The boom-bust nature of the American economy has now spawned ‘ghost tenants’, people who are essentially high-end house sitters. It works like this. Suppose you have a huge luxury house that you need to move out of and want to sell. You don’t want to leave the house empty or with a caretaker because houses are easier to sell if there is someone actually living in them. But you don’t want to rent it out either because that creates other problems.
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Some years ago, I attended a function at my daughter’s high school. These events are very well attended and parking is hard to get but I found a space and parked and was walking towards the building when a car came to a stop in the middle of the street where there was a parking space and a woman jumped out. I knew her because she was the mother of my daughter’s friend. She gave me her car keys and asked me if I would park her car for her in the space because she did not know how to parallel park.
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What is the number that is obscured by the car?

Some years ago, I gave my views on the use of pseudonyms and on sockpuppetry but I want to briefly return to it to clarify a point.
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Cleveland sports fans let out a collective sigh of relief and whooped it up when LeBron James announced that he was returning to the local basketball team the Cavaliers, four years after he infuriated his adoring fans here with his grandiose departure. This was much bigger news than that the Republican party had picked the city for its 2016 convention. The Plain Dealer celebrated his return in Saturday’s edition with a 20-page supplement full of color photographs documenting his life. This in an era when they have cut back on print issue deliveries (it now delivers just four days a week) and reduced the size of the paper and its reporting staff.
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Funerals are not fun events. One goes to them to show one’s sympathy for the loved ones of the deceased and they are usually events that have a certain solemn decorum with the body in a casket and people filing past to pay their respects. If the casket is open, the body looks composed and at rest.
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Journalist H. L. Mencken was no friend of religion or its apologists and took every opportunity to savage them with his biting wit. There is a great line of his that I have used on many occasions where he expressed his contempt for theologians, saying: “A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn’t there – and finding it!”
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Some of you may recall the absurd situation that arose in 2010 when basketball player LeBron James’s contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers expired and there was speculation as to whether he would re-sign with the team or go elsewhere. James made himself a laughing stock by arranging a 75-minute TV special on ESPN grandiosely titled The Decision where he was interviewed, during which he announced that he was ‘taking his talents’ to Miami.
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After taking a week off from blogging, I am now back.

My daughter’s wedding on Saturday went off without any hitch and everyone seemed to have a good time. Weddings are a good time to meet with family and old friends and to meet and make new friends from among the in-laws. We had a lot of houseguests and the last of them left yesterday. I come from a close-knit extended family and many relatives came from all over the world and we had a wonderful time together.
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My younger daughter is getting married later this week and I am having a lot of friends and relatives visit over the next week, some as houseguests, so this blog will be on hiatus for a while.

I will of course be monitoring the blog from time to time. If something really compelling comes up and I have a few minutes of time alone I may blog about it. Otherwise, I will return towards the end of next week once all festivities are over and all the houseguests have left.