It only gets better from here on out. A bit more daylight everyday.

This year it is kind of cool that Hanukkah starts on Dec 21st, the longest night of the year for an event that centers around bringing light into darkness.

I'm just listening to The Twilight Singers first CD tongiht for some reason tonight.

I'm kind of laying low at the moment. Really all I'm doing is just recharging myself and trying to focus on what I want out of life next year.

Economies of Scale have to be utilized...

Christmas and Hanukkah Merger

Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hanukkah will merge. An industry source said that the deal had been in the works for about 1300 years.

While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Chrismukah, as the new holiday is being called.

Massive layoffs are expected, with lords a-leaping and maids a-milking being the hardest hit. As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the dreydl, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wider audience.

Also, instead of translating to "A great miracle happened there," the message on the dreydl will be the more generic "Miraculous stuff happens." In exchange, it is believed that Jews will be allowed to use Santa Claus and his vast merchandising resources for buying and delivering their gifts.

One of the sticking points holding up the agreement for at least three hundred years was the question of whether Jewish children could leave milk and cookies for Santa even after having eaten meat for dinner. A breakthrough came last year, when Oreos were finally declared to be Kosher. All sides appeared happy about this.

A spokesman for Christmas, Inc., declined to say whether a takeover of Kwanzaa might not be in the works as well. He merely pointed out that, were it not for the independent existence of Kwanzaa, the merger between Christmas and Chanukah might indeed be seen as an unfair cornering of the holiday market. Fortunately for all concerned, he said, Kwanzaa will help to maintain the competitive balance. He then closed the press conference by leading all present in a rousing rendition of "Oy Vey, All Ye Faithful."

I know everyone here is We <3 Buffalo, NY but the latest proposed budget just about takes it to the absurd level.



Seriously a 4% tax on itunes, $.50 more a movie ticket, a couple of bucks to a Sabres ticket, 4% to Satt TV or Cable, Additional 4% tax of clothes, A tax on gym memberships, Increased taxes of beverages. Seriously someone making 30K in Buffalo you will have less to spend on entertainment or keeping yourself in shape than elsewhere.

My question is where does all of this money go?

I was up last night and I caught the end of the movie Boiler Room and after reading the news today about this Guy not much has changed in 8 years.

The funny this is in the movie Giovanni Ribisi character realized that there is no way after working @ J. T. Marlin he would ever get a job at a "reputable" firm like Merrill Lynch, HA if he only knew how "Reputable" they would turn out 8 years later.

It just reinforces the face that the as "the game" has been played over the last 25-30 years in the country. That guy that pulled off the biggest ponzi stock scheme was the FORMER CHAIRMAN OF THE NASDAQ!!! Now who can you really trust?

The only part that will be interesting to read/watch will be the fallout of the people at those country clubs in Palm Beach or the Hamptons who now realize that they aren't millionaires after all!!! There should be some good dateline episodes coming out of this for sure. Time to pull the kids out of private school...

I ended up going out to Vegas last weekend. Here is where i stayed, again.









I actually did something that didn't involve gambling, I saw Oasis on Saturday Night.























Liam being a Liam at the end of the show



Everyone trying to get out of the Palms



The Venetian, adding another tower altough the stock price has plummeted from $200 a share to $5.







Me going out to a shady but always entertaining bar by the Hard Rock, The Double Down Saloon.



Why can't we have a special at a bar like this?


Now my Mom actually wanted to go and see "Dirty Vegas" aka the are off of Fremont St.


Here is the regular Fremont St Experience













A Million Dollars @ Binions, which they had back in the day before the casino was sold 3 times in 10,000 Bills. It's good to see that the new owners are putting money back into such a historical casino.



Now the lowest of the Low Casino's on East Freemont St which is really "Dirty Vegas" or the Gold Spike.






























The Berlin Wall in the Men's room @ Main St Station.











Want your Checks Cashed?

Wow!

I'd never think I would ever see the day. UB wins their Conference!

All I can say is Turner Gill is a #1 Class act all around.

Yea, I guess we really are in a "recession."



More carnage to come I'm sure.

There were so many people in Western New York who thought that they would never see this day. All I can say is that form my perspective it's really due to how the place is run instead of the "recession." They ran out all of the people with brains, class and experience. In a way the whole process of what happened was a class warfare thing form the start Was there validity in their points about a CEO getting paid 1.2 Million while people live in abject poverty? Sure you can't deny that fact at all. Now is having a guy who's only business experience is running a smoke shop empire with a leveraged operating advantage over any other competition outside of the sovereign tax free. Basically all I'm saying that I seriously doubt that he would have risen to the level of success he has had without the tax free element of his business plan. Anyway I did find the comments in this story pretty enlightening

The trouble is that with casino's they're extremely competitive businesses and the people that really have big money want to be pampered and treated right with respect. The employees at the Seneca Niagara Casino are pretty rude and cocky; Why I have absolutely no idea. You don't get that treatment over in Canada or on the Vegas Strip or even Wheeling Island. All I saw after Mickey Brown and the people that open the most sucessful casino on the east coast, Foxwoods in CT was the place go downhill. Just go to the the Thunderfalls buffet and pay for that overpriced slop.

From my perspective, it's not just the economy that's a downer on gambling, but other financial monitoring laws we have in place now. For example, the casino in the falls could never draw any Canadian high rollers for fear that bringing large sums of cash across the border would result in it's confiscation or at the very least it being registered and recorded.

All I can say is Joel Rose is somewhere smirking now. After all the Senecas were going to single handily save WNY with all the jobs that they would create, especially in that abandoned steel skeleton in the cobble stone district.

After giving up this it was so worth to have everyone look at this

This is what was going through my head as I was leaving the Ralph around 4:30PM today


Kickoff!








After the game, these drunk ass people responded to the challenge of "Do the Hill!!!"

Now the NFL has a similar introduction like a Monday Night wrasslin' show





















My friend from D.C. Says hot dog vendors down there are not this hot by any stretch of the imagination.







The saddest part of the game was not that they lost, but the 1st and only TD of the game was scored on the Very First possession for either team, with SF going down to score after getting the ball after the coin toss. Seriously, if I could get my money back I would. Playoffs??? Ha, Ha, Ha!

Wow, currently I have about 40 more views to go until I hit 100,000 views. I'd never thought I'd ever get any where near that or anyone would find my blog interesting enough to read though the content. It's not like I'm a chick blogging about my love life, so there's pretty much zero readership for the "juicy" content reasons. But some how or another people come across thing thing for whatever reasons and for that I'm 100K reasons grateful.

The only thing that I could come up with that would draw Google hits would be my financial/trading ranting and raving.

So with 100K views in 1007 days of this (e:strip) blog that's about 99.3 views per day. Not bad where I come from I must say. For my livejournal I may get that a quarter and not in a day, that's for sure. It just goes to show what great work (e:paul) does with this site.