I'm sorry, sa-- sa-- I do not recognize this word you are using.

Exactly.

Right now, lots of stuff is wrong with both my rent and my income, and it's going to stay that way for awhile. I don't see myself possibly being able to afford a house without credit of some sort any time before age 50, unless I happen to marry someone with money, or suddenly inherit a huge amount.

Whoo. I just got back a few minutes ago from the best community service EVAH.

San Francisco, as many Buffistas are no doubt painfully aware, has some of the crappiest parking in the universe. It makes you want to cry, to pound your dashboard, to stabbity stab stab all the other drivers in the city until your arm goes limp with exhaustion.

Any car owner moving here would be well advised to make getting a residential parking permit Top Priority #1 within milliseconds of arrival, and equally well advised to budget a good $40-50 a month to cover all the sneak attack tickets that come from busted meters, migrating handicapped spaces (no, really), random DPT staff coming by and putting up restriction signs and painting the curb in the middle of the day so that you leave your car in a legal space and come back to a $35 white-zone fine (again, no, really), and homeowners cranky that your bumper impinges one full centimeter into their driveway.

Thank God for Project 20, an extremely secret program through which you can pay off your tickets before you get booted or towed through community service rather than cash. You agree to work a set number of hours for every $10 you owe (Hec and I presently owe close to $500, hence 84 hours), you interview with a caseworker, and the caseworker checks through the list of organizations signed up with Project 20 to see what your options are. There are community gardening groups, recycling centers, soup kitchens. There's a preschool that needs people to come paint the kids' faces at a student fair. Craft fairs need volunteers to work the booths and help the artists. And the School of Circus Arts needs people to do, well, everything.

So, tonight after work I strolled down to the Circus Center (conveniently located exactly halfway between my office and Chez Zmayhem), presented myself to the program director, and was asked if I would mind going down to the local grocery store and seeing if their balloon lady would inflate some mylar balloons for us.

Off I went, a breezy three-block walk in the afternoon sun. A butterfly balloon suffered a fatal rupture; I replaced it with a dragonfly; I strolled back through the sunshine, balloons bobbing and rustling over my shoulder, causing a passing standard poodle to totally flip its shit out with excitement.

I returned, was hailed with a disproportionate but still flattering degree of delight, and proceeded to slounge about for the next hour or so as volunteers from the Asian Art Museum scrambled around setting up for a benefit Chinese circus arts performance.

Eventually I was called back to duty, assisting a stilt-walker in a 9-foot-long scarlet cheongsam up a flight of concrete stairs without tripping over herself or damaging her magnificent black velvet, chrysanthemum and tassel bestrewn headdress. Then I had a glass of cabernet. Then I had some spinach quiche. Then I ran downstairs to tell the hoop-jumpers the call was two minutes, and ran upstairs to tell the Mystic Pixies the same. Then I watched everyone perform.

The hoop-jumpers were a group of six teenage boys who were typical goofy/snarky teenage boys offstage and a six-part single unit of grace and power and utter focus onstage. They rolled, dove and leapt through great hoops stacked on other hoops stacked on the floor; the top tier hoops were some five feet off the floor, and the boys would launch themselves up and through and land coiled and languid and strong, utterly silent - not a thud, not a thump, as if they had drifted weightless to the floor and might just as easily have arced up to the ceiling.

The Mystic Pixies were four little blonde girls with glittered lips and Sandman's-sister-Deathlike squiggles around their eyes, who did Chinese-style contortionist tumbling to goosebump-raising music that sounded almost but not quite like the theme to HBO's "Carnivale." They did the splits on the floor, standing on one leg, standing on each other's thighs. They lay face-down on the floor, raised their heads, balanced on their sternums, and curled until (continued...)

( continues...) the cheeks of their asses just grazed the tops of their heads, and then they did the splits from there. They turned no-hands cartwheels over each other's bodies, twined around each other like snakes, made shapes of themselves that were surely not human. They were boneless and sinuous and utterly at home in their own bodies, precise and strong and fearless.

The smiling old man who followed them was almost anticlimactic, except he wasn't; he balanced raw eggs on more raw eggs on chopsticks on his chin, and tossed porcelain plates in the air and spun them about on slender metal rods, and made a helicopter out of two sticks and a nail and sent it zooming over everyone's heads and up to the ceiling beams and then obediently back into his waiting hand, and he laughed at himself the whole time.

Then there was dessert, and then I gathered up the wine glasses, and then I swept up all the rose petals that had fallen on the floor, so the students in the clowning class the next morning wouldn't step on them and slip. Then I had some English toffee and came home.

Best. Community. Service. Ever.

Anyone want to guess whether or not the bank made money?

Money being made on exchange of money? The banks are really clever to have thought that one up, and nefarious to boot.

Why shouldn't they make money?

Don't get me wrong -- they seem to make money keeping my money where it's hard for me to get to it, and I resent that. But if they make money off of me borrowing to buy something that I want, that can serve as an investment? Bully for them.

Credit does not suck. Using it to meet basic needs does.

Wait a minute, I have to come back to this. Credit to buy - what, a big tv - is okay, but not to buy a house? What do you think credit should be used for?

Man, I need to get out there and get some more parking tickets.

Brenda, I answered this a few "continued"'s' back.

Yup, just saw it. So, buying a business is ok (agreed) but not buying a house? I just don't get that. As for other things that might "keep you ahead of the interest," what would that be? Buying on margin?

How much could you borrow on your current monthly rental payment?

Buying on margin?

O, no you don't. I have my arithmetic in hand.

I'd still have to pay the rent, though. I don't get out of that by putting the money to another use. [eta] Unless it were going to a mortgage. So the question is more, how much could I borrow with what I have left over after I pay the rent and other fixed expenses, isn't it? And the answer is, precious little.