A Silly Mother's day poem

It appears that the children

may have glued your pans to the wall

It seems that the dog may have puked in the hall

I think that the cats ran rampant

through the steak sauce

It's possible

that the sink overflowed,

and filled the kitchen with soapy water

And the kid are slippin'

and sliding out the door.

The pet fish

is swimming

through the living room

and the cat seems to be trapped

in a soap bubble

the waterfall

is attracting bears,

who are catching trout

that swam upstream

when the water hit the pond.

That Other Thing in the hall?

I'm not sure, but I think

A dimensional hole was ripped

when I tripped on the bear trap

and bounced into the

new digital video antenna.

What's this?

Tiny dinosaurs from the past

sneaking through the rift,

Dining on the steak dinner

For which you especially asked on this special day?

Technology. Who Knew?

This is a day of days

We celebrate it with many hurrays

You bore my sons

You are the best

You deserve this day of rest.

Hmm..... Umm.....

We should go out for dinner, don't you think?

By Timothy Caleb Nordloh

I guess I thought wrong

I was watching the crazy mortgages for the last few years, and I saw more than one journalist cry wolf. In fact, I read an article about the 'interest only' loans that showed a case where they make sense. An interest-only loan with occasional large payments is meant for someone like a Porsche salesman, who will get huge commissions every few months, with possible long dry spells. This kind of loan is not meant for Single-mom Sally. But here is what I thought was happening. I thought that the corporations making these loans knew what they were doing. I thought they were knowingly selling houses to people who couldn't afford it, with the intention of collecting a payment like a landlord, without having any of the traditional landlord responsibilities. I thought they were using the american dream against the average consumer. Evidently I gave them too much credit. Evidently they thought single-mom Sally could make that house payment that went from $500 to $2000.

Or possibly they are even more evil than we all imagined. They are collecting vast sums of money from Single-mom Sally (and those of us who took normal, prudent home loans, and those of us who rent) in the form of government handouts. They claim that they 'will self-destruct' if we don't hand wads of cash to them, I feel like I'm in New Jack City, listening to Chris Rock's character, Pookie. What we need is Ice-T to come in and kick some institutional ass.

I think these guys are full of crap. Here they are, with people begging to stay in their houses. They can resell it at 50% of its current price and still make a killing, considering the amount of interest they collect on a daily basis. They have people begging to refinance, to continue to 'rent' without getting the benefits of landlord obligations. I don't believe their crocodile tears. Watch them write off billions of dollars this year, and next year, and then earn amazing profits for the next 10 years.

When I send in my mortgage check, and see that 90% of that check goes toward interest, and 10% goes to the principal, and then I hear about how the rate of foreclosures go up to a whopping 2.5%, and hear that this is just killing the super-rich, it makes me want to go ahead and give up my house. At least if I was renting, I wouldn't have to pay to get the dishwasher fixed.

Crazy economy

The economy is going crazy right now, with stock prices plummeting on healthy companies, as quickly as unhealthy ones.

In a lot of ways, the crazy world of subprime mortgages, and the subsequent drop in house prices and then the destruction of the assets associated with the subprime homes has evidently caused the entire economy to fall down. It's puzzling on a number of fronts, because I and everyone I care to ask, got normal, safe loans. What portion of loans out there are truly in the 'at risk' category, and where does my normal, fixed rate, loan fit in?

I can say this: my fixed rate loan was sold by one of the 'failing' companies, and purchased by some small company, hence causing that 'failing' company to become weaker, in my opinion. I'm thinking they, and other companies on the brink of failure, are probably doing this to survive from day-to-day, selling off their best loans but unable to shed the most toxic of their assets.

Seems to me that a lot of people got rich as the housing boom took place, and now another set of people are getting rich off the housing bust. Nice to see that the irrational behavior of the marketplace is transferring a ton of wealth from company to company. Meanwhile, grocery costs seem to have climbed a bit (anecdote: apples were 1.25 per pound and are now 2.25 per pound, ouch).

The question is, can the common person benefit at all from this crazy economy? Typically, the stock market is only available to those who have a certain minimum amount of money to invest, to overcome the cost per transaction of stock purchases. I refer you to zecco.com, where you can buy stocks without any fees (except the penny or 2 charged by the SEC). This could be a way to buy stock in amazingly great companies for 1% of what they used to cost. Example, Fannie Mae, a company with lots of great loans and great assets, has gone from 40 dollars/share to 60 cents. Buy 100 shares for 60 bucks, and maybe in 10 years they could be worth 10 dollars a share, and you can sell them for 1000 bucks. That is totally possible and, involves such a tiny amount of money that anyone above the age of 16 could do it. Why not eh? at that cost, their entire portfolio of assets could drop a ton, and still you stand a good chance of making a good amount of money. There are still assets behind these 'toxic' loans, and unless $200,000 houses start selling for $4,000 , Fannie mae will eventually turn around. If that actually happened, most of us will be more worried about surviving on rats and whatnot than whatever money we put into our portfolios.

promiscuity causes less aids spread:

I read this interesting article on disease control: Simulation shows promiscuity prevents aids spread
I'll assume you will read it, and not quote it here. What I think is interesting is that, with only a small amount of promiscuity, you are virtually guaranteed to eventually contract a sexually communicable disease. So, if I am loyal to my partner for 20 years, and then pass a beautiful person on the street, one that just can't be resisted (and fit into the stereotype that is the weak-willed male), and end up having sex, chances are that I'm not her "first lover", and also, chances are that, she's a disease-ridden germ factory, spewing death in all directions. That puts things in perspective.

While I was reading the article, they mentioned that, with nightly promiscuous activity, 200 days , in a population of 400, would cause the entire promiscuous world to be infected. Scary freakin' simulator. They mentioned the simulator's ignorance of the fact that most sexual behavior is more strait-laced than random partners every night. Most lovers are semi-loyal to each other, even in a promiscuous relationship. But the problem is the interconnections with each other. I think the 200 days represent a speeded-up simulation, where it would be better to say that 200 couplings where a good percentage of people are not monogamous will virtually guarantee contraction of Aids. I think most of us are safe from this fate regardless of our status. Our greatest fear would be to live long enough to couple with 200 non-monogamous people (repeats would count toward this total, I believe). Since I don't have a very good imagination, I think this would take 1,000 years to manage for all but the most libido-driven person.

I have always found this topic fascinating, because AIDS is REALLY hard to get. You have to find someone with aids who is also willing to 'rub nubbins' with you, and even that isn't always enough. You both have to also be unwilling to take basic contraceptive practices (make sure the rubber DOES meet the road). It's interesting, and scary, that for promiscuous members of society, the only thing that will save them from aids is that old age will get them first. And any monogamous partner of a promiscuous person is also screwed (no pun intended), and didn't even get to have the 'fun' of barhopping and whatnot.

Saturday

Getting over being sick, hanging out with the kids and listening to npr. The story is about a guy that has made lists of everything he has done since 1955. Phone calls etc.

Anyway, it reminded me that I haven't written anything recently. So there you go.

I have never voted for a winner.

I have done a small amount of blog reading in the last little while, and it's a little strange. The category that seems most common seems to be a mix of satire and self-righteousness, which leads me into my post.

I have never managed to vote for the winner in any presidential election. My first opportunity to vote involved William Jefferson Clinton, and I decided to vote against him because he was getting sucked off in the oval office, and decided that that wasn't 'sexual relations'. Evidently it's just a mouth hug, as the comedians say. I voted for Bob Dole, because he seemed like a good man, with an honorable military history and a tendency to do the right thing. According to the media, he was too 'wooden', but that just appealed to me, because I'm a bit 'wooden' myself. I'm sure that personal charisma plays some part in running a country, but I don't care for that part. All it gets you is mouth hugs.

At my next opportunity, it was Gore Vs. Bush, and I decided that George Bush wasn't wooden enough. In fact, he struck me as a garrulous father with a hickory stick behind his back.

Third time isn't the charm. After the events of 9/11, along with the inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and the fact that we were essentially spending billions of dollars to ship soldiers within range of 50 dollar roadside bombs, I had had enough of the war. Although John Kerry bugged me a lot, I had to vote for him. Either George Bush misled the American people into the war with Iraq, or he was duped into it by his staff. Either way, he deserved to lose his job.

In 2008, I went to the polling booth and put my mark in for John McCain, for very similar reasons to why I voted for Bob Dole. I think I will always tend to lend support to a military man over anyone else. I'm not sad that Barack won, but I didn't really keep good track of the presidential candidates this year. I voted for John McCain, because I really wished I had the chance in 2000, and I wasn't going to miss it now.

I wonder if it would have really made a difference. If we had elected Bob Dole, and Clinton would have been kicked out early, would we have remained on track to pay off the deficit? Clinton was actually a kickass president, if you can discount his one small character flaw.

What would have happened, if Al Gore had become president in place of George Bush? I think we can agree that our planes would probably still be doing patrols through a no-fly-zone over Iraq, and Saddam would still be taunting us. There would be no need of a national monument commemorating the dead in the Iraq war, but we would probably still have the unalterable reality of the skyline changes in New York.

I don't want to think about what would have happened with John Kerry in charge of the United States, but let's face it, a lot of contractors would have lost their jobs in Iraq as we pulled out, probably causing a massive economic slump. oh wait... that happened anyway. Maybe it would have been ok.


Well, I think I got a little self-righteous in there, but I didn't master the satire portion. Better luck to me next time.

Semi-irregular post, welcome to guests!

Well, with the advent of telling my wife about my blog (2 weeks ago), and through word of mouth a few other people now finding out about it, I am changing the bent of this blog a bit. Rather than the tight-eyed nod, and insincere welcome in first post to those who could only have found it by googling my name, I should give a sincere welcome to people who got here through the 'word of mouth generated by my spouth', (does a lisp count as a rhyme?) so here it is:

WELCOME!!!!!

ok, that's done.

In the interest of the original, somewhat unstated purpose of this blog (Allow me to feel less guilty about googling even the most casual acquaintance) I will try to say something personal that is somewhere between sincere and cautious, as befits the crazy permanence of the web, and its potential audience of anyone with access to google, including past lovers, future employers, my neighbor's dog, special investigators or fellow employees.

I think the above paragraph reveals quite enough about me. Suspicious, hostile, and probably for no reason since the only people who visit this blog are my wife and me. Take what you will from that, and once again.....

WELCOME!!!!!