Still, Money Isn’t Everything

Know When To Quit, and When Not To

There is no price that can be placed on having coworkers you like, a good boss, and interesting labor.

Would you trade all that for just more money?

Fool.

New Blog Categories: Bands And Blog Notes

Since I’ll now be writing about bands other than my One True Love, Girls Don’t Cry, I thought it best to add a Bands category. Otherwise everything will get mixed (no pun intended) under the Music category.

And notices such as this really do belong under a Blog Notes category instead of Stuff.

I’ll add the new categories to relevant past posts during the week…

Reference: Cancer Therapy

Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction

On October 1st 1890, William B. Coley, a young bone surgeon barely two years out of medical school, saw one of his first patients in private practice at the New York Memorial Hospital. Although he’d only finished his residency earlier the same year, he’d already gained a good reputation and many considered him a rising star of the New York surgical scene.

The seventeen year old patient had a painful, rapidly growing lump on the back of her right hand. She had pinched the unlucky appendage between two railway carriage seats on a transcontinental trip to Alaska some months before, and when the bruise failed to heal she assumed the injury had become infected. However the bruise turned into a bulge, the pain steadily worsened, and her baffled doctors were eventually compelled to call for Dr. Coley. As a surgical man, Coley would never have guessed that this innocuous referral would take his career in a totally new direction– into an unusual branch of medicine now known as cancer immunotherapy.

Daddy!

TEACHINGS OF DIOGENES

Diogenes was knee deep in a stream washing vegetables. Coming up to him, Plato said, “My good Diogenes, if you knew how to pay court to kings, you wouldn’t have to wash vegetables.”

“And,” replied Diogenes, “If you knew how to wash vegetables, you wouldn’t have to pay court to kings.”

And:

Diogenes was strolling through the market place. Suddenly, he called out in despair, “Men! Men! Men! . . . ”

Immediately, they came running from all directions: young fops with flowers in their hair; lusty young boys, scantily dressed, hanging off the arms of older men; freemen, their slaves beside them burdened down with groceries, their cheeks bulging with small change; merchants who had left their shops in answer to Diogenes’ call.

He looked at them searchingly one by one and with a sad shrug turned to walk away. “I called for men,” he said in disgust.

And:

Diogenes was asked, “What is the difference between life and death?

“No difference.”

“Well then, why do you remain in this life?”

“Because there is no difference.”

Go To Your Doom By Scorning Me And Trusting The Suits

The impossible loan: The murky path to a couple’s dream home

David and Jerri Bauman, a mentally challenged couple who have scraped through life, wanted a home. It was supposed to be 22 Fairview Ave. in West View — a place sold to them amid a flurry of confusing paperwork they couldn’t read, a pair of unexplained bank transactions and at least three sales documents that contradict reality.

Twenty months after they put shaky signatures on a mortgage they couldn’t afford and a settlement statement they didn’t understand, the Baumans are preparing to leave. David Bauman can’t read. His wife reads slightly, but with minimal comprehension. The lawyer who handled the transaction, according to Mrs. Bauman, told her it would take too long if they read everything.

Here’s the new bedrock of our economy:

The sale of 22 Fairview Ave. and the financial twists and turns are felt in ways large and small.

Small: A learning-challenged couple find themselves signing documents they can’t read, accumulating debt they can’t pay and, finally, being ejected from a house they shouldn’t have been sold.

Large: The stock market falls by more than 500 points in three days after massive sell-offs fueled in part by fears over souring investments in the very kind of high-risk loan the Baumans took.

Emphasis added by me.

Dig it. You can’t get more Suit than this:

Where the loan went
Less than three months after the Baumans took out a mortgage they had no way of paying, Bear Stearns, the investment firm that had accumulated a fortune by bundling thousands of mortgages to underwrite Wall Street bonds, bought the value of the Bauman mortgage.

The deal was complex, and the Bauman mortgage with Encore was almost invisible in the multimillion dollar deal. It worked this way: Bear Stearns used bundled mortgages, their value bought en masse from mortgage lenders such as Encore, and created a fund in which investors could draw interest from the subsequent payoff of the loans.

Bear Stearns became the major player in this kind of investment, with more than $16 billion of the market in the riskiest kind of mortgages.

These were sub-prime loans — meaning loans that drew a higher interest payment because the borrowers were considered risky. The bet was that the majority of borrowers would meet their payments or that any subsequent foreclosures would get back the value of the debt when the house was sold.

It didn’t work.

Last week, over a two-day period, the stock market tumbled by hundreds of points after Bear Stearns acknowledged that two of its funds were essentially worthless as families such as the Baumans defaulted on mortgages they couldn’t pay.

On Tuesday, the market, shaken by the collapse of the Bear Stearns funds, fell 226 points. On Thursday it dropped another 311.

Emphasis added by me.

You strut around in your pinstripes lecturing the population about honesty and hard work — and you’re a pack of fucking thieves!

Shit like this wouldn’t happen if I was in charge.

Previously in this blog:
On The Internet, Telling The Truth Becomes Imaginary
Fasten Your Seatbelts. Then Pray.
America: Collapse Watch
America: The Endgame
The Suits Will Bleed Anyone Dry! Especially You.
Hey, VISA Card USA! I Accuse You Of Running A Bait-And-Switch Scam!
The Answer Is Yes
When An Economy Crashes, Baby, There Are No Airbags!
And Then Google’s Stock Finally Thank You Jesus Crashes And Takes The Entire Global Economy Down The Toilet, Thank You Science!
The Road to Great Depression 2.0

It Is So

QUOTATIONS ON GENIUS

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

— Longfellow

— linkswipe via reddit

A Sad Day For Auntie Beeb

BBC Corrupted

Today the BBC made it official — they have been corrupted by Microsoft. With today’s launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution of BBC programming. From today, you will need to own a Microsoft operating system to view BBC programming on the web. This is akin to saying you must own a Sony TV set to watch BBC TV. And you must accept the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) that the iPlayer imposes. You simply cannot be allowed to be in control of your computer according to the BBC.

–linkswipe via Techmeme

Reference: Online Storage

ONLINE STORAGE: 80+ File Hosting and Sharing Sites

–linkswipe via Techmeme

Blog Notes: It’s Now Official. So Shut The Fuck Up.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* fucking (3x)
* shit (2x)
* dead (1x)

Pay The Fekkin Taxes, You Eejits!!

Followup to a prior post: Live Stupid, Die Stupid…

Apparently the Feds made some sort of move yesterday. Reports of shots being fired. Prior to that, a report states:

Notice: Power, telephone lines, Internet access, satellite TV, and all mail/parcel delivery has been cutoff to Ed and Elaine.

Back in the 1970s, a guy named Irwin Schiff was all over talk radio promoting his “truth” about the “illegal” income tax. He was put in prison. He’s just been put there again.

Many people who followed him — and like-minded groups (fraudulent relgious certification was also the rage back then) — wound up with their assets stripped from them, huge fines and penalties, jail time, and ruined lives.

All of you who think you are Great Patriots are actually deluded dipshits who deserve the mauling you will get.

Do you love this country or not?

Then pay the goddammed taxes it takes to maintain it! Period.

Look at what they did to poor Willie Nelson — and he wasn’t even at fault!

In 1990, the IRS handed Nelson a bill for $16.7 million in back taxes and took away most of his assets to help pay the charges. He released The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories? as a double album, with all profits going straight to the IRS. Many of his assets were auctioned and purchased by friends, who gave his possessions back to him or rented them at a nominal fee. His debts were paid by 1993.

I remember the contemporaneous TV coverage of this. It was a disgrace. Personal items such as family photos had to be auctioned off. I didn’t like that at all. But if someone who wasn’t trying to protest taxation could be treated like that — how much worse will it be for you?

Wake up!

Littlefield leaned closer to him. “You’re a young man, you can still learn. Pay attention to this. You can steal in this country, you can rape and murder, you can bribe public officials, you can pollute the morals of the young, you can burn your place of business down for the insurance money, you can do almost anything you want, and if you act with just a little caution and common sense you’ll never even be indicted. But if you don’t pay your income tax, Grofield, you will go to jail.”

— The Score – Richard Stark, Copyright © 1964 by Richard Stark; pg. 73

If you’ve been stupid, seek legal advice to get squared with the IRS. Use the Offer In Compromise to get your life out from under the shadow of possible imprisonment! The IRS, when faced with an attorney, will try to work things out with as little fuss as possible. Repent and be saved. Stand your ground and you’ll be buried on it.