We're closed.

I'm here.

"...just gimme an easier life and a peaceful death..."

Because sometimes there are subjects I don't get into because they don't fit the venue. Because change is good. Because evolution happens. Because I find myself not saying and writing things because of the general character of "Vincenzo's". And just because.

Everything will be moving here in a bit. I'm seeing how I can arrange things. That other place is not officially OPEN yet.

I've brought most of the blogroll over. Update if you'd like.

No crisis or anything close, need to recharge and come back in a new unit of time. Not sure if there will be changes to the venue, but feeling a bit restless.

Spur of the moment, so no time to engage some good subs to guest post. Be back soon!

I'm boring and you aren't helping. Maybe time to change the routine? The music changed... go to the sidebar for the new one. If I disappear I'm thinking. If I don't, what?

That is all.

In fact they will give it to you up to 10 times. But you can't go out and buy iPods or comic books with it (though you could buy Apple and Marvel if you wanted). And though Marketocracy is an online game, if you are good enough, it could turn into a job. Allow me to explain...

You go to the Marketocracy website and do the free sign up. You can immediately pick the level of email involvement you want, from nothing at all to paid newsletters. No muss, no fuss. Then you can - if you want - play a little game. Using the rules as they exist in the real world, you can get $1,000,000 in virtual money and start your own virtual mutual fund. You use that million to build a collection of stocks. You can name your fund, write a description of the strategy (or not), and buy and sell within the context of your "fund" as you will. Then (still for free) they track you and everybody else who is playing and you get updates (free) every day just by logging in and seeing how your picks are doing. They use the laws that govern the running of actual mutual funds, but you don't have to know them because if you stray from the rules they just highlight it for you. You can run up to 10 separate funds.

I have 6 so far and they're doing OK but they are still new - only a few weeks old. The one I am having the most fun with is the one I'm calling the Ventnor Avenue Fund. In it I have stocks that mimic the stuff on a Monopoly board; railroads, water and electric utilities, real estate, hotels, banks - even a company that runs jails, for God's sake.

Anyway, if you are so inclined, the opportunity exists and you play when you want to.

Who knows, after watching you trounce all the big boys, they may just tap you on the shoulder one day and hire you to do it in a bigger universe.

Labels: investing

This is all Gino's fault. I tried and I tried to not copy it but it is just too much for me to resist. The most proper title is as stated...

WHY NO ITALIAN MUSLIMS

That ain't right. That can't be right.

Can it??

Labels: modern society

...it only makes me want it more.

I am compiling a list of things I have to do before I croak.

One thing I want to do before I kick the bucket is to ride in an open-air prop-driven airplane. Preferably a World War I vintage rust bucket. Anyway an open-air cockpit. Because.

Another is to drink absinthe until I am Vincent Van Gogh. Well not exactly Vincent Van Gogh, but close to it.

So I'm going around the internet minding my own business and researching absinthe (supposedly a legendary drink of the old artist colonies of Paris in the 19th century that made you crazy and see "the green fairy" and create great art and kill your parents or something), when it dawns on me that there is still a hoodoo-voodoo thing going on over absinthe in the States. One reference even says it is illegal to sell a product that contains thujone (the active ingredient in wormwood-based absinthe) but not quite illegal to buy it - they think. I've seen references that say you can't transport it across some state lines. I know they are selling it out of New York and New Jersey, but the warnings on some of these sites says it is your responsibility to know whether or not it is legal to ship it into your state.


OK well... you just have to know that this is really getting my interest up.

Then I noted on eBay that you can get kits of the two main ingredients that you can mix in the comfort of your own home (hence legal to sell because, technically, you're not buying absinthe itself), but then you'll find sites that warn you that there is only one authentic kind of absinthe that will kill you and to avoid "bad alcohol" absinthes because they'll kill you. Anyway it had been banned for decades because of a naturally-occurring ingredient called "thujone" which, according to the devotees, is horribly misunderstood. Apparently the old school anti-absinthe crowd believed it gave you fits and made you suicidal and turned you blind or found you talking to wraiths on the corner.

So how is it that there is an entire subcultural thing going on out there and I missed it? And did you know that if you follow all the reference links in this article you, too, will be pulled into it?

I have to get to the bottom of this and I'll tell thee what... I not only want to taste absinthe once before I die, I want to drink enough of it to see the Green Fairy. Just once.

Don't prohibitionists know how it works yet? Say you can't have it and you've created a market! It's brilliant.

Labels: ancient gizmos, drinking, resolutions