The Stock Market Is Not A Leading Indicator

The logic: "Since the stock market leads economic recoveries, once the stock market recovers, the economy will recover." That is, the stock market is a leading indicator.

I disagree.

I could've asked you between mid-October 2008 - mid-January 2009, "What would you say is the current health of the economy?", you might've said something like, "Well, the stock market seems to have found a natural bottom around 8,500 (DJIA), so I think we've seen the worst of it, and so I'd expect a recovery in not too long once investor confidence returns in full." How would you explain then the following month and a half we spent below 8,000?

There's an inherent problem in using a stock market index both as a measure of economic health and as a future indicator of economic performance. Analogously, you need both a thermometer and a barometer to perform an analysis of the current environment and to create a forecast. The stock market has no foresight, it is purely reactionary, and so cannot be a barometer.

Why Any Index Sucks
What the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index (DJIA), for example, represents is an instantaneous assessment of investor demand for what the Dow Jones Company deems a representative sample of all publicly-traded companies on the New York Stock Exchange. When the DJIA goes up, the investor demand to own a percentage of those companies within the representative sample of publicly-traded companies goes up, and vice-versa when the DJIA goes down. In fact, it may be the only real world example of a Giffen good. Leaving aside the validity of any non-statistically selected sample to accurately assess a whole market, we have to question whether the dynamics of that index are capable of capturing (1) the entire current economic state of affairs, and (2) the outlook for the future.

On (1), conceivably, the movement and value of an index, being a representation of investor willingness to own publicly-traded companies, would accurately reflect the overall state of the economy because those informed people buying up company assets in the form of shares would be reacting to a full set of up-to-date economic data, financial forecasts, industry surveys, and deep corporate analysis of assets and liabilities. The errors enter when you consider how inaccurate that full set of up-to-date information really is. E.g. No nation's central bank forecast this global recession. Alan Greenspan just shrugged his shoulders back in 2004. "A new paradigm!" Can you say the U.S. economy was actually strong 1.5 years ago when the DJIA was tickling 14,000? Or was it a facade of cheap capital that bloated the market's perception of those companies' value and led to our current situation? Even greater than inaccurate information is the investing feedback loop. A big mutual fund company dumps a load of cash into a company or industry, prompting others to do the same to catch the ride upward, prompting smaller investors to do the same and grab the sloppy seconds. All parties then unload their shares, in the process taking some good profit, to the latecomers who think they're onto the next hot stock. Did the value of the company ever actually change, or was it just the perception of the value of the company that controlled the stock value? Of course it was just the perception, and when you start attaching numbers (in this case, dollars) directly to people's perceptions, you get misinformation. For example, I'm an Orioles fan (as much as one can be anymore). Would I have put $10,000,000 on a bet at the beginning of the season that the Orioles would make the playoffs because their new pitching talent was being talked up on local sports radio? What if they're winning percentage in the first 20 games is .750? Doesn't sound like a bad bet, until you consider that the Orioles fucking suck and they have been hot early on but then collapsed at or before the All-Star break every year for the past 12. Anyway, the point is that gambling follows the same principle. You attach a value to your perception of the likelihood of the team you bet on winning, and your perception is based on imprecise information compounded with a dependency on the actions of individual people. The stock market is no different.

On (2), I think the obvious volatility caused by overreaction is enough to tank any stock market index's ability to forecast economic performance. Sure, whatever happens today may have residual effects in the future, but on the whole, it's merely a snapshot and an instant history. Looking at the artificial floor at ~8,000 in early February is enough to call this into question. You could point out that the market is back to about 9,500, but then I'd have to wonder why it ever bothered dropping 20% to 6,500 at all if it were a solid predictor of economic activity. It's not, and its value only tells you what other people just like you think it's worth. For that reason it is often considered a measure of investor confidence. This, I think, is true, but it doesn't really matter that much how confident investors are in the long-run. If all it took was confident coke-snorting traders on Wall Street then the DJIA would have gone into orbit by now; investors were mighty confident two years ago until they realized a lot of their money was tied up in things that weren't worth anything. That is, investor confidence is just a projection of past performance onto the future.

Why Weathermen Are Better At Their Jobs
The weather is a chaotic system. There are countless variables that influence it and there are countless attempts to do so. But despite its complexity, weather still follows the immutable laws of physics. The stock market, and for that matter, the economy, ultimately relies on a deeper chaos: human behavior.


What the stock market, or any index, really is is a forced amalgamation and an instantaneously fleeting assessment of what investors think of the value of traded companies, with no memory and no foresight. Simpler? It's an artificial grouping of what people think things are worth right now. Any attempt to derive much of a prediction from stock market data is doomed to fail eventually, because it's essentially a prediction of what people will do, and predicting people's behavior is, well, impossible, unless you work for Pixar.

Why I'm So Damn Right
Instead of breathing a sigh of relief watching the DJIA tick up-up-upwards, I'm rather concerned about the fact that unemployment---as measured by our screwy method---has increased by 62% since last July. If we're looking for a recovery, it's consumers, as always, that will drive it, and if there is less capacity for consumption, then there's less recovery. Less consumption and wages also means less tax revenue for federal and state governments, and the current government economic stimulus is not sustainable in the medium-term anyway.

I know people don't like thinking pessimistically, and for those without jobs it's particularly difficult to bear, and of course I hope I am wrong and the economy does turn around, but I think for financial analysts in the media and in the markets to continue to herd after the stock indexes is overly simplistic and will only lead to further calamity in the future.

GRE

I'm taking the GRE in about an hour. I don't like standardized tests, but I've studied a lot for this one so hopefully it'll go better. 5 hours from now I'll be either really disappointed or really appointed. All I gotta do now is "rock it!".

Dear DC cabbies...

One last word of thanks for ridiculously ripping me off the entire time I've lived here in DC. Tonight, I paid $13.50 to get from DC to Arlington but $19 to get from Arlington to DC. To my taxi driver this evening: you and your fake family can fucking go to hell, since I'm sure it's just an excuse to squeeze out those extra bones from my non-profit salary. Yes, I chose that job, but you also chose to be a greasy longhaired pennygrubbing-whore-asshole. It may surprise you, but this city was not intentionally built to only support taxi drivers. I really hope you and your family starve to death on the marginally-fair meter system imposed upon you later this year. You, and only you (my taxi driver tonight), I seriously hope you go to fucking hell. Fuck off and die. I would love to salt [sugar] your gas tank.

Brice Lord predicts snow days this year

Okay, so maybe the title is a little misleading, because

Brice Lord's prediction for snow days this Winter = 0.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!!!!

I've lived in this goddamn city for 4.5 years now and I have not had a single fucking snow day. I'm sick of it. I'm tired of it. I'm sick and tired of it. I want a snow day. We've had plenty of bullshit like getting off work 2 hours early, or getting in 2 hours late, but that's for suckers, and I'm no sucker. We did have that one day off when that pussy "hurricane" Isabel hit DC in 2003, but by "we" I mean "everyone but me" because I was scolded for getting into work the next morning---hungover as hell mind you after going to two different hurricane parties the night before---an hour late.

So here's how this Winter's snow day forecast will go. Sometime in mid-to-late-December there will be a dire 20% threat of 1-2" of snow 3 days from Monday, and that's all anyone will talk about in the office until we end up getting cold rain that Thursday morning. Regardless of this, some woman (this is specific to my office, so no offense to my female readers) with a high-pitched whiney voice will start waxing idiotic about how "they're saying" the rain will change to freezing rain this afternoon and "I heard we're going to get let out at 3." Apparently Whiney has a spy in the Office of Personnel Management and everyone else in this city doesn't. She also seems to have a poorly-tuned sixth-sense for weather prediction, because I end up working until 6pm and NOT going home to smoke weed and do snow angels in the middle of Connecticut Ave. [ETCW! does not condone the consumption nor possession of illicit and hilarious narcotics.]

Anyway, this will repeat roughly every 3 to 6 weeks throughout the winter until we break 70 for the first time in March. At that point it'll become evident that, once again, we haven't had a single snow day all Winter, and once again I'll want to push Whiney out of the 9th floor window. Oh right, she's too fat! God I'm heartless.

I blame the big three for this snowless imprecation: global warming, god, and Gyromite. I also blame the trend of decapitalizing "Winter", but I'm finding it hard to identify evidence for this in the literature. I guarantee that Old Man Winter and Jack Frost are none too pleased, though.

All in all, if it's going to be cold, it may as well snow, because that's all it's good for. Otherwise we're all just walking around in fancy zippered blankets and not having profligate Springtime bunny sex for nothing.

Snow = AWESOME!

Q.E.D.

More notes from the road...sort of

I was in the process of putting together a follow-up to my wildly successful "Notes from the road" whilst in Geneva, Switzerland when a microbial interloper interloped. My guess it was the bouillabaisse I had at the cafeteria that did it, and having ignored my own cardinal rule of no sea-based foods in cafeterias, come Thursday night (two Thursdays ago) things started to go south. By that Friday morning, it became pretty evident that I had eaten something that didn't like me very much, and it was tearing me up. My flight was set for the next day, Saturday, and as the day wore on it became pretty evident that wasn't going to happen, so I had to change it to Sunday, which cost me about $200. Of course, what guarantee did I have that I'd be ready for a 15-hour day of air travel with no control over what I could eat? So, for another $200 or so, I had a Swiss doctor call on my hotel room and check me over for about a half hour. She told me I probably had bacterial food poisoning and it had set up camp in my intestines. Pretty sweet stuff. She gave me a prescription for 3 different meds, one of which was a strong antibiotic which ended up killing the bugs off. Of course, getting to the pharmacy, which isn't 24-hours like CVS by the way, was a bit of an ordeal itself, considering my state. She also told me what I could only eat bread, plain rice, and plain pasta for the next few days. If I could find a brothy soup, that would be okay too, but good luck finding a non-cream-based soup in a city that borders France. Anyway, I was able to find a Vietnamese place that had a chicken noodle soup, and get my meds, without too much issue. My ritual of getting Wingos the minute I get back home from a trip had to be put off a week, and I lived on soup and crackers for about 2 more days after getting back. It's amazing how much you miss solid food and things that taste like things after only a few days.

Anyway, there's a few more little tales I wanted to share while in Geneva that were either pretty funny or interesting.

Auf gut Glück!

So the first night I'm at the hotel I call down before I get to sleep to ask for a wake-up call at 7:00am. The standard practice of performing the wake-up call is to call said hotel occupant at the requested time in order to wake him/her up. Around 5:05am I woke up in the middle of a dream about Erika Christensen (just kidding) to a repetitive knock on the door. It was still pitch black outside, and I thought the cleaning crew was going around a bit too early. It's Europe, so you never really know what's going to happen in hotels. After throwing on my jeans to cover up my huge dong I go and open the door and there's this hotel employee who says, "Bonjour! Bonjour! Wake up call! Wake up call!"

Naturally, I'm perplexed, I look at my watch, and sure enough it's 7:00am. But seriously, what the fuck? How confusing is that for someone who just woke up? Couldn't they just have called me, as the name "wake up call" implies? Silly Swiss. Of course I couldn't have that weird scene happening every day, so I had to rely on just waking up on my own and therefore ended up being about an hour late every day.

A big 450-foot jet of water coming out of Lake Geneva known as "Jet d'Eau," or "Jet of Water."

Another little observation of mine was that no matter where I went, I was known and referred to as "the American." At a restaurant, one waiter told another that "blah blah blah the American blah blah blah blah." At the hotel, "the receptionist told the other that "blah blah blah the American blah blah blah blah." When the doctor came to my hotel room, she called someone and asked a question because "the American blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." Obviously I don't speak any French whatsoever, Spanish is my game, but no matter the language the word "American" is still pretty much the same. Take note, my Swedish friends!

This is not Epcot Center, actually, this tram is part of Geneva's excellent public transit system. The woman in white ended up getting hit by the tram, by the way.

At the conference I went to I met people from all over the world. The most memorable interactions were with representatives of Lesotho, one of two countries enclaved within South Africa (just because of novelty), Iran, Syria, Palestine, and North Korea. I was particularly amazed to see anyone from the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" at all. You hear and read so much about these places, so that when you actually meet someone on a personal basis a lot of your preconceptions are challenged. Of course, the people I met aren't responsible for the massive human rights abuses in most of the countries I listed, so it wasn't too difficult to have a conversation with them. In general, I did notice that most of the Arab countries' reps never said "thank you" for the complementary materials they took, they just kinda walked away. Having sat in on one of the general sessions, which looked exactly like a UN meeting with translators in overhead booths and earpieces so you can understand what everyone is saying, I was able to pick up that "shokala" or similar meant "thank you" in Arabic. So even a simple "shokala" would have done.

A big, fancy, important building somewhere near Lake Geneva.

Movie Review!!!!1!!!1!1!

I went through quite a long period of movie-less activity recently, which was abruptbptbltpylbluly ended ...god "abruptly" is awkward to type... by watching three movies over the past week or two. They were of varying "goodity", which is a value derived from "goodness" using the "sexy", "guns", and "originality" coefficients. The movies I saw, and my ratings of them, are:

1. Hot Fuzz: &++
2. And the Band Played On: C-
3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: H
4. Bubba Ho-tep: R-

Did I say 3 movies? I meant 4. That's how good Bubba Ho-tep wasn't.

Now you might have noticed something peculiar about my grading scheme. Unlike the overgenerous school system, I operate on an extended grading scale that doesn't stop at "F" for "fucking failure" nor "A" for "altogether awesome." I just don't think there's enough gradation in there to properly encompass any movie you might see, from crappy Kazakh hardcore porn to mind-blowing action movies sent back in time to us from the future. My rating scale may or may not bottom out at "Z-----", which is five minuses below a "Z" rating. I'm also not sure where the top of the scale is. In fact, there is no top since it's my scale, but so far Hot Fuzz is close to topping it with an "Ampersand ++." In the future I may need to extend to exponentials and factorials of alphanumerics to properly rate movies, but we'll cross that turtle when we come to it. Movies are also awarded "Awesome Points" for being awesome, and the amount awarded is entirely at my unpredictable discretion.

Now that you fully understand my rating system, here comes the part where I tell you why I rated these movies as such, also known as the "content" of the blog post.

Here we go:

1. Hot Fuzz. RATING: &++ with 180 Awesome Points

Written and directed, and acted, by the same genius British minds behind Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz tells the story of a overachieving London police officer (not policeman), Nicholas Angel (played by Simon Pegg) who is transferred to a small, quiet village in the English countryside which it turns out is vying for the "Village of the Year" award, an honor that is perennially just barely out of its grasp. This is of little consequence as several suspiciously violent accidents start to befall the residents of Sandford and the supermarket manager, Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), is the focus of the potentially-criminal investigations. Let me pause here, because casting Timothy Dalton is a brilliant call. Not only does he perform outstanding in this character, but casting one of the worst James Bonds adds a measure of je ne se qua to the film's feel. So, Sgt. Angel's convinced these accidents are perpetrated by Skinner but can't get the homeboy police force to believe him. Angel is, however, joined in his quest for justice by one thick-headed officer, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). What makes the movie truly stand out is the combination of subtle British humor, wacky British humor, wry British humor, dry British humor, ...wait, I think I can just say "British humor and capture all of this. The movie also makes purposefully obvious tributes to American action movies, particularly Bad Boys 2 and Point Break, which are done so as not to be hokey nor unnecessary. As with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's previous accomplishment, Shaun of the Dead, the movie is chock full of both subtle and obvious foreshadowing, as well as using self-referential techniques within the film, which make the movie worth watching over and over. All in all, this movie easily earns it's "&++" rating.


2. And the Band Played On. RATING: C- with 5 Awesome Points

Meh, this movie was a bit of a shame. From what my taught Moroccan fiancee, Michael, tells me, the book upon which this made-for-HBO movie is based is fantastic. However, the film obviously doesn't get the adaptation right. In short, the movie portrays the onset of the AIDS blight that struck in the early 1980's and how the U.S. government, including the NIH, CDC, and White House, deftly kept it under wraps, since it was a "gay cancer." Only after about 25,000 Americans had died did President Reagan first utter the word "AIDS." Sadly, all of this is blindingly true, and it's scary because this tragedy could easily repeat itself. For such an important subject matter and one of considerable political tenderness, the movie does a disappointing job of explaining anything in any detail, and ultimately leaves you stuck trying to figure out if you're really watching an Oxygen Channel 2-hour feature or a Dateline NBC special investigation reenactment rather than being perplexed by what went wrong with the AIDS epidemic. The film boasts an "all-star" cast (Ian McKellen hit .315 in the majors) featuring Anjelica Houston, Richard Gere, Ian McKellen, Phil Collins (seriously), Steve Martin, Alan Alda, and a bunch of other people for which you'll find yourself saying "hey, I know that guy from something..." Problems immediately begin when you realize several scenes have been cut for brevity's sake but that leave you wondering what the hell is going on and who the characters are before they ultimately die of AIDS. For instance, Richard Gere portrays a nameless character credited as "The Choreographer," but it's not clear how he knows one of the main characters, who he is, why he's important, or why he's in the movie at all. The only saving grace for this movie, and the only reason I don't give it a "H.5 +", is that the subject matter is worth knowing more about. Although these days it's not particularly unimaginable to think the government is keeping important information from us, but it's valuable to understand there's plenty of awful precedent.


3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. RATING: H with 35 Awesome Points

As supersexyrawcool as the film noir genre can seem, actually pulling it off is another thing entirely. This is what, in my opinion, doomed Sin City to pointlessness. Similarly, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang misses the mark by 9 letters, getting an "H". I originally rated it "J", but then remember Val Kilmer, surprisingly, did a tremendous job playing a sociopathic gay private investigator. It also gets bonus points for positive "sexy" and "guns" coefficients. However, its negative "Robert Downey Jr. taking neurosis too far again" coefficient drags this back down a bit. Basically, as with every noir, we get a guy, a girl, some faceless bad guys, a big city, and a couple of murders. There's some funny lines in the movie, and some interesting plot twists that, admittedly, I am never able to follow in movies, and a good bit of unrealistic gore and violence. I think that, and the picture [caption: Robert Downey Jr.'s gotten himself into yet another mess] pretty much sums up the entire movie, so I'm done.


4. Bubba Ho-tep. RATING: R- 1 Awesome Point

.......... ............ .......... I'm sorry, I blacked out trying to figure out how many other movies I could have watched instead of this one. You'd think that any movie with Bruce Campbell would have some measure of subculture appeal one way or another, but this movie succeeds thoroughly in this absence. Bubba Ho-tep starts off with some fat old guy (Campbell) who thinks he's Elvis Presley waking up from a coma or something in an East Texas nursing home. Then an Egyptian mummy with a cowboy hat and torn jeans starts walking around late at night sucking the residents' souls out and killing them. Seriously. So Elvis and a black guy who thinks he's JFK devise a plan to torch the mummy using some sort of makeshift flamethrower, but something goes wrong and JFK eats it, but then Elvis ultimately bakes the mummy, but who then comes back to "life" somehow, but then Elvis wins again somehow and destroys it for good. It's all really fucking stupid. There was one funny line though: "Now the two key words for tonight- "caution" and "flammable."" That soft chuckle was certainly not worth 2 hours of my time, nor the 4 awards and 6 nominations it has gotten from such venerable institutions as the Fant-Asia Film Festival. Fuck it, this movie gets an "R-".

Pillowfight '07: Michigan vs. Notre Dame

As a devoted Michigan fan, I've naturally been de-testacled this season after successive losses to unranked opponents, one of which shall remain nameless for the rest of my life, to open the season 0-2. This is the first time Michigan opened its season with two straight losses at home since 1959. That's almost 50 years. It's truly a season of historic ignominy for my favorite teams. Michigan sucks as bad as it has for a half-century, the Orioles lost a game by 27 runs, the first time in 110 years, and the Ravens can't seem to beat the perennial cross-town underachievers (Redskins) nor the perennial convicted criminals (Bengals).

Some idiot UM fan made this tshirt before the season started (obviously). Now we all know where to point those fingers.

This weekend Michigan faces one of its archrivals, Notre Dame. Thankfully, Notre Dame is equally awful, having lost their first two games this season as well. Of course, it'll be the first time in history that's ever happened. Lucky me. Watching this game should be like watching blind, retarded sumo wrestlers play checkers in space.

There's a lot of talk this time around about which team is worse rather than the usual "which team is better" madness. For some reason Notre Dame fans think their quarterback's extra 6 quarters of gametime experience over Michigan's freshman QB (our senior got hurt last week) will make the difference somehow. Oh, and thanks to the Big 10 for filling our bye week with an out-of-conference game; that should really give the injured players the respite they need midseason. But, for some reason Michigan fans think that this is a fluke and we'll turn it around all the sudden against the hated Irish. I'd love to believe that, but as far as I can tell this fluke is less the gastrointestinal variety and more the Dune Sandworms variety.

This is not a fluke.

No matter what happens on Saturday, what I am absolutely 100% sure of is that everyone can look forward to watching a 4.5-hour football game, compliments of the ABC network, Doritos, Carmax, and Cialis.

And that's why it's called Pillowfight 2007*. But hey, Go Blue.

* I didn't come up with this.

The Baltimore Orioles make history again!

110 years is a long time.

In the past 110 years, the Ottoman Empire and its Muslim Caliphate were dissolved, two World Wars involving over 100 nations in toto were fought and decided, 20 U.S. Presidents have passed through the White House, six of whom were shot and two of whom were killed (the West Wing was not built until ~1909), the first production automobiles were sold (590 million now exist globally), powered flight and the escalator were invented, man harnessed the atom, narcotics were stigmatized internationally, world population increased four-fold, and humankind stepped foot on an astronomical body 240,000 miles away---the Moon---six times.

Nope, it's not a typo.

Perhaps it's somewhat less consequential, but do you know what else happened 110 years ago? A Major League Baseball team, for the first time in history, scored more than 30 runs in a single game. This rapacious feat was performed by the Chicago Colts against the hapless Louisville Colonels in 1897, with a final score of 36-7. Notice how you've never heard of either of these teams. So, how many teams since have scored 30 or more runs in a single game? Well, as of Wednesday, August 22, 2007, one.

That team would be the Texas Rangers, a team 15 games below .500 and with the 4th worst win percentage in the entire League, when they came back from a three-run deficit to beat my hometown team, the Baltimore Orioles, with a final score of 30-3 in Camden Yards, the O's home field. Loooong sigh. If I had known in advance, by divination or by Biff's anachronistic sports almanac, that an unknown baseball team would lose a game that night by 27 runs, I most certainly would have put my money on that team being my fucking Orioles. For a team that's spent nearly half a billion dollars on player salaries (actual > $400M) in the past decade, this shit will not pass.

It's only natural that the enfeebled, incapable Orioles were on the losing end of such a record. We always manage to outdo our own mediocrity somehow. Like it's not enough to have an entire decade of consecutive losing seasons. Like it's not enough to have an autocratic tyrant for an owner. Like it's not enough for the team to not have even reached the World Series in 24 years. Like it's not enough for the Orioles to hold the record for the most consecutive losses at the beginning of a season (1988). Like it's not enough for the Orioles to have had 6 different managers in the last decade. Sure, if it was opposite year the Orioles would be in great fucking shape. But we don't live in opposite town, and opposite year was 1989 ("Why Not?!"). How could all these comedies of error not be the end of Lord Mephistopheles' (pictured below) artful machinations? How could schadenfreude knows such infinite depths? After this game, I am utterly convinced that the Orioles are damned to persist indefinitely in underachievement or, perhaps by some grace, will finally achieve obsolescence and demise. Truly, for Orioles fans, the end is extremely fucking nigh.

One of Mephistopheles' fiendish doppelganger minions. And he hates steamed crabs.

In case I haven't yet been able to fully evoke the magnitude, rarity, and historic relevance of this defeat, allow me to try to put it in context:

• The Orioles could have scored 27 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, only to tie the game and go into extra innings.


• The last time a baseball team scored this many runs, the Civil War was a more recent event than the Vietnam War is now.


• The first American League no-hitter was pitched in 1902, 5 years later, by the Chicago White Stockings. 234 no-hitters have been pitched in all, and 17 of those were perfect games.


• In 1897, the Cy Young Award would not be awarded for another 59 years.


• 22 years after the Chicago Colts' victory, Jackie Robinson is born in Cairo, Georgia.


• At the time of the 36-run game, the Louisville Colonels had a budding young shortstop on the roster named Hognus Wagner.


• The knuckleball would not debut in the MLB for another 11 years.


• And lastly... the first subatomic particle, the electron, was discovered that same year. It would be 35 years before the neutron was discovered and high school students would need to start worrying about p's, e's, and n's outside of the alphabet.

Sadly, this unfortunately-historic game was the first in a double-header on Wednesday night. If the 30-3 loss wasn't enough---and "loss" doesn't quite convey the true absurdity of the event---the Orioles also lost the second game that night 9-7, meaning that the Rangers put up 39 runs to the Orioles' 10 in a single night. When put in that perspective, the Rangers may as well have beaten the record for all I care.

Kevin Millar has never seen a ball hit that far that many times in so short a time. No one else alive today has either.

So how does this stack up against other baseball records? Well, it's quite difficult to compare these, right? How do you compare batting average with ERA records, or career no-hitters with career RBIs? Well, it seems there is one easy way to do so, and that is rarity. The less likely something is, the more of a feat it becomes. Sure, specific circumstances determine some records, like unassisted triple plays. But not this one. This game represents not only the unmitigated implosion of one team, but also the sudden impulse and collective synergy of the opposing team in response. Indeed, that is a rare thing. And 110 years is a long time.

Newz U Can Yewz: IT'S HOT!

In case you've been staying home from work this entire week, have entirely ignored TV, the Internet, and email, and have isolated yourself from all interpersonal contact, I have some very very important news for you today:

It's HOT outside!

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this, but the temperature seems to be really high lately, and I don't feel comfortable walking around in my long wool pants and sateen dress shirt lately. It also seems to be the topic of conversation in every elevator, cafeteria, Potbelly, Chipotle, doghouse, chickenhouse, cathouse, crackhouse, and outhouse. I'm guilty of it, too. Shit, it's about all you can think about when the Heat Index is 105 Degreez (though it could get hotter).

So, in conclusion,

"fuck you" Mother Nature.

Oh, that's right, I printed something one second ago!

I am now 100% absolutely goddamn sure I just printed something.

You know... I'm not really sure how to begin, but I'll preface by saying that sometimes technology rubs me the wrong way. Not in a suicidal Radiohead-OK Computer kind of way, but maybe more in a Rage Against the Machine way.

For instance, those water-saving smart toilets that supposedly know when to flush are truly a fantastic accomplishment of human ingenuity. They sense when you're done doing your thing and then do you the courtesy of sucking down your poo without you needing to touch anything. That is except that they tend to flush 4-5 times even if you're in there for only 20 seconds just to adjust your shirt tuck. How "smart".

Computers are particularly frustrating. Microsoft Windows is especially good at pushing those tiny buttons in my brain that make me pound the table and mutter things like "Holy shit I swear to motherfucking Christ fuck I'm gonna fucking kill something this is fucking ridiculous oh my god i fucking hate this piece of shit you asshole bastard fuck fuck FUCK (with table pound and continued muttering)."

That friendly, bug-eyed Paperclip that pops up every time you do anything in Word is also a fun one. I almost feel bad for it, it just wants to help, but Microsoft just made him fucking annoying. It's like that pudgy kid in middle school who was reeeeally friendly but also reeeeally dorky, dorkier than you (me) even, and so you always blew him off just in case any of the cool kids might catch you being seen with him. That kid was the Paperclip. Shit, that kid probably created the Paperclip.


Worse than poorly programmed human-computer interface psychology experiments like the Paperclip are the little itty-bitty things that just make your life slightly more difficult. For instance, take the following scenario:

1) I'm working on a document, "List of Hot Men.doc", and want to print it.
2) I click the printer icon to print the document.
3) The printer right-fucking-next-to-me starts printing "List of Hot Men.doc".
4) After it's done printing, up pops a little balloon in the bottom-right of the Desktop telling me extremely useful information such as:

• "This document has been sent to the printer"
• "Document name: 'S:\trkn.xerxes.smi.\230GH-I70\Proje..."
• "Printer name: \\PS09\M913-LJ43KT"

Okay. That's all completely necessary information. What is it I'm supposed to do now, thank the computer? It sure seems like it, because that helpful little balloon won't ever, ever, ever go away until you hit the tiny little "x" to close it. If DC was ever attacked with nerve gas on like a Wednesday morning, the Feds would need to put together a special task force just to go floor-to-floor throughout the city in order to close these balloons.

Microsoft: please, please, please stop doing these things. Please.

Hot Chicks with Douchbags

It's not a stretch in any way to say that this is what the world has been waiting for. I've spent easily an hour just now pouring through the pictures and commentaries on Hot Chicks with Douchebags, and I'm still finding myself laugh out loud (yes..."LOL"). I've seen some pretty choady things in my day, but the pictures assembled here are off the scrote charts. It's impossible to read this site for even 5 minutes and not develop a refined hatred of New Jersey.

This site is something every guy can relate to; that is, unless you're one of the douchebags hoisted up in the Hall of Scrote, like "Oopma Prompa" below.

Jesus...

The author of HCwDB writes of Prom Oompa Loompa:

"There's a certain genius to the Prompa, and it's not just the zoot suit or the orange or the hair. It's that nervous moment we can all relate to. That glance around right before going to the prom when you're waiting in line and making sure your tie's on straight. The only difference is that unlike all of us at our prom who just felt like we looked ridiculous, Prompa actually does look absolutely ridiculous."

It's pure gold. Here's a picture of a d'bag he refers to as "Ab Lobster".



Part of the brilliance is that the same asswipes turn up over and over again. Ab Lobster, for instance, is a regular, even though he may not know it.

You're doing yourself a great disservice if you don't check out this site. Many kudos to Douchebag1, the author and proprietor of this site. Respect also to They Promised Us Jetpacks and We Got Blogs for leading me to this site. You've saved me from at least 3 days of work.

oh me, oh my

I hate writing about real stuff that happens to me in reality because who really cares what's going on in my little corner of the world? I mean, I just completed Gran Turismo on the hardest setting (reference anyone?), but why should you care? Actually that would be pretty spectacular from my point of view.

Anyway, I spent about 4 hours at Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday getting two sets of X-rays and visiting the orthopedist twice as well. Though I did gain the ability to see through walls from the seven x-rays I had done, that wasn't the point of my visit to the ole' HMO joint.

(ABOVE) My non-adamantium skeleton and its unintelligent design

You see, I went skiing in Vail back in February during which I fell...over and over and over again. The biggest fall was also pretty much my last, and the one that I think landed me in the situation I'm in now. I chose the words "fall" and "landed" very carefully, because during the Minturn Mile run I hit the third of a set of three man-sized moguls a bit crooked and ended up sailing through the air into the side of a hill, landing on my right shoulder.

I'd be lying if I said that a spill I took during my first run at Whitetail a week earlier in Pennsylvania wasn't the instigator of all of this shoulder trouble, but that'd be a pretty fucking pathetic story to tell at bars...as I found out the other night.

I still blame my inadvertent hang-time out in the backcountry in Vail for wildly exacerbating the injury, though. My friend Eric was there, he'd back me up on that spill. In fact, I can still remember him laughing hysterically when it happened, followed by the compensatory "uhh...are you alright dude?" Of course, as a guy, having "dude" and "you alright?" in the same sentence mandates a response of "fuck you dude, I'm fine."

According to those ability-enhancing x-rays, however, my shoulder doesn't think so. I've either got a fractured glenoid (the cup that holds the ball of the humerus) or a slightly torn rotator cuff (the thing that helps my curve ball hang instead of drop). If it's a fracture there's a chance that there's a few bits of bone hilariously floating around in my shoulder causing me pain, in which case I'd need arthroscopic surgery to reunite them with my savings account. No matter what it is, I need an MRI, which is cool but not cheap. With an MRI I'd also get to enjoy a "magnetic shit" injection, as I call it, directly into my shoulder. Since I love needles so much, I may as well plan on hyperventilating and passing out that day, in addition to driving to fucking Fairfax. Maybe I'll take advantage of the situation and pick up some delicious suburbs-only fare like Noodles & Company while I'm at it.

The really fun part is that I got to wait 2.5 weeks before I could see the orthopedist, and I get to wait another 4 weeks to see her again (assuming I can fit in and afford an MRI in the meantime).

Now, I'm not ragging on MRIs, they're pretty cool shit. From what I've read on CNN.com's tech section, they can see into the future to predict how shitty your life is about to get. They also excel at making you feel like you're stuck in a really expensive trashcan for an extended period of time. Pretty amazing stuff.

Anyway, no matter what happens, I'm on pins and needles about finally being able to join in on conversations when people talk about broken bones, because I never have before (KNOCK ON WOOD !!! /.... LOL!!!LLOL!!1LO!O/!!7O11!L!L). I can also join those supermacho conversations about sports injuries, which in most cases, are probably more underpinned by acute office-related atrophy than Dan Cortese-esque extreme sports accidents.

Whatever happens, I wish god had given me an adamantium skeleton instead of this intelligently-designed bullshit.