Monthly Archives: November 2024

Contemplating Jaguar’s Crash

It’s everywhere; we cannot avoid it. The news is Jaguar. Jaguar is finished, Jaguar has gone woke, heading to a stock price of a buck. The CEO’s going to be axed. Agreed. But why? That word, why, will no doubt be on my tombstone. I always want to drill down to the reason. I think it’s about creativity. Creativity is dying.

Think about how many re-releases, how many remakes, how many copies we see. Good grief, why remake Snow White? How many Star Wars are there? The VW bus is back, but it’s a Buzz now. OMG. Make something new, for God’s sake. I’ve noticed that, aside from Elon, creativity, new ideas, great leaps forward for society, have disappeared over the horizon. Only Elon is standing in the breach. Why is nobody trying to copy him? Because, no talent and no drive. Too much work to copy Elon and work, well that’s not gonna happen. Too many video games and too many men wanting to be their version of women. That’s insulting, by the way. It’s cultural appropriation. Dark red lipstick, a midriff tank and a falsetto voice make a costume, men. A costume.

What happened to men who couldn’t wait to get a car they could ‘work on’? Where are the greasy hands picking up tools out of the toolbox? Where are the guys building computers…or anything…in the garage? Where are the ideas like having all music in one little rectangular box? What’s the next fiber optic idea? Data at the speed of light stuff? Nobody?

It used to be the case that ideas overflowed from colleges and universities. Art, technology, ideas that pulled society forward at breakneck speeds leapt from campuses, flowed like rivers. But not now. It’s SO bad now that the new Jag ad, for example, actually says, “Copy nothing”. Well I think that’s a subliminal admission that copying is the only way anybody these days can graduate. So Jag jumped onboard the woke train, when it had already left the station. No wonder the knees are scratched and bruised. People who should never be in charge are pushed to that position because of woke-ness, not because of training or education. For those of us who lived in the age of a huge technological leap, it’s depressing and we’re trying not to read the writing on the wall. But we have functioning brains.

Another thing. There is an absolute aversion to paying attention. To looking around. To reading the room. People are so desperate to be unique that they copy EVERYTHING. It’s all they can do because the think tanks are indoctrination incubators now. There’s no: How can we leap forward as a society? How can I make things incredible? No, now it is: How can we destroy society, tear it down, be anti everything? Destruction doesn’t work. Problem is, if we don’t read that room, we’ll miss the big train. Does anyone else see the irony of desperation for uniqueness causing a limp, deflating picture of deadly imitation?

Yeah, I think Jaguar is devoid of creative people, ones who like wrenches and power tools. I think Jaguar is so desperate they want to be Target. I mourn.

Ah Crap. There Goes Jaguar

Photo by Kamaji Ogino on Pexels.com

Once in another lifetime, I owned a red Jaguar with light tan leather interior. It was one of my favorite cars ever. Beautiful, solid, tight, fast. Car. Car car car. I loved that car, and I had to have a good job, paying good money in order to afford it! I am talking about the Jaguar CAR.

I hope you have seen the new Jaguar ads, which have nothing to do with cars. Any cars. What they are, is a collection of woke…people…who knows what kind…trying to be unique and there are no CARS in sight or sound. But, they’re copying every other woke collection of people trying to be unique. This crap is getting old. Young people are STILL trying to be unique by copying everyone else! Maybe they don’t know what unique means. In any case, they copy their older brothers and sisters by trying to be unique. hahaha. You can’t make this stuff up. They are probably all middle children. Once AGAIN we see a collection of…people…trying to be as counterculture as they can manage…and it is SO BORING, so already done.

But I digress. Jaguar is…uh, WAS… one of the MOST sought-after cars with the iconic hood ornament that NOBODY could afford unless you were buying an old, used one. Like I did. Ah, but not now. heh heh heh. Watch what happens to this brand. Ever hear of Bud Light? Ever hear of ‘Go woke; go broke’? The new ads actually advertise counterculture wokism, not cars, which as we all know is the giant kiss of death.

I saw their new ‘ad’ and my exact response was, “Ah CRAP there goes Jaguar”. I’m not wrong. I haven’t BEEN wrong with my predictions. This means I’m mainstream, I guess. But I WILL mourn the murder of Jaguar. Bud Light, I didn’t care, except that I didn’t have to watch that guy in a woman costume anymore. I didn’t drink Bud anything. Tractor Supply had a close brush, and I will never shop at Target again. No biggie. But for the murder of Jaguar, I weep.

Wait, is it murder? Or is it suicide? I think it’s suicide. If it is suicide, then they get exactly EXACTLY what they deserve. Goodbye Jaguar. I will miss you.

And all of the Jag owners, probably out to eat in an expensive restaurant, wearing expensive clothes, looking well manicured and young…You are the end of the age of coolness.

GET. A. GRIP.

This is the time out generation. This is the generation where there were no consequences for bad behavior. This is the generation of entitlement lifestyle, or placated entitlement, to teach children that everything is a bed of roses. NO COPING SKILLS and no need to teach anger management, poor, poor parenting, when it is the parents’ job to teach children how to make it in life, EVEN when things don’t go his/her way. Maybe teaching how to lose gracefully is MORE important. Because you’re gonna lose sometimes. You are going. to. lose. But, parents, because you have not taught your children the truth, you get this. Listen little crybabies, your parents know life is hard because they worked to pay YOUR way. And yet you are ungrateful cretins.

You know sports, right? You know one team wins. ONE TEAM. You don’t see the losing team killing the winners! Can you even grasp that? Are you that stupid??

Listen up, brats. Here’s a news flash for you. Life is hard. Life is full of disappointments. Yes, it is full of celebrations, joy, winning, happiness. But there are also disappointments, hardships, terrible tragedies, accidents that cause irreparable damage. You’re the smartest people on the planet, or so you believe (you are SO wrong); figure this out! Learn to control your emotions, for God’s sake. No level of education, nor professional paychecks nor little lifestyle choices mean shit if you have to kill someone because your candidate lost. And guess what, little terrorist. They don’t mean shit in prison either, as you will discover. By the way, MOST politicians lose. Did you even KNOW that?? This is the freaking dumbing down of my country.

Have you even HEARD about hurricanes or tsunamis, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes? People DIE in these tragedies. Life is hard, life is tough. You have zero value if you cannot grasp that simple concept. Zero.

I cannot WAIT to see you claim mental illness. Oh I know it’s coming. It MUST be someone else’s fault because you are perfect, right. You? The one who can’t handle a little bit of disappointment. By the way, ‘snapping’ is not mental illness, criminal. No freaking way. “Snapping” is “no coping skills”.

Any person who bludgeons her father to DEATH because her political candidate lost, because it ‘pushed her over the edge’, has NO place in society. This is a terrorist ticking time bomb. I hope the death penalty applies and if not, I guess we pay for your miserable failed life in prison. Good riddance. I’m done with this insanity.

Boost Your Existing Home Desirability to Buyers

The years 2023 and 2024 were challenging years for existing home sellers. That’s in general; there were some warmer markets. But overall builders captured the market with huge and I mean HUGE incentive dollars for buyers. The problem existing home SELLERS have is that their homes are not new, and they should not be priced alongside new or newer homes. And yet some are.

The problem I see is that often, sellers spend tens of thousands of dollars on their homes getting them ready to sell, and promptly add that dollar amount to their dream price. That NEVER works, folks. What sellers spend is actually required to bring their home back to life to be worthy of the market; it’s not icing. They replace worn out flooring, leaky roof, repair wet crawl space, put in a new water heater, update appliances…all of the things buyers EXPECT to see when they are shopping homes on the market. Today’s buyers do not want to do DIY. They want older but they want it to BE new. See the conundrum?

There’s that dirty word no seller ever hears: Market. The internet makes my job much harder in a way, because it fools people into checking the square footage box, the acreage box, the age box and POOF! There’s your home value. Not. Not not not! Please hear me when I say this: There are a thousand other things to consider when deriving a price for your home and NONE of the online home sites consider any of them. So they tell you a dream price and you buy it, hook, line and sinker.

Remember the ‘nose blind’ commercials? It’s real. But there’s ’emotion blind’ too. Buyers don’t care that your parents built this home; they don’t care that this used to be your room as a child! They have never seen this house, and they don’t see it through your emotion lenses. The automated valuation models don’t know that your back yard view is of a propane dealer or that you have termites eating your floor joists. The AVMs don’t know that there is a plan to put an interstate alongside your property line! AVMs don’t know that your kitchen appliances are forty years old, or that the bathrooms are that age too. They look at age, square footage, zip code and then they grab others with those criteria and give you an average. Most of the time, they are wrong. Read that last sentence again, please.

I’m going to say this and hope you will listen. Real estate agents see thousands of homes each year. We see the best of the best and the worst of the worst. We know how to value your home. By the way, your market is not the same as the one 20 miles away from you. Real estate is LOCAL. Know that when we come to meet you and your home, our goal is to find out your STRATEGY for selling your home. In other words, how motivated are you and why. That’s critical. And then we talk to you about the repairs you’ve had to do, the ones you plan to do, the age of the systems, what you love and what you hate about the home. Then we investigate the building materials (like Masonite or polybutylene) and whether or not you are in a flood plane. We check for easements and private streets and road maintenance agreements. And we check the HOA and covenants. ALL OF THAT makes a difference folks. All of it. AVMs do not consider them, by the way.

But the bottom line is that unless you have made your old house new in all of the ways, you cannot price it alongside new construction. Even if, may I say, the quality of construction may be better. So please, consult a real estate agent (me) and let’s just talk about it. Oh, and then please listen. I will tell you the truth. And then I will help you actually sell your home.

I’m Brenda, a real estate broker with Premier Advantage Realty. Call me.

I Am A True Crime Junky

As usual, I turned on a true crime YouTube video to watch while I had my morning coffee. OMG yet ANOTHER husband murdered by his wife, who had some skill hiding his body, apparently. I heard the same words and phrases. Like 1) smell of bleach; 2) new mattress; 3) new gun purchase a couple of months before the murder; 4) help moving the body; 5) help cleaning the crime scene; 6) extra marital affair; 7) children; 8) mapped the drive while carrying a corpse (okay that’s my turn of phrase); 9) DV accusations against the dead guy (yeah, my phrasing again). I said, “Are you kidding me??? Again???”

The point is this. PEOPLE, future CRIMINALS, listen UP! There are millions and MILLIONS of true crime fans who know how to use the internet and cannot WAIT to help take you down. We assist law enforcement all the time. ALL the time. And we are everywhere…even in the dark! I know! We sit there with our fingers poised above our keyboard just waiting to come after you. What PLANET are you on, what rock do you live under that you do not know this?? Have you not heard, “It was a YouTuber who gave us the tip we needed”? If you don’t know that, you are an idiot and clearly not smart enough to pull off the murder of your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your partner, your mother, your child, your whole family or your DOG. We’re gonna get really, really, REALLY upset with you. You don’t want that, you really really do not.

We can tell you did it just by looking at you, and then by what you say, and by you rocking back and forth and eating your lips. You broadcast your lie without even talking. And you know, often, it is the privileged ones who try to pull off this horror. Your god is money. Or sex. Extra marital affairs apparently make people freaking STUPID. But hey, that won’t matter in prison. Your God will become your commissary fund. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a prisoner whining about their commissary fund. All of a sudden your new squeeze, your fancy car, your mansion are replaced by BOO HOO COMMISSARY.

So. We have the following to catch you:

  1. THE INTERNET
  2. Body language experts
  3. Profilers
  4. Crime scene investigators
  5. Medical examiners
  6. Really really good detectives and police officers
  7. Luminol!
  8. Experience watching a thousand others like you who were already caught
  9. Map time
  10. GPS
  11. Infotainment
  12. CCTV (that is closed circuit tv)
  13. Ring and other such doorbell cams
  14. OTHER cameras
  15. Dash cam
  16. Cadaver dogs!
  17. DNA testing capability
  18. Helicopters
  19. Really fast cop cars
  20. Microscopes
  21. ELECTRON microscopes
  22. Plant scientists
  23. Anthropologists
  24. Okay computers
  25. Triple digit IQ
  26. Tenacity
  27. Ingenuity
  28. Compassion and passion
  29. A love of humanity and the law
  30. Oh this is huge: cameras in Walmart. hahaha. Walmart somehow gets on the radar most of the time.
  31. Credit card records
  32. Receipts
  33. Grizzly True Crime
  34. Hidden True Crime
  35. Crime Talk
  36. It’s a Crime
  37. Gray Hughes Investigates
  38. Plunder
  39. Law and Crime Network
  40. Court TV
  41. Nancy Grace
  42. Harsh Reality
  43. Explore With Us
  44. Surviving the Survivor
  45. And a thousand more
  46. Eye witnesses!
  47. Kick Ass attorneys

And that’s just a FEW THINGS we will use to take you down. Listen if you cannot control your urges and think you need to kill your spouse, first, you’re an idiot and you’re going to prison. And second, we will catch you. We won’t give up until we do. We’ll find your spouse (or child) in the landfill, in the mountains, in the forest, in the swamp, on the side of the road, in your drains, in the water, under your concrete patio, above the ceiling tiles, bricked in the WALL. We’ll find them and then we will lift our eyes to you. You’ll recognize the look in the eyes of the detectives at that time, for sure. Then you’ll cry when you are found GUILTY and sent to that scary prison and you’ll realize that all of your friends won’t take your calls from, nor visit you, in prison. You’re gonna lose everything. And by the way if we have NOT caught you yet, don’t blink. Millions are coming for you and we are PATIENT.

One last thing. That woman with a magnifying glass at the top of this post? That’s an AI image. My first. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? So yeah, you can add AI to that list up there.