Quote of the Day

"Today might be the day where everybody throws in the towel," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist for Avalon Partners. "People are saying 'I've had it, I can't take it anymore, I'm selling everything.'"

While I'm far-from-sophisticated about the global markets, and probably keeping my head in the sand, I still feel like this smacks of self-fulfilling (self-defeatist?) prophesy. That said, I'm keeping one eye on the stock ticker all day. (The other'll be on my Kleenex box as I continue to try and shake this tenacious cold.)

Curmudgeon Role Model

Woman, 89, arrested for keeping football.

I always have said I wanted to someday grow up to pretty much be Walter Matthau. A grumpy old man. However I now have a new role-model for eventually being a curmudgeon. This local 89-year old woman has told them repeatedly, but the neighbor kids' couldn't keep their ball from going into her yard... so she kept it. She' done it before -she says 3 times, though the parent of the kids said 10 - and said she was going to give it back.

Eventually. After they'd learned their lesson.

When police asked Jester to return the ball to the children, she refused. They
warned her twice she would be charged if she did not cooperate, Schaffer said.
They tried to give her a citation, but she refused to sign for it, he said.

Of course,the police took her in and booked her. Some people think they over-reacted, some people think they didn't. I think we all have to agree to disagree. From one viewpoint, what was once a member of a village helping raise a child is now a petty thief. From another, this crazy old coot's stealing from children and it's about as cruel as building a gingerbread house to get them into one's dinner. The only people who can probably really gauge this situation are the friends and neighbors. Is she a mean old lady? Are the kids little hellions who should be put down now for the good of future society? Are they just kids, placing play over respecting property boundaries they don't even understand?

Evidently the max sentence is six months in jail or and a $1000 fine. Somehow I don't see her paying that. All the great old ladies I know are too strong and proud and stubborn to take that kind of guff...

The football, valued at $15, is being held for evidence, Schaffer
said.

We are, in fact, quite screwed

2 headlines on MSNBC.com this afternoon, one presented right over the other:

G-8 wants to halve global emissions by 2050
Newsweek: Why the G-8 doesn't matter

It still amazes me that our national policy is "nah, we're not going to curb our pollution... ya'll do that." I really wonder why we think we're such "leaders" and setters of example when we can't even deign to get together and turn our American Know-How to preservation and clean air and hedging our bets with this oh-come-on-it's-not-"iffy"-you-enormous-jackasses science of preventing"Global Warming" for no other reason than that it's the right thing to do and there's money to be made in it?

Oh, wait, I can't be bothered to add 2 hours to my commute every day and get up an hour earlier to take the bus... least I'm not flying to Chicago for Pitchfork. I'm taking the bus - that's curbing my emissions by sharing with others. Giga will be driving nearly 4 hours round trip to join me... sigh... we have a lot of work to do.

I'm going to try and actively pay attention to my emissions. I keep my air conditioning off more than on. By coasting to save gas I'm turning into a far-less-aggressive driver. We'll have to see what else I can do... because everything I do will be cancelled out by Billions of Asians buying those cheap enough to afford Tata cars...

Aaak, I shoulda stayed in Europe. I'm a pinko, French-loving Lefty.

"I thought hell is bound to be a livlier place."

Gore Vidal just had a new collection of his essays come out. I've always been a fan of his as he usually winds up being proved right on issues of social mores and honest, if not a bit paranoid, on observing that America is truly an "Empire." He comes out against war, hypocrisy, and illiteracy with a stylish turn of phrase and I've always been a sucker for it. Yes, he can be a complete gasbag at times, too, but still more magnetic and informative to listen to than 99% of the talking heads you'll see on television offering opinions on the same subjects.

Check out this feisty interview (he's really rude to the reporter, frankly) where he mocks reviewers of his novels ("That's because they don't know how to read"), John McCain ("Who started this rumor that he was a war hero?"), and William F. Buckley ("I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place."). Okay, the novel observations I'll give them. I've only read 4 or 5 of them, including the under-appreciated "Myron," with the wonderful (albeit childish) conceit of replacing all the swear words with the names of Supreme Court justices to protest a ruling on obscenity that had come down around the time he was writing it. I'm not sure he's ever turned out a classic novel besides "Myra Breckenridge," but I plan to read more of them before I come to a decision. The essays, however, are classics. Pick up the new collection or go ahead and dive into the giant "United States" collection (which collected about 1/3rd of all essays he'd published between '42 to '92 in about 1300 pages). I've read probably 6 or 7 collections of his essays and still slowly chip my way through "United States." Always entertaining and informative. He's worth a read.