Somehow I missed this, but way back in November, I was tagged by John Cole for one of those "six interesting things" things. His link to me has been in the list of incoming links that WordPress gives me for three months, but I never looked at it, because I assumed it was attached to one the many comments I've left at BJ.

Oh well...

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

1. The first concert I went to on my own was Judas Priest and Fastway. I was probably 13 or 14, and the ticket was $12. The first concert I remember being taken to was a bluegrass festival in Lenox MA. Doc Watson played. I was probably still in diapers.
2. I made my first Bolognese sauce, last night. I used a recipe that came in a box of pappardelle. The recipe starts out by having you saute onions celery and carrot in one pan, and browning the ground veal in another pan. But, it never tells you to combine the two. So, I improvised. It still turned out pretty good, and was exceptionally filling. Next time, maybe I'll add a little cream or milk, and maybe some ground pork, too. This was much better than the insipid chicken cacciatore I made last week.
3. I first met my wife on-line, at college. This was back in the day before the WWW, though. We met in the poetry forum on something called Notes, on VAX/VMS. It was a little like a web forum, but text-based, and all users were local to the college.
4. I once met Billy Joel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in NYC. My father and I had gone down to NYC, on a day trip, just to bum around, see some sights, etc.. It was a weekday morning, and the Met was empty. We were in a big room with a small Egyptian temple, when we spotted him. He was pushing his daughter in a stroller, accompanied by what I assume was a body guard, and we were the only two other people in the room. We stood there in awe - this was in the mid-80s, when he was still huge, and being from a small upstate town, we didn't get to see any actual celebrities. He noticed we were gawking at him, and walked over to us to say Hi. We didn't get an autograph because none of us had a pen, but he did compliment me on my hat.
5. My father's mother's maiden name is "Borden" and I am told this is "Borden" as in "Lizzie Borden". I haven't been able to verify this, though.
6. When I was four or five, I went on a trip to Nova Scotia with my grandparents. As soon as we got off the ferry, a bee stung me in the ear.
   

Whew. Six was tough. But at least it wasn't 25 random things.

And I'm supposed to tag six other bloggers? Man, I don't know six other bloggers.

Happy Birthday!

Cardio For Indie Rockers

Old Jews Telling Jokes

Orla The Orphaned Otter

Damn I love conservative economics. It makes me feel like the motherfucking angel of compassion.

American consumers are awash in debt, drowning in it. This is the fundamental issue with the stimulus proposal. We're trying to borrow our way out of debt. Unfortunately, we need a recession. That is, consumption must decline because for some time we have been consuming more than we produce or have reasonable prospects of producing. Monetary policy has been used to inflate a series of bubbles to avoid the consequences of excess debt, and the more we try to hold it off, the worse it's going to be. Bourbon works as a hangover cure, but only for a while.

It's theoretically possible for an intelligently-designed stimulus action to help smooth this landing a bit, but we can't avoid a painful adjustment. Americans are going to live in smaller houses, drive older cars, vacation nearer to home and have less impressive digital camcorders than they expect.

"Vacation nearer to home"? Well, I guess that's one way to put it.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits has reached an all-time record, the government said Thursday, and more layoffs are spreading throughout the economy.

The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest on records dating back to 1967. That's an increase of 159,000 from the previous week and worse than economists' expectations of 4.65 million.

This year, I imagine lots of people are going to spend their summer looking for jobs or standing in line at the unemployment office - having driven there in their old cars , I'm sure:

Ford Motor Co. said Thursday it lost $5.9 billion in the fourth quarter and burned through $5.5 billion in cash as sales slumped

Ah, but that's Ford - when's the last time they made any money? What about our shiny Japanese friends?

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s second-largest automaker, forecast its first operating loss in 71 years on plummeting demand, prompting Moody’s Investors Service to consider downgrading the company’s top-rated credit.

The carmaker will post a 150 billion yen ($1.7 billion) loss in the year through March, it said in a statement today, scrapping a previous forecast of a 600 billion yen profit.

“The environment we’re in is extremely tough,” President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters today in Nagoya. “We’re facing an unprecedented emergency situation. Unfortunately, we can’t see the bottom.”

Unprecedented emergency? Nah, this is just a trip to fat camp for all of those greedy, fat, over-consumers who are all stuffed with their ill-gotten loot - and now there aren't any donuts for the rest of us! But, a few weeks of rice cakes and push-ups and they'll be good to go. Thursday is movie night - free Crystal Light! Leave your crappy camcorders at home, nobody wants to see what really happens while you're being painfully adjusted. It'll be fun!

And his precious economy will be all better.

The History Of The Oval Office Desk

I'll be putting up a Name That Tune sometime in the next few days. Go peel your eyes.

(this post is here so i won't forget to do it...)

Warning: BSG spoilers in the comments below

Think Your Cube Sucks?

Senatorial Hit-list