Dreams

Last night I had a dream that I was interviewing a composer for a semi-famous situational comedy on television. And in his promo picture he was wearing a tuxedo with three hoodies with hoods up, pulled back on his right side to reveal his pierced ear. The interview went well except he refused to call me by my name.
I miss the good ol' days when I only had nonsensical dreams about childhood games, Mayan rituals, and killer deer.

Ponzi Schemes

CNN has an interesting article about a former chairman of the NASDAQ operating a multibillion Ponzi scam. I always find this kind of stuff interesting as to how people are able to successfully dupe investors or to see if someone has created a new way of scamming people.

Ponzi schemes are pretty simple: a scammer goes to investors and promises higher returns in a shorter amount of time compared to other types of investments.
The investor puts up the money, and the scammer takes the money and goes to other investors, makes the same promise, and receives more money. The scammer turns around and pays off the original investor, making good on the scammer's promise for a return in a short time period. Then, the scammer offers a higher return if the investor leaves his/her money in for a longer amount of time. The investor invests more money, and the scammer takes the larger amount of money and pays off the second set of investors, tells them the same thing told to the first investor, and the scheme goes back and forth. Either the scammer runs out of money to pay the investors, and they investigate the scammer and discover the scam, or the scammer will be able to pay out the majority of his investors, leave a few investors with diminshed returns, but not before he ultimately makes off with some money and closes the scheme before detection.

It's just that it's worrisome to see a chairman of the freaking NASDAQ to have actually operated a Ponzi scheme. What's next? Hedgefunds?

Deep Thoughts

Instead of a catnap, I wonder what taking a dognap would be like. I'm betting it involves a lot of drooling, snoring, and running in place.

The Importance of Heat

Tea and temperature go hand in hand. I try and aim for about 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit for green tea and a little cooler for white tea, a little more for rooibos and wulong, and boiling or close to it for black (or Chinese "red" tea) and pu'er teas. I'm really not that choosy when it comes to tea steeped at approximate temperatures, because I can only tell 3 things about tea and temperature: if the tea has been brewed in tepid water, hot water, and boiling water. And honestly, the taste gives the water temperature away. Tepid water yields weak and watery tea, hot water yields a better tasting, thin tea, and boiling water produces good tea.
But, the next thoughts in this next paragraph don't hold any water (har har) for green and white teas. Today I brewed up some sheng pu'er, the Xiaguan 2007 Tibetan BaoYan, in a porcelain mug. The taste was a little different than what I was used to, much cleaner in a sense, but I attributed my taste familiarity with this tea to my yixing teapot and unlined yixing cup which I use for this sheng. Maybe I was getting flavors from other teas previously brewed in the teapot and the cup, and that this brew of Baoyan with "tea masala" is what I'm used to. But as the body of the porcelain mug got unbearably hot to hold and forced me to grip its handle, I realized that the water was not staying quite as hot as it would in my yixing.
I noticed this in later infusions where the tea tasted very good, but somewhat dulled. I tried warming up the mug with hot water and then infusing my tea, but I still got the dulled taste. I guess porcelain doesn't insulate quite as well as clay. It's interesting because I've never noticed this before with green and white teas, but they only require semi-hot water for good tea. Pu'er just seems to like very hot water to brew properly.

And I'm still wondering if perhaps I should dedicate my yixing cup to one type of pu'er, or if it too will season along with the pot and enhance teas in one way or another.

An Existential Minimalist Christmas

As our corporeal beings accelerate towards the coming of the Winter Solstice usurped by the Christian holiday of the birth of Jesus Christ and that amusing television situational comedy's day of praise for Festivus, I have looked into the depths of my brain to determine if what I am experiencing is in fact real and if I have any way to prove it. The slap that I gave to myself consequently hurt, but that does not make my life nor anything in it real. I may have dreamt that my tender cheek ached, and yet unable to wake myself from a horrible Lovecraftian nightmare.
In other words, I am in a festive mood for Christmas.

The gaudy songs that portray water in a solid matter precipitating upon terra firma, and subadults enjoying gamboling out in it make me weary. Anthropomorphic shapes of this "snow" that manifest themselves and exhibit cognizant behavior only excited me the first time. Ungulates of the far northen hemisphere that display genetic rostral mutations as a beacon of light in the 625-740 nanometer wavelength of electromagnetic radiation only serve my ideas that human life must be composed of boredom and misery in order to be a full, well-developed human being. To summarize, I am tired of all these plebian sounds and words strung together to create "Christmas music."

So, what must a man do to feel that his life has meaning and worth? He must create or record for posterity an accomplishment that will appear as a tile in the mosiac of humankind's varied history. I am creating a song for Christmas. And if anyone knows how to upload midi files to this
infernal theoretical google blog, I would humanly appreciate it.

George Costanza

With the way my life is going right now, if I were bald, I'd be a doppelganger for George Costanza in terms of situation and outlook.

Pyramid Schemes or Vector Marketing

Great. In my quest to find temporary employment until the Navy godwilling comes through, I came across Vector Marketing. And my alarm bells went off ringing that it was a pyramid scam. Which it honest to god is. Let me explain.
Apparently sales(wo)men have to buy a set of expensive knives to display, and attend mandatory seminars and workshops for which they are not paid. That sounds like a ripoff, and it is, but it's not officially a pyramid scheme until you have to recruit more people to work for the company. As it turns out, there's a small bonus you can receive for recruiting friends to work for the company. All of this sounds very sketchy, but if I were to work for them, and I recouped my losses on the knives and gas and food, and turn a profit, there wouldn't be a problem right? Except there have been a large number of complaints lodged against them through the BBB and people seem to actually lose money working for them. To me, it seems like the company would make a considerable amount of money requiring people to buy the knife set, and then wait for another sucker to come along and get hired. I still don't fully understand why most of the on-line job finders are riddled with these companies or the ones claiming you can make millions from your home. There may not be a sucker born every minute, but a scam sure is.