Keeping up with Sarah

Salaam Dear Safdar

We received the following email con which presumes that we would want to impersonate the relative of a wealthy dead man in Dakar in order to abscond with 45% of his $8MM fortune.
...

Salam Dear Safdar

I am pleased to introduce a business opportunity to transfer to your
overseas account the sum of($8.4M USD)Eight million Four hundred thousand
United States Dollars from one of the Prime Banks here in Dakar Senegal .

I am Mr Yusuf kamara(Bsc,Msc) the Auditor General of one of the prime banks
here in Dakar Senegal, during the course of our auditing, I discovered a
floating funds valued at US$8.4M (Eight Million Four Hundred Thousand United
States Dollars ) in an account opened in our bank since 1998 and up till
date no body has operated on the account .

The owner of the account is Late Engr. Sam .A .Safdar, an estate
consultant, He was one of the death victims of December 12th 1999, plane
crash in Abdijan Cote D'ivoire,together with his family without leaving
a[Heir/WILL] .Hences the floating situation of the account .

Therefore ,with a personal conviction of trust and confidence ,I wish to
contact you as a foreigner , since you are of the same surname to stand as a
relative, thus I can work out the release of this fund, No other person in
the office knows about the account, please be assured of the risk free , I'm
the one that will work it out , all I need is your cooperation because the
account content can not be approved to an indigen here as his next of kin
just as his files in the office implies.

At the conclusion of this project , I propose a joint investment of an equal
partnership to you or we may share it in a ratio of 45% for you and 55% for
me.

One more thing please; I beg you not to consider this against moral
justification, they are many other aspects of life we may contribute with
this funds to help the less privileged and the needy in any society than
having it shared as an unclaimed bill among Government PLEASE .

I look forward to your earliest response.

Yours Truly

Mr. Yusuf kamara

....

I love that last paragraph. I find it heartwarming to know that he would prefer not to have to do this because after all 55% of $8MM is meant to cover the needs of the less privileged. "Please don't judge me for trying to con you" is what I really read, because we're damn poor here in Senegal (or wherever he really is, the email is from a hotmail.fr account). I love the libertarian appeal ("Government shouldn't have this money). I find the honorableness of the appeal for forgiveness ironic from a society overwhelmed with problems that come from shame like HIV, prostitution, homophobia.

Here is a great article in the New Yorker on someone who fell for one of these scams (though I some how doubt it was because they happened to share a fictional dead person's Islamic last name: How a Dr. Fell for Nigerian Scam

Peace he wishes me. I wish him peace too.

Want to buy me a present for a holiday I don't celebrate?

Send a care package to a soldier fighting a pointless, bloody and increasingly dangerous war instead.

http://anysolider.com/WhereToSend/

Evidence that Whiny Maureen Dowd is just...

take a guess:
1) a difficult person - and therefore as Shabbir would put it "undateable"
2) whiny
3) a half-glass full kind of reporter going for the high end advertiser who wants to sell diamond rings as more than engagement rings

From the Washington Post:
"Today, women with a college degree or higher are more likely to marry than women with less education and lower earnings potential."

Best Birthday Present Ever

An Election Day Birthday is always tough. Though in DC it's really a boon: Indeblue was nearly empty and parking in downtown was as easy as parking at Walmart.

Best of all, however, were the democratic victories in the Senate, House and among the U.S. Governors. These graphics from the New York Times point out how the tide is changing. In no category did the Republicans gain a single seat.

The senate is nearly tied, which means the Republican senators are going to have to listen to the people instead of the President. The house belongs to the Democrats. Let's hear it for our own sparkplug Madame Speaker Pelosi, winning the trifecta for Democrats, women's rights, and the personal accomplishment of pushing out bumbling Dennis Hastert, who's first post-election day announcement was for anonymous page tip line.

And from youtube.com I give you:

Here's to a better future without war, without neglect, without W.

Crafty Bastards: Or How Nickelodeon influenced our culture

On Sunday my son and I went to the Craft Bastards craft fair in Adams Morgan at Marie Reed school. The weather was lovely, the site was packed with vendors, and it was crowded enough that we could barely get through to the stalls. It was an exciting day in the world of crafting.

Our first stop was Sticky Fingers' booth for the very last of their sticky buns, which they let me have, in exchange for payment later, because I turned out to be cash free. Twenty minutes later, after a run to the ATM across the street, we had paid three bucks for the bun which M had already devoured. I highly, highly recommend Sticky Fingers: the baked goods are vegan which means M can eat as much as he wants of them, and it means, in general, that there will be less fat (no eggs, no cream), which means less cholesterol and less calories than the other boutique hipster bakery in the neighborhood, Cake Love, which also represented at the fair. Both make cakes that are, IMHO, too sweet. And while I've been a longtime lover of Warren's wares, I'm a bit *over* the hypersweetness.

But that was as far as sugary sweet went at this craft fair.

We, alas, had no second stop. Granted, it was very crowded, and it was in the afternoon, so perhaps my random selection was less than random. However, there wasn't much variety there. I know, I know, for those men among you who read this mostly knitting blog, you think craft fair and immediately think of red and green hand painted wood Christmas ornaments, or gingham square mantlepiece dolls, the kind of kitsch that fills the homes of middle America and innumerable numbers of my relatives. This was not your mother's craft fair. I didn't see one piece of gingham, not even used ironically, but oh, was the irony big. The irony was so big it was no longer ironic.

And I ask this vitally important alternative culture metric question: HOW MANY TIMES DOES SOMETHING HAVE TO REAPPEAR IN CULTURE BEFORE IT IS NO LONGER ALTERNATIVE?

I could have outfitted the entire third grade class of Marie Reed with the off-center, dank colored, purposefully ugly, silk screened t-shirts available at innumerable booths. I could have inculcated the entire children's ward of Georgetown Hospital with hand made ugly dolls and created a pre-school generation of goths and zombie fanatics.

I very, very much appreciate the "interestingness" of these memes, especially as they were originally done, by Ren and Stimpy and I Feel Sick (comic and cartoon geeks can get me here and point out that even my popular culture reference is *too* popular). But let me tell you twenty-somethings, that you're wearing the clothes and culture of someone who's almost 40 years old, and this is neither new nor exciting. As one of the booths honestly proclaimed, "Art School Drop Out!" most of these crafters (like hipsters only even more mainstream?) clearly had dropped out before art history of the later twentieth century. I want my son to be exposed to as much creativity as possible, and I found nothing there to buy for him that I couldn't have gotten in a commercial store.

Piercing your lip, wearing all black and scribbling is no longer creative.

Craft Bastards - more like Crafty Boredom.

In an alternative universe

Al Gore as President.

"What part of lockbox don't you understand?"

"You wake up in the morning thinking about food."

Don't we all? We wake up every morning and our responsibilities are to feed the baby, the dogs, and finally ourselves. It seems like a lot of work, to go downstairs, find the food in the refrigerator, put it out, consume it, clean up and then go on with my day. Yet it's hardly a matter of daily contemplation.

For the Nukak-Makú, however, it's the goal of the day. Find food to eat for the day. Eat it. Go to sleep. Find food to eat for the next day. We were once all there, and how easily we forget how good our lives are. They are jungle dwellers in Colombia who do not wear ties, commute to work, use computers, indoor plumbing, buy SUVS, or take vacations via airplane. And a band of them have walked out of the jungle and asked Colombia to take them in. They want to live near a village, learn to grow food (read that again...learn to grow food), and become part of Colombia culture.

Here are some tidbits from the article:
"Are they sad [to have left the jungle]? "No!" cried a Nukak named Pia-pe, to howls of laughter. In fact, the Nukak said they could not be happier. Used to long marches in search of food, they are amazed that strangers would bring them sustenance — free.

What do they like most? "Pots, pants, shoes, caps," said Mau-ro, a young man who went to a shelter to speak to two visitors.

Ma-be added, "Rice, sugar, oil, flour." Others said they loved skillets. Also high on the list were eggs and onions, matches and soap and certain other of life's necessities. [Clearly NOT necessities - the Nukak could teach us a lot about what are really necessities.]

One young Nukak mother, Bachanede, breast-feeding her infant as she talked, said she was happy just to stay still. "When you walk in the jungle," she said, "your feet hurt a lot."

All live in shelters now, enjoy constant medical attention and, on weekends, stroll into town to take in the sights. "Nukak life is hard in the jungle," Dr. Maldonado said. "You wake up thinking about food and you go hunt, you go search for nuts. So when they see us they think their food problems are over."
---
And they are. Now when I wake up in the morning I will think, "Do I need to strap my child to my back and go out foraging for berries for him to eat for breakfast and shooting at monkies until I bring one down?"

Three Things I wish I could See, and if you're not going and don't have a baby, you're a punk

Paul Mooney with Dick Gregory? Can you say, "All hail the godfathers of humor?" Tonight at the 9:30 club.

And the SAME NIGHT, Wanda Sykes, who clearly owes some props to Mooney and Gregory at the Warner Theater.

And then Sunday night, it's Chuck Brown, DC's own Go-Go-dfather.

Were I able to get a babysitter on short notice, my kid wouldn't see me at all this weekend.

Condo Bust Begins

Working in the real estate industry, though I'm neither a real estate agent, nor a mortgage broker, so don't ask me about those things, I ride the crests of real estate trends, like a kayaker trying to stay just beyond the breakers. My clients tend to be surfers, who start on the crest with me and then ride up to the peak, and often into the curl, before they get some other sucker to take the rest of the downward ride. The most recent interesting swell has been the increase in residential home prices of the past five years, especially the last two, and the burgeoning supply of new homes and new condominiums in light of the surge in prices. It hasn't been unheard of to see 25% increase in condo prices in a year in strong markets, and even in markets that suffer both bountiful supplies of land and lack of zoning regulations, condominium buildings and condominium conversion have been going strong. Everyone I know who rents has been lamenting their inability to buy in the past two years. Well I'm here to tell you you've been saving your money.

The New York Times has an article about Las Vegas, one of the hottest, meaning most supply built, markets in the past few years. Typically with new condominiums, in a strong market, the condo developers try to pre-sell the units before they're built. They build a model unit, often in another, existing building or one currently under construction, and they'll sell the un-built condominium unit based upon buyers liking the finishes and room layouts of the model. Granted the buyers haven't ever stood on the 7th floor of the unbuilt building and seen that the unit they've purchased has windows on three sides that look onto brick walls 12 feet away, but the demand, shall we say potential hysteria, for condominium apartments and the federal home-owner tax deduction so heavily touted as almost another right of democracy, like public education and sewers, has pushed many happy renters blindly into purchasing. One of the touted selling points by the real estate professionals involved, in markets such as we've had recently, is the expected re-sale value of the home. People have been buying not one but two and more condominium units with the expectation that they will be able to rent and then re-sell the units for a profit. That's a nice long-term goal, but unless you're in the business and have been following the trends for a long time, it's not a bit different than day-trading in 1999.

The article in the Times talks about one of the largest condominium developers in the country, and their abortion of a new condo development after marketing and receipt of deposits. Now, according to most state laws, though I haven't checked up on Nevada's and they're a rogue state in many ways, in order to market a condominium for sale, the developer must have met and been approved by the appropriate boards for development, including full architectural plans, which is not a cheap undertaking. To put this another way, for a company to pull out of a development after receiving deposits means that the company believes that the amount of money they will receive from individual condominium buyers is not profitable enough to actually build the building. This is striking! It's shocking!

The time line on this occurs as such: The land owner develops a condominium plan with the goal of netting a profitable return, then goes and gets the appropriate governmental approvals and then markets the proposed developments, prior to building, and then builds the units. Stage 1, the plan development takes into consideration current market values for condominiums. By Stage 4, building the units, the developers should have pre-sold a substantial number of the units, but not all of them, but enough to verify their belief in the market value of the units. In a city with an easy zoning board, like Las Vegas, though an interesting construction union, the time between Stage 1 and Stage 3 may be as brief as three months. The company in the article marketed the property and received the deposits in May 2005, and yet 7 months later, they're pulling the development. Get it yet? In seven months, the market value of these condominiums moved from profitable to unprofitable. That is a substantial swing. One of the country's largest condo developers with substantial experience and depth in most major American markets did not foresee the change of condominium value in what could be a timeline of just seven months.

That's a substantial dip in the market which has occurred without a major hike in long term interest rates, though they are up from the bottom of the market, but with short-term ARMS still available. Credit conditions haven't tightened, but demand has still dried up enough to drop prices. Perhaps because in Las Vegas with minimal limitations on development, overbuilding has dropped condo prices. I haven't had time to check the research on this, I'm just speculating.

So, in brief, never fear, current renters, you haven't missed the wave, it's peaked and is cresting, and another low tide will be along for you when you've got some more cash saved up! As for those of you that purchased in this ride, my hope is that you bought for the long term and didn't buy for "investment" in those growth markets, and that you bought in markets with substantial barriers to entry, i.e. New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, etc.

Today, I'm a cow

From Shabbir's last post
"AMERICAN SYSTEM:
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead."

Working this weekend AGAIN.