Crude, Crude, Crude...

One night long ago, my brother and I were lying on the carpet watching The Waltons when he grabbed one of the many Dennis the Menace books I owned. He was flipping through it when he grabbed a Flair pen and scratched out the original caption and wrote his own. When he showed it to me I bust out laughing to the point our Dad suspected something was up and shouted out, “Whatever you're doing in there...cut it out!”

The picture in the book showed Dennis's friend, Joey, holding a sling shot. The original caption had Dennis saying, “Oh, I wouldn't use one of those on cats, birds, windows, cars, mailmen, Margaret...” The implication was that he used it on all of them.

My brother had Dennis say instead to Joey, “Now, shove it up your ass.” 

Yes, it was sophomoric, crude and typical humor of a fourteen year old. But to me at nine years of age, it was hilarious. This was the very first Dennis the Menace panel he had rewritten. There were six other books he would eventually redo.

My brother once said it was too easy to do. Hank Ketchum, the originator of the Dennis character, was one to draw very active scenes. These scenes easily lent themselves to other, rather disgusting, but screamingly funny, interpretations. Only on a rare occasion would he draw something else into the cartoon to expand on it.

Another cartoon panel had Dennis sitting in his rocking chair that faced the corner whenever he misbehaved. The scene showed Mom, in exasperation, telling her husband Henry as he came in the door from work, what a day she had with him.

My brother then drew a kid's “Li'l Doctor” toy kit on the floor next to Dennis. He rewrote the caption with his Mom complaining to Henry, “...and then he took out his little doctor kit and performed an abortion on Margaret!!!”

We had a scare once. My Dad once picked up one of the rewritten copies to take with him into the bathroom (aka: The Library) with him to read. My brother and I just stared at one another thinking we were dead meat.

About twenty minutes later, my Dad had returned the book to the coffee table and I shot a sidelong glance at him to discover his mood, if any.

He made no sound at all, not a peep.

I still wonder just what he must have thought of his two sons after reading it.

Years later, I showed them to my then college friends who guffawed over the jokes. I had to warn them in advance the my brother attacked every single racial group there was. He made fun of every sexual orientation, religion and whatever was deemed Holy in our culture. He left no survivors.

Those rewrites started in 1975 and I still have most of them to this day.

 

An Old Man Beats Me Like a Rented Mule

A while back, I knew an engineer who worked at Hasbro. I'm not sure what kind of engineers a toy maker would hire, but there you go. I guess you do need to know about plastic injection and how to transform some artists creation into the latest hot toy to rush to Schwartz's for Christmas.

He did sort of look like a Santa Claus, a very health conscious one. He was skinny, wiry skinny and tan. A pile of white hair was on his head with the addition of a longish white beard as well. His smile looked like any other smile you'd see on any Santa, with those reddish cheeks and elfish eyes. The movements his body made were deliberate and almost graceful. That came from his lifelong adherence to Buddhism and the Martial Arts.

I told him my closest brush with Buddhism came from the David Carradine TV show Kung Fu and a short, very short spell of watching, not trying, Tai Chi. We would talk of the seemingly bizarre quotes of that Buddhism will throw at you to crack your own ossified thinking of how you perceive the world. Also, he showed me a few Tai Chi moves.

The first time I saw Tai Chi in person was in Slater Park a few years ago. A group of mainly women were following the movements of an old Asian instructor. To watch it from afar looks like watching ballet. It's fluid, slow and seems “easy.” You could overhear the instructor call out the next moves, whose names sound completely benign.

“Do the 'Separating Clouds' now.” He'd say. Then the whole group would move in slow motion unison into some position then stop, like thirty statues. There were others I remember, “Gazing at the Moon” and “Scooping the Sea.” Again, the whole crowd would slowly transform into another position and stop.

My engineering friend decided to show me a few simple moves. He would stand beside me and then slide effortlessly into some stance, with his arms making wide swoops and his body shifting up then down. When I tried it, I was surprised at how a very simple looking shift could make my legs shake and I’d feel every tendon in my ankles wanting to untie themselves. The few other positions he showed me had the same effect. Tai Chi is NOT easy in any sense, though it certainly looks so from afar.

I was curious about his Martial Arts training too. I wanted to see him defend himself from a punch. I promised him, again and again, that I would throw a slow motion punch to his face and he would, at the same speed, defend that attack so I could see what he was doing.

So, I do just as I promised, I throw a slow motion punch straight at his face and his arm reaches up a bit quicker than I thought we agreed upon and grabs my wrist and starts to twist it toward an angle no wrist was meant to go. I could feel the pressure rise in my hand and forearm fairly fast.

“Ok, I say, let's speed it up, I'll swing faster at you, but I PROMISE I won't make contact with your face, and you react at the same speed I'm moving at now.”

“OK” he says

So, I toss a punch at him quicker. The next thing I notice I have to drop to my knees as he grabbed my wrist in a very fast and quick movement. As he applied God awful amounts of pressure in my arm, my only way to relieve it was to by drop myself to the floor. Once down, he shifted the movement to something else and the pressure moved from my wrist straight up into my shoulder.

“If I move your arm 'this way' (and he does, to which I'm falling backward again relieve the pressure) I can have you flat on your back in one second!”

I get up, and very respectful of this older man's abilities. You wouldn't think someone above the age of 60 can move this fast.

It's odd, seeing someone so quiet, benign and peaceful, have the ability to dislocate my shoulder in seconds.

"It may take half a lifetime, to master one system." Click to Watch.

T&A and $

I've said before I find finance the best ESPN around. My sports pages include financial blogs and like most sports pages and channels, they sell 'em with SEX.

You used to get grizzled, old men on the field trying to snag an interview or opine about the team's chance. Now you have barely 22 year old girls with perfect skin down on the field doing the interviews.  She's a slight more prettier than a 55 year old ex coach from Notre Dame.

There's little difference in the world of finance either. You can watch CNBC's Margaret Brennan tell you of a 600 point drop in the DOW and you won't care as you look into her eyes.

 

“Huh? What did she say? Did she say Exxon just collapsed?” is all your reaction will be.

The financial blogs are no better really. Though, the don't put pretty girls on them to “sell” as the blogs are private. But these writers, as guys will do, will toss up a picture of some girl they find attractive and others will chime in about the choice.

The conversation can go from discussing the latest T-Bill auction to a longer discussion about the color of hair on a girl.

“Yes! Auburn hair is the best!”

“Are you nuts? Blondes! Blondes are the prettiest!”

“Aahh, you're wrong! Blondes are a dime a dozen!”

This can go on for some time as Bernanke is in the background droning on about bond rates.

One blog I read, Jesse's Cafe Americain is mostly about gold prices (which I could care less about) and a few other well written articles on economics. His blog is populated with everything French. The other day I'm reading it and he posts this long forgotten 60's chanson singing mournful French love songs. The girl fell on the Earth pretty back in 1963 and you know why he posted it...he's entranced by her. She has nothing to do with the CAC-40 trading floor in Paris. She does, however, have everything to do with being pretty. Once the flutter around her is done, the talk returns to dry financial subjects.

 

Is it Live or Is it Memorex

From the News:

It is one thing for tungsten-filled gold bars to appear in the UK, or in Germany. However, when a 10 ounce 999.99% gold bar bearing the stamp of the reputable Swiss Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux PAMP and a serial number #038892, (likely rehypothecated in at least 10 gold ETFs across the world), mysteriously emerges in the heart of the world's jewelry district located on 47th street in Manhattan, things get real quick. Moments ago, Myfoxny reported that a 10-ounce gold bar costing nearly $18,000 turned out to be a counterfeit. The discovery was made by the dealer Ibrahim Fadl, who bought the PAMP bar in question from a merchant who has sold him real gold before. "But he heard counterfeit gold bars were going around, so he drilled into several of his gold bars worth $100,000 and saw gray tungsten -- not gold. The bar was filled with tungsten, which weighs nearly the same as gold but costs just over a dollar an ounce."

What makes it so devious is a real gold bar is purchased with the serial numbers and papers, then hollowed out.   The hollowed bar is filled with tungsten and is neatly closed up. That is a sophisticated operation.

MTB, the Swiss manufacturer of the gold bars, said customers should only buy from a reputable merchant. The problem, they admit, is that Ibrahim Fadl is a very reputable merchant.

Raymond Nessim, CEO of Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, said he has reported the situation to the FBI and Secret Service.

The Secret Service, which deals with counterfeits, said it is investigating.
 

***** 

 

My old friend constantly laments that “...it's all a sham now, you can't trust anything, it's all a scam. Cans of tuna weigh 5oz, coffee isn't a pound, it's 10.5 ounces, stock...mortgages..nothing's real anymore.”

“All they do is find a way of digging deeper into you pocket.”

I'd hate to be the one who laid out $100,000 for a pile of tungsten.

 

 

Whataya Wanna Do Today?

Click To See The Clip

I've spoken before of where and who I grew up with. Looking back on it all we were a might bit young to be partying like adults, but we did. We weren't pre-criminals (well, a couple of us were) but mostly middle class kids looking to have fun.

The movie Over the Edge was based on an actual event in Foster City, CA where a planned neighborhood was built w/o any thought to the fact there would be kids there. Foster City was built on reclaimed marshland that was at the time, somewhat isolated from the more fun areas of San Francisco. Add to that, the entire suburb had no place for the kids to go but each others homes or a rec center that sat on a playground. Other than that, there was little else for the kids to do.

So, it being the '70's, they smoked pot, drank, ate 'ludes and acid to pass away the time and try to find what fun that could be had in that. The parents of the time, who I found accurately depicted, either were too busy with their careers or didn't give a rat's ass what their kids did. They had no idea just what little Johnny was up to every night he went “out.”

So, as these kids were left unattended, they became worse. They started to engage in petty vandalism out of boredom and finally one night, en masse, assaulted their own school. The San Francisco Examiner wrote a piece entitled, ““Mouse Packs: Kids on a Crime Spree.”

Here's a bit of that article.

--Mousepacks. Gangs of youngsters, some as young as nine, on a rampage through a suburban town. One on a bike pours gasoline from a gallon can and sets it afire. Lead pipe bombs explode in park restrooms. Spray paint and obscenities smear a shopping center wall. Two homes are set ablaze. Antennas by the hundreds are snapped off parked cars in a single night. Liquid cement clogs public sinks and water fountains. Street lights are snuffed out with BB guns so often they are no longer replaced. It sounds like the scenario for an underage Clockwork Orange, a futuristic nightmare fantasy. But all the incidents are true. They happened in Foster City where pre-teenage gangs—mousepacks—constitute one of the city’s major crime problems.

--Last summer the Foster City parks department sponsored ‘drop-ins’ at a junior high gymnasium. “Within two months the gym had been destroyed—pool tables ripped, ping-pong tables broken,” said Juvenile Officer Rick Rivera. “The program had to be canceled.”

--“Foster City was supposed to be an ideal bedroom community. The designers built it with a master plan; it was threaded with little man-made canals and waterways. Outside of some houses were docks that people could use to boat to the grocery store. But there was nothing for the large percentage of teenage kids to do in that town — 25 percent of the population was below the age of 18. It had the highest percentage of juvenile crime of any comparable city in the country.

--“These kids were bored out of their minds. There was literally nothing for them to do. It was like a theme park without the fun — you’d have these developments called ‘Whaler’s Cove’ and these fake pilings and these lame rec centers, with ropes and an airplane and a slide and a sculpture of a whale. Everything was brand new. Nothing was older than the kids themselves. The place made everyone feel a little disposable.”   

I saw this flick when the just then new cable TV was wired up in our neighborhood. I sat there with my mouth half open because it looked like, in some ways, exactly what we did as kids. Not only that, the clothing and hair styles were what we wore then too. It could have been Darlington where I grew up. Though we didn't set fire to the school.

It got bad here once. Bad in that no one, not even the cops, were stopping us. In Slater Park, there was a simple parking lot we dubbed “The One Way.” Here is where we all hung out. Sunday through Saturday, you'd find someone there getting stoned or drunk. After that, the defenseless woods, park buildings and what not was prime game to take out any anger, boredom or whatever you could to them. I saw kids plow down young trees with their cars for God's sake.

As word spread of this place, more and more teens showed up. It became the largest open air pharmacy you'd see. Cars would pull in and dealers, competing with one another, would run up to the car, nearly begging the buyer to purchase their weed and not the others. On some nights there must have been 100 kids in that lot, doing whatever the hell they wanted.

It did finally all end and luckily I wasn't there for it. The police, after nearly nine months, finally acted and came crawling out of the woods, up the street in their cars and brought along a prison bus to handle the myriad arrests they made that night. I was told half of the kids scattered and escaped through the marshlands by the creek that feeds the duckpond.

Out of the 60 or so arrests, the cops let most of them go, as most didn't have enough pot on them to satisfy the Attorney General's office to push that many through the court system. Even the AG's office has a budget that must be used for cases that provide enough bang for the buck and processing a bunch of punky teens wasn't in the policy.

A week went by and all of a sudden there was a new place to hang at, Pascale's Lot. It was situated inside a zoned industrial area directly across from McCoy stadium. The festivities began anew.

A Perfect Shit Storm

Bernanke is panicking. The latest QE “3” he released today, is an attempt to suppress the interest rates on longer term bonds. That will in turn suppress rates all over in order to spur borrowing. I don't think can last long. To be fair though, he has few tools left in his magic bag that work now and I believe that was his last. The real tools reside in Congress. But they cannot come together to implement any of them due to ideological differences. Bernanke is out of bullets and now he'll have to hand this albatross to Congress...during an election cycle.

See where this will lead? Nowhere.

The GOP will never allow a tax hike on the rich and the Dems will never allow Social Security or Medicare to be axed. Both sides have their electorate ready to scream Holy Murder if the opposing team even tries it.

And fast approaching is the Fiscal Cliff come January.

Remember the Super Committee? The one that was supposed to come to some sort of agreement on how to deal with the deficit? Well, if you recall, it failed wonderfully for the same reasons I stated above. In order to make some “success” out of it they put a sunset clause in it stipulating that if by Jan 2013, if nothing was done, then the tax hikes on the rich will go up and budget cuts to the ENTIRE US budget would automatically ensue. If this were to happen say hello to Recession #2.

In finance circles they're calling this the “Perfect Storm.”

1	If Congress fails to act on the Sunset Clause or comes down too heavily in favor of one side vs. the other. It's Recession Time once again.
2	China and the Emerging Markets are slowing down and might be headed for a hard landing.
3	Iran and the Middle East may flare. This is a Wild Card. Say hello to high oil prices and that drags on your wallet.
4	The Euro Union has GDP larger than the entire United States.  Right now across the pond they are throwing up as we speak.

Finance jokingly called the past few years, “kicking the can down the road.” That is to say, all these policy interventions just are putting off the inevitable.  They did hold out hope that it could work. The can may have become too heavy and big to kick any longer. Now what do you think of our rich elite, our best and brightest?

Advice? Get the hell out of all debt if you can. If not, pay down what you can. If it's too large, blow it off then, forget it. Why worry now?

Plays Well with Others

Job searches have certainly changed. The last time I did one was 18 years ago and I would circle want ads in the ProJo and send off paper resumes. Today it's all electronic.

I was at career services at a local college to get some hints, tips and contacts to widen my “social network.” The counselor was pretty helpful, as in realistic, instead of the “rah-rah go gettem' team” approach. She believes in building a foundation before you shingle the roof.

Above all, it's smart to have a sounding board to bounce ideas off of with someone who's experienced with this question. I've always believe comparing my own view of reality with someone else's tends to put me on track if I wander.

Not to toot my own horn, ah...rather it was a confirmation of some skills that I haven't used in a long, long time that surprised me that I still possess. She quickly stated that my interpersonal skills were honed to a sharp edge.

She said: “You talk like a natural counselor...did you know that? It just flows with you. You're very open, at ease and you drew me right in...You can do that with anyone!”

“Ah” I say “That's the Art of the Relationship. If the other person is willing, I can establish a connection fairly fast...IF they're willing, but try that on someone who's naturally lacks trust, it's like chiseling a brick wall. To tell the truth, I find people who are incapable of this, as weak.”

To tell the truth, I'm far more comfortable with the One To One than being a part of a large group where it's near impossible to reach individual people as everyone is jabbering to one another.

“Ron, it's a dying art you know. I counsel a ton of college aged kids and they haven't the ability to do face to face. It's all texting. Many of them miss the social cues needed to just connect! Sometimes it's so hard to “drill down” into them to learn just who they are because they can't express it.”

I then critically say; “Ah, We're a nation populated by people brain damaged by Aderall.” No one wants to listen, they all want to talk at once...be the center of attention.”

“I'm a dinosaur.” I say

“No, you're just from a different generation that learned how to deal with people.”

Perhaps I am? Perhaps if I texted constantly and learned that I could keep an impenetrable electronic barrier between me and the other, I could wall myself off. The fact that no body language, no facial expressions or a zillion other cues people use are blocked by electronics, it sort of give you can easy way to keep people away. Ah, No, I don't wish that.

But...in a certain sense, I have to become more aware of the social networking thingy. She tells me 70% of the positions acquired are by this. I translate that into my own brain as “It's Who You Know.”

I Once Did a Mr Creosote!

Click and Watch Mr. Creosote Make an Ass of Himself.
 

Ok, here is promised about a story of my ralphing in a restaurant.

It was another Friday in the same Friendly Tap. There wasn't a hint of anything unusual that would happen as we ate out and then off to Almacs in Seekonk to get the weekly groceries. I didn't feel the least bit sick either.

I was 10 then and my brother 15. We ate as a matter of course and nothing seemed out of place till we were about to leave. Everyone else got up from the booth but I stayed behind for about 20 seconds when everyone noticed I wasn't moving. My Dad prompted me that we were leaving and I then slid halfway across the booth when out of nowhere, I heaved all over the table.

Friday nights in the Friendly Tap are full of TGIF folks who were happy, rambunctious and ready to enjoy their weekend. It was packed that night and somewhat loud as everyone was jubilant. When I spilled my guts onto the table, the noise level in the room dropped to zero and every head turned around to see what I was doing. I wonder to this day how many appetites I managed to ruin that night.

What I saw, was this pool of thin vomit crawling to the edge of the table and dripping off, like a spilled milkshake. I sat there in a bit of a woozy state when my brother started to laugh his head off.

“AH HA HA HA HA HA! AH HA HA HA HA! DID YOU SEE THAT! AH HA HA!”

“Kenny! Stop IT!” My mother yelped at him.

I got up, sort of stunned, and in a odd moment of compassion, my Dad hung his London Fog trench coat over my head and guided me out of the restaurant with his hand on my shoulder. Once in the parking lot with the “shame coat” off of my head, my brother bust out laughing again as this was the funniest thing he saw all month.

Oddly enough, I felt totally fine after that. I had no idea just what made me puke. Perhaps Friendly Tap's shitty cooking that night? Anyway, I was good to go about 20 minutes later.

Now that I was feeling fine, we didn't abandon our trip to Almacs. On the way, my brother kept teasing me about it all, finding any and all jokes he could barb me with. I sat there defending myself as well as I could and in some sense, getting my balls busted by my brother was more of a sting than puking and having 60 patrons witness it.

My Dad, trying to quell the kids in the back seat finally said,

“Alright Ken, enough's enough...leave him alone.”

I sat diagonally from my Dad who was driving and when he said that and I noticed he was trying to stifle a giggle himself.

I'm not sure if we went back the next Friday. I'm guessing we took a week off to let the story die down so I could return w/o everyone pointing.

Yes. Now that I look back on it, it was funny as hell.

Let's talk about pepperoni pizza, since I tend to speak so well about it.

To me, there is only one pizza shop around here that makes the best. The House of Pizza on Division St in Pawtucket. This Greek shop has been here for decades now and it's possible I put one of their kids through a semester at college with all the money I've spent there.

As a kid, I hated everything. One of the things I despised was cheese. Yes, ain't that weird? I don't quite remember why I did but I wouldn't touch the stuff. I'd watch in horror as my brother would eat those frozen school pizza squares my Mom would sometimes buy. Fine by me, you can eat the whole box, you won't have any competition from me.

The other thing he'd eat was that canned Chef Boyardee Spaghetti in some weird cheese sauce...Ugh!

*****

Every Friday night, the day my Dad was paid, we hit up a local restaurant then go food shopping at the old Almacs in Seekonk. My parents were creatures of habit and you could count on this like you could count on the sun rising the next day. These small, predictable things are what makes a decent childhood. 

We would eat at the Friendly Tap, a half bar/half restaurant that served up the same menu since before I was born probably. There were waitresses in there that should've been name “Flo.” It was full of working class 30-something girls of the early 1970's, snapping gum and still hanging on to beehive hair dos. They word baby blue uniforms with silly paper, Jackie Kennedy pill box hats too. They looked like they were waiting for their truck driving husbands to return from the road one day. You know, in some ways, it did have the feel of a truck stop, though the road it was on was no where near a trucking route.

I'd grade the place a perfect C+ for quality. It was never awful nor grand, so they get an A+ on consistency. Perfectly middling. Perfect for my Dad, a Depression Era kid who thought meat and potatoes was the only food worth eating...and lots of it.

I have to get off track here because I just remembered it.

Once in a great while, my Dad wanted to try something different...really different for him...like...Italian food! There was a new neighborhood restaurant that we tried ONCE and never went back too. I forget the name and it's no longer there but looking back on it, they did do Italian food right. This was back when Italians from North Providence were moving into our predominately Irish/English/Polish neighborhood.

When we got there, there was a line out the door but it moved fast enough. When we managed to get inside the building, my Dad noticed an awful odor that wrinkled his nose.

“Maureen, what's that stink!?”

“Richard, shhh...it's just garlic.” my Mom told him.

“Holy Moses! It's like a skunk!” he said. He said it loudly enough to insult some of the Italian/American patrons sitting in their booths. I saw them turn their heads.

I guess the word spread that the six-foot-two IRISH guy had managed to insult the one ingredient that makes Italy famous. We were seated and waited forever to be served. When we did get our food, I ate mine, simple spaghetti, while my Dad poked and prodded something he'd never seen before, Veal Parmesan. He ate half, which was surprising as Dad usually inhaled food.

After, we were sitting in the car and my Dad said,

“Auggh...We're not coming back. The service was crummy too!”

My Mom, the woman, who always had better judgment on social cues said that if he had not too loudly protested the smell of garlic to ¼ of the restaurant, perhaps we would've received better service. Leave it to the wives to be the moral compass.

Ok, back to my story...but this reminds me of another great story about my puking in a restaurant. I will tell that one soon enough, it's funny.

One day my Dad died and with him a lot of the things we used to do went with him into the grave. We no longer went out Friday nights and I had to learn to live with this change.

My brother, who was 18 at the time and wanting, more than anything, to live his own life w/o having to deal with my Mom, started getting take out from a Greek pizza joint behind Saint Ray's High school every Friday night and ate it by himself.

My Mom and I'd eat whatever she cooked while my brother sat in the living room eating his pizza. I'd finish up pretty quick and joined him to watch and goof on Star Trek that was on the TV in late afternoon.

One Friday I finally got curious and asked if he would get me the same pizza he was eating for a Friday night treat as I missed the Friday treks we used to do. I suppose if I could have this, it would be something like we used to do...at least a tiny part of it.

He came back with two pepperoni pizzas and I when I lifted up one slice, I could see the underside looked sort of burnt. This isn't good! Not only that, if you tilted the pizza, a slow progression of oil could be made to crawl across it.

“Well, this is going to suck.” I told myself.

That judgment was reversed in a damned hurry when I got the courage to try, with what I thought, was a badly cooked piece of food. The flavors that spilled across my mouth were amazing. The salt bite, the heat, spice, the incredible CRUNCH of the pizza dough busting on my teeth. I never knew!

That was probably July 1977. Since then I've eaten more pepperoni pizzas than was probably healthy to do.

The House of Pizza is still there, a couple of the original owners, gray haired now, are still running the ovens to this day. Had my Dad walked into this place, he would've been thrown by all the murals, Greek vases and how the employees shout at one another in that language.

Or perhaps not? Perhaps, he would've been surprised as I was.

The original book Frankenstein by Mary Shelly is far more complex and interesting than any cheezoid movie made of it. Though the exception would be Young Frankenstein which was a scream. The authentic story was considered a piece of serious work than one of horror and science fiction way back then. Mary Shelly was something of a prodigy as she wrote Frankenstein when she was 18.

The book has a great opening. In it, there's a washed up British scientist trying to revive his career while on an expedition to the North Pole. While on the ice cap, he spots a very large man on a dogsled disappearing over the horizon. A few miles on he encounters a starved and near frozen Dr. Frankenstein who had to give up his pursuit of the dog sledder. The Dr. then tells this scientist his entire story of how he managed to end up chasing some shadowy figure across the Arctic.

It has been 184 years since this book as been published and people have based dissertations, to achieve a Ph.D., on various readings of it. That's how seriously this book was taken.

One reading, which I resonate with, was the view on how society picks a scapegoat to heap derision on. Even in the cheapo movies, you see the monster being harangued wherever he goes, typifies all that is evil and is hunted down.

 

*****

 

We all know them. We all know who they are and may have even dumped all over them while in High School. It's that poor kid who occupies the lowest rung on the pecking order. When you're living down there, nothing rains on you but shit.

This kid I knew was Stephen. He was too tall for 16 years of age and bulky looking. He had flat, thin straight hair that was ordered in a boring haircut that never changed during his entire time in at St Rays. The clothing he wore day to day reminded one of a janitor who wears Dickies. His voice was thin. He had an odd way of hanging his head to one way he had a long history of being abused since kindergarten. Also, and I kid you not, his head was squarish in shape and if you drove two bolts into either side of his neck, he could pass for a sympathetic looking Monster in Frankenstein.

Too boil it all down, he wasn't handsome in any measure of the word.

As teenagers, you become acutely aware of your own self image which can be fragile. Teens attack one another with the most vicious criticism knowing that it'll find it's mark and fast. If you're caught not conforming or being different, you might as well have a laser sight spotted on your forehead. Stephen was the target of teen snipers every day.

I never knew him well. Our circles enveloped one another when we shared the same algebra or gym class. But this was enough to see him tortured on the rack by those who did know him better.

*****

A few days before Valentine's Day, the teachers would hand out forms to the boys to buy roses to be delivered to their girlfriends or perhaps as an introduction to a girl they liked. You could have them delivered with or without your name attached and then perhaps later, reveal yourself to her.

On Valentine's Day, the girls who did receive roses beamed with pride, as girls will when they are singled out of the crowd for such a gift. The girls who received anonymous roses were even happier and curious as to who had affections for them. I'd hear a clutch of girls in the corner, discussing every boy they knew and the likelihood that one of them was the sender.

Ashley, who was your typical “girly-girl” and very feminine in nature even among other girls, had an anonymous rose. Her happiness lasted the entire of home room period and was ruined by the end of her first class.

I was told, as I was not in her history class, that Stephen rose from his chair, went over to her to announce that it was he that had sent the rose and asked her as a date for the Junior Prom. I was told Ashley's jaw hit the floor. She had no idea what to do but to deny his request. Stephen I was told showed nothing but dejection in his face and sat back down. Ashley, in her mind, having her standing and reputation besmirched by the affections and attention of the Biggest Loser in the school, then spent the rest of the day deriding the fact that someone like him, would even have a snowballs chance in Hell of dating her.

The other girls in the lunchroom busted Ashley up about it, with Ashley vehemently denying that anything of the sort would happen.

I happened to overhear parts of it.

“Oh, Ashley, don't hide it from us! You want to be his love, you want to have his children....THOUSANDS of them!”

“I do NOT!!” Ashley protested.

“Don't lie to us Ashley, we saw you coming out of an empty classroom with him the other day, wiping your mouth!!”

“STOP IT!!!!” she'd yell back.

The teen political world sure did have some hard tasks at times. Ashley was fighting for her position on that ladder as her friends comically were trying to shove her down a few notches.

I saw Stephen later on in the day in Chemistry class. As usual, he bee-lined to his seat and sat down without talking to anyone. As the class filled up, you would hear islands of laughter arise here and there, with the kids shooting looks at Stephen. All knowing smirks would be directed his way and delivered with the effect of further condemning him.

When we graduated, I never saw him again. At the reunions I attended, he never appeared. He escaped over the horizon on his dogsled.

A few years after graduation, I'd wonder about him and puzzle just why he was such a target. It seemed so over the top the amount of harassment he put up with. Perhaps it was just particular event that borne itself in our school alone.

No.

I met our gym teacher in a Greg's restaurant, a guy with an unusual first name, Saar, about ten years later. We talked some of the old times and I asked him if the kids were any different now. He told me not in the least. I then asked if there was a “Stephen” in that year's class.

 

“Ron..there is always a 'Stephen' in every class. This year his name is Michael.”

I found out this latest version of Stephen was just as ill treated as the original one I knew.

The “monster” in Shelly's book survived, escaped and won. I wonder if Stephen did?

Flannel Shirts Soon Enough

My eyesight isn't what it used to be. I find it harder to ride at night as I can't make out the potholes and deeper cracks in the road before I smack them and give my skeleton a nice jarring. The bike will survive fine, it was made for that. My body isn't made for these sharp jolts as I can feel my teeth clack together when that shock runs through the handlebars, up my arms and into my jaw.

So I check when the sun sets and time the ride beforehand if the weather isn't cooperating in the morning. Today, the sun sets at 8:11 PM. By the end of September, the earlier darkness will be very apparent. Fall is coming. I've even seen the low flying geese blazing overhead at dawn once more.

What I'll miss about the summer is the long daylight and at times, room temperature outdoor air. I also love having the windows open to let that breeze through. If I could, I'd have one of those houses in the Cayman Islands where entire walls swing up on a hinge and stay propped up. I'd be OK with just having a roof over me. Outdoor living is liberating.

What I won't miss are the jungle dew points and the 90+ degree days.

I don't mind autumn at all. In fact, it can be enjoyable. The warm temps stick around till late October now, thanks to global warming. At the same time, the damned slop humidity retreats pretty quickly too. A double bonus.

Autumn used to mean school. My first year out of college when September rolled around was strange as I was done with school. There was no fresh start each September used to bring. New clothes, new classes and new people to meet were what September meant. It became just work, which didn't show much difference between August to October. Since then fall has meant a change in the weather only.

There's probably no other place in this country to enjoy fall except here in New England. There is a definite change in people's character and mood when it creeps in, and it's not necessarily a bad one. The cooler, drier air invigorates you. It wakes you up from those sleepy days during the height of summer and there is, in me at least, a boost of energy. I can get things done whereas in the summer I can draw it out. Try hanging wallpaper in an upstairs room when it's 90 out. That project draws out day after day hoping for a drop in the temperature.

After living here for so long, I'm not sure I'd adopt easily to a San Diego style Halloween where it's 70 degrees out at night. San Diego doesn't get N'oreasters either. What's great about those storms is that they remind you that you have a dry, warm home. New England can teach you just how great it is to be lying in a warm bed late at night, with a roof over your head while the rain, wind and tree branches slap the side of your house for hours. The next day the sun returns with nice, crystal clear Canadian air filling in. In San Diego it's a consistent 70 degrees all year long with no change in the weather. You might as well live inside a windowless office building w/o any idea of what the day is doing.

In a couple of months the leaves will turn and fall and there's no mistaking it then. You even can smell it. Back in the Jurassic epoch when I was a kid, you could legally burn leaves on your property in order to get rid of them. Sears used to sell perforated steel garbage cans you stuffed with leaves and set on fire. As young kids we would crowd around it as that was the closest we could get to fire w/o our parents screaming at us. I do miss that scent at times. However, that's been replaced by people firing up their wood stoves for the first time and that has a pungent but sweet smell. Unless they're burning packing crates they've stolen from work. Then it smells like a residential house fire.

So, it's coming.

Advice from the Devil Himself

“Machiavelli argues in The Prince that political life is divided between fortuna, the unexpected event that must be dealt with, and virtu, not the virtue of the religious -- the virtue of abstinence from sin -- but rather the virtue of the cunning man who knows how to deal with the unexpected. None can deal with fortuna completely, but some can shape and mitigate it. These are the best princes. The worst are simply overwhelmed by the unexpected.”

--a quote I've stolen from StratFor Global Intelligence.

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a complete farce and as a sarcastic stab in the face to Lorenzo De Medici & Family. De Medici came to power in Florence and had Machiavelli imprisoned, tortured and finally exiled. Niccolo wasn't happy about that at all and satirized tyrannical rule by advocating it in it's worst forms.

But, as the centuries passed, people who never understood the joke or the relationship of Machiavelli to the Powers That Be, took this treatise as real and turned it into a philosophy to be praised. Once again, humanity proves itself dumb as a bag of sticks.

I read this when I was in college, a kid basically. I then understood that “Machiavellian” meant to be the biggest, most viscous prick in the room. Once the course was over, I forgot all about Machiavelli; that was until I read the above quote at the head of this page.

I guess one of the reasons The Prince was so touted as the next philosophy back then was that there were gems of knowledge in it. But ideas, like trees in the forest that are scattered and happenstance, don't form up to make a cohesive argument just because they happen to be near one another and are similar. True. But if you take gems lying on the ground for what they are, as they are, you can learn something.

*****

So, now it's past Labor Day and I'm keeping my second promise to myself. I'm hitting the job market again. I haven't written a resume in over 18 years (as I didn't have to as I was always employed) and I find it harder than I thought. You just don't sit down and string together some ACTION words, you have to write a small thesis in order for it to persuade. Also, I love the spellchecker as sending out resumes with mistakes makes you look like an incompetent.

I was given a book mid summer about career choice called Making the Most of Happenstance in Your Life. The gist of the book is that it reminds you that greater powers than you can change your life but also provide options at the same time. The book advises to abandon the idea of the “career path” and make use of any opportunity that may arise in along your way. Also, it's great for slapping your face with reality in each chapter. Sure, you can have a dream job, a dream career, but be ready for Plan #2 if the first doesn't pan out...and Plan #3 if need be too.

You have to learn to dance to the new music as fast as the band changes the tune. If you're lucky, a chance may happen by that you can manipulate and form up, but you have to be awake and quick to spot and then jump on it.  

Another thing I like in the book is this: Do NOT be afraid to fail. It advises you to chase after a particular idea you like and if it smashes against the wall. So.be.it. You'll dust yourself off and readjust your plans.

So, we'll see what out there for the pickin's and hopefully something will provide a very malleable and profitable chance for me. If not, I'll plug along.

More Alluring than the Super Bowl

The above is a snapshot of a trading platform I used to use. Most of these programs fling far too much information at you and the learning curve is pretty steep as well. You have to play with it using fake money, in order to familiarize yourself before you get the balls to plunk down real bets.

I haven't bet on these ponies in a long while. The reason why is that my little computer, which happens to have a four core AMD (a latest and fairly powerful CPU), cannot in a zillion years outplay the mainframe computers built by Intell and sit in high rises in Manhattan. Who am I to think I can out gun Goldman Sachs?

I'll tell you what the major players do today. They have access to computers like this one below. This is not a Star Wars CGI creation, it's real.

 

These computers can out-think, out-trade and out-do anything my little desktop can do. Not only that, these major players hire MIT math geeks to write formulas that sniff around to exploit trends I’ll never see.

One little completely legal trick they do is they'll “front run” any trade they want. If I make a trade, in a millionth of a second, their computers will spot it and then jump ahead of my trade. In doing so, they'll force the bid up by one single penny, forcing me to pay that. Not much huh? Their computers do that a million times all day long. That's one legal trick they do. There are many other cunning plays that border on felonies and those are designed to manipulate the herd. JP Morgan was busted a few years back with stock manipulation software but, being as rich and connected as they are, they walked away from any prosecution.

****

I'm not a gambling person. I never was. I have never been to Mohegan Sun nor Foxwoods. I haven't the interest. I have made two bets in my life on the dogs at Lincoln park and lost twice when I was 18. But put me in front of a trading screen and I'm hooked.

I started this before the Dot.com boom back around 2000. I wasn't a day trader, I was more a month trader. I'd look around for companies that seemed stable, wait for a general drop in the entire market, then try to time a trade when it looked like the entire thing was turning around and try to get off on the top.

Did I succeed?

Sometimes massively so. Other times I got my head handed to me. On the whole, back then, I was winning more times than I was losing. Though it all stung me when the Dot.com boom blew up which coincided with the Bush/Gore court case on who was to be President.

There are soo many variable to take into account when placing a bet. At the time then I was paying far too much attention to the political side and ignored the overheated technology sector. I figured once this court case was solved, the markets would settle down and begin again its rise. Wrong. I got porked as the real reason for the fall was due to the overly priced tech sector. Ouch!

Well, dust yourself off and try again they say.

I did. But the best wisdom you can have is the one borne from pain. I was far more careful in the trades I made and in doing so, the pay outs became less so, but the losses too hurt less.

*****

The slaughter that occurred during August and the autumn of 2008 really woke me up. I was going to bet the entire farm on Black 13 and spin the roulette wheel when the market finally bottomed but being a scardey cat, I didn't. You cannot predict the future and a fall from 14,000 to 6,500 on the DOW has a tendency to chill your feet. Had I done so I'd be living in a house in West Greenwich with the Happy Maids company cleaning up my house. But as you can see, I didn't.

Do I regret it? No. I had learned to temper my personal greed and emotion with a very sobering fact: You can lose and lose big.

But some years have passed since 2008 and I have made perhaps three trades total and those were conservative ones as well. There are times when I fire up the trading screen and watch it, but don't bet a penny. I just watch the game from the the seats and see the action play out before me.

The Euro Union is teetering and has a larger GDP than the entire US economy. That is true if you can believe it. If it goes, it takes the majority of the world with it. China is choking. We have the US “fiscal cliff” coming up late this year and the fact that whoever is President will have NO influence on the market as it's an unmanageable gorilla. I don't see myself betting anything until the S&P smashes itself against the wall again. And we'll see if I have the guts to do that.

I don't watch sports. I don't attend games. My Monday Night NFL game starts every morning at 9:30 AM and I'll have my screen on, watching this competition...and it's going to be one hell of a ride soon enough.