I look at the cost benefit analysis of buying a home, and it just doesn’t seem like it is there to me.

Yeah you can claim the interest on your income tax as a deduction… guess what, you still paid those taxes out of pocket, and it doesn’t come anywhere near making up for the deduction.  Money down the drain.

Insurance, money down the drain.  Repairs and upkeep, money down the drain.  Taking out an interest charging loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars and paying it over the course of 30 years just doesn’t seem prudent to me.   I’m of the general opinion that borrowing money and paying interest are things to be avoided.  Necessary at times of course, but if avoided, all the better.

Not to mention, we’re paying $885 for a 1000 sq ft apartment with gated, covered parking, hot tubs, tennis courts, full fitness centers, someone is here all during the day to accept and hold packages, the location is wonderful, I need only take my garbage as far as my front door, where the trash pick up concierge service does the rest.

Where the fuck could I find a property in the same location with the same benefits, same amenities, for $885 a month including the principle pmt, PMI, interest, insurance, taxes, upkeep, etc etc?  Its impossible!

Meanwhile, I’m spending a paltry $450 in rent for all that stuff and my extra money goes into an interest bearing account, that is MINE, that i can access at any time or move into other investments.  Meanwhile, the money you pay towards you mortgage that builds you equity is stuck in your home, and all the while the housing bubble is collapsing.  Not a chance in hell your equity is going to go up these days.

Friend of ours bought a studio in Spire for $250k when it opened.  its worth $170k now.  He’s fucked.

Nah, we’re gonna stay renting for a while.  simple living, no headaches, low payment, save a ton of money and get a ton of amenities.  We can move whenever we like.  Its swell.

Bought my ‘98 formy in 2004, 48 month loan, it was paid off today in full.

Oh well, Its gonna be nice having an extra $300 laying around each month

This is a nice story.

It could not have happened at a worse time. A major snowstorm was howling outside. Whole Foods supermarket at Bishops Corner in West Hartford was jammed with shoppers anxious to get home for dinner.

Suddenly, the computer crashed. None of the cash registers could function. Ted Donoghue, the assistant manager running the store on the afternoon of Dec. 13, consulted associates and made a snap decision:

All customers passing through the registers would get their food for free until the computers were working again.

Woohoo! Free food!

I doubt any other chain store would have done the same thing, but this is Whole Foods, where every employee earns a living wage, employees are real team members and customer satisfaction is not just a saying but a practice.

“It was clearly a snafu on our end, and it didn’t seem right” to punish the customers by making them wait, Manager Kimberly Hall said.

She said Donoghue did not consult headquarters before making his decision and said she has heard no negative feedback from the top brass.

“They just totally trust us to do what is right for our customers,” she said.

It didn’t appear to be a big deal to Hall. In fact, neither the store nor the chain sought publicity for what happened.

One of the customers, Christine OConnell of West Hartford, tipped me off about the incident.

“I have the perfect Christmas story,” she wrote.

She said she picked up about $70 worth of groceries for a dinner party that night to celebrate the first snowstorm of the season. When she got to the cash register she was prepared to swipe her card, but an employee was blocking the machine.

He explained to her the problem and asked if she wanted paper or plastic.

“I was somewhat dazed by this comment and asked what I should do,” she wrote me. “He said, ‘You don’t understand, we can’t charge you and your groceries are free!’ I think I looked pretty silly standing there with my mouth open for a few minutes.”

A grateful OConnell said she will donate the $70 to a food bank, “and I thank Whole Foods heartily for what I think is truly the essence of Christmas spirit.”

Imagine the kind of world we would live in if all corporations were run like Whole Foods.

One time a friend of mine came to a party and told everyone he had just taken some bear tranquilizers and to give him a beer. We were all like “LOL, oh chris, you so crazy.”

A good 18 hours later he finally wakes up and has no fucking clue what day it even is

Can someone explain to me why only having two presidential candidates was a good idea?  I am getting so, so pissed off at people writing off both RP and Kucinich now, because they have “no chance” of even winning their primary, let alone winning the election.  Everyone’s saying its gonna be Hillary vs Guiliani for ‘08 and there’s nothing we can do about it.

What is this bull crap?  How did we get to the point that we can only have two options to vote for?

I mean christ, what if the NCAAF BCS Football championship bowl series only had two teams that got to play.  Or what if March Madness only had two teams in the whole bracket.  Or if ironman triathalons only had two competitors.

Why can’t we get 10, or 15, or 20 candidates?  All of them lined up and have them debate, and then you vote for who you like the most?  Maybe even have elimination rounds.  Fine, start with 20 candidates, america votes, 10 get eliminated.  then down to 5, then pick your president.

This status quo, two-party, republicrat bullshit is destroying america and it just doesn’t seem like there’s anything we can do about it.

The internet is angry this day, my friends. According to all trustworthy sources including the Discovery.com site itself, tonight’s 12/12/07 episode of Mythbusters was planned to tackle the “airplane on a treadmill” question that has plagued the vast depths of internet forums for going on 2 years now.

The hour came and passed with nary a mention of the venerable plane and its companion treadmill.

The Mythbusters forums are crashing; Thousands are coming on from OffTopic to demand explanation, as are thousands more from other forums world wide. I got on myself for a bit, all the explanation we’re getting is just one liners from equally pissed off viewers. You can feel a collective surge of anger stirring round the tubes this hour as The Mighty Discussion rages on, renewed once again without a definitive source to dispel the ignorant.

Mythbusters, you can go fuck yourselves.  However, in one strange twist of interest, searching on google for the phrase “mythbusters treadmill” results in this thread on the MetaForum beta site as the #1 result.  CrAzY!

[07:56] BEN4D1: gotta love it when you wake up in the morning and theres a dead guy outside your door
[07:56] BEN4D1: should i offer the cops a cup of coffee
[07:56] BEN4D1: hahaha
[07:56] brian lpt: pics or it didn’t happen

my new hobby:  going onto forums and finding the plane on a treadmill threads and then arguing, vehemently, that the sucker won’t take off.