Beware the Under Toe!

Enough! I hate when my bloggery commentationalism turns political, because my rantings rapidly turn semi-incoherent however right my underlying instincts may be (no, really). All I know is Kennedy was right when he asserted (with proof) that tax cuts generally lead to higher tax revenues, and Bush proved it, and so did Clinton, so quit with the tax-cuts-are-only-for-the-rich Left Coaster-isms already. All I also know is it sucks that if my capital investments make gains, I owe income tax on all the difference, but if they make losses, I can only write off three grand of it. Three grand is not enough! I sold GE (at a loss) the other year to pay off some of the house, enough to keep those losses carrying over against taxable income at 3k per year for the next seven freaking years. How stupid is that? It means any more losses I incur (plenty of opportunity for it these days) can't be written off until, geez, Obama's third term! Choke! (So I shouldn't have sold? Hello? Stock market, or lower mortgage? Come on, quick now, easy question.)

So forget all that! Here's a picture of some toes near and dear to me.

Lottery Dreaming

Remember in the early internet days when there was little or no connection between a company and its domain name? Then people discovered they could register a well-known company's name as an internet address and make a boatload of money selling it back to them. For awhile there was a flurry of trading activity as savvy early adopters of the internet domain-buying game snatched up useful URLs and auctioned them off to the companies that wanted to use them, often for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When I first hit the net in '94 or so, tacobell dot com was just a fan site. At some point the domain was sold to Pepsico (or Tricon or whomever), hopefully for a lot of cash. (For simplicity I'm ignoring the twisted legal history of major corporations beating up on entrepreneurs for being quicker on the draw and basically stealing domain names for a song and a lawyer's fee.)

Those good ol' days are long gone. Domain names themselves mean shit. Content counts. It is said that business dot com sold for the highest amount, well up in the millions; but look at it now. It's nothing. Who would ever have predicted the big winners would have silly names like google, yahoo, myspace and youtube?

But for a moment the dream of unearned riches returned. Turns out back in '06, GM forgot to refresh their copyright to "Oldsmobile" (copyright is distinct from domain name, and rather more valuable). The name sat around unclaimed for awhile. In time, Toyota snatched it up, and Oldsmobile will soon be a component of Toyota's marketing strategy. But imagine if you had been able spend the $5k and snatch it up yourself. Not to make cars (duh) but just to have it in hand when you call GM and ask if they want it back. "Oh wait, Toyota's calling, let me get back to you on that."