two weeks

yes, grizzly bear is blowing my mind. they actually have a song on the dark is the night compilation album called deep blue sea and it's amazing. the national have a song on there too that's incredible.

david carradine is dead. i had never seen him in anything until kill bill, which i thought he was strangely calm and unnerving. his superman speech is great.

this is nice: a worrier's guide to economic recovery. after all these months of pessisism (sp?), could we really be coming out of it? can i believe yet?

because then you read something like this that says rising interest on the world's debts will continue to sap growth.

look at this prius!! it gets 50 mpg! that's incredible!!! wow. i want one.

kicking television

did anyone catch the entire "earth 2100" last night? i only caught the last 45 minutes of it. i'm going to try and find it on the web and watch the whole thing. it deals with the possible environmental ramifications of our actions if we do not accept that our current way of life is unsustainable. i've been making this joke lately that my mom and other baby boomers don't really appreciate, but at least they laugh. the baby boomers experienced the most perfect period of life on this planet. they were raised during u.s. dominance and they matured and grew older when stocks were high, land was cheap and medicine was advancing. they could run their air conditioners all day and they could drive their inefficient cars as much as they wanted. but that period is ending. and the aftermath will fall on us.

i have no scientific data to back this up. but i'm not an idiot. i've seen changes in my life. i've seen the choices we have made about how we live, work and surround ourselves with exploits of life. so i wonder, what will change during my lifetime? i wonder if world leaders are determined enough/smart enough to really get a handle on the seriousness of the situation. do they understand what raising sea levels will be like? do they really understand how fast disease will spread when changing temperatures allow it to permeate and breed much more easier in areas where it used to be uncommon? do they understand that globalization will end overnight if our infrastructure is challenged and compromised? and it really wouldn't take much for that to happen.

one of the reasons i want to leave houston so bad is because i would love to live in a city where a car is not a necessity. i dream of the idea of waking up, grabbing a book and hopping on a train and reading the whole way to work, or listening to a new album. it would make my life so much easier and cheaper and also help the environment around me. i see all these condos going up inside the loop here in houston and i wonder, how do they plan on moving all these people around? cause each high-rise will have about 100-200 tenants and each one of those people will get into their car and drive to work everyday. they have no choice.

we've taken "the old ways" and we've industrialized them. what happens when we have to go back to the old ways? we'll have to have a garden and grow our own crops and possibly raise our own animals to eat. and think of all the advancements that have been stored in some electronic database that will be lost. it all seems so pointless when you think about it in these terms. why did we advance ourselves to the point where we ended our civilization?

and i'm not saying these things as a means of scare-mongering. this is real stuff. our actions have consequences. our choices have consequences. we never realized we were partners with the earth and maybe we never will. but the earth knows we're just renting from her. and she'll evict us eventually if we don't change. i know we have the technology to do this. but do we have the stomach? it's got to be our generation that mandates these changes, otherwise, when we're 70, we won't recognize the world around us.

so what changes can you make right now around you? well not big ones. but you can change your light bulbs. you can insulate your house and install thicker windows that don't leak. you can grow a garden. you can ride your bike or take the bus/train/lightrail if you can. i know in texas that's not easy/plausible. you can use re-usable bags instead of plastic bags. you can turn down your water heater a few degrees and maybe your a/c too. that's also not easy in texas summers. i don't have any grand ideas for your everday life. those will have to come from somewhere else. but imagine a world where your car is electric and you drive to work/home and you plug into something like a carport that is outfitted with solar polars that are used to recharge your car. those are the kinds of ideas we need to get behind.

anyway, i just think our lives will be so much simpler when we do make this leap. our generation will experience the worst. we'll have to work out the kinks and pay the highest prices for this change-over. i'm ready to do it. i can't wait to see it.

the good part

apparently this song is on the war on war single. the good part. check it out. it's a little tasty tune.

what is the deal with this jon and kate make eight or something? who are these people? i had never heard of them until like two weeks ago and now everywhere i go, i see their faces or i'm staring at their pictures in line at the grocery store. did these people have eight babies and they were given a tv show? is that what's happening here? man, i really want to punch these people in the leg. like real hard for interferring in my life. i also had gone this long without hearing that old scottish woman sing until last night when my wife had on the jimmy kimmel show and she was singing. i was proud of myself for going this long without hearing her. it's not that she's bad, it's just that i do not appreciate cultural phenoms thrust down my throat. or hot pizza bagels.

here is an important piece of journalism...can white women and black women get along. i thought oprah was bringing all the women together. oprah has let me down.

during the summertime, the avclub does reviews of old classic television shows while the real shows are on hiatus. newsradio is one of them. it's in my top five of all-time sitcoms/television comedies which are numbered as such:

1. arrested development
2. seinfeld
3. newsradio
4. the simpsons
5. cheers

number six would be out of this world.

"would you like to swing on a star, oh oh oh, carry meanbeams home in a jar, oh oh oh, and be better off than you are, oh oh oh, or would you rather go to earth?"

deep blue sea

it's already a big day. GM filed for bankruptcy. that is huge. GM was one of those pillars of american business. you had coca-cola, johnson and johnson and stuff like that. GM was in that bunch. now it's gone, owned by the government. also, a freaking plane disappeared over the atlantic. apparently it ran into some lightening and freaking disappeared.

more than two people read this blog. i stand corrected. by christmas of 2011, this blog will be seen by four to four point five people. aim high.

pretty good article from the new york times about banks digging in their heels against regulations even when the business they were trying to protect was disintergrating.

the new republic does a write-up on arianna huffington. it's not pretty. she has a website called the huffington post, which i use from time to time for stories on this blog.

this guy has ideas about how to spend stimulus money. like instead of spending it on parking lots or signs for blind people, we can spend it on outfitting our buildings/homes/public arenas with green appliances/techonology.

i saw the wrestler this weekend. and while it was a great movie, because i used to get really into wrestling and kind of followed some of the guys careers and my cousin wrestled in humble for quite a while, the story was a little predictable to me. but the performance of mickey rourke was outstanding. he was great. i think everyone should check it out.

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.

airline to heaven

it's been a while. i haven't really been doing anything. i've been going to the gym. that's right, i'm huge. muscles on top of muscles. actually i'm starting to wonder how good my body produces muscle, that maybe my body type (frame) won't allow me to hold mass. because i'm lifting the same, if not more, than some ripped dudes in the gym, but i don't look like them. my lanky muscles are squandering my hopes for a chiseled frame.

anyway, you ever heard of an economist called "dr. doom"? well his name is nouriel roubini and i've mentioned him a few times on this blog. here's a write-up about the guy.

so which country holds the most debt as a percentage of GDP? you'd probably guess the united states. you'd be wrong. way wrong. the reason: as a percentage of GDP. in terms of fiscal dollars, yeah, we're holding a lot of debt, but as a percentage of our GDP, we're not in the top ten.

are we finally at a point where suburbia is being questioned? well, high-end suburbia anyway.

england's debt gets downgraded and now we're worried about the same thing happening to us.

i hope everyone enjoys their weekend. i'll be seeing some friends, here and there. take it easy.

el scorcho

i am really jonesing over two bands lately: blind pilot and white rabbits. blind pilot just did a hearya session and they sound amazing. they're totally live on those recordings. they sound incredible. tanner's been all over this band for a while now and i've recently succumb to how good they are. something about those live sessions really bring out these amazing pure sounds and the vocals are totally inspired. the other band is white rabbits. their new album was produced by britt daniel, of spoon fame. anyway, i've only heard the opening track gun percussion and it's great. the album came out today and i'm assuming the hype machine will have more tracks soon. i've been digging some camera obscura lately too.

so i finally purchased these books i've been waiting to buy. one of them is lords of finance by liaquat ahamed. here is an article where he has lunch and says stuff. check it out.

"catacomb, catacomb, be my security." i have no idea what that means, but i can't get it out of my head.

here is an interview with myron scholes who wrote the rules on financial risk with the black-scholes model. i certainly love the photo used. this guy is a financial genius, even though his theory was relied on too heavily, proving major cracks in the logic, but this picture, it looks like he's starring in a sitcom on abc TGIF after full house.

naill ferguson's always good for a reality check. here he is telling us we live in a land of diminished returns and excess regulation is unnecessary.

"catacomb, catacomb, be my security."

california is out of control and dealing with major budget issues, like passing one.

informer

breaking news:

i just ate hot pockets for the first time in probably five years and they were good. they were some sort of quesadilla hot pockets and i ate them both. i think most people eat both of them. although, now that i'm done, my stomach is gurgling and i'm wondering where this is all going to end up.

are the sonic guys still funny? is the "hey bro" commercial considered a classic sonic guys commercial? i don't know. i like the "hey bro" but i don't think it's classic. there hasn't been a really good one for a while. i'm glad they're still trying though. keep working sonic guys. this country needs you.

i listened to the wilco album the other day, well most of it. i actually turned it off because i had other things to do and i was pretty disappointed too. there's some interesting stuff, like in bull black nova. it does somewhat sound like a television rip-off at some points, but speaking of rip-offs there is a total rip-off of george harrison's my sweet lord in one of the songs, i can't remember the name. you'll hear it. and the duet with feist, what is that about? i'm sure i'll come around and say i like it, but it's not classic and i feel it's a step-backwards in my opinion.

plus i've been having this conversation in my head about bands. it's like with most writers, there's a window. when that window is open, you come up with amazing stuff. but when it closes, you still come up with good stuff, but not like you did before. it doesn't come as easy and, if you're honest with yourself, it's not as good. now, take that theory and think about how few albums bands put out now-a-days. the beatles put out like an album a year. the beach boys, sometimes two. now, it takes bands two to three years to put out an album. therefore, the window is closing and because the band has put out so little product, we think the window should still be open. but it's not about product, it's about time. that time is passing and regardless of whether you've put out two albums or twelve albums, the window closes. my example is bob dylan. i love me some bob dylan. but look at his career. the real creamy stuff he did came from 1964 to 1966. that's it. two years! once he did blonde on blonde, that was it for that bob dylan. his music changed. his lyrics changed. he wasn't the same performer, he wasn't the same writer and he never was again. yes, blood on the tracks and desire have incredible moments, but you cannot for a second tell me that the lyrical imagery from those two albums compares with highway 61 and blonde on blonde. there's no way. so for dylan, his window was wide open until 1966 and then it started to close. that's peak production. it's hard to recognize when you're going through it. you really can only recognize it through hindsight.

wilco's put out, by my count, seven albums since 1993. and they've slowly built up an impressive catalog. but my thinking is that jeff's window is closing or has closed. he as a songwriter has peaked. i liked sky blue sky for what it was, but it was also a notice to me that things have changed. i really liked a ghost is born. some people didn't. it was weird and all over the place. but i can almost look back now and say, that was it. that was the point where wilco stopped making amazing, creative, perplexing, confusing records and started making records. and that's fine. the window was open for summerteeth, yankee hotel foxtrot and a ghost is born. i'll accept that. and i'll keep listening. but man, they used to be so good, they were sick.

by the way, argument number two, the band is better with jay bennett. it's not the same band. it doesn't have the same feel. i know he wasn't on a ghost is born, but look at the three albums since jay left and you have to notice the drop-off in melody, in production methods and varied instrumentation. i miss jay bennett.

any points?

that birdhouse (the song)

the new wilco album is available for streaming on their website. i haven't really had an opportunity to listen to it yet. i'm going to when i get home. i tried here at work, but everytime there's a computer message, like where a message screen pops up, there is a loud beep that is so loud it actually hurts my brain. so i decided for the health of my brain, to wait until i got home where i could control the beeps and not slowly crumble from the inside out.

does anyone remember the dana carvey show? well it's finally been released on DVD. i remember that show was a bizarre, mish-mosh of amazing comedy and amazing crap. some of my favorite sketches like skinheads from maine, and where tom brokaw has to pre-record all these wild scenarios before he goes on vacation like former president gerald ford being mauled by lions and how delicious he was. and then there were skits where bill clinton is nursing a pig and kitty kats tell you the news or something. but it was worth watching especially considering it came on in 1996 or something and it was after or before home improvement. remember that steaming pile of crap? yeah, well this show probably freaked out everyone who loved home improvement. check it out.

i keep hearing about underwriting and decided to stop being confused and read about it.

i haven't had any caffeine today and i'm starting to get a headache. but i'm almost done with work and it hasn't been too bad. plus i'll be home soon and i can workout tonight.

as most of you know, i have sbcglobal as my email carrier. today they're doing these advertisements for teeth cleaning. so everytime i go to check my mail i'm greeted with these horrible before and after pictures of people's teeth. some of them are pretty bad. and they're close-ups.

pork soda

i have finally figured it out! it's the soda. of course! the caffeine is killing me. not really killing me, but turning me into a zombie. how does caffeine turn you into a zombie you ask? oh you didn't ask? well then forget it. but if you're interested, here's how it does.

i don't really start to feel awake until i go to the gym usually around 7 or 8 in the evening. i feel tired and sleepy all day and then finally i get to sweat and burn some calories. this desk job is harder than i thought it would be. i keep thinking of ways to add a little exercise to it, like replace my chair with a workout ball or turn my desk into a standing post. i'm not sure those would fly in my office, but it's worth a shot. i think i'm sleeping too much too. you have to vidulent when you get older. if things start feeling different, you got to start using placebos and control techniques. i don't even know what i'm saying.

i was looking over the book i wrote like three/four years ago. it's actually pretty good. i'm re-typing it and adding some stuff here and there to make it better. i'm thinking about sending it to oprah once i'm done. i'm serious. i'm going to send it to oprah, she'll read it, then tell everyone to read it and they will because she said so and then i'll be a millionaire and i workout right away in the morning and feel awake all day. and eat oatmeal with blueberries. and toast. and pancakes. i'm thinking about starting a phrase that reads: "it's better than pancakes." i'll use it if something is really good. i think people will appreciate it if i tell them that they're better than pancakes.

monday

i'm referring to the wilco song "monday" from being there. speaking of wilco, has anyone seen their new album cover for the album coming out in june? it can be seen right here. what is that? i don't know what to do with that. i kind of laugh, but then my forehead crinkles a bit and i stop laughing and start really studying the picture. if this is any indication, this album is going to be wild. apparently this guy at billboard has already heard the album. he's a got a mini-review here.

did anyone watch SNL this saturday? usually i don't, but the wife was out of town and i had nothing to do and also justin timberlake was hosting. i know people are going to start making jokes, loud, inappropriate jokes, about me liking justin timberlake. but that dude is funny! and his music is actually really good, but more importantly, he's funny. he makes fun of himself and he's good at it. they had a parody song about mother's day. it was hilarious. check it out somewhere.

i have no political news today. i've been working non-stop since like 9a.m. so i've no time. i'm heading home to eat some cereal and watch the simpsons.

beyond here lies nothing

here are the preliminary results from the stress tests (i actually wrote "testes" and had to erase it. sometimes the mistake is better).

also here's an entry from the same blog about fractional reserve lending. i've made some entries here before about it. what does everyone think about fractional reserve lending? is it legal? is it beneficial? is it appropriate?

ron paul is a man against the machine. here's his thoughts on FRL.

i was listening to elbow yesterday. totally great line: "i sat you down and told you how the truest love that's ever found is for oneself, you pulled apart my theory with a weary and disinterested sigh."

a gift

dom deluise died today and i didn't find out until like five minutes ago. that is unacceptable. that man was in smokey and the bandit!

so postings will be few and far between. i'm also getting serious about the cpa exam, so i'll need time to study. but i'll pop in and out when i feel the need to rant.

this is what i'm listening to RIGHT NOW! give it time to load. it will. or contracted: it'll.

yet another movie

this weekend was sweet. 3-day weekend. first full weekend for quite some time. it was nice. the wife and i went to austin and rode the greenbelt. the next day we went canoeing, saw some friends and headed home. i always love being in austin. the minute i stepped back on the greenbelt, i felt great. it was so nice to be back there. i love it. the creek was dry, only a trickle of water at sculpture falls. the wife jumped in the water that was there. i didn't. it was cold, cold water and the sun wasn't too bright, so i stayed out. plus we saw a snake. i threw rocks at it, which is the scientific response when viewing a snake. we also saw a snake when we went canoeing. it was big and it was right next to the boat. i mean seriously, two foot away from the boat. we freaked out, which is the normal response when seeing a snake by your boat. i stopped by waterloo. went to the bookstore. it was a great weekend. now i'm back and i only have to work 40 hours a week again!

if anyone believes that these banks are actually making profits, you're drinking the kool-aid. these are accounting tricks and some smoke and some mirrors. the overall US financial system is being propped up. otherwise, it would collapse.

warren buffet wants to buy wells fargo.

here's a bio of al dunlap.

if friday night lights played varsity blues, who would win?

here are some lessons learned from star trek. space lessons.

wah-wah

i just read the timeline of the little boy who died from the pig flu and i'm wondering outloud here: he visited the galleria on april 5th and he goes back home april 8th and gets sick. i wonder if he was sick while he was here?

because the galleria isn't far from where i live, where i work out, where i eat and shop for groceries. and then i suddenly and out of the blue fall ill on april 17th. i have not been sick in any other month other than oct., nov. or dec. since 2004 when i had the flu. weird. and i still am not totally well yet. i wonder....

by the way, saw blue velvet last night. i've been wanting to see a david lynch movie because i knew they were weird/odd. but this was beyond weird/odd, this was amazingly disturbed. i would recommend it to anyone looking to watch a movie that will intrigue them and disturb in an arty way at the same time.

the grass roots and creed bratton

holy crap. creed bratton was in the grass roots. that is cool.

one of my favorite creed moments is when he dyes his hair black and tries to act much younger.

wow.

magnificent

after my months and months of overtime and working non-stop on saturdays, fridays and all days in between, i'm rewarded with: a day off. i'm off this friday. three-day weekend! the wife and i are planning a trip to austin to ride some bikes on the greenbelt. it should be nice after all the rain we've gotten. hopefully the creek is wet and running along. i went one time when the creek was running somewhat high and it was the greatest day. i remember the cold water rushing past us and having to carry our bikes over our heads. finally we made it to the end and hung out on the rocks and enjoyed the serenity. i hope it's like that again.

last night around 3 in the morning, i swear the lightning was so bright, it lit up the entire house for two or three seconds. i thought everything around us was getting struck by lightning. i stayed in bed though. funny how i feel really safe in bed. or maybe i'm still partly asleep to think, "hey, it's falling apart out there, i should probably stay in my pajamas in bed." actually that sounds nice.

so with our armies in iraq and afghanistand (what is afghanistand? that's a typo that i'm leaving in there), and trust me, i hate to bring this up, but what happens if pakistan falls apart? it's not likely, but it's not as unlikely as you think.

don't really have much today. houston is under water and i think there's more on the way.

i saw the ACL lineup this year and i'm excited. i'm totally excited about my buddy leatherbag playing ACL this year! that is insanely great. i'm still in shock. that dude is moving on up. hopefully i'll get to go the day he's playing and try to make him laugh while he's playing. i should wear a bert costume but use an ernie voice.

i'm only sleeping

still not feeling great. all the stuff in my chest has moved back up into my head and my head feels like a balloon with too much air. i can't wait until all this clears up. and then now i'm hearing about some pig flu. what the hell? when did our animals start mutating flu strains to kill us? first it was the birds, now the pigs. these animals are getting out of hand. seriously.

sheila barr says the FDIC should be the one stepping in and taking over banking and bank-holding companies. i'm not so sure i disagree with her.

everyone better get used to the idea of paying taxes for online purchases. it's coming quick.

i've been railing on them for awhile and i'll continue. here's more on how credit card companies hoped to keep people in debt.

here's eric rosenfeld from LTCM talking about the bust that was his company in the late 90's.

anybody have an opinion on the texans draft picks? i have not heard of any of these guys, but most draft experts say it was a good for houston. no idea. i'm predicting 15-1 this year. that's right. you read that correctly.