Tag: wtf

Where your mutual fund money is going (WSJ)

Short version: whores, private jets, and rented dwarves. P. Diddy is running your 401(k).

A Wall Street Affair: This Bachelor Party Gets Lots of Attention Probe Centers on Payments For Fidelity Star’s Bash; Private Jet to South Beach

By SUSANNE CRAIG and JOHN HECHINGER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 18, 2005

Even by Wall Street’s over-the-top standards, the March 2003 bachelor party for Thomas Bruderman, a onetime star trader for Fidelity Investments, was an event to remember.

The festivities began with a trip by private jet from Boston to a small airport outside New York City. There, the revelers picked up some Wall Street traders and at least two women who investigators suspect may have been paid for their attendance, say people familiar with the matter. The partygoers — including the groom-to-be, who was getting ready to marry the daughter of former Tyco International Ltd. boss L. Dennis Kozlowski — then continued to trendy South Beach in Miami. The fun included a stay at the ritzy Delano Hotel for some, a yacht cruise and entertainment by at least one dwarf hired for the occasion.

“Some people are just into lavish dwarf entertainment,” says the 4-foot-2 Danny Black, a part-owner in Shortdwarf.com, an outfit that rents dwarfs for parties starting at $149 an hour. Mr. Black says he spent part of the weekend on the yacht and worked as a waiter on the Friday night at a high-end Miami eatery alongside what he called “regular size” people. “A good time was had by all,” he said, declining to provide further details.

Now I say I say hold I say hold I say HOLD ON HERE.

BRAAAINS (dopamine mechanism)

Looks like I’m not the only one with issues about dopamine. My ADD/depression/anxiety/self-hatred galaxy revolves around the stuff, and of course it’s the mechanism of addiction. But these poor bastards found out that the medication they were taking for Parkinson’s disease was turning them into pathological gamblers.

When the drug was discontinued, the urge to gamble disappeared. The AP story is here at Salon.com and the full scientific article from the Archives of Neurology is here.

That’s a Holy Shit Moment, that a dopaminergic drug can cause that specific an addiction to a behavior.

This heaven gives me migraine

Waiting for my mother at the doctor’s office just now I picked up a magazine called “Organic Style”, thinking “this should be good!”

It does not disappoint. A more descriptive name would be “The magazine for women who need to be so healthy and virtuous and beautiful that they are all hot yoga adepts and Jane Goodall and Susan Sarandon at once”.

Ads for Shell Oil face editorials decrying Arctic drilling. A product sidebar touts a $249 “earth/peace scapulare” that makes a statement in 14k “recycled gold”. There are many, many skin moisturizers and breakfast cereals. One is commanded to indulge everything, always.

The best part was a Dove ad. It was actually an ad for an advertising campaign (!). Dove wishes to celebrate “real beauty” of “women with curves” who are not size 2 models. They laud their own ad campaign, in which they stand firm for real women and unretouched photographs and celebrating… Anyway the women in the ad for the ad are impossibly hot twenty year olds with perfect everything laughing in their underwear. I guess it’s okay to be a size 4 catalog model now, gals! Size 0 is no longer mandatory!

tidbits from livescience.com

  1. High School dumps books. This confused me, and not because I’m a book-hugging Luddite. I can see why browsing a crappy modern textbook on a laptop is not much worse or better than holding one in your hand, but what about English classes, for example? Is there an advantage to reading The Scarlet Letter on a screen in electronic form versus the Penguin paperback? Or is this just the latest version of administrators falling in love with technology?
  2. Cockblocking (literally). Chickens, like swinging 20somethings, have lots of empty sex.
  3. This inappropriately funny headline actually shows how STDs spread among teenagers.

Bizarre Marriage Thing I’ve Never Heard Of

Jeremy & Vicka were discussing their trip to the government place to get their marriage license this weekend. Long line, go to this window, sign this, etc.

Dave and Bethya had a different experience. After all the official city hall signing and stamping and proving and agreeing, they got the license back, along with another item: a plastic bag of stuff. The official said brightly “This is your starter kit” or something like that and handed it to Bethya. It was full of household cleaning products.

I guess Dave missed the “men’s starter kit”, which is probably a universal remote for the TV and stereo.