Grown-ups

We got a new rug (X-mas gift) and then K-twn's folks got us end tables.    Kristen thinks our living room looks like it's for grown ups. 

RIP - Don Van Vliet

A true musical revolutionary.........

RIP Mr Feller

The first famous person I ever remember seeing.   My grandfather took me to an Amarillo Gold Socks game and he was signing autographs before the first pitch.  I didn't really know who he was but I will always remember it.

Classic

So, Do you think he can fall down, while pretending not to 

 enjoy the happy ending he's provide.    

Top 5 of 2010

here they are so far:

1. Beach House - Teen Dream 

2.  Wolf Parade - Expo 86

3. Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

4.  The National - Tired Violet
5. Deerhunter -  Halcyon Digest

Honorable Mention

Tired Pony - The Place We Ran From
Midlake - The Courage of Others

XX
Broken Bells
Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Billy's BBQ at the Oasis - Austin, TX

Athens, Jerusalem, Cairo, Istanbul

Trip of a lifetime

God Bless Douglas Adams

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)

NEW SCAM..... or I got my first email from Mr Bernanke

from FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD reply-to null to date Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 3:53 AM subject CONTRACT FUND CREDIT FROM BANK FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD mailed-by wested.org

NEW YORK.

ATTENTION

CONTRACT FUND CREDIT FROM BANK FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

We received an instructional letter to credit $10.5million to your account


We wish to let you know that all charges are waived for the success of this
contract fund to be credited into your account.

Your respond is required to enable us credit your account without any further
delay and you are also required to get back to us with the reconfirmation
of your banking particulars for we to know if what we have in file is correct and
to avoid crediting your funds to wrong account.

CONGRATULATION TO YOUR CONTRACT FUND.

Please be fast on this matter.

Thanks and God bless you.

Regards,

Ben S. Bernanke


Chairman Federal Reserve Bank New York.

The POUR

The digging continues

Treching and Sewer fun

Written by the wife:

I wanted to share with you guys what's happening in our neck of the woods. Poor Tuey is having to play plumber today! We had a major working weekend installing 3 french drains in the backyard with the help of the best friend ever, MV. We rented a trencher and moved tons of dirt and buried the flex pipe with sand and more dirt and then spread all the extra dirt around our dirt filled backyard...you get the point. It was dirty and sweaty and exhausting. We must be crazy to have picked the first weekend in August for such a task, but it was a necessary step before moving on to more fun things, like our patio, so we sucked it up and got it done. All told, we laid 124 feet of underground pipe.

Early in our trenching we ran into the previous owner's poor excuse for a french drain. It had been buried over the years and we couldn't fine where it daylighted so we figured we would just work around it. On down the line we ran into it again with the trencher. Dennis and Mark both commented that it was kind of weird that it was a different kind of pipe but since it had already made the corner to the downslope of the yard it was probably just whatever they had on hand and used it rather than buying more perforated pipe. 2 architects and one day laborer (that would be me) all came to the same conclusion. Cut through it and keep digging!

Fast forward to Monday after all the dirt was back in it's place for the most part and we are feeling pretty good about what we accomplished. We even managed to trim all the trees and drag them to the curb for the biannual brush collection. We are ready to move on now that we have our infrastructure in place. We even kind of hope it will rain, despite the ridiculous mess that will lead to with the dogs, to see how well everything drains out.

I come home from work and wash my face in our bathroom and the toilet starts gurgling. Weird, I think and then recall that I heard that sound this morning after I finished showering. Why would the toilet be bubbling? I yell for Dennis to come in there and complain about what I heard. Of course, it's not gurgling anymore so he makes a joke about me losing sleep at night over a noise that isn't really there and flushes the toilet. That's when things went south.

The toilet backs up, the floor drain in the laundry room overflows, and the tub is filling with water, too. 15 towels and 25 cuss words later we have things leveled off but no solution. Plunging won't work, drain snaking won't work, and Tuey has to leave to go to our neighborhood association meeting. He leaves and comes back in 3 minutes later with the realization. That wasn't the old french drain. That was our plumbing line. The yard is wet all over the area where we cut through the pipe. Lovely.

He spent about 2 hours digging the pipe up last night to give it time to dry overnight and is knee deep in it right about now trying to find the pipe, cut it smooth, and put a replacement piece in. To be followed by, of course, more dirt filling. On the human needs side of the equation, we are lucky that we have two other bathrooms that are on the original plumbing to the main line so we are still able to shower and use the facilities. Tuey leaped from bed to remind me that my excessive 7 AM dish washing was going to create mud for him to work in back there, but apart from that our water usage is wide open.

You fix one problem only to create another one. Typical for the do it yourself renovators that we are. Thank goodness he has the skills, stomach, and back to solve the problem. My husband the plumber. God love him.

Geiser on Dixon Street

5325 Sendero Hills Parkway - AGAVE

UPDATE.   Built in 2007, this project was published on July 25th, in the Austin American Statesman

This 1,525 sq. ft. home was designed in early 2006 as part of the Agave development in East Austin. This development was designed to be a sustainable community with Modern designs at affordable prices. This was created while I was working with KRDB. To learn more about this development and would like to know more goto AGAVE

Travel Well

Daniel Louis Schorr (1916 – 2010)



There are so few Great Ones remaining. 

“being poor, fat, Jewish, fatherless” had made him feel like an outsider, and that he had “achieved identity through my stories.”

"All news is an exaggeration of life. "

Fasinating

To those of you who still read this blog,   PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT & SHOUT OUT AND SAY HELLO.   I've forgotten who you are.   Also, if you've never emailed me but occasionally read, let me know who you are.    Don't make me track down your ISP through my domain tracker.


I do find this story riviting and terribly fasinating if only for the fact that I too, want a nice apartment on the West Side some day.

TAKE A LOOK

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Happy Bastille Day Motherfuckers!    Go find someone in the aristocracy and behead them.   Barring that you might consider looking at the DMV, a WWE event or Sarah Palin rally (same thing really).   Still no luck.   Ok, well then you might want to consider working more than 30 hours a week, having less than an average paid vacation days of 37 days (2nd highest in the world)  or working more than 1380 days (as opposed to the US 1777- a 9 week delta, 4 if you subtract the paid vacation days).   

But the fact of the matter is that none of that really matters.  

We are more alike than we are different.  We have MANY similar problems (emigration, trade, welfare, partisan BS) and the longer we exist, the more our identity will be challenged by the forces that act on our country. 

Good luck France.   We will all need it.

and then

Some days just suck.    No two ways about it. 

Sad Week

It's been raining for what seems like forever.    Luckily  I mowed the yard on the one night this week that it was dry.    Supposed to be clear tomorrow.    I hope so.   Almost 3" since the first of the month.  



I made the final payment for the honeymoon this morning.

I'm ready to move on with our lives.  

I wish I was busier (work-wise).   I could really use a good distraction.   

The plan

Not quite sure how the boat is supposed to plow through the Dardanelles overland but should be a hoot. 

Kitchen Back Splash & more Summer Harvest

Fannie Mae is killing PACE

I have been watching the PACE program and was waiting for Austin to pick up the program before using it to get a insulation, the solar hot water heater and maybe a 3 kW PV system.   But it looks as though the Federal lenders are killing the deal, stopping the job and hampering what I perceive as progress.

The first harvest of the HOME garden

why someone might not like soccer

End of the first day of Play.....

France 0 : Uruguay 0
Mexico 1 : South Africa 1

WOW.... THE DRAMA,  there's 180 minutes of our lives well never get back and are not completely wasted..... Sudden Death - jerks off's... watch a hockey game and pick up a few things....Like a stick to the jaw, perhaps.

Death of a Recording Legend.

If you've ever used a 'KILLER' microphone, you probably have Fritz to thank.   At least in part. 

So be a little bit grateful.  RIP FRITZ

Darth Vader's recording for TomTom GPS - behind the scenes

jebus loves the power point too

this shit is funny, wait, I mean tragic, wait, I mean scary as all hell.

Stop this BS

I hope that I never have my loved wife, father or brother killed by some idiot who needs $1.25, but if I do I hope I don't feel the need for capitol punishment. It is not the solution or the result of evolved societies.

Check this out, the statistics of global capitol punishment.   The US & Japan are the only Western countries left.






I think that says alot.     GO YEMEN!

Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer.

From the NYTIMES By DAVID LEONHARDT

Forty-seven percent. That’s the portion of American households that owe no income tax for 2009. The number is up from 38 percent in 2007, and it has become a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio. With Tax Day coming on Thursday, 47 percent has become shorthand for the notion that the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole.

Neither one of those ideas is true. They rely on a cleverly selective reading of the facts. So does the 47 percent number.

Given that taxes are likely to be one of the big political issues of the next few years — and maybe the biggest one — it’s worth understanding who really pays what in taxes. Once you do, you can get a sense for our country’s fiscal options. How, in other words, will we be able to close the huge looming gap between the taxes we are scheduled to pay and the services we are scheduled to receive?

The answer is that tax rates almost certainly have to rise more on the affluent than on other groups. Over the last 30 years, rates have fallen more for the wealthy, and especially the very wealthy, than for any other group. At the same time, their incomes have soared, and the incomes of most workers have grown only moderately faster than inflation.

So a much greater share of income is now concentrated at the top of distribution, while each dollar there is taxed less than it once was. It’s true that raising taxes on the rich alone can’t come close to solving the long-term budget problem. The deficit is simply too big. But if taxes are not increased for the wealthy, the country will be left with two options.

It will have to raise taxes even more than it otherwise would on everybody else. Or it will have to find deep cuts in Medicare, Social Security, military spending and the other large (generally popular) federal programs. All the attention being showered on “47 percent” is ultimately a distraction from that reality.

The 47 percent number is not wrong. The stimulus programs of the last two years — the first one signed by President George W. Bush, the second and larger one by President Obama — have increased the number of households that receive enough of a tax credit to wipe out their federal income tax liability.

But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and capital gains taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.

Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

Focusing on the statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of households, as ranked by income — underlines this point. Households in this group made $35,400 to $52,100 in 2006, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has released data. That would describe a household with one full-time worker earning about $17 to $25 an hour. Such hourly pay is typical for firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent. A good number of people, in fact, paid no net income taxes. They are among the alleged free riders.
But the picture starts to change when you look not just at income taxes but at all taxes. This average household would have paid 0.8 percent of its income in corporate taxes (through the stocks it owned), 0.9 percent in gas and other federal excise taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. Add these up, and the family’s total federal tax rate was 14.2 percent.

I realize that it’s possible to argue that payroll taxes should be excluded from the discussion because they pay for benefits — Social Security and Medicare — that people receive on the back end. But that argument doesn’t seem very persuasive.

Why? People do not receive benefits equal to the payroll taxes they paid. Those who die at age 70 will receive much less in Social Security and Medicare than they paid in taxes. Those who die at 95 will probably get much more.

The different kinds of federal taxes are really just accounting categories. At the end of the day, the government has to cover the cost of all its operations with revenue from all its taxes. We can’t wish our deficit away by saying that it’s mostly a Medicare and Social Security deficit.

If anything, the government numbers I’m using here exaggerate how much of the tax burden falls on the wealthy. These numbers fail to account for the income that is hidden from tax collectors — a practice, research shows, that is more common among affluent families. “Because higher-income people are understating their income,” Joel Slemrod, a tax scholar at the University of Michigan, says, “We’ve been overstating their average tax rates.”

State and local taxes, meanwhile, may actually be regressive. That is, middle-class and poor families may face higher tax rates than the wealthy. As Kim Rueben of the Tax Policy Center notes, state and local income taxes and property taxes are less progressive than federal taxes, while sales taxes end up being regressive. The typical family pays a lot of state and local taxes, too — almost half as much as in federal taxes.

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

So why are those radio and television talk show hosts spending so much time arguing that today’s wealthy are unfairly burdened? Well, it’s hard not to notice that the talk show hosts themselves tend to be among the very wealthy.

No doubt, like the rest of us, they don’t particularly enjoy paying taxes. They are happy with the tax cuts they have received lately. They would prefer if other people had to pick up the bill for Medicare, Social Security and the military — people like, say, firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers.

the truth of rock and roll

This week on SNL the new teen sensation Justin Bieber is set to take stage.   He's been prepping all week by doing Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, the Today show, et.  Al.,  in promotion of his new album “2.0”.   

Although, I can hardly imagine what 2.0 might be referring to, I’m trying hard to take this kid seriously.    He’s only 16 years old and to be working on the 2^nd version of something at his young age is hardly imaginable, unless you’re talking about a 2^nd ‘stand’ of facial hair.   I love rock music of most varieties.    I like hip hop, rap, pop, indie, dance and even pop bubble gum – so my geriatric mind is trying to make sense of this for some reason. 

I recall when the preteen band from OK, Hanson, premiered in 1996, there was an insightful interview about the state of rock & roll.   The thesis was that, while it was clear that this album was pop bubble gum, it was clearly marketed, designed and CREATED by 16 year olds for the consumption by other 16 year olds.   Therefore any discussion about being derived or handed down were hardly news.

Rock and Roll was never really been PROG-ROCK or Alt. Country or any other distilled variant.   It’s hardly ever been some High Art creation by 35 y. o. audio engineers to impress the other engineer that didn’t get the good job at the local AMI studio or get there “one hit”.    At its core, Rock has always been essentially made for/to/by 15 year olds about getting into the pants of other 15 year olds.     I’m ok with that.   That’s how it should be.

“I wanna hold your hand” was never supposed to be the “Dark Side of the Moon” .     Justin Bieber’s music has a lot more in common with pre-Tommy, WHO than it does with the last 5 Wilco Albums.   I get it.   This music isn’t created as an evolution. 

Each teen generation is not supposed to arrive with the ‘knowledge of the father ‘ prior to creating their next big thing.   The 16 y.o. Debbie Gibson that I watched in 1986 was not signed by her  label to produce a subsequent “PET SOUNDS”.   Instead, she was signed to sell as many units as she could; which was only supposed to be more than her competitor: “Tiffany”.  

So, with the understanding that this music is not meant for me, all I can say is that this little “beetle” really needs on work writing/buying more catchy tunes.   Because, quite frankly – he’s putting me to sleep, but then again at 38 and married, maybe it’s suppose to.

Just for giggles, try reading the lyrics to one of his latest hits. The similarity between his stuff and the 50's drippy stuff is uncanny.  

 Lyrics – Justin Bieber – One less lonely Girl

 Lyrics - Richie Valens – Donna

I suppose my point is - get over it or maybe, when do I get to have my turn hosting SNL?

You can't give an idiot £1,000,000.00

If you haven't seen the "Mitchell & Webb Look" you should give it a go.  I know that not everyone gets the BBC network but if you get the chance order it.   It's almost my favorite network by a factor of almost 2:1.

Check out their take on "Reality Shows".
 

Homeopathic Medicine


and of course "Rocket Scientists". 

Go figure - oops somebody did

I find this fascinateing and easily digestible.   UMMMMM, digestible.