pink glove, things are things, right?

i'm not going to joke with you. i could. and it would be easy. i find it easy. that's probably why i'm not successful. because it's easy. joking that is. world finance, not so much. no matter how much i read. futures. swaps. offs. forwards. they are difficult contracts. are they even contracts? i mean, who is dictating these terms of words and constraints? who? are you? i'm not! but if i had a massive amount of assets behind me, could i move the market in my favor? potentially. maybe.

but those things are counter to this album. this is an album of desperate people. people who are young and have no future. people who are fun and opportunist. i love it. people moving together and then bouncing off other people and quickly regrouping to re-position themselves. in front. always in front.

i'll take it home. i'll make it mine. and you'll be improved. and i'll have make-shift wood furniture and a fence. and lines of electric wire. and phone wire. things improving my life. by leaps and bounds. making me invisible. making me isolated.

making me tempered.

whatever. listen to do you remember the first time?

i was once interesting. but time. i mean. come on. time. jeez.

airline to heaven

so last weekend, or the weekend before that actually, we took a little trip, took a little trip, took a little trip hiking. we headed north towards boulder, but turned off west and went hiking in el dorado canyon. this place was awesome. we had to drive through this little town, and i mean little town. the only thing separating the houses was a dirt road with tons of potholes. i had to drive about five miles an hour. you had to pay to get in because it's actually a state park.

the park was awesome. for the first mile or so, it's straight up. you can see in the bottom shot demitria sitting down. we had some water there and i took that shot of her and tried to show how far up we were. even at that point, we had higher to go. we continued up the trail and took a few more shots. there was this giant boulder up there sitting on top of this other giant boulder. so demitria and i climbed up there and took shots of us holding it up.

finally when we were down and came all the way back down the mountain, we sat by the stream and ate some horrible sandwiches we packed. we were pretty exhausted by that point.

the top picture is the night wolf. i've been telling a few people about the night wolf. he's actually a fox and he hangs out in our neighborhood. he mostly sits in one dude's front yard. that's where he's at in the picture. he'll just sit there and hang out. the dude who owns the house said he has no idea why the night wolf hangs out there because he doesn't feed him or anything. but we get a huge kick out of seeing him. we love/fear the night wolf.

holding onto black metal pt. 2

there is a series going on that is tremendously worth reading. it is a five part series. and four parts are out. they take their titles from clint eastwood movies.

for a few dollars more

fistful of dollars

the good, the bad and the ugly

the outlaw josey wales

unforgiven (still to come)

holding onto black metal

we had a great memorial day weekend. i have some pictures to post soon. saturday i took my FAR test and we cleaned and mowed and cleaned and got ready for sunday. we grilled out on sunday and had a few people over. it was fun. too much fun. i had to hang around the house most of monday.

and then a weird thing happened. i couldn't sleep. i slept about three hours monday night and then four hours on tuesday night. i laid in bed tuesday night from 9:30 to one in the morning and i couldn't fall asleep. you ever have sleep deprevation? the world gets real slow. and work takes a long time. i hope i have some serious sleep tonight. i need some rem sleep. i went into the basement and slept last night. i'm going to try that again. it's pretty depressing not to fall asleep when you want to. you feel powerless.

fake empire

the heat beat the bulls last night to set up a rematch against the dallas mavericks. i don't really care about basketball until it gets to the finals. but what's interesting is that since 1984, only a select number of teams have won the nba championship.

1) the lakers (8)
2) the celtics (3)
3) the bulls (6)
4) the pistons (3)
5) the rockets (2)
6) the spurs (4)
7) the heat (1)

that adds up to 27. so in 27 years, we've had seven different champs. that's it. maybe the mavericks will make 8. but if you notice, those teams have come and gone and come back again, well mostly the lakers, pistons and celtics. who knows about the rest. maybe it's time for another 27 years of a different set of eight champs. maybe it's time for the warriors, the hawks, the bucks and the thunder. probably not.

Scenes from the Suburbs - trailer

fore!

yes, that is a huey lewis reference. and if i'm lucky, it won't be the last one. most of my life, i've been pretty good at sports. baseball, football, basketball, tennis. i wasn't great, but i wasn't horrible. i was never the last kid picked. well, if we were playing golf, i would be the last person picked. on earth. and earth is pretty big. with a lot of people that's how terrible i am. i couldn't even hit the ball down the fairway. i hit it left. i hit it right. i hit it on the ground. most of the time, the ball never even went in the air. sad. but i don't really enjoy the game. i don't think i'll be playing again any time soon. apparently, the nine minute video i watched last night did not do the trick. maybe i should have watched the ten minute video.

we don't need no education pt. 2

two weeks ago i was an amateur fourth grade teacher for charity. tomorrow, i will be an amateur golfer for charity. sounds fun? can anyone guess how many times i've played golf in my life? the answer after the break....

well, we're back. the answer is: zero. zero times. i have gone to a driving range once. when i was seventeen. or sixteen. i can't remember because that's how long ago it was. i think the golf outing will be more terrifying than teaching fourth graders for me.

stay tuned for the outcome.

who taught you to live like that?

is the sloan best band that nobody's heard of?

before today

my teaching day at the elementary school was awesome!!! i taught fourth graders about money and resources and gains and losses. i had lunch with them, but we were too rowdy and we couldn't talk for the last five minutes of lunch. i think i was a bad influence on the kids. i really dug it. they called me mr. wright and kept asking me to come back the next day. i had a blast.

i just heard the most amazing interview on npr. the author of a book about area 51 was talking about a source she had that claimed that the aliens that landed in new mexico were not aliens. they were genetically/surgically altered human beings by josef megele who was working with the russians. how crazy is that?!?! check out the full interview here.

the astros were sold this week. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. i hope that new management brings in smart baseball people who can identify young talent. i think they need to make a play for the young blokes in tampa bay. one of them is from houston.

speaking of baseball, i went to my first rockies game last night. they won 7-4. we had a good time. my company paid for it. that made it even nicer.

we don't need no education

i'm currently watching a video (a 42 minute video, i should add) that is going to train me on my junior achievement training because tomorrow i'm going to an elementary school to teach them about money or something. i think about banking. i'm going to start with fractional reserve lending and then move into the audicity of the federal reserve. and right about then, i should be getting kicked out.

but i'm actually looking forward to it. i think it will be exciting and a welcome break from the day to day. of course, i do have to wake up super early. like being back in school. except no bus. i have to drive. and no recess. i do, however, get a lunch. i hope they still those large, flaky rolls i used to like so much. and steak fingers!

the video is finally about to start.

savage night at the opera

it's beautiful outside. i'm laying on the couch studying. wondering why did i ever want to take the cpa test? what is wrong with me?

"let's face it, old souls like us are being born to die."

my eyes are crossed. my brain is mush. i cannot decipher common rules and applications. i still haven't gotten REG back and i won't until june. so i can't use that as a motivator anyway.

"it's not a war til someone loses an eye."

i know losing AUD and BEC won't be the end of the world, but man, if i lose those credits and have to start completely over studying, i'm not sure what i'm going to do.

"yes, i'm familiar with your scene. some would say shockingly uptight."

in the long run, this will only help my career. i know that. but what am i missing in the meantime? weekends pass me by. weeknights pass me by.

"you'll never guess just where i've been, a life abandoned midstream."

and i can't stop listening to destroyer. but i did go to the furry scurry this morning. and i did have a great lunch. and i'm about to study outside. so life isn't horrible. it's just mildly disappointing. it's amazing. the luck i've had. working in big four in denver. how did that happen? if only my luck could be extended to standardized tests.

the fix is in

so what is america without a middle class? it's these facts. and if things don't turn around, there will only be a few haves and everyone else.

do the panic

i am probably in a very small minority, but i think that phantom planet is a very underrated band. i mean, raise the dead, is a pretty solid album. it's not going to change the world, but i dig it. also, the self-titled album is pretty good too. i know that the lead singer used to be or still is an actor or something and that jason schwartzman was the drummer for a while, but even his band coconut records isn't bad. i mean eddie murphy was and i guess still is an actor, but "party all the time" is an anthem. i mean, they're not on the level of underrated as elbow is, but they're in the ballpark. probably a big ballpark, but still.

easy like sunday morning

ryan adams has emerged as general sunday morning listening fare for me. the dude confounds me. he's got all this talent and puts out half-great, half-banal albums, but if you turn down the voices in your head, even the jejune can be smile-inducing. whatever that means.

jumping someone else's train

zerohedge has a letter to congress. there's a line in the song "the gloaming" by radiohead that has a line that repeats several times at the end. "your alarm bells, your alarm bells, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing, they should be ringing."

i am trying to break your heart

paste magazine has ranked the 30 best wilco songs. i'll let you guess which one they ranked as #1. plus, jeff opens up about the new album coming out this year.

the birds

there have been six rocky movies. i'm guessing the sixth one is probably the last one. but what if there was a seventh rocky movie. what would happen in that movie? i think it would have to involve the passing of the torch to rocky's son. we'll call it rocky 7: bad son rising. rocky's son will rise from the bottom ranks of the boxing legion to ferociously beat his competition and gain the attention of the boxing/world community. along the way, rocky teaches him how to earn the respect of the those around him. he becomes a spiritual hero in his community/world. his son meets a new love, someone who acts and looks a little like adrian. in the end, he loses the big fight that would have landed him the championship fight, but he marries his new love, which sets up perfectly for an eighth movie. sounds corny? you know you want to see this movie. i do.

montague terrace (in blue)

the time says i posted this at 11:00:00. it's a chilly night. and i'm listening to scott walker again.

happy easter

hey everybody. have a great easter today. it's cloudy and a little chilly in denver today, but we're going to go out in the backyard and plant our herbs and berry plants today. i'm trying to develop a green thumb in the brown landscape here. so far, so good.