Whimsy Speaks Again

There's something discordant between the GOP's leveraging of anti-gay marriage initiatives and mainstream America:  witness the mini-ad on Travelocity I saw when making a reservation for Junie and I to have Thanksgiving in SLO.  It said "Check into San Francisco's Gay-Friendly Hotels".  I read recently, in, of all places, Fortune, that the legal legitimacy of same-sex marriages would add $2 billion to the "marriage industry" (think flowers, planners, churches, reception halls, tuxedo rental places, ...).  As venal as it may be, the good thing about free enterprise is that dollars tend to change minds.

I've gotten a number of emails over the years about my BAP posts and webpages.  They usually take the tone of "WHY are you doing this?" and "What could be so important about BAP that you subject it to microanalysis?"  and "It's only an anthology, what's up?".  I guess my answer is:  why do millions of Americans follow baseball, and hundreds of thousands of them know who played second-base for the Reds in 1946?  In fact, I take BAP way less seriously than Green Bay fans view the Vikings.  I don't know, offhand, how many majors Woods has racked up.  The last televised football game I saw was USC vs. Texas for the Rosebowl, which was a hell of a game, and, besides, I spent 10 years getting an ridiculous number of degrees at USC.  My point is, could it really be sillier to do BAP stats than to memorize the pole positions of the current NASCAR guys?

In case you're thinking of moving to Colorado, it was a drop-dead gorgeous day in the low 70's with blue skies and the mountains just beyond the Front Range are snowy and clouded.  Nice homes are available in what has become the same buyer's market as almost everyplace else in country.  That means if you're coming from San Diego, Naples or Atlantic City, you can buy two or three of them.  Somebody has compiled a list of "cities with overpriced housing".  There's a whole lot of cities in California and Florida, in fact the first 30 on the list.  However, New Jersey and New York show up, too, and there's a smattering of Arizona, Maryland, Utah and Massachusetts.  The calculations that go into the Overpriced Calculation tend to involve two things:  the percentage of the local population who could actually afford a mortgage (which in San Diego, is less than 20%) and the factor by which a mortgage payment exceed rent for an equivalent home.  There gets to be a point at which, even with the Fed's permitted deduction for mortgage interest, it just doesn't make sense to buy an $600,000 fixer-upper in Escondido when you can rent a nice two-bedroom for $850 a month. 

News short:  Clinton has the balls to go on Fox News and say he got closer to killing Bin Laden than the current administration has achieved.  Somehow, God knows how, Jackass Number Two took that top box office spot.  A classified intelligence report states that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat to the US (well, duh).   Jerry Falwell states that Hillary Clinton running as the Democratic candidate for U.S. President would motivate the evangelicals greater than if Satan himself were running.  I will probably get a huge ration of shit for this in email and comments, but I agree.  I've listened to enough right-wing talk radio to know that, to conservatives, Hillary is the sensory equivalent to a shot of adrenalin administered via hypodermic to the heart.  As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing special about Hillary (OK, she's smart and competent, but that's not enough) and we need to find a candidate like Republicans John McCain or Colin Powell, who even moderate Democrats think about voting for.

Hey, the weekend is about over.  You guys have as good a week as possible.