I’m gonna have to check out Google Video. Lex did and he linked to this funny video of an old lady taking on a Mercedes convertible…and winning.
It looks like a pretty obvious set-up to me, but it’s still funny.
Over in Greensboro, NC the police chief has resigned after being locked out of his own office and threatened with administrative leave by the city manager. These events are the result of an ongoing controversy surrounding the apparent profiling and investigation of black Greensboro police officers. You can read the Greensboro News & Record’s coverage here.
City Councilwoman Sandy Carmany is one of the first public officials I’ve seen who consistently maintains a blog, and her post about this issue is a great example of how public officials can use blogs to better inform their constituents. The comments to the post are also a great example of why that one feature, comments, makes blogs such a powerful communication tool.
Poetry is something I suffered through in college, which is frightening when you consider that I was an English Lit major. Really the only poetry class I remember attending regularly was a comparative literature class (Wordsworth and some dead white English dude) being taught by a really hot, brunette 26-year-old professor. Even then I only made it to mid-terms before I began skipping class in earnest. Other than that I remember nada…zilch.
Since college I’ve intermittently tried to read some poetry just to see if my tastes in literature have changed since then (they haven’t) only to discover that poetry still bores me silly. I’m probably just not smart enough to get it, but for whatever reason I just can’t do it.
Well, today bookofjoe had a poem by Kenneth Koch that I both "got" and enjoyed. You can read it here, and I can actually say I recommend it. Will the wonders of blogging ever cease?
In an earlier post I wrote about The Smoking Gun’s probe of author James Frey’s supposedly biographical book "A Million Little Pieces." Not five minutes after posting that piece I read this news story about the mummified body of a woman found sitting in front of a TV. She’d been dead for 2 1/2 years but was only discovered in her attic after the air conditioner other residents of the house kept going in her room broke down and people began to smell death.
Of course this story took place in Ohio, which since the 2004 election seems to be giving Florida a run for its money in terms of weird behavior by its citizens.
Who need’s to read crap like Frey’s book when all you have to do is watch the news for a steady diet of depravity, corruption and bizarre human behavior.
There’s a best-selling book out there called "A Million Little Pieces" and it’s a best-seller primarily because Oprah featured it in her book club. I haven’t read the thing, and in a second I’ll explain why I’m glad I didn’t.
The Smoking Gun (TSG) wanted to put up a mug shot of the book’s author, James Frey, because the book is all about how the author survived addiction, alcoholism and a life of crime. When they had difficulty finding any evidence of the life of crime that this guy supposedly survived they started to dig and the result is a long expose that pretty much shows that Frey has invented a new genre that I’ll call BioFiction.
This guy Frey is a mid-30s white guy who grew up in an upper middle class home and had what I’d call a relatively common alcohol and drug experience in his high school and college days. In fact he seems remarkably like most of the guys I knew in college. Now he’s taken those experiences and grossly embelished them to create a story he could sell; in fact he first submitted the book as fiction but had to "revise" it to a biographical account to get it published. And now he’s a millionaire.
I won’t go into all the details since you can read the TSG piece for that, but I will say that based on the book excerpts in the expose I’m very glad I didn’t bother to read it. Actually, a book being featured in the Oprah club is a good way to guarantee that I won’t read it. Oprah’s scheduled a follow up appearance for this guy, and he’s already published a follow up and apparently is working on the film version with some leading lights in Hollywood. I wonder if Oprah is going to cancel the follow up after reading the expose and it will be interesting to see if his pending book/movie deals go down the toilet.
Anyone with a kid, especially a son in the 10-year old range, will appreciate this story about how a doctor in Canada used a Super-Soaker to remove an ear wax plug from a patients ear. Here’s the best part:
Verbal consent (covering risks and benefits) was obtained from the patient. He then changed into swimming shorts, located himself on an ideal location on the deck and held a Tupperware container (product number 1611-16) to the side of his neck, in lieu of a kidney basin. The Super Soaker Max-D 5000 was filled with body-temperature water and then mildly pressurized using the blue hand-pump. The trigger was depressed, releasing a gentle, narrow jet of water, which was then aimed along the posterior wall of the ear canal (Fig. 1). After approximately 15 seconds, the jet was aimed along the anterior wall. This cycle was repeated (with occasional repressurizing) until the Super Soaker was empty.
Midway through the second load’s stream, wax particles began to run out of the ear. Just after starting the third load, a large plug of wax burst forth from the patient’s ear. The 3 generations of family members present took turns admiring (or recoiling from) the specimen. The patient exclaimed in joy, "I can hear again!"
Found via BoingBoing.
I’ve always thought of Christmas celebrations as falling into one of two categories: those that involve going to church on Christmas Eve and those that don’t. I never realized that Christmas celebrations could involve Jell-O Shooters and drunk white people wielding silly hats, chainsaws, radar guns and paint guns, AND a drunk older fellow squeezing himself into an old (children’s) Batman costume thus exposing his tighty-whities. Even more amazing is that one particular celebration could incorporate all of that and more.
Read about it and see lots of pictures here.
Thanks to Lex for the lead.
There’s an interesting item at the Business 2.0 blog about a website in Madison, Wisconsin for people selling their own homes, or in the real estate vernacular it’s a site of "for sale by owner" (FSBO) properties. Here are the critical numbers they cite:
If you want to check out the site you can find it at FSBOMadison.com.
Well here’s what I think. Traditionally, the biggest advantage of hiring a realtor as a seller was access to the MLS (multiple listing service). By using the realtor’s service you were broadcasting the availability of your property to the world at large much more quickly than you could do it yourself. Now, though, with FSBO services and other online tools like CraigsList you can get the word out there very quickly all by yourself. The realtors probably instinctively know this, but don’t want to admit it. They better wake up though, because their biggest asset on the sales side is disappearing. Agents will tell you that they also give their clients advice on prepping their property for sale (empty those closets, unclutter your kitchen, etc.) but you can get the same info from a "Selling Home for Dummies" book.
As a buyer, especially if you’re moving into a new area, the biggest advantage of using a realtor is their knowledge of neighborhoods. Celeste and I found this out when we moved from DC to Winston-Salem two years ago. We did a lot of online research before we started working with our realtor but it became pretty apparent that we needed the services of someone who could match our needs to a neighborhood. In other words we needed a highly specialized service and we definitely benefited from our agent’s service. (BTW, if you need a good agent I highly recommend MaryLee Hester of Prudential Carolinas Realty). I don’t see that advantage disappearing any time soon.
My prediction is that the real estate business is going to change. Smart agents will not worry as much about being the listing agent and will instead focus on providing services to buyers. They will embrace the evolving FSBO market by being flexible. The really smart ones will help get one of the dirty little secrets out about real estate: selling is easy. Most people don’t know that it is up to the buyer to get a contract written up and submitted to the seller for consideration AND that you can get a contract written up by a real estate attorney for a few hundred dollars. And the new FSBO sites and online listing services will take care of the marketing.
(Disclaimer: As always there is the possibility that your house is a pig, and even if you put lipstick on it you’ll still have a pig.)
Smart agents will focus on helping their clients find the perfect home and then provide them with a list of real estate attorneys just like they do with plumbers, general contractors, etc. They will mine the FSBO sites and CraigsList for leads, just like they’ve traditionally used the MLS. They will also concentrate on educating the FSBO market to the advantages (larger market, contract sales force) of accepting visits from realtor-represented buyers even if they have to give up 1-3% commission.
To give you an idea of what I mean, when Celeste and I sold our first house a few years ago I was hammering the FSBO sign in my front yard when our phone rang. An agent happened to be driving by and asked if we would let her bring a client by to see the house. "Sure," we said, "but we’re only paying a 2% commission." She jumped right on it, because in reality she would have gotten only 3% anyway if we had a listing agent.
Celeste and I sold all three of our properties without an agent,
and I can tell you that we worked harder trying to buy our house in Winston-Salem than we did to sell all three houses combined. Admittedly we sold in a hot market, but I still think that in the end selling is easier than buying, and smart realtors will ackowledge that and focus on servicing home buyers.
My final point would be that they should not abandon listings totally. They should just recognize that they’ve lost the monopoly, and in fact they should consider listing their properties on things like CraigsList themselves. In other words they should really do the marketing that they’ve only been paying lip-service to up until now. Still as a seller I don’t know that I’d be willing to give up 3% for that kind of service so they’d definitely have to consider giving up a point or two there.
Yesterday I had a 1:45 flight from Greensboro to Washington-Dulles on United. The plane took off on time, but halfway to DC we were turned around and did an emergency landing back at Greensboro due to a faulty sensor in the cabin door. Bummer.
Back on the ground we were told to de-plane and then wait for word about the flight. Eventually it was cancelled (about 5:00) and in the interim United’s computers went down worldwide. That meant that no one could tell us if we’d be able to get on the next flight because they couldn’t pull up the reservation system and they couldn’t tell if the flight was full (it was). And they couldn’t tell me if I’d have a seat this morning if I came back to the airport so I ended up renting a car and driving up. My little one hour flight turned into a 12 hour ordeal.
Most bothersome to me was:
I want to emphasize that the employees at United that I dealt with were all polite and as helpful as they could be. Their management hung them out to dry, and if anyone from United is reading this I can tell you that your folks were great and they never once pointed the finger at you even though they should have.
Friendly skies my butt.
I read here that Dave Hoggard, supreme Greensboro blogger who I was privileged to meet in October at ConvergeSouth, came home on New Years Eve to a party thrown by his son (with permission).
I, on the other hand, came home on New Years Day, to find another floating turd within an hour of my arrival. As I’ve pointed out before, I am the "Turd Man."
