The rules:

(1) List six things that make you happy
(2) Pass the award on to 6 more kreativ bloggers
(3) Link back to the person who gave you the award
(4) Link to the people you are passing it on to and leave them a comment to let them know.
(5) Request scantily clad photos of your blogger friends of the opposite sex.

1.) Fast cars. There’s nothing quite like going fast enough to make you worry about flying off the road, diving into a high-speed increasing radius curve from the outside, touching your tires to the inside line, heel-toeing into a hairpin and hearing the engine go from a growl to a high whine on exit, or flicking a shifter through all 6 gates to make you feel alive. And it’s fun to scare the people in the car with you.

2.) New episodes of Celebrity Rehab and Intervention. Any time I can watch people whose lives are waaaay more fucked up than mine, I feel pretty good. Especially that chick who was huffing Duster all day long. That bitch was fucking NUTS!

3.) Raspberry lemonade from Quizno’s. It’s probably the most delicious beverage ever invented. CORRECTION: Most delicious NON-ALCOHOLIC beverage ever invented.

4.) I feel unoriginal for doing this, but she knows.

5.) Walking through the door of my apartment at 530 Friday afternoon, taking off the work clothes, taking a shower, and putting on weekend clothes. The sense of freedom (at least for a couple of days) is exhilirating. I get a natural high that I can only compare to the feeling after good sex for the first few hours after 5 PM on Fridays.

6.) Sleeping until between 1 and 3 PM on weekends. Any later wastes the day. Any earlier means I probably didn’t get enough sleep.

Six people. Hmm..

The True Story of What Was
RENO!!! HAHA!!!
Angie

Well, there are three. That’s it for now because pretty much everyone else has been memed already. And I’m waiting for the granny panties, ladies.

Eventually, Estelle digs through the gargantuan patent leather chasm that is her purse far enough to find her checkbook, only to discover that, alas, the pen has fallen out of the checkbook. So in she dives again, even though the cashier has a perfectly good God damned pen sitting three inches in front of Estelle’s massive red, sparkly, patent leather monstrosity her friend Gert bought her for her fucking 10th wedding anniversary. This time Estelle finds her car keys. They’re in the way, so Estelle decides she’s going to set them on the counter next to the OH GOODNESS A PEN! Our elderly shopper now has to ask 4 times what the total is, because, well, she’s fucking old and forgets everything, only to write a check that’s practically illegible for a total much less than the cost of the paper on which it’s written plus the time of everyone around her that’s been wasted.

By this time, the person (or people) behind our slow friend are dealing with screaming children, melting ice cream, warming milk that will soon be infested with all sorts of bacteria, rising blood pressure, and an overwhelming desire to club this old bitch about the head and neck with that God damned massive purse until her dentures protrude through the top of her skull and her blue hair is caked to the terrazzo floor with her red blood. And you know what? In my book, that is pure WIN.

OK. Let me explain. PH and I were discussing the next Blogger Bash in an email volley earlier today. The date on which it would normally fall is Tuesday, December 30th. This creates scheduling problems for the parents in our group. Most parents get a sitter for New Year’s Eve, and don’t want to get a sitter two nights in a row.

There has been much grumbling about Bashes being held on school nights. No one wants to stay out late or drink too heavily for fear of a hangover or being late to work the following day. Moving the Bash to WEDNESDAY, December 31st solves this problem because the majority of us don’t work on New Year’s Day.

For those of you who would argue that it’s “Tradition” and “City Council doesn’t meet on the 5th Tuesday” and “Who gave you the right” and blah blah fuckin’ blah, no one is saying you can’t have your Politikfest on Tuesday, December 30th. If that’s what you choose, I can guarantee you that it will be poorly attended, and I sure as shit won’t be there. Moving the Bash to NYE is the smart thing to do.

As far as locations go: Depending on the weather and how much everyone has to drink (especially considering your friendly local SS is going to be out en masse to get those DUI numbers up), we need to find something centrally located, or somewhere people can stay for the night, or something centrally located to people who can let people stay overnight.

Update: Judging from the commentors and the Shoutbox on PS, this is not the great idea we originally thought. I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong. So, Tuesday 30 December it is. Crow tastes like chicken.

*Not really.

on 10 Oct 2008 at 12:36 pm # edit thisidonotknowme

And all the people who took out no principal, 100% mortgages on properties they never even walked into because they were going to “flip that house”. All the people who can’t pay their mortgages should be foreclosed upon and all the banks who get stuck with a bunch of properties because they made stupid loans should go out of business. Let people suffer the consequences of their choices.

If it were only that simple. Brokers sold to banks, banks sold to regional holding companies, and the smaller holding companies sold to the big boys, AIG et al. Using faulty formulas based on old data, these mortgages were sliced up and reconsolidated into CDO’s, which were rated at AAA, which is as good as cash. As Wall Street got more and more greedy, banks were encouraged to give more and more loans with fewer restrictions to keep the flow of money going. Eventually, they started giving No Income, No Asset (NINA) loans, which meant you could take out as large of a loan as you wanted, as long as you SAID you COULD make a certain amount of money. No W2’s or bank statements required. As it became easier and easier to get a home, prices went up and up as demand increased. Eventually, people started defaulting on the loans because, oops, they couldn’t afford them. All of a sudden, the supply of homes went up, demand decreased, and home values actually started depreciating, something that has never happened on a scale so large in the US. The “good as cash” CDO’s now started to lose value, which the brain trusts (for reasons beyond me) never accounted for when they started buying up all these mortgages. If the companies had borrowed 2:1 like the rest of us can do, this wouldn’t have been so bad. Unfortunately, they were leveraged at 20:1, 30:1, even 50:1. High leverage is great when you’re winning, because if you’re leveraged 30:1 and the value of your investment goes up 1%, you make 30% on your money. If it DROPS 2%, you’re pretty much closing up shop and selling the office furniture to the highest bidder. This is what happened to AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, etc. If these companies are allowed to collapse, it could be catastrophic to the global supply of money and possibly create a worldwide depression, which we’ll be lucky to avoid anyway.

Now, do I agree with the bailout? It’s not such an easy question to answer. I don’t believe in the government bailing out businesses that make bad decisions. I don’t believe in the federal government getting involved in a lot of things, but they do anyway. Now that I have read a bit about what’s happening with the lending market, and the astronomical amounts of money that will basically disappear if something isn’t done, it’s really hard for me to say that nothing should be done. I am an idealist, but I am not a myopian.

I just want to say “Thank You” to the douchebags who sold NINA mortgages, created CDO’s, and took high leverage loans to destroy the global economy. You fucksticks. If it seems to good to be true, IT PROBABLY IS.

…I’d also like to use this economic crisis to make convenient scapegoats out of large groups of people who clearly had nothing to do with perpetuating this crisis, but whom I’ve long despised anyway. Like French immigrants. God, I fucking hate those people. At least Mexican immigrants are PRODUCTIVE. Ever see a French immigrant doing useful landscaping work? No. STOP SUCKING ON THE ENGORGED TEAT OF MY BELOVED COUNTRY, YOU BAGUETTE-EATING ASSHOLES. I’m going to meet up at the beer hall with my friends, form a new political party rooted in fear and intolerance, and discuss a “solution” for what to do about them. Rolf will be in charge of the train schedule.

I’d also like to blame the group Fall Out Boy. Because they suck and I hope they die in a tour bus accident. And I’d like to blame Sarah Palin. Because she’s a fucking moosetard and I hope she gets trapped under an ice floe.

In addition to blaming others for the downfall of the country, there’s one other thing that can help us all feel better, and that is reveling in the financial misfortune of others. Sure, I’m going broke. But at least some cocky trader fuckfaces are getting dumped by their shallow, horrible trophy fiancees. That makes me feel better…

Oh, and Sara, I’m sorry I smacked you in the clitoris.

Oh, and I find it really amusing that Mr. Dennis has a sidebar with the 3 or 4 most recent posts on BlogPeoria, because my F-Bomb laced tirade is mingling with his ads and articles about politicians and rich folks.