Son cheval est son partenaire

January 25, 2008
  • White Russian milkshakes are the best thing ever. Especially when they’re made with [redacted], which I suppose would make the drink some kind of “beige” or “taupe” Russian.
  • Chai, on the other hand, is gross.
  • Bubble tea, on the gripping hand, is merely OK. The tapioca ‘pearls’ can be a bit much.
  • You have to eat the fortune cookie if you want the fortune to apply. Does anybody seriously dispute that?
  • There was a story in last week’s Washington Post magazine about a woman who had a shoelace break. She decided to replace the shoelace instead of throwing the shoes in the garbage, and that decision was apparently worth writing a page-long story about. Is that what American consumer culture has become? Is it that noteworthy when somebody puts forth minimal effort to repair something rather than discarding it and buying a new one? For fuck’s sake.
  • This whole ‘subprime’ fiasco, which would more accurately (in my decidedly non-expert opinion) be considered a ‘collateralized debt’ fiasco, reminds me of the following joke:

    Q. What do you get when you stir a spoonful of shit into a gallon of ice cream?
    A. A gallon of shit.

    (Apparently a lot of expert financiers thought the answer was “AAA-rated bonds”.)

  • This whole ‘subprime’ fiasco also reminds me of the lesson I learned from the S&L fiasco of the 80s, which I was far too young to understand at the time but read all about in Inside Job (which I highly recommend); a lesson that was reinforced by the Enron fiasco some years back. That lesson, of course, is that novel accounting practices are Bad News. Obviously that’s an oversimplification, but should you really be able to treat hypothetical money you might get in the future as a current asset? It’s like that other joke: If you owe the bank $100K, you’re in trouble. But if you owe the bank $100M, the bank is in trouble.

Songs of the Moment: «Nouveau Western» — MC Solaar; «Bonnie & Clyde» — Serge Gainsbourg

2 Comments

  • Aili says:

    Two things:

    Bonnie & Clyde is good.

    Hazelnut vanilla tea is bad. It was almost tolerable at the time of drinking (I don’t actually drink tea that isn’t twisted or at least iced, but I didn’t want to be rude) and now I just want to vomit. Hours later. Because I keep remembering its taste and smell.

  • Aili says:

    Oh god. I’m thinking I should just vomit.

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