Are my eyes really blue?

So Apple blew the roof out again. Over a billion dollars profit in fiscal Q3, another record, and that with the iPhone basically gone from the channel down the stretch as the ramp up to the 3G began. And with that announcement…the stock drops 10% in after-hours trading.

Well, the usual talk is “the guidance was below analysts’ predictions.” Thing is, this has been the case for eight of the last nine quarters. Eight of nine. And in all but one case, the guidance was more than 9% under the analyst prediction. And every time, three months later, the results have beaten the guidance and the analysts.

Normally this is where I make my sardonic comment about stock traders having the attention span of a goldfish, and rue the fact that I could have sold all my shares Thursday and bought them back today and increased my holdings 15%, knowing the stock will be back up to scratch in four to six weeks. But instead, I’m bothered by something else…

How can people be wrong, all the time, about everything, and still be taken seriously?

Seriously, when a blogger is wrong, big !-ing deal. Hell, when a blogger is right, big !-ing deal, and I say that as someone whose track record is pretty damn good if I say so myself. But how can people be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on television, in magazines, in newspapers, on financial channels and “news” channels, get it wrong over and over and fracking over, and still be regarded as worthy of being heard?

Thing is, look at the typical newspaper columnist, in the business section or the sports section or the editorial page. In almost every single case, there’s somebody else doing the same thing online, for free, for love of the topic – and who usually has as good if not better qualifications to speak on the topic. The very best writing on college football in the entire country is coming from a guy whose day job is working with international refugee agencies, and it’s not because he’s getting sacks of money and country ham flung at him while he shouts “GIMMEH GIMMEH,” it’s because he cares about college football and is directly answerable to the throngs of commenters who will let him know right quick if he sucks. There’s none of the insulation provided by a big-time publication or a million-dollar salary or a like-minded clique. If you’re full of shit, you’ll know it because nobody will be listening anymore. You can keep wittering away, but to paraphrase the great Butt-Head: “If a tree fell on a band, and they sucked, would anybody care?”

Why on Earth are we still expected to take seriously the thoughts and opinions of people whose batting average wouldn’t get them a shot in short-season A-ball, just because they have a newspaper/TV show/radio slot/back page of the magazine?

Radovan Karadzic captured in Serbia

Two downsides:

1) They probably won’t execute him

2) Even if they did, they could only kill him once.

More’s the pity.

So the big audit is finally over. There’s a mandatory “outbrief” at 1 PM, which sounds like something vaguely dirty involving underwear that you’d see during Pride Week. However, I daresay that there will be no fit young blokes at this thing, but rather a slew of paste-eating special snowflakes* that send email of complaint using phrases like “self-appointed experts from the military-industrial corporate-lock-down security complex” with no apparent irony. Those of you who marched with the Rifles of the EUS when history was made will recognize this crowd in a second: Pre-Press.

(A Ghra Mo Chroi, I long to see the boys of the old brigade. Slainte, lads.)

Fortunately, since that particular show is closing, I am back to the firehouse role: sit around, wash the truck, pet the dog, and wait for something to blow up or burn down. I could really use a couple of days of complete downtime at work, not to mention a lunch hour longer than 35 minutes. See, the way I see it, if I’m an exempt employee, and I’m already there 8 to 5, a full hour for lunch and just to be away from the phone and the computer is the bare minimum required by a civilized society.

I have also smoked 3 whole cigars this week. However, it has been so long since I hit the cigars on a regular basis that I have permanently reverted back to the robusto size, which was my go-to ten years ago, rather than the “phone pole with a leaf around it” size of cigar that I was famous for back in the Old Dominion.

Just my luck, by the way, that when I cut my hair down to a 1 setting (as close to shaved without breaking out the Mach 3 as you can get), the weather suddenly turns cool and breezy and my God, it’s 62 degrees out there, are you kidding me? So much for trying to keep cool. Now I just have to avoid sunburn.

(I knocked down some more Black and Red last night, a.k.a. the Diamondback, a.k.a. the Darth Maul. That black-cherry cider is STRONG, but blending with Guinness cuts down the excessive sweetness without compromising the flavor. And they even sell kegs right down the road. I’m just saying.)

Right…time to order lunch.

* Blue Tarp Girl gets a nickel. Who Dat?

The bit that really sticks out here? “Tobacco shops”.

Really?

Really?

I’m sick of all this pussyfooting around. If you want to ban smoking, grow some balls and ban it. Completely. Otherwise, F off and quit pissing me off with the whole “death by a thousand cuts:” routine. If you don’t have the courage of your convictions, maybe you ought not be legislating.

And (insert enraged blasphemy here), quit trying to tell me that all this whining about burning particulate matter in the respiratory system doesn’t count for marijuana because it’s a wonderful magical organic plant that is nothing but good for you. Tiny burnt bits in the lungs is pretty much one and the same as far as I can tell, whether it’s a fine Bahia Gold Maduro, a stack of newspapers, or some of Dumpster Muffin’s beloved Oaxaca ditch-weed. (PJ O’Rourke gets a nickel.) I trust that the crackdown on cigar shops will quickly be followed with action against all these medicinal marijuana “clinics” that aren’t providing THC intravenously.

Actually, come to think of it, I would favor allowing medicinal marijuana in unlimited quantities…on the condition that it only be provided as a suppository.

• I’m not kidding about the Washington Post. When the Washington Times – run by Moonies and one step above the New Frontiersman (Watchmen reference, folks! Try to keep up) – is producing equal or better journalistic product, it’s time to fold up shop. The paper was circling the drain once before, in the mid-60s, and was kept afloat almost single-handedly by the brilliant sportswriting of the great Shirley Povich (pray for us). And while there’s all kinds of things you could call the Post columnists in 2008, don’t call them Shirley.

• Speaking of Old Media, let me just say this: the “satire” excuse is the last refuge of somebody whose joke sucked. Every time I criticize Starship Troopers, somebody always comes out of the woodwork to complain that it’s a satire and it’s supposed to be like that. Let me put on my English-minor hat and give you a hint here: “satire” is not a synonym for “shit on a shingle.” If people aren’t laughing at your satire, while it may make you feel smart to say that they just don’t get it, you should at least consider the possibility that in fact your work just blows.

• Shortest joke in the world, stolen without attribution: “Pretentious? Moi?”



• Seriously, I’ve been taking the New Yorker for almost nineteen years now. Nineteen years. Insert incredulous expletive here. Occasionally you do find some good stuff in there, but for the last few years you’re grasping to get three good articles in a month. I think it’s less a reflection on the magazine than on the fact that long-form magazine literature in general is taking a beating when so much content is freely available online, even if you don’t have the most staid and hidebound publication in the country. (Can you believe that the whole uproar about Tina Brown taking over the New Yorker was sixteen years ago? Does anyone even remember who Tina Brown was?)

• It’s amazing to me that I can get to more attractive destinations, faster and more reliably, by taking a heavy-rail commuter train than the VTA light rail. Even on the weekend, I can Caltrain to San Francisco and walk to O’Neills almost as fast as I can take the light rail and walk to O’Flaherty’s. In twenty minutes with Caltrain, I can be downtown in Sunnyvale, Palo Alto or Menlo Park. Twenty minutes on the light rail gets you to something called “Old Ironsides.” Double it and you’re still not close to San Pedro Square. Here we see the catch with public transit: to be effective, it has to go somewhere you want to be. They didn’t run the Orange Line on the Washington Metro out to Clarendon and Ballston; those communities grew huge and significant because the Metro was there, and it took two decades for them to get that way. Ironically, the route the VTA light rail ought to take is the exact route the Caltrain takes: roughly parallel to El Camino Real the length of the Peninsula. Instead, the light rail sets out from downtown Mountain View (a very viable destination, admittedly) and then takes two dozen stops and almost an hour to get downtown. On the way, it manages to miss every single mall, movie theater, downtown high street or other commercial destination that somebody might actually want to get to.

• Now that’s comedy. I just got a message in Friendster, which never happens – how they got lapped by MySpace and then Facebook is astounding to me, frankly, but there it is, and in fairness Orkut (from Google) has been a bigger bust than Dolly Parton’s got – and it’s some sort of spam that purports to be from my sister-in-law. However I sort of doubt that she has a “profiel” on “youare2cute.info”. Just a hunch.

* I do love my car. Zipping around on a cool summer night in a VW with the windows down and moonroof open is exactly what I was hoping for in 2004, and the Rabbit beats the ’04 New Beetle all hollow under the hood. Nevertheless, if I’d known in 2006 what I know now, I would definitely have bought the Vespa for less than a quarter the money and almost quadruple the mileage. It would be long since paid off, I’d be clocking ridonkulous cheap commutes relative to what I was before, I could still get almost anywhere I want that doesn’t require a freeway, and I could basically be one long Eddie Izzard joke.

• Very interested to see if The Dark Knight is better than Iron Man. Can’t fathom that the first Batman was more than half my life ago.



• Is it just me, or does the Stig always give the impression of always being just one more smart remark away from seizing Jeremy Clarkson by the throat and throttling him until his perm un-curls? Seriously, nobody has ever more perfectly conveyed such a perfect blend of frustration, contempt, and supreme talent wasted in an ignominious cause. I think the Stig must have been in tech support once. Actually, that’s ideal – the guy you send to somebody’s office to work on a machine should be clad in a firesuit and full helmet, no identifying marks, never speaks, just fixes and leaves. That way, you can still go to lunch in public without being accosted for help. Why we didn’t think of this in 1998, I have no idea.

• This post has been brought to you by Larsen’s Biscuits.

A TWELVE-part series on Chandra Levy?

Ladies and gentlemen, an official announcement: the Washington Post is no longer involved in any form of journalism. Refunds of subscription will be posted presently.

Jimminy Christmas, where the hell can I go in this country to get news that adheres to higher standards of newsworthiness than The View?

Guinness + black cherry cider = the Black and Red, a.k.a. the Diamondback.

God I’m money!!!

Man tells why he’s first in line for iPhone

…the last big cross-country drive. This would be the last voyage of Danny – Arlington to Alabama to Silicon Valley. Well over 3000 miles to drive in the heat of July, from my old life to my new.

In retrospect, after all the stress and strain of the final months in DC, it was ideal. I had about a dozen cigars – lovely parting gifts from the crew at my old shop – and there were 12-packs of soda in cans for $2 each in the grocery store in my hometown, so I loaded up – and my little cooler could be filled with ice every morning. So there I was, all day every day, flying down the interstate keeping pace with the wife’s car in front of me. (Usually. We have a mildly differing philosophy on convoy tactics.) Cigar smoldering in one hand, ice-cold Buffalo Rock ginger ale between the seats, new XM radio playing everything from Outkast to Jefferson Starship to the Pixies to the Doors to “A Secretary Is Not A Toy” to BBC World Service for 4 hours at a stretch. Sunlight gleaming off the blue lenses of the wireframe shades, arm slowly baking to well-done on the windowsill, the wind whipping right through me.

(And a good thing too – turns out the thermostat was broken and the fan assembly wasn’t kicking in, so all I had to keep the engine from boiling over was a steady stream of fresh air on the intake. Which was problematic, say, stuck in rush-hour traffic in Denver where they barely have air to begin with. Taking a car with 190,000 miles on a cross-country joyride may not have been the smartest thing I ever did.)

We got to drive what will someday be I-22 across Mississippi, and I hope they have the sense to keep the billboards off it, because it is gorgeous. We stayed in the Peabody in Memphis, we saw the ducks, we ate in B.B. King’s club, and we rolled out of town on the 50th anniversary of the day Elvis Presley recorded “That’s All Right Mama.” We stood on the banks of the Big Muddy at New Madrid and read about what a real earthquake can do to you (and everyone else in a 500-mile radius). We stayed in the Bob Dole-Arlen Specter Suite at the AmericInn Suites in Russell, Kansas, with real live tornadoes visible out the drivers-side window in the worst thunderstorm I’ve seen in a decade. We stopped at every Dairy Queen between Hannibal, MO and Wamsutter, WY. We saw friends and relatives and took great advantage of the opportunity to couch-surf, and a good thing too – I had no idea when I would find a job. (As it turns out, it only took about three weeks before I started one, for which I was profoundly grateful.)

Well, I wanted a new beginning and a fresh start. Interesting to see how things have progressed.

BTW, secret code message to the Rifles of the EUS: after a week of Special Forces, I am now getting ready to go floor by floor and obtain Reports from the Underground. The rest of the administrators are trying to figure out how I covered twice the systems in half the time, and they don’t seem to be satisfied with the explanation that I “went all Mowbray on that ass.”