The most shocking part of this isn’t that Mel Gibson is dropping racial slurs like crazy. I think that’s been fairly well discussed up to this point. The shock is that he didn’t have the foresight to assume she’d record his asinine conversations.

The basic premise of “The Bachelor” is that 15 beautiful women and 5 trolls all show up to the same mansion to live to together to compete for the affections of a very eligible bachelor, who for some reason has been unsuccessful in love up to this point.

Problem number one. They are asking the viewing public to believe that for some reason, this good looking guy cannot find enough decent women to date. I guess it’s possible to believe that a good looking financially successful man has trouble meeting women, but only if you are sad and desperate person who wants to believe that men of that caliber have as hard a time finding love as they do.

It’s ridiculous to believe these men have trouble finding women. That leaves the obvious conclusion left. They want to be on the show to become famous and whore around. Why is everyone shocked when these relationships don’t work out. You put a man with good looking women clamoring for his attention, and you are shocked none of the relationships worked out.

Then there this bachelor, who has prompted rumors that he isn’t gay.  And his friends came to his swift defense.

From RadarOnline

“Every guy knows that when a woman disrespects you to that level, it’s hard to make love to her and mean it.”

And, according to the source, Pavelka is the type of guy who wants to have a special bond before he becomes intimate with a woman.

Yeah. That did it.  That will definitely kill off rumors of his sexual preference.

Girls, Girls, Girls – Motley Crue from matt edwards on Vimeo.

When he was in his prime, there was no one better. “Billy Jean” and “Beat It” are still better than 99% of all of the shitty pop songs released today, and he turned the video music format into a formidable force until MTV took it out and shot it a decade ago.

The good news is that we don’t have to watch Michael go through the horrible decline that was waiting for him. He owed hundreds of millions and was literally worth less than the average street bum. His only hope was a new tour and some revenue.

The bad news is his family is a bunch of circus freaks. They’ll be picking over his bones for another decade.

People hate rosie

When I saw the first commercial, I thought it was a joke. I see Rosie in a feather boa with a small harem of gay men (not that there is anything wrong with that) talking about a new variety show she is going to star in. To me the idea of Rosie O’Donnell in a prime time variety show is confusing for a wide variety of reasons, but the one that sticks out in my mind is this: Everyone Hates Rosie.

How does NBC not know this? Don’t they have focus groups? If they do have focus groups, who is in these groups and what are they asking them? Did they ask the simplest question? “Do you hate Rosie?” because I guarantee that at least 1/3 of the people in any single group hate her. This isn’t a question of whether you would watch her show or if you like variety shows. NBC couldn’t get it through their heads that a sizeable of people find Rosie objectionable on face value.

Don’t confuse the issue either, this isn’t about gay women hosting shows. People LOVE Ellen. Why? Because Ellen is funny. Ellen doesn’t make every single minute about her show a chance to ramble on about herself. It’s not about politics or gender or race. People just hate Rosie. Whoever gets paid at NBC to say things like “wait a minute Bob…..I see a flaw in our plan. I think we might be looking at a problem. It seems people FUCKING HATE Rosie. Maybe we should look at someone different.”

NBC should look at hiring Captain Obvious.

Apple

It seems these days that tech is out of favor. No one is interested in what most technology companies are doing at the moment. This won’t last long. After some time passes, and people will be looking for the latest and greatest companies.

With the imminent demise of Yahoo!, people will be looking for where to put their money. Many have already put their money behind Google. This would be a mistake. Google does one thing very well: Search. Beyond that, Google’s successes are suspect. Everyone is far to willing to crown them as the new kings of technology.

My pick to carry the crown? Apple. My reasons are likely not the ones you might think. It has nothing to do with iTunes, the Apple line, the iPod’s, or the iPhones. Those are merely incidental reasons I think Apple has the potential for taking the leadership in technology. The real reason that Apple will become the dominant technology is the App. Store.

For the past decade, the story of the little guy producing Doom in his basement and getting riches seemed impossible. Games budgets were in the tens of millions and small applications were essentially written for free. The brilliant hobbyist programmer had no real mechanism for turning their talents into real money. The Application Store has changed all of that. The iPhone gives programmers a simple device with which to produce small programs that cost $5. There is not only no need for millions of features, but it’s undesirable.

Applications cost anywhere between Free-$29.99, but the vast majority cost about $5. It’s cheap enough that people aren’t afraid of the cost or the effort to learn the software. Most developers think that cost is the main obstacle to purchases of software. It isn’t. The main obstacle is the time it takes to learn a product and hoping it will meet your needs. The idea of buying software to learn just doesn’t appeal to most people.

Most iPhone users have the expectation that the software be VERY easy to use. Factor in the cost of only $5 and you have a recipe for success. The simple standardized platform with an expectation of simplicity means no extra features. Programmers do one simple thing and do it well. This means the dream of anyone producing a blockbuster title is now alive again. Nothing makes your product more vital than a community of hobbyist developers doing far more with your product than you imagined. The valued added from this community is immeasurable.

Now is the time of the iPhone app millionaire. The gold rush for programmers is on. That is the vitality and interest in a platform that Google and Microsoft don’t have.

Gambling at it’s core is purchasing a chance where you may or may not know the odds, but there are set odds for every given circumstance.  The odds of your winning at the Bellagio in blackjack are set, and if you play 1,000 hands, those odds will bear out over time.

If you look at one single tradeable item in the stock market, it’s easy to determine why and how the individual price movements occurred.  If you had perfect knowledge, you could easily predict the direction that price would move.  In blackjack, this cannot occur.  The best player in the world has no statistical advantage over the second best player or even the 5,000 th best player. The rules are so simple and the options so limited.  This is the same with games you play the house.  Even the best players will hardly outperform each other.

Now look at poker.  Poker isn’t really gambling. It’s a contest much like football.  The difference between the best player and the 5,000th best player is hugely significant.  Why?  The game becomes far more complex, and skill and choice matters.  If you bankroll the better player, you’ll come out ahead most of the time.

The stock market is representative of the companies that are competing in a very complex game.  The stock values for any given company is representative of our belief of how skilled and how likely those companies are to “win” their poker matches.  Can investing be gambling?  Sure.  If you gave $100 to each person on the casino floor to play with and hoped one would hit the jackpot, that would be gambling.  It would also be gambling if you gave one person $1K and hoped they would hit the jackpot.

But if your money was backing the house?  That’s not gambling, that is investing.  Your money is backing the best player each and every time.   For people who throw their money around, the stock market is a pure gamble.  For those who invest over the long term with the house?  That’s investing.

Oil trades at $50 today. If i asked 1,000 people if oil is likely to hit $100 again in the next 5 years, I bet 95% will tell me it will. I’d also guess they will be right. I also bet that 95% of them aren’t buying oil right now even knowing a 100% gain in 5 years would crush their other investments.

Why won’t they invest in a likely outcome? Well, its a whole lot more fun to stay at the casino and gamble than run the casino. If you want to stay at the Casino and gamble, than gamble away, just don’t look at us Casino Owners and think we are playing the same game

To help further illustrat Circuit City flushing itself down the toilet, here is an excellent timeline provided by the great folks at Consumerist, the best blog on the planet for consumer activism.

Circuit City did the unforgiveable.   They are in a the service industry.  Their product line does not differentiate itself from their competitors in any significant manner.  That means any added value must be gained form the service that the stores render to the customer.  The fuck ‘tards who were in charge of CC have the highest amount of arrogance.  They think their leadership adds value, and they can get any $8/hour scrub to succeed because their leadership is what matters.

The market always punishes such arrogance.   Their operating officers thought they were in the electronics business, when in fact they were in the service business.  They took their single most imporant assett and flushed it down the toilet.  Good riddance. Anyone who was still at Circuit City after the cuts one year ago was asleep at the wheel.  This company had horrible leadership and was doomed.   When you have screw ups like Philip Schoonover running the show first get rid of the stock.   If you work for that company, it is time to jump ship.

Find the companies making gross errors and short them all the way down.  You can no longer count on companies to hire CEO’s that have a clue how to run a business.  Schoonover had a deal for $6-$8 a share. amd Circuit City piddled around until Blockbuster got cold feet.   A big “Fuck You” to Philip Schoonoveris deserved, but understand he isn’t the only one.

It would be sad if it weren’t so funny.  In an earlier post, I outlined that Yahoo’s deal with Google was a huge strategic fuck up.  Now that Google has backed out of the deal that Yahoo! so desperately needed, Yahoo! is headed for disaster.

Yang has sold the deal as the salvation of Yahoo.  Everyone with a functioning brain knew that Yahoo! desperately needed the deal and Google was only doing it to piss off Microsoft, but was far from necessary.  Had the deal passed, Google would have slowly been a more and more important source of revenue. Once they knew Yahoo! couldn’t live without them, they’d pull the rug out from under them.  It’s the harsh strategy of bringing somoene under your protection and then weakening them until they can no longer defend themselves. Then you throw them to the wolves.

$33 was the price.  The stock is now worth $14/share.  $33 was more than a fair premium for a company that had started it’s long slide into the Abyss.   Why was this deal turned down?  Ego.  Jerry Yang’s ego took precedent over his primary responsiblity to the company and it’s shareholders.  He violated a basic principle of business.  Check your oversized ego at the door.  It’s not about you, it’s about your company and the shareholders who have made you disgustingly rich.

Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone has been a relevant director for about 15 minutes in 1986 when he made “Platoon” which was a semi-decent Vietname war movie which netted Best Picture which ranks it as one of the most overrated movies of all time.

Stone’s other forays into history are the incredibly badly done Nixon and the successful but ADDA style film J.F.K.  A most basic look at the accuracies of these movies shows they are about as awful as they come.  When it was announced he’d be doing a biopic on George W. Bush, most people dismissed it out of hand as a political hit job just in time for the election.  Being an infamous liberal in Hollywood, it’s timing appears to comes off as a patronizing piece of propaganda.

For the first time, Stone has actually put a movie together from top tier sources and the movie appears to be mostly accurate.  Far from a political hit job, the movie has plenty of inside sources and appears to be a fair treatment of the sitting President.

So why is Stone a dumbass?  Because no one gives a shit.  There is no point in doing any movie about George Bush, especially by a paranoid hollywood liberal.  Every single imaginable attack on George W. Bush has been done.  Attacks on his policies, family, friends, intelligence, speaking, looks, fans, have all been done at every level of taste and accuracy.  There is nothing left to say.  Nothing left to do.  All the jokes, accusations, and stories have been done.  Nothing will be discovered or learned and no minds will be changed.

The story of George W. Bush’s presidency has hit full fatigue.  It’s why Obama’s campaign slowed the more he used the McSame talking points.  The President is more than a lame duck president.  He is already out of the hearts and minds of the populace.

At this stage, Oliver Stone’s movie has all the effect of a knock-knock joke you’ve heard one too many times.  The movie will generate mixed reviews and low ticket sales.