I don't know why that damn cat thought I was going to get up and put out fresh food. One of the rules is cats don't get to wake me up to be fed and they're usually pretty good about it. I'm particularly annoyed because--of course--there was plenty of food there. I'd opened a can this morning, which they barely touched, and of course there are two kinds of dry food right next to that.
If this gets to be too prevalent, I can always stop opening cans and feed them only dry food for a week.
* * *
The first of two posts at Market Ticker says that we're entering a deflationary depression, and that we're in for a bumpy ride:
The next move down, unfortunately, should comprise almost four hundred S&P points and close to four thousand DOW points, and is likely to be more violent than what we just experienced. It could be worse too - it's possible that we see an S&P decline of more than six hundred points, basically cutting the indices in half, more-or-less "all at once."F...four thousand?
The DJIA is up over close yesterday by 430 points. It hit a nadir of 10,627 around 2:45 PM, then rose precipitously to close at 11,240. It's still down from where it was when the week began.
Imagine, then, that it somehow magically rallies all the way back to 12,000, and then the bombs hit. A 4,000 point drop would mean a DJIA of 8,000.
When was the last time it was that low? April 2009, it turns out; and it hit a nadir of six thousand and change in March of 2009. But it was sometime in the 1990s when the average climbed above 8,000 for the first time, and it was a year or so later that it stayed there.
*
The second post says that we're in for at least two years of shitty economy.
Vox Day translates the trader-speak. Interest rates are going to remain on the floor:
...[T]this announcement of zero interest money for a minimum of two years in advance is about as close as Ben Bernanke is ever going to get to admitting that the economy is in a depression until it becomes a matter of public record.*sigh*
* * *
This AoSHQ overnight open thread begins with a list of classic kid's books...and Have Space Suit--Will Travel is #9.
Considering that's my favorite book ever--
I've also read Charlotte's Web, Encyclopedia Brown, Three Investigators, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Mad Scientists' Club.
Not listed: Nancy Drew and Danny Dunn, both of which I read voraciously in my "tween" years.
...when I discovered that the Nancy Drew hardcovers could be had for the princely sum of around $6 each, I began buying them...in 2002-2003. I bought them in order and read them in order--but the project languished around the time I broke my finger and stopped having disposable income again. Perhaps I should consider finding those books, figuring out where I left off, and continuing.
I always preferred Nancy Drew to Hardy Boys. No, I don't know why, except there was this TV show in the 1970s:
...okay, Shaun Fuckin' Cassidy was a pop star around then. Remember that? I do, sadly, and it soured me on Hardy Boys before I ever tried reading any of them. When I saw the long line of both series at the Crete Public Library I sampled both, and never went back to the HB end of the shelf.
Okay, and as an adult let me say for the sake of clarity that Pamela Sue Martin, in that white sweater, jiggling along--damn.
The other thing in that post--the bit about Story of Star Wars--I still have that record around here somewhere (or at least I should) and I, too, know the movie by heart because of repeated listens to that thing, over and over and over again, in the summer of 1977.
...because in 1977, if you could even get a machine that could play videos, it cost many thousands of dollars (probably tens of thousands) and any copy you had of any movie would necessarily be either a bootleg, or cost thousands of dollars itself. This was, of course, slightly beyond the means of the average ten-year-old.
I can remember being excited when the Sunday night movie was going to be a James Bond movie instead of something lame. There was this crappy show about movie stuff that was appointment TV for me solely because they had special effects cuts from Star Wars in the title sequence. (They hooked their audience by doing their first ep on SW.) When the Sunday paper arrived I'd pore over the TV listings in hopes of seeing something good turn up; and most of the time there wasn't anything worthwhile on but the usual crap.
All that is gone thanks to the invention of home video. Being able to watch what I want when I want to is vastly superior to the excitement of seeing that Live and Let Die is going to be on tonight, with all kinds of commercial breaks and after the banal variety shows are over...but there's a football game on the other channel and Dad's going to watch that (because he's seen that goddamned movie twice already and the movie ends the same way every time you watch it)--and there's only one TV in the house because TVs aren't exactly cheap, either.
No; I think this way is better.
* * *
Well, I've got things that need doing; I'd better get after them.