In Case You Don't Watch CNBC

Rick Santelli Is Pissed (Again)

Christ, Are You Kidding Me?

I'm sure they'll be on Hell's Kitchen next.

And then there's this quote:

A separate 2005 study provided the first sign dolphins may be capable of group learning and using tools, with a mother seen teaching her daughters to break off sea sponges and wear them as protection while scouring the seafloor in Western Australia.

That's not journalism; it's unabashed speciesism. Sea sponges are animals too. So what if they're asexual and have no nervous, digestive, or circulatory systems? It doesn't make them tools.

Free the Porifera.

Stop dolphin propaganda.

I Vote For The Flying Pirate

McK's Public Humiliation Challenge

The lovely and talented McKoala recently issued her First Annual Public Humiliation Challenge. The idea here is to write a minimum of 100 words per day or else she will, um, humiliate you...publicly...in a...er, challenging...way. I think. Anyway, blog posts don't count (which is a shame because I'd be halfway home already) and there are some other stipulations and fine print mumbo jumbo, plus I may have gotten some of it wrong in the previous sentences, but you can find out all about it HERE.

I'll put something up in the sidebar to keep track. Also, I'll be shamelessly stealing borrowing the Koala Claw Threat Level from JJ de Benedictis because it's cool. So I should have all that up this evening. Actually, it might be tomorrow because this evening I'll be at the Throwdown In O-Town and I'll probably be too drunk after.

You'd Think

This would be getting more play.

The kooks even predicted it 6 or 7 months ago.

A Beautiful Translation

of Greenspan wannabe's recent speech.

QFLC #2

In honor of the forgotten words of dead mostly dead (looking) people everywhere, today we continue our weekly casual examination of:

Quotes

From

Last

Century...

Century...

Century...

(That's an echo.)

When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates.

The "Fed" succeeded: it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed.

--from the essay "Gold and Economic Freedom" by Alan Greenspan, 1966 (wherein he argues FOR the gold standard)

NOTE: This was 20 years prior to him being named Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. 30 years prior to the excess credit which his Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. And nearly 35 years prior to the same thing happening in the real estate market. Cast in this light, his "Oops, I failed to detect a flaw in the model that defines how the world works" excuse somewhat breaks down.

More Is More And Ho Ho Ho

That's my neighbor's house across the street. I know it's a bad picture, but I'm a bad photographer and people started asking questions after the fifteenth take so I kinda rushed it. Plus, this is only about half of it, and it was hard to get all the lights in the shot because they're synchronized to the music that plays till freaking midnight and some were mid-blink.

This sort of thing used to piss me off. The vacuum-esque shrill of 37 inflatables. The unending chirp of looped MIDI Christmas carols. The obnoxious cram-it-all-in attitude devoid of style or forethought. The—OK, possibly it still pisses me off, but I was trying to make a point here... What was it?... Hell if I know.

Anyway, Merry C—

Oh yeah, I remember. This used to piss me off so much that one day a few years back I'd finally had enough (and probably like seven Coronas), so I walked across the street to have a little chat with my idiot neighbors. I didn't know what I was going to say. I only knew it wasn't going to be pleasant. I ring the doorbell and my neighbor answers and I open my mouth to launch the first volley of sarcasm bombs, but then I stop because I realize for the first time that my neighbor—the guy I see everyday walking up and down his driveway, the asshole who never waives back no matter how many times I waive, who doesn't even acknowledge me—turns out he's blind. He had that spooky white glaze over his eyes which I had seen on elderly people before but this guy was only in his early fifties max. And if that wasn't bad enough his wife comes walking up behind him and turns out she's got the white glaze over one eye and the other one's normal. So now I'm feeling like a lowlife and of course I don't tell them the real reason I came over. I lie and say I just wanted to wish them a Merry Christmas and blah blah blah and we get to chit chatting about this and that and eventually the subject of their Christmas decorations comes up. They ask me what I think and I start to say something polite because they're actually nice people but before I say anything the wife jumps in and tells me they've been putting up these decorations the last three years for their granddaughter who's nine.

Four years ago the two of them were in a really bad car accident. They nearly died. Lost most of their vision, etc. The driver of the car—their son and father of their granddaughter—he didn't make it. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. And it happened on Christmas Eve. So this little girl woke up Christmas morning four years ago at five years old thinking she was going to open presents from Santa but instead finds out Daddy's not coming home anymore. (At this point I'm feeling like a total loser by the way.) Long story short, the granddaughter and daughter-in-law spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my neighbors now and since it's such a traumatic time for all of them but especially the little girl they use all the lights and music and inflatable characters as a way to make it somewhat norm— All right, that's total bullshit. They're not blind and they don't have a granddaughter. They're just obnoxious consumer-trons with a $700 power bill. I don't know where I was going with that.

But I do love them because they give me something to bitch about, and that's the best present of all. Plus they still haven't figured out who keeps egging Frosty in the nads.

Anyway Merry/Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yule/New Year's/Etc.

Hey, You Re-Elected These

bastards.