It can be a perverse pleasure to own a pretty thing, especially if that thing is highly coveted by others. But this story may be the ultimate.
Today’s guest blog is by Sherrilee.
Even I, who love winter more than anyone I know, can get a little tired of the season by February. The slippery streets, the slush in the shoes, the high mountains of snow at each side of the driveway that make pulling out onto my street a life-threatening event every day. I often feel like I might be the writer of the Diary of a Snow Shoveler, which has been around forever:
So I read with interest about a woman in Spain, Angeles Duran, who had registered herself as owner of the Sun. Apparently she did her homework, discovered that there is an international agreement that no country may claim ownership of a star or a planet, but that there is no stipulation that an individual cannot make such a claim.
The part of Spain that Angeles hails from is Galicia, which is thought of as the rainy region of the country, although this is certainly relative, since Galicia is in the south of Spain so probably doesn’t have anything close to a Minnesota winter. But apparently the weather is quite volatile there, so you can go many days without seeing the sun. I suppose that claiming the sun as your own might make the gray days a little easier to take. Kind of like taking a vacation to Florida in January or February makes the shoveling a little easier to take.
Of course, it didn’t take Angeles long to try to make some money off her new claim. She wants to make sun-usership a fee-based activity, with the proceeds going the Spanish government, the nation’s pension fund, research, world hunger and 10% left over for herself. Generous woman.
What planetary object would you like to claim?
Trail Baboon 
a gracious good morning to You All – and thanks, VS, for the interesting story of an entrepreneurial landlord. easy to be generous with money one doesn’t have.
i had one spate of landlordship – about 5 months, i think – but there are too many worries. so for Angelese as well – what if her “tenants” decide to pollute the air or damage the ozone layer? or stiff her on the rent? rules will be made. then they’ll have to be enforced. icky. no ownership of rental property for me.
i’ll enjoy the free, warm sunlight until i get a bill from Angeles. wait – maybe i’ve gotten one already in my “junkmail” file!
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Morning BiB… I didn’t even think of the whole landlord issue when I read this. Wow, what if this woman has all the makings of a slumlord…yikes!
I’ve been a landlord twice… kinda. When I moved to the Twin Cities, a friend lived in my basement… there was a side door to the basement, so except for laundry, it was his space entirely. And then I rented a room in my current house for several years. Since I’m still friends with most of these folks, I assume I wasn’t a horrible landlord!
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can’t imagine you would be a bad landlord, VS – and it sounds like your tenants behaved also. renting a room in a house is different i think. so, would we be renting a room in Angeles’ sun-house or just renting the sunlight? i guess if she owned the earth (but i suppose someone has claimed that already – i found out that up here people on the range only own the top of the earth but not what’s underneath their garden (like copper, platinum, etc) can that be correct??
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barb, there is a restaurant one block from my son’s apartment that sells birria, goat stew.
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yum! did you have some? we don’t eat our goats, but we got some goat meat in barter for some breedings to T (from a woman who is very, very good to her animals. they live comfy, albeit short, lives at her farm. the meat was sweet. but i look at Niblet (who, as a wether, would be stew over 2.5 years ago) and i just can’t send him off. he stays, unstewed.
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did not try it, yet anyway
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Used to get the goat meat pies from the Jamaican bakery in DC-that and a fierce ginger beer-pure heaven and good for whatever ails you. Having now made the acquaintance of the Goats of Blackhoof, I think I would today settle for the equally fine veggie pies.
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i think the letter informing the back rent was due an what the future monthly installments would be, would be a kick. tell china that because they have so much space the owe just a penny a day per sq meter. i am going to work that out and get back to you all. the law firm that sent out the collections letters would be an interesting one.
if i got to claim a heavenly body i would take orion. there is something about the fact that he is such a tireless pursuer and the fact that you get to see him for a while then he is off to the other hemisphere before returning in the fall. that old bear is going to slip up some time and he will be ready.
fun stuff . thanks sherrilee
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Orion– nice choice… one of my favorites too.
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Like BiB, I was a landlord for awhile – bought the duplex I was living in from my landlord, then was a landlord myself for about 5 years. It had its ups and downs, but it’s an experience I don’t think I need to repeat. Don’t need the responsibility.
As for owning a planetary or celestial object, I don’t think I’d want one. It might be fun for awhile, but the lefty-liberal-bordering-on-socialist in me doesn’t think anyone should be able to “own” them, individual or otherwise. Besides, how do I know which twinkly star it is that I point at and tell Daughter that it’s my grandma up there winking and sparkling for us? It seems to move. 🙂
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comes to 959,696,000,000.00 per day for china
i didnt know that russia, canada and usa are bigger than china. russia owes twice that amount.
i could get by on 10% of that per day.
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I received a star for Christmas one year…forget which one…it had a number for a name…and never figured out where it was, but I have the deed. somewhere. I might have paid more attention if I had thought I could collect rent from it.
Good morning, y’all…cold again. I keep promising the goats this is the last of it…again and again.
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me too. but i noticed, as i was kneeling to repair a manger on saturday, that their deep layers of (soft on top, but composting pee and poop below) bedding is cozy and warm. speaking of resilience – they are way more resilient than i am!
maybe you could bring your star a bit closer to us tonight – heat us up a bit??
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Barb, yes, mineral rights can be and frequently are sold separately from the surface land, usually with special rights of access to the property in order to get at and exploit any minerals below. You gotta read your contracts and mortgages very carefully!
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You’re quite right, Crow Girl. When we bought our house, the oil industry out here was in a bust, so the mineral rights to our lot were included in the purchase. When they discovered an oil deposit beneath the college football field goal posts, we were included in the “oil field” proper, and that means we receive about $90 every 3 months in oil royalties. Gravel is considered a surface mineral out here, so even if you don’t have the deep mineral rights, gravel could make you rich if you wanted your property dug up.
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wow – did you get a ceement pond with all that money??
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Snort!
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I’d like the North Star, please. I can’t live in Minnesota at this point in my life, so having the North Star would be a good second choice.
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Good morning to all,
Has anyone registered for ownership of the moon? That’s the planetary object that you might be able to make some money on by charging rent. I guess I couldn’t charge the US space program for back rent if I didn’t have ownership when they were there. Does moon light have any value? Could I change admission to viewing of the moon? Maybe I can get royalties for all those songs that mention the moon.
This is a little like those big companies that are going around claiming exclusive rights to organisms that they say contain genetic material that they have discovered and might want to use. Don’t tell Wall Street that it is possible register as the owner of things in space.
The big bankers would probably find a way to claim ownership of the entire universe. The Tea Party would defend the right of the bankers to own the universe and would work to defeat legislation limiting the amount of the universe that any one banker or big company could own.
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I love the idea of royalties for songs… Jim, I think Moon songs probably beat all others out. Blue Moon, Moonshadow, Midnight Moon, Sister Moon, August Moon, Harvest Moon, Dark Side of the Moon. I can hear the coins jingling for you now!
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I had better be fast about getting the ownership of the moon, if some one doesn’t alrighty have it. Then I will have to look into the laws about collecting royalties.
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I mean already not alrighty.
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Well, it will be alrighty if you get those rights. The names of songs w/ moon in the title are mounting quickly in my brain!
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Kind of brings new meaning to “The Dark Side of the Moon” (as in the “Star Wars” sense of Dark Side) paired with that other Pink Floyd classic, “Money”…
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Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XV5UoyY2rM
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“Like”
Thanks TGITH
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Yes, but Jim, you most likely would end up spending all the royalties paying off all the claims of unfortunate incidents brought on by “Moonlight Madness”.
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Oh no!
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Fun, Sherrilee — I can’t think of a celestial body I want, but I sure would like to be able to turn on the Northern Lights at will! I wonder what that would entail…
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A really big switch (and a lot of 220v cable).
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oh surely that can be done by remote these days!
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There’s an app for that…
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OK, I just read this in one of Husband’s financial newsletters (Alexander Green’s “Spiritual Wealth”). This week we got exciting news that Kepler has found 15 extrasolar planets (beyond the 510 already known to exist) and identified up to 1,235 other candidates. Fifty-four of these are the right size and orbit a “habitable zone” – the goldilocks region neither too close to a sun nor too distant – where liquid water might pool on the surface of a planet.
If I were to own a planetary object, I’d like one with water on it. But it does still seem like too much responsibility.
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Water would be good and a very short winter would also sound good about now.
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Hear hear… even I am officially ready for spring!
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Rings of Saturn? Pluto? The Big Red Spot? A Near Earth Object? Does Halley own his comet? I want one of the moons, I think one is on Saturn, that has frozen methane.
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Landlord of the Sun, she can have the headaches. I myself to not want all those rentpayers calling me everytime it is cloudy or there is an inconvenient solar flare.
I’ll just take a little undeveloped asteroid that I might want to build on someday as a retirement place or as an investment.
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True, when sun spots wipe out the global communications–in20143, is it–she will have upset landlords.
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My son says it will happen in 2012, the solar flares that will be hard on global communications of all sorts–a very serious issue by the way. But the world is supposed to end in 2012. Will she be then responsible, and who will collect?
And does Bachman get to claim her home planet, wherever that is?
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🙂
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there is a planet “dufus?”
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OMG, BiB…you are too funny.
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From a co-worker re: Bachmann’s own planet: “And she can have any lightbulb there she wants?!”
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Reminds me of a funny line from “Men in Black”. Will Smith says to Tommy Lee Jones “You do know that Elvis is dead?” and TLJ replies “No, he isn’t. He just went home.”
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of course, this is assuming her planet has plenty of fossil fuels to power it with (or not-maybe just Believing there are enough will make Tinkerbell’s light glow-clap very loudly if you Believe)
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Love this thread!
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There is also quite a bit of paperwork to keep up with – she will need to get a signed waiver from everyone on the planet saying they will not sue her if they use her product and develop skin cancer.
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Ha ha!
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Morning–
I would like a hospitable little rock that I could just cruise around on and watch the stars and planets go by…
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Like the Little Prince? Would you have a rose to take care of?
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As long as I didn’t have to concern myself with matters of concequence… after all “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Thanks for reminding me Cynthia… you have given me a sense of calm for the rest of the day…
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This is OT but funny. I wish I could figure out how to do links. In any event, the Carrington, ND wrestling team, on their way to a regional wresting tournament, decided to pick up a dead racoon from the road and stowed it in a storage compartment of the team bus. When they got to the tournament, they opened the storage compartment and the racoon walked out and ran away. The team was banned from partipating in the tourney out of fear of possible rabies exposure. What a surprise for the boys and the racoon! I can’t imagine what they were thinking.
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Gets boring, driving across ND
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Oh, that’s great!
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Heard about that this morning and could only think that they could have been spared so much trouble if they had come across something else instead.
It’s racing through my brain, why should it not be going through yours:
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Where’s Steve today?…
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sunbathing???
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Greetings! I can’t think of anything — but I have a question. Does anyone watch the TV show “Glee?” After watching the Packers cream the Steelers 🙂 , I had to watch the big production song/dance numbers on Glee. Does that show always feature song and dance numbers like that? Wow! That would be worth tuning in or recording. I’m at karate most nights so I have no idea about most shows on TV right now.
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Oo! OO! Pick me!!
We LOVE Glee- The whole family is into it…
Yes and no in regard to last nights show… they always sing and dance… Sue, the ‘Cherrios’ coach was a perhaps a little more vitriolic last night. I mean she’s always ‘mean’ just a little extra ‘umph’ last night… and the make up and smoke for the big number was more than most shows, although they did a ‘Rocky Horror’ spoof too w/ costumes and makeup…
Every show will have singing and dancing to some extent… and they are good dancers…
It’s a fun show.
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Ben, I had a feeling you’d be into it — being the theatrical farmer that you are! They’re good dancers certainly, and they have some awesome singers — although maybe not the actors themselves. I loved that semi-a capella cell phone number with the guys in suits. Reminiscent of the Nylons or the Bobs. Generally, actors don’t sing together that well unless they’ve done it a long time. LOVED the Thriller/Dance ’til You’re Dead(?) mash-up. I don’t really know the second song they used, but wow it fit.
And the Super Bowl halftime show was amazing! Never saw Black-Eyed Peas, but the light and dance show was out of this world! What a spectacle … God, I love big production numbers!
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I’m a Gleek too. Watch their Christmas show – a Very Glee Christmas – if you have a chance (might still be available on hulu). Sue is hilarious in it.
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Gotta respond today, as I’m an astronomy buff. But I can’t decide – Uranus because it spins tilted on the side (nicely eccentric) or maybe Pluto because I like to root for the underdog. Or maybe the anonymity of one of the dozens of nameless little moons of Jupiter that have been identified since I learned about the planets as a kid! Or, exiting the planetary realm, maybe Sirius the Dog Star. Hmmm, too many choices.
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