The Airing of Grievances

Lay-Offs...

...all around me. I keep looking for a trend but there's just nothing. SVPs, directors, managers, individual contributors, people who I consider friends, people who are really good at their jobs, people that aren't so much, people who just had a child, people who just had a grandchild, people who've been here for 25 years, people who've been here for one. It's just a whole day of whispers and tears and every time you hear an office door shut, it sends a chill down your spine. Someone else just got thrown into an empty job market. Mix all that in with the anxiety caused by the fact that at any given second, the tap could be on my shoulder and this is truly the epitome of surreal.

I can't believe it's only 10:27.

I'M GOING TO FIX YOUR FINANCIAL CRISIS

HI MY NAME IS NEEL KASHKARI AND I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO BE OVERSEEING THIS $700 BILLION BUY-OUT THAT YOU MAY HAVE HEARD ABOUT. IT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU COULD HAVE MISSED WHILE BLINKING, OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT I'M TOLD AS I HAVE NEVER BLINKED IN MY ADULT LIFE.

I'M GOING TO GET THIS ALL STRAIGHTENED OUT SO THAT WE CAN GET OUR FINANCIAL SITUATION BACK TO NORMAL. I'M GOING TO THINK REALLY HARD AND USE A LOT OF BRAIN POWER. THIS WILL MAKE MY HEAD GLOW. AVOID ME AT THESE TIMES, EVEN IF I STARE AT YOU. I'M REALLY NOT LOOKING AT YOU, IT JUST APPEARS THAT WAY. I'M ACTUALLY JUST PROBABLY PRETENDING TO BE AN EAGLE. AWWWK AWWWWK SWOOOOOOP AWWWWK AWWWWWK. PEOPLE TELL ME I LOOK LIKE A BALD EAGLE. THEN I TELL THEM THAT I USED TO BE A VP AT GOLDMAN SACHS. WHAT KIND OF EAGLE WORKS AT GOLDMAN SACHS. NO EAGLES DO IS THE CORRECT ANSWER. BUT YOU PROBABLY WOULDN'T KNOW THAT BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T A VP AT GOLDMAN SACHS LIKE I WAS.

LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING AT YOU.

 

NO TRADERS OR EXECUTIVES ARE GOING TO REVERT TO THEIR OLD BEHAVIOR DURING THIS PROCESS BECAUSE I AM GOING TO BE STARING DIRECTLY AT THEM THE WHOLE TIME. YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM ME UNLESS YOU HIDE IN MY EYEBROWS AND I WILL MAKE SURE THAT NO ONE HIDES IN MY BROWS. DO YOU HEAR THAT WALL ST? I'M NOT GOING TO ALLOW THIS TO FAIL. YOU CAN WRITE THAT DOWN ON A WRITING SURFACE WITH INK OR BLOOD OR SOMETHING ELSE SEMI-PERMANENT. IN THE MEANTIME PLEASE EXCUSE ME BECAUSE I HAVE SOME WORK TO DO AND I HAVE TO FIX THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. OK BYE.

Chiles Looking For Bailout Lowdown

The kid is overseas and, very thankfully, the kid has not been following the news at all. That said, the kid is quite interetested in this bailout stuff. What's the lowdown? What happened? How should I feel about my portfolio? The kid did try to do a little personal diligence but You Go Girl!!! Sarah! did not help. What's the dealie Greivers? (Gracias, Ocho)

Lightening the Mood with some Gayness

From LiveLeak.com via ESDBS. Hey, Jackie, you haven't added the 365gay.com tag yet. Come on, man! Get on it.

I tried embedding the video. It didn't work. Someone help me out!!!!!!! SOS!!!!!

Hey Look...Irony!!!

Good news if you're a surfer out there who occasionally has visions of Jaws sneaking up behind them. For a mere $645.00, you can now ensure yourself the freedom of surfing without having to deal with those pesky shark attacks! I give you... The Shark Shield. It's a device that attaches to the bottom of your surfboard and sends out electronic waves that induce spasms in the shark's nose. This was almost enough to get me to surf but unfortunately there's one minor glitch.

Whilst being tested in South Africa, under the supervision of the Natal Sharks Board, a female great white ate a Shark Shield device that had been attached to a float. This has been the cause of speculation that the electrical fields designed to repel sharks might in fact attract them. The manufacturer claims that the device does work but that due to the design it will only be effective while a surfer is stationary and waiting for a wave.

Awesome. She ate the shark repellent. Thank god for quality control because you'd have to think that having a product on the market designed to repel sharks that actually attracted them could ignite some fairly serious lawsuits down the road.

This sort of reminds me of the time that my cat had fleas so I had my wife hold her down and I grabbed the bottle of flea spray and completely doused the thing while it was having a tantrum. Turns out the bottle I grabbed wasn't the flea spray but a bottle of cat repellent that you spray on furniture to keep the cats away. The stuff is so repugnant to cats that you just need to spray a little on your couch and they won't go within 5 feet of it. We gave this thing a bath in that stuff. She must have wanted to kill herself.

Alright, it's not really like that at all but regardless...that cat fucking hates me to this day.

Why Do You Hate Us?

I was watching The Wire on HBO this past weekend. The whole "Wire" thing is confusing the hell out of me because I thought it was supposed to be some intense urban drama and now it appears to be a documentary on the journalism industry, or does HBO have two shows with the same exact name that have nothing to do with each other? I honestly have no clue and google didn't clear anything up for me either so I'll just digress.

The basic premise of the show is that the newspaper industry is declining as it's cheaper and more convenient for people to obtain their product from the internet (at least that was the premise of this particular show). I think it said that about 3% of people between the ages of 20-35 get their news from newspapers. Most newspaper journalists seem to think that they dropped the ball by providing the news for free on the internet. What I didn't realize was the complete and utter disdain that newspaper journalists have for bloggers.

Shave and a Haircut?

I like my barber.  He does a good job on my hair (and this is something that is nearly impossible).  However, I hate the chit chat.  I try to answer each question with one word answers, but yet he doesn't get the message that I don't want to talk.  At the same barbershop, I notice other customers in in-depth conversations, chest bumping, and giving intricate handshakes with their barber.  Is there some interpersonal relationship that I'm missing out on here? 

Furthermore, the barbershop is really racially mixed.  However, white people only get their hair cut by the white/latino barbers; while black people only get their hair cut by the black barbers.  One time, when I was in a hurry, I thought I could get my haircut before an interview.  When I showed up, there were no white/latino barbers to cut my hair.  I wanted a haircut, and I really didn't care who did it; as long as my hair was cut.  I was the only person in line, yet the three barbers were really taking their time with their current customers.  I felt like they were trying to go as slow as possible because they didn't want to be the one to cut the white person's hair (example:  one guy had a shaved head, yet the barber was still fiddling around with it for 20 minutes).  After over an hour of waiting, I ended up having to leave after because time was short.  I left angry; but after I thought about it, I wondered if they didn't want to cut my hair because they weren't sure how to style a white persons hair.  Anyway, let's say I go back and have the time, and there are two barbers available: one white (not my barber) and one black.  Should I go with the white person under the assumption that he/she is trained to cut only white people's hair?  I'm not sure on the etiquette here.

Wife Or Whore?

It's a day late, but enjoy this competitive analysis of the merits of marriage versus the no-strings-attached life of whoremongering.  For all you attached fellas, hope you and your "low-cost provider" had a wonderful V-Day.

Some Guys Have All The Luck

Ex-cabdriver Tamir Sapir has landed the most expensive townhouse ever sold in Manhattan.  Be sure to read the linked Times piece, as Sapir's rags-to-riches story is nothing if not inspring.  But don't forget to check out our source for the link, Wall Street Folly.  They managed to unearth a picture of yet another of Mr. Sapir's trophy possessions for their accompanying piece.

Awww, He Thinks He's People!

Alot of people ask why I vacation in places like Ethiopia.  Wonder no longer:

Mr. Martinez, 34, who owns six dogs and two cats, said he founded the station because "my cat, Snickers, asked me to do it." One day, Snickers was pacing the floor restlessly and meowing. "I said, 'What do you want?' " Mr. Martinez recalled in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I turned up the music, and she was fine." He discovered that Snickers likes 80's rock, particularly the Eddie Money version of the song "Take Me Home Tonight"

Just when I thought I couldn't be any more of a misanthrope...

(thanks to bluehorseshoe for the link)