The Stock Market

I hear the stock market isn't doing well lately.

I'd have no idea.

I'm sure there's some money somewhere for my retirement that has something to do with stocks or bonds or something of that nature, but the whole things seems both shifty and addictive and those are usually a bad combination for me. When I was young I was councelled by the father of a close friend, " With your disposition should probably start doing drugs...they'd probably mellow you out a bit and keep you out of jail...that being said you should never ever ever ever ever do coke. If you do coke you'll be dead in a month...probably from your father shooting you while you try to steal his television set...you can't handle coke...or the stock market".

So I got that going for me...which is nice.

But the bru-haha about the market this week makes me remember the other thing that Ron and I found in Larks apartment when we visited him last.

Along side of the rubble, the army surlus cargo net, the arsenic, the hip wader with the rusty golf clubs in it, and the empty Foster oil cans, was a stack of Wall Street journals, some stock certificates, and notebooks full of scribbling in red and blue ink.

BTW did you ever notice how much crazy people scribble in notebooks ? I think a lot of crimes could be solved if the police started staking out stationary stores.

Due the the fact that the guy was living in squalor I was a bit surprised to see Larks have such an interest in the market so I asked, " What's the deal with the Wall Street journals and the notebooks ?"

Larks lit up like a Christmas tree.

" Oh...YEAH ! I'm into the stock market now. I came into some money recently and needed to do something with it so I started investing."

Came into some money ?....I say, don't ask don't tell probably works best there. And while I was shuttin up I figured best not ask if perhaps replacing some golfball busted windows or having some food in the house might not be a better 'investment'...but I know better than to interrupt a man on a roll.

" So I get these Wall Street Journals from the doctor's office downstairs at the end of the day and I pour over them to find good stuff to invest in."

Now since I don't know anything about the market and was curious, " So what do you look for ? Article on certain people...or do you like certain writers ? I mean doens't everyone read the same stuff anyway ?"

" OH..no...I've enver really been into, you know, reading and such. What I is open up all the pages with the symbols and numbers and lay them all out over the floor and table and then I stare at them for about 5 minutes or so. Then after a little while I start to see it," and he started gesturing with both his arms...one high in hte air making a circle and one low on the other side making a circle and then bringing them together. " I start to see things."

" You mean like one of those 3-D poster things.", I asked

" YEAH !!!! Something like that", he continued, " What I see is like way down here you have oil futures...and they're going up. And then I see up here that corn is low and pigs futures are high. And I see that theres a tractor factory that has a low stock and it starts to come to me. They ship pigs in trucks and corn in trains. And if oil is going UP then pig farmers are going to do shitty cause it going to be more expensive and people will be like ' fuck it I'll eat chickens' and you can get chickens anywhere. But corn is on trains and oil doesn't affect that much so all those chickens will need corn to eat. So BAM corn is going to do well. And you know what happens when corn farmers start to make money...they going to be all like, 'I'm going to get me a new fucking tractor' and so I figure I'm buying tractor stocks cause that shit is going up."

That kind of thinking is just tough to dispute.

So I asked, " well how are you doing ?"

" Well the red is bad and the blue is good. And you can see at the beginning there was more red than blue...but the last month I'm getting better at it and I'm on a roll lately....now none of these things in the book are anything that I own. This shit is like Microsoft and IMB and shit...too expensive at this point...I'm working my way up to that."

"What are these certificates then ?"

" Oh yeah, this is some shit that I bought about six months ago and it's made me some good money." and Larks pulled out the certificates and handed them to me.

" California Speculators ?" I read aloud.

" Yeah...I only had a little bit of money so I started looking at these really cheap penny stocks for these small companies and I found these guys."

" Well what do they do ?" I inquired.

" That's the interesting thing. I bought this shit cause I KNEW that with all the shit going on in the world that there wasn't going to be any oil coming from the Middle East anymore, at least not cheaply, so I figured that if I could get in on the ground floor with a company that did oil exploration and if they hit an oil well in California...you know there's got to be tons of oil out there with te tar pits and shit, then I might be able to cash in..."

"And ?" I asked

" Well I kinda fucked up."

" What do you mean ?"

" Well I was figuring, you know California Speculator...was like those old '49er dudes...you know gold speculators...except I fucked it up because those guys were PROSPECTORS....not speculators...so I was thinking that the company was all into searching for oil and shit like that...but it turns out that they have nothing to do with that at all."

" Oh shit...well what do they do ?"

" They're a rewal estate company that buys up land all over california and hopes that rewal estate prices go up."

"Oh...so it hasn't done well for you ?"

" That's just the thing. I bought this shit in January and then remember all those crazy ass rain storms and mudslides and shit in California ?"

" Uh..yeah ?"

" Well this company bought a whole bunch of land...not ON the coast...but right behind the land on the coast. And when all that rain came it started a bunch of mudslides. And those fucking mansions fell into the ocean....and all of a sudden all that shit land that we bought turned into ocean front property. And those sold it right back to the rich fuckers to rebuild their mansions on. BAWHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA Can you believe that crazy shit ! BAWAHAHAHAHAHHAHA ! So long suckers. That shit is like double what i bought if for. I made like three hundred bucks !"

So like I said, I'm not one for the stock market. At least with the poker, you know that the other guy is trying to screw you and there's no hard feelings.