An addendum to my earlier post, Indigestion Over Gas: The Nation’s The Daily Outrage blog features five ideas that matter. No. 3 is “Get off oil.”

“Oil revenues help fund terrorism, prop up dictatorships, stagnate democracy, exacerbate inequality, boost corruption and spur costly resource wars.”

It’s worth reading the entire post.

Here in Royal Oak, Mich., housing is just as hot as anywhere. Take, for example, the lofts going up downtown. The sign hyping these trendy abodes joyously touts “starting at the 290s.” (Note that the last two digits on the sign have been replaced, suggesting that when the project broke ground that starting price was more merciful.) Curious, I plugged that number into my handy mortgage calculator, hoping to give me a clue as to the class of people that can afford to pay that much for what is essentially an apartment - albeit an über-bitchin’ one.

For the sake of this scenario, I figured a roughly 10 percent down payment of $30,000. After inspections, closing costs and fees, I estimated a mortgage amount of $268,000. The interest rate I used for this story problem was 6.125 percent, but clever shoppers might get a little better. Trying to keep payments low, I financed for 30 years.

The resulting monthly payment? How’s $1,628 strike you? And that’s just the mortgage. In addition, don’t forget about PMI (less than 20ish percent down, remember), and association fees (lofts seem to act like condos in this respect). Just estimating, $2,000 a year in PMI breaks down to $167 per month. Tack on $300 per month in association fees to cover common areas (like that “private fitness center” in the basement). Now, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some other costs, but we’re already talking $2,095 - for a loft.

I clicked through some of the floor plans. The smallest unit I found was a two bedroom, two bath measuring 1,068 square feet. Raise your hand if you can afford to pay $2,095 per month for that. Okay, I see the hands of a few doctors and lawyers. Oh, and the retired couple in the back that just sold their home in LA for a mint, and want a slower-paced lifestyle.

My favorite statistic out of all of this? After 30 years, the lucky owner has paid $586,000 for his or her loft, $318,000 of it in interest.

My second favorite statistic? The “80 percent sold out” also touted on the sign advertising the lofts. People are eating these up.

Kind of gives you goosebumps, doesn’t it?

My question is, why has it taken 15 years for this chimp’s handlers to push for smoking cessassion?

Sometimes, a news item’s just too snarky not to point toward.

Some musings on the price hike for crude oil and, by extension, the cost of gasoline:

• Those on the most modest parts of our class system feel it the worst. Imagine a single mother who scrimps to put $20 in her beat-up Escort to get to and from work, and take kids to child care. What does upping that to $30 do? I’m sorry Tommy, but mom can’t afford anything but Ramen this week. Again.
• In addition to the price at the pump, consider the ripple. I once saw a sticker on a semi’s cab that read: If you got it, a trucker brought it. How much do you think it costs to fill the tank on a semi nowadays? This one for sale has two 120-gallon tanks. At $3.14 per gallon, a price for diesel already seen in areas of the country, that amounts to a $750 fill-up. Don’t think for a second that such pump shock won’t translate to higher sticker prices at the grocery store, the local mall and all retail points in between.
• Think of what you do when you have an unexpectedly high bill, and tighten your belt. That’s right, no movies or eating out this week. And next week’s not looking good either. That hurts everything from restaurants to tourism (the mainstay of my adopted state, Florida).
• Remember “plastics,” the undying catch-phrase from The Graduate. Know of anything packaged in plastic or made from petroleum products? Click here and scroll part-way down for a handy table featuring just a few examples. Everything from the shell keeping your cell phone’s innards together to the jug keeping your milk in one tidy place just got pricier.
• Which leads me to the jump in producer prices. Your raw materials, and the juice to get them to market once assembled (see above item), is eating into your bottom line. Your only avenue of reprisal? Raise prices. This particularly hurts manufacturing-based states, like Michigan.
• Expect the cost of money to rise too. Energy prices are a big factor in inflation, which sums up all of the earlier points. What does the Federal Reserve do to cool inflationary heat? Ten points to whomever answered, “Raise interest rates.”

Now, I’m not trying to hate on the oil cartels. They have a right to rake a buck, even if they are a tad monopolistic. And I won’t hate on the Saudis or the Venezuelans, or even the war in Iraq.

But, what I will hate on is America’s weakness. We love oil, and can’t get enough of that black gold. (I’m no different.) It makes us weak. This same thing happened the year I was born, and was attributed to Western support of Israel in its war with Egypt (Gaza Strip, anyone?). There was a reprise six years later, this time on the occasion of the Ayatollah Khomeini taking the reins in Iran.

Those were serious enough to get us talking about alternatives. As a youngster, I remember rosy-eyed discussions about alternative fuels: solar, wind, etc. As an adult, I see few changes. How different would the U.S. be now if in 1973, or even 1979, when long lines for dry pumps whipped up outrage, long-viewed politicians put in place a plan to wean us from our addiction?

The only difference I see now: Instead of cutting the supply to hurt us, as in 1973, oil cartels keep the market glutted and just take our hard-earned cash. We’ve truly exported capitalism to the rest of the world.

I’m lucky, in that I can take about a month off between my most recent job, at the Star-Banner in Ocala, Fla., and my next position, at the St. Petersburg Times, also in the Sunshine State. That time is now passing in Michigan, visiting girlfriend and family.

Idleness. The Uncarved Block of time. I dedicate this month to those concepts. Deliberately, the block is (mostly) uncarved. The busy-busy of U.S. culture and norms makes idleness an ideal to shoot for, though rarely achieve. What nicks and scrapes I do have in my “uncarved” month of time are of my own passion and interest.

A few things earning my focus:

• A long weekend up north. The concept of “up north” - where you, family, friends and beer coalesce on a campsite or cabin - doesn’t quite translate well in Florida. I’ve missed it. Plus, camping in Florida has the added non-plusses of alligators (in some areas) and bugs the size of small songbirds. Though I haven’t camped there, those two items alone would seem to detract from the experience.
• Books. Funny, when I read at work for eight hours, reading at home loses its luster. My luggage included Roll Over Che Guevara by Marc Cooper, and The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac. The former introduced me to lefty journalist Cooper, and it appears to be out of print. The latter feeds my recent interest in interracial relationships and their dynamics. That’s not to say I’d liken my Divine Miss K to Mardou, the basket-case of issues Kerouac writes about, but it does give me more context.
• More books. When I travelled to Michigan in mid-July, I visited the four floors of fun that is John K. King Used & Rare Books. That’s where I bought the Cooper book. Also, I found three collections of stories by speculative cynic Harlan Ellison. First on that list is a re-read of Deathbird Stories, a book so dark that, when my friend BS lent it to me years ago, I had to read it in multiple sessions to fend of depression. Sounds like a cheery read, doesn’t it?
• Personal physics. That is, yoga and tai chi. My first tai chi teacher, a small barrel of a man with half-inch thick glasses, had a doctorate in physics. He taught tai chi in the language of vectors and conservation of energy. As far as yoga, I had two years of it with a skillful teacher when I lived in Ypsilanti, Mich., and I miss the personal pinnacle of fitness I enjoyed then.

Not a bad slate. In planning this time off I thought, if I could clear my schedule and do what truly makes me happy, what would that look like. This is pretty damn close.

St. Petersburg is interesting. Some initial thoughts:

• There are an awful lot of aimless people here. The heat seems to bring out folks - some of them apparently crazy - to walk the streets.
• Progress Energy needs competition. In signing me up for utility service, they charged me an exorbitant deposit. They said they would waive it if I passed a credit check, but then told me I didn’t pass. (I have a recent copy of my Experian credit report here, with no blemishes.) To add to the Kafka-esque nature of the whole thing, they told me they were under no legal obligation to disclose the criteria on which they based my failure.
• The 4th Street area rocks. I live close to, um … like, everything.

More eventually. Unpacking awaits.

Newsosaur’s take on the shell game this week among major newspaper chains Gannett and Knight Ridder; an event that indirectly hits home here. He takes a Darwinian approach.