The Sound of House Prices Crashing All Around

Hey, hey. I just took at trip to the edge of suburban sprawl - you know, the sort of place that was home to working farms half a dozen years ago - and was prompted to write about the current suburban passion for "for sale" signs. Yeah, yeah, you say, house prices slipping is nothing new. But today, on a hot Sunday in late August, game day for open houses, there was a distinct chill in the air.

I drove out on one of those new toll roads, the sort with exits to nowhere. Some of the road signs were in place, but covered up because the communities they were intended to exit to, weren't quite there. Really, there was no there, there.

Along the speedy highway were a number of "Be kind to turtles" signs, yellow diamonds with pictograms of kindly turtles meandering across the landscape, the message being that you should stop if you saw a baby turtle crossing the street. This would be fine in another setting, say a dirt road with a 25-mile-an-hour speed limit, but considering the speed on this six-lane highway was 65 miles per hour, stopping to let a turtle go would seem positively reckless. I wondered if the developers just put in the signs to create a sense of place, the thought being that really, it was a suburban Eden if only you could look past the big box stores and the gas stations.

As well as turtle signs I saw realtors signs - "home MUST be sold today!" - for places with pseudo names like "Belmont Crossing" or "Vista Landing." And strangely enough, these landscapes filled with hardiplank homes were hardly occupied. I never saw a soul. If you ask me, there just aren't enough people to fill these houses.

Of course, the mortgage loan mess was bound to happen as soon as those ingenious interest-only and exotic ARMS passed their honeymoon period. And naturally, we can point to all those mortgage risk assessment departments that seemed to take a vacation in the late 1990s until this August - why were they lending money to people who couldn't afford the repayments? - , but let me be honest: I think that we have just reached saturation point. Quite simply, there are too many new homes for the people who can legitimately afford them.

We've reached the end of the road as far as luxury upgrades and over-the-top custom finishes. I know I can't bear to see another chip of granite, a sumputous bathroom the size of a football pitch or a cathedral ceiling that puts a cathedral to shame: I just want to live somewhere I can afford, where the rooms aren't built for giants and I can commute to and from without GPS. Come on America, let's live where there's life, and let's leave the turtles alone.

Bitchin' by the Pool

It's scorchin' and I'm bitchin'. This time I'm going to complain about the pool. Since summer days are here, I have occasion to spend a few moments ringside at our local pool, where, dear readers, I have made two important observations:

• water aerobics performed by old ladies is not pretty
  
• gangs of Mothers of Small Children (MSC) are quite unbearable
  

First, I'll just share with you the sight I was treated to at 10 AM today: a dozen or so women of senior years, clad in nothing but swimsuits and sun visors, were lying on their backs, with their legs in the air, opening and closing their legs like geriatric scissors. It was like some strange AARP porno movie. The music that wafted up from the speakers at this moment was Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy, Breaky Heart." It was enough to make me drop my Diet Coke and run for the shelter of the kiddie pool.

Which leads me to my second observation: MSCs en masse are enough to send me to water aerobics. This morning they terrorized anyone without a small child into giving up all available seating and making way for their strollers. In their wake, they left a trail of Goldfish and raisins.

As a breed, the MSCs are focused on their neighborhood, schools and golf. Sadly, this leaves little time for their children, who are forced into dumping pool furniture into the water to gain enough attention to receive more raisins.

While I was poolside, I overheard some conversational gems that really ought to make it into a screenplay one day:

"I've got a cousin called Bubba and two more called Buddy."

"I heard it's only $100 thousand to join Congressional, but my husband thinks it's ridiculous to drive that far when we're two seconds away from the golf club here."

Boy, I wonder what Billy Ray Cyrus would say about that.

Shambo Says Shalom

In the past few days, I've been reading about the recent recurrence of foot and mouth disease in the UK. For those not familar, it's a contagious disease that makes those with cloven feet foam at the mouth, blister and sometimes die. In 2001, an outbreak cost the UK millions of pounds, postposted the general election and caused general madness among farmers.

Needless to say, the recent outbreak is cause for widespread alarm and fingerpointing. The British Authorities are investigating the source of the outbreak, but they should save their time because I have a conspiracy theory: it's Shambo's revenge. Who is Shambo? A dead cow, but not just any old dead cow. Shambo was a sacred Welsh bull, revered by the Hindus of Skanda Vale, near Llanpumsaint, Wales. No, really, I'm not making this up. There's a Hindu community in rural Wales and their bovine was sacrified in the name of TB.

The saga began in April when Shambo tested positive for TB. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said Shambo must die. The case went to the High Court that declared Shambo could live. Then the Welsh Assembly Government appealed and the Court of Appeals upheld DEFRA's original plan to make mincemeat of Shambo.

On July 27, after a little tug-of-war with the condemned Friesen, Shambo was put to death by lethal injection. It turns out Shambo really did have TB, but I think the last word belongs to one of Skanda Vale's monks quoted in the Guardian:

"Today they broke into the temple to take away a cargo to kill but they cannot kill Shambo. They will simply add to the drama of his life cycle and he will come back again."

Coincidence? I think not. Foot and mouth diesease is just the drama of Shambo. I think this is a lesson to us all: what goes around comes around. No bull.