Newest segment of the show: The fix is in (but you knew that already)

Update:

Rubber dolls, WTF?

http://www.realmodel.com.tw/en_index1.asp

longoria has jedi like reflexes

yes! only 2 weeks til pitchers and catchers report.

yes, it seems that way

Pest Control

Astros to Change Name?

Bread, you must be apoplectic.

They're not gonna go with Asstros are they? 'cause that's my idea - I wrote them about that years ago.

I think I saw the sidewalk light up

I know nobody comes here anymore but

I wish I could love my job like this guy loves his.

Straight outta Manila.

Married?

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, a Prince asked a beautiful princess,

Will you marry me? The Princess said, NO!

And the Prince lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and fucked skinny

big titted broads and hunted and fished and raced cars and went to nudie

bars and dated women half his age and drank whiskey, beer and Captain

Morgan and never heard bitching and never paid child support or alimony

and ate pussies and fucked cheerleaders in the ass and kept his house and guns and

never got cheated on while he was at work and all his friends and family

thought he was fuckin cool as hell and had tons of money in the bank and

left the toilet seat up The end

Pretty Cool

Jetman

Chinese Inflation...

Some famous finance guy in China gave a closed door speech on how China is in deep trouble and possibly bankrupt. He told everyone not to record his speech or put it on the internet...so naturally its on youtube now.

Take this all with a grain of salt or two, but here's the link.

Key points is that a lot of Chinese growth the past few years is just stimulus money and loans spent on real estate, and that as these loans go bad, the shit will hit the fan.

He claims inflation is really running at 16%...which might be good news for my RMB appreciation-wise if China was trying to really stop it. But its scary when a bank account only pays 5% for a 3 year CD.

Plus, if China has an economic collapse, the value of the RMB probably won't be going up...should have cashed out last visit. Thought about it but was lazy.

Oh, well, everything seems to be falling apart this year, so why not one more thing...get it over with fast.

This is what I'm talking aboot! (click to link)

I can screw the pooch for much, much less.

Overheard at Pops

"There's Sodom, there's Gomorrah, then there's Bangkok. "

Sadly True

I would love to say it isn't so...but the list about things people do in Montana is spot on. Oh, and she is also correct that Montana is adding jobs...

Yahoo Headlines

Economy adds 103,000 jobs, but it's not enough

WTF? and I don't mean Win the Future.

What kind of headline reporting a statistic can say 'but its not enough?"

Its a statistic being reported for gawd sakes.

I mean, sure have an analysis section to your story or have 'but analysts say it not enough'

OK rant off.

FUN WITH FORMOSA

This old map has a lot of place names in Taiwanese...I enjoyed testing out my Taiwanese speaking relatives to see if they could guess what the hell I was saying...

Also, I will be in Taiwan this November if anyone is up for hitting the bars in the Chung.

The Last Post?

As the posts become fewer and fewer, I am wondering if this won't be the last post on our beloved experiment?

Anyhow, greetings from Montana. It has been a crazy summer, so crazy in fact that this is my first weekend in Helena since early June. Many tales to be spun, hopefully in person with some of you at hand.

Back over July 4th weekend, Jim was kind enough to host a reunion of sorts. Rye, PIMP, Dean-O and myself were able to attend (apparently the price of gas for the six hour drive from Lubbock to Denver was too unbearable for the J-Hole). A concert was attended in Steamboat, a baseball game in Denver, a fireworks display from Jim's roof, and lots of cigarettes and even more bullshitting went down over three days.

Stoney and I made the drive from Montana (once his plane landed a mere ten hours late). Yellowstone, Teton and the nothingness of southern Wyoming proved just the trick for two old friends catching up. We did get stonewalled by some snow high in the Wyoming mountains near Jackson, but that just added to the fun. Next year, Vegas baby! Stoney, you should publish some pictures here.

Later in the summer a few friends and i attended Red Ants Pants music festival in White Sulfer Springs, MT. A bit of Texas came to Montana, as Jerry Jeff (Austin), Lyle Lovett (Houston), Carrie Rodriguez (Austin), Rodney Crowell (Houston), Guy Clark (Houston), the Trishas (Austin) and a few others showed up in the hills of central Montana for two days of awesomeness. The awesomeness culminated with Rodney and Guy sitting on the stage playing songs for each other on Sunday afternoon. Poor Guy can barely get around, and can't remember his own songs anymore, but still amazing, especially since his solo show was on Saturday, thus giving us a real treat by sticking around just to play with Rodney Crowell. During his solo set on Saturday, Rodney and Lyle sat just off stage simply to watch Guy Clark play music.

I did manage to squeeze front and center for the shows, because, well, that's just who I am.

Here is Guy Clark singing with Verlon Anderson. Yes, it was The Cape.

Rodney Crowell crooning Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight



Rodney watching Guy trying to remember the Lyrics to Old Friends


A sober Jerry Jeff singing Mr. Bojangles or Navajo Rug, I forget which at this point.

In other news, my brother submitted some photo and became season ticket boy for the Houston Texans. Monday night was meet the team night. Here's a copy of the ticket for all none of you that are interested:

I reckon I'll follow this up at some point with a few more summer details (hikes in Glacier, work trips to Florida, Vermont and Alberta), but who knows, maybe I'll just fade into the distance...

Chinese Inflation Continues

Inflation rose to a three-year high of 6.4 percent in June, data showed on Saturday. The comments mark a fresh attempt to show the inflation fight is far from over and the government is determined to bring prices back under control, analysts said.

I guess this didn't work:

The central bank has raised interest rates five times and bank reserve requirements nine times since last October as the inflation threat has grown.

Bank reserve requirements may not be able to be used as a further weapon:

Many analysts expect the central bank to lean more on interest rates to fight inflation in coming months, partly because they see limited room for higher bank reserve ratios, which for big banks stand at a record 21.5 percent.

So, the other two tools that they can use are interest rates and exchange rates.

Higher interest rates tend to make your currency stronger. If you try to keep your currency rate down while raising interest rate, you just get more foreign money pouring in. To fight inflation you want to lower your monetary supply not increase it.

Looks like I will sit on my RMB CDs for a while longer...I will enjoy the higher interest and then hopefully some more currency appreciation.

Fixing the odd tweak

Fortunately I found this video to help take the stitch out of my knee and ham string.


God bless the Dutch.
Too bad about Vancouver, drunk and high riot and looting?

Not Taiwan

So, I'm drinking some yellow bellies and the wife is transfixed by the credits of Bourne Identity.

She demands I find the song played during the credits. Child's play for any non-senior citizen, but she is impressed. (Google search is indistinguishable from magic for her.)

Extreme ways. Moby. Ennnnh, sounded better with the credit rolling.

Anyways, bored, I plugged in Taiwan on amazon.com's MP3 website to see what would come up. Surprisingly, many bands use the words Taiwan, but have nothing to do with Taiwan.

Tex Taiwan - actually a Belgian industrial band or something. That's confusing.

Maiden Taiwan - ha ha, weird rap not from Taiwan.

Taiwan Typhoon - punk rock.

Anyways, I am forming a new band called Anglo-Japan. We sing in Swahili and are based in Brazil. Yes, we are all pretentious now.

My God, page 4 of the search result calls up:

Everyone Eats Taiwan Rice I think you use this one casually, acting as if you have no idea how dumb this song sounds. "What? Honey, don't you like Taiwan and Taiwan rice?"

Hsu-Nami - Passport to Taiwan cool name

35 mm - I live in Taiwan

Music you figure would have been suited to Taiwanese conscripts fighting for Japan in WW II in Pacific: Kiwi & the Papaya Mangoes...

Taiwan Ko-Ro seems nice...might even buy that.

If there was a Taiwanese version of Hawaii 5-O... this would be the theme song.

There are a bazillion more songs, from techno to jazz, but I will leave you with a nice song in old-school Mandarin exhorting Taiwan's economy to take off...