Further blog fodder...

"Those who blog, blog. Those who can't, cut & paste. "
I guess that would be me emulating the aforementioned form.

Anyway, from James Taranto of the WSJ:

President Obama gave the commencement address Wednesday at Arizona State University, and blogger Jim Hoft notes what he describes as a rather audacious passage from the president's speech:

We've become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals and get-rich-quick schemes that got us where we are, but hard work and smart ideas--quality products and wise investments. We started taking shortcuts. We started living on credit, instead of building up savings.

Uh, what do you mean "we," kemo sabe? Two weeks ago New York's Daily News ran an op-ed by "an elected official in California"--not Nancy Pelosi, we'd guess--writing under the pseudonym Richard Henry Lee. "Lee" evaluated Obama's personal finances and found that for several years the future president lived just the way he decried in Tempe:

A close examination of their finances shows that the Obamas were living off lines of credit along with other income for several years until 2005, when Obama's book royalties came through and Michelle received her 260% pay raise at the University of Chicago. This was also the year Obama started serving in the U.S. Senate. . . .

In April 1999, they purchased a Chicago condo and obtained a mortgage for $159,250. In May 1999, they took out a line of credit for $20,750. Then, in 2002, they refinanced the condo with a $210,000 mortgage, which means they took out about $50,000 in equity. Finally, in 2004, they took out another line of credit for $100,000 on top of the mortgage.

Tax returns for 2004 reveal $14,395 in mortgage deductions. If we assume an effective interest rate of 6%, then they owed about $240,000 on a home they purchased for about $159,250.

This means they spent perhaps $80,000 beyond their income from 1999 to 2004.

A less charitable observer, or one less inclined to paralipsis, might characterize Obama's book royalties as more of a "get-rich-quick scheme" than a "quality product." But in any case, they passed the marketplace test, so more power to him.

Smokin' Part II

Not quite as glamorous as the folks in the prior smokin' post, but definitely back in the day.

Audi S4 @ 160 MPH

Check out this youtube of some numb-nuts pushing it in an S4.
The video is billed as 160 MPH, but I don't think I saw them ever get there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dR1Vihz18&feature=player_embedded

I happen to have a B5 S4 as well. I thought that the top speed was supposed to be "electronically limited" to 142 MPH. I suppose I was mistaken.

I may have briefly punched mine up to maybe 110 or so a time or two, but that's about as far as I've gone. 160 would be out of the question. My video is below:



One exception about driving fast however.
The fastest I've ever driven (for a sustained period on a public highway) was in Montana.
The rental car just kind of stalled out at about 105, would coast, and then resume acceleration at about 95 MPH. It wasn't scary at all.

I would have liked to have seen how my S4 performed out there.

Furthermore, from "The Sports Curmudgeon"

The Sports Curmudgeon's post for today.
But don't get him wrong.... he loves sports.

April 29, 2009

I Just Do Not Care…

Recently, I had the opportunity to break bread with an old friend – a long-term reader of these rants – and his new significant other. As the conversation evolved, she asked me if I cared about a variety of sports and I always answered that I did - - even if some of the minor sports commanded a smaller degree of caring than others. Finally, she asked if there were any things in the sports world that I didn’t care about. When I answered in the affirmative, she seemed surprised and asked for examples. That led to a discussion, which led to making a list of “Things I Just Do Not Care About”. And that list gave birth to this rant.

With the NFL Draft fresh in my mind, the very first thing I mentioned that went on the list was “Mock Drafts”. There was a time when one or two people did Mock Drafts late in the week leading up to the Actual Draft. Those were interesting to a degree because they were “different”, the people doing the mock drafts were presumed to be knowledgeable, and the Actual Draft was imminent. All of that is so horribly diluted now by the presence of Mock Drafts written by thousands of people who possess degrees of knowledgeability that are undecipherable. Compounding that horror is the fact that you can go looking now for draft orders for the 2010 NFL Draft such that all you need do is plug in the NFL teams in the reverse order of their finish for 2009 and get the first round for April 2010. Categorically, let me say that there is no value to such things other than to contribute to the entropy death of the universe. I just do not care…

As a corollary to Mock Drafts, I no longer care about “Bracketology”. I do not recall when it was that I read my first projected NCAA basketball brackets this season but it was within a week either way of New Year’s Day. That is too much blather and babble to maintain interest. It got to the point that whenever I heard someone on radio or TV prattle on regarding the projected brackets, I thought to myself how much nicer it would be to wait until that certain Sunday evening and to allow the doings of the Selection Committee to manifest themselves. I just do not care…

The WNBA regular season and its playoffs are simply uninteresting. I just do not care…

The NHL regular season and the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs constitute a set of contests that go on for far too long involving far too many teams that mean nothing to me or to the majority of sports fans in North America. I just do not care…

The NBA regular season represents about six months of ennui punctuated by a few seconds of real excitement randomly strewn throughout that time span. I just do not care…

Sideline reporters have even less likelihood to produce something interesting/compelling than does a random NBA regular season game. The same goes for “news conferences” with a golfer who just won a tournament, the owner/trainer/jockey of a horse that just won a major race, the owner of a team that just won the World Series or the Super Bowl or anyone from the NCAA speaking about the wonderful “student-athletes”. I just do not care…

If someone is in a fantasy league for any sport from baseball to NASCAR to the Iditarod, I really do not care about your team or how you went through the analysis to select your team or what your standing in your imaginary league may be. I do not want to hear about it; I do not want to read about it. If I really were interested, I would have an analogous entry in a separate league - - but I do not have such an entry because I do not have a real interest. By the way, if I had an analogous entry in a separate league, you should not care about my team and I would not presume to bother you with stories about it. I just do not care…

National Signing Day – the day when high school seniors announce where they will go to college to play football – is less interesting to me than a treatise on dandruff in some obscure species of woodpeckers. I just do not care…

Televised poker was a curiosity – and therefore interesting – for a while about five years ago. In the intervening time, it has become so horrendously overexposed and with relentless reruns that it has become actively antagonistic. I enjoy reading Norman Chad’s syndicated sports column; he is creative and clever. Nonetheless, I want to throw a brick at him every time I see him on ESPN leading into yet another poker program. I just do not care…

At least televised poker had a moment in the sun when it was interesting. Televised fishing and televised deer hunting - - or hunting for any other species - - has never been particularly interesting and has not attained any level of interest as years go by. Poker, fishing and hunting are participatory events not spectator sports. [Aside: Sex is also not a spectator sport, which is why XXX Rated Movies are not of any interest to me.] I just do not care…

The poker craze on television followed a natural and predictable course. Once the producers had run out of WSOP events to show and had shown the same professional poker players participating in mind-numbingly repetitive tournaments taking place at different latitudes and longitudes, they fell back on a tried and true expansion formula. Let’s show celebrities playing poker and ask anyone who actually knows how to play poker to suspend their incredulity at the lack of ability of these celebrities. If you think I got tired of watching WSOP reruns, you have no idea how quickly and vehemently I tired of Celebrity Poker. The reason here is that it brings together two things I have no interest in - - televised poker and celebrities. Celebrities are interesting only when they exhibit the talents/abilities that make them worthy of notice in the first place. Celebrities in any other context are boring. I just do not care…

And so, as a logical consequence of my lack of interest in celebrities, let me highlight just a few here to give you sense of where my head is at:

Anything Alex Rodriguez does or says outside the context of a baseball game is uninteresting.

Athletes and celebrities have sex with one another so frequently that it is no longer news and no longer interesting.

David Beckham is not interesting to an amazing degree. His off-the-pitch life has been uninteresting for a while; now he has created a drama about where he will actually play soccer and that drama is uninteresting too.

Lance Armstrong was an inspirational story at first. Now he seems to be such an attention-whore that he has become uninteresting.

Speaking of attention-whores, Danica Patrick took up residence in that zip code a while back. Think about how unimportant she is as an “athlete” any more; what do you read more about, her racing endeavors or her appearances in the SI Swimsuit Edition?

And it should go without saying that Brett Favre’s career decisions and life vector are uninteresting.

For all of these issues and the hundreds that are fundamentally the same - - where only the names change to expose the guilty, I just do not care…

I have two words for you here. Reality … Television. No, it is not. I just do not care…

While it may be a bit tangential here, let me also say for the record that I find Facebook, My Space and Twittering monumentally uninteresting. I just do not care…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

From The Economist: 100 days: Obama in seven haikus

From the Democracy In America blog

Posted by:

Economist.com | NEW YORK

FROM the editor of More Intelligent Life:

In 100 days
A super-majority.
What next? A hushed Rush?

Seventy percent
Of Americans dig him
The dog didn't hurt.

As long as his foes
Hold lame "tea-party" protests
The force is with him.

A plump government
Is grand if it means cheap meds,
Not water-boarding.

Such ambition! Well,
Roosevelt would be impressed
If not Kim Jong Il.

It is a fine thing
To have a smart president
Whose sentences work.

A fine amuse bouche
For what promises to be
A grand, filling meal.

smokin'

mostly from back in the day.


YSL.



















Angelica & Jack


















Anne Klein













Billy Preston & Mick
Who's the guy behind Preston?



















Kid Rock

Buckley on Buckley(s) and on being an orphan @ age 55

Christopher Buckley writes on the loss of both parents.

Usually, I just copy and paste the entire article, but this one is pretty long.
In my opinion, it is worth reading in its entirety.

I've always found C. Buckley to be a funny writer. This too is funny, but with pathos.

A few excerpts however:

One realization does dawn upon the death of the second parent, namely that you’ve now moved into the green room to the River Styx. You’re next. Another thing about parental mortality: No matter how much you’ve prepared for the moment, when it comes, it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed.

///////////////////

Mum’s serial misbehavior over the years had driven me, despairing, to write her scolding — occasionally scalding — letters. Now I saw that she had simply stopped opening all letters from me, against the possibility that they might contain another excoriation. I opened one of them and read:

Dear Mum, That really was an appalling scene at dinner last night. . . .

I wished that I could take back that letter, even though every word of it had been carefully weighed and justified.

////////////////

I forgive you. I was glad to have the chance to say that to her at the hospital, holding her hand, tears streaming down my face. I can hear her saying, Are you quite finished, or shall I fetch my Stradivarius?

///////////////

When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between a Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a 13th-century saint being burned at the stake.

//////////////

Pup’s self-medicating was, I’d venture, a chemical extension of the control he asserted over every other aspect of his life. The term “control freak” is pejorative. Put it this way: Few great men — and I use the term precisely, for Pup was a great man — do not assert total control over their domains. I doubt Winston Churchill ever said, “Whatever.”

/////////////

cheers.