new bankruptcy laws are helping drive
foreclosures to a record as homeowners default on mortgages and
struggle to pay credit card debts that might have been wiped out
under the old code, said Jay Westbrook, a professor of business
law at the University of Texas Law School in Austin and a former
adviser to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank…Washington Mutual, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase &
Co. and Citigroup Inc. spent $25 million in 2004 and 2005
lobbying for a legislative agenda that included changes in
bankruptcy laws to protect credit card profits, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan Washington group
that tracks political donations.
The banks are still paying for that decision. The surge in
foreclosures has cut the value of securities backed by mortgages
and led to more than $40 billion of writedowns for U.S.
financial institutions. It also reached to the top echelons of
the financial services industry.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t pay their bills, I’m simply saying that it’s kind of ironic that the same institutions that charge high-risk debtors interest rates that can only be described as usury are being hammered by a law they lobbied for to keep those same high-risk debtors in hoc to them.
There are some family pictures featuring me and my brother sporting what can only be described as horrific clothing ensembles. When descriptions include the words "leisure suit", "peach" and "lime" you know your in deep technicolor poop. Of course this was a step up from the lederhosen and the little navy suit (looked like a dress with epaulets) Mom dressed me in as a toddler, but not much. Check out that outfit I’m wearing in the picture on the left. Sure the picture’s black and white, but for God’s sake it’s a vest with stripes! One can only imagine the full effect in color. Check out the photos at the bottom of this post. Love the stylin’ on my brother’s striped pants. I think even then he knew those things would come back to haunt him. And how about the fur fringe on the hood of my coat? We were sitting ducks.
Now, thanks to a pointer from Ed Cone, I’ve found archaeological evidence of the hell that was mid to late 70s fashion. A blogger named Johnny Virgil found a 1977 JC Penneys catalog in an attic and it made great fodder for a post he titles Strap in, shut up and hold on. We’re going back. My friends, if you’ve never seen shag carpet on a toilet then you simply must check out his post. It’s funny enough that when I visited he had over 360 comments.
Okay, I admit that I’m a non-reformed headbanger in the music department. I grew up listening to AC/DC, Van Halen and that ilk and I never left it behind. Sure I like other genre and will listen to lots of different stuff, but I’m constantly amazed at how many great artists I’ve missed in my 40+ years. Add folksy Nickel Creek to that list. I’ve been perusing NPR’s new music site and I have two things to tell you:
Today I received an email from Lewisville-based Terri Kirby Erickson inviting me to read one of her poems, Queen Anne’s Lace, which was published in the Christian Science Monitor. I’m no connoisseur of poetry but I liked it, and it befuddled me just as most poetry that doesn’t begin with "Roses are red" tends to do. She has a collection titled Thread Count available at Amazon.com among other places.
According to this article a popular toy is being recalled in Australia because when ingested it metabolizes into GHB, better known as ecstasy:
The toy is produced by Melbourne company Moose and won this
year’s toy of the year award at the Melbourne Toy and Hobby Fair.
Bindeez consists of colourful craft beads that are joined together
to create designs. They are sprayed with water to fix them.The company yesterday ordered a nationwide recall of the
Chinese-made product, saying a chemical had been substituted
without the company’s knowledge. The toy contains beads that have
been found to contain a chemical that the body metabolises into
gamma-hydroxy butyrate (GHB), also known as "grievous bodily harm".
It should instead contain a non-toxic glue.
The Chinese give us lead but give the Australians ecstasy. They must still be holding that whole Taiwan thing against us.
Befuddled 