Four games of his I’ve seen so far, and to pretend that there’s a small difference between the value of a 2007 #1 pick and a #3 pick is ridiculous. This guy has the size, hustle and talent on both ends of the floor that can rightly be considered the pick of the century for whichever team ends up in a position to draft him first overall. A center of this magnitude amidst year after year of tweeners with “tremendous upside” is a special thing, and as I see it, the Celtics were acting accordingly until they came from behind in Houston the other night. At this very moment they’re ahead of the Knicks by 5 in the third quarter. Their only real competition for the highest odds of landing Oden are the Memphis Grizzlies, who are ahead in the loss column by one…actually, they’re behind by one as far as I see. Ahead of Utah by 4, a much better team than the Knicks, I’d bet on the Celts and Grizzlies being tied with 15 wins each by tomorrow.
With the luck of Celtics fans for the past twenty years or so, Philly will take a nosedive, we’ll get hot with Al Jefferson averaging 20-20 from here on out, end up with the #3 pick in the draft. Taking into consideration the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis, losing out on Tim Duncan in spite of having the worst record going into the lottery…anything is possible. I’m praying for a losing streak to rival the one we just broke a week ago.
The first point guard I ever watched and loved, Dennis Johnson, died recently. His attempt to work his way into a head coaching job in the NBA was the last I remember reading about him. He will be missed! God Bless ESPN Classic…where DJ lives on!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:58 PM MST
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If John Brown had won, I’d have figured it was good luck to be whacked in the head with a dildo several times before a competition. As the last couple episodes of ego trip’s White Rapper Show (VH1) clearly showed that Shamrock was the one who deserved it, the only thing I could figure John Brown had going for him was that a dildo to the head somehow equaled good luck. And even though it didn’t, what Persia and her boyfriend brought to his stupid head in that first episode, may have actually foreshadowed something that ended up being revealed in the season finale. Not that there’s anything wrong with this…but John Brown’s gay lover was flown in along with Shamrock’s best friend to surprise the MCs prior to the final battle that would decide the winner. I couldn’t decide who to feel bad for the most. Either the scrawny burbsian come to wish his boy good luck only to be completely ignored, insulted and shunned by Brown, or the sucka-MC himself who was most likely outed by surprise on national television. Whatever the right thing happens to be, I chalk it up to karma just doing its thing. First with the dildo-wielding psychopath Persia having to be taken to the hospital after passing out from having to run a couple blocks, only to forget her lines for the tenth time during elimination, and finally being gone for good. It went something like…“Persia be fast, Persia be slick, Persia be uh…uh, oh my God…ok, here we go, Persia be cool, Persia be bad, Persia be uh…uh”. In John Brown’s case it was karma as well, since he was a douche bag from start to finish, always babbling about something called ‘Ghetto Revival’ in every episode, and failing to convince a single person in any of them that he wasn’t the stupidest person they’d ever met.
Needless to say, I’m looking forward to season two.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:49 PM MST
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I want to come out and predict that Jeb Bush emerges as the candidate poised to gather up the majority of Christian conservative votes at some point in this race, and perhaps winding up with the nomination. The Romney people out there who have already fallen in love, will no doubt snap out of it and then swoon for the former ‘Governor who almost managed to keep Terri Shiavo’s body plugged in forever’. Jeb’s big brother did him a personal favor in flying back to DC on his vacation to sign that bill at the expense of their national party. Regardless, what’s done is done, and if Jeb weren’t to run it would have been all for naught. Though squandered opportunity and disaster aren’t things that Bush-Walker folk tend to dwell on that I can tell, as the months go by, the iron will certainly grow hotter. So the press will be provided a staggered trickle of “being urged to run” talk for a little while, and around the time when McCain, Romney and Rudi are already thoroughly exposed, mind-fucked, and Brownback is counting his eggs for the third or forth time, Jeb will bust out onto the scene with some “nightmare bogus poetry”, Michael Savage will rejoice, Britney will relapse, the collection plate will be passed from one eager set of hands to another and another and so on.
(Woodruff ABC News) “While the U.S. Department of Defense says that there have been about 23,000 nonfatal battlefield casualties in Iraq, Woodruff discovers — through an internal VA report — that more than 200,000 veterans have sought medical care for various ailments, inclu ding more than 73,000 diagnoses for mental disorders.”
(Andrew Sullivan) An amazing video from 11/2002 where Obama is debating on television and talks about how he would have voted on the Iraq War resolution, and what his concerns were in leading up to the war. Profound mostly for the dead-on accuracy in which he predicts what the problems might be, but in viewing a clip like this, it’s extremely difficult to not have what Republicans were saying would happen also playing in your mind.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 7:13 PM MST
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Update: NTES is really the stock I’ve liked most for a long time, and it is part of my holdings in both portfolios. I increased my stake in it today and it currently accounts for about 15% of the entire nut. For all of the Chinese stocks I’ve researched and agonized over in the past 5 years or so, this is the only one I’ve ever actually owned in real life, and over time it has never disappointed. I recommend NTES (Netease) to anyone looking to invest in China.
Wanting to be as legit as possible, I decided to maintain a transaction log that I’d post here often. I’m not really expecting many people to be following this intently, but having a public record is important to me. I’ll make good use of the ‘more’ html divider so the front page isn’t littered with spreadsheets. Transaction log follows (BAM is my big time gainer today, followed by PBR - both worth your time to investigate for your own investments): Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics at 2:00 PM MST
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The US Army’s Chief of Staff is asked (2/23/07) about the importance of capturing Osama Bin Laden:
“I don’t know whether we’ll find him…I don’t know that it’s all that important, frankly.” - Gen. Peter Schoomaker
Dick Cheney in 1991:
“The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one in terms of what we’d have to do once we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire.”
Hunter S. Thompson:
“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:57 AM MST
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Predictably the media has completely missed the point of this Walter Reed story (Part 1, Part 2). Everywhere I turn, the emphasis is on the rodent infestation and mold, yet the important detail they’re ignoring is that thousands of veterans are being denied disability as a rule, and only those with enough awareness to contact Congress end up with anything close to what they deserve. I’ve been advising soldiers and marines for years now that their hope must not be placed with a lawyer, but with their Congressman and Senator in DC. Whether it be an issue on the job, during a courts martial or non-judicial punishment, while confined after a conviction, the appeal to a higher power than whatever General deciding their fate is the ONLY effective strategy. The portion of the Washington Post article I was most satisfied with was this:
Doctors have concluded that Dell was slow as a child and that his head injury on the Iraqi border did not cause brain damage. “It is possible that pre -morbid emotional difficulties and/or pre-morbid intellectual functioning may be contributing factors to his reported symptoms,” a doctor wrote, withholding a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. Annette pushes for more brain testing and gets nowhere until someone gives her the name of a staffer for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. A few days later, Annette is called to a meeting with the command at Walter Reed. Dell is given a higher disability rating than expected — 50 percent, which means he will receive half of his base pay until he is evaluated again in 18 months. He signs the papers.
The mold and holes in the ceiling are temporary, whereas the veteran with severe brain damage, that the Army is insisting to be a pre-existing condition, is being tricked into signing off on their 0% disability discharge with a severance payment is permanent. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:53 AM MST
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The urge to inject new ideas using the portfolio I’ve posted on for about a year and a half goes against my desire to remain true to the game, so what I decided to do is start a new one with a much larger pile of money to start with. With this one I’ll be focusing on many different areas of the global economy, while unlike fantasy portfolio A, it will be very diverse and chock-full of small cap stocks. My first four picks are (opening price Tuesday):
- NTES - Netease (China) - 3750 shares - $20.44 ($76,650)
- SCMR - Sycamore Networks Inc - 3000 shares - $3.95 ($11,850)
- USG - USG Corp - 200 shares - $54.13 ($10,826)
- RIV - Riviera Holdings Corp - 600 shares - $21.05 ($12,630)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics at 2:17 AM MST
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If you really want someone to feel like a piece of dog shit for a long time, then be sure to recommend that they earn money for college and gain job experience by enlisting in the United States Army. Once they’re all contracted up and ready to ship out, a masochist’s dream world opens up to them, and no matter how dark and lonely the trip becomes, it can always get worse. Thinking that the loss of your legs and the ability to keep your mind focused long enough to order a cheeseburger at McDonald’s is the low point in your tragic life is the stupid reasoning of dog shit that thinks its special, and the essence of what I’m getting at here. Turn off your mind, panic, and work upstream - you’re still in the Army, and the Army still hates you.
To be so foolish as to assume that the actual injury and thousands of miles of transport and surgery after surgery constitute the worst of what your signature on that contract was in exchange for, is to undoubtedly be stupid enough to expect that because you’re in possession of that smart looking Purple Heart medal that you’ve been upgraded within the Army to something more consequential than the piece of dog shit you’ve been up to that point, and if the feeling you were taught to become one with as a fully capable soldier in your unit is something you consider a thing of the past, then see how you feel wheeling your broke ass down to formation in the rain, say for a year and a half or so.
You’re missing parts of your body and mind; still over in Iraq or Afghanistan somewhere, already been pissed on by people, livestock and rolled over by tires of trucks, seeing day and night looking up at whatever, wondering if their host is every coming back to pick them up. They won’t of course, but such soulful meditation, the cutting of ties, the acceptance of what’s lost, it’s all part of making it to 30 and then 40 and hopefully past that age right there, to a veteran it’s the new 70, and Hallmark might have a clue as to whether or not the poor bastard has things worked out even then with what to say or think about that part of them still being pissed on and rolled over on the other side of the world.
It’s on the top of the to-do list, but Army dog shit hasn’t yet earned the right to feel entitled to anything besides the constant reminder of what it is and what it is worth. In the rain you sit, because you have to, on account of having no legs, but above all that is the need for the Army to further shame and humiliate and break away that will to live…smear some Kiwi all over that unauthorized gloss from being called a hero, and sit there in that chair you’ll loathe forever hearing this asshole at the front of the formation talking to you and the rest of what’s left of the sorry fuckers soaking in the phantom sensations from toes that still wiggle when thought about for a second in the rain on a 30 degree morning, still ten minutes before the asshole stops talking and the five minute trek back to the moldy walls and seclusion of hell can be returned to.
Fifteen months of this and the paperwork is lost, tied up, incomplete…and so the guy down the hall figures he can bring back the booze for me along with his own, and just like in that book Misery, I’ll dump all that chemical dust into a few cocktails and this life can finally end. Just tell anyone you can to stay away and forget about all that hero bullshit everyone in the civilian world thinks exists in the Army. Before that though, check my room and see I’m collected and buried before these rodents get to biting on me. Just don’t let me get eaten by my roommates here, and we’ll be even. Hopefully I’ll smell enough dead like the Army has made me feel alive to attract someone who’ll wheel me out of here and get me one of those nice funerals with the gunfire and bagpipes. (Read the inspiration for this)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 3:59 AM MST
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I don’t think it would be possible to find a couple of chickenshit cyborgs more off base in their calculations regarding the Iraq War than John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Though perhaps in their respective cases it’s more repugnant than normal given how much original thought they’ve both devoted to the actual policy in play as opposed to the “position” that might be popular in 2008. It’s sad to think about, but realistically, there isn’t any number of murdered Americans or Iraqis that could compile in a day, week or month that would impact their “position” one way or the other. Half of the soldiers in each of their districts could die over there on a single day and it wouldn’t phase them in the least.
A vote is to take place on a resolution that disapproves of the President’s tactical surge in Baghdad, and the so called ‘maverick‘ is getting as far away from DC as he can. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near a debate on the Iraq War, because he knows better than anyone that it is a debate he cannot benefit from in any way whatsoever. His opinion on the war is as arbitrary as his opinion on abortion, immigration or the minimum wage. The same can be said about Hillary, and with this dynamic at play, where it seems like half of the Senate is running for President already, there is absolutely no hope of ever accomplishing anything meaningful in the time between now and the end of the primaries.
The problem I have with all of this is the fact that while Senators like McCain and Clinton simply refuse to do their jobs for a couple years, the noise machine in Washington is more than happy to follow them around and report on their movements just as often as it reports on the real world. It’s a Page 6 diversion from the details involving actual people and actual events that manages to derail the train more often than a story about Britney Spears shaving her head or Anna Nicole Smith dying. The same blow hards that lament entertainment news stealing the spotlight from politics will often become the hypocrite without even realizing it, by parsing the different words used by someone like Hillary from one week to the next as if it actually means something.
‘Isn’t it interesting how just two months ago she was using this phrase to describe Iraq instead of what she’s saying today…’ It really isn’t. And for you to be paid per word to delve into such a thing, is about as meaningful as knowing the exact time and location of Hillary’s last bowel movement. In fact, if you could scoop that tidbit also, you’d have two headlines of equal significance that came from the exact same place!
Which is revealing in a way, since you have to figure that’s where a lot of these press-pass wearing star fuckers are taking notes from in the first place. As far up there as they can possibly get. Hell, Libby’s about to start his prison term and Judith Miller is still enjoying the warmth of his colon during these cold winter days and nights. He works on something related to fusion and Iran, and before it’s halfway through the small intestine she’s got 500 words pecked out.
So the love of oneself in how important the people they suck up to are can surely lead to a war, as we know all too well. Now it’s going to lead us through a nauseating season of American Idol, one that never ends, while all around us the empire is catching fire. McCain is going to perform a cover of that Lionel Richie song ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’, while the streets run red in Iraq. Hillary is going to juggle while riding a unicycle and still attempt to belt out a Simon-friendly rendition of ‘I’m Every Woman’. Chimps with press credentials are dousing their heads in KY for the post performance lunge that might get them right up in there.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:25 AM MST
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I’m posting every Thursday on The Blue Republic from now on, so check that out. Dusty was responsible for landing the spot for me, and she posts there as well. Politics and humor mix for a great read on a daily basis. Thanks to Dusty and Dude for allowing me to contribute!
“Just a closer walk with thee” - Jim at Borrowed Suits celebrates Charles Darwin’s birthday with some great words.
Catnip does a great job of breaking down your typical “Snow Job“…btw, Snow’s latest: “I’m not sure anything went wrong in Iraq”
jurassicpork from Pottersville writes on the Edward’s campaign mistake of hiring on two full time blogsmiths without considering all the what-ifs
My head’s feeling heavy everytime I try to write, so I’m staying away. Might be the end of a semester, maybe a tumor or something in between; probably a head cold. Peace - DI
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 3:52 PM MST
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1270 active duty military personnel have signed the Appeal for Redress as of today. It was delivered to Congress, and I haven’t heard much about it since.
A site (Soldier Voices Forum) that is run by an active duty soldier has become a primary destination of mine in recent days, and for my comrades who visit frequently, I’d appreciate it if each of you could take the time to sign up, link to, read some of the content there. Here are a couple samples:
My pre-deployment rant…“This is not an easy position to be in. I never thought I’d put myself in so much danger. I don’t like to be inconvenienced when it comes to my day-to-day life. And dying is a rather large inconvenience. Not that I believe I will die. I’m not sure, to be quite honest. But I am definitely tempting fate with this deployment. And for what? The chance to “make a difference”? A difference for who?” (Ginia2269)
A little more about me…I psychoanalyze myself a lot because I don’t know what happened in my brain. I don’t know how I went from a pro-Bush conservative to a hippie. I re-enlisted (not to be confused with reenlisted) in early April. I was a civilian and in school and wanted to finish the semester, but couldn’t knowing that my country was at war. But they didn’t ship me out until late August. During that time, an end to major military operations was declared. Ok fine. I wouldn’t have come back in if I wasn’t prepared to make the military a career. (ShockandAwe)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:37 PM MST
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Excerpt from ‘Designer Dog-Fights‘ - The New York Times Magazine 2/4/2007 - Jon Mooallem
“Making purebred pugs is arduous and important business. The pug’s problem is geometrical. A century of selection for the standard’s “square and cobby” body has exaggerated those qualities, rendering many males incapable of positioning themselves on a bitch, of procreating reliably without human assistance. Nor can puppies muscle through the pug’s narrowed birth canal; like many breeds, virtually all pugs must be delivered by C-section. “You’ll never have feral pugs,” one woman told me earlier that night. She said it fondly.
Woody, the Beards’ stud, is older, and his frozen semen had not survived FedExing. So weeks earlier, Patt Kolesar embedded a hormonal implant in her bitch’s vulva to bring her into heat in time for tonight’s scheduled “side by side.”
Kolesar positioned her bitch, Birdie, on the floor. Woody sniffed rambunctiously and mounted. As the dog began his dedicated thrusting, the unlikelihood of him ever managing the transaction on his own was plain. And so, as planned all along, Jutta Beard crouched behind him and concluded things with an expeditious right hand. In an instant, she was holding up a plastic bag with a dime-size clump in its corner. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 3:58 AM MST
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Anna Nicole Smith marries this guy (or whatever they did), and in short time both she and her son are unable to manage their chemical consumption, both found dead of overdoses. For a lot of reasons, veteran FDA-approved drug heads are unlikely to go down in such short of a time after one another. Overdoses of street drugs typically take lives like that, bang-bang, but the retail variety have the dose and a billion dollar profit margin attached to their safety. So unless a lot of booze and the intent to commit suicide are in play, it’s tough to figure how the stuff could have got the best of them both.
If Smith was notorious for “gold digging”, then Stern has certainly automated the process. “Fuck a shovel!” He says, “I’m boring tunnels through this mountain, and I’ve got plenty of immigrants to help get the color back up to the surface once the mine is built.” A deadissue corespondent was recently undercover within the Smith posse, and reports back that after a week or so, it was clear that Anna was sporting the kind of tolerance that may have surpassed even that of Rush Limbaugh or Jerry Garcia. Whether stoned, laminated or completely blotto, the differences could only be noticed in terms of intake, as whatever the time of day, she was uniformly incoherent throughout.
And like the two aforementioned drug icons, her talent was not diminished in the least from all of this. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 3:01 PM MST
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Invested in this hyped stock with everything he’s got. Money, possessions, bodily organs and hope all down on the idea he had a few years back, developed over some serious unmet needs pertaining to relevance. How could he manage to somehow matter in this life? The inspiration began showing up in newspapers, television and was overheard several times around town, discussed by adults he looked up to; passionately like nothing he’d heard before, these words coming out of these heads that hadn’t shown him a hint of anything close to what they were absolutely certain of now. Some he figured hadn’t voted once in their lives, suddenly all political and full of proclamations. Heroic thoughts sprouted from all this lofty widespread agreement raining down, as the dim glow of promise in what surrounded him seemed to grow smaller by the day. A few of the fellas talked about going somewhere far away, getting the band some gigs around the county, maybe a couple of regular nights each week at one of the bars, but as the weeks went by he figured it would never happen. Couldn’t play anything complicated on his guitar, hadn’t written any songs, and the urge to talk like that, think like that, dream like that had to be the smoke talking more than anything else. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:13 AM MST
1 Comment »
A streetlight with no courage flickers insanity across sidewalk split all over with tufts of grass and dirt plump up and down so a bug with something to do maneuvers over one mountain then another without fear or even the memory of ever being late for anything besides that one time it all went bad during a burrow into soft soil already occupied by tens of tens of however many smaller bugs with enormous strength and blood-curdling shrieks yet not a wing among them so the mad hurl in reverse worked like a charm and a little bit of pain the only cost, though from that experience a reluctance to slow down or think carried nerves and appendages onward and upward often away from everything except food and moisture and artificial lighting. (7/26/2006)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:13 AM MST
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