See what you think. It’s Alexander Scriabin’s Prelude in G minor, Op. 27, No. 1 for piano, orchestrated for full orchestra by yours truly.

Scriabin Prelude in G Minor Opus 27, no. 1, arr. Smith

Update: updated the link, should give you more than a preview now.

Still, this piece was pretty bad in conflating various “percents,” as was its source material. Here it quotes Times Online:

Payday UK said that the typical annual percentage rate (APR) for its deals was 1,355 per cent. The typical rate for a credit card is 20 per cent, while a high street bank charges about 18 per cent on an overdraft.

Well, “APR” and a “charge” are very different things. Both are percents, but the comparison ends there.

Payday lenders, such as Payday UK, Express Finance and Pounds Till Payday, offer loans of up to £1,000. Payday UK demands that £125 be repaid for a £100 loan, or £937.50 for a £700 loan. The loan is usually paid off within a couple of days, as soon as the borrower’s wages are paid into their account.

Well, if you get 100 but have to pay back 125, and you do so in a few days, that’s 25%, not 1,335%. If you carried the loan the full year, you’d be talking that kind of rate–but you don’t. So if a bank overdraft is 18%, I’m imagining they don’t let you carry that 18% over a whole year. They charge it immediately. So the relevant numbers are 18 versus 25. This works in the bank overdraft’s favor, but not so dramatically as 18 versus 1,335. That’s a deceptive comparison…ironically, the same sort of comparison used to get people to get a payday loan.

Of course, getting bank overdraft protection on this side of the pond requires a decent-sized deposit, an annual fee, and a credit check. I’m guessing most customers of payday loans don’t do that well on credit checks, don’t have tons of cash to make the bank feel happy that they’ll get paid back, and can’t afford an extra $100/year just to know they won’t have to go to a payday lender. And while the poor may be able to wallpaper their apartments in credit card applications, the reality of getting credit sufficient to pay off an electric bill is not necessarily so rosy.

So yes, if you’re a yuppie, you’re an idiot to get a payday loan, and the guys with the soft helmets will look at you and mutter, “retard.” But maybe you should think about the consequences of making the last refuge of the desperate job-holder illegal.

Speaking of, let’s deal with the rhetorical coup-de-grace:

I was recently on an NPR show on consumer debt, and a caller said his uncle, a former loan shark who did 15 years in prison, was mystified by payday lending, particularly since he had charged only 17%.

Wow, what a deal…now was that 17% accrued over an entire year, or was it due in a month or less?

Nah, I’m kidding. The real ludicrousness of this comparison is that payday lending companies tend not to break your legs when you default.

When I was in high school, I was interested in a jazz and media program at the local university. My piano teacher, who didn’t have any experience playing or teaching jazz, arranged for me to get private lessons with the jazz piano prof, John Emche. John was a sweet guy, very friendly and generous with his time.

After a few months of lessons, I knocked on his door as usual and he opened it, clearly woozy and with the lights out. He was sorry, he said, he had been sleeping because of some muscle relaxants the doctor had given him for a sudden series of debilitating headaches. The next time he had forgotten to cancel the lesson and was somewhat confused.

Then I learned he had a brain tumor and was getting surgery. The next time I saw him he was bald with scars on his head from the surgery. He was clearly much better, though his eyesight had been affected. But in a couple of months he was confused again and would drift back and forth. After that he quit teaching while he got radiation treatment.

It looked hopeful for a while, but I never had another lesson with him. Apparently the doctors determined, as is usual, that it had spread and there was little else they could do. So they quit treating him, let him regain his strength, and he and his wife went on a cruise together while he was still functional enough. Apparently it was good for both of them to relax and enjoy something together.

Very soon thereafter, he passed away. The whole process took about a year from what I recall (bear in mind this was 22 years ago). Now fortunately for Senator Kennedy, he has more resources and, more importantly in the world of medicine, more influence to ensure he’s not in the control group of an experimental study. But  depending on the severity and type of tumor, he could be gone very soon.

Whatever you may think of someone or their politics, it’s a frightening prospect, hard on them and their loved ones, and I really hope the outcome is better for him. But the odds are not good, and I don’t wish that on anybody. One small consolation is that Senator Kennedy had a good long life until this point. John Emche was in his thirties–this disease doesn’t really care who you are or what you’re like. And John Emche was a great guy who deserved more time with us.

UPDATE 11:07: Everyone except CNN calls Oregon for Obama. Bill Kristol informs Fox viewers that Oregonians are all “drinking lattes and sipping granola.” I’m confused as to how this is a greater character flaw than the Kentuckyian trend of “strongly disliking black people.”

CLINTON: Ha haaa! Well you know, anyone off the street with a scary black pastor can talk about change, but it takes a fighter to fight for change. And I’m a fighter. I’m tough. And if you lived my life you’d be pretty darn tough too. I mean, I had to go to Wellesley. That was my safety school. But I was strong anyway and I endured. And as president I’ll fight the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry and the health care industry, just as soon as they stop giving me millions of dollars!
FB: That’s that no-nonsense down-to-business style I like about you, Hillary Clinton! You don’t just talk about change. You talk about how much you don’t just talk about change!

Seriously, if at this point you still support Hillary “racist whites are more racist than sexist, so vote for me, because for sure they’ll keep voting for me over an Old White Man in November” Clinton, you should read this.

And to see why, see how extraordinary rendition is like Three’s Company or how mere marijuana becomes the unsold sale, just by existing–thanks to the physics of commerce!

Edit: I worry about the posting date of the new Fafnir post. Still, a new Fafnir post is welcome, even if he’s joshin an foolin.

When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank.

Oh, goodness! Why, we’re all just a paycheck away from doomsd- wait, how do you blow through the savings you can earn with a 70K/year job in a month? Oh, right, you keep hoping your house gamble will pay off:

Guerrero is estranged from her husband and raising her two young children. She’s already burned through her savings to help make ends meet, and is drawing unemployment checks. She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month. In fact, her mother moved in with her to help pay the bills.

This is like the person who complains they’ve done everything to lose weight, and nothing works. Well, you know, everything except diet and exercise. Lady, you have a house. Sell it, and move in with your mom wherever she was before. Or move into the apartment you can afford off your husband’s child support and unemployment. But if you’re hanging on to an interest-only loan, it’s because you think the market is going to turn around any day now and you can flip it for a profit.

But wait, we’re not done with her “extreme measures”:

Guerrero even applied for food stamps, but was denied.

“I never used the system. I’ve been working since I was 15-and-a-half. I needed it now and it turned me down,” she said.

Maybe because they look at your balance sheet and say “Hey, what about this house thing you have listed under ‘assets’? Maybe you could sell that?”

If you made $70,000 a year, and presumably your husband made a little something too, then the idea that you’d gamble your children’s ability to eat on whether you could flip a house you’re not even paying principal on is pretty sickening.

To have burned through her savings in a month means she burned through $2,500 plus utilities and food. But with a $70,000 a year job, she should be bringing home around $4,000 a month. Which meant that despite making $1,500 over her housing cost, she couldn’t salt any of that away. And remember, this is before help from Mom or the soon-to-be ex.

What all that means is that this wasn’t “oh but for getting thrown out of work, there could go you or I,” but it means she had to make poor decisions and keep making them repeatedly to get into the mess she’s in. I feel bad for her kids, but I really can’t feel sorry for her. You made your bed, lady, now try really sacrificing like actual poor people do.

The rest of the article tries to be scary but can muster precisely zero data. All we have is a woman who kept making bad decisions and wants us to bail her out. As someone who didn’t jump on the house bandwagon, I’m pretty pissed off. I’d like to have a house, too. Who’s willing to pay my food bills to make that happen?

*Title Reference

1. If fish or garlic
   is the problem, behold the
   power of lemon.
2. Everything has
   a place, and everything
   in its place. Yeah, riiiight.
3. Use garlic. A lot.
   No, really, your cooking will
   be ten times better.
4. Cockatiels are the
   enemy of cleanliness.
   Spritzing them won’t help.
5. Immigrants need work,
   and we are lazy fatsos.
   Nice how that works out.

It should be obvious that Holly has never seen the inside of my apartment. Er, I tag, um, Jason, Ginger, Oscar, who should be thinking about this with the oncoming porch monkey (we’re taking it back!), and Todd, who actually is really clean.