grab bag

I really have nothing to say right now. Events from earlier have passed and now it's off topic to discuss them. But, since it'll fill the void, I might as well. Actually, I'm more concerned with what to discuss tomorrow. I was thinking about something on the image of the oil and gas industry, but I can't find the relevant articles and links that I have seen before. I'll whip something up tomorrow. Perhaps actually going to work will inspire me.

I enjoy using words in ways that, while technically correct, are not how most people commonly use them. This is especially true for words that generally have a positive connotation, but are not necessarily positive words. A perfect example of this can be seen in my last post. I called the blown piston spectacular, but it's hardly a good thing, simply dramatic and sensational.

Two Fridays ago, as in January 20, was an absolutely brutal day for stocks. Personally, it was my worst single day loss ever and the largest percentage loss too since I've had enough to legitimately diversify my principle brokerage account. One of the things I've learned from investing is that weathering bad days is part of the process so I've become pretty nonchalant about stomaching them. I've had my share of them, but I've had plenty of good ones too to come out ahead. Admittedly, when it comes to what I call my principle brokerage account, I'm overweight in some areas, but am very aware of that. In the end, considering all accounts, I'm reasonably balanced.

However, being diverse and balanced is for passive investors and now I'm pondering how passive an investor I want to be. I'm not going to turn into a day trader or any such nonsense, but I can become an active investor, doing significantly more research and taking more control of the whole process. Along with being active comes the possibility of un-diversifying as well. If I have done my homework and have a high degree of confidence in my decisions, then there's more potential gain in being heavily invested in a few holdings rather than being moderately invested in many. There's certainly more risk too, but I'm also at the point in life where I can accept a fairly high degree of risk. This isn't happening tomorrow, but there's definitely some research going on and some make believe investing happening as well.

Why do I get religiously themed mail? More accurately, why does my address get said mail? And how come I never got stuff like this when I lived in California? General demographic reasons? Until this latest piece that I'm going to describe in a momentthey were generally solicitations for donations. However, the Saint Matthew's Churches feels that starting a letter "Dear…Someone Connected with This Address" is an effective means of getting my attention. How touchingly personal.

The letter than goes on to have too many words for me to really want to read but a cursory glance reveals a lot of bold text and underlined words. The best stuff is on the back of the letter where I can ask them to pray for me for the following choices: my soul, a closer walk with Jesus, my health, a family member's health, confusion in my home (I assume to clarify the confusing things, not for more confusion), my children, to stop a bad habit, a better job, a home to call my own, a new car (getting a little secular here), a money blessing (it gets better though), to be saved. The last option is really the best though. It's to "pray for God to bless me with this amount of money: $____" and yes that is a blank space to write in how much you want/need. Then there's a second page with testimonials from people who have been blessed with various things though none of the quotes indicate to me that these people (assuming they exist) have achieved a closer connection with God. And there are pictures of two of the people that the testimonials are supposedly from that look like they are either straight out of the 80's or off the cover of a tabloid. And here I was getting nostalgic for big hair until I saw how atrocious it generally was.

There's more. There's also a "prayer rug" included that is really a piece of paper that was folded to a sixth of its size to fit inside a standard envelope with Jesus' picture on it. Of course, Jesus is depicted as looking much more Anglo than you would have thought someone from that part of the world during that time would look. Tragically, all of these pages have a date with my shredder. It's not about the content or anything personal. I just like to shred my mail, even the stuff that doesn't contain personal information or pre-approved credit card offers.

In the end, I would assume that a properly religious person (as if someone like that would care about my standard for them) would be appalled by this mailing. It totally lacks any spiritual depth, implies God rewards prayers with material objects, and has a bar code on it.

It appears I did have a couple things to say. Imagine that.