I suppose this is related to real estate, sort of

 

IKEA meatball material

Giant Viking rat terrorizes Swedish family

A Swedish family suffered the shock of a lifetime when they discovered that the ‘kitchen mouse’ that had their cat running around in circles was in fact a gigantic monster rat.
The Bengtsson-Korsås family first noticed something was wrong when their cat Enok refused to enter the kitchen in their flat in Solna, north-west Stockholm.
The rat measured 15 inches, without its tail, and had made it into the family’s flat by gnawing a tunnel between a wooden panel and concrete.

AJ comes through!

Now it can be told:

Then he must be king

 

 

In the Land of the Blind

One-eyed, dozing security guard protects us.

An aging, half-blind security guard assigned as the first line of defense inside the Freedom Tower was caught sleeping on the job.

A shocking cellphone photo obtained by The Post shows Abdul Basher, 65, stretched out nearly horizontal in his chair in the skyscraper’s south lobby, where he was the only guard assigned to protect the ground floor of the top US terror target.

Sources said a Port Authority worker spotted Basher catching some z’s around 2:45 a.m. Saturday, almost six days to the hour after a teenage daredevil slipped past another snoozing guard on the 104th floor on his way to the tower’s iconic spire.

Basher, who was fired on the spot, admitted to The Post on Wednesday that he was the absolute wrong person for the job because he suffers from a nerve condition and can’t open his left eye, while the vision in his right is “hazy.”

“Sometimes I cannot recognize people, stairs,” the Queens resident said. “That post was so hard to cover for me. It was very, very stressful. I could barely see half of the lobby.”

Basher — a shop steward for the 32BJ union who ironically was named its “Security Officer of the Year” for 2013 — also said he was “just getting ready to go on disability.”

Basher … claimed that he wasn’t really conked out.
“To my knowledge, actually I was not sleeping. I was mistaken to be sleeping. I was exercising my eyes,” he said.

Why stop at $10?

Funny, he doesn’t look like a robot – yet.

Received the following bit of fluff today in my mail box:

HARTFORD — Council 4 AFSCME, the state’s largest AFL-CIO union, applauded the General Assembly’s expected passage today of Governor Malloy’s minimum wage bill, and released the following statement:

“Raising the minimum wage will help reduce our state’s income gap — the 2nd largest in the nation — and helps us retain young workers who are on the verge of leaving the state because wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living. [emphasis added] That’s why with Congress paralyzed, Connecticut is taking action,” said Council 4 Executive Director Sal Luciano. “Our members are excited that the Governor put forward this plan, and that the Legislature acted on it so quickly. We look forward to the Legislature passing more important measures on behalf of Connecticut workers before the end of the session.”

Retains young, minimum wage workers who would otherwise leave the state? Where are they going when their employers leave the state?

And, as always, if raising the minimum wage has no negative effect on hiring, why does the legislature stop at $10? Why not $50, why not $100?

FEMA house to rise on Meadowbank?

Number 21 Meadowbank has just been listed at $2.250 million. There’s a house on it, but this is in the high flood zone, and nothing existing there now can last. Look for a stilt house, coming your way. That’s not necessarily bad, because eventually all the houses on this street will be up in the air but for now, whoever builds here will be looking down on his neighbors.

UPDATE: Readers say no stilts required here. I’d still want to know what the new required height will be before purchasing, however.

Meadowbank Road, Hurricane Irene 2011 (B. Luckey photo)

Ledge Road, Hurricane Sandy 2012 (G. Raymond photo)

Tod’s Point concession stand, Hurricane Al, 2014

 

Shove Iowa off the “safe” list for Democrats

He’s sorry now

Iowa’s Democrat senator Tom Harkin is retiring, and the guy who was supposed to be a shoo-in for his seat, Rep.Bruce Braley made a little fund-raising trip down to Texas recently. Bad move.

As National Journal reports, Braley was speaking to a group of lawyers at a “closed-door fundraiser.” He presumably didn’t realize that before the doors closed, somebody had brought in a camera, which was rolling. He warned the lawyers of the dire consequences of a Republican majority in the Senate (the odds of which Silver puts at 60%).

“You might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Braley said. “Because if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Grassley is currently the committee’s ranking Republican.

Braley’s self-description is more substantively revealing than his disparagement of Grassley. As National Journal describes it: “Braley, who practiced law before joining the House, told the crowd he would be someone on the Senate Judiciary Committee with ‘your background, your experience, your voice, someone who’s been literally fighting tort reform for 30 years.’ “

The identity of the videographer hasn’t been revealed, but the 38-second video was posted to YouTube by America Rising, a conservative political action committee. The visual is a treat, too: On the table alongside Braley are liquor bottles and tumblers. So there he is at a cocktail party, disparaging farmers and promising to serve the trial lawyers. About the only thing that could have made it worse would be if it took place in New York or Beverly Hills rather than Texas.

Here’s what’s sure to be flooding the Iowan airwaves next fall, probably run as a continuous loop.

College football players can unionize

United Steelworkers Union warms up

It’s early in the first quarter, but Northwestern football players have taken an early lead with a ruling from an NLRB arbitrator. I’ve always thought these kids were being scammed; coaches make millions, universities make even more millions, the kids get a couple of years tuition, unless they’re cut from the team. There’s nothing amateur about big time college ball, and the players ought to get a piece of the action.

New Riverside listing

 

220 RVSD Ave

220 Riverside Avenue, $1.995 million. It sold in the $1.8s in 2010 and Riverside’s hot, so I’d bet they sell at close to this. It’s described as an antique farm house, by the way, but that structure was long ago subsumed. Still, good location, decent house. It’ll sell.

Is Perryridge ready for this price?

18 Perryridge Rd

18 Perryridge Road is back again, now asking $4.195 million. It failed to sell at $3.895 in 2011, failed again at $4.275 in 2012, now the owners are splitting the difference. It’s a nice house, but it’s on 0.19 acre, directly on the ambulance route to the hospital next door and Perryridge itself has never seen a sale price even approaching this one. Its time will come, but I’m not convinced that time is now. We’ll see.

Next Greenwich Olympian

 

You go, girl!

Meghan Lynch, 10, captured ten gold medals in the state swim championships held last week. She’d probably have won more, but the rules cap them at ten. Meghan already holds the national records for girls her age in a variety of events and assuming she doesn’t forget how to dog paddle in the coming years, I imagine we’ll be cheering her on for most of the next decade, or longer. Pretty cool.

Has “new” taken on the same flexible meaning that realtors have assigned “renovated”?

 

45 Meadow Wood Drive

45 Meadow Wood Drive, described as “new construction”, has dropped its price another million and is now offered for just $9.750.  That’s quite a price drop from its price when it was “really, really new” back in 2007, when it hit the market at $17.9 million. In the years since, it’s seen prices of $14.9, $12.9, $10.750 and, now, $9.750, as well as having been rented out for $24,000 per month.

There are beautiful views down the cove from here, as you’ll see from its pictures. What those pictures don’t show you is I-95, which is just in back of  the house. That seems to have deterred buyers over the past seven years and may well continue to do so. Several of us agents, seeing this for the first time way back then, opined that it would be the first of the mega-spec houses to see a bulldozer before it saw a buyer. That hasn’t happened yet, but time marches on.

More contracts

 

36 Zaccheus Mead Ln

36 Zaccheus Mead Lane, asking $1.8 million, two acres.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

105 Shore Road

105 Shore Road, Old Greenwich, asking $1.895 million. Came on in February, now it’s gone.

Foot fetish?

 

Friend of Walt’s

Freed after 15 years, robber returns to hold up same shoe store, with same result.

Christopher Miller spent 15 years in jail for holding up a shoe store on the Jersey Shore. And just one day after being freed from prison, he went back to the same shoe store — and robbed it again.
“I have no idea what he was thinking,” said Officer Ralph Stocco from the Toms River Police Department. “We thought it was extremely strange ourselves that he would just rob the same store a second time so many years later.”
The manager of the Toms River Stride Rite, who happened to be on duty in 1999, thought she had déjà vu when she saw Miller walk through the door again on Saturday.
“I knew who he was right away,” said the 43-year-old worker. “I just think [he came back] because he didn’t get anything the last time.“

Too bad it didn’t hit in August

 

Closed for winter

The storm that bypassed us today has hit the Vineyard and Nantucket with 80+ mph winds and 12″ of snow. It’d have been a shame if Bo’s upcoming Vineyard vacation was spoiled.

The millionaires must already be lining up to collect our tax money to rebuild.

People will be dying to get into this one

 

21 Roberta Lane

New listing (Steve Archino) at 21 Roberta Lane, $1.595 million. Looks clean and fresh and inventory in this price range is so sparse that I’m sure this will get a lot of attention.

Not everyone’s afraid of Al Gore and Denise Savageau

 

19 Meadow Place

19 Meadow Place, on the Old Greenwich waterfront, has a contract, asking price $14.6 million. Owner paid $8.5 million for the land back in 2008, then built this. Much nicer inside, in my opinion, than out.

Does this mean we’re done with Dennis Rodman visiting North Korea?

Dear Leader orders all males to adopt his haircut.

Kim Jong-Un is forcing all male students in North Korea to get the same haircut – his own.
About two weeks ago, the government announced that the only haircut allowed would be the Dear Leader haircut favoured by Kim Jong-Un.
Taking the ‘short back and sides’ to the extreme, the Dear Leader is a shaved undercut and floppy curtains.

From this:

to this

Tiny Kim

Here it comes

 

I wonder what they’re up to?

Hartford wants to reexamine how hospitals are (not) taxed, but that’s just the opening salvo.

HARTFORD — Lawmakers on Tuesday approved a variety of bills aimed at eventually changing the way Connecticut helps fund local governments.

While the legislative Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee voted for a systemic study of municipal finance, the Planning and Development Committee pushed through a bill that would entirely revamp the way cities get payments for hosting tax-exempt universities and hospitals.

Because he’s an amiable dunce, Greenwich’s Scott Frantz sees nothing ominous with what’s going on:

“It has not been thought about, as far as I know, for a decade or longer,” said Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, ranking member of the committee. “This will be a huge and valuable building tool toward getting to that better place where we fully understand what’s working for the state of Connecticut and what is not. And we have a chance to make an optimal tax-revenue structure for the state.”

Let me spell it out for you, Scott – better yet, let a Democrat do it for me:

Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, a member of both committees, said the bills emerging will fuel many important discussions on the state’s future and the possibility of ending the dependence on local property taxes that make for a high cost of living in lower-income cities like Bridgeport and New Haven.

It’s all as one with last session’s creation of regional governing bodies, which is to say, taking more from Greenwich and passing the monies seized onto friends of Dannel. Scottie will pull out what’s left of his hair in consternation when he discovers what his colleagues are up to but that will be five or ten years from now, when it’s far too late to do anything.

Scott’s a wonderful, generous guy, but he’s clearly incapable of swimming with the sharks. That speaks well of him as a person, but not so such as our representative in Hartford.

Speaking of lunatics…

 

Adele M.Stan, professional gender studies victim

See if you can follow the logic of this whack-a-doodle as she “proves” that the evil Koch Brothers are “anti-choice”.

[Premise]: In order to effect their anti-environmental agenda, the Kochs will need senators willing to make it happen. But people who fear Obamacare are likely to be the same people who fear Obama himself—people who also fear the fading demographic of a non-Hispanic white majority, as well as equal rights for women. [Conclusion]: In other words, they’re anti-choice. And if a raft of anti-choice senators is what it takes to win the right to pollute at will, it appears the Kochs are fine with that.

 

As an aside, I note that Miss Stan works for a 501(c) tax-exempt organization, just like those targeted by the IRS. The difference, of course, is that Stan’s group is “progressive”, and therefore shielded from IRS hostility.

Wikipedia’s view of holistic medicine imbibers

 

Available at Whole Foods, naturally

“Lunatics.”

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales vigorously rejected a Change.org petition to allow more positive discussion of holistic medicine on his crowd-sourced Internet encyclopedia. The petition, which has nearly 8,000 supporters, calls for people to stop donating to Wikipedia in response to what it called “biased, misleading, out-of-date, or just plain wrong” information about holistic approaches to healing. “As gatekeepers for the status quo, they refuse discourse with leading edge research scientists and clinicians or, for that matter, anyone with a different point of view,” it reads. Wales disagreed, commenting in response: “No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful. Wikipedia’s policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of ‘true scientific discourse’. It isn’t.”