Procrastinet

I Am The King of Strong: Remainders

filed under: Dadditudes

UPDATE: Fixed the upload of "Witch's Vampire" so it should play now.

A couple more tracks from Max's improvised pop album I AM THE KING OF STRONG. The out-of-time tambourine is courtesy of baby brother Charlie, who wasn't really paying attention.

Witch's Vampire:

Bucket and the Cannon (Star Wars Version)/But That's All:

And, in the big two song finale -

The Sunniest Day in the Universe/It's Over and Far Away:

The whole "album" is here.

Free Fallin'

filed under: Stuff to worry about

I have a long history of attempting to prevent disaster by pre-emptively panicking about it. Click the heading "Stuff to worry about" above for many examples (no bird flu pandemic yet, right? You're welcome).

So here goes again: as the Dow and the S&P 500 set new record lows every day (we're back to 1997! To 1993! To 1932!) I read at Minyanville that the extremely bright Kevin Depew thinks that we've got a long way down before we can expect a bottom, because the entire psychology of the market (and by extension the country) has to shift before we can start to put things back together.

Key graf:

...going back to the early 1980s, as social mood began to shift from negative to positive, it became necessary to view long periods of benign economic conditions as the norm, and short periods of negative economic conditions as cyclical interruptions in the primary positive trend. That must be reversed now.

We are going to be experiencing long periods of harsh economic conditions interrupted by far more brief periods of improving conditions. Adjusting to this will be difficult. Many false starts in the form of brief economic bright spots will appear, but the inevitable return to the primary negative trend will crush any brief bursts of optimism until all reasonable people conclude there is no point in embracing optimism because things are only going to get worse. And at that point, we will have reached the bottom.

Read the whole thing here, though it turns into "technical analysis" which I think is the modern day equivalent of reading auguries in entrails.

I Am The King of Strong

filed under: Dadditudes

About a month ago, Max announced that he was writing an album, called "I Am The King of Strong." He had song titles for all of the songs for the album (something he has done before). But this time he actually started singing the songs, so we jumped for the video camera (the Flip Mino HD which I totally recommend) and got some of them recorded.

So here they are, the advance cuts from I Am The King of Strong (note: a couple of them are "covers" of songs by "The Great Sounds"). Don't let the confidence fool you - he's totally making all of this up as he goes along.

"Carbalone" (no I don't know what it means either)

"Break Up With Me"

"Great White Wind" (this is his power ballad)

Hey What's That Roaring Sound?

filed under: Stuff to worry about

Mid-December:

My dayjob firm calls a staff meeting to explain the steps being taken to deal with the troubled economy. "Don't worry," they say, "we have been planning for this and have taken steps that have insulated us from the worst measures that other firms are finding necessary. Primarily, there are to be NO LAYOFFS."

Today:

Staff meeting to explain that all floater secretaries have been let go. Employees of retirement age being offered voluntary buyouts. All employees being offered voluntary schedule/pay reductions. Once these measures are in place, "we'll see where we are" and consider "involuntary measures."

That took less than three months.

I think a lot of businesses knew things were rough and took the first steps to gird against it last year, but are only now facing up to just how bad it is and just how drastic those measures are going to have to be. Expect to hear more stories like this in the next couple months, as more people are given sudden and unexpected opportunities to re-evaluate their life priorities.

"Hey, why is our canoe moving so fast? And what's that roaring sound?"