cuddly toy

ever heard of the "smell test"? i'm sure you have. somebody tells you something and you think, that sounds like bullshit. your friends do it, your family does it. everybody does it, but not everybody implements the smell test. it's very important you do. because smelling bullshit can be a great and powerful tool in your life. everytime one of these banks comes out with its quarterly report and claims big profits, i think, that smells like shit. and it is. it's accounting tricks. it's hiding liabilities. it's all make believe and they're doing it for short-term profits and public perception. but what they miss is that no one, no one is going to invest in a bank where they use accounting trickery, especially if they get burned twice. and long term, these institutions will fail because, quite simply, we won't have anymore money to bail them out with.

remember when i was saying how oil will balloon once this depression ends and we'll be faced with another oil spike? well the depression isn't even over and has anyone else noticed how much gas keeps creeping up? here is a profile of dave hughes, another peak oil believer. in 2030, i'll only be 50. if i make it to 2050, i'll be 70. those last years could be really depressing if we don't figure a way out of this.

what is with these huge chinese basketball players? i mean really? 7'6'! that's outstanding. how are they growing these dudes?

we still don't know what killed jay bennett and this guy doesn't want to know.

the avclub did a list of the worst book to movie adaptations. i've seen some of these and some were actually pretty good, but this list focuses on the author's hatred for the movie.

i'm trying my hardest, but i just don't get what's so great about the kings of leon. the only two people who read this blog, love that band. i'm trying guys. i'm trying.

yoshimi battles the pink robots

i had to post this today. i've been giving lance zierlein a hard time because he's 39 and he's talking about nintendo being a part of his generation. if you don't know who he is, he's a radio host on a morning sports show here in houston. i love the show and also he has a blog on chron.com where he posts things. so i went after him. here is the exchange (these posts occurred throughout the day, you can read them here):

kevin: your generation is the nintendo generation? seriously. you had a spirograph for ten years and when that little baby wore out, you moved on to your jordache stone-washed jeans phase and your slap-bracelets. come on!

lance: Nintendo. RBI, Punchout, Contra. Come on, fool.

kevin: dude, you're 39, so you were 17 when RBI baseball and punchout came out. sorry lance, that is past your generation. by that time, you should have been making time with the cheerleaders and not at home figuring out how to beat soda popinski.
come on, fool.

lance: "Making time with the cheerleaders"??? Who are you - Bing Crosby? My generation played past the age of 18. We went from Nintendo to Sega to Playstation to PS2 and beyond. In college we played basketball, went to class, went out drinking, came back late and night and gambled on Double Dribble or Golf. That's how we did it.

kevin: when bing crosby wasn't making time with the cheerleaders or singing christmas ballads with david bowie, he was beating his kids with a bag full of brass door knobs, not playing ninja gaiden and figuring out the power glove. if there was a game where you got drunk and verbally assaulted people, bing would have commanded that game. he would have known the code for extra lives and beaten fred savage's little half-wit brother and bing would have been crowned the wizard.

lance: Best of the day.

we'll miss you jay

jay bennett died yesterday. he was only 45 years old. i'd just written about that dude and how much i miss him in my favorite band, wilco. i'd read something one time that said he'd been in something like nine car accidents and evidently he was about to have hip replacement surgery because of a fall from a concert back when he was with titantic love affair. he smoked like a fiend too. but man, 45 is young. i started wondering about jay bennett's place and it bothered me that no one would ever really remember him like me, how even though wilco was jeff's band, jay brought jeff's songs to life. but i got an email from bruce saying how he thought summerteeth was wilco's best album. and that made me think that there were plenty more people out there that loved summerteeth and maybe they didn't know why or maybe yankee hotel foxtrot was their favorite record or maybe they thought wilco wasn't the same after yankee hotel foxtrot. those people might not know the name "jay bennett" but without knowing his name or anything about him, they listened and they heard jay bennett. and that's what is important. jay brought to life "being there," "summerteeth," and "yankee hotel foxtrot." and for that, his place in rock history is secure by me.

i read this article yesterday and it blew me away. it's not really an article, but a group of some guys i've been reading lately: niall ferguson, paul krugman, nouriel roubini and others sitting around discussing the way to economic recovery. they actually might not be sitting around, they be on the phone or standing up, but anyway, it's a great read. i actually tried to print it out, but i ran out of ink. i hate ink.

america and argentina: quite similar when you look back.

i hope everyone enjoys their day today.