Pineapple Juice

I suggested UPIP at 77 cents in September and bought more at $1.  In case you’ve noticed it at $9.70, don’t be impressed. It split 1 for 12.  Which means we paid, adjusted for that, $9.24 and $12 for each share we now own.  But Aristides’s Chris Brown thinks UPIP may be an even better bet now, having won some of its patent cases.  It should be in the mid-$20s, he thinks, not least because it has NOL’s alone worth $12 a share (“net operating losses” from prior management — an accounting thing that can be monetized).  With money I can truly afford to lose, I bought more.

Jeff: “I used to be poor, but now I’m not.  Should I choose a more expensive health insurance policy, because I can afford the premium; or a minimal policy, because I can handle the catastrophes?”

☞ I’d say go minimal if you feel you are generally healthy by nature/lifestyle/genes because (a) they’re not taking the risk as a favor to you (they expect to cover overhead and make a profit); (b) you’ll encounter less paperwork and frustration.  Consider supplementing the coverage you do buy with a health savings account.  And read How Not to Die . . . to need less health care in the first place.

Friday was W.C. Fields’ birthday.  Specifically, according to The Writer’s Almanac . . .

. . . the birthday of the man who said, “Comedy is a serious business” – born William Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania (1880). He also wrote screenplays, including for the films The Bank Dick (1940), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939).

He ran away from home as a child, stole to survive, got in a lot of fistfights, and was arrested often. He was a fabulously skilled juggler, and at 14 he honed his juggling act and joined the carnival. He went from juggling to doing a witty comedic routine, and then to acting in films. He toured a lot, and the more famous he became, the more he drank. When he was filming movies, he kept a flask of mixed martinis near at hand, referring to it as his “pineapple juice.” He often quipped about his drinking, saying things like, “Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” And, “Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.” And, “If I had to live life over, I’d live over a saloon.”

One day someone snuck into his trailer and replaced the martinis with real pineapple juice.  Back from filming, Fields took a sip and, surprised, spit it out — then charged around the set yelling, “Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice??!!”  (Thanks, Glenn.  Thanks, Nat.)