Archive for May, 2010

Stick and the Eskimo

I once spent an inexplicable amount of time with an Inuit who told me that you can “reason” with a brown bear or a grizzly bear. If you happen upon either type of bear, you simply bargain – i.e., “Look, bear, I have so much salmon, you want so much salmon. Let’s be reasonable and cut a deal.” This Inuit claimed, however, that a Polar Bear was the one type of bear with whom “you cannot reason.” I hope that this is so, if Soros is indeed being pursued by such a bear.

Any amount of time with an Inuit is inexplicable. There is a reason the Quebecois detest them.

But it’s true, we are eminently pragmatic. And our desire for pragmatism is only boosted by our physicality. The carrot looks pretty good to your counterparty when your stick is a 1500lb bear that can knock your head off with one swipe. Hence, pragmatic, reasonable solutions to problems tend to happen. The government knows what I’m talking about. There is nothing else you will need to know.


If It Can Go Up, It Can Go Down

In front of me stood the majesty of the Mt Saint Elias, or as it’s know in bear — “Roarpaw Pawpawroar”. Snowcaps like candy. Its veins suffuse with glacial flows, drip-drip-dripping down to become streams, to become rivers, to become oceans. I stood on all fours, daintily perched on old Fisherbear’s stone, a sort of reverse-oasis in a fast moving current. As a 4 year old bear, there was no more exciting place to be in the middle of the salmon run. Your bear friends and family all looking on, depending on your savvy to bring home the salmon bacon. How I miss those days.

The Soros’* and Icahns of the world liken the salmon run to particularly memorable days in the market like Black Monday. Days when fortunes and reputations were made, and fortunes and reputations were lost. That works for me, being both a bear and a master of markets. And there resides an apropos lesson in that delicious little swimmer, the salmon.

Salmon are born in the shadows of the mountains. They swim downstream out into the ocean and flourish for years. Normal stuff, stuff you’d expect from any animal. But then they do a crazy thing, something oppositional to common sense. They swim BACK upstream. They fight for every inch up these fast-moving currents, just to spawn. All this takes so much out of them, they die right after. Science calls this semelparous. Bears call this fucking crazy.

But this taught me an important lesson about markets. Markets go with the flow for the most part and do the sensible thing. But eventually they will swim upstream, spawn and die. There is nothing else you will need to know.

*Last I saw George, he was being stalked by a particularly ornery Polar Bear with an appetite for FX speculators.


Bear With Me

ROARRRRRRYYYYYRRRRRRRRRAWNNNNNNNN! I am SOOOO sleepy. You people (I can say that shit without being racist, I’m a bear as sure I shit in the woods (which is amazing btw)) get all worked up and jonesing for frappucino when you have hunkered down for like 8 hours tops. Can’t function, face like a sat-upon powdered donut, hair like a goddamned hippy. Try 6 months, fools! You know what hibernating is like? Thermonuclear halitosis, especially if you didn’t do a good job flossing out them salmon bits. My hair looks like a frazzled mess. And dreams so vivid I could taste the shark in my mouth from when I gave it a massive dream beatdown. Still bracing from my return to a reality where not even Vegas will sanction a proper BvS fight.

Anyhow, I don’t know where the jokers who kept me in this cave are. I am mostly sure I didn’t eat them but the timing of my nap compared to the timing of their departures…and the fullness of my belly…and these human bones scattered about…that all begs some mighty serious questions. But fuck’em, I’m here and they’re not. It’s great for you because now I have the run of the place, and perfect timing based on what’s been going down.

So by way of proper introduction, I am Bear and I have an MBA from the “Harvard of Grizzly Maze.” Here is a shot of me at my desk. There is nothing else you will need to know.


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