An Aside + A Song

I've just come up with a way to describe my current trading strategy in the tax-deferred account -- I am swing-trading stocks I would buy and hold if I were a buy-and-hold investor. About half an hour after the market opened this morning I sold 200 shares of a financial stock I bought three trading-days ago (and can therefore now sell with incurring a "trading violation" -- but when the profit-potential if significant enough I have been known to incur a "violation" -- it's okay once in a while but they'll fuck with you if you do it too often) for a net profit of $254.95. I thought the market would crash and burn today but instead it's climbing like a motherfucker. That being the case, since my other holdings are more than holding their own, I think I will take the rest of the day off. I don't particularly enjoy trading stocks, although I will confess to manic rushes on particularly good days. I suppose I will check in on the BlackBerry throughout the rest of the trading day and make any necessary or desirable adjustments, but I am not inclined to make myself sit in front of this screen any longer than I have to on such a lovely autumn afternoon.

I wrote the lyrics for "A Concise History of Hip Hop" in three stages: 1) The first two stanzas were written in 2006; 2) The fade-out chorus was written in May 2008 in John Stanford's living room while he was working out the arrangement (which took him about half an hour); 3) The auto makes were added to fade-out chorus as an ad-lib when we were performing it on-stage at Cornelia Street Cafe in September 2008. Two versions of the song -- one in the "studio" (such as it is) and one live -- are streaming on the Jersey Petroleum website (www.jerseypetroleum.com).  With that:

A Concise History of Hip Hop

Hippity-hop to the chop shop
To grandma's house we go
YO!

Gonna waste that bitch
Gonna steal her crack
Gonna stuff her corpse
In a gunny sack

The pipe is cooking
My hos are hooking
The cops are looking
And I am booking
In my Bentley

The pipe is cooking

My hos are hooking

The cops are looking

And I am booking

In my Lamborghini

he pipe is cooking

My hos are hooking

The cops are looking

And I am booking

In my Alfa Romeo