ADM

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Iran.

As an American or just as a person, I think it is worth your time to spend some of your energy paying attention to what is happening in Iran right now.

This is just one - not to be ignored.

This looks to be a Moment.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Hey, you know what's totally awesome?

MY MOTOCYCLE!!!!!!!!!

Though I didn't really spend all that much time thinking about it, because nothing seemed perfectly fitting...I think I will end up naming her Blueberry. Before I continue, Fuck You - yes, Blueberry. My first choice, as always, was simply naming my bike "Butters." The only reason I refrained from naming her Butters, is 1) if I get a dog at any point in my life, he will be named Butters, 2) Clearly she is a she, so Butters is not befitting (Hmm...Maybe Beurre...oooh, or Beurreberry), and 3) If I have a child at any point, he will be named Butters. In any case, if you have a suitable name for the bike, and I like it...I will go with it. Though an explanation for your suggestion would be appreciated. And any explanation that involves any permutation of "Because you're Gay" will be automatically eliminated.

I will admit - the first week or so on the new bike in the city was a little bit nervewracking. Just nervewracking enough that I wouldn't cross 14th street (except when I got caught in traffic and got too scared to zip out of it to make a turn), and just nervewracking enough that it wasn't totally fun...but just a little bit terrifying. Just a lil bit. lil bit.

On top of that, having never driven a manual before...I had the stalling problem. I would roll the throttle/gas, let go of the clutch, lurch, feel a pop, and come to a dead standstill as my bike shuddered and stalled. The first 7 times this happened, I was in front of large groups of hip pretty young people eating breakfast outside in the lower east side. (I had ventured down to get some Guss' pickles, but found out they were closed. And promptly stalled in front of a mack truck and in front of lots of people.) In my defense, the clutch on this bike was very different from the clutch on the bike I learned on...so I had to get used to it. The friction spot in the clutch was very narrow so just half an inch stood between a slow start and an embarrassing stall.)

The worst of these moments was driving up near 23rd street on a particularly adventurous journey that first week, and stalling (inexplicably) while moving in heavy traffic. My guess is that I was in 3rd gear, didn't downshift in time, and simply stalled out. I was on my way to Ess-a-Bagel (!!!), when the stall happened...and I shakily parked my bike and hoofed it the rest of the way there, where I got myself an Everything Bagel with Whitefish (oh man, so good.)

Luckily, now I've gotten the hang of it.

And now that I've gotten the hang of it, I am back to totally loving it. I made a trip up to Hell's Kitchen last Sunday, with great success...namely, if you catch the Green Light starting at 14th St, you can pretty much make it ALL the way up 10th Avenue until you hit the mid-40s before you hit another Red Light. In New York? 30+ blocks in 2 or 3 minutes? Duuuude. (My trip to Hell's Kitchen was end-stopped by an artery squeezing free dinner at Shake Shack, courtesy of my friend Rachel who needed air condition installation help, which involved a caramel shake, a shack burger, AND a shack-cago dog. All of which made the drowsy ride home slightly more tenuous.)

(P.S. - Consider this a virtual coupon - if you visit me in New York and say the words "I love Patrick Dempsey", you will get a free ride to breakfast, snack, and dinner at Ess-a-Bagel, Guss' Pickles, and Shake Shack (the Madison Park version)...on me.)

(Hm...why do all of my motorcycle adventures involve food? And why does that make this So Much More AWESOME!)

Alright, as for the rest of my life, it's the same. Who cares.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Done!

Step 1: Drink a bottle of wine with a friend.

Step 2: Discuss the plan to chop the book into several pieces.

Step 3: Plan to plan meticulously about how to chop the book based on page numbering, symmetry, and ease of access to footnotes.

Step 4: Reach for the second bottle of wine and get out the cutting board. Wander out to the bedroom to search for the uberprecise eXacto knife.

Step 5: Return to the kitchen and express horror that the friend has opened the book to a random point and started sawing at the spine with a dull kitchen knife.

Step 6: Struggle mightily before simply letting go and resignedly holding a some section or other of the book chosen at random as the sawing continues.

Step 7: Wood glue the spinal wounds - air dry. Packing tape the entire outer "cover" pages and the cover, with additional reinforcement on the spine.

Step 8: Read with ease with only your left hand.

Step 9: Absorb, be baffled, love.

Step 10: Repeat. For 53 days.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Update!

Motorcycle Written Exam: 98 of 100
Motorcycle Skills Test: 100 of 100
Awesomeness: 99 of 100
Excitement: 101 of 100

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Yeah it's been awhile.

So, I figure I might as well have a little post while I am off from work and not so brain-dead and exhausted as to have no interest at all in writing or explaining the things I do.

So I'm on what I've been told is a "Staycation" (variously conjugated on and off facebook as Gaycation, Jaycation, and Vacasian. Apparently asian and gay jokes are going to stick with me for life). Basically, in order to accommodate a three-day motorcycle safety course (more to follow), I took an entire week off from work and decided to just completely relax. Thus, all of the spring cleaning, reshuffling, shopping, laundry, and sunning in NYC are all being summarily handled with great aplomb.

So the motorcycle lessons are, well, totally sweet-ass. I hate the NYC DMV with a purple passion, and if you take the motorcycle course, they will teach you all the basics of riding, and once you pass their course, you no longer have to take a NY road test - that is, you get a waiver and a license.

So I dragged my ass out of bed at 5:15 am and arrived in the Bronx at 7:15 am and we promptly got our riding lessons starting with the fundamentals and moving into more complex formations and techniques. The sun was a blazing 82 degrees, the bikes were easy starter bikes, and I have to say that if I wasn't already completely sold on riding from all my previous experiences...finally getting onto a geared machine and feeling the workings of the clutch, throttle and gears was shudderingly good. I've always ridden non-geared scooters in the past, which just let you pull the throttle and then use two hands to brake...but really didn't involve any deeper interaction with the machine. Oh: Here's the bike they provided.

It's not super powerful, which I will grant, but at 250 ccs, it was substantially more powerful than anything I've ever ridden, including a beast of a Honda scooter I rode in India this summer with an Asian in tow and not even the slightest bit of drag on acceleration (while dodging hideous auto drivers and poo-covered cows). I would actually buy one of these, but given that they are only 250 ccs and I'm 6'2", it's just slightly slightly cramped.

I was actually surprised by how involved a process it is to drive anything manual. I must have stalled out at least 20 times over the course of the day (tip: do not let go of the clutch if you are in first gear, lest you be shuddered and silenced while a line of angry latinos and white dudes waits for you to get the fuck out of the way). It's almost like drumming in a weird way. You have four completely separate functions being performed by four completely separate limbs, while astride a steel contraption hurtling towards a chain-link fence in front of an audience of 12 very macho men wearing bandanas and timberlands. Apparently, if something darts out in front of you, your automatic emergency reaction is supposed to be:

1) Roll off the throttle.
2) Right hand: Hand brake.
3) Right foot: Foot Brake.
4) Left hand: Clutch.
5) Left Foot: Downshift after the engine has been disengaged.
6) Left hand: Not let go of the clutch.
7) Left hand: Why? Because you'll stall out.
8) Left hand: I let go of the clutch.

But my instructor did clap and say "Good job!" So, yeah.

In any case, here's is what I'm looking at now: It's from a friend of a friend, so he seems totally reliable. It's a Kawasaki KZ440...but it's from 1982. Which means this bike is older than me...but apparently still runs like a top. The clincher? $500 dollars. So excited.

I myself am pretty shocked that a 27 year old bike looks this modern and this clean, but I am not complaining. At 440 ccs, it's about twice as powerful as the bikes I've been taught on, but it's still small enough that I'm not going to lose control...unlike those fucking 1200 cc Harley's that take a fucking drum line to your ear drums whenever they ride by.

Other relevant updates? I've now been hooked and reeled in by Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad, both of which are excellent excellent shows...and I'm 800+ pages into Infinite Jest, which means that I will be done soon, after which I will read a newly procured copy of the Brothers Karamazov...which sadly I have only recently decided to explore after reading an essay DFW wrote about the biographer of Doestoevsky. That guy has got some crazy influence on me...

Ok, peace out you two.
Anyway, that's all.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Vices.

I cannot, for the life of me, ever manage to rid my life of all of my vices at the same time.

If I'm not drinking, then I'm eating terrible food or smoking lots of cigarettes.

If I'm eating healthy and exercising, I'm invariably drinking enough to counteract it.

When I quit smoking last year, I also managed to start exercising and eating healthy. The alcohol intake rose substantially.

It's not even a voluntary choice.

At the current moment, I am eating quite healthily, exercising 4-5 times a week, and drinking in moderation...so, as you may have guessed, something about working on a particular transaction for 500 hours over two months turned me back into a smoker. (I know, I know. I made a public declaration last time, and here I am reaping the scorn for it.) So I'm basically going to try cut smoking again tomorrow...which has been back with a vengeance for about 3 months now, and see where that takes me. I imagine the healthy eating will remain, since I've built it so rigidly into my daily routines that I've gotten very used to it...so here's to hope.

P.S. Working on corporate transactions is stressful. Ugh.

P.P.S. And yes, I am a gay fish.

Your mother is...

[fill in as necessary. My preference is "a whore."]

Sunday, April 26, 2009

YEAH!!

That is all.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Full Blown Obsessions.

Bjork - more historical than current.

The Wire - one full rundown down complete, surely to be repeated.

Radio Lab - apparently the reaction is not universal, but that just means you suck.

Deadwood - so good that you're upset no one else was in the room to witness what it is that just unfolded.

David Foster Wallace - this one is going to be trouble. BIG trouble.
...Read it or don't. (Start here for pure joy if you do)

No more pushing. But my life is so immensely, incredibly, and internally richer for it.

And Every. Single. One.
...a sense of wonder at this beautiful mess.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Infinite Jest.

Edit: Following on Sarah's comment about the size of this fucker, has anyone ever cut a large book into 2 or 3 normal sized pieces and rebound it themselves?

I am now, much like my quitting smoking fiasco, broadcasting that I have begun to read Infinite Jest in order to prepare myself for the battle that may be awaiting me by using public shaming as an additional buttress.

Wish me luck, though so far having read 1.38% of it, it is every bit as enthralling and mind bending as I had hoped.

If you have ever wanted to read this book, or just are in the mood for something that by all appearances is going to be deeply challenging and equally rewarding and twisted, I maybe sorta hope that you will take the leap and try and read this fucker as I do. Sorta like AA. Or a book club. I'm only on page 15 of 1079 right now, and I imagine I won't make it past page 50 tonight before I fall asleep. Let me know.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Abercrombie and Fitch.

I used to really have it out for Abercrombie: the people who wore abercrombie, their advertisements, the whole she-bang. It just felt like it represented all of the wrong things. It wasn't evil or malicious or anything like that, but just...wrong. I generally stopped caring as we appeared to be moving out of the age group where people buy these clothes.

Anyway...I read this article today about how A&F refuses to cut prices and is trying to remain a luxury brand in the midst of the recession, quite stupidly, and how their share prices are tanking and they are struggling quite a bit. Not interesting. Then found a link to a picture of the Chairman and CEO of the company, one Mr. Mike Jeffries.

"To Jeffries, the "A&F guy" is the best of what America has to offer: He's cool, he's beautiful, he's funny, he's masculine, he's optimistic, and he's certainly not "cynical" or "moody," two traits he finds wholly unattractive." - Salon, January 24, 2006

The man is 64.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

OOOHHHHHHH MYYYYYYY GODDDDD!!!!!!

OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!
OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!OHMYGOD!!

Yeah, that makes sense.

"Swiss-filled?" Eddie Murphy? Pee Wee Herman?

Come on people. I think we should open up an advertising agency called "Not Morons LLP": We would making a killing.

(From the website: And you have no business asking why the fuck I went there in the first place. One of you might have some inkling.)

Ho Hos ® - Another San Francisco Treat

Apparently, rice isn't the only San Francisco treat. The history of Hostess Ho Hos dates back to 1967, when a San Francisco bakery began hand-producing the Swiss-filled chocolate cakes elegantly enrobed in delectable confectionary coating.

Over the years, the tubular snack has enjoyed its share of laughs. In connection with the 1999 introduction of Nutty Ho Hos, which added chopped peanuts to the original roll, a search was launched for the country's nuttiest celebrity laugh - or ho ho. (We know what you're thinking, but not everyone laughs with a ha ha. Just ask Santa.) When the votes were tallied, Americans decided that comedian Eddie Murphy's laugh took the proverbial cake, followed by the kooky cackles of Phyllis Diller, Roseanne Barr and Pee Wee Herman.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Even at the G-20 the cool kids leave out the Chinese kids.

Monday, March 30, 2009

The Shadow Banking System.

I've been watching Quantum of Solace on a calm night off, drinking some beers, lounging on my couch doing absolutely nothing (except responding to RS' absurdity of absurdities on the previous post...which explains the 30 odd comments), and even though it's midnight and I have a 9 am call tomorrow morning and my mind is not functioning optimally at all from the beerage, I thought maybe I'd take a stab at the Shadow Banking System. I have to say, as a term, it is an awesome one. (And Quantum of Solace appears to mark a very quick descent for the previously good Daniel Craig bond movie into schlocky, overwrought, over directed and over choreographed action nonsense. But, as usual, the bond girl was smokin.)

As always, subject to the usual caveats, I have the distinct idea that what I'm about to write is going to sound very pompous and bizarre in tone, but I find it easier to write this way, so go fuck yourself with a big rubber dick and then call your mother to report on it, because, for a fact, I know she likes being fucked with a big rubber dick and would love to hear some family input on the matter. Yes, I'm talking to you. Even if you are my brother.

So to understand the shadow banking system, the normal banking system needs a quick review. (Pardon me if this is too elementary, but I still barely understand this myself.) Let's start with the concept of money and the money supply. So there's about 900 billion dollars of physical US currency in circulation right now, yet US GDP is somehow over 13 trillion. How is this possible? What is money, if not currency? How do you "print" money if you're not actually printing money? What the fuck is money? Yes, let's start there.

Well, we'll start there after this. The control of the US money supply is crucial to maintaining stability in the economy. If the US government "prints" too much money, that is, if the Federal Reserve lends out too much money at super low interest rates, then money because less valuable. That's inflation. This is what has happened in Zimbabwe, where the government printed SO much money that inflation was last reported at 231 million percent. Yes. I typed that correctly.

So why did i put "prints" in quotations? Because when the US "prints" money, that has absolutely nothing to do with printing currency. "Printing" money merely means increasing the money supply. What the fuck does THAT mean? (They now call this "Quantitative Easing" in the press, if you ever wondered wtf that means.)

Starting with the simplest banking system. Imagine you have 100 dollars of value, whatever that means. Lets just say that is 100 dollars of hard currency, let's say Gold. You take that 100 dollars and you put it in a bank. The bank says "cool doucher" and then promptly turns around and lends that money to RS, doucher extraordinaire. Now the bank cannot lend out all 100 dollars. It has to have SOME money in the bank if you decide to come back and get your money. So it holds a "capital cushion" or a "reserve." Roughly speaking, this is usually 4% to 8% of that 100 dollars. Anyway, so the bank takes 100 from you and lends 92 dollars to RS, doucher extraordinaire. RS, doucher extraordinaire, then goes to another bank and deposits those 92 dollars in another bank, which we will call Boucher Bank. So then Doucher Bank (not to be mistaken with Deutsche Bank), lends out like 86 of those dollars to me. I then take those 86 dollars and deposit them in my bank, Awesome Bank, which lends the money out after holding some cushion of its own. By now you get the picture. From those 100 dollars of original currency, the banking system, through its loans, has effectively "printed" 100 + 92 + 86 + ad nauseam dollars. And ALL of that, every entry on the books, is real money. At any time, each of us could go to our respective banks and should be able to pull our money out. And it has value. (Of course, underlying all of this is the stability of the banking system and the confidence that not everyone will run to get their money out of the banks at once. As NPR aptly put it, money is trust. And this is why.)

So the Federal Reserve's job, generally speaking, is to set the amount that banks have to hold in reserve, and thus control how much is being lent out at each iteration, and thus controlling how much money is in the system. So if the Fed were to require banks to hold 20 dollars for every 100 dollars it takes in, only 80 could be lent out the next time, and so on and so forth, leading to MUCH less money in the system compared to a situation where banks only had to hold 4 dollars for every 100. In addition, the Federal Reserve also operates as a bank. It lends out money at interest rates it sets (Federal Funds Rate), and by lending at high or low rates, it also controls the general interest rate in the economy. By setting these capital reserve requirements and interest rates, the Fed controls the amount of currency that exists in the system. If it looks like there's going to be massive inflation and money will start to lose its value, the Fed will ramp up the capital cushions and ramp up interest rates, thus restricting the amount of lending and thus shrinking the money supply. This is also why Alan Greenspan is getting F'd in the A over his time at the Fed. He kept the interest rates super low when he should have reined them in...leading to a massively inflated asset bubble. Nevermind.

Anyway, there you have it. The money supply. Banks have to hold certain reserves at the Federal Reserve's dictates and that constitutes the primary means that the government has to control inflation, the money supply, and in some sense, economic growth. And it generally worked.

So what the holy fuck is the shadow banking system?

The shadow banking system is where lending and borrowing takes place outside of this oversight and supervision. This is where derivatives and mortgage-backed securities and other such nonsense come into play. So imagine a bank, instead of taking in deposits and lending out those deposits, or lending money for a mortgage and taking the house as collateral, decides to engage in a brand new endeavor. Instead, this bank decides that it will not keep any of the loans on its books. So it will loan out lots and lots of money for people to buy their houses. And then it will take the houses as collateral. So far, just like a normal mortgage.

But now, instead of holding the houses and loans on their books, and holding the capital cushion, they will drop all of the loans and houses into a giant pool, slice them into securities and sell them to Wall Street investors. So Wall Street will get the 6% interest rates being paid on those mortgages, the home owners will get funding to buy their houses from the Wall Street funding, and the bank no longer holds either while taking a cut off the top. If you dig in to this structure, you notice that there is lending. You notice there is borrowing. You notice that everything operates the way it normally would in a banking system. It IS a fucking banking system. Money is borrowed and lent by banks.

EXCEPT, because the banks are not taking in and lending out that original 100 dollars, they are not required to hold 8 dollars on their books anymore. So you still have that same 100 dollars, and instead of that 100 dollars become 92 dollars, and then becoming 88 dollars, and so on....you have the 100 dollars and no restrictions on lending.

Thus, instead of the Fed controlling the money supply by carefully controlling and calibrating the "reserve ratio" or "capital cushion," you have unfettered loans by all of these banks without any regard to capital requirements. In essence, these banks are "printing" more and more money with each of these lending structures, and it is completely out of the control of the regulators. Banks begin to loan more and more and more through these structures, and the money supply is no longer able to be controlled by the Federal Reserve. And if you look at it from a bigger picture, all this lending and all this borrowing is happening, it's just been restructured outside the formal banking system. Hence, the shadow banking system.

And the consequence? The level of consumer and household debt dramatically increases. And what we perceive to be "Growth" because there's more money, is actually an increase in the money supply and an increase in debt. And then a bubble inflates. And inflates. And inflates. And then pops. And here we are.

Anyhow, I'm not even going to bother re-reading that. I'm slightly tipsy and I'm not even sure if that made any sense. But I thought I'd share it, incomprehensible or not. Because it interests me. And I remember how I used to find everything financial and everything economic entirely incomprehensible until I somehow found a way to understand it. And hopefully, I am helping SOMEONE in that process.

Did anyone make it this far? Peace out bitches.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Corn and Finance.

Financial players have managed to take a single measure of value, and slice, dice, reportion, repackage, and redesign the risk so that it appears in many different incarnations, each different from the others but reflecting the same underlying economic value. And my use of multiple verbs above, which are usually used by the media with a negative connotation, are meant in no such way. I actually think that the transformation of value into different vehicles can be tremendously useful - as long as the markets can actually keep up with the scope of their complexity, which has proven to not be the case. Just as humans are limited, all participants in the market are limited.

So today, I thought I would trace the source of our regulatory failure (i.e. fragmentation) through a single prism: A bushel of corn.

Buy or sell a bushel of corn? No regulator. At least not a financial regulator. Who knows about the corn gods.
Sweet. Now you've sold your bushel of corn. Put the money from that bushel of corn into a bank. Now that money is regulated by bank regulators the Federal Reserve, Office of Thrift Supervision, or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency depending on what the bank looks like. And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which will save your ass if the bank fails.
Buy the bushel of corn in advance, that is, buy a future in corn? Then that contract for that future bushel of corn is regulated by the Commodities and Futures Trade Commission (CFTC).
Forget the corn itself, it's too corny. How about you buy an ownership stake the company that sells the corn? Now you've bought yourself an equity stake, a security, a share in a company. Now you're subject to the SEC and 50 state securities regulators.
Too complicated. How about instead of selling away rights to your corn company, you just agree to sell the stream of income from the bushels of corn? Well you got yourself a security still. And the SEC and 50 state securities regulators are watching.
Eh. Still complicated. I'm just gonna grow corn and pay a tiny little percentage to the insurance company and buy insurance on whether that corn crop will survive the season. Now you are subject to zero federal supervision, and you are instead subject to 50 different state insurance regulators all with their own rules. Yay federalism!
Ok, so let's simplify again...what if you just decide to flat out lend money to the farmer who grows the corn? Now you have to watch out for state usury laws, or, if the farmer is getting loans from lots and lots of people and decides to issue standardized debt agreements (bonds), then you're once again dealing in securities, although this time they're debt securities, and the SEC is breathing down your neck.

Now fuck the corn itself, how about you just learn about the corn markets and get paid to give advice to someone about whether to buy shares in the corn company or lend money to it? Now
you're an investment adviser and the SEC regulates you as an investment adviser
Or, you could just sorta stand in the middle and buy and sell corn and corn related instruments to and from farmers and investors. And...take a penny or two off of every transaction, because you help the buyers and sellers find each other. Well now you're a broker-dealer. SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) regulate you as a broker-dealer.

And voila. The regulatory system in a nutshell. The question is then, how different are these different packages of corn? Do we really want 15 regulators regulating one thing packaged in 15 ways? Sure they're specialized and understand the nature of their little fiefdoms, but Who watches the Watchmen? (ha, I hate me too.) What is being pushed now by the Treasury and the Fed is to consolidate regulatory authority so that entire systems of finance don't develop in the gaps between these fiefdoms, which is exactly what has happened.

I'm not sure why I wrote this post, especially because I don't feel like taking it any further. I guess I've been thinking about this a lot and remember a very interesting day, like a year ago, when suddenly this insight about one underlying source of value splintering into a thousand different instruments, each with a different regulator, hit me like a ton of bricks....and found it interesting. Hopefully you will too? I dunno. I've also been sorta itching to write about the shadow banking system, mostly because it is such an awesome term, and because writing these things out helps me dig a little deeper into the details myself. Maybe I'll do that.

In the meanwhile, Disgrace by Coetzee was awesome. Now I'm onto reading essays, watching more Deadwood, and doing whatever the f I want because it's saturday and I need to relax.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

To Live Deliberately

...is a lesson I find myself losing and regaining from time to time. I ask you to remind me in those moments I am clearly and utterly derailed. Life is very good and I need to remain slow enough to enjoy it.

Before digging into the first layer of self-indulgence, allow me to make a point: It is unfortunate for this guy, and the rest of us, that this was CNN's choice of photo for the fact that the stock markets have been on an upswing during the last week.

Moving on...

Tonight was a very good night, in the most unextraordinary ways. This post will exemplify all of the mundanity popularly mocked on blogs, but I persist because my blog is fairly closely controlled as to viewership, and I know you all well enough that I can tell you to suck it and hear a "no you suck it" in return, so whatever.

After making a 6.1 mile run, on concrete no less, along the East River from 11th street all the way to the southern tip of Manhattan and back, I went shopping at my local pasta place and bought one of those awesome pepperoni/sausages draped over the steel bar above the counter, a pound and a half of fresh gnocchi, and a large loaf of bread. I limped home, loaded myself up on gnocchi and bread (the entire loaf which I managed to finish tonight, and laid on my couch with a Sam Adams catching up on The Office and 30 Rock until I passed out from sheer exhaustion for 3 hours on my couch. Apparently Stringer Bell is now on The Office. Holy jesus.

Upon waking up, I flipped on the Duke game and ordered a burger from a local joint with fries, diet coke, and a oreo ice cream sandwich, which I wolfed down with impressive esophogeal agility and proceeded to trudge out to Blockbuster to pick up Disc 1 of Season 2 of Deadwood (quickly moving up on my list of "totally awesomes") and then decided, on a whim, to stop by the Strand Bookstore and pick up a book or two to keep me human. I wandered the store for about an hour, listening to the new Sigur Ros album (which is excellent by the way, and very very different than their earlier albums, except the talent remains) and was just like a pig in shit wandering by myself amongst books. And I definitely wasn't alone. Turns out a lot of people also like to spend their Saturday evenings wandering in a bookstore. I bought two books: Disgrace by Coetzee, which I have been avoiding for fear that it is too obscure for me to comprehend (see, e.g., Foucault's Pendulum, was I really supposed to enjoy that?)) and The Best American Essays 2008, which I am surprisingly excited about.

Then, I wandered home and decided to start reading both of the books.

Disgrace is shockingly clear, simply written, not the slightest bit obscure and extremely accessible in all respects. I have enjoyed the first 30 pages, and I expect to enjoy the rest, when the story finally picks up. As for the book of essays, I am actually very excited about that as well. Despite the apparent schlockiness of the premise of some publisher collecting the "Best Of" of each year and releasing 30 volumes of the "Best Short Stories," "Best Mystery Stories," "Best Political Writing," "Best Sports Writing" and on and on...I actually find these compilations to be fantastic filters for some truly excellent writing and forceful thinking. I would recommend them highly. (Unless, of course, you have the ability to truly dig deeply and discover all of the wonder of the writing world on your own devices, in which case I think it's ok that you don't try them out. And then recommend some good stuff to me. And then realize that I'm mocking you.)

Anyhow, after reading for about an hour and a half or so, I decided to crack yet another beer and watch the first two episodes of Deadwood, Season 2. So good. I am already missing the show despite the fact that I have at least 22 hours left to go. Feels like I'm watching The Wire again.

(P.S. Watch The Wire.)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Shakes his head

I was just reading an article about Obama's overtures to the Iranian people, which, win or lose, seems like such an incredibly smart and correct move to make. And then suddenly buried my face in my hands:

Do you remember when George Bush decided to label Iran part of the Axis of Evil?

What the fuck!? The "Axis." Fucked up given the history of the world.

Of. Ok that's kinda neutral.

Evil. Um. Did he just declare an entire country and its people to be Evil?

Evil!?

Anyway that's over now. Back to watching Deadwood at 8 am because I passed out, cell phone in hand, until it dropped onto the ground, directly under my bed...until the alarm decided to go off at 8 am and force me to get out of bed and scramble onto my hands and knees to find the source of this irritating and unlocatable sound.

Gurgh.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Life Update.

I just jointed Mint.com to start trying to keep better track of my money. It seems pretty cool, since it electronically tracks ALL of your financial information in a consolidated analytical tool. Loans, credit cards, bank accounts, 401k, assets, liabilities, and all of that sort of nonsense. It should also help track spending patterns, which will be quite helpful.

Lesson of the day? My net worth is currently -$125,727.50. There. I said it. To be continued.

Oh, and in my lovely lovely free time, I managed to watch another movie: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which I really did enjoy. 'Tis a sweet movie.

And...time more some more of doing nothing! Whoo!!