HAUS OF HAKKIN£N

Kimi Shows Up, Alonso Melts Down

2007-07-01T22:46:00.001-04:00

HUGE win for Kimi Raikkonen this weekend, especially as it was combined with a rare Alonso biff.

KR is now within 8 points of Alonso, who, having been savagely humiliated by Lewis Hamilton, is clearly experiencing the kind of catastrophic Freudian ego disintegration (a.k.a. "ego death") commonly associated with people who've overdosed on Schedule C hallucinogens, or flatlined on an operating table and come back, only to be tormented forever by howling, winged demons.

Public, slow-burn ego death is never a pretty picture--even the tabloids won't touch it--but in Alonso’s case, it gotta be especially rough. Right now he's finding out that deep down, underneath it all, once all those masks and the fruity little Euro sunglasses come off, he’s just another shame-faced clown.

Well, his loss is Kimi’s gain, so no complaints from me....

Sadly for Alonso, the Sabbatic Goat-Daemon Baphomet is a massive Lewis Hamilton fan. He also has boobies.

Why I Am a Kimi Fan...

2007-04-14T22:34:00.000-04:00

...in 10 seconds or less:

Jordan Pins Finns’ Wins on Sins

2007-04-13T21:13:00.000-04:00

Team owner Eddie Jordan has come out in fierce support of the vodka-soaked carnival of debauchery that is Kimi Raikkonen’s life.

In fact, he implies that the main reason that Finns--including King Hakkinen The Hasty--are such savage speed freaks is that, as a people, they are puking drunk all day and night, all the christforsaken time.

Says Eddie:

It's a well-known fact the Finns love a bevy and can consume heroic quantities of alcohol, and Kimi is just following a national tradition. The Irish get lashed on pints of Guinness but the Finns do it with enormous amounts of vodka…

[Kimi’s] been caught absolutely bladdered on several occasions but it's to be expected…and why the hell not? Providing it's not during a race weekend or during testing I feel Kimi is entitled to get hammered every now and again.

Fellow Finns Keke Rosberg and Mika Hakkinen both liked a drink and a smoke behind closed doors and it never did them any harm. They both won world titles.
If you change someone's make-up they don't perform to their best. When you sign a driver with Raikkonen's talent you just have to accept the way he likes to live his life. It's a sad day when you are trying to force your aces to become even more corporate.

Speed, Money and Doomsday Update

2007-03-27T00:04:00.000-04:00

This blog is about Speed, Money and Doomsday. It says so right up top. I'm all about giving the people what they want, so here's a shiny nugget of content on each of the three subjects.

1. SPEED--Check out this Ferrari/Shell video. It's the coolest thing you'll ever see that isn't nude. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about being forced to become a Ferrari fan upon Kimi's switch to the red car.

2. MONEY--How are the markets doing this year? Capital Spectator made this handy table for you. I borrowed it.

3. DOOMSDAY--There are so very many reasons why we're all doomed. For today, let's just concentrate on old-fashioned violence.

Now, I figured the world is more violent than ever these days. Apparently, it's not. The trend for armed conflicts is practically in free-fall, and while international terrorism (Iraq's not counted) is on the rise, the number of annual attacks is basically stuck near 300, while annual deaths are trending at 400-800 (as of most recent data). Bottom line: unless you live in Iraq, the odds are absurdly low that you have anything to worry about on this score.

BTW, my source for the graphs is a website for something called The Center for Systemic Peace. It came up when I Googled "global conflicts," so rest assured it's 150% true.

Assclown: the Life and Times of Ralf Schumacher

2007-03-09T21:59:00.000-05:00

It's official. Ralf Schumacher is smoking dust.

Exhibit A.
'I'm a top-three driver' - Ralf S.

Mar.9 (GMM) Ralf Schumacher thinks he is one of the "best three drivers" in formula one. In an interview with Bild newspaper, the 31-year-old German...ranked himself alongside F1's undisputed top two Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen. "Clearly they are really fast but I don't feel like I have to hide from anyone," he said. "I rank myself among the best three drivers. "If I didn't think that then I wouldn't bother being in formula one any more," Schumacher added.

(Mind you, this is the same Ralf who was the second highest paid driver last year and has all of six wins in 10 years.)

Exhibit B.
Ralf hits bird on last test day

Mar.9 (GMM) Ralf Schumacher struck a bird on Thursday as his and Toyota's pre-season period came to an end at the Spanish Jerez venue. "He was able to drive back to the pits where repairs were made," a statement issued by the Cologne based team - referring to 31-year-old Schumacher, not the bird - read. The bird was apparently hit by the front left suspension of Ralf's TF107, which on the grounds of precautionary safety was replaced.

Exhibit K.

There is some good news, however. Kimi Raikkonen apparently celebrated his Bahrain practice sessions true to form by getting falling-down drunk back home in Finland, according to the Finnish press (via the Malta Star):

Kimi drunk at karaoke bar
07 March 2007
Kimi Raikkonen might have switched to Ferrari but he has not given up his partying ways, new reports in the Finnish press suggest.

The tabloid newspaper Iltalethi reports that a drunk Raikkonen, 27, was spotted at the weekend in a Helsinki bar singing karaoke after returning from the final pre-season F1 tests in Bahrain.

Iltalethi claims that the Finn, behaving raucously, had spent the evening drinking beer, and before leaving he autographed a bottle of Koskenkorva Viina....

What exactly is Koskenkorva Viina, you ask? Great question. According to wikipedia.com, it's industrial ethanol, spring water and a "very small amount of sugar".

Seriously.

A look at the 2007 odds

2007-03-06T22:53:00.000-05:00

William Hill has their odds up for the 2007 Drivers and Constructors Cups. The numbers for the Drivers Cup are as follows:

K Raikkonen 15/8
F Massa 9/4
F Alonso 9/4
H Kouvalainen 12/1
L Hamilton 14/1
G Fisichella 16/1
R Kubica 20/1
J Button 20/1
N Heidfeld 25/1
R Barrichello 40/1
Ralf Schumacher 100/1
J Trulli 100/1
M Webber 125/1
D Coulthard 125/1
V Liuzzi 150/1
S Speed 150/1
N Rosberg 150/1
A Wurz 150/1
T Sato 200/1
A Davidson 200/1
C Albers 300/1
A Sutil 300/1

Basically, they're calling it a 3-way horserace between Kimi, Massa and Bultardo Alpaca, with Kimi a nose ahead. Sounds about right. And the time to wager is now, cause those three are going to start running away with the season starting day 1.

Anybody with a pair of onions (obviously not me) would throw all they had and all they could borrow on a Heidfeld or Kubica to show. Maybe even a Hamilton.

Now that I mention it, I'm surprised they have a rookie fresh out of GP2 that high up the rankings, but he is in a fast car and he does have a reputation for being a stone-cold barbarian on the sweeping turns.

I tried to get some additional science off www.tradesports.com's F1 book, but apparently there are no punters yet. I like the idea of seeing what the "market" is handicapping on a given trade, even though there's virtually no valid price discovery on that site since participation is so small.

Juan P takes the shit to NASCAR

2007-03-05T23:51:00.000-05:00

I hold JPM in fairly low esteem for abjectly wussing out of F1 to join NASCAR. But this makes me feel a little better.

Mar.5 (GMM) F1 emigrant Juan Pablo Montoya scored his first NASCAR victory on Sunday in typically controversial style.
In the second-tier Busch category in Mexico, the feisty Colombian took out his teammate Scott Pruett to lead after climbing up from nineteenth in the field.
"That was just low-down, nasty, dirty driving," Pruett - who recently shared a winning car with Montoya in the Daytona 24 hour race - told ESPN2 television.
Montoya's crew chief at the Chip Ganassi team, Brad Parrott, said: "I'm really glad we won but really upset that we took out a teammate. I'm upset we wrecked Scott."
Ganassi said of Montoya's nudge, which sent Pruett into a spin: "I don't know that he had to make a move like that so soon."

Happy St. Valentine's Day...Wankers.

2007-02-13T23:37:00.000-05:00

From your pal, Hak

Happy Valentine

See more like this on kontraband.com

Time waits for no man (with the obvious exception of Mika Haitch)

2006-11-12T01:11:00.000-05:00

Here's a little something for you to mull over during the winter non-racing season. Guy takes a picture of himself every day for 6 years (so far). Then he strings it together into a short film. Here's the result:

It's a pretty interesting work, I thought, but sad. An hour longer, and it would be his whole effing life.

Then again, if you mute the soul-crushing Moonlight Sonata-style minor arpeggios in the background, suddenly the situation's not so dire. Replace the soundtrack with Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere" and the movie goes from existential statement to comedy in short order.

And if you replace that with Dope's "Die Motherfucker Die," it goes back to disturbing.

Kimi's Back!!

2006-08-30T22:20:00.000-04:00

Let's be honest. It's no secret that this year has been disappointing for Kimi Raikkonen fans. We keep waiting for the magic to happen, but week after week, we find ourselves disappointed.

But, on August 22, loyal fans were finally reminded why they love old KR, when Agenzia Giornalistic Italia published this headline:

PATENTE RITIRATA A RAIKKONEN, GUIDA IN STATO DI EBBREZZA

Translation:

RAIKKONEN DRIVER'S LICENCE CONFISCATED, DRUNK DRIVING

He's Effin' BACK!!! Writes AGI:

Milan, Aug 22 - Kimi Raikkonen had his driver's licence and passport confiscated: the Formula 1 pilot was pulled over in a state of drunkenness. His fame of party animal keeps growing. The McLaren pilot, probably in Ferrari next season, would have committed the offence after a party organised by Red Bull after the Grand Prix of Hungary in Budapest according to the German journal "Bild um Sonntag". The pilot would get a 7,500 dollars' fine. His parties in Finland and Switzerland are famous and it cannot be excluded that Ferrari starts to have doubts about him for this reason.

Frankly, it sounds to me like the reporter was drunk--and for that I commend him. In any case, the story started popping up in the international press. A piece on softpedia breaks it down for you so I don't have to:

After participating in the [Hungary] race, the McLaren driver was invited to one of Red Bulls’ parties in Budapest. We are not 100% sure on how much he had to drink at that party, but what we can be certain of is that he lost his driving license and 7500 dollars with it. Now, there are two stories to tell: According to the Danish media, Kimi drove back from the party drunk. At one point, the police stopped him and realized that he was under the strong influence of alcohol. They took his driving license away and fined the F1 pilot 7500 dollars. On the other hand, according to German tabloid “Bild am Sonntag”, the driver had a little too much to drink [i.e. blacked out nude in a puddle of his own rancid upchuck(?) --ed.] at the above named party and lost his wallet. Therefore, he also lost his money and registration – passport, driving license, etc. What we do know is that he had a hard time getting out of Hungary the next day, having no identification on him.

Glad to see he's apparently back in top form, and I genuinely look forward to watching him once again shame his nation and the sport in the near future.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I'm including a video capturing former F1 racer Juan Pablo Montoya cursing Raikkonen's name to high hell on the racetrack. It's a 10-second classic that I guarantee will make your day 50x better, or my name isn't Turd Ferguson. And it isn't.

UPDATE:
I've been informed that Kimi denies the whole story. Here's an exchange from the Aug 24 F1 press conference:

Q: (Andrea Cremonesi - La Gazzetta dello Sport) Kimi, just to clarify gossip that we heard a few days ago: Sunday night in Budapest, did you lose your wallet or did the police take your driving licence? Which is the truth?
KR: Yes, I read that I have lost my driving licence by driving and drinking. I don't know who wrote this story but for sure, he will get an interesting outcome from this and we will see what happens.
Q: Was that inaccurate?
KR: For sure we will see in the courts. I don't want to say any more.

Bottom line? I blame that bastard Turd Ferguson.

So who brought the tequila?

2006-07-29T15:56:00.000-04:00

Axl n Kimi....'Nuff said.

Mika: Ready For His Close-Up

2006-06-10T02:04:00.000-04:00

Quick update here. A faithful reader named Bogdan took the time to write in with a massive scoop on M. to the Hakkinen. According to some Romanian tabloid, the All-Time King of Speed is to co-star with some gal in a major motion picture called Luger, to be shot in the aforesaid country.

Bogdan explains:

“…Her appearance will be highlighted by a 4 wheel "jewel", a Ferrari from the '80's. And I quote again from the magazine, "She drives a car to match her beauty- a red ferrari. For such a car the blonde will have a matching partner, formula1 driver, Mika Hakkinen". Well I didn't really understand if H will drive the ferrari (ohh nooo) or if he will shoot the dumb blonde or throw rotten tomatoes at her. The article didn't say...”

Tomatoes or no, I feel certain that “Luger” will be liberally sprinkled with Palmes d’Or next year at Cannes. Can’t wait!

Here are some scans from the magazine, courtesy of Bogdan:

BTW, if for some reason you didn’t realize Mika’s got star quality coming out his ass, check this out:

Tons more F1 "separated at birth" classics here

Sweet, Merciful Mother of Jesus.

2006-05-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

This is the hardest fucking thing ever.

It's a short video of some guys revving an F1 engine. At first, you just see some blue flames coming out of the pipes and whatnot. Then, about 1 minute in, they drop the effing hammer and the metal exaust pipes go almost transparent with heat. It sounds like the world is coming to an end.

The effect is so mother-whoring ferocious, I popped wood.

Boing!

Getting Sideways in Paris

2006-05-22T23:18:00.000-04:00

Here's a little morseau for all you abject Speed Freaks out there (and you know who you are):

"On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets."

It's a great watch. Good ending, too. Turns out there was a plot all along. BTW the director got arrested for making this, but they never found out which F1 driver was at the wheel of the Ferrari.

Reminds me of a high speed run we once made from Cape Cod to NYCin a McLaren Mustang and a 300ZX. The McLaren's speedometer only went to 80 (it was a stock part), but our buddy in the 300ZX let us know when we hit appropriate speeds. Top speed was around 155 mph somewhere in Connecticut--on I-95 in broad daylight. The rest of the time we were doing more like 120-130.

Also, Fran from Dutchtilt Desktops (who made the kick-ass new Haus banner) has informed me that there's a new site out there just for Ralf Schumacher fans. The description says:

"This group is for guys who love hot F1 drivers such as Jacques Villeneuve, Jenson Button, Ralf Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Nick Heidfeld, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Giancarlo Fisichella, Christian Klien, Nico Rosberg among others. Discussion about your hot fantasies about these drivers among other stories are more than welcome.

DISCUSSIONS ON THIS SITE WILL USUALLY BE OF AN ADULT NATURE, SO IF YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE BY SUCH DISCUSSIONS, THEN PERHAPS THIS MIGHT NOT BE THE GROUP FOR YOU"

Thanks, Ralf!

Poll Results: You are a perverted hyena.

2006-05-15T20:04:00.000-04:00

Well, the old poll was getting a little stale so I've put a new one up.

I've gotta say, I'm disappointed in your participation rate. Only five (5) people voted, and I was at least two (2) of those. From now on, I want to see a little more hustle on your--the reader's--part.

Anyway, here are the results. As you can see, and as we all already know, you're a bunch of savage pervert hyenas, if not outright criminals:

Listen. I'm saying this as a friend: Get the help you so desperately, desperately need.

Gooooooooooooooolllllll!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-05-15T19:18:00.000-04:00

Pretty funny commercial. I like the hippie and the soap....

And Iran, Iran So Far Away

2006-04-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

Great article in the FT about Iran and oil recently. Yahoo also ran it. It’s called Faith-based frenzy that unites Iran with the oil speculators, by John Dizard

The speculator part of the story is interesting…you can read it on your own. The Iran part is even better: According to the author, Iran will be screwed if the price of crude declines, so they need a massive geopolitical crisis to stay in business. That’s why they’re doing all this nuke stuff now. But they won’t be able to milk that game forever, the author says, and when the music stops the brinksmanship will, too.

My own guess is that it is factors like the nuclear brinksmanship, in addition to the possibility of Peak Oil and disruptions in places like Nigeria and perhaps the Gulf of Mexico that will keep the game going for a long time…Anyway, here’s a lengthy excerpt for your intense reading pleasure:
------------------------------------------------------------------

....There is a shortage of refined product, because that takes big, complicated plants that take a long time to build and are difficult to operate. That's too much like work for people in the developed world. So the developed world (and its speculators) is effectively long crude and short refined product.

There will continue to be a shortage of refined product, in part due to price controls on product in fast-growing parts of the world. One of those places is Iran, which heavily subsidises refined products, which it has to import. According to Iran's numbers, they use 50 per cent more petrol per capita than Americans.

So Iran is long crude and short refined product. Just like the speculators, it needs a high and rising oil price. Without $70+ oil, Iran would face fiscal disaster. In the Iranian fiscal year just ended, government expenditure rose by 25 per cent, or27 per cent above what was budgeted. Only high oil receipts kept government finances from collapsing. Most of the increased spending went to operating expenses such as salaries and price subsidies, rather than capital expenditure. That will be hard to cut. The report of an IMF mission to Iran from last December said a "fiscal adjustment", or government spending cut, of 3 per cent of gross domestic product would be needed, along with tightened monetary policy.

To avoid that, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, needs crude oil prices to keep rising. I don't know why people think he's insane. Creating a panic over the prospects for oil supply is his only way out. If Gulf crude oil were to decline to $40 a barrel, the long-term upward price trend would remain in place, expensive substitute supplies such as the Canadian tar sands would still be economic, and the rest of the Middle East would still prosper, though at a less frenzied pace.

Light Crude (NYMEX) prices

But those who bought the ETFs and the "sophisticated" investors who bought into crude-long hedge funds would lose a lot of money. When they started liquidating their futures positions and selling ETF shares, the product behind those holdings would also be sold, eventually, to refineries, which would accelerate the price decline. And the Ahmadinejad administration would be finished.

This won't take that long. Energy prices are cyclical. The underlying physical and economic laws haven't been repealed. We are talking about a year or two until this happens, based on past experience.

Nationalist frenzies in commodity exporting countries collapse with the decline of commodities prices. It always happens. This time will be no different. The professional commodities players will go back to making nickels and dimes off rolling their contracts into a backwardated market. The war freaks will slink back to their think-tanks.

1,001 Perverts, Terrorists and Hedges

2006-04-12T23:05:00.000-04:00

Some quick updates here...

First up, Haus of Hak has surpassed the 1,000 visitor mark:

I have to reiterate what I said when this site passed the 500 mark: you, my reading public, are an international bunch of abject savages, convulsing with all manner of rank perversions—especially the 9% of you that come from “Unknown Country.” 1

You know who you are. And so does Jesus....

-=The Mystery Reader=-

Actually, while we’re on the subject (of rank perverts, not Jesus), I’ve become curious and paranoid about one reader in particular. See, the counter on this site tells me the city, country and partial IP address of all visitors. Don’t panic, I can’t figure out who you are with that information (don't care, either)—and all websites get at least that much data about each of their viewers.

But there’s one Haus reader in particular, someone from around Blackpool, Lancaster, who’s starting to freak me out a little. This person reads so christforsaken much Haus content that I’m beginning to think it’s The Cops.

OK, sure: I might have nicked an F1-themed JPEG or two from here and there around the web, but my understanding is that since I’m not making any money with all this, then it’s all kosher. Yes?

Anyway, if that mysterious reader could send me an email or something to assure me that it’s not a massive conspiracy to take me down for Agitation and Thought Crimes, I’d sure be grateful. And thanks for reading, by the way!

On the other hand, if you are John Law, then you’d better open your ears and listen up...and listen good, boy:

You'll never take me alive, you facist, pig-fucking bastard!! ²

-=A Light, Sweet Iran trade=-

Speaking of sticking it to the Man, Iran and the West seem to be heating up the tough talk more and more these days. The Financial Times recently handicapped the likelihood of War at 25%. That seems high to me. A strike on Iran would probably mean WWIII and likely wouldn’t solve the nuke/mad ayatollah issue over the long term.

I’ve looked at terror-related financial co-movements before and liked the dynamics. Now, my advice would be to short the tradesports.com contracts on a pre-DEC. 06 US/Israeli strike on Iran (@ $20+), and hedge it with a long position in Dec. ’06 Oil > $67.50 contracts.

That way, if we do attack Iran and you lose out on the short contract, you’ll make up for it with the oil ones, since oil would probably go to triple digits in such an event. Most likely, you’ll win on both contracts anyway.

Check out the charts:

Price for US/Israeli Overt Air Strike against Iran

Price for Light Sweet Crude Oil Feb07(G7) Futures Year End 2006

Note that the price essentially represents the market’s perceived % likelihood of the outcome in question coming true. Also, it would be hard to do the Iran trade in size because of the lack of liquidity. For the oil you could just use normal contracts, and would probably be better off. Here are the details of a hypothetical trade:

Risk/reward for selling 500 Iran strike contracts @ $21.6
Risk: $3920
Reward: $1080

Risk/reward for 1000 of the oil > $67.50 contracts @ $64
Risk: $6400
Reward: $3600

If the US and/or Israel strikes Iran, you lose on the first and just about make it up on the oil. If there’s no strike, you get the $1080 for sure. And as long as things stay tense, you’ll almost certainly win on the oil.

Basically, it’s like betting on the world staying a fucked up place. If the world suddenly gets better before the end of the year, I’d obviously keep the Iran trade and reverse the oil one.

------------------------------------
Footnotes:
1. This information may be speculative, and should under no circumstances be construed as true, even though it probably is
2. Just kidding....See you in Gitmo, Lard-Ass

Insane in the (mem) Bahrain

2006-03-12T22:41:00.000-05:00

Well, if you don't know by now that Kimi came from dead last to place third in the Bahrain GP, get off my blog right now. I mean it.

To quote Stephen Colbert, you're dead to me.

However, most of you (i.e. all 3 readers) will know that having crashed out in qualifying, Kimi charged thru the field on a one stop strategy to land on the podium. That means that although he did save 30 seconds on a pitstop, he was carrying around more fuel than everyone else, and worse-worn tyres. And he still placed third. He's effing amazing.

After the race, McLaren managing director Martin Whitmarsh made an apt comparison:

"Mika early in his career had a number of disappointments but he shamed some of us with his confidence and ability to bounce back so quickly, and Kimi's like that."

Indeed, my friend. Indeed.

At the end of the first race, Kimi is third in the points, but McLaren is tied for first in the constructor's cup. It's kind of astonishing...tied for first, and one of their drivers didn't even complete a qualifying lap. This season is going to be great.

On another note, Ralf Schumacher wins HoH's Asshole of the Month award for trash talking Kimi. Trash talking is fine, but this is from a guy who's been racing for years, makes millions of dollars, and has won exactly the same number of GPs as I have--and I can barely parallel park.

Without further ado, here's the entire story from F1-Central:

Kimi 'Not Cool' -- Ralf
Schumacher Jnr slams 'Iceman'

(GMM) Ralf Schumacher has aimed fire at a 'cool' F1 rival -- so-called 'iceman' Kimi Raikkonen.

30-year-old Schumacher, who drives for Toyota, was asked by the German 'Stuttgarter Zeitung' newspaper what he thought of McLaren's monosyllabic Finnish star.

''People call him 'cool', because he doesn't say anything,'' Ralf, the younger brother of world champion Michael Schumacher, said.

''But if I ran around the paddock behaving like him, people would call me the most arrogant idiot of all time.''

In the same interview, Ralf also suggested that his brother's presence in formula one has always been a 'hindrance rather than a help' in his racing career.

Video: KR Jacks Fisi, Suzuka '05

2006-03-09T23:46:00.000-05:00

Remember this from last year?

Such a savage, fyre-hot pass...the illest thing about it was that Kimi started dead last on the grid. Things like this are why I'm psyched out of my mind for the season to start this weekend, and why Kimi is making something like $20 million per annum--that's a lot of hooker money!

Tuff...

2006-03-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

Prepare To Shit All Over Yourself

2006-02-11T01:21:00.000-05:00

Today is the greatest day you will ever have in your life. That's because I'm posting the video of Mika Hakkinen's classic punk-out of Michael Schumacher at Spa in 2000.

Not only that, but you get full color commentary by the undisputed, all-time King of Speed himself.

Many people--myself violently included--believe this to be the illest pass in modern F1 history, although Kimi's '05 Japanese GP pass is a strong contender (I'll post that one soon).

Anyway. Coming down the straight neck-and-neck with MS at 180MPH+, Mika sees he can't overtake. So, he drafts the back marker (Ricardo Zonta) for a second, then dives inside and breaks the F out right before the chicane. Hakkinen went on to win the race--his greatest victory.

This is everything an F1 pass can and should be. It is the alpha and the omega, if you will. It's so textbook, so mother-whoringly money, that every time I watch it I feel like setting myself on fire and running through the streets nude and screaming, smashing things apart.

Now, without further ado...

More MP4-21 pix

2006-01-24T20:51:00.000-05:00

This is one hot ride. I definitely like the reversion to McLaren orange. Message to Newey?

SUCK ON THIS.

Kimi will take it for a spin this Thurs and Friday at Catalunya. BTW, Check out the barge boards (above).

The orange is a throwback to the original McLaren livery. Pictured above is team founder Bruce McLaren drving a 1967 M7A (great link), in which he won the Belgian GP.

From www.paddocktalk.com:

"Visually MP4-21 will look very similar to MP4-20," said Jonathan Neale, Managing Director of McLaren Racing. "In addition to the tighter packaging to the rear of the car, people will notice differences to the nose area, which has been lowered, and the aero body work, such as the barge boards and deflectors.... The reduction in required cooling for the V8 engine has allowed us to in turn reduce the size of air intakes, this includes apertures in the main chassis, which is beneficial to the overall aerodynamic package...."

Trivia fact: the new car has 11,500 parts, 90% of which are new.

Bleak Haus

2006-01-23T23:57:00.000-05:00

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

-Emily "Fire Buns" Dickenson
-------------------------------

It’s the middle of winter…47 days or something til Bahrain….too cold for any Nitro action. All is bleak.

I’ve been too despondent about the current lack of viable Speed options to post much in the last few weeks. But life must go on. I therefore present you with the following five (5) morseaux to suck on while we in the international BHP community await more exciting days.

1. The 2006 McLaren MP4-21 is out, and it’s looking pretty savage:

2. DC is banging a new gal. I guess he dumped Simone Abdelnour. Anyway, the new babe is the F1 reporter on France’s TF1 channel, Karen Minier.

This only goes to reconfirm what my consultant, Juan, assured me years ago: that DC is by far the biggest poon-hound in the entire paddock, bar none.

3. Two news stories for the price of one! Mika sez Schumacher should quit; Schumacher sez Rossi has a job driving F1 for Ferrari if he wants one. (see earlier post)

4. Mika also sez Kimi is the best driver out there. As an interesting aside, Kimi was voted F1 Magazine’s Driver of the Year even tho Alonso won the driver’s cup. Obviously the crowd is giving KR his due ‘n’ proppaz for being a drunken barbarian. As he put it upon being confronted by the press over his behavior, "It doesn't make me any slower."

5. Speaking of which, today is the one year anniversary (give or take) of one of the greatest Kimi stories ever, as reported on http://www.people.co.uk/:

Jan 23 2005

EXCLUSIVE

Drunken F1 race ace Kimi kicked out of a lapdance club for fiddling with his gearstick

By Steve Myall And Ray Levine

MOTOR racing star Kimi Raikkonen was chucked out of a lapdancing club after putting on an obscene display that shocked staff and customers. The married Formula One driver and his pals had spent more than £5,000 on booze and table dances when he suddenly…

WHIPPED OUT his manhood in front of two lapdancers.

PLAYED with himself in front of the busty blonde and brunette.

WAVED AWAY the horrified manager who tried to stop the sordid scene.

LURCHED drunkenly out of the club as he and his pals were hustled away.

The manager of trendy London Mayfair club For Your Eyes Only told The People: “I was gobsmacked.

“I thought I’d seen most things in the lap dancing game but when I saw one of the world’s top racing drivers sprawled there with his trousers undone I couldn’t believe it.”

Finnish-born Raikkonen, 25, who drives for McLaren Mercedes and is the major rival of F1 legend Michael Schumacher, arrived at the club on Wednesday night with two pals. They got through bottle after bottle of Cristal champagne at £600 a time and dozens of dance vouchers at £20 each. The party transferred to a VIP area and Raikkonen – who married beautiful Finnish model Jenni Dahlman last year – was enjoying dances from a blonde and a brunette when he decided to give them a show of his own.

The sozzled Finn unzipped his designer jeans, pulled out his manhood and began fondling himself.

The manager, called UJ, said: “I was working downstairs and got a call there was a problem.

“I raced up and at first I thought there was nothing wrong.

“Then I looked again and Kimi’s hand was there on his crotch with his trousers undone and his body exposed.

“I shouted ‘What the hell are you doing, get out now’ but he waved me away.

“Fortunately it was nearly the end of the night and the house lights came on.

“I sent away the two girls, Kimberly and Brody, and managed to get his group downstairs. It was too much.

“He was drunk as a skunk and didn’t care who saw what was going on.”

An astonished eyewitness said: “Raikkonen was very arrogant and loud when he arrived – flashing his credit card for everyone to see but he didn’t even use it and let mates pay the bill.

“The girls were halfway through a dance and were about to remove their G-strings when the management spotted the driver with his trousers undone.

“Every now and then you do get guys going over the top with the girls but you don’t expect anyone to expose themselves – especially when they are a world famous millionaire racing car driver.”

Another member of staff told The People: “The girls are used to men coming on to them but Raikkonen overstepped the mark. “The poor girls were so embarrassed they didn’t know where to look. “I feel sorry for his wife if that is the kind of thing she has to deal with.”

Raikkonen, nicknamed the Iceman for the cool style in the cockpit which has won him two Grand Prix, is no stranger to controversy. He was pictured last year collapsed on a pavement in Gran Canaria, Spain, after a bust-up with wife Jenni, 25, a former Miss Scandinavia.

The randy driver, who owns homes in Chigwell, Essex, and Finland had been smooching with other women.

After another drunken escapade in Finland, Raikkonen – reported to be on an £80 million contract – said: “You can’t stay at home all the time. You have to live your life”

But club manager UJ said: “It doesn’t matter how famous he is, it doesn’t excuse his shocking behaviour.”

When The People spoke to Raikkonen’s agent Steve Robertson yesterday he dismissed the claims as rubbish but admitted he had not spoken to the star. Then the driver’s best friend Christian Vine, who was in the club with him on Wednesday night, phoned to protest Raikkonen’s innocence.

He said: “I’m sitting with Kimi now but I can’t put him on the line because you will quote him.

“But it’s absolute rubbish that he exposed himself. It’s not appropriate for an F1 driver to speak to a newspaper about something like this especially on a Saturday afternoon when he is off duty.”

What they got through

FUN-LOVING Kimi Raikkonen and his friends racked up an incredible £5,000 bill for champagne and lap-dances on the boozy night out – but the bill could have been nearly double.

A source revealed the group worked their way through FOUR magnums of Cristal champagne costing £600 a bottle, SIX bottles of £270 rose wine, and £1,000-worth of table dances. They also ordered a monster jeroboam bottle of Cristal in a presentation box for £4,500. But it was left undrunk on their table and was returned to the bar and knocked off their bill.

BONUS PIC -- A trashed garage: this is supposedly a pic of Ralf (with the unbuttoned shirt by the knocked-over fridge) and Kimi (wearing the West shirt) after getting into a drunken brawl. I have no idea if that's the real story...I found this on a message board.

My Christmas List for Santa

2005-12-13T23:25:00.000-05:00

Dear Santa,

What follows is a partial list of my Christmas demands:

First up, I need you to get me this Mika Hakkinen cross-stitch kit.

I want it, I want it now, and I don’t want to hear any of your mealy-mouthed excuses on this. Git ‘er done, and get back to me ASAP.

If possible, have Ms. Claus take care of all the sewing and whatnot for me. I’m no good at that shit—all thumbs, etc. Listen, if it doesn’t entail ball diffs, I can’t help you, pal. Just tell your gosh damned byrd to hook a brother up over here and make it into a pillow cover for my kid’s future nursery, okay?

Other things I need you to get to me ASAP (i.e., no later than Christmas morn):

1. A signed copy of the Mika Hakkinen CD single—preferably the Finnish version, which reached the top of Finland’s charts in 1998.

[Readers click here for an audio sample of this priceless masterwork]

Chorus:
Here he comes! Mika Mika Häkkinen!
This is the day of white and blue!
Donnerwetter Schumacher!
You have got us all wrong! We don't mean you

2. A McLaren team fleece ski hat (tuff)

3. A Scalextric 1/32 McLaren/Mercedes MP4 F1 2005 “Kimi” slot car (harde)

4. A SCX 1/32 Slot Car McLaren F-1 “Mika” slot car (ill)

I’ll keep you apprised of other gift necessities for me as and when that information becomes available.

In the meantime, keep it real—and don’t even think about jerking me around on this. I will have that cross stitched pillow, damn it.

Your pal,
--HAKKIN£N!!!!!!!

P.S. If they’re out of the Hak stitch kits, I’ll settle for a Bee Gees version. That motherhumper Barry Gibb’s got a voice on him like a fricken angel.

Bless that Barry Gibb's little heart.

The Lingua Franca of Horsepower.

2005-12-04T03:16:00.000-05:00

Almost nobody outside Finland speaks Finnish, and that’s a mother-effing shame.

For my part, I’m trying to learn the International Language of Speed because I believe doing so is my sacred duty as a Nitromaniac.

Think about it: how much of a total disaster would it be if, during one of your semi-annual pilgrimages to Helskini, you ran into Kimi Raikkonen blacked out at a strip joint—and you couldn’t drop any science on him?

Here’s what I’m gonna do for you. Below is a list of all the terms you need to know to go drinking and whoring with Kimi in Finland.

As an added bonus, each term is linked to a .wav file demonstrating the proper pronunciation.

Good luck, and try not to get arrested too much…

-------------------------------------------------

Hyvää huomenta! = Good morning!

Iso tuoppi! = Could I have a pint of beer, please?

Kiitos! = Thank you.

Kippis! = Cheers!

Tämä on hyvää! = This is good!

[Repeat as necessary.]

Moi! = Hi!

Sinulla on kauniit siniset silmät. = You have beautiful blue eyes.

Hauska tavata! = Nice to meet you.

Sisään! = Come in, please!

Anteeksi = Sorry!

[No word yet on how to say “STOP: bukkake time!”]

Saanko laskun? = I would like to pay you.

Minulla oli mukavaa. = I had a nice time.

Näkemiin! = Goodbye

The Sound of Tuff.

2005-12-01T20:50:00.000-05:00

I'm definitely going to miss the V-10s next year. Nothing in the world sounds cooler than one of those things flying around at close to 200 MPH.

The V-8s just aren't the same. For one thing, they're 20% less powerful:

GAY

But don't take it from me. Here are a couple of samples for your listening pleasure. They were recorded in Barcelona on 29 November, 2005.

Note: I strongly advise turning your speakers up as loud as they'll go:

V-10 (Scuderia Toro Rosso)

V-8 (McLaren/Mercedes)

Above: JPM takes the new engine out for a few laps in Barcelona. Kimi must be out rocking some whores and absinthe in the Raval or something. Good man.

The Whores of High Yield: GM PET Bonds

2005-11-23T22:12:00.000-05:00

Been following General Motors PET bonds a lot recently.

PET (Preferred Equity Traded) bonds are a family of preferreds that are actually repackaged “retail” bonds with $25 par values. They’re issued directly by the parent company and trade like stocks.

Anyway, these days the GM prefs/PET bonds are paying monstrous current yields—like 12%— and if the company ever manages to gets its shit together, the capital gains on a recovery or call could be excellent, too.

Here are the bonds in question:

By the way, that chart took me a solid hour to research and make, so don't ever say I never do anything for you, you filthy swine.

Anyway, I’ve been watching with great interest as the company’s fortunes slurp deeper and deeper into the economic toilet. Now that they’re good and wedged down in there, is it time to load up?

The chief remaining question to me is whether GM will survive as a company.

In the spring of 2003 I did a similar trade with American Airlines prefs (AAR) right as the company was negotiating with the various unions for concessions to avoid Chapter 11. The CEO was fired, the unions caved, the company stayed alive, and I ended up doing pretty well.

To me, that was much more of a gamble than the current GM situation. It was a bet that the unions would rather take pay cuts than have the company go bankrupt. Fortunately, it worked.

So what about GM?

Well, I don’t know jack shit about finance, but I know how to find those who do. In fact, I buy research from a couple of them, and it's way better than anything I can come up with. One of my favorite fixed income dudes had this to say about the GM matter a few days ago:

FIVE REASONS WHY A GM BANKRUPTCY IS UNLIKELY

The talk about a GM bankruptcy makes for market attention but lacks real substance. There are a number of arguments for why this is so.

1. You have to be eligible to declare bankruptcy; you can't just decide it would be strategically beneficial to do so. GM with $19 billion in cash and a book value of $40 billion hardly meets that test now or for a number of years.

2. GM doesn't need a bankruptcy threat to win concessions from its unions. It has Delphi to do that for them. When the Delphi bankruptcy is concluded, the unions will know what they can expect to win from GM if they force it to use the bankruptcy route. Chances are, they will settle for something close to the Delphi concessions because they have even more to lose with GM.

3. GM as a business is a very valuable franchise. Before it goes into bankruptcy it would likely reach a merger agreement with a foreign car manufacturer much as Chrysler did.

4. Unlike the airlines, GM and its unions have it within their power to fix the problems. There are a variety of ways this can be done short of bankruptcy. The main battle may well be within the UAW pitting young workers against those retired or about to.

5. A bankruptcy filing would be most devastating to GM shareholders. It is the duty of the board of directors and management to do everything to prevent that from happening. While this principal seems to have been ignored in several recent bankruptcies, it seems less likely to happen here. Besides, we have Kirk Kerkorian watching to make sure this doesn't happen. I'd be more worried if he had bought GM debt instead of stock.

Take it or leave it. Me, I'm gonna keep mulling this whole thing over for now, but situations like this always make me feel supremely, mother-humpingly greedy…

Speed Freaks Down East

2005-11-20T22:21:00.000-05:00

Karting is the greatest sport in the world besides F1.

A bunch of us went up to an indoor track in Boston this weekend and got sideways in a massive way. I finished in the middle of the pack (5th place), which was a satisfactory result for me, given that I’ve only driven competitive karts once before.

The top 3 drivers had done endurance karting last summer at Lime Rock, and had also taken the Skip Barber driving course. Their experience clearly showed, but I expect to drop as much as a second from my average lap time next time out.

Here’s the layout. We were on Track 1, which goes counter-clockwise:

(Note that the first straight is uphill, and the hairpin goes steeply downhill into a tunnel.)

The last time I went karting (outside London) I destroyed the left front upright early in the race as I came out of a hairpin and drilled my friend Juan, who was stuck in an accident of his own at the beginning of the straight. I blew a tyre in the process, and may have bent the frame, as well. It was awesome.

The Boston experience was better. I was much smoother around the track, hit all my apexes and breaking points, didn’t spin once, didn’t wreck once, and managed to bury two (2) to three (3) people in the wall and not get flagged for it. My only major technical flaws were slowing into a couple of turns I didn’t need to, and slowing excessively into the downhill corkscrew before the tunnel.

Part of the latter issue was that I was overly cautious when tailing people on that turn. I saw a lot of people spin and crash there, and I wanted some room to evade if someone wrecked in front of me. The strategy paid off several times, but it cost me a few painful hundredths. That I cannot and will not abide next time.

Another highlight of the experience was getting a first-hand view of Mika Hakkinen’s helmet from his 1998 Monaco Grand Prix win.

When I saw the display I almost collapsed in a violent attack of Stendhal's Syndrome. I recovered without major incident, but not before popping a painful and embarassing boner.

All told, it was a tremendous experience (the racing, not the boner), which brought me closer to my inner Nitro/Speed Freak.

This summer we hope to explore F1 Boston’s mile-long outdoor track (click thumbnail below), as well as do some six (6)-hour team endurance races at Lime Rock.

New Poll: I Choose "Gonnorhoea"

2005-11-11T00:47:00.000-05:00

It's like a kick in the onions....but to your SOUL.

The Judas of Woking

2005-11-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

That slimy little bastard.

Adrian Newey, McLaren's technical director for the last eight years, moved to Red Bull today (thanks for the heads-up, Juan).

Newey was the brains behind the heady Hakkinen years, as well as Kimi's recent ascent.

One has to wonder what McLaren boss Ron Denis, pictured with Newey below, was thinking when he allowed this travesty to happen.

I mean, how hard is it to just throw cash at the guy? We know he's a whore--that is now beyond dispute. The issue is that though a whore he may be, he's also a great racecar designer.

Moreover, if McLaren goes to shite as some are predicting, how long will Kimi stick around? It's effing Silly Season in November.

On the other hand, I can't be all that worried. Like Mika Haitch, KR has the Gift of Speed, after all. That's not something a person can buy or learn, and it's not something that can be taken away. It's all in the genes. Read and learn:

"It is a circumstance not generally known, perhaps, that among seamen, Finns are regarded with peculiar superstition. For some reason or other which I could not get at, they are supposed to possess the gift of second sight, and the power to wreak supernatural vengeance upon those who offend them..."

Herman Melville
Omoo
1847

"DIE MOTHERFUCKER, DIE!!!"

Haus of Hak Celebrates 500th Visitor

2005-11-07T22:47:00.000-05:00

Let me drop some mother-effing science on your cracker ass:

That's right, Haus of Hak officially received its 500th visitor today.

Who are you, the reading public? Well, you're obviously a cosmopolitan crowd, hailing from all corners of the world:

On the other hand--and I just can't sugar-coat this--you're an international bunch of abject perverts, plain and simple.

Don't believe me? Here's a selection of some of the top referring searches that got you here--in the last 24 hours alone:

...well, you get the idea.

For the sweet love of Jimminy Mother-Humping Jehosephat, people! Honestly....

Other, more understandably popular searches include:

and one I sincerely hope is kosher in intent:

aina hakkinen

Haus of Hak is also the go-to destination when it comes to Kimi's habit of publicly blacking out:

"drunk raikkonen" (in Turkish)
drunk raikkonen --hey, top Google result! (Please don't sue me.)

There are other referrals with more violent themes:

And finally, my proudest internet association of all:

Super Nitro carbon fiber

That's right, somebody found a link to the Haus on page 14 of his/her (ok, it was definitely a dude) Google results after searching for "Super Nitro carbon fiber." That makes me damn proud.

As for "Grandpa's Cum".... yeah ... uh, I'm somewhat less proud of that one. Not to say displeased, though. Interestingly, those searches are emanating out of Mexico and Arizona. Puebla and Tuscon, to be more precise.

So... I bet you didn't know that when you search for "Grandpa's Cum" people can see where you're doing it from.

Well, fruitcake, you guessed wrong.

Anyway, when you're done dying of mortification and frantically trying to erase your geriatric jizm-encrusted hard drive, why don't ya cum on back to the Haus....

Everybody's welcome here, butt-nut. You're home now.

Poll Results: 40.7% of You Are Drunk

2005-11-06T19:52:00.000-05:00

Haus of Hakkinen has been hosting a poll over on the sidebar for a while, and the results are now in.

The poll asked readers, “Why is Kimi so Christforsaken Fast?”

Overwhelmingly, you were too drunk to answer the question. Take a look at the results:

These results come as no surprise, really. In fact, I can’t imagine why anyone who wasn’t falling-down drunk would read the trash I put on this site.

On the other hand, 33.3% of you apparently were sober enough to take a stab at Kimi’s secret, and you attributed his blisteringly incandescent speed to his being Finnish. In this assumption you were only partially correct. It is indeed necessary to be Finnish to be as fast as Raikkonen, but it is not sufficient.

So what about answer #3? Well, that was a trick question, but only 18.5% of you fell for it. The fact of the matter is that strippers do not routinely punch KR in the face with their asses; in actuality, he punches himself in the face with their asses. It’s a fine distinction, but one that I’m confident the less severely drunk of you can appreciate.

Well, as you’ve by now probably figured out, the correct answer was #4. Only 7.4% of respondents got it right, and one of those votes was my own. Poor show on your part, you smelly, grunting herd of barbarians!

So what does “Raikkosen tallitoveri han oli radalla ‘strippers’--toinen!!!” mean?

Well, it’s an old Laplander koan that unfortunately has no English translation. And even if it did have a translation, the underlying gist of the thing is so intensely vulgar—so absolutely fucking revolting—that I simply wouldn’t feel comfortable posting it on a family site like this.

Thanks for taking the poll, and better luck next time!

An RC…Person?!

2005-10-27T23:19:00.000-04:00

Now this is just plain Buck Effing Wild.

You put a contraption on your head and suddenly your whole body essentially becomes radio controlled. I'll quote the article at length, but you really should read the original.

I wonder if they could fit one of these things around, oh, I don't know...say... a vagina?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A special headset was placed on my cranium by my hosts during a recent demonstration at an NTT research center. It sent a very low voltage electric current from the back of my ears through my head _ either from left to right or right to left, depending on which way the joystick on a remote-control was moved.

I found the experience unnerving and exhausting: I sought to step straight ahead but kept careening from side to side. Those alternating currents literally threw me off.

The technology is called galvanic vestibular stimulation _ essentially, electricity messes with the delicate nerves inside the ear that help maintain balance.

I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced _ mistakenly _ that this was the only way to maintain my balance.

The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands.

There's no proven-beyond-a-doubt explanation yet as to why people start veering when electricity hits their ear. But NTT researchers say they were able to make a person walk along a route in the shape of a giant pretzel using this technique.

It's a mesmerizing sensation similar to being drunk or melting into sleep under the influence of anesthesia. But it's more definitive, as though an invisible hand were reaching inside your brain.

F1's New Centreline Downwash Generating (CDG) Wing

2005-10-27T22:49:00.000-04:00

So some designs are out for F1’s new Centreline Downwash Generating (CDG) Wing ...

All told, they’re wicked. What do they do, you ask? Here’s an explanation from the FIA:

The two-part wing, a result of aero research done by the sport's governing body in conjunction with technical partner AMD, is designed to promote overtaking by lessening airflow disruption immediately behind the car. Following cars would be able to get much closer before losing front downforce, hence making passing easier. The FIA hopes to introduce the wing in either 2007 or 2008, in conjunction with a return to wider, slick tyres.

More info here and here.

The whole thing is to lessen the cars’ aero traction and get more mechanical traction (i.e. tires/tyres, suspension, etc.). The pic below shows the difference in turbulence coming off the car. The top is with the current wing, and the bottom is with the CDG....Tuff...

Portrait of the King as a Young Man

2005-10-20T22:52:00.000-04:00

Found some guy’s personal karting website the other day.

Sure, it’s got the standard faded photos taken of long-forgotten races at tracks now silent and covered in weeds. And sure, it’s written in that crazy goddamn Laplander pig Latin I can’t make heads or tails of.

But it also has something more, something supremely wicked. It has this:

Know who that is? That’s right, you heathen bastard—it’s Mika Fucking Hakkinen.

Yup, he’s the little tough-ass who ditched his shirt to show off some beef for the chicks. Even back then he was baddest emmer-effer in the paddock.

Furthermore, even back in the day (long before his Flock of Seagulls phase) he was sporting enough to let the other guy stand atop the podium for the picture, as if Hak himself had somehow placed third.

Speaking of that “other guy,” it's none other than fellow Finnish Speed Freak Mika Salo. The chick in 2nd is one Taru Rinne, who would go on to be one of the first women to race in MotoGP (125cc).

My guess? Mika banged her.

It's an interesting story. No, not the one about Hak depucelating Rinne; the one about him and Salo. The two grew up down the street from each other near Helsinki and raced together as kids.

Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, by the time Hak was 12 he had forgotten more than most people will ever know about driving. That’s because he started racing in 1973, at the ripe aulde age of five (5).

Little known fact: Mika Hakkinen’s father took on a second job as a taxi driver to pay for the young feller’s karting career.

Better-known fact: I don’t know how it was back in ’73, but when I went to Helsinki in 1991, every last taxi in town was a new-model BMW or Mercedes. Maybe Hak, Sr. didn’t have it quite so bad? Who knows?

But I digress. In the end, whereas Hakkinen’s destiny was to become the Greatest Sportsman of All Time, Salo bumped around Japanese F3000 before having a basically mediocre run in F1.

These pictures were taken in 1979 or 1980, which would make Hak about 11 or 12. Let them be an inspiration to one and all.

Kimi Gets Old, Flavio Gets His Balls Gargled

2005-10-17T22:26:00.000-04:00

No, that's not Sam Neil, asspipe.

Anyway, I won't lie to you--I feel ashamed of myself for posting that pic.

Maybe posting this one will make it all better:

Succhiarlo, leccacazzi puttanna! Succhiarlo!!

Season's over...

2005-10-16T04:39:00.000-04:00

...all is black, etc.

Anyway, I'd like to commemorate the 2005 F1 season with a picture of Kimi, shown here as he brazenly dry-humps a random girl singing at a bar.

And, of course, here's him getting violently eighty-sixed a short while later.

Good on ye, Kimi. I knew you were one of us.

Kimi Busted in Wild Chinese Orgy (?)

2005-10-14T03:11:00.000-04:00

Got this story off the popular Finnish rag Iltalehti Online. Unfortunately, seein’ as how I don’t speak Finnish, I don’t know what in Sam H. Christmas it says.

Far be it from me to assume anything untoward about Kimi's behavior, but for the sake of convenience let's just assume the article says he got caught banging Chinese paddock hoes ten at a time. Understood, but I’d sure like to hear the details.

Everyone knows the ChiComs don’t go in for that European orgy shit, what with the one-child rule and all. Not officially, anyway... Of course, Charlie did invent ben-wah balls, so he ain't got a leg to stand on as far as I'm concerned.
--------------------------------------------------------

Räikkönen neljäs perjantain 1. harjoituksessa
14.10.2005 8:10

McLaren-tallin kolmas kuljettaja Pedro de la Rosa piti parasta vauhtia formula ykkösten Kiinan gp:n ensimmäisissä harjoituksissa perjantaina.

Shanghain GP:ssä riittää katsottavaa ajosessioiden välissäkin. (EPA)
Toiseksi nopein Shanghain nopealla radalla oli kisan viime vuonna voittanut Ferrarin Rubens Barrichello 1,8 sekunnin erolla kärkeen. McLaren-tallin Kimi Räikkönen oli neljänneksi nopein. Hän oli radalla vain viiden kierroksen ajan ja jäi kärkeen reilut kaksi sekuntia. Kuljettajien maailmanmestaruuden jo varmistanut Renaultin Fernando Alonso oli seitsemänneksi nopein 2,1 sekuntia kärjestä. Hän kiersi radan 10 kertaa.

Räikkösen tallitoveri Juan Pablo Montoya oli kuudenneksi nopein 2,05 sekuntia kärjestä. Michael Schumacher oli Ferrarillaan viidenneksi nopein. F1-kauden päättävässä Kiinan gp:ssä sunnuntaina ratkeaa, voittaako Renault vai McLaren tallien maailmanmestaruuden. Renault johtaa sarjaa kahdella pisteellä ennen McLarenia.
Perjantaina ajetaan vielä toinen harjoitusjakso.

----------------------

Also, apparently Jenson Button fell victim to the old "Let's Bukkake the Round-Eye" trick upon his arrival ahead of the Shanghai GP. Seen it happen a dozen times to unsuspecting Westerners. It's never pretty...

Raikkonen/ Hakkinen/ Bukkake

2005-10-13T00:23:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wondered whether there was a correlation between Raikkonen, Hakkinen, and the Japanese group-ejaculation ritual known as Bukkake?

Me, too.

As you know, Haus of Hakkinen is about much more than commentary. This page is also concerned with researching the unseen facts that shape all our lives.

One of my ongoing interests is trying to divine the zeitgeist to the extent possible using statistics that fly under the radar. One example of this was HoH’s analysis of gold and oil stocks in comparison to Zarqawi- and bin Laden-capture futures. Another example was the entry entitled, “Can Computers Predict the Future?”

Call it quantum physics, serendipity, or what-have-you, but Things do seem to be Connected. For instance, besides having at least one superfluous K per word, I have discovered (via BlogPulse software) that there is indeed a correlation between Hakkinen, Raikkonen, and Bukkake:

Bukkake, as it turns out, appears to be a leading indicator of Raikkonen:

Amazing. But what does it mean? My guess is that the global consciousness has picked up a link between Kimi Raikkonen’s existence and the relative prevalence of Bukkake on a worldwide basis.

But what about Hakkinen? Where does he fit into this, you ask. Well, we all know that Mika’s long been a family man, and I guess we are forced to surmise that Erja doesn’t like to get bukkaked. Can you really blame her?

Bottom line: when KR is in town, you can bet your sweet ass a bunch of chicks are going to get hosed down with spunk.

P.S. Did you know that the original meaning of Bukkake refers to the Japanese culinary practice of dousing noodles with Miso soup? Mmmm, now THAT's tasty!

Bukkake!!!!

I Love Trash

2005-10-11T02:23:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! message boards are always a great place to find some seriously trashy people. After a few minutes worth of trolling said boards this evening, I found this post, which wins my enthusiastic vote for most lucid point of the day:

Well spake! BTW I had to make the post into a jpeg to preserve the formatting. You've gotta appreciate how innovative some people can be. It's a mitzvah from God.

Kimi Blacks Out/ Pussy of the Year

2005-10-08T00:53:00.000-04:00

First up is this classic tidbit about Christ’s Gift to Speed (and Finland), Kimi Raikkonen:

“According to speculation, Formula One party animal Kimi Raikkonen has been at it again.
"McLaren's pace setting Finn, who has already been verbally warned about his alcohol-fuelled escapades by Ron Dennis, has apparently now received a formal written reprimand from the Woking chief.
"The gossip in the Spa paddock is that a drunk Raikkonen, 25, was somehow caught - in northern Italy - in public with his pants down in the week prior to last Sunday's Monza race.
"Mercedes boss Norbert Haug called the story a 'completely unfair attack' and 'a lie'."

There’s another Kimi black-out story here…I need that picture from Bild like Kimi needs his nightly coterie of sluts, a handle of Tequila, and a giant bag of toot.
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PUSSY OF THE YEAR 2005

Who is Christian Abt, you ask? Nobody. Nothing. A chump. Trash. Abt is just another poser sucking his way to the bottom in the German DTM Touring Car Series. The reason he’s Pussy of the Year is that he traded some paint with the King of Speed (M. Hakkinen) at the Euro Speedway last week and had a hysterical hissy-fit about it afterward. Here’s the news summary:

"On the first lap, things were going well and I was able to make up several places," reflected Abt, who started from P19."Then [Rinaldo] Capello pushed a bit too hard and spun me."Even after that my lap times were okay - unfortunately, though, a two-time world champion [Hakkinen] behind me got nervous - and pushed me off the track."

Boo hoo hoo, cupcake. Let me clarify something for you: Mika didn’t “get nervous;” he was putting you to the fucking wall, you girl! And you damn well deserved it.

Here was Mika’s side of the story:

"After Christian Abt had hit my car, something was wrong and I was not able to push anymore."

Now THAT is what I call sportsmanship. Frankly, Abt is extremely lucky that Mika found it in his heart not to beat him to death (unmercifully) with a tyre iron in pit lane.

Back in the day, Abt would have paid for his backsass with an immediate kick in the face. Mika’s still got the fyre, but he’s long since settled down:

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In other news, the Japanese GP at Suzuka is this weekend. Should be solid, even though the season is pretty much over. Kimi fucked the dog when his engine blew up in practice, but he so christforsaken fast I wouldn’t rule out a podium finish regardless.

Although Alonso’s locked in the Driver’s Cup, McLaren will be fighting ferociously for the Constructors’ Cup. Apparently there’s a lot of money in the latter. But with the Driver’s Cup locked up, Alonso probably will be taking more risks, too. Should be a good one.

Japan has a unique history vis a vis F1. Two (2) spectators were killed in 1977 (at the Mt Fuji course) after Gilles Villeneuve’s ride launched off the track after hitting Ronnie Peterson’s freakshow six-wheeled Tyrrell P34, pictured in my last blog post.

Unsurprisingly, Ronnie and the P34 came in 14th for the season. (Niki Lauda took 1st for Ferarri, Jody Schechter took 2nd for Wolf, and Mario Andretti took 3rd for Lotus. Those were some great racing years….)

Finally, the Japanese supposedly are up in arms about Honda firing Takuma Sato, who is widely considered the best F1 driver ever to emerge out of Japan. The problem is, he pretty much sucks. His car sucked, but face it: so did he. Some people think Sato might go to Toyota, but it seems like a long shot.
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Bonus link: BBC story partly about MotoGP King Valentino Rossi possibly moving to F1….

Bonus pic: Juan making his “You fucking cock-a-roach” face:

Or maybe it's his "!Me cago en la puta leche, Christian Abt!" face? Yes, that must be what it is...

Jimminy Mother-Whoring Christmas, Charlie.

2005-09-29T22:02:00.000-04:00

Why?

That’s all I want to know. Tamiya, an early leader in RC technology re-released the Grasshopper and the Hornet (the Grasshopper’s “souped up” cousin), two classic scale buggies whose heyday came and went in the mid-80s. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they did it.

The Grasshopper was the first RC car I ever had. It’s also the only 1/10 scale car I’ve ever heard of that came with a 380-size motor instead of the standard 540. Not only that, but instead of having a thin polycarbonate body shell, it had a thick, hard plastic one that didn’t flex and weighed about 400 lbs. It featured spring-only shocks that bottomed out on every bump, and while the front two were independent, the rear suspension was of the single-axle trailing arm type (which means that every time you hit a bump, both rear wheels go flying). In retrospect, I’m amazed it even had a diff. It was a piece of shit, alright, but I sure loved it. Then I drove it into the ocean and it died. But I digress.

Nowadays, any decent mid-range RC car is a wildly over-engineered speed machine made primarily of titanium, graphite, and carbon fiber. It might feature a carbide ball diff, a coreless, brushless cobalt/rare-earth motor, and a lithium polymer battery that is half the weight of the old NiCd’s with 4x the specific energy. And the idea that shocks would be (a) not fully independent (except on a 1/12 pan car), and (b) not oil-filled, is angeringly absurd.

The question is no longer even whether to use oil dampers, but rather what oil weight to use in the front and back, given the track conditions. The last time anyone seriously considered using spring shocks alone on a 1/10 scale car was when Reagan was president.

The thing about scale—and not just cars—is that fanatics will go to almost any lengths to build to the current technological potential. That’s why these divorced engineers show up at the track with $2500 RC cars stored in the back of their $1500 hatchbacks. Long before LiPoly batteries showed up in cell phones, they were being jury-rigged into RC planes and cars. Almost as soon as the prototypical wireless video technology allowed it, nitro fiends were rigging up systems in their planes. Any self-respecting Nitromaniac will spend dozens and dozens of hours per vehicle tinkering with the minutest of control settings, and every year the RC community builds astoundingly hi-tech new vehicles.

Oddly, the company that probably did the most to bring “serious” RC cars to the masses, Tamiya, consistently has lagged the industry for years now. Their cars are heavy, inefficient, made of cheap materials, and amateurishly designed. Of all the major brands, which include Losi, Team Associated, Kyosho, HPI, Mugen Seiki, Ofna, and others, Tamiya is by far the least competitive.

All of which makes one wonder why in Christ’s holy name they re-released the Grasshopper and the Hornet. Like any committed Nitro fiend, I’m nostalgic about my old Grasshopper: the nerf bars, the paddle tires--all that shit. But for $85 (retail), why would anyone ever consider buying a scale car featuring 1984 technology? I just don’t get it. It’s literally like re-releasing the Atari 2600 and pricing it a hair lower than an Xbox 360.

Maybe Tamiya is fresh out of design ideas, I don’t know. On the other hand, they have come out with at least one unique whip. Granted, it’s a scale 1977 Tyrrell P34 F1 car, but given that it has 4 steerable front wheels (like the original), you have to give it props.

I’ll leave you with a link to a video of this guy who built a flame thrower into his Traxxas T-Maxx nitro monster truck. It’s effing awesome:
http://videos.radiocontrolzone.com/hotshot2.ZIP

Also, here’s a HPI Super Nitro RS4 that does 100MPH:
http://videos.radiocontrolzone.com/100mphcwh.zip

Tons more here: http://www.radiocontrolzone.com/cars/video.asp

Fee Na Nay: I'm Going Back to New Orleans

2005-09-21T00:03:00.000-04:00

Watching the Superfly From the Big Apple to the Big Easy on pay-per-view right now. I didn't go in person cause I'm too dead ass broke to shell out $200 for tix for me and my bird, plus she goes to bed early. I've been taping the whole thing, but pausing frequently, such as when Bette Midler came out to low and burp into the mic for 15 minutes--or was that the song?

Actually, the PPV version is mostly from the MSG show, but the simultaneous Radio City Music Hall show looked to be the money shot. They cut to it for a sec and it was fucking Allen Toussaint and Jon Cleary doing a duet of Tipitina. How awesome is that? Well, it's hard to say, cause they cut back to Elton John in a Marie Antoinette outfit sucking pole and raw-dogging a male model onstage. Or was THAT the song?

Anyway, now it's the original Meters and the Neville Brothers--playing together for the first time ever. Of course, my tape just ran out, so I'm not getting any of it, but the show is rocking. My advice to those guys is, if Allen Toussaint offers them a contract backstage, ask for more money this time.

I guess the bottom line of this entry is that I'm going back to Jazzfest. It's more of a state of determination than an abstract travel plan I'm talking about.

Listening to Kermit Ruffins and the ReBirth and (25 second of) Snooks, I realized I was committed to going back down there, whatever condition things are in (i.e. come hell, but hopefully not high water). I don't care if they hold it in a massive, churning vortex of PCB-ridden geriatric diarheea that stretches clear across Mid-City, and only 14 people and 2 bands show up; I'm going back. The real tragedy is that I am already previously engaged during this coming year's Fest. That's okay, there will still be plenty of toxic diarheea left in 2007.

So it's settled: if and when I get an email saying that the Jazz and Heritage Foundation (or whatever it is) needs my support, they're gonna get it... cause my kids are going someday, too. In the meantime, I'm going to sock some dough away for a kick ass hotel for the last week of April and the first week of May, 2007....

Life on Mars?

2005-09-19T01:28:00.000-04:00

Water Vapor Discovered on Tiny Moon of Saturn

Stories like this give me a boner. I don't know why; they just do.

I love space stuff to no end. Lots of people ask why we should spend all this money on the space program when people are starving, etc, down here on Earth. A common answer is that society in general benefits from the technology developed via the space program. I buy that. Imagine if we didn't have satellites to check out the weather, not to mention take surface data about the planet. The weather benefit alone is priceless. Then there's the telecommunications stuff (e.g. the internet). That seems valid to me.

There's also the argument that humans have always been explorers. Columbus is usually cited, but I'd urge one and all to peruse his diaries (link to excerpt), the opening pages of A People's History of the United States, or, best of all, the amazing accounts (excerpt) of Bartolome de Las Casas, an early arrivant in the New World, and an acquaintance of CC.

Now, Columbus was a fine sailor, but while he happened upon the New World while trying to find a Western route to China (which he died thinking he had done), he stuck around for the gold. And that's generally what explorers did. They weren't going for the gratification of seeing virgin land; they were trying to hit the jackpot.

When Columbus got to Haiti (Hispanola), he wrote back to Ferdinand and Isabella that the island was effing silly with gold, and he urged them to send him supplies to help get at it. The problem was, he was lying his ass off. There was roughly zero gold there. He enslaved most of the Arawak natives of the island in a savage bid to find some of the yellow metal, but to no avail. Most of the Arawaks died in one of history's many genocides.

Here's Las Casas a few decades after CC's arrival:

We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.

The common ways mainly employed by the Spaniards who call themselves Christian and who have gone there to extirpate those pitiful nations and wipe them off the earth is by unjustly waging cruel and bloody wars. Then, when they have slain all those who fought for their lives or to escape the tortures they would have to endure, that is to say, when they have slain all the native rulers and young men (since the Spaniards usually spare only the women and children, who are subjected to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast), they enslave any survivors. With these infernal methods of tyranny they debase and weaken countless numbers of those pitiful Indian nations.

Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts. And I say this from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed. But I should not say "than beasts" for, thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect; I should say instead like excrement on the public squares.

I don't mean to slam Columbus, since he was acting perfectly normal according to the standards of his day. And for all of de Las Casas's denouncing of the Spaniards' treatment of Indians, his solution was to get a ton of black Africans to be slaves instead. Incidentally, he was also the first priest to be ordained in the New World. It's odd when we think about it now, but in his day Las Casas would have been (and was duly denounced as) a flaming liberal and a Spain-hating Injun-lover.

Anyway, tying the whole thing back into space exploration, there are plenty who point to commercial and military motives pursuant to out presence in the heavens, and scorn it. All that may be valid in a way, but what really sells me on the whole thing is the pure discovery aspect.

I love it when they find frozen methane cliffs on Titan, or slam a satellite into a comet just to see what would happen. To me, it's the grand continuation of kids' backyard exploration: what happens if you launch a toad 900ft in the air in an Estes model rocket? (The G-forces get him.) If you hose down a plush Odie doll with bugspray, light him on fire, and use a water balloon slingshot to fire him into the night sky, will he leave a trail of flames? (Yes.)

Anyway, I will leave you with a false color image of Saturn's moon Mimas. The crater that lends Mimas its trademark Death Star look is 88 miles wide.

BTW, for a good time, check out the NASA video link on the sidebar of this page. It's great. Also, on the subject of C. Columbus, check out the true circumnavigation chronicle "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum, and /or see my second post. When the narrator gets violently sick in the middle of the Atlantic, the ghost of the captain of the Santa Maria takes the helm for him. It's awesome.

PS Song of the Week: "Life on Mars" by David Bowie. Check out the Seu Jorge version, too.

Get 'em While They're Hot!

2005-09-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

From the Big Apple to the Big Easy

From the fellers at Superfly...pass it on.

Bittersweet Nitromania

2005-09-12T00:18:00.000-04:00

Kimi did it again.

That's right, he eked out a killer win at Spa following the 2nd pit. I tell you, he is immortal. Shame I missed the whole thing.

Anyway, it wasn't long after he took the checkered flag that he started in on the sauce in a major way.

My guess? He's still drunk and probably passed out inside a Belgian stripper's ass right now.

Which brings us to the question, Which F1 driver's wife is the savagest piece of Trim? Take a look at some of their babes here. I think Jenson Button's gal (Louise Griffiths) is the biggest smokeshow in the paddock today:

Kimi's wife, Jenni, was Miss Finland a few years back. Juan, my Team Wong co-driver, has always been of the opinion that Kimi crapped the bed by marrying her, especially so young. It seems that Juan was right; Kimi is just now reaching his peak as a driver, and he gets caught having wild, late-night gang bangs on a routine basis. Judge for yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy this unusual shot of a clearly drunk Alonso singing "Ooh Ooh Child" (by the Five Stairsteps) in a thick Castillian baritone as Kimi watches on, moved...

Mika: Rapid Dragon/ Tune of the Week

2005-09-09T00:51:00.000-04:00

Soon I'm gonna stop posting so christforsaken much about New Orleans. The "Doomsday" component of the "Speed - Money - Doomsday" troika has overshadowed the two other, equally critical components of my total consciousness.

Not only that, but with Kimi failing to win the GP at Monza, I had to consider last weekend's racing news as just more Doom. Now the permanently trashed and ever more brazenly lecherous young Finn is 17 points behind Alonso with only four (4) races to go. Even worse, I'm not going to be able to see the GP this weekend at Spa cause I'm going to be up in the country with no cable. I'd give both my arms and legs for a TiVo right now. Unfortunately, I can't afford one because whatever money I don't give to Katrina victims I'm sending to Kimi's divorce lawyer. Trust me, Kimi's gonna need the help as bad as anyone.

Getting back to the point, my miss this weekend is particularly painful since Spa has one of my favorite corners in all of F1 (based on extensive PlayStation2 testing), the Eau Rouge: a double-uphill left that you hit doing 180 mph in 7th gear. Spa is also where my beloved Mika Hakkinen savagely punked out Schumacher on a chicane a few years back.

Speaking of which, check out Mika's tatoo. It's Japanese Kenji that loosely translates as "Rapid Dragon":

It could also be translated as "dragon kings old hometown" or "quick sovreign," among others. Either way, it's hard as fucking nails. For more detailed discussion of how to interperet the kenji, I stongly recommend going to the source.

Anyway, about the song of the week. It's "Louisiana 1927" by Randy Newman. This is a beautiful song, and seems sadly appropriate at a time like this, even though those "trying to wash us away" in the lyrics presumably are supposed to have been Yankees. But, particularly for someone like me, for whom the loss of New Orleans increasingly feels like a death in the family, the anguished refrain and plaintive gospel changes resonate massively.

I like all the versions: those by Randy himself , those by Aaron Neville (though a bit over-engineered, IMO), and the one by a band called Old School Freight Train (iTunes link). I remember last JazzFest I was sitting in the waiting area of Bayona in NOLA right next to Randy. I have to say I didn't even recognize him until someone mentioned it. Anyway, this is a great tune, and apt for the occasion.

“Louisiana 1927”
Randy Newman

What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Care Forgot.

2005-09-08T12:57:00.000-04:00

The following Katrina account was sent to me by a person who knows the writers. I can't attest to its accuracy, but it certainly merits a read. By and large, it rings true. Other people I know who looted (for survival) or who defended themselves against armed thugs had similar stories. Also, the incident on the Crescent City Connection was widely reported in the media.

The story reminds me a little of the testimonios made famous by Central American writers/respondants like Rigoberta Menchu (who won a Nobel Prize for hers, but who was accused of making some of the story up). As with the events in the testimonios, the ordeal of the Katrina victims must be considered in the context of class, race, and relations of power within America, not least in places like New Orleans.

Now, a lot of the white people I've talked to about this aren't buying the race thing. To a person, they're not from down there. All those people who are shocked--SHOCKED!--at the introduction of the so-called "race card" into the national dialogue on the post-Katrina situation should remember that in 1991, more than half of Louisiana's white voters voted for ex-Klan leader David Duke for governor. Granted, I think he was running against Edwin Edwards ("Vote for the Crook"), but Duke's relative popularity means something. Specifically, it means that at least 51% of the white people in Louisiana are fundamentally okay with cross-burnings and whatnot. Just something to take into consideration.

The city is/was an amazing place, but a model society it was not. In fact, one of its great charms was how completely, insanely fucked up it was on every level. It was also a magnificently, profoundly apathetic place in general. Just about nobody there, including me, really gave a shit about anything, or did anything about it if they indeed had a concern. That fucked-upness and apathy provided for tons of laughs and some beautiful facets of life (see Confederacy of Dunces), but it obviously has come at a price.

They call New Orleans "The City that Care Forgot." Well, guess what? Care forgot.

This whole episode reminds me a bit of the Victorian"discovery of poverty" and its aftereffects in England from about the 1870's to WW2. The early days were the time of Jack the Ripper, Dickens, Marx, Beatrice Webb and the Fabian Society, Charles Booth, the classic slums, the workhouses, Poor Laws, and means tests, Social Darwinism, malnutrition, and so on. (Further reading).

The British Empire was at the apex of its global power and glory, and laissez-faire capitalism combined with breathtaking imperialism had got it there. The "discovery" of widespread poverty wasn't limited to Britain; before long trade unions and antipoverty/anti-imperialist activists of all stripes were on the rise all over Europe (note the 1905-1907 First Russian Revolution; that nation was fighting the Russo-Japanese war) and North and (to an extent) South America.

During WW1, virtually every town in France, England, and Germany lost men to death or disfigurement. Among British soldiers, the rich and the poor were forced to scum it in foxholes together for the first time, which some say contributed to a greater sense of intra-class solidarity. By contrast, German and Russian leaders both had to contend with an increasing sense among working-class troops that the war was not between regular poor folks, per se, but between the elites who controlled both countries--at the expense of the poor. It should have come at no surprise when, as WWI ground on for a near-defeat Russian army, the workers and peasants upped and killed the Czar and Rasputin, and called off hostilities with Germany (Second Russian Revolution, 1917). Everyone knows what happened after that.

The British, too, were moving Left in response to the condition of the poor and the general unfairness of Imperial British society, but there was no revolution. Many people credit the Britain's legislative and grassroots efforts on behalf of workers and the poor, and the menacing rise of Facism (itself against a background of widespread poverty) in Germany, Italy, and Spain as heading off open socialist revolt in the UK. However, after WW2, the Empire finally crumbled, and Labour won the first postwar election in a landslide on an essentially socialist platform even though Churchill, the conservative incumbent, had just led Britain to perhaps the nation's all-time greatest victory.

This ultra-lightweight breezing over of history is just my way of pointing out that the pendulum swings back and forth according to the realities of the times we live in. Having a massive underclass is an invitation to social upheaval if the problem is ignored. The pot tends to boil over. It's just a matter of time unless you either fix the problem or increase state repression.

For that reason, I'm curious whether Katrina will lead to something of a "discovery of poverty" and/or race and class divisions in the US. It's no secret that this has been a watershed event for black Americans. I see evidence of the anger everywhere from Kanye West to the pissed off trainer at my gym. And certainly the rest of the world noticed. However, most white Americans say they disagree. Regardless, the story that follows has clear overtones of race and class, both in its style of narration, and in the facts it describes.

To me, the biggest question after Katrina is not "who's fault was it?" but rather, "what does this whole episode say about our society?" To me, it peeled back a shroud and demonstrated that we're even more fucked up than I thought. But depending on the constituency answering the question, the responses will vary as widely as the fortunes of our citizens. Everybody has a stake in the answer, so consensus and decent analysis will be hard to come by.

Meaningful solutions will not come. Not from Democrats and not from Republicans. No matter who wins the next election, I'll probably mourn, although one candidate will no doubt be worse for the nation and the world than the other. But issues of race and poverty have always bitterly divided America, and I guess they always will. To me, the only thing that's uncertain is exactly how much friction we're gonna see going forward. My guess? There's not gonna be much of a revolution.

As a country, we're not exactly famous for being able collectively to cast a critical eye upon ourselves. Sunny optimism sells much, much better here, especially if that optimism means that you get to give away less of your money. When people wonder whether or not we should massively increase government spending on the poor, it's reasonable to ask whether such a sorry bunch of perverted fucking hyenas (the government, that is; not the poor) should be given another dime with which to futher sodomize our national dignity upon the altar of Freedom and Democracy. Think of the government as Zed and our heritage and future as Ving Rames.

On the other hand, if the consensus develops that we, as a nation, can't accept such ongoing deprivation among entire categories of our citizenry, I don't see how reducing the national safety net even further is going to fly. Then again, I've been surprised before, like this time when there was like this huge hurricane, and the government completely fucked up the evacuation, and then completely fucked up the rescue part, and a whole city went down the toilet. It was fuckin' wild, man. Crazy.

The first line of the second paragraph of Tom Paine's Common Sense refers to government as "in its best state...a necessary evil." For now, I'll accept that as truth, not least because Paine was probably the greatest and most savage blogger (i.e., pamphleteer/propagandist) of all time. So, assuming that (however regrettably) we need an institution to govern us, perhaps that institution should put its shoulder into not having a giant, permanent underclass. How to do it? You got me. Social programs are great, but you need to make bank to have em. Maybe we could just sell Kansas (and everyone in it) to the Mexicans and give the proceeds to the poor. Secretly, I think the best idea of all would be to dissolve the US and go back to being either autonomous states, or regional blocs of like-minded former states. I'm not a very good nationalist.

The problem is that I believe that not all of us--probably not even a majority of us--but a great many of us, either deep down or up front, are basically in it purely for ourselves. And as a matter of practice, many of us straight up just don't give a tuppenny fuck about other people...especially people different to ourselves. There's nothing new in that, unedifying as it may be. But why are we still pretending that we're all one big, happy, whack-a-doodle American family? Probably cause if we didn't, we'd eventually have to gun each other down like dogs. Which reminds me of like this one time, like a week ago, when there was like this huge hurricane, right? And...

Maybe you didn't see the subtitle of this blog or something: DOOM, MOTHERFUCKER, DOOM DOOM DOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, without further ado, here's the account of those couple of Katrina survivors. Take it away, Don Pardo!
-------------------------------------------
Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences

Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

Oak St. -- A Stranger Few Days Than Usual

2005-09-03T01:59:00.000-04:00

I've heard from about four different people that Uptown is basically fine--physically. When Be bugged out on Wed. night or Thursday, Snake's was intact, Jacques-imo's was okay, Tulane was fine, and so was the Maple Leaf. The problem was that the people at the Leaf were holed up with shotguns as a gang of local thugs tried to beat the owner of the Tru-Value next to Jacques-imo's to death with a crowbar.

The owner of the hardware store, an old guy who once followed me around the aisles with a suspicious eye, had driven to his store over dry but somewhat littered Riverbend streets to see how it had fared in the storm.

When he got there, the young dudes from the neighborhood were clearing its inventory out. He told them he'd give them whatever they needed--nails, hammers, wood, etc--but asked them not to ruin his livelihood. That's when one of whacked him in the head with a crowbar. Seeing this from down the block, the owner of the Maple Leaf went over with a shotgun and scared off the looters. Reportedly, it looked like they were fixing to kill the store owner. He was okay, and returned shortly thereafter to pile as much of his inventory into a pickup truck. He then drove off down Oak St. with a few buddies in the back--guns drawn.

Meanwhile, a dramatically less murderous (and I reckon drunker) contingent of remaining locals went shopping at the Rite Aid on Oak and Carrolton. With a forklift:

One resident, who shall remain nameless, said that the store wasn't ransacked as much as shopped-at-without-paying-for-it. Once the door was open, these locals just helped themselves to modest basketfuls of necessary staples: in our friend's case, this was 2 things of Rollos, maybe a toothbrush....all I remember of the list was the Rollos. He said people were just walking up and down the aisles as on any other day, then walking out with their stuff instead of going to the counter first.

Even on Wednesday, some of those on Oak St. saw no particular reason to leave. The houses were standing and in good shape. There was no electricity, but there were candles. There was plenty of water and beer, and food was availible, if not through strictly legal means. There was even pool volleyball until the groundwater started to rise in certain places by later in the week. However, the battle between almost-normal and almost-Mogadishu resolved in favor of the latter.

The stories started to come in about what was happening across the city. Then the thugs started coming by. Cop cars would drive by the gangs, take one look, and keep going. By late Wednesday and Thursday, the same people who had been contentedly playing pool volleyball in a ghost town started walking down the street to Rite-Aid carrying guns.

It's a shame: a bunch of the people remaining around Oak St. felt that they probably could have been pretty helpful around the neighborhood were it not for the pickup trucks full of kids going around armed to the teeth, looking for people and things to violate. They recognized the kids. They're the neighbors from down the street, the same ones we would buy $25 bikes from (and who would steal them). In the end, things got hairy pretty fast, and a few Oak St. people hopped in a car and got the fuck out of town, having more or less written off all their possessions.

Pics of Uptown...

2005-08-31T23:32:00.000-04:00

Found some pics of Uptown, New Orleans on www.wwltv.com. I think they were taken post-storm, but pre-flood. Not sure tho.

1. Robert's Bar/Fro-stop area. If Papa John's survived and Robert's is toast, I will eat my own poo. The good news is that the glass at the Fro-Stop is intact, so maybe the damage over there isn't total. The irony is that I feel sad that the Fro-Stop sign is down even though there was a time when, if some of us could have knocked it over ourselves, we probably would have. And it would have been, um, hilarious. $5 says George Lennox is still passed out on the Robert's pool table from last Saturday night. [Large]

2. Somewhere on Freret...again, probably pre-flood...looks familiar. [Large]

3. Somewhere on Colliseum... [Large]

How New Orleans Can Bounce Back

2005-08-31T14:26:00.000-04:00

A lot of people familiar with the city wonder how it can bounce back, given the devastation. Not that I know shit, but I think it will. Here are some things I think might happen:

Once the city is drained, the wreckage blocking the infrastructure will be cleared. Eventually the water, sewage, and electricity will be repaired. At that point you’ll have several hundred thousand (or more) displaced people.

Volunteers will help clean up the bulk of the non-infrastructure-blocking wreckage, i.e., wrecked houses and buildings, and downed trees.

At this point, the property market in New Orleans will be in a tailspin.

Some people will not come back. But many will--their friends, families, and histories are in New Orleans. Many of those that do come back (of all income levels) will essentially be put on welfare by the government. They will be issued food stamps, a stipend, and probably given a certain amount of repair resources with which to fix their homes. Charity will play a big role.

Many locals whose jobs are gone will find work helping homeowners and businesses rebuild, whether rebuilding networks, or nailing shingles.

Tourists will not come back at first, so the employment situation overall will be dire, but there will be some jobs, and these will "seed" the local economy.

Key to saving New Orleans is keeping a critical mass of citizens from leaving permanently. Ironically, the crash of the property market will be essential to this. If a massive plan to defend the city from future storms is put in place, buyers will be attracted to the very low property prices, since housing is so expensive elsewhere. With enough incentives, buyers will slowly return.

As time passes and a new normalcy emerges, small businesses, including bars, small markets, gas stations, some superstores, and so on, will open and employ people.

Essentially, life in New Orleans will need to be subsidized until a market for goods and services develops on its own. In the Great Depression, the government adopted huge projects (like the Tennessee Valley Authority) to employ people. Maybe the government will come up with projects like that for New Orleans, as well. That way, people would have money in their pocket, the city would be rebuilt, and everyday life would reemerge in town.

Eventually, as long as the city’s storm defenses are upgraded, New Orleans will survive as a living city. Geographically, it is a hub of the energy and shipping industries, and a major industrial and agricultural capital. Culturally and historically, it is unique enough, and enough of that uniqueness probably survived, to draw visitors back.

The population will probably shrink in the coming years (compared to pre-Katrina), but people will go where there is an incentive (e.g. low property prices, jobs); where there are working people, there is a marketplace; where there are markets there is an economy. That, in addition to the assurances of physical storm defenses, should be enough to keep New Orleans alive in the long term.

This is all off the top of my head. If you think of anything else, please let me know!

(BTW, if the President says the US economy won't be harmed by this, I think he's full of shit. He actually can't say that the economy is toast without it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Energy prices are going to continue to be super-high, which will come right out of national consumer spending, and many companies probably will unexpectedly miss earnings for this and future quarters.)

Want to volunteer for a week?

2005-08-31T13:26:00.000-04:00

11:46 A.M. - WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal emergency officials are looking for two-thousand Homeland Security Department workers to volunteer for hurricane relief efforts. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff a-thousand people are needed within 48 hours and two-thousand within a week.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

Uptown to Flood About Nine Feet

2005-08-30T23:47:00.000-04:00

Uptown looks to be in big trouble tonight:

The basic deal is that efforts to plug the 17th Street levee failed (they have given up on it for now), and lake water is pouring into the city. The flooding will stop once the water level in the city equals that of the lake. The lake is 3ft above sea level, while St. Charles Ave is 6ft below sea level. According to the mayor, that means that St. Charles will be under 9ft of water before the flooding stops.

Obviously, that’s enough to really fuck up most of the homes around there. The ones built up on berms might fare better....

Other news:
Gasoline is to be rationed East of the Rockies.

The Red Cross (Disaster Services) is asking for volunteers from around the country for one- to three-week stints. Apparently you muster in your area, and then head down to the scene. They also need money.

View from Above

2005-08-30T22:21:00.000-04:00

The live feed from New Orleans local WWL-TV is giving way, way better coverage than CNN and the other national channels.

Instead of hearing that jackass Wolf Blitzer bleat on about the grave Greater Meaning of the tragedy ("the damage is almost Biblical in proportion, John."), some cameraman from WWL got himself into a helicopter and toured New Orleans uninterrupted for half an hour, going from area to area and pointing out landmarks: “...and there’s the Wal-Mart on Parish Road…over to the left....there’s Chalmette High School…ahead we see I-10” etc, etc.

The footage spoke for itself. Square mile after square mile after square mile of the greater New Orleans area is shredded and underwater, a lot of of it up to the rooflines. In place after place it’s the same, whether in Metairie, Slidell, Downtown, or wherever.

All the other channels have reporters with videophones broadcasting from the tops of CBD hotels (yay, another shot of the Superdome), but what people who know or live in the city want to find out is what’s happening in the neighborhoods. That’s why the WWL footage was so key—you see all these landmarks and places and roads that you know, and sadly it’s all trashed.

Aside from the thousands of wrecked homes, the images of the ruined everyday stuff that makes up the city affected me the most. The office parks, the plants, factories, depots, storage sites, all the malls, churches, homes…. at best they’re soaked through and standing, but in many cases it looks straight out of the tsunami from last year. Even after this dries out, what are all those people going to do? They'll need every crane and dumptruck in the country, it seems.

There are parking lots with dozens of school busses overturned and half submerged, others with dozens or hundreds of shipping containers strewn around, and rail yards with all the different types of car scattered around like children’s toys. You have to wonder what’s inside a lot of those rail cars.

Maybe the worst part is that as you fly over mile after mile of flood zone, every once in a while the camera picks out a single person or family cowering on a rooftop amid this sea of destruction. When they see the helicopter, they freak out and start waving their shirts for help. They look so isolated out there, and of course there’s nobody they can call for help. No boats, no cars, no roads in sight. Nothing. The people must wonder if anybody is going to find them.

Some screen captures (more later):

Overturned rail cars in New Orleans East:

Michoud Shuttle tank assembly plant:

Distribution center with wrecked trucks:

When the Levee Broke, Part 2

2005-08-30T21:29:00.000-04:00

Seems the helicopters that were supposed to drop sandbags on the hole in the levee never showed up. This is from WWL's blog:

8:04 P.M. - Mayor Nagin: Unhappy that the helicopters slated to drop 3,000-pound bags into the levee never showed up to stop the flow of water. Too many chiefs calling shots he says.

7:59 P.M. - Mayor Nagin: Pumps at 17th street canal has failed and water will continue pouring into the city. Nine feet of water is expected on St. Charles Avenue.... Water is expected to spread throughout the east bank of Orleans and possibly Jefferson Parish.

Nine feet of water on St. Charles Ave is really bad news. It had looked like uptown was going to be spared the very worst, but that seems not to be the case now.

It's hard to believe that despite the emergency conditions they didn't manage to get sandbags to the hole in the levee. That might turn out to have been an absolutely ruinous fuck-up.

When the levee broke...

2005-08-30T18:14:00.000-04:00

Been following the horrifying New Orleans situation on WWL's live feed. This is a screen capture of a shot of the levee that broke and has been flooding parts of the city.

Apparently the authorities are trying to plug it, and they opened up another levee that will let some of the water drain out in a marsh....

New Orleans in Trouble

2005-08-29T03:46:00.000-04:00

Been up listening to radio reports and surfing the web for info about Hurricane Katrina.

As I used to live in New Orleans, the storm is definitely worrying. I'd been away all weekend and hadn't heard much about it until Sunday night, when I saw that they had closed the LOOP (the offshore oil terminal), abandoned several thousand oil rigs in the gulf, and were evacuating New Orleans. A lot of that infrastructure might well be destroyed.

For months everybody's been saying that the lack of excess refining and pumping capacity in the oil market left no room for a shock, but I think people generally had shocks of the terrorist/war kind in mind. However, the amount of supply shut down the Gulf is about equal to current global spare capacity. Oil is duly up 7% overnight at $70.80, NG is up 20%, and gasoline futures are going nuts, too. (Someone suggested that those who are long oil futures or royalty trusts, etc, might want to consider donating some of their profits to the reconstruction of New Orleans if needed. That's not a bad idea; the problem with betting on Pure Doom is that you benefit when things, like peoples' lives, otherwise go completely to shit.)

Anyway, there may be more problems on the horizon: there's supposedly another storm building behind Katrina, and of course all the geopolitical risk is still out there. Depending on the damage done in the next day or so, I have to wonder how much more the global economy--or at least the US economy--can take before some serious economic damage comes.

Before Katrina, Americans were spending about $250 billion more on gasoline this year than last--about $1000 per person, or perhaps a few G's per family. That money obviously now won't get spent on discretionary purchases like Xboxes, furniture, vacations, etc. Also, for families with a fairly low income and a bunch of engines (and kids) to feed and drive around, that's a significant chunk of change out of pocket--and it's probably just going to get worse. The fact that the money won't go towards purchases means businesses will suffer, which means higher unemployment, which means lower consumer spending, which means businesses will suffer, etc, etc, etc. If the gov't tried to cap gasoline prices, that would just drive them up in the long run. If they opened the strategic reserve, that wouldn't mitigate the damage much, we'd be even less secure in our energy supplies, and we'd probably have to buy it all back at higher prices. To me, being long oil is a hedge against the damage the energy situation stands to do.

Still, I can't get my mind off the New Orleans situation, that is, the place and the people who live there. It's one of the precious few truly unique cities in America, but it's below sea level and surrounded by refineries and chemical plants. I don't imagine it's easy to move chemical plants to high ground. If the damage and flooding is as bad as they say it might be, NOLA could be turned into more or less a toxic dump (it's pretty polluted as it is).

I've been in some serious storms there. One night it rained 18" or so and submerged the whole city in several feet of water. Manhole covers were popping out, electric lines were in the water where people were swimming house to house and bar to bar, and entire lots of cars were swept up and destroyed. The whole first floor of the city was submerged in scum. But it was just rain, not hurricane-force winds. Most of the people I know just got blacked-out drunk and made the best of the occasion, then cleaned up later.

But this one could be a lot worse, it seems. I hope the authorities are wrong and crying wolf, but this time, it sounds like they might not be. Check out the following excerpt from a weather advisory from the National Weather Service. There have also been predictions of the city's above-ground cemeteries being broken wide open. What a mess that would be, and a shame...

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED.

AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. MANY WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES MAY LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MANY POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.

Terror Arbitrage: Put Ali Q to Work for YOU.

2005-08-15T01:59:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I did a couple of entries about predicting the future, specifically using markets to predict the future, and even more specifically, whether they were predicting something bad that falls outside the direct purview of stocks and bonds, etc.

So, we know that oil and gold are on a tear, and that the guy at Marginal Portfolio, at least, thinks this is the market saying that dangerous times are coming down the pike.

As it happens, TradeSports.com has futures on, among other things, whether Osama or Zarqawi will be captured by Dec. ’05.

(Because of the website’s design, I can’t post the URL, so you have to go to http://www.tradesports.com/, then navigate to Current Events, then Intl Events.}

Anyway, sure enough, both futures have been tanking. In other words, the “market” (granted, volumes are only like 10,000) is increasingly discounting the likelihood of their captures. Check out the graphs on the far-month contracts. Osama's on top, and Zarqawi's below:

Now here are the oil (top) and gold (bottom) spot prices:

Coincidence?

Well, sort of, yeah. For one thing, such low volumes on the terror futures means that very few people are contributing their opinions (and money) to the market, which makes it inherently inefficient—and probably inaccurate.

Second, as the contract expiration deadline approaches, the probability of the terrorists’ capture gets slimmer, which would drive prices down.

That said, there is almost certainly a correlation between the oil/gas trade and the Osama/Zarqawi trade. After all, news moves the markets. A capture would almost certainly (at least temporarily) lead to a perception of less geopolitical risk, which would be bearish for oil and gold. Gold is a safe haven, and it's worth remembering that Iraqi oil output is at something like 58% of pre-war levels.

Mainly, it seems like a greater share of the general public is now seeing Iraq and the wider war on terror as going less well than it had been. In the states, support for the war in the polls has sunk to LBJ/Vietnam in ’68 levels as the violence in Iraq continues. Meanwhile, the only thing that stopped a second bloodbath in London was the fact that the tangos were abject retards. Everyone knows it could happen again--anywhere.

The point is that negative views on the entire Iraq/terror enterprise would, all else being equal, probably push the Osama/Zarqawi capture futures down, and oil and gold futures up.

So how should one play it all? My personal recommendation would be to short Dec 05 Osama futures and go long about 5x as many 08 Republican Presidential Victory futures as a hedge (those are under “politics”).

If Osama is caught, you're almost sure to get caught in the ensuing short squeeze, especially since there’s so little liquidity in the market. I assume that since it’s a straight bet, you’d be out 100% (I should check on the trading rules). However, your 08 GOP’s should do quite well, and more than make up for the Osama loss.

Assuming Osama is not found, you can collect on the short positions New Year’s Day, and you’ll have plenty of time to unwind the GOP hedge and/or come up with a new one before the race really starts.

As for picking your buy and sell points (independent of the headlines of the day), a rule of thumb I've heard is that the contract price should be roughly proportional to the square root of the time (in days) remaining to expiration. That puts fair value at somewhere around $11.60 today vs a $12.70 actual price as of this writing.

So, what about Zarqawi futures? I think it’s a riskier bet. Unlike Osama (weirdly, when you think about it) we have way, way more people looking for him. This I gather not only from the news, but also from a man who currently works for US intelligence, and who told me so in his back yard over some steaks.

Also, the coalition almost got Zarq earlier in the year (he jumped out of the car they were tracking and ran away). My gut feeling is that he’s more likely to go down than Osama.

A final idea might be to do some kind of Dec 05 Gold vs Dec 05 Osama arbitrage play or something. Lemme think about it some more and get back to you.

-------------------------------------------

UPDATE: After I wrote this entry, this came over the wires. Shit like this is why I think Zarqawi is more likely than Osama to get pinched.

US confirms death of Zarqawi aide

WASHINGTON (AFX) - A top aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the Al-Qaeda operation in Iraq, who has played a key role in masterminding several high-profile suicide bombing in the country, has been killed by Iraqi security forces, defense officials confirmed Sunday.

Abu Zubair, also known as Mohammed Salah Sultan, was gunned down in the northern city of Mosul Friday, when he got caught in an ambush set up by Iraqi security forces, the officials said, confirming a report by Mosul police. No other details of the operation were provided. But officials pointed out Abu Zubair was wearing a suicide belt filled with metal pellets when he was
killed.

It was not immediately clear whether the suspect intended to become a suicide bomber himself or the belt was to be used by somebody else. Abu Zubair was wanted for his alleged role in organizing a bombing attack on an Iraqi police station in Mosul last month, in which five policemen were killed, according to the defense officials. He was believed to be behind several other bombings directed against US forces and their allies, but the officials offered no specifics.

Fun with Google Earth

2005-08-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

First of all, if you don't have Google Earth, you're way missing out.

Anyway, somebody out there has made a Google Earth grand tour of all the F1 tracks. It's pretty fresh. You save it on your computer and zoom in on a given track. Then, when you click on the name of a new one, you zoom out again, fly to the next one, and zoom back in. You can view the tracks from different angles, too.

To get it, download this:

http://home.comcast.net/~jsaunders51/cv/F1_2005_Circuits.kmz

Once you have it, unzip it, then open the file in GE. It's wildly, savagely money.

Below is a GE shot of a track that somehow didn't make the list: The Crystal Palace nitro track in London. This is the home/official testing track for Team Wong Motourspourt, Ltd. To view it on Google Earth, just type in "Crystal Palace, London" and you'll fly to a spot about 1km SW of it. Scroll over and zoom in, and there you are: Nitro Mecca.

BTW, this is also the home track of the London RC Club. But just because they built it and operate it (exclusively) doesn't take away from its place in the Lore of Team Wong. We've ruined many a scale hub carrier at this aulde course....

Here's a couple of live pics. The driver's stand is alongside the back straight.

FYI I think I was managing ~20 second laps in qualifying at this track. However, I did clock TW co-driver Juan F. at sub-00:19:00 on his cell phone's stopwatch during testing one day. It's a shame I didn't have my car dialled in back then as well as I do now. My inconsistent driving skills aside, that thing is without question a 16-18 second ride these days.

Get ready to crap in your pants.

2005-08-13T00:20:00.000-04:00

This could be the Biggest Thing in the history of Speed since Mika Hakkinen invented the automobile in 1884.

Valentino Rossi, the Italian MotoGP driver (who dominates his sport like Jordan, Gretzky, Armstrong, and Schumacher combined) seems to be in the early phases of an F1 career.

Ferarri has been putting him thru the paces on its test track in order to get him an F1 Superlicense, which he would need to race in GPs. Word has it that Rossi is about 1.5 seconds off the pace. That's a considerable distance from being race-ready, but given that he's a motorcycle racer, it's also pretty effin amazing.

The theory is that he would be an official test driver next year when his MotoGP schedule allowed it, and would eventually replace MS as a full Ferarri driver.

It's an interesting concept. You have any number of theoretically more qualified drivers not only in GP2, Indy Car/Champ Car, but within F1 itself. Perhaps Ferarri's thinking is that anyone as dominant as Rossi has the secret ingredient needed to win--no matter what the genre.

So far, there's no official word out on all this, but as one of the F1 podcast guys pointed out, it's so expensive to even test F1 cars that Ferarri must have some expectation of being rewarded for its investment in Rossi.

The plot keeps getting thicker. For now, the pics of Rossi hanging around the Ferarri track are enough to make me crap in my pants with fear and awe.

More info:

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/formulaone/18790/

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/formulaone/18660/

SpeedChannel: Kimi Greatest Driver in World

2005-08-12T23:48:00.000-04:00

The Speed Channel has compiled its rankings of the greatest drivers in motorsport today. Interestingly (but unsurprisingly), Kimi Raikkonen is ranked #1 across the entire 4-wheel milieu--ahead of Schumacher. KR happens to be leading the F1 field in fastest laps. It's kind of a shame they didn't include MotoGP, cause Valentino Rossi would have dominated the list. One other thing: I think it's pretty safe to say that pretty much any F1 driver outclasses any NASCAR driver, even though it might be heresy to say that in the US...

Anyway, here it is:

1 Raikkonen Kimi F1
2 Stewart Tony NASCAR
3 Schumacher Michael F1
4 Bourdais Sebastien CCWS
5 Wheldon Dan IRL
6 Alonso Fernando F1
7 Mayfield Jeremy NASCAR
8 Tracy Paul CCWS
9 Herta Bryan IRL
10 Kenseth Matt NASCAR
11 Martin Mark NASCAR
12 Vickers Brian NASCAR
13 Wallace Rusty NASCAR
14 Busch Kurt NASCAR
15 Franchitti Dario IRL
16 Jarrett Dale NASCAR
17 Kahne Kasey NASCAR
18 Biffle Greg NASCAR
19 Hornish Jr. Sam IRL
20 Kanaan Tony IRL
21 Wilson Justin CCWS
22 Edwards Carl NASCAR
23 Servia Oriol CCWS
24 Gordon Jeff NASCAR
25 Busch Kyle NASCAR
26 McMurray Jamie NASCAR
27 Scheckter Tomas IRL
28 Mears Casey NASCAR
29 Sharp Scott IRL
30 Dominguez Mario CCWS
31 Castroneves Helio IRL
32 Schumacher Ralf F1
33 Meira Vitor IRL
34 Tagliani Alex CCWS
35 Vasser Jimmy CCWS
36 Trulli Jarno F1
37 Glock Timo CCWS
38 Button Jenson F1
39 Bremer Ronnie CCWS
40 Allmendinger A.J. CCWS
41 Montoya Juan Pablo F1
42 Heidfeld Nick F1

Hak to Kimi: "You're fast, but you're a dork."

2005-08-12T23:03:00.000-04:00

Mika Hakkinen, the greatest sportsman of all time, had this to say about fellow Finn Kimi Raikkonen, the fastest man in F1 today:

"He doesn't need my advice....Kimi is so good that I think I have nothing to tell him about racing. Maybe off the track I can give him some tips."

To have a guy like Hakkinen say he has nothing to teach you about racing is perhaps the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a human being. It brought tears of pride to my eyes on Kimi's behalf. That said, I think Mika was also subtly ribbing KR for marrying that bumpkin beauty queen when he could have been off gang-banging paddock hoes 5 at a time instead. And you know something? The King is absolutely right.

What am I saying? He's always right.

On a sadder note, Mika is stuck in 4th place in the 2005 DTM standings (though his team leads in the constructors cup). At least he's ahead of fellow ex-F1 drivers Jean Alesi, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, and Allan McNish. Taken together, they couldn't carry his fucking jock.

By the way: Mika, if you're reading this (and you probably are), please accept my sincere apologies for not sending you and Erja flowers and a Bob Marley onesie upon the birth of your lovely daughter in May. My congratulations to the family and to the nation of Finland. My guess is that Mika's daughter will be more than capable of putting Danica Patrick to the wall by age 7 at the very latest.

For those who hadn't heard the great news, here's a press clip:

DTM rookie Mika Häkkinen’s second child has seen the light of day. On Thursday morning, Häkkinen’s daughter Aina Julia was born in Monte Carlo. The little sister of Hugo Ronan Häkkinen (4) is 48 centimetres ‘tall’ and weighs 3,100g. Directly after the birth of his daughter, Häkkinen went by plane to Spa-Francorchamps to return behind the wheel of his AMG-Mercedes C-Class, this morning. [editor's note: he won at Spa]. The entire DTM sends congratulations to the Häkkinen Family!

Quote of the week

2005-08-12T01:28:00.000-04:00

from Overheard in New York:

Cop: Man, there's a lot of Grade-A ass out here today!

--Ground Zero

Can computers predict the future?

2005-08-12T01:06:00.000-04:00

The good news is we may be developing a primitive version of technology to predict future events. The bad news is that the future seems to suck.

Let me back up.

I have a theory. I think intuition is kind of like a mental connect-the-dots that’s as yet incomplete, but which has enough connected dots to suggest the ultimate form. Let’s say each intra-dot line represents a relevant fact, a piece of evidence, or the trigger to a memory you forgot you had—in other words, a piece of knowledge. When you have all the necessary pieces of knowledge, a clear idea forms in your head, just as when you have all the lines, you clearly see the picture. But when you have only some of the pieces of knowledge, you may only register a hunch—remember that all of this is happening in the background of your thoughts. The hunch is equivalent to the suggestion of a form on an incomplete connect-the-dots picture…. I think that’s what intuition is. It’s kind of like embryonic knowledge. Maybe a mosaic would be a better metaphor, but you get the point.

OK. Now imagine if this process were writ across a whole culture or civilization. Before something is known to a population, perhaps there is something like a collective intuition. Bits of knowledge materialize in disconnected quarters. Bit by bit, connections are made, but the big picture still hasn’t formed. Is there any way we could find those embryonic bits of knowledge and intentionally assemble them before the picture would otherwise, “naturally” emerge?

Some computer scientists are trying to do just that. Using ultra-powerful and complex computer programs, they send “bots” out to scour the public internet—websites, blogs, newsgroups, chat rooms, and so on—and try to tease out the zeitgeist via prevalent topics, emotive language, and I’m not sure what else (for a better, but way more confusing explanation, read this).

Think of all the various and sundry shit people write about the Iraq war, subjects having to do with economics, the weather, the news, and so on. And they casually slip references to all kinds of things into their speech…how hot it is in Fresno, how expensive apartments have gotten in Osaka, and on, and on, and on. The program apparently can handle all of that. The collected public content on the internet is probably a (roughly) fair sample of the world’s present knowledge at any given time. To be able to parse it all down, distill it, analyze it, etc could yield something pretty close to a global intuition, perhaps. The idea is not just to enumerate topics of global conversation, but to measure shifts in its “emotive content.” What comes out are fuzzy reports that apparently reflect and refine not only literally what millions of people are talking/writing about, but what they feel, what they believe is going to happen (perhaps without realizing it), and why and when.

"Cliff," one of the main guys who do this kind of thing, runs a site called http://halfpasthuman.com/. His reports are $70 when they come out, and $250 after the fact. They read like free-verse, computerized Nostradamus strophes:

“During this time, the [market halls/rooms] will [ring (with voices)] all (seeking) [their time (on the floor/to speak/trade)]. At this time, some [participants] will recognize that the previous period has marked the [zenith] of the [trade/swap (of paper)]. In concert with global battles being waged elsewhere, the [great/powerful men] who [rule (paper)] will attempt [to fly/exceed/escalate] something, in spite of many [warnings (public)]. This will be associated or marked by the appearance of a public scandal involving [influence peddling]. At that point, the [great/powerful merchants] will (publicly) [repent] of their (flying/escalation effort), but this will be too little, too late and the [peoples] will [not hear/believe].”

A market signal? I don't know. The real art apparently lies in interpreting the data the computers spit out. On that score, Cliff at halfpasthuman claims the output is totally decipherable, but has lousy timing. That said, some people credit him as having “predicted” 9/11, the tsunami, and the London bombings, among other things.

Here’s a sample of the guy’s analysis of a reading (which came after "the" 9/11, btw):

“An entity arises which must reluctantly be named FoundationCrumbles. This entity represents what does appear to be a attempt at an [attack]. The lexical construct of the entity suggests an (attack) on a person, or in more singular language and so could be interpreted as an assassination attempt rather than a more general form of attack as we are doing here. The use of [strike](down) could apply to an attack of both a personal or an institutional kind.

“Further, the clustering of lexical clues suggest that the most likely time for the attack is the night of September 10th. We have a clustering of our distance values for this entity arriving at that date within the modelspace. So the suggestion is the night of the 10th or the morning of the 11th. And of course, in so far as the western mind is concerned, using a solar calendar, this would be the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks of 2001. “

I would believe the bombings claims more easily than the weather claims. Theoretically, I suppose that if enough people have enough clues, and these can be harvested and compiled, maybe those people could “predict” natural disasters. But that would mean things like tsunamis are not as random as we thought, that they give out very subtle warnings long in advance—or that people are psychic. However, for human-created events, especially large-scale/ high-impact ones, I can believe that the masses out there collectively know some things that individuals do not, and that we can figure out what those things are. If only these programs could go through the world’s faxes and emails…how much do you wanna bet the NSA has something like that?

So, one must wonder what the computers are picking up now? Well, I happened to stumble upon what follows in a Yahoo message board for a small gold company. Now, I don't think Yahoo messages are a gold mine of knowledge and wisdom. This one, however, just caught my little eye. Along the lines of the Marginal Portfolio guy in my last blog entry, there is talk of the market foreseeing trouble (by sending oil and gold thru the roof). There is the suggestion of menace and conspiracy and impending doom. It's great stuff, actually. Whether the markets—or the bots—are predicting anything, I cannot say, but seriously: doesn’t everyone think things in general are, well, kind of fucked up right now?

Anyway, I leave you with an excerpt from the aforementioned Yahoo post:

"We reported to you on Monday that the Saudi's are making no secret of repatriating $360 billion from the US to other places closer to their home. After consultations with Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com, I've come to consider the Saudi moves one of the most interesting of the past six-months. Just collecting the headlines puts it in perspective:

"July: Saudi Foreign Minister resigns
August: King Fahd dies
US shuts down embassies over terror threat
Oil prices hit record

"What would drive the Saudi's to pull out their money from the West without so much as trying to hide it from the public? A number of disturbing possibilities come to mind, but the two that are at our top of the heap are a pending Saudi production decline or perhaps the Saudis have a "heads up" on a financial disaster to come…." [continued on yahoo, if you give a crap...]

World to End Soon: Strong Buy.

2005-08-10T18:48:00.000-04:00

Here's a little morceau from Marginal Thoughts, the website of a guy who runs a kind of commodities/doomsday portfolio (which is up 38% vs the market, btw):

“Tonight we'll share a completely unfounded suspicion with our readers diligent enough to check for new posts every night. WE DO NOT LIKE this recent action in gold. It's bullish, we're profiting from it, but I'm afraid that the market is sensing something problematic in the near future.

“Oil is making new highs, and gold is pushing towards 450. Something is not right. Something is about to break. We could be dead wrong about this, but our advice is to abandon conventional stocks and head for high ground. We feel that our portfolio contains adequate protection against adverse geopolitical circumstances, we will stand pat. Again, it's speculation, it's unfounded and unsupportable, but due to the strange action in precious metals, we foresee something ominous down the road. You have been put on notice.

“On that note, have a great night!”

Of course, he seems to be suggesting that the market is predicting a terrorist attack. It’s true that the market seems to have a way of predicting things (earnings misses, merger news, etc, sometimes seeps out in advance of official announcements; market participants sometimes collectively guess outcomes right, etc). This was why John “Iran/Contra” Poindexter wanted to build a terror futures “market” as part of the DARPA/Total Information Awareness program.

The idea was shot down since, among other flaws, you could go long a Friday bombing, then blow something up on Friday and collect. But legit markets like that do exist. One of em called the new Pope dead on. How well they—or the oil and/or gold markets—predict catastrophes is another question. Gold, for example, was in the middle of a decline when 9/11 happened.

The thing is, liquid markets tend to be pretty efficient, but they’re not psychic. For oil and gold futures markets to predict an attack, enough oil and gold investors might need to actually know that one is about to happen. I don’t think that is the case. More likely, what with the London bombings and Iraq, lots of peoples’ intuition may be that the risks of an attack are higher than normal. But does it really take a market to figure that out? Half these traders are getting their bags searched for bombs on the subway every morning. My guess is that unless there’s a massive global conspiracy, the markets won’t see an attack coming.

Whether the Marginal Thoughts guy is right or wrong in his interpretation that the market is predicting a calamity (and that one is indeed coming), it’s common sense that oil, at least, should be rising. The world is basically producing at capacity; there’s very little cushion for supply disruptions; it’s hot; it’s peak driving season; there’s all kinds of savage violence in the Middle East; bombs in London and Istanbul; Chavez is fuckin’ wack; Putin is fuckin’ wack; Nigeria is a christforsaken shame in every respect; and the US supplies are probably peaked out. On top of all that, demand is still rising. Despite ~$2.75/gal gas, American demand for it jumped 1.4% over the past year. It must suck to have an SUV right now. Anyway, the basic equation is something like this: limited supply + huge demand=higher prices. Higher prices = more oil futures buyers chasing the gains = even higher prices.

There is definitely an element of mania to the whole thing, but given all the crazy fucks around (both friend and foe), it’s not unreasonable to think that the shit will hit the fan any minute now. (That probably has something to do with why we’re camped out on the ocean of oil beneath Iraq. From the Hobbsian/ Leninist/ Neoconservative points of view, better us than someone else.)

What about gold? Why is it a safe haven? We don’t really use it up like we do our precious, precious oil. I think pretty much all the gold ever mined is still around (and supposedly would form a 66ft-square cube if we mushed it all together). We don’t really, really need it like we do other things, at least as far as I know…

Lessee, we solder stuff with it; we plate stuff with it; we put it in teeth (which we could, and probably do, recover post-mortem); and we use it for Bling. But with most of those applications, we don’t use it up, per se; we just assign it a use until we melt it back down for something else. If you’re Alberto Fujimori, for example, you take all the Inca masks in the Peruvian National Museum and melt them down for gold bars, which you use for bribe money. But how is gold money? How is it so valuable if it’s really not in very short supply, and we don’t really, really need it anyway?

Gold barely reacts with anything; it hardly oxidizes, it hardly corrodes, it hardly dissolves. Like its patron saint, 2-Pac Shakur (who not coincidentally took an Inca name), gold Just Don’t Give a Fuck--it’s one of the mellowest of metals. I think we think gold is so valuable because it’s sort of a tradition. Governments also used to just dictate its value, but now that we’re off the gold standard, the market does. And the market thinks gold is worth about $450 and ounce these days, give or take.

From an investment point of view, gold is the haven of value we flock to when the world is at risk of exploding and taking all that is great and good with it. But why? Is gold intrinsically valuable? Call me an A-Hole, but when the shit goes down, I’d rather have a fistful of iodine pills, tons of ammo, and a few thousand CLIF bars. Keep your gold, you mother-whoring bastard, or join me in the hills! We shall feast on the flesh of the invaders and the walls will be as knives, etc.

My guess? In the post-apocalyptic hellscape, as civilization feasts upon its own rancid corpse, Bling will no longer be King; brute force will be the only currency left.

That said, I’m long both oil and gold….almost exclusively. Just in case I’m wrong.

Die, you slovenly, jelly-necked cyborg.

2005-07-08T03:20:00.000-04:00

Was at a job interview not long ago, and the experience was a massive trauma. I came home and wrote this thank-you letter as a means of survival. But I didn't send it. Why? Because I am a whore.

Whore, whore, whore, whore, whore.

It's a gosh damned shame. Anyway:
----------------------------------------------------

Dear Ms.______,

Thank you for taking the time to see me yesterday afternoon. It was a great chance for me to learn more about ______'s US strategy. Unfortunately, you personally underwhelmed me to such an extent that I can confidently say I would never work either for you, or with you, for any price.* In fact, my mission in life must now be to destroy you.

The reasons for my position are several. First, I flatly refuse to work for more than nine hours per day for any reason. The "typical" 11-hour workday you described to me was almost as embarrassingly absurd as your business suit. Editors are neither bankers, nor lawyers, nor doctors, nor suckers. We are abject slackers who excel at nothing so much as advanced work-avoidance techniques. The sole attraction of specialized editing is the favorable work/pay ratio. You should be aware that the "pay" component of that equation must increase logarithmically as the "work" number rises past eight hours a day (inclusive of the daily two-hour lunch). If there's a problem with that, I suggest you get a pen and edit the research yourself, you disgusting, blubber-jowled golem.

Second, the obvious forfeiture of all your human will to the Machine that is the global corporation precludes my working for _______. I do not work with the Undead. On the contrary, I firmly believe that such individuals—yourself prominently included—should be unmercifully staked through the chest at the earliest possible opportunity. When you used the term "facetime" in my presence, only the direct intercession of the Lord on High and the cost of my attire stopped me from lunging over the desk and savagely head-butting your nose into a sickening, blood-soaked haematoma. Likewise, your use (or should I say "utilization"?) of the terms "bandwidth," "implement," "best-of-breed," and "holistic" was completely and totally unacceptable. You might as well have screamed, "Cum in my ASS!!" at the top of your lungs, as far as I'm concerned--it was THAT egregious.

Similarly, when you mentioned the phrase "core competency," I knew right away that "competency" was a quality of which you are utterly bereft, much in the same way that you lack both a soul and the capacity to love. My strong view is that you need to be fired forthwith and put in jail forever, if not burned alive at the stake. Perhaps I should clarify this in a language you can understand (besides R2D2-like beeps): the "net-net" is that if, instead of this thank-you note, I could email my elbow directly to your face, I would.

The last straw was your introduction of the term "dotted-line report" to describe the new hire's relationship to the head of the ________ department (in contrast, I imagine, to a "direct report"). Your choice of words was so bafflingly, breathtakingly robotic that I almost committed suicide out of anger, pain, sadness, fear, and shame. To find a truly apt comparison for your brand of mathematically absolute, soul-crushing artificiality, one must recall the victims of Perseus. These poor souls were instantly turned to stone--as you seem to have been--when the ancient hero showed them Medusa's severed head. Medusa, you probably will not be aware, was the Greek goddess of "DIE, YOU SLOVENLY FUCKING JELLY-NECKED CYBORG!! DIE! DIE! DIE!!"

Thanks again for your time. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to shove them up your ass on an as-needed basis.

Warm Regards,
HAKKIN$N!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* below what I was making at my last job.

Laminar Flows, Cash, Money, and Speed

2005-04-25T01:12:00.000-04:00

Been drooling over the new Ferarri F2005, which they're debuting attheBahrain GP. The aerodynamics intrigued me, so I sent this email to a mechanical engineer and physicist I know named Juan. Note that I don't actually know any physics, but if anybody else does, please let me know if this makes sense...

"BTW, the new Ferarri looks iller than Terri Schiavo on a bad day. I guess the swooped radiator scoops are pretty much standard F1 gear this year, and it’s a good thing; they’re harde as nails. Of particular interest to me on the new Ferarri were (1)the front mini-wing, and (2)the double(?)-slotted airfoil on the main front wing. Airfoil design is supremely wicked, by the way, whether for scale aviation or F1 purposes.

"Take a look at this picture, for instance. My guess is that the mini-wing in front of the main front wing is supposed to reduce turbulence on the under-tray. One of main things with wing functioning is the concept of laminar flow. Basically, laminar flow is the opposite of turbulence. As you can see from the link, when you have a fluid (in this case air) moving between a stationary and a moving plate, the air near the moving plate moves gradually faster than that which is nearest to the stationary one. In this condition, the air is streamlined. So, in this case, the stationary plate obviously would be the track surface, and the moving one would be the undertray. The problem is that the MAIN front wing, with its downward angle of attack, would create a Bernoulli effect, or basically a turbulent vacuum, on the underside and trailing edge of the wing. That means that the air entering under the car would be turbulent and not streamlined, resulting in a potential and obviously wildly catastrophic nominal loss of Speed.

"My bet is that those mini-wings, which look to have a neutral angle of attack, are basically fins that focus a 1-foot wide flow of streamlined, laminar air under the car to offset the turbulence from the main wing. There are probably groovlets under the car to help this. Another effect might be to narrow the angle at which the wind attacks the main wing, the way a jib does for a mainsail. The benefit is that more wind would hit the main wing exactly dead-on, so you could calculate the critical wing angle more precisely. That said, the wind probably already hits the wing pretty much dead on, unless you’re drafting.

"As for the slotted airfoils, apparently they creat lift (or downforce here) more efficiently than constant airfoils. They use them in flaps in airplanes sometimes, and also in helo rotor tips. I think there’s some thing with stall characteristics, which don’t really apply to car wings, that makes them not always suitable for plane wings. When I was a lab assistant (biology) at ______, another guy (physics) was wind-tunnel testing slotted airfoils. We used to smoke a lot of herb together in the science building.

"Anyway, if the builders don’t do it already, I’d bet that at some point they start messing around with actively heated and cooled wing surfaces. Apparently that affects flows a lot, too.

"One thing I don’t really get is the upward-swooping air scoops on the side of a lot of this year’s cars. They look money, but from their appearance, I’d think they actually create lift. Check out this shot of Alonso’s whip. It would seem like the air enters at the “N” in Mild Seven, then runs into a surface with a positive angle of attack (inside, along the tops of the letters “SEVEN”). True, the airflow is then directed down, maybe in a vortex of some kind, but I don’t know where it goes after that. Maybe they just needed the scoop opening to be higher in relation to the front tyres than it used to be, and they can’t position the body of the scoop any higher…"

Grandpa’s Boobies

2005-03-10T23:53:00.000-05:00

“The truly savage part of New York is not Harlem,” said a perhaps racist Federico Garcia Lorca in 1932 to a Madrid audience. “In Harlem, there is a warmth and the noise of children, and there are homes and grass, and sorrow finds consolation and the wound finds its sweet bandage….The terrible, cold, cruel part,” he said, “is Wall Street.”

FGL was a Columbia student when the market crashed in 1929. He later described walking through Wall Street’s “limestone canyons” during the crisis: “A rabble of dead money went sliding off into the sea. Ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings….”

I love that quote. I thought of it the other day when I started reading through a torrent of message board posts written during a classic stock blow-up. It all started on Monday, Feb. 28, when two drug companies, Biogen and Elan, suspended a promising MS drug, Tysabri, because two patients had died. Both of the stocks tanked immediately, and before the day was over, Elan had lost about 70% of its value. That night, I happened to look at the ELN message board on Yahoo!Finance, and soon became obsessed with the saga as it played out in thousands of harried posts. There were a lot of suicide threats. There were nauseating personal train-wreck stories. There was a fair bit of abject panic. There were sincere messages of consolation, desperate pleas to God, messages of hope, and lots and lots of vicious insults.

Then there was the advice. The top piece of advice seemed to be to hold on for “the long term” and/or to buy yet more ELN stock. The second-place piece of advice appeared to be a tie between (1) not to pay brokers the money they were due from all the margin calls, and (2) to sue ELN. In third place (by my rough count), was not to commit suicide. Last by a long shot, there were a couple of reminders not to place all of one’s money in a single stock, on full margin, especially when you are (make that were) about to retire.

Below is a selection of posts from the first 24 hours of the crisis. There were far too many to choose from, so this is a somewhat random selection. The overall progression of posts is (to me, at least) a weirdly compelling portrait of human psychology in a moment of confused online despair. Here, on display, is a full panorama of panic, massive financial loss, desperate hope, depression, shock, sadism, sarcasm, poor judgement, aggressive piety, blackest hate, good humor, and an absurd level of denial.

All in all, it's both sad, and kind of funny. Technically, I think that makes it poetic, and I'm sure FGL would have appreciated the effort I went through cutting and pasting all this crap.

Without further ado:

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I AM DESTROYED !!!
by: crazyturtle999
02/28/05 10:00 am

sll my savings was in this stock i also had margin , lost all my savings damn i am still in shiock denial
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I JUST LOST MY HOUSE AND WIFE.
by: sundaeboy2001
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 11:06 am

33
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I lost my life savings my wife is going
by: searchingforthetruth2001
02/28/05 10:23 am

to kill me.

what should I do?Please anyone.

god help me.
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PLEASE JOIN ME IN PRAY
by: judgeoffacts
02/28/05 10:40 am

LET US BOW OUT HEADS AND PRAY
LORD PLEASE HELP THE LONGS
WE DO NOT DESERVE THIS
LET A MIRACLE HAPPEN.
PRAISE THE LORD.
BLESS YOU ALL FOR PRAYING
WITH ME.
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STRONG STRONG BUY...
by: bill021 (M/MA)
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 12:09 pm

Great info from CC.
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I have been wiped completely out...
by: knewcomer1
02/28/05 01:33 pm

and still owe schwab money. This is the terrible lesson with margin. I've sold all stock, and options and still owe money. How depressing.
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Adios Amigos
by: postbusters (48/M/Honolulu, Hawaii)
02/28/05 01:43 pm

Sorry that it had to end this way for many. … This has cost me dearly, going from $150K profit to over a $400K loss. Will be refinancing the house and delaying retirement plans. Hope others were able to do better than me in that regard.

A tough pill to swallow, but the sun will come out again tomorrow and as long as breath is in your body there is no reason to surrender.
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If you bought high, average down now
by: ohhh_yes_yes_yes
02/28/05 01:49 pm

$8s are very safe bet, in a few days it will recover. Also get soem MIKR, MIKR will announce earnings in a few days, MIKR went from $4 to $14s on its last earnings. Now sitting at $7, it is ready to give you a 100% soon.
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If every of us buy 20, 000 shares then
by: enoughisenough1234
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 02:05 pm

shorts will be squeezed, am I right? that's exactly what I am going to do now. I believe the risk is small the rewards will be huge and many will follow me.
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Have some balls and get rich here!
by: suckersumac
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 02:09 pm

Someone will pull a rabbit out of their hat soon. Keep shorting all you worthless cocksuckers. You'll pay dearly soon.
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Can anyone drink some Jameson with me?
by: loadedandbloated
02/28/05 02:15 pm

Please, I've had 1/2 a bottle and need help polishing off the rest. I feel I am doing my civic duty as a shareholder of Elan and an admirer of the motherland.
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MORGAN STANLEY REMAINS OVERWEIGHT!
by: donjauncarlo (48/M/santa domingo)
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 02:50 pm

THEY SAY THEY WOULD BE BUYERS OF ELN AT CURRENT PRICES!!!
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i just awoke. what happened?
tia
by: wearingbuffit
02/28/05 02:55 pm
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$349,545 down the pucking drain...
by: williamfrancisiii
02/28/05 03:17 pm

someone should die.
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Re: $349,545 down the pucking drain...
by: greg_dutch (36/M)
02/28/05 03:18 pm

sew the bastards
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HUGE RECOVERY INTO CLOSE!!!!!
by: tumbler478
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 03:19 pm

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ELN now starring in GaY porno
by: blutospeaks
02/28/05 03:24 pm

painful to watch
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god help us all......my college funds
by: nicepompoms
02/28/05 03:33 pm

for 3 kids is now gone...
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Re: Elan
by: wizardom2000
02/28/05 03:41 pm

My wife has given me a big hug. She tells me she did not marry me for money. She told me not to be on margin, and I partially listened to her, easing off margin, but not enough. This is a half million lack of judgement on my part, not listening to my sweetheart. She has been right before. Now I have to come up with money I do not have to pay a margin deficit. I am writing this to pass it on to those of you who may listen, not so you feel sorry for me. Margin, even a little, can be a crusher. You think you have time to protect yourself. There was no time this morning to bail out.

My wife is an angel. She's everything to me and I wanted to win her the sky to fly in. She says she has me, and that's enough. It is enough for me to have her. We just won't retire and play. She deserves to have some play time, but we'll work and play in our working together. My margin greed colored my perspective once again and I did not have my values in balance. Good lesson. If it helps someone here, I am happy. Bye. Wiz
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Re: Long east sh!t Shorts eat Lobsters.
by: jpbb03
02/28/05 03:58 pm

I made 120,000 on this stock, but I still feel for others. Stop being a douchebag.
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I am happy you longs lost your ass
by: ass_rape_in_progress (666/M)
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 02/28/05 04:22 pm

and i was not even short eln.
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Goodbye world
by: changb29
02/28/05 04:24 pm

I will kill myself tonight.
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I don't feel too good right now
by: loadedandbloated
02/28/05 04:26 pm

When the booze wears off I'll be looking at a major hit in my Schwab account. Not funny.
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$502,012
by: waspeaceforall (46/M/Boston area)
02/28/05 04:58 pm

loss to the penny. Lost dreams. Lost sense of independance that 502,012 more in liquidity gives one.

But my family is safe and healthy, I earn a good living. My wife's support is unwaivering.

I still can't beleive it.
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any girls want to make good money
by: sling_schlong (19/M/San Diego, CA)
02/28/05 05:33 pm

you will have to do some pretty disgusting stuff to my body parts.
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How am I going to face my wife????????
by: queenscojoe
02/28/05 05:57 pm

I feel so terribly ashamed
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Re: How am I going to face my wife??????
by: ass_rape_in_progress (666/M)
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 02/28/05 05:58 pm

just do her from behind
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Lost 360K and only had...
by: williamgrenner
02/28/05 06:41 pm

250K in equity. I know you will all say I was an idiot and I feel like one but I have been in and out of this stock for years and really felt I could appreciate the risk. I loaded up 20K share on margin only after the two approvals, the SEC resolution, and the Barron's endorsement of a double. Merrill forced me to liquidate today and I owe them 112K. This has almost killed me emotionally, and while it is only money, I clearly lost more than I could afford or have ever imagined. Five years of trading profit gone in minutes this morning. I never should have margined; I should have diversified, and I should have my head examined for not seeing the signs that Elan refused to respond to all of the recent good news. There was something lurking and to see that this morning was more than devestating. I have no capital to re-build. Christ this hurts.
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Re: Lost 360K and only had...
by: elanjuice
02/28/05 06:48 pm

You are not alone. I am praying for a miracle. I truly need one. Thank God for my faith. It gives me courage and stability in times like this; although, I must say, I have never experienced anything quite like this. I am in your exact situation. After my account is liquidated, I owe 90,000. And I have no idea where it will come from. Wishing you better days ahead.
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Re: Lost 360K and only had...
by: p1nqdave
02/28/05 06:56 pm

I had 20k I picked up at 25.60 in jan, I am retired and thought I made a great buy for my 401k, now I have lost half of my retirement funds and face a 50k margin call as best as I can figure, I will have to return to work after 3 short year of retirement my social security is not enough to keep me above water I will lose my home as some of the money I had in eln was from a home equity loan, I FEEL THIS IS THE END FOR ME, IF I DECIDE TO STAY ON THIS EARTH I WILL BE THE MOST SUPRISE, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!!!
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Re: Lost 360K and only had...
by: whattheckwuztat
02/28/05 09:06 pm

Take a loan out against your house and average down!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sell your wifes wedding ring,sell the furniture the car,the dog,cat,fish etc..... this is just a shake-out...look at what happened to CYBX,ELN will be back!
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THEY TOOK MY GE STOCK
by: falcon_phan08 (42/M/Atlanta,GA)
02/28/05 08:58 pm

AND EBAY SHARES..

charles schwab stole my money. !!!!

they didnt call me today.

i just find out now what happpened.

I AM FUCKIN GOING TO KILL MYSELF
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Do not pay your Margin Calls! Listen
by: ezdeek
02/28/05 09:39 pm

If you are about to owe your brokerage serious money then I am telling you NOT TO PAY. Let me know how to get in touch with you and I will walk you through the Bankruptcy process step by step. Don't be a sucker to the casino.

If this drop today is going to seriously affect your lifestyle then I can help you. Don't make matters worse by settling up with your broker. Save yourself.
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Lost my life savings
by: mindchinese
02/28/05 10:16 pm

Bought 4000 shares on recent breakout of $29. Now, all my money is gone. This IS FUCKED!

What can I do now? How can I tell my wife? Suggestion anyone?
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First disillusion then anger
by: beldar59
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 10:35 pm

I was as shocked as every other long who was wacked today. When I first checked the pps I did not believe what I saw. OK I said and I employed my doomsday investment scenario to pre-empt margin call. Then read as much as I could about the situation….

Then I consider the numerous shorts prancing like demons in the fire and ash. Cohorting with the likes of the proud father who adopted the sign of the devil as part of his moniker and waltzing with the short whos id is graphic child pornography. ANYONE WHO POSTED TO SUPPORT THESE OR ANY OTHER SHORTS TODAY HAVE PLACED THEMSELVES IN LEAGUE WITH THE DEVIL. PLAIN AND SIMPLE. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

I'd rather be down a boatload of cash than to sell my soul for price you all were paid.

The science helps MS sufferers. STRONG BUY.
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Re: First disillusion then crazy
by: dickbrain5440
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 02/28/05 10:42 pm

Hate to break it to you but you don't invest to support science. that's what charity is for. You invest to make money. the shorts who were luckier than you aren't satanic, they're fucking WINNERS. You, my friend, are too deluded to be in this game. I give u a matter of weeks before you become a catfood-eating manic street preacher. Then you'll probably go to jail.
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Re: First disillusion then crazy
by: beldar59
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 02/28/05 11:05 pm

I invest in promising technologies. In biotech the promising technologies are designed to help humankind. My penchant for prayer is in direct opposition to your penchant for calling yourself a dickbrain and for justifying mr. 666 and the baby raper. You must make your mother proud. I will even say a prayer for you.
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Re: First disillusion then crazy
by: dickbrain5440
02/28/05 11:08 pm

And I'll pray that you go fuck yourself, you sick freak.
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BOBNMICHIGAN..........YOU LIEING PIECE
by: lickinurpussy
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 02/28/05 11:34 pm

OF SHIT, I HAVE READ YOUR CRAP ON THIS BOARD FOR 2 YEARS. WHEN YOU SAY BUY THE STOCK GOES DOWN, WHEN YOU SAY SELL THE STOCK GOES UP. YOU HAVE NO CLUE. YOU ARE A CONTRARIAN INDICATOR. BOB, GO FUCK YOURSELF IN THE ASS WITH A 15 INCH DILDO.
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Re: I Lost My Life Savings
by: williamgrenner
03/01/05 02:19 am

My father also committed suicide when I was eleven and I agree with all of your comments. The pain never goes away -- I found him too. I can't tell you how despondent I am over losing my life savings as well but we have to move on. For a guy like me who grew up fatherless and put himself through school I should have known better than to swing for the fences with that much money. How long will it take to rebuild 360K I don't know, but I will feel the warm sun tomorrow and, like you, keep bouncing back a little wiser.
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Smith Barney ups ELN
by: dqups
03/01/05 05:26 am

4:34am 03/01/05
Smith Barney ups Elan on Tysabri's likely return to mkt (ELN, BIIB) By Aude Lagorce
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Smith Barney Citigroup upgraded pharmaceuticals company Elan Corp. (ELN) to "hold" from "sell"….
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HOW DO I JOIN CLASS ACTION SUIT
by: floooridian
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 03/01/05 07:36 am

TIA
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GET your lost MONEY back
by: whatchoutbro
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 03/01/05 02:07 pm

look at VASO
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Lost 55K, My Wife slapped me hard
by: totisand
03/01/05 07:20 pm

and scolded not to gamble anymore on stock markets. I was trying to shy away on phone when the broker called me to take care of the margin call in the morning. I left the room , however she heard the panic in my voice and figured out something is screwed up.

I had to let her know finally and she slapped me hard. I had lost 140K during bubble times and that's like a fucking pain in my life. I have bee working hard, daytrading and trying to recover those losses. However everytime I gamble big I get a big kick in the butt and lose more money. This is vicious circle and causing more losses. I just can't get away from that 2000 crash loss and it's becoming like an OCD syndrome. The more I try hard, more I lose. I am still living in rental.

I wonder if I had bought real estate with that money in 1997-1998, I would have doubled my money. This causes even more pain. The stock market is so fucked up, you just can't trust anything and it's all your FATE

I am cursed by god that I will anver make money in stock market and lose more
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PREDICTION: SHORTS DRINK MY CUM!!!!!!!
by: ibuyfromscaredmutts4bank
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 03/01/05 09:24 pm

AT $19.25

LOL F U BOILER ROOM BASHERZ IM ON TO YOUR STRATEGY OF OF "BASH AND BUY"
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"IF"..........
by: thefireblade (49/M)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 03/01/05 10:08 pm

This was the most valuable present I ever got.

From my late Dad. Written in his own hand to me, on my 21st birthday. (A while ago I should add). Originally composed by Rudyard Kipling.

Kind of appropriate at this critical juncture.

Rudyard Kipling

“If”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

[deleted; you know how it goes...–ed.]

…Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Best wishes.

Fireblade
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Re: "IF"
by: fightsfires2004
03/01/05 11:31 pm

IF my grandpa had boobies he'd be my grandma!!!
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Sea Stories...

2005-03-10T01:05:00.000-05:00

Was down in Peru for a wedding recently. Aside from the wedding, a bunch of people signed up to go on a trip to Cuzco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and some other places. Some of the group were older, some younger. Of the younger (20s + 30s) people, some partied obscenely, while a cadre of about 4-6 others were generally mellower, particularly late at night. I was in this second group. By the closing days of the trip, Group B had sort of made it an unofficial custom to get a bunch of late-night drinks at the hotel bar in Lima before going to bed. Personally, I had taken to guzzling coca maté (coca-leaf tea) since suffering altitude sickness in Cuzco, so that’s what I’d have to relax after a long day. The others drank mostly whiskey.

Anyway, over plenty of whiskey, coca maté, and counterfeit cigarettes, we’d swap stories. Since most of us didn’t know each other that well, we had tons of fresh stories to tell. I think my favorite yarn of all was contributed (very slowly and with lots of hand gestures) by Rob, a blond-haired and lobster-skinned boat captain from Nantucket.

He prefaced it by saying, “Hey, I got a pretty good shark story…”

Well, I may have forgotten some details, but this is the basic deal:

So, Rob was crewing on a fishing boat off Cape Cod at some point in the past. The boat was long-line fishing, which is where they drag a (long) line with lots of hooks on it, like in A Perfect Storm. In fact, this story is a lot like an episode that happened in the movie.

Well, Rob and this other crewman are baiting the hooks on the long line as it reels out into the ocean. Apparently this was taking place around dawn. Meanwhile, the boat’s captain, a massively fat, huge, and salty guy, is up in the tower of the boat, driving. As they reel out baited hook after baited hook, all these sharks--dozens of them--start coming right up into the wake of the boat, just off the stern. As Rob and the other guy work the lines, the sharks are thrashing around just below them in a feeding frenzy. Apparently they were attracted to the bait, or perhaps to some of the fish blood and guts that was washing off the deck.

Rob’s not sure how it happened, but the other crewman gets caught on one of the hooks (or pushed, or something (at this point Rob threw in a “maybe it was my fault”…he didn’t pause to elaborate and nobody pressed him))…either way, the poor guy goes flying off the back of the boat and into the christforsaken drink—directly into the school of feeding sharks.

Well, no sooner had Rob called “Man Overboard” than down the ladder flies the massively fat captain. He runs to the stern, and in one motion grabs a long, aluminum gaffing hook off the gunwale, slams it through the back of the foundering crewman’s shoulder, and hooks it right through his chest near the armpit. Then he yanks the guy back on board with the hook. Once the crewman was safe on board, the captain hacksawed off the barb protruding from the crewman's chest, pulled the rest of the hook backwards out of the guy’s shoulder, and called the Coast Guard.

I asked Rob if the crewman was pissed and/or in agonizing pain as a result of basically being harpooned. Apparently the guy was neither. I guess the shock took care of the pain, and the abject terror trumped any anger at being speared like a whale. The captain did save his life, after all. He grabbed the crewman so fast that the sharks didn’t have time to get a piece of him.

That story led to a long discussion about a classic tale called Sailing Alone Around The World, by one Joshua Slocum. It’s a great, great sea yarn, and a true story. This old Yankee sailor repairs a beat up wooden sailboat and, setting off on April 24, 1895, takes it around the world (alone, as one might have guessed from the title). Many adventures ensue.

It’s a pretty short read, strangely compelling, and genuinely entertaining. Best of all, it’s on the web for free:

http://www.arthur-ransome.org/ar/literary/slocum2.htm

Test post

2005-03-09T21:18:00.000-05:00

The word of the day is:

Mothergrabbin'.