Back At It

Been doin' a bunch of readin' and writin'. No 'rithmatic, though. Still having issues with getting the materials I need for my classes. Mostly because Cornerstone insists on linking to Amazon, even when they don't sell the book or the version used in the class is out of print. Which leaves the students thrashing around in on-line used book stores of dubious legitimacy trying to scrounge up text books and CD's and other such tripe. I've been working at getting everything for these classes since December and I'm still missing stuff. This is completely ridiculous, but it seems to just be the way it is. May 11th cannot get here fast enough.

My leg is more or less normal now. I still have no clue what I did to it. I must have twisted wrong or something climbing around on the step ladder during the Spring Deep Clean of 2009, and pulled a muscle. Getting old sucks; I lost a weekend because I stepped off a ladder wrong? Holy Crap.

And speaking of holy crap, I'm not sure that prayer works this way:

The website "Information Age Prayer"... offers, for a few dollars, to recite prayers for the faithful who are too busy in this Information Age.

The concept is simple. Users have to click on their religion of choice on the home page, which leads them to a list of prayers such as the “Our Father” for Christians and the "Fajr" for Muslims.

Prices are based on the length of the texts and therefore vary. For Catholics, for example, the monthly fee for a daily prayer ranges from 70 cents for the “Hail Mary” to $49.97 for the rosary. And for the hesitant ones ($50 dollars, it’s a lump sum), the button offers a reminder: "Show God you’re serious - Get the complete Rosary Package." It’s an offer that’s hard to resist.

Um, yea.

The stock market has had a nice little rally over the last 10 days, and everyone is wetting themselves thinking we've seen the bottom and we'll be back setting new highs in six months. This is why they call these "sucker's rallies" because they run up just enough to convince people they are missing out on something and to jump back in, and then drop again. Of course Monday's big bounce is because our brilliant government just came up with a great plan: allow Wall Street firms to buy assets from the banks at fire-sale prices and guarantee the firms against any losses. At taxpayer expense, of course. No wonder the market set records for a one-day move.