your redneck past

i missed it. i don't have cable and apparently i missed the undressing of the new century. jim cramer, who i was obsessed with early on in my education of stocks/finance, was on the daily show last night. now although john stewart is a funny man, he has a knack for pinpointing hypocracy within the media. he did it with crossfire, which was subsequently cancelled, and now he's doing with CNBC as a whole. i agree with his assessment to a point. yes- CNBC is not for the average investor who watches it for stock information. yes- CNBC was so far up the ass of corporate america that they could not see the fall coming and it brings their journalistic integrity into question.

but....come on. if you are watching jim cramer and following his advice to a tee without doing your due diligence and investigating where you're putting your money, you're an idiot. john stewart's right: this isn't a game. this is real. these losses are real. that's why i cannot understand for the life of me why people put their money in these stocks/mutual funds/hedge funds and never look at it again. or investigate who is in charge. who makes the calls. who handles the checks. information is power. you have to know where your money is and what is happening with it.

i have since recognized that jim cramer is an idiot. the person i listen to for stock advice now is the tiny man who lives in my sock drawer. his name is ted and i found him paddling on a bar of soap on buffalo bayou during a rainstorm. we started talking and he was looking for a place to stay. i suggested my sock drawer and he was fine with that as long as i fed him honey nut cheerios. he actually wades in the bowl of milk to eat the cheerios. it's really funny. but he's got great stock advice. like one time he told me: "i would never fetch a reindeer if i wasn't sure which way was north." brilliant. made thousands of dollars that day. another time he said: "it's not called bluffing if you're not wearing underwear." another thousand dollars. sometimes he talks of travelling and wants to get out, but i put a lock on the sock drawer so he's not going anyway. ah, ted.