On a Rounding Basis

I live a life of contradictions.  It is more exciting that way.  I have an intense aversion to cliches but I also have an intense aversion to hipster's aversion to cliches.  Yes, I am working on a powerpoint flow-chart to demonstrate this.  I have, for the moment, run out of auto-shapes however, so that plan will be pending MSFT getting a little more creative.

I almost always refer to companies via their stock symbols, an out-growth of my early career as an equities analyst.  It is somewhat surprising that the brain can retain very literally thousands of three-to-four character combinations that can often be rather similar.  You would figure that some of that stuff would have fallen out of my brain by now but that just isn't the case.  Yet I can only remember three birthdays by heart: The Legend, Boondock, The Dancing Orange.  For two of those I have found a way to cheat at remembering.  For the last it is only because I grew up being constantly reminded of the number of days older she was than me, which was a really subtle form of elitism.  I always get confused with The Sky is Falling (terrible I know) because hers is so close to Thanksgiving (one of those odd holiday's tied to a day of the week instead of just the date) which always confuses me.  I am easily confused, evidently.  There is very little need for me to recall the birthdays of The Hammer, The Delorian, and The General because, well, we're boys.

It is really remarkable what gets stuck up there and what doesn't.  I can't recall the names of just about any of my high school teachers or college professors but I can remember my high school girlfriend's phone number?  That doesn't seem terribly useful.  As the moniker of this blog would highlight, I have always had a thing for numbers.  Naturally, this means that I subject the inter-web to my writing.  Again, those wonderful contradictions.

I really enjoy writing Haiku, though never about nature like they're supposed to be.  I like having to reduce an idea or a memory to that finite of a space.  It just makes you think about things differently.  Most of what I read is non-fiction but I did an independent study in creative writing at one point.  I had a short story about baseball published nationally when I was in high school which instilled high hopes in The Sky is Falling.  Alas, the gardening industry was too powerful a force to resist.  My Philosophy professors in college (the ones' whose names I can't remember) were always indignant to find out that I was also a Finance major.  It was outwardly demoralizing thing for them to realize that I could understand their gig so well without the same level of reverence for it.  That's probably how born-again Christians feel about Biblical scholars who also happen to be gay... or worse, Irish Catholic.

There are commonalities in all of those things, of course.  I gravitate toward things that rely on logic and structure.  I have always been decent at identifying drivers of complex systems, about the only prerequisite to being friends with Mr. Market.  The Chicago Mr. Market, not the New York Mr. Market, these are very different sirs, the latter is prone to spending far too much time at Brooks Brothers.  Oh, but I live in Los Angeles?  Don't worry, it makes sense.

-I Heart Plaindromes