Ponzi schemes have been and always will be a CONFIDENCE game. Gain the confidence of your mark before you burn him.

President:I belive there is much to learn from each other if we can make a truce. We can find a way to co-exist. Can there be a peace between us?

Alien: Peace? NO PEACE!

President: What is it you want us to do?

Alien: Die... Die.

- Independence Day

I was shocked and dismayed –I think we all were- to learn that Goldman Sachs had been involved in whatever it was they did. I had always ranked them with unlicensed boxing promoters and taxi drivers in Cairo, as people who inspire one with absolute confidence.

I was visiting my poor mother in Somerset when I heard the news.

"You’re never going to believe this," I told old Longbottom the farmer. "Goldman Sachs defrauded investors out of more than $1bn by mis-marketing toxic sub-prime mortgage-related securities."

He looked at me with tears in his honest, weather-beaten old face.

"I don't understand it," he said, "but I know it's wrong".

- blog: Chase Me Ladies I'm in the Cavalry

Soon his lungs are full and he holds it the way he would hold pot smoke. He exhales and is immediately coughing. The taste is like medicine, or cleaning fluid, but also a little sweet, like limes. The smoke billows out into the living room like a great unfurling dragon. As he watches the cloud spread and curl, he feels the high at first as a flutter, then a roar. A surge of new energy pounds through every inch of him, and there is a moment of perfect oblivion where is is aware of nothing and everything. A kind of peace breaks out behind his eyes. It spreads down from his temples into his chest, to his hands and everywhere. It storms through him - kinetic, sexual, euphoric - like a magnificent hurricane raging at the speed of light. It is the warmest, most tender caress he has ever felt and the, as it recedes, the coldest hand. He misses the feeling even before it's left him and not only does he want more, he needs it.

Bill Clegg 'Portrait of an addict as a young man'

I loved something that I made up

– Scarlett O’Hara

Worship Shiva neither by day or night.
By transcending day and night, Shiva is always worshiped.

Hatha Yoga Pradipika 4.42

So this is continuous happiness. You know, I always imagined it as something more.

Feeling people cannot harm others or even harm animals. Because they can feel, they experience the impact of their every act. They can feel the Pain of others and would not do anything to hurt them.When people cannot live by feelings they must live by categories: right and wrong. For them, all behavior must be so classified.

-Arthur Janov

The United States is gone. It got too big to fail, then it failed. The hair and nails on the corpse are still growing for a while. But, the inevitable decay will commence no matter what the elitists do. It's harsh medicine, but it's the only way to exorcise the corporate demons. Starve them to death. Hopefully, a few smaller and easier to govern US's will get going again and won't be so destructive to the environment and adventurous with the lives of the poor and the marginalized.

- Illingsk

Vidal: "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of proto- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that, I'll only say that we can't have--"

Buckley: "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."

Way back when, when I heard the new president of US Steel proclaim 'We are not in the business of making steel, we are in the business of making MONEY'. It was over. Just like a steer shot in the head, yeah, they thrash around for a while, but the death blow has been dealt. It's OVER.

- net post

The small man
builds cages for everyone
he knows.

While the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,

keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.

--Hafiz, 14th-century Sufi poet

Another art of the tyrant is to sow quarrels among the citizens; friends should be embroiled with friends, the people with the notables, and the rich with one another. Also he should impoverish his subjects; he thus provides against the maintenance of a guard by the citizen and the people, having to keep hard at work, are prevented from conspiring. The Pyramids of Egypt afford an example of this policy; also the offerings of the family of Cypselus, and the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus by the Peisistratidae, and the great Polycratean monuments at Samos; all these works were alike intended to occupy the people and keep them poor.

- Aristotle

After houses, cars are the biggest money sink there is- period. As long as one is able to get back and forth to work, being car-free is quickest way to get out of debt and stay out of debt, plus avoid a huge amount of stress and headaches. Perhaps most people don't realize how much of a money-sink car ownership really is. Car 'ownership' is practically slavery in my opinion. The car 'owner' is unknowingly the slave, always trying to provide their master (car) with monthly payments, routine maintenance, repairs, insurance, gasoline, car washes, custom upgrades, parking fees, etc. Yes, the cars own their drivers through a never-ending demand of servitude. Kind of like serfdom.

"When the end comes, as I suppose the end must always come, it seems it will be the stronger, deeper, more cunning, and more beautiful who will survive"

That's me a goner, then....

- Charles Lee

"It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked."
- Al Capone

i returned home through the snow. Crossing the road i lost my footing on a patch where cars had impacted the snow into a frictionless patina, and as i was falling i reflected that knowledge presents similar problems to snow – where many have trodden, the ground is icy, one just skids along, unable to generate the friction for a proper step; and as civilization progresses, it is harder to find fresh snow, where the foot can crunch and tread; one needs to approach the matter differently, to contemplate ancient knowledge as a modern man, or modern knowledge as an ancient – either is like wearing snowshoes – there is friction, a useful strangeness. The world is strange but accumulations of research disguise this. So academics never seem to approach the matter itself – they get as far as “what Nietzsche said” or “the Leavis position” and go no further. Hence academics are constantly citing other academics – they entirely lack the innocence one needs, to see things as they are, as strange. Everything is familiar to the academic – that is to say, false. Nothing is familiar.

- Elberry

"To be a successful copywriter, you have to appeal to your prospect’s feelings and desires. Here are seven very important ones:

Fear!

Greed!

Vanity!

Lust!

Pride!

Envy!

Laziness!

Do you recognize where these came from? If you are Catholic, you probably do. They are the Seven Deadly Sins."

- direct marketing tutorial

"I don't fight. I'm too old, have had too many broken bones, have too many scars, and have too many teeth knocked out. The best I can hope to do is make a quick, clean, kill."

- Jerry Penguin

“O God, put away justice and truth for we cannot understand them and do not want them. Eternity would bore us dreadfully. Leave Thy heavens and come down to our earth of water clocks and hedges. Become our uncle. Look after Baby, amuse Grandfather, escort Madam to the Opera, help Willy with his homework, introduce Muriel to a handsome naval officer. Be interesting and weak like us, and we will love you as we love ourselves.”

- W. H. Auden