On Electile Dysfunction and Proposition 8 in California

Like most states, California had several propositions on the ballot yesterday.  Ours ranged from high speed rail proposals to bigger pens for livestock, but the one that received the most attention was Proposition 8.  It stated the following:

Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

And today the news is reporting that it passed, meaning gay marriage is unlawful (again) and the state constitution will be amended to reflect that “marriage” can only be between a man and a woman.  The Mormon church was the single biggest source of funding behind the proposition, giving more than $20 million towards it’s success.  Big-time celebrities like Spielberg, Pitt, and DeGeneres all contributed to fight against it.

But the most interesting thing about it’s passing?  According to exit polls, whites opposed the amendment 53-47.  But blacks supported it 70-30, and Latinos supported it 51-49.

The majority of whites (you may know them as the oppressors) voted against it in supportof gay rights.  But blacks (and latinos to a lesser degree) voted overwhelmingly in favor of limiting the rights of homosexuals in California.

Looking at Obama’s victory, a milestone in the fight against racism, a moment that will be permanently etched into not just black American history but American history itself, an example how old hatreds can be overcome, an opportunity for black Americans to finally feel like this great country belongs to us all, and at the end of this beautiful day… one minority fucked the other in the ass.

The irony here is fantastic.

On a Sad Acceptance

I like giving ominous and dramatic sounding titles to blog posts about things that are far from serious.  That said, this short post is about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I didn’t see it in theaters like I had originally planned, because the wave of criticism was so high and unavoidable.  I figured I’d wait for the DVD when the press had calmed down some. So I started watching it yesterday… and while it was playing I got up to do dishes.

While it was playing.

I’m trying to finish watching it now, but instead am browsing online and writing this.  I was also fast forwarding it a few minutes ago.  It goes without saying it’s a huge disappointment, but it’s also quite simply a bad movie.  It started okay with the feisty and welcomed return of Indiana… Harrison Ford is old but the dude is still incredibly watchable.

But when he realized he was stuck in the middle of an atomic testing town about to be detonated… and climbed into a refrigerator… and was blown a mile away by the blast that decimated everything in the town… and then climbed out of the fridge slightly shaken but okay… well, that’s simply bullshit.  And then there’s Shia Labeouf, and the CGI monkeys, and the Tarzan-like vine swinging, and the CGI ants, and the never-ending and incredibly implausible car chase in the jungle… it was all bullshit.

I realized what the real issue was about halfway through the film.  It is completely and utterly joyless.  There’s not a single action scene that isn’t heavily layered with obvious and annoying CGI effects.  That car chase through the jungle is ridiculous in too many ways to mention… frankly it’s all just incredibly sad.

There was one single scene of almost-joy.  When Karen Allen first appears on screen, Ford wears an expression of such happiness at seeing an old friend and lover… it would have been nice to feel the same way when watching the film.

On the Willfully Ignorant in Strongsville, Ohio

I realize ignorance knows no political boundaries, and that there are angry retards on both side of the aisle, but c’mon… there are real, everyday people who seriously believe Barack Obama is a terrorist?  BloggerInterrupted has posted a video taken at a McCain/Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio recently, and it is both frightening and sad.

On Part of the Problem

There’s a financial crisis going on right now.  In case you hadn’t heard.  It’s quite possibly the end of the world as we know it.

Or not.

The DOW is down quite a bit from where it’s been, banks are closing up shop, and people around the world are afraid.  Yes, Wall St and many of the financial institutions that thrived there mishandled billions of dollars.  Yes, greedy Americans believed they could live outside their means and bought houses they couldn’t afford.  We know all this, but the biggest problem now is containing the fear sweeping through individuals and corporations alike.  Fear that the Apocalypse is nigh and the hordes will soon be raiding their homes for food, gold, and women.  (I’m looking at you dad.)  The best weapons against fear are common sense and smarts, but in a country where Beverly Hills Chihauhua is the number one movie at the box-office… do we even stand a chance?

And the media isn’t helping either.  One of Yahoo’s latest headlines… “Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion-so far!” is about the norm right now sensationalist journalists who gain readers by scaring the shit out of them.  There’s one problem though… you can only lose money in investments if you SELL your shares. (Or if the company goes bankrupt, but that’s still a rare occurence.)  All the retirement accounts, 401k, etc are definitely worth less now than they were a few months back, but they haven’t lost a single dollar.

Within about six to nine months, as the economy starts picking up again, those same accounts will begin growing.  Will there be a Yahoo headline proclaiming that trillions of dollars have magically appeared again?  No.  See, the accounts hold the same number of shares… it’s just the dollar value per share that fluctuates.  Shares that used to cost you $10 now cost $5, so your account shows a 50% loss.  The prices are low now, so the overall value is low.  This is not the time to sell… it’s the time when you should keep on buying those shares at $5 because eventually they’ll be back up to $10.  You’ll be getting more shares for your money, and when the market recovers, WHICH IT WILL, your retirement account value will recover as well.

Seriously, relax.  Keep some cash handy for peace of mind.  Live within your means.  Don’t watch over your 401k, just keep funding it. Spend more time with your family and friends. Find a hobby. Read a book.

Things are rough. But things will pass.  And won’t you feel foolish sitting behind your duct-taped windows, surrounded by canned goods, and praying to an invisible man in the sky…

On the Best Mugshot You’ve Ever Seen

She chased kids through the streets.  She peed on a neigbors doorstep.  She disrupted traffic.  All while wearing this.  And the best line in the news piece is the last.

On Investing This Past September

So my weekly investment blogs have been somewhat inconsistent.

I know, that’s putting it kindly. But there really wasn’t much interesting happening there for a while, and if it bores me to write it I can only imagine the excitement you feel when you read it.  So maybe a monthly schedule will be better for me, or better yet, no schedule at all… just updates when I feel like it.  Which is what I’ve been doing already.

Anyway.  September.

Crazy ass month for the markets for reasons you’re already well aware of.  People and companies have lost millions of dollars, lives are ruined, the apocolypse is near… except really it isn’t.  Yes, jobs will be lost as banks fail, but the money usually isn’t.  Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual were exceptions as they went completely belly up, but most failing banks and financial institutions will be bought by stronger ones meaning stocks and bonds are secured.  I was initially behind the $700 billion bailout plan, not because it was a good plan (it wasn’t) but because the markets needed some kind of assurance that things would be okay.  The bill was defeated, the market tanked, but it rebounded pretty strongly the next day.

… and today it’s down again (as of noon EST anyway) which only shows that the market is flexible like a rubber band even in times of extreme distress.  The market as a whole, as in the collective of investors big and small that comprise it, behaves like a pack of lemmings or a herd of African Wilderbeasts.  They move as a whole and the market moves as a whole.  And they’re driven by the same thing too… fear.

I may think differently if my entire livelihood were invested in the market, but it’s not.  (And no one else should either.)  I have money set aside for my market dabblings, but I also have savings and a 401k.  So I look at these ridiculous drops in stock prices as invites, bargains, sales, and offers I just can’t refuse.  I pick solid companies that I know will recover, with stock prices that have fallen as part of the whole market decline (as opposed to any default of their own) and I invest.  As the market recovers, which it will, it always does, these shares I’m picking up at bargain rates will return to normal.  Even if they don’t climb beyond that I’ve made money.  Add in the dividends and my profit increases even more.  (Theoretically…)

Which is why beyond extending (and cost-averaging down) some of my positions, and selling out of one all together, I now own shares of both AT&T and Philip Morris.

Don’t judge me.

On an Unlikely Story

I’ve never been to Stuart, Florida.  It’s on the east coast of the state, and no where near anything worthwhile.  But after reading this news story I may want to add Stuart to the itinerary of my next Florida vacation.

Seems a man named Olmer Morales was riding his bike to work this past weekend when he was stopped by a burly woman in overalls.  While she held his handlebars and prevented his escape, four thin, blonde girls… wearing suspenders with nothing underneath… as in no bras or shirts… as in topless… surrounded him and robbed him of his last $100.

There’s no mention of Mr. Morales being tested for drugs, or the quality of the police station’s interpreter, or if there’s a strip club between his home and his work… but I’m thinking one of three things happened here.

Olmer had a dream.  Olmer got high.  Olmer had a lap dance.

On the Death of a Thirty-Eight Year Old Man

Title makes it sound so serious and ominous doesn’t it?  Don’t worry, it’s not.  And no, I’m not the 38 yr-old either.

Instead, I’m referring to Army veteran, drug addict, schmuck, James Ronald Cockrum Jr.  Apparently he decided to break into some cars Thursday night around the Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco.  An area he was horribly unfamiliar with… When police arrived on the scene he took off running.  They chased after him. He jumped over a three-foot wall to escape the officers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And fell 200 feet to his death.

Lest you think Cockrum was an idiot, ”Cockrum’s grandmother, Geraldine, agreed that he was not familiar with the area and would not have leapt over the wall had he known what was on the other side.  ‘Oh, heck no,’ she said.”  Yeah, I still think he was an idiot and an ass too.  He left behind a wife and a two-year old daughter.

I’ll go ahead and predict Cockrum will be in the next edition of “The Darwin Awards” under the Stupid Criminals section.

On the Unexpected “You Look Just Like…”

Everyone has someone famous they resemble, either slightly or dramatically so.  When my hair is getting shaggy and curly the one I hear most is “you look just like Eric Foreman (Topher Grace) from That 70’s Show!”  I get that a lot and usually use it as my cue to get a haircut.  (I’ve also gotten “You sound like Steve Buscemi” twice now from two different strangers!

So today, when a co-worker stopped me in the lunch room and said “You look just like…”

I started to laugh and nod my head in expectation of what’s to come, and began to plan my response about that being crazy because I just got my hair cut a few days ago so the resemblance should be gone for now.

“… my ex-husband. Who died last year.”

On McCain’s Folly

Absolutley ridiculous.

Sarah Palin will go down in history as the most horribly vetted and poorly researched vice-presidential candidate in history.  John McCain’s only smart move on the topic was to announce his pick the day after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.  McCain stole Obama’s thunder on that first day, but since then has seen his whimsical and ignorant pick start to crumble.

Yes, Palin is a woman.  And yes, McCain hopes that translates into an influx of Hillary Clinton supporters tied more to the uterus than to actual issues.  Sounds ridiculous, but there are women who will follow their vag instead of their brain if it means getting a female Vice President.  Just like there are blacks who’ll vote for Obama strictly to get a black in the White House.  Just like there are whites who support McCain strictly to keep the blacks out.  People are stupid.  It’s one of humanity’s greatest consistencies.

But some, hopefully most, of these women will jump ship as more information comes available on Palin’s past and present.  There’s the obvious fact that she has zero relevant experience to be second in command of the country.  Governor of Alaska (pop. 670,000) for about a year, mayor of Wasilla, AK (pop. 9000) for six years, and… hockey mom?  So she’s a tough broad, as evidenced by her nickname “Sarah Barracuda.”  So what.  The press keeps telling us she’s a past beauty pageant winner… Miss Wasilla 1984.  Again, population 9000.  So what.

McCain’s other “coup” is Palin’s strong conservative bend.  The far right doesn’t view McCain as conservative enough, so the addition of Palin is meant to ease their pain in voting for him.  She’s anti-choice, she’s fiscally conservative, she’s a lifelong NRA member, she’s popped out five kids in her forty-four years ranging in age from nineteen years to four months old, she’s a firm supporter of abstinence only programs, and she loves Jesus.

Some interesting points to ponder from that list… 1) she gave birth to her first child eight months before she was married.  Her seventeen year old daughter is five months pregnant, and plans to marry the fetus’ father.  So much for abstinence only. 2) her claim she that told congress what they could do with their “Bridge to Nowhere” $$$ is a slight pile of bullshit. She initially supported it, then changed her mind, but still kept the $ and spent it elsewhere.  3) she believes humanity has zero effect on global warming, and she thinks creationism should be allowed in schools. She backed off a little on the latter under pressure, and said simply if the topic came up in class it should be explored. 4) she supports a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage.

McCain also chose Palin because we’re only three months away from the election.  Palin had been untouched by the intrusive eye of the press and now they only have ninety days to dig up some really good shit on her.  All of McCain’s other possible picks had already been in the spotlight, warts and all.  People knew too much.  He prefers they know too little, like he apparently did having only met Palin twice before asking her to join the ticket.

McCain?  Kiss the White House goodbye.  You fucked up old man.