London Bridge

Did everybody else know that The London Bridge is in Arizona?

Ok, that is only partially true:

A bridge has existed at or near the present site (in London) since the Roman occupation nearly 2,000 years ago. The earliest contemporary written reference to a Saxon bridge is in 1016.

In 1968 they sold the London Bridge (designed by Rennie) to an entrepreneur from Missouri named Robert P. McCulloc. This bridge was taken apart and each piece numbered, then sent to Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

Back in London, the modern London Bridge opened in 1973.

So if you find yourself in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, don’t be surprised when you cross over London Bridge.

So, I just watched the M&M commercial...

So, I just watched the M&M commercial. Red and Yellow are setting on the coffee table while a man and a woman discuss the probability of the M&M’s limbs and shoes being chocolate too.




Now I am forced to wonder, if Plain Red and Peanut Yellow are the only Red and Yellow M&M’s that can talk? Or are there other Plain Reds and Peanut Yellows with different voices and personalities? Are all Green M&M’s female? Since she is Green, does that mean her Parental M&M’s would have to be Yellow and Blue? Are they a bunch of individual M&Ms or are they like the human Cylons? All Plain Reds share a collective personality and memories with all of the copies of Plain Red?



Since they know what chocolate tastes like does that make them cannibals? If a milk chocolate M&M eat a white chocolate M&M, is it still cannibalism?



Since it is almost always Plain Red and Peanut Yellow in the commercials are Plain Red and Peanut Yellow somehow higher in the M&M social structure?

God Hates Danny

I am a gay man with a caring and loving family. I have amazing friends, online friends from all over the world. So I ask a favor.

If you see a story about gay people do this. Replace fags or homo with Danny.

The sign really says “God Hates Danny”.

Remember “Danny cannot legally marry.”

Replace any gay connotation with my name; all of those headlines are about me.

Your Family Disaster Plan

With the events that happened today in Japan I want to encourage you all to set down with your family/friends/partners the people who are central to your life and would be concerned about your wellbeing if you or a loved one found themselves reacting to a ‘disaster’ situation.

I talk to people about it and they roll their eyes and chuckle like it’s never going to happen.

Set some time aside, get everyone together for a dinner or a BBQ and hand these out to the people you care about and those who care about you.  The site also gives lists of emergency kits you keep in your home and your car.  

If you can’t afford a cell phone go buy a 20 dollar go phone and get 20 or 30 minutes of talk time, just in case you need it.  Because if the world is ever pulled out of your feet, wouldn’t you be better off knowing that you have discussed the possible aftermath with everyone.

Also, people talk trash on Twitter and Facebook, but people in Japan were actually able to locate loved ones using Twitter and Facebook because the phones were overloaded with calls, but they could still connect to the internet.  

If it were for me to decide we would all live peaceful lives and never need to even discuss these things, but there is a myriad of dangers that could go off at anytime, anywhere.

Here are some additional links:

http://www.ready.gov/america/makeaplan/

http://www.redcross.org/images/pdfs/code/family_disaster_plan.pdf

The Banking Mess

           

The Banking Mess

           

(in very generalized laymen’s terms – and I am NOT AN EXPERT OR AUTORITY ON THE MATTER)

    

Several years back, the Federal Government did a study and they discovered that when banks were giving loans they were giving/approving loans preferentially.  That is to say, if you lived in ‘a bad part of town’ it was much more difficult to get financing because of location.

      

As I understand it, the Feds told banks that was being prejudice and they needed to offer better opportunities for the under qualified borrowers.

    

In response to this, the banks began to develop financing for @ risk borrowers, one of these plans was called an ARM Loan.

    

ARM stands for Adjustable Rate Mortgage.  So you would get a loan that was typically a two or three year ARM.  After the first two or three years, your interest rate would adjust automatically dictated by the current LIBOR (the standard international interest rate amount, look up LIBOR if you want to know more).

    

After your ARM period your loans interest rate could adjust to the current LIBOR +3%.  This adjustment would be revalued every 6 months and your interest rate would change.

     

INTENDED BENEFIT – Provide @ risk borrowers with the financing to prove that they could afford the payment and then have them refinance their loan before the first interest rate adjustment happened.  They would have an established payment history and could refinance to a fixed rate with an affordable loan.

    

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED – People got greedy, brokers, loan officers, buyers and even appraisers.  If you give good values to properties with these low interest rates (because they were ARMS) you get more money.  Good Appraisers get more business, loan officers make bigger commissions, and banks have excellent payment histories on loans that are performing perfectly.

      

WHAT BROUGHT IT DOWN – Many of the borrowers were very ignorant of the type of loan they were getting.  The DID NOT understand how it worked and how important it was to refinance before the interest rate adjustment occurred.  Suddenly their payments went up easily by 300 dollars a month and that’s on the low end.

    

Loans were defaulting across the board and everyone started scrambling not really understanding what was going on.

     

I will use myself as an example:  My house was probably worth between 55 to 65k.  My appraisal came back at almost 100k.  I took the loan, got cash out (like 30,000 which I ignorantly blew) and my payment was around 650 / month.  I fully intended to refinance before my ARM kicked in.

    

I forgot.  My house payment went up to nearly 1000 bucks a month; it took almost 4 months for me to manage to get a refinance.  In the end I had to walk away from my home.

     

The simplest nutshell I can put this in is this.

    

My home was over appraised; the bank gave me 30,000 dollars that never really existed.  I defaulted on it and the finance company had to eat that loss.  All of the investors that invested in that bank shared the loss, the investors that invest in those investors had to eat some of that loss and the hedge funds had to eat the loss AND the REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG INVESTORS who invest in the Hedge Funds had to eat the loss.

     

The top layer of investors have not even seen the losses hit their books yet, it could take a couple more years for the BIG MONEY investors to actually see the loss because they do investments in bundles of things that they don’t even know what their investment money is being put into.

    

So at the end of the day, each and every loan across the nation and in several countries was financed on over appraised properties.  The financial people gave loans against equity that didn’t exist and by the time the borrowers (all the millions of people at the very bottom of this chain) began to realize and understand the mess they were in, it was too late and millions of people couldn’t afford their adjusted mortgage payment.  Home gets foreclosed; borrower got the excess cash so it’s gone.  Banks have to eat the losses and it trickles up through several layers of investors.

    

This also happened on commercial properties (hotels, malls, city developments, etc., etc., etc.). 

    

So the government had to intervene.  The financial institutions ‘created and gave out money that never existed’ that money still doesn’t exist, but it has been spent.  It is gone and they are trying to stave off a meltdown of unimaginable proportions

    

This explanation is incomplete, it isn’t anywhere near perfect and it’s not meant to be, I’m just a pee-on and this is an EXTREMELY SIMPLE EXPLANATION of A TERRIBLY COMPLEX SERIES OF EVENTS.

    

I hope it at least answered some questions for you.

    

So who wants to play Monopoly?

Why you shouldn't give to the Salvation Army this holiday season

This really upsets me. I give consistantly to the door ringers every season. Hopefully the money that I gave was actually used to help some people (no GLTB people for sure but hopefully some people) and not money for their church and politics.

I would appreciate it if my friends and family would NOT support The Salvation Army until they change their ways.

This link leads to a video that pretty much explains their policies about the GLBT people out there that might need help.

Damn it, this really made me sad... a bunch of ASS HOLES!

Why you shouldn't give to the Salvation Army this holiday season