This is getting a little morbid and a little tasteless, but I am gloating that I was so accurate in my predictions about this weekend’s Boston homicide count.
Author: Aaron Weber
Maybe it’s because I’m a bitter drunk
But I find it hilarious that Boston’s managed to get this weekend’s first homicide out of the way before 5PM on Friday, leaving time for one more tonight.
Boston: we start our weekends early.
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged about real estate
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about real estate. But the number of places in my neighborhood for sale keeps piling up– $500k condos, $900k single-families, that kind of thing. So thought I’d look around to see if there’s any news about that impending real-estate disaster I keep thinking is just around the corner. Remember, I’ve been thinking it’ll happen any day now for at least three years. As my 7th grade history teacher used to say, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.
Highlights from the last couple weeks of real-estate Jeremiads:
- MSN asks “When will the tsunami of foreclosures hit?”
- Boston Herald: Fewest homes moving since 1995
- National Association of Realtors president can’t sell his own house.
- The Paper Money blog has several good posts, including one about the National Association of Realtors lead economist’s PowerPoint called Reality Check and one on grim numbers from various federal economists.
- The WikiPedia page on the US Housing Bubble is huuuuuge.
I’m feeling kind of optimistic: I might be able to buy a home sometime in the next two years.
I’m tired of these motherfucking laptops on this motherfucking plane
And now for the final Snakes on a Plane reference ever: laptop explodes on plane at LAX.
Mean Tech Gossip Alert
You just know that this story is going to turn into “Linux Causes Murder” right away. It just brings back this feeling I had from when I was working for Novell/SUSE, that Ext3 was way, way better.
Sick at heart
I’m running the Hillary Clinton site for Top 10 Sources in our new format — very editor-intensive, updated constantly with the best of the web’s content, etc.
That means reading a lot of things about Hillary Clinton, some of which are just plain awful.
It’s not like she’s Paris Hilton (yes, we have a Paris Hilton site done the same way). Paris Hilton’s job is to go out in public and act silly. Hillary’s trying to do something useful and all the public has to say about it is that she looked ugly in her prom picture?
American political discourse makes me want to vomit. Or maybe that’s the leftover barbecue I had for breakfast. Not sure.
Dumbassery
The following t-shirt was on display at Jasmine Sola, a trendy boutique in Harvard Square:

The words mean “friendly for the devil.” If I were generous, I might translate them to “friendly on behalf of the devil” and interpret them to mean that the wearer is acting nice to promote the interests of Satan– “Hi, I’m Satan’s PR agent.” But I’m not generous.
I’ve seen western misuse of eastern languages on Hanzi Smatter and eastern misuse of western languages on Engrish. But I’ve rarely seen someone try to be cool by using Spanish in a gothic font to look like some kind of cholo badass.
PS, while searching for “cholo” links I found Han Cholo and his store. Not sure what to say about that.
PPS, update 7PM: The point of this post is that the word for “sympathy” in Spanish is not “simpatico” but “condolencia” and that this shirt is a mis-translation of the English phrase “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Hope in Dope
To this day, she blames Armstrong for what she said was pressure on teammates to use drugs. Her husband, she said, “didn’t use EPO for himself, because as a domestique, he was never going to win that race.”
“It was for Lance,” she said.
When will I ever need to know this stuff?
Off-by-one error
The leaves are turning, apples are showing up at the farmers’ markets, and students are returning to town. Yes, it’s the end of summer, also known as the outdoor homicide season.
But we haven’t slowed down yet: three shootings, one of them fatal, in Boston this weekend. It’s a good thing I didn’t put in for the office pool on it, though. I was totally off by one.