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.

Idiots… In… Power!

Changes in tax code should be revenue-neutral. Just like with the Massachusetts income-tax repeal, which has been described as “public policy arson”, we’ve got a similar situation at the national level. Congress, under pressure from the prez, is shooting itself in the foot. Yes, the AMT needs to be fixed. But it needs to be fixed in a revenue neutral manner, and instead Congress has just said it’s going to pile up some more damn debt.