Yoga Dad

I do my yoga solo. I use OnDemand videos, books, YouTube, I study my form in the mirror, etc.

Contrasly, my wife just has to find her chi in a *class*. She has to leave the premises and spend that $15 to have an instructor holler whisper directions in a group setting.

For a while now, she's been trying to get me to *just try a class*. She insists that they're different,....better and more effective. Yet I've maintained my thrifty skepticism. After all, I've never paid for a golf lesson either. I'm a complete auto-didact!

But I was just getting around to humor her and try a class when she all of a sudden changed her mind:

Mrs. C-Nut - You know, with you being an at-home Dad....taking the kids to ballet, soccer, and karate classes....if people in town start seeing you at the local yoga studio it may just be a little too much.

Hmmmm.

I had just convinced myself that it wouldn't be so bad to see the neighborhood mom's contorting themselves in front of me, nor would it be so bad to have some ripped yoga teacher physically correcting my poses....

But my wife makes a good point.

So as a compromise, I subscribed to Yoga Mom magazine which I'll conspicuously read at the park, in the library, and on the town beach.

Taking Aim At Ave Maria

Ave Maria is a new planned community just northeast of Naples, Florida. It's been designed and built by centi-millionaire Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza.

It's to be a Roman Catholic town centered around, well, the church, and a new Catholic university. I actually drove out to visit it while I was snowbirding in January - and was quite impressed. The facilities are tremendous as were the people we bumped into. I've got to tell you, it's not often I meet college kids that resemble what 19 year olds used to resemble over the past few millenia....i.e. YOUNG ADULTS. A few stopped to talk to my kids, offered to take pictures of us, and showed us around. I was there with my MIL and we both thought the exact same thing, "This is where her granddaughters ought to go college to meet their husbands!"

Anyway, don't you think a town of such explicit purpose would invite the usual Commi-pagan critics?

Of course it would!

The local Naples paper or news *site*, whatever it is has recently been running this:



First off, anytime a paper runs a multi-part special report, you can be sure journalism has been subordinated to a political agenda. For example, the most recent *multi-part* special I came across was the Boston Globe's six-part hagiography of bunghole Ted Kennedy.

The Ave Maria smear goes like this....apparently, when the town was founded, the developer WHO RISKED MILLIONS OF HIS OWN HARD EARNED MONEY used the normal legal avenues to maintain political control over what he was building. In other words, he set the municipality up so that he and his builder would essentially have voting precedence over any or all of the other elected officials. The Naples paper is trying to make this into a story when none exists at all. They are running around frantically trying to make residents apoplectic that *their votes don't count*....that this is an un-Constitutional disenfranchisement of residents....and that homebuyers down there weren't sufficiently disclosed to. Yet the paper can't really find anyone living there who's upset. All they can muster is some critical law professor who lives hundreds of miles away.

If you look more closely at that last pic (click on it), there's a video clip in the lower righthand corner subtitled,

"REACTION to 'A TOWN WITHOUT A VOTE' - Ave Maria residents sound off about developer's control".

Yet when you watch the video, click here, the only thing they sounded off on was the newspaper's insinuations and distortion!

You can read the articles:

Ave Maria - A Town Without a Vote: Developer keeping score on its ability to rule town

Ave Maria - A Town Without a Vote: Taxation without representation?

Ave Maria - A Town Without a Vote: Residents' control hinges on trust

Or you can get a primer from watching this video of the reporter discussing this manufactured story that he *spent 1.5 years on*!

The fact is, a developer has to maintain control when building an extensive project. If he doesn't, it mightn't fulfill his orginal design ambitions. For example, if the Domino's tycoon allowed others to interfere with his plans, say the co-ideologues of Naples News, he could end up with all his municipal workers UNIONIZED and DEMANDING PENSIONS....which would eventually bankrupt his town, just as they have every other one in America. Would you risk/spend your life's savings to build something only to leave it vulnerable to pagan statists?

I sure as heck wouldn't.

I don't *know* that Tom Monaghan was specifically scared of unions when his development team established what every other large developer did in terms of legal and economic self-protection....but I'm certain he should have been.

You see, as a nation we are trapped in ubiquitous statism. No town in Massachusetts, my home state, or probably any other state could ever just say, "You know what, we are going to do away with unions and pensions for municipal workers" or "We are going to close down all of our public schools...." There are laws codified against that. AND, loopholes would be closed via extortion. The state would revoke highway funds and whatnot for any little district that didn't *play ball*. Read John Taylor Gatto's - The Logical Tragedy Of Benson, Vermont to see a case study of institutionalized thuggery.

Seriously, make certain you read that astonishing story.

Okay. So our entire country is mired in overlapping local, state, and federal socialism. The only cure, the only real hope against a thuggish monopoly is innovation. People need to be able to move on and build completely different communities. That is arguably what Ave Maria is all about. It's opting out of what hasn't worked - at least from the standpoint of its residents.

This is why Ave Maria is and will always be in the sights of the Moronic, pagan statists.

Now my good friend who lives down in Naples, he visited Ave Maria shortly after I did. He said that there he saw a large mixed-age group of kids playing soccer; and then, when they were done, they sat down to eat a conspicuously civilized lunch. Short on articulation, my witness said it was truly a sight to behold.

Mind you, my buddy was raised Catholic (I think) and has since gone evangelical Christian with a tinge of anti-Catholicism (like all of dem' Protestants!). So I deem his favorable impression to be noteworthy.

[In fairness, what he saw was probably independent of Ave Maria. I think he just bumped into the homeschooling group. I took my kids out with a local homeschooling group yesterday and the entire time my 4.5 year old son was *socializing* with 11 and 12 year olds who didn't mind his company one bit. Meanwhile, the government-schooled 6 year olds we usually see more often than not rebuff his overtures!]

Most people buy a vacation home for *pleasure* - a condo at the beach, a ski lodge, or a timeshare. After all, they need a respite from their thoroughly unsatisfying wage slavery.

But after visiting Ave Maria, I thought, why not buy a place there? Why not buy a second home in a place that could behoove my family morally? I am raising kids whose entire development is in my hands; AND it's a task I take most seriously. I submit it's extremely healthy, for all of us, to be around as many grounded people as we can in lieu of our idiot neighbors.

PLUS, Ave Maria has a decent golf course, it's still sunny Florida, and less than an hour from the beach!



If my son ends up marrying some Masshole chick with *like* 1,000 friends on Facebook, zero independently-arrived-at opinions, and one of those ridiculous pink Red Sox hats instead of say, someone like these marketable broads above....

I'll have failed as a parent - no matter how fluent my son is at trignometry or how versed I've made him in world history.

I'm almost 35 now; we're a bit past the six-weddings-to-attend-each-year stage.

All we hear about now are tragic divorces.

Movie Rec - The Lives Of Others

Here's the trailer:



Below is a clip of the opening scene. As the trailer conveys, this film is a study in the totalitarian statism of East Germany; it's about the secret police, government surveillance, and the chilling toll they take on the sheeple.



Watch closely again the scary scene that begins at 2:55. Did you catch how the professor reacted to the inquiring student?

The movie won an Academy Award or two, and, according to Wikipedia, the *snitching* storyline has a rough personal basis in fact for the writer/director.

Whatever. Good movie. Good reminder of real hardship and real censorship for present-day ignoramuses.

I give it 3.75 out of 5 stars - only because the third quarter of the film slowed down a bit.

And imdb.com has it rated pretty highly:



One would have to think the main reason Hollywood (i.e. the Academy) loved this movie so much is that it glorified artists and villified censorship, no?

Yet these same self-unconscious airheads in California go on and practice their very own, much subtler, art of propaganda, persecution, and censorship!

Tale Of Two Floods

I just got an *email forward* with the above title, and consisting of the following two pics:

Why Buy The Boston Globe?

When you can self-induce vomiting, with a finger, FOR FREE???!!!

Read today's *most emailed* ridiculous article:



The gist is that we're all supposed to feel bad for a kid on full boat to Harvard....because other students there may be wealthier.

This Miguel Garcia was perturbed by his classmates who allegedly were dropped off by chauffeurs, own tuxedos, and can afford to outsource their laundry!

[Pause here to dry watery eyes.]

The Globe also bemoans a kid who *chose to spend the week earning $11 an hour scrubbing toilets in Harvard dorms.*

I leave y'all with the money quote from a dean of admissions and financial aid:

"The stakes are high here," Fitzsimmons said in an interview. "If we aren't educating the full range of the population, we won't be educating effective future leaders of the country."

That's just what we need.... *future leaders* mired in low self-esteem and boiling with envy . Miguel Garcia gets handed a $200,000+ education and expresses his gratitude by demanding a driver and turn-down service. This fool, along with the Moronic Boston Globe, have no idea that the parents of those strutting rich kids are the ones actually paying his fare.

The Boston Globe may be down but it's not out. It'll continue inverting the truth until its last breath.

And, not for nothing....but I went to a school (UPenn) that had to be at least if not wealthier than Harvard. Even though I was from a typical 2-government-worker family in Worcester, MA, a town whose average household gross today is around $40,000 per year....In 3.5 years of school, I never once felt subordinate to my classmates from the Main Line and Westchester County.

In fact I worked for nearly 40 hours per week - albeit at $5-6 per hour, not the $11 for Harvard's (unionized?) toilet scrubber - and had plenty of money in my pocket to do with what I wanted.

And truth be told, I looked down upon, and felt pity for many of my über-wealthy classmates. They lagged me in the classroom; were socially maladroit, unathletic, lazy, and at least a few of them I knew were serial, incorrigible masturbaters.

The way I saw it, despite all their *privilege* thus far, the fact that I was in the same place as them at the moment made me the winner and them the losers!

Calling Out The Pious

At my local church there is a wonderful woman that stands upfront and *signs* the entire mass for whomever in the parish may be hearing impaired.

I've noticed that she keeps and sips a water bottle on her little podium. What's that all about? She doesn't *say* a single word for about an hour. How could her throat be dry?

Now I know very little about signing so perhaps it's a real athletic, real exhaustive endeavor.

But if it ain't....I say she should be allowed hand lotion but nothing more!

True Story - my brother's ex-wife, who wasn't too familiar with religious services, once cracked open a Snickers bar during Christmas Eve mass. We were sitting up front to boot!

Movie Rec - Office Space

Yeah, Office Space is ten years old, but I did just get around to seeing it.

You see, I just don't watch *comedies*. In fact, right now as I'm trying to think of my favorite comedic film I'm coming up blank. There are simply no candidates. Remember There's Something About Mary? Everyone implored me to see it, saying it was the funniest thing ever. I was completely unmoved.

The same went for Old School. That was one of the stupidest, most over-rated films of all-time.

I don't know what it is. Perhaps I just don't have any sense of humor whatsoever?

So anyways....Office Space started out great. I was laughing not 41 seconds into the opening scene where that Charlie Sheen look-alike was trying to change into the faster moving lane. I absolutely loved the first part of this movie before the *change*. Then it sucked royally.

I doubt a movie hasn't going *limp* this fast, this badly since The Crying Game. Would you believe I saw that one during Spring Break? We walked out of the theater!

I reluctantly give Office Space 3.5 stars out of 5 - if only because the beginning was so well done.

Same Old Short Sale Story

A local broker forwarded me the above home to consider buying. It's a *short sale* with a current list price of $465,000. Driving by this afternoon, we noticed there wasn't even a sign out front. This one must be really close to *auction*.

At 2,300 square feet, it's a bit small for me to even consider. Remember, I work from home and will educate my kids there. This claustrophobe needs a tad more space than that. After all, I didn't rent this entire housing bubble only to settle!

The first thing I do when I get a new listing is Zillow.com it.



Okay. So it sold *at the top* for 366k....

Then how the bleep is it a *short sale* at 465k?

It would seem that, minimally, the homeowner homeborrower took out 100k in home equity lines. Here's the pricing history:



Okay, as I was typing this up, I had to change course for the post. Since in the pictures of the listing, I didn't see gleaming hardwood floors, a Trex deck, nor granite countertops I was wondering where the HELOC money went. Then I found a note in the description that said *1,300 square feet* were a recent addition. Aha! So it was a flipper who paid $366,000 - at the top - for a mere 1,000 square foot chicken shack. He added on, skipping the fashionable kitchen update, and unsuccessfully tried to flip it for 600-700k.

Whoever this guy is - and he could very well be a contractor - with this track record, I sure hope he LOVES stocks today. (note I am really short these days)

My wife wants to see the place this week so I'll humor her. So I'll find out some more details soon. Any guesses as to who the real homeowner is?

I'll bet between the two liens there are two of these culprits: Countrywide, Wamu, GMAC, Option One, and perhaps Greenpoint Mortgage.

By the way, they say that 90% of agreed-upon short sale transactions are rejected by the banks these days. The lenders are probably suspicious of friends trying to pull fast ones on them.

But man, were they late to adopt some healthy skepticism!

Federal Slavery

Schwarzenegger's office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.

I actually had to read that article to be convinced of the headline. The State of California, in an effort to stave off fiscal bankruptcy has cut the pay of its *unionized home healthcare workers*, among many other trimmed expenses.

But that's not going to fly with the Obama administration. They are going to withhold Federal monies from California if Arnold doesn't spare that sacred cow. Thou shall not reduce thy budget. Stay bloated and in debt to the Federal government!

It's ridiculous how the states let the Feds confiscate income tax and then, if they're lucky, if they *play ball*, Washington will magnanimously give the dough back. Remember those *kids* arguing not long ago how the so-called blue states paid more in Federal taxes (than they got back)?

Well how smart is that?

Meanwhile, this is the situation in the land of fruits and nuts:

Reporting from Sacramento -- California could run out of money as soon as July, the Legislature's chief budget analyst warned Thursday, as a new poll showed voters poised to reject five budget-related measures on the May 19 ballot.

If the propositions do not pass, the state could find itself as much as $23 billion short of the money it needs to pay its bills over the next year, according to a new forecast by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor.

link

Whole states are bankrupt. Pensions are leagues under water. Unemployment is soaring. A new foreclosure wave is about to come crashing from shore to shore, the Feds are drunk printing and borrowing around the clock....

And yet the Dow Jones has rallied from 6,600 to about 8,600 in the past two months - a bounce of 30%. Even the prudent bears are getting wiped out. Now they'll be absolutely nobody with cash to buy homes, stocks, and bonds when they start their inevitable crash.

Refi'ing A Bubble

Right now, there over 70 homes in the tony town of Hingham, Massachusetts listed for sale at $1 million or higher.

But in the last six months, only 8 homes have sold over that price point.

I talked to a local broker and she confirmed that *the high end is dead*.

But she told me that the low end, the 400k stuff is going bananas. She said, "These homes are selling in like one day."

"But who wants to live in 1,600 square feet?" I asked.

"More like 1,400, if you're lucky," she corrected me.

My general rule of thumb is that if something is selling *like in one day*, it's the last thing in the world I want to be buying. Supposedly foreclosures under 100k are getting scooped up that fast as well in places like Cape Coral, FL.

Again, I say wait. For a long term investment/gamble you want to buy junk that's bidless, not bidfull.

There's plenty of supply on the way. Just wait.

Recently there's been this ridiculous run to bid up stocks, *cheap foreclosures*, and chicken-shack homes in places like Hingham. I guess the bear market stock rally, the warm weather, lower interest rates (for the creditworthy), and hopeful delusion are ruling the day.

People are getting complacent again - especially the big banks. Look at this chart that Calculated Risk put up today:



Now it's great that banks can essentially borrow at 0% in the short-term and lend at 5% to mortgagers. I mean it's great that they can generate some sorely-needed profits that way. But do they really have to squander the windfall of cheap money by selling 4.5% mortgages as they've been doing this past month?

In other words, look at the chart, they've reduced the *spread* on their mortgage lending back to normal levels. I submit they should not be dropping mortgage rates; what they're doing is arrogant; and it's what got them in trouble in the first place.



Can y'all believe they said that ???!!! link

Drudge also had, which I can't find now, a pic of Ben Bernanke giggling on his site the other day.

So everyone is giddy about *refi's* - the banks, some real estate lawyers I know, probably appraisers,....

They need to bear in mind, that once the US Treasury market starts to fall apart - and that could be very soon as I'm now out of my short - there might not be any more refi's for a decade.

A Sign?

Recently I had the manager of a local burrito joint, that I frequent, tell me that I was the only person they ever saw clean up their table thoroughly.

When I'm finished eating, without fail I throw everything in the trash and I wipe down all the tables and chairs with a wet napkin.

I'll also get onto the floor and sweep up the rice that missed my daughter's mouth so, okay, I may go a little overboard.

But does a sense of basic responsibility in fact make me an alien?

I get scolded by my wife for scraping and stacking plates at waited tables. I figure, why not make it easy for the server/bus-girl? Why have them leaning over and precariously juggling messy plates and whatnot over my head? Plus, I like to have room to put my *elbows on the table*.

And there's something wrong WITH ME?

If I'm at a store and decide against purchasing something....I tote it all the way back to where it belongs.

Meanwhile, my wife (and MIL) just drop it on any shelf or rack and justify their laziness with *we are sustaining jobs* - I kid you not!

What do you do?

And what does this say about me and y'all - and our differences?

Killing Trees In Furtherance Of A Ponzi

And, of course, *Federal aid* is created out of thin air. Or, more accurately, from felling trees and printing paper money!

Full story here.

The State of Massachusetts predicted $19.5 billion in tax revenue this year. Already, they are saying to expect a number more like $17.7 billion. I don't know about y'all, but I'll take the *under* there.

Here's the money quote from State Budget To Be 'Doom and Gloom' For Years To Come:

Current spending for this fiscal year also must be dramatically scaled back. Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill said state spending will outpace incoming state revenues by $335 million in May and $717 million in June. Even if the state stopped paying all of its employees, Cahill said, it would not be enough to solve the current year's budget problems.

Trades - May 7th, 2009

I'm trying to not look at my brokerage account these days; in fact, I'm trying to not even look at the market AT ALL. I'm down big at the moment and hopefully have the capital to ride out the pain. Plus, I figure if those sheeple mutual fund investors can *not look* at their statements, then why can't I, right?

The other day I dumped my palladium at $226.00 or so. That I bought around $390.00 last year. This trade was made reluctantly to free up some funds in my futures account. Watch that thing skyrocket to $1,000 now!

I dumped my ultrashort long-term Treasury position at I think 49.75. This was a good sized position and I figure if TBT runs 20 points, I should do okay with my SRS and FAZ *investments*. Ideally I'd hold it but I needed to take dough some off the table. Hopefully, I'll be able to re-enter TBT at decent prices in the future.

And I did add to FAZ yesterday at 5.26 or so. My break-even must be around $14 now.

I also dumped my small DELL position this week (sold at 12.20?). That was a profitable trade I initiated in the fall/winter. Again, I'd look up and relay the precise details, but that would entail logging into my account and seeing the ugly balance.

Provoked Crankiness

So the other day I had it out with a deranged woman over her dog. I came extremely close to calling the police.

You see, at the playground where I take my kids daily, there're always piles of dog poop. And everyday, I'm there scrounging for a stick to flick the logs *out of bounds*. Otherwise, one of my kids will surely step (or fall!) in it.

On Tuesday, I espied a rather non-skinny woman letting her dog run loose there. It was raining so playing kids were scarce. The mutt had no leash on and I witnessed it defecate on the grass. The owner did nothing. There was no *bag in hand* - no movement to assess - no nothing. Clearly, based on the size of the dog it had to be the serial culprit!

So I started walking over to her, hollering, "Do you have your dog crap on this grass here everyday?"

She responded in the negative and her mongrel actually charged me with advertised teeth. It's amazing how well canines can accurately sense hostility.

The next day, sure enough, she was back with the dog. I must have walked toward the phone and turned around 3 times. I wussed out on my promise to call the cops on her unleashed, unscooped pooper.

Note the warm weather is now here and soon enough I won't be able to flick the *softies*. A showdown is imminent and it will be blogged.

I've written a bunch on *deranged dog people* - click here to find most of it.

Marginalizing Mish Math

General Motors is effectively wiping out its shareholders via dilution. The stock is currently trading at $1.66 per share. Here's what Mike Shedlock, aka Mish, wrote yesterday:

If GM's demise comes on or before May 15, then holders of 60,671 PUTs will see the value soar from 3 cents to 99 cents equating to a gain of 3000+%. I am not recommending this play, but I sure as hell would not want to be the writer of those options.

Ah....excuse me, Mish,

If 60,671 puts lose .96....that's only a total dollar loss of a paltry $5.8 million. I'm quite sure those Moronic *option writers* can handle it. Not to mention many of them may have *spread* them off, or shorted the underlying against them.

You see, OPM ("other people's money") traffickers like Mish look at everything in terms of *yield* and *percentage move*.

3000+% move!!!!!

Oooooohhh. Wow.

Meanwhile proprietary traders like me see everything in terms of *gross dollars*.

Who Found Whom?

Here's the song in question.

That chick commenting above (on YouTube) is hardly the only one to misinterpret the lyrics of The Fray's *You Found Me*.

The other night I heard a radio DJ wax sentimental about the song too. He was also under the impression that the song was about a dude and a broad in love. You'd think a *professional* would have a cursory knowledge of his craft, no?

In fact, *You Found Me* is about finding or being found by God. It's about religion which, depending on personal definitions, stands in contradistinction to amorous heat.

Mrs. C-Nut laughed at how backwards these people could be. But I said, in fairness, 99% of all secular music is indeed about *romantic love*; it's actually as safe a presumption as one could make on this planet.

Not to mention, my wife has a horrible ear for lyrics. She rewrites classic songs, all the time, with no remorse whatsoever. Just go ahead and try and correct her.

I myself am not a music buff. I'd never know the gist of *You Found Me* if I hadn't heard it on Christian Rock radio station down in Naples this past winter.

While we do have to bear the Beastie Boys and whatnot, there's still a ton of good secular music out there with some pretty darn poetic lyrics. No doubt future generations studying our culture will scratch their collective head trying to label us as easily as we have preceding ones.

Here's another decent song with provocative lyrics.

That one line in there, "Dad I'm big but we're smaller than small
In the scheme of things, well we're nothing at all"....reminds me of Will Durant's line:

In any event it is good that a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

Shocking!

The following is on Drudge right now:



Anyone watching the show won't be surprised in the least. There's no way Paula's queer behavior over the years could ever be fully explained by mere *airheadedness*.

Here's the story.

Next up, the New York Times will admit it's been addicted to deliberate distortion.....but for decades.

Help, Please

Here's why the internet is so freakin' unbelievable. I was watching some golf clips on YouTube and I took notice of some guy who commented on another's swing. Clearly, this dude had an advanced knowledge of the golf swing. So I emailed him a video of me splitting the fairway and asked for his opinion. In particular, I asked how I could limit my left arm from bending during the swing. This was his rapid response:

From what i see from Face on....you got one hell of a swing. I wouldn't mess with it too much. The "faults" you have described (in my opinion) are idiosyncrasies...not really faults. With that being said, your left arm clearly bends because...
-your middle does not move correctly
-your lack of wrist set (leverage)
As a result, your left arm bends to create a secondary leverage source (energy). Therefore, your left arm has to bend to make the backswing feel powerful. This is a short answer.
Now...your wrists do not set properly because of your grip
-left hand
-palmy
-lack of pressure points
-lack of trigger finger
-Right hand
-lack of dish angle
-lack of pressure points
-lack of trigger finger.
Your middle does not wind properly because...
-your right hip is a bit high at address
-lack ground pressure (you could be flat footed) so there isn't much to wind against.
You see, there would be quite a few things you would have to do to remedy the bent left arm and still have your swing feel powerful. You have a great impact and deliver the club on a good angle so I wouldn't get caught up in in what you don't like about your swing....look at what you do right......there is a hell of a lot of good things going on there. Great job.

WOW!!!

Now I've been playing golf for 20+ years....but this kid gave me a decent analysis and alerted me to some aspects of my swing that I'd never really thought about before.

Professional advice all for the bargain price of ZERO....+ a sincere thank you.

Gotta love that deflationary juggernaut - the internet!

How much are you using it to enhance your life?

Economic Transactions Masquerading As Love Marriages

I generally don't like to do this, but here I'm just going to link to an interesting column penned by a woman whose fiancée is trying to get her to sign a pre-nup - Will You Marry Me.

I think most of us marry within our *socio-economic tribe* so even if one half of a marriage brings a bit more financially to the table, the amount usually isn't too problematic.

But there are plenty of instances of trust-funded wealthy people marrying below their station. And in those cases the pre-nup idea most often comes from the *parents*. Think about it, if one is Moronic enough to marry down....then in all likelihood they are too clueless to think about *asset protection*.

Okay, that last line was a jest.

Now read this article - The Chilling Effect Of State's Divorce Laws - for some horror stories on alimony.

Though I haven't researched it much, I'll be that if I did, I'd come down against state-sanctioned marriage for both verts and inverts.

For the record, I'd never sign a pre-nup - not even if I was marrying Bill Gates' daughter.

Yeah, my ego is that big and my brain that small.

Maybe He'll Start His Own Bank?

Have y'all been watching The Office this season?

If you haven't, one plot development has been the firing of Michael Scott and his venture into building a competing *paper company*.

Anyways, I couldn't help but think of the show and the Michael Scott Paper Company when walking past the following sign in Charlestown, MA last night:



I've written quite a bit on the embattled Moron who heads Bank of America.

Click here to find much of it.

Second Career Roadkill

At around 11:45pm, on my way back from the Celtics playoff game last night, I espied a rodent making its way gingerly across the street not one hundred yards from my driveway.

Timing it perfectly, I flattened it under the right front tire of my Earch-scorching Ford Explorer.

Then I spun around and snapped a picture of it so this time there'd be proof.

If y'all remember from My First Roadkill, all evidence of my kill quickly and mysteriously vanished.

In fact, by 7am this morning, I noticed down the street that last night's roadkill was eerily gone as well.

These local Chinese restaurateurs must do a *dawn sweep* of the roadways.

Speaking...

....of poor choices.

Yesterday, which was a Sunday, I made the unwise decision to linger at a bar after a stupid trivia charity event. I ended up leaving at 12:45am, seven hours after my first beer!

This is not the way to start the week - especially considering I have two very sick kids at the moment.

Then just now my buddy called up informing me he had an extra playoff ticket to tonight's 8pm Celtics/Magic playoff game. Of course I have to go to that. They better freakin' not get blown out.

This is going to be one long, painful week for me - even before considering the continued bear market rally.

Meredith Whitney On The Banks

More Infighting Boston Morons

First, read this post - Self-Segregating, Hypocritical, Bigoted Anuses - that I penned nearly one year ago.

Apparently, the Anuses are having problems with their financial slavemaster.

West Coast Tom just emailed me a news story on these *holes* from last week's Boston Herald - click here to read.

I know it was only last May, but I simply cannot believe WCT remembered that old post; I certainly didn't. In fact, I've been so prolific that I can't recall much of what I've written. Often times, I peruse Marginalizing Morons to educate myself!

Homeschooling Update - May 3, 2009

So PrinceC-Nut is just about 4.5 years old now and his outside-the-school education is rapidly getting more interesting.

We're on the final book, Sentences, of the Kumon *pre-school* series. It's pretty amazing that he's already learning about what nouns, adjectives, and verbs are.

I've been pushing his email a bit. We write a few lines on paper to a relative, then he has to log into his Gmail account and type the message in and send it off. This way he gets responses from his aunts and grandmothers (grandpa is not *online* - even though he's 62 years older than his grandson!) - which he can read himself. I figure since this is how modern day adults correspond, then why not get him started on a skill he'll utilize for the rest of his life, right?

Also, more generally speaking, I consider composition a core component of education. Ideally, I think students should everyday do some reading, some computation, they should be composing, and even doing some oral presentation. To that I'd add that the well-rounded student ought to regularly be *creating* and, of course, *working*. These endeavors remain goals within themselves - almost regardless of the particular context or subject.

Next up for my son on the math side will be division (How do we split up 12 cookies in our family?) and my favorite - geometry. Although I haven't figured out how to proceed formally as of yet. Apparently Kumon is going to release in July a new series on geometry but I don't want to sit around and wait. By then we'll probably be studying continuous functions.

But as I said at the outset of this post, the learning curve is getting pretty steep and our educational options are broadening. My son can sit and read by himself now. And this opens up many, many avenues. Heck, he grabbed the macaroni and cheese box the other day and hollered out the instructions.....telling me I needed *6 cups of water*, etc.



One thing that he's really into, on the toy side, is what he calls *Polish Legos*. They aren't actually Polish; they are called Knex. I jokingly called them Polish Legos when he got his first box only because the young lady, a friend of ours, who gave them to the Prince is 105% Polish.

Anyways, these are far beyond conventional Legos. They are tiny and there are numerous types of interlocking pieces. My son can now follow the instructions and build these very complicated spaceships, motorcycles, and whatnot. It excites me that he's now mature enough to hunker down, concentrate, figure out, and deal with the frustration that comes with intricate projects (and when one's sister comes by and spitefully destroys his works in progress!).

I've also given my son free rein with my digital camera - only partially because I bought a new one. In fact the above pic is his work. Of course he absolutely loves it, which 4 year old wouldn't? But he's learned, mostly by himself, how to center targeted images in the viewfinder, that he must keep steady, how to shoot video footage, and we're even working on how to upload to the computer. Meanwhile his agemates are watching Elmo....

When I pull out of the driveway, I ask my kids which roads to take. In other words, I say, "we're going to the library...how am I going to get there?" We recite street names as we drive by them. And I usually quiz them on which of their friends live where. Ideally, I would like my son to hold the GPS device in his hands so he could get a firmer grasp of maps and geography....but then his little sister would be demanding equal time.

I also make he and PrincessC-Nut try to remember where we park the car; and I ask them to find it before we start walking back to it. I'm just forever thinking about adding new responsibilities to my brood. And why wouldn't I?

The sooner they grow up and become productive individuals, the lighter my load, and the sooner I can relax.

Alarmism - Big Business And More!

Must-read cynicism on the so-called swine flu pandemic.

Swine flu alert clears old stock of Tamiflu

Minivan Makeover

Somebody looked into my filthy, trash-ridden Suburban today and recommended the following video:



For the right demo, it's pretty darn funny.

I tell you, it's amazing how roomy my Earth-scorching car seems after the rare clean-up!

Stay-At-Home DILF Competition

This is pure anecdotage but....I'm seeing a whole lot more *dads* out there in my territory these days. At ballet classes, karate, at the playgrounds, etc. It really just used to be me. (My record was set this January down in Naples, FL where I went to an open house at MyGym where it was me and 34 *moms*!)

The new supply of SAHDs must be a Greater Depression *lost job* thing, no?

And yeah, you guessed it. That *dad* above is from Cambridge, MA. Just look at the color scheme he's got the poor child in!

I generally make my wife leave out their clothes for the day.

Palladium Update

Last year I bought palladium at $390 right before it dropped to around $170. I still have it and it's hanging out near $220 at the moment.

Palladium is Jim Rogers favorite metal - fundamentally. And it's also the favorite of the blogger who writes Stockology.

For a good update on the palladium market see his recent post The True Rationale of Commodities Supply And Demand and also be sure to poke around on his blog and hit some of his numerous hyperlinks.

Palladium might become an alternative energy play from *cold fusion* - see link above.

And there are some investment products about to make the metal easier to manipulate buy.

Basically, just read this guy's other posts:

The Russian Checkmate On Platinum And Palladium Is Looming and The Latest On Precious Metals And Commodities.

Also read this story - Getting in Platinum and Palladium Ahead of the ETF Launch.

What's interesting about that article its mention of industrial opponents to palladium ETFs - in particular Big Auto. If that doesn't tell you to get long, I don't know what would!

I really wish I had free capital at the moment. If I did, I'd buy a whole lot more palladium and sock it away for the long haul.

Comeuppance Imminent?

The Boston Globe’s largest union is pleading with the New York Times [NYT] to extend today’s midnight deadline to come up with $20 million in cuts to keep the paper open, even as Publisher P. Stephen Ainsley told staff yesterday "there is much work yet to be done.".

The Boston Newspaper Guild last night asked for the stay of execution because it says management mistakenly counted $4 million of previous salary cuts among a menu of savings options from which the union could choose, the Globe reported.

The Guild, which learned of the gaffe Wednesday, wants more time to negotiate new concessions to satisfy the New York overlords and keep the embattled broadsheet operating, according to the Globe

How knee-slapping ironic would it be if the Boston Globe met its demise on May Day? In case you didn't know, today is a Commi holiday known as International Workers' Day.

My fingers are crossed....but I'm sure the inevitable will be dragged out, somehow.

However, I am a patient man and there's a reason there's no such thing as *fast torture*.

The best thing for the Globies would be to be shown the door today. So, ironies aside, I can't root for that. Let them subsist on *hope*, the drug du jour.