John Wise

Kudos to Katelyn the comfort engineer, who on a stroke of genius has delivered the ‘Husband Chair’ at a local branch of Michaels, also known as “the dreaded craft store”. This convenience near the entrance of the store allows us, men, to quickly take refuge near the same door that is also the exit. While not as anonymous as staying in the car, I must admit, since gasoline prices are so high, that sitting in the car with an idling engine and the air conditioning running full blast is getting a bit expensive.

Katelyn, seemingly on a direct connection with the male psyche is looking at improving her masterpiece-in-progress by adding a cushioned seat cover, a custom coat of middle-age defying glossy black paint, and possibly even flames – those OC Chopper dudes would be envious. This woman will be a corporate goddess in her own time. My only suggestion, we need some manly magazines to hide behind and let others know that we are real men, even if we are in the craft store.

What do you get when you take a cheap, run-down $450-a-month apartment in a bad neighborhood and call it a condo? Rich! That is what this apartment owner is hoping for. At 595 square feet (55 square meters) this newly refurbished largish 1-bedroom-closet is now on sale for $120,000 – and it comes with covered parking! Since laundry machines are so bulky and noisy these master-planned luxury units offer luxury laundry rooms near the pool. With such wonderful digs in your newly improved neighborhood and the expensive pool and grounds maintenance costs, owners will be paying on average $140 in HOA fees, but that includes water and trash. So your walls are still paper-thin and the neighbor stomping upstairs is guaranteed not to be moving out soon – this place is all yours for the rest of eternity.

Next to security cameras, alarms, guard dogs, barred windows, and a well-lit corner location, what else does the modern business need? RAZOR WIRE!

There is a very nice festival on August 9th in the Hindu calendar called Raksha Bandhan. On this day sisters and close friends offer their brothers a rakhi to be worn on their right wrist to ward off evil. As can be seen from above, rakhis can be found in many different colors sporting a variety of charms, but simple threads wound together and tied around the wrist are also offered. Once put on they are seldomly taken off intentionally. I have seen these rakhis lose color and become threadbare after months of wear. I would venture to guess that some rakhi make it to the following year and the next celebration of Raksha Bandhan.

This is what you will see on so many corners of Phoenix, Arizona. When the bulldozers come in and rip every shred of the desert away, flatten the land and then abandon it, it becomes a barren wasteland of burned grass and trash. And if you are one of the citizens living near one of these patches in America’s sixth-largest and obviously wealthy city, you may not see any improvements here during your lifetime, as developers enjoy building new, financially more lucrative communities with bigger houses and bigger shopping areas rather than working on infill to raise property values. You might think the city government would care? Not a chance, it sees greater tax revenues from new neighborhoods, too. In any case, these older neighborhoods are destined to become ghettos as anybody with enough brains and money moves into the new McMansion communities sprouting up 40 miles further out in what used to be desert. If you don’t believe that we leave our great economically powerful cities to fall into disrepair, go on and visit Detroit, Buffalo, Superior, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Syracuse, and Flint – some of the fastest shrinking cities in America, or are they too practicing this model of xeriscape?