down is the new up

this guy. this guy is something else. he is the epitome of failing upward. he screws up, he gets promoted. he oversees the biggest wall street fallout, let's put him in the white house. he has nine lives. and now he wants to block the wonderful and beautiful elizabeth warren from heading the new consumer agency. hopefully, this will be his last mistake and he will be cut loose, as he should have been months ago. look at this guy. elizabeth, it's going to be okay. if you want to give me a call, please do. i would love to talk to you and have coffee and gently caress your hand and stroke your hair and maybe, just maybe, tell you i love you.

sting o' luv

wow. just when i thought our banks couldn't get anymore immoral, they go and do this.

here is a quick discussion on the future of finance.

this is a great article from the web of debt on how brokers became bookies.

a roosevelt moment for the biggest banks?

young adult fiction

today is bastille day! it celebrates the great french race around the world that began in france and ended in france and in between went through really, really interesting places. what a race it was. this is all true.

i got a spicy chicken sandwich from chick-fil-a today. this may be the best day of my life.

also, i received seasons 1 and 2 of newsradio in the mail today. didn't even order them. they just showed up! actually i did order them and they didn't show up, they went to the post office and i had to go get them. but i'm still thrilled. the first two seasons are not the best. the characters are not yet zany. most shows get terrible when the characters begin to get zany and lose all notion of reality. but newsradio got better when this happened. way better. phil hartman was incredible.

in other news, the epa says rivers shouldn't smell like shit...

evil urges

anyone who reads this blog knows one thing about me: i love me some arrested development. i think it's the greatest show on television ever. there will probably never be an arrested development movie and i think, we as a human race, are the worst for it.

but check out this trailer for an action arrested development movie. it's freakin' awesome.

i read this article today and nearly started hitting my head on the desk as hard as possible, but then i realized that wouldn't solve anything. so i asked someone else to do it. basically, the premise of the article is: what if the BP oil spill is the beginning of a chain reaction of events that will cause mass extinction of human life? wild? weird? wikely? i mean, likely? who knows.

i'm going to out on a major limb here and say the american league wins the all-star game. again. they've won every game since i was like 12 years old, so i think we're good on this bet.

"i nailed it! i hibbled that bibble like jibble on a dribble!"

tenth leaving train

i've been hearing a lot lately about austerity, haven't you? yes, that's what i thought as well.

so what is austerity? well, it's when a government reduces its spending and/or increases fees and taxes to pay back its creditors. that is straight from wikipedia. the page was last modified monday at 10:48, so the definition could have been different then.

but back to austerity, well, that's what it is. so when you use it next, you'll know.

this is a pretty good article from the nyt regarding the changing structure of the american dream. were the boomers the last prosperous generation of americans? that might end up being the case.

i have my lebron james prediction ready. he will play for the washington senators who will finally beat those pesky globetrotters!!! go senators!! go!!!

finish your collapse and stay for breakfast

i had another dream last night that i wish to share with the masses. it's short on details, but long on emotion.

dwight schrute and i are working on a road project. basically, we're standing on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere shoveling some chemical on the shoulder. in addition to the two of us, there are two tigers hanging out watching us work. that's right: TWO TIGERS!! we pay them no attention and neither one of us show any regard for them being there. behind me as i'm shoveling are a stack of boxes that form a kind of domino highrise. it's not too tall, only about as tall as me.

as i'm shoveling, one of the tigers gets up and walks up that ramp and jumps on my back. i am terrified and screaming for help. dwight, who has now turned into michael scott, runs away in terror to get back to the car, which is now a truck. when he gets to the car, which is now a truck, there is a man there waiting for him who begins to beat him with one of our shovels. that might be the weirdest part of the dream. why did he get the crap beat out of him? and who was this mystery man? i have no explanation for that one.

who knows. at this point, i have a tiger on my back. he is slightly gnawing on my arm, just playfully. he loosens his mouth just enough for me to pull my arm out and i begin to run like the wind. the tiger begins this wild pouncing motion. he jumps high into the air and comes down hard, only to quickly bounce back up into the air so he can pounce me into the ground. he is no longer playing with me. i reach the car, which is now actually a truck, and i'm having a hard time getting up the side of the truck so the tiger can't get me.

then i wake up. i have had tons of dreams in my life. lots of them where i get killed or i'm about to get killed, either by gangs, or wars or whatever. this was the most terrifying dream i've ever had. the idea of being eaten alive is utterly horrific. i woke up and could not go back to sleep.

now here is my explanation for this dream, not exciting, but i believe true. once i had woken up, i got up and went to the bathroom. while i was there, i noticed that benjamin, our cat, had knocked over his cup of water, either he did or my wife did at some point in the night. so i imagine he got thirsty and was meowing and walking over me, which has been known to happen. so what started as an innocent "dwight schrute and me" dream, turned into a tiger mauling nightmare because my cat did not have his water.

as far as michael scott getting bludgeoned with a shovel, i have no idea.

hang onto yourself

every once and a while, i'll watch a movie and get weepy. not weepy like, life is horrible and i can't take it or a small puppy is crushed by a bigger puppy. but more like, the grandness of life feels overwhelming. and it's absolute beauty is achieved and offered in 90 minutes of quickly moving frames.

the most recent movie to do that was "once." its story is simple. the shots are simple. the leads, however, are not simple. not by some undefinable characteristic, but by simply being confused, optimistic human beings. but what makes the film, is the songs. the songs carry this movie and they create amazing interludes that tell us more about these people than any conversation could. they tell us where they've been, they tell us where they would like to go and they tell us if they will get there or not.

i highly recommend this movie. listen to the songs two or three times. apparently, this duo in the movie is now a duo in real life in a band called the swell season. check them out too.

now i have to get back to elmntng vwls frm my vrdydy cnvrstn.

the show must go on

in 10 hours, i square off with BEC again.

i'm imagining a rocky II ending rather than a rocky I ending.

actually, rocky III would work too.

lessons learned from rocky I to rocky III.

tracy hide

it's a lively saturday here at the household. i'm studying all day. currently taking a break, wearing a hat and going through my wondermints albums, of which i have four. you read that currently. i have four wondermints albums. why? i don't know.

the s/t first album, bali and mind if we make love to you. i also downloaded an import of theirs, years ago, called the wonderful world of the wondermints. that's probably their best album. it's an album of covers including brian wilson (via glen campbell) the monkees and others. it's really, really good.

the rest are okay. some songs are amazing. some are pretty lackluster.

wow. see. i just stumbled across a song that sounds a lot like trader by the beach boys.

convinced of the hex

financial regulation reform passed last night. what does it mean? well, it means nothing. the bill contained nothing. no real regulation. no real change. it was as if your parents grounded you, but you still could do whatever the hell you wanted. "be home at midnight, unless it's a day of the week between monday and sunday, with monday being the beginning of the week and sunday being the end of the week, with all days considered to exist in between."

here is tyler durden at zero hedge. every word is true:

"as if anyone thought otherwise, the final shape of financial regulation has now been formalized and as Shanien Nasiripour at the Huffington Post notes, "many of the measures that offered the greatest chances to fundamentally reshape how the Street conducts business have been struck out, weakened or rendered irrelevant." congrats, middle class, once again you get raped by Wall Street, which is off to the races to yet again rapidly blow itself up courtesy of 30X leverage, unlimited discount window usage, trillions in excess reserves, quadrillions in unregulated derivatives, a TBTF framework that has been untouched and will need a rescue in under a year, non-existent accounting rules, a culture of unmitigated greed and all of Congress and Senate on its payroll. and sorry, you can't even vote some of the idiots that passed this garbage out: after all there is a retiring lame duck in charge of it all. we can only hope his annual Wall Street (i.e., taxpayer funded) annuity will satisfy his conscience for destroying any hope America could have of a credible financial system."

the debate is settled

in the 80's there were two types of men: men without hats and men at work. both had their unique characteristics.

one band of men made songs about safety. the other, made songs about coming from down under. both were unforgettable. both were equally strange.

so, who was the better man in the 80's? the men at work? or the men without hats?

i got the hots, pt. 2

those guys over at the burning platform, you got to love them. they're filled with more righteous indignation than any human being should be and bless them for it.

they watched gasland last night. and they were not happy with what they saw. i mentioned the documentary in yesterday's posting, "i got the hots." which is a great song from underwater moonlight by the soft boys.

did anybody else watch it? i do not have hbo. i only have channels a-g. from h-z, i got nuffin, with the exception of m. somehow that one comes in.

in other news, eons of darwinian evolution somehow produce mitch.

i got the hots

haven't we heard that natural gas is going to lead way into the future? cure us of our addition to oil? foreign oil? well it might all be true. and in the process, it might just ruin us all.

what? what you say? you did say what, didn't you? outloud. or under your breath. or into a coffee cup. but you said it.

fracking. that might be an issue going forward. fracking is also known as hydraulic fracturing. basically, they shoot a bunch of water, chemicals and stuffs into a hole to help get the stuffs out.

but that stuffs they're shooting in there, it ain't no good. it's made of some bad stuff.

and why are we doing this? for shale gas. it's going to power the world some day. which is a shame, because i shorted shale gas and went long on love.

but see, there's this town of damascus, where people are getting sick. their water is bursting into flames. i mean, that sounds fun, but i like soft water.

and if you don't like reading, which who really does, check out this film/trailer for a documentary called gasland.

jigsaw falling into place

radiohead has a new album coming out this year. that's what mr. ed o'brien is saying at least. i liked in rainbows, but i had issues with it. wilco got tons of flack for releasing an album that seemed to be made up of various phases in their collection of sounds. i gave them flack for that.

but wasn't in rainbows the same thing? listen to it again in that context and you hear the various sounds of their career. there's over-edited, cut-up tracks recalling kid a/amnesiac. there's melodic, soothing, soaring songs recalling o.k. computer. there are straightforward-ish songs recalling hail to the thief. i liked the album. but radiohead received praise where wilco received derision. they made the same album. neither one of them was horrible. but neither one of them was groundbreaking.

groundbreaking like this.

not like this.

cut your hair

i've had a lot of things said to me in my life. some positive. some negative. and i think the thing that i would appreciate the most would be for an old man to say this to me:

"what you got there is a solid haircut."

kind of in a hank hill-type voice. i don't know why, but that would make me really proud.

only in dreams

so i had another crazy dream last night. i was at a basketball game, i believe, maybe football, but a game no less. i was sitting there with my wife and a friend, watching the game. so halftime comes along and they start throwing the balls into the crowd for someone to catch and throw it back into the basket, you know how they get crowds to participate and think they're part of the action. so a ball comes our way and my friend and i both catch it somewhat at the same time. i was a little earlier. but i relented and in the spirit of good times, let him throw it. and he made it, which was amazing considering how far back we were from the basket. we celebrate and rejoice his awesome shot and await the return of the game. then things get weird.

before the game restarts, i notice lots of people reading something and turning around and pointing at me. so i grab one of the newspapers and there's a story about me. the story describes the aforementioned ball-into-the-crowd-me-relenting-my-grip saga from above and how gay i am for doing it. and i'm not exaggerating for the story. the article called me gay for doing it. there is was in big headlines, "kevin is gay!" how did they know my name? first of all, i have no idea how a paper was produced that fast. that was amazing. those people were reading about me literally 20 seconds after it happened. and second of all, how is that gay? i was being considerate. so i found a guy passing out the papers and asked him who wrote the story. he said he did and he was some 17 year-old punk calling me out. well, we go back and forth and no one wins and i don't really remember how the rest of the dream went.

my main point is to be careful what you do and say because there will be a special edition printed about your actions and distributed all across the land.

plus he made the shot!!! that should negate the whole thing!! if he threw it like a baby and it hit some old woman in the head causing her to vomit on the family in front of her, then maybe i'll take some blame about not taking the shot.

but he made it!!! i'm suing that paper.

thank you friends

i saw high fidelity last week. greatest movie quote ever:

"what came first, the music or the misery? people worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. did i listen to pop music because i was miserable? or was i miserable because i listened to pop music?"

most depressing album ever: berlin by lou reed. i honestly believe if you listened to this album at the wrong time in your life/day/night, you will find yourself riding your bike downtown at 3 in the morning, slightly intoxicated and wondering where exactly you were going to land.

the WAND

pictures courtesy of tanner.

in the morning of the magicians

so the freepress houstonfest is over. i still prefer the name "the super-happy houston funfest spectacular festival" but this name has yet to catch on. but by either name, it's over.

there are two things i will remember from this year's super-happy funfest. one: my wife and i huddled together under a small black umbrella as her left side was getting soaked and my right side was getting soaked during what was probably a 35-45 minute torrential downpour while sitting on the hill at eleanor tinsley park holding our spot so that we wouldn't lose it for the flaming lips later that evening.

two: the flaming lips. it was one of the most amazing shows i've ever seen. dancing bears, crazy props, walking through a women's legs, megaphones, plastic orbs that floated into the audience. and the sound. the sound of their songs was amazing. absolutely incredible show. i could barely move while they were playing because if i did, i probably would have slipped and fallen into the muddy hill that had become the park, but i was able to shake it enough to inspire the crowd to follow my lead.

backtracking to saturday now....saturday was weak. the sun was behind the clouds, which helped. but i would have rather taken a beating by the sun and gotten better music. ra ra riot was okay. but girl talk was just some dude behind a computer that would take a rock riff and paste it over a hip-hop song. what the hell? i could do that shit in my bedroom if i wanted to while watching reruns of scrubs. i can't help it. i love scrubs. i think i'm a lot like turk. anyway, he was the headliner for saturday! before him was some horrible stuff like medeski, martin and wood and detroit cobras and some rap dude. so that was saturday.

sunday was hot all day. the sun was out. we were preparing for the worst. but when we parked, the wind picked up and could feel it coming. we had no idea how bad it was going to be. we literally sat down and got out the umbrella, and it started pouring on us. and God bless her, my wife sat there with me, crouched together getting soaked in her nice pants and shoes and was happy to be there with me. no one else was there. all of our friends were in their cars staying dry. we held down the spot. she and me. i and her. and i thanked her for that. not many wives would do that. towards the end of the downpour, but still raining, lucero played. they weren't great, but it helped to take our mind off the fact we were getting soaked and having mud flung onto our persons.

the rain finally let up for stars. and i liked that show. i listened to a few tracks beforehand and thought it was a little weak, but i'm going to have to go back and listen again, because live, they were pretty strong. the lead singers (male and female) were engaging. the guy was pretty witty. i like that. wittiness.

then slimthug played(?, he didn't play anything) and we bolted and let everybody else watch our spot for us. but then the lips came on and it was amazing. they played several tracks from their new album embryonic. but they played she don't use jelly and what was cool, they used the screen behind them to have jon stewart, circa 1996, introduce them from his old show. nice.

we got home finally sunday night. with soaked feet. soaked underwater. dirty shoes. dirty blankets. and for a minute, we probably wondered why we did it. but i know why we did it. because i'll never forget that rainy sunday with my wife under the umbrella getting impaled by rain to hold our spot for the flaming lips. that was why.