Don't you love this guy?

So much passion. So much emotion. Vive la revolution!

Awful

Given its the holiday season, it is my duty to say something negative and put a damper on it. Yay!

So, this friend of mine has some acquaintances in the 'theater world', and he called me to the 'premiere' of this movie in a theater west of Lincoln Park. The theater turned out to be a 800 sq ft dump of a place near a McDonalds, and the movie turned out to be so bad that one is tempted to suppress free speech and mercilessly destroy such putrescence so that folks are saved from accidental brain damage.

It was initially just awful enough to make me erupt into muffled sniggers, but later it became so awful that as mentioned earlier I wished I was in a totalitarian regime where things such as this would have lead to some missing people and a movie that never happened.

What was the story? It is about this guy who is a psychiatrist during the day, but has this vague desire to clean out public toilets at night. He dresses as a dude to clean the men's johns and as a woman to clean out the women's jennys(?). In the loo he meets this guy who has a cleanliness obsession, and together they have fantasies about a giant cockroach. What this means in reality is that 60% of the movie is shot in the Metra Toilets a few blocks from where I work, and the cockroach is this dude in a motorcyle helmet with brown straws hanging out.

Not surprisingly, the psychiatrists day jobs involves counseling those who want to change their gender. One scene involves a fat white butt-ugly dude in a blond wig saying - "...ohh I feel so feminine. I want to leave my wife, kids and everything to be who I want to be.". Damn funny no? But no. Everyone is dead serious. Then this psychiatrist gives him advice - "Why not just cross-dress first before changing gender? Maybe you just like womens clothes?" Not sure why this scene had to part of the movie, but then another patient comes in.

Its a middle aged dude who advices his psychiatrist to try out some psychedelic pills that he snagged from a drug trial. What is the drug made of? Uranium. What?? Uranium? I wanted to ask - Uranium-235 or Uranium-238? Apparently popping a pill filled with Uranium gets you high because of all those electrons pelting your mind. No, you don't die due to radiation poisoning as your tissues get annihilated. Also, which doctor takes medication from a patient?

I know I just quoted some random disconnected scenes, because that's exactly what it was. The concept of a screenplay was completely alien to the director (apart from the alien cockroach that is). The movie ended (thank the Lord) with everyone popping Uranium pills and getting high. What was the point? Ingest Uranium? Wear a cockroach helmet? Cross-dress and clean public-transit toilets?

I was miffed I had to pay 15$ to watch this garbage. My initially thought was - expensive but a worthy contribution to promote art in Chicago. My art patron hallucination. Yes, hallucination it was because the directors and actors should be fined for making people watch this complete mockery of what a movie is.

Blogs that have ended

I got into this blogging business a while back, and though I don't update very frequently I do sparingly sprinkle my blog with smatterings of my sparkling wit. Just happened to click through to many of the blogs I haven't visited in a while, and about 70% of them have for all practical purposes ended. Its interesting how almost no blog just stops abruptly. People feel the need to say something witty or solemn or sad or happy i.e. evoke a special feeling to mark the occasion. Why this human obsession with not being forgotten? Mausoleums, pyramids, named buildings, companies - all to stay remembered.

No I am not closing this blog (not that anyone cares). Its kind of fun to update occasionally and though there is not much personal information it does play the role of an online diary. Usually when I read an entry from back in the day, it does bring back memories from around that period of time. The power of association is probably the best way to encrypt something - out there for everyone to see but the personal meaning of fairly mundane things can never be replicated! Ha ha.

What else is up? Good summer. No complaints. Oh yeah did a road trip to Yellowstone. 3300 miles driven in 5 days. Fun stuff. Might update later with details.

Tiffany & Co

Gross margin (gross profit as a percentage of net sales) increased to 57.8% in the second quarter, from 55.1% last year, partly reflecting the recapture of higher product costs through retail price increases, as well as manufacturing efficiencies and a decline in wholesale sales of rough diamonds. Gross margin was 57.8% in the first half, compared with 55.5% last year.

Wow. This does not even include the fact that the diamond market itself is one big cartel controlled by De Beers, the Russians and a couple of other players. There was an article in the NYTimes about the fall in diamond prices in '09 as demand collapsed. One of advisors to a diamond producer said the following :

How the buy-in price for the stones will be set, and how the company will determine when the price goes up and down, is unclear, Mr. Malinin said.

"We have to tell people that diamonds are valuable," he said. "We are trying to maintain the price, just as De Beers did, as all diamond producing countries do. But what we are doing is selling an illusion," meaning a product with no utility and a price that depends on the continued sense of scarcity where there is none.

Just like gold. The whole jewelry industry is one big marketing trick. I do not understand the human obsession from ancient times with 'precious' stones and gold.

Yo

Yes, I said yo. Summer it is and life is good. No complaints. Really. Which might explain why I am not blogging prolificly.

Man this Bloomberg News

Bloomberg News has a tendency to create these headlines by putting together a lot of keywords which individually make sense but all together don't. Keywords to make sure the article turns up in search engines. All said, this is ridiculous :

Strippers Declare Inflation Dead in Zero-Coupon Bond Revival

What?? Since when did the adult entertainment industry begin tracking implied future changes in broad price levels as reflected in the price of treasury bonds.

Now, on deeper investigation stripping refers to the practice of separating (or stripping) the interest and principal components of treasury bonds and marketing them separately. A financial analyst who does this stripping, would be well...a stripper.

European countries offer $41 billion to Greece

Its like telling an alchoholic - "You know I feel really bad you have been sober for a week. Here kiddo. Here is a bottle of vodka, go have fun."

I think there is some sense in bailing out countries which are essentially solvent, but are going through a balance of payments crisis. Stabilize the currency enough for them to work through the crisis. The Asian countries in the late 90's. They all bounced back strongly.

Given the level of public debt, the budget deficit and rampant tax evasion, Greece has no viable mechanism to pay that money back. Another Argentina waiting to happen. Better to armtwist first and extract serious structural change before lending any money.

Opening lines...

ANTONIO

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

..from "The Merchant of Venice". I studied it through high school, and know the opening lines almost by heart. As we progressed through the book, we were tested on the entire book up to the point where we had stopped. So, I ended up studying the first act for like 20 tests!

Doesn't it describe how I feel? Not sad but a weird feeling of malaise. See there is no legitimate reason for me to feel so. In the poker game of life, I have been dealt a fairly decent set of cards. Obviously, a sense of entitlement could still make me feel disappointed, but I claim no such title. Quite simply, people are strange.

In the grand tradition of humanity, I shall externalize my feelings. Its the crappy wet snow this weekend. Its the frustration of summer being around the corner, but not being there yet. Its getting up at 7 in the morning during the week, and having to do homework all weekend. Its the uncertainty about the future, not that anyone has been able to successfully divine the future. Its this. Its that. Its this and that.