Money gurus

.

My friend came by recently and the conversation turned to the markets. He had come by  a good deal of money  the hard way and over the past few years placed most of it in the financial markets, losing as of last week,  about two-thirds of it. He spread it around in accord with the advice of a "well regarded investment advisor"  who sold him  a "diversified portfolio" of mutual funds.  Which brings us to the point:

These guys don't know one damned bit more about investing than you do. 

Write that on your hand. 

Like used car peddlers, they work for commissions. 

The B-word

.

It isn't quite like Carlin's famous seven, but our northern-plains forecasters are reluctant to use bl****ard. Bad for business. 

So we haven't  had an official governmentally approved (B-word) yet this season. The worst I've seen in print is "whiteout," (code for "Drive and Die") due to heavy snow and high wind. That used to be a (B-word). 

But some of us use the word in conditions of carefully guarded privacy,  and that will sometimes raise the question of where it came from.  As a matter of regional pride, Midwest children hereabouts  are taught that it was invented by an Estherville, Iowa, newspaper writer to describe a spring storm in 1870. 

Which ignores a little bit of doggeral of the kind I've always liked -- an evil-repelling chant from  the early 1800s asking Divine protection against "gizzards and blizzards."

It also ignores one  contribution,  among many,  of the shooting sports to the English language. From the Newark (Ohio) Advocate for October 25. 1867: 

“I and Sam loded and fired as fast as we could, and at every broadside the black rascals fell in showers around us….The crow was keerful to keep as high abuv the rest as possible, but every time he’d lite we’d give him a blast. At length, toward evenin, we kind of hived him, and the last of the blackbirds in a big old tree….Now, Sam, sez I, now for big lodes and a simultuous blizzard!….How it did rain blackbirds….”.

It's sad that Estherville has nothing else to be proud of.

EDIT,  Sat. A.M.: Does NWS read this stuff? Or is Smugistan-on-Lake really in for it? Anyway, the dreaded  B-Word is now in our forecast.

  

 

Hey Al Gore, I got your ice right here

.

Yesterday's news held woeful laments for all that recently lost ice and snow  in northern Greenland. Relax Al. I just found it here in Smugistan-on-Lake.

You can have it back for free.  Just pay shipping and handling.

Speaking of Vermin

.

Perhaps I already mentioned Bernie Madoff, the former Naz chairman and investing genius accused of somehow managing to make $50 Billion disappear in a Ponzi scheme.

Turns out Bernie was active in politics, too, lavishing some of that $50 Billion on politicians and and K Street bandits. Among them:

"One of the largest recipients of Madoff largess was Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who received $39,000 from the family for his two Senate races." (AP) 

Senator Schumer is the virtuous fellow who keeps writing bills to make sure no one has any firearms except the military, the police, and the criminal class.