I have started four entries over the past two weeks just to have them stopped by some nonsense or another. Aside from having the worst non-debilitating fever cold experienced in recent times, what I had idealistically described as my 9-5 in the UK has blown out of all proportions with a fulltime job and two consults now producing nearly two fulltime jobs worth of time consumption and well more than two of income. If the Log was the place for such discussions, some kind of rain analogy would be useful.

I cleared my lungs last night and decided to tune in to WeFunk.

Two Degrees of Separation From Jim Cramer

I have been meaning to write about Mad Money for some time. With two hours to eat and reacclimatise before bed, my evening television is very focused. Mad Money is my meal viewing. Michele is usually asleep or elsewhere. I really like Mad Money but I feel I need to maintain a good distance from Jim Cramer other than passive interaction.

Earlier point in fact, his book, I found in Barnes and Noble. Read three random chapters and found it quite boring. Nothing like the TV program and quite common-sense-ical. Why pay money for this kind of information, I thought to myself as I put the book back on the shelf. Cramer raves about his charitable trust through Mad Money. I have looked at the Street website before and nothing seems that much more amazing when compared to the multitudes of other speculative finance sites. Google Finance is now providing the best free interface with real story tracking on stocks.

I found Cramer's charitable trust through Wikipedia;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Cramer

I signed up for the free trial and was immediately hit with a two option screen - pay some number of hundreds of dollars per year for one options or a smaller number of hundreds of dollars per year for another option. No such thing as a free trial in Jim Cramer territory.

So I shut the page down without going any further. But my email has been flooded with theStreet updates ever since. They say I can't unsubscribe because I opted for the free trial.

The final point of fact about the Cramerica experience is that I only know about technology. But I find his technology analysis pretty suspect. The flaws I find, and I do track the stocks without buying them, always eventuate in some unpredicted fall. So my thinking is, if I know about technology but not gas pipelines or drug companies, maybe people that know those fields feel the same way I do about his analysis.

I still find Mad Money a very entertaining program and he introduces numerous companies I wouldn't hear about through PBS's financial programming which used to be my main source of financial news.

Gurapian Wisdom

As I am rewriting/writing a novel, I wanted some feedback on some of the content. Whilst tuning in to WeFunk last night I saw my man Alex 'Gurap' Brooks was online in Sydney and I pinged him for some historical discussion. He gave me a lot of great material that will be very useful.

Alex mentioned that he had heard from a primary school cohort of ours, a fellow by the name of Simon Crean. Without irony, the nephew of Simon Crean;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Crean

My personal feeling is that the Australian Labor Party, the Labour Party (in the UK) and the Democrats here are three groups that I have unreserved hatred for. These idiots completely eliminate the meaning of left-wing and their nonsense parties have nothing to do with social justice and are in fact super-corrupt right-wing-lite parties. I don't see any political movement in my life time that has captivated my spirit. In short, general disgust. When Doug Rushkoff started hanging out with Al Gore... 'nuff said.

So my assumption was that Simon Jr had become a member of parliament or something of that ilk. Apparently he's an ''entrepreneur'' like my ''friend'' and fellow Las Vegas resident, Tim Shell.

So Alex finished the messenging with, 'When I see Simon Crean, I'll tell him you said hi!'

And I responded.

'No. Kick him in the nuts and tell him that's for his uncle. One of the reasons I left Australia. He'll probably remember that better.'

Full Circle on the Funk

WeFunk last night. When you communicate with Static and Groove or Mike and Nick as I like to call them, you find that they are actually intentionally conservative on how they play music and produce interactions with WeFunkRadio.com. For me, this is something of confusion. But their formula can't be argued with.

For this year's funding drive, I'm going to donate CAD200 with an additional CAD100 if Loe Pesci, Montreal's daulat MC will drop some verses live.

We'll have to wait and see.

Good afternoon.