Journalism, Darkened

I just stepped out of a back massage, I'm sitting in a waiting room so that my strength can come back, and what do I hear?

Walter Cronkite is dead at 92.

Holy crap.

Here's to you, Walter.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

So it's been about a week or so, and how have I faired with my monkey traps?

So-so.

But more importantly, dieting has been hard, not because I crave enormous amounts of junk food, but because it requires that I have a holistic approach to eating. Eating in the United States has cultural significance in that it typically brings the family togehter. As my schedule has progressively become hectic, it becomes harder and harder to maintain a cooking regimen that will in, in turn, provide me with tasty left-overs for lunch. So I have to find substitutions, usually in the form of not-nearly-as-good-for-me-but-not-entirely-made-of-sugar snack foods that I keep onsite for contingencies.

So the short of it is, consistency in behavior yields expected results. Who'd a thunk? But there's also external factors in play. People are not the sum of their own decisions, they are also subtly influenced by outside behaviors, even if those behaviors are lacking in value, character, or are often passed on as entertainment.

I bring this up because I just recently heard the news that our failing banks are much more inclined to foreclose on homes with questionable mortgages, rather than negotiate with the homeowners. This brings the following three points:

• it's more profitable to foreclose, because;
• the loss doesn't have to be booked immediately, rather, it can wait up to a year and;
• selling at auction results in large lumps of money and making it someone else's problem.
• Someone else's problem usually means the original owner takes the hit, and;
• the new buyer now has the hassle of dealing with the property

But maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way.

Maybe these homeowners are in their own monkey traps, and we're watching the trap spring into action, just played back in slow motion. Maybe the got into the house, knowing full well that the sweet lure of ever-increasing home values is a lucrative thing, that they themselves would "make it someone else's problem" after flipping the house, and that foreclosure can't possibly happen to them...or maybe they just tried to grasp what they thought was the brass ring, the way to the good life, simply because the lure was too good.

Either way, if these are monkey traps, it then begs the question, "who set the bait?" Certainly not the soon-to-be former homeowners.

I feel for these people. I really do. Being without a home is devistating.