That is one fugly Mercedes.

It isn't that I haven't seen ~any~ cars, I just haven't seen any that I haven't seen before. 

I think I ~might~ have seen a MayBach once at an Auto show, but never in the wild. And I just don't get them. I don't know why you would pay up for this. 

A few minutes before we spotted it, Mr S. and I were talking about the baby shit brown/yellow color that comes around from time to time. I've been seeing a bunch of that lately.  He says - next .....two tone will come back. Then we saw this Maybach in two tone.

Construction crash imminent.

 

I was at the lumber store a few weeks ago and noticed the wood section was looking uncharacteristically rough for Home Depo. It was super thin and heavily picked over. Then it occurred to me that if there is no wood, people don't have jobs. It freaked me out enough that I walked the whole store trying to spot a pattern. I would have thought maybe this store hadn't been stocked recently and maybe this was no big deal..... if it weren't for all those stories I've been reading about shortages from literally all over the world.

The shortages have been talked about a lot over the past months, but when you start seeing large gaps at Home Depo, the end is pretty near. They have one of the deepest supply chains on the planet. 

Since then I've been trying to figure out the real reason we have a shortage of wood. There are a lot of theories, but so far most of them don't make that much sense to me. They range from when Trump put the 25% tariffs on wood from Canada it decimated their milling industry which seems plausible. Apparently this put a lot of mills out of business.  Which I'm not sure I have a lot of sympathy for because Canada put our mills out of business. Which is why we can't recover from this quickly. Those tariffs were designed to help bring back domestic production.

People go on to speculate that those tariffs caused a cosy relationship between China and Russia because wood is now a global commodity. I am not sure exactly how this makes a difference to us but.....

Others speculate about the bark beetles. 

But the craziest theory I heard yesterday is that Mendocino is holding back supply to make the price go up. I have included a handy chart of the lumber futures at the bottom of this post, and you tell me if you think that's plausible. Prices are literally at a 40 year high. Why woUld you not make money hand over fist now, for the ~chance~ at a higher price tomorrow. More likely the price will collapse and you get nothing.

Yet another theory is that we are in a building boom. Which also seems not quite the reason either. I have included housing starts at the very bottom and we have just returned to the midline.

All I know is that while our country is seizing up, Biden is out fighting social justice. Career politicians don't understand supply chains, and I'm looking forward to this next chapter. People deserve what they voted for.

 

Even if there was wood, half the hammers are sold out.

 

This has gotten worse since last week not better.

 

Paint supply looks thin, but it's probably a Texas problem because of the chemical plants shutting down last month. But all over the store, the top shelves are starting to look SUPER thin. Normally Home Depo is packed to the rafters. And they are pulling product to the front of shelves to make them look fuller. I mean, it not quite Fry's electronics yet... but if they start moving shelves to make the store look less empty - things gonna get crazy.

And this ALL was from before Shippy Mcstuckface caused a traffic jam.

 

Hope you don't want a chainsaw.

 

Or a leaf blower.

 

This is the point Trump unleashed the firehose of money.

 

Historical lumber futures chart. Source.

Housing starts. Source. You have to hit the max button.

I'm pretty amazing in a crisis..... but afterwards I sort of fall apart. I was out all last year experiencing everyones fears and now I'm just sort of all used up.

No one was there in the housing crisis because none of us had ever seen that before, but I wanted to try and be a form of stability for people this time around.

I just need some time. Especially because IMO this isn't over by a long shot. This blog takes a lot of energy (as meager as it is), and I just don't have it right now.

Turns out my buddy who sold his house for 100k over asking is a chump because two towns over, houses are selling for 300k over asking.

I read an article claiming that some were selling for as high as 400k over, but I didn't find an example of that. But I did find a couple of them in the 300 over range.

I guess with a money printer everything is now possible.

You can definitely expect a bitchy post about this.

I have been mostly staying out of the reopening conversations because I have always advocated different places doing different things. (I can dredge old posts if needed)  If we all do the same thing, it takes longer to get through the mistake phase. I may not agree with certain things, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried. Everyone has enough information to make their own choices now. And honestly the fastest way to get through this is to nut up and let people go. They will figure it out.

Having said that - I just learned last night you can still get arrested in Texas for not wearing a mask. Which was quite a shock. For months every person ~not living~ in California was crowing about how WE had the strictest rules. Despite a simple google search would have shown we have been open many times. In the Fall we even had indoor dining.  But everyone wants to make a political point and made it seem like we have all been cowering in our houses the whole year. It's super frustrating because TWO days ago Fox News was still repeating this lie of us being locked down hard the whole time. It would literally take two seconds to see that is not true.

For MONTHS every news story has been about how California has the same numbers as this State or that STATE despite "the most severe restrictions." When in reality life is more nuanced. Right? We have all the mandates, but no one gets arrested! Look. Let's do a google search with exactly the same criteria. Here it is for Texas. And here it is for California.

The only way to get arrested in California for Covid is having a huge underground party. We have been ticket only pretty much the whole time. And I've never heard of ANYONE getting a ticket. But I have heard of hair dressers getting arrested. IN TEXAS!

So.... I would say that California has NOT had the strictest rules obviously.

Think you are haunted by customer service surveys?

A couple of weeks ago my husband created Five Star Husband Service. Now every time I ask for something he says - Can I count on you for a 5 star rating?

Oh FFS - yes.

Is "Temporary Inflation" A Real Thing?.

When it's printed out of thin air.  I mean, really - why do any of us need to work anymore?

Whenever I see a story like this I immediately think - oh..... you haven't bought anything lately. Because you can't believe the mundane shit you have to wait for these days. If you don't walk out of the store with it in your grubby little  hands,  you are gonna get "the talk". 

You can see it in their faces immediately. And they must be getting "the shit beat out of them". I've been making their lives easier by saying I know it's going to take forever. I've been going out of my way to be patient because I know everyone is just trying to get by the best they can. But even I am like - what the ehll., And I wouldn't even consider myself a patient person. But it doesn't help anyone to get a stick up your butt.

Either the vaccines work and we open wide up and relatively quickly we hit an air pocket., or the variants win and ....... I don't know.

 

It was only a matter of time.

This is going to be CES if they ever have an in person conf. CES always overdoes things. It was wall to wall Guitar Hero ~many~ years after it wasn't popular anymore. So I'm not even being sarcastic when I say - the next five years will be nothing but "mask technology".

I would even go as far to say that these masks will have bluetooth technology somehow.  I can't even think about all the sorts of buzzy shit they are going to put in them.  But I'm sure it's going to mostly make me mad. Unless they fill them with Darth Vader rebreathers.

Now that I think about it... if it is wall to wall mask technology, maybe it's the safest place to be,

Maybe I have achieved singularity.

I say this tongue in cheek because I think most of the hysteria about this is overblown. And yes - I have seen people with antennas implanted in their heads. Don't @ me.

I've been playing in VR for a couple of days now and my opinions have shifted ~slightly~.  The screen door affect is greatly improved with the higher resolution headsets. I really don't notice it anymore.

However...... motion sickness is still a thing. It been an interesting test study in the Snarkolepsy household this weekend. Mr S. is prone to motion sickness. I am not. I can count on one hand how many times I've thrown up in my whole life. I generally have a stomach of steel.

I have been in the headsets more recently and more often than he has in the past few years and have experienced motion sickness from time to time. I can't really figure out what triggers it. Sometimes I'm fine, others not. So far though, he hasn't experienced any motion sickness.

Since I'd only spent five minutes at a time in VR previously, I thought that it was just my physiology, but going through youtube, it obviously is not. Almost everyone talks about motion sickness to some degree.

We started out downloading DOOM VFR. Don't do that. It's s super crappy title in VR by all accounts. It doesn't translate well. But also - it gave me significant motion sickness which surprised me. It was bad enough I wondered if I was coming down sick. It wasn't until I went to the bathroom and noticed the floor was spinning like when you drink too much that I calmed down a bit. Once my brain saw the straight lines I started to feel better. But it gets a little .....weirder.

The way you move around in VR isn't always intuitive. So you are going to have watch some youtube videos. But when we did that, the television displaying VR was also giving me motion sickness. Which is fascinating because I have NEVER gotten motion sickness from TV.  We think it's because of muscle memory because I'd already been in the headset.

After we realized that DOOM is just a crappy title we downloaded Half Life:ALYX, and that was ~much~ better. But I'm still getting motion sickness to some degree just even watching youtube videos on TV. Now I think my brain is slightly broken.  I feel a little floaty like I'm still in the headset. Maybe I can't tell where the game ends and real life begins. Said in the most sarcastic way.

As it turns out - it's good I'm having problems because Mr S. is developing in this platform and obviously motion sickness is a very big deal. But wow. I can certainly see why it's adoption rate is what it is.