for 8 July 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

really excellent article. you
might want to also consider
that the economies have been
playing fast and loose with
the idea of value for quite a
while now. for example - the
forex markets. it's a shot
here, but it seems that the
departure from the gold
standard for currency
valuation seems to have
restructured our
understanding of 'worth' to a
more esoteric level all
around. not that i'm
complaining, though....

many thanks (yet again).

m. faraz javaid
<jupi2@mailexcite.com>

Absolutely. Money is paper
from a printing press - who
cares if we play with it in a
slightly unreal fashion? It's
like: Hey, you're not placing
your Barbie in real-life
situations, children. Maybe
we can switch to, like, the
wood standard or something,
re-inject a little reality....

Ambrose Beers

Austin Stories

"The Adults w/Brown
Whornet[sic] @ Electric
Lounge, Austin, Texas, 8 May
1998" is the shit, huh?

You fucking clowns. I can
understand misspellings,
maybe even in a .gif. But to
have it up since the end of
May . . .

It's clear that Austin is a
great place to live; there's
a steady stream on geeks
getting off the Southwest
Airlines Nerd Bird and not
getting back on. But it's
not because of the bands,
venues, or theatre companies.
Number one reason Austin is a
great place to live in ...
zero tolerance for pompous
black-attired folk that jump
on the Next Cool Thing Band
Wagon.

Don't be fooled by the
pouting hipsters already
here. They're from out of
town just like you. Try
wearing one of those outfits
to the lake at 3 p.m. Seen the
Wizard of Oz lately?

Kick it,

Robert

I'm not sure exactly what's
being said here, Robert. Is
the implication that liking
the Adults and Brown Whornet
necessarily makes me a
"pompous black-attired ...
pouting hipster ... from out
of town"? Pompous, I grant
you, but the rest is a slur
to which I bear no (close)
resemblance. Neither the
Adults nor Brown Whornet are
terribly "Next" or a "Cool
Thing," although I once
helped Brown Hornet, pre-"W,"
load their equipment into a
"Band Wagon" after they
played at a friend's house.

As for the suggestion that
proof of Austin's being "a
great place to live" rests in
"a steady stream on [sic]
geeks getting off the
Southwest Airlines Nerd Bird
and not getting back on,"
well, I think you may have
simply misspoken. The influx
of the business class is
obviously what's making
Austin more economically
unlivable by the day (for my
income bracket, anyway).

Finally, and most
wrongheadedly, the idea that
Austin's greatness inheres in
its intolerance may just be
wishful thinking on your
part. Austin may be an
appallingly segregated city
(one of the worst I've seen,
in fact), but it's still
pretty live-and-let-live, at
least in my neighborhood.
You're right about one thing,
though: The way the city's
demographics have been going
(yuppies, Dellionaires, and
the Guero's-, Four Seasons-,
and Speakeasy-visiting big
shots from out of town),
Austin's student population -
traditionally the seat of
hipsters and poseurs - has
been diluted from about 15
percent of the population to
under 10 percent.

Pouting and Pompous in the
River City,

LeTeXan

Subject: Well, fair enough
... but black still blows.

LeTeXan, Boy, I felt like a
goose when I found out they
changed their name. (Of
course, I'm guessing that;
I'm seeing Hornet and Whornet
cross-referenced all over the
place.)

But, that doesn't change the
fact that the most visible
immigrants to Austin are the
same type of folks that ran
to Seattle in the early '90s.
You mention two places that
are so far removed from the
Austin way of life that I
can't even consider them part
of the city limits: Four
Seasons and Speakeasy. (Hey,
and watch what you say about
Guero's and Dell; that place
is South Austin to the core.
And Mike Dell pays a good
amount of my bills)

As far as the Buffy and Mitch
go: All I can hope for is a
major recession to eat up
their discretionary spending.

Hey, I'm just a simple South
Texas boy who went to UT. I
liked Austin, learned how to
code in college, and I stayed.
We both agree that Austin is a
wonderful place to live (or
visit, I guess).

But, how the hell do you
know? Because you saw a show
and helped one of a thousand
bands put their equipment in
a car? Why is a Web magazine
based in San Francisco saying
that Austin is so great?

I sure as heck didn't mean to
insult you personally. I've
always been a huge fan of
Suck (and the rest of the
online Wired family). But,
you folks ought to stick to
what you know.

(Oh, yeah ... and that
statistic is full of crap.
Redefine the Austin area as
bordered by the 183/290/360
"loop" and see what you come
up with. Remember, UT is now
the largest university in the
nation, it continues to grow,
and students don't leave very
quickly after getting their
degree. (Unless of course,
they're business majors and
who needs them anyway.)

Sic 'em,

Robert
<pearse@mail.shebang.net>

Did I say Austin was so
great? That's a pretty big
inference. I just said I
liked this one music show.
Anyway, the "how the hell do
you know?" gets the response:
Because at least one of us
(me) lives
there/here/whatever and has
since the nasty economic
"trough" of the late
'80s/early '90s. But it could
just as easily get the
response: While certain
anthropological theorists
might make a convoluted
argument to the contrary,
"indigenous populations"
(aka: Locals, Townies) aren't
the only ones capable of
observing their own cultural
formations (in this case,
Austin music).

Not to get all factual and
stuff, but here are the stats
I was working with: Between
1960 and 1970, the size of
The University (love that
capital "T" they insist on)
doubled to almost 40,000
students, while the city
population as a whole grew
only by about a third. As a
result, throughout the 1960s
and 1970s, Austin's
college-age population
hovered between 13 and 15
percent of the population as
a whole. Although UT is now,
as you say, the nation's
biggest (a dubious honor,
btw), the city's population
growth post- Slacker has
substantially diluted this
figure, to just a hair over
10 percent. And if you
believe the city's population
projection for 2000 (621,795
- tres specifique!) and
assume a more or less static
university population (UT
itself actually predicts a
decline), it'll be under 8
percent.

Thanks for writing,

LeTeXan

Filler's Summer Movie
Spectacular

Subject: Deep Impact

I hit the point where they
were making wedding plans
before the mission ...

"That's it, they're gonna
die."

Never EVER make romantic
plans before leaving on a
dangerous mission, because
you will die.

John Muller
<a-jmulle@microsoft.com>

Well, there's got to be some
reason to care, right?

Convergence Theory

Wow, great article on the
economy.

I never did understand how it
worked or where all that
money in the stock market
came from. Now thanks to
you....

Ah shit, I still don't. If I
gave a fuck I would read it
again and maybe even think
about it.

Thanks again for another
great article,

Marty Herrick

P. S. Hey, how come like a lot
of articles by Beers it isn't
even the same writer each
time is it? How the heck do
you pick the names? Big hat
o' names?

WHOA, there, sparky. There is
only one Ambrose Beers, and
you're talkin' to him. Well,
you know, you're
communicating with him. Just
because I write in an
erratic, inconsistent style,
with varying points of view,
doesn't mean I'm not still
one solid piece of flesh and
blood.

If you prick me, do I not
bleed?

Ambrose Beers

Great exposition, as usual.
Couple of things, though:
Don't come crying to us, your
readers, when you cause a
worldwide market panic. And,
does today's writing indicate
you think that the Dow might
not hit 15,000 this year? If
so ... should I get out now?
You might have included that
you are the (only, I'm
guessing) nation with the
pyramid on its money. Your
problem is you're right.
However, most people (like
myself), will go on putting
money into the market,
because by now everyone knows
that that is the only/best
place to put it when they
have retirements, kids
college, blah blah blah to
pay for ... and we all know
we can't depend on
governments anywhere to take
care of us. The other option
would be to take my money and
buy real estate away from
civilization to hide out in
at the eventual total
collapse of everything -
which now that I've written
this letter, seems like a
pretty good idea.

Ted Sturk
<ted@light.on.ca>

We actually had some
discussions about the impact
the piece would have - we at
Suck have been keenly aware
of our impact on world
markets ever since the day we
dropped the soy futures
market with that "soy sure is
dumb" piece - but we were
drinking a lot of peach
liqueur that day, and the
lines just got hazy.

Can we make it up to you by
stabilizing the baht?

Ambrose Beers

It may be interesting to note
that on the day of
"Convergence Theory," from the
time the stock markets opened
in the morning (9 a.m., I
don't know) and 11 a.m.
(Eastern time), the S & P 500
stock index rose 11.45 points
or about 1 percent (Dow rose
by 80+ points, also about 1
percent). Not much it would
seem, until you take the
magical world of compounding
into account.

This increase of 1 percent in
a single day means that the
expectations of the stock
market for a large sampling
of companies in the economy
improved by a 3,961 percent
annual rate ... in a couple
of hours translates to an
improvement of
1,492,390,000,000,000,000
percent at an annual rate.
Have the expectations for the
US economy changed that
dramatically?

How dumb are the people that
invest that they could
suddenly say, "Jeez, I really
missed that thing the other
day that changes things by a
kazillion percent."

To put in the way that I
think about it, a credit card
with an 18 percent annual
percentage rate (APR) (which
we know is high, but we do it
anyway) has a daily interest
rate of .046 percent ...
pretty small compared to that
1 percent. If you paid 1
percent per day on your
credit card, you would have
to pay that big 3,961 percent
on an annual basis (that's
more than furniture rental rates).

(I can count, isn't that
impressive?)

So every time the Dow roars
ahead or behind 100 points in
a day (1 percent) or the S & P
increases dramatically, the
pyramid scheme rises to a new
level.

Wall Street is the least
idiotic (at least they do
original research, even if
they lie about it). Mutual
fund blow-hards have the
greatest misperception of
their own societal worth (big
egos, little brains that wait
for quarterly earnings
reports and Wall Street
research and know little
else).

But the dumbest ... are they
the people investing in the
pyramid, or those who sit out? As
you say, who is being
defrauded?

M Urban
<urbsm@hotmail.com>

Beautiful - see what happens
when someone who understands
these pesky "numbers" (that
is, someone who isn't a
writer) gets a hold of this
kind of subject? Very nicely
done.

As far as "who's the
dumbest," it honestly just
beats me. On one hand, I
believe what mom and dad
taught me - not the part
about sex, drugs, and so on,
and which please don't tell them -
but about easy money being
highly dubious and always
containing some kind of trap
or punch line. On the other
hand, I genuinely believe
that the US has transcended
reality, that we're so
disconnected from notions of
real-world value that we may
be able to play this game
forever. (When you tell the
guy in the nuthouse that he's
not really Jesus, does he
apologize bashfully and take
the robe off?)

Maybe ask me again in 10
years.

Ambrose Beers

Convergence Theory

Liked your piece immensely.
Shared fictional notions -
when did the notion of
investing your money change
from buying a piece of a
profitable company to one of
collecting stocks like
bubble-gum trading cards? And
like other worthless
collectible crap that
maintains the illusion of
value only so long as it
continues to change hands,
such as plates from the
Franklin Mint or Beanie
Babies, when are enough
people going to be left
holding the embarrassing
media of their avarice for
the whole thing to collapse,
Asia style? Probably never,
as few people have the
imagination to do anything
other than shovel what little
cash they have to spare into
the hands of some money
manager to by more mutual
funds. Anybody still holding
Bre-x?

Drinking heavily, A. A.
Ambrosia Ales
<ambrosia_ales@indegraph.com>

It appears that you
understand, to which I can
only say: Continue to drink
heavily.

Ambrose Beers