Muttrox - Muttroxia

Screw ’em all. You signed the loan papers. The bank didn’t force a pen in your hand. Maybe they were deceptive, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe you were an idiot. Being an idiot isn’t good. And now you’ve decided to go a step further, and just be a liar and a cheater.

It may be a rational step for some, but you can’t feel good about the ridiculous logic and complete lack of morality. The featured couple in the article is taking weekend trips and hitting the casino.

But the couple also refinanced at the height of the market, taking out cash to buy a truck they used as a contest prize for their hired animal trappers. It was a stupid move by their lender, according to Mr. Pemberton. “They went outside their own guidelines on debt to income,” he said. “And when they did, they put themselves in jeopardy.”

Did they really say it was a stupid move by their lender!? How delusional do you have to be to think that? It was a stupid move by you! And you don’t get to throw out a deal because you think the other side shouldn’t have offered it. Too late. The time to bring that up was before you shook hands.

If it was just between the borrowers and lenders I would care so much. But it’s not. My tax money is subsidizing all this garbage. The people who bought houses they could afford don’t get government money. We get higher tax bills to bail out all the morons. Fantastic.

Laundry Machines are a Great Deal

Both our washer and dryer broke this month. We quickly figured out the new ones we wanted. Because the memorial day sales were coming up, we decided to wait a week. I brought a weeks of laundry to the laundromat. We had 38 pounds of laundry, and it costs $34 to get it cleaned at the laundromat.

The new washer and dryer cost $850. ($740 for the units, plus tax and hoses and whatnot.). $34 divided into that is 25. In other words, the new washer and dryer pay for themselves in less than six months. That’s pretty damn good!

Links o’ Interest

Too big to fail

Yo-yo trickster genius

Ads for porn network (funny, and safe to watch)

Bad day

Frank Sinatra’s letter to George Michael. (By the way, Listen Without Prejudice is a great album.)

Atheist cats, and my faithful sidekick…

Then there’s Denny

Amazing optical illusion

Oh Tiger!

Pinky is driving

Ceremony fail

Illusion of the year

Can this be true? Percentage of homeowners with negative equity, by state

This job is hell

Sports fail

He’s still cool

Hailstorm in pool.

Now that’s a “server down” page

Amazing mountain-climbing move

The evolution of privacy on Facebook

Color pictures of Czarist Russia

Another Innumerate Sportswriter

Howard Beck get the idiot of the month award for this column. It is about how likely LeBron is to end up on which team. The reasoning is fairly good, but then he makes the mistakes of actually putting in numbers.

Knicks: 40%
Bulls : 75%
Nets: 40%
Heat: 30%
Cavs: 60%

That adds up to 245%. As great as LeBron James is, he can’t play for more than one team at a time. Howard, you’re a moron.

Update:
I guess I’m not the first person to call him out on this. I was working from the print edition. The online version has different numbers.
Knicks: 3-1 (25%)
Bulls : 2-3 (60%)
Nets: 5-1 (17%)
Heat: 7-1 (13%)
Cavs: 5-7 (59%)
Which adds up to only 175% or so. That’s quite an improvement!

Links o’ Interest

Graphs on the internet. I honestly lol’d several times.

Every Woman’s magazine

How to make Visa obey you.

The truth comes out

Couch cushion architecture

Where’s Homer?

Dolls vs Action Figures

Running with the Bulls: Never again

14-year old new kid takes on school bully

He’s giving a stock webinar while the market crashes, goes absolutely insane

Minimalist superhero posters

It’s a trap!

The internet was right, this is a great instrumental.

Things Bears Love

Bad prediction

A sportswriter unleashes some perspective.

Who else uses Google, the most powerful index of the sum of human knowledge, as a spell checker?

French reality show recreates Milgram’s experiments. They are also willing to kill just because someone asks them.

The average American family

If at first you don’t succeed…

Guilty: She was applying nail polish while driving, struck and killed someone

Saying no to bouncers

Gravity

Working in tech support

How to draw hands

Stacking bricks in Bangladesh

Underwater river.

Fun with secret questions. (I already wrote how to do them wrong.)

Understanding the oil spill, 1 and 2.

Celtics in the Playoffs Update

Against expectations, The Celtics took one from the Cavaliers yesterday, on their home court. The boys in green now hold home court advantage.

Obviously, the huge factor is that LeBron’s elbow is bothering him so much. It goes without saying that their team is LeBron and a bunch of guys. The Celtics may not be able to beat The Cavaliers, but we can beat a bunch of guys at any time.

Other things going for us:
a) Rondo is amazing. Here’s a very small ferinstance. Glen “Big Baby” Davis steals the ball with an all-out effort. He runs down the floor with the ball, then drops it off for Rondo behind him. At that exact second I thought, “Rondo is going to get the ball back to Davis for an easy two. I don’t know how, especially since their whole team knows it, but he will.” Sure enough, Rondo drove and somehow slipped the ball back to Davis for an easy two. Rondo rewards the big men for running, every time.
b) The Celtics are healthier than they’ve been in months. Garnett looks like a deer out there, hopping around and jumping all over the place. Pierce isn’t playing that great, but he has the energy that’s been missing. Allen is a killer. Not only is he scoring consistent points, but he’s doing it efficiently.
c) Wallace? Rasheed Wallace? Sports Guy nailed him exactly. Wallace has sucked this year. Sucked to an incredible degree. I can’t count how many times I’ve yelled at the tv or snorted in disgusted. Last night, he was great. I’m not greedy, I don’t need him to be great. I just need him to not suck. Can you do that for me Sheed?
d) LeBron is injured. More important than any of this.

I will say this. If the Cavs get knocked out, LeBron will be downright suicidal. How much more can one man do? If they get knocked out due to a freak injury, that will be very sad for him.

The Celtics in the Playoffs

The Celtics couldn’t take game 1, where
a) LeBron was off his game
b) Rondo played out of his head
c) Cleveland didn’t know how we’d play

It’s over. There’s no way we’re stealing a game on their home turf now. It was a good season.

My Morning Jacket

Friday night we went to see My Morning Jacket at Chastain. They are a modern current band, but a lot of their music is drawn from the same vein as the 70’s classic rock I like. Thanks to the wife’s connections, we were in the 9th row, and were able to walk through in front the front row a couple times.

My Morning Jacket 1

My Morning Jacket 2

The internet is amazing. The next morning I was listening to the show already, check it out. I recommend Where to Begin. Mrs. Muttrox accurately nailed it as Neil Young sounding (the slide guitar is straight out of Harvest).

Good times!

Links o’ Interest

Off to My Morning Jacket tonight!

Fighting a particularly horrible parking ticket

Why all records sound the same

How to make a Nicholas Sparks movie

Orwell irony

Baby kangaroos at the beach aww….

Sure it’s milk. Sure.

You can’t be cynical about this.

It’s all your fault

The Batman on Chatroulette

Things that look like other things

Check out the caption on the photo

A great baseball play: baserunner jumps completely over the catcher

Where your tax dollars go

The implosion of Texas stadium, from the inside

Fan Fiction

“Look”: an entrancing video

Say chee— hey, who are they?

Writing under the influence

Beating Obesity

Propaganda: Inside the North Korean information machine

After the end of the Civil War, Col. Anderson of Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, asking him to return to work for him. Here is his reply.