Tuesday, September 23, 2008

I Swear To You People....

From "What Did I Ever Give You" by the Kaiser Chiefs

What did I ever give you
When you wanted me to
All I gave you was grief
Are you sick to your teeth


..... Sometimes I wish I had never invented the Interwebz. Seriously! Y'all are abusing the privilege! I'm half tempted to take it away from you for a few days.. See how many of you survive.

*sigh*

But I won't.. I never do. I threaten, I bluster, but I am a gentle and benevolent Swede.

However, I will shake my fist at you. I will sigh extravagantly at my monitor. I will bear this burden one more day..

... but watch yourselves. You never know what tomorrow holds.




(Shamelessy borrowed from some un-named poster on some seldom used forum.. completely without permission.. however, if the creator of this fine piece of work happens across my Blog, thank you!)

Monday, September 22, 2008

And Now For Something Completely Different..

From "Benny Lava" sort of by Buffalaxed

My loony bun is fine Benny Lava!
Minor bun engine made Benny Lava!
Anybody need this sign? Benny Lava!
You need a bun to bite Benny Lava!


I can't tell you exactly what has caused my terror induced sprint down memory road (mostly because I don't know), but I've been thinking about the past a lot lately. This is likely the most useless statement in the world, but here it goes; life is damned interesting!

I used to be a huge fan of the Peanuts comic strip. I also liked the animated TV stuff, but the REAL Peanuts was the strip. I must have had 20 different hard and soft backed Peanuts novels. So much that I started associating myself with Charlie Brown. (Of all the Joshua Butterfields in the world, I'm the Joshua Butterfieldest..)

One of the most memorable things (for me anyhow) that happened in the strip was Snoopy writing a story that started "It was a dark and stormy night..".

Here's the entire text of Snoopy's novel (which, alas, never got published by in-strip publishers..):

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

by Snoopy

Part I

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!

A door slammed. The maid screamed.

Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!

While millions of people were starving, the king lived

in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was

growing up.

Part II

A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the

tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.

At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was

making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in

Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas

who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the

daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?

The intern frowned.

"Stampede!" the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head

of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men

rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves.

A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An

uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch

was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the

coffee shop. he had learned about medicine, but more

importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END

*sniff* I laughed, I cried, I learned a little bit about myself. THAT, my friends, is writing.

So while I'm having all of these thoughts about peanuts, I'm also starving at work.. (typical) I walked over to the vending machine (completely atypical) to pick up some Swedish Fish. I put in my money, and instead of hitting the E and then the 10 button, I hit E and then 1 and then 0. However, to my surprise and chagrin, the machine wasn't waiting patiently for me to build a 10.. it saw E and 1 and went to town.

To my surprise, it dropped.....

......Peanuts.

Life is damned interesting sometimes.

I would like to take this moment to salute Charles M Schulz and all of the Peanuts crew. The life lessons I didn't learn from my Grandpa and Grandma, I learned from this crew.



Keep flying, Snoopy.. keep flying!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Buying a Home Is Like....

From "Inane" by KMFDM

DON'T BLOW YOUR TOP NOW, HERE WE GO !

KMFDM - WHAT'S THE DEAL
YOU'RE SO NAIVE, COME ON GET REAL !

KMFDM - FOR WHAT YOUR MONEY CAN BUY
LEAVE YOUR ANGST BEHIND AND FLY SKY-HIGH !


Yeah, so, we're buying a house. Ugh. However, I figured out the perfect metaphor for it.. I mean, sure we've all HEARD the metaphor, but now I finally understand it:

You start off nice and flat and you think "Heck, this'll be cake!"... Next thing you know there's the drop off.. "WHAT? I need WHAT? WHAT?!?!!" And then comes the rise.. "Ahhh, ok, we're good now.. phwew, that was close!" And then you take a few minor drops.. "eeh.. eeeeeeh! EEEEHHH!" But after all of that you get good news and then you're back to "PHWEW, almost done now!" And then comes the loop de loop outta no-where..
"No loan? But.. but... Wait, a new loan? Wait.. an ARM? Wait.." At the end of that you're not only unsure what's going on and which way is up anymore, but now you're just flat out tired of being on the ride..
"Crikey, does this frickin' thing ever stop, I need to pee!" and then after that you just become detached from the things going on.. like you can see your body going up and down on the ride, but the things you've been through before were so extreme that these things just don't bother you anymore.. "Weee, I guess?"

And now, ahead of us we see that there are two tracks.. one track leads back to CERTAIN FIERY DEATH and the other track leads to the house..

*pant pant pant pant*

And part of you is just like "Hell with it.. I don't care where I end up, just want off the ride!" Though even though you say it, you think "Well, ok, I care a lot, but I feel tougher saying things like Hell With It.."

Apparently the process for buying a home used to be more .... intuitive. Still pretty whimsical, but somewhat logical. In other words, the loan officer used to be able to contact the underwriter and explain things and provide information that would ultimately provide a more accurate picture of what the borrower is capable of.

Of course, the whole Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac situation was deteriorating rapidly when we were pushing our loan through underwriting. Maybe now that things have been seized things will return to normal? Maybe I'm optimistic, I don't know.

All I know is that it's been hard. It's hard having the rules change on you when you're 90% of the way through the process. It's hard when no one is notified until your loan just gets declined for a reason that didn't previously exist. It's hard living in limbo wondering if you're ever going to really find out.

In two months from now, when we're comfortably in the new place with a huge amount of celebrating and debauchery behind us, we'll look back on this and chuckle. We'll call up our loan officer and realtor for some drinks and have laugh ourselves silly.

..... but for now we wait. And... hope!