flick my bic

oh how i miss the good old days before the world became child and idiot proof. last night whilst watching deadwood i decided to enhance the viewing experience with a little fishing but my trusty old bic lighter was on the fritz. not to worry, i had planned ahead and bought a package of 5 new ones. a new bic lighter, if that isn't nice, what is?

well, it didn't turn out to be that fucking nice after all. first it took a while to find the package, i had already done a little fishing, and things were falling out off the shelf. i almost knocked a good pile of fish onto the floor. finally, i found the new lighters and the fucking things wouldn't work. after a few moments of being perplexed as only a seasoned fisherman can be, i figured out that there was a safety ring around the wheel. i looked at the package and there weren't any fucking instructions. woe was fucking me. luckily i knew my limitations and headed upstairs to the gas stove for fire. the lovely mrs myshkin was neither impressed nor sympathetic to my dilemma, situation normal. i decided to figure it out in the morning.

well, the morning came and even with needle nose pliers i still couldn't get that goddamned safety ring off. in the space of a few minutes i broke 2 lighters. on the third try, i had success but it came at the cost of 2 noble instruments of fire. i don't like child proof packaging almost as much as i don't like cops. well, it's not even close but you get the picture.

here's a little exercise on how and why we're fucked when it comes to cleaning up the environment, Why world can't agree over climate change. it's a nice little article that seems to perfectly state the human condition when it comes to making the tough choices.

i love you sons of bitches.

corruption or incompetence?

i imagine that most people are aware of obamacare's web site problems. it's a total clusterfuck. so it goes.

i was listening to a radio interview with john mcafee, the founder and ex president of mcafee anti virus software etc. he was CONTACTED BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION and asked for his help in fixing the malfunctioning web site. his thoughts on the whole clusterfuck were very eye-opening. he said the site was not fixable and to be fully functioning and secure it would have to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch, a process that could take a few years if it is to be done right.

now here's the part that tickled my funny bone. the company hired to build the site is a canadian company, cgi, that has a history of cutting corners and producing less than stellar results. mr mcafee further stated that cgi contracted out a large part of the contract to second rate programmers in india. so the big question is, is the obama administration corrupt or incompetent to have done such a thing? this web site might be one of the most complicated and high profile sites in the world and it also contains some of the most sensitive data on the planet including the personal medical history and financial data of people potentially numbering in the hundreds of millions and lets not forget this site will be processing data with financial implications reaching into the trillions! there is room for a lot of shenanigans when money changing hands may be counted in the trillions over time. so why in the fuck would they cut corners? once again, corruption or incompetence?

the reason this brought a wee smile to my face is the friction between the canadian prime minister and obumble. prime minister harper has been kissing obumble's ass for a few years trying to get keystone approved without any success, only receiving threats over the level of our carbon emissions. could this be harper's revenge? i doubt it but it's fun to think about.

i love you sons of bitches

the be goods

i've been a be good tanya fan for years and consider them to be a successful band. they've put out several albums and i've even purchased a few of them. so it was a great surprise when i learned that one of the band members WAS INVOLVED IN AN ACCIDENT and was in financial hardship. maybe i just fell off the turnip truck but i thought that members of a successful band would be rolling in the dough. not so it would seem. justin beiber has $100,000,000.00 and one of the be good tanyas can't come up with $10,000. something isn't right.

you might have to live in vancouver to appreciate this song but it's still an excellent piece of music:

but what the fuck, who ever said the world made sense? there has been huge opposition to the keystone pipeline with protesters saying the world will end and the pipeline will ruin the enviroment. well guess what, if the pipeline isn't built the oil will be moved by rail and RAILWAY ACCIDENTS HAPPEN, 42 people confirmed dead, 5 missing and a town burned down to rat shit. and a few days ago it happened again, CN TRAIN STILL BURNING. that's right, the accident occurred on october 19 and the son of a bitch is still burning. yes, kill those pipelines and build more trains.

one further comment on keystone. obama is still farting and tap dancing over whether or not to issue his royal decree giving consent to complete the pipeline or whether to mothball the fucking thing. there is lots of arguing over economic or enviromental impact but that's got fuck all to do with the decision. any investor worth his or her salt knew a few years ago that nothing would happen until after the 2014 mid term elections.

but fuck the piplelines and railroads, let's celebrate the genius of the be good tanyas!

i love you sons of bitches and my tires are still inflated!

tires

does anyone remember my tire saga of several months ago? to recap, i had a flat tire and my other 3 tires were not in great shape. the tire store strongly recommended that i buy 4 new tires and told me they couldn't fix the flat. i said no and told them to put air in my leaky tire. they came back and told me that they had one mismatched tire that they could sell me for $70. it was a deal so i had 1 new tire and 3 crappy tires. the plan was to drive it for a while then look for 3 good quality used tires. well, today things happened.

there's a used tire store that advertises excellent deals on used tires but it's a fair distance away. i called, gave them the size i was looking for and was told they had some fucking beauties. after a frustrating drive in heavy traffic i arrived at the tire store only to find the tires were shit. not only were they heavily worn, i could see where one had been repaired on the sidewall. the manager had a very good sun tan. i gave him a dirty look and walked out.

back home and onto craigslist. i find several ads that look interesting and call them all deciding on a little hole in the wall shop which told me they had 2 used michelins with 90% tread. i hopped in the mighty hyundai and was off to the shop. sure enough the michelins were very nice so i decided to buy them at which point he told me he had 2 of the same and would give me a little discount if i took all four. i had to think long and hard because that would mean dumping my almost new yokohama. i finally said yes and went for a walk whilst they installed the tires. when i returned they were installing the tires and i went to have a look. the second pair of tires were not michelins and they were not in great shape. a very heated discussion ensued where my excellent f bomb skills were put to good use. after a good argument i insisted that he replace my good yokohama and only sell me the original 2 michelins. it took him a while to agree. then he suddenly realized that he might have one good michelin and we went to have a look. it was a fucking beauty and all was right with the world. i ended up with 3 almost new michelins at a very good price. if not for my combative nature i would have been thoroughly fucked by the shady automotive shops.

i heard this song on cbc radio and the opening few lines really hit home:

i love you sons of bitches.

the spending fight explained

fuck me, it worked. usually i have a tough time reproducing a graph. i guess somebody up there likes me today. i often see pro obama articles that show some sort of a graph depicting him as the most frugal president in modern times and of course there are anti obama articles that depict him as satan incarnate spending the country into oblivion. so what's the real story?

who the fuck knows what the real story is but the graph above defines the problem quite clearly in my eyes. in 1963 discretionary spending was 67.6% of total spending but now the figure has shrunk to 24.2% and mandatory spending (health and social security) has risen to 61.8% from 25.4%. discretionary spending is the money the politicians can spend on pet projects, reward supporters, feather their own nests etc and mandatory spending is the stuff they have very little control over, the money must be spent. one of my favorite quotes is, "when the watering hole gets smaller, the animals get meaner." can you see where i'm heading?

in this case discretionary spending is the watering hole and it is getting smaller every year with no end in sight as the demographics change with the ratio of workers to retirees shrinking and obesity skyrocketing. simply put, there isn't enough free money to go around these days. in the past politics was like pro rasslin, a good show when the cameras are on but when the cameras go off the politicians would retreat to their inner sanctums, light their cigars then divide the money. there was enough to go around. now there is not enough to go around so they no longer can play nicely. the gloves are off.

another very interesting point on the graph is the percent spent on interest. at the present time it is at 14%, a doubling of the figure from 1963. right now interest rates are almost at zero. they could easily double or triple in the next few years. it's not a question of IF rates rise, it's a question of WHEN rates rise. every increase in interest spending, means a corresponding decrease in discretionary spending. and one day, the watering hole may be completely dry.

here is a graph of historic 10 year rates for mr bananas, i think there is room for an increase.

"With regards to Quantitative Easing, unlike Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, I believe that the spending isn’t about creating new jobs. It’s about the fact that the Federal Government spends about 1.2 trillion dollars more than they take in per year. They appear able to ‘hoodwink’ bond-buyers into buying about 750 billion dollars’ worth of bonds… which leaves them about 450 billion shy."

bottom line, we will be living in interesting times very soon. but all the preceding analysis might be total bullshit and we are the brink of enlightenment.

i love you sons of bitches.

lost at sea

what started out as a simple exercise turned into 10 minutes of frustration. i previously mentioned an excellent movie that i was watching and the gimmick de jour was to reveal this movie at a later date. well today is the later date and my profile has been updated to include the excellent new movie. somehow i ended up on the template bullshit and after 10 minutes it was time to move on. a simple template is now applied and if i ever get the motivation it will be replaced. who gives a shit, right?

the new movie that definitely deserves to be included in my top ten films is.....REPO MAN!

sat chit ananda! repo man brought me that elusive moment of bliss. real moments of bliss are few and far between for me and of course they cannot be forced or pre planned, they just happen. any movie with harry dean stanton is always going to be good but throw in a host of other odd ball characters and the hint of otherworldly occurrences and let the magic begin. this might just lead me to a harry dean stanton marathon.

the new deadwood discs arrived:

i haven't played a disc yet but the packaging is light years better than the packaging that came with those motherfucking nine iron discs i bought from e-bay. i bought these from amazon and they were nice enough to give me a free 30 day prime membership. i later found out that the free trial automatically becomes a $79 per year charge. these internet vendors don't miss a trick.

so i fell in love with repo man and the deadwood on blu-ray arrived, can life get any better? fuck yeah!

i found these this morning and they sound excellent:

i found them whilst walking ruby. the packaging was partly open but they looked and smelled new so a little alcohol wipe and bobs your uncle.

i love you sons of bitches!

the shutdown

i have an observation on the shutdown. it's pretty tiresome watching obama and the republicans argue over who is responsible for the little dust up. yesterday whilst watching the news i heard one pundit comment that "tapering" may be off the table due to the damage being inflicted on the economy by the government shutdown. then it hit me! this is exactly what obama wants, an excuse to continue the fed's bond purchasing spending spree!

in order to grease the wheels of the economy obama and his crew turned to quantitative easing a few years back, QE for short. well QE didn't exactly set the world on fire so they did it again, QE2. once again, quantitative easing did not jump start the economy and critics of quantitative easing had a field day. so that was the end of the road for quantitative easing. the next rabbit to be pulled out of the hat was "the feds" bond buying program, $85,000,000,000.00 per month with no fixed end date. the bond buying program is nothing but FUCKING QUANTITATIVE EASING! so obama gets to keep greasing the wheels and creating the illusion of an economic recovery. yes there is a recovery, a JOBLESS RECOVERY!

so that's my great revelation. maybe this whole shutdown bullshit is just an excuse to keep quantitative easing afloat and maintain the illusion of economic recovery. what happens when tapering (the slow wind down of quantitative easing) begins? theoretically interest rates will rise and that will not be good for obama and all the debt he has piled onto the already large stack. a cynic would say that obama just wants to keep all the balls in the air until his term expires and then it's the next guy's problem. in this case, the next guy might be his old nemesis, hillary!. so keeping the fed bond buying program going kills two birds with one stone for the current war monger in the white house. it keeps the system awash with money thus creating the illusion of economic recovery and it keeps the fuse lit on the economic time bomb facing the next president, probably hillary.

i apologize if i've bored anyone with that wee rant on quantitative easing when i really meant to bask in the glory of my latest acquisition, deadwood on blu-ray! i ordered them from amazon this morning. i saw an advertisement for the complete breaking bad series with 55 hours of commentary all packaged in a small replica oil barrel and decided to check out the price just to satisfy my curiosity. as if by magic, amazon knew i liked deadwood and offered me a great deal. i took the bait, hook line and sinker. oh yeah, the breaking bad shit was about $200 but who gives a shit, i'll soon have deadwood on blu-ray and the fun will begin anew.

so i got that going for me too, which is nice.

i love you sons of bitches.

life is good

life is good, let me count the ways:

1.baseball playoffs begin.

2.hockey season begins.

3.soccer playoffs around the corner.

4.canadian football playoffs around the corner.

5. nfl has begun and the shithawks are undefeated.

6. this is the big one, THE NEW CROP OF APPLES HAVE HIT THE SHELVES!. crisp fresh apples at a good price, if that isn't nice, what is?

life is still not good for my depressed buddy. for as long as i can remember he has hosted baseball playoff parties with unlimited amounts of alcohol and fish. no parties this year and he doesn't seem the least bit interested in the playoffs or the world series. this is his 4th or 5th bout of major depression and he has yet to seek medical help so my compassion for his plight is on the wane big time. he has moved on from yelling at me for not understanding that his problems are bigger than any other human's problems then threatening to commit suicide to a subdued, drowning in self-pity persona. there's a frump joke in here somewhere but it would be very heartless to go down that road, maybe next post. so it goes.

am i my brother's keeper. who the fuck knows, i'm going to eat fresh apples and watch sports for a few weeks then i might turn my attention to my brothers in arms.

once again i have to thank cbc radio for introducing me to very nice band. can anyone suggest a good internet radio station similar to CBC MUSIC RADIO?

i love you sons of bitches.