Shivers up my spine...

Here comes another story from the train.

I was asked by a stranger to please sit next to her. This was a request, mind you, not a question. She asked, "if [I] would please sit next to [her]." She didn't even know who I was. I smiled politely and showed her my wedding ring. She responded with, "even better."

I just had to ask why she would want a married stranger to sit next to her? Her answer: cause there are some seriously creepy SOB's in this world. I was way too intrigued... I had to sit down.

Friends, this is how I learned that there are some people in this world where, it may have been better if they were never born. I like to think that I am a fairly open-minded person, who has a gift for discerning the light that is (supposedly) in all of us. That is why I stressed "may" earlier... but this man that I am about to tell you all about literally gave me shivers and I wanted to throw up, just from the feelings that I got from him.

She managed to tell me that there is a man that follows her from train car to train car, and that he doesn't catch any of the hints that she gives. That was all she could get out before some guy scared the Hell out of me, by putting his face between our seats from behind and says, "I thought that was you!" He then comes around to the other side of the seats and sits down across from us. I assumed (correctly) that this was our creep. Without telling you every painful detail, and they were painful, I will say this. The man is either socially inept with an utter disregard for personal space (you NEVER touch a woman's thigh like that... ever), or he is a sociopath that does not care whether the poor woman is uncomfortable. This poor lady, tried everything during the first 20 minutes of the ride. She ignored him, she asked him to please not touch her, she told him not to touch her, she said that she was very uncomfortable with his topic of conversation (tip to my single friends, don't talk about how a woman reminds you of a porn that you once saw, she WILL NOT find that flattering... ugh!), and lastly she looked at me with pleading eyes.

I know some of you are wondering why I let it go on for 20 minutes. The only thing I can say is. HE WAS FREAKING CREEPY! I was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. Seriously. I was thinking to myself that he must have been dropped as a child, or abandoned, or made fun of through High School. SOMETHING, must explain why he felt that was a good way to talk to a girl.

Sorry, I digress.

So when she looked to me for help, and there was no mistaking this look, I said to him: "you have made both of us very uncomfortable, please go to another car." I kid you not, he pretended like I hadn't even opened my mouth. Completely ignored me. This actually really bothered me, I hate to be so poignantly ignored. So before I could stop myself, I let something slip (my family knows about my Turrets). It wasn't the nicest thing, but it didn't include any profanity. He didn't ignore that, oh no, he looked at me and said, "...I have killed animals bigger than you." Then he SMILED at her, as though to disarm her.

It was at this point that I stood up, offered my hand to the damsel, and we left that train car. He tried to get up and follow, but I pushed him back into his seat, leaned close, and as calmly as I could, "I am not an injured animal that you chained in your garage, you psycho. If you follow us, I will break your face." Posturing over, I quickly escorted her to a different car.

When we arrived in LA, I walked her to the Sheriffs that were on the platform and told them the story. They said they would escort her to where she was going, and that one of them would go talk to the man (who was waiting about 30 yards away. *shiver*).

So everyone, if I happen to go missing... look for the fifty-odd year old that rides the Orange County line, that wears 80's style prescription glasses, and has a lumpy nose. If I saw in the paper that this guy had been kidnapping and killing people, I would not be surprised. He honest to goodness, scared the crap out of me. So creepy...

Lemonade? what a load of crap.

recently i was told something that i am sure we all hear often. "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." but, just think about how dumb that is... no, really, think about it.

lemonade is not just lemon juice. it has water and sugar as well... lots of it. water dilutes, and sugar sweetens. so when life gives us lemons (something bitter) how the crap are you supposed to make something sweet out of that, with out having... well, something sweet. and if you have something sweet, then you don't really have a bitter situation after all, do you?

i know... i am a hopeless Cynic.

Drunks pay taxes, why can't Stoners?

California's budget is $15 billion under water. In my opinion this is mostly because the state is run by economic airheads. I can say that because, all of the fiscally intelligent people are too busy making money to run for office. That is our loss. There is also the issue that more than 60% of the population receives some sort of aid from the state government. California is starting to see why socialism doesn't work. (as I have said before, eventually you will run out of other people's money).

but there is hope for the crappy budget. It comes in the guise of "moral corruption," also known as legalizing marijuana. I have to say that it is humorous, to say the least, that a State that throws a fit over same sex marriage (a TRULY moral topic), is struggling at all with this issue. The pot growers have VOLUNTEERED to be taxed, and have suggested "at least $1 billion" in tax revenue. (the money that is saved by not having to enforce lame laws will be close to $10 billion on the low end). I know that there will be people that think this is a horrible idea, but if it is legalized, you solve a budget deficit, make lots of people happy, and correct a logic problem all in one. I mean, we let people drink and smoke tobacco. Both of those are taxed at a higher rate, because they are viewed as bad for your health. How is Mary Jane any different?

If you don't like it, don't smoke it. You can still enjoy all your state benefits, while you abstain.

exhaustion

i think being an adult blows. who really wants to grow up? i seriously think that the only people that WANT to be older are moronic teenagers that don't understand how good they really have it.

as an adult, your weekend is full of more work. That is it. nothing else. you work all week, so that you can do all your errands on Saturday, so that you can do all of your church callings on Sunday, then start all over again on Monday.

being a grownup... sucks!

Redistribution of wealth? good luck with that...

i suppose the few people that read my blog may have gathered that i have had the economy on my mind lately. not surprising, i would guess most people in the world have that on their minds more often these days. but i have to address another issue that is irking me.

lots of people are looking forward to the current administration's attempt to 'right the wrong' that is the unfair distribution of wealth. I could point out that the majority (not all... we have Paris Hilton to consider... ick!) of those that are ultra wealthy, paid their dues and in my opinion deserve their HARD EARNED wealth. the lesson we should learn is that if we work as hard as they do we can be wealthy too.

but that is an aside. my real topic is this. IF you want to redistribute the wealth of this nation, putting greater regulation on the industry is counter productive. sounds strange? here let me explain my reasoning.

our current economy is marked by lots of "Delevering" and "Deglobalization," these are natural consequences to an over bloated market that was fed by the very government that is now attempting to "fix" it. these are good things because they are correcting the market naturally. the economy is also marked by lots of re-regulation and new regulation. this is not a natural consequence. this will create an "inefficient market" (which is actually the whole point of the regulation). instead of rewarding the smartest and hardest working person, you can force (through regulations) a "fair" price, etc. fairly simple to understand.

here is where i start to smile to myself (more of a smirk, really). the reason that many investment banks made a KILLING in Eastern European countries, India, China, Brazil, etc. is BECAUSE they are inefficient markets. i mean for crap sake, i work for a "alternative" investment bank that specializes in this! we are practically licking our chops waiting for this to happen here in the US. inefficiency is what creates the opportunities to make money. so even though you are trying to redistribute the wealth, who do you think is going to be capitalizing on these markets? I can assure you that it will be the wealthy and they are going to remain wealthy.

so my advice: stop with the jealous whining and stop waiting for government handouts. they aren't helping any of us.

why raising Corporate taxes is a problem

here is the thing. if the economy is failing (which it is) how is the government going to save it?

the answer: it can't

the government gets its funding from two main sources: taxes and it prints its own.

if it just prints the money to cover the shortfall that we are seeing then we will have inflation, maybe even hyper-inflation. that is VERY bad. don't believe me? look at what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe. we are already being threatened by high inflation rates. so Obama (or any government) can't do that to fix it...

that leaves taxes to collect all the necessary funds for the 'relief' programs (Social security, Welfare, Unemployment, TARP, Bailouts, etc). now here's the thing, individual citizens are suffering in the economy and are making less money, so you can't increase their taxes without causing more harm. so who can the government tax? Corporations, of course! i mean, they are greedy and make too much money anyway (sarcasm is present). i will admit that some corporations are greedy and corrupt, but the vast majority of them are not. most of them are trying to keep producing in a stagnant economy. so when you increase taxes on them, that cuts into the earnings and revenue and the company needs to compensate in some way. the company has two ways to do this (1) increase the sale price of their product, or (2) cut costs. in order to increase the sales price to compensate for the proposed tax increase, most companies would need to up the price between 10%-30%. They wouldn't be able to sell very much in a sinking economy by doing that, now would they? so that leaves them with cutting costs. guess what is the easiest and most efficient way to cut costs? get rid of employees. that is right, lay-offs.

so increasing the corporate tax will lead to more unemployment. which leads to further recession, etc. i believe the term we are looking for is 'a vicious spiral.'

so here is a suggestion for employers that i heard and I think it is good enough to propagate. if you are having trouble deciding which employees to let go. just go to the parking lot, and find the cars with 'Obama' stickers. after all, they did want change...

disconnected from reality

the current market is completely disconnected from reality. all last week, i stared at the market indices and wondered what was going on...

unemployment is STILL on the rise, so how is it good news that unemployment is ONLY at 10% on average across the country, just because the pundits THOUGHT that it would be closer to 11%? or the fact that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan reported black in their earnings for 1Q09? not hard to do when you change your fiscal accounting period so that you don't have to include December 2008, one of the WORST months in history (Goldman didn't have to report almost $7 Billion in losses with that stunt). Or writing more Credit Default Swaps (CDS) that are one of the risky assets that people are trying to get rid of (JPMorgan holds close to 50% of all of the worlds CDS's). the accounting gimmicks are running wild.

Further more, housing prices are still dropping, foreclosures are WAY up, and defaults are climbing. these are not good pieces of news. that is why i am RELIEVED that the market has lost everything that it gained last week. it just didn't make sense...