It's all about the Benjamins

Okay seriously guys

Our Bennyfactor — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:41:06 +0000

Dear J. Crew:

I know that you’re sorry about pissing me off because you made your sizes too small for a few seasons. I appreciate that you’ve been trying to make it up to me since Christmas by listing more clothes than just dress shirts in XL-Tall and XXL. You’re even selling the only pair of jeans I would ever consider wearing for reasons of fashion rather than just doing farm work – 501s – and I’m willing to overlook the fact that you made up some silly reason to charge a buck forty for them. I mean, it’s okay, the ones I already have will last another 10 years so I’ll just buy another pair for 40 bones at J.C. Penney if they still exist in 2019. It was a good effort by you guys, and I appreciate it.

But this here offering, J. Crew. That’s just flat out groveling for me to buy stuff from you again. They’re not even some sort of silly special edition like you did with the converse shoes. You have listed $55 black adidas sambas. You know, the ones I can get from the Kern Bros for the exact same price, and have repeatedly since they still sold them in green back in the early nineties. I mean, look, okay, I’ll buy some new shirts once I get another paycheck, you don’t have to pander that hard.

Love and kisses,
Our Bennyfactor

Did you know that when it comes to economic policy…

Our Bennyfactor — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:43:13 +0000

I AM AN EXPAIIIIIIIRRRRT?!

Yeah, so thanks to one of the cool kids from Hardizzle, Ian Thomas, I got a chance to play the hottest Ben Bernanke simulator around: The Bailout Game. On the first play through all you haters ought to know that Our Bennyfactor stemmed off the the recession, only spent about 30% of the 700 billion bailout package, and, oh yeah, that’s right. The DOW was at 16k and climin’ vavy! Do you know why? That’s right, just like my main man J-C Trichet,

I GET MONEY.

Let’s see how you guys do! I think I’m gonna try to keep things going without bailing out GM next time.

PS And if the Notorious is out there still reading this, could you make a real Ben Bernanke sim? You know, like Gran Turismo, only it would be THE REAL CENTRAL BANKING SIMULATOR. Instead of starting out with like a ‘81 CRX or a ‘83 Corolla Levin, the player would start out with a selection of say, an entry position a member bank of the Eurosystem or the Federal Reserve, and move up the ladder. Or, maybe, as the head of some LDC’s central bank and try to make that LDC a regional economic powerhouse. You’d have at least one buyer.

The best part of wikipedia is the vandalism

Our Bennyfactor — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:02:58 +0000

So I was reading this article on slashdot about how paypal reneged on a bunch of payments to Indian subscribers, essentially because Paypal pretends not to be a bank and the Indian central bank is turning the screws. At least, that’s why according to this slashdotter Naturally the first thought to my mind and that of many other was that beautifully racist phrase “Indian giver” and naturally somebody posted a wikipedia link. It’s pretty informative about the possibilities of the origin of the phrase, and then, you know, I scrolled down to the “See Also.”

PRICELESS, ERR

Intuition once again substantiated by facts

Our Bennyfactor — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:39:05 +0000

Ever since I moved to Norfolk I’ve always thought that traffic was terrible and that these people drive like idiots! Turns out I’m freaking right and here are the statistics to prove it:

Most likely place in Va. to crash is Hampton Roads (Virginian-Pilot)

Oh, and here’s some delectable morsels:

On average, there’s a traffic accident in Hampton Roads every 19 minutes. Every 2½ days, someone dies from one of those crashes

The leading causes of accidents here include following too closely, distracted driving and failure to yield.

AKA, driving like idiots!

A taste of the old vitriol

Our Bennyfactor — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:24:00 +0000

Did you know that there are people out there who don’t believe that people drank alcohol in classical antiquity? Did you know that these people probably call antiquity “Bible Times” but never distinguish between classical antiquity of and the Late Bronze Age, which are so totally like 800 years apart? And plus in the Late Bronze Age they only had a little bit of iron, which must have been a pain in the butt when you were a bronze-age military going up against an early iron-age culture that also had a guy that was really a lot taller than you were? Oh and also did you know that these people are uniformly uniformed?*

WELL NOW YOU KNOW DEAR READERS.

So what is wine anyway? I’m a big fan of chianti, almost as much as San Pellegrino (1 2 3 4 5 6 7), so I know a little bit about how it’s made**. See, the really cool thing about grapes is that they in a symbiotic relationship with yeast; the yeast grows on the grapeskins and then, when one mashes up the ripened grapes to get the juice out, the yeast comes along for the ride and helps preserve the juice: by turning it into wine!

You see, grape juice as we know it didn’t exist until somebody invented it – I’m serious – until the 1860s. That fresh-squeezed stuff from the recently-picked grapes isn’t grape juice even though I called it that, it’s more like a grape cider, since it’s got a bunch of mush and grape solids in it. But anyway, you take this freshly-pressed grape mash and put it in a container, and, in about a week, you get primary fermented wine! So what the little yeasties do is take the sugar from the unfiltered, unpasteurized grape juice-and-bits and convert some of it into ethanol and carbon dioxide, which acts as a preservative, killing off bacteria (but not the little yeasties). In classical antiquity, an easy way to make a sealed container that could handle the expansion from the creation of a bunch of CO₂ (and concomittantly enthanol, hereafter known as “booze”) was a bag made out of animal skin. And then, after the primary fermentation is done, one filters the wine, pours off all the carbon dioxide (otherwise known as fizz) and puts it into another sealed container where it undergoes some secondary fermentation to bring the alcohol level up to about 12%. These days this is usually done in an oak barrel or maybe in the glass wine bottle, once again in those heady Bible Times they used the ol’ animal skins. In fact, they used the old ol’ animal skins because secondary fermentation doesn’t make a lot of fizz (red wine doesn’t have a head like beer does, or champagne – which is a complicated production) and thus wouldn’t pop an old, hardened wineskin that had already been stretched out once already. Because you know, unlike today the ancients just didn’t waste packaging when they were done with it, they, uh, recycled! For example, here’s a quotation from a source written down during the Classical Roman period:

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, “The old is good.”

Man those crazy Greeks and Romans and their enjoyment of well-fermented vintage wines and drinking different kinds of wine and saying things like “the old is good”! Man I wonder who was the writer of this mysterious quotation Ben Lamb just put in there, maybe it was like Virgil or Cicero or some crap, or maybe Martial since he was always writing about scandalous activities.

Oh but hark, what heading from yonder leather-bound volume breaks? ‘Tis the fifth chapter of Luke, and Jesus Christ the speaker. You know, that guy whose first miraculous sign was making a bunch of booze at a wedding? Yeah, him. Well, my stomach hurts and I just had another winter nosebleed so I’m going to follow the advice of a wacky ex-Pharisee and get off the Internet for a while.
—
*Well at least, the people who doubt the consumption of alcohol; though I guess the bronze-age militaries facing iron-age militaries were uniformly informed of, uh, ironmaking.

**PS Czech this photodump for some serious old school shots of Ivo.

IAATB.net is well within the Cone Zone

Our Bennyfactor — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:23:11 +0000

Like Andre 3000, I just want you to know how I feel.

Money money money is all you need

Our Bennyfactor — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:53:06 +0000

So I was perusing a great publication by the European Central Bank today, entitled “Price Stability: Why is it right for you?” On page 16, it starts with a nice little anecdote about the history of the word money. Well, hey! I know that EU documents are printed in a bunch of languages. While cognates for money exist in the latinate languages (where it usually means coin, but I have ignored this below for the most part); most of the northern tongues lack such a word. So I thought I’d do a comparison. Below is the text on the page 16 in the english document, followed by the French, Italian, and German versions. I have provided as literal of a translation as possible without quite crossing the line into the “Borg Saint Fred / Prate Port” sort of mock-translations that I so enjoy.

English version

French version

The history of the word “money”
Money plays an essential rôle in the modern economy. In a literal sense, there is a bit of truth in the adage that goes “Cash does turn the world”: modern economies could not function without money. The term money is of Latin origin. In ancient Rome, however, the word monetor or moneta signified a counselor, which is to say a person who warns or makes a certain person remember a certain thing. According to some historians, the signification of this word comes from a major event in Roman history. In 390 before Jesus, in a sanctuary on the Capitoline consecrated to the goddess Juno, a troop of geese alerted, by their honking, the Roman defenders to an attack of Gauls, which spared them from defeat. In a sign of remembrance, the Romans built a holy place dedicated to Moneta, the goddess who warns and gives council. In 289 before Jesus, the premier Roman hotel of money [Okay, this says 'first Roman mint', shut up] was constructed in the temple or in its proximity. Some pieces of bronze at first, and later, of silver, were struck. The face of numerous pieces portray the effigy of Juno Moneta. Hence, the world money derives from the name of this goddess.

The functions of money
What it is, the money? …

Italian version

Story of the term “money”
Money carries out a fundamental role in the modern economy and it’s certainly not an exaggeration to sustain that the latter would not function without it, this fact affirms the line from the song “money makes the world go round” (the denarius makes to go round the world). [The syntax of the previous sentence is extremely difficult to represent in English with any clarity.] The term is of Latin origin, but in ancient Rome monetor or moneta had the signification of “council” and came to be used for one who admonished or [caused to be] remembered something to someone. According to some historians, the actual sense can be drawn back to an important episode in the story of Rome: during the invasion of Gauls in 390 BC, the clamor of geese brought up in the temple of the goddess Juno upon the Capitoline alerted the Roman soldiers who in this way were able to push back the assailants. In sign of the gratitude the Romans erected a temple to Juno Moneta, the counseling or admonishing goddess. In 289 BC, in proximity of this edifice or inside of the same was realized the first Roman mint. On much of the money in that was coined, utilizing at the first moment bronze and successively silver, figured the head of Juno: the term money derives thus from the appellative [epithet name] of the goddess.

The functions of money
What is intended by money? …

Auf Deutsch

What is money? …

['Geld', the German word for money, comes from the world for 'gold', which would require a rather banal story of its etymology so they didn't even bother.]

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

All you heathens take note

Our Bennyfactor — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:17:36 +0000

By your refusal to say ‘Happy Holidays’ I will understand you to be engaging in a War on Ben Lamb’s Birthday and also sort-of Thanksgiving and New Year’s. These are integral parts of the True Meaning of December (parties and Christmas tree smell and snow), which is the moral bedrock of our society and also something about the founding fathers.

Uh, inspired by this malarkey.

Things I’ve learned about Nor’easters and Norfolk

Our Bennyfactor — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:13:23 +0000

So since Wednesday there’s been a hurricane-based weather pattern bearing down on my dumb house here in Norfolk (called a Nor’easter primarily because the press has been full of pseudo-folksy baloney for over a century), which I initially decided to use as for a parody of those TV-news “live remotes” with some idiot standing on a beach during a hurricane, and the new phenomenon of “liveblogging” or “livetweeting” technology events, like Steve Jobs talking about a tiny upgrade to an iPod. The next twenty numbered links are my performance art piece of a livetweet (Ben Lamb, performance art, yeah right): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

So anyway as hilarious and fun as that was on Thursday afternoon, things only got worse. Lots and lots worse. At about 8:30 PM I lost electricity simultaneously with a loud explosion noise, which was probably a transformer! But not one that was kind of cool in the 1980s, no, just the kind that live up on telephone poles.

Well, the outage continued through Friday, and, while I was able to get out of Norfolk, finally, after the roads stopped being so flooded, and have dinner with some of my friends that live in Virginia Beach, I came to the conclusion that I would be in the 19th century for the long haul as Dominion Power continued to roll back the day on which they expected to be able to restore power. I bought a few bags of ice without too much hassle from the gas station, put them in the refrigerator, and went to bed. Next morning I decided to go up to the part of Hampton that is more affluent and has some enormous sporting goods stores to score a tent heater, and either a power source or maybe a shotgun.

Yeah well eff youuuu Ben Lamb! Because here’s what I learned happens when Ben Lamb tries to be self-sufficient and proactive about living in a cold, dark, drafty house with no heat or light thanks to a Noreaster!

Want to sleep in a little, since it’s not like you can see anything in your house until it’s 10 AM or so? Too bad! Some deranged man will stand in your street at five o’clock in the morning, shouting unintelligbly– that is, unintelligibly except for the curse words!
Feel like it’s okay because your doors are locked and your security system has a battery back-up! Oh you silly face, it’s been 32 hours since you lost power and just as the deranged guy gives it a little breather, the alarm merrily panel chimes in “Very low battery. System disarmed. BEEP!” Too bad you didn’t buy that shotgun last year when all of your disposable income wasn’t paying for heating oil and servicing credit card debt.
It’ll take an hour to get to Hampton. It doesn’t matter if its only seven miles. It just will. And people will camp out in my blindspot! Because that’s the most attractive place to go camping. It’s like a freaking KOA out there behind my left rear quarterpanel.
Bass Pro Shop is like an enormous hillbilly bed bath and beyond. The item you’re looking for will be sold out, but the more expensive one will be there, promise! Everyone will be so friendly to point out to you that indoor tent heaters aren’t for indoor heating even though it says on the box that the thing is for indoor heating and has a low-oxygen automatic shutoff.
Remember how you used your cell phone internet to check the Virginia State Police website to ensure you could buy a firearm with an out-of-state driver’s license? Yeah whatever Bass Pro Shop requires 2 forms of Virginia ID and they only have nice inexpensive Italian shotguns in black plastic or hilarious hayseed camouflage LULZ
Oh but hark, what sign through yonder storefront breaks? IT IS THE LOWE’S, AND “STANDBY GENERATORS AVAILABLE” IS THE SUN. It’s 700 bucks with tax and all the relevant equipment, but whatever, I need electricity, right?
Cici’s Pizza is actually a pretty cost-effective food solution for Ben Lambs. I really don’t have any complaints about this, but I just thought I’d mention it.
Hahe ignoring sign before the hampton roads bridge-tunnel that says “all vehicles carrying propane tanks stop for inspection” 8D I mean, they’re only little 1-gallon tanks and the sign has an outline of the 20-gallon kind for a gas grill! KABOOO– no, wait, I made it through the tunnel without exploding, nevermind.
Did you just try to manhandle a 200 pound generator box out of the back of your station wagon? OH HAI, we restored your electricity service. At least you didn’t get it all the way out of the hatch yet and only mashed one finger, dumbass.
Remember how surprised you were that your basement never flooded during all this mess! One inch of water is now on the floor that wasn’t there this morning, even though it’s stopped raining! Nobody has any pumps at any hardware store, though. Get real!
Hey, how about you trip going up your back stoop while trying to put your phone in your pocket? Don’t want to ever find the battery cover ever again? Well you’ll love to know that even if you hold the battery in with your fingers to turn it back on, the screen has spiderwebbed!
Really, why did you bother with that ice in the refrigerator! Silly! All the meat and milk still spoiled and now there’s water all over all the shelves and in your nice bag of grated pecorino romano.
PS isn’t it great that Bass Por Shop wouldn’t sell you a shotgun? Because now would be a good time to SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FACE*

Yeah well, I guess that’s the real Ben Lamb advantage! On a weekend when you are supposed to get ahead of your course schedule you’re out 800 bucks and a cell phone! Should have just acted on my initial instinct and stayed in bed all day.

*Ben Lamb is not actually suicidal. Actor portrayal. Results not typical. A stoeger 2000 is primarily a terrorist goose-hunting weapon and has much too long of a barrel to be able to cause self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the face of Ben Lambs. See inside for details. Void where prohibited. No firearms sales to California. Offer not valid in Canada.

Guess who’s not politically “unstoppable” anymore

Our Bennyfactor — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:28:37 +0000

No, not President Obama. Bob McDonnell has been shown in polls to be the likely winner of the Virginia gubernatorial election since as early as February 4th of this year (Rassmussen Poll, see section 3), so that’s no suprise. The Republican candidate for king of the nation’s trash-heap, you-know-whaddi-mean had been trending above Corzine since roughly the same time period (Qunnipiac see paragraph six, Rassmussen). Corzine only started to show intermittent leads against Christie at the end of September, and failed to consolidate these late gains.

Look I’m not even going to talk about Michael Bloomberg or New York City or how they’re hatin’, comptrollin’ and tryin’ to catch me bloggin’ dirty (tryin’ to catch me bloggin’ dirty).

But what I am going to talk about is the failure of the “tea party” types (viz. Sarah Palin and her ilk) to cause their proxy to win a congressional district in northern New York. Not that these guys were ever unstoppable in the first place, but they sure have acted as if they were. This New Yorkist constituency is no mean district, rather it’s one of the most Republican districts of the 20th century:

NY-23 previous elections analysis

So the original Republican candidate wasn’t “conservative” enough for you, Ms Palin? She wasn’t “Republican” enough, so you and your friends ginned up a candidate who was more easily countenanced by your delicate right-wing sensibilities? Maybe next time instead of worrying about whether or not a candidate is conservative enough, you should worry about a candidate being electable enough, since, after what was incredibly heavy campaigning for an off-term vacancy election, your little goon COULDN’T GET ELECTED IN A SLAM-DUNK REPUBLICAN DISTRICT.