home as hell

Why Do Women Insist On Buying Houses?

"The scariest money mistake women can make (Hint: It's not shoes!)" sure sooounds like your average "Hey, it's O.K.…" Glamour enablement missive. (This month: Hey, it's O.K… to think about your eBay bid during sex!) But actually, "Welcome To My Mortgage Hell", penned by Meghan Daum, who knows a little bit about money mistakes, is interesting/depressing/important. Women, particularly single women, are addicted to acquiring real estate. "You use your home as a way to express who you are," says one lawyer and expert. Like shoes! But this is a newer development: until the 1970s single women were rarely allowed to buy homes without somehow proving the veracity of their intention to never have kids; today the rate of homeownership (or, you know, "ownership") among single women — single women who've been taking on half-million dollar double adjustable-rate crackpot mortgages with no down payment and that sort of thing — is twice that of single dudes. But why? More »

crappy hour

War Is Hell, But Troops Are Hot!

Welcome back reader(s.) While you were drinking Bloody Marys to soothe the damage inflicted by your spirited displays of appreciation for our troops and/or the house you bought last year, this guy was fighting the Taliban. Yes there are still 34,000 American troops doing that! But supposedly, this time, they are winning, which would sort of lend credence to Bill Kristol's assertion that the media is covering up the inspiring success story that is the war, which is sort of why I don't really buy it, since Bill Kristol's assertions about media cover ups are probably about as grounded in reality as Bill Clinton's assertions about media cover ups, which is to say: yesterday Bill Clinton said the media was covering up the fact that Obama can't win. This stands in contrast to Hillary, who thinks he might win as long as he doesn't get assassinated first like back in 1968, the year two Egyptian med school students met and formed the modern-day jihad movement. Much has changed since then, as stories in this week's New Yorker and New Republic about jihadists' disenchantment with killing people will illuminate (also for instance, Megan and I were born.) So your life could be complete upon clicking through to the jump! More »

news roundup

The Oh, Hell No Afternoon

• New York City police arrested Al Sharpton, Sean Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, and hundreds of other protesters today for staging prayer sessions at the exits of Manhattan in protest over the acquittal of the cops that shot Mr. Bell. Because, obviously, inconveniencing others to protest the loss of life means you should spend time at Rikers. Why did they have to make me like Al Sharpton? [NY Times]
  
• Hillary's staying in the race despite the hellishly long odds, hoping that Barack will fuck it up and she can convince the superdelegates to anoint her the candidate. [NY Times]
  
• To that end, she had an unannounced meeting in Washington with many of them behind closed doors. There's nothing sketchy-looking about that to the average voter though. [The Atlantic]

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