American Madness

Is your home overpriced? You could be a victim of an impending bubble collapse.

A recent report from Bubble Butt Consulting said ?sixty-five of the nation’s 299 biggest real estate markets are severely overpriced and may be subject to market corrections.?

No kidding. Some of these markets are absolutely crazy. For example, a refrigerator box in San Francisco goes for $235,000, double if you want an ocean view. When I was a kid, we used to play in refrigerator boxes, which were just lying on the street for the garbage boys to pick up.

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Investors continue to buy Gold as hedge against inflation, and because Gold as an asset tends not to correlate with equity markets or other commodity prices.

But Gold is being promoted as a safe place to park assets in the event of a true catastrophe, which is only partially true.

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Richard Causey copped a plea.

The Enron accountant pleaded guilty to two counts of securities fraud and conspiracy and one count of being fat. He must now help convict former bosses Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who were the Smartest Guys in the Room, not the heftiest.

Causey had cause to rat on his former superiors. One, he didn?t want to become a love muppet for other sleazy white collar criminals; instead, prosecutors promised to send him to Folsom Prison in time for the next Johnny Cash concert. Two, Lay and Skilling tormented Causey unmercifully about his weight. Now revenge is sweet, as were the 12 cupcakes Causey downed between each meal.

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It was a rough day on Wall Street, as stocks tumbled down the staircase and out the front door, scaring the shit out of the cat.

First out was AT&T, which broke a tooth and lost its ampersand. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 38 points. New York City Detective Sergeant William Miller said the city would try to find the points but no one should hold their breath.

Trading was mixed, then stirred. Concerns about consumer spending took their toll, as Stock Market officials tried to sell Waffle Irons to passing Greek tourists. They were rebuffed and told they were much cheaper at Target.

Analysts blamed point guard Taysheeka Jones. Jones, a member of Mimes for Jesus, continues to shoot the ball even when she doesn?t have it. This confuses Cisco (CIS) and United Doughnuts (UD), who stand around all day until their mothers call them home for dinner.

End of the year portfolio reshuffling took a toll, said Monte ?Three Card? Grinker, chief investment officer at Drunken Sailor Asset Management.

“In general, there’s concern about consumer spending, but hey, get a load of these waffle things. I mean, they make great waffles!? Grinker also blamed the yield curve, whatever that is.

Among the decliners were No Balance Footwear (down $2.29 to $64.69) and Banana Peels R Us (down $2.23 to -$232.34). Company officials were tight lipped after saying Friday that sales and earnings in the fourth quarter were really crappy, due to what the company said was consumer concern over bad waffle irons and yield curves and crap like that.

Any progress I might arguably have made as an individual since leaving college has now been barbarically destroyed by the last three days spent working from home during the subway strike have caused me to revert to a troglodytic state of grunting simian anarchy. (My writing has also devolved, as evidenced by the preceeding run-on sentence. Mrs. Smith, I am sorry. I WAS paying attention in 7th Grade English)

It’s not simply that I’m eating all my meals from delivery or at the diner down the street. Television has taken over my mind in the evenings. I can’t bring myself to re-read any more of my books, so I’ve been watching transit strike coverage and other drivel.

As a result of watching more television these past three nights than I have seen in six months, I have also been forced maybe 20 times to watch a shortened version of the Baz Luhrmann ad for Chanel 5, featuring Nicole Kidman (Australian, and with the accent to prove it) and and Rodrigo Santoro (he’s Brazilian, and women find him Braziliant).

I can’t say I’m unhappy to see this type of commercial back, with its dreamlike quality and some degree of subtelty in pushing its product. I just hope this means we’re not in store for a slew of retro-80’s ads, like the infamous Obsession commercials. Though with all the reality in advertising now, it’s not so bad having to watch some unreality.

Changing the Password Paradigm
Every ninety days, the CSO at my company forces everyone to change their passwords for email access. If we don’t make the change, we don’t get email. Like any good CSO he requires strong passwords so users must come up with an 8-character minimum phrase with at least one number. I pop that new password into my email program and blackberry and then I forget it for another 90 days. The problem is that in 90 days I need to remember what it was before I can change it again. Like many employees, I take the easy way out and write it down.

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Ahh the world of instant gratification. At midnight last night, I thought it would be a good idea to start a podcast covering the events of the transit strike. At 3:30 am, I had one.

I want to have wordpress’ babies.

So now that the courts have rules that a Pennsylvania school district cannot teach Intelligent Design (a lovely concept that says some “things” were created by a supernatural being), we can now ask the questions that need to be asked.

First of all, is it intelligent design that a sewage pipe runs through our recreational area? What kind of supernatural being would design such a thing? A supernatural engineer who flunked out of MIT?

Plus, why only one mouth? It is very difficult for some people to talk out of both sides of their mouth, and if they had two, hypocrisy would move along that much faster.

Finally, why do some male genitals hook to the left? I haven?t actually seen this phenomenon in action, but some women I know swear that it?s true. They also seem to think this model hits the G-Spot much more efficiently. This is confusing. Does this mean the G-Spot is on the right? Can?t we all compensate by moving a bit to the left? Is this more information than anyone needs to know?

Questions, questions.

I really wanted to pose these and other queries to the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania. But now that the school board’s decision has been termed ?breathtaking inanity? by a federal judge, I?ll just have to ask my priest or rabbi or legalized Nevada hooker. Unless they overturn her, too.

Channeling Shaggy, former Enron CEO Ken Lay has claimed in a recent speech that “It wasn’t me.”

Lay lays it out.

We’ll see what the court says, Ken.

It’s like this guy never heard of criminal negligence. “I didn’t know my teenaged son was shooting pedestrians from the passenger seat. He used a silencer and I was too busy driving the car.”

Next case, please!

Posting a response to Adam’s latest bloggerhea on the cold in his office (Whining Marketer Wears Hat), I noted that given the proliferation of noise-canceling headphones, subway riders will soon no longer have to hear the homeless pitch their wares (Candy for a dollar!) on the subway.

To reach a target audience, subway vendors and beggars might need a long-term plan involving podcasts if they are going to stay in the game. And I’m not just making a bad joke. If it’s not being done already (Eric will chime in and tell me if it is), someone should offer a podcast for the homeless…with funds going to an organization like Common Ground Community, which provides supportive housing and helps clean up the shelter system. Sponsors could include the usual suspects: over-fat corporations and rich individuals looking to purchase indulgences from the church of public opinion.