Category Archives: News

Financial Restraint

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As I scrutinize my gas bill and finally decide that yes, that’s just one month’s bill and they did in fact receive my last payment, this story on the New York Times makes me more than just a little sick.  It’s a bit on how these financial executives won’t be able to maintain their current “standard of living” if President Obama’s plan to limit executive pay goes through.  The plan is a good start at breaking a corporate culture that sees incredible pay and bonuses regardless of performance.  Of course the plan would only apply to companies that seek government assistance, but it’s a start.

Imagine for a minute that your expenses added up like this:

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.
Mortgage: $96,000 a year.
Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.
Nanny: $45,000 a year.
We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

To say that this is ridiculous is an understatement, it’s like winning the lottery every year, and thinking you deserve it.  Incredible.  Here’s hoping these guys hurt at least a little, although their perspectives are so warped it’s hard to imagine any real hardship from “scraping” by on $500 grand a year.

Completely Unecessary

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It feels sometimes like modern science is getting a little carried away with it’s own success.  Often medical science is amazing, and any breakthroughs that save a person’s life are of course welcome, but at times these things read like the most ridiculous playground bragging.

I give you this: surgeons remove healthy kidney through vagina.

Was that completely necessary?  I mean really.  It sounds like that surgeon made a bet with his buddies and had to go through with it.  I’m not all that convinced that in this particular case it was the very best decision for everyone.  If you notice in the following picture, everyone is smiling, except the lady in green.  Guess who had an organ removed from her vagina?  I rest my case.

Ouch

Ouch

Shameless Profit

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While the “Big” 3 dwindle and shrink dramatically before our very eyes, it’s kind of hard to ignore the contrast of Exxon Mobil reporting their largest profit ever.  Ever.

$45 billion

That’s even after the price of oil tanking at the end of the year, falling 70% at times.  It makes you wonder just what the hell is going on here, doesn’t it?  Not that I want us to be buying more gas in any way, but that is one hell of a profit (profit, as in AFTER expenses) for a year.  If the price of crude was so high (and it was) wouldn’t profit go down?  Sure, you pass the cost of to your consumers, but this is still rather incredible don’t you think?  These guys really know how to milk  it, maybe someone should talk to them about that little global financial crisis thing.

Seems like there could be at least a little wiggle room in the price of a liter of gas, what do you think?

Ford Loses 6 Billion, Insists It’s Fine, Really

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The Ford Motor Company gave a press conference today and insisted that despite losing almost $6 billion this quarter, it’s quite fine, thank you.  In a Monty-Python Black Knight moment, Ford claimed that the loss was only a flesh wound, and that it was in fighting shape.  While it hopped around on it’s one remaining leg, bloody stumps spurting, Ford said that it expects to lose a LOT less money next year, and to come back here and fight like a man.  Clearly woozy from the loss of blood, Ford slurred that it would be ready to sell cars that no one can currently afford in the current recession, and that it would return to health any day now.

“There’s no need for that government-lended $9 billion line of credit, really.  We don’t expect to need any government money, at all, unless things get, you know, really bad.”  Ford said, all the while blood stained $100 bills fell from every pocket as it swayed back and forth unsteadily.

Still, Ford looked to be at least ambulatory, unlike Chrysler, who was passed out on the floor, and GM who had it’s head jammed into the dirt enthusiastically, mumbling something about “..electric cars? ready any day now!”.

Don’t Mess with the public library

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As part of her wonderful and nurturing nature, Nikki often takes the kids to the library to get some books and foster some good old reading time.  This well meaning pastime is something the kids really enjoy, and they often come home with a huge bag full of books for snuggle up story time.  As anyone who has been to our house knows, our lives are busy and sometimes, through no fault of our own (well ok it’s technically ALL our fault) the books are misplaced and don’t quite make it back to the library on time, even though you can renew them online, which is a great idea.  Anyway, for whatever reason we have at times forgotten to return a book or two.

Let’s keep in mind this is the public library, where kindly bespectacled cat-owning ladies meekly tend the stacks, shushing where appropriate, but in general these ladies are about as assertive as cooked spaghetti.  Well all that goes out the window when you might have misplaced one of their charges, they drop the facade and become hardassed book mobsters, busting kneecaps with glee.  The first hint is a strangely insistent letter listing the missing book, and ending with a chilling warning to return the book, or face greater consequences.

If you are new to this dangerous world of militant librarians, you might even ignore that letter.  That would be a mistake.  The very next thing they do, the very next thing, is to send a collection agency after you.  A collection agency.  For a $12 Robert Munsch book. Over-react much?

It’s the equivalent of a nuclear strike in response to a forgotten thank you.

Talk about touchy.

So, when I read this story about a lady who made the mistake of not returning a book and ending up in jail, I was not surprised at all….

She should count herself lucky, she could have been sporting a concrete cardigan at the bottom of the river.

Yes, it’s exactly like Milli Vanilli

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It seems that the quartet that performed at the recent presidential inauguration was as phony as, um, a really big phony thing.  Yes, apparently the illustrious Yo-Yo Ma and the other guys (I kid, but it seems that these people are actually all huge in the classical music world, which really does not intersect with my world) decided that it was too cold to play the event live, so they actually played along to a tape, Milli Vanilli style.  The reason given was the cold would have caused their incredibly expensive instruments to go out of tune and the piece would have sounded like garbage.  Fair enough I suppose, but it really takes the class out of having those guys out there in suits, looking impossibly elite, eyes closed, bleeding the music out of their fingers, wrought with thousands of hours of painstaking practice at their art.  Instead, we heard David the IT guy click “play” on the MP3 on his laptop, or perhaps somebody put the tape into the presidential boombox and slid it a bit closer to the mic on the table.  It’s just not very presidential, and it’s certainly not genuine for those musicians to pretend to play the thing, is it?  The best part is the spokesperson insists “This isn’t Milli Vanilli” but, it really really really is.

This is just slightly better than the whole Olympic thing with the cute-but-terrible-sounding little girl lip-synching to the tape of the only-slightly-less-cute-but-great-sounding little girl.  At least these musicians were playing to a tape of their own performances (or so we were told).

A bunch of phonies