What Comes Around

From the karma department:

It's funny how it happens sometimes. Little karma events that might go unnoticed if you aren't paying attention. I've seen it happen on a larger scale, but those usually aren't quite as funny as the smaller ones.

The first time I really noticed the reciprocal nature of things, I was about fifteen. I was playing in a Pony League baseball game and a guy on my team hit a fly ball to right field. The right fielder tentatively tracked the pop up, moved around a little as he waited, had his glove up, and the ball came straight down on his head. I laughed out loud. We slapped palms in the dugout, and generally made a ruckus that made the poor right fielder feel pretty bad.

Two innings later when we were in the field, I was playing shortstop. The rightfielder was up at the plate. Dude hit a hard grounder at me and as I went down for it, the ball hit a pebble, took a funny hop, and hit me right between the eyes. As I lay on my back looking up at the sky, seeing stars, the thought popped into my head, "That'll teach you."

Last weekend I was at a party at my friends' house, Gary and Missy. They have a great set-up in their backyard, with a pool and a tiki bar, horse shoes off to the side. We play a lot of water volleyball in the pool. It's usually coed, and sometimes it can get pretty competitive. We were playing five on five in a close game and my team was serving. I was on the front line, the guy serving was right behind me. He hit a line drive serve, missed it I should say, because instead of going over the net it hit me right on the side of the face. Stung like a sumbitch, too.

Well, everyone got a laugh out of it, and the guy who hit it convinced me that it was truly an accident, so it didn't turn into an ass whipping. As everyone was laughing I noticed that one friend, Tara, playing on the other team, was laughing a little too hard for my taste. She was taking a little too much pleasure in my misfortune. I didn't say anything, but I did make note of it.

Later in the game, a ball went up near the net and my boy Skinny went up for a spike. He nailed it hard to the side, but it hit the side wall of the pool and ricocheted directly into, you guessed it, Tara's face. It didn't hurt her bad, but I know it stung like hell. I didn't laugh out loud, but I gotta admit, I was laughing pretty hard on the inside. I was thinking, "That'll teach you". I wonder if she made the connection to her earlier laughter. Probably not, and therefore she didn't understand the significance of this karmic event. The lesson was not lost on me, however.

The lesson is: don't get too cocky because it's never inconvenient for God to bitch slap your ass back to a more humble state of mind.

Hitting Bottom

I make no secret of the fact that I'm a recovering alcoholic. I don't thump my chest about it, nor am I ashamed of it. It is what it is, part of who and what I am today. So I went to an AA meeting tonight (People ask me, "You've been sober for a while and you still have to go to those meetings?" Makes me laugh, I go because I want to. You can't beat an AA meeting for pure entertainment value.) and the topic of the meeting tonight was hitting bottom.

This young fellow, a newcomer, attending the meetings in an attempt to build goodwill with the judge before his DUI trial, raised his hand and asked a question. "What is a bottom, really? I mean, I kinda know what you're talking about, but how do you know when you've hit bottom?"

This old tattooed biker dude named Jim, big guy with a silver ponytail and wire-frame glasses, raised his hand to reply. Jim's voice sounded like gravel churning in a deep well. He said, "You know you've hit bottom when the bad shit is coming at you faster than you can lower your standards."

I found that simple explanation to be very profound. A slice of wisdom based on experience that I can relate to. I hit many bottoms, but I always managed to lower my standards further.

I was what you call your "low-bottom drunk".

Thank God for friends and family, or I would not be here to share these insights with the hapless reader who stumbles upon this blog. By the grace of the Spirit I've been sober over 6 years now, and I have a great life. I'm not saying I'm a choir boy, but I haven't had an alcoholic beverage of any kind.

But that's not the point. I'm getting there, though. So, I was thinking about what Jim said, and how I always managed to lower my standards. No matter how bad it got, I could rationalize it into being not all that bad. I was kind of zoning on this and I noticed a guy in the meeting who looked like Harold Ramis, which made me think of the movie Stripes, which made me think of Bill Murray's "Big Toe" monologue, which made me think of my own big toes.

During a couple of very drunken episodes, I managed to break both of my big toes. Not at the same time; separate occasions, separate toes. One episode I remember - a Panama City trip. Need I say more? The other episode I was in a blackout. On both occasions, I didn't just break my toe, I mangled it. My right toe I broke and jammed at the same time, and split the tip of it wide open. Very nasty. The other one, it looked like I dropped an anvil on it, and none of the other toes were damaged in the slightest. No idea what happened, just woke up the next morning and cried like a little girl when I rolled out of bed and tried to stumble to the bathroom.

Thinking of the damage to my toes got me to thinking about all the other damage I did to myself and others when I was drinking. I abused myself pretty severely, and in the process, hurt the people around me. I've done my best to make amends to those I harmed, though not everyone has been crossed off the list. I'm working on it, though.

This time last summer, I was doing my best to make amends to my father. I'd made verbal amends long ago, and he'd forgiven me, as he always forgave my transgressions. But this was real. I was making a living amends to him, by taking care of him as his health failed, doing my best to be a good son. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to do this, and that I followed through and did my best for him. This probably isn't a big deal for most people, but it was a big deal for me. It was growth. I sit here today and think about what a blessing it was to have that time with him, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful to him for everything he did for me.

So, to get back to the point of hitting bottom. It doesn't matter how far down you go. Everyone stumbles in life, everyone falls. Some fall further than others. What matters, really, is how you bounce. You can use the bottom to launch. Find your Spirit and launch. It's inside everyone, this Spirit, and if you look inside and find it, amazing things can happen.

I'm proof. I'm a walking miracle. Bounce, man.

A Key Insight

I mentioned a few posts back that for several months I've been doing some research on the stock market and stumbled upon the Elliott Wave Institute website. I read up on The Elliott Wave Principle, the underlying theory behind the science of Socionomics.

In short, the Elliott Wave Prinicple proposes that mankind is born with an internal mechanism the governs a collective social mood. This social mood moves in a repeating pattern and has a dynamic form that is self-similar from small to large degrees in what is called a robust fractal. So, at any given time, collectively, we are at some degree of hope or pessimism. The stock markets are the most immediate reflection of our collective social mood. Rising hope is reflected in a bull market. Increasing pessimism is reflected in a bear market. The Elliott Wave is reflected in similar form in an hourly chart, a weekly chart, monthly, on up to the scale covering the centuries that data is available, and the form repeats itself.

Socionomics studies all of the social implications of the wave theory. According to the premise, the Elliott Wave governs social, political, economic, and cultural trends. If this is true, isn't this a HUGE insight? If you know where you are on the wave, at all of the various degrees, you could predict with some reliable degree of probability where things are going, couldn't you? Robert Prechter, father of the science of Socionomics says, yes, absolutely.

I find this proposal fascinating. If we, society in general, are all moving in a similar direction and you understand the direction, it has tremendous implications for not only investing but also business forecasting and predicting trends in fashion and entertainment, not to mention having a deeper understanding of current social events.

Prechter and his followers say that entertainment trends are easily predictable. In a bull market, Disney movies, romantic comedies, and other light-hearted themes are popular. In a bear market, horror and monster movies ride the tops of the charts. Notice the popularity of vampires in the last few years? We've been in a large degree bear market since 2000. Prechter also predicted in his 2002 book Conquer the Crash, that newer, more brutal sports would become popular. Notice the UFC craze in the last few years?

What this means, if true, is that we (globally) are on the cusp of the biggest crash in about 300 years. That's what the Elliott Wave Prinicple shows on the charts. Big time, scary stuff.

Do I believe it? Yeah, I guess I do. I'm fairly educated. I've taken numerous classes in economics in business school and I think I have a pretty solid grasp of the fundamentals of modern economic theory. The funny thing is, economists' forecasts hardly ever agree with each other, and when a majority of them agree, they are invariably wrong. Ask twenty economists what caused the Great Depression and you'll get 20 different answers. And this 80 years after the fact. If they can't explain what already happened, how can they possibly hope to predict what is going to happen? The Elliott Wave Prinicple, from what I've learned in my studies, has a very good track record of forecasting the big trends, and with some degree of reliability, the smaller ones.

It's a difficult concept to grasp, this theory, because it proposes that our mood isn't affected by social events, but rather, social events are affected by our mood. It basically turns conventional wisdom inside out.

Gangsta rap doesn't make kids want to kill cops, they already want to kill them; the music is just an expression of their mood. Sure, you might have a few isolated incidents where a kid got inspired by a song, but I'm inclined to believe he was already leaning that way.

What about how the stock market jumps up and down on Fed announcements and earnings reports and so forth? Well, if you look at the charts, there might be a short term spike or drop, but the overall trend quickly kicks back in to correct it.

The implications of this theory are far reaching. I've only scratched the surface here, but my imagination can get carried away pretty easily as I observe what's going on around me from a socionomic perspective.

It's a powerful insight. It explains a lot about what's going on right now, and I do believe we are in a historic time, where big changes lie ahead. I don't know what things are going to look like in five years, but I do believe they are going to look much different. And, according to the wave theory, we should be coming out of this downturn in 3-5 years, for a decade or two, anyway.

So, what does all this mean? Well, for starters, despite what you hear a lot of people say, now is not a great time to buy real estate or make any long term investments in the stock market. Wait a few years and take another look.

Free advice, that last part. Other than that, I highly recommend going to the Elliott Wave Institute website and checking it out. If the theory is wrong and I'm completely fooled, I'll have a good laugh about it down the road.

Same Old Story

It just keeps getting better, doesn't it? Banks buying jets with the bailout money. Wall Street brokerage houses paying out billions in bonuses while their customers wonder how they're ever going to retire with what's left of their investment portfolio. Governors selling Senate seats to the highest bidder.

And now the leaders we've elected can't seem to find anyone to help them run the country, because none of the people they want to appoint have paid their fucking taxes. Our elected leaders go on a rampage about how irresponsible the Wall Street millionaires are, meanwhile all their friends are holding out on Uncle Sam.

Give. Me. A. Break.

Aren't there any good guys left? Isn't there anyone who knows how to do the right thing? You know, just normal everyday things, like not humping your intern and paying your fucking taxes. Isn't there anyone we can look to and see hope?

Take the bible thumpers out. Liars and hypocrites. Don't look to the corporate executive ranks, they're thieves and cheaters. Athletes? Thugs and wannabes. The Arts? Come on.

I don't care if someone smoked a joint at some point in their life. In fact, it's probably better if they have. But show me some common sense, huh? If you're a politician, you live in a high profile world. Take care of your business, okay? Do the right thing and pay your taxes.

Okay, that's enough. I need to watch a funny movie or something. Reality pisses me off.

Life Lessons

The holidays were different for me this year. It was the first holiday season sans both parents. I felt a bit like an orphan.

It was my mother's wish that we spread their ashes on St. Simon's Island, where they spent their most enjoyable years. My sister and I rented a big beach house, and she came down with her family and I went up solo, as I'm not married and don't have any kids. We did the deal on Christmas day, and it was a special time, and I kind of felt like it was my mom pulling us together as a family. It was a very smooth thing, nothing at all like Lonesome Dove, when Tommy Lee Jones had to carry Robert Duvall's body back to Texas and it like to killed him. No, this was an enjoyable task and gave us a great opportunity to celebrate their lives and include them in our Christmas.

I'm getting to the life lessons now, I had to set the scene first.

My sister has two daughters from her first marriage and my brother-in-law has a daughter and son from his first marriage. They have no children together. So, I have three nieces and one nephew, and I love them all.

The girls are pretty easy to get along with, but the nephew is 14, about to be 15, and he's pretty full of himself. He wants to be like his daddy so bad, it just can't happen fast enough. That's not a bad thing, his daddy is a good man, but the boy ain't there yet. In the last year he's grown about 6 inches, and now he's 6' and several inches taller than me. He's going to be a big dude, he's not done growing by a long shot. But regardless of how big he gets, I still have to keep him in line. As the Cool Uncle, it's my job.

So during the holidays we were all hanging out in the beach house. The kitchen and the family room were basically one large room, with one wall nothing but floor to ceiling glass, looking out at the ocean. Very cool.

I start joking around with my sister's oldest daugther, Hayley, about one of her friends. Now, I'm twenty years older than Hayley and her buddies, but they're in their early twenties and full grown. I mention to her that maybe her friend Sarah is in the market for a sugar daddy, and I'd be happy to volunteer for the job. I said, tell her I almost meet the age requirement, and as far as the money, I'm still working on it. But we can go ahead and get a head start, if she wants.

Everybody laughed and my sister got a little tweaked. She looked at me like I'm a pervert, and said I'm not old enough to be a sugar daddy and don't have the money anyway, and I said hell yeah I am and don't sweat the dough, we'll manage. Joe, my bro-in-law, jumps in on my side, and the banter went on for a couple of minutes and it was over with a few laughs.

Later that night after dinner my nephew made some comment, I don't remember exactly, and I said something back and then he said, "Come on, old man."

"Who you calling old man, punk?" I said.

"I'm calling you old man. You said so yourself," he said, smirking a little.

Whoa. My sister looked at me, sort of grinning. Joe was looking at the TV, I don't know if he heard or not, but he was smiling about something.

I looked at the boy and shook my head. "Jared," I said, "walk with me."

I put my arm around his shoulders - I had to reach up a little - and led him out to the deck.

He tensed up, like he knew something was coming but not sure what.

"Jared, that was a dick move, just now. You know it in your heart, but you don't know why, exactly. I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to do you a favor and drop a little adult wisdom on your verdant punk ass."

We were leaning on the railing, the light from inside falling on the dunes and the beach beyond. We couldn't see the waves but we could hear the persistent dull crashing. I looked at the boy, who looked a little confused.

"Jared, you want to be liked by people, right?" It was a rhetorical question and I didn't wait for an answer. "Of course you do, it's natural. One way to be liked by people is to not be a dick.

"Now, earlier, I kind of made myself the butt of my own joke. That's called self-deprecating humor, and most people find it to be an endearing quality. People generally like other people who don't take themselves too seriously, and don't mind providing laughter at their own expense once in a while. It's a humble gesture, and people generally appreciate humility in others.

"Now, by taking my own humility and turning it against me, you've violated an unspoken law. Only a dick or an asshole does it, see?" I squeezed his shoulder for emphasis, and he grimaced a little, as I squeezed it kind of hard, right up there at the base of the neck.

"Not only that, you were just a witness to the joke, not a participant. That joke was between me and Hayley and Robin and Joe, so that's a second violation, compounding the seriousness of the initial dick move. You still with me?"

He nodded, looking into the darkness, kind of forlorn.

"So, ultimately, if you want to be a smartass, and by the way, don't believe the people who say no one likes a smartass, cause plenty of people love a good a smartass, but if you're going to be a smartass, you have to learn the etiquette, and I've just given you your first lesson. If you don't want people to think you're a dick, don't act like one. You dig?"

He nodded again. "Thanks, Uncle John, you're the coolest. I'll try not to be a dick anymore."

"You're learning, boy. I think you've got a chance."

Principles and Prognosticators

Tricky times we're living in right now. Uncertainty seems to be the prevailing forecast. Volatility in the financial markets has reached, in recent weeks, record levels. Most of the popular TV pundits don't have a clue what's going to happen next, and opinions range from "we've seen the worst of it and we're turning the corner" to "this is only the beginning of a long, painful shift in the way the world functions" to "prepare for the Apocolypse".

Current events affecting my livelihood, particularly the deteriorating economy and slumping stock market, sparked an interest in doing some research on these subjects, including the history of the markets. This research lead me to the websites of some current market historians, as well as some theorists who also happen to be prognosticators of future market events.

One such group of theorists, followers of the Elliott Wave Principle, I found particularly interesting. The Elliott Wave prinicple provides the foundation for the study of Socionomics.

In a nutshell, the theory proposes that man is born with some endogenous mechanism that dictates the collective social mood, and these moods rise and fall according to a particular pattern (waves), and that these waves have a particular form. They propose that the stock market is the most immediate measure of current social mood, and you can trace the wave patterns in the Dow Jones Industrials, the S&P, the gold markets, etc. All of the markets will follow this form.

R.N. Elliott is credited with forming the primary postulates of this theory. In the 1930's, Elliott discovered that the stock market prices trend and reverse in recognizable patterns. Furthermore, these patterns are fractals (he didn't use the word "fractal", but he proposed the concept). A fractal is, to quote Wikipedia, generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,"[1] a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured." A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration.

Fractals are the basis for a lot of mathematical mumbo jumbo that I won't go into here, but as it pertains to the stock market, it is significant.

If the theory holds true, it means that you can look at the well-documented history of the stock markets, going back to the 1700's, and trace these patterns right up until today. Which also means you can see what the pattern calls for next.

I don't know about anyone else, but if I know what's going to happen next, I'm in a hell of a lot better position to prepare for it.

But the theory is only a theory, right? I mean, no one can really predict what's going to happen next. No one has a crystal ball.

But these guys have been right about a lot of stuff. I mean, a lot of stuff.

Five years ago, Robert Prechter, the world's leading expert on Elliott Wave theory, made some predictions. Actually, he made 100 predictions, and if these interest you, you can find them on the Elliott Wave Principle website. Here are just a few:

Finance:

Stock markets around the world will continue to fall. Ultimately, the averages will drop more than 90 percent.

Real estate values will fall more than they did in the 1930s and 1940s.

Debt packages made of mortgage-backed bonds, auto loans and credit card debt will become viewed as unworthy investments.

The dollar will lose its place as the world’s reserve currency. Either gold, a currency backed by gold (such as the Islamic dinar), or the Chinese yuan will take its place.

The total amount of credit outstanding worldwide will decline substantially.

The Federal Reserve chairman will be labeled a fool who is greatly responsible for the collapse.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will shut down.

“The rich” will be vilified, and their property will be increasingly taxed and seized.

The Economy:

The trend toward economic contraction that began in 2001 will continue to develop into a depression.

The unemployment rate in the U.S. and in most countries around the world will rise and eventually exceed 25 percent.

A record number of manufacturing companies in the U.S. will fail.

Politics:

The occupation of Iraq by the U.S. will progress from a quagmire to a financial, political and public relations disaster.

The Third World War, which began on 9/11/01, will escalate.

Separatist movements will gain momentum. Many will successfully establish new geopolitical entities.

Fears about technology will lead to restrictions on its development.

Politics will become far more polarized, splintered and radical.

Other Social Trends:

Religion will become increasingly popular. Its advocates will become increasingly passionate. Religious intolerance will increase.

Science will be turned to manipulative or malevolent purposes.

New brutal sports will be introduced and gain popularity.

The U.S. space program will be shut down.

Hemlines will fall, and bright colors will go out of style.

Cults and other escapist communities will be established.

These are just a few of the predictions Prechter made in 2003. Some of them are pretty radical, but many are proving prophetic. It makes for very interesting reading.

The idea of a pre-determined collective social mood seems pretty farfetched on the surface, but if you take a closer look, maybe not so hard to believe.

I'm not saying I buy it without question, but I'm reading a couple of books on the Elliot Wave Principle and paying attention to what's happening.

Maybe I'll make some predictions of my own. I'm a prognosticator in training.

Writing Fiction

Finally, I'm writing again. I've not written any fiction, or rather, I've not worked on anything serious, in about four months. I've fooled around with some stories, but ever since I decided to shelve the recent WIP, I've been spending a lot of time doing research. The new story has some major plot elements that I knew nothing useful about. I've been researching how our Port Authority works, and I'm starting to look into Asian business culture, particularly South Korea. I don't have to become an expert on these matters, but I have to know enough to write with realistic detail where it's needed for the scenes and to give verisimilitude to the plot.

I've had plenty of time in the last four months to plot and scheme and develop characters. Seven hours of highway time once a week was great for playing around with ideas, working them through, scribbling them onto a notepad as I barreled down the highway at 80 mph.

Now that I'm actually writing, starting out on a new story that will hopefully be around 80K words when finished, it feels like sitting down to dinner with an old friend that you haven't seen in too long.

How you doing, Blank Page? Let's reacquaint ourselves.

I don't know yet if I'm starting at the beginning of the story or not, I'm not worried about that right now. I've got a destination in mind this time, and I'll enjoy the journey. I'm sure it will take me to some unexpected places, and I'm looking forward to it. I love the journey. My last WIP didn't wind up anyplace exciting, but the journey was worthwhile and certainly I developed my skills. Writing in first person POV was an interesting excercise, though I'm writing this one in close third. Third gives the opportunity to develop tension in different ways. I think it will work better for this story. It will have a thriller edge to it, though it's still a quest-type mystery.

I read one of Jason Pinter's novels recently, The Stolen, his third one, I believe. I haven't read the first two, so I don't know if they're written in the same style, but he alternates between first person POV for his MC, and third person for other people. It was effective in that it allowed him to develop tension by letting the reader in on what the other characters were doing while keeping the MC in the dark. I've thought about doing this, but I was afraid it might be viewed by editors as a cheap way to create tension, kind of cheating, in a sense. Shows what I know. Pinter got away with it, so I guess it's a legitimate strategy.

If you want some exciting news, check out Stuart Neville's blog here Conduit. What an exciting adventure Stuart is living right now. It gives hope to all of us.