Thursday, October 23, 2008
House Rich
Joe Biden, one of Delaware's US senators and one of the Senate's "poorest" members had the acquisition and ownership of his main source of personal wealth, his one house, i.e. home, investigated and questioned. He came out clean, as he had stated from the get go.
That other VP nominee? Seems not that much has been done as regards investigation of her $1.4 Million in assets. Funny, that. Would that be termed as picking on her? David C Johnston, former tax policy reporter for the New York Times, lists 10 questions he thinks should be posed to the Republican VP candidate. Another chink from her "hockey mom" armor may fall off, now that we know she's been clothed in Neiman Marcus. Any reporter out there going to ask her?
That other VP nominee? Seems not that much has been done as regards investigation of her $1.4 Million in assets. Funny, that. Would that be termed as picking on her? David C Johnston, former tax policy reporter for the New York Times, lists 10 questions he thinks should be posed to the Republican VP candidate. Another chink from her "hockey mom" armor may fall off, now that we know she's been clothed in Neiman Marcus. Any reporter out there going to ask her?
Labels: Home Decor, Only in America
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Insulation
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even
forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart."
Billy Collins
I was going to post a picture of some of my "memory aids" here but, out of concern for personal safety, opted not to. Suffice it to mention that these "aids" are piled/stacked/organized by my bed, by my desk, by my sofa. Basically, any furniture in the house has a "by my" pile associated with it. Yes, the memory has bee slipping for a while. I believe if I read less or had less books, less would be forgotten. I, however, am of the thinking that, perentage wise, the amount of forgetting as a function of the quantity of printed matter located within the property lines is significantly less than if I had a smaller inventory of books. While the books forgotten quantity may be the same, upping the composition of the divisor, i.e. # of books on hand, makes my forgetten books % lower.
That's my rationalized outlook on keeping the printed words around and I'll stick by it.
Besides, it's been rather chilly lately and the books stacked against the house's outer walls has been keeping us warm.
Labels: Home Decor, Humans, Idiosyncracies, Self-Therapy
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Cipherin'
In the House & Home section of today's NYT, there was a short blurb about a Book Stool. Available at Conran's, these "stools" consist of paper, books, possibly even fabric or blankets (that you have lying around causing much domestic misery) and two cotton/nylon straps with the plastic connecting pieces you see on backpacks. You provide the material to be strapped and Conran will provide you, for a hefty fee of $39.00 (excluding delivery) two 88 1/2 inch pieces of cotton/nylon straps.
This is killing multiple birds with 2 straps. Those books, newspapers, and magazines that have been a thorn in your ever-loving spouse's(ELS) side can now be turned into something truly useful. YEs, another place to sit one's carcass on. Why, you can finally have that 12 place dining set you've been mulling over for the past 23 years. If I play my cards right...hmmmmm, let me do some cipherin' here.
12 stools.
$39 each.
That's $468, about the price of 2 decent chairs or one exquisite chair.
O.K., if I can convince the ELS that rustic/rural is in this year, I can substitute 12 of these for one of this, saving roughly $466. If I start her off with the price of one exquisite chair @ $468 or $5,616 for twelve chairs and then negotiate down to 12 decent chairs @ $2,808 for a dozen (because I am, after all, a reasonable man), my "savings" would increase from the initial $466 to a whopping $2,806.
You know where I'm going with these savings, right?
That's right! To the nearest brick 'n mortar or Internet bookstore, since I'll be needing more filling material for these book stools! So, I'll be decorating and accumulating at the same time (and that's even taking into account the insualting I'll be indirectly doing by accumulating additional books).
Hey, Gwynne, this is how you CPA's do your cipherin' when you're about to tell a client how much you saved them, right? Think there's a future for me in the post-Enron accounting world?
I'm waiting for the CD version of these Book Stools. Sittin' on CD's. Sound good? Let me get to cipherin' that possibility.
Labels: Home Decor
