bad day in US-good day in DOWTOW WITH RODMELOTTE

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www.FrontPorchColumbus Dot Com
optimism running rampant (at some point)

Long but you have a whole weekend to devour it!

Last night I dreamed Clay Aiken died. I really hope he does not die today. The real question is why why why was he in my brain in the first place. What goes on in there while I'm sleeping anyway. Clay Aiken????
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Don't Ponzi me bro!!

So you have heard the Ponzi word a lot lately. Charles Ponzi did not invent the Ponzi scheme but because he bilked $15 million out of investors in the nineteen-teens he gets credit.

A Ponzi scheme is basically a pyramid scheme but Bernard Madoff perfected it. The guy really IS evil. He looks like a nice old man but that is why he is evil and I do not feel for him one tiny bit. He will live in a max jail for the rest of his life and will never be talked to, have ANY friends and he will live his final years is utter and complete loneliness. Probably won't last long in there anyway.

He stole even from his longtime friends and knew NEW he was stealing from them.

Even small towns like Columbus that invested everything in his scheme lost money. At first I laughed at people that were taken in but I was listening to interviews and even conservative money managers who did their due diligence were taken in. One guy said "I am very very good at what I do financially, I'm very conservative and do a lot of research and was totally blindsided. Am I embarrassed? No! He stole from me, I'm angry"

Here is sort of what he did in a VERY Cliff Note way.

He comes to you in January and says give me $1000, I will give you the $1000 back in February PLUS a nice steady income from my hedge funds. Sounds too good to be true right, until you start getting checks for $1100 the next month. The reason you get a good return is because in February he got other people to give him $1000 so you are getting THEIR $1000 and they will get $1000 for the people the NEXT month.

Here is the tricky part. The reason this worked for SO long is that he offered only modest gains, nothing huge, it was like real investing AND at first he only offered it to rich people. This was a key because he knows rich people would not want to take their money out, they were smart enough to keep it in.

It was working SO well he stopped telling people about it. It became sort of a secret club, people asked him if they could get in on his investing skill. The slow pace and ongoing cliquish "insider" word-of-mouth marketing enabled his scam to work for decades. Until 2008 when the stock market started to crumble. All of a sudden people wanted their money. UH OH!!

Charities lost hundreds of millions. Thousands of normal people like you and I lost their entire life savings, they have zippo, nothing. Small towns that invested lost everything. $65,000,000,000 (BILLION) GONE! And no one knows where it is.
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Speaking of the Stock market.

I'm feeling like Coach on Survivor now. Trying to predict things. Last week it seemed to ME that the market was looking like it was really pooping on itself. I know that at the end of a big bear market the market will dive in one final huge POOPER. I was telling myself that this really looked like a bottom style crash. However - I have never been in a situation like this and unless you are 100 years old no one has.

We shall see. It's been a real real good week so far. There is good financial news coming out. Remember , the Stock Market is a predictor for what things are like about 6 months from now. Cross your fingers.
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Public Enemies.

Looks like Oshkosh is doing nothing for Public Enemies meaning maybe we can get their Extras to come on down to Columbus. The PROBLEM is both people in charge of actors have no email (I can not fathom that).

So get a hold of me if you are in Oshkosh and want to attend our party July 11th.
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Long long story that happened yesterday

This is Crazy Chinese Guy

Where do I begin. I actually can not put into words the events. hmmmmmmm

I was going to take a final look at my bookmarks (they look AWESOME!!!!) before givign the printers the GO! I stopped at the Capitol and took a photo in the rotunda.

I was leaving and a guy ahead of me was walking out. He stopped in the revolving door and and spoke something but I had no clue what he said.

On the outside he pointed at his huge camera and said something on the order of "you picture". After a lot of pointing and so forth I knew he wanted ME to take his picture but his camera had - "dead battery - no find".

I pointed to a local camera place "you buy battery - I take picture". He gets all excited like a puppy and now it's getting weird.

He starts jumping up and down (literally). And saying "you stay here you stay here- I get battery - you take picture me".

THEN - he raises his arms in the air and starts screaming and is running to the Camera Company arms over his hear and screaming like the Home alone kid. Oh man! I'm at the top of the steps wondering what I should do. A guy coming the other direction says "That guy is having a good day". "Seems so!" I say

BUT WAIT - it's not over.

I stand there with a silly grin on my face wondering what I should do. So I take a few photos and decide to just stop in at the store to see if he is really there. YUP - but he can not buy a battery. His camera is a Sony and it will take two days to order it.

Charger back and hotel - you no have battery? It took a few minutes to get that across. I tell him I will take his photo and email it to him. I give him my card so he can email ME so I can get his address. He takes my card and writes, in Chinese, his email address, which I'm pretty sure my keyboard does not have those characters.

no no - u email me so I get your address, YES YES he says - u good friend so I give him another card. Then he wants to buy a $3 battery for something else. Gives the clerk his card which is rejected, no money. "I call wife, no problem." Here u use one of these? and he whips out five other cards. All Chinese cards.

rejected, unreadable, unreadable, old date, rejected. "I call wife, she at hotel no problem I be back. I on vacation come back in aprow 5 day I here."

So finally we go out and I take the above photo of him and we shake hands and he SKIPS off into the sunset.

I walk back to work and take a photo outside of where I have worked for TWENTY YEARS - now you will see why I am so downtrodden and oppressed.

It's just a real cheery building to walk into every single freaking day.

I get an email an hour later - bad day in US-good day in DOWTOW WITH RODMELOTTE (my email address was RODMELOTTE@yadayadablahblah.net

And I mail him the photos.
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And finally - you have to click on this link to see something DJ will not let me do.

Beer bottle Domino

And if that was good check out this old commercial.

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Have a great weekend
Rod