stupidity is not a class thing

Foreclosures come to McMansion country - Yahoo! News:

LEESBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - Million-dollar fixer-upper for sale: five bedrooms, four baths, three-car garage, cavernous living room. Big holes above fireplace where flat-screen TV used to hang.

The U.S. housing crisis has come to McMansion country.

Just as the foreclosure crisis has hollowed out poorer neighborhoods, "for sale" signs are sprouting in upscale developments so new they don't show up on GPS navigation screens.

Poor people weren't the only ones who took out risky, high-interest loans during the housing boom. The sharp increase in housing costs -- and the desire to live in brand-new, spacious houses with modern features -- led many affluent buyers to take out loans they couldn't afford.

The *real* aggravating thing in all of this is the fact that in spite of having a TON of houses up for sale (and no buyers, to the point that in the last tax year we've already lost $100,000 from our house's peak assessment), the local government is still about to give a major handout to developers to building 15,000 more unnecessary and unneeded houses out on the south side of Dulles Airport, putting the traffic strain on the 50-28 intersection to a breaking point...if there's anybody to move in, that is.

So we've got already decreasing housing values (from the bubble burst), that are going to get lower 'cause tons of for sale signs drop property values in general, and then have them go lower by dramatically increasing the supply for a demand that obviously isn't there.

on film music being played by "classical" music stations

This blog post had a ton of internet wrong on it, so I wrote a bunch of thoughts in the classcial music lj comm.

( cut 'cause most don't care )

"I listen to Mahler because I like to enjoy film scores without the emotional baggage of having actually seen the movie." -- me.

on the loss of the online "home"

from a discussion on the announcement that Disney was likely to close VMK in a few weeks:

as for me on VMK, well, I was very annoyed at having lost everything I had just 'cause I went one week too many without logging in (faire's a busy season). made me lose my appetite for online games (to the point of nausea) just as strongly as i had lost it over muds back in the early 1990s when every single mud I had a character and "home" on disappeared in a matter of weeks, from Mbongo to ToonMush to TinyTim. VMK was the first non-violent social game i'd joined since the death of the muds, and when i was dissed by it, I just gave up all over again.

With this generation being so addicted to online games, I wonder how over the long term they'll react to the heartbreak that comes from losing a "home". will they find somewhere else? will they be able to stay together elsewhere (as LJ managed to keep many of us AFR netizens together)? will they actually stop and start playing with the people around them in person rather than hide in a new online world?

how many teens on the verge of serious (and unnoticed) depression will decide its better to end it all because some beloved online "home" is no longer there to hold them together and they simply can't imaging life in a new "home"?

the reality of virtual reality is going to sting a great many before we as a society finish adjusting to it.