Author Archive

Just Heard in My Morning Meeting

“They’re doing ok in pickles, getting their ass kicked in fish”

First person to name the company being talked about gets a link in this post. Update: Mara was the first to name the company and here is her link which you must click.

Recommendation: Long pickles and Mara, short fish.

Smooches,
JD


Learned/Heard/Seen This Week at BofA Conference

• After seeing that clip, I wish I was in the virtual ammunition business.

• Guy with a button on the back of his collar. The dress shirt equivalent of the superfluous third nipple.

• I have been replaced by my wife’s scottish terrier.

• We looked at Meow Mix, but we passed because we didn’t think we had the platform for it. But then, neither does Cypress [private equity shop who bought MM], but what do financial guys know anyways. [pause] Don’t tell them I said that.

• You can have a cup of Starbucks, or you can clothe your child.

• Buy our bonds, short our stock, try some capital structure arbitrage!

• Everyone from Lord Abbett seemed to be over 70 and at least part troll. Picture the last scene in Rosemary’s Baby. Now picture everyone who wasn’t John Cassavetes or Mia Farrow or the antichrist. Those are the people managing money for Lord Abbett.

• Puppie adoptions were up 40% after 9/11.

• My hunch is that there were far more people from Bank of America at the Bank of America Equity Conference than people not from BofA; the ratio of suits to non-suits speaks to this. Who wears a suit to a business casual conference?

Points are awarded to who can attribute which thing to which session. Note that we only have 14 points. Also note that not all points are equal.

-JD


This Girl is Not Attractive, so Short Her

Or more appropriately, you need to separate nubility from future attractiveness. [This is a response to Juggles and Edamame]

  • This is a flattering photographic situation. Slightly shaded, one side of the face, not too close. She could have giant legs and a fupa complementing her subpar bosoms. We don’t know.
  • Her face could be anything. She’s 19 and while she has the blush of youth, she does not seem to have the structure either in face or in body to withstand age and maintain any attractiveness, which she may or may not currently have. She will trend down, and then lose all she’s got by 31 when she will have the superficial sexual appeal of tapioca pudding.
  • She appears to have a chalky residue on the side of her feet. That is unacceptable and it’s example as to why you always have to check out the feet before consummating the relationship.
  • I guarantee you she is awful in bed.
  • While you both may agree, there is nothing that precludes you from both being wrong.

-JD

Background: Juggles linked me to this NY Times article, which focuses on girls who are on high riser tracks, are ambitious career-wise and attend prestigious schools but fully plan to end their careers and become stay-at-home mom’s at some as to yet undetermined point in the future. He wrote “she is cute, sign me up” (he actually writes like that) and that Kaiser agreed with him.

Recommendation: Short Emily Lechner and also Edamame and Juggles’s projection of women; long JD.


Long Self-Involvement

Our last two posts have been about ourselves, I’m sensing a trend. When I sense a trend, I lay down the big bones.

Recommendation: JD = Long Self-Involvement


You have only 375 songs on your iPod: The Idiot Demographic

I’ve been thinking about music technology on a couple levels. First of all, I’ve been drawing together a proper music snobbery response to two of Craig Newmark’s posts, the first about how technology has killed the rock snob star and letting him know what the perfect album is. During this process, I came across this tidbit of information via CD.com: the overwhelming majority of people use only a paltry percentage of their iPod’s total capacity.

Why is that? The most obvious answer to me is that most people have such small brains that they can only handle having 375 options available to them. The second most obvious answer is that there is a constant 18 month moving average of 375 top 40 songs.

But why do people continue to buy iPod’s, and other digital music players, at capacity levels which they won’t ever approach? Because people are stupid and cannot properly gauge what they need. Alternatively, people are vulnerable to the power of marketing featuring Bono gyrating in bizarro shadow relief video style.

A running theme here at LOS.com is that in every group of people, most of them will be idiots. Applying this maxim here, in any group of iPod owners, most of them will be idiots. This is good news for Apple.com as any growth they hope to achieve, now that everyone and my mother has an iPod, is dependent on the continued existence of the Idiot Demographic (aka TID). Oh you have released a product which already far outstrips anything I need, costs twice as much, and is difficult to order? I must have the OmegaPod Mini Shuffle!

We think that you can always bank on idiocy. The post-war diamond industry was built upon this. So we will continue to focus on business plans and companies which are dependent upon TID. Future entries in this series include “Why own when you can lease for 50% more? The Rent-A-Center Story” and “SBUX: Hot water and filtered dirt for $4.50.”

Full Disclosure: JD owns an iPod Mini and an iPod Shuffle. He fully embraces his inner-hypocrite.


Short My Own Brain

JD here and my brain has been blown by the guys at MR. TC and AT usually hit me up with some mind bending econ, but this is something that has broken my cognitive visual powers to the nth degree. In this image square A and square B are the same shade of gray.

No, I didn’t believe it either. I looked it from every angle, I used every visual queue and I even tried some 3D glasses. Then KM hit me with this proof. Thanks KM, my brain is feeling less vulnerable now. My intuition will bounce back though, so be ready to jump on it long in the near future. Big time. JD out.


The New Guy

Hello. I’m a new poster, my name is Johnny Debacle. JD for short. My MO is abbreviations. Because nothing beats a good abbrev. Well, nothing other than a cooler, better abbrev. The only abbrevs that I can’t stand are overused, hackneyed abbrevs (e.g. LOL et al). But really, comparing abbrevs? Come on, find a better use of time.

I’ve noticed some of the other longorshort bloggers using really big words so I thought I’d kick it off by helping the readers who don’t understand them.


iconoclast
– this refers to a person who grabs on to icons, usually the ones on his desktop, and then drags them all over the place with no regard for human life. I know, random word huh?


esoteric
– this word is only understood by a small group of people, I couldn’t get a hold of them to get a definition.

Finally I’d like to say that I am the man. I was watching Miss Teen USA last night, and turned to my buddy right when Miss Teen Ohio walked out and I said: “she’s the best, she’s got the goods”. Two thrilling hours later, she was crowned.

Now she’s moving to New York and has free hair care for a year, and boy did she earn it. I can’t wait to email her. Also, her favorite song is “Eye of the Tiger,” what a GREAT answer to that question, ha, eye of the tiger, that’s just great.


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