(Updated July 9 @ 2300 hours, typo and missing word. Stet.)
I have been putting off this post for a long long time.
Since about 2000-2001 or so, I have been involving myself in various activities in Aspen Hill, especially focusing in such things as cleaning up North Gate Park, bringing more and better security to local shopping centers, and improving standards of living and safety at local rental and townhome/condo complexes.
The park is pretty well cleaned up, and to some degree security is improving at the rental/condo complexes. That latter improvement is due to increased cooperation between property managers and law-enforcement; the property-managers don't want any kind of doper action going on and they have all kinds of numbers to call to arrange a really bad day for whatever tenants they decide they don't want on their properties. The people answering those calls will cheerfully provide those very bad days, but there is a consequence which may have been unintended but which should have easily been anticipated. All of the displaced "problem people" -- as they are actually called -- wind up renting here in "the houses", in Aspen Hill west of Georgia Avenue, or during the recent excesses in the mortgage markets, they actually bought houses with "stated income loans" (or "liar loans") and those were generally in South Aspen Hill.
Even the sketchiest of "white Americans" tend to be either staying out of South Aspen Hill, or they go there in force. Gangs have been here longer and more deeply than the police or elected officials wanted to admit, but largely those were "immigrant gangs" such as the 18th Street Gang or MS-13, Vatos Locos, Sur X3 and the occasional wild clique of South Side Locos. But in recent years we've seen something pretty new and it's just depressing as hell, as well as totally understandable. Yet though it's understandable, I cannot approve.
Almost any of the misplaced cultural anthropologists -- who have spearheaded "anti-gang initiatives" for years here -- would tell you without hesitation that "immigrant gangs" are a natural response to a feeling of displacement, of being the stranger in a strange land, outnumbered by unfriendly faces and frequently the outright and undeserving victim of discrimination, harassment, and even violence. Be that as it may as regards the origins of such immigrant gangs, those origins are far in the past, and the aggressive recruitment of such gangs even down into elementary schools shows that it's not the immigrants who are set upon by hostile whites or blacks. What's happening here is that the "immigrants" -- legal or otherwise -- are assimilating to a new culture in their new homeland, a culture of crime, violence, and especially of organized activities of vendetta, revenge, and pre-emptory intimidation.
But the worst part of it all is this: people coming to America are expected to become American, and the most unusual and amazing characteristic of the USA is that we generally oppose racism. We generally oppose separatism. We generally strive to offer equal opportunity. But the gangs don't want that, in most cases.
And in response to the relentless anti-white/anti-Americanism of the "immigrant gangs", now we once again have white gangs, and I'm not talking about people who came out of prison after 20 years and can't wait to get back into a life of crime; I'm talking about teenagers and young adults. Black gangs are growing in the area at a rate never before seen, and they're not just gangs of local kids-gone-bad who just happen to be black; a lot of this is national-scope gangs such as Crips and Bloods. As for the Latino gangs, the local situation used to mostly be spontaneous networks of people moving mostly in the underground due to immigration status (or lack thereof), organizing a workforce not legally entitled to work in the US, and assorted bored teenagers with lame pretentions to being "gangsta". Yet in recent years, even before the current economic doldrums, there has been increasing importation of the so-called "California rivalries". Locally, black "rude boys" and sketchy latino kids used to be able to get along. But as the Crips and Bloods rivalry is imported from the brutal West Coast scenes, so also do we see the importation of the brutal rivalries between the Bloods and the 18th Street, between the Crips and other "hispanic" gangs, and as the crime grows increasingly racist, so does the general society reacting to that racist crime.
Very sadly indeed, as a primarily American Black community finds itself driven more deeply into poverty by the economic downturn, the already high unemployment rate of non-college black males is driven even higher by the cutthroat and cut-rate competition of "immigrants" (legal or otherwise, mostly Spanish-speaking) for low-skilled and construction work. This sort of endless competition and sense of being discarded in favor of the johnny-come-latelies that can't even "speak American" is not making anyone any happier and indeed the outrage is growing.
I'm seeing increasing segregation at various places. For example, the central Aspen Hill shopping centers seem to be increasingly latino or African immigrants only, and in the Plaza del Mercado stores -- notably CVS -- there is a pervasive attitude I pick up, of "what the fuck you doin' here, white man?" I didn't spend most of the last decade trying to reclaim the parks from crime, or get more and better programs in the schools -- such as free summer lunches and educational programs to keep kids on the right track -- just to have people get all up in my face as if they thought they had a right to resent me.
If the recent elections -- both the Presidential and the County District 4 Special Elections -- are seen mostly as giving a license for racial hatred, all I can say is that I'm offended. Race or perception of it is no license to crime, to exclusionary practices. Indeed, race or the perception of it is especially odious as associated with criminal acts.
And there's nothing more odious, thus, than organized crime -- gangs -- based on race. The only thing that could be worse would be gangs -- racist or racialist gangs -- engaging in continuing patterns of crime and harassment to carve up desegregated neighborhoods into racially exclusive enclaves... that they control.
Yet as far as I can tell, the elected officials are "just fine with that"... and that's where the police get their orders.
More to come.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Other Shoe About to Drop: Commercial Real-Estate, etc.
Ah yes, once again into the fray of blogging.
I haven't been feeling very well -- perhaps it's something I ate, perhaps it's the rather peculiar weather, and the allergies that go with it, or perhaps it was my genuinely amazing level of alcohol consumption over the holiday weekend -- and so I have been restricting myself to intellectual pursuits rather less demanding than blogging.
I'm still spending several hours daily in tracking down obscure yet fascinating deed transactions in Aspen Hill Land Use History.
Somehow I have managed to become Focused (grr) on this truly boring and ultimately pointless task. Indeed, I am managing to display a nearly manic enthusuasm for downloading PDFs from Maryland Land Records Network and cross-referencing with the subdivision plats from the Plats Network.
Well, you know how it is when people get Focused. They become obsessed with trivial details and totally forget about everything else, such as dating, shopping, food, sleep and most importantly to those who want to use Focus as a tool, politics.
My fascination with trivial details pertaining to land-use patterns has been most gratified by locating various marker stones and pieces of pipe hammered into the ground. Dating, eh, I think I covered that a few posts back. Food, sleep and shopping? Well, I can just stock up on groceries and beer and mostly nobody will see me for weeks at a time, and I sleep when I can't read the deeds anymore because my eyes are shot, and when I wake up, my eyes don't work right until I eat something, so who knows what sort of hours I'm keeping.
I have been out, mostly to satisfy my obsessive thirst for knowledge about why the streets in my neighborhood appear to have been laid out by chimps on acid rather than in the traditional small-town mode of glorifying the cow-paths as happened infamously in Boston and elsewhere.
To understand this, you have to understand the bounds of the lands, as those lands were bought and sold, aggregated and parceled out. Whether aggregated over time as farmers increased their lands or aggregated in a one-day frenzy of flipping as seen in the acquisition of central Aspen Hill West on September 18, 1947, or aggregated over years as in the immense tract acquired around the turn of the 20th Century by one George H Earle Jr of Philadelphia only to be sold by the heirs, or land sold off a piece at a time until only a shadow of former greatness remains, as in the division and distribution of equity as in the case of the Cassell Tract, which remnant in the modern day is mostly visible as the grounds of the Aspen Hill Library.
Perhaps I've been bitten by some strange sort of bug, or perhaps I got spellbound by wicked warlocks, but really it's more likely that I saw one too many showings of "National Treasure". But much has been uncovered and explained, such as the origin of an abandoned dirt road just east of Brookhaven Elementary School.
Of course this effort is ongoing, I mean, it wouldn't be an obsessive Focus if it wasn't both endless and carried on regardless of any possible goal or profitability. Could be worse, I suppose; I mean, I could be desperately in love with a demented foreign veterinarian and be cruising country-western bars in search of cowboys to trade into the international human organ black markets, or driving my children insane by teaching them that you can tell who's a werewolf by looking at their ears, or something equally and classically Montgomery County Weird. I'm just taking GPS readings and making googlemaps. And unlike a lot of people, I actually know where is the "West line of Hermitage" and the "end of the 42nd line of Bradford's Rest".
My point? I'm generally harmless, but have been keeping busy doing things other than nothing-but-blogging.
Besides, I must add to confuse anyone who thinks that they are (but are not) the Astute Reader, with no current One Time Pad, is no point in concealing clever comments in transparent HTML window-target statements. Perhaps is coming back from abroad cleverly concealed in phrasing from minor economic accords from recent summit meeting between leadership of superpower states. And perhaps it is already picked up from dead drop in surveyor's stake at the end of the 40th line of Bradford's Rest.
Just be careful out there as you prowl around out there in the bushes. There are more and more desperate people in those bushes, many of them coming from places where desperation isn't answered by Social Services but rather by the Law of the Pack, and they've been hunting all of their lives while you can't ever seem to even be able to find your TV remote.
In a lot of places near Aspen Hill, though the crime may frequently go unreported, violence and skulduggery is way up. Let's just say that when biker 'Nam vets from Baltimore characterize the scene in South Aspen Hill as "getting goddamn rough down there", you can't just pass it off as me being typically timid and easily frightened. Even a lot of the cops you see driving around down there have this look on their face that I translate as "when I signed on for MoCo I did not expect to be patrolling this much instant ghetto".
The fact is: probably 80 percent of the households in South Aspen Hill (which is, of course, in the Hermitage rather than in Bradford's Rest) depend on the construction trades for their income. And as poorly functioning as is the market for even "distrssed residential" real-estate, the new-homes market is doing even worse, and there is something like a 9-month surplus of new homes already built that need to be sold before there's any excuse for building any new ones.
Commercial real-estate cannot be expected to provide all that much work for our suffering "guest workers".
Commercial real-estate vacancy rates are up 20 percent, from about 8.5 to above 10 percent in the District, and in Maryland -- already not doing too well -- it's nearly 14 percent. There's simply no need to build any more.
A recent visit to the "Rio" in Gaithersburg got me there an hour early for the premier of "Star Trek", and I spent some time wandering around looking at the stores... and there weren't all that many stores, and a lot of them had "going out of business sale" signs in the window. That was a few months ago, and I imagine that those storefronts are all empty now. And they say that when you have a retail/office complex like that, if you have any empty spaces on the street level, you probably have almost nothing but vacant office space above.
Obviously, all of that vacancy decreases rents ("Local Office Vacancies Soar, Driving Down Rent", Haynes, V. Dion, Washington Post, July 7, 2009).
The thing is, it could be worse, and elsewhere, it is. "Chicago Business" shows nearly 25-percent vacancy in Chicago's suburban commercial real-estate market.
Remember, folks, a lot of entities such as pension funds -- especially those serving public-servants such as educators, fire/rescue, and law-enforcement personnel -- have very major proportions of their assets on the books as ownership in full or in part of large commercial real-estate sites. For example, TIAA/CREF -- which serves the professional academic community -- is one such outfit, and I've been watching that part of my retirement savings take a major hit as of 6 months ago. (How did I wind up with them? Long story short: it's not rocket science, it was me doing network and computational support for rocket scientists at a university consortium.) Still, the specific investments listed in the real-estate section of my prospectus are rock solid... yet still they've declined very significantly. So don't take this as me crowing about other people's misfortune. I'm getting reamed once again, as if losing my ass in the dot-bomb implosion and then again after 9/11 wasn't bad enough.
If I was the sort of person who had excessive wealth and wanted to hang on to it, I might try to be the first to actually short commercial real estate. Remember, those pension funds were very likely some of the entities hurt worst when it became evident that sooner or later the housing market bubble was about to burst, and they fled in part into commodities investment, specifically into oil futures, driving up the price of gasoline to over $4.00/gallon, assuring the housing market meltdown, and then when it became evident that they had lost all assets there and that this collapse would also drive down oil to recently unheard-of lows, there wasn't anything to do except to try to be the first to short oil the most.
Fiduciary responsibility is a sword of many edges and while it might not be even-handed in terms of what befals the greater economy, the duty to the stockholders is unequivocal, especially if you yourself are a major stockholder and get paid bonuses in stocks rather than in cash. In such a position, just to preserve no more than a 20-percent loss in the pension fund of, for example, the Florida teacher's union, you'd cheerfully short oil down to 25 percent of what it was 6 months before, just to keep up the values of your major asset, commercial real-estate. Shorting oil could make ridiculous amounts of money, at least until the new rules came into effect against "naked shorting", which was basically taking bets with other people's money at a game where you weren't even present and in which you had no stakes. (This is also known in classic caper lore as "the bookie is skimming the till and winning no-lose bets with it". It works great until someone notices, and then you get concrete overshoes.)
Without a fallback to either shorting something that can no longer be shorted -- there's not much lower to go, and you're not allowed to do it -- or using the after-effects of that shorting to prop up a business climate with super-cheap energy, the only way you can maintain asset valuation in your commercial real-estate holdings is to not acquire any more of it, and perhaps even to unload the less-solid sites... at discount rates. This of course leads to a scramble to the bottom, and the bottom is nowhere in sight.
The end result of this, of course, is that there's no work at all in the Construction trades, and what there is has been going to the bottom feeders, and the race to the bottom is cutthroat. It's gotten so bad that you've got day-laborers getting paid $5.00/hour and being glad to get it, and you've got the vultures circling the check-cashing places looking to do a little "amigo shopping" (day-laborer robberies) and even as hobo "jungles" start to pop up in the bushes around various shopping centers -- the Park Police are being pretty aggressive about monitoring the parks -- you've got really scary people starting to hang out in the bushes just laying in wait for any of the homeless to try to bed down there with a few dollars in their pocket from any work they might have got.
Foreclosures -- or homes within a month or two of final action in foreclosure -- in Aspen Hill may amount to as much as 5 percent of the housing stock. Thus far, no rumors are circulating about gutted houses, or squatter shacks, and most of the lawns are reasonably well maintained, which is to say, they have been cut at least once since the property was vacated.
How long this can last, especially once the next wave of "alt-A Option Mortgages" reset to much higher payments within the next 6 months, nobody can predict. But summer is really only new beginning, and as the last of the alt-A mortgages resets, winter will only then be really with us.
And between now and then?
Don't look for the commercial real-estate sector to save us. Their total asset value is likely to drop nearly a quarter between now and then.
I haven't been feeling very well -- perhaps it's something I ate, perhaps it's the rather peculiar weather, and the allergies that go with it, or perhaps it was my genuinely amazing level of alcohol consumption over the holiday weekend -- and so I have been restricting myself to intellectual pursuits rather less demanding than blogging.
I'm still spending several hours daily in tracking down obscure yet fascinating deed transactions in Aspen Hill Land Use History.
Somehow I have managed to become Focused (grr) on this truly boring and ultimately pointless task. Indeed, I am managing to display a nearly manic enthusuasm for downloading PDFs from Maryland Land Records Network and cross-referencing with the subdivision plats from the Plats Network.
Well, you know how it is when people get Focused. They become obsessed with trivial details and totally forget about everything else, such as dating, shopping, food, sleep and most importantly to those who want to use Focus as a tool, politics.
My fascination with trivial details pertaining to land-use patterns has been most gratified by locating various marker stones and pieces of pipe hammered into the ground. Dating, eh, I think I covered that a few posts back. Food, sleep and shopping? Well, I can just stock up on groceries and beer and mostly nobody will see me for weeks at a time, and I sleep when I can't read the deeds anymore because my eyes are shot, and when I wake up, my eyes don't work right until I eat something, so who knows what sort of hours I'm keeping.
I have been out, mostly to satisfy my obsessive thirst for knowledge about why the streets in my neighborhood appear to have been laid out by chimps on acid rather than in the traditional small-town mode of glorifying the cow-paths as happened infamously in Boston and elsewhere.
To understand this, you have to understand the bounds of the lands, as those lands were bought and sold, aggregated and parceled out. Whether aggregated over time as farmers increased their lands or aggregated in a one-day frenzy of flipping as seen in the acquisition of central Aspen Hill West on September 18, 1947, or aggregated over years as in the immense tract acquired around the turn of the 20th Century by one George H Earle Jr of Philadelphia only to be sold by the heirs, or land sold off a piece at a time until only a shadow of former greatness remains, as in the division and distribution of equity as in the case of the Cassell Tract, which remnant in the modern day is mostly visible as the grounds of the Aspen Hill Library.
Perhaps I've been bitten by some strange sort of bug, or perhaps I got spellbound by wicked warlocks, but really it's more likely that I saw one too many showings of "National Treasure". But much has been uncovered and explained, such as the origin of an abandoned dirt road just east of Brookhaven Elementary School.
Of course this effort is ongoing, I mean, it wouldn't be an obsessive Focus if it wasn't both endless and carried on regardless of any possible goal or profitability. Could be worse, I suppose; I mean, I could be desperately in love with a demented foreign veterinarian and be cruising country-western bars in search of cowboys to trade into the international human organ black markets, or driving my children insane by teaching them that you can tell who's a werewolf by looking at their ears, or something equally and classically Montgomery County Weird. I'm just taking GPS readings and making googlemaps. And unlike a lot of people, I actually know where is the "West line of Hermitage" and the "end of the 42nd line of Bradford's Rest".
My point? I'm generally harmless, but have been keeping busy doing things other than nothing-but-blogging.
Besides, I must add to confuse anyone who thinks that they are (but are not) the Astute Reader, with no current One Time Pad, is no point in concealing clever comments in transparent HTML window-target statements. Perhaps is coming back from abroad cleverly concealed in phrasing from minor economic accords from recent summit meeting between leadership of superpower states. And perhaps it is already picked up from dead drop in surveyor's stake at the end of the 40th line of Bradford's Rest.
Just be careful out there as you prowl around out there in the bushes. There are more and more desperate people in those bushes, many of them coming from places where desperation isn't answered by Social Services but rather by the Law of the Pack, and they've been hunting all of their lives while you can't ever seem to even be able to find your TV remote.
In a lot of places near Aspen Hill, though the crime may frequently go unreported, violence and skulduggery is way up. Let's just say that when biker 'Nam vets from Baltimore characterize the scene in South Aspen Hill as "getting goddamn rough down there", you can't just pass it off as me being typically timid and easily frightened. Even a lot of the cops you see driving around down there have this look on their face that I translate as "when I signed on for MoCo I did not expect to be patrolling this much instant ghetto".
The fact is: probably 80 percent of the households in South Aspen Hill (which is, of course, in the Hermitage rather than in Bradford's Rest) depend on the construction trades for their income. And as poorly functioning as is the market for even "distrssed residential" real-estate, the new-homes market is doing even worse, and there is something like a 9-month surplus of new homes already built that need to be sold before there's any excuse for building any new ones.
Commercial real-estate cannot be expected to provide all that much work for our suffering "guest workers".
Commercial real-estate vacancy rates are up 20 percent, from about 8.5 to above 10 percent in the District, and in Maryland -- already not doing too well -- it's nearly 14 percent. There's simply no need to build any more.
A recent visit to the "Rio" in Gaithersburg got me there an hour early for the premier of "Star Trek", and I spent some time wandering around looking at the stores... and there weren't all that many stores, and a lot of them had "going out of business sale" signs in the window. That was a few months ago, and I imagine that those storefronts are all empty now. And they say that when you have a retail/office complex like that, if you have any empty spaces on the street level, you probably have almost nothing but vacant office space above.
Obviously, all of that vacancy decreases rents ("Local Office Vacancies Soar, Driving Down Rent", Haynes, V. Dion, Washington Post, July 7, 2009).
The thing is, it could be worse, and elsewhere, it is. "Chicago Business" shows nearly 25-percent vacancy in Chicago's suburban commercial real-estate market.
Remember, folks, a lot of entities such as pension funds -- especially those serving public-servants such as educators, fire/rescue, and law-enforcement personnel -- have very major proportions of their assets on the books as ownership in full or in part of large commercial real-estate sites. For example, TIAA/CREF -- which serves the professional academic community -- is one such outfit, and I've been watching that part of my retirement savings take a major hit as of 6 months ago. (How did I wind up with them? Long story short: it's not rocket science, it was me doing network and computational support for rocket scientists at a university consortium.) Still, the specific investments listed in the real-estate section of my prospectus are rock solid... yet still they've declined very significantly. So don't take this as me crowing about other people's misfortune. I'm getting reamed once again, as if losing my ass in the dot-bomb implosion and then again after 9/11 wasn't bad enough.
If I was the sort of person who had excessive wealth and wanted to hang on to it, I might try to be the first to actually short commercial real estate. Remember, those pension funds were very likely some of the entities hurt worst when it became evident that sooner or later the housing market bubble was about to burst, and they fled in part into commodities investment, specifically into oil futures, driving up the price of gasoline to over $4.00/gallon, assuring the housing market meltdown, and then when it became evident that they had lost all assets there and that this collapse would also drive down oil to recently unheard-of lows, there wasn't anything to do except to try to be the first to short oil the most.
Fiduciary responsibility is a sword of many edges and while it might not be even-handed in terms of what befals the greater economy, the duty to the stockholders is unequivocal, especially if you yourself are a major stockholder and get paid bonuses in stocks rather than in cash. In such a position, just to preserve no more than a 20-percent loss in the pension fund of, for example, the Florida teacher's union, you'd cheerfully short oil down to 25 percent of what it was 6 months before, just to keep up the values of your major asset, commercial real-estate. Shorting oil could make ridiculous amounts of money, at least until the new rules came into effect against "naked shorting", which was basically taking bets with other people's money at a game where you weren't even present and in which you had no stakes. (This is also known in classic caper lore as "the bookie is skimming the till and winning no-lose bets with it". It works great until someone notices, and then you get concrete overshoes.)
Without a fallback to either shorting something that can no longer be shorted -- there's not much lower to go, and you're not allowed to do it -- or using the after-effects of that shorting to prop up a business climate with super-cheap energy, the only way you can maintain asset valuation in your commercial real-estate holdings is to not acquire any more of it, and perhaps even to unload the less-solid sites... at discount rates. This of course leads to a scramble to the bottom, and the bottom is nowhere in sight.
The end result of this, of course, is that there's no work at all in the Construction trades, and what there is has been going to the bottom feeders, and the race to the bottom is cutthroat. It's gotten so bad that you've got day-laborers getting paid $5.00/hour and being glad to get it, and you've got the vultures circling the check-cashing places looking to do a little "amigo shopping" (day-laborer robberies) and even as hobo "jungles" start to pop up in the bushes around various shopping centers -- the Park Police are being pretty aggressive about monitoring the parks -- you've got really scary people starting to hang out in the bushes just laying in wait for any of the homeless to try to bed down there with a few dollars in their pocket from any work they might have got.
Foreclosures -- or homes within a month or two of final action in foreclosure -- in Aspen Hill may amount to as much as 5 percent of the housing stock. Thus far, no rumors are circulating about gutted houses, or squatter shacks, and most of the lawns are reasonably well maintained, which is to say, they have been cut at least once since the property was vacated.
How long this can last, especially once the next wave of "alt-A Option Mortgages" reset to much higher payments within the next 6 months, nobody can predict. But summer is really only new beginning, and as the last of the alt-A mortgages resets, winter will only then be really with us.
And between now and then?
Don't look for the commercial real-estate sector to save us. Their total asset value is likely to drop nearly a quarter between now and then.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Where Your Money Is: Calculated Risk
Please subscribe to Calculated Risk.
Read it and tremble... but at least you'll have some clue about what's coming.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Turn of the Screw
(Update. Fix links, typo etc. Stet at Midnight July 3, 2009)
I know of a reasonably cute l'il gal. She has that sort of technical talent at which older folks marvel.
You know, can't figure out how to set the VCR? Call in the kids, they'll look at you like you're stupid and fix your broken stuff in about 30 seconds. What's really scary is when they try to explain to you what they did. They say something like "um well, you just..." and words usually fail them and they wiggle their fingers like they were pushing buttons.
It can be difficult to articulate what occurs in the realms outside of the verbal. I have done a fair amount of technical writing, and the hardest part is translating the "well, push this button and yank that cord" into a story that has not merely a beginning, end, and middle, but which also conveys to the reader the reasons that they will need to know to figure out any uses outside of the merely rote.
Alas, though I had hoped the young lady in question might turn out to be one of those who can either figure out the reasons on her own -- whether or not she could articulate them into the common standard language -- or can come close enough to doing that so as to get jobs done that most people wouldn't even try to do. Most folks of a certain age are doomed to forever watch the clock on their VCR blink . Even though they can watch videos or DVDs just fine, it's a waste of the capabilities of the equipment.
Yet I made the mistake of asking the young lady in question "So, have you set your mind on a career yet?" and she declared that it was her intention to become a Parole and Probation person.
All I could tell her was that such people that I've known generally didn't seem to me to be too incredibly happy.
What I couldn't do was to express my complete incomprehension that anyone would ever want to spend four years in college just so that they qualified to be a lousy screw.
"Screw", for the English Impaired, is a classic and commonplace reference to anyone remotely associated with the business of keeping people in lockup.
"Screws" can also refer to anything that can't be resisted, and gets tighter and tighter and tighter... until things break. In certain contexts, what breaks is a person's will.
In a certain sub-context of that last definition, a screw is exactly what is used to stop an asshole from blowing crap everywhere. You just keep tightening it down, and finally, the asshole is stopped.
It's just not exactly pleasant to be the poor bastard with the screwdriver.
Then again, you stopped an asshole.
As of July 1, 2009, a lot of new laws went into effect. At the State level, nobody will be getting a new driver's permit in the State of Maryland which is usable for any Federal purpose unless they can prove lawful presence in the USA. At the County level, a lot of the people who won't be able to get new driver's permits also will get ticketed for parking their fly-by-night commercial vehicles in residential areas.
Yet the real gravy is only now starting to be basted onto a goose that is long overdue to be cooked.
The Gazette reports that at long last the Montgomery County Police will start moving towards dealing with the immense backlog of bench warrants. Their reluctance to do anything about it previously to now stems directly from at least a decade of County policy. There has been no significant effort in at least 10 years to deal with this backlog of warrants, because over half of the people in line to be arrested for "failure to appear" have "Hispanic" names and possibly most may reasonably be presumed to be illegal aliens.
The County's approach for now is to blanket the neighborhood with flyers advising people that it's really best for them to turn themselves in to avoid complications.
The County is, I have no doubts, just taking their standard approach, which is to give everyone all due warning that the County is about to start turning down the screws.
Although the County is trying to take the line that of course they'll be giving primary attention to minor offenses -- as the illegal alien community is still adjusting to the idea that only crimes of violence or weapons charges will get their immigration status checked -- this is of no consequence. Orders have come down from the very top -- which is to say, via DHS chairperson Janet Napolitano on direct orders from President Barack Obama -- that all persons brought into any jail anywhere on any level of charges will be checked against ICE and CIS as well as LEAA and NCIC. It doesn't matter, the second these warrants are served those people get their status checked. That's all. Direct from the President. A Democrat. Understand me, Mr County Executive, Mr Chief of Police, Mr Sheriff, Mr Officer On the Street? Deal with the warrant backlog, and you'll be dealing with the immigration issue.
Or, you could simply do as has been done for the last decade... ignore blatant disrespect for, and open mocking of, the law... as long as the repeat offenders and bail jumpers are all foreigners illegally present in the country.
We citizens -- who just today heard that the official unemployment rate is 9.5 percent but when you really do the real math, it's more like 16.5 percent -- expect that here in Montgomery, we who play by the rules and abide by the law will still see the foreigners being turned against us as tightened screws.
Then again, times are changing and the politicians need to change with them.
Maybe the screws will be turning where they're supposed to be turned... against the lawless and the cheaters.
I know of a reasonably cute l'il gal. She has that sort of technical talent at which older folks marvel.
You know, can't figure out how to set the VCR? Call in the kids, they'll look at you like you're stupid and fix your broken stuff in about 30 seconds. What's really scary is when they try to explain to you what they did. They say something like "um well, you just..." and words usually fail them and they wiggle their fingers like they were pushing buttons.
It can be difficult to articulate what occurs in the realms outside of the verbal. I have done a fair amount of technical writing, and the hardest part is translating the "well, push this button and yank that cord" into a story that has not merely a beginning, end, and middle, but which also conveys to the reader the reasons that they will need to know to figure out any uses outside of the merely rote.
Alas, though I had hoped the young lady in question might turn out to be one of those who can either figure out the reasons on her own -- whether or not she could articulate them into the common standard language -- or can come close enough to doing that so as to get jobs done that most people wouldn't even try to do. Most folks of a certain age are doomed to forever watch the clock on their VCR blink . Even though they can watch videos or DVDs just fine, it's a waste of the capabilities of the equipment.
Yet I made the mistake of asking the young lady in question "So, have you set your mind on a career yet?" and she declared that it was her intention to become a Parole and Probation person.
All I could tell her was that such people that I've known generally didn't seem to me to be too incredibly happy.
What I couldn't do was to express my complete incomprehension that anyone would ever want to spend four years in college just so that they qualified to be a lousy screw.
"Screw", for the English Impaired, is a classic and commonplace reference to anyone remotely associated with the business of keeping people in lockup.
"Screws" can also refer to anything that can't be resisted, and gets tighter and tighter and tighter... until things break. In certain contexts, what breaks is a person's will.
In a certain sub-context of that last definition, a screw is exactly what is used to stop an asshole from blowing crap everywhere. You just keep tightening it down, and finally, the asshole is stopped.
It's just not exactly pleasant to be the poor bastard with the screwdriver.
Then again, you stopped an asshole.
As of July 1, 2009, a lot of new laws went into effect. At the State level, nobody will be getting a new driver's permit in the State of Maryland which is usable for any Federal purpose unless they can prove lawful presence in the USA. At the County level, a lot of the people who won't be able to get new driver's permits also will get ticketed for parking their fly-by-night commercial vehicles in residential areas.
Yet the real gravy is only now starting to be basted onto a goose that is long overdue to be cooked.
The Gazette reports that at long last the Montgomery County Police will start moving towards dealing with the immense backlog of bench warrants. Their reluctance to do anything about it previously to now stems directly from at least a decade of County policy. There has been no significant effort in at least 10 years to deal with this backlog of warrants, because over half of the people in line to be arrested for "failure to appear" have "Hispanic" names and possibly most may reasonably be presumed to be illegal aliens.
The County's approach for now is to blanket the neighborhood with flyers advising people that it's really best for them to turn themselves in to avoid complications.
The County is, I have no doubts, just taking their standard approach, which is to give everyone all due warning that the County is about to start turning down the screws.
Although the County is trying to take the line that of course they'll be giving primary attention to minor offenses -- as the illegal alien community is still adjusting to the idea that only crimes of violence or weapons charges will get their immigration status checked -- this is of no consequence. Orders have come down from the very top -- which is to say, via DHS chairperson Janet Napolitano on direct orders from President Barack Obama -- that all persons brought into any jail anywhere on any level of charges will be checked against ICE and CIS as well as LEAA and NCIC. It doesn't matter, the second these warrants are served those people get their status checked. That's all. Direct from the President. A Democrat. Understand me, Mr County Executive, Mr Chief of Police, Mr Sheriff, Mr Officer On the Street? Deal with the warrant backlog, and you'll be dealing with the immigration issue.
Or, you could simply do as has been done for the last decade... ignore blatant disrespect for, and open mocking of, the law... as long as the repeat offenders and bail jumpers are all foreigners illegally present in the country.
We citizens -- who just today heard that the official unemployment rate is 9.5 percent but when you really do the real math, it's more like 16.5 percent -- expect that here in Montgomery, we who play by the rules and abide by the law will still see the foreigners being turned against us as tightened screws.
Then again, times are changing and the politicians need to change with them.
Maybe the screws will be turning where they're supposed to be turned... against the lawless and the cheaters.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Blarg: Stuff
First, a note to self and advice to others:
Never walk into a bar and give people clues to your blog, especially if the bar is one of the deeper dives in the Weirdness that is Washington.
Well, if you're me, you've had weirder things for breakfast than most of these people could ever hope to see, much less to be. But for the average person with the average idea of what constitutes sanity? Kiss your average ideas and average sanity goodbye. In particular, never let troublemakers mine your blog output for whatever will most annoy you, because Washington being Washington, and carpetbaggers being carpetbaggers, they will do whatever they can to get your goat.
That's okay... I've been a regular on the scene in the District since long before these kids were born, and while the respect I get from real District Denizens might be a bit grudging at times, since I know how to mind my manners, I have it.
And as for these kids from out of town who think they've got new tricks for the old dog, all I ever have to do is to mention that the only difference between a tourist and a carpetbagger is that the carpetbagger has an address, and make that mention to any of a large number of real District homeboys who have known me to have done them no harm in the 20 or 30 years they've known me.
If you think that the national sport of Washington DC is "fucking with tourists", that's nothing compared to what we got for carpetbaggers, and you'll be moving right along as people ask with big sorrowful eyes, "Leaving us so soon?" and then make damn sure the door hits you in the ass as you get the fuck out... but not fast enough.
A lot of carpetbaggers never quite understand that a real Washingtonian is never unintentionally rude. They then compound that mistake with mistaking politeness for weakness.
For example, it's exceptionally polite to say "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, do please be so kind as think up something appropriate in terms of a comeuppance for someone who actually made me mutter, every day in every way forces me to add to the very long list of people who can just kiss my fat ass". And you know what? If someone asks you politely like that, well, something's just got to be done, know-what-I-mean? Especially if you're one of those special people who remembers having the cartoon in question stapled to the fabric of their government cubicle.
Moving right along: the Washington Post reports on an increasing awareness of the profound dangers of atypical antipsychotics and antidepressants of the benzidiazepine class. Please see Anti-Anxiety Drugs Raise New Fears ("Anti-Anxiety Drugs Raise New Fears", Balestra, Katie, Washington Post, June 30, 2009).
Never walk into a bar and give people clues to your blog, especially if the bar is one of the deeper dives in the Weirdness that is Washington.
Well, if you're me, you've had weirder things for breakfast than most of these people could ever hope to see, much less to be. But for the average person with the average idea of what constitutes sanity? Kiss your average ideas and average sanity goodbye. In particular, never let troublemakers mine your blog output for whatever will most annoy you, because Washington being Washington, and carpetbaggers being carpetbaggers, they will do whatever they can to get your goat.
That's okay... I've been a regular on the scene in the District since long before these kids were born, and while the respect I get from real District Denizens might be a bit grudging at times, since I know how to mind my manners, I have it.
And as for these kids from out of town who think they've got new tricks for the old dog, all I ever have to do is to mention that the only difference between a tourist and a carpetbagger is that the carpetbagger has an address, and make that mention to any of a large number of real District homeboys who have known me to have done them no harm in the 20 or 30 years they've known me.
If you think that the national sport of Washington DC is "fucking with tourists", that's nothing compared to what we got for carpetbaggers, and you'll be moving right along as people ask with big sorrowful eyes, "Leaving us so soon?" and then make damn sure the door hits you in the ass as you get the fuck out... but not fast enough.
A lot of carpetbaggers never quite understand that a real Washingtonian is never unintentionally rude. They then compound that mistake with mistaking politeness for weakness.
For example, it's exceptionally polite to say "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, do please be so kind as think up something appropriate in terms of a comeuppance for someone who actually made me mutter, every day in every way forces me to add to the very long list of people who can just kiss my fat ass". And you know what? If someone asks you politely like that, well, something's just got to be done, know-what-I-mean? Especially if you're one of those special people who remembers having the cartoon in question stapled to the fabric of their government cubicle.
Moving right along: the Washington Post reports on an increasing awareness of the profound dangers of atypical antipsychotics and antidepressants of the benzidiazepine class. Please see Anti-Anxiety Drugs Raise New Fears ("Anti-Anxiety Drugs Raise New Fears", Balestra, Katie, Washington Post, June 30, 2009).
Benzodiazepines, often prescribed to manage anxiety, panic and sleep disorders, include Xanax, Ativan, Valium and Klonopin. Originally pushed as an alternative to barbiturates, their use has grown rapidly in the past 30 years. But critics say their long-term effects have gone largely unaddressed. Health professionals and consumers are increasingly recognizing that taking the drugs for more than a few weeks can lead to physical dependence, often ending with a grueling withdrawal.
[ ... ]
Some doctors have been turning to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as Paxil, to replace benzodiazepines in the treatment of anxiety, although those antidepressants may also produce withdrawal symptoms. Steven Daviss, chairman of psychiatry at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center, said SSRIs are a safer alternative for panic and anxiety disorders, with less risk for dependence and a less dangerous withdrawal.
The ordeal of withdrawing from benzodiazepines can rival that of kicking a heroin habit, according to some who have had success. Abrupt withdrawal can result in hallucinations, seizures and even death, experts say.
[ ... ]
Last Day to Rent Storage for Commercial Vehicles!
Don't forget that as of tomorrow, July First 2009, it is illegal to park a commercial vehicle either on the street or on private property in most parts of Montgomery County in or near Aspen Hill or Silver Spring. Furthermore, the police and Code Enforcement will now be working hand in hand, so that the old game ends, the game of "get a ticket on the street, move it onto the lot and it'll be six months before Code Enforcement cites it, park on the street again, start the whole 6-month cycle all over again without paying a cent".
No, the County is hungry for Revenue... and we the suffering citizens who have had to put up with watching our neighborhoods assume the appearance and appeal of industrial parks, well, we'll be phoning it in right and left. I might even go out and charge up the cellphone just so I can blow $50.00 of prepaid minutes busting out the sort of asshole who cuts down every tree they have and paves the yard to park their fleet of work vehicles in residential neighborhoods.
So, how much is that ticket/citation again? $500.00?
My goal? To make five million dollars of commerical-vehicle illegal parking revenue for the County... by mid-July.
No, the County is hungry for Revenue... and we the suffering citizens who have had to put up with watching our neighborhoods assume the appearance and appeal of industrial parks, well, we'll be phoning it in right and left. I might even go out and charge up the cellphone just so I can blow $50.00 of prepaid minutes busting out the sort of asshole who cuts down every tree they have and paves the yard to park their fleet of work vehicles in residential neighborhoods.
So, how much is that ticket/citation again? $500.00?
My goal? To make five million dollars of commerical-vehicle illegal parking revenue for the County... by mid-July.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Rock Stars Can't Die!
I am almost exactly the same age as Michael Jackson, or Madonna, for that matter.
Despite their human foibles, I've always looked up to them as icons of my age and culture.
I grew up with Michael Jackson, but until Thriller came out, I didn't pay any more attention to him than I had to... and then there he was.
And now he's gone, not even the shade is left here on this earth, though his influence may cast a shadow down through the ages, as much as he shone a light of music into the culture.
Then again, there is always Madonna:
And Madonna is still with us.
Despite their human foibles, I've always looked up to them as icons of my age and culture.
I grew up with Michael Jackson, but until Thriller came out, I didn't pay any more attention to him than I had to... and then there he was.
And now he's gone, not even the shade is left here on this earth, though his influence may cast a shadow down through the ages, as much as he shone a light of music into the culture.
Then again, there is always Madonna:
And Madonna is still with us.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Exceptional Boredom, Silly Research, "Hermitage" and "Bradford's Rest"
After some weeks of poring through various old Subdivision Plats and assorted deeds, I found out a few interesting things about the development history of Aspen Hill.
During the very early years of Maryland settlement by Europeans -- mostly by the English, in the early days -- grants of land as large as 5000 acres or so were granted via "patents".
Aspen Hill, west of Georgia Avenue, is split between two such patents. One would be "Hermitage", and the other would be Bradford's Rest.
I've discovered that the line of division is quite nearly west-to-east, starting from Rock Creek across the stream from Meadow Hall, running at roughly 87 degrees East of North, to a bit east of the intersection of Aspen Hill Road and Georgia Avenue.
"Hermitage" lies to the south of this line -- which in the present day is roughly the line of Aspen Hill Road from the Aspen Hill Library to the fence line between Gate of Heaven Cemetery and the Aspen Manor Shopping Center -- and Bradford's Rest to the north.
A map of Bradford's Rest is available. Rotate it 90 degrees to the left to get it pointed north, and start looking at a Google map of the area. A hint, the line-segments marked "42 and 41" are roughly the course of Georgia Avenue from Aspen Hill Road to Bel Pre Road. From there the Astute Reader may calculate the extent of this huge swath of land.
Hermitage runs south to a bit past Wheaton, or "Mitchell's Cross Roads" as it was then known.
In recent days -- or perhaps weeks -- I've been able to determine the rough extents of "Cassell's land" which is often referred to in the deeds of the time and many subsequent deeds which reference the earlier deeds. It seems to be the most southeastern tract in Bradford's Rest, comprising lands now BAE Systems, Home Depot, much of the English Manor and parts of the Wheaton Woods subdivision north of Aspen Hill Road, and the Northgate Plaza shoppiong center.
Also more rigorously determined, the bounds of the "Bauer Tract", the present-day site of the Aspen Hill Library and a narrow strip of subdivision running 6 blocks north. Also, some of the bounds of the so-called Earle Tract, much of the original route of Aspen Hill Road, etc etc.
Given a bit of time, and some walkabout with a GPS, I should be able to generate nice googlemaps and potentially a MPG movie of boundaries over time including the times of subdivision.
By the time I'm done, assuming that anyone in Aspen Hill remains who can speak English -- generally speaking, that may be a sucker bet -- this should be a comprehensive history of land-use pattern changes over time, all as a backdrop to other evolving histories of the place.
Well, I can't be categorized as yet-another frat-boy cut-and-paste term paper writer. I'm actually doing my own research, and doing a lot of walk-around and transcription from onlined microfilm images.
Between this and my UNIX and internet skills, not to mention my ability to read and write English without needing a spellchecker, you'd think I could get a fucking job.
But that's not going to happen... so all I have is a hobby.
During the very early years of Maryland settlement by Europeans -- mostly by the English, in the early days -- grants of land as large as 5000 acres or so were granted via "patents".
Aspen Hill, west of Georgia Avenue, is split between two such patents. One would be "Hermitage", and the other would be Bradford's Rest.
I've discovered that the line of division is quite nearly west-to-east, starting from Rock Creek across the stream from Meadow Hall, running at roughly 87 degrees East of North, to a bit east of the intersection of Aspen Hill Road and Georgia Avenue.
"Hermitage" lies to the south of this line -- which in the present day is roughly the line of Aspen Hill Road from the Aspen Hill Library to the fence line between Gate of Heaven Cemetery and the Aspen Manor Shopping Center -- and Bradford's Rest to the north.
A map of Bradford's Rest is available. Rotate it 90 degrees to the left to get it pointed north, and start looking at a Google map of the area. A hint, the line-segments marked "42 and 41" are roughly the course of Georgia Avenue from Aspen Hill Road to Bel Pre Road. From there the Astute Reader may calculate the extent of this huge swath of land.
Hermitage runs south to a bit past Wheaton, or "Mitchell's Cross Roads" as it was then known.
In recent days -- or perhaps weeks -- I've been able to determine the rough extents of "Cassell's land" which is often referred to in the deeds of the time and many subsequent deeds which reference the earlier deeds. It seems to be the most southeastern tract in Bradford's Rest, comprising lands now BAE Systems, Home Depot, much of the English Manor and parts of the Wheaton Woods subdivision north of Aspen Hill Road, and the Northgate Plaza shoppiong center.
Also more rigorously determined, the bounds of the "Bauer Tract", the present-day site of the Aspen Hill Library and a narrow strip of subdivision running 6 blocks north. Also, some of the bounds of the so-called Earle Tract, much of the original route of Aspen Hill Road, etc etc.
Given a bit of time, and some walkabout with a GPS, I should be able to generate nice googlemaps and potentially a MPG movie of boundaries over time including the times of subdivision.
By the time I'm done, assuming that anyone in Aspen Hill remains who can speak English -- generally speaking, that may be a sucker bet -- this should be a comprehensive history of land-use pattern changes over time, all as a backdrop to other evolving histories of the place.
Well, I can't be categorized as yet-another frat-boy cut-and-paste term paper writer. I'm actually doing my own research, and doing a lot of walk-around and transcription from onlined microfilm images.
Between this and my UNIX and internet skills, not to mention my ability to read and write English without needing a spellchecker, you'd think I could get a fucking job.
But that's not going to happen... so all I have is a hobby.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
More Thursday Mindlessness, Only Now More Diverse
I decided I was bring horribly horribly eurocentric with my boring video postings. Not merely eurocentric, but limiting myself to NW Europe. What total lack of diversity! What, can't the former satellite states of USSR get any credit?
Really, they're all moving into the modern age. Here we have post-punk beach music from Hungarian rockers Supernem. It's enough to make you want to drive your Trabant all of the way to the shores of the Baltic and see if the surf's up:
And who would believe that even in the Czech Republic they have Gothic bands? Not too bad, actually. Bratrstvo Luny:
Ani Lorak of Ukraine can definitely rock a soft love ballad with "Rozkazhy". As best I can make it out, she's moping about how she's devoted her entire life to some guy, but what she wants the most of anything is to hear him tell her "I love you". Mariah Carey, look out.
Of course, in Russia, they have actual culture, this is traditional instruments and good musicians. Of course, if you are Russian at soccer game and this comes on speaker, you are required as patriotic gesture to drink entire bottle of vodka, empty the benches of stadium onto field, and fight until police come with tear gas.
Of course, you might want to think twice, in case this is the team you are playing:
As to this last video, nobody has ever figured out what the hell it's supposed to be about. Nobody. Ever.
you can't believe how hard I had to dig for this, but at long last: Tibetan Reggae.
No Thursday would be complete without a Korean punk rock club video.
Really, they're all moving into the modern age. Here we have post-punk beach music from Hungarian rockers Supernem. It's enough to make you want to drive your Trabant all of the way to the shores of the Baltic and see if the surf's up:
And who would believe that even in the Czech Republic they have Gothic bands? Not too bad, actually. Bratrstvo Luny:
Ani Lorak of Ukraine can definitely rock a soft love ballad with "Rozkazhy". As best I can make it out, she's moping about how she's devoted her entire life to some guy, but what she wants the most of anything is to hear him tell her "I love you". Mariah Carey, look out.
Of course, in Russia, they have actual culture, this is traditional instruments and good musicians. Of course, if you are Russian at soccer game and this comes on speaker, you are required as patriotic gesture to drink entire bottle of vodka, empty the benches of stadium onto field, and fight until police come with tear gas.
Of course, you might want to think twice, in case this is the team you are playing:
As to this last video, nobody has ever figured out what the hell it's supposed to be about. Nobody. Ever.
you can't believe how hard I had to dig for this, but at long last: Tibetan Reggae.
No Thursday would be complete without a Korean punk rock club video.
Mindlessness & Thursdays Go Together
(Updated June 26, fix lyric ref)
It occurs to me that I'm being a bit too serious.
Hey, when the world is an immense trainwreck crashing all around you and you seem to be the only adult on the car, you worry, you get angry, you run around and do stuff. But once the wheels come off of the tracks while the train is still moving, it's beyond anything you can do and you might as well surrender to intertia. In the end when you have done all that you can, you just sit back and wait for the moment that all of the metal folds up around you when the inertia encounters the immovable object, or perhaps you get lucky and a hundred cars of freight and passengers all slide more-or-less gently to a stop.
Might as well put on some music and crank all knobs completely clockwise.
I said I'd be trying to find some europop and ideally this page with send your browser into a screaming crash landing.
This, I think, might be the German equivalent of Miley Cyrus, or maybe not. At least it shows that girl groups that have actual talent not only still exist, but can put out a video that isn't all about skin and strut. Too bad you have to go to Germany to see it.
Sorry, can't embed it, so you get a popwindow: Debbie Rockt! "Ich Rocke"
And then there's a bit of French pop from Alizee. Remember, French pop isn't for everyone but this one's a bit naughty:
"It's not my fault
When the cat's got my tongue
I see them gather 'round to pounce
It's not my fault
That I hear everything around me, is 'Lolita'
Me, Lolita".
Moving right along back to Deutschland, here in a popwindow is video prooof that no German anywhere -- especially not in Germany -- has ever had a sense of humor. Please see Deichkind -- Ich Betaube Mich.
Now you will understand why Frankfort is the industrial and banking capital of the world. It's the deep and endless seriousness, I tell you.
And then there's Yvonne Catterfeld, who can sing a sappy ballad far better than Britney has done for years:
But of course no German popmuzik sampler is complete without the Cookie Monster lyrics of Rammstein:
It occurs to me that I'm being a bit too serious.
Hey, when the world is an immense trainwreck crashing all around you and you seem to be the only adult on the car, you worry, you get angry, you run around and do stuff. But once the wheels come off of the tracks while the train is still moving, it's beyond anything you can do and you might as well surrender to intertia. In the end when you have done all that you can, you just sit back and wait for the moment that all of the metal folds up around you when the inertia encounters the immovable object, or perhaps you get lucky and a hundred cars of freight and passengers all slide more-or-less gently to a stop.
Might as well put on some music and crank all knobs completely clockwise.
I said I'd be trying to find some europop and ideally this page with send your browser into a screaming crash landing.
This, I think, might be the German equivalent of Miley Cyrus, or maybe not. At least it shows that girl groups that have actual talent not only still exist, but can put out a video that isn't all about skin and strut. Too bad you have to go to Germany to see it.
Sorry, can't embed it, so you get a popwindow: Debbie Rockt! "Ich Rocke"
And then there's a bit of French pop from Alizee. Remember, French pop isn't for everyone but this one's a bit naughty:
"It's not my fault
When the cat's got my tongue
I see them gather 'round to pounce
It's not my fault
That I hear everything around me, is 'Lolita'
Me, Lolita".
Moving right along back to Deutschland, here in a popwindow is video prooof that no German anywhere -- especially not in Germany -- has ever had a sense of humor. Please see Deichkind -- Ich Betaube Mich.
Now you will understand why Frankfort is the industrial and banking capital of the world. It's the deep and endless seriousness, I tell you.
And then there's Yvonne Catterfeld, who can sing a sappy ballad far better than Britney has done for years:
But of course no German popmuzik sampler is complete without the Cookie Monster lyrics of Rammstein:
