Month: August 2007

How to make money in the stock market

I’ve thought of a sure fire way to make money in a dubious looking stock market. If this ILX thread is any indication, there’s a growing need for stock photos of anxious and desperate stock exchange traders. Imagine an entire disc of photos like these:

worriedbroker1.jpgworriedbroker2.jpgworriedbroker3.jpg

Add in some generically important looking graphics of downturned arrows and shrinking bar graphs, all with liberal amounts of blood red ink, and you’ve got a best seller on your hands! Every news web site would be in your debt.

Of course the “Desperate Brokers” disc would only be the first volume of an entire stock photo series of 21st century desperation. Volume Two, of course, would be “Mortgage Mania!” and have pictures like these:

price_reduced.jpg foreclosure_sign.jpg

I’m calling the entire series FailureFotos. I don’t quite have the time to pursue it, but I encourage any QC readers to run with it. My only price is 10% off the top and a free license to use any of them for album covers.

Ex-Detectives update

Short Ex-Detectives update. We finished up all the recording for the album and we’re on the last go-round of letting the making sure the angles are straight, letting the paint dry, and sweeping up the dust. Some of this will show up on the MySpace page and a new website that is still undisclosed.

In the meantime here’s some overdubbed ambience courtesy of Yours Truly…

When you have to choose between truth and legend… I say choose the legend

tonywilson.jpg
Tony Wilson interviewed by the NME in 1986:

NME: There’s a quote about being misconstrued: ‘Irony is lost on pinheads’. I think Elvis Costello said it about The Clash, when all those, um, anti-violence songs caused the audiences to start slugging each other.

TW: The only way we can have peace in the world is by having lots more riots. There will be riots down the line before we get peace. A good old fashioned rock and roll riot is a movement towards truth; it’s the forward motion of history.

NME: Even if the rioters aren’t freedom fighters, but simply a bunch of assholes?

TW: Oh certainly. The urge to destroy is a creative urge. It’s never static. You only get old when you decree ‘all revolutions are over’, when you say the dialectic is finished. That’s why Russia is an old nation, because it has called a halt to change.

NME: What happens to pop when the rioting stops?

TW: I saw Malcolm McLaren last week in Los Angeles, and his theory at the moment is that it will never happen again. He’s saying that there are now so many avenues open to music that there’s just no chance. I said to him,’Just like fucking Lenin, right? There’s a continuous dialectic going on until you’ve had your bit. As soon as you’re in charge, that’s the end; no more world revolutions’. Speaking of Malcolm, I’ll have to tell you my How Malcolm McLaren Fucked Himself In The Ass Theory.

RIP. Like Ned, Factory has always meant Manchester first and Warhol second. I hope the funeral gets a FAC number.

Boldly going where everyone has been before

*sigh* It may just be time to take NASA out back behind the barn and put a bullet in it’s head because after twenty-five years of landing on, well, land, it looks like the next design revision of Orion will be splashdowns only. Apparently nothing has progressed in conglomerate-built spaceflight since 1962. NASA might as well have joint activities with the Society For Creative Anachronism. More anger and FUD to be found at the NASA Spaceflight.com forums.

On the other hand, NASA is very good at burning heaps of cash on ugly-ass graphics. Check out this prime piece of bureaucratic-speak from the NASA Office Of Strategic Communications:

I am pleased to provide you with the final NASA Message Construct. These messages have been market tested and have proven to resonate best with the general public.

The Message Construct serves to guide your communication efforts with the general public. We are asking that you use the Core Message: “NASA explores for answers that power our future,” in the text of your communications material and that it be used verbatim. We also have developed a graphic element to illustrate and enhance the Core Message. The graphic element is: Inspiration + Innovation + Discovery = Future. The graphic element is to be used on all Agency communications materials. The other messages in the Message Construct are also market-tested and should be used where best applicable.

Here’s the graphic element in question:

nasa_uglygraphic.jpg

Yuck! Doesn’t the new Core Message make you want to fly into space? Maybe now it’s not so surprising that a couple of astronauts are hitting the sauce.

Meanwhile, I’ll await the day when someone makes a “SpaceShipTwo, Government Zero” sign.

Feed a cold, feed a fever, feed whatever ails you

I’m not much of a hamburger eater these days, but when I have a cold all I want to eat are hamburgers. Full-on king hell gravity-well craving. Specifically I’m looking for a burger from an extra hot grill that has a nice crispy char to the outside of the beef with a thick zone of medium rare inside. The bun only needs to be sufficient enough to sop up the juice. Anything else is unnecessary (cheese, bacon, and onions are OK. Pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and dressing are not). As much as I love the Apple Pan, Pie And Burger, and Tommy’s (which really belongs in its own category) they don’t really satisfy the I’m-sick-want-burger crave. Sorry In-N-Out fans, but you’re just not on the radar.

If I was anywhere near Portland I’d be on my way to Burgerville right now as it’s dead on what I want. The bacon burger at Sidewalk Cafe on Glenoaks gets about 70% of the way there. Still looking…