Love On The Beach

I have shamelessly stolen this from Odat because she is a genius at illustrating important socio-political points. If any person in this video is more appealing to you than another, it almost certainly isn't because of their race, religious belief, country of national origin, and so on and so forth. That's the way it ought to be, the normative. If you look carefully, you can see most of my favorite people in this video.

Like Amytree, a transplanted Californian living in Devon, England who seems to handle more difficult situations with grace and aplomb than I could ever dream of dealing with. Just as important, she has a way with her animals that is tender, caring and touching. Amy is not only dancing, she made most of the costumes.

Glamourpuss is a redhead, because she told me she is a redhead.I have simply adored Puss for a long, long time. She is incredibly smart, unbelievably well read, she writes magnificently and does not stop thinking. All of this will endure after her career as a pole dancer. She was dancing on the beach I believe.

Crankster and his entire family, sister Ella, wife Misanthropster, and daughter Georgia were in the video too. Ella did their decorations with her special paint. I'd give Ella her own award if she had a blog. I adore Crankster, and have become very close to him over a period of time. He's the brother I never had. You can see him dancing with a group of us. I was in lavender swirls. He was holding his daughter Georgia, very easy to spot.

Franki has been a friend for a long time and I genuinely like her. I have seen more of her than any other blogger. She's a sushi buddy. She also is a good friend of the wife's, always a welcome guest for both of us, and she's hilarious on top of it. Similarly, is Say It, previously known as Pool, a source of enormous wisdom and friendship for me. I adore both of these women. They were bogeying in the video with the wife, Franki's kids, and Pool's family.

For those of you who don't know Tiffany King, in real life, she is a blond bombshell who is one of the funniest people I have ever met. If she weren't happily in a relationship, and I wasn't happily in a relationship, I'd be chasing Tiffany and asking to be trained in massage and adjustments as an excuse. She's the dancing blond in the video.

James Burnett and his wife Mrs. B. were also on the beach together, swaying to the music. You could have noticed that Mrs. B. is exceptionally rhythmic. Her radiance comes when James sings in his deep and melodious voice. Who knew he was a radio guy before he became almost a professional race car driver. He's even better as a journalist. I never write to him enough, he's a guy I genuinely like.

Heart in San Francisco writer a.k.a. Hearts or Susan, is an all-time favorite. She has the entire package, the gestalt. That means, I can't describe everything she can do superbly well because it would take forever. A creative writer of reknown, she organized and led the dance on the beach, to include the filming. She was assisted by Open Grove Claudia.

If you have no idea of the high pedestal that I have put Open Grove Claudia deservedly onto, then you haven't been reading my blog for a while. Not only did Claudia help Susan, she was rocking out in the video. Naturally.

I have this thing for WnG , I just enjoy her blog enormously. She is a great writer, and she puts her heart and soul into everything she does. Periodically, she writes the most profound posts that I get to read. She was dancing next to me on the video.

Wicked H and I have had a brother and sister act going for quite a while now. Every time we talk on the phone, hours melt into minutes, and it is obvious that there is a warm relationship just waiting to happen. We have yet to meet in real life. We blame it on our schedules, our families, and when necessary, I blame M@. Naturally. He's very handy that way, and that means he's also my friend in real life. You can see them both dancing in the video.

Skinny Little Blond is absolutely a Philosopher Queen. She's a lot easier to read than Sartre, and just as insightful. She often writes of the love of her family, and the richness she revels in because of it. Regardless of the topic, she writes with insight. You can see her dancing with her sisters on the roof in the video.

MJ has been a long term friend-buddy-pal who I care about for a long, long time. She hides out with her husband in Utah. Occasionally she disappears into the hospital to try to teach the local doctors some medicine. She is way too kind to them. She used to have Great Danes, but had to give them up unfortunately. She's also in the video.

Heather of the Phoenix Hearse also has a gorgeous Great Dane, and is quite devoted to her dog, as well as her Hearse. She has parlayed a background in automotive engineering (a Masters) into being a Nissan test driver. I enjoy her blog a lot. You can tell Heather as she's the one dancing with the big dog and having a blast.

Lee, a.k.a. Nosjunkie, along with Will and her fiance Stiffla, all of Misfit Mania comprise one of the best exports from South Africa you can read. Lee is hilarious. Will is sort of a philosopher Prince, and Stiffla keeps Lee very happy, so she dotes on him, and worries about both of them endlessly. They also were part of the wonderful dance routine, Lee made sure they were there on time.

I have save some of the best for last. I have had this not-so-secret thing for Echomouse for quite a while now. We shared a less than perfect 2007 together. I am hoping we are having a much better 2008sort of together. You see, we live a couple of thousand miles apart. That's blogging for you. Watch Echomouse, better known as Carrie, dancing in the sun in Love on the Beach.

Then there's CMHL, Allan and Ali, and Mist. The blog wouldn't exist without them.

And last, but hardly least, there's Odat,who is the best, and can get me laughing when no one else can. I don't have the vocabulary to describe how wonderful Odat really is, you need to get to know er to appreciate her. And you should.

I grabbed the video from her to 'discuss race' on the blog. I did just that. The video portray the World as I'd like it to be, a place for everyone, with love and music. A bit idealistic perhaps, but it beats the hell out what we have currently, the descriptive. Too much hate and rancor for my taste.

I'm giving everyone listed above the following three awards,Best Blogging Buddies, Friendship Is A Light In The Dark, and Sexy Blogger Award. They all deserve it, each and every one. Some of them deserve the award more than once and are receiving it for a second time. My heart is in the right place. What with the new job, and all the certifications, you too can help stamp out racism. I could never notify all of these people of their awards. I can't even get all of their URLs in place. They are all in the blogroll. But if you, the reader went to someone else's blog and told them of their award, and introduced yourself, thereby meeting someone new, you too could risk meeting someone wonderful like the Skinny Little Blond, and telling her that I had given her an award. Same thing for Say It. I'll bet you have never met someone with chartreuse swirls and an attitude! Isn't it about time?

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Have a safe, happy, health St. Patrick's Day. I don't have any good stories, do you? That's what comments are for!

I Am Truely Grateful

I find myself commuting to work and getting there, thankful that I didn't kill anyone on the way there. I didn't intentionally run anyone off the road. I never fired a single photon torpedo, never opened up the 50 caliber machine guns during the interstate combat with the high speed 25 mile an hour jockeying for position on the high speed highways. I say 25 miles per hour because that is high speed when things are moving well. Hand to hand combat is more likely on a bad day.

I am almost equally as grateful in neighborhoods, such as Bethesda, aliens will suddenly cross the street in the middle of the block in front of the car while it is moving. Yesterday, an alien walked right in front of the car as I was backing into a parking space. Tonight, I was doing 35 miles per hour down Arlington Road when another alien walked right in front of my car, causing me to slam on my brakes barely missing them. She made an obscene gesture at me, ignoring the fact that I was driving a 3500 pound vehicle and expecting it to stop on a dime. Literally. I was grateful that I didn't kill her, as I don't have the time or money to defend, even though I'd probably win the legal battle, eventually.

I don't think I qualify for Open Grove Claudia's blog Everyday Kindness when what I'm thankful for is avoiding massive slaughter and killing on the road. Even avoiding single idiot removal doesn't qualify as an act of everyday kindness. The rest of the blogroll (you all know who you are) would be going "tsk tsk tsk" and I can only handle so much tsking. Ask M@, he once saw me lose it over excessive tsking, it was ugly I tell you. Maybe he'll blog about it one day, if he ever recovers from the fallout from the exploding Worcestershire sauce. He was pretty traumatized by it. I think he had to get a new kayak, but I digress.

When I get all down in the mouth and unhappy and depressed, I generally just go to the 'actual' Open Grove itself. The Open Grove is a complete source of holistic living. It is a fabulous source, and you will find it on my blogroll. I consider it as important a resource as Investors Business Daily, Jim Cramer, and Barry Ritholtz, three of my personal cornerstones. The Open Grove is the fourth. If you have never been, you should go take a look. It's a great step toward living better. It is temporarily on hold, as Claudia pauses to consider her options. Can't hurt to stop by and let her know what you think, and maybe what you would like to see, and support in the future. But please, do stop by and let her know what you think. Claudia is a LOT more than just another pretty face!

Stagflation

You're going to hear a lot about stagflation as the primaries and then the election heat up, yet few people seem to know what stagflation means. That seems to include the politicians. I am not taking sides here, both parties offend me equally. I offer you a modern, working definition that almost anyone of you can use, and immediately know more than the political parties (except for the really good economists that they hire).

Stagflation is when a country's inflation rate exceeds its growth rate.

Plain and simple. Your currency is devaluing faster than your economy is producing goods and services. You are losing two ways. First, inflation is when you produce more money than goods and services. I'm avoiding more classical terms like calling goods and services 'factors of productions'. Technically, they are labor, capitol, land, and entrepreneurial ability. Mix those factors together and they produce goods and services. Each one earns a return, such as wages, rent, interest, a return. So when a factor, or the factors earn a return that exceeds their productivity, you have inflation. Sounds pretty boring, eh.

When you get a real estate bubble, and real estate starts to fall, and mortgages start to get defaulted upon, and capital is destroyed, the Federal Reserve Board, naturally, cuts interest rates. Many of you may not realize it, but cutting interest rates creates money. Entrepreneurs start new businesses. Existing businesses start new projects that becomes feasible at lower interest rates since they borrow money to finance expansions. People refinance their houses, and often take money out and expand or upgrade their existing homes. These are reasons to borrow, and to consume.

People stopped buying houses, and started selling them in droves. This has continued. According to RealtyTrac, as reported by Barry Ritholtz of "The Big Picture" a supurb financial and economic blog, there were 153,745 initial foreclosure notices sent out in the United States in January. During the same period, there were sales of 43,000 total sales of newly built single-family homes, which just so happened to be about half of the total sales which included existing homes and condos. So initial foreclosures are about the same as total sales. Not a lot of room for price increases in the real estate. Our current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernake has recently told Congress that he is prepared to cut rates again. By cutting rates, more money will be made available, and it will produce inflation, partly because the economy is slowing, and partly because the other countries of the world are not cutting interest rates.

There are other little land mines out there to consider in this election year. Foreigners hold about half of this countries debt. If you held a couple of hundred billion of this countries debt, like China does, and you saw our increasing inflation rate, what would you do? Those bonds are denominated in dollars, which are dropping in value in the currency markets to new lows, as compared to let's say one of Glamourpuss' pounds sterling. Gold is closing in on $1000 an oz. China recently gave the Blackstone Group $2 billion dollars to buy into American companies.

Now watch carefully, here's where it gets a little tricky. The economy is slowing down. If you're really smart and market savvy, you have been buying the huge multi-national companies with large foreign sales. Small and medium sized companies, which outperform their enormous cousins in the stock markets typically sell within a country's borders. Small companies grow faster than bigger ones.Small and medium sized American companies are struggling. The Big American international companies like General Electric are coming to life as their huge international sales rev up.

OK, let's summarize here, we're pumping out a lot more money because we have problem with real estate falling, and people defaulting on mortgages. We wrote a piece on option arm mortgages and how they were destroying people when home prices stopped going up. We're paying the piper now. The financial markets have been disrupted because of those mortgages, and constitute several posts all by themself. They have hurt anyone trying to refinance in the last year, and as far away as Europe. The dollar is falling because of the interest rate cuts, and the economy is slowing as we slow our consumption, and unemployment will rise. We are probably either in or about to go into a recession. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the economy (as measured by the Gross Domestic Product). The GDP for the 4th Quarter was up 0.6%, just barely positive. Inflation for the same period probably ran a bit over 3%, up from the previous period, higher than the growth rate for the period (hello Richard Nixon, our last period of stagflation before rampant inflation in the 70's). Don't think that the politicians have any silver bullets, or will make things crystal clear, or can repeal the business cycle, which we haven't discused. Notice, I haven't mentioned either political party, or any candidate. We're all in this together. I close with the first exercise in C progromming. Printing out the two words, "Hello World".

There's a lot to ponder here, hence Rodin's "Thinker" to help you mull things over. A little art always helps a lot, hence, the following recommendations!

For better writing, I'd personally read Open Grove Claudia, Hearts, and James Burnett. For different and unique there The Phoenix Hearse and Odat, as usual. And for pure, unrivaled joy, there's always my friend, buddy, pals WnG, Glamourpuss, Frankie and Amytree. M@ is at the Doc's so.........

Open Grove Claudia's Meme

**Start Copy
Here are the rules:

You are about to send a virtual Message In a Bottle across the Blog Ocean. Leave a message in the sand or on the bottle. Write anything you wish. Be a pirate or a poet. Serious or silly. Anonymous or not.

What message would you like to send out to the universe?


Message In A Bottle Meme


1. Compose a message to place in your virtual bottle
2. Right click and Save the graphic below
3. Use a graphics program of your choice to place the message on the picture
4. Post the meme and these rules on your blog
5. Return your "Message In a Bottle" to me via email ~ mimiwrites2005 at yahoo.com, sign the Mr. Linky below and leave a comment HERE telling me you've finished. IF YOU WANT YOUR MESSAGE TO BE ANONYMOUS PLEASE SAY SO.
6. Tag a minimum of five people - or your entire blogroll - to do the same. Notify them of the tag.






I'm sending two messages, Tempus Fugit, or Time Flies in Latin; and This Too Shall Pass, demonstrating that everything in life is temporary. I once tried to quantify 'Time Flies' by looking at the difference in how long it takes for a year to pass for a 10 year old versus say a 50 year old. Think along the lines of Y = (1/x)**2 where Y is a year, and x is the age of the person. The ten year old is in school, and school lasts forever, yet summer flies by. A year for a 50 year old moves at a speed that feels like it's just about the speed of light. This explains the inverse of your age, the squaring just makes the point stronger.

As for This Too Shall Pass, it may feel like a kidney stone while it's passing, but everything, in time, does pass.

Anyone that wants to do this, enjoy yourself.