Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a German intelligence agent ... everyone in his unit speaks English, oddly ... he smokes and drinks enough in this one to down a rhino, which he oddly resembles, a blonde rhino. Robin Wright shows up as a CIA agent with a horrible dye job, black, maybe trying to pass as KD Lang ... beautiful fake blonde "human rights" lawyer ... Willem Dafoe doesn't play a Batman villain, but a German banker villain (more evil) with a soft spot, a bitchy bored wife, and an AMG Mercedes ... they got that guy from Nazi central casting (Hitler mustache, wire-rim glasses) to play the bad German intelligence guy ... was sort of interesting but not really ... spoiler: the Americans swoop in at the end with their black glass Suburbans and scoop up all the bad guys to send off to god knows where. Hoffman goes home to drink more, smoke more, and play Brahms using two fingers. Not 90% fresh but already in the queue before I made the new cutoff, so I watched it. Yellow rating.
Movies Watched -- A Most Violent Year
Two hours long and felt about twenty hours long ... slow slow slow. Starred the folk singer from the recent Coen brothers movie, Oscar somebody. Also had a blonde Jessica Chastain and her boobs. This was a W.D. By movie, maybe the same guy who made Life of Pi or something. God it was slow. The only thing that interested me was how many late 70s and early 80s cars they had to get in one spot for a highway scene. Again, this was on the RT Top 100 list but would have been cut if I had instituted the 90% fresh rule. From here on in I'll only watch the 65 movies from 2014 that were at least 90% fresh. Yellow rating.
Movies Watched -- 22 Jump Street
Sequel to dumb comedy 21 Jump Street ... funny in parts, but aimed so squarely at white suburban teens and early 20s frat boys that it gets old fast if you're outside the target demographic. 10 minutes of end credits so really only 10 to 20 minutes too long. Inexplicably on the Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 movie list so I had to go back and rework the list to include only things rated 90% fresh, which cut it down from 100 to 65 movies, which I will now watch so you don't have to. Yellow rating.
Aurora Dragon In All Its Glory
Looks a bit like the Prism ... will probably devote an entire island to the rainbow dragons.
QQQ to $110
The set-up across volatility I pointed out before still stands, even though the Swiss revaluation threw markets for a loop, and the Q's look like they should rally from here. That's my take on things.
Ctrip to $36
Next leg down ... keep an eye on it.
Cheap Chinese Cigarettes -- Taishan
Under US$1 and a hard pack ... Taishan ("Mount Tai") is one of the famous mountains in China, can't remember how many there are in total, oh right, five, five sacred mountains 五嶽 ... it's in Shandong province, so these cigs are manufactured in Shandong. Predictably the website listed on the package doesn't work: taiclub dot com dot cn ... probably because I have a US IP address?
UPDATE -- Taishan has a number of brands under their label, this is the "General" brand.
The characters in the center of the package say 將軍 or "General" It also says "General" in English script on the bottom of the box.
Taishan written in pinyin on back of box.
Plain pull foil, though gold
Butt design ... "General" in fancy English script
Charts of Note, Thu. Jan. 15, 2015
JNPR, KRFT and TGT ... click on the chart to flip through them.
Volatility Indexes Pointing To Broad Rally
Same pattern in VXX, UVXY (2x), TVIX (2x), etc. If the market rallies then gold will fall, so the gold short (and Kinross) makes sense. Other outstanding shorts like GILD, TWTR, etc. will have to be scratched.
UPDATE: The Swiss National Bank messed things up ... volatility and gold jump, the broad market drops hard on their move. TWTR and GILD shorts benefit.
Cheap Chinese Cigarettes -- Baisha
Remember the rules, under US$1 and must be a hard pack. Baisha is a "common place name" according to the dictionary. Literally it means white sand. These are manufactured in Hunan province, apparently. Just like Hongmei, the website listed on the pack doesn't work for me ... hngytobacco dot com.
Front of box, a pair of cranes which symbolize something, would have to google it. OK, "ultimate depiction of longevity." The text on the gate says 白沙古井, "white sand ancient well"
Name in pinyin on back.
Plain foil pull.
Butt design