International Work On Your Novel Weekend Approaches @10:12 AM
What are you going to do this weekend? Catch up on your CSI? Some light cleaning? Or maybe you could polish off two chapters in your dusty old novel! Maybe it's your first novel, the one that you would rather die before showing anyone? Or, as Michael Berger puts it today, "The one people will say, provided it ever gets published: oh that was just his first novel. That’s why it was so childish and so preoccupied with sex and werewolves and time travel." (Um, yes please.) Anyway, that is what he is going to do this weekend and why don't you join him? He is still hacking out the beginning of his, "which features a fire in an apartment complex, a food fight, a congregation of greaser bikers, fishnet stockings and a long walk to a haunted park." Sure! 8
Latest Richard Florida Takedown Has Big Dollar Figures @3:10 PM
Just about everyone has written a Richard Florida takedown, to which I say, the more the merrier. This latest entrant, by Alec MacGillis, takes a long look at Catalytix, which is "A Richard Florida Creativity Group Company," one that extols the virtues of and implements the Creative Class® philosophy that he espouses. This is a great racket. READ MORE 6
Things You Can Own: "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" @1:15 PM
There are so many new exciting sources of investment income these days! Fortunately you can own 25% of 20% of 50% of the performance royalties only of 80s pop hit "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off," as recorded by Jermaine Stewart, long dead now, and then you can retire, because you will be rich. Or stupid. (Here, the math: for every dollar earned that qualifies for performance royalties, you get, lesse: OH A SHINY ROUND 2.5 PENNIES.) 5
Ruth Madoff To Walk? @4:43 PM
Um, that's weird! The Feds gave Ruth Madoff her passport back, "which apparently indicates that Lady MacMadoff will definitely not be charged with any role in the scam." Maybe she is innocent! Or promised immunity! Or maybe the world has gone mad. 4
Rich People Things: The Great New PR Campaign For Traders And Their Friends @2:19 PM
It was easy to miss amid last week's great celebrity die-off, but while a nation turned its lonely eyes to the departing shade of Billy Mays, the securities industry moved into what it ominously termed the "execution phase" of its campaign to roll back "populist" resentment against the lords of the paper economy. READ MORE 6
'Gossip Girl': The New York City Tour (For Morons) @11:43 AM
We don't really have to do anything more than quote the headline on this press release: "Experience a Day in the Life of Manhattan's Elite on the Tour of 'Gossip Girl' Sites." But seriously: what, you can't walk into Henry Bendel all on your own, without someone telling you it was on the T.V.? It's a fucking department store! READ MORE 0
Citi, Bank Of Liars @10:39 AM
Citigroup's quarterly results, announced this morning, are a huge pile of bullshit. That the New York Times would headline their story "After Year of Heavy Losses, Citigroup Finds a Profit" is fairly dubious-although "finds" is hilarious. That's because Citi actually went out and found a way to make it look like they had a profit. We found a great explanation of what Citi did, in a toss-off by John Carney during the earnings conference call. READ MORE 2
