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Wednesday, August 28, 2002
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Is This It?
This morning, my wife and I went through the surreal experience of closing on our new apartment. We went to the back room of the offices of a law firm (I believe it was the cooperative's law firm). Our lawyer and the seller's lawyer were there, and they gave us some papers to sign. Then we chatted with our lawyer about his recent trip to Spain. About half an hour later, the seller's bank's representative showed up and exchanged papers with various lawyers. Then I played some Tetris on my Palm Pilot for a while. Through all of this, the broker read the paper and carried on personal conversations on her cell phone.
A while later, our bank's lawyer showed up, gruffly asked my wife to change seats so he could have more room, and dove into his pile of papers. For another half hour, he handed papers to our lawyer, who handed them to us to sign. Then various people were making phone calls and copying checks and other papers, and as I was waiting for more papers to sign, everyone else walked out of the room. Apparently we were done. We walked out empty-handed, but we're now homeowners. There's nothing left to do but sit back and wait for the violent rightward swing in our political ideology.
10:00:53 PM 
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Wanna Buy Some Salvation?
Yesterday's Washington Post had an article about the scandals in the world of Yoga. This story has everything from specious use of trademarks ("...folks trying to teach yoga anywhere in America are finding that nearly all the formerly holy words of yoga have been trademarked. If you want to use them, you've got to shell out the dough...") to sex scandals ("...in 1994, Amrit Desai, a Massachusetts yogi who touted celibacy as one of his precepts, was forced to resign after admitting he'd had affairs with three female disciples. In 1997, a woman won a $1.9 million lawsuit against a Pennsylvania yoga center after claiming that she'd been sexually assaulted by her swami...").
But the worst offender on all counts is Bikram Choudhury, who calls himself the "Guru of the Stars."
An Indian immigrant, Choudhury has franchised his "hot yoga" method to 600 studios nationwide. He taught yoga to Madonna and Michael Jackson. He compares himself to Jesus and Buddha. He claims he can cure any disease. He lives in a Beverly Hills mansion with his collection of classic Bentleys and Rolls-Royces.
"Everybody knows I'm superhuman," he says. "My spirit is in cosmic consciousness."
He has, of course, trademarked poses and been accused of sex scandals, against which he defends himself thusly:
"What happens when they say they will commit suicide unless you sleep with them?" he asks. "What am I supposed to do? Sometimes having an affair is the only way to save someone's life."
A man who can cure any disease, who is comparable to Jesus and Buddha (both of whom owned literally nothing but the shirts on their backs), can only manage this in his defense? As Eric would say, this man needs a hard kick in the groin.
8:51:11 AM
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Why Is Hartford in Trouble?
The Hartford Courant, the oldest continuously published (and perhaps worst written) newspaper in the country has responded to the New York Times piece about the descent of Hartford. This is one of the saddest things that I've come across in a while. The Times piece was a thorough, well-reasoned analysis, describing how this city and its residents have been victimized by ineptitude and larger social and economic forces. The Courant's response was, in essence, "We know that Hartford is among the nation's leaders in things like drop-out rate, single parent households, and poverty, but we have some good, inexpensive restaurants." Or as one observer put it:
The saddest part of Greg Morago's defense of Hartford against the NYT is this: His list of the city's "advantages" focuses almost exclusively on places to eat. Said restaurants must be great comfort to all the undereducated and out-of-work kids so devastatingly portrayed by the NYT. Let them eat cake, Greg?
8:28:51 AM
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Why Didn't Someone Tell Me?
If I had these home-buying tips (especially the first one) from The Onion three months ago, then maybe I wouldn't be in this mess now.
8:09:57 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist.
Last update: 11/2/03; 10:27:02 AM.
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