my journal 2

[Yamato]

Thanks for the feedback and for the compliments, and saying that I am a "good man". I don't know about that. I feel like I am a regular selfish person.

Regarding life leading me anywhere, as I wrote recently, I don't believe in god and destiny, so I feel like I could be building my castle of cards my whole life, and then, all of a sudden, just when I am about to finish it, I get run over by a car.

But it feels great to have a reader... who reads me for 3 or 4 years when I have only been writing for less than 2 years, so I guess you've been making money, because as you said money does amplify things.

Still sleepless after all these hours. I drank almost a whole bottle of wine. Oh, and if money amplifies who I am, then I am an alcoholic.

Thanks for the feedback, even though I don't agree with everything you said.

 

[Yamato]

Still cannot sleep.

I drank a whole bottle of wine, and still I can't sleep.

Probably will manage to fall asleep in 15 to 30 minutes.

50% chance of skipping the whole day at work. Then again I might go late and let them see that i am making an effort, despite insomnia.

Anyway it's all taken off from my days of vacation.

The systems are making money today as well. It seems like a curse. It seems like I won't be able to sleep until we will enter a drawdown, with a semblance of comfortable failure.

Something that will make me feel like I am back in my comfortable life of being disapproved of by people, unsuccessful, and all that.

I can't wait for a drawdown to bring me back to reality.

 

[Yamato]

i did go

I went to work and... I went at 12:05 and left at 15:05 and used up 3 hours of "vacation".

The systems are making money as usual but now my euphoria is gone. The problem is instead that the paranoia is still in my head... usual unmentionable concerns regarding whether my dream will actually come true or not.

The good thing is that I am getting used to seeing my systems make so much money. No wonder. Until now it was all virtual, since I had no capital (after blowing out my accounts for over a decade). Now the capital invested is starting to get increased to levels I had not witnessed before in my own bank account, and of course the result is that real money is being made. Well, the whole point is that I've never seen my systems make so much money before, and I hope to get used to it. Anyway, whether i get used to it or not, I won't be able to do anything, because it's not my account anyway. And this is good, as far as my gambling concerns.

 

[Yamato]

momentarily in a good mood

Yeah, I finished all work related to the latest wave of 52 systems and the work related to the latest scaling up. I am momentarily done with all work and concerns. I finished helping all those guys, too, for the moment.

I am pretty much done, the systems are making money... all set. Momentarily satisfied.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrDSMBJ7AAc

 

[Yamato]

another grotesque movie: Fido

http://www.putlocker.com/file/W7PEW9IG5WGKS8

It's not too bad, this Tim Blake Nelson guy:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/?actor_name=Tim Blake Nelson

 

[Yamato]

a little improvised poem

I am trying my poetic skills, and I will write my poem. Maybe it's not a poem even, but if i write something and then press carriage return before the line ends, it looks like a poem, so I could say I look like a poet maybe. Anyway, here it is. It goes like this (ignore the "travis" part, because it's from a chat I wrote on skype):

[14:59:14] travis: when i connect on skype
[14:59:21] travis: i hear that sound
[14:59:25] travis: like a wine bottle
[14:59:27] travis: getting opened
[14:59:35] travis: it makes me worried
[14:59:40] travis: that something in my laptop
[14:59:46] travis: is getting wrecked
[14:59:50] travis: do you feel the same way?
[15:00:10] travis: ok
[15:00:13] travis: i have to go offline again
[15:00:16] travis: it was a poem
[15:00:21] travis: i wanted to leave you with

If you think about it, every chat can be turned easily into a poem. It's just a question of selecting the right parts. I'll do it more often. It feels good being a poet.

In fact, skype is ideal, because it times your chat like a poet times his silences between verses. So this is just perfect and my poem will have to be recited precisely according to the pauses recorded by skype.

 

[Yamato]

Here I am, back to my "journal" experiment. Writing what comes to mind.

I feel it's a big success, as I have had blogs before, but never had as many readers as I have here. Each time I come here, on the bottom of this page, it says there's me and someone else reading. Usually there's more guests than registered users. Or rather, it depends on the times. When there's registered users, they all tend to be here together, for some reason. But the guest or two are always there, almost always, no matter at what time of the day I connect. It's a good feeling. I have no life, but at least I have this journal that gets read by someone. I just wondered if the guests are always the same or people coming and going, coming once and never coming back. I would also really like to know what each of my reader is thinking when he's reading this and that post. I'd like to be in their minds. I have always been obsessed about what others thought of me. I am interested by it.

Yeah, and I am saying all this because I've always wanted to be a writer, and here I get to be a writer. A "published writer", too. And one who gets read as well. There's the feedbacks to prove that. 500 of them, if I also count the "recommend travis's post" comments.

I have a cousin who wrote a book or two, all novels. And they call him a writer of course. He's the writer of the family. He has a blog about his books, his own blog, and guess what. He has had only 10 comments on his books or so, and almost all of them are from friends and relatives. It's pretty pathetic if you think about it. I feel more successful a writer than he is.

Yeah, neither of us makes any money. He probably doesn't make any money either, but anyway this type of thing is not something you do for money. Yeah, some like Stephen King get famous and rich, especially those who have their books turned into movies. But almost all writers just want to be read. They don't write because they're trying to make money.

And this is why I am trading, too. I wanted to be a writer and my dad said "writer is not a job". I wanted to be a philosopher and he said "philosopher is not a job". So I said "ok, I'll do political science" and he said "ok, if that is what you like...", after having rejected all my other choices (psychology, philosophy, literature major). So I now work at a bank, because there's not much you can do with a political science major.

But, like Tony Montana in Scarface, at the start of my banking jobs, I said to myself: "ok, I want to be a writer, a philosopher, a poet, a thinker, so first I need to make the money, then I can do whatever I want". And to this day I am still trying to make it happen. And I feel like I have wasted my life. If my father had instead encouraged me to go after my dreams, maybe now I'd be making more money from teaching philosophy, even if I hadn't become a famous philosopher, than the money I am making from trading in order to still be a philosopher. It's like that story I heard somewhere where a fisherman talks to a rich man, and says why did he become rich, and ultimately the rich man became rich in order to be able to fish all day, and so the fisherman says something like "well, you could have simply been a fisherman instead of working all your life to make money and then finally achieve your dream of fishing". Yeah. That's what happens when your parents keep you from going after your dreams. This is what happened to me.

It reminds me also that quote from the catcher in the rye, which applies to me now and to me 10 years ago and earlier:

Mr. Antolini didn't say anything for a while. He got up and got another hunk of
ice and put it in his drink, then he sat down again. You could tell he was thinking. I kept
wishing, though, that he'd continue the conversation in the morning, instead of now, but
he was hot. People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you're not.
"All right. Listen to me a minute now . . . I may not word this as memorably as I'd
like to, but I'll write you a letter about it in a day or two. Then you can get it all straight.
But listen now, anyway." He started concentrating again. Then he said, "This fall I think
you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted
to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole
arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking
for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their
own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up
before they ever really even got started. You follow me?"

The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.

That is precisely the part of the Catcher that applies the most to me. Because my father mostly denied me all fun and all satisfaction in life. No matter how good my grades were, I had to keep on studying, so I finally just stopped trying to please him in vain, and started skipping and failing classes, at the age of 14 (which is when I read the catcher, while skipping class probably). Then later, practically choosing my major for me, he once again denied me any satisfaction: you don't do what rewards your brain and thinking but you do something that pays the bills. You cannot be an artist, was his message to me. You cannot be creative. You cannot have fun in life. You just have to work hard your whole life. So I was slowly discouraged from even dreaming of being happy in life. All my ambition to achieve something and be happy were suffocated from very early on from my dad.

Then I also learned from the catcher to be sincere. It's like my bible. I write the way I write because he showed me the way. He showed me that you can just speak your mind and call yourself a writer. He showed me the value of being direct.

He showed me that simply by being so successful. He was rewarded for writing that way. So basically, this is my philosophy in life. Speak as much of the truth as possible, and be as direct as possible, especially when you're writing. After all, the catcher in the rye is a journal. Holden's journal.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is
where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were
occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I
don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff
bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece
if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like
that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also
touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or
anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last
Christmas...

I read this book at 14 and since then it just got into my head -- I immediately knew it was my favorite book, just like I immediately knew taxi driver was my favorite movie. And travis, too, writes his journal in taxi driver, and in that journal he says what he thinks. Journals are by nature the place where you speak your mind.

So this outspokenness... was in me, ever since I read the catcher.

And here I am, starting my journal, and it sounds just like the catcher, even without doing it on purpose, at all:

Up until recently discretionary trading seemed easy to me just like it does to the author of the above mentioned journal. This is how I lost about 50 thousand euros during 12 years, one thousand at a time, more or less. I've kep on doing discretionary trading for the whole of these past 12 years, despite losing every month. This tells you that I am much sicker than the average trading addict.

Anyway, in these 12 years, one way or another, I did manage to do something good in the meanwhile, while losing a few hundred euros a month with my discretionary trading (on average 350). What I did is I developed a few automated trading systems, that make money, and have been making money for a couple of years now...

With the Catcher and with my journal it is evident that the author just speaks his mind and doesn't hide any details. His main objective is to shoot away all his thoughts, without picking the ones that will impress the reader. The result is something compact and full of meaning and logic. If you instead skipped some thoughts, and your objective was appearances and making a good impression, you'd be skipping logical steps and the reading would not be as pleasant. We're just presenting our reasoning here. We're not trying to impress. If anything we're trying to impress with our sincerity. You can tell this difference between this journal and the others. And if you can't, then you're one of the dicks i keep complaining about.

Other things that made me love the characters of Holden and Travis were for the first guy that he skipped classes and similar, and for the second guy that..."I've got some bad ideas in my head...":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDgXeYlpbOE

Then wizard tells him "don't worry so much...". That's exactly what people have been telling me all my life. But I worry, Holden worries, the three of us think. Our minds are independent from conformism. We're anticonformists.

In a way we feel special, we feel that we're entitled to having our own mind and thoughts, and be independent from the herd, we feel that we don't have the obligation to conform like the other sheep. We feel special and we dare to have our own free thoughts.

 

[Yamato]

I am finishing "Fido", and I have to say that I was expecting nothing of it, when instead it is a deeply philosophical movie (beyond the comedy surface):
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-3256-Fido

This Billy Connolly is an amazing actor. I also saw him act in Beautiful Joe. Amazing actor.

This movie grows on you. Very well made despite disgusting appearances.

This movie is not about real events, but as a metaphor, it is realistic and could be compared to the way slaves were treated in the States less than 200 years ago. Or even servants, maids are treated today in many places. It is a really well made movie, despite appearances. It's even hilarious at times.

This is a director to remember:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Currie

"Fido" is a work of art, if not even a masterpiece. Here's a good review on it, some quotes from it:
http://www.thefilmyap.com/2010/04/17/fido/

Criminally overlooked, Andrew Currie’s 2006 comedy deserved a larger cult following than it gathered — a crafty and mordantly witty application of the Cold War panic present in Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” to a zombie tale...

...Currie’s script incisively observes how taboo preferences of our society (resigning our elderly to a lonely twilight) have become policies in the one “Fido” creates...

Here's another intelligent critic:
http://pixelatedgeek.com/2007/07/fido/

Some movies are made for a very specific niche audience, but delight better than any mass crowd-pleaser. Fido is just such a film. The premise: It’s 1951. Those zombie wars were a generation ago, and are now over (we won, by the way, or so we believe). For the last 25-30 years, we have enjoyed a blissful, blinders-on 1950′s existence only found on Leave it to Beaver or Lassie, with clam diggers, peaceful town squares, circle skirts, big smooth metal cars, and zombies as servants and laborers.

Basically, if you think that is a swell notion (I sure do!), then you will love Fido. This is a tiny Canadian indie with a decent-sized budget, terrific production value, and some familiar faces (Carrie-Ann Moss, Billy Connolly). Our lead, Timmy Robinson, the boy who named his zombie Fido, is played with cherubic earnestness and lonely genuineness by K’Sun Ray...

There we go, now we're talking! "Some movies are made for a very specific niche audience, but delight better than any mass crowd-pleaser". I really dig the rotten tomatoes web site, with all those critics. From now on I will check out the movies advised by this Cinerina Karina Montgomery lady:
http://pixelatedgeek.com/author/cinerina/

http://www.putlocker.com/file/W7PEW9IG5WGKS8

Masterpiece. Yeah, Fido is an understated masterpiece. No doubts.

It is not a movie made to make money by tom cruise and a bunch of other money-hungry incompetent idiots. It's a masterpiece created by very skilled and artistic people.

 

[Yamato]

Peggy Lee - It's A Good Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-PqM0BSmt4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Good_Day

Yes, it's a good day for singing a song,
and it's a good day for moving alone; (ALONG)
Yes, it's a good day, how could anything go wrong,
A good day from morning' till night

Yes, it's a good day for shining your shoes,
and it's a good day for losing the blues;
Everything go gain and nothing' to lose, (TO GAIN)
`Cause it's a good day from morning' till night

I said to the Sun, " Good morning sun
Rise and shine today"
You know you've gotta get going
If you're gonna make a showin'
And you know you've got the right of way.

`Cause it's a good day for paying your bills;
And it's a good day for curing your ills,
So take a deep breath and throw away your pills;
`Cause it's a good day from morning' till night.

 

[Yamato]

american violet

http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-7192-American-Violet

Great movie. This Tim Blake Nelson is in all good movies:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/?actor_name=Tim Blake Nelson

And he's a very versatile actor: he plays the moron in Leaves of Grass, the pervert in Fido, the civil rights lawyer in American Violet. And he's credible in all roles. And then he's also a good director:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Blake_Nelson

http://www.reginakelly.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Violet#Historical_basis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_County,_Texas
http://www.co.robertson.tx.us/ips/cms/districtcourt/districtAttorney.html

Great soundtrack, too:

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free...

Great song.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wish_I_Knew_How_It_Would_Feel_to_Be_Free
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Taylor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Simone

 

[Yamato]

Well, well.

It's time to write again.

About what? Just what's on my mind. That's what a journal is for.

I won't be posting my equity anymore, because it's going too well and it looks like I'm showing off. I can't write everything that's on my mind, because of personal reasons and other things I can't explain. So let's just say there's some "unmentionable worries" that I haven't been writing about. But when I have those worries, I just write "unmentionable worries", and they're a constant presence in my mind, every day. And this is one of those moments.

So, no equity line, no unmentionable worries, what then?

Since I was thinking about the equity line and about the unmentionable worries, I will just leave it at that for now. This is my journal entry: non-posted equity line, and non-written unmentionable worries.

Oh, and for a change, I can't fall asleep.

[...]

But let's look at the bright side.

I have finished my 120 systems, a week ago, and, as a consequence, in the last two or three days, after I finished helping those guys, too, I have been free. Refining some details... and then watching a lot of movies.

But still suffering from sleep deprivation for weeks now. Terrible.

A lot of it has to do with the loud neighbours. And with my tense nerves. If I hear a noise that wakes me up, I can't fall back asleep because I start thinking that I want to kill the bitch.

[...]

The excitement from making money has worn off a little bit, luckily. I am getting used to it.

[...]

I was thinking about the internet. There's this... world that opened up to us, and now we're discovering the world around us, via internet. Then the world will become a smaller place for us, because as time goes by, we keep on exploring it via the internet, and then we run out of movies to watch, because we start in 1900 and then pretty soon we've seen all the good movies... but knowledge keeps on getting produced, like movies, too, and like everything else, so basically we can never keep up with knowledge. And, even if we did, we can never catch up what we don't know, no matter how intelligent and hard working we are. If the world was one person, or a small tribe, we could ace it. But now our world is neither a tribe, nor a village, nor a nation, but the entire world, and with an increasing population. And then, last but not least, from what I've heard, we die, and so ultimately this is all hopeless. And our forces keep on decreasing as we age.

So, basically, since we can't catch up, and cannot even keep up with the world, the best is precisely to make money, and retire as fast as possible, and then peacefully accept our limits and stop yearning for knowledge, and take it easy - and make knowledge our pastime but not a compulsive one. As the morons always say "take it easy". After all, the morons of the world, the cool dudes of the world, are pretty right about their "take it easy" philosophy. Or rather: it is ok to "take it easy" if you've worked your ass off for a few decades. It's not ok for them to take it easy, because if it were up to them, we'd all go back to being monkeys. We got better than monkeys because of natural selection, yes, but also because we didn't take it easy. Yeah. Our brain is the same as the brain of the men in the Stone Age, and so we weren't even monkeys back then. But what made us improve relative to the men of the Stone Age is that we did not "take it easy", which is how we developed and passed on our culture, because at least a few of us did not "take it easy". But what I am saying is that I've done my share and that now I could indeed take it easy, even though I know I won't. But I guess I could take it a little "easier" than I've been doing. Only thing... I guess not: I still don't have enough money to even quit my job, so I can't even take it "easier".

[...]

I am going to watch another one of those Tim Blake Nelson's movies.

Yeah... sometimes I feel like the gods will bless me, or that I am blessed by the gods, because I am engaging in reasoning and intelligent activities, because I am intelligent and I work hard, but I was just brought up and programmed to feel this way, whereas this is just a huge illusion. Today I was almost run over by a car in reverse gear, on a pedestrian crossing (my friend saved me). Yeah, you spend your whole life engaging in intelligent endeavors, and then you get run over by a moron driving in reverse gear and ignoring a pedestrian crossing. This is life. It doesn't make any sense. Or rather, it makes as much sense as statistics. If you're smart and work hard, on average, statistically, you get further than morons. But that is just the average, if it is at all a trend. Then there's cases when you get killed by one of the morons you were supposed to be outsmarting.

But you see, to make progress you have to be hard-working, intelligent AND antisocial. Today I was lured into meeting a friend, and that is why this happened. I hadn't slept... a bunch of problems all deriving from people. When you're with people you're less alert, and you're walking around to begin with, which you're not doing if you are alone (you stay home or if you walk outdoors you're more alert). Staying away from people in general is always a rule to follow. People should be dosed with a dropper, like a dangerous medecine. On the other hand, that guy is alert and intelligent, so I saved myself by having a friend like that. But it might be better to not have a friend at all. Anyway, he's coming to live in this same building, so I'll have one good neighbour soon.

I am going to watch this one:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-353433-Saint-John-of-Las-Vegas

For example, this guy, Tim Blake Nelson, graduated from Brown University, he's a jew, and so... this is not a coincidence that every movie he is, is a good one. This is not a "take it easy" dude. Intelligence pays off, but it pays off in ways that are valuable only to other intelligent people. Yeah, because if you're surrounded by morons, it becomes an idiocracy, and your hard work might not even be appreciated. Therefore you should be able to find a way to join the few intelligent people ruling the idiots below us. But if you can't find a way to join that elite, then you're stuck among idiots. You know what I am saying, right?

Tim Blake Nelson has not made one bad movie, and this is because he managed to somehow join the elite that has the power and that manages to stay intelligent and not drown. An elite that manages to make enough money to support its higher moral values and higher reasoning, because those things are a luxury, you know. But if you don't join that elite, and you're stuck being intelligent and working at mc donald's or for that matter working at a bank with other idiots (most college graduates are also idiots), then you're really screwed: they'll make you pay for your superior mind. Because being intelligent among other intelligent people is a pleasure, but being an intelligent guy among idiots is a torture. To get my point just make yourself watch a whole movie with tom cruise or nicole kidman and you'll see what i am saying about torture. The denial of everything you've been taught and everything you've been working for. Dealing with stupid people is a torture. And since the majority of people are stupid, my rule is to avoid people in general, and dose the intelligent ones with a dropper.

[...]

Even my aunt -- she was here yesterday -- is an idiot. An intelligent person blinded by stinginess becomes an idiot. She's a university professor. She could not pay 40 euros and take a cab from the airport to here, as i advised her, and do each time she comes here. She said "i can't afford to pay..."... yeah. All right. Then she wastes the money on other things. It's like a sin to pay for a cab.... well, the point of the story is that yesterday she landed in rome at 20.30 and it took her from 20.30 till 23.00 to get here. Two and a half hours instead of 30 minutes, because she got off the plane, went to the little train, waited for the train, sat on the train for 30 minutes. Got lost in rome. The subway was not working. Took a bus. Got lost again. Walked around in the city, with her luggage. She spent a total of 15 euros, instead of 40. And wasted two extra hours of time. Was it worth it? Especially after all the time she has experienced this before? Was it worth it... well, this aunt is not one who'll run you over in reverse gear on a pedestrian crossing, but is still an idiot in her own right. This expression is a bluff, really. I don't know what it means, but it sounds good.

Anyway, now I'll watch that movie:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-353433-Saint-John-of-Las-Vegas

[...]

Something very wrong with the script of this movie. Not good at all. The story is no good. That's basically the whole problem. Nothing happens basically, nothing worth making a movie about.

Here's what the critics say (those I agree with):
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/saint_john_of_las_vegas/

Mick LaSalle - San Francisco Chronicle:

Saint John of Las Vegas was a bad script that somehow got made into a bad movie with good people in it.

Shawn Levy - Oregonian:

Buscemi delivers game and spry and pleasurable work, but writer-director Hue Rhodes drops him into a mess of a film and lets him dangle helpless and alone.

 

[Yamato]

Watching this one now:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-980-The-Astronaut-Farmer

[...]

Not a masterpiece, but pretty good. Definitely recommend to watch it. There's a lot of similarities to what we try to achieve as independent retail traders, despite skepticism around us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronaut_Farmer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne

Now, this is somewhat related, even though i found it on youtube a few minutes after getting sidetracked:

It is private flight, even though not private spaceflight. I want to do this, too, one day. Fascinating stuff, because what matters is the view and not how big the plane/boat is:

Imagine what it could do in a place with a better scenery.

 

[Yamato]

Time for another movie, at least time for starting one.

I will write some more, then I will wash some dishes, then someone will call me on the phone, one my aunts. Yeah, I pretty much only keep in touch with aunts -- easier to handle. Yeah: not uncles, not cousins, not parents, but just aunts. That's my favorite type of person. Then I also like vegetarians.

I'll try watching this tim blake nelson one:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-5063-Wonderland

No, wait: i have seen this just a week ago, but it was so bad that I forgot about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holmes_(pornographic_actor)#Drugs_and_the_Wonderland_murders

Ok, I'll try watching this one then:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-2309-The-Good-Girl

Movies should be watched by skipping the first 5 minutes, unless there's any important action, which usually is not the case.

Another good thing is know as little as possible about them. I don't even want to know if it's a comedy or drama or biography or documentary, nor the title... nothing at all. We should all start watching movies like you start watching them on tv, half way into them, without knowing anything about them. That's the best way to watch a movie. Basically this is the opposite of movie trailers and sneak previews, which I can't stand, because they ruin a dozen movies whenever they have them on. I always look away when they show trailers.

Now, this movie so far is crap. Aniston does not look credible as the wife of a pot-smoking blue-collar. She could be ok working at the supermarket. That could be acceptable. But not the husband. They either needed a different husband or a different actress playing the wife. You can't start a movie with something so unlikely to happen. Unless you do it on purpose. I'll have to watch the whole movie, but I think they didn't mean it on purpose.

"I think you two are a pair of pot-heads", she says. That pretty much says it all. It's impossible that she could have married him. Gyllenhaal instead is ok for the role he plays.

[...]

It's actually getting better. Unbelievable. Thanks to holden who's rescuing the movie, 20 minutes into it.

Wow.... 25 minutes into it: it's turning into a very powerful movie.

 

[Yamato]

depressed again

Just a week ago I was excited/euphoric for the profit being made by my systems. Now that excitement is all gone. For various reasons (some unmentionable), I am not excited anymore. Maybe I got used to it, or maybe it's because my systems haven't made any money in the last 3 days.

Probably both.

Now I feel depressed and bored.

I am at work. And after spending 4 months battline the ace - kaizen idiots, they're gone. The quality of everything went from 100 to 50, and my work also decreased. Since I practically refused to do things like crap, the boss took over in most of the statistical work for our office. Which means having unreliable data. But I have less work. I don't know if it's good or bad. It is bad because I am not doing my job. Getting paid for doing nothing. But it is good because I don't want to be forced to do something badly and unreliably. Besides, I've been working non-stop for several years, so now I can rest all i want, without feeling guilty.

However, I am used to having problems to solve, things to complain about. Now I can't complain about trading: no gambling for months and profit being made every month. I can't complain about work: ace - kaizen is gone, no one is bothering me, I am on a part-time schedule. I can't complain.

So, I might either look for a new cause to fight for. Or I might relax a little more. I think I need to relax so probably for two weeks I won't be looking for something new to fight for.

Relaxing is an uncomfortable feeling for me, like they show in those war movies, where there's calm in Vietnam and then you get a bullett right between your eyes, because the vietcongs are attacking you in the jungle.

Yeah, according to that philosophy of always staying alert and never relaxing (I was brought up by my dad to feel this way), I am about to get screwed by someone who's approaching quietly and will screw me when I least expect it. I just wonder who it will be, if someone at work, if someone from the trading area, or some neighbours. The neighbours can't screw me because I am still at war with them.

Well, all in all, if I am stressed out, I buy cigarettes, drink alcohol, still don't sleep at night... I have reached self-destructive levels of alertness. At this point I could actually benefit from relaxing a little bit. I am going to allow myself about 10 days of relaxation, until the end of this month.

This will mean that:
1) I won't go to the boss and ask for work, and will just sit doing nothing, like now.
2) I won't get busy creating any new systems, except for that friend who asked me.
3) I won't devise any scaling up plans.
4) I will keep everything as it is. Without worrying about changing anything.

 

[Yamato]

Still nothing to do, and another 1 hour to go.

No work whatsoever.

I remember this situation - it's almost more tiring than working. Sitting and doing nothing is.

Let's just write some philosophical psychological post.

During these last 2 years on this forum, with my journal and my journal 2, I have gone through different phases, and thank god I did, because it's been an improvement.

I went from a situation where I was constantly screwing myself, to a situation where, due to working other people, I am being kept from screwing myself (and them).

Right now I am not a threat to myself any longer, which was totally the case for the first year of these journals (cfr. the 4000 posts I wrote). Right now the only threat to myself is from the people I am working with. If they don't screw me, then I will just keep making money, month after month.

Right now I can go through any mental emotional state, euphoria and depression, as I have gone through in this last year, and yet the equity line will not be affected by it. I will be stopped from scaling up too fast and from disabling systems just because they have failed one trade or two.

I have been taught, ot at least, I have been shown how one should approach automated trading: without minding losses and adhering completely to the trades decided by the systems. It would seem normal, but in practice it was never the case in my case.

I will stop here for now. Maybe I will come back in a few minutes to write another one of these posts, on trading psychology and all that.

Recapitulating, I would say that when I came to this forum and throughout the first year here, I was a compulsive gambler. And now I have temporarily stopped being one. I am always at risk of relapsing. I know that now. But if the situation stays like this, with the support of the people I am working with, then things will be fine. If I were on my own again, things might be fine, too, but I wouldn't bet my balls on it. There's a high risk I might relapse when, all alone with an account all to myself, I'll see a big loss from one of my systems.

 

[Yamato]

another 18 minutes to go

I am almost done for today (doing nothing basically). I have only worked 2 hours out of 6. Maybe 3.

So yes, basically, I had become such a bad trader (regardless of the reasons, and whether I knew how to trade or not), I had become so addicted to trading in a careless way, I had become such a compulsive gambler... that my money has been safer with some strangers than with me. The first advantage was that I stopped gambling, the second advantage is that I am now making money.

I am precisely in such a situation, where I am better off giving my money to others, or getting paid a percentage of the profits, than having it in my own account. Even if one day I will get screwed and not receive a part of the money I am entitled to, even then, I will have been better off than by being on my own with any amount of capital in my own account.

I knew that trading with others would solve this gambling problem, but what I still don't know is if I have learned anything, or if I still have the same problem and if, being alone, it will be just the same. I am afraid I have not learned anything. This is just a trick, like many other tricks I use in my daily life.

For example, yesterday there was an argument with my mom.

I told her not to buy ice cream. She bought anyway. Then I was eating it, even though I don't want to, because I need to be on a diet. Then she said to me to not finish it all at once. Then I said "ok, but take it away from the table please". Then, before doing so, she asked me "if I wanted more", so we got into a huge argument where I told her "you're an idiot", took the rest of the ice cream with me, and left, went to my room, watched a movie and finished my ice cream.

This is like a torture. If you know you'll be tempted, and ask to not fill the refrigerator with sweets, and she still does anyway, then at least she should not complain if you eat them, and then if she tries to stop you from eating them, and you accept and ask her to remove them from your sight, then at least she should not ask you, once again, if you want any more ice cream? You get my point? This is what I mean by "idiot". The concept is clear, I explain it to you, and you keep coming back at me, showing the ice cream in my face, and then I want it, and you tell me "no, don't eat everything".... it's a goddamn torture and i left saying "**** you bitch" basically. But what I said is "you're an idiot" because she did not mean it in a mean way. She is simply retarded. That's right - my father married her for her looks and not for her brains.

I know I should not have said anything like that, but hey this is a real torture. I am all alone, she comes, I ask she buys nothing, instead she fills up the refrigerator with tons of sweets and other groceries, then fine -- the inevitable happens and I start eating. Then she ****ing complains, too. Then I say "fine, please remove it from the table". Then she ****ing asks if I don't wanto any more!?

So ok, my point is that, probably like many others, I cannot resist certain temptations, and so my trick is to keep away from them. To keep money away from my IB account, to keep sweets away from the house, to keep cigarettes away from me, to keep all things I want to avoid away from me.

For trading, this means that I probably will not be able to manage my trading capital, just as I have been unable in the past 14 years. So this leads to the paradox of my money being safer into some stranger's hands than in mine. Because the stranger might not rip me off in the end, whereas, judging from the past, it is almost certain that, once again, I would blow out my account.

And now I am done and I am going home.

 

[Yamato]

Ok, I am home. And I am going to finish the movie I started last night:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading-journals/85510-my-journal-2-a-256.html#post1591702

[...]

Ok, the problem with "The Good Girl" is that aniston is not good enough an actress to play the dumb girl who destroys other people's lives for being so irresponsible. Everyone else is fine, but she is miscast, or if you will she's not a good enough actress. It's not just her fault but also the director's. Everything is pretty acceptable in the movie otherwise but with her in it, the story is not credible - and since she's the protagonist it is a big problem. She looks intelligent and beautiful, and someone like simply cannot end up with the character played by John Reilly. So basically this movie doesn't make any sense due to the way aniston plays the character, both the director's fault and aniston's fault for accepting the role or for being so bad.

Now let's see what the other critics have said. I'll quote those I agree with:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_girl/

There you go! I knew there was one smart guy who agreed with me:

Maybe Aniston should stop trying to be serious and stick with being funny, which is something she can certainly do.

Sandra Hall
Sydney Morning Herald

Both her previous roles, subsequent roles, and her acting, her expression... she's not credible in that role, and if she's credible then the story is all wrong and not realistic.

I guess the screenwriter and the director were faced with this choice: do we want to make a good movie or a successful one? And they picked the second choice. A successful movie makes money, but is not remember - it goes straight down the toilet. A good movie might not be as successful but it will be remembered.

This movie, the directing, the whole thing, is not art. Some acting is art, almost all of the acting. But as a whole it is crap.

 

[Yamato]

rotten tomatoes

Speaking of rotten tomatoes, the website collecting all the critics. I was browsing and looked for taxi driver, and there's one guy who dared to not like it:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918034-2,00.html

...Mean Streets first showed the conflict between Scorsese's natural gift for human observation and his attraction to social and psychological statements.

Unfortunately, social comment does not come easily to him, and the strain shows.

It is a conflict he can resolve only in a violence that seems forced and—coming after so much dreariness—ridiculously pyrotechnical.


Richard Schickel

This guy is good. Well, tell you what. A critic is like a lawyer almost. He manages to convince you of everything and the opposite of everything. For a few instants, he almost convinved me that there's something wrong with taxi driver.

Never read this stuff, never read critics before you watch a movie, or it's all spoiled.

Always try to watch a movie before letting anyone tell you anything about it. If anyone wants to talk about a movie to you, don't let them do it unless you've already seen it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_Gets_in_Your_Eyes

 

[Yamato]

judy garland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland

 

[Yamato]

johnny carson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wVsJR5Fu7I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv0tFPMgmKw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Carson