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Saturday, December 14, 2002

BREAKING NEWS   Cheney Nabbed Tunneling To White House   WASHINGTON (AP). FBI investigators, responding to resident complaints of mysterious explosions rocking the area surrounding the US Naval Observatory, the residence of Vice President Dick Cheney, have detained him for questioning.     Initial reports suggest he was caught tunneling up to a White House refrigerated vault containing the vial of smallpox vaccine intended for the Commander-In-Chief. A similar vial, with the label shown above, was found in his possession. Further details are unavailable at this time.   10:50:13 PM    comment []

Know something? After 4 glasses of wine, I have no trouble at all understanding this blog entry from Michel Vuijlsteke. Fantastisch, magnifiek, groots. Kissinger dient zijn ontslag in als voorzitter van de 11 septembercommissie. Als er rechtvaardigheid was in wereld, zou hij voor een internationaal gerechtshof moeten komen voor al wat hij mispeuterd heeft in zijn leven.  12:16:33 AM  9:07:54 PM    comment []

The "Mother Of All Battles Mosque" First, the minarets. The outer four, each 140 feet high, were built to resemble the barrels of Kalashnikov rifles, pointing skyward. The inner four, each 120 feet high, look like the Scud missiles that Iraq fired at Israel in 1991 during the Mother of All Battles, known to Americans as the Persian Gulf war. At their peak, these inner minarets are decorated with red, white and black Iraqi flags. ("Fair Use" courtesy of the NYT) The one thing that resembled comedy about the first Gulf War was the public dialogue, a prelude to a schoolyard fist fight, between Bush père and mère Saddam. Remember "Line in the sand!", "Baby Milk Factory", and the unforgettably florid "Mother Of All Wars"? This time all they're giving us is Rumsfeldian neospeak like "Weapons Of Mass Destruction" or "Axis Of Evil". Saddam is silent, not even doing the reaction shots. It's like Analyze That, or any sequel: weak plot, undeveloped insider humor, scenery-chewing, and product placement. Maybe Dubya is upset that Saddam had all the good lines in the original. 8:04:31 PM    comment []

Nasdaq Sheds Tech Ever wonder why the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and DJ30 conistently outperform most investors? It's because the indices dump their losers and replace them with high-momentum stocks, without implied tax consequenes. A mutual fund manager can dump the dogs too, but about this time every year many funds have to declare tax losses and (rarely recently) capital gains. What if the manager bought WIDG at $10, you bought into his fund when it was $100, and stayed with it after the manager sold at $20?  You'll have an obvious NAV loss, but will still pay taxes on the fund's capital gains.from the time of purchase when they are declared, usually this time of the year. You'll also be hit on dividends. Check prospecti for the effective dates and don't be left holding the bag for the manager! Father Christmas may look more like the Grim Reaper if you do. It's probably too late and unlikely, unless you're very smart or lucky, this year. Next year is a different story. It will either equal the 4 consecutive years of losses leading to The Great Depression, in which case we're all screwed; or it will be a year when most funds will have capital gains. If you're sitting on a loss, it might be better to plan taking them early next year, readjust, and write your Republican congressman backing him on their plan to increase the $3,000 capital loss deductions. It's a bet against a depression, which only loses about once a century. Even in a depression, like 1932-38, there can be a bull market. The current law is stupid for taxable losses. It encourages the "little guy" to hold on to losing positions well past the point of no return. All your realized gains are taxable but only a piddling amount of your realized losses are deductible. The only arena where the average investor is on equal footing with the corporates is with tax-deferred accounts, like IRA or 403(b) - no tax on gains, no deductions for losses. That = flexibility = good. Anyway, it's good to see Whole Earth Foods in the Nasdaq 100. That's the place where I bought the Marcona Almonds that helped me survive the ice storm. It's where they had genuine Italaian Mortadella within days after the import ban was lifted. They have capicola, prosciutto, they have pancetta. People need to eat. 2:48:01 PM    comment []

Mistakes were made... Today was to be the day I helped Liz hang pictures, so early on I put together a box with a cordless drill, cordless screwdriver, anchors, hammer, and screws. The stepladder wouldn't fit into the box, so I left it in the closet on the deck. Then I called Liz and she was still asleep. She has errands later, so the pictures go up tomorrow. I opened some old mail, a letter from Broderbund. I'd been wondering what happened to my order for PrintShop 15. There inside was the order form and check to Gourmet magazine and a nice note saying I probably sent it to the wrong place. So, I printed up another envelope and fired it off. Checking through my records, I noticed that no charge had gone through to either Broderbund or Tiger Direct, where I thought I had ordered a UPS on Wednesday. First Broderbund, ordered online. They charged "predicted sales tax"...hmmm. While going through the records, I noticed extra charges from BJ's Warehouse whenever I used my ATM there. Not insignificant charges - more like $12 on a $50 purchase. Then I recalled that someone at work told me they charged fees on ATM transactions, but he didn't say "outrageous fees". Live and learn. It's useless to complain, I'd simply become more and more angry until they turned me in to Ashcroft or worse, into Ashcroft That's the beauty of a free-market economy - they have machines that screw you, minimum wage employees to take the heat for it, and mechanisms going into place to make sure nobody "gets weird" about it. [Update 12/15/02 - Duh! - I bought gas there on the days I had ectra charges, they didn't rip me off at all! Glad I kept my mouth shut] I think everything is taken care of now, except for the non-urgent UPS order. I don't really need that until next month, when I'll be going to peaceful American-loving Korea and would like to be able to blog by email. Every day since I applied for the visa, things have escalated into insanity over there. The travel agent who booked the flights and hotels for me (Japan is also on the itinerary) said that a visa was "not necessary, but highly recommended at this time." That was a month ago, was she psychic? My business traveling companion wants to rent a car and drive up to the DMZ, where he was stationed in the 70s. No, I say, not at this time. 1:33:44 PM    comment []

One Turkey In Bondage! Total time = 1 hour. I wasted a whole hour deboning a turkey breast and sewing the damn thing back together again, so it's completely surrounded by its own skin. While it was laid out flat, skin down, I salted, peppered, and gelatined it. That's Knox Unflavored Gelatin, which will help it stick together. The sewing was improvised, trying to compensate for the chest cavity. That was work. When I was done with that, I tied two circumference strings around it, turned it over and, presto!, it looked like J-Lo's butt! Don't know if I have the patience to do the other turkey breast the same way. Debone, okay, but I have some stockinette bags left. The drawback of those is that they pull off huge chunks of skin when you remove them, making the finished turkey breast unattractive. Pluses: they are convenient and quickly adapt to shape the ham or turkey inside to maximum compression. Just slide the turkey breast to the bottom, twist the excess stockinette to draw it taut, and pop a couple of hog rings on the twisted part to hold it, tie it to a smoke stick, and it's ready for the smoker. The spring-loaded hog ring pliers are recommended over the manual ones because they allow you to crimp the hog ring with one hand, while securing the stockinette with the other. 12:58:44 PM    comment []

I might have made a beginner's mistake myself with Johnny Horton's imagery in Sink The Bismarck. A glance at the lyrics of Horton's first Top 40 hit, The Battle Of New Orleans, gives insight into the actual mechanism involved in firing projectiles out of animals – they are fired from the mouth! Sorry for the bum steer!  Here are the touchstone lyrics: We fired our cannon 'til the barrel melted down. So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round. We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind and when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind. 7:41:50 AM    comment []