How to lose money

Here's a sure-fired recipe for losing money:

1. Build a business and a brand around a wildly popularly product that has an almost 50% *net* profit margin -- a ridiculously high return on investment in today's world. Count your dough and gloat.
   
2. Suddenly decide you don't want to be in that business -- that you want to be in *another* business, that is more fashionable but which has never made money.
   
3. Deride the customers of your "legacy" product -- the wildly profitable one -- as old-fashioned, and do your best to keep new customers from buying your "legacy" product, instead forcing them to buy your new unprofitable "fashionable" product before you'll let them buy your profitable "legacy" product.
   
4. Profit! Err.... *NOT*.
   

Netflix has done the sure-fired recipe for losing money mentioned above, and whadya know, they lost money! Whocuddapredicted, eh?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Improving the gene pool

Actor re-enacts Judas suicide as part of play, dies.

File this under "dumbass". What is it with religion, does it suck the brains out of people, or does it simply attract people who are already dumbasses?

-- Badtux the Head-shakin' Penguin

Netflix and the definition of "fail"

So anyhow, as some of you know, I switched to Blockbuster By Mail when Netflix started messing with their pricing structure. Blockbuster's okay, but the disks take a lot longer to arrive than with Netflix, and they don't have some of the more obscure foreign films. So I decided I was going to go back to Netflix's Disk by Mail service. Except....

Except they don't offer it anymore!

Yep. The service that basically defined Netflix... no longer available to new customers. Instead, you have to buy their Streaming service for $8/month, then add on the 1 disk plus Blu-Ray service for an additional $10/month. $18/month for disk-by-mail, vs. $10/month for Blockbuster.

Way to go on your slide to irrelevancy, Netflix! Netflix is showing all the signs of a company in a death spiral, complete with massive flailing about where they can't stick with one business model for more than a few months. I think I'd rather sign up for a Hulu+ subscription at this point and stick with the Blockbuster for the movies, thank you very much -- I have enough drama in my own life, I don't feel like dealing with Netflix's too.

-- Badtux the Head-shakin' Penguin

A word of advice to the lady doing the yogi

Okay, let's say you're doing the yogi in a rest area. You spot a potential mark -- some dude driving a dirty Jeep with what looks like half his possessions in plastic bags in the back. So you go up to him and apologetically say "I hate to bother you, but my car is out of gas... it's that brown car over there..."

At that point, SHUT UP. Let the mark think helping you out is HIS idea. Especially if it's a guy in a Jeep, Jeepers are notoriously generous and usually are carrying at least 5 gallons of gas on them in that red can that's on the back of their Jeep, so if you really ARE needing gas, you're likely to get a significant bunch of gas. If the next words out of your mouth are, "do you have some money I could buy gas with?", the next words out of *his* mouth are going to be, "I see", and he's going to shut his door, start his engine, and drive away. Because, look. You're in a rest area. Not in a truck stop. There is no place in a rest area to buy gas. Duh. Jeepers may be generous, but they're not idiots. Just sayin' :).

-- Badtux the Not-THAT-stupid Penguin

A thought on Amanda Knox

Some people think she literally got away with murder, that she actually did kill Meredith Kercher and it's just the incompetence of the Italian cops that freed her. But I know she's innocent. Here's why:

The Italian police say she killed Meridith Kercher in a drug-addled rage. The Italian police say she admitted to indulging in illegal drugs with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and that the drugs caused an otherwise mild-mannered American student to flip out and participate in murder.

So what was this eeevil drug that the prosecution say caused Amanda Knox to kill Meridith Kercher? Was it crack? Meth? Uhm, no: the drug that the prosecution say caused Amanda Knox to fly into a rage and kill Meridith Kercher was... uhm... marijuana.

Dude. Bogus. I've been around a number of marijuana users over the years, and I'll tell you this much: About the only way you could get them to fly into a rage would be if you got between them and the pizza delivery boy when they got the munchies, and even then it'd end immediately after they got that hot steaming pizza pie into their hands. Marijuana makes you mellow. As well as hungry. If the Italian cops said that marijuana caused Amanda Knox to kill a pizza, I'd believe it. Otherwise... dude. Not happening.

-- Badtux the Not-drug-addled Penguin

More good work from the Free Market Fairy

Left: The Free Market Fairy takin' care of meat safety.

Libertarians are fond of saying that the magical Free Market Fairy would take care of making sure that meat was safe in their magical Libertopia. Apparently the Free Market Fairy like, waves her(?) magic wand and, like, sprinkles magic free market jizzum all over the meat and presto, it's safe!

So, err... why isn't it happening? Yet another government-forced recall of Cargill turkey meat that made people sick. If the Free Market Fairy's magic wand would automagically make Cargill ship only safe meat in Libertopia, why isn't it happening?

My problem with the Libertopians isn't their theories. My problem with the Libertopians is that they're just fuckin'-a *DELUSIONAL*. Their notions are pretty and all, but you can't point me to a single nation, anywhere, where they work in real life, and plenty of places where they clearly don't work -- like in assuring that meat don't kill you, yo.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Dirty Fucking Hippies

The Catholic Church now has a new official explanation for why their priests keep fucking kiddies: the hippies made them do it.

Y'now, that excuse didn't wash when I was a kid, if I did something wrong or stupid and I said "my buddy Keith made me do it!" my mother would just shake her head and say "Go to your room, you're grounded for the next two days." It doesn't sound any more mature coming from an institution that's 2,000 years old and supposed to be more grown-up than that...

-- Badtux the Grown-up Penguin

Rapture fever

I wish there really was a rapture this Saturday, where all the faux Christians with their fish stickers and creepy smiles and constant "Have you accepted JEEEEEEzus as your LOOOOORD and SAVIOR!" get taken up to Heaven en masse. I must admit that I'm far too nice to the JEEEEEzus people who knock on my front door. Rather than debate the fine points of Tuxology vs. Christianity with them and talk about the superiority of the Great Penguin to Jehovah as the creator of the universe while stroking a black cat and occasionally saying "what's that you said, my pretty?" to the cat, I say "Sorry, not interested, thank you, goodbye" and slam the door in their face. JEEEEEzus!

Update: 10 Rapture tips for Christians. My favorite one: "Keep the sunroof open." I might add the same note about the skylight :).

-- Badtux the Great-Penguin-Worshipping Penguin

And the Governator is a horndog?

Who coulda guessed that the Governator had a love child?!

So let's see. In this week's scandals we have a bankster raping the staff, and a rich politician fucking the help. Talk about a metaphor for the state of things in America...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The definition of "unsustainable"

Top 1% of U.S. taxpayers earn more income than entire bottom 50% of U.S. taxpayers.

Where is the possibility of a thriving middle class in that simple fact? Simple: There isn't any. That sort of concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has no place for a middle class. And a nation without a middle class is not sustainable -- without a broad and prosperous middle class, a nation is unable to build the supply of human capital needed to foster innovation and economic growth, because poor people lack access to the resources -- both educational and capital -- needed to innovate.

And of course let's not forget the plight of the working poor either -- the only constituency whose taxes go up under the Obama plan. I suppose the next step is to give the bottom 40% of the American people only 3/5ths of a vote apiece. It's not as if there isn't precedent after all. Slaves shouldn't have the same right to vote as the rest of us, right? Right?!

Sadly, the American people keep voting back into office the same corrupt assholes who defend this kind of bullshit, time after time. If futility is defined as doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different outcome, the American voter's behavior is the ultimate in futility. Continually casting your vote for the most corrupt asshole, rather than carefully researching the candidates' views and background and voting for the best candidate, gets you this -- a nation that is spinning out of control, and which isn't going to come out of this tailspin until it utterly crashes into utter national disaster. 30 years. Max. That's all the U.S. has left, and given the utter stupidity of the average American, who keeps voting for the same corrupt cretins over and over again, I see no hope that this could be reversed. There simply is no "there" there in the average American's cretinous inbred incurious anti-intellectual holy roller Bible-babbling "mind" (in quotes, because repeating talking points handed down to you by religious figures as if they meant anything isn't a "mind", fuck, parrots can do that!).

As JazzBumpa is so fond of saying, WASF. I am glad I have no children or grandchildren who will be affected by the collapse. If you do... leave. There is no stopping this downbound train.

-- Badtux the Gloomy Penguin