The great chase is over. Motorcycle #1 is a Suzuki Intruder. I will post the account number for the emergency medical savings account later.
Born to Be...Formerly Living.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Should I call IT, or a Priest?
The great chase is over. Motorcycle #1 is a Suzuki Intruder. I will post the account number for the emergency medical savings account later.
Born to Be...Formerly Living.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
That's Where the Retardation Begins
Last week, my oldest child threatened suicide. Child #1 is a few months shy of being 15.
When I started this blog, I was on the road, Boston I think. At that point, Child #1 had not spoken to me in several months, stopped coming to the house, would barely speak to me when I made my quarterly phone call to see if anything was forgiven yet. Being on the road so much made it easier for me to ball all of the daily guilt up and pack it away somewhere that the National Safety Administration couldn't find during the numerous bosy cavity searches I was subject to.
Throughout my adult life, I believed that even if I failed at everything else, I would always be a good father. In 2002, less than a year after 9/11, and while dealing with a second major flare up of multiple sclerosis, I began the long painful process of leaving one family to start another.
Wife #1 (who was, by that time, also wife #2) made certain that the process was a loud, long, painful, public matter. Though we never honestly discussed the matter, I suspect her point was to visit upon me the same time of pain and shame I was visiting upon her. The difference was, she decided to use and abuse the very legal system I worked in an attempt to take my children away from me, tried to make me look like a thief, a liar, and a deadbeat. I was accused of having secret bank accounts, having affairs for years, hiding assets. I cared little about those things. Fresh out of law school, having grown up in a series of mobile homes, the only assets we had were a set of Ginsu knives, and the new VCR I bought when we had been remarried.
The apparently accepted manipulation of the legal system to aid in the attempt to take my kids away, that bothered me immensly. It changed the way I view many things not the least of which include my job, the courts, and my colleagues who make their money jacking with other people's kids. The harder I tried to do good and be a "suitable parent", the more it backfired.
Once the divorce was finally, thankfully completed, I tried to get on with the business of putting my relationship with my kids back together. Unfortunately, at the same time, I was also trying to establish new relationships with new kids and shortly a new wife. For a short time I worked a few weekends as a security guard just to buy groceries.
During the summer, I was moving stuff across town from an apartment to a rent house. Wife #3, was just home from the hospital after we had our first child together. The office was calling wanting to know when the hell I was coming back to work. I was seriously unhinged as a person, apparently useless as a father. I let the outside stressors build up, and vented my frustrations on my family. It was the last straw for Child #1. She never came back.
For a long time, she blamed it on Wife #3, the new kids, she lashed out at anything and everything. That was 2 years ago.
When I started the blog, I was searching for some public persona that would allow me to feel normal for a bit. It was no longer normal to carry on the types of conversations that people do when first meeting. Waddya do, have kids, how many...? I felt as though I carried a scarlet "Asshole" sewn on my clothes, as though everyone knew I had a child that hated me. That was the inspiration for the name of this blog. New wife, new kids, new job responsibilities all required that I keep functioning. But inside I was dead, or at least starting to flatline. I kept believing that Child #1 would come around, certainly that is what everyone kept telling me.
Child #2, seeing the upside to familial chaos, is now following suit. The day that Child #1 was coming home from the facility Child#1 spent the better part of the week in, Child #2 called to ask me how to get new music on Child #2's Ipod. Child #2 hasn't been here in 2 months. 10 minutes into the call, I had to interrupt Child 2 to see when Child 1 was coming home. I also finally asked Child 2 about summer vacation. Yeah, a week long trip to Seattle sounds cool, but no I don't want to spend the summer with you.
Child 1 is home now, and finally getting the counseling that has been so sorely needed the last 2 years. Mom had decided the Child 1 didn't have to go to counseling unless, at the child's discretion, it was necessary. And I am the piss poor parent. Just incredible.
Children 1 and 2 will call me when they are ready to have a relationship. They will call me when the Ipod is broken.
The job has new requirements. I have to start building a name, a reputation, and a book of business of my own. As more and more companies resort to bankruptcy, and more non-bankruptcy litigators get in on the game, it truly is becoming a mercenary-staffed battlefield of suicidal clients and assassin litigators. I hate the job, but I do so love the work.
The time for my apologies has passed, the retributions will, undoubtedly, be lifelong. My failure as a father, and as a man, have stripped away any value I may have represented to my children. To complete strangers, my time is worth $250 an hour. I don't get much of the $250, but enough to buy some more Ipods as time goes on.
If you think I'm an asshole now, just wait till you see me as... Formerly Living.
When I started this blog, I was on the road, Boston I think. At that point, Child #1 had not spoken to me in several months, stopped coming to the house, would barely speak to me when I made my quarterly phone call to see if anything was forgiven yet. Being on the road so much made it easier for me to ball all of the daily guilt up and pack it away somewhere that the National Safety Administration couldn't find during the numerous bosy cavity searches I was subject to.
Throughout my adult life, I believed that even if I failed at everything else, I would always be a good father. In 2002, less than a year after 9/11, and while dealing with a second major flare up of multiple sclerosis, I began the long painful process of leaving one family to start another.
Wife #1 (who was, by that time, also wife #2) made certain that the process was a loud, long, painful, public matter. Though we never honestly discussed the matter, I suspect her point was to visit upon me the same time of pain and shame I was visiting upon her. The difference was, she decided to use and abuse the very legal system I worked in an attempt to take my children away from me, tried to make me look like a thief, a liar, and a deadbeat. I was accused of having secret bank accounts, having affairs for years, hiding assets. I cared little about those things. Fresh out of law school, having grown up in a series of mobile homes, the only assets we had were a set of Ginsu knives, and the new VCR I bought when we had been remarried.
The apparently accepted manipulation of the legal system to aid in the attempt to take my kids away, that bothered me immensly. It changed the way I view many things not the least of which include my job, the courts, and my colleagues who make their money jacking with other people's kids. The harder I tried to do good and be a "suitable parent", the more it backfired.
Once the divorce was finally, thankfully completed, I tried to get on with the business of putting my relationship with my kids back together. Unfortunately, at the same time, I was also trying to establish new relationships with new kids and shortly a new wife. For a short time I worked a few weekends as a security guard just to buy groceries.
During the summer, I was moving stuff across town from an apartment to a rent house. Wife #3, was just home from the hospital after we had our first child together. The office was calling wanting to know when the hell I was coming back to work. I was seriously unhinged as a person, apparently useless as a father. I let the outside stressors build up, and vented my frustrations on my family. It was the last straw for Child #1. She never came back.
For a long time, she blamed it on Wife #3, the new kids, she lashed out at anything and everything. That was 2 years ago.
When I started the blog, I was searching for some public persona that would allow me to feel normal for a bit. It was no longer normal to carry on the types of conversations that people do when first meeting. Waddya do, have kids, how many...? I felt as though I carried a scarlet "Asshole" sewn on my clothes, as though everyone knew I had a child that hated me. That was the inspiration for the name of this blog. New wife, new kids, new job responsibilities all required that I keep functioning. But inside I was dead, or at least starting to flatline. I kept believing that Child #1 would come around, certainly that is what everyone kept telling me.
Child #2, seeing the upside to familial chaos, is now following suit. The day that Child #1 was coming home from the facility Child#1 spent the better part of the week in, Child #2 called to ask me how to get new music on Child #2's Ipod. Child #2 hasn't been here in 2 months. 10 minutes into the call, I had to interrupt Child 2 to see when Child 1 was coming home. I also finally asked Child 2 about summer vacation. Yeah, a week long trip to Seattle sounds cool, but no I don't want to spend the summer with you.
Child 1 is home now, and finally getting the counseling that has been so sorely needed the last 2 years. Mom had decided the Child 1 didn't have to go to counseling unless, at the child's discretion, it was necessary. And I am the piss poor parent. Just incredible.
Children 1 and 2 will call me when they are ready to have a relationship. They will call me when the Ipod is broken.
The job has new requirements. I have to start building a name, a reputation, and a book of business of my own. As more and more companies resort to bankruptcy, and more non-bankruptcy litigators get in on the game, it truly is becoming a mercenary-staffed battlefield of suicidal clients and assassin litigators. I hate the job, but I do so love the work.
The time for my apologies has passed, the retributions will, undoubtedly, be lifelong. My failure as a father, and as a man, have stripped away any value I may have represented to my children. To complete strangers, my time is worth $250 an hour. I don't get much of the $250, but enough to buy some more Ipods as time goes on.
If you think I'm an asshole now, just wait till you see me as... Formerly Living.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Spring Break Extra - Greybeard University
All the kiddies are out on spring break. You can always tell because the bars are empty, the planes are full, credit-card issuing bank stocks are up, and the additional weight of fresh new debt tilts the party barge to one side so that the increasingly overweight co-eds slide across the deck on their pasty, thong split asses.With the co-ed age leaches out of the house, next door apartment or vomit covered gutter, take this opportunity to take a quick look at the plans that all of you loyal readers have been making regarding your investment/retirement accounts. In previous posts, we danced around growth versus equity, and, if you were paying attention, established that you are gonna be your own gate-keeper for your money.
Where in the world, you ask, can we find some place that is worthy of guiding the newbie investor in each one of us? Here is the profile... we ain't talking about day trading here, nor are
we talking about timing, metrix, forex, or any other get-rich-quick type of voodoo. If you are so inclined to this kind of investment, I suggest this resource... For the rest of us, we can tolerate a trading station that does not execute trades faster than I can drink two fingers of scotch at work. Some of us, like me, don't have a lot to work with so we need also need a table with a small buy-in. That means that account minimums gotta be reasonable, and per-trade-fees have got to be as equally reasonable. For you and me, all we really need is some thing like Sharebuilder, or the new $7 per trade that Bank of America offers. Despite my unsolicited dislike for banks, B of A also has a program that automatically transfers your "pocket change" from your checking to your savings account each day, a concept fully endorsed by the facutly of good ol' Greybeard U.How then, do we play our short stack of chips so that we have enough chips to go slip toes in the hot sands with all the college refuse now south of the border? If you have been paying attention, you know that a portion of your portfolio needs to be stocks you know because they are products you use/ or an industry that you know. These are the stocks that Google sends you an alert on, you read the SEC filings on a regular basis, and the CEO has you on the speed dial (or has requested a temporary restraining order so that you leave him or her alone).
The next significant portion of the portfolio is gonna be split, at some percentage between growth and income. For the young, reckless and indestructible, the percentage of growth stock is probably going to be much higher than the old and broke down set like greybeard. At least, that is the conventional wisdom, and I don't know that conventional carries the day today.
Growth is like an addiction. You get a little, you want more. Soon, you gotta have more and more just to get the same rush. Growth stockers have lots of GM shares they are shedding. Growth stockers were orgasmic over Enron, right up to the very end. The latest messiahs for growth have been the pencil-neck geeks at Google. The problem is that the institutional investors who make their money taking risks with other people's money expect more and more growth, and they don't give a damn how it is accomplished.Growth stockers are easily bored, so they play this little game each quarter, where the target company provides estimates about growth, income, revenue, the number of import banana-yellow thongs that will be purchased...whatever. The stockers, not complacent with watching the game, have their own quarterly forecasters, the "analysts". Anaylsts are the "they", the "them", the nebulous of collective wisdom that the rest of us refer to prove an unfounded point, such as "They say that Bill Gates is giving away $500 if you forward this email I keep hearing about," or "Google stock is good enough for them." "They" play a game each quarter that has profound impact on Mom and Pop SixPack's retirement fund.
Last month, Google stock took a huge hit in value, meaning it's share price decreased. Google didn't lose money last quarter, they aren't getting sued because their latest drug made Thalidmide babies look like Olympic swimmers, nor have they profitted from no-bid government food service contracts that starve our service men and women. No, last quarter Google made money, they just didn't make as much money, AT THE GROWTH RATE THAT THE ANALYSTS GUESSED THEY SHOULD! In their defense, Google released a press release explaining that the "organic growth" rate was probably at its peak.
Beloved, note two things here. When Google launched its now historic IPO, part of the manifesto
from the math geeks suggested that they weren't going to play the forecast games that other companies in the past, notably Enron, had used to drive the short-term implementation of the company business plan. Problem is, even if the target company wont paint a big red cross hair on its ass every quarter, the analysts do it anyway. What this means for you and me is, the value of a huge company is being driven by the wild-ass guess of a bunch of pencil pushers in NYC. If a company grows 25% in one quarter, but the wise ass analysts say that growth should have been 35%, the value will drop overnight by 30%... just like Google.The second thing you should note... when corporations start using language that would make the White House Press Office swell with pride, terms like "organic growth", it is time to place your bets elsewhere.
Growth investing, over the long term, has been profitable for two generations. Growth investing on the short term, betting on sustained, meteoric growth seems to be new phenomenon. If you are gonna heavily invest in growth stocks, know that which you put your chips into.
Income stocks are ugly, boorish, and not much fun to discuss around the beer-bong. Rather than focus on growth in terms of the stock price, income stocks look to pay a dividend to share holders. As a result, income stocks tend to be represented by more consistent and predictable approaches to core business. This means that it is, or should be, easier for the great unwashed such as you and I to track what they are up to. The beauty about income stocks, especially in programs such as Sharebuilder, is that the dividends can be automatically reinvested, so that you don't feel like you have a few bucks sitting around burning a hole in your pocket. Think of it as a savings account that builds equity.
Here is a good starting point to see what makes an income stock a good income stock...
While you discuss amongst yourselves, Spring Break is almost over, so I gotta run a few hundred more miles, shed that winter weight, decide between the Triumph of my dreams, jump on the Von Dutch anti-marketing anti- rebel rebel image, stick with the sentimental favorite, build my own, or strike out in new patriotic directions with the Victory motorcycle. [I know, I know. Victory is owned by Polaris, and Polaris is a division of Bombardier, a Canadian interest, but every year or so, I apply for an in-house counsel job with Bombardier, so blow me.] The end of spring break means the return of the co-eds, and mini-skirts will rise just as surely as gas prices; neck lines will plunge like GM revenue. With a good raise, I am even gonna get a custom painted helmet, a pin-up girl on the side, and on the back in blood-red razor blade tattoo paint... Formerly Living.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
"Woman, I Broke my Rock!"
This weekend, I crossed off one of the things on my "To Do before I Die List", and took a motorcycle safety course. Yes, the irony is not lost on me that participation in this activity could prematurely end my existence, and thereby prevent me from completing the other items on my list. Guess what? The same can be said for all the other items on the list as well... so smoke 'em if you got 'em!
I put off doing this a long time, even though I grew up riding motorcycles with 2-4 wheels, and even though I have always wanted to ride with my dear dumb ass dad. I just didn't do it. Prince rode a motorcycle. Chuck Norris rode a motorcycle. The Terminator rode a motorcycle. Hell, if you look close enough, half the horses in the old John Wayne movies had two wheels and a panhead. And the unnatural attraction of chicks to motorcycles? Never bothered to exploit that opportunity.
My wife has been, figuratively and literally, standing around tapping her toes, waiting for me to get a motorcycle. I didn't even have to resort to the tried and trued "Gas prices, baby... we can save money". For the life of me, I just couldn't figure out why she wanted me to get a bike so badly...
So, I did learn a couple of things. For instance, there are some folks that have been riding for years, but don't knwo the first damn thing about how to ride a motorcycle. Those are the folks that keep national insruance rates high, but do help in thinning out the herd a bit. Next, I figured out that my dreams of running down to the local Triumph dealership and buying the biggest, baddest cruiser or cafe racer they got is just going to have to wait a bit. Here is to growing older and wiser at a measured rate.
Most importantly though, I have decided that the United States should implement a mandatory program requiring every licensed citizen to ride a motorcycle for an entire year as their primary means of transportation. Only in this way can the asshats of the world understand why it ain't okay to make a right hand turn out of the left lane, across 4 lanes of traffic.
Even with visions of my eyeballs exploding like nightmarish sugarplums at 80 miles an hour, over the two days that I was in the course, I didn't worry about work or seethe with unquenched rage at my ex-wife or bemoan the two children who have disowned me, nor did I shake my fists at the Bush administration that has made it so difficult to remain Republican after 15 years of loyal service. Monday morning, when I got back to the pressure cooker, I felt better than I had in months. There really is something about riding a motorcycle that you just cannot get from any other recreational narcotic.
My wife's anniversary is next week. She has authorized the release of her approved wish list:
1. A motorcycle for her loving husband
2. Someone to ride with [link NSFW]
3. A new watch
5. Membership in exclusive club
Is it any wonder I love this woman so?
Over the weekend, volunteer and professional firefighters all over the Texas Panhandle battled the largest fire in Texas' recorded history, nearly 800,000 acres as of this morning. Some reports attribute 11 deaths to the fire. Towns were evacuated and homes were burned. These are all people and places I know and love dearly, so don't make me chase your cheap ass down.
Please send financial contributions here. [Photo is property of AP/Amarillo Globe News]
Glad to be alive, glad to be able to ride, waiting for the rains to return to my beloved Panhandle so I can ride home. Sitting in the sidecar beside me, dressed in a yellow rainslicker and limo-dark tinted goggles...Formerly Living.
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