Stream of Consciousness Thursday
I'd forgotten about this short-lived feature. It garnered some boos and some laughs, and I like laughs, like that scene from Mary Poppins ("I love to laugh. Hahaha"), but that weightlessness stuff reminds me of astronauts, and I hear they have to wear diapers, which always freaked me out. I guess the amazing torque upon take-off is pretty bad, but I handled the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point without any problems, and that was a fun trip with my kids back in 2007. We've taken lots of day trips--to the Dunes, to Notre Dame, to the zoo, to smaller amusement parks--but that trip to Cedar Point was the best one. No one vomitted, which is good, because that could trigger a vomit chain reaction and that's worse than a genital-kicking contest at boot camp. I don't like boots. Even when it's cold outside, I'd rather put on two pairs of socks, a pair of tennis shoes, and a foot-sized condom than a pair of boots. They always bother my heal and I can't moonwalk in them. Yes, I can moonwalk. A kid named Jeff Wheeler taught me how when we worked at K-Mart. I was a stock boy there for three years during high school and college. I liked that job. They even let me do blue light specials, which I spiced up considerably, though the manager called me to his office after I introduced a blue light special on baby clothes with a gravelly, down-and-dirty voice, "Attention you K-Mart mothers!" A co-worker that I hadn't seen in twenty years found me on me on Facebook earlier this year. The first thing he wrote, "Attention you K-Mart mothers!" It was funny stuff.
So Funny It's Scary
One of the more humorous things I've read, if it didn't point to such a huge systemic problem:
The Federal Reserve apparently can't account for $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions.
When Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) asked Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman of the Federal Reserve some very basic questions about where the trillions of dollars that have come from the Fed's expanded balance sheet, the IG didn't know.
Worse, nobody at the Fed seems to have any idea what the losses on its $2 trillion portfolio really are.
What's $9 trillion when you can digitally create $90 trillion in moments? What's $9 trillion when the money is mere paper, with no more substance--in tangible terms--than me typing out "$9,000,000,000,000" on this blog?
Money is a tricky thing because money is psychological. Like most things psychological, it's saner when tied to something tangible: they say gardening helps a person spiritually (can't say I've experienced that yet, but tens of thousands of monks over the years have) because it let's him stick his hands in the dirt, to ground himself, to give roots to his soul. The same goes for roots in a hometown, for family connections. Nothing is safe when it's loose. And fiat money is loose (in metaphysical terms) and American is making its fiat money even looser (in quantitative terms).
Never knew such things existed outside of the academies: tuition-free colleges.
Get a Life: Dan Coulter managed to get Moby Dick in its entirety on Twitter. It took 12,849 Tweets over nine months. (A bot did the leg work, thank goodness.)
Turn it into a placard and make him wear it around his neck at his new home: The credit card bill is a 30-page study in conspicuous consumption. A quick scan shows a restaurant charge of more than $2,800, $2,000 in spending at a Parisian boutique and $441 at a gourmet bagel shop. The total amount due: more than $100,000. Eye-popping numbers aside, the American Express statement from January 2008 has taken on broader meaning because of the notorious name on the corporate account: Bernard L. Madoff.
