Author: Aaron Weber

Did the Globe do this deliberately?

Newspapers are supposed to refrain from voicing opinions, but sometimes you can tell they care, at least a little. Or maybe I’m projecting. For example, some guy in Weston built an enormous house. Enormous even for Weston, I mean: $21M to build, 20 rooms, 21,000 square feet. Yes, each room costs about a million dollars and is approximately the size of my entire apartment. Why would the Globe point out that kind of wretched excess if not to instill shame in its creators?

Who Knew Rabies Would Be Such A Hot Topic?

I found a bat in my home last week, and accidentally touched it. That was the biggest thing that happened on this blog ever: Nine comments so far, and only two from me! One guy has been encouraging me to seek medical attention in case the bat I touched had rabies, and it scratched me without me knowing it, and the scratch gave me rabies. Hey, MA residents are required to have insurance, so why not use it?

Yes, I have insurance. But to be honest, I’m so sick of dealing with them that I would rather die of rabies than fight with them over a hospital visit. I know that’s incredibly stupid, and that it’s giving in to the primary way insurance companies reduce costs. (They make it too much of a hassle to deal with the medical establishment, so people skip care they think might not be absolutely necessary. Some people die because they make uninformed decisions and defer necessary care, but in aggregate it saves a few bucks for the insurance companies. Sick and evil, but economically logical.)

I don’t want to go into my own medical problems because they’re pretty minor. And yes, I’m lucky to have insurance at all, and incredibly lucky to be able to afford the occasional surprise on the bill. Nonetheless, I’m really determined not to go to the doctor again this year, and I’ve spent all I care to on medicine this year, and if that means I get rabies and die, fine. At least then someone else will have to deal with the insurance paperwork.

Speculation And Insight And One-Liners

my-workspaceElsewhere writing: I’m relatively pleased with this bit of speculation about the commensal relationship between Will Smith and Tom Cruise.

And I’m very proud of my driveby insult titled “Rachael Ray Devours A Small Child.” Yeah, sure, she’s an easy target, but it’s still kind of funny.

And Co-Worker Joel says that my post linking “Kid Nation” to the decline of the US Dollar and the increase in global sea piracy is funny. So that’s an accomplishment today.

Nonetheless, I find myself identifying with robot comics an awful lot. Maybe it’s time for my daily dose of staring at kittens.

Movoto And Reality Hitting The Boston Real Estate Market

The Boston Real Estate Blog says that Movoto has come to town. It’s another disintermediation play like Redfin and ZipRealty, although I haven’t bothered to figure out what their specific angle is, because I don’t really want to buy a house right now.

See, I spend a lot of time drooling over loft condos, because that’s the kind of shallow yuppie I am. So I looked up a few in my neighborhood and found 7 Park Ave, which is asking a million bucks and has been on the market for over a year. I used to live across the alley from that building. It’s nothing special, and it’s shadowed on one side by the tall, unattractive apartment building I used to live in. Yeah, the library garden on one side makes up for that a little, but not much. And sure, the condo residents get offstreet parking, but it’s just not a million-dollar condo. Spacious, yes – 3BR, 3500 square feet. And well-appointed, too, with granite countertops (the harvest gold appliances and shag rugs of the ’00s). Whoever owns this place must be a real admirer of Manny Ramirez, who has had his condo on the market for two years now without a nibble or a price reduction.

There are a lot of fancy loft condos in this neighborhood for a lot less money, and they’re not moving either.

If they all started cutting their prices by, say, forty or fifty percent, then I’d consider trying to get a loan. (Yes, I know, I’m going to rent forever because I am too cheap to pay all the various fees, which strike me as deliberate insults. Shut up.)

Do Cats Eat Bats?

I went down to the basement today to get the laundry and opened the door into the basement and there was a thing that looked kind of like a chunk of lint or a sock hanging on the edge of the door. I grabbed it and it was warm and furry and surprising. I dropped it and jumped back. It was a bat. It wasn’t moving. Did I stun it? Was it sick? It can’t have been dead. It was still warm and twitchy when I grabbed it and dropped it.

I opened the door and shoved it out gently into the cold. It didn’t move. Later I checked back and it was gone.

Flown away? Eaten?

Who Needs The Daily Show When You Have Real News Like This

Krugman points out that comparing Dick Cheney to Darth Vader is hardly fair. After all, Darth Vader once served in the military, and his contractors at least finished building the Death Star.

My father points out that Dick Cheney was actually not a terrible person forty years ago. Conservative, sure, but not vicious. It was only after his first or perhaps second heart surgery that he became the vicious monster he has become today. He’s not the only person to have had personality changes following heart surgery. In a lot of cases, people take their post-heart-surgery lives and use them as an opportunity to turn into evil bastards. Only Dick Cheney, however, seems to have been in a position to turn his years as an evil bastard into war crimes.