(Setting: A podium at a decently respectable school, though its reputation is perhaps not what it once was. Your humble author, me, stands at the lectern, staring out at a sea of shiny, fresh-scrubbed faces. They asked for my worldly wisdom on this, their graduation day. They got it. I clear my throat and commence the commencement.)
“Don’t wear sunscreen. Or at least take it easy until the EPA sorts out which ones give you cancer.
As you graduates finish school and head toward whatever is next, it seems to raise the inevitable temptation from your elders to pass along their questionable wisdom. Like me. Right now.
I don’t have much wisdom to share, my career path is more crooked than a gerrymandered Congressional district.
But I do feel that the recent controversy over sunscreen provides some food for thought.
It seems like every few years much of our received wisdom is proven useless, obsolete or ridiculous. I talk about sunscreen because about 15 years ago it was alleged Kurt Vonnegut (he was a great writer, if you haven’t read him yet, please do so) wrote a commemoration speech where his first instruction, famously, was “wear sunscreen.” He then spun other words of wisdom to his young listeners, though he would periodically tell them, again, to wear sunscreen.
Well, the entire thing was a hoax. Vonnegut never wrote those words. And now it turns out the central refrain of the entire thing is also phony.
What are some other pieces of hand-me-down wisdom we’ve seen brutally dispelled in the past decade? I can list a few.
1. God ain’t making any more land: Used as an inducement to buy into the real estate bubble, this may actually, literally be true. But even if god ain’t making more land he sure seems to have a near endless appetite for McMansions that nobody needs or wants. The lesson here? Don’t buy something because somebody else told you something about god, I guess.
2. People will pay for quality content online: Due to the rise of the Internet the value of the written word, and writers, has been slashed more than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween 1, 2 and that new one that just came out a few years ago. This tells me that while we have a market of ideas it is a market. And markets behave in ways that are hard to predict long term. The other lesson, I guess, is that, by and large, being a writer actually kind of sucks a little.
3. The Internet is unbelievably cool; ergo tech stocks are always cool too: Tell that to anyone who bought shares in pets.com, etoys.com, webvan.com or any of the million other now-forgotten tech stocks that went blammo. The lesson? By the time we learn about something cool it's almost certainly not really cool anymore.
4. We would never enter a war based entirely on lies: It’s long been whispered FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and let it happen to draw us into war. If this is true, and I doubt it is, it still pales in comparison to the Iraq War, which was marketed, and sold completely on unreliable and un-provable assertions, aka lies, about the imminent danger of weapons of mass destruction. Then the lies were sold to us on TV by the highest members of The Bush Administration. The lesson? We are easily led, and make terrible decisions, when we are afraid. Like then voting Bush in a second time.
I could go on, and, believe me, I do. Ask my wife.
(Pause for polite, if predictable, laughs)
But that’s not the point of this speech. What I am trying to get at is the idea that the future, despite all received and conventional wisdom, remains stubbornly unknowable. Today’s truisms can become falsehoods before I’m even done with this sentence. And probably just did.
Knowing this you no longer have any good, logical reason to play it so safe, to do what is expected rather than what you want without even testing your wings on the unknown. Because in 10 years what is as yet unknown could be so commonplace as to become unremarkable, and what is known, and understood to be safe, could become completely discredited. Like banking! Seriously, remember when bankers were merely boring? And then they destroyed our economy. God, how I long for boring!
So take a risk on the unknown, which is really a risk on you. You don’t have to know how the story ends before you start writing the book. Which is something made out of paper that people read before Kindle.
So, thank you for allowing me to speak before you, but I’ve got to go. My broker is calling my iDroid, something about ePets.com shares on the cheap. He says it’s a bottom.
Oh, and, despite what I said before, yes, wear sunscreen. Just do your own research first instead of trusting me, Kurt Vonnegut, or someone imitating Kurt Vonnegut. I think the EPA’s website is a good place to start. Thank you, I hope you enjoy middle school and let's party!"
(Cheers, mortar boards thrown into the air, somewhere a baby cries from the heat.)
Friday, June 17, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Everyday I Climb The Hill
The headline of this post is the chorus of a song I wrote called "Everyday."
I wrote the music about a year, or so, ago, when we were in Cape May, NJ. It was a bouncy upbeat sort of thing, acoustic-based, fun. Stella liked it, and usually that means it's pretty good! I remember her dancing around on the porch of our rented beach house. It's a fond memory.
The lyrics came about six months ago when I was, there's no other way to say this, locked into a deep, deep depression. They are as uplifting as I could make them at the time, which was not very. (And some were cribbed from Dylan Thomas: Hey, steal from the best!) Here they are:
"Everyday"
Taking the blue pill everyday
Thank god for pharmacology
Keeps the noon-day demons at bay
I didn't use to feel this way
Pre-Chorus
Well I won't go gentle into that good night
I will rage against the dying of the light
Verse 2:
Up the hill the stone I push
Feel a lot like Sisyphus
Falls to the bottom whenever I reach the top
Keep on pushing I can't let myself stop
Pre-Chorus:
Well I won't go gentle into that good night
I will rage against the dying of the light (sing 2X)
Chorus:
Everyday I climb the hill
Don't know if I'll get there I don't think I ever will
Didn't use to feel this way
But I'm gonna keep on pushing, keep on climbing everyday
Verse 3:
Brought a child into this world
The bluest eyes you'll ever see
She's my darling sweet little girl
It's no longer just about me
Chorus and out
So that's the song, kind of an upbeat downer when you hear it. When I have a decent recording of it, I'll post it. I like it, although I don't feel like we, the band, Bottle Cap Manifesto, have it 100% down yet. (It's the bridge that's kind of hanging us up.) When we play it live, which we've done a few times now, it doesn't feel as confessional as it reads on the page, but I guess that's the beauty of music, the blues even. Sharing the dark stuff can become positive, or more positive, when its in communion with others, the band, the audience, the universe, the Hindu floaty thing. (The last reference is an inside joke to Randi, and comes from the truly, truly strange documentary "Grizzly Man." If you haven't seen it yet, get it right now. It cannot be described adequately, in its full awesomeness, by me tonight.)
And the sheer repetitive fact of practice makes me less self conscious about the song too. By the 50th time we've played it in practice it no longer feels like reading a diary entry and more like constructing and deconstructing a mechanical object, cutting it down, refining, memorizing the words so I no longer think about them.
But ... the part about Stella gets me every time I sing it. As it should.
And I don't take a blue pill everyday, just so you know. That's what they call poetic license. It's white. :-)
I wrote the music about a year, or so, ago, when we were in Cape May, NJ. It was a bouncy upbeat sort of thing, acoustic-based, fun. Stella liked it, and usually that means it's pretty good! I remember her dancing around on the porch of our rented beach house. It's a fond memory.
The lyrics came about six months ago when I was, there's no other way to say this, locked into a deep, deep depression. They are as uplifting as I could make them at the time, which was not very. (And some were cribbed from Dylan Thomas: Hey, steal from the best!) Here they are:
"Everyday"
Taking the blue pill everyday
Thank god for pharmacology
Keeps the noon-day demons at bay
I didn't use to feel this way
Pre-Chorus
Well I won't go gentle into that good night
I will rage against the dying of the light
Verse 2:
Up the hill the stone I push
Feel a lot like Sisyphus
Falls to the bottom whenever I reach the top
Keep on pushing I can't let myself stop
Pre-Chorus:
Well I won't go gentle into that good night
I will rage against the dying of the light (sing 2X)
Chorus:
Everyday I climb the hill
Don't know if I'll get there I don't think I ever will
Didn't use to feel this way
But I'm gonna keep on pushing, keep on climbing everyday
Verse 3:
Brought a child into this world
The bluest eyes you'll ever see
She's my darling sweet little girl
It's no longer just about me
Chorus and out
So that's the song, kind of an upbeat downer when you hear it. When I have a decent recording of it, I'll post it. I like it, although I don't feel like we, the band, Bottle Cap Manifesto, have it 100% down yet. (It's the bridge that's kind of hanging us up.) When we play it live, which we've done a few times now, it doesn't feel as confessional as it reads on the page, but I guess that's the beauty of music, the blues even. Sharing the dark stuff can become positive, or more positive, when its in communion with others, the band, the audience, the universe, the Hindu floaty thing. (The last reference is an inside joke to Randi, and comes from the truly, truly strange documentary "Grizzly Man." If you haven't seen it yet, get it right now. It cannot be described adequately, in its full awesomeness, by me tonight.)
And the sheer repetitive fact of practice makes me less self conscious about the song too. By the 50th time we've played it in practice it no longer feels like reading a diary entry and more like constructing and deconstructing a mechanical object, cutting it down, refining, memorizing the words so I no longer think about them.
But ... the part about Stella gets me every time I sing it. As it should.
And I don't take a blue pill everyday, just so you know. That's what they call poetic license. It's white. :-)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Father's Day Ruminations
Coming on the third Father's Day, which is very cool. I don't have any real plans firmed up yet. We've considered visiting the Muhammad Ali center. And for whatever I have for dinner's main course, I am having a dozen oysters on the half-shell in advance. That's about it for my big plans. I'd like to think it's because I'm low maintenance, and not because I'm lazy.
But I've been thinking about parenting, and being a dad, as I am wont to do, you know.
It's a weird thing. In recent years I've really become judgmental about people, not generally, but in very specific ways. You can be a prick, a blowhard, a jerk, a phony. Generally speaking, unless it impacts me quite directly I don't care. I don't have to have you in my life, or have an opinion on you. In fact, the less I think about you the better off we both are.
But there is one area where I've become kind of a stickler. You can be the world's biggest a-hole to me, but if you have a great relationship with, and are good to, your kids, and they love and admire you I will basically think you're not all bad. In fact, maybe you're okay, just not to me.
Conversely, you can be nice, nice, nice but if your kids think your a shit, I, deep down, don't care for you.
Or maybe you've been a shit to your kids, but they still love you and try with you. That's okay, they can still care for you, but I won't like you.
You almost certainly will never know this. I won't tell you, because it's really not my business, but this is pretty much how I judge people these days.
You can fail in a lot of ways, but if you are good to your kids and love them and they love you back, and mean it, I will say you're a good man.
Conversely, you can be a great success in this world, but if I see you being a bastard to your kids and family I will never trust a word you tell me, no matter how nice you are to me.
I had a boss in Boulder who was a bastard. There's no other word for it. He treated his staff like crap, threatened, harassed and tried to intimidate people. He was belligerent, and a blowhard, and sometimes not all that smart. He told me my predecessor was fired for not doing what he said, on my first day on the job.
Nice guy, right?
But his daughter would walk in, and she loved her daddy. You could tell. And it probably wasn't always easy on them, because this was a broken home.
Okay, to me he was still a bastard, and at times I could have easily imagined strangling him. But then I would think of him, and his daughter and think, well, you know, he sucks but at least he's not all bad. Maybe 95%, but not all.
Conversely there is a guy who is buddy-buddy with my own dad, and he is always friendly, garrulous even.
Then one day, about 16 years ago he was over at our house, selling my parents a car. It was in great condition, and he kept it up well, the motor sparkled. Meticulous.
But, and I don't know what caused it, his wife said something, and I saw him snap. I don't remember what he said/shouted, but his nice-nice face darkened real fast, he lit into her, and I could tell he only wore the mask of a friendly man. No, he was not friendly.
This is how I think of him today, and I've seen him many times since.
The problem is, you don't get to say whether you are a good parent, or a good father. That's not your call in the end. No, only your children can determine that. And it takes a long time to see if what you claimed was your "best" really was.
I hope my best is really my best.
And yes, sometimes kids hate their parents, even though the parent does everything right. And sometimes kids from great, loving homes end up ruins, addicts and disasters.
But mostly it's not that way. Mostly people who travel those dark roads go there because there is an emptiness inside that should have been filled very young by a parent's love. They are looking for something that can't be so easily found in drugs, or food, or booze, or self-hate, but that doesn't mean they're not going to try it anyway. Mostly if kids turn out to be problematic adults you can safely lay the blame at the feet of the child's parent in some way.
So those are my thoughts on Father's Day!
That and I hope I get a tie.
But I've been thinking about parenting, and being a dad, as I am wont to do, you know.
It's a weird thing. In recent years I've really become judgmental about people, not generally, but in very specific ways. You can be a prick, a blowhard, a jerk, a phony. Generally speaking, unless it impacts me quite directly I don't care. I don't have to have you in my life, or have an opinion on you. In fact, the less I think about you the better off we both are.
But there is one area where I've become kind of a stickler. You can be the world's biggest a-hole to me, but if you have a great relationship with, and are good to, your kids, and they love and admire you I will basically think you're not all bad. In fact, maybe you're okay, just not to me.
Conversely, you can be nice, nice, nice but if your kids think your a shit, I, deep down, don't care for you.
Or maybe you've been a shit to your kids, but they still love you and try with you. That's okay, they can still care for you, but I won't like you.
You almost certainly will never know this. I won't tell you, because it's really not my business, but this is pretty much how I judge people these days.
You can fail in a lot of ways, but if you are good to your kids and love them and they love you back, and mean it, I will say you're a good man.
Conversely, you can be a great success in this world, but if I see you being a bastard to your kids and family I will never trust a word you tell me, no matter how nice you are to me.
I had a boss in Boulder who was a bastard. There's no other word for it. He treated his staff like crap, threatened, harassed and tried to intimidate people. He was belligerent, and a blowhard, and sometimes not all that smart. He told me my predecessor was fired for not doing what he said, on my first day on the job.
Nice guy, right?
But his daughter would walk in, and she loved her daddy. You could tell. And it probably wasn't always easy on them, because this was a broken home.
Okay, to me he was still a bastard, and at times I could have easily imagined strangling him. But then I would think of him, and his daughter and think, well, you know, he sucks but at least he's not all bad. Maybe 95%, but not all.
Conversely there is a guy who is buddy-buddy with my own dad, and he is always friendly, garrulous even.
Then one day, about 16 years ago he was over at our house, selling my parents a car. It was in great condition, and he kept it up well, the motor sparkled. Meticulous.
But, and I don't know what caused it, his wife said something, and I saw him snap. I don't remember what he said/shouted, but his nice-nice face darkened real fast, he lit into her, and I could tell he only wore the mask of a friendly man. No, he was not friendly.
This is how I think of him today, and I've seen him many times since.
The problem is, you don't get to say whether you are a good parent, or a good father. That's not your call in the end. No, only your children can determine that. And it takes a long time to see if what you claimed was your "best" really was.
I hope my best is really my best.
And yes, sometimes kids hate their parents, even though the parent does everything right. And sometimes kids from great, loving homes end up ruins, addicts and disasters.
But mostly it's not that way. Mostly people who travel those dark roads go there because there is an emptiness inside that should have been filled very young by a parent's love. They are looking for something that can't be so easily found in drugs, or food, or booze, or self-hate, but that doesn't mean they're not going to try it anyway. Mostly if kids turn out to be problematic adults you can safely lay the blame at the feet of the child's parent in some way.
So those are my thoughts on Father's Day!
That and I hope I get a tie.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Joe Battipaglia: In Memorium
I just learned of the unfortunate passing of Joe http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifBattipaglia. He passed away in mid-April, from a heart attack. Joe was beloved in the financial community and the odds are good that if you were at all a regular watcher of financial shows over the past decade you probably saw him on TV.
He always made his case vigorously, but I can't remember even one time I saw him yell at or belittle anyone on one of those shows. His facts spoke for themselves.
Doing a little research online I have since learned a good deal more about Joe. He was a remarkable person in many ways. According to his CNBC guest bio he "was the son of a sanitation worker, grew up in Queens, only child, first in family to attend college. Graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, economics, Boston College, 1976. Played rugby, lacrosse. MBA from Wharton, 1978. Market strategist (private client group) at Stifel Nicolaus, began career as analyst at Exxon and Elkins & Co. Joined Gruntal & Co., where he spent 18 years. Chaired investment policy at Ryan, Beck & Co. Former trustee of the Securities Industry Institute ... Married 1980, wife Mary Ann. Sons Matthew (Dartmouth) and Jeff (U.S. Naval Academy) played college football; also has daughter, Christen. Helped get employees out of One Liberty Plaza, across from WTC, on 9/11. Frequent guest of Larry Kudlow, Fox Business. Suffered heart attack in Georgia, where he had gone to speak at investors luncheon. Recalled in memoriam as "gentle giant," "very generous guy."'
That's a lot for any person, especially one who went so young, 55. He was also 6'7" and 300 pounds. He cut an imposing figure, I suppose.
I knew him personally, not well, I need to add. But I did know him. When we were starting Intelligent Investing at Forbes.com three years ago there was this idea that we would have an "Investor Team" of financial wizards and superstars that we would use in regular rotation for our stories. Build a repertoire of experts, in a way.
The only problem was we had no real experts or stars. I didn't know where to exactly begin recruiting such a team, either. But the fact was, we needed some names, it was what the entire thing kind of was premised upon.
Somehow Joe Battipaglia's name came up. He was extremely well known among those who follow the markets. Maybe not known to everyone on the street, but definitely known to everyone on The Street.
We had little time to lose. We had to begin cranking out stories, and still did not really have our experts. I had a fairly lengthy list of people who hadn't called me back when I asked for their help. The list of those who would help, though, was much, much smaller.
So I, out of the blue, called Joe. I didn't know him. He sure did not know me. Having seen him on TV I was, to be truthful, a bit intimidated. I expected to leave a message and never hear from him again, as had already happened so many times.
Instead, to my surprise, I got him on the phone. I told him about what we were doing, or trying to do, and who I was. I said the word "Forbes" as much as I could to give myself some credibility by association.
After about 25 seconds of my spiel Joe said he would do it. Suddenly, I had a source for one of our inaugural stories, and a big one at that. I believe it was about the future price of oil a hot topic, then as now. I nervously took notes, and he slowly went over every point a few times, patiently. His voice was a rumbling basso profundo, but easy to understand. All in all I interviewed him for maybe 10 minutes that day, but he gave me a lot to work with. I was profoundly grateful.
Because he has so impressed me with his generosity of time and spirit I made sure to call him back before the final draft went online. I went over each of his points, making sure I had the facts just right. Believe me, this can be a dicey time. Sources can often get shockingly prickly when you read back to them what they actually said to you. Joe merely listened patiently, made a few additional supporting points, to make sure I really understood it, and then when it was over said something like "yeah, I think you got it."
The story ran, and we were on our way with a great new channel on the Forbes.com website.
The truth is I think I maybe interviewed Joe one additional time after that. He was busy, always going to conferences. I could often get him on the phone, though, even if he was just telling me no. "You know Dave, I would really love to, but things have just been so crazy here. But please keep me in mind for next time."
I did, and even if he kept not being able to do it I always left those little phone chats feeling pretty good. Here he was, a big man, in his field, in so many ways, but he always had the time to at least take the call.
I never met Joe in person. I think I told him that if I ever came down to Philly I would like to say hi. He agreed, if I am remembering correctly, that that would be nice.
I can't claim some great friendship with him, that would not be honest. But he was a friend to me, a stranger, when I really needed it. He was a good person, a very smart Wall Street analyst, and I am very sorry to learn that he is no longer with us.
He always made his case vigorously, but I can't remember even one time I saw him yell at or belittle anyone on one of those shows. His facts spoke for themselves.
Doing a little research online I have since learned a good deal more about Joe. He was a remarkable person in many ways. According to his CNBC guest bio he "was the son of a sanitation worker, grew up in Queens, only child, first in family to attend college. Graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, economics, Boston College, 1976. Played rugby, lacrosse. MBA from Wharton, 1978. Market strategist (private client group) at Stifel Nicolaus, began career as analyst at Exxon and Elkins & Co. Joined Gruntal & Co., where he spent 18 years. Chaired investment policy at Ryan, Beck & Co. Former trustee of the Securities Industry Institute ... Married 1980, wife Mary Ann. Sons Matthew (Dartmouth) and Jeff (U.S. Naval Academy) played college football; also has daughter, Christen. Helped get employees out of One Liberty Plaza, across from WTC, on 9/11. Frequent guest of Larry Kudlow, Fox Business. Suffered heart attack in Georgia, where he had gone to speak at investors luncheon. Recalled in memoriam as "gentle giant," "very generous guy."'
That's a lot for any person, especially one who went so young, 55. He was also 6'7" and 300 pounds. He cut an imposing figure, I suppose.
I knew him personally, not well, I need to add. But I did know him. When we were starting Intelligent Investing at Forbes.com three years ago there was this idea that we would have an "Investor Team" of financial wizards and superstars that we would use in regular rotation for our stories. Build a repertoire of experts, in a way.
The only problem was we had no real experts or stars. I didn't know where to exactly begin recruiting such a team, either. But the fact was, we needed some names, it was what the entire thing kind of was premised upon.
Somehow Joe Battipaglia's name came up. He was extremely well known among those who follow the markets. Maybe not known to everyone on the street, but definitely known to everyone on The Street.
We had little time to lose. We had to begin cranking out stories, and still did not really have our experts. I had a fairly lengthy list of people who hadn't called me back when I asked for their help. The list of those who would help, though, was much, much smaller.
So I, out of the blue, called Joe. I didn't know him. He sure did not know me. Having seen him on TV I was, to be truthful, a bit intimidated. I expected to leave a message and never hear from him again, as had already happened so many times.
Instead, to my surprise, I got him on the phone. I told him about what we were doing, or trying to do, and who I was. I said the word "Forbes" as much as I could to give myself some credibility by association.
After about 25 seconds of my spiel Joe said he would do it. Suddenly, I had a source for one of our inaugural stories, and a big one at that. I believe it was about the future price of oil a hot topic, then as now. I nervously took notes, and he slowly went over every point a few times, patiently. His voice was a rumbling basso profundo, but easy to understand. All in all I interviewed him for maybe 10 minutes that day, but he gave me a lot to work with. I was profoundly grateful.
Because he has so impressed me with his generosity of time and spirit I made sure to call him back before the final draft went online. I went over each of his points, making sure I had the facts just right. Believe me, this can be a dicey time. Sources can often get shockingly prickly when you read back to them what they actually said to you. Joe merely listened patiently, made a few additional supporting points, to make sure I really understood it, and then when it was over said something like "yeah, I think you got it."
The story ran, and we were on our way with a great new channel on the Forbes.com website.
The truth is I think I maybe interviewed Joe one additional time after that. He was busy, always going to conferences. I could often get him on the phone, though, even if he was just telling me no. "You know Dave, I would really love to, but things have just been so crazy here. But please keep me in mind for next time."
I did, and even if he kept not being able to do it I always left those little phone chats feeling pretty good. Here he was, a big man, in his field, in so many ways, but he always had the time to at least take the call.
I never met Joe in person. I think I told him that if I ever came down to Philly I would like to say hi. He agreed, if I am remembering correctly, that that would be nice.
I can't claim some great friendship with him, that would not be honest. But he was a friend to me, a stranger, when I really needed it. He was a good person, a very smart Wall Street analyst, and I am very sorry to learn that he is no longer with us.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
The REAL difference between New York and Kentucky
A year ago, while we still lived in New York, I took a job as an editor for a start-up financial newsletter. It was run by a very successful investor and former hedge fund manager I had originally met through Forbes. He was a dynamic person, and lots of fun to be around and I was happy for the job. It was hard work, and I wasn't necessarily a perfect fit for what he wanted, it turned out, but I gave it my best.
In the end he needed someone who was far more of an investment guru than I was, with more ability to break down balance sheets in order to unlock the true potential of stocks. I had little knowledge about this process. My picks tended to be pretty predictable, and not all that exciting.
Not that I was wrong all the time, I wasn't. I read through the reports they already had on file and said that Apple, for example, was a "buy" at $260, it's now at $335. The iPad was brand new and all the analysis I read pointed to it potentially being a smash product on the order of the iPhone, although many poo-pooed that notion a year ago. Worth remembering: the iPhone was also poo-pooed when it came out. I saw parallels. Honestly, Apple still might be a buy, as it's price-to-earnings ratio is only 15, but I digress. (Another digression: it's extremely hard to consistently beat the market over time.)
Whatever, I didn't buy Apple that day, because I'm really not comfortable investing any real money into individual stocks. I guess that's why I'm not already retired in the Caribbean sipping daiquiris, like Dan Ackroyd at the end of Trading Places.
And none of these points are why I'm writing this anyway.
One day my new boss took me out to lunch at a local Pannera. He generously offered to pay for my soup and salad, as well as his own. This being New York these came out to something like $25, by the way. But pay it he did, which I really appreciated.
When he paid, I noticed, he did it with an American Express card. Then I looked still more closely. It wasn't just any American Express card, it was The American Express Black Card.
Something clicked in my memory. The Black Card, I thought, isn't that what, like, Jay-Z uses?
In other words, it is for the truly big money.
That night, out of curiosity, I looked up all I could find about The Black Card. It turns out to have an interesting story. The Black Card (the real name of which is actually The Centurion Card, but no one calls it that) was actually a myth before it was a product. Once upon a time the highest, most-prestigious Amex card you could get was the Platinum card. Which is plenty prestigious, believe me.
Still, the world being what it is, the Universe's various Masters started to say they had heard tell of still another card, that was even more rare, and exclusive. The Black Card. You couldn't ask for it, they could only give it to you. If they felt like it. Maybe.
But at this point there was no Black Card, it was just a neurotic fantasy playing out in the minds of pampered heiresses and Wall Street hard-ons in order for them, somehow, to still feel inferior.
Of course American Express eventually got wind of this. I imagine when they first heard the story their top execs probably laughed their asses off and then, in mid-laugh, became dead serious. Holy crap!, they almost certainly shouted, we've got to introduce this Black Card! The marketing has already been done for us, by the most powerful people in the world! Then they went back to laughing their asses off and eating money sandwiches.
And so the Black Card was released. In a canny move Amex kept it invitation only. Today you can only be invited to get a Black Card if you already own a Platinum Card, are crazy rich, have great credit and, presumably, spend just wheelbarrows full of money all the time.
So, THAT was the card my new boss used to pay for our lunch at Pannera, that day, a year ago.
Man, I thought, this dude is seriously loaded. Which I already kind of knew anyway, but this proved it.
Not long after that I overheard a conversation in the office whereby my boss talked about how he had to pick up his laundry, either within the building or perhaps through delivery. He didn't have the ability to do laundry in his, presumably, posh, possibly penthouse-level, apartment.
Fast forward one year later. We live in Louisville, Kentucky. We do not have a Black, Platinum, Gold or even Green Amex Card. Yet we do have a clothes washer and dryer in our apartment, unlike my old boss. That we have this is considered so unremarkable no one ever remarks upon it. We spend a grand total of $905 a month in rent, which is high for here.
And THAT is the real difference between New York and Kentucky.
In the end he needed someone who was far more of an investment guru than I was, with more ability to break down balance sheets in order to unlock the true potential of stocks. I had little knowledge about this process. My picks tended to be pretty predictable, and not all that exciting.
Not that I was wrong all the time, I wasn't. I read through the reports they already had on file and said that Apple, for example, was a "buy" at $260, it's now at $335. The iPad was brand new and all the analysis I read pointed to it potentially being a smash product on the order of the iPhone, although many poo-pooed that notion a year ago. Worth remembering: the iPhone was also poo-pooed when it came out. I saw parallels. Honestly, Apple still might be a buy, as it's price-to-earnings ratio is only 15, but I digress. (Another digression: it's extremely hard to consistently beat the market over time.)
Whatever, I didn't buy Apple that day, because I'm really not comfortable investing any real money into individual stocks. I guess that's why I'm not already retired in the Caribbean sipping daiquiris, like Dan Ackroyd at the end of Trading Places.
And none of these points are why I'm writing this anyway.
One day my new boss took me out to lunch at a local Pannera. He generously offered to pay for my soup and salad, as well as his own. This being New York these came out to something like $25, by the way. But pay it he did, which I really appreciated.
When he paid, I noticed, he did it with an American Express card. Then I looked still more closely. It wasn't just any American Express card, it was The American Express Black Card.
Something clicked in my memory. The Black Card, I thought, isn't that what, like, Jay-Z uses?
In other words, it is for the truly big money.
That night, out of curiosity, I looked up all I could find about The Black Card. It turns out to have an interesting story. The Black Card (the real name of which is actually The Centurion Card, but no one calls it that) was actually a myth before it was a product. Once upon a time the highest, most-prestigious Amex card you could get was the Platinum card. Which is plenty prestigious, believe me.
Still, the world being what it is, the Universe's various Masters started to say they had heard tell of still another card, that was even more rare, and exclusive. The Black Card. You couldn't ask for it, they could only give it to you. If they felt like it. Maybe.
But at this point there was no Black Card, it was just a neurotic fantasy playing out in the minds of pampered heiresses and Wall Street hard-ons in order for them, somehow, to still feel inferior.
Of course American Express eventually got wind of this. I imagine when they first heard the story their top execs probably laughed their asses off and then, in mid-laugh, became dead serious. Holy crap!, they almost certainly shouted, we've got to introduce this Black Card! The marketing has already been done for us, by the most powerful people in the world! Then they went back to laughing their asses off and eating money sandwiches.
And so the Black Card was released. In a canny move Amex kept it invitation only. Today you can only be invited to get a Black Card if you already own a Platinum Card, are crazy rich, have great credit and, presumably, spend just wheelbarrows full of money all the time.
So, THAT was the card my new boss used to pay for our lunch at Pannera, that day, a year ago.
Man, I thought, this dude is seriously loaded. Which I already kind of knew anyway, but this proved it.
Not long after that I overheard a conversation in the office whereby my boss talked about how he had to pick up his laundry, either within the building or perhaps through delivery. He didn't have the ability to do laundry in his, presumably, posh, possibly penthouse-level, apartment.
Fast forward one year later. We live in Louisville, Kentucky. We do not have a Black, Platinum, Gold or even Green Amex Card. Yet we do have a clothes washer and dryer in our apartment, unlike my old boss. That we have this is considered so unremarkable no one ever remarks upon it. We spend a grand total of $905 a month in rent, which is high for here.
And THAT is the real difference between New York and Kentucky.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
I Was A Teenaged Randian
Today, upon the celebration of my 39th birthday I though it appropriate to wade through some old writings and reveal perhaps one of the most shame-inducing things I have ever written. But, first, a little background setup is in order.
As 2011 moves past its first third it has become more and more apparent that the nation as a whole is in the grips of a new wave of influence from The Scientific Objectivist herself, Ayn Rand. Rep. Paul Ryan--who resembles no one so much, in manner and look, as Gabe from The Office--proudly proclaims himself a follower of the writer and philosopher. Copies of her books continue to sell briskly and an Atlas Shrugged movie has recently been unleashed in theaters. In short Ayn Rand, almost 30 years after her death, is having a bit of a moment. Her philosophy has struck a chord with Americans who fear the incoming wave of still more moderateness from our already hopelessly modest president. This, they have thundered, cannot stand. They cry for the rights of the individual, the right to assert their greatness, their right to pay fewer and fewer taxes in the name of fiscal balance and responsibility.
Forgive me for perhaps sounding a bit smug but of course Ayn Rand is old news to me. Way, way back when, in 1988, I myself had a bit of a personal Ayn Rand moment. In fact I spent much of the first half of junior year walking around with my head blown by this idea of self-reliance and unfettered genius. After all, who would know more about self reliance than a pampered, coddled suburban Jew, who had everything he could virtually ever want literally given to him? But that mattered not. I looked around at my fatted calflike neighbors, with their lazy intellects and perfect yard-induced complacency and saw right through them. None of you, I thought, have ever stood up for what you truly believed. None of you, I again said to myself, again silently, have any of the guts you truly need to change this world. I would shrug my shoulders, perhaps in an Atlas-like fashion?, and look down my nose at them still more. Failures, I ruminated, the entire lot of you.
Of course I am not the first to wrap my cloak of suburban anomie around the first handy philosophy I could muster. And not long after that I found myself attached, tic-like, to yet another, and greater siren call, The Grateful Dead. Mind equally blown, but in a big party full of stoned hippies, businessmen and hippie businessmen. Of the two mind blowers, I add, perhaps unnecessarily, the latter was a hell of a lot more fun, and a hell of a lot less lonely. But, as they say, I digress.
I had been given a copy of The Fountainhead during a teen tour I had taken during the summer of 1988 in Israel. (On a side-note one of my favorite fellow teen tourists that summer was Roger Madoff, nephew of the justly hated Ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff. Talk about the rights of an individual to do exactly what they want!)
The corrupter of my young mind was my counselor Alan, another suburban Jew, of course, except he was in college and knew a couple of Crosby, Stills & Nash songs on the guitar. You know, he was awesome. I don't know what prompted the conversation, but at some point Alan presented me with his idea of the individual and his supremacy.
"Think about it Dave," he said. "Has ANYTHING great ever come from a committee? Can you perform surgery by committee? What about all the greatest inventions? Were any of these done by committee? The light-bulb? The telegraph? No, these are all things best done by one person leading the way, alone."
I thought for a moment about Alan's surgery example, then answered. "Well, Alan, what about the research that went into the medical knowledge that lead to the surgery. Often that is done by groups and even teams. And during surgery itself there is an entire team of people working with the surgeon, like nurses and anesthesiologists, who are just as important, in their way, as the surgeon."
Alan pondered this for a few seconds and, if memory serves, even granted I may have had a point. Despite this he still saw fit to hand me his copy of The Fountainhead, telling me to just check it out.
It was a big book, 740 pages, or so. This alone meant a lot to me at the time. Up until that point the biggest book I had ever read was The Sword Of Shannarah, a Tolkien-esque ripoff that held me spell bound in sixth grade. And let's be frank here, bigness is important when you really don't have any real experience or knowledge in the world of literature. I hefted the soft-covered text. Hmm, I thought. It's about the size of a brick. I should read this.
My second thought was, man, this is going to take up a lot of room in my bag. But screw it, knowledge is power, and therefore worth the work.
Later that night I cracked the spine and immediately was captivated. Howard Roark, my god, who WAS this guy? Where did he get off taking down The Parthenon like he did, and right in front of his mendacious architecture instructor? Then Roark marched off into a sunset of self-assuredness, just a few minutes before he was to graduate from architecture school. But Roark just didn't care about the phony pantomime of graduation. He only cared about the little amount of knowledge to be gleaned from the inferior hacks and losers that were there to instruct him.
After this big entrance Roark then went to work in a rock quarry, all on his own terms. And this was all in, like, the first 25 pages!
Now this, I thought, is a man. He lives by his own rules, he sticks to his guns no matter what, he doesn't let anyone get in his way, he believes in himself without even the shadow of a doubt. He is content to suffer and get passed by without compromising himself or his art. People can either see him for what he is or leave him, he just didn't care. He didn't hate anyone, he didn't talk down to anyone, he wasn't bitter about the chances lesser talents got, he simply focused on what brought him joy and wouldn't let anyone sully the purity of his work.
Now that I read this again it still seems attractive. And I still see how elements of it remain with me today.
But along with all that good stuff, came a sort of almost super-human callousness. To show compassion for those who aren't as talented, who aren't as supremely self-assured, this concept doesn't exist to Howard Roark. The idea of sharing in the bounty of a wealthy society, understanding that some simply do not get the opportunities others get, this idea is also seen as completely without merit to Roark, and by extension Rand. To understand that reason is not always objective, but fallible, that successful people are not necessarily better people, again there is no place for these ideas in Rand's universe.
Nor, for that matter, is there any other concept of virtue at play here other than the self-realization of the individual. In The Fountainhead Roark goes on a diatribe at one point about how nature is simply there as a tool for man's use. Trees only have value in as much as they can be split and made into beams. And to attribute any sort of feeling of greater respect or care for the natural world, apart from what it can do for us, is simply a romantic, pointless and trifling waste of time. This idea literally could not even occur to Roark.
Of course I realized all this only later. Because I loved The Fountainhead. I was with Roark ever step of the way. I jeered his seeming nemesi, Ellsworth Toohey and that brown-noser Peter Keating. I especially loathed Keating, that sellout. Toohey, even at 16, simply seemed like a cartoonish weirdo and hard to actually hate.
But Keating. If you haven't read the book Keating is cast as a kind of anti-Roark. They are classmates at the architecture school Roark leaves. While Roark struggles Keating is the perennial golden boy, graceful, ingratiating and easy to be around. He will conform to what you want him to be if it helps him climb the ladder. A modest talent he gets by simply by being good looking, malleable and popular. And while I personally may have been pretty malleable I sure didn't feel like I was popular or all that good looking. So, you know, fuck that guy!
As the book progresses Roark struggles, but eventually begins to build a client base. He even turns down jobs, no matter how much money he needs, if it's wrong. In one example he refuses to build a home for an old man, because the man wanted it to be based on a sort of plantation that he looked at as a boy and felt excluded from. Roark, in a moment of nice insight, asks that, really, is all you want to stay locked in the battles and mindset you had as a boy? Is your true mission simply to remain stalemated in that time, only from a different perspective? Where is the you in what should be your home?
Like I said, Roark/Rand was not all bad.
And over time Roark's star, by dint of unshakable self-confidence and nonstop work, starts to rise. And in that same time Keating begins to age like the picture of Dorian Gray. He is miserable in his work, his seemingly perfect like starts to unravel, what he really loves to do is paint canvasses. So he takes it up again, as a bit of a hobby, but it's too late. He sold out, and in Rand's world, once you do that you really can't get unsold again. (Again, these ideas, right or wrong have certainly influenced me, for better or worse.)
Needless to say the book meant a lot to me, even as I started to drift from it over time, perhaps inevitably. Rand seemed to me a bit of a fad, something people went through. And then two signal events happened that estranged me from much of what she stands for and her philosophy.
First I reread the book when I was about 25 and I fought it a dreadful, tedious work. The characters are at best cardboard approximations of people. The prose disastrous, the philosophizing tedious. As a fan of great writing the mere fact of her prose hackery did a lot to diminish Rand in my eyes.
Then, a few years later, I started to see Rand's mantle appropriated by people with whom I had very little, if anything, in common. People who used her name as an excuse to gut desperately needed programs for those people among us unlucky enough to have been born very poor. Rand would simply say it's their fault if they are born poor and remain that way as adults. They didn't try hard enough, she'd argue. They are lazy, and in a sense, bad people.
But when my wife told me about kids in the Bronx who want to go to school and learn but their parents are either absent or on drugs ... Or there weren't enough books, yes, not enough books. Or the building they attend school in is crumbling around them, or actually making them sick. At that point I realized that Rand's intellectual purity was no match for the problems of the real world.
When I heard Rand's name used to justify what amounted to me as an undeclared war on our nation's poor I realized I could never identify in any real way with her or Scientific Objectivism. To buy into this philosophy and really live it you have to be blinded to anything subtle or complex about the root causes and solutions to poverty. You have to love a one size fits all answer to everything, which is that gifted people are serving the ultimate moral good by just doing as they damn well please at all times and somehow this benefits society. And the more they do as they damn well please the better off society will be.
Really? Well, I don't know how gifted the financial industry is but it's pretty much done as it damn well pleased over the past 30 years and where has it gotten us? We are a stagnating nation, where the rich already live in Gault's Gulch, and didn't even have to leave the country to get there. America, as it is today, is a land where the rules literally and figuratively do not apply to the rich and super-rich. And we are all, the rest of the nation, poorer for it in every way.
Wow, all that and I didn't even get to the main point of this essay. And this is, to reprint, for your amusement my college admission essay where I talk about what a great Scientific Objectivist I am. And to think, I imagined this would get me into Wesleyan.
As 2011 moves past its first third it has become more and more apparent that the nation as a whole is in the grips of a new wave of influence from The Scientific Objectivist herself, Ayn Rand. Rep. Paul Ryan--who resembles no one so much, in manner and look, as Gabe from The Office--proudly proclaims himself a follower of the writer and philosopher. Copies of her books continue to sell briskly and an Atlas Shrugged movie has recently been unleashed in theaters. In short Ayn Rand, almost 30 years after her death, is having a bit of a moment. Her philosophy has struck a chord with Americans who fear the incoming wave of still more moderateness from our already hopelessly modest president. This, they have thundered, cannot stand. They cry for the rights of the individual, the right to assert their greatness, their right to pay fewer and fewer taxes in the name of fiscal balance and responsibility.
Forgive me for perhaps sounding a bit smug but of course Ayn Rand is old news to me. Way, way back when, in 1988, I myself had a bit of a personal Ayn Rand moment. In fact I spent much of the first half of junior year walking around with my head blown by this idea of self-reliance and unfettered genius. After all, who would know more about self reliance than a pampered, coddled suburban Jew, who had everything he could virtually ever want literally given to him? But that mattered not. I looked around at my fatted calflike neighbors, with their lazy intellects and perfect yard-induced complacency and saw right through them. None of you, I thought, have ever stood up for what you truly believed. None of you, I again said to myself, again silently, have any of the guts you truly need to change this world. I would shrug my shoulders, perhaps in an Atlas-like fashion?, and look down my nose at them still more. Failures, I ruminated, the entire lot of you.
Of course I am not the first to wrap my cloak of suburban anomie around the first handy philosophy I could muster. And not long after that I found myself attached, tic-like, to yet another, and greater siren call, The Grateful Dead. Mind equally blown, but in a big party full of stoned hippies, businessmen and hippie businessmen. Of the two mind blowers, I add, perhaps unnecessarily, the latter was a hell of a lot more fun, and a hell of a lot less lonely. But, as they say, I digress.
I had been given a copy of The Fountainhead during a teen tour I had taken during the summer of 1988 in Israel. (On a side-note one of my favorite fellow teen tourists that summer was Roger Madoff, nephew of the justly hated Ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff. Talk about the rights of an individual to do exactly what they want!)
The corrupter of my young mind was my counselor Alan, another suburban Jew, of course, except he was in college and knew a couple of Crosby, Stills & Nash songs on the guitar. You know, he was awesome. I don't know what prompted the conversation, but at some point Alan presented me with his idea of the individual and his supremacy.
"Think about it Dave," he said. "Has ANYTHING great ever come from a committee? Can you perform surgery by committee? What about all the greatest inventions? Were any of these done by committee? The light-bulb? The telegraph? No, these are all things best done by one person leading the way, alone."
I thought for a moment about Alan's surgery example, then answered. "Well, Alan, what about the research that went into the medical knowledge that lead to the surgery. Often that is done by groups and even teams. And during surgery itself there is an entire team of people working with the surgeon, like nurses and anesthesiologists, who are just as important, in their way, as the surgeon."
Alan pondered this for a few seconds and, if memory serves, even granted I may have had a point. Despite this he still saw fit to hand me his copy of The Fountainhead, telling me to just check it out.
It was a big book, 740 pages, or so. This alone meant a lot to me at the time. Up until that point the biggest book I had ever read was The Sword Of Shannarah, a Tolkien-esque ripoff that held me spell bound in sixth grade. And let's be frank here, bigness is important when you really don't have any real experience or knowledge in the world of literature. I hefted the soft-covered text. Hmm, I thought. It's about the size of a brick. I should read this.
My second thought was, man, this is going to take up a lot of room in my bag. But screw it, knowledge is power, and therefore worth the work.
Later that night I cracked the spine and immediately was captivated. Howard Roark, my god, who WAS this guy? Where did he get off taking down The Parthenon like he did, and right in front of his mendacious architecture instructor? Then Roark marched off into a sunset of self-assuredness, just a few minutes before he was to graduate from architecture school. But Roark just didn't care about the phony pantomime of graduation. He only cared about the little amount of knowledge to be gleaned from the inferior hacks and losers that were there to instruct him.
After this big entrance Roark then went to work in a rock quarry, all on his own terms. And this was all in, like, the first 25 pages!
Now this, I thought, is a man. He lives by his own rules, he sticks to his guns no matter what, he doesn't let anyone get in his way, he believes in himself without even the shadow of a doubt. He is content to suffer and get passed by without compromising himself or his art. People can either see him for what he is or leave him, he just didn't care. He didn't hate anyone, he didn't talk down to anyone, he wasn't bitter about the chances lesser talents got, he simply focused on what brought him joy and wouldn't let anyone sully the purity of his work.
Now that I read this again it still seems attractive. And I still see how elements of it remain with me today.
But along with all that good stuff, came a sort of almost super-human callousness. To show compassion for those who aren't as talented, who aren't as supremely self-assured, this concept doesn't exist to Howard Roark. The idea of sharing in the bounty of a wealthy society, understanding that some simply do not get the opportunities others get, this idea is also seen as completely without merit to Roark, and by extension Rand. To understand that reason is not always objective, but fallible, that successful people are not necessarily better people, again there is no place for these ideas in Rand's universe.
Nor, for that matter, is there any other concept of virtue at play here other than the self-realization of the individual. In The Fountainhead Roark goes on a diatribe at one point about how nature is simply there as a tool for man's use. Trees only have value in as much as they can be split and made into beams. And to attribute any sort of feeling of greater respect or care for the natural world, apart from what it can do for us, is simply a romantic, pointless and trifling waste of time. This idea literally could not even occur to Roark.
Of course I realized all this only later. Because I loved The Fountainhead. I was with Roark ever step of the way. I jeered his seeming nemesi, Ellsworth Toohey and that brown-noser Peter Keating. I especially loathed Keating, that sellout. Toohey, even at 16, simply seemed like a cartoonish weirdo and hard to actually hate.
But Keating. If you haven't read the book Keating is cast as a kind of anti-Roark. They are classmates at the architecture school Roark leaves. While Roark struggles Keating is the perennial golden boy, graceful, ingratiating and easy to be around. He will conform to what you want him to be if it helps him climb the ladder. A modest talent he gets by simply by being good looking, malleable and popular. And while I personally may have been pretty malleable I sure didn't feel like I was popular or all that good looking. So, you know, fuck that guy!
As the book progresses Roark struggles, but eventually begins to build a client base. He even turns down jobs, no matter how much money he needs, if it's wrong. In one example he refuses to build a home for an old man, because the man wanted it to be based on a sort of plantation that he looked at as a boy and felt excluded from. Roark, in a moment of nice insight, asks that, really, is all you want to stay locked in the battles and mindset you had as a boy? Is your true mission simply to remain stalemated in that time, only from a different perspective? Where is the you in what should be your home?
Like I said, Roark/Rand was not all bad.
And over time Roark's star, by dint of unshakable self-confidence and nonstop work, starts to rise. And in that same time Keating begins to age like the picture of Dorian Gray. He is miserable in his work, his seemingly perfect like starts to unravel, what he really loves to do is paint canvasses. So he takes it up again, as a bit of a hobby, but it's too late. He sold out, and in Rand's world, once you do that you really can't get unsold again. (Again, these ideas, right or wrong have certainly influenced me, for better or worse.)
Needless to say the book meant a lot to me, even as I started to drift from it over time, perhaps inevitably. Rand seemed to me a bit of a fad, something people went through. And then two signal events happened that estranged me from much of what she stands for and her philosophy.
First I reread the book when I was about 25 and I fought it a dreadful, tedious work. The characters are at best cardboard approximations of people. The prose disastrous, the philosophizing tedious. As a fan of great writing the mere fact of her prose hackery did a lot to diminish Rand in my eyes.
Then, a few years later, I started to see Rand's mantle appropriated by people with whom I had very little, if anything, in common. People who used her name as an excuse to gut desperately needed programs for those people among us unlucky enough to have been born very poor. Rand would simply say it's their fault if they are born poor and remain that way as adults. They didn't try hard enough, she'd argue. They are lazy, and in a sense, bad people.
But when my wife told me about kids in the Bronx who want to go to school and learn but their parents are either absent or on drugs ... Or there weren't enough books, yes, not enough books. Or the building they attend school in is crumbling around them, or actually making them sick. At that point I realized that Rand's intellectual purity was no match for the problems of the real world.
When I heard Rand's name used to justify what amounted to me as an undeclared war on our nation's poor I realized I could never identify in any real way with her or Scientific Objectivism. To buy into this philosophy and really live it you have to be blinded to anything subtle or complex about the root causes and solutions to poverty. You have to love a one size fits all answer to everything, which is that gifted people are serving the ultimate moral good by just doing as they damn well please at all times and somehow this benefits society. And the more they do as they damn well please the better off society will be.
Really? Well, I don't know how gifted the financial industry is but it's pretty much done as it damn well pleased over the past 30 years and where has it gotten us? We are a stagnating nation, where the rich already live in Gault's Gulch, and didn't even have to leave the country to get there. America, as it is today, is a land where the rules literally and figuratively do not apply to the rich and super-rich. And we are all, the rest of the nation, poorer for it in every way.
Wow, all that and I didn't even get to the main point of this essay. And this is, to reprint, for your amusement my college admission essay where I talk about what a great Scientific Objectivist I am. And to think, I imagined this would get me into Wesleyan.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Notes From A Newsroom Pt. 6--Food
(Remember all these people below, and in all the other entries before, wrote in expecting that a TV show would take up their cause. To me that is the best part of this whole thing. And here we bring our "book" to a close with all the things people wrote in about food.)
FOOD:
Why does everyone want to sue? Besides, didn’t you see “Supersize Me”
From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
I recently went to McDonald’s and purchased a #7 from the breakfast menu. After receiving my food I went home to enjoy my purchase. While I was eating my sandwich I discovered a headless roach in it. The roach seemed as if it was cooked along with my food and I bit its head off. Help me. What can be done? Can this be a possible law suit?
************************************************************************
Another one who missed “Supersize Me.”
From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
I recently went ot McDonald’s and purchased a #7 from the breakfast menu. After receiving my food I went home to enjoy my purchase. While I was eating my sandwhich I discovered a head-less roach in it. The roach seemed as if it was cook along with my good and I bit its Head off.
************************************************************************
Hey guys? Maybe we could all just skip the Mickey D’s for a while?
From: xxxxxxxx@aol.com
I have a problem with a McDonald’s in the Bronx. On Saturday March 5, 2005 at around 8.25 in the morning I ordered a Big breakfast deluxe meal. I started eating the meal and almost half through the meal I notice something black in my mean which turned out to be Rats Feces. I have the food from tha tday in my freezer and I have pictures of the meal. I had to go to the emergency room because I had diarhea and was vomitting up.
************************************************************************
Ants are a delicacy is certain parts of the world; I’m not sure where but that place exists.
From: xxxxxxxxxxxx@officeteam.com
I went to Haagen Daz to enjoy a delicious treat… I bought a cone with sprinkles that comes already prepared. To find that as I was pealing off the wrapper of my delicious treat and finish it off, millions of little ants came crawling out. I still feel sick. No one was able to help me. They did not even give me my money back! Please help!
************************************************************************
Wait, this guys is upset that he didn’t eat more of this hot pocket?
From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
I had brought a hot pocket from pathmark and I found a rodent tooth in it. It really made me sick to my stomach I didn’t eat no more after I found the tooth in it. I only had like two bites before I came across the tooth.
FOOD:
Why does everyone want to sue? Besides, didn’t you see “Supersize Me”
From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
I recently went to McDonald’s and purchased a #7 from the breakfast menu. After receiving my food I went home to enjoy my purchase. While I was eating my sandwich I discovered a headless roach in it. The roach seemed as if it was cooked along with my food and I bit its head off. Help me. What can be done? Can this be a possible law suit?
************************************************************************
Another one who missed “Supersize Me.”
From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
I recently went ot McDonald’s and purchased a #7 from the breakfast menu. After receiving my food I went home to enjoy my purchase. While I was eating my sandwhich I discovered a head-less roach in it. The roach seemed as if it was cook along with my good and I bit its Head off.
************************************************************************
Hey guys? Maybe we could all just skip the Mickey D’s for a while?
From: xxxxxxxx@aol.com
I have a problem with a McDonald’s in the Bronx. On Saturday March 5, 2005 at around 8.25 in the morning I ordered a Big breakfast deluxe meal. I started eating the meal and almost half through the meal I notice something black in my mean which turned out to be Rats Feces. I have the food from tha tday in my freezer and I have pictures of the meal. I had to go to the emergency room because I had diarhea and was vomitting up.
************************************************************************
Ants are a delicacy is certain parts of the world; I’m not sure where but that place exists.
From: xxxxxxxxxxxx@officeteam.com
I went to Haagen Daz to enjoy a delicious treat… I bought a cone with sprinkles that comes already prepared. To find that as I was pealing off the wrapper of my delicious treat and finish it off, millions of little ants came crawling out. I still feel sick. No one was able to help me. They did not even give me my money back! Please help!
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Wait, this guys is upset that he didn’t eat more of this hot pocket?
From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
I had brought a hot pocket from pathmark and I found a rodent tooth in it. It really made me sick to my stomach I didn’t eat no more after I found the tooth in it. I only had like two bites before I came across the tooth.
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