We're in Bend! Oregon!

If not for the logistics (i.e., hotel room table, awkward laptop keyboard, no slippers, and, most importantly, American Idol coming on in about 15 minutes), after having arrived in Bend, Oregon, there just might be a Jim Kunstler type riff on the end of suburbia.
But, given these constraints, all that can be offered up here is the image above which, for those of you who have been to this town on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range surely understands, represents conditions that are about as good as they'll ever get for unchecked consumerism in the western U.S.

Apparently, foreclosures accounted for almost 70 percent of all existing home sales during the month of December - we just might move here.