All Recessions Are Over

Having trouble posting...

... keyboard covered in tar.

Skeletons, Sex Workers, Fish Monster, Terrorise Wellington, Issue Vague Demands

Thousands took to the street in Wellington this Saturday in a terrifying show of force against probably The Economy but also maybe something else. Maybe they just wanted me to stop asking questions about their iPhone. Whatever their motives the thing they did was fairly entertaining, with the fascist recession-encouraging liquor-ban laxly enforced.

Rod in the frame.

These skeletons were not real. But it's pretty much impossible to guess how they did them.

This is what happens when your daughter does four years of modern dance (hons): her eyes start glowing like a fucking Jawa.

Um... That is an actual fish? HaHa.

The end.

Newspaper Industry to be Bailed Out By Romance

Poempology

boy, is my face red.

as red as the blood they drained.

carpet stained with pain.

I'm not that sorry

they took fucken ages.

my wages came in stages.

Phantom Expander $$$ in Futures Market Pound-Down

Will he? Probably not. The HAB4U team has a whole lot of overtime behind this bs and we still don't have a name. (Unless we do. I get confused and overtired very quickly).

Anyway there's got to be a way to make some money on this. Like... by picking the right one. Which is obviously the No one. Because no one but me gives a fuck anymore, and I have a pretty strong feeling that the btown police aren't exactly running around wire-style on this old man's ass.

Also, this post is now about the btown police, their awesome bebo page, and the degenerate squid-people who say things on it:

Sneak Preview: Clipart for an Age of Decline

I told you it wasn't going to be pretty. But now they're here. In a HAB4U exclusive we have leaked samples of Microsoft's Office 2009 recession-ready clipart. So watch out those of you who still have jobs with computers and meetings in 2009, which will only really be people in the 'trench-digging and dead-body putting-in-the-trench' industry. That and being a crazy person.

Wishing yourself a 'Picton Birthday', or just shooting yourself in the mouth, will be popular activities this year. And if you want to talk about them in a powerpoint in some not-so-subtle cry for help then the new Office has you covered. Unfortunately you will be giving your powerpoint to the salvation army, who don't have a working video projector.

I think this one's pretty self explanatory: You'll have to sell your wife's prosthetic hand to pay the power bill. And your attempt to build her a new one from fencing wire and toilet rolls will humiliate her so deeply that she permanently looses the power of speech. Happy 2009 everyone.

Pre-Recession Time Capsule Unearthed Deep Within MS Office

Cast your minds back to a time before The Recession. If you're finding it difficult to think over the thick stench of new-hobos burning their last belongings in trash-cans, for warmth, then take a look at this:

This is an image included somewhere in my never-used Office 2004 folder. The pictures tell a stylishly-shaded tale of what things were like before the whole world economy went to total shit. Diggers loaded up trucks. Couples hugged trees and dug around them, secure in the knowledge that they were basically giants.

ACTUAL giant farmers roamed the planes, claiming and cuddling grain silos like the benevolent subsidy-gods they are. And Michael Clyne had the power to become a REAL SAIL.

  

That's how things used to be. Now it's just apply tar or have tar applied to you. Burn shit in a big metal drum, or have all your shit burnt in a big metal drum. The future is a long unemployed squirrels' nest of pain in which all your computers will eventually need servicing or upgrades which you can not afford, because you will be slightly poorer, and slightly more dead inside. Those cliparts aint pretty. You've been warned.

Also: women had freakishly wide shoulders. And were ghosts.

Scott Watch: What Recession?

We get shit done on Scott St: need money for an ounce? sell a fucken house, dick.

Then its time for a re-SESSION!!!

Memorandum

[EDIT:

Since when did interns write up long rambling official looking memos? Anyone who thinks that will fly here really has no idea how much of a dick I am. Nice tar pic though.

/EDIT]

Econocast: 'On ShortZ'

Based on an article that I didn't really read, it sounds like a lot of crybabies are crying like babies because a few people made fortunes shorting everything the last year or so. Well these people are champions. Or they are at least a lot cooler than people who loose all their money. Those people are comedy. [Disclosure: I have no money].

Since the piece is from portfolio mag i assume it ends up saying that he's a genius. If I had the patience to read something with so few swears in it I'd be working at a library.

The accusation seems to be that they should have shared their short-selling secret with everyone. a) it definitely wasn't much of a secret, and b) if you watch this you can see how keen people were on hearing it. If you try and warn them they just squint and say 'yoar ghey'. Instantly. Anyway it bewilders me how these people, who presumably get paid to concentrate on this full-time, manage to fail so hard, all the time, in exactly the same way, and then act like the few people who don't completely suck at their jobs are the ones doing it wrong.

What did it actually mean to 'sell short' in this case?

Let's say that there was this kid called Michael Clyne, who was pretty good at leaving his bike outside dairies with no lock on it for days at a time. So his name is ringing out. People want to know him. Also his friends are pegged at like 1%. Which is fuck all.

Then - high on sugar - he tells everyone at a family barbecue that he's going to take his Uncle's totally awesome dirt bike and do a wheelie literally right accross the surface of the pool like one of those water skipping lizards. That seems fucking unlikely. But then again his bike hasn't been stolen either, even though he's been just leaving it on the sidewalk for days at a time.

(Oh yeah: Clyne is a bunch of poor people paying off housez and also I guess he is a bunch of people trading the responsibility of paying someone back if they loose money on investments derived from the loans on those housez. Seriously. Clyne's Uncle is China. The dirtbike is actually a dirtbike.)

Anyway you know that Clyne clearly can't, in a million years even-if-he-wasn't-so-fat, get his bike to do The Thing He's Telling Everyone at the Family BBQ That He Can Do. So you tell everyone that if they're so stoked on Clyne then you promise to be at least as stoked as they are, but later. Take special note of the smug facials as they make this deal. They think they're ripping you off. But you know you will only have to pay them back with fail (what their stokedness will have become by then). Because's Clyne's stunts are always a let-down.

And so when, predictably, Clyne gets up on his roof and starts throwing berries at everyone at the BBQ, and doesn't even attempt the jump, you get to make out with one of his sisters.

The point is that betting against Clyne's stunt is a sensible, if non-trivial, strategy. And it takes two to bet. (Also: useful price signals, opportunities to hedge against unavoidable exposure, etc). Mainly though the point is that Clyne, if he is out there, should SHOW HIMSELF. Econocast over.

Slightly Cheaper Bread Signals Libertarian Utopia

Being 30 cents short for a loaf of bread was no obstacle in my obtaining a delicious corned silverside and chilli sauce sandwich this evening. The kid at the service station, risking his job and soul, let me off in a bizarrely loud and public display of theft as a servant.

I have to attribute the entire welcome spectacle to our new National government who, freeing this urchin from the burden of welfare-funding taxation (WHICH IS THEFT! BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT HAS ARMIES OR SOMETHING!), allowed him to follow his charitable heart somehow.

Anyway, expect a lot more of these so called freeloaves in the future as the hundreds of thousands of lazy baby farmers and pretend-depressed people clogging up our video store new-release sections, and McDonalds drive-throughs, are forced out into the glaring day of gainful employment.

Shit. I better get a job or something.