NEW YORK — Actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday of a possible drug overdose in a Lower Manhattan apartment, the New York Police Department said.

— CNN.com

Possible drug overdose, possible suicide! Oh dear . . . another blow to the theory that being rich and/or famous is the ticket to happiness.

I think most famous actors — not all, obviously — are convinced that they can do things that nobody else can do, that they’re not cardboard people who are adored for no reason.

Tom Cruise, for example, I don’t think will ever commit suicide.

Oh well . . .

I’ll be the first to admit that these are cute pug photos, but are people really paying $1,100 to take photos of their pets?!

I’m thankful that I have a job! A lot of people don’t!

I lost my last job a few months ago, along with 9,499 other people in the Orange County real estate/finance industry over the past year. We all got to compete against each other to find another one.

The Orange County Register ran a story yesterday on how some of these folks are doing . . .

Delia DeYulia, a grandmother, was recently forced to take her first retail job.

For the holiday shopping season, DeYulia, 53, is working part-time at Kohl’s, placing clothes on racks and cleaning dressing rooms. She resorted to taking the temporary work after not finding other employment. After 15 years with Fremont Investment and Loan, she lost her mortgage job in Anaheim Hills in March.

“I’m used to sitting in an office,” said DeYulia, who audited loans at Fremont, a firm from which she expected to retire. “Now, I’m on my feet all day. I’m carrying a lot of stuff and my body has to get used to it. It’s hard work for a minimum-wage job.”

The extra money will help pay the mortgage and car payment. Her husband can’t work because he’s disabled.

“I had always felt comfortable financially,” said the grandmother of two. “Now, I’m worried about the future.”

[Robert] Harrington, 31, of Tustin, was let go in September from Bankers Mortgage in Santa Ana. As its loan originator, he made about $75,000 last year. More than half of that was from commissions.

That’s why he thinks his best bet is to find a commission-based job at a luxury retailer or a store that sells big-ticket items.

So he has zeroed in on several shops at South Coast Plaza. He recently applied to Movado, Bloomingdale’s, Sony Style, Porsche Design and Allen Edmonds.

“I hope one of them calls me back this week,” he said.

He needs to help supplement the income from his wife, who is a waitress. They have a three-year-old son.

Corinna Vickers, 35, was let go a year ago from Secured Funding in Costa Mesa. Then two months ago, her husband Shad Vickers, 35, lost his job at Lending Tree in Irvine.

Combined, they had been making $200,000 a year.

Now they’re both unemployed and have been hunting for work to pay their bills and help them save for retirement and college tuitions for their four daughters. They have not had any luck and now the Vickers are both willing to take on holiday retail work.

Rhonda Struman of Laguna Niguel is not waiting around to get hired full time. Last month, she began working as a part-time salesperson at Nordstrom at The Shops at Mission Viejo. It pays $8 an hour. Before she was laid off in August from her underwriting position at Paul Financial in Irvine, she was making more than four times that hourly rate, or about $70,000 a year.

Her husband also got laid off from the mortgage industry. He was pulling in about $130,000 a year. Now, he’s working for $11 an hour at a Costco in San Juan Capistrano.

Because of their huge pay cuts, they’re having a hard time paying their $3,400 monthly mortgage. They sold off their boat to get rid of the monthly payments. They will soon sell their furniture.

“I cry all the time and I’m stressed all the time,” Rhonda Struman said.

By February, she and her husband will leave Orange County for Colorado to look for mortgage jobs or work that pays better than their current employers. They’ll rent out their Laguna Niguel house to help pay the mortgage and then rent in Colorado.

“We have no choice,” said Struman, who’s in her 40s. “There’s too much competition in Orange County. “There are too many people out of jobs” who are looking for new work.

Whew, tell me about it! I was this close to taking a job parking cars for $12 an hour . . .

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Nor does the immediate future look bright for the local real estate market. Here are some of this week’s headlines from the OC Register real estate blog:

• Calif. had biggest U.S. home-price drops in Sept.
• Fed sees ‘deepened’ housing downturn
• Equity’s gone for 35% of recent SoCal homebuyers
• Early Nov. O.C. home sales off 43.5%

The rising tide of the mortgage industry lifted some pretty spurious boats here in Orange County, so it’s fun now to watch the subprime sinkhole laying them low.

Example: John Lynch, the “surfing banker,” executive VP of Secured Funding Corp., specialists in home equity loans and second mortgages to people with bad credit.

I had this guy pegged as a moron years ago, around the same time OC Metro ran a fawning blowjob of a profile on him:

For the foreseeable future, he will continue as a master of both the surfboard and the boardroom — plus anything else that he decides to do.

— OC Metro, Jan. 8, 2004

Well, that was then and this is now:

The party is over in Orange County. These days, Secured Funding’s once-buzzing office building in Costa Mesa, near John Wayne Airport, is gutted.

The imprint of “Secured Funding” is all that remains of the corporate logo that once graced the outside of the two-story building. Above it is a “For Lease” sign advertising the 82,333-square-foot (7,649-square-meter) building.

— “Subprime Fiasco Exposes Manipulation by Mortgage Brokerages,” Bloomberg.com

Lynch was so, so chatty with the press in 2004. What does he have to say now?

Neither [Lorne] Lahodny nor his partner in Secured, John Lynch, responded to messages left by phone and in person at their offices.

I adjure you by the gods, cease to admire material things, cease to make yourselves slaves, first of things, and next, for their sake, of men who can acquire them or take them away.

— EPICTETUS, Discourses, Book III, Ch. 20

When we moved recently, having to pick up everything we own and transport it from Point A to Point B confirmed something I’d long suspected, which is that we’ve accumulated way too much junk and clutter in our lives.

And if I were to walk away from here with nothing but the clothes I’m wearing, how much of it would I really miss?

Answer: Not much.

No hard feelings, but I’m looking at the company president’s new employment agreement on EDGAR . . . the stock’s down 50 percent, the bond rating’s been lowered to junk, you laid off 400 people end of July and announced plans to lay off 1,000 more, and yet shareholders will still be paying for a really fabulous set of benefits for this lout: luxury automobiles, first-class air travel, $35,000 a year for financial planning services, and not one, but two, country club memberships.

The rest of the peasants — er, employees — have to pay for their own cars, green fees, financial planners, etc., which is even tougher when you’ve been laid off thanks to my man’s (lack of) stewardship at the mortgage bank.

Let them eat cake!

I challenge you post a link to the employment agreement on the company web site and see if he isn’t guillotined within the fortnight.

My friend PE was laid off recently. He’s leasing out his house and renting a smaller place in an effort to keep his finances under control.

This should be a good lesson for that boy of his: Work hard all your life, try to do the right things, and you too can wind up with no house, no job and a wife who hates you . . .

Another study quizzed graduating master’s degree students who had received job offers about whether they had simply accepted the offered starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many men — 51 percent of the men vs. 12.5 percent of the women — said they had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated tended to be rewarded — they got 7.4 percent more, on average — compared with those who did not negotiate.

— Washington Post

A Carnegie Mellon professor has figured out why men make more than women for the same job.

I actually figured that out myself the first time I heard about it. Salaries are negotiable. You can’t pay someone less than they’re willing to work for. Hence, women must be willing to work for less money. It’s the only possible explanation.

UPDATE: I should have emphasized that 7.4 percent is just the difference in starting salaries. If we make the reasonable assumption that men continue to be more aggressive in seeking raises and promotions throughout their careers, the monetary difference potentially becomes very large indeed.

In memory of the Rev. Falwell, here’s one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes, from Hannah and Her Sisters

But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third-rate con men telling the poor suckers that they speak with Jesus. And to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what is going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.

Farewell, Falwell!

When I went to Boston, I knew they won championships but didn’t really know the history. But the players always came around, you’d ask questions, they’d talk basketball. You didn’t want to let the guys down. They set the bar high. It’s not like that here [in Indiana], or around the league. We stay at the nicest hotels. In Minnesota we’re right across the street from the arena, maybe a 45-second walk. They’ve got a bus for them. You’ve got to be kidding me. Charter planes. That’s not flying. I always say guys deserve the money, but it changes some people.

— Larry Bird

For years, Pete Rose denied betting on baseball while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

Now he admits to betting on his team every time they took the field.

— FOXSports.com

Good for him! Managers and players should be required to bet on their own teams. You’d see those assholes running out ground balls for a change, I assure you.

Eddie Van Halen says he’ll enter rehab

— Associated Press

This is sad news, and Eddie’s sweet, elderly grandma (pictured at right) says she wishes him the best.

Wait a moment . . . I’m being told that the person in the picture is not Eddie Van Halen’s elderly grandma, but is in fact — Eddie Van Halen!

Sweet Jesus! This is certainly another blow to the theory that being rich and famous will solve all of your problems!

I’m working through our monthly cash flow in Quicken while my son bounces a basketball around the family room. I see an expense that I can’t figure out, which happens more often than I’d like when I go through the family finances.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I say to myself.

“What?” my son asks. “We actually made a little money for once?”

He’s so thrilled with this zinger that he breaks into a cross-legged dance around the room yelling “OHHHHHHH! OHHHHHHH!” over and over again.

The privately held Craigslist has been approached about installing text ads on the site, and the potential revenue is “quite staggering,” [CEO Jim Buckmaster] said.

But, Buckmaster deadpanned, “No users are suggesting we run text ads.”

— Associated Press

Craigslist is an exception to the rule that a lot of Internet companies talk about putting users first, but when it comes down to a tradeoff between what users want and a boatload of money, they go for the money.

Bill Gates and the Microsoft crowd have been very prominent in charitable circles, saving Africans from disease, etc. By contrast, a Google search for “Steve Jobs charity” or “Steve Jobs donation” turns up nothing except an article on how Apple bought him a $90 million Gulfstream bizjet.

So… if Steve Jobs doesn’t give money to charity and doesn’t pay for his own jet, is he doing something interesting with his $billions?

— Philip Greenspun

Gift continues filmmaker George Lucas’ long-standing support of educational initiatives at his alma mater.

— USC news release

Danny Flores, composer of “Tequila,” a huge hit for the Champs in 1958, has died. He was 77.

— Orange County Register

Flores died in Westminster, about 20 miles from where I live in Irvine. He had been suffering for years from Parkinson’s disease.

He made about $70,000 a year from the European rights to “Tequila” but in one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” moves that you kick yourself for later, he had long since signed away the rights to U.S. royalties, an error in judgment that the Register attributed to the fact that Flores was — wait for it — a heavy drinker in the early days of the band.

Under Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, incomes today are $1,000 less for the typical household than during Bill Clinton’s final year in office; incomes for the typical working-age household have declined every year since the president took office.

— Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman

BOO HOO HOO! The President made my income go down.

I’ve never understood the mechanism behind the president or Congress making my income go up or down. Can someone explain that to me?

You know who I think makes my income go up or down? ME! I’ve made decisions that made my income go UP, and I’ve made decisions that made my income go DOWN.

Who is the target audience for this tripe? People who want to believe they have no control over their own lives? People who need to blame all their problems on others?

It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s my boss’s fault, it’s my spouse’s fault, it’s the president’s fault . . .

Look in the mirror, you schlubs!

What a dismal vision of America. Elect some Democrats, you sorry losers! Oh, and we won’t be fighting terrorists in Iraq anymore. We’ll be fighting them in the streets of major American cities.

He’s not exactly Winston Churchill, is he?

Women control [all] the wealth.

— Tom Peters

Don’t worry about it, Tom . . . because we control the women.

In the old days, greed and covetousness were seen as sinful; now they are encouraged. Jack Welch’s Winning sets the tone. The author grins manically from the cover - despite the silver hair, manicured nails and perfect teeth, he looks like Beelzebub incarnate.

But why is “winning” so great? Because, says Welch, it enables people to make lots of money which . . . erm . . . enables them to “get better healthcare, buy vacation homes, and secure a comfortable retirement”. That’s it. Those are the three goals of our mortal existence, otherwise known as more pills, more mortgages and more burglar alarms. Whatever happened to joy, pleasure, brotherhood? Whatever happened to enjoying life? Whatever happened to creativity? Whatever happened to love?

— Tom Hodgkinson