Alex Winter's Discontent

 or Concerto for Second Violin "Aux Printemps"

Characters;
Bill S. Preston [Aaron Paul](partner of Ted ____)
Doug McKenzie, [Rutger Hauer]"Great White North" (brother of Bob; not sure if it's vice versa)

Scene; Anywhere in LA, evening, interior 7-11, two questionable types in long line to checkout

Hey, I know you. You were in that movie about Canada and beer. That was awesome! Bob and Doug! My dad used to watch it all the time on tape and chug when you did. Good times, Never found a passenger, though. [laughs] Hey, we're both drinking Ruby Rocket, now. I used to be in pictures, too...

I know kid, I recognized you when you came in. Do a lot of people still light up for you?

Oh, yeah, constantly. I even kind of appreciate it now, but it's kind of like pity sex - "You mean there's another kind?" [too much laughter]

I blame my mf brother. He made about a thousand movies, some of them big as shit, and he couldn't even cut me in like a no-talent Quaid or Baldwin brother. I'm in comedy clubs now The McKenzie Brother - that's a barnburner, eh? You working at all?

The internet, man, I'm famous! somewhere, somehow... No money-type work, though. Somebody tried to set up a cop/buddy film with Ted. He said it sounded too "gimmicky" as if HE could tell [laughs] Not a word, since. I can't get a fucking break.

They checkout - head for the park, smoking Pall-mall unfiltered (Doug) and Kools

I don't hate the guy, though, it just seems like there's some kind of Curse of the Buddy Films, where one guy sheds the loser and takes off, and the other guy goes to hell, but my own brother, eh? At least we got away from the cold. Canada - the only place I've been that makes LA not suck. I only really miss the women. What a buffett!

To women! Pours down about half a quart. Smiles

TBC

Head Shots Count Triple

My friend wrote in a response to a Motley Fool sucker bait "Special Offer":

"The lies they tell!!   Microsoft has built an even larger data center than these "chosen" dudes with no name or mystery corporations (like the entity that naked short sold Bear Sterns) that built these data centers in the Pacific NW.  On the corporate level companies are using this regurgitated buzz word (cloud computing) to get the attention of the gubmint contacting officers.  In Chicago MS built a Gigantic DS because they won't have to cool it most of the year.   What idiot would give up their own processor, data storage and apps to some kind of monopoly?   Remember how Larry Ellison had the network computer that using the internet and java driven apps was going to replace the PC?  Best Buy and Circuit City didn't even put Larry's boxes on display."

Even if I did investing, which I don't and probably never will, these newsletter things have one big logical problem; if something is a sure thing with a big payoff, why would they be looking for suckers, I mean investors, to share in the profits? Seems to me, if they had some real opportunities they would keep it to themselves. I think that's what's going on right now with the equities markets and why they're keeping interest rates artificially low, to try to lure in another flock of gullible sheep to fleece, people who were not ruined in the last crash, who have a little cash earning less-than-inflation interest. As soon as they see that the bus is filled, they raise interest rates and the trip is over. I believe the Paulson emergency bailout was because they knew they had screwed the pooch and thought the game was really over for good so they were going to blow out the lamp, grab the cash and head for the holy land ahead of the lynch mob, but amazingly the chumps are getting back in the game.

"What idiot would give up their own processor, data storage and apps to some kind of monopoly?"

Most people don't have any important or valuable data and probably less than 1% do anything that actually uses processing power, (cadd, video processing, etc.). How often do you use anything beside the browser? and maybe email, which works better and easier in the browser, anyway. Outlook, hah! And the big bottleneck is and will remain bandwidth.  For most users, the cloud is perfect, as long as they realize everything is visible to anybody who cares to look. The trouble is, there isn't really any money in it, because there are too many players. If someone could somehow eliminate all their competition (and they would need to get the gubmint to do it) then yes, gold mine. I don't see it happening unless they can radically restrict the net (which is why they will try, and most likely succeed for other reasons, but restricting would kill the cloud model). The main target is big finance; if we can stop the brain-eating, the zombie will die. Always shoot at the head...

Writerjudd explains the Ineffable

"I'm just a simple country doctor. Take a couple of aspirins and try to get some sleep"

Can Anybody Find Me Someone to... Love?

I've been searching for a couple of days for the text version of this clip that I read a couple of months ago. The original (for me) article was Matt Taibbi's in Rolling Stone 

"Taibbi writes:

“On Tuesday, March 11^th, 2008, somebody – nobody knows who – made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half of their value in nine days or less. It was madness – “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.”

Bear’s stock would have to drop by more than half in a matter of days for the mystery figure to make a profit. And that is what happened.

As Taibbi explains, “the very next day, March 12, Bear went into a free fall…Whoever bought those options on March 11^th woke up on the morning of March 17^th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. This trader was either the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…Or what?” 

You should read the Taibbi article, although he's kind of flaky but funny (he wants to be the new Hunter Thompson). supposedly he gets a lot of his stuff from Deep Capture (I'd never heard of it, but it's good). IMO this is the biggest story ever and the biggest swindle in History so far. I was wondering how hard it would be to find who was making all the shorts (not very hard, I bet, since the gubmint probably knows exactly who). I like this exposure of The Markit Group, a black box for sure run by a Bulgarian/Israeli and I would guess a front for Goldman.  We need to borrow the Russian team that got Kordekovsky and put a whole lot of tribesman in Guantanamo since it's empty or soon will be, and use the not-torture methods until someone sings. Or, alternatively, let goldman go ahead and and eat Morgan, and then nationalize goldman, and use the proceeds to buy the pals a lot of these.

Danny the Car-Wiper is on the Nod

I've always disliked Christmas, but in the last couple of years it seems like every twinkling light and jolly shopper is like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, every gayly wrapped package a reminder that no one really grows up, every shriek of delight and surprise a passive-aggressive assertion that all's well with the modern world and that Jesus didn't die in vain. Fed up, bloated with existential figgy pudding and heavy gravey, the stupidity and waste piling up like dead Asian catfish on a frozen Chicago beach, I want to spew the contents of ten thousand dead albatross chick-guts on the National Christmas Tree and fill every stocking with 'Cong ears and bandages from limbless Iraqi orphans.

Then, New-Years, the celebration of mindless drunken revelry, the passing and heraldry of another year of death-based consumption as Americans waddle into the future, fat, dumb and happy as cannibalistic chimps on a full moon, unknowing and uncaring of anything beyond what they can eat or fuck or stuff in their pockets. "On Dasher, on Dancer, Comet and Vixen", a turd down every chimney and a rotting corpse under every tree. Let the ball descend on cleaned-up Times Square squares and Williamsburg hipsters celebrating another trip around the old tired sun, while we Surge into another unenlightened Afgan pass; down through all eternity, the whining of humanity, a big mac in one hand and M-16 in the other. Thank god for Burroughs.

Merry Xmas to all, and to all a "Good Night!"