My Sick Mind

If you believe, as I do, that "The Star Spangled Banner" is a song about a war that we lost, and how the big positive of the deal is that "the flag was still there," then maybe you'll get this.  Whatever .... There has been a lot of bluster, screaming, outrage, and other stuff over the National Anthem and what people do while it is played - at sporting events, mostly - because that's where they play it, mostly. Stand, kneel, sit, take off your cap ... do whatever they tell you, right? And, for the record, I have stood at Fort McHenry and looked out at the place where " the flag was still there ," and yeah, I got a little chill thinking about it, but that's where it stopped.  Mostly, it's because of the ceremony of the thing.  Otherwise, it's just a song praising war.  But I digress... The kerfuffle started when a few NFL players decided to do something other than stand at attention while the song was being played.  That c...

I really hate to write about such mundane things as investing and life, because they don’t get nearly the page views of my rants on gun culture and the ridiculous state of politics in America - but here we go. What have I been doing lately, while the market has been going nuts (up and down) and some people have been scared out of it. I hate to sell and trade, but sometimes, it’s necessary. I sold my position in Extreme Networks (EXTR) after a double over the past year.  In retrospect, I could have sold it much higher, but I usually wait for earnings, and this latest report was absurdly negative, so I decided to cash-in my profit rather than wait for the upturn, which may take more than a year. I also sold 25% of my stake in Square (SQ).  As much as I love the company I felt like the stock had run-up to $55 from my purchase price of $26, so I felt it prudent to take some profits and watch it go, if it does.  There has been some selling over a recent battle with Pay...

Some things are just too hard to figure out with our small people brains. Lawn darts killed three children between 1970 and 1994, and as such, they were made illegal in the United States and Canada. On 19 December 1988, all lawn darts were banned from sale in the United States by the Consumer Product Safety Commission after they were responsible for the deaths of three children since 1970.  In 1989, they were also banned in Canada. In 1982, some nutjob poisioned  some Tylenol capsules.  As a result, we can’t open a bottle of pills or a beverage without going through a major operation, even though authorities never identified who was responsible. The Chicago Tylenol murders were a series of poisoning deaths resulting from drug tampering in the Chicago metropolitan area in 1982. The victims had all taken Tylenol-branded acetaminophen capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide.  A total of seven people died in the original poisonings, with several mo...