Long or Short Capital

Shaken from Katrina, people and stock markets are over-reacting. When everyone assumes the worst, plan for slightly better.

Recommendation: Short Hurricane Rita, Long puns.

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.

Hi. I’m here to tell you the history of shaving. It all began with cavemen, they had long hairy beards and the beards were sweaty and dusty.

Then, in 1904, a company called Gillette invented the “safety razor“. The safety razor was a single-blade razor that made shaving cool and fun and everyone did it. The single-blade safety razor set off a wave of innovation that would last for the next 100 years.

In 1971, after more than 60 years of research, Gillette realized they could double their revenues if they sold a razor that had (get this) TWO blades. That’s right, the dual-blade Gillette Sensor Excel took the shaving industry by storm and it was another 30 years before the inventors at Gillette could improve this model.

At the turn of the millennium, Gillette surprised the world when it rushed to market the Mach 3. This razor had 3 blades and a cool name that made you feel like you were shaving at three times the speed of sound. I was in college at the time and before every dorm dance all the guys would shave with the Mach 3 and then talk about it. However, Gillette did not know this would wake a sleeping giant and the giant’s name was “Schick” and Schick was very tired of losing the race to see how many razor blades you could convince someone to buy at one time.

Schick decided to give Gillette a dose of its own medicine and launched the Schick Quattro. For those of you that don’t already know “quattro” is Slovakian for “four”. The Schick scientists had surprised even themselves by fitting four full size razors onto one apparatus, unbelievable. Unfortunately for Schick, Gillette was already a step ahead of the game . . .

Yesterday, in what could herald the proximity of the millenial time of the six blades , Gillette announced it would begin selling the Fusion. The Fusion has a five-razor “shaving surface” and you won’t believe it until you see it. Ok, ready to believe it? Here you go:

The president of Gillette’s razor division compared shaving with the fusion to “a nuclear reaction in which nuclei combine to create power.” Sounds very comfortable to me. If you’re not pumped about shaving with the fusion yet you should check out these comments from the Gillette CEO and on their investor webcast:

Innovation is, and always has been, the life-blood of the shaving business. As the leader in shaving, Gillette always innovates. We always push technology to the limit. We always seek to provide superior consumer satisfaction, and men are always looking for a better way to shave.

They want superior closeness, superior comfort, superior overall shaving performance and a superior shaving experience, and they want this extraordinary shave on every part of their face. That includes those difficult areas like shaving under the nose, trimming side burns and shaping facial hair. Let me tell you that facial hair is not a concept Gillette usually mentions at an event like this, but today about 50% of men support some form of facial hair, whether it is moustaches, goatees, chin straps or soul patches. And, there is no easy way to shape or trim it. That is until now because our new brand will bring every man a better way to shave.”

You heard it hear first, Gillette has brought to the soul patch market the most sophisticated facial topiary technology available to date. What will they think of next? We don’t know, but we hope it involves more razor blades because we can’t get enough.

If it isn’t obvious by now we are long Gillette and see a soft market for unkempt facial hair. Sorry this post is so long, hopefully your facial hair is short enough to make up for it. Thanks for your time.

Recommendation: Long Gillette. Short unruly facial hair.

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

Blogsnob sucks. Pheedo sucks.

Long or Short has served roughly 4,000 impressions for Blogsnob/Pheedo. It’s supposed to be such that for each impression we serve we get a credit for 2/3 of an ad of ours to be served on another part of the Blogsnob network. This is the idea of traffic sharing. Our ads have been served at a rate below 20% of the amount we have served. This is the idea of traffic thieving. We have 2 clickthroughs to our site. What is the point? Pheedo is a bad service. When we short you, we crush you. Pheedo, you are crushed.

Recommendation: Short Pheedo.

Self-analysis of Long or Short. Judged and ranked for the strongest combination of humor and truth.

1. Perf: The Next Big thing. Abstract, yet tangible. And clearly, very true.
2. Supreme Court Dance Parties: Long. Truth was strong in this analysis, as this has been upgraded to Chief Justice Dance Parties, within only a month of our post.
3. Visteon: Analysis of New Ideas. A graph and fraternal due dilligience. This is why we’re the best there are at what we do.
4. Racialistness: Markets in Soul and Respect. An overview of the impact of the inputs of “soul” and “respect” on the music markets.
5. Proposed Changes to Koran Pt 1: Mortgage Friendly. Everyone wants an ARM these days, let’s not let religion prejudice a group of potential homeowners against “freedom” financing.
6. Mudpies, Creampies: Short, Long. Prefaced the whole OSTK hubbub. THAT is how you analyze.
7. The Number Z: Preempting the trend. Like Perf, but with numbers. When is the last time a truly new whole number came along?

Recommendation: Give us your money. Riches will follow. We’re long Long or Short Capital LLC. Feel free to advocate for your favorite.

Full disclosure: We are Long or Short Capital LLC, which may or may not bias our opinions of ourselves. All external advocacy will be ignored.

Justifying our cephalopod recommendation from July, witness this video in which a giant pacific octopus dominates a shark in acquatic combat. Here is the footage. We reiterate our long position. Keep in mind that if the stock begins to tick up, there is a lot of tentacle pressure that could push it through the roof.

Background via Collision Detection:

Okay, so — the Seattle aquarium had a couple of Giant Pacific Octopi, and for logistical reasons they had to temporarily put one of them in a tank holding several sharks. They figured the octopus would be okay because it can change color to conceal itself from predators. But over the next week, the marine scientists came into work to find sharks are lying dead on the floor of the aquarium. Whatever was going on? They stayed around one evening and trained a camera on the water to see.

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.

Pinnacle Entertainment (ticker:PNK) is a small-cap gaming company whose assets were particularly hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. Here is their Casino Magic Biloxi property.

The company yesterday held a call to talk about the damage they have suffered both in Biloxi and to their Boomtown New Orleans property. It was announced that the Biloxi casino needs to be rebuilt and will be with with the insurance proceeds. But the company faces a double-edged labor issue.

CEO Dan Lee, September 6th, 2005:

One of the ironic things we started looking at it and we are very concerned — what do we do with the 900 employees? We are continuing to pay them now. We can’t continue to pay them forever. No company can afford to pay people forever who are not working.

…

[Also,] how are [we] going to find people to work on rebuilding? Because as I said a minute ago, carpenters are going to be in short supply.

Labor on payroll that doesn’t fit their labor needs. Pinnacle has been handling this situation remarkably well, putting their workers’ first and handling the devastation with calm focus. Their solution to this particular problem is pure genius.

[Our] HR people are fervently trying to search out how to set up courses or classes for our employees that while we are getting organized, we teach dealers how to swing a hammer. And even people who work in housekeeping — there is a lot of people pushing brooms on construction sites.

We applaud PNK’s creativity under tough circumstances, even if we are dubious as to how well it will work in practice. The workers will definitely be incented to try and make the switch but most dealers I’ve seen seem to specialize in three things, namely, being a dealer, being a degenerate gambler on their spare time and ruthlessly crushing my spirit.

Actual message conversation between Mr. Juggles and me about our Google Adsense Ads, (which are very clickable, if you are, you know, into that kind of thing):

MisterJuggles: How many clickthroughs have we gotten this week?
Me: I don’t know. It’s difficult to sort out the legitimate hits with the constant and perpetual click fraud I commit on a daily basis.
MisterJuggles: *laughter*

Don’t worry about GOOG and YHOO though, as I’m sure I’m the only who does this.

As an aside, does anyone know where I can get Neil Diamond tickets?

Directnic.com is an ICANN accredited domain registrar based in downtown New Orleans. Through hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they have continued to be operational and have continued to nameserve hundreds of thousands of domains, thanks to the miracles of gasoline generators, human ingenuity and the effective provisions of gasoline supplies.

Even more amazing is that they are blogging about it live and supplying a live video feed, which they move around as action warrants. The blog tells tales of survival, provisioning, former special forces training kicking in, cops looting, thugs shooting and even some shots of the blog writer’s model fiancee.

Right now we’re trying to show you all the looting. Guys pushing shopping carts with 40 Nike boxes in them. People breaking into cars. Assaulting ATM machines. It’s hard just to sit by and do nothing. That’s property that belongs to other people and these animals are just taking it.

You know, this crisis is going to end. One day it is going to be over, and people are going to have to live with themselves and the knowledge of how they behaved. The cowards, the thieves, the murderers. We’re getting a guy on cam right now stealing tires from one car and putting them in his car. What a bunch of monkeys. No respect at all for their fellow man. Like I said, one day this is going to be over, and I hope the shame overwhelms these bastards.

This blog is incredible and worthy of linking. And Directnic.com is redefining reliability…assuming they survive and don’t get crushed by a wandering riverboat casino like that Holiday Inn did.

We’re long Directnic.com, because they have corporate intestinal fortitude.

The diamond industry has tailored over 70 years of marketing around the idea that a marriage is NOT a marriage without the BLING. Their recent campaign underscores their updated message in a world where the role and composition of marriage is changing.

This anniversary, show her your love is everlasting by saying “I Forever Do.”

Say “I Forever Do” as opposed to the first time you made that promise….but didn’t really mean it. Well now you mean it forever, you do.

Another gem:

Only the gift of a diamond, as timeless and unique as your love, shows her you would marry her all over again.

In the past, many men have tried to show their devotion by treating their wives with respect, providing for them, and accompanying them to watch romantic comedies involving a woman and her bookstore (or a woman, her dog and a bookstore. Or a woman, her dog, and her 3 best friends, one of whom owns a bookstore and meets guys on IM). And they were all wrong. Thanks to the diamond industry and their products backed with extensive empirical romantical experimentation, we now know that only the gift of a diamond will suffice to show your wife that you will love her for foreverido.

In May on their 1st quarter conference call, auto retail chain CSK Auto announced that they would be launching a secondary store initiative called Pay’N’Save. In the words of CEO Maynard Jenkins (via Streetevents):

Second, the Company has recently launched a new retail concept store named Pay N Save. Pay N Save, which targets a broader demographic than our CSK stores, represents one potential component of an important long-term growth strategy for CSK and is allowing us to develop new sourcing, particularly import sourcing for our merchandise.

Well, Maynard, that doesn’t sound so bad. What kind of goods will you sell at these Pay N Save stores?

Pay N Save stores plan to offer a consistent core of value merchandise, and I want to stress value, consisting primarily of tools, hardware, housewares and other household goods, seasonal goods such as tents, outdoor furniture, water toys, and a constantly changing array of unusual merchandise, such as industrial popcorn machines, garden windmills, full-size leather barber chairs, all at incredibly low prices.

Ahh the “Selling-Shit-from-China” business model. But, lest investors be concerned:

I want to assure everyone we understand what our main focus is and [we]will remain [focused on] automotive parts at CSK.

Because for an auto-retailer, nothing says focus like starting a whole new concept store to sell “an eclectic mix of items such as windmills, fishing gear, water fountains and bar stools.” CSK Auto, you win the Patrick Byrne Award for Operational Focus and Excellence. Congratulations, young padowan.

Last week I attended two concerts at Madison Square Garden: Eminem/50 Cent and Neil Diamond. Both were great shows and I fit in well at both in my pin-stripe suit and Hermes tie (my Hermes tie is sweet, seriously).

After attending these shows I’ve decided something important about the difference between Caucasians and African-Americans: White people have respect but no soul. Black people have soul but no respect.

Neil Diamond is a great person and his songs show respect for love (“September Morn”), his country (“We’re coming to America”), and blue jeans (“Forever in Blue Jeans”); but sadly Neil Diamond does not have a soul – and it’s pretty obvious to anyone who was at that show.

Mr. 50 cent, on the other hand, now his singing and dancing are filled with soul but his song titles show pretty obvious disrespect for young ladies (“Surrounded by Hoes”), drug addicts (“High all da time”), and gangsters (“You ain’t no gangsta”).

If anyone has any ideas on how to combine the respectful attitude of Neil Diamond with the rhyming soul of 50 cent please email me at kaiseredamame@gmail.com.