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was going to write up a bunch of personal blog stuff today, to go with
the plethora of news items I blogged on Monday and Tuesday. I was going
to talk about mall shopping, outrageous prices for brand name stuff, the
great buffet lunch we had at Todai
[including the best glass of soda (Pepsi) I've ever had in my life] and
what sushi means to Malaya and me (very different things), jogging
frustrations, juggling aches and pains, and much more, all of it
entirely unimportant in the larger scheme of things.
I was going to do that, but since Monday's blog was a year and a day
long, and it's gotten late Tuesday night and I need to get a couple of
hours work in on the novel, I'll have to postpone that stuff for
Friday's entry. Today there is a bunch of news of all sorts, so the blog entries on actual news
stories are down below, and the entertainment stuff is up here. There's
even some reader mail! There are no reviews at all, for a change,
and yes, I'm way behind on those as well. As usual.
¤
Reader mail!
Well, just two of them, and both on the same subject; housing prices.
In a recent blog, I quoted from an article about a shooting in
Indianapolis, and what I found most amazing were the housing prices;
$60k for actual houses, in a decent area. Having lived in California,
first Southern, now Northern, since about 1983 (and I was too young to
pay any attention to the real estate market before then anyway) I found
that shocking. You can't buy a rock within 50 miles of the California
coast for less than $200k at this point, and in most places even the
smallest, oldest, crappiest house anywhere near the ocean is going to
cost you well over $750k.
Malaya and I live nowhere near the ocean (or even the bay) and while
we're in a relatively upper class area, it's far from the most expensive
around here. One bedroom condos like we live in were going for $200k a
year ago. Just recently two of them in our area went for $270k. That's
roughly 35% price increase in 14 months, if you're wondering. Yes,
it's a housing bubble.
Anyway, two readers wrote in from other parts of the country with
some comments on what houses cost where they live. First up, we've got a
reader from Indiana, not too far from where the shootings were in the
news article I quoted from:
Now that particular
neighborhood is not very good...old, small houses that are close together.
But it isn't some wild exception, either. To give you a comparison, I live
in an adjacent county to Indianapolis (suburbs, basically). I moved into a
new house in a new subdivision in 2000. The house is two stories, with a
two-car garage, and 2000 square feet of living space. Set me back about
$126K. It isn't anything fancy...brick on the front but vinyl on the other
three sides...1/8 acre plot. But it's a nice first house. And there are
lots of neighborhoods going up around here. Corn fields are being converted
to subdivisions quite rapidly in the area. So if the wife and I decided to
sell our house right now, we'd definitely take a loss. You have to compete
with not only other existing housing, but all of the cheap new housing as
well.
And here's word from a reader in Cleveland, Ohio.
The house up the
street from mine is on sale for $108K and it's ridiculously
overpriced. Most houses in this neighborhood (which is pretty nice),
run from 80K to 100K.. and they are 2 story houses with garages,
decent sized front and back lawns, 3 or 4 bedrooms, etc.
Keep in mind we make
a lot less here though, so it's all relative.
Talking to a friend
once in Calif who had a similar job that I had, and just was stunned
that I was only making about 35K a year. Claiming I was getting ripped
off, because he was making 100K a year. Of course I could rent an
apartment here at the time for 400-450/mo while he couldn't find
anything lower than 1500. heh.
Told him he needed
that job and to telecommute from here.
That's a far greater salary disparity than I've generally
seen, for similar jobs, but even at the 3 to 1 ratio... you'd still be
living in a box in California! My dad's house in San Diego was
about $180k when he bought it 15 years ago, and it's your basic 3
bedroom 1.5 bath 2200ish square feet family dwelling. Far below
McMansion size, but it was built long before SUV sized homes became all
the rage through much of the country (but not in CA, since if you can
afford that much house, you can afford a real mansion, given what land
costs anywhere near anything). Homes on his street are now selling
for over $650k, and he's not in a rich area... at least he wasn't 5
years ago. Since then 2/3 of the long time residents have grown giddy
with thoughts of $500k profits and sold their homes, and the new people
moving in are at least upper-middle class. As they have to be, to make
the $3500+ a month their $500k mortgage requires.
Anyway, if it's $100k for a 3 bedroom house in Indiana (or wherever)
and $650k in California... that's a lot more than triple the income will
cover. And as most of us know, renting is slow death.
It's largely OT, but I've seen some interesting discussions of the
huge effect this sort of thing has had on relative black vs. white
family net worth. After WW2 is when a great percentage of US
families got their first decent house, thanks to the booming economy,
housing boom, interstate travel opening up, GIs returning home, low
government mortgage rates, etc. White and black families bought
homes of comparable value back then, but over time the white areas
increased in value a great deal, while the black areas didn't, and when
you multiply that interest over time and fast forward 30 or 40 or 60
years, even with comparable salaries (and that's obviously a fantasy)
the white family is worth far more than the black family, simply because
their biggest asset, their home, is worth 3 or 4x more than the black
family's home. In other words, living on the wrong side of the
tracks has a huge effect over time.
¤
Dooce was one of the first blogs I really enjoyed, and one of the
blogs that got me thinking it might be fun to have one of these blog
type thingies myself. She's listed on my sorely-outdated links
page, and she gained some measure of Internet fame when she got
fired from her job for talking too much shit about coworkers on her
blog. That's all long in the past, and I've found her blog a lot less
interesting over the past year since she had a baby and talks about
virtually nothing else since then. She's still pretty good sometimes; I
just skip over 90% of the "Oh I love my adorable little baby so
much!" stuff. Especially when there are pictures. She's not as
insipid as Lileks
since he had his baby, at least.
Anyway, I bring Dooce and her site up today since her
August 28, 2004 update was the first blog entry I've ever seen that
was written by a mental patient. No, really. Dooce had herself committed
since her postpartum depression was not lifting, to the point she
thought she might hurt herself, and the cocktails of Prozac-style drugs
she'd been taking weren't working anymore.
There's nothing especially revelatory in her loony bin update, or the
follow-up posted on
the 31st in which she talks about what it's like in an institution
and how happy she is to be leaving soon, but I thought the novelty
factor of blogging by crayon absolutely deserved a mention.
¤
The ABC news show 20/20
recently reported on the apparently shocking new addiction of Internet
Porn. I didn't see the program, but just reading the
online version was enough to make me laugh several times, and shake my
head half a dozen more. Who wrote this thing, the AFA?
It's like Reefer Madness about porn, and couldn't be more frumpy,
disapproving, and one-sided. (Read the Jan 24,
2003 entry here for much more on this porn addiction subject.) It's a John
Stossel report, to no one's surprise. He's pretty notorious for this
sort of muck-raking garbage. A few absurd quotes:
Most of us navigate
quickly past the come-ons. But for some who are enticed to open these
cyber doors, one click can ruin their lives.
"I thought it was
just a recreational thing that I could do on my own, but it cost me
everything," said Michael Leahy.
He told 20/20
that he kept his habit a secret from his wife, Patti Onorato, for 14
years. But eventually his life came crashing down, just like that of an
alcoholic hitting rock bottom. In this case, though, the drug of choice
was cyberporn.
So he was addicted to
cyberporn for 14 years? Assuming they broke up a year ago, that means he
got started in 1989 or so. Wow, talk about an early-adapter; most people
hadn't even heard
of the Internet then, and this piehole was already addicted to cyber
porn? How much fun could that have been given the modem and phone
technology of the time, and the fact that there were like 50 websites on earth?
Experts say there are
hundreds of thousands of men like Leahy out there.
"Every man I've
talked to has started out with a Playboy. And now they spend
hours upon hours on the Internet," said Lisa, who did not want her
last name included.
The upstate New Yorker
was one of several women who spoke to 20/20 under the condition
of anonymity. She was jolted by the discovery that the man in her life
was obsessed with cyberporn.
Where do they get these
figures? I mean is "hundreds of thousands of men" based on
anything other than the wild conjecture of anti-porn crusaders? Also, it's
hard not to discount any argument that begins with Reefer Madness logic.
One peek at Playboy and it's all over!
Incidentally, I wonder
how long it will be before this example dies? I mean Playboy's sales have
been declining for years, and it's mostly older men who still buy it,
while the "lad mags" like Maxim and FHM and Details are growing
in popularity, especially among younger men who might actually have sons
of their own. Sons who will cut their porn teeth on whatever dad leaves
lying around, as generations of men have done before them. The lad mags
seem far more pornographic than Playboy, even though their US incarnations
eschew actual nudity; there's no innocence in them; the women are always
oiled or dressed in fetish gear or posed in porn positions; they've just
got tiny bikinis or other strips of cloth blocking the view of nipples and
vagina.
Or is the entire magazine
concept hopelessly outdated, with those formative porn experiences
entirely overwritten by the easy availability of online porn? Why waste
time with the near-nudity of print mags when your inbox is full of more
porn than you can ever look at?
On the Web, you can see
plenty for free. Those in search of hard-core porn pay from $50 to
thousands a month.
Is this really true? I
guess (grudgingly) some people get addicted to chat sites and live cams
and pay more money for actual interaction, but wasn't that true of phone
sex lines 20 years ago, before we even had an Internet? Every porn site I
ever see a banner for is ridiculously-cheap; $3 for a week or $5 a month
or something like that, and they claim to have gigs of content. I've
never paid for porn or surfed a pay site, but are there guys so crazed for
porn that they need to subscribe to 10 pay sites at once? I can
hardly keep up with 10 blogs at once, and I'm not reading any of those
one-handed.
The other thing I never
understand about porn addiction is how people keep at it for so many
hours. I mean isn't the whole joke about porn how awful it all is once
you're not motivated by sexual desire? How do these guys not use it to
"fulfill their needs" if you know what I mean, and then move on
to something more interesting? Do they just have super sex drives and feel
horny again as soon as they wash away the evidence? My opinion of
porn has always been that it's just barely tolerable when I'm horny, and
utterly pointless when I'm not. An opinion obviously not shared by these
alleged addicts.
Just in case you weren't
sure how cheesy and exploitive the program was, the last line of the
online article drives the point home with sledgehammer subtlety.
All these men live in a
shadow world, insisting they're just normal guys. Which means anyone of
them could be your husband, your brother or even your son
Destroy your computer
before it's too late!
¤
A damn interesting
interview with long time Hollywood script writer Peter Briggs can be
seen here. I saw a link to it from
AICN, and they linked since the guy being interviewed wrote one of the
earliest drafts of AvP. In the interview he talks about AvP, other scripts
on the subject, horror and action movies in general (he wrote a lot of the
Hellboy script), and more. There have been rumors about AvP saying that it
was ruined by the PG-13 rating, that the original movie would have been
great if they could only have showed all the violence and fight scenes,
etc. Rumors started by Anderson, the director. Are they true?
Mr. D: Anderson says
all the best scenes in 'AvP' have been cut?
He did?? Really!? That's...fairly unbelievable. I've got several drafts
of his script from over the last year or so, including the last few
shooting drafts, and...he said that? What "best scenes"?
Pretty much what he wrote in the script's up there. The only major thing
of any consequence I'm flashing on is a daft scene where the Predator
strips out the Alien's brain and plays chicken-claw with it. There's a
peachy coffee table book of the A.D.I. effects work that I picked up at
the Comicon, and there's some pics of that in there. It's not like
Anderson wrote a lot of fight scenes in his thing to begin with. And I
don't think either of the opening scenes were ever filmed? There's some
dialog that's been trimmed, sure, but...?
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 ews
items of note from the last couple of days. Suspicious murder in China,
9/11 toys you know you want, and the continuing decline in elected
officials, spotlighted by Rep. Dennis Hastert.
¤
Bizarre
news story from China.
A man who killed six
men in Beijing and then cut off their genitals has been executed, state
media reported on Friday.
The victims had all gang-raped Li Yijiang, 25, before he went on his
murderous campaign of vengeance, the Beijing Today newspaper said.
Li killed the six between late 2002 and early 2003, in all cases cutting
off their genitals.
This sounds like the plot
to Kill Bill 3. Pity the news item doesn't mention whether or
not he had a special super sharp sword made for the job, like The Bride
did. On the other hand, do you really want a sharp blade for this sort of
work? A rusty spoon is more appropriate, really.
With that sarcasm out of
the way, I must point out that I think this article is at least 90%
fictional. It's news issued by propaganda-happy Chinese State Media, and
as the rest of the article points out, the Chinese government is busy
trying to repress free speech and pornography, as all repressive regimes
do.
China is in the midst
of a "people's war" against pornography on the Internet, and
has closed down hundreds of sites and arrested dozens of people.
Beijing has also launched a crackdown on adult-oriented entertainment
venues and businesses surrounding schools and universities in a drive to
stamp out negative influences on young people.
The blitz reflects two top concerns of the Chinese leadership - the
ethical standards of the young and the subversive potential of the
Internet.
I must admit that I don't
quite see how this story serves their purpose, other than to connect
horrible crimes with online porn. If the article was about how some serial
rapist/murderer was meeting his prey through online porn dating sites,
that would be an obvious cautionary tale. Even if it weren't true. But in
this case, it's just weird stuff to weird people.
¤
This
one is all over the news and it's pretty amusing, in a horrible sort
of way.
Small toys showing an
airplane flying into the World Trade Center were packed inside more than
14,000 bags of candy and sent to small groceries around the country
before being recalled.
...
The toys came in an
assortment purchased sight unseen from L&M Import in Miami and
included the toys depicting the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the twin
towers, whistles and other small toys, said Luis Pedron, Lisy's national
sales manager. The invoice said the toy was a plastic swing set.
"I hate to blame the importer. He probably did not know what he was
getting. He brings them in 40-foot containers. But whoever made it knew
exactly what they were making," Pedron said.
...
The company's 100
distributors sent out the candy bags. Most are sold to small Hispanic
and Mexican groceries, Pedron said.
They've recalled them,
they didn't know they were in there, etc, etc. I imagine some of the usual
"freedom fries" suspects will try to find out and say we should
ban all imports from that country/company. Whatever. You want one
though, don't you? Just admit it, you want one. It'll be hard to
find; they had a few on Ebay a couple of days ago, but as I look now I
can't find the listing. People
say it had been bid up to over $5000, which seems ridiculous... but
then again, plenty of people pay ridiculous prices for ridiculous things.
¤
This isn't really worth a
blog entry, but since I saw a link to it, read it, and loudly exclaimed,
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever read in my entire life!" I
suppose I'm obligated to at least mention it. Dennis Hastert is the
speaker of the house, a ranking Republican, and over the weekend he was on
some FOX show talking about various things, when he
let the following gem slip out:
On "Fox News
Sunday," the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire
financier George Soros, who's funding an independent
media campaign to dislodge President Bush, is getting
his big bucks from shady sources. "You know, I don't know where
George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas
or from drug groups or where it comes from," Hastert mused.
An astonished Chris
Wallace asked: "Excuse me?"
The Speaker went on:
"Well, that's what he's been for a number years - George Soros has
been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of
ancillary interests out there."
Wallace: "You
think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?" Hastert:
"I'm saying I don't know where groups - could be people who support
this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know."
Okay, leaving aside the
absurd ease with which anyone interested can look into the sources of
George Soros' billions, has Mr. Speaker here given this an instant of
thought? If there's anything foreign drug cartels want less than
legalization of narcotics, I can't imagine what it would be. Armageddon,
perhaps, though even that would pump up sales, at least in the short
term. Just hypothetically, if cocaine and heroin and other drugs
were legalized, or at least decriminalized, every drug cartel on earth
would collapse inside of a year, as prices plummeted and the US and other
major drug-consuming countries shifted to local production.
Why would anyone pay to
ship cocaine up from Columbia, or import opium poppies from Afghanistan
when we could just grow them in huge industrially-farmed fields in the US
south, or California, side by side all of our other crops? Even if imports
continued, prices would drop through the floor. Checked the US
market for imported tobacco lately? Heard much lately about the
bloodthirsty and ruthless international tobacco smuggling cartels?
Christ, what an idiot
this guy is. And he's not some sycophant blogger or shilling Coulter-esque
columnist -- he's an elected official, one who holds a very high rank in
the Republican Party. This man writes and approves dozens of laws and
government policies every year, and if this is any indication, he doesn't
have two brain cells to rub together.
After I wrote the above on Monday, Tuesday brought a
bit more on the subject.
I've talked to
reporters who've asked Hastert this around the convention hall. And
he's been aggressively restating the 'charge.' I'm told he even shoved
his finger in the chest of one of them when repeating it.
Now Soros has written
this
letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more
specifically "either substantiate these claims -- which you
canont do because they are false -- or publicly apologize for
attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation."
No word yet on Hastert's response, but given his character, I
strongly doubt he'll do anything that could even remotely be construed
as honorable.
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