Saturday, January 8, 2011
blogging is retarded. But I'm shitty at expression and straight garbage "at" creativity. Which sucks, because I am inspired by things and feel feelings, unlike most robots. What makes creative people tick? How does someone wake up and, without reflection, just paint something beautiful, pen a song or a story, or design....something. I wish I were party to the Promethean expedition and could trade in some of my talents for dour, sober analysis for an artistic spark. Let me take that back. I have moments of sudden inspiration, but the second step, actually turning the gears and expressing myself, is where I fall short. How does one get better at this? Can you?
Sunday, October 31, 2010
For a guy who spends 8 hours per day in a lab, I have a pretty decent informal education in real estate and finance. Two friends work in private wealth management, one is a marketing director for a new real estate development, one worked in reverse mortgaging for the past several years, and one appraises commercial real estate. It is from this last friend that I've been hearing for acouple years now that the punctured residential real estate bubble has merely been the tip of the iceberg.
The coming trouble, he says, is that commercial real estate leases typically run on five-year terms before re-evaluation and negotiations for renewal. The favorable interest rates and cheap credit of the early and mid 2000s resulted in tons of business expanding, getting new offices, warehouses, production facilities, etc etc. Now they face the double blow of stagnant demand (though the economy does seem to be improving) and the end-term of drastically distorted leases they can no longer pay for. Bad enough for the lessees--many of which are downsizing already-- and a boon for appraisors like my friend, whose firm has never been busier, but a nightmare for property owners and banks. Yet, I hear surprisingly little about this in the media. Why, I don't know. I watch for such things in WSJ, The Economist, and HuffPost, to name a few, but perhaps the news cycle is just dominated by other, slightly more tractable problems-- such as the foreclosure crisis currently being subjected to government action and intense media coverage.
I'd like to think that my buddy is wrong, at least in his estimation of the magnitude of the problem, but I'm afraid he's not. Oy. Just what the country needs now-- another gaping hole in the mortgage market and empty buildings instead of productive businesses. Huzzah! Makes me pretty sick to think that the same banks that played a significant part in inflating the last credit bubble and financing, out of thin air, the building and purchasing of hundreds of thousands of homes that Americans truly couldn't afford, are now paying "Foreclosure robots" to stamp papers on even deserving homeowners, whilst the second wave of pain from this crisis is just ahead. Thank God I'm 26, rent, earn next to nothing, and have no kids.
The coming trouble, he says, is that commercial real estate leases typically run on five-year terms before re-evaluation and negotiations for renewal. The favorable interest rates and cheap credit of the early and mid 2000s resulted in tons of business expanding, getting new offices, warehouses, production facilities, etc etc. Now they face the double blow of stagnant demand (though the economy does seem to be improving) and the end-term of drastically distorted leases they can no longer pay for. Bad enough for the lessees--many of which are downsizing already-- and a boon for appraisors like my friend, whose firm has never been busier, but a nightmare for property owners and banks. Yet, I hear surprisingly little about this in the media. Why, I don't know. I watch for such things in WSJ, The Economist, and HuffPost, to name a few, but perhaps the news cycle is just dominated by other, slightly more tractable problems-- such as the foreclosure crisis currently being subjected to government action and intense media coverage.
I'd like to think that my buddy is wrong, at least in his estimation of the magnitude of the problem, but I'm afraid he's not. Oy. Just what the country needs now-- another gaping hole in the mortgage market and empty buildings instead of productive businesses. Huzzah! Makes me pretty sick to think that the same banks that played a significant part in inflating the last credit bubble and financing, out of thin air, the building and purchasing of hundreds of thousands of homes that Americans truly couldn't afford, are now paying "Foreclosure robots" to stamp papers on even deserving homeowners, whilst the second wave of pain from this crisis is just ahead. Thank God I'm 26, rent, earn next to nothing, and have no kids.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Yes, we have vacancies.
In the same week the chronic vacancies plaguing Dubai's army of new buildings made the Yahoo! front page, my friend announced he was visiting the emirate with his girlfriend after a stop in Europe. Oddly, for middle-class kids originally from Idaho, he is not the first of my friends to make the trip to this tiny experiment in controlled excess on the Arabian peninsula. The first time someone went, I was stunned. Why, with the funds at your disposal, would you visit a creepily post-modern amalgam of oil money, hot sand, and impetuously tall, empty buildings? Why not Thailand, or Peru, or...my backyard!? Frankly, any place with plants!?
The bottom line here is that I've read, watched, and listened to numerous reports on the construction debacle occurring in Dubai, and I find the place simultaneously fascinating and repulsive. I want to say it's a classic case of trying to get ahead the wrong way and paying for it, but it's not really so clear-cut. Dubai is, as Johann Hari calls it in one of his articles for the London Independent (see below), a glittering neo-liberal facade teetering on the edge of oblivion. I think of it as an archetype for the globalized world-- a desert state that has leveraged meager natural resources into a playground for the elites of finance and global trade-- and its current travails might tell us much about the solvency of the ideas behind Dubai's rise and fall.
*A quick aside, as per wikipedia for context :Real estate and construction (22.6%),[10] trade (16%), entrepôt (15%) and financial services (11%) are the largest contributors to Dubai's economy*--- When things go sour for the rest of the world, Dubai is in quicksand. Its own success is not based on homegrown industry, manufacturing, agriculture, etc. Aside from the construction of office and apartment buildings for the service elite, Dubai's own success is inextricably tied to those of the greater world economy. A better long-term bet than oil alone, but, as the past two years have shown, potentially more volatile!
Both friends made the trip with American companions who had already spent months working in England, and a trip to Dubai was the highly recommended choice from those in the know-- the new flavour du jour at reasonable prices. Maybe Marbella and Malaga were too crowded, but whatever the reason, everyone from highly-paid footballers to spring-breakers wanted to soak in the rays--and take in what I must imagine to be a bizarre cultural crossroads--in sunny Dubai.
*Note- as I search for the original article on the 90% vacancy rate in some of these towers (including the world's largest, the Burj Kalifa at 2717 feet), I have a hell of a time actually finding any such information from any recent source. I wonder if the good people in the UAE Real Estate and Tourism PR office have put the lean on Yahoo....
Anyway, the first of my friends to make that trip went in the summer of 2008, just before the world economy began to unravel. He returned wide-eyed and loquacious over the late model Mercedes-Benz driven by the entire police force, the Burj Kalifa, and the two massive man-made sand islands visible from space in the shape of a palm tree. Yeah, that's a great idea. Build record-breaking towers on sand. I'm sure it's not just the Bible that recommends against this architectural brain fart. I was irrationally offended by his excitement, and I held it against him not to have known about the charges of environmental ruination and slave labor leveled against the authorities (including one instance where a hastily-executed sewage system overran capacity and backed up into the waters of Dubai's acclaimed beachfronts). I had also heard that the desalination plants all along the coastline were (a) not producing enough to meet the needs of the growing vertical city and (b) were washing toxic heavy metals out to sea as part of a byproduct.
Now that another friend is making this trip, two years on and after seismic shifts in world travel, finance, and real-estate development, I am very keen to hear his take on everything. He's (geo)politically savvy, knows the history of the Middle East, and, as a finance manager, risks palpitations when discussing the enormous sovereign wealth funds of the Emirates. A soccer fan myself, I am reminded on a weekendly basis of the grasping reach of this money-- do I watch the Arsenal players run around in shirts sponsored by "Fly Emirates" in their London "Emirates Stadium", or should I flip the channel and see the now-familiar logo on the shirts of AC Milan? The long-standing rumours of Dubai International Capital buying out Liverpool never came to pass, but Sheik Mansour of Abu Dhabi did pump a few hundred million into Manchester City FC.
And that's the funny thing to me. The sheiks who manage the money generated from their man-made oases are smart guys. Economics and finance degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, LSE. .. They knew fifty years ago that they were a few dry oil wells short of returning to the hot sands, so they diversified. They bet big on Western tastes, building gigantic concrete-and-steel edifices to the exchange of money, with tax incentives (read: no taxes) and cheap labor to attract foreign executives and expatriates, and built as fast as they could, frantically fleeing the prospect of a return to a poorer time. And now, as the greed-and-opportunism-mechanisms built into "first-world" economic policies and consumer tastes have brought us low, Dubai again faces the empty desert, only this time with empty buildings to boot. It might not last forever, but the lesson is clear-- live by the sword, die by the sword. Worst of all, you can't blame the emirs for following the best-looking path out of poverty and into modernity. That this path comes to a jagged end says a lot more about the rest of the world than it does about Dubai.
http://www.swfinstitute.org/fund/adia.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/dubai-has-always-been-ban_b_372795.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
The bottom line here is that I've read, watched, and listened to numerous reports on the construction debacle occurring in Dubai, and I find the place simultaneously fascinating and repulsive. I want to say it's a classic case of trying to get ahead the wrong way and paying for it, but it's not really so clear-cut. Dubai is, as Johann Hari calls it in one of his articles for the London Independent (see below), a glittering neo-liberal facade teetering on the edge of oblivion. I think of it as an archetype for the globalized world-- a desert state that has leveraged meager natural resources into a playground for the elites of finance and global trade-- and its current travails might tell us much about the solvency of the ideas behind Dubai's rise and fall.
*A quick aside, as per wikipedia for context :Real estate and construction (22.6%),[10] trade (16%), entrepôt (15%) and financial services (11%) are the largest contributors to Dubai's economy*--- When things go sour for the rest of the world, Dubai is in quicksand. Its own success is not based on homegrown industry, manufacturing, agriculture, etc. Aside from the construction of office and apartment buildings for the service elite, Dubai's own success is inextricably tied to those of the greater world economy. A better long-term bet than oil alone, but, as the past two years have shown, potentially more volatile!
Both friends made the trip with American companions who had already spent months working in England, and a trip to Dubai was the highly recommended choice from those in the know-- the new flavour du jour at reasonable prices. Maybe Marbella and Malaga were too crowded, but whatever the reason, everyone from highly-paid footballers to spring-breakers wanted to soak in the rays--and take in what I must imagine to be a bizarre cultural crossroads--in sunny Dubai.
*Note- as I search for the original article on the 90% vacancy rate in some of these towers (including the world's largest, the Burj Kalifa at 2717 feet), I have a hell of a time actually finding any such information from any recent source. I wonder if the good people in the UAE Real Estate and Tourism PR office have put the lean on Yahoo....
Anyway, the first of my friends to make that trip went in the summer of 2008, just before the world economy began to unravel. He returned wide-eyed and loquacious over the late model Mercedes-Benz driven by the entire police force, the Burj Kalifa, and the two massive man-made sand islands visible from space in the shape of a palm tree. Yeah, that's a great idea. Build record-breaking towers on sand. I'm sure it's not just the Bible that recommends against this architectural brain fart. I was irrationally offended by his excitement, and I held it against him not to have known about the charges of environmental ruination and slave labor leveled against the authorities (including one instance where a hastily-executed sewage system overran capacity and backed up into the waters of Dubai's acclaimed beachfronts). I had also heard that the desalination plants all along the coastline were (a) not producing enough to meet the needs of the growing vertical city and (b) were washing toxic heavy metals out to sea as part of a byproduct.
Now that another friend is making this trip, two years on and after seismic shifts in world travel, finance, and real-estate development, I am very keen to hear his take on everything. He's (geo)politically savvy, knows the history of the Middle East, and, as a finance manager, risks palpitations when discussing the enormous sovereign wealth funds of the Emirates. A soccer fan myself, I am reminded on a weekendly basis of the grasping reach of this money-- do I watch the Arsenal players run around in shirts sponsored by "Fly Emirates" in their London "Emirates Stadium", or should I flip the channel and see the now-familiar logo on the shirts of AC Milan? The long-standing rumours of Dubai International Capital buying out Liverpool never came to pass, but Sheik Mansour of Abu Dhabi did pump a few hundred million into Manchester City FC.
And that's the funny thing to me. The sheiks who manage the money generated from their man-made oases are smart guys. Economics and finance degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, LSE. .. They knew fifty years ago that they were a few dry oil wells short of returning to the hot sands, so they diversified. They bet big on Western tastes, building gigantic concrete-and-steel edifices to the exchange of money, with tax incentives (read: no taxes) and cheap labor to attract foreign executives and expatriates, and built as fast as they could, frantically fleeing the prospect of a return to a poorer time. And now, as the greed-and-opportunism-mechanisms built into "first-world" economic policies and consumer tastes have brought us low, Dubai again faces the empty desert, only this time with empty buildings to boot. It might not last forever, but the lesson is clear-- live by the sword, die by the sword. Worst of all, you can't blame the emirs for following the best-looking path out of poverty and into modernity. That this path comes to a jagged end says a lot more about the rest of the world than it does about Dubai.
http://www.swfinstitute.org/fund/adia.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/dubai-has-always-been-ban_b_372795.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
something stupid I wrote about falcons
Robin-
>
> Let ME tell you a thing or two about falcons, or as
> I like to call them, our avian death-dealers. First
> off, falcons love to hunt smaller birds, like
> pigeons and swifts. The fact that your name is
> Robin doesn't bode well for your proposed ownership
> of a falcon; the falcon may try to kill you. The
> same goes for people with names like Jay, Wren, etc.
> This poor guy Rich and I knew in high school,
> Western Hummingbird, was slaughtered by a falcon he
> tried to tame. Another interesting story regards
> Trav's and my friend Murray, who is a talking
> squirrel. Murray was once hunted by a falcon, but
> managed to talk his way out of a jam and is now
> living somewhere in Africa.
>
> Another thing is, falcons dive-bomb their prey.
> They routinely reach 180 mph in these dives and hit
> the poor bastards from above with a wicked array of
> talons and beak. I heard that once three falcons
> were hunting a herd of elephants and dive-bombed
> STRAIGHT THROUGH the damned elephants! Put a hole
> in 'em the size of a goodyear tire, no b.s.! Be
> careful that when you attempt to have your falcon
> take out the aforementioned pigeon's nest, he
> doesn't just kill hisself by boring a hole deep,
> deep in to the ground, perhaps to China. A couple
> last facts about falcons that almost no one but me
> knows-- falcons can smell fear, falcons dine
> exclusively on blood and pixiedust, falcons and
> wolves share a common language, falcons are way
> sweeeeeet, falcons will mess you up, particularly if
> you wear a large rabbit suit (trust me on that one).
> Jesus owned falcons, as did Julius Caesar,
> Napoleon, Bob Barker, Verne Troyer aka Mini-Me, and
> my cousin Ned. Lastly, in naming your noble
> falcon, consider strong, classical names. Don't be
> tempted to do the thing that will piss the falcon
> off and name him Snufflemuffle, or Squeezybigboy, or
> Loveyboo. Falcons kill for less. Name it Malachi,
> like in the Royal Tenenbaums. That movie is rad
> with a capital RAD. Other good names for falcons
> are Patrocles, Amadeus, and Tony Lamont, Jr. Oh,
> and the famed falconer's glove you want to wear? It
> weighs over three thousand pounds and only a select
> few people living today (me) have the strength to
> lift it. Finally, don't train your falcon near a
> children's playground. Unless, of course, you
> despise children like I do. Then, it's a great
> idea!
>
> Please Email me at the International Magnolia Falcon
> Institute with any pertinent, or impertinent
> questions. In the language of the falcon,
> SCREEEEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRR
>
> Let ME tell you a thing or two about falcons, or as
> I like to call them, our avian death-dealers. First
> off, falcons love to hunt smaller birds, like
> pigeons and swifts. The fact that your name is
> Robin doesn't bode well for your proposed ownership
> of a falcon; the falcon may try to kill you. The
> same goes for people with names like Jay, Wren, etc.
> This poor guy Rich and I knew in high school,
> Western Hummingbird, was slaughtered by a falcon he
> tried to tame. Another interesting story regards
> Trav's and my friend Murray, who is a talking
> squirrel. Murray was once hunted by a falcon, but
> managed to talk his way out of a jam and is now
> living somewhere in Africa.
>
> Another thing is, falcons dive-bomb their prey.
> They routinely reach 180 mph in these dives and hit
> the poor bastards from above with a wicked array of
> talons and beak. I heard that once three falcons
> were hunting a herd of elephants and dive-bombed
> STRAIGHT THROUGH the damned elephants! Put a hole
> in 'em the size of a goodyear tire, no b.s.! Be
> careful that when you attempt to have your falcon
> take out the aforementioned pigeon's nest, he
> doesn't just kill hisself by boring a hole deep,
> deep in to the ground, perhaps to China. A couple
> last facts about falcons that almost no one but me
> knows-- falcons can smell fear, falcons dine
> exclusively on blood and pixiedust, falcons and
> wolves share a common language, falcons are way
> sweeeeeet, falcons will mess you up, particularly if
> you wear a large rabbit suit (trust me on that one).
> Jesus owned falcons, as did Julius Caesar,
> Napoleon, Bob Barker, Verne Troyer aka Mini-Me, and
> my cousin Ned. Lastly, in naming your noble
> falcon, consider strong, classical names. Don't be
> tempted to do the thing that will piss the falcon
> off and name him Snufflemuffle, or Squeezybigboy, or
> Loveyboo. Falcons kill for less. Name it Malachi,
> like in the Royal Tenenbaums. That movie is rad
> with a capital RAD. Other good names for falcons
> are Patrocles, Amadeus, and Tony Lamont, Jr. Oh,
> and the famed falconer's glove you want to wear? It
> weighs over three thousand pounds and only a select
> few people living today (me) have the strength to
> lift it. Finally, don't train your falcon near a
> children's playground. Unless, of course, you
> despise children like I do. Then, it's a great
> idea!
>
> Please Email me at the International Magnolia Falcon
> Institute with any pertinent, or impertinent
> questions. In the language of the falcon,
> SCREEEEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRR
honey, I'm home
well, here we are again. you can lay the blame for this mess right at the feet of Special Agent DoubleR, who crawled inside my skull and jerry-rigged enough neurons to misfire a blog posting.
The first and only set of postings here are the product of a mind fevered by oxycodone, chemically-induced and naturally-occurring insomnia, and an overdose of laxatives--recall J. Peterman lost in Burma, mad and emaciated, but still Elaine's boss. Context, okay? Detailing one's minor surgery is a pretty inauspicious way to go about writing things again, it's true. Really, there is no substantive difference between these postings and the "daily journal of Uncle Patterson's bout with the gout". Sad, I know. That's why there's been a shakeup all the way from middle management right to the damn top of this operation. If there's anything of value, literally a-ny-thin-g, to come out of this, we'll really have to knuckle down around this blog and do a better job. Profligacy out! Productivity in! Remember the Maine!
New ground rules: (1) being verbose was a hit at wall street coke parties in the 80s, like in American Psycho or Crocodile Dundee, but I've got to cut down this damned word count! Also, while spelling will always have priority 1 (indeed, above coherence and logic), punctuation and capitalization rules are out. So I guess that might be worse writing, already. Shit. (2) stop being cute. Only a real curmudgeon accuse his curmudgeonly self of being overly-clever. what a douche.
There are probably more ground rules...
Bullet point information of the now:
(where do you get the fucking bullet points on this thing?)
oh. there they are.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why did you put that on the internet?! God! Mark Zuckerberg, there is a very special place reserved for you in hell for unleashing this upon us. Let the march of human progress continue towards Stimulus/Response/Consumptive/Automatons!
The first and only set of postings here are the product of a mind fevered by oxycodone, chemically-induced and naturally-occurring insomnia, and an overdose of laxatives--recall J. Peterman lost in Burma, mad and emaciated, but still Elaine's boss. Context, okay? Detailing one's minor surgery is a pretty inauspicious way to go about writing things again, it's true. Really, there is no substantive difference between these postings and the "daily journal of Uncle Patterson's bout with the gout". Sad, I know. That's why there's been a shakeup all the way from middle management right to the damn top of this operation. If there's anything of value, literally a-ny-thin-g, to come out of this, we'll really have to knuckle down around this blog and do a better job. Profligacy out! Productivity in! Remember the Maine!
New ground rules: (1) being verbose was a hit at wall street coke parties in the 80s, like in American Psycho or Crocodile Dundee, but I've got to cut down this damned word count! Also, while spelling will always have priority 1 (indeed, above coherence and logic), punctuation and capitalization rules are out. So I guess that might be worse writing, already. Shit. (2) stop being cute. Only a real curmudgeon accuse his curmudgeonly self of being overly-clever. what a douche.
There are probably more ground rules...
Bullet point information of the now:
(where do you get the fucking bullet points on this thing?)
oh. there they are.
- I've said since the mid-60's that when everyone I know starts getting hitched, I would take a stand and avoid having my summers weekends dominated by a proceeding with a 50% failure rate. Lack of a serious relationship helps me avoid this morass, but suddenly I realize even the people I actually like are tying the knot. There goes that principled platform I'd erected, but damn I hate weddings, generally. And I fucking hate facebook even more for weddings and the comments they elicit. What is in the water these days that the default comment for EVERY single member of the facebook "community" is to proclaim that they (and their significant other) "love you guys sooooo much! So happy!" when people get married or engaged? Clearly, the statistics on armed conflict and world population allow us to infer that there is simply NOT that much love going around in the world. Someone is full of shit.
- That reminds me, how weird is facebook? Kids born from 2005 onwards have no idea what the world of social interaction is like without this....thing. The significance of friending, de-friending, or liking a certain thing boggles my mind. Boggles. There's even some horrid "like" generator that spits out the worst minutiae of the human experience and if that experience is something you relate to, you "like" it. Here are two real examples:
(User) likes "No matter what I get on the computer to do, I always end up on Facebook. on ♥. "
(User) likes I hate when a dream is near the BEST part and someone wakes u up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why did you put that on the internet?! God! Mark Zuckerberg, there is a very special place reserved for you in hell for unleashing this upon us. Let the march of human progress continue towards Stimulus/Response/Consumptive/Automatons!
- Finishing the assigned summer reading, "A People's History of the United States". Mmm, subversion. It says something about the world that I'm both completely unsurprised and horrified by this book. Do yourself a solid and read it...ask to borrow from me.
- New Tunes for your Zune (just kidding): Empires of the Sun, Holy Ghost!, Van She, Darc Mind, Pnau, Best Coast, Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme.
- We can infer that the Tea Party has never occasioned self-reflection, because I'd imagine that their collective heads would explode. Another post for later.
- I promise, I'll do better next time. So much for brevity.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A formal apology from The Dr's Office
Dr. Festivus would like to apologize. Apparently, his/her medical humorosity has not been dispensed at adequate pace or dosage to satisfy the lonely three of you who actually follow this blogblogblog.
Do the Dr. a favor, please let me know exactly how many patients there are in the waiting room so he can figure how many appointments to schedule. Also, please remove your clothes. Except you, Drew.
Let me tell you a tale, my children. A tale of rosy chickens, hefty handlers, and assassinatory cats. Yes. Assassinatory.
Sunday, I left me house to do something useless. Turning into the alleyway in the Superu (complete with new dents, which I suspect came from the fat hacky-sack playing teenager across the street), I noticed the neighbor's inappropriately named young black cat Boy in the ready position ahead of my car, facing away from me. I honked, but he didn't even glance back at me. Using my knowledge obtained from the Jeff Corwin Experience and the musical Cats!, I realized that he was in stalking position. Ipso facto, he was stalking something. Was it a mouse? A stray human baby? I had to find out.
Rounding the corner on foot, I was confronted with a beautiful plumed hen-- a chicken--clucking and walking in slow circles, gradually, gradually away from danger. The cat, Boy (named by the neighbor's kids, who I suspect aren't racist, but they may well be), was either fascinated at the stupidity of the fowl or readying himself for the kill. Though the epic motions of nature's struggles are always good viewing--and especially so in person--I was less interested in seeing a bloody fowl corpse than getting on my way to pastures greener. Plus, there were now two cars waiting on my own to move forward in the alleyway.
Speedy quick, I chased the cat off a short distance to avoid returning to a bloody, feathery mess, and knocked on my next-door-neighbor's door. Belated detail: she has a chicken coop in her backyard. Seeing as we are probably 30 miles from the nearest actual farm, I assumed the hen belonged to her. As is usual when my (very nice) neighbor and I have our infrequent interactions, she answered the door a bit flustered, with two slightly anxious-looking Japanese exchange students eyeing me suspiciously. My theories on that relationship are for another post. At any rate, she told the Japanese kids to "focus on making their sandwiches" and asked me what was up.
Me: Hi. Yeah, I think one of your chickens is in the alleyway and Boy is trying to kill it.
Her: Ah! Which one?
Me: Um.
(inner monologue for me) what the fuck kind of question is that which chicken. I don't know your stupid chickens from Adam, should I just make up a name? Mr. Boondoggles. That chicken. God!
It's kind of orange.
Her: ROSIE! Dammit!
Turns out, when the garbage truck bumps the fence to her yard, it can uncover a hold in the posts that these idiot birds sneak through to wander in circles, clucking and attempting to eat gravel. We hustlebustled back to the alleyway, during which time Boy accompanied us. Then, for the next minute or so (that's a full 60s, imagine it), I, along with Boy the Cat and three other car denizens, were treated to the following scene: My neighbor involved in a low-speed circular chase with Rosie the chicken, with lots of clucking going on from both parties ("rosie, are we going to do this again?! You embarass me!" "gobble gobble cluck cluck"). Each time the neighbor girl got near (it's obvious by now I can't remember her name), she would most unathletically swoop her arms down towards the bird, and at the last second Rosie would take a couple of lousy chicken-prance steps forward, leaving her owner with nothing but air and hands that continued in an uncoordinated fashion into a self-hug. Swearing, repeat.
Finally, after I almost pissed myself but kept my mouth shut (I was closer to actually getting a lawn chair and a tall can of Vitamin R), she chased Rosie McShitforbrains into the foliage and pinned her against the wall. Cue feathers and leaves a'flyin! Marching back to the yard, I was able to see the other drivers/passenger's faces as they comprehended the cause of the delay. Shock, confusion, and glorious smiles were all I could gather, but it was enough to convince me that the tale was worth relaying. Moral? I pay $662.50 per month to live in El Salvador.
ala-kazaam! st. patrick got the snakes out, but I have no idea about the newts.
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