Ryan Adams is insane

"I'm Andy Fiddlesticks, the alligator!"

You must listen to these recordings. Preferably in order.

If you don't have time, then just listen to the first 3 tracks (especially #3) from "The Shit - The Movie", it'll only take 3 minutes........ when a song finishes, just click the next one on the list.

Guitar Hero II - Best video game in the history of the universe

My roommate got this video game called Guitar Hero II. Basically you use this giant plastic guitar controller to play some rockin' tunes on your TV. You play notes by holding down the correct buttons on the fret board and strumming the strum bar at the right time.

So fun.

You can rock out to such classics as:

• Freebird
• Search and Destroy
  
• Shout at the Devil
• Stop
• Sweet Child o' Mine

Dear god....it is so addictive and fun. I like to put on spandex pants and jump around bare chested while I play. I recently acquired a groupie and everything. Unfortunately I have to keep her locked in my room during the day when I'm at the office because she constantly tries to escape. I think she'll start to come around when she sees me finish Mathew Sweet's "Girlfriend" on Hard.

Ecce Homo

....stole my girlfriend for no reason.

Defrauded!

I am so embarrassed.

You may recall that I recently purchased some shares in a Canadian goldminer Crystallex (KRY). Well today at work I decided to check up on it shortly after lunch. It had recently taken a beating and fallen from where I bought it ($3.00) to around $2.82 or so. Well I was delighted to see that the share price had skyrocketed in about 5 minutes from the mid $2.80's to almost $3.00! What could be going on? I checked out my favourite finance blog, billcara.com, and found that someone posted a news article from Dow Jones newswire time-stamped at 1pm stating that KRY had received their environmental permit!

Yippee! This is what I had been hoping for! The long awaited permit! The share price was sure to double! Or triple! Perhaps it wasn't too late to buy more shares?!? The news was just released minutes ago!!!

So, fool that I am, I put in a limit order for 300 shares at $3.25. The order was immediately filled at $3.04/share. It was my "lucky" day.

...........except, it turns out the news story was a complete fraud:

Crystallex's Share Price Jumps On Fraudulent News Report

Jan 30, 2007 15:30:00 (ET)

CARACAS (Dow Jones)--A fraudulent news story Tuesday on the Venezuelan operations of Canadian miner Crystallex International Corp. (KRY) pushed the company's share price up nearly 10% before profit-taking pared the gains.

The fake article, which resembled a Dow Jones Newswires report, claimed that Venezuela had at last approved a long-awaited environmental permit for Crystallex to begin exploiting the Las Cristinas gold mine.

The phony report was posted on a Yahoo message board. Shortly after it appeared, Crystallex's share price on the American Stock Exchange rose as high as 9.3% to $3.07 before the gains were trimmed. The stock stood at $2.96 per share, up 6.1%, at 3:23 p.m. EST.

Crystallex officials have denied the report. "As of now we're just fielding questions from investors," said Richard Marshall, vice president of investor relations for Crystallex. The company has yet to decide on other actions such as contacting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he said. "We'll bring it up with our board and to (legal) counsel to see what we can do."

The bogus story included a fabricated quote attributed to Venezuelan Mining Minister Jose Khan.

-By Raul Gallegos, Dow Jones Newswires; 58-212-564-1339; raul.gallegos@dowjones.com

KRY is currently trading back down at $2.88 and I am $60 poorer.....or wiser (depending on how you look at it). I have learned three very important lessons:

1. Price action, even the high volume price action that happened today, may not mean anything.
2. Never trust anything people post on the internet about a stock, even when it is supported by an observable price movement in the market.
3. I am a moron.

Buying on margin

It's no wonder that stocks have enjoyed a huge bull run for the past 4 years.....banks and brokerages are willing to lend any skid thousands of dollars to invest on the market. With so much easy credit I'm sure that a large portion of the rising equity prices are a simple result of lots and lots of dollars chasing limited financial assets.

Case in point. I have an account with an online brokerage. This is what they know about me:

• My age
• Where I live
  
• The fact I am a student (but not my school or what I study)
• The fact that my total liquid assets total less than $10,000, er I mean $49,123,457
• The fact that I have essentially $0 in non-liquid assets (like houses and cars)
• The fact that my yearly income is less than $25,000
  

Despite these less than stellar stats, I currently have margin purchasing power that is greater than the total value of the assets I hold in my brokerage account. That means they are willing to lend a penniless skid money (to buy risky securities) that totals more than he has in equity.

That being said, I would have to be a complete moron to buy stocks on margin considering the %10.25 interest rate they charge. These people are leeches.

I have the most worthless readership of any blog in the blogosphere

You would think that, with millions and millions of readers worldwide™, when I publish a cry for help regarding my painful shin splints that at least a dozen readers would jump at the opportunity to help me out. Many of my readers are medical professionals, physical therapists, scientists, mechanical engineers, and countless other varieties of annoying brainiac, and yet one sole individual offered me advice.

I give and give and give and you take, take, take......and then in my moment of need, when I ask for a little bit of reciprocation I find myself deserted.

You are all disinvited from my blog-party. Go away.

Here is a t-shirt I am definitely buying

You can get it from Gawker.com

Shin Splint

I have problem with shin splints on my left leg. Weird that it would be the left leg only.....I am wondering if it has something to do with the fact that in the winter I run on a treadmill and not outside. I rested it over the entire Christmas break and it healed up, but now that I am running again I can feel it starting to re-develop. I will try cutting back from 6 to 5 days/week and see if that helps. I may also force myself to run outside.....

If anyone has some tips on avoiding shin splints please comment......

Crystallex (KRY)

Today I bought 3 units of Crystallex....a Canadian gold miner. This is a pure gamble. I bought in at $3.00 US. They currently have the rights to the Las Cristinas deposit in Venezuela which is one of the richest (if not the richest) unmined gold deposits in the world. The potential problems with them are twofold:
1. They are waiting on an environmental permit before they can commence operations. In the meantime, they burn cash.
2. Venezuela is a political hot potato these days because of Hugo Chavez's propensity to piss off the USA and his socialist leanings. Recently they've nationalized the oil and telecom industries....so there's some fear that they will do the same to mining.

I think the main concern is #1. My feeling is that concern #2 is, if not unwarranted, at least overstated. I believe that mining is already nationalized and that this is priced into the stock. Venezuela owns the Las Cristinas deposit, not KRY. KRY just has the mining rights. Furthermore, even though Chavez nationalized the oil industry there are still many western oil companies doing business in Venezuela, so business with the Venezuelans can't be that bad.

I'll know by the spring if this was a good buy....

Wow.

I just spent half an hour writing a really funny post and then took it down after about 3 minutes because I got cold feet. It used easily misinterpreted language and er, imagery. This is not really an anonymous blog and I need to be careful. I laughed really hard while I wrote it though. I am a bad person.

Financial Blogging

I have recently jumped into the exciting world of investing. This month I opened an account with the online discount brokerage Etrade, and wired the bulk of my net worth ($49,123,457) into said account. I've decided to blog any trades I make. This is boring for you the reader, I know, but it forces me to express my investment ideas and think through my reasoning before I do anything rash.

At the end of the day when my finances are in shambles and I sit at a bar spending my last $20 on shots of Jack Daniels tearfully mumbling "How could this have happened?" I will at least have a well-documented record to answer my own rhetorical question.

First trade was executed earlier this month:

I bought 1.25 units of Silver Wheaton (SLW) at $9.00. SLW is a silver miner that buys the silver stream production of other mining companies and sells it on the open market. Apparently gold miners like to do this because there is pressure by investors for them to remain unhedged to gold. By selling their silver production via long-term fixed price contracts they can use this revenue to hedge (i.e. to protect themselves against fluctuations in metal prices) while maintaining the appearance of being unhedged to gold investors.

Why I bought:
I believe we are in an environment that is favourable for precious metals. Inflation seems to be a real concern and since interest rates seem to be staying fairly constant, that means real interest rates are at risk of declining. The economy also seems to be at risk of entering recession which, from what I gather, is historically associated with falling real interest rates. Precious metal stocks are reasonably priced relative to the price of the metals themselves. Furthermore, silver is a metal with many, many industrial applications and demand currently exceeds supply. SLW is a bet that this year silver prices will increase.

What scares me:
SLW doesn't really seem to have a competitive advantage other than a close relationship with Goldcorp. I mean, what's to stop somebody else from coming in and buying up contracts and eating SLW's market share? What makes them so special? On the other hand, they only have about 4 employees and several long term contracts, so I assume they can stay profitable as long as silver prices are reasonable....so I think there is a limited potential for catastrophe.

I Reluctantly Withdraw My Offer To Mate

Due to the underwhelming response to my post of January 10, I have decided to withdraw the offer.

Total genuine applications received: 0
Number of rather cruel joke applications received: 1

It isn't funny to toy with a man's emotions.

Attention fertile human females!

I have decided to mate.

Please send a thorough medical and sexual history, a CV, several recent full-body photographs, a credit report, and your 2 most recent tax returns to the email address at the bottom of the page. I will reply to all suitably qualified applicants.

Aloha readers....

I just got back from beautiful Hawaii. I was on Maui for a conference, and let me say it is the most beautiful place I've ever been. I had a chance to explore a bit and I was really impressed. Maui is essentially two mountains with a valley in the middle. The valley part is gorgeous. There are beautiful beaches etc..., but the mountains are the really impressive part.

Sunday I drove around the mountainous region in the northwest part of the island near Kapalua (where there was a golf tournament going on). It was stunning. It was also scary as hell. There was about a 10 mile portion of the trip where you are driving on a narrow winding road (wide enough for 1 car) that hugs cliffs. There are no guard rails and there are literally big fallen rocks in the middle of the road. If you meet another car you need to find a place wide enough to pull over and let the other person squeeze past. The sights are amazing, although if you ever do it make sure you're sober because there are craaazy drops and if you ever went off the road you would be dead for sure.

Monday my flight left late at night, so in the morning I went up to the other mountain which is also a national park (Haleakala). You can literally drive up to the summit of the mountain which is over 10000 feet above sea level. At the summit you can look down on a big crater that has been created by erosion. It looks like the planet Mars. You can see cinder cones created by the volcanic activity and, even though it wasn't a clear day, I could see the entire island and two adjacent islands as well. Absolutely thrilling stuff. I hiked around on some trails on Haleakala and brought home two rocks as souvenirs.

On my flight into Hawaii there was an incident aboard my plane. I sat down beside some old lady who was chowing down on a big bag of McDonalds food. After finishing, and shortly before takeoff, she excused herself to go to the washroom. Then after having sat down again, she decided she needed to excuse herself for round 2. At this point we are about 4th in line to take off and the flight attendant starts screaming at this lady to sit down. She tells her the bathroom is locked because we're about to take off. The lady starts yelling back because she is having a Big mac attack and eventually pushes past the attendant and barges into the bathroom. The flight attendant starts banging on the door yelling "We're going to have to go back to the gate! We're going to lose our place in line!" She radios the cockpit and the captain comes on the intercom telling people to sit down and put their seat belts on. Meanwhile the old lady is yelling that she'll be out in a minute. A short time later, she emerges and I get up to let her into her seat. As she walks past me I'm overwhelmed by the pungent scent of human shit.

She. shit. her. pants.

But the good folks at United Airlines will be happy to know that we took off on time. It only cost an old woman her dignity and me a rather unpleasant 5 hour flight to Kahului. Of course after take off the old bat didn't get up to clean herself off or anything. No, she just pretended that nothing happened and ordered a ginger ale to sip on while she stewed in her own feces. She also kept putting on hand cream. I think she thought it would mask the smell. It didn't. After we landed, she wrapped her coat around her waist and hurried off the plane. On my way to pick up my bag, I overheard a couple remark about the "bad gas" that someone on the flight had. I said nothing.

Happy New Year

2007 is a new year and a new start.

Life is better when you're optimistic.