There are rumblings in the legislative branch about possibly extending and expanding the first-time home buyer tax credit.

Figure 1 - Home owner smiling Bob is all for extension and expansion.

This post’s title originated from an odd and unintentionally humorous commercial my friend heard on the radio advertising male enhancement drugs. The commercial claimed the advertised product would make you thicker and wider. Unless your parts are shaped like a spatula, this does not make a whole lot of sense.  I was thinking about writing a post on this, but decided that I didn’t want to write about wang pills.  I decided the metaphor was appropriate to apply to the housing market, given that we’re all pretty much boned.

Speaking of dick measuring, representatives in both the House and the Senate have proposed among them five different bills affecting the current $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit, all trying to take some credit of their own as saviors of the housing market.  I applied the “popularity contest” principle to these because, despite slight variations, they all propose pretty much the same thing.

The common theme among the five bills is extension of the current credit. I can most certainly agree with this being the forefront of any initiative to modify the current credit.  Like others trying to weather an unsure economic climate, I had already made other financial plans and goals when I heard about the credit earlier this year. The prospect of getting $8,000 in return for purchasing a first home probably got many thinking about buying their first home, but it also left them scrambling.

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Figure 1 - Comedy Central instead of FOX? This may be the case, only no longer just in syndication

“Huzzahs are in order! Huzzah!!!”

Cable television has once again resurrected an animated show that was given its pink slip far too early–except this time they’re taking matters into their own hands. The first lucky recipient of reanimated life was Family Guy, which had its canceling network, FOX, order new episodes after seeing the show’s reruns post impressive ratings on Cartoon Network’s late night programming block, Adult Swim.  Now, after six long years of waiting, a spokesperson for 20th Century FOX Television has confirmed that Comedy Central has ordered 26 brand-spankin’ new episodes of Futurama. While the FOX Network executives have had brain slugs on their heads for some time now, Comedy Central realized the potential of the Planet Express crew and made a lot of fans of the show extremely happy.  Huzzah!!!

“If anyone needs me I’ll be in the Angry Dome.”

According to the Futurama Wikipedia page, the show had 6.4 million viewers at the time of its cancellation.  So why was Futurama canceled in the first place?  Futurama was a show with fantastic writing, superb character development, and as creator Matt Groening had envisioned, a goofy comedy that would have underlying “legitimate literary science fiction concepts.” At the conclusion of its first season, Futurama had posted higher ratings than South Park, Family Guy, and King Of the Hill.  The writers of Futurama saw their impending doom coming placing hints throughout (Figure 1) and using obvious insinuation such as when Bender said, “Another classic science fiction show canceled before its time” in the episode Where No Fan Has Gone Before when referring to Star Trek.  So what in Sega Genesis happened?

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