Author Archive: Paul Epps

The Moreno Valley: Junkyard of OC Dreams

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The Moreno Valley is now the poster child for American housing gone wrong, and the New York Times weighed in with one of their stock magisterial pieces, the kinds that read purty but don’t say jack shit about reality. The Orange County connection is that two of the homeowners profiled in the piece moved to the MV because they couldn’t afford apartments in OC, which should clue the rest of the nation into how stupid they were to buy into Moreno Valley. Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer doesn’t note that even people in Colton ridicule Moreno Valley residents for living there. It’s not an area “filled with people priced out of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, or looking to escape louder, less-safe cities,” as the Times notes; it’s a place for fools who weren’t smart enough to buy a house in Calimesa. Shit, even Beaumont is better than Moreno Valley, and Beamount… Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-23

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@ReporterHaley Love the food at Lucille's. And they make a very good mint julep… in reply to ReporterHaley # RT @capricecrane: I was trying to make exercising fun but apparently after a certain age its no longer "appropriate" to play Ding Dong Ditch # Read more →

The Death of Ivan Ilych

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It occurred to him that what had seemed perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend. “But if that is so,” he said to himself, “and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and… Read more →

White House Adds $2 Trillion to Deficit Forecasts

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The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates. The new projections add approximately $2 trillion to budget deficits through 2019. Earlier this year, the administration had predicted that Obama’s policies would require the government to spend $7.108 trillion more than it collects in tax revenue over the next decade. An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report will not be formally released until Tuesday, said the change is due primarily to updated projections of economic growth that are far less rosy than data used when the White House released its first long-term budget outlook in February. — washingtonpost.com I think I’d be way more upset about this if the numbers weren’t beyond human comprehension . . . Read more →

Pug Photos on Flickr

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Originally uploaded by Kerbear…NYC bound….. Originally uploaded by Madness Rivera Originally uploaded by wombatarama Originally uploaded by geraldbrazell Still want more? Here’s a bonus set. Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-21

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Want to buy a customized Michael Vick Eagles jersey for your dog? http://tinyurl.com/la3o36 # Obama: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Good mission statement for the death panels! # RT @diablocody: Obsolete memory: pushing card catalog drawers in and out at the library. Also, the tangy smell of the old cards. # Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-18

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If you can substitute toothpaste for spackle, can you substitute spackle for toothpaste? Might be good for whitening your teeth… # RT @paulandstorm: [S] Today's trillion-dollar idea: patent the concept of "technology" # Read more →

An Obstacle Course

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Pretend that your project is an obstacle course and you want to get the biggest obstacles over with in the beginning. Here are some strategies for being on time or early: You want to know what all the obstacles are as soon as possible. You want to deal with the biggest, hardest obstacles first. You want to complete every obstacle as soon as possible, rather than “on schedule.” If you can go around an obstacle or skip it, do that. Your team has to stay on the same course. You don’t want part of your team on a different course. Getting your team aligned about the blocks and how to deal with them using the entire team IQ is much more efficient than “working hard” or pounding away at the problem. Look for the big ideas. Make sure team members aren’t going over obstacles that don’t exist. What’s the biggest… Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-17

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My uncle fell down and cracked his head open. He's 80. No, he's not a member of Aerosmith. # RT @ericmusselman: Jerry West "Sometimes talent gets in the way of people being able to play well together " # Read more →

Family Happiness

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I was reading a Tolstoy story called “Family Happiness” in bed last night. It was close to midnight when I finished it. “Good story,” I announced to my wife, although she was 90 percent asleep by that time. Without opening her eyes, she asked, “What was it about?” “A man and a woman fall in love and get married. They’re very happy for a while but then the marriage starts to come apart.” “Because the husband spends too much time on Facebook?” she asked. “No, they didn’t have Facebook in 1860. What I didn’t see coming though is that the story turns out to have a happy ending after all.” “Perfect,” she said. “What did you learn from it?” “The past is gone, but you can still find a new life and a different kind of happiness.” “With the same wife?” “Yes.” “Perfect,” she said. Read more →

Comfortable With Our Stupid Children

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Researchers have found that generic American parents, faced with a child who can’t do math or science, will say “Don’t worry, Johnny, because you have so many other talents.” Asian parents, supposedly, will say “Since you aren’t apparently naturally gifted at math or science you’ll have to study extra hard in these areas,” and not stop nagging until the kid is doing well. — Philip Greenspun Read more →

New Used Books

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I paid a visit to The Bookman — a local used book store — today, spent $36 and came home with the following haul: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy Despair, Vladimir Nabokov Hunger, Knut Hamsun The Lover, Marguerite Duras New York Trilogy, Paul Auster Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray The White Hotel, D. M. Thomas Read more →

Pug on a Diet

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Early every morning, the pug comes into our room and paws at my side of the bed for me to lift him up. It’s too high for him to jump — the top of the bed’s about four feet off the ground. This morning I leaned over and hoisted him like I always do, but instead of the dog ending up on the bed, I went over the side and almost decapitated myself on the corner of the nightstand, on the way to a hard meeting with Mister Floor. “It’s okay,” my wife said. “Try again tomorrow.” The dog was unharmed. He’s not fat but a modest weight reduction program may be in the cards for him . . . Read more →

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