Contributors to this Issue
This issue will be late due to circumstances entirely of our own making. We clicked on to the wrong thing; our computer icons are now on the right hand side of the page, laughing at us when we try to coax them to the bottom where they belong.
We are planning a burial at sea for our computer, if we do not throw it out the window first. Even so, we plan to press on and tell our readers a little something about the private lives of our contributors, which shouldn’t be hard, as they never shut up about themselves.
John Lamont Thurgood, late of Harvard, took his PHD in literature from Yale with his thesis: Moby Dick, Whale or Not? after watching the video version by John Huston. His current article “Tolstoy’s Little Girl Characters” follows on the heels of his “The Bronte Cousins: Men or Mice?”
Eliza Dart Hennings, our staff reporter, is fresh from the Continent (Australia) with an in depth look at world peace and the mating habits of mongoose.
Leonard Q. Waling is just down from Oxford with the latest news from Ole Miss about Faulkner’s Weirdo Characters Whom He Left Out of His Nobel Prize Speech.
Louisa Short Siddons has another of her series “Why Men Are No Damned Good”, which she is busy turning into a screenplay for the Lifetime network. Her devoted readers plan to watch the movie while sticking pins into male dolls.
Ezra Lysander Dudley has an exciting proposal for Peace in the Mideast, or Peace in Our Time, which he calls the Neville Chamberlain solution. (All the participants go to their respective corners and are sent notes to come out swinging their umbrellas.)
Pauline Simon, our celebrated film critic, will do another of those re-appraisals for which she is justly famous. In this case she turns her ever-fresh eye upon the work of Ed. Wood, whose cinematic mastery has been woefully neglected. She gives us the first close reading and textual analysis of the script Glen, or Glenda? This work has baffled film scholars for decades, as it was written on unnumbered napkins.
Arlington Tobias Clinker has written an outstanding account of his trip to Three Rivers, Michigan; the article is enhanced with his candid Polaroid shots of leafless trees and bare spots where Ernest “Papa” Hemingway once stood briefly before popping another beer. (Clinker has been working for twenty years on his Hemingway biography, and has now got the author up to age six.)
We also had requested manuscripts from Thomas Wolfe and Stephen King, but they never replied to our numerous e-mails; their agents indicated they were too rich to be bothered.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Lifetime Plans Movie Network for Men
Lifetime Plans Movie Network For Men
The Lifetime Channel announced today that it is launching a new movie network devoted to men’s issues. A spokesperson explained, “We want to attract male viewers, who probably watch the network only at the insistence of wives or girlfriends”. (Or, as one reporter suggested, at gunpoint).
The theme of the movies will be that men’s problems are caused by women. Network executives explained that the vast Lifetime Library would be the source of the new male stories with a few minor alterations such as sex and name changes. Donna Louise Kelly, for example, would become Donald Thurgood Pendleton.
The Pendleton character will be in The Moment of Truth Series, which will feature a defining moment when the male character realizes that women are no damned good.
The scripts will feature the various women who have ruined the characters’ lives. Many stories will be devoted to “Mom”, who though lovable, managed to screw up every man-child of her own as well as neighborhood boys whom she just stopped to zip their jackets. One overly zealous Mom is shown pulling a grown man out of a taxicab to dab his ears with a spit-laden hankie.
Another script heavy category will be “Mothers-in-Law” who are also lovable, but have a tendency to drive guys nuts. In one script a character wheelbarrows a horse’s head to his mother-in-law’s bed—just a little something to show her how he feels.
Ex-Wives will also come in for plenty of airtime. Divorced, alimony-receiving women will be portrayed as the bloodsuckers they are. This will be distaff side of the Lifetime (male) scumbags who leave the state and never pay alimony, child support, or separate maintenance, which means maintaining someone in a lavish beachfront condo, while the guy lives in a discarded Sears A/C box.
The male characters will have problems similar to Lifetime’s current heroines—they will, for example, be hounded by stalkers and harassed by phone calls from strangers who turn out to be someone (gasp!) from the characters’ past.
Male characters will also be plagued with bad seed sisters who were mean to them during childhood. These definitely not nice girls will show up frequently wanting to borrow money to start their own meth business.
There will also be the obligatory movies where the male character tries to reform an abusive spouse, as deep down, he knows she’s a good person even though she goes to bed every night with a knife and a pistol strapped to her arms.
Sexual-harassment stories will also be a staple. The male characters will be plagued with women who tend to get fresh (as in putting their hands down a guy’s pants kind of fresh).
The network’s press kit stressed that the male actors have had to be educated that this behavior is unacceptable from either sex. And the writers are instructed to write only politically correct scripts with sensitive guy characters that cry when accosted by strange women.
“Why, oh why, can’t they just leave me alone?” one guy character wails in the script titled: Female Professor Scoops up Male Teaching Assistants and Uses them as Boy Toys, or The Gary Sanders Wright Story. (Writer alert: male characters without middle names will be assigned one the first day of shooting.)
Men who have been plagued by women treating them as sex objects, or have been otherwise abused, are encouraged to submit their stories to the new network.
One gentleman has e-mailed that he has a great idea, but is stumped on naming the character. Currently, he is leaning towards Harold Dean Snodgrass.
The Lifetime Channel announced today that it is launching a new movie network devoted to men’s issues. A spokesperson explained, “We want to attract male viewers, who probably watch the network only at the insistence of wives or girlfriends”. (Or, as one reporter suggested, at gunpoint).
The theme of the movies will be that men’s problems are caused by women. Network executives explained that the vast Lifetime Library would be the source of the new male stories with a few minor alterations such as sex and name changes. Donna Louise Kelly, for example, would become Donald Thurgood Pendleton.
The Pendleton character will be in The Moment of Truth Series, which will feature a defining moment when the male character realizes that women are no damned good.
The scripts will feature the various women who have ruined the characters’ lives. Many stories will be devoted to “Mom”, who though lovable, managed to screw up every man-child of her own as well as neighborhood boys whom she just stopped to zip their jackets. One overly zealous Mom is shown pulling a grown man out of a taxicab to dab his ears with a spit-laden hankie.
Another script heavy category will be “Mothers-in-Law” who are also lovable, but have a tendency to drive guys nuts. In one script a character wheelbarrows a horse’s head to his mother-in-law’s bed—just a little something to show her how he feels.
Ex-Wives will also come in for plenty of airtime. Divorced, alimony-receiving women will be portrayed as the bloodsuckers they are. This will be distaff side of the Lifetime (male) scumbags who leave the state and never pay alimony, child support, or separate maintenance, which means maintaining someone in a lavish beachfront condo, while the guy lives in a discarded Sears A/C box.
The male characters will have problems similar to Lifetime’s current heroines—they will, for example, be hounded by stalkers and harassed by phone calls from strangers who turn out to be someone (gasp!) from the characters’ past.
Male characters will also be plagued with bad seed sisters who were mean to them during childhood. These definitely not nice girls will show up frequently wanting to borrow money to start their own meth business.
There will also be the obligatory movies where the male character tries to reform an abusive spouse, as deep down, he knows she’s a good person even though she goes to bed every night with a knife and a pistol strapped to her arms.
Sexual-harassment stories will also be a staple. The male characters will be plagued with women who tend to get fresh (as in putting their hands down a guy’s pants kind of fresh).
The network’s press kit stressed that the male actors have had to be educated that this behavior is unacceptable from either sex. And the writers are instructed to write only politically correct scripts with sensitive guy characters that cry when accosted by strange women.
“Why, oh why, can’t they just leave me alone?” one guy character wails in the script titled: Female Professor Scoops up Male Teaching Assistants and Uses them as Boy Toys, or The Gary Sanders Wright Story. (Writer alert: male characters without middle names will be assigned one the first day of shooting.)
Men who have been plagued by women treating them as sex objects, or have been otherwise abused, are encouraged to submit their stories to the new network.
One gentleman has e-mailed that he has a great idea, but is stumped on naming the character. Currently, he is leaning towards Harold Dean Snodgrass.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
The Stock Market A P
The Stock Market: A Party You Might Not Want to Attend
Do you enjoy browsing in the financial pages? Is your fire lit by phrases like “non-farm employment numbers”? Do you follow Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan’s every pronouncement? Or do you move on to the sports page? (This is not a bad idea actually).
The problem with Wall Street is that it is run by a very nervous group of people. The least bit of news will have them rushing to sell or perhaps to buy. (It depends on what everybody else is doing). A job numbers report may have investors dumping stocks in the morning; by afternoon they may buy again when the Fed hints it may not raise interest rates.
The news cycle was much slower in our previous history. To cite only one example: Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans was somewhat dampened when he heard the War of 1812 had ended the year before. The General was quoted as saying: “Great Jumping Jehoshaphat! Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
Nowadays we hear way too much in real time, which the investment community cannot handle. For example, Fed Chairman Greenspan and his little playmates are watched around the clock in case they slip up and actually say something in English.
The Open Market Committee proceedings are not well understood. It is not all that complicated really. Greenspan and his friends will meet for breakfast and do a little shopping at an open market (hence the name); they will have a Danish and coffee. Sometimes they will have their hair done before going to the office.
They will then announce the latest interest rate, which is unchanged, or is higher or is lower. Any of these three results will set off a frenzy of buying or selling depending on investors’ interpretations.
Some investors pretend to be real people with minds of their own, but the strain causes them to throw up in their wastebaskets. They soon catch up with the herd, which is butting heads on the trading floor to be the first to sell or buy depending on what the consensus is that the news calls for.
Are you really interested in all this? Should you be in the market or not? It depends. What is your risk profile? Let’s say you lost 30% of your life savings overnight in the market, would you (a) Remain calm and stick with your buy and hold strategy or (b) Would you sell out and have nightmares for months afterwards?
If you’re in the “b” category, you may want to skip investing and go directly to saving. Or spend your spare cash in the hope that your money will never run out. This strategy may keep you working until you drop which may not be your plan.
So what should you do with your discretionary funds (mad money)? Love it, keep it, but be cautious about sending it to market. With the market your stake can change every minute. You can make yourself a nervous wreck. All this is unnecessary. You don’t have to worry about diversifying your holdings either, which only means losing money on both stocks and bonds.
You also don’t have to concern yourself with asset allocation. Do you have to be told where to allocate your money if it’s already tied in up your home and liquid assets (beer)?
When the latest news story stirs up the market, you can skip it unless it’s one with some human interest attached. Let’s say Juan Valdez (The Mr. Coffee of Columbia) is interviewed by CNN when it is rumored that coffee prices are going lower.
Juan is caught on camera without his burro saying the coffee market is going to hell in a hand basket. This upsets commodity brokers worldwide who huddle to decide if they should dump coffee or if should they buy in case Juan is all wet? Decisions, decisions. You might follow this story just to see if Juan has got a new outfit lately or if his burro is the same cute one or a new one who is considered more photogenic.
But if you enjoy following the financial news and would like an expensive, time-consuming, stressful hobby, the market could be just the thing for you.
Do you enjoy browsing in the financial pages? Is your fire lit by phrases like “non-farm employment numbers”? Do you follow Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan’s every pronouncement? Or do you move on to the sports page? (This is not a bad idea actually).
The problem with Wall Street is that it is run by a very nervous group of people. The least bit of news will have them rushing to sell or perhaps to buy. (It depends on what everybody else is doing). A job numbers report may have investors dumping stocks in the morning; by afternoon they may buy again when the Fed hints it may not raise interest rates.
The news cycle was much slower in our previous history. To cite only one example: Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans was somewhat dampened when he heard the War of 1812 had ended the year before. The General was quoted as saying: “Great Jumping Jehoshaphat! Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
Nowadays we hear way too much in real time, which the investment community cannot handle. For example, Fed Chairman Greenspan and his little playmates are watched around the clock in case they slip up and actually say something in English.
The Open Market Committee proceedings are not well understood. It is not all that complicated really. Greenspan and his friends will meet for breakfast and do a little shopping at an open market (hence the name); they will have a Danish and coffee. Sometimes they will have their hair done before going to the office.
They will then announce the latest interest rate, which is unchanged, or is higher or is lower. Any of these three results will set off a frenzy of buying or selling depending on investors’ interpretations.
Some investors pretend to be real people with minds of their own, but the strain causes them to throw up in their wastebaskets. They soon catch up with the herd, which is butting heads on the trading floor to be the first to sell or buy depending on what the consensus is that the news calls for.
Are you really interested in all this? Should you be in the market or not? It depends. What is your risk profile? Let’s say you lost 30% of your life savings overnight in the market, would you (a) Remain calm and stick with your buy and hold strategy or (b) Would you sell out and have nightmares for months afterwards?
If you’re in the “b” category, you may want to skip investing and go directly to saving. Or spend your spare cash in the hope that your money will never run out. This strategy may keep you working until you drop which may not be your plan.
So what should you do with your discretionary funds (mad money)? Love it, keep it, but be cautious about sending it to market. With the market your stake can change every minute. You can make yourself a nervous wreck. All this is unnecessary. You don’t have to worry about diversifying your holdings either, which only means losing money on both stocks and bonds.
You also don’t have to concern yourself with asset allocation. Do you have to be told where to allocate your money if it’s already tied in up your home and liquid assets (beer)?
When the latest news story stirs up the market, you can skip it unless it’s one with some human interest attached. Let’s say Juan Valdez (The Mr. Coffee of Columbia) is interviewed by CNN when it is rumored that coffee prices are going lower.
Juan is caught on camera without his burro saying the coffee market is going to hell in a hand basket. This upsets commodity brokers worldwide who huddle to decide if they should dump coffee or if should they buy in case Juan is all wet? Decisions, decisions. You might follow this story just to see if Juan has got a new outfit lately or if his burro is the same cute one or a new one who is considered more photogenic.
But if you enjoy following the financial news and would like an expensive, time-consuming, stressful hobby, the market could be just the thing for you.
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