Into the Boingle Bucket with you, scum!!

I don't remember this thing, but it sure looks neat.

The little girl in this cracks me up

Peppers!

My pal, Sam visited the island of Cuba and took a bunch of photos. Because of my love of hot peppers I've posted this one, but she has lots of cool pictures of modern Cuba. Check out her photo album.

Black Metal goofballs for Steve

I like big husky cross-face in his black metal sweat pants.

Polish movie posters

Don't know what the deal is, but the Poles produce their own artwork for Amurr'kin and other countries' movies. Maybe it's a copyright issue. Whatever the reason for this, many Polish movie posters transcend mere advertisement.

"Gava Fran Trulen" album edit

Much better. Genuinely rocking, too.

Good lord

Talk about lo-fi. Here's Arckanum's "Gava Fran Trulen":



I think that guy is a Muppet that got abandoned at the drawing board. His growl at the beginning not only doesn't scare my daughter but manages to crack me the hell up every time. Parody, please?



Thank you.

can we say "skittish?"

Here's a fun note that shows how insanely skittish the market has become:

Crude rises on surprise inventories data, weaker dollar
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures surged more than 4% Wednesday to close near $106 a barrel as a government report showed U.S. crude inventories were unchanged last week and as the dollar fell against other currencies. Crude for May delivery rallied $4.68, or 4.6%, to settle at $105.9 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Other energy futures also moved higher. U.S. crude stockpiles held steady at 311.8 million barrels in the week ended March 21, the Energy Information Administration said. Analysts surveyed by energy information provider Platts had been looking for an increase of 1.5 million barrels.

In a nutshell, when oil inventories came in less than 0.5% below estimates, the market jumps up over 4%! Panic buying I think is what they call it. Regardless, I have to guess everyone in the oil trading pit at this point knows about peak oil and that's why they're so worried about making sure they are "in" on any massive runup.

fun times

so, since my last post...

Recent transactions:

03/17/2008	Buy To Open	1	CLZ15	Crude Oil DEC 2015	100.30
03/17/2008	Buy To Open	1	NGZ11	Natural Gas DEC 2011	9.410
03/20/2008	Sell To Close	1	NGZ11	Natural Gas DEC 2011	8.760

Notice that I bought a contract, and turned around and sold it 3 days later for a hefty loss (about $6500). But I'm getting ahead of myself - here's the real story:

SO I've been investing in this new thing called futures (see previous post) - and, holy shit - I'm making money hand over fist. Made like $65k or something crazy. right away too, within weeks.

Then, I decide to press my luck (see transactions above). Then everything comes crashing down, and all of the sudden I've lost all of my winnings and I'm nearing a margin call (ie. I have to put up more $$ or they'll force me to close out a position (or two). So I sell one - the one I just bought a few days ago.

Turns out the past few weeks has been a roller coaster by any measure. I was reading about all the unprecedented rise and then more about his unprecedented fall in oil and natural gas and what-not. panic buying and selling is what they called it.

Needless to say, last week was quite a welcome into the futures trading market. It was fun going up, not so fun going down. Thankfully I didn't lose my shirt.

I know at this point that I'm too heavily leveraged, but I can't seem to get myself to close out some positions to reduce my risk. Here is what the current holdings are:

Symbol	Description	Qty	Cost Basis	Price	Change	Gain/Loss $
CLZ15CRUDE OIL DEC 2015	CRUDE OIL DEC 2015	3	99.85	97.74	0	-6,330.00
CLZ16CRUDE OIL DEC 2016	CRUDE OIL DEC 2016	2	92.12	98.2	0.27	12,160.00
ECM9EURO FX JUN 2009	EURO FX JUN 2009	1	1.5275	1.5259	0	-200
NGM13NATURAL GAS JUN 2013	NATURAL GAS JUN 2013	1	7.889	8.596	0	7,070.00
NGZ13NATURAL GAS DEC 2013	NATURAL GAS DEC 2013	2	8.935	8.941	0	130
SPU9S&P 500 INDEX SEP 2009	S&P 500 INDEX SEP 2009	-1	1325.2	1354.4	0	-7,300.00

what do you say - roll the dice and keep these holdings? Or play it safe and cash out a bunch of these?

Gross humor---you've been warned...

If You Watch Only One Black Metal Satire Today...

...make it this one.



Gut. Busting. Funny. Black metal fans--at least the employable ones--have a very articulate sense of humor about their music. Cheers to that.

Black Sabbath cartoon!

from the now cancelled TV Funhouse:

What?

I suppose I shoulda provided text for this post. Anyway, looks like Mappe Bjorkman of Candlemass is going to jail for a coupla years. Seems he and a buddy were stealing CDs from the warehouse they worked at and sold them at a cut rate to retailers. And we're talking lots of CDs! Too bad.

I Declare Today to Be. . .

"Nobody Is Allowed to Make Fun of Immortal" Day.



Here are some samples from the Facebook group "Any Picture Can Be Improved by Adding Immortal to It"

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=10353855&blogID=275697519

Russian Forest Psycho

This is an article about the recent demise of a recluse who lived ferally in the woods for 20 years, menacing all who came near, including cops and federal agents. Maybe he's the third in the death trilogy of Arthur C. Clarke and Anthony Minghella.