Time for Tea!

BBC ran an article on the recent 'harsh' edicts laid down by the administration. The article finished by asking for a response from anyone affected by the content of the article. My response:

Everyone who drives and pays taxes has been affected by the continued practice of treating the symptom, not the cause.

The US, with its lack of functional mass transit due to the expanses of our work/live/play model, makes us tied to our autos. Autos continue to be tied, due to the outdated internal combustion engine, to fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are predominantly tied to Petro-Terrorist states our government continues to cowtow to. A no-win cycle for our economy and our environment.

Let us nor forget the biggest problem with US manufacturing: the union. The union continues to keep us uncompetitive with its antiquated collective bargaining (as relavent today as the electoral college!). Their tactics, nothing short of extortion, have artificially driven up costs on every product involving union trade. Like the combustion engine, it's time for unions to go the way of the Model T (Ford's orginal models were not internal combustion).Yes, it affects us all greatly.

Our hard-earned money, given with such eagerness to poorly run institutions, whilst the true backbone of the economy, the small businessperson, continues to go without.

Tea, anyone!

Idiocracy of the Week

Watching my neighbor, smug in their decision to purchase a hybrid, drive the 2 blocks from their house to the mailbox and back home again.

Why Do We Still Have Phone Books

The Phone Book. The poster child of a waste of natural resources and the base ingredient of any landfill.

When I arrived home today, I had to crack a sarcastic smile at the box on the counter. Via UPS, AT&T sent me 21 pounds of phone books. Why? So I can add to the other 40 pounds of phone books sent to me by the 'real' yellow pages (they sent us 2 sets...just to be sure!).

I realize that they do come in handy; prop a door open, replace a leg on a desk or table, kindling for the fireplace. Oh, yeah....to look up a phone number in case the power goes out and you want to wile away your time trying to figure out what catagory the listing you are looking for is under.

Granted, not everyone has access to the internet yet. I get that.

Here's an idea - Offer the ability to opt out or in. I can only imagine how many hundreds if not thousands of tons of paper, ink and glue would be saved, let alone wind up in a landfill.

Being in public relations, I realize this is advertising, sort of. Personally, I look for recommendations. I don't remember the last time I sought service from the yellow pages (real or not!). I steer all who inquire away from this shotgun approach that is quickly going the way of the wired phone line.

At any rate, I'm off to borrow a handtruck to load my 60+ pounds of yellow to be recycled.

Back In the Day

Do you know what happened 158 years ago last fall... back in 1850?


California became a state
The people had no electricity.
The state had no money.
Almost everyone spoke Spanish.
There were gunfights in the streets.


So basically nothing has changed except the women had real breasts and the men didn't hold hands!

Too Close For Comfort

The continued failure of the housing market hit even closer to home yesterday. My across the street neighbor of nearly 4 years quietly moved out of their home, a shock to the rest of us. The couple are/were professionals, very personable and were great neighbors. Being the oudoors type, I thought nothing of the toy hauler that appeared in the driveway a few days back. They owned a nice boat and spent a lot of weekends at house they bought on a nearby lake. They must be doing some back country exploring, I thought to myself.

Then the toy hauler appeared again later that day upon my return from the office. Odd?

That's when I saw the wife loading up a vehicle with household items. Not a good sign. Having a number of years experience in real estate and finance, the earmarks were there for an unhappy ending to this story. Validation came today when, speaking with another neighbor, I was informed that they gave the house back to the bank. Shock and awe, Reno-style.

Now, speculation kicks in. They bought the house around the time we did, which was when the market was just starting to take off. The house did not have the best lot. They must have recieved a super deal from the builder, as we thought this would just remain open space (yeah, that bad of a lot!).

The house seemed to be on the market over a year. Suddenly, the sign disappeared, a few days later, so did our neighbors. Again, this brings the crisis we are in the middle of right in your face. It is dire, it is disruptive, it leaves you a little depressed. I wish there was something I could do, reach out, tell them you can look forward to a fresh start. Not my business, I thought. They didn't offer to confide and it is none of my business. Or is it?

I believe we are all party to what has happened, every one that thought we were all real estate genuises, making all this money for nothing, just buying a house at the right time, buying a few more and play the flip game. Ignorance, arrogance and greed. The hat trick of quick profit and even quicker destitution.

We will crawl our way out of this. We will, again, be back to some semblance of normal. My only fear is that we, again, suffer from short term memory loss.

It is encumbant upon each and every one of us to have the lessons we are learning burned into not only our memories, but our genetic code. This is not the way we want to go out. This is not the world we want to leave the generations that follow.

If this is a little too close for comfort....GOOD! Remember this, make it part of your being. Let us not doom ourselves to repeat this.

Family photos from London