Banksy

"Who is Banksy? We may not know his real name, but his art is unmistakably the work of a passionate individual. So what do we know about Banksy? His paintings, stencils, and other art pieces frequently address serious social issues. He takes on capitalism, war, poverty, and governments with grace. His work often displays a keen sense of humor, making it equally possible that you will laugh or cast your eyes down thoughtfully upon seeing a Banksy piece."

Click for his official website:

Head and Shoulders

A few thoughts on the current SPY points

Overbought indicators lately have been lacking in effectiveness. This in part is due to the high-liquidity diet given the bulls at the Federal Reserve feed lot. Two oversold indicators I follow have been valuable in the latest six-month run up, however. Keep in mind that during the meltdown last September-March these were entirely useless as trading tools. If we've indeed hit the dreamy wave 3 down, these should stay oversold for weeks / months at a time. If there is still upside, we should bounce shortly from current levels.

Cheers!
-Biff

What's Green, Smells Like Horse Urine, And Is Devoured By The Chinese?

A Century Egg!

I used to fancy myself an adventurous eater, but that delusion is long gone now. Discover more about this nauseating tradition here.

Prickles and Goo Explain Rationality

We are all but prickles and goo, although some are gooey prickles and others prickly goo. This is an abstract discussion by Alan Watts put to animation by Matt Stone and Trey Parker (South Park).

Bill Hicks Skewers Rick Astley

The great Bill Hick's soul suffers from late 80's popular music:

Medical providers, Employers and the Wealthy

...these are the three categories of citizens who will pick up the tab for Obama's health care reforms. For most Americans, these are natural targets for extracting funds from. I mean, geez, what a bunch of greedy bastards! Why don't they buy my health care, they've been taking advantage of the middle class for centuries?!

Sadly, I meet all three criteria, at least as defined by Obama and his populist minions.

I'm an orthodontist, I own two practices / employ 12 people, and am technically rich (I made slightly more than $250,000 last year.

Lesser known facts about myself:

• I went to school until I was 31 and made no income during that time. My dental school tuition and fees averaged $41,000 a year. I borrowed all of it.
• I was $1,300,000 in debt four years ago after paying for my schooling, buying one practice, and starting another from scratch. I have paid down roughly half of this amount.
• I made zero income in 2003 and 2004 and almost went bankrupt when starting the new practice
• My personal health care plan has a $5000 deductible. I've paid premiums on this plan for 6 years now and have not submitted one claim. It is essentially an "insurance" policy against cancer or car accident.
• I paid over $100,000 in state, federal, and local taxes last year.

Am I rich? According to Obama and congress I am. I apparently owe my country a great debt. Since the government cannot balance it's books, people like me must further pony up to bail them out. Every year the definition of "rich" is re-defined to a lower level.

Remember, the government does not produce any product, sell any service, or contribute in any way to the GDP of America. They are a parasite that steals from the productive capacity of it's citizens. Currently they are spending so much that the future income of Americans is already spoken for.

There are three absolute rules for all government programs: It will cost more than advertised, it will provide less than advertised, and it will expand every year at 2-3 times the rate of inflation

To all non-medical providers, non-employers, and the non-"rich", congratulations for now! Remember, there are no free lunches, and the government is running out of toolbags like myself. Be prepared for lower wages, fewer benefits, and fewer job openings, and ultimately higher taxes for everyone.

Thankfully This Technology Was Replaced:

This sound was custom made to stimulate pain in my central nervous system. (Thanks, Mike)

What Prospects Doth These Seniors Have? And the Lord Saith: "None"

Rather than simply pointing, laughing, and forwarding these pictures along to my "friends of Onan" (how immature!), I feel compelled to offer a few words of advice to these misguided young people:

The world is waiting for you, and it's probably going to eat you alive. I am not optimistic about your prospects, yet I sincerely hope you become a self-sufficient individual and not a blight on the system. Good luck in all your future endeavors, I'm rooting for you! I suggest you put on some clothes, put down the sword / football / guitar / Nintendo and wipe that shit-eating grin off your face. Let's get to work! You, the guy with the pregnant teenage girlfriend, you're screwed. I hope you enjoyed your 9 second lovemaking session.

Sincerely,

Biff

Morning Dump - The Freshest Load of Links

• The top marijuana strains popular today. - CliffsideMalibu



• A condom that measures in painful detail your inadequacy.



• Are you a fundamentalist Christian? Here's the litmus test.



• Cooking with whatever shit you have in your rotten refrigerator.



• More useless trivia facts.



• "The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden story. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just keep your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions." -- Frank Zappa

Wingsuit Basejumping on Skis

Those darn kids, what'll they think of next? (thanks Lee C.)



This link shows a wingsuit accident in the same area. Remarkably, the guy doesn't die or parlyze himself, he just breaks a leg. This video is the helmet cam the victim was wearing and shows a first-person view (with sounds and shreiks). It made me cringe.

Who Knows About Your Sins?

Google Knows more than Jesus...

Morning Dump - The Freshest Load of Links

• The real life inspiration for Shrek.



• The earliest known artificial eye is 5000 years old and located in Persia.



• The beauty of clouds.



• The town of El Tardo is located on the Utah / Arizona border. Inbreeding anyone?



• "One would suppose that the battle for religious liberty was won in the United States two hundred years ago. However, in the time since, and right now, powerful voices are always raised in favor of bigotry and thought control." --Isaac Asimov

Porn Industry Seeks To Sodomize US Taxpayers

Seriously? What two-bit scummy industry hasn't approached Uncle Sam with their grubby, greasy hand outstretched? Oh yeah, the oil industry... tune in next week.

LOS ANGELES -- First it was the banking industry, then the auto makers. Will the adult entertainment industry be next?

Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and "Girls Gone Wild" chief Joe Francis announced Wednesday that they have sent a joint request to Congress asking for a $5 billion federal bailout to help the adult entertainment industry weather difficult financial times.

The duo contends that while the industry is still viable, the sagging economy has had an impact.

"People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."...Read More

The Tim Christopher Legal Defense Fund. Help Out an Environmental Activist.

If you're not familiar with Tim Christopher, he is a University of Utah student who entered bids for land being auctioned at low bids to Bush / Cheney cronies for oil and gas drilling. Naturally, if you want to preserve such lands, it's a felony to bid on them, it's only if you intend to destroy them can you safely purchase at sale prices. Below is a news clip summarizing his situation. The point of my article is to solicit donors for the Tim Christopher legal defense fund. He's being strung up with felony charges, possible prison time, and hefty fines. I donated through a link on the Center for Water Advocacy website. Help the man out, he put himself out the only way chumps like us can, by sacrificing his hide.

Tim DeChristopher, 27, faces possible federal charges after winning bids totaling about $1.8 million on more than 10 lease parcels that he admits he has neither the intention nor the money to buy — and he’s not sorry.

“I decided I could be much more effective by an act of civil disobedience,” he said during an impromptu streetside news conference during an afternoon blizzard. “There comes a time to take a stand.”

The Sugar House resident — questioned and released after disrupting a U.S. Bureau of Land Management lease auction of 149,000 acres of public land in scenic southern and eastern Utah — said he came to the BLM’s state office in Salt Lake City to join about 200 other activists in a peaceful protest outside the building Friday morning. But then he registered with the BLM as representing himself and went to the auction room.

There, he thought about the times he has marched, fired off letters to his congressmen, signed petitions and supported environmental organizations — all to no avail.

“What the environmental movement has been doing for the past 20 years hasn’t worked,” DeChristopher said. “It’s time for a conflict. There’s a lot at stake.”

BLM official Terry Catlin said the agency didn’t want to reopen the bidding on the parcels DeChristopher snagged unless all interested parties were able to compete for the leases. That means the parcels won’t be available again until at least February — after Obama takes office — during the next scheduled auction.

DeChristopher, who acknowledged upping other bids by about $500,000, said he would be willing to go to jail to defend his generation’s prospects in light of global climate disruption and other environmental threats.

“If that’s what it takes,” he said. Visit his own site for further reading.

Morning Dump

• The case of the pubis VW Beetle.



• Have a Rumpologist read your fortune and personality via your buttocks.



• Some signs of human evolution.



• Look at this tough American. - Shorpy.com



• This little bastard will probably be home-schooled by her ignorant mother and grow up a disturbed, maladjusted person... although it's nothing that 5 years of hard labor wouldn't fix. Her parents should be sentenced to college.



• "In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches." -- Carl Sagan

"You're Only Making a Mess By Trying to Put Things Straight."

This is classic "far out" material. In "A Conversation With Myself", Alan Watts describes how mankind is destined to fail when trying to address environmental destruction and wield his crude tools and methods on the planet. In fact, Man can only make things worse by forcing action on Nature. The only possible course of action is to tune out our impulses, let go of ego, breathe, and allow nature in (which he rightfully states is impossible). We must acknowledge that our fundamental physical and mental tools are simplistic and harmful, our language and science both linear in a complicated, multi-dimensional world. In a nutshell, we are screwed.

I find it amusing that several times during the conversation there are sounds of rednecks whooping in the background. How appropriate that Neanderthals inhabit the very sanctuary of Watt's mountain oasis. How can someone possibly convince the hicks that what Alan says is correct? Intellectualism of this type today is roundly dismissed and mocked by the pig-heads that make up society. Stupidity and arrogance rule the day in America.

Alan Watts, "Conversation With Myself" aired in 1971. It's worth noting that he died of alcoholism-related issues in 1973.

If you enjoy part III and IV, try out part I and part II, they are both excellent.

Part III


Part IV

Vladmir Putin, Tough Man or 'Light in the Loafers?'

This picture was taken while Putin was on holiday with Prince Albert (how perfect).

According to the Moscow Times, Vladmir Putin invited journalists to his dacha and surprised them with a tiger cub, which he said was a birthday present from an unidentified donor. The tiger snuggled in a tiger-print dog basket, and his Labrador, Koni, was nowhere to be seen. The tiger taming antics impressed at least one man. "When I saw his naked torso and a slain Siberian tiger lying at his feet, I almost had a stroke. Won-der-ful!" Alfonso Signorini, an openly gay Italian television host, raved in October in an interview with La Stampa. Putin "is my erotic dream," Signorini later told The Moscow Times. The prime minister also continued to be an erotic dream for his fans in the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, who began selling a range of women's underwear with the slogan "I'm With You, Vova."

Here's another headline from Daily Mail UK:

"When Vladimir Putin stripped down to the waist for the cameras, his muscled torso made headlines around the world. And one week on, the ripples are still being felt in Russia, where he has become a sex symbol, the inspiration for men to start pumping iron, and the new darling of the gay lobby."

Type in "gay Putin" in Google, and 3.2 million hits pop up.

George W. Bush was caught on the beach without a shirt, but he wrapped himself in a flag and friend before anybody could take a picture:

Morning (Link) Dump

• An interesting German bathroom prank.



• Liquid sculptures as art form.



• The definitive guide to cult films - filmsite.org



• A most depressing economic prediction for 2009, made by a man who correctly predicted the misery of 2008. - market-ticker.org



• Quick, write something!



• "If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT." – Frank Zappa

Somali Pirates Are Sexy Devils!

A strange article from the Somaliland Times shows how local ladies are swooning for the pirates of Somalia. In a wretched hive of scum and villainy, I suppose the richest scoundrels are naturally the most attractive.

"The pirates are the hottest men in town," Abdi said. "Girls from all over Somalia moved here to marry pirates. But if the girl isn't cute she's out of luck, because the pirates only go with beautiful girls..."

It isn't just women who are starry-eyed. Mustaf Mohamed Abdi, a 48-year-old taxi driver in Garowe, marveled at the excitement in town when a band of pirates comes through on a spending spree. If he's lucky, Abdi said, a friendly pirate might tip him with a hundred-dollar bill.

A local named Jama has earned $375,000 as a pirate, enough to buy a Toyota Land Cruiser and to begin building a six-bedroom house in Garowe, the regional capital, for his family. His biggest payday came last month, when he earned a $92,000 share of a $1.3 million ransom for a Greek ship, the MV Centauri, which was released after 10 weeks with its crew unharmed. Almost overnight, Jama said, his standing with the fairer sex has improved dramatically. "Once there was a girl who lived in Garowe," 100 miles from Eyl, Jama said. "I loved her, I tried to approach her many times, but she rejected me. But since I became a pirate, she has tried nine times to get with me."

Read the entire article here.