Is it any surprise? Tell me there is no schadenfreude here:

THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG

What would an electoral draw look like, I wonder? Well I found this and got to work and came up with this. Possible, yes? Then what? I am not the only one asking this question. It seems this is already considered in, of all places, our very own Constitution in the 12th Amendment. So if the matter of who shall become the next Nuclear Triggerman fails to be decided by the people, then it goes to the Congress.

Not to worry, then, Congress will take care of it. There, I feel better already. =)

First week-end in a month not on any kind of pain-killers and let me just say I have little urge to abuse the meds. Amazing how truly whacked out that stuff makes you. I looked over some code I wrote in the past month and spent the whole of this AM turning it into something that someone may actually want to look at.

Speaking of gunk, the missus and I went to a 'psychic fair' on Sunday. It was all in good fun. We didn't get our palms read or anything but there was this vendor selling footbaths there. Yes, you read that right. Apparently these footbaths are rather special; they suck toxins out of your body via the feet through using negatively charges ions in the water. The idea is really very simple; bad stuff in the body tends to be positively charged and floating loose, since the body doesn't really want to hold onto it. The negative ions attract the positive ones attached to the bad stuff. Since we are about 90% water, the bad stuff just shoots through us down to where the positive ions are and out it comes through the pores of the feet. The picture below is what my footbath looked like after 20 mins.


Pretty disgusting, huh? So after returning home, I started surfing. I decided I needed to use one of these things regularly. The machines they were selling (of course) cost ~$750. Via the magic power of eBay, I found the same thing for $99 and promptly ordered it. I'm tellin' ya, how can you make money in a marketplace where all it takes is one jerk to come along and spoil your margins? I figured if spas and other such places were charge $20-$50 per session, it made a lot more sense to buy the machine rather than rent it.

Other than that, not much news to report. Oh yeah, the stock market is in the tank. But that isn't news to anyone who doesn't live under a rock.

Saw this article on the propensity to take offense, give offense, and so on. Slate and felt it was good enough to post up here. It has a lot of good observations and draws for various POVs.

Well it's been quite a past couple weeks. In the last three days of my honeymoon, an "old friend" came to visit and accompanied us back to the U.S.: my lower back. You see, at some point back in 2001 a disc slipped but after about two weeks and a surgical consult, it stopped being a bother. Now fast-forward to 2008. While I was enjoying my first 10 days of married life, the disc decided it wanted to slip some more. Only it did more than slip, it fairly went "on holiday", as they say in the UK.

The picture below is a phone camera snap of the medial plane body line MRI scan I had a mere 5 days ago. I added the red circle. This is pointing out the place the disc (L5-S1) should be. But as you can see, it isn't there. At all. In fact the only way you can see this disc is by an umbilical plane MRI scan (sorry, I didn't snag that one). It looked a lot like what happens when a kid piles on all sorts of stuff onto a hamburger at a picnic and then decides to squish it down to a size he can fit into his mouth. You get the idea.

So, for most of this month I have been using a cane to walk around and taking the kinds of pain killers I

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hoped I'd never have to take, at least not until I was drooling on myself and talking to people I haven't seen in over 50 years, who aren't really there. So all I need at this point is a pipe and I'd look a lot like Henry Fonda. Anyway, today I had my first attack pass at this mess. It was an injection of lidocaine and some kind of glucocorticoid steroid (the procedure is discussed here). The short version is this: they stick a really sharp needle into your lower back and pump it full of dye contrast, lidocaine, and the steroid.

That's it. For a 1-minute (or less) procedure, it feels like it's taking an hour. And let me just advise you to do all you can to avoid being in a position in life where you have to pull your pants down and let 5 total strangers get a full and uncensored view of your butt without at least making them buy you a drink first. =) To add to it, they then pump drugs into your back and boot you out the door! It's either a really bad nightmare or a typical party scene at the Playboy Mansion, take your pick.

So, I am told I will know within the next two weeks if this procedure was successful at quelling this recurrence sufficiently or if "further measures" will need to be taken. Fun, fun fun!

I am grateful for this one thing though: I live in a place where I can actually get medical treatment, albeit not without some struggle with my insurance company. [Once I convinced them that I was both sincere in my expressions of discomfort and not looking for a goldbricking excuse, they became a lot more cooperative.] All over the world, people with a problem like this just plain have to live with it. How they do it now, and how they did it back when there wasn't much in the way of health care available, I cannot imagine. The idea of living day in and out with that kind of pain and nearly no way to reduce it is almost unthinkable.

And with that, I think I'll go back to bed. :)

Good news, bad news. Good news is, I found my GPS! It had been hiding from me in my car. Bad news is, I reinjured by lower back somehow so now I am hobbling around on a cane until my MD and I can make a plan. I am hoping it doesn't entail surgery but if it did, I am glad to know surgery on the lower back has come a long way since my old man had his for a herniated disc (which I also have) back in 1982 or thereabouts.

I want to plug this product: http://gravitydefyer.com/ After seeing it in an airline catalog on our trip back from Mexico, I knew it was meant for me. I got a pair just yesterday and even with my current hip-pain from my disc issue, I can tell it makes walking and standing feel so much better. I can only imagine what sort of time scores we'd see in the Olympics for running events if these were allowed.

Oh yeah, "the market", of course: I am in nothing now but some metals. Nationalizing the larger banks (no such thing as 'partial nationailzation', just like there is no such thing as 'partially pregnant') will have a very bad effect on the value of the USD. Unfortunately there seems to be no currency-based safe haven, as the Euro has the same problem and the underlying currencies (the mark, pound, peso, etc.) of course do as well. What advice would I give if I were asked "Gee, what do you think I ought to do now with my cash?" Other than metals, I really don't know. But I'll think about it some. There may be some opportunity in some parts of the US to go into real estate successfully, but real estate isn't my forté. So I'll have to sleep on it I guess. But I better not sleep too long, not in this market. ;)

This may well go down in history as the most miserable week in stock market history. The Dow was off 655 pts from opening not long ago. Here at close, the my non-delayed-reporting trading account says the Dow is still down OVER 600 pts. I remember a George Carlin (GRHS) comedy routine I listened on our old stereo record player (yes, wayyy back then...) where he did a joke-newscast. One of his lines was "The Dow took a little dip today as it dropped 600 points." The audience laughed. Well, when he said that he probably didn't think such a thing would ever happen. Well, it has. It happened today. As I sit here and write this at around 4:10, the Dow is still falling. (Trading information is still coming in, so the actual close value won't be reported for some time, maybe another 1/2 hour or so.) It is going south however, not north. Not even fluctuating. Right now it's down 675 pts! I can't believe it.

On a more amusing note, it seems I have lost my GPS/PDA. I am pretty sure I left it someplace public and someone has walked off with it. So while this is annoying it is not the end of the world and there are other fish in the sea. So I went fishing and decided on a model I wanted that fit my price range and what I am looking for in features. Of course one place I looked was on amazon.com. One of the affiliate sellers had an unusually low price-- but then I saw the shipping cost. Yep, it's that $155 shipping charge that gets ya! So I decided to order from a different source. =)

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Rats, just missed the trend! Oh well, guess I have to make a living the old-fashioned way...

Confessions of an English gigolo

Vindicated!

Sorry, Fido, It’s Just a Guy Thing

Dear Readers:

That's a joke, sort of. Anyway, right to it: I said if I changed my outlook or allocations in this market I would promptly confess. Even as I write this, I am in process of setting SELL orders on damn near every pick I have. The market is now off the leash. Without a solid lending and credit basis for business, oil and commodities cannot even appreciate. Gold and metals stocks haven't done what they "should" be doing. [They are appreciating, but nothing like what they "should" be doing.] The market is, collectively speaking, behaving irrationally, and there are forces at work here that no single person is able to quantify -- by this I mean the impact of CDSs and other such beasties and the effect the failure to make good on them is having. So now is when I cash in my chips and wait for the madness to pass; I want to be sure I have some chips to re-enter the game with when people come to their senses.

When will this happen? Got me. Crazy is as crazy does. Could be any time between now and 2100 for all I know.

And with that, I join the ranks of so many others who tried to figure out this market but did not do so (at least not apparently, anyway). Stay tuned!

OK, here they are: the magic moments... yes, I am wearing a kilt.