What fatal flaw in your character made you end up here?

Subject:	more lazy cooking
Time:	7:42 pm.

Call this an Eggplant-Sausage Bake or something.

1 eggplant
1 lb bulk Italian sausage
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes (with or without added stuff like peppers or garlic, whatever)
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
2 small onions/1 medium/whatever, chopped
garlic, minced
shredded cheese - I had some mozzarella and a 4 cheese mix from Trader Joe's
salt & pepa
Italian seasoning mix or whatever, a little oregano and basil would be fine
a pinch of hot pepper flakes

Heat over to 350. Saute onion and garlic, add sausage and brown it. When sausage is browned, add tomatoes, salt & pepa, Italian seasoning and pepper flakes. Simmer.

Slice eggplant in whatever size discs you like. Put tomato sauce in bottom of casserole dish to coat, then add a layer of eggplant pieces, a layer of cheese shreds, tomato sauce, a layer of eggplant, all the sausage tomato mix, the last of the eggplant, and finish with a layer of cheese. Depending on the size of your casserole dish and the size of the eggplant, this may need to be fiddled with, but you get the idea. Layers.

Cover dish and bake for 45 minutes. It should be pretty bubbly and brown around the edges. Remove lid and let bake for another 10-15 minutes until top of the cheese is browned. Let it sit for a few minutes before serving. I wish I'd made noodles or something to go with it, maybe rice. There's a nice liquid that cooks out.

And this is what happens because I'm too lazy to do much with an eggplant except cut it up a little bit. A very little bit.

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Time:

2:52 pm.

I found a four-leaf clover today for the first time in my life, over in the front garden of my new house. Well, it's not a garden now, it's dirt where there used to be giant ugly bushes, and now is instead filled with paint bits that were scraped prior to painting and lots of little white rocks that the previous owner so thoughtfully used instead of mulch around the base of said giant ugly bushes.

And a four-leaf clover.

Yesterday I told the contractor that he has to be finished by next Friday. It was no big production or scary confrontation, I just realized that I need the last two weeks of the month to clean both places and move and all that crap. I don't really expect him to be completely finished, but he knows that I'm starting to schedule other things, like the carpet cleaning and the cable installation. He just has to be enough done that I can get other things done around him, say while he paints the trim on the house or puts the new gutters up. I can deal with that.

At any rate, the kitchen is nearly done. The bathroom is nearly done. I picked up a mirror at Ikea earlier this week, and got the towel bars and bathroom light today. He was finishing some detail in the kitchen when I stopped over there earlier. The appliances are all back where they're supposed to go. It all looks quite nice. I'm ready to get out of here and get moved in over there.

Fingers crossed. Next week I think I'm going to try to schedule my mover. After I rake up all those goddamned little white rocks from the front garden and dump them behind the shed.

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Subject:	headdesk
Time:	8:35 pm.

I rarely talk on the phone. Rarely. I hate it. What I predictably use it for is calling in prescription refills. Ordering pizza. I feel little to no need to talk to anyone once I'm home, and I've never been the person who calls someone else just to chat. I used to unplug my phone for days or even weeks at a time, because on any given day, I couldn't think of anyone that I'd want to talk to if they called.

All of which leads to to wonder: just how long has my phone been dead?

And just why is it dead?

The only way to find out is to actually go to the Time-Warner office, since I don't have a cell phone to use to call and ask, because, frankly, I can think of plenty of better things to do with my money than get some lame-ass piece of tech I have no use for.

And tomorrow I'll be busy all day and probably won't have time. So who knows when the phone will be back on, but I can't call to refill my prescription TONIGHT.

I keep thinking I should get a pre-paid cell phone, and always end up deciding it would be a waste of money. And then some stupid shit happens. I'm not particularly Luddite, but I really fucking resent the way it keeps getting harder and harder to function in 21st century America without a fucking cell phone.

Telephones: inventions of SATAN! There's NOBODY that has that much that's interesting to say that they need to be able to do it at any split-second, day or night.

Also: Project Runway. I want to punch Kenley in the head. But that was how I felt long before the phone fuck-up.

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Subject:	What do you have hidden under the mattress?
Time:	8:19 pm.

Spanish hoards of €500 notes could aid liquidity

It is, perhaps, the strangest idea yet for pumping extra liquidity into Europe's troubled banking system. Spanish officials were yesterday reported to be looking for ways of encouraging Spaniards to remove the estimated 108m €500 notes they have hoarded in safes or under floorboards and take them to the bank. That averages out to at least two per Spaniard, or a total of €54bn, circulating outside the country's banking system.

A combination of tax-cheating and a long-standing mistrust of banks, means Spain soaks up a quarter of all the €500 notes - one of the world's highest denomination bank bills - released every year.

One option for getting the notes into the banking system, by offering a no-questions-asked fiscal amnesty, was ruled out by the finance minister Pedro Solbes yesterday. El Mundo newspaper reported, however, that there had been pressure from within the government's finance team to consider a fiscal amnesty. Spain's tax inspectors, whose job it is to root out the notes when they are used for tax fraud, were among those opposing the idea.

The purple €500 notes are so rarely seen that they have earned the nickname "Bin Ladens".

Most are used in real estate deals, where property is often bought and sold in a mixture of fiscally opaque cash and fiscally transparent bank transfers. The price of property deals reported to the tax authorities is, therefore, often much lower than that really paid.

Other notes circulate in the country's black economy. Sectors including the footwear industry, construction or silversmiths are thought to do much of their business in black currency.

Spain is estimated to have one of the biggest black economies in Europe, accounting for between 20 and 23% of annual GDP. Spanish tax authorities are investigating 12,000 big transactions involving €500 notes.

This story is great on oh so many levels, not the least of which it's starting to seem very smart to distrust banks and cheat the system, because indeed, the system has cheated us. No amnesty for tax criminals, only for the financial professionals who got us into this mess!

Speaking of which: 'Your company is bankrupt, you keep $480m. Is that fair?'

Ayup. Bye, Lehman Brothers. Don't let the screen door hit you on the way out.

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Subject:	kitchen experiment
Time:	3:10 pm.

I am putting this together right now.

Squash & Turnip Soup

3 small-medium butternut squash
3 small onions, chopped
3 small-medium turnips, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes
garlic
salt & pepa
1 qt chicken stock
hot pepper flakes
dill
apple cider vinegar

Roast the squash at 375 for an hour or so (cut in half with seeds scooped out, drizzled or sprayed with a little oil). When soft, scoop out of skin and mash. It may not all be thoroughly mushy, that's okay because it will get cooked more. The mashed squash can be cooled and kept for many things, but I wanted to try soup.

Saute onions, garlic, turnips. Add tomatoes to heat, then stock. At this point add mushy cooked squash. A lot. You'll be surprised at how much can go in. Season and add spices and vinegar, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer for an hour.

This is where I am now. I'm going to puree it after the turnips are all cooked soft, then see how it tastes. I have no idea what to expect. As usual, I didn't measure a thing.

Whee!

ETA: I like it. It's rich and sparkly, with a definite bite from the turnips, peppers and vinegar.

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Subject:	ugh
Time:	9:09 am.

Recently, I have been waking up every morning filled with dread. It wasn't until this morning that I identified the feeling, but there you have it.

What's going to go wrong today?

I don't normally operate that way, but given the ways things have been going recently, and given how little power I have to affect what happens, most days I just wait for the other shoe to drop. And then the one after that.

I don't normally get particularly close to people or invest a lot of trust in them. It's no big melodramatic thing, but there you have it. I don't trust easily or deeply and that's just the way I roll. And I've been screwed over hard by a few people recently, all of whom I genuinely believed would never do that to me. So there's that. It's just exhausting and takes a lot of mental energy to get past.

And then the house, of course. This is endless, a psychic Bataan Death March that's gotten to the point where I fundamentally believe that I'm never going to move in (or rather, that I'm never going to escape my apartment. "Escape" is the crucial concept here.)

My desktop computer died a week ago Friday, and it took quite a bit longer than it should have to get the new one built. I have a feeling that the computer weasels were lying to me the whole time about what was wrong and why it was taking so long to get the new one put together. Again, there wasn't all that much I could do about it short of demanding my money back and going elsewhere, and I just didn't have the energy.

It took me hours yesterday to get the new computer working the way I would like, and it isn't finished yet. I'm going to have to get into iTunes and fiddle with a lot by hand, which, hello, is there any bigger waste of time?

( TMI about what seems to be the start of menopause )

Everything is just sucking energy from me at a rate faster than I can replenish it. I feel like I'm hemorrhaging money. There's a daily triage of decisions about what to do and what not to do based purely on the amount of stress they'll give me that day. Some days, just getting out of bed maxes me out completely.

Ugh.

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Subject:	Haha, WALNUTS!
Time:	11:39 am.

Frank Rich: so over it with McCain

McCain’s Suspension Bridge to Nowhere

WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House.

For all the focus on Friday night’s deadlocked debate, it still can’t obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. George Bush put more deliberation into invading Iraq than McCain did into his own reckless invasion of the delicate Congressional negotiations on the bailout plan.

By the time he arrived, there already was a bipartisan agreement in principle. ( It collapsed hours later at the meeting convened by the president in the Cabinet Room. )

It's worth clicking through to see the hyperlinks Rich uses to support his claims. Interesting that the Times is finally making use of them (at least, I've never noticed them like this before).

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Subject:	Cui bono? Goldman, of course
Time:	4:54 pm.

Behind Insurer’s Crisis, a Blind Eye to a Web of Risk

Two weeks ago, the nation’s most powerful regulators and bankers huddled in the Lower Manhattan fortress that is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, desperately trying to stave off disaster.

As the group, led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help.

The only Wall Street chief executive participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson’s former firm. Mr. Blankfein had particular reason for concern.

Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.

Days later, federal officials, who had let Lehman die and initially balked at tossing a lifeline to A.I.G., ended up bailing out the insurer for $85 billion.

Their message was simple: Lehman was expendable. But if A.I.G. unspooled, so could some of the mightiest enterprises in the world.

A Goldman spokesman said in an interview that the firm was never imperiled by A.I.G.’s troubles and that Mr. Blankfein participated in the Fed discussions to safeguard the entire financial system, not his firm’s own interests.

Yet an exploration of A.I.G.’s demise and its relationships with firms like Goldman offers important insights into the mystifying, virally connected — and astonishingly fragile — financial world that began to implode in recent weeks.

Click through to read the rest. It's worth your time.

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Subject:	Hell: Freezing over
Time:	10:43 am.

George Will in today's Washington Post:

McCain Loses His Head

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17, Page A4; and the New York Times of Sept. 20, Page One.)

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Haha, I guess the chickens may come home to roost for ol' WALNUTS!* after all.

*WALNUTS!

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Subject:	The next shoe drops...
Time:	9:44 pm.

Goldman, Morgan to Become Bank Holding Companies

In one of the biggest changes to Wall Street in decades, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two independent investment banks, will become bank holding companies, the Federal Reserve said Sunday night.

The move fundamentally changes one of the mainstays of modern Wall Street. It heralds new regulations and supervisions of previously lightly regulated investment banks.

The move comes after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapses of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch.

Being a bank holding company would give Morgan and Goldman access to the discount window of the Federal Reserve. While they have had access to Fed lending facilities in recent months, regulators had planned to take away discount window access in January.

The regulation by the Federal Reserve brings a host of accounting rule changes that should benefit the two banks in the current environment.

In return, they will submit themselves to greater regulation, including limits on the amount of leverage they can take on.

...

What the hell is a bank holding company?

Haha, Wikipedia, ever-helpful. "A company with significant ownership of one or more banks."

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