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.

the underdog

holy crap, i've got such good stuff today. man.

okay, first: i love the psychology argument of investors. economists assume investors to be rational and on top of that make their choices because they have all the necessary information available. both assumptions are wrong and completely false. here is an article where the rational investor argument is blown up. i love it.

another great argument about elizabeth warren who has been put in charge of our beloved TARP money. she makes amazing statements about the insolvency of the american family. she seems to share my hatred/distrust of credit card companies and says american is the only place, i love this, where people save to be bankrupt. that's amazing. read it here.

the "stress-test" results are out and i don't have any links to those but i do have links to the government's methods for testing the stress at the bank. "there's a lot of stress in here. wait...wait.... i just found some more stress. it's over there. see it?"

here is andrew cuomo's letter to the SEC, barney frank, etc. in regards to the BofA merger with Merrill Lynch. lots of juicy stuff in this.

congratulations to my friend ana who got a new job making more money and with a shorter commute. i'm very proud of her.

congratulations to my friend bruce who is going through the final mixes of his band's ep. can't wait to here the results.

and congratulations to me who during a break in songs during the spoon concert, called out opener black nasty. i yelled, "you suck!" and the singer/rapper lowered his head because he knew in his heart i was correct.

"you suck!" very original.

blue in green

this past weekend was my 1st wedding anniversary. i woke up friday morning with a sore throat which progressed into a full-on sinus blow-up over the weekend. also, it rained for the entire day saturday, which meant bike-riding, the international festival and all other outdoor activities were cancelled. so being the industrious couple we are, we changed plans on the fly. saturday we went to the angelika movie theater downtown and watched "the great buck howard" which was one of those movies that no one else, besides you, will ever see. it was actually really good and then we went to the hotel and had dinner. sunday the weather was cleared up and the baseball game was good, despite the fact the astros lost. my wife got an autograph from reds 2nd basemen brandon phillips. it was an old ball i kept in my car to use at the park, so when she handed it to him, he commented, "what the hell happened to this ball?" to which my wife responded, "we used it."

so i'm feeling better today after sleeping almost all day yesterday.

so geitner says the banks are well capitalized. really?

great article on the "wail of the 1%." this opens up a great dialogue about compensation.

kc fed chief is at it again. dude doesn't mind speaking his mind. love it.

in case you didn't know, you can watch all episodes of frontline online.

our next netflix movie is blue velvet. i'm excited.

the bends

I noticed that Capital records has re-released Pablo Honey, The Bends and OK Computer from Radiohead. In recent years, I have proclaimed my favorite band to be Wilco. I’ve listened to them since I was 17 and something about Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics and melodies beat alongside my own ups and downs as someone living and dealing with America. The older I get the more it seems we occupy the same space in thought.

But for a great period of my life, from about 15 to 23, Radiohead defined my vision of music. They defined my musical experience. Starting with OK Computer and ending with Hail to the Thief, I bought every Radiohead record the first day it came out, once even getting caught in the pre-Allison flooding rains to purchase Amnesiac.

Radiohead made albums of frustrating beauty. They were melodic, yet completely distressed. There was anguish, there was loneliness and there was paranoia. Those were characteristics I knew when I was younger. Who has your best interests? Who are your friends? Who’s really in charge? What is coming up ahead?

I first heard Radiohead like everyone else. Creep was huge. I loved it. It was easy, it was nice to listen to in my truck, but I never thought about this band in any other way except, that was nice, see you later. It wasn’t until I was up late one night watching 120 minutes or some show like that on MTV (remember when MTV had videos, videos that weren’t just teeny pop and hip-hop) and the video for Just came on. I remembered the name Radiohead and decided to watch it. It blew my mind. Not only was the song incredible, but the video was original and I still say it’s one of the best videos I’ve ever seen. So I went out the next day and bought The Bends. It was instantly one of my favorite albums of all time. Starting off with Planet Telex and the line, “you can force it but it will not come” and this atmospheric sound and menace. I had no idea what I was listening to, but I loved it. I devoured it. High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, Just, Nice Dream, Street Spirit. These songs still resonate in me. I was dumbfounded by how good this little band had become. From Pablo Honey to The Bends is probably the greatest artistic leap I’ve ever experienced. This was a different band. I began preaching to everyone who would listen and those who would not. Radiohead, you gotta listen to Radiohead. But rarely would anyone get excited. Then it came.

OK Computer hit like a hurricane. I bought it the first day it came out and didn’t stop listening to it for about four years. It ranks as one of the greatest albums of all time. Start to finish, it’s leveling. The melodies are four star. The lyrics are disconnected and disjointed, yet as a whole, they form a cohesive response to a world that was beginning to spin too fast and too loose. The next thing I knew Radiohead was huge. But it didn’t make me like them less. I was proud of them. I thought I was witnessing the response to the release of Sgt. Peppers. That is what it felt like, I would think. Because you don’t witness that kind of response to an actual work of art very often. This wasn’t Cher filling stadiums, this was Radiohead, singing about refrigerators buzzing and the karma police. It was amazing.

Since then, they’ve released more great albums (Kid A, In Rainbows) and some okay ones (Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief). And as I’ve gotten older, my identity has shifted some and I now find myself less confused and more comfortable with who I am and those around me. I still feel the world is out to get us, so I will always come back to Radiohead. And I’ll always come back to that time when I 15 hearing “comes like a comet, suckered you but not your friends, one day he’ll get to you and teach you how to be a holy cow, you do it to yourself, you do, and that’s why it really hurts.”

It’s not an understatement to say Radiohead helped shape the way I look at the world. That’s something that will stay with me longer than any song or album.

birds flew backwards

the doves are another band that i wonder why they're not insanely popular.

i usually lead off with the political/economic stuff, but come on, an interview with will arnett. that leads baby. although he doesn't talk about the arrested development movie. that worries me.

"they forget their job is to protect us from the banks, not to protect the banks."

obama bettin' it all on the failed banksters.

the fair value litany.

has everyone done their taxes? today's the day.