#dori's younger cousin series
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My little cousin (15) is watching atla for the first time. She's just started season 2. Here are her opinions of the characters so far:
Aang: "bald. Very bald."
Katara: "bad bitches do it so well"
Sokka: "attractive but in an older cousin type of way" (??????)
Zuko: "also bald. Angry and bald. Although he changed his hair now so just angry i guess."
Azula: "i will use my right to remain silent."
Uncle Iroh: "how old is he? Like 80? I'm gonna say 80."
Admiral Zhao: "musty dusty crusty" her exact words.
Yue: "she's coming back right?" Oh sweet summer child.
Jet: "all i remember is that stupid wheat thing in his mouth."
Haru: "who?"
King Bumi: "he looks like his mother got electrocuted when he was in the womb"
Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors: "all power to them bc i would not stand a chance fighting in a heavy dress"
#she's a very opinionated 15yr old#i can't tell if she's intimidated by azula or attracted to her#also i did tell her azula is supposed to be 14 and she did not believe me lol#avatar the last airbender#atla#avatar#aang#avatar aang#sokka#zuko#prince zuko#katara#azula#princess azula#iroh#uncle iroh#dori's younger cousin series
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prologue, the burning sky — star wars.
series masterlist | writing masterlist | askbox
─── summary: prologue; the burning sky. some tragedies will always happen, like a story you've always been unable to rewrite. but you still try.
─── warnings: star wars au, canon divergent. character death, vehicle accidents, blood & injury (nondescriptive), child loss, grieving.
─── notes: this is the prologue to a series i'll be posting following my ocs. this is a whole rewrite of the star wars sequel trilogy featuring ocs and focusing largely on family, grief, what you would do / how far you would go for family, haunting the narrative. the whole point of this story is family. are there love interests?? yes. but the core of it is 'what would you for / because of family?' you don't have to like this, but if i receive any rude feedback i'll just block you because the star wars fandom already fuckin terrifies me, let me just post my sad shit.
─── word count: 2.5k.
━━ the beginning.
The sun rises, as it always does, a burning orb cresting over the horizon, painting streaks of pink across the silvery sky. Dawn leaks in through the windows of a newly-broken home, reaching across the room with long yellow fingers to raise a house full of heartache.
Dory wakes with itchy, saltwater eyes.
For a moment, she wonders why the skin around her eyes feels tight and sore, her nostrils stinging. She winces as the sunlight bleeds through the blinds, casting the room in a happy yellow glow. Her stomach twists violently as she remembers what happened the night before, each painful memory crashing back into her mind; bile burns the back of her throat, and she has to choke it back down.
A sob racks her shoulders, sudden and vicious. She presses a hand to her mouth, trying to keep it in as tears rise in her eyes again, blurring her bedroom into one sun-drenched mess.
Something heavy lays curled at the foot of her bed. Blinking her tears away, she peers over the edge of the covers, finding her younger cousin Marya sleeping there. She must've crept in in the middle of the night.
Gently, she nudges Mare, and the younger girl stirs. Dory pulls back the covers and pats the space beside her. Blonde hair stuck to her face, mascara smudged beneath her eyes, Mare pushes herself up onto her elbows and crawls into bed beside her cousin. Dory pulls the blankets back up over their heads, and wraps her arms around Mare, pulling her cousin as close as she can.
"My room was too quiet," Mare whispers into the fabric of Dory's shirt, fingers curled and clinging tightly to it. "I wanted to stay up to hear any news, but I couldn't stay in there."
"That's alright." Dory's voice comes out cracked; she runs her fingers through the tangled strands of her cousin's hair, trying not to wince as Mare hugs her, pressing into the bruises that are spread across Dory's torso like a gruesome abstract painting.
She has never been the most affectionate person, not even to her own sister ━ but things can change in the blink of an eye, and people get lost when you thought they would live forever, and things bleed when they aren't supposed to, and Dory just wants to hold onto Mare for as long as she can before she has to let go again, no matter the pain it causes.
"Mum hasn't slept, has she, Mare?" asks Dory.
Mare shakes her head a little. "Not since I last checked. She was sitting in the kitchen when I left my room earlier... my mum was sitting with her. Uncle Luke went to be with mama in case something happened with Rion, and I don't think they've come back yet..."
Dory swallows at the mention of her other cousin.
When she stumbled in last night, stained with blood and reeking of smoke, with Mare hanging onto her arm, her father had folded them both into his arms. He'd sat with her as she screamed and raged for hours, held her when she sobbed until there were no tears left, and never said a word.
No one else had been there waiting for them; her mother had gone straight to the medical centre with Aunt Ashka and Aunt Leia when she heard what happened, and only returned in the early hours of the morning, pale as a ghost and clinging to Ashka as if she were the only thing keeping her standing.
Dory had never seen her parents like that before. Yve Cybele was the strongest woman in the galaxy, and Han Solo was always smiling, laughing as if everything were easy.
Last night, though, Dory watched her mother shatter into a million pieces, and her father had no way of pressing them back together again.
Last night, her sister died.
When Dory closes her eyes against the sunlight, it all comes back to her in sharp, jarring flashes.
She recalls the events leading up to the accident with perfect clarity; she, her parents and her little sister, Clarya, had come to visit their family for a month, as they had done every year for as long as Dory could remember. The visit, at least, had gone reasonably smoothly ━ she always worried about growing apart from her cousins, when they spent so much of the year on separate ends of the galaxy. She and Rion, especially; Rion had been absent their last few visits, training at their uncle's re-established Jedi temple, and this was the first she and Clarya had seen him in such a long time.
But it had been fine. Clarya and Marya, both fourteen, had stuck together like glue from the moment they arrived. Dory and Rion, too, had gotten over their initial awkwardness and bonded once more. Rion, one year younger than Dory at seventeen, had delighted in showing off all the things he'd learned at the temple. Clarya had laughed and wished she was Force-sensitive, and Rion had lifted her in the air, saying that flying was far better than being a Jedi, anyways.
Last night, Clarya had wanted to go racing. Rion had a landspeeder he'd hardly had the opportunity to use since getting back from the temple, and Clarya desperately wanted to try it. She was their father's daughter entirely ━ with the wind in her hair, she could do anything, be anything.
And nobody had ever been able to say no to Clarya.
Memories of the accident are more fractured, flashes of blinding light and sickening noise. Dory and Mare had gone along with their siblings, not wanting them to get into any trouble. Rion had been driving... too fast, Dory had thought, but she'd never been a thrill-seeker like her little sister, so she hadn't been too concerned.
Until Rion lost control of the speeder.
Dory woke up on the ground. Mare was screaming, covered in blood that didn't belong to her, clutching Rion to her chest. He'd been unconscious, too, the jagged cut across his head leaking crimson into his hair. The air crackled around them, heat from the speeder rolling over them in waves from where it lay burning nearby.
Clarya had been lying next to Rion. Her eyes, wide and blue as the dusk sky above them, stared blankly at nothing at all. She'd been impossibly pale, her leg bent at a strange angle, her hair stained pink. Dory had dragged herself over there, an unbearable pain digging claws into her chest, and only after a moment had she realised that her sister was dead.
Mare holds tighter to her now. It is too warm beneath the blankets, and her lungs ache for fresh air, but salty tears flow silently down her cheeks and Dory cannot bear to face a world without her sister in it.
"Where's dad?" she asks, careful to hold her voice steady, so she doesn't upset Mare anymore than she has to. Last night, Dory had been a howling beast, pounding fists against her father's chest, a cataclysmic explosion barely-contained within a fragile teenage girl.
But Mare's brother, her closest and dearest friend, is still unconscious in the medical centre. The doctors fear he may never wake up. While the cruellest, most spiteful parts of Dory pray he never does ━ he took her sister with his recklessness, and Dory has always seen the world in -black-and-white, and eye for an eye, his life for her sister's ━ she knows it would destroy her aunts the same way it has destroyed her parents, left them a burnt-out wreck the same as the speeder that crashed.
It would destroy Mare like it has destroyed her.
Gently, Mare shrugs, sniffling. "He wasn't with Aunt Yve and mum. I think he left... Maybe to check on mama and Uncle Luke? I hope he comes back with news..."
Dory has to fight to bite her tongue.
Later, when the sun is higher in the sky and Dory is done being angry with it ━ how dare you rise on such a dark day? she wants to spit at it, bloody fingernails grasping for the sky in a bid to tear it down ━ she peels herself from her bed, showering away all the blood and smoke from the night before, though the pain remains.
She passes the guest room her aunts had made up for Clarya during their stay. The door is cracked open a little, and peeking inside, she sees the room is exactly the way Clarya left it. Clothes strewn across the floor, a pile of her favourite books on her bedside table, the ones she brought just for this trip, in case Aunt Ashka and Aunt Leia didn't have any she wanted to read.
Reaching out, she pulls the door closed sharply, as if she can trap her sister's ghost in there forever.
Her mother and Aunt Ashka aren't in the kitchen, but the living area. Yve looks as if hell descended on her in the night, and left her nothing but a living corpse; her blonde hair, patches of silver creeping in at the roots, is a tangled mess, her eyes bloodshot. Ashka looks little better, her own blonde hair kept in a long braid thrown over her shoulder. She smiles at Dory as she enters the room.
"Mare is sleeping in my room," says Dory quietly.
Her aunt nods, hands folded carefully before her, every inch a politician. "I don't think she slept a wink all night, worrying about her brother."
"I don't think any of us slept, really," Yve says. Dory's eyes dart to her mother, who pats her knee. Soundlessly, Dory pads across the room and curls up in her mother's lap, in a way she hasn't done since she was a little girl. Her mother wraps thin, strong arms around her, stroking her hair back and rocking her like she is a baby again, and Dory doesn't mind.
Quiet sobs wrack her body as the tears flow once more. Her sister is dead. Sweet Clarya, her little sunshine sister, born in the summertime. She used to weave flowers in her hair and dance on the balcony when she could, and their father would let her stand on his toes even when she grew too old for it, just so he could hear his little girl laugh.
Her sister wasn't an angel. Clarya could be a brat when she wanted to be, when she didn't get her way, but she was the brightest flame of them all, and in the end, she was only a flickering candle, snuffed out far too easily when she should have been a star, burning forever.
Her mother is crying, too. Her tears flow into Dory's hair, making it damp, but she doesn't mind at all. There is enough ache here to drown the whole room, if they truly wanted to. Dory wants to open her veins and let it all spill out, let her ocean of hurt drown the world. She wants to take everyone down with her into this agony. She wants everyone is the galaxy to feel as awful as this.
It was her fault.
She should've tried harder to stop them going. Clarya wanted to go, and Rion wanted to show off for his cousins and sister, but Dory had known it was a bad idea and she'd let them do it anyway. She was the oldest. She should've stopped them. She should've known better. She should've told Rion to slow down, to stop...
It's Rion's fault, too.
"Have we heard anything?" she wonders aloud, her raw throat burning.
There are a million other questions she'd rather ask. Like why did this happen, or how did this happen, or where has dad gone? All of them feel like ticking bombs, each designed to inflict maximum damage, so she sews them into the lining of her tongue and keeps quiet.
Asking about Rion is normal, and safe, even if she doesn't care at all.
Her mother's arms stiffen around her. Aunt Ashka frowns, the gentle lines of her face deepening slightly. When Dory looks properly, she sees her aunt's eyes are bloodshot, too, and there are dry tear tracks staining her cheeks. Her too-thin fingers weave together.
"We didn't want to wake you," she says quietly, her gaze falling to the ground. Her shoulders droop slightly. "Leia called and told us about an hour ago... Rion woke up in the night."
Dory swallows her bitterness like poison. It festers in her gut. She wanted him to die instead. If she could trade her life for her sister's, then she would, but she would trade Rion's first. Her cousin is lovely and good, and she hates him still for what he did. For what she let him do.
It's his fault, and your fault, too.
"Is he alright?"
Ashka picks at a loose bit of skin on her thumb. She seems so unlike herself that Dory has to blink, in case she is dreaming. Her politician aunt, a former princess, married to another politician and former princess, has always been the smiling kind. Even so, Dory has always been able to pick out the similarities between Ashka and Yve, aside from their shared blonde hair and shining blue eyes.
She sees the similarities in the harsh edge to their smiles, the mischievous glint in their eyes, the sadness that settled into their bones over thirty years ago which hasn't ever gone away. Ashka may be a politician, but she has always been easy-going in equal measure, determined to balance her stoic facade with something happier.
Today, Dory isn't seeing Aunt Ashka. She is seeing Ashka Cybele, the politician, sharp-angled and cool, channelling her emotions into being someone else, to control the situation.
"He's alive." Ashka offers a small, slightly-relieved smile, but Dory doesn't take the bait.
"And?" There's something else. Dory can tell.
Ashka hesitates for a moment, and then sighs. "He doesn't remember what happened. The accident. Or..." Her lower lip trembles. Something inside her breaks free, and a single tear rolls from her eyes and drips from her chin. She doesn't bother swatting it away.
"Or anything at all."
For Dory, her fragile world, held up with cracked pillars and broken columns, comes crashing down in that moment. Her damned cousin, Rion, who caused the accident and killed her sister, gets to blissfully forget about what he did. Her lovely cousin, Rion, whom she still loves because that's how awful the world is, gets to forget.
And she has to remember. If, in that moment, Dory had known what would come for them all ━ what the memory of Clarya would make them become, how they would fill the void she left, how they would take the ache and learn to make it feel like home ━ she would wish to forget, too.
#star wars fanfic#star wars oc#poe dameron oc#poe dameron x reader#rey star wars fanfic#* fic: beautiful ghosts.#* chapter update.
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Hi! This is my first blog and I would like to share my adventurous journey about my life. Let’s start. My name is Ian Francis Maranan. I’ve been living for 20 years since the day I was born on the 25th of October, year 2000. I’m currently living in the city of Calamba, province of Laguna. When I was younger, I was an introvert. I don’t like interacting with anybody other than my family. Many people don’t know the truth about me, not even some of my friends.
I am the fifth and last son of my biological parents. Yes, I am an adopted child. It is because of an emotional turmoil that my family was going through that time. Truth is during the whole duration of me being inside my mother’s womb, every single family member didn’t know that she was conceiving me. They only discovered it when my godfather heard my cry as a baby. The pregnancy was not expected nor my birth because it was just recent when my brother was born. During that time, my biological mom is experiencing a psychological problem so she’s been emotionally unstable resulting to our family facing financially insecurity. For everybody, I am the miracle baby. Despite the challenge that my biological family, there is still hope.
I was adopted by the eldest sister of my biological mom who is my Mama Dorie. She is one of the many Overseas Filipino Workers in Macau. She is still single until now so I’m very sure that I am the only boy in her life. Though I was left here by Mama Dorie with my Lola, Mama Dorie and Mama Gloria’s mom, we never failed to communicate with each other. I am really blessed, right? I have three mothers, a father and four brothers.
For 11 years, my Lola took care of me and loved me. I was in grade 5 then, but I can still remember how dark my days when she died. I really miss her. I miss when she brings me to school and takes me home every single day. I miss her ways of disciplining me. I miss her every Sundays I go to mass because it reminds me of her wanting me to grow up as a child who is God fearing. But I’m still thankful I had her for 11 years of my life and I would treasure those times and memories with her.
After the death of my grandma, I was left in the custody of my Tita Delia until I graduated grade school. Tita Delia is a day care teacher and the mother of my best friend and cousin, Benok. I had been a consistent honor student then. With the help of my biological brother, who is a licensed teacher now, I excelled in my studies. He’d been very patient with me every day so I guess I had to give back through a bit of recognition in school.
I graduated in grade six as the second honorable mention or top four of our class. That time, my Tita Delia was supposed to be with me on graduation but I was surprised when Mama Dorie showed up on the day of my graduation ceremonies. I was still in shock Mama Dorie and I claimed my diploma and academic awards at the stage provided. But that doesn’t end there; Mama Dorie brought me to Macau and Hongkong as a graduation gift.
After that, I continued my journey at the city of Makati. Mama Dorie decided to send me to my godmother’s house to live and continue my studies because things were a bit complicated when Lola passed away and no one will take care of me. Not even my brother because he needed to focus in his work to support the needs and finances of my biological family. So, I started studying in Gen Pio Del Pilar National High school in Makati as a grade 7 junior high school student. At first, I was really nervous. Imagine; you have been some kind of an introvert for years than suddenly you are in a new place with no acquaintance. Scary, isn’t it?
In spite of my shyness, I tried my best to have some friends in school and luckily, I gained a lot of them and found that extrovert part of me. Every holiday, I visit Laguna to have some vacation. I finished junior high school in Makati city. I experienced facing challenges and sharing memories as a student and as a friend. Although junior high school wasn’t a paradise, I still had great memories. I’ve gained a group of true friends which was formed during grade nine and grown at grade ten. We named ourselves “team hoCage”. We thought it was funny when one of my friends pronounced hokage as hocage and so we laughed and decided to use the word as the name of the group. I will never forget those treasured bonding memories that I had with my friends. At the day of our moving up ceremony, I thought it will be the last day I’ll see them; we hugged and promised that we will bond again. Now, even from afar, we still talk together through online communication.
Moving on, I decided to continue my studies in Laguna at an IT school named AMA Computer College-Calamba campus. Taking science, technology, engineering, and mathematics strand. For the last 2 academic years, senior high school has been very challenging yet fun for me. I’ve made new friends. I had come to learn to be more independent. It has been a year of learning as well. And though it was tough, I am grateful, especially to God, my friends, and family who have always been there to help and support me. I am hoping there will be more wonderful, exciting and blessed experiences to come in my journey through life.
For now, I am currently a student in second year at City College of Calamba, taking an IT course. I am grateful for experiencing college life, still in progress until I graduated. This period of time is not that easy as an adult. I'm always thinking about my future and whether I will be successful. Many responsibilities will come, so I should be ready to face them. Today, this pandemic has had a major effect on our lives. Many of us are facing challenges that can be stressful and that can cause strong emotions in adults and children. One of the major effects is education. Many students are struggling with their modules and online classes, and some of them are worsening their mental health conditions. I hope this pandemic ends soon.
Now, I’m focusing on the things I like. First on the list is my love for arts. I draw a lot. I love creating portrait and anime drawings. I wish to be recognized someday as one of the popular artists in the world. I also like taking pictures with my smart phone usually through selfies or groufies with my friends and taking pictures of sunset and post it on my Instagram or Facebook accounts. A lot of people say that I have skills in photography. Someday, I also wish to have a dslr camera. Definitely, my life will not be complete without sports. Badminton is first on my sports list which I started playing since childhood. Second is playing volleyball. I also love playing strategic games like chess and dama. I also dance and I consider it as my passion. I like watching hip-hop and urban dance videos because it really makes me happy. As a result, I’m become a fan of Matt Steffanina and Sean Lew for the reason that they are the great dancers and choreographers and that they keep inspiring the people in the field of dance. I’m also a certified music lover and I can’t live without it. I play music that fits me when travelling, feeling alone, feeling sad and feeling bored. Music is my source of happiness. Just by plugging the earphones, you can easily forget the world.
After all, I feel blessed and I’m thankful for the good things that had come into my life and for all my friends and my family who never fails to put a smile on my face. In life, we commit mistakes but always put in mind the things we learned from it. There will always be a bad days and problems will come into your life but never give up and always stick of the positive side of life! There will be a way to solve it and let our God guide you always.
I want to thank you for reading and I hope I made you smile :) Have a nice day! :D
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You like AUs, right? Mash up Metalocalypse and That 70s Show, go! Mash up Metalocalypse and Friends, go! Mash up Metalocalypse and Frasier, go!
Oh jeebus, why?
… But yeah you’re right I do.
That Dethklok’s Show
You know what makes me mad is that I want to say Nathan and Charles are Eric and Donna, but Seth is unarguably Lori and that messes everything up.
Okay so Pickles = Eric, Seth = Lori, Calvert = Red but with hair, and Molly = Kitty except Seth is her favorite child too.
Skwisgaar = Kelso because he’s tall, pretty, and horny. Also, in this AU, he is drowning in brothers because Servetta can’t keep it in her panties.
Toki = Fez because he’s foreign, happy most of the time, sings and dances for the simple joy of it, and his room is decked out with toys and fun stuff.
Murderface = Hyde because of the righteous fa-RO baby, and also because he DOESN’T HAVE ANY PARENTS. He moves in with Pickles’ family and lives in the basement. (Pickles was hoping this would give Molly and Calvert another Target to rag on and give him a break. It didn’t work.)
Unlike Hyde, Murderface is not cool and doesn’t get any eventual Hyde/Jackie storyline. Instead, his relationship history goes more like Fez’s. Without the weird forced Fez/Jackie stuff at the end of the series, which really went downhill has soon as Donna dyed her hair blonde.
Charles = Buddy, the random rich kid who is canonically gay, only he’s a regular part of the group instead of a one-episode throwaway character.
I’m cool with Pickles/Charles, and that fits with Buddy coming on to Eric in the show. But I would eventually break them up and put Charles with…
Nathan = no one on the show, but he’s got a lot of Hyde’s qualities in terms of stoic, bad boy vibes. However, like Kelso, he is an Adorable Dumb (see “that’s doable” hat).
Rebecca Nightrod = Jackie, but she’s not a necessarily a regular character. Murderface fawns/lusts over her like Fez, even though she’s a bitch. Nathan hates her, even though he does date her briefly in a relationship that she holds onto tenaciously until, in an act of desperation that absolutely horrifies Pickles, he cheats on her with Seth.
Abigail = Donna, because she’s smart and has good hair. (Zero bleach kits in sight.)
Rockso = Bob, because he’s a cue ball on top and makes liberal use of crazy wigs. Bargain Rockso’s is that store that’s always open on holidays — just in case you’re driving home Christmas night, realize you forgot to get a gift, and rush in to buy a fridge to solve the gift problem and/or some cocaine to forget there was ever a problem in the first place.
Magnus = Leo. He gives Murderface a job at his hilariously unprofitable Photo Hut business, declines to sell his real cool car to Skwisgaar on principal, and generally supplies the gang with all their weed and assorted drugs.
Dory McLean = Midge. She’s young, dumb, has big boobs, and Abigail is exasperated as hell that she doesn’t understand feminism in the slightest.
Knubbler = Mitch, the weird kid who hangs around and is sometimes kinda entertaining but keeps hitting on Abigail, which annoys her. However, he’s also stupid and accidentally self-sabotages (see setting his sleeve on fire while trying to flirt), so she doesn’t really waste energy on slapping him back down.
Pickles “burning down the shed” = Eric telling Red “I do it too” when Hyde gets busted for possession. Either way Abigail (Donna) is standing in the background going, “For the love of god, DON’T.”
Trindle = Cousin Penny, only instead of prankish Pickles (Eric) she targets Nathan, who during her last visit when they were much younger helped Pickles trap her in a revolving door. Abigail is completely secure in her looks compared to Trindle and actually talks Rebecca out of a potentially disastrous sunlamp tan.
Nathan and Abigail go out for like, a second, while Nathan and Charles are I one of their off-again fazes.
Endgame parings are Nathan/Charles, Abigail/Rebecca, and Skwisgaar/Toki.
B.A.N.D.M.A.T.E.S
Nathan = Ross. Can you picture Nathan doing the *long sigh, ex wife is a lesbian blues* “Hi” thing? Because I can.
Abigail = Carol. They got together but it just didn’t work out in the long run.
Rebecca Nightrod = Susan. Tbh, I think the reason she keeps popping up is because of how @little-murmaider portrayed her in Stay Alive. She and Nathan get along like a house on fire, in that it’s a disaster and Abigail keeps having to turn the hose on them to stop the bickering.
Toki = Monica, although his chef skills are mostly confined to providing fruit and burning plastic. He’s still got the overshadowed younger sibling thing going on though.
Molly = Judy Geller. Dotes on Nathan.
Oscar = Jack Geller. Is amiably odd.
Charles = Rachel. Except not as ditzy. But he does break an engagement off at the altar and moves in with Toki, an old acquaintance he hasn’t seen since high school and one of the few people he, ah, did not invite to the wedding. For the record, he was hoping that wouldn’t come up.
Skwisgaar = Joey. Except when they all go to London, Toki (Monica) does hook up with him, gradually teaches him how to relationship, and eventually they get married.
Murderface = Chandler. He hates his data processing job and keeps threatening to leave it to work on his side project, Planet Piss, but never actually does because the money is really good. When he goes back to the pet store to return the baby chick Skwisgaar impulse bought, he instead adopts an ugly-ass duck that no one wants because it’s original owners thought it was just an ugly duckling that would grow up into a swan. He feels that he can empathize with it, and names it Dick van Duck.
Knubbler = Dick van Duck. Listens patiently to all of Murderface’s Planet Piss ideas.
Pickles = Phoebe. He doesn’t even know who his dad is, and is proud that he doesn’t. (I’m not going to lie, Phoebe’s family situation definitely fits more with Murderface, but Phoebe’s dating track record is too good.) Remember the one where Pickles broke up with someone he’d just moved in with because the person shot a bottle of liquor?
Seth = Ursula. 100% Ursula. Seth is a “career driven” waiter and also a part time porn star on the side, using Pickles’ name.
Fraiser
I don’t watch this one as much, so this one won’t be as detailed probably.
Skwisgaar = Frasier. Idk, because he goes on dates with a different woman at least every episode. Also, he’s a jackass, but good at what he does and there are some redeeming glimmers of not being a complete asshole that make his presence worthwhile.
Nathan = Niles. Minus most of the neuroses. Instead of successful musicians, he and Skwisgaar are both successful psychiatrists, although Skwisgaar usually gets the bulk of the public’s, ahem, attention.
Daphne = Charles. He’s oblivious to Nathan’s crush on him for ages, but when he realizes it’s there and thinks about how sweet Nathan’s always been to him, he falls hard.
Rebecca Nightrod = Maris. She and Nathan have a rocky marriage, and eventually a rockier divorce in which she accuses Nathan of being emotionally unfaithful because of Charles.
Abigail = The brilliant divorce lawyer that handles Nathan’s case, and briefly dates Charles. They seem like such a good fit on paper that they’re actually engaged for a bit, but they break it off amiably right before getting to the altar, and Nathan and Charles ride off into the sunset in an RV with “road warrior” vanity plates.
Toki = Roz. (I know, technically Roz’s promiscuousness would be more Skwisgaar, but Skwisgaar’s superiority complex fits better with Frasier.) Although competent and successful in his own right, he is not the on air talent. Unlike in Frasier, when Toki and Skwisgaar sleep together they actually become a couple instead of backing off and remaining good friends.
Rockso = That garbage man that Roz was head over heals with for a while… Rodger?He belongs in a garbage can. Anyway, after breaking up with Toki over the latter’s inability to get over his massive cocaine use, Toki goes to Skwisgaar for comfort, which leads to drinking which leads to sex. Toki flees the next morning and flies to Norway for the annual family reunion, only he hadn’t told anyone he’s broken up with Rockso. Skwisgaar, desperate to Talk Things Out and hopefully even Do That Again, follows and (cringingly, but of his own volition) answers to/pretends to be Rockso to help Toki save face in front of his critical family.
Murderface = Bulldog. He and Toki briefly have a thing, and he’s actually kind of sweet when you get right down to it, but things don’t work out. Masturbation photos are involved — don’t ask. Also, at one point Skwisgaar accidentally repeats a rumor that Murderface is going to get fired where Murderface can hear it, so
Murderface goes and yells at the station manager (then Knubbler) and quits. Then he’s unemployed for a while, and scrapes by delivering pizzas. I forget how that situation resolved itself in the show but it does.
Knubbler = Kenny the station manager. Weak willed. Weak chinned. Ineffectual. Good track record in his career, but mostly he’s just there.
Abigail = That domineering and extremely competent lady station manager that’s there for a while… Kate? Has a cat. But she does NOT get it on with Skwisgaar (Frasier) on his desk and accidentally bump the On Air button partway through. She has a very strict policy of not getting involved with anyone she works with, although naturally everyone tries.
That’s all I got.
Magnus = Martin. Because he’s a cranky old man. He and Nathan don’t get along and he resents having to live with Skwisgaar, but they all gamely trade barbed insults and leave it at that. Magnus is a retired cop who still works on old cold cases as a hobby, having vowed revenge on uncaptured murderers everywhere. He and Charles (Daphne) get along pretty well, and there is no stabbing of any kind.
Metal Masked Assassin = Cam Winston. At one point he blocks Skwisgaar and Toki in Skwisgaar’s SUV into a parking space with his own SUV, and only relents and backs out when Charles comes and calmly threatens him, because “that’s my bread and butter you’re blocking in.”
There, are you happy now?? I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this, asdf;lkj lol.
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Six Sentence Sunday
Sharing excerpts from works in progress and completed stories under the cut.
Snow White & Rose Red, Chapter 1:
Once upon a time in a cottage in the woods lived two lovely girls and their mother. The older girl was named Rose Red because when she was born she had the prettiest little red lips and rosy cheeks. Just so people would be sure to remember her name her mother made her a red cloak to wear when she went to town for her. Rose Red grew to be a beautiful young lady with lovely auburn locks and shining sapphire blue eyes.
The younger girl was named Snow White for when she was born both her skin and hair was white as snow. Like her sister, her mother made her a white cloak.
WIP- Reworking this entire series before re-release.
Silver and Gold, Chapter 1:
On the first fine Spring day Bilbo, Balin, and Gandalf left Erebor; Bilbo to return to his home in the Shire, Balin to summon the Durinfolk to their ancient home, and Gandalf to go wherever it is wizards go. Dori was never certain where it was Gandalf got off to and wasn’t sure he cared as it reminded him too much of Nori’s old rambling ways. All he knew was that it seemed rather irresponsible to go off somewhere else when one was expected and/or needed elsewhere.
That was why he had waited so long.
Dori hugged his family and friends and perhaps blubbered a bit about their leaving and his own. He would miss them all.
WIP- I keep going back and re-writing things.
Jackdaw:
In and out. In and out.
Dori would never approve if he knew, but Nori needed this. Mahal, how he needed this! He loved the thrill of it. He was breathless from the anticipation of it and his heart raced in the act of it.
Available for early access for $1 patrons. There is a teaser, a bit longer than this, available on AO3.
A Gypsy’s Dance:
Except for the tinkling of the bells about her ankles, her feet added almost no sound to the percussion of her dance. She didn’t need it what with the clacking of her many bracelets, the soft zyee-zyee of the coined belt and trim of her bodice, and the jingle and tap of the tamborine with its long streamers that she employed during the day. At night she had the little finger cymbals and the clapping along by the men of the village who had only given the gypsies looks of disdain during the day. No, the night was another matter entirely. Something in the gypsy music called the men from their judgment and brought them to the gypsy camp where they would toss coins at the feet of the dancers when the tempo of the music changed to something that aroused an unfamiliar feeling in the dwarf.
It had taken Bofur all of two days or perhaps two nights to get the feel for the exotic rhythms of the gypsies enough for him to join in with his pipe.
Early access phase for $3 patrons.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 2:
“That’ll put her off, don’t you think?” Gigi asked as they hurried through the marketplace.
“Only a bit.” Hamfast pulled them behind a large cart of hay and watched from behind. “And not for long. She won’t give up.”
“We’re gonna get it when she catches us then. I’ll be out on my ear and you’ll be out of a job.” Gigi sighed. She could not even imagine the trouble they were going to be in when the nearest relative of their Master found out they had lied.
Chapter 1 is available for everyone to read on AO3 along with a teaser of chapter 2. The entirety of chapter 2 is available on Patreon as early access for $1 patrons.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 3:
Now Gigi had spent the entirety of her stay wondering about Bilbo Baggins. When she had her hands in the rich, moist dirt of his kitchen garden she couldn’t understand how a Hobbit who had worked the same ground could think of leaving. Of course he left it in the capable hands of her cousin, so it would be well cared for, but who would possibly leave a garden in Spring? Who could? It must have been a terribly important errand or he was a decidedly careless Hobbit. Certainly she heard rumors he was a little odd, but as she felt the warm sun on her back, the cool, pliant earth between her fingers, witnessed the full greening and vibrant colors, and scented the fragrant breezes that whispered of flowers along the lane and pies cooling in windows, no one could be so foolish or odd as to leave a place that told every sense one was home.
Early access of this chapter is available for $3 patrons.
AO3 - https://archiveofourown.org/users/FountainsOfSilver
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/FountainsOfSilver
Patronage and engagement unlocks more writing available for all to read for free on AO3 each month. Patrons get early access to complete chapters, one-shots, and sfw art as well as exclusive access to epilogues and nsfw art. <3
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57 Facts Tag!
Thank you so much @serensims for tagging me! I kept seeing this in my dash, so I was genuinely surprised to be tagged myself. I’m tagging @dreemiie, @existentialisims, @xsunnysims, @justkeeponsimming and @thesheslittleredridinghoodblog (if you’ve already done this then sorry)
I love the color blue
I am a white, 17 year old Albanian girl
I’m a Taurus! I share this with my little sister and Mom
I have 2 younger siblings
My birthstone is emerald!
I share a birthday with my grandma
I have never left the U.S
I have never been on a plane (man I‘m boring)
I went to Hershey Park once and screamed my head off on some of the rollercoasters
I love seafood, like shrimp or crab (much to the disgust of my sister)
In order to youngest to oldest, me and my siblings are 4 years apart
I have never been stung my a bee
I am a huge baby when it comes to heights
I do not know how to swim
The only pet I’ve ever had was an angel fish named Dory when I was 5, which lived for 3 days because I was 5 and had no idea of to care for a fish (I’m sorry Dory)
Movies I was obsessed as a kid was Finding Nemo (pet fish was called Dory) and Tarzan
For I was obsessed with as a kid, Drake and Josh, SpongeBob, Goosebumps tv, and a whole bunch that was on CartoonNetwork
I have never broken a bone
I really want either a cat or a dog (I’ll probably just get a cat) when I have my own place, and financially stable enough for one
I still don’t know how to drive
I love coffee, and make is really sweet and milky (its basically not coffee at this point)
My favorite fruit is strawberries
I got into the sims from youtube
I use a MacBook air
I edit my screenshots with Gimp
I once burned my fingers trying to make tea back when I was obsessed with drinking it (coffee has taken over)
I really like doodling and drawing and want to improve at it
What got me to discover tumblr was Undertale, when I was looking at all the really cool fanart
I have been to so many wedding because I have so many cousins (including all’ve my distant cousins)
I have a lot of cousins
I can never get enough sleep when its a school night
When I was little, I loved reading the Goosebumps books, its what started my love for reading. My little brother has inherited that same love.
Once in 4th grade, before my family moved, I made the mistake I borrowing book 4 of Harry Potter from my school’s library (i was really getting into the series then) and I wanted to finish it, so I ended up spending a week just reading all day
I can’t handle spicy food at all
I really like the Broadway play Hamilton
I’ve taken 2 AP history classes (AP Euro made me suffer so much)
I don’t like bananas
I suck at learning languages
My first phone was an iPhone 4
I’m a city gal
I have face planted into the pavement
I have never been to Disney Land
I’ve never owned a game console of some kind ever (i really want to change that)
I have a bit of a weird way of speaking? Like its hard to describe. Not as bad as when I was little and had to go to speech therapy.
Someone once asked me if I was British
I suck at lying
I’ve read the Harry Potter series so many times
I used to be super into Rainbow loom and would make charms a few years back, and I still have a box full of leftover rainbow loom from that time
My closet has stacks and stacks of books from me and my siblings. It get’s messy sometimes
I always wear jeans, and either a hoodie or t-shirt
I almost always wear sneakers
I hate high heels with a passion
I’m not really into make-up that much
When I was little I wasn’t really scared of bugs but for some reason now I kinda am
I love reading
I once offered a dandelion to a random cat when I was 8 and the cat just curiously stared back at me.
I am bad at talking about myself
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A Choice
The last installment of the Mori(you)/Thorin drabble series!
Art by unknown artist(egads, I hate when reverse image search gives me nothing but uncredited pinterest boards... I shall keep looking, because this is epic)
Previous chapters: Cuddles, On the Road Again, In Rivendell, Splashes of Thought, Frustrations Peak, Reactions, Mirkwood Muddle, Laketown and Lamentations, The Arkenstone, The Maker
“No…” Thorin moaned, when he saw her, pale and still, her auburn hair flowing across Dori’s thick arm. The cut eyebrow had clotted, but her hair was matted along the side of her face; a bloody wound on her temple still seeping red. “Mori!” he cried, fighting to get up off the cot where Óin was trying to fix his foot. “Mori, please,” he begged, but she did not stir, Dori’s silent sobs disturbing a lock of hair, making it trail across her closed eye.
“She’s not dead, Thorin,” Nori choked out, “but we can’t wake her.”
“Get the Elf,” he ordered, staring at the thief, “please. Tell him… anything. For her life, anything.” It was the last words he spoke, staring at her gentle breathing as though he could make the small motion of her chest continue by his willpower alone. Dori undressed her, letting Óin look her over for damages, but other than the head-wound there was little but a few bruises to care for. The Arkenstone shone on her breast, but Thorin ignored it aside from telling Dori not to move it. He had not been the one to give it to her, but Mori should be Queen – would be Queen, he swore – and the Arkenstone should be hers. He saw again the way she had smiled when she’d spoken of the song – he had touched it before, before the dragon, and it had not sung for him, which made him wonder if the Mountain thought him unworthy of the seat of his forebears; yet he dared not reach to touch it, dared not test whether the song would fill his soul as he had seen it in Mori. It hardly mattered; Thorin considered himself unworthy of the Throne, and even if his apology was accepted by the small Hobbit, he did not think it would be enough to erase the shame of his actions over the past month. Dwalin had punched his good shoulder – Thorin had felt he’d earned a punch to the bad one, but Dwalin wasn’t cruel – and he knew they would eventually be alright; he had not wanted to harm Dwalin in the Throne Room, though he seemed unable to stop himself from reaching for his sword – his words meant as a warning as much as they might be perceived as a threat.
“You asked for me, King Thorin?” Thorin had never been so happy to see anyone as he was to look upon the Elvenking in that moment, had never heard a voice as sweet as the haughty drawl that filled him with a burning sense of hope.
“For Mori,” he whispered, staring at the Elf; uncaring that his heart was laid bare before those ancient eyes. “Please. Help her.” Thranduil gazed at him for what felt like eternity, but was probably no longer than a minute, turning his face towards Mori instead. He hummed, stretching out long pale fingers, resting his hand on her forehead and closing his eyes.
“Móeidr Queen,” he murmured, “where have you gone?” Later, Thorin would have sworn Mori began glowing, just like the elf; lit from within by starlight, the green walls around them brightening. The elf was singing; Thorin did not understand the words, though he felt an indefinable sense of power in the chant. Thranduil’s eyes opened, staring directly at Thorin. He did not speak, and Thorin felt absolute certainty that he didn’t even see the Dwarrow in the tent, paying no heed to Thorin’s own pleading gaze, nor to the way Ori was whimpering in Dori’s arms, while Nori was cursing at the healer trying to tend him.
“Uncle!” Fíli cried out, waking in his own cot.
“Hush, Fíli,” Thorin croaked, reaching for the lad to press him back down. “You’ll tear out Óin’s stitches.”
“Kíli?” his oldest nephew begged, staring up at him as he fought the draw of the poppymilk Óin had given him. Thorin sighed.
“He’s fine; we were only worried about you.” There had been so much blood; so much blood Thorin had felt certain that death had come for his golden prince… but it had not. “Kíli’s got a broken arm,” he murmured, squeezing Fíli’s hand. His nephew tried to return the touch, but his fingers lacked their customary strength, Thorin knew. Fíli would be weak for a time, but the blade that had pierced his side had missed all major organs, simply slicing through skin and muscle. “He’s in the food tent, I think.” Fíli nodded, subsiding into drugged sleep once more and Thorin’s attention fixed inexorably on Mori’s rising and falling chest; was her breathing slower?
“Cousin,” Dáin’s usually boisterous voice was comparatively quiet as he shouldered his way into the small sickroom that the Company had claimed for their own. Thorin didn’t even have to will to glare at him, the anger he felt smouldering in his breast not willing to catch flame. If she died… “I’m sorry,” Dáin continued solemnly. “Does… is there… hope?” he asked, looking torn. Thorin wondered what his face was telling his deceptively perceptive cousin in that moment, but he had no mind to formulate an answer, lost in staring at Mori. The wound on her temple had finally stopped bleeding, though the bandage showed a stain in the middle.
“We don’t know yet, cousin,” Dwalin murmured, startling Thorin who hadn’t even realised that the warrior had resumed his usual silent position at Thorin’s side.
“She has to…” he trailed off, unable to voice even the possibility that she might not. Even if the kiss had been a fluke and she was still angry with him, so long as she was alive to be angry with him, Thorin would take it; as long as Mori simply existed, his life would not be so… empty.
Thranduil’s eyes closed, and he seemed to sway gently. The light diminished, leaving them bathed only in the gentle glow of the Arkenstone. He moved slowly, pulling his hand back from Mori’s face with what Thorin might have called a caress and a soft smile, if he had had the presence of mind to care. He stared. The Elvenking’s eyes opened again, but this time the sharp gaze was present, the mind behind the blue eyes alert.
“So be it…” he breathed, stumbling back from the cot. Dori’s quick action kept him from falling, the tailor guiding the Elvenking to a chair in the corner. He fetched him a cup of water, helping him sip. Thranduil’s hands trembled.
“Will…” he tried, but the question would not pass the guard of his teeth. The elf held up a hand, making everyone in the tent fall silent.
“I think so,” he finally muttered, wiping a loose strand of hair away from his blood-spattered face. “It was… the oddest sensation I have ever felt.” The Dwarrow simply stared. Ori was still clinging to Nori, whose face seemed grey as he stared at his sister.
“What did you do?” Thorin heard himself ask, without choosing the words.
“I don’t… know. There was light, and singing,” Thranduil mumbled, his gaze distant as though he was staring at something only he could see. “Lady Mori was there, and a presence I could only call… Aulë, I think, though I cannot say how that could be. I- I made her remember.” He swallowed. Thorin copied the nervous move.
“Remember… what?” Some people with head injuries were never the same; just look at Bifur, Thorin thought. Would Mori be one of those?
“You,” Thranduil sighed, getting to his feet. “The rest is up to her, King Thorin; the choice is up to her.”
“What choice?!” Thorin called after him, as the elf ducked out of the doorway – he didn’t really need to, it was high enough for an elf to enter the sickroom comfortably – but Thranduil did not turn around.
“Life,” he said, his voice floating back to the group of Dwarrow who were now staring horrified at each other, “or death.” The wounded noise he heard; not quite a scream, but not a whimper either, didn’t end until Thorin realised it was coming from his own chest, turning back to Mori as though she might have perished in the seconds since he last looked at her. Dori was cleaning her hair, the dark rust colour of dried blood turning the water in his bowl red, as he combed out the auburn strands. Nori had taken her hand, staring just as intently on her chest as Thorin himself.
“Don’t!” Thorin cried, when Dori made to move the Arkenstone from her breast; she had apparently stuffed it into her breast-band, and a distant part of him knew it couldn’t be comfortable for her, but a larger part of him felt utter revulsion at the thought of taking the stone from her; in his mind, the Arkenstone belonged to Mori, his Queen… whether she lived or died. “Leave it, Dori,” he muttered, when his loud voice shocked them all. “The Arkenstone. Leave it with her; she owns it.” The Heart of the Mountain, he thought wryly. It was a fitting tribute for the one who held the Heart of the Mountain’s King. Dori nodded, but didn’t reply, though neither ri-brother objected when Thorin hobbled over to sit in the chair on Mori’s other side, stroking her palm gently.
They waited. Thorin would have liked to say – and it would have sounded better in a song – that they waited still as statues, all eyes on Mori, but it would have been a lie. As more wounded soldiers made it through the Gates and into the purview of Óin and a handful of healers from the Iron Hills, the sounds of busy hands interrupted the silence. Someone brought them food, and at some point Dáin disappeared along with Balin, but Thorin didn’t care. He looked up when Kíli returned, but he only managed a pale smile in the direction of his nephew, who was quietly filled in by Ori before he collapsed on Fíli’s cot, making Thorin think of the way they would sleep closely entwined as dwarflings when Fíli just protested sleepily and wrapped his arm around his younger brother.
Mori squeezed his hand.
Thorin looked up, gasping, to meet the equally startled gaze of Nori, who had been holding her other hand. Turning his face slowly, he feared what he would see. Mori squeezed his hand again.
“Mori,” Nori croaked, while Thorin could only stare at her, speechless. Mori smiled gently, tugging on Nori’s hand.
“Hey, nadad,” she whispered hoarsely, “fancy meeting you here.” Nori gave a watery chuckle, leaning in to press his forehead against hers. Dori was openly weeping behind him, Ori’s head pressed into his shoulder and Thorin felt like he might be able to breathe again. Nori’s shoulders shook, and Mori’s fingers remained wrapped around his thumb, a remind to Thorin’s wildly beating heart that she was there, she was alive.
“Mori,” he finally whispered, when the thief sat up, wiping his face with his grimy sleeve. Thorin didn’t dare to hug her, though he wanted nothing more, wanted to hold her as tightly as he could, kiss her like he had dared to do in the middle of battle.
“Thorin,” she replied, biting her lip. All his attention zeroed in on that spot, the contrast between her white teeth and the red lip, turning slightly bloodless with the pressure.
“Mori…” he repeated, hardly recognising his own voice. He felt her tug on his hand.
“Come here, Thorin,” she murmured, and he could do that, certainly, he was capable of following that simple command… right?
Thorin remained upright, stiff as a statue. Mori’s brows furrowed.
“Thorin?” This time, his name was a question he didn’t know how to answer, reaching out the smooth the lines between her brows with a gentle touch. “What are you doing?” she smiled, tugging on his other hand again. His grip tightened, his free hand sliding down to cup her cheek as he leaned in until her grey eyes filled his view completely.
“Never scare me like this,” he murmured, stroking her cheek and tracing the line of her jaw, marvelling at the softness of her beard. “Never again, Móeidr,” he repeated, “promise me.” He stared at her, watched as her eyes turned almost silver, crinkling around the corners.
“Thorin?” she asked, her breath whispering across his lips. He nodded. “Kiss me.” He heard some far-off groan, but it was lost to his mind when he finally moved the last distance between them, slanting his mouth across hers. She had been sweet the last time, sweet and a little hesitant, but this kiss was filled with fire and love and Thorin couldn’t get enough, sliding his hand into her hair and seeking out every part of her mouth with his tongue, his own hair falling like a curtain between them and the rest of the room. Mori chuckled against his lips, squeezing his hand gently. Thorin pulled back slightly
“My Mori,” he murmured, kissing her again just because he could. “My Queen.” Mori’s eyes widened.
“I am not!” she objected, releasing his hand to lift the Arkenstone from her breast. “Take it, Thorin,” she murmured, pressing it into his hand. Thorin chuckled. “It’s your throne,” she insisted, “I was only holding it for a little while, I swear.” He didn’t like the anxiety in her face, the way he could feel her heart race beneath the heel of his hand where it rested against her neck.
“I will take it from you,” he murmured, pleased that she responded to his kisses still, “but you would still be my Queen, love, even if I do not deserve you.” Mori froze beneath him.
“Thorin…” she repeated, “Are you… what are you doing?”
“I was kissing you,” Thorin replied, feeling nearly giddy with relief. “And I think I just implied that you should marry me. Make it official, as it were.” He kissed her again, stroking her cheek.
“O-Official?” she stammered, and Thorin felt the heat of her blush against his fingertips.
“Yes.” He nodded; it sounded like a plan. “As Dwalin will tell you – because he’s evil like that – I’ve wanted you to be my Queen since… well,” Thorin frowned, considering.
“I’d say nigh a century, give or take,” Dwalin replied matter-of-factly somewhere behind him. Thorin started; he’d quite forgotten that there were others present. He felt the heat rise in his own cheeks, but he didn’t raise his head to glare at his old friend, simply stared at Mori.
“You… want to marry me?” she asked, lifting her hand to trace his face. Thorin turned his head, pressing a kiss into her palm. He nodded. Mori’s eyebrow lifted. Thorin began to feel like this wasn’t going to plan – not that he had had a plan, really, a small voice in the back of his head added. “And this is your idea of a marriage proposal?!” she asked, gaping up at him. Thorin closed his eyes; things were definitely not going the way he had dreamed when he allowed himself to dream of such things. “Look at me!” she snapped.
“Móeidr, daughter of Dagni,” he interrupted whatever she wanted to say, speaking quickly as he tried to salvage whatever fondness she still felt for him. “I have kept my silence, and if you do not accept, I shall speak of this never again, but I love you, as I have loved you, and as I will continue to love you. There is little to say that you don’t already know, and little to give that is not already freely given. I come to you as any Dwarf comes to his love. I swear to keep you and hold you, comfort and tend you, protect you and shelter you, for all the days of my life. Will you marry me?” He stared into her eyes, hardly daring to blink. Mori looked stunned.
“Oh, Mahal’s Beard,” Dwalin groused, “just accept already, we all know you’re mad for each other.” Thorin lifted his face to glare at his unrepentant Captain, but his ire was diverted by the way Mori’s fingers tangled in his hair, drawing him back to her mouth for a kiss that stole his breath away.
“Yes.” She whispered, when he finally had to pull back, feeling dizzy. “Yes, I will marry you, my clot-heid King,” she chuckled, kissing him again, “but don’t you ever dare try to banish me for my own good again!” Thorin nodded fervently, pulling her off the cot and into his arms. Mori went willingly, her solid form warm against his chest. A loud throat clearing interrupted him before his hand could move lower than the small of her back, making Thorin start guiltily, lifting his head to stare at Dori’s stern glare of disapproval.
“Hardly the place or time, Mori!” he exclaimed, gesturing wildly. Beside him, Nori was grinning; his greatest source of amusement was putting bees in Dori’s bonnets and Thorin had just managed spectacularly. Mori moved slightly, before she froze. The beads in her hair clacked together when she turned her face to star at him. Thorin ducked his head shyly, silently gesturing at her shift-clad body. Mori’s cheeks glowed slightly, but she settled more firmly in his lap, looking up him in a way that begged him to kiss the smirk off her lips. Thorin obliged dutifully.
“I think there’s no better time to kiss my future husband, Dori,” Mori stated calmly. Dori spluttered. If possible, Nori’s grin widened, though Thorin didn’t miss the speaking glance he sent towards the dagger that had suddenly appeared in his fist. His free hand signed only ‘or else’, but Thorin understood clearly. He nodded.
“Do you feel well enough, amrâlimê?” he murmured into her hair. Mori yawned.
“Hungry,” she admitted.
“Dori!” Thorin called, interrupting the rant no one was paying attention to. Dori shut up. Little Ori stared wide-eyed at Thorin. “Your sister – and Queen – is hungry. Could you get her some food?” Dori’s mouth opened and closed a few times but then he simply nodded, ducking out of the small room. Dwalin sighed.
“About time, Thorin,” he murmured, punching Thorin’s good shoulder lightly, “about bloody time.”
“Can you hear it singing?” Mori whispered suddenly, holding up the Arkenstone, its gentle glow bathing her hand and turning her skin milky pale. Thorin shook his head, still not quite daring to touch the shining gem. Mori kissed him, distracting him with her mouth as she placed the stone in his palm, holding it with him.
Thorin heard it.
Welcome home, my Children.
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Coco (2017)
In 2013, the Walt Disney Company moved to trademark “Día de Los Muertos” in anticipation of Pixar’s planned Day of the Dead film. Responding to the news, comic strip author Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha) created a protest image of “Muerto Mouse”, warning of its intentions to, “trademark [Latino] cultura!”. Alcaraz, through La Cucaracha, has always been politically-minded through his comic strip and has been a vehement Disney critic since at least 1994, when he infamously dressed Mickey Mouse as “Migra Mouse” to protest the Walt Disney Company’s support of California Proposition 187 and the immigration policies of then-Governor Pete Wilson. So it came as a surprise to Alcaraz’s readers when he accepted a job as cultural consultant on Coco, directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina (also a co-writer). Alcaraz helped oversee an American film that justly honors Mexican culture while approaching questions about death in ways that cross borders, answered in different ways by people of different ages.
Looking at the reaction in Mexico, Pixar and Disney have avoided what could have been a mortifying cultural blunder. Unadjusted for inflation, Coco is a Mexican cultural phenomenon, being the highest-grossing film in that nation (adjusted for inflation, it is behind a handful of 2000s releases). With the exception of Russell from Up (2009), it is the first Pixar film in which the human protagonists are non-white. It is the first Pixar film to make note of and celebrate that specific cultural and national background. At worst, Coco is devalued by hackneyed storytelling decisions (this is a great Pixar movie, but not the best of what the studio has to offer) and its frantic climax. At its best, this an affecting tearjerker always in command of its characters’ sorrow and strength in family.
Born to a family of shoemakers, all twelve-year old Miguel wants to do is be a musician like his movie hero, Ernesto de la Cruz (a composite of Mexican singer-actors Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete; both dominated the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema and make a joint cameo in Coco... Miguel also believes, for reasons best seen than described, that de la Cruz is his great-great grandfather). Miguel lives with his extended family, including his parents, cousins, grandmother Elena, and great-grandmother Coco (for whom this film is named). Día de Los Muertos – the day when the dead return to the Earth – is approaching. To describe how Miguel enters the Land of the Dead is too convoluted, lest this paragraph should run far too long. Upon entry with a stray Xolo dog named Dante, he is instantly recognized by his deceased relatives – everyone appears as skeletons – and is informed that he must return to the world of the living before sunrise with the family’s blessing. The family stipulates in their blessing that he must abandon any musical pursuits. Miguel refuses, and seeks to find Ernesto de la Cruz and receive his blessing.
Along the way to find de la Cruz, Miguel will pair up with Héctor, a fellow unable to return to the land of the living and on the cusp of being forgotten by his daughter.
Día de Los Muertos (also known without the “Los”; “The Day of the Dead”) is a Mexican holiday with Aztec origins that has been synthesized with Catholic elements. The holiday, known superficially among non-Mexican-Americans in the United States, might not be as familiar to audiences outside the Americas. But Molina and co-screenwriter Matthew Aldrich do their damndest to introduce the holiday, Mexican culture, even more than several snippets of Spanish throughout. This has been covered before in Jorge Gutiérrez’s The Book of Life (2014), another musical animated film delving into the Day of the Dead. Then again, there is boatloads of Christmas media that has been produced by American television and movie studios, so there should be room for more than one Day of the Dead movie. The animators certainly have taken great care of their worldbuilding and although the colorful Coco does not highlight the incredible visual bounds Pixar has innovated with each film (The Good Dinosaur’s photorealism, water animation breakthroughs in Finding Dory), the layered wide shots in the Land of the Dead recall what the multiplane camera provided for Walt Disney Animation Studios in the 1930s.
Preventing Coco from being top-tier Pixar is its tendency towards exposition dumps, a plot structure dependent on fakeouts that is becoming predictable and tired (something that keeps reappearing from Frozen to Big Hero 6 to Zootopia and unfortunately, I cannot elaborate any spoilers), and lightly treading on heavier moments (think of nursery rhymes that, after the first two stanzas, reveal stories dark and twisted, never recited by most parents). Molina and Aldrich spend too much of their screenplay having the dead characters explain their world, rather than it revealing itself to the audience. Once the basic rules are established for the Land of the Dead, they neglect Miguel and his living family. The living family also disdain Miguel’s wishes to become a musician, so how does he reconcile his love for family with their attacks on his true passion? The movie never makes that clear, missing a compelling facet of characterization. It is too focused on its an increasingly repetitive journey-to-x adventure (see: Inside Out, which I loved despite that criticism) that reveal more about the supporting characters than it does the leads. Not that exploring supporting characters is a terrible thing, but the aforementioned explains one reason why I haven’t truly connected with a Pixar lead character in a non-sequel since Up.
As I have mentioned before, personal and collective loss have been central to Pixar’s greatest movies since the beginning. Titles like Finding Nemo (2003) and the entire Toy Story series have been premised in loss – some losses being more abstract than others, like the emptiness of humanity found among the passengers of the Axiom in WALL-E (2008). Coco takes these themes further than all of these previous films, acknowledging that death is its central theme and not an accessory to characterization. All other subjects, feelings, and ideas can queue behind it as Coco inspires tears. Here, death takes on a culturally specific context approaching areas that major American animation studios have rarely endeavored: that death can inspire both anguish for whom one has lost and celebration for how they lived their lives. It is how one conducts themselves in life that informs how we die – even if one’s death is unexpected, senseless, arbitrary, excruciating.
Coco wants to reaffirm that, through the characters of Héctor and Ernest de la Cruz, that a person’s goodness will impact how they live in others’ memories, but takes a circuitous way to that point. The film neglects others who do not have a distant family member who can embark on an adventure through the Land of the Dead for them – in depicting the celebratory half of death, Coco forgets how death can devastate. The two can be balanced (see: Up), so it is an unnecessary compromise.
The closest Coco comes to darkness is the fact that, when a resident of the Land of the Dead no longer has anyone on Earth who remembers them, they disappear. This idea is first introduced when we meet Chicharrón, a musician friend of Héctor’s, whose time is dwindling. Chicharrón’s second and, perhaps, final passing occurs in silence and stillness, not entirely at peace. I wished that, while leaving Chicharrón’s shack with guitar in hand and after explaining the metaphysics of the Land of the Dead, Héctor took the time to tell Miguel things like why he and Chicharrón were friends, what he found admirable about him, a single memorable moment, and what he would miss about him. This need not have been a ten-minute retelling of Chicharrón’s life story, but it would have helped to show younger audiences that, yes, some are forgotten after death, but also the complexity of memory’s weight: how those we love most continue to live, in a way, when they have passed on. Though death devastates, it is not to be feared.
Coco is also a musical journey featuring a good score from Michael Giacchino (his fourth and final film score of the year, and his second-best behind War for the Planet of the Apes), but especially the songs penned by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Frozen and the upcoming Frozen 2). Orchestrator Germaine Franco (an orchestrator decides upon the instrumentation of the score; Kung Fu Panda series, The Book of Life), was brought in to assure the music’s authenticity. Michoacano and Oaxacan (two states in Mexico) music is featured, as is a variety of genres: mariachi, banda, chilena, and norteño. Solo guitar, violin, pan flute, and trumpet respective to all those genres lead the orchestral-based score. A more qualified person should judge the appropriateness of Giacchino’s score, but, to me, it does not sound like a poor imitation of Mexican music that I might have expected from him about ten years ago. Giacchino continues to progress as a composer, knowing how to adjust his styles for the films he is working on.
Yet it is the song score from the Lopezes that take center stage in Coco, and no song is as important as “Remember Me”/”Recuérdame” (all provided links are the Spanish-language versions, as they are superior to the English-language versions – note that this review has been written on the basis of the English-language version). The song’s first appearance, sung by Ernesto de la Cruz in a flashback, is an energetic ballad replete with an awesome grito (a Mexican interjection analogous to an American cowboy’s “yeehaw”). But the song’s integration in its next two placements that will break the eye’s floodgates. Without saying too much, the lullaby and its final use in the film proper are marvelous examples of how a song may evolve in meaning from the beginning to the end. It changes with context; it changes as Miguel finds his way home. Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete would be proud.
Marcela Davison Aviles (President/CEO of the Mexican Heritage Corporation) and playwright Octavio Solis joined Lalo Alcaraz as Pixar’s cultural consultants on Coco. Noting and implementing the suggestions from these three proved difficult for Unkrich, Molina, and the producers at Pixar, but it has been well worth it in the end. Aviles critiqued the film’s music, Solis examined the theatrical presentation of the film, and Alcaraz, “looked to include more Mexican elements in the film when possible, like additional Spanish in the dialogue, and made suggestions on specific words.” Says Alcaraz: “I think we struck a good balance on giving comments that helped the cultural authenticity of the story without bogging it down as if it were some kind of Día de Los Muertos documentary.”
Quality representation in American cinema has always been difficult (this is a classic film blog, so I should know something about that), and some movie executives say “catering” to minority communities is not worth the risk. When done correctly and with respect, the results are incredible to behold. Such fortune has followed Coco from the moment it premiered in Mexico, endearing itself to Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike. It is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing Pixar film in China (where Pixar has historically struggled). The Chinese censors have, in the past, enforced a rigid ban on the depiction of ghosts and other undead. But I sense in Coco’s case, because the veneration of the deceased is so prominent in China (as is the case in many East and Southeast Asian nations; being Vietnamese-American, my extended family’s practice of ancestor veneration is the most prominent aspect immune to Americanization), the censors did not mind this time. If your movie can even make a censor feel feelings to the point where they are not executing the letter of the law, you must be doing something right!
Perhaps my criticisms of Coco are actually quibbles, but I guess I will only know upon any rewatches. In any case, Coco is one of the strongest films – animated or otherwise – released this calendar year. It attempts storytelling that other contemporary animation studios and filmmakers are too hesitant to try. It builds understanding in a year where the nation this film came from has turned inward, benefitting none. That alone makes this newest Pixar film worth seeing.
My rating: 8/10
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
#Coco#Pixar#Lee Unkrich#Adrian Molina#Lalo Alcaraz#Matthew Aldrich#Jason Katz#Michael Giacchino#Robert Lopez#Kristen Anderson Lopez#Germaine Franco#Marcela Davison Aviles#Octavio Solis#My Movie Odyssey
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Rules: Answer 8 questions and come up with your own 8 questions. Tag others to answer your questions.
Tagged by: @neonfree
Something you get told by people all the time?
Well, I guess there are two things. That I don’t look my age (at the very least 8y younger than my actual age) and I smile all the time. First one I am starting to appreciate more and more, second one is actually tiring because people tend to have the attitude that nothing is wrong because I smile a lot. But lucky me I have a few great friends who knows me more than I usually want people to. Actually friends who probably knows me more than my own family.
The best dream you ever had?
While awake or asleep? xD
Thing is I rarely remember my dreams, when I do they are either scary or plain weird. But I guess the few times our earlier dogs Ritzi and Joy have appeared counts. Although it’s sad to wake up afterwards.
The clumsiest thing you have ever done?
I’m not really that clumsy. Sure I tip over a bit when going to toilet at night and stuff, but I rarely break things or fall over. But I do have bad memory and forget things easily. Things I just heard xD I’m like Dory in Finding Nemo.
What are the things you collect?
STONES! Ever since I was a kid I have loved stones. The tiger eye my dad brought back from South Africa was my favorite and my mom always had to empty my pockets of white, smooth and/or glittering stones whenever we went home after being out fishing. Even today I collect them. Brought at least a kilogram back from Albania, buying pretty stones at a local store and yeah... stones <3
I also collect VIXX albums, but not for that long of a time xD
A pet peeve?
Wow. ehm... people being rude without reason? I’m a leo, I thrive on happiness, including the happiness of people around me. Have a bad day? I listen. You sad? I listen. You just want some love? I’m there. But energy thieves who has no real reason to be rude or disrespectful but still are... no I won’t let things like that ruin my day. Also “I’m not racist/sexist/homophobe/etc, but-”... yeah, that is a pet peeve to many of us.
What are some of habits you have?
Bad or good ones? Both maybe?
A bad habit I have is I can stop listening to a conversation but still seem like I am listening (sometimes not). My attention span is short and I am trying to get better at it but have been like this since I was a kid. I listen better if I am doing something practical at the same time, like drawing or folding clothes, something that don’t require much thinking.
Good habit... trying to make people smile? Like I like to smile to make others smile (my job as a barista requires this too). And also say things to bring their moods up. idk, I just can’t feel at ease when people show negative emotions, so I just do it.
What makes you nostalgic?
Hmmm, my grandparents. Like their stuff and their old house (which they recently sold to my third cousin). They gave me a trousseau which has been in my grandmother’s family for some generations that always stood beneath the stairs. They used it for keeping firewood ^w^ I really love old style furniture and stuff and this was something I really wanted. Also since they are getting old and aren’t at best health I feel like this is something that can remind me of the best days when they were still up and about, full of energy. *le sobs*
A Favorite word?
Guuurl, this is a really hard question. I found one before once when I was scrolling words for prompts. “Lucida” which is the brightest star in a constellation. I like stars and astrology and zodiacs and such, so Lucida is nice in that way, but it also sounds beautiful. tbh I could name one of my children Lucida because of it. :)
My eight questions:
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
If you met you fave and had to choose one thing/sentence to tell them what would it be?
What book is your favorite?
Name a character from a movie/book/series from your childhood that have left an impact on your life?
Cats or dogs? (I’m not kidding here. Choose)
If you were to travel the world and had to choose 5 things to bring, what would it be (money excluded)?
Your motto?
A possession that means a lot to you?
Ok I summon: @librarianknights @lerrryyyyy @by-ca ... who more... shit I barely talk to people here these days... wait... @haru2115 (you were so kind and told me a bit about ldh so yeah ^^) I give up... just whomever can answer xD
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Keeping Secrets
Modern!AU
Master Lists: Drabbles/Imagines, and Completed Series
“Morning class,” you say as the bell rings.
You were an upperclassmen english teacher meaning you thought AP students and senior classes. Thank goodness. Everyone else was too annoying for your taste.
“Professor y/n,” Emily says and you look at her.
She was a nice girl. Very quiet but always got good grades on everything. She remind you of yourself very often.
“yes?” You ask, grabbing your cup of coffee.
“Are you and Mr. Oakenshield ever going to go on a date?” she asks.
That makes you choke. The coffee travels up through your nose and you hurriedly grab a tissue, trying to wipe away the tears and coffee.
“Mr. Oakenshield and I are just colleagues,” you reply, throwing the tissue away.
“But you guys look happy together like all the time,” Ori, your favorite student, says quietly.
He was so quiet, but that is what why you loved him.
“I so ship it,” Kili says and you glare at him.
He was the knuckle headed one out of the entire class and he bothered you to no end. Sometimes you wondered how he was even in AP. His brother was one of our students five years ago and you expected more from the younger durin.
“You really should not be shipping your Uncle with another teacher and focus on your work Mr. Durin. Now today, we will be talking about the Catcher in the Rye. I hope you all read,” you announce earning a groan from the class.
You smirk as you turn your back. That’ll teach them.
When it’s time for lunch, you head to the staff room hoping and praying that Thorin won’t be in his classroom like he usually is around this time and you smile as you spot him in the break room.
“Good afternoon, y/n,” Thorin says, pouring coffee into his bottle.
“It’s not really good though,” you say, plopping onto the couch and putting your foot up on the coffee table, earning a glare from Dori, Ori’s older brother who looks a bit too old to be his older brother.
“And why is that?” he asks.
“It seems that my students want us to date,” you say, closing your eyes.
“Really? That’s strange,” Thorin replies, taking a seat next to you.
“And why is that?” you mirror.
“Because my students want the same thing,” he chuckles and you can’t help, but laugh along.
“Isn’t Kili in one of your classes?” he asks.
“Yes. That was the class that brought it up,” you groan, sitting up straight.
“In fact, he was the one who said, ‘ I ship it’,” you tell him and he lets out another chuckle.
Oh how you loved that laugh.
“I feel like they plan it out. Gimli asked me the same question today during my first period,” he explains.
“Ah that would explain it. Kili and Gimli are cousins after all. At least according to what you said on our first date,” you tell him, smiling.
He smiles again.
“I did, didn’t I?” he asks.
“Are you ever going to tell your students that you are already dating?” Dwalin, the PE teacher, asks as he takes a seat on the other chair.
“Nah. We’re just going to let them stew for a bit. Both of your nephews deserve it,” you say, rolling your eyes and that earns a chuckle from the two of them.
Keeping secrets was fun.
#thorin x reader#thorin drabble#reader insert#thorin imagine#dwalin#thorin oakenshield#dori#ori#kili#graham mctavish#richard armitage#adam brown#mark hadlow#aidan turner#the hobbit#the hobbit imagine#the hobbit drabble#drabble#imagine#books
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My little cousin (15) finished season 2 of atla, here are her opinions of the characters after the s2 finale
Aang: "adorable and he better not be fucking dead"
Katara: "i hope she gets vengeance in season 3." Me: "vengeance on who?" Her: "the world."
Sokka: "he needs a girlfriend, every girl he's met has either died or left him... are you sure he's not into guys at all?" Me: "the fandom thinks so." Her: "they're right."
Toph: "she reminds me of a feral little dog most of the time"
Zuko: "get that traitor out of my face"
Azula: "if i speak."
Uncle iroh: "if he needs to die for zuko to finally get some character development so fucking be it"
Mai: "knife wife"
Ty Lee: "she's so me coded"
Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors: *hums who run the world girls by Beyoncé*
Jet: "dead. at least i think."
The Earthking: "oh that loser"
Long Feng: "who?" *gets shown a picture* "imagine being half bald and losing your whole army to a teenage girl"
Joo Dee: "she's innocent"
#avatar the last airbender#atla#avatar#aang#avatar aang#zuko#sokka#prince zuko#katara#azula#princess azula#toph#toph beifong#ty lee#mai#uncle iroh#iroh#ba sing se#book 2: earth#dori's younger cousin series
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2007 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (Morning) Transcript
1. Jimmy Buffett sings “Berkshire Hathaway-ville”
ANNOUNCER: And now, please welcome the charming, insightful, witty, rather brilliant, debonair, influential, well-heeled yet down-to-earth, talented, surprisingly modest, handsome, and refined exemplar of unflappable character, Mr. Buffett.
(Applause and cheers as musician Jimmy Buffett comes on stage with a guitar)
JIMMY BUFFET: Who were you expecting? My junior partner? (Laughter)
For those of you who don’t know, I’m the distant cousin, Jimmy Buffett.
This would be a good day to rob a bank in Omaha. Everybody’s here, you know, so — (Applause)
I couldn’t be around for the game with LeBron James. I was busy working on my wardrobe for this surprise appearance.
This is my first time in the Qwest Center, so I feel very at home in large spaces like this. It’s great to be back in Omaha. (Applause)
That’s the good news.
The disturbing news is, as a long-time Berkshire Hathaway stockholder and shareholder, the big question is, you know, those guys are getting up in age, you know, Charlie and Warren.
Who are they going to leave it to?
Well — (laughter) — I got news for you. We did a genetic test, Warren and I did. You won’t see that in your program or in the shareholders report. And somewhere back about 6,000 years ago, in some ancient village in Scandinavia, they were trading Buffett genes, and I got the talent. He got the business.
So, later on in life, after Doris [Buffett, Warren’s sister] introduced us — I don’t know, 30 years ago — I started figuring out, so I better get that business thing going as well.
So, since blood is thicker than water, I am your new chairman. So, I hope you like that. (Applause)
Don’t run out to sell. I’m keeping my mine. (Laughter)
So, on the way out here on the plane, I figured — it was an interesting day, if you read The New York Times business section yesterday. There was a lot going on.
So, I thought I would — this song has done very well for me, so I thought I would bring this for my first appearance in Omaha at the Qwest Center — I would rewrite a little “Margaritaville” with a little Berkshire — well, actually we’re wasting away in Berkshire Hathaway-ville this — today.
I’ve never sung this early in the morning, except on the [NBC] “Today” show, so you’re not paying, so don’t worry about it, so — (Laughter)
Don’t worry, I’m a semi-professional. This is OK.
I will be looking at these notes. As you can tell, Warren gave me a really big budget for a teleprompter here. (Laughter)
All right. So, you can sing along if — but you will not know — you’ll know a few of the words to these songs. But then I’ll try to do this slowly, and I have my bifocals, so I think we’re in good shape here, so —
We’ll start the morning off with a little hymn.
(Singing to the melody of “Margaritaville”)
Nibblin’ on sponge cake,
And Omaha beef steak,
Watchin’ you stockholders buying the rounds.
The Qwest Center’s rockin’,
The press is all blockin’.
There isn’t a doubt
Warren’s big in this town.
Wastin’ away in Berkshire Hathaway-a-ville,
Searchin’ for my lost box of See’s.
Some people claim that Charlie Munger’s to blame,
And you know, Rupert Murdoch is peeved.
From World Books to sofas,
Jet planes, diamonds, and (inaubible),
(Inaudible) in euros,
Let’s not forget euros.
(Spoken)
Uh oh. I made a mistake here. All right. Hold on.
You won’t pay for that, OK?
Are you going anywhere? We’ll start again.
From — from —
Let me get these bifocals off here.
(Singing)
From World Books to sofas,
(Inaudible) and (inaubible),
Jet planes, diamonds, and underwear cover the floor.
(Spoken)
It was the Fruit of the Loom that got me.
(Singing)
Tool books (inaudible).
Let’s don’t forget euro,
Make all those —
(Spoken)
Oh, this is a good line. I got to —
(Singing)
Make all those hedge funders
Want to go and buy stores.
Wastin’ away again in Berkshire Hathaway-ville,
Searchin’ for some good companies to buy.
Some people claim privatization’s to blame,
But we know, this holding company’s on fire.
So, who was the wizard,
Who thought up the lizard,
To sell car insurance to humans while making some jokes?
Projects we’ll surmount,
But I still want that discount.
Can someone show me where they’re sitting those rich Geico bulbs?
Wastin’ away again in Berkshire Hathaway-ville,
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt.
And some people claim that Doris Buffett’s to blame,
But I know this is all Warren’s fault.
And some people claim that ukulele’s to blame,
If there’s a God, he’ll turn that thing into (inaubible).
(Applause)
(Spoken)
All right.
So you thought I was kidding about that running the company stuff, didn’t you?
So — I was. (Laughs)
That’s a big relief there. So, with a great bit of pride and admiration, please welcome my junior partners, Warren and Charlie. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: Separated at birth. Separated at birth. (Laughs)
Thanks, Jimmy.
JIMMY BUFFETT: All right.
WARREN BUFFETT: OK.
I actually had asked Charlie to do that number — (Laughs)
2. Opening remarks
WARREN BUFFETT: Got a lot of people to thank, starting off with Jimmy. Wonderful.
We hid him out — came in last night kind of late and we — to be sure it was a surprise, we stashed him away over at the Hilton, and I just want to say thanks to him.
We both got the commercial gene, but unfortunately, he got the singing gene. I got this voice you’re hearing.
We — the movie, as we mentioned, we get a lot of help from a lot of people. They all do it just for the fun of it.
I particularly want to thank Andy Heyward of DIC who did that cartoon. He’s done them now for a number of years. They come back here to get my voice recorded and to get Bill’s [Gates] voice and Charlie’s voice. They do it all themselves just to participate in the movie.
Andy and I — I’m working with Andy on a cartoon series that will be out pretty soon, which we’re aiming toward younger people to try and work a little financial education into a good time on Saturday morning for kids.
And we’ll see how that all comes out. But Andy is wonderful to work with. It’s been — (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: My daughter Suze puts that movie together. It’s a lot of work and it’s a labor of love. She does a terrific job, and I just want to thank her for — as usual. (Applause) Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Then finally I want to particularly thank the grand impresario of this whole affair is Kelly Broz.
And Kelly puts this all together, the exhibition hall. I just turn it over to her. I forget about it, and Charlie and I just show up on Saturday morning.
And Kelly is having her 50th birthday tomorrow. So, Kelly, would you stand up and take a bow, please. Yeah.
(Singing) Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Kelly. Happy birthday to you.
For Kelly. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: Now, today we’re going to follow the usual format. We have a number of microphones placed around this room and we have overflow rooms. We will go from one station to the other, keep going until about noon or thereabouts, and then we’ll break for 30 or 45 minutes for lunch.
We’ll come back here, and we will then go until about 3 o’clock, continuing the same routine.
We don’t prescreen the questions or the questioners. It’s whoever got in line first for the microphones.
At 3 we will take a break for a few minutes. We will reconvene at 3:15 for the official business meeting.
We have an item of business — normally we take care of business in about five minutes, re-elect the directors. But today we have an item on the proxy relative to our holdings of PetroChina.
We were not required to put that on the ballot. The SEC told us we didn’t have to, but we really thought it would be a good idea to do it so that all of you that are interested can hear about our reasoning and the reasoning of the people who disagree with us. We’ll give them plenty of time to tell you why they think we’re wrong and we’ll respond.
And I hope anybody that’s interested at all on the subject, I hope you stay right until 4 o’clock when we will adjourn, because Charlie and I are then going to greet, perhaps, as many as 600 shareholders who have come from outside of North America.
We have a record number. I think we have a hundred or so from Australia, and we have close to that number from South Africa.
We have shareholders from all over the world. So we feel if they come all the way to Omaha, Charlie and I would at least like to shake their hands, and we have that from about 4 till 6:00 o’clock, and then we’ll be doing some other things this evening.
But that is the drill for this meeting. We won’t elect the directors until the regular meeting, which commences at 3:15, but I would like to introduce them at this time and we have a few special announcements in that connection.
3. Berkshire directors introduced
WARREN BUFFETT: But we start off — this is Charlie, this fellow that’s been making all the noise over here. (Laughter)
He’s quite hyperkinetic. But we seem — I think he’s on his medicine. (Laughter)
Charlie, incidentally, can hear quite well and I can see, so we work together. I have a little — I thought I was doing pretty well when I remembered his name, actually.
But our combined ages are 159 for those of you who can’t work with big numbers.
So Charlie. And then we have — and if you’ll stand as I read your name — Howard Buffett. (Applause)
Bill Gates. (Applause)
Sandy Gottesman. (Applause)
Charlotte Guyman. (Applause)
A former Omahan, Don Keough. (Applause)
Tom Murphy. (Applause)
Ron Olson. (Applause)
And a lifetime Omahan, Walter Scott. (Applause)
Now, in addition, we have with us a director whose family has been involved with Berkshire Hathaway and its predecessor companies for over a hundred years. His father played a very key role in Buffett partnership obtaining control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965.
He was supportive in every possible way, as his father, and now his son. And Kim Chace has been on our board for a great number of years. He’s been a — just like his father before him, he’s been a wonderful director.
He’s been a great friend. He will be leaving the board this year, but Kim is here with his family and, Kim and the family, if you would stand up, I’d like the shareholders to recognize you. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: And then finally we will have a new director get elected, and I’ve got the votes in my pocket so there’s no question about it, and that is Sue Decker. And, Sue, if you will, please stand. (Applause)
4. Q1 earnings are “good”
WARREN BUFFETT: Just one or two items of business the — before we start the questioning.
We did report our earnings yesterday after the close, and I can’t see the — are they up on the monitor?
But it was a good first quarter. We had a good year last year. The insurance earnings are going to go down. There’s no question about that. How much they go down depends on Mother Nature and a few other factors.
But it’s been an extraordinary period for insurance. I mean, nothing bad happened last year, and the same was true in the first quarter.
As you might expect, that favorable experience has caused people to lower prices in some areas quite dramatically. And the nature of insurance, if you write a one-year contract, say, six months ago, you were still getting premium at the old rate, if you write at a one-year policy, for another six months.
So there’s a lag effect when things are getting either better or worse. And the lag effect from this point forward, we will — our insurance rates results will show the effect of lower prices.
They will probably show — certainly we have the most benign hurricane season imaginable last year. We have less hurricane exposure that we’ve written this year but, nevertheless, as natural catastrophes occur we will be paying out lots of money if and when they occur.
It couldn’t get any better than it was last year from our standpoint. So things in the insurance world, our insurance earnings, underwriting earnings, are bound to decrease.
Now, what we really hope over time is more or less to break even on the underwriting of insurance. So when you see a significant profit like last year or underwriting profit this year, just look at that as kind of the good side of what will later be an offset to it in a way of an underwriting loss.
But if we break even in insurance on underwriting, we do very, very well because we generate lots of float and we earn money on that float and our float is at an all-time high.
So this is really the frosting on the cake when we have an underwriting profit, and it’s not to be expected to necessarily — well, it won’t occur year after year. Ever since we’ve been in the insurance business, about half the years we’ve made money underwriting and half we haven’t.
I think our mix of business now is such that we’ll even maybe do a touch better than that in the future, but we won’t do anything like what we did in the last year and in the first quarter this year.
There’s one unusual item in our balance sheet that you should be aware of. March 31, you’ll see our receivables went up by about $7 billion. That was because of the Equitas transaction I described in the annual report.
On March 31st, the deal, basically, was closed at the end of the quarter. So we had a receivable of 7 billion, and then a couple of days later we were given 7 billion of cash and securities. So that receivable very quickly turned into liquid assets, cash.
And we sold all those securities we got. So we had 7 billion transferred from receivables to cash very early in April.
Other than that, most of our noninsurance businesses did fine. The residential construction-related businesses are getting hit, in some cases getting hit very hard, and in some cases getting just — but still reflecting decreases in their business.
And my guess is that that continues, perhaps, for quite a while. So you will see lower earnings coming from the companies that are related to residential construction such as Shaw, Johns Manville, ACME Brick, and that group.
But overall, compared to the companies they compete with, our managers continue to do an absolutely sensational job.
We have the greatest group of managers and, for that matter, we’ve got the greatest group of stockholders, of any company I know of in the world, and Charlie and I are very grateful.
You saw in the movie Charlie and I going over there to give the fellows in Israel a lot of advice on how to run their operation better.
And Charlie might want to — you might want to comment on ISCAR.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that was a great experience, and ISCAR is a very great company. I have never seen anything as automated as that ISCAR operation. I think they regard it as a disgrace if any human hand has to do anything.
WARREN BUFFETT: We bought it without looking at it, but after we looked at it, we really liked it. (Laughter)
For those of you who won’t be around for the 3:15 — and I hope everybody that’s interested sticks around for that — it will be an interesting discussion.
But we do have a preliminary vote. Again, I can’t see the vote up there. But, [CFO] Marc [Hamburg], is the vote up there? Unable to hear anything there, but I assume it.
The — basically, I can’t see it from here, but it’s about 2 percent are in favor of the resolution and about 98 percent opposed. And that was true of both the A and the B stock.
So there really wasn’t any great difference in the way people voted on the proposal. And even if you leave out my personal vote, which was against, it’s about a 25-to-one margin that voted in opposition to it.
And anybody that wishes to vote in person or to change their vote, be sure and stay for the meeting at 3:15, and I think you’ll find the discussion very interesting if you care to stay.
5. Buffett sees no private equity “bubble” about to burst
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s get a map here. Here we are. We will start with area 1, which I think is over here, and there we are and we have a questioner.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger. My name is Kevin Truitt (PH) from Chicago, Illinois.
Thank you both for, again, hosting this “Woodstock for Capitalists” for your shareholders and fellow capitalists. I have two questions. My first question is for both Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger.
WARREN BUFFETT: I don’t like to interrupt you, but we’re only letting everybody do one question, so pick whichever one you feel the strongest about getting an answer for, please.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: OK. First, given the ocean of equity money that is out there — private equity money — that is out there today chasing deals, and with the quality of the deals continually diminishing as the quantity of good deals continues to go down, and given the fact that these private equity funds are getting their equity portion of the money from pension funds and college endowments and using very high levels of borrowed money from the banks, this has the look, feel, and smell of a bubble that is about to burst and is likely to end badly for many of the deal-makers and the investors.
What events, in your opinion, could cause this bubble to burst, and how do you think this is likely to all end?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, as you were reading off that list, we are competing with those people, so I started to cry as you — (laughs) — explained the difficulty we have in finding things to buy.
The nature of the private equity activity is such that it really isn’t a bubble that bursts.
Because if you’re running a large private equity fund and you lock up $20 billion for five or longer years and you buy businesses which are not priced daily, as a practical matter, the plug will not — even if you do a poor job, it’s going to take many years before the score is put up on the score board, and it takes many years, in most cases, for people to get out of the private equity fund even if they wished to earlier.
So it does not — it’s not like a lot of leverage can lead to in-marketable securities or something there. And the investors can’t leave and the scorecard is lacking for a long time.
What will slow down the activity — or what could slow down the activity — is if yields on junk bonds became much higher than yields on high-grade bonds.
Right now the spread between yields on junk bonds and high-grade bonds is down to a very low level, and history has shown that periodically that spread widens quite dramatically.
That will slow down the deals, but it won’t cause the investors to get their money back.
There’s one other aspect, of course, that — of this frenzied activity, you might say, in private equity is that if you have a $20 billion fund and you’re getting a 2 percent fee on it or $400 million a year, which seems like chump change to those that are managing them but sounds like real money in Omaha — if you’re getting 400 million a year from that $20 billion fund, you can’t start another fund with a straight face until you get that money pretty well invested.
It’s very hard to go back to your investors and say, well, I’ve got 18 billion uninvested and I’d like you to give me money for another fund.
So there’s a great compulsion to invest very quickly because it’s the way to get another fund and another bunch of fees coming in.
And those are not competitors for businesses that Charlie and I are going to be particularly effective in competing with.
I mean, they — we are going to own anything we buy forever. The math has to make sense to us. We’re not given to optimistic assumptions, and we don’t get paid based on activity.
But I think it will be quite some time before — it’s likely to be quite some time — before disillusionment sets in and the money quits flowing to these people that are promoting these. And whether they can continue to make deals will depend on whether people will give them lots of financing at what I would regard as quite low rates.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. It can continue to go on a long time after you’re in a state of total revulsion.
WARREN BUFFETT: The voice of optimism has spoken. (Laughter.)
6. I didn’t do enough to “sell” Berkshire internationally
WARREN BUFFETT: We’ll go on to 2. And I should have mentioned at the start. We really only take one question per person because there’s a lot of people waiting and some people get very talented about rolling four or five into one, but we — we’ve gotten more talented about unraveling them, so try to keep it to one. Area 2, please.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Greetings to all of you from the Midwest of Europe from the city of Bonn in Germany.
My name is Norman Rentrop. I’m a shareholder in Berkshire since 1992, as well as a shareholder in Wesco and Cologne Re.
I’m a great admirer of both of you and want to thank you again for sharing your wisdom with us and for continuing to stay humble by managing Berkshire for the benefit of all of us without any big 2 and 20 percent fees, without stock option plans. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: Be careful. You’re giving Charlie ideas here. (Laughter)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I want to applaud you in setting another great example by donating most of your wealth to charity and for donating — (applause) — and for donating it in a very intelligent and selfless — that it’s not your name on the foundation — way.
Now, I’m a little disturbed by the remarks from another great investor, from John Templeton, who continues to say that you are narrow-sighted in not investing more overseas.
You do focus on the U.S. with relatively little, so far, internationally. You explained that it doesn’t really matter whether a company is headquartered in the U.S. or London or Munich or Paris, and that you would pay almost as high an amount for such companies as for similar U.S. companies.
You were audacious to invest your petty cash in South Korean stocks.
Coca-Cola went totally global many years ago; whereas, Hershey’s missed the opportunity to go global, leaving the chocolate globalization to Swiss-based Lindt & Sprungli.
Now, what would it take you to go totally global with Berkshire by investing internationally in a big way?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, that’s a very good question. And I would say that I know I probably bought my first stock outside the United States at least 50 years ago.
It is not that we have not looked in the marketable securities field beyond this country, and we’ve made some investments there.
It really wouldn’t make any difference to us if Coca-Cola was based in Amsterdam or Munich or Atlanta as long as they had the business they had.
So we’re very involved in international business, but the hard fact is that in terms of buying entire businesses, we were simply not on the radar screen to the same extent — close to the same extend —outside the United States as we became in the United States.
When we started in the United States, really, nobody knew anything about Berkshire, either, so we had — we had a selling job to do here, but we did not do the selling job — or I did not do the selling job — well abroad.
And thanks to Eitan Wertheimer, he found us. And I think has contributed in a very significant way to getting us better known.
We have no bias against buying either marketable securities or entire businesses outside the United States.
Eitan is even planning a little procedure to get us even better known — get Berkshire even better known — outside the United States, and I’m going to participate in that with him within the next six or eight months.
But we can be very validly criticized for not being a better effort to get on that radar screen.
I think we’re — I think it’s improving. We own a number of non-U.S. securities. We own stock in — just stock, marketable securities — we own two that are based in Germany, and we own others — as it’s been pointed out — we own, for example, 4 percent of POSCO, which is based in South Korea. That’s over a billion-dollar investment at current market.
And we have — I can think of a half a dozen or so marketable securities investments outside the United States.
We don’t have to report those in the 13F — I believe I’m right on this, [CFO] Marc [Hamburg] — so they don’t necessarily get picked up the same way as do our domestic investments by reports we make to the SEC.
There’s a problem — for example, in Germany we have to report our holdings in Germany if our holdings exceed 3 percent.
Well, if you’re talking about a company with 10 billion in market value, that means at $300 million we have to tell the world what we’re buying, and telling the world what we’re buying is not the favorite activity of Charlie and myself.
So — and it tends to screw up future buying. So that 3 percent threshold, which exists in the UK, exists in Germany, is a real minus to us, in terms of accumulating shares.
But I can assure you that the entire world is definitely on our radar screen, and we hope to be on its.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well yes. I’d say that John Templeton made a fortune going into Japan very early and having the Japanese stocks go up to 30 or 40 times earnings.
And that was a very admirable piece of investment. But, you know, we did all right in the same period. (Applause)
7. CEO compensation is a “joke”
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go to station 3, please.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. (Inaudible). I lived most of my life in India, but now in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Warren, first thank you for replying to my letter. I misspelled your name, and where I come from if I did the same thing, the reply would have been, more on, get my name correct before asking a question. So thank you once again.
Investment managers nowadays are benefiting a lot more at the expense of the investors and the (inaudible).
My question is both to you and Charlie is, what do you think is the best structure/fees that managers should have that will give him an opportunity to maximize the time (inaudible) and money (inaudible) over the next few decades and being fair to the profession — the investors and himself? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Before I answer that, I think I should tell you a very short story. It’s a little embarrassing, but I got worried a few years ago about Charlie’s hearing.
But I mean, the guy’s been my pal for 45 or 50 years. I didn’t really want to confront him with this apparent evidence of old age.
So I went to a doctor and I said, “You know, I got this good pal. I don’t think he’s hearing so well. I really don’t want to confront him with it, so what do you suggest I do to check this out?”
He said, “Well, stand across the room, talk in a normal tone of voice, see what happens.”
So the next time I was with Charlie, I got across the room and I said, “Charlie, I think we ought to buy General Motors at 30. Do you agree?” Not a flicker. Not a flicker.
I went halfway across the room. I said, “Charlie, I think we ought to buy General Motors at 30. Do you agree?” Nothing changes.
Get right next to him, put my voice in his ear and said, “Charlie, I think we ought to buy General Motors at 30. Do you agree?”
Charlie said, “For the third time, yes.” (Laughter)
So, Charlie, would you like to address that question? (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. The question addressed the problem of unfairness of executive compensation and the effects of that unfairness on investors. And now that you know the question, you can solve the problem. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, Charlie and I have plenty to say about compensation, and some of it makes our stomach turn.
I will say this, though. There are more problems with having the wrong manager than with having the wrong compensation system.
I mean, it is enormously important who runs — you name the company — Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, American Express — and any compensation sins are generally of minor importance compared to the sin of having somebody that’s mediocre running a huge company.
That said, Charlie and I think that compensation has — there’s a natural tendency — because of ratcheting, because of the publicity of what other people get, and because of the lack of intensity in the bargaining process.
I mean, you read about labor contracts, you know, where impasses go on for weeks and where they negotiate till 3 in the morning and, you know, both sides take their case to the press and everything.
I ask you, when have you heard of a comp committee, you know, working until 4 in the morning, declaring an impasse for a week, not being able to make a deal?
It just doesn’t happen because the CEO cares enormously how he or she is paid, and to the comp committee — and they’re doing, perhaps, a little better job now — but it’s basically play money.
And, of course, as I’ve pointed out in the past, I’ve been on 19 boards. They put me on one comp committee and they regretted it subsequently.
You know, they are looking for cocker spaniels with their tails wagging to put on comp committees and, you know, they’re not looking for Dobermans.
And I try to pretend I’m a cocker spaniel just to get on one, but it doesn’t work. (Laughter)
But it is not — there is not a parity of intensity in the bargaining process. One guy cares enormously and the others don’t.
And as Charlie has pointed out in the past, what really drives a lot of this ratcheting impact is envy.
I saw that on Wall Street. You can talk about greed, but if you paid somebody $2 million, they might be quite happy until they found out the guy next to them made 2 million-one, and then they were miserable.
And Charlie has also pointed out that envy, of the seven deadly sins, is probably the dumbest, because if you’re envious of somebody, you feel terrible and, you know, the other guy isn’t bothered at all.
So all you get out of envy is this miserable grinding in your stomach and all that sort of thing.
You know, compare that to some of the other sins like gluttony, which we are about to engage in. (Laughter)
You know, there’s some upside to gluttony. I’m told there’s upside to lust, but I’ll leave that to Charlie to explain. (Laughter)
But envy, where the hell is the upside, you know? But it does produce this ratcheting effect in pay.
The comp committee sits down. The human relations person comes in. The human relations person knows what the CEO thinks of them is going to determine their future, and the human relations department recommends some comp consultant. The comp consultant knows that his recommendation to other firms is dependent on what these people say about him.
So under those circumstances, you know, can you imagine that it’s anything like a fair fight? It’s a joke.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. The process is contributed to by a wonderful bunch of people called compensation consultants.
And that reminds me of the old story where the mother asked the child why she told the census taker that the man of the house was in prison for embezzlement. And the child said, “I didn’t want to admit he was a compensation consultant.” (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: We’ll get around to the rest of you later on, too. Don’t feel smug because we haven’t attacked your —
I just had a note handed to me. We do have about 27,000 people here. The overflow rooms are full, and we will have a whole bunch in the exhibition hall as well. (Applause)
8. Corporate jets can be good
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go to number 4.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. Good morning. I’m Rob (inaudible). I’m from the UK, and I traveled from Switzerland to be here today.
This is a question that Charlie will like. There’s a study by David Yermack that companies with private jets underperform their peers by 4 percent.
What is the yardstick that you use to judge whether people are good stewards of money — management?
WARREN BUFFETT: Did he direct that to you, Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, he referred to private jets being a possible indication of executive excess.
I want to report that we’re solidly in favor of private jets. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: We even pay for them ourselves. (Laughs)
Charlie used to only — he traveled on the bus, and only then when they offered a senior citizen’s discount.
But in recent years I’ve shamed him into getting his own NetJets share — I have my own — I have two NetJets shares.
Actually, Berkshire is significantly better off in a number of its businesses, and including at the corporate level, because we use corporate jets.
I don’t know which deals wouldn’t have been made, but I do know that — excuse me — I would not have had the same enthusiasm for traveling thousands of miles to go after deal after deal and so on.
And I see what it produces at our — a number of our other businesses. So it has been a valuable business tool.
It can be misused like anything else. I remember many, many years ago, we owned stock in a public company, and the CEO stopped off in Omaha on the way to see me, and he explained that they use some grocery chain in Idaho or something to be sort of their test case on all new products.
And they would go visit it because they also had this lodge out there. I mean, you can abuse any system. But properly used, I would say that corporate jets have been a real asset to Berkshire.
I would go back to this comp question just one second, too.
I mean, comp is not rocket science. I mean, we have very simple systems that compensate those people whose pictures you saw during the movie.
They’re terrific people. We compensate them based on things that are under their control and that we care about. And we don’t make it complicated, and we don’t pay them for things that are happening that they have nothing to do with.
I mean, we talked last year about what you do in a commodity business like copper, oil. I mean, if oil goes from $30 to $60 a barrel, there’s no reason in the world why oil executives should get paid more for what’s going on. They didn’t get it to $60 a barrel.
If they have low finding costs, which is under their control, and which is important, I would pay like crazy for that, because a person who finds oil and develops reserves at $6 a barrel is worth a lot more than somebody that finds and develops them at $10 a barrel, assuming they’re similar quality reserves.
That is the job that you hire the person for. But the price of oil, they’ve got nothing to do with it, and to hand them huge checks because oil goes up or to cut them back because it goes down — if oil went down and somebody had the lowest finding costs that was working for us, we would pay them like crazy.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Well, I’d like to go back to that corporate jet thing.
If the trappings of power are greatly abused, I think you would find a correlation that some of those companies would be disappointing to investors.
And, you know, man has known for a long time that getting too enchanted with the trappings of power is counterproductive.
The Roman emperor that’s most remembered as presiding over a period of great felicity was Marcus Aurelius, who was totally against the trappings of power even though he had them all — he had all the power.
So I think all these things can be abused, and I think the best way to tackle a subject is to provide examples of contrary behavior.
WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie, have a (inaudible) —
CHARLIE MUNGER: I think I’ll go over here.
WARREN BUFFETT: This is our idea of corporate benefits up here, lots of fudge, lots of peanut brittle. I recommend the diet to everyone.
9. “Extraordinary” things can happen when people panic
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go to number 5.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: David Winters, Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.
Could you please explain what you believe the impact and, hopefully benefit, of a credit contraction would be on Berkshire Hathaway, and maybe higher interest rates as well?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we do benefit when others suffer.
That doesn’t mean we enjoy their suffering, but times of chaos in financial markets, the situation that existed in junk bonds in 2002, the situation that existed in equities, you know, back in 1974.
So I don’t think you’ll necessarily see a contraction in credit. That — I think most authorities are very reluctant to really step on the brakes. You know, it’s too easy to figure out who did step on the brakes.
But you could very well see some exogenous event that starts feeding on itself in markets.
In fact, I think it’s much more prone to feed on itself in markets than in most periods in the past, if you really got a shock to the system.
And that would result in a huge widening of credit spreads, cheaper equity prices, all kinds of things that actually are helpful to Berkshire because we usually have at least some money around to do something at times like that.
There will be periods like that. If you go back 30 or 40 years, when credit contracted, it just really wasn’t available.
Charlie and I went through a couple periods like that. We were trying to buy a bank in Chicago 40 — 40 or so years ago, and the only people that would lend it to us in the world — because banks weren’t lending for acquisitions — we found some people over in Kuwait who said they’d lend it to us in dinars.
And we thought, you know, it might be fine to borrow it, but when it came time to pay them back the dinars, they would probably be telling us what the dinar was worth, so we passed on that particular deal.
But you had real credit contractions then. And, of course, the whole reason — not — I would say the major reason the Federal Reserve was established was the huge contractions in credit that were felt, particularly here in places like the Midwest where they were dependent on correspondent banks in the larger cities, and when those banks had problems, the banks here got shut off.
And we really needed a system that would not have that happen except by design. And I would say the Fed, by design, is probably not going to produce any credit crunches.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, the last time we had that credit contraction, we made, what, a quick 3 or $4 billion? And we were acting with vigor.
The whole investment world is more and more competitive, and if you talk about a real credit contraction, which gums up the whole civilization, no one would welcome that.
And I would predict that if we ever had a really big credit contraction after a period like the one we’re in with all this excess, which is causing so much envy and resentment, that we would get legislation that most of us wouldn’t like.
WARREN BUFFETT: There’s a book by Jonathan Alter that came out about a year ago that talks about the first hundred days after [President Franklin] Roosevelt took over [in 1933], and by the nature of the book it tells about some of the days before that, too.
But if you want to get an example of — I mean, this country was close to the brink at that point, and, basically, Roosevelt got anything passed he wanted, just as fast as they could write the bills there, initially. And that was a good thing, you know, with banks closing and people dealing in scrip and that sort of thing.
So nobody wants that to come back, and we’ve learned a lot more about that sort of thing since the Great Depression.
I don’t think you’ll see an orchestrated credit contraction.
Now, you had in 1998, in the fall, when Long-Term Capital Management got in trouble, you had a seize up of the credit markets.
It wasn’t an orchestrated by the Fed-type contraction. You simply had people panicked about even the most — even the safest of instruments and credit spreads doing things that they’d never done before.
And that’s rather an interesting example, because that was not a hundred years ago. It was less than ten years ago. You had all kinds of people with high IQs in Wall Street. You had all kinds of people with cash available.
And you had some really extraordinary things happen in credit markets simply because people panicked and they felt other people were going to panic. And you get these second- and third-degree type reactions in markets.
We will see that sort of thing again. It won’t be the same but, you know, as Mark Twain said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. And we will have something that rhymes with 1998.
10. Munger reminds people “too much of John Adams”
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 6.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. My name is Andrew Paullin (PH), a former Michigander now from Woburn, Massachusetts.
My question is for Charlie, though Warren, please add your thoughts as well.
Charlie, you were quoted in “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” as saying, quote, “Ben Franklin was a very good ambassador and whatever was wrong with him from John Adams’ point of view probably helped him with the French,” end quote.
If you are willing, I’m curious to hear your additional thoughts regarding John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, of course, they were wonderful people, both of them. And —
WARREN BUFFETT: Did you know them personally, Charlie? (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER: No. No.
But if you wanted to have a really jolly evening, I would have taken Franklin every time. And the French love Franklin.
I think I remind many people too much of John Adams and too little of Ben Franklin. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: He does pretty well in respect to Ben Franklin, too
11. Corporate profits can’t stay at record highs
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go to number 7.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name Takashi Ito (PH) from Japan.
In addition to the global excess liquidity, corporate profits are very high compared to the share of labor. Does that make it extra challenging for you to find investment opportunities? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yes, corporate profits in the United States are — except for just a very few years — are record, in terms of GDP.
I’ve been amazed that after being in a range between 4 and 6 percent of GDP, they have jumped upward. And — (coughs) — you would not think this would be sustainable over time.
Excuse me just one second. Charlie, want to talk for a second? (Laughter)
You’ve just heard him on the subject.
But corporate profits, when they get up to 8 percent plus of GDP, you know, that is very high. And so far it has caused no reaction.
One reaction could be higher corporate taxes. You have lots and lots of businesses in this country earning 20 or 25 percent on tangible equity in a world where long-term bond rates are 4 3/4 percent — government bond rates.
That’s extraordinary. If you’d read an economics book 40 years ago and it talked about that kind of a situation persisting, you wouldn’t have found a book like that.
I mean, that does not make sense under pure economic theory, but it’s been occurring for some period of time and, as a matter of fact, it’s gotten more extreme.
Corporate profits continue to rise as a percentage of GDP. That means somebody else’s share of GDP is going down.
And you’re quite correct that the labor component of GDP has actually fallen fairly significantly.
Whether that becomes a political issue — maybe in the next campaign — whether it becomes something that Congress does something about — Congress has the power to change that ratio very quickly.
Corporate tax rates not that long ago were 52 percent and now they’re 35 percent and a whole lot of companies get by with paying 20 percent or less.
So I would say that, at the moment, corporate America is kind of living in the best of all worlds, and history has shown that those conditions don’t persist indefinitely.
What brings it to an end, when it happens, I don’t know. But I would not expect corporate profits to be eight-and-a-fraction percent of GDP, on average, in the future.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Of course, a lot of the profits are not in the manufacturing sector or the retailing sector, either. A lot of them are in this financial sector.
And so we’ve had a huge flow of profit to banks and investment banks and investment management groups of all kinds, including various kinds of private equity.
And that has, I think, no precedent. I don’t think it’s ever been as extreme as it is now. Do you agree with that?
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. And Charlie and I would have said 20 years ago — and we’ve done things in banking from time to time, including owning a bank.
But if you had said to us, in a world of 4 3/4 percent long-term governments, will one major bank after another be earning more than 20 percent on tangible equity, dealing in what is basically a commodity — money — we would have said that that condition just wouldn’t persist.
Now, part of that is because the banks are geared up more. So if you earn 1 1/2 percent on deposits, you know, and you have — or 1 1/2 percent on assets — and you have assets of 15 times equity, you’re going to be earning 22 1/2 percent on equity. And by gearing up more, it does improve the return on equity.
But you still would think that would be self-neutralizing. You’d think that after one guy did it, another guy would do it, and then instead of earning 1 1/2 percent on assets, you’d earn, you know, 9/10 of a percent or 1 percent on assets, but it hasn’t happened. It’s gone on for a long time.
And, you know, we are living — I’d have to look at a chart on it, but there may have been a year or two post-World War II, but I don’t think that — I would bet there haven’t been more than two or three years in the last 75 when corporate profits, as a percentage of GDP, have been this high.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Some of this has come from consumer credit, which I think has been pushed to extremes that we’ve never before seen in the history of this country.
Some other countries that pushed consumer credit very hard had enormous collapses. Korea had one, for instance, that caused chaos for, what, two or three years? Maybe longer. So I don’t think this is a time to just swing for the fences.
WARREN BUFFETT: And the chaos in 1997 and 1998 when the IMF stepped in, I mean, it was bad in Korea for a while.
It produced some of the most ridiculously low stock prices that I’ve ever seen in my life.
In fact, I mean, you could go back to 1932 in this country and you wouldn’t have seen things any cheaper. And in the meantime, the companies rebuilt their balance sheets and their earning power.
So things do turn around in financial markets. You will — if you’re young enough, you will see everything and then some.
I mention in the annual report, in looking for an investment manager to succeed me, that we care enormously about finding somebody who’s not cognizant of everything risky that’s already happened, but that also can envision things that have not yet been experienced.
That’s our job in the insurance business, and it’s our job in the investment business.
And there are a lot of people that just don’t seem to — they’re not — they’re very smart, but they just — they’re just not wired to think about troubles that they haven’t actually witnessed before.
But, you know, that’s the problem Noah had. You know, the first 40 days, it was tough sledding for Noah, but he got revenge eventually.
12. We welcome short-sellers betting against us
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go to number 8.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. My name is Brian Bowalk (PH), Fremont, Nebraska.
With the growing number of fail-to-deliver trades happening in our stock markets, including investors’ cash accounts, Roth IRAs, and other retirement accounts, it seems like the problem is getting worse.
With some companies being on the Regulation SHO list for hundreds of days, what can be done to make Wall Street deliver stock that they have sold but never delivered? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. The so-called fail to deliver and naked shorting, I think is the question. I don’t know exact — I’ve never been in a position where I’ve asked a broker from whom I bought stock to give me the certificate and have them decline it for any period of time.
I would think that you might have some action against them. But I’ve never — I do not see the problem at all with people shorting stocks.
I mean, I would welcome people shorting Berkshire Hathaway. I mean, it — if you own stock, and they need to borrow from you, you can get some extra income from your stock. And the one sure buyer of your stock eventually is somebody who shorted it. I mean, that guy is going to buy it someday.
And I have no problem with shorts. If there’s some kind of a game that’s played — and I’ve read about it — I’ve never seen it happen to anything that we’ve owned.
Like I say, if anybody wants to naked short Berkshire Hathaway, they can do it until the cows come home, and we’ll be happy to. We’ll have a special meeting for them.
But — and I would say this: the shorts generally have the tougher time of it in this world. I mean, there are more people bowling stocks for phony reasons than there are burying stocks for phony reasons.
So I do not see shorts as any great threat to the world. If enough people shorted Berkshire stock, they would have to borrow it and they would pay you to borrow your stock and that’s found money.
We did that on USG. When USG got hammered after they went into bankruptcy — or maybe just before — one large brokerage firm came to us and they wanted us to lend them millions of shares and they paid us a lot of money.
And we happily lent them the stock. We wished they borrowed more. In fact, we insisted that they borrow it for a given length of time just so that we could collect a large premium.
And I don’t know how many — I’d have to look it up but — I don’t know whether it’s in the hundred thousands or, maybe, low millions, but we were better off.
And they didn’t do too well shorting USG at $4 a share either, but it was immaterial to us.
So I do not regard — I do not regard shorts as — it’s a tough way to make a living.
It’s very easy to spot phony stocks and promoted stocks, but it’s very hard to tell when that will turn around.
And somebody that’s promoted a stock to five times what it’s worth, may very well promote it to ten times what it’s worth, and if you’re short, that can get very painful.
Charlie, do you have any thoughts on shorting?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, not on shorting. But those delays in delivering sometimes reflect a tremendous slop in the clearance process, and it is not good for a civilization to have huge slop in the clearance processes for its security trades.
That would be sort of like having a lot of slop in the management of your atomic power plants. It’s not a good idea to have slop that causes a lot of financial exposure that people are ignoring.
WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie, reach back into your law practice. If I buy a thousand shares of General Motors, and my broker doesn’t deliver it to me, and I ask him to deliver it and he doesn’t deliver it to me after a week or two weeks or three weeks, what’s the situation?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, if you’re a private customer, you may wait a while. And a lot of the other trades — the clearance systems do cause people to put up collateral and so on.
But a lot of — take derivative trading. There’s a lot of slop in derivative trading. And the clearance problem would be awful if a lot of people wanted to do something at once.
WARREN BUFFETT: But if I demand delivery after three weeks, can I walk into court and say I want my stock, I’ve given you the money?
CHARLIE MUNGER: I don’t think there’s any court that can issue you a stock certificate just because you want it.
No, the clearance system is failing you. Why, you can scream a lot, and you may have some ultimate remedy, but there’s —
WARREN BUFFETT: I’ll get somebody else to represent me. (Laughter)
13. “Gambling is a tax on ignorance”
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 9.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, hello. My name is Johann Fortenberg (PH) from Hanover, Germany.
Do you think gambling companies will have a great future? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: What kind of company?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Gambling companies.
WARREN BUFFETT: Gambling companies. Gambling companies will have a terrific future, if they’re legal.
You know, which ones or anything, I don’t know anything about that.
But the desire of people to gamble and to gamble in stocks, incidentally, too. Day trading, I would say, very often was — came very close to gambling as defined —.
But people like to gamble, you know. I mean, it’s a — if the Super Bowl is on — better yet, if a terribly boring football game is on but you don’t have anything to do, and you’re sitting there with somebody else, you’re probably going to enjoy the game more if you bet a few bucks on it one way or the other.
As you know, I mean, we insure hurricanes, so I watch the Weather Channel. But that’s a — (Laughter)
It can be exciting. (Laughter)
But people — the human propensity to gamble is huge. Now, when it was legalized only in — pretty much in Nevada — you had to go to some distance, or break some laws, to do any serious gambling.
But as the states learned to — you know, what a great source of revenue it was, they gradually made it easier and easier and easier for people to gamble.
And, believe me, the easier it’s made, the more people will gamble.
I mean, when I was — my children are here, and 40 years ago I bought a slot machine and I put it up on our third floor, and I could give me kids any allowance they wanted as long as it was in dimes. I mean, I had it all back by nightfall. (Laughter)
I thought it would be a good lesson for them. Now they weren’t going to Las Vegas to do it, but believe me when it was on the third floor, they could find it, you know.
And my payout ratio was terrible, too, but that’s the kind of father I was. (Laughter)
The — but gambling, you know, people are always going to want to do it.
And for that reason, I particularly think that access — you know, in terms of friendly gambling or anything like that, I’m not a prude about it, but I do think that to quite an extent, gambling is a tax on ignorance.
I mean, if you want to tax the ignorant, people who will do things with the odds against them, you know, you just put it in and guys like me don’t have to pay taxes.
I really don’t — I find that — I find it kind of socially revolting when a government preys on the weaknesses of its citizenry rather than acts to serve them. And, believe me, when a government — (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: When a government makes it easy for people to take their Social Security checks and start pulling handles or participating in lotteries or whatever it may be, it’s a pretty cynical act.
It works. It’s a pretty cynical act. And it relieves taxes on those, you know, who don’t fall for those or who don’t — who aren’t dreaming about having a car instead of actually having a car or dreaming about a color TV instead of having one.
So it’s not government at its best, and I think other things flow from that over time, too.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: You know, I would argue that the gambling casinos use clever psychological tricks to cause people to hurt themselves.
There is undoubtedly a lot of harmless amusement in the casinos, but there’s also a lot of grievous injury that is deliberately caused by the casinos.
It’s a dirty business, and I don’t think you’ll find a casino soon in Berkshire Hathaway. (Applause)
14. How to be a better investor
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 10, please.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Thomas Gamay (PH) from San Francisco. I’m 17-years-old and this is my tenth consecutive annual meeting. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: You must be a Ph.D. by now at least.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, I’m curious about what you think is the best way to become a better investor.
Should I get an MBA? Get more work experience? Read more Charlie Munger almanacs or merely is it genetic and out of my hands?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think you should read everything you can.
I can tell you in my own case, I think by the time I was — well, I know by the time I was ten — I’d read every book in the Omaha Public Library that had anything to do with investing, and many of them I’d read twice.
So I don’t think there’s anything like reading, and not just as limited to investing at all. But you’ve just got to fill up your mind with various competing thoughts and sort them out as to what really makes sense over time.
And then once you’ve done a lot of that, I think you have to jump in the water, because investing on paper and doing — you know, and investing with real money, you know, is like the difference between reading a romance novel and doing something else. (Laughter)
There is nothing like actually having a little experience in investing. And you soon find out whether you like it. If you like it, if it turns you on, you know, you’re probably going to do well on it.
And the earlier you start, the better, in terms of reading. But, you know, I read a book at age 19 that formed my framework for thinking about investments ever since.
I mean, what I’m doing today at 76 is running things through the same thought pattern that I got from a book I read when I was 19.
And I read all the other books, too, but if you — and you have to read a lot of them to know which ones really do jump out at you and which ideas jump out at you over time.
So I would say that read and then, on a small scale in a way that can’t hurt you financially, do some of it yourself.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, Sandy Gottesman, who is a Berkshire director, runs a large and successful investment operation, and you can tell what he thinks causes people to learn to be good investors by noticing his employment practices.
When a young man comes to Sandy, he asks a very simple question, no matter how young the man is. He says, “What do you own and why do you own it?” And if you haven’t been interested enough in the subject to have that involvement already, why, he’d rather you go somewhere else.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. It’s very — that whole idea that you own a business, you know, is vital to the investment process.
If you were going to buy a farm, you’d say, I’m buying this 160-acre farm because I expect that the farm will produce 120 bushels an acre of corn or 45 bushels an acre of soybeans and I can buy — you know, you go through the whole process.
It’d be a quantitative decision and it would be based on pretty solid stuff. It would not be based on, you know, what you saw on television that day. It would not be based on, you know, what your neighbor said to you or anything of the sort.
It’s the same thing with stocks. I used to always recommend to my students that they take a yellow pad like this and if they’re buying a hundred shares of General Motors at 30 and General Motors has whatever it has out, 600 million shares or a little less, that they say, “I’m going to buy the General Motors company for $18 billion, and here’s why.”
And if they can’t give a good essay on that subject, they’ve got no business buying 100 shares or ten shares or one share at $30 per share because they are not subjecting it to business tests.
And to get in the habit of thinking that way, you know, Sandy would have followed it up with the questions, based on how you answered the first two questions, that made you defend exactly why you thought that business was cheap at the price at which you are buying it. And any other answer, you’d flunk.
15. When you don’t need a huge margin of safety
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 11.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, I’m Marc Rabinov from Melbourne, Australia.
I just wanted to ask you, how do you judge the right margin of safety to use when investing in various common stocks?
For example, in a dominant, long-standing, stable business, would you demand a 10 percent margin of safety and, if so, how would you increase this in a weaker business? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: We favor the businesses where we really think we know the answer.
And, therefore, if a business gets to the point where we think the industry in which it operates, the competitive position or anything is so chancy that we can’t really come up with a figure, we don’t really try to compensate for that sort of thing by having some extra large margin of safety.
We really want to try to go on to something that we understand better. So if we buy something like — See’s Candy as a business or Coca-Cola as a stock, we don’t think we need a huge margin of safety because we don’t think we’re going to be wrong about our assumptions in any material way.
What we really want to do is buy a business that’s a great business, which means that business is going to earn a high return on capital employed for a very long period of time, and where we think the management will treat us right.
We don’t have to mark those down a lot when we find those factors. We’d love to find them when they’re selling at 40 cents on the dollar but we will buy those as much closer to a dollar on the dollar. We don’t like to pay a dollar on the dollar, but we’ll pay something close.
And if we really get to something — you know, when we see a great business, it’s like if you see some — somebody walk in the door, you don’t know whether they weigh 300 pounds or 325 pounds. You still know they’re fat, right, you know?
And so if we see something we know it’s fat, financially, we don’t worry about being precise. And if we can come in, in that particular example, at the equivalent of 270 pounds, we’ll feel good.
But if we find something where the competitive aspects are — it’s just the nature of the business that you really can’t see out five or 10 or 20 years because that’s what investing is, is seeing out.
You don’t get paid for what’s already happened. You only get paid for what’s going to happen in the future. The past is only useful to you in the extent to which it gives you insights into the future, and sometimes the past doesn’t give you any insights into the future.
And in other cases, like the stable business that you postulated, it probably does give you a pretty good guideline as to what’s going to happen in the future, and you don’t need a huge margin of safety.
You should have something that — you always should feel you’re getting a little more than what it’s worth, and there are times when we’ve been able to buy wonderful businesses at a quarter of what they’re worth, but we haven’t seen those — well, we saw it in Korea here recently — but you don’t see those sort of things very often.
And does that mean you should sit around and hope they come back for 10 or — you know, wait 10 or 15 years? That’s not the way we do it. If we can buy good businesses at a reasonable valuation, we’re going to keep doing it.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. You’re — that margin of safety concept boils down to getting more value than you’re paying. And that value can exist in a lot of different forms.
If you’re paid four-to-one on something that’s an even money proposition, why, that’s a value proposition, too.
It’s high school algebra. And people who don’t know how to use high school algebra should take up some other activity.
16. Health care is too tough for Berkshire
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 12.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: — morning. Good morning.
WARREN BUFFETT: Morning.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Mike Klein, and I’m a general surgeon from Salinas, California.
Given your resources and experience in underwriting insurance, do you have any thoughts of entering into, or helping to solve, our health care mess?
Time is right for a new approach with Berkshire’s clarity brought to the formula. Let’s acknowledge the stakes are huge with implication for our economy and our future as a country.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Let me try that one. It’s too tough.
WARREN BUFFETT: I would —
CHARLIE MUNGER: Warren and I can’t solve that.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we can’t solve that one.
We try to look for easy problems because those are the ones we find we have the answers for. And you can do that in investments. We don’t really try tough things.
Now, sometimes life hands you a problem, not in the financial area in our case, usually, but it will hand you a problem that is very tough and that you have to wrestle with.
But we don’t go around looking for tough problems. I would say this: we do very, very little in health insurance. You know, if we were to have — if we were looking for a solution through the private sector, we would be looking for something with very, very low distribution costs.
I mean, you do not want a lot of the revenue soaked up in frictional costs between the benefits paid and the premiums received.
I don’t know how to do that, and I haven’t seen anybody else that’s very good at doing it, and you can say if you’re paying close to 15 percent of GDP for health costs, you know, somebody ought to be able to figure out something, but I haven’t heard it.
Maybe we’ll hear it in the upcoming political campaign but Charlie’s views reflect mine at the present.
17. Munger on what’s driven Berkshire’s “extreme” success
WARREN BUFFETT: Now we’re going to go to the grand ballroom. We have these two overflow rooms that are full — or more or less full — and the grand ballroom is number. 13. Would they come in, please?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is Phil McCall (PH) from Connecticut.
I wondered if you could comment on a subject I don’t think you like to talk about very much, which is intrinsic value, and the evolution over the past 10 or 12 years of going to — off and on — but giving us investments and then giving us the operating income and suggesting that might be a good guide to us.
I find it extremely helpful. I’m not sure other people do when looking out the 20 years you’re talking about, looking ahead on both those two parts. Any comments you might have, I’d surely appreciate.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, the intrinsic value of Berkshire, like any other businesses, is based on the future amount of cash that can be expected to be delivered by the business between now and judgment day, discounted back at the proper rate.
Now, that’s pretty nebulous. Another way of looking at it is to try and figure out the value of the businesses we own presently, and we try to give you the information that will enable you to make a reasonably close estimate at that.
We own lots of marketable securities. It’s probably safe to say that they’re worth more or less what they are carried for. And then we own a number of operating businesses, and we try to give you the figures on those businesses that are the figures that we use in making our own judgments about the value of those businesses.
Now, that tells you what we have today and more or less what it’s worth. But since Berkshire retains all of its earnings, it becomes very important to evaluate what will be done with those earnings over time.
I mean, it is not only a question what the present businesses are worth. It’s a judgment on the efficiency or the effectiveness with which retained earnings will be used.
If you had looked at the intrinsic value of Berkshire in 1965, we had a textile business that was probably worth about $12 a share. But that was not the only part of the equation, because we intended to use any cash generated to try and buy into better businesses than we had, and we were fortunate to be able to buy in the insurance business in 1967 and build on that.
So it was not only a combination of the business we had, but the skill with which retained earnings would be used, that determined what the present value actually should have been at Berkshire going back that far.
It’s the same situation today. We will put to work billions and billions of dollars this year and next year and the year after. If we put that to work effectively, each dollar has a greater present value than a dollar has simply in cash or distributed. If we do ineffectively, it has a value of something less.
The businesses today, you know, we have whatever the figure is in the annual report — roughly $80,000 in marketable securities.
If our insurance business breaks even, that $80,000 is free to us, in terms of using it. And we have a group of operating businesses and we show their earnings in the report and we’re going to try to add to those and they’ll try to add to their earnings.
But if Charlie and I were each right now to write down on a piece of paper what we think the intrinsic value of Berkshire is, our figures would not be the same. They’d be reasonably close.
And I think with that, I’ll turn it over to Charlie.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. What’s hard to judge at Berkshire is the likelihood that you’ll have anything like the past to look forward to in the future.
Berkshire has gotten very extreme, in terms of investment results. In fact, it’s gotten so extreme that it’s hard to think of another similar precedent in the history of the world.
And the balance sheet is gross, considering the small beginnings of the place. Now, what on earth has caused this extreme record to go on for such a very long time?
I would argue that the young man who was reading everything he could read when he was 10-years-old became a learning machine, and he got a lot of power early, and then he got a very long run when he kept learning.
If Warren had not been learning all the while, I’m telling you having watched the process closely, the record would be a pale shadow of what it is. And Warren has improved since he passed the retirement age of man.
In other words, in this field, at least, you can improve when you’re old.
Now, most people don’t even try and create that kind of a record. They pass power from one 65-year-old to one 59-year-old and then do it over and over again. But you get an enormous advantage from practice in this field.
And so what happened accidentally in the case of Warren has helped you shareholders greatly because you had this long run with power extremely concentrated, and with the man holding the power being a ferocious learner.
Our system ought to be more copied than it is. (Applause)
This idea of passing the power from one old codger to another, in a settled way, is not necessarily the right system at all.
WARREN BUFFETT: We have a very strong culture now of rationality, of being owner-oriented, that will go on long after I’m not around. And we have a talent on the operating side in place to do a lot of wonderful things over time.
We will need, in capital allocation, to keep doing intelligent things. We won’t get to do brilliant things because you don’t get to do brilliant things with the kind of sums we’re talking about. Maybe once in a blue moon or something, you know, you’ll get a chance.
But we will need somebody that never does — basically doesn’t do any dumb things, and occasionally does something that’s reasonably good. That can be done.
And we have — we’re on that road already. It does not — fitting into this organization as an investment officer or a capital allocator, you’re getting in the right vehicle. It has the right standards. It will reject ideas that really are irrational.
I’ve been on a lot of boards. Charlie’s been on a lot of boards. You would be amazed at the number of things that are responding to “animal spirits” rather than to rationality that take place. And we have our animal spirits but we devote them to other areas.
18. “Deficient” auditing of derivatives will cause problems
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go on to number 14. That’s in — that’s in the junior ballroom.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. Hi, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger. This is Whitney Tilson, a shareholder from New York.
For many years both of you have been warning about the dangers of derivatives, at one point calling them “financial weapons of mass destruction.”
Yet every year, tens of trillions of dollars of derivatives are bought and sold. It just seems to be getting bigger and bigger and almost certainly improperly accounted for.
And so I was wondering if you could comment, and, specifically, if you have any thoughts on how much longer this might go on.
Do you see anything imminent that could derail this ever inflating bubble? What might trigger it? And who should be doing what to try and mitigate this looming danger?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we’ve tried to do a little to mitigate it ourselves by talking about it, but the — you’re right, the — and it isn’t the derivative itself. I mean, there’s nothing evil about a derivative instrument.
As I mentioned, we have 60-some of them at Berkshire, and on Monday I’ll go over with the directors — I’ll go over all 60-some and, believe me, we’ll make money out of those particular instruments.
But they — usage of them on an expanding basis, more and more imaginative ways of using them, introduces, essentially, more and more leverage into the system.
And it’s an invisible — or largely invisible — sort of leverage. If you go back to the 1920s, after the crash, the United States government held hearings.
They decided that leverage — margin, in those days, as they called it — leverage contributed to, perhaps, the crash itself and certainly to the extent of the crash. And it was like pouring gasoline on a fire was — when people’s holdings got tripped, you know, when stocks went down 10 percent people had to sell, another 10 percent, more people had to sell and so on.
Leverage was regarded as dangerous and the United States government empowered the Federal Reserve to regulate margin requirements, regulate leverage, and that was taken very seriously.
And for decades it was a source of real attention. I mean, if you went to a bank and tried to borrow money on a stock, they made you sign certain papers as to — that you weren’t in violation of the margin requirements, and they policed it.
And it was taken quite seriously when the Fed increased or decreased margin requirements. It was a signal of how they felt about the level of speculation.
Well, the introduction of derivatives and index futures, all that sort of thing, has just totally made any regulation of margin requirements a joke.
They still exist and, you know, it’s an anachronism.
So I believe — I think Charlie probably agrees with me — that we may not know where, exactly, the danger begins and where — and at what point it becomes a superdanger and so on.
We certainly don’t know what will end it, precisely. We don’t know when it will end, precisely.
But we probably — at least I believe — that it will go on and increase to the point where at some point there will be some very unpleasant things happen in markets because of it.
You saw one example of what can happen under forced sales back in October 19, 1987, when you had so-called portfolio insurance.
Now, portfolio insurance — and you ought to go back and read the literature for the couple years preceding that. I mean, this was something that came out of academia and it was regarded as a great advance in financial theories and everything.
It was a joke. It was a bunch of stop-loss orders which, you know, go back 150 years or something, except that they were done automatically and in large scale by institutions and they were merchandise.
People paid a lot of money to people to teach them how to put in a stop-loss order. And what happened, of course, was that if you have a whole series of stop-loss orders by very big institutions, you are pouring gasoline on fire.
And when October 19th came along, you had a 22 percent shrink in the value of American business, caused, essentially, by a doomsday machine. A dead hand was selling as each level got hit. And three weeks earlier, you know, people were proclaiming the beauty of this.
Well, that is nothing compared — it was a formal arrangement to have these — this dynamic hedging or portfolio insurance — sell things.
But you have the same thing existing when you have fund operators operating with billions in aggregate, trillions of dollars, leveraged, who will respond to the same stimulus.
They have what we would call a “crowded trade,” but they don’t know it. It’s not a formal crowded trade.
It’s just that they’re all ready to sell if a certain given signal or a certain given activity occurs. And when you get that, coupled with extreme leverage which derivatives allow, you will someday get a very, very chaotic situation.
I have no idea when. I have no idea what the exogenous factor — I didn’t know that shooting some archduke, you know, would start World War I, and I have no idea what will cause this kind of a thing, but it will happen.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. And, of course, the accounting being deficient enormously contributes to the risks.
If you get paid enormous bonuses based on reporting profits that don’t exist, you’re going to keep doing whatever causes those phony profits to keep appearing on the books.
And what makes that so difficult is that most of the accounting profession doesn’t even recognize how stupidly it is behaving.
And one of the people in charge of accounting standards said to me, “Well, this is better, this derivative accounting, because it’s mark-to-market, and don’t we want current information?”
And I said, “Yes. But if you mark-to-model, and you create the models, and your accountants trust your models, and you can just report whatever profit you want as long as you keep expanding the positions bigger and bigger and bigger, the way human nature is, that will cause terrible results and terrible behavior.”
And this person said to me, “Well, you just don’t understand accounting.” (Laughter.)
WARREN BUFFETT: If four years ago, or whenever it was, when we started to liquidate Gen Re’s portfolio, we had reserves set up for in the hundreds and millions and all sorts of things.
And our auditor — and I emphasize any other of the Big Four auditors absolutely would have attested to the fact that our stuff was mark-to-market.
You know, I just wish I’d sold the portfolio to the auditors that day. (Laughs) I’d be 400 million better off.
So it’s a real problem. Now there’s one thing that’s really quite interesting to me. If I owe you, on my dry cleaning bill or something, $15, and they’re auditing the dry cleaners, they check with me and they find out that I owe you $15 and it’s all fine.
If they’re auditing me, they find out I owe the dry cleaner 15 bucks. There are only four big auditing firms, you know, basically in this country.
And I will — so in many cases, if they’re auditing my side of the derivative transaction, you know, what I’m valuing it at, the same firm may often be valuing — or attesting to the value of the mark by the person on the other side of the contract.
I will guarantee you that if you add up the marks on both sides, they don’t equate out to zero.
We have 60-some contracts, and I will bet that people are valuing them differently on the other side than we value themselves, and it won’t be to the disadvantage of the trader on the other side.
I don’t get paid based on how ours are valued, so I have no reason to want to game the system. But there are people out on the other side that do have reasons to game the system.
So if I’m valuing some contract at plus a million dollars for Berkshire, that contract on the other side, it’s just one piece of paper, should be valued at a minus 1 million by somebody else.
But I think you probably have cases — and this is — I’m not talking about our auditors, I’m talking about all four of the firms — but they have many cases where they are attesting to values that — of the exact same piece of paper — where the numbers are widely different on both sides.
Do you have any thoughts on that, Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I — as sure as God made little green apples, this is going to cause a lot of trouble in due course.
As long as it keeps expanding and ballooning and so on and the convulsions are minor, it can just go on and on. But eventually there will be a big denouement.
19. Dangers of short-term investing and advanced mathematics
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go back to number one.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I’m Stanley Ku from Hong Kong. My question is about a proliferation of short-term mindset to investing.
As more and more money is being placed under absolute return mandate, these managers, as you just said, responded the same response, and tried to trade issues.
So with credit spread on — I should say, risk premium — on various products declining across the board and correlation across markets increasing, can we read into it and say what is healthy or not healthy for the economy or the markets? And can we arguably say the portfolio insurance dynamics is already in place today?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think you put your finger on it. And, you know, we do think it’s unhealthy.
Obviously, if you take — and no way of precisely measuring this, but I’m quite certain I’m right — if you take the degree to which, say, either bonds or stocks, the percentage of them that are held by people who could change their minds tomorrow morning based on a given stimulus, whether it be something the Fed does or whether it be some kind of an accident in financial markets, the percentage is far higher.
There is an electronic herd of people around the world managing huge amounts of money who think that a decision on everything in their portfolio should be made, basically, daily or hourly or by the minute.
And that has increased turnover on the New York Stock Exchange — and I don’t know the exact figures — but I think it was down around the 15 or 20 percent range 40 years ago and it’s increased it to a hundred percent, I believe, plus, now.
So — and certainly in the bond market, the turnover of bonds has increased dramatically. People used to buy bonds to own them and they’d buy bonds to trade them.
And there’s nothing evil about that, but it just means that the participants are playing a different game, and that different game can have different consequences than in a buy-and-hold environment.
And I do think it means that if you’re trying to beat the other fellow on a day-to-day basis, you’re watching news events very carefully or watching the other fellow very carefully.
If you think he’s about to hit that key, you know, you’re going to try to hit the key faster, if that’s the game you’re playing and if you’re getting measured on results weekly.
So I think that you describe the conditions that will lead to a result that we’ve been talking about expecting at some point.
It’s not new to markets, though. I mean, markets will do crazy things over time. Every time — when Charlie and I were at Salomon, they’d always talk to us about five sigma events or six sigma events, and that’s fine if you’re talking about flipping coins, but it doesn’t mean anything when you get human behavior involved.
And people do things that — and intelligent people do things — very intelligent, educated people do things — that are totally irrational, and they do them en masse.
And you saw it in 1998. You saw it in 2002. And you’ll see it again. And you’ll see it — it’s more likely to happen when you have people trying to beat currency, bond, stock markets, day by day.
It’s — I think it’s a fool’s game. But — you know, it may be what’s required to attract money.
When I set up my partnership, I told the partners, you know, you’ll hear from me once a year.
And I even thought — in 1962 I put the partnerships together and in May of 1962 the market got terrible — and I actually thought of sending all my partners a letter, and then sending it down to Brazil to have it reshipped back up, just to sort of test them out, but — how they felt about things.
But, you know, I had a few with bad hearts. I decided it wasn’t worthwhile.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. When people talk about sigmas, in terms of disaster potentialities in markets, they’re all crazy.
They got the idea that bad results in markets would be predicted by Gaussian distributions. And the way they decided on that outcome was it made everything so easy to compute.
They don’t follow Gaussian distributions. You have to believe in the Tooth Fairy to believe that.
And the disasters are bigger and more irritating than [German mathematician Carl Friedrich] Gauss would have predicted.
WARREN BUFFETT: It was easier to teach as well.
CHARLIE MUNGER: It’s easier to teach, too.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.
CHARLIE MUNGER: I once asked a distinguished medical school professor why he was still doing an obsolete procedure, and he said, “It’s so wonderful to teach.” (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: There’s more of that in finance departments than you might think.
It’s very discouraging to learn advanced mathematics and, you know, how to do things that none but the priesthood can do in your field, and then find out it doesn’t have any meaning, you know.
And what you do when confronted with that knowledge, after you’ve invested these years to get your Ph.D., you know, and you’ve maybe written a textbook and a paper or two, having a revelation that that stuff has no utility at all, and really has counter-utility, I’m not sure, you know, too many people can handle it well. And I think they just generally keep on teaching.
20. Quantitative approach to intrinsic value and investments
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 2.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. Burkhardt Whittick (PH) from Munich in Germany.
I would like to get some more transparency on how you make investment decisions, particularly how you determine intrinsic value.
You mentioned that the theoretically correct method is discounted cash flow, but at the same time you point out the inherent difficulties of the methodology.
From other books, I see that you use multiples on operating earnings, or (inaudible) multiples. Your [former] daughter [in law] Mary, in one of her books, describes another methodology where you apply compounding economics to the value of the equity.
Could you give us a bit more transparency which quantitative approach you use and how many years out you try to quantify the results of the investments you’re interested in?
WARREN BUFFETT: I understand the question, but I’m going to pretend I don’t and let Charlie answer first. (Laughs)
I really do.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. When you’re trying to determine something like intrinsic value and margin of safety and so on, there’s no one easy method that could be simply mechanically applied by, say, a computer and make anybody who could punch the buttons rich.
By definition, this is going to be a game which you play with multiple techniques and multiple models, and a lot of experience is very helpful.
I don’t think you can become a great investor very rapidly any more than you could become a great bone tumor pathologist very rapidly. It takes some experience and that’s why it’s helpful to get a very early start.
WARREN BUFFETT: But if you’re — let’s just say that we all decided we’re going to buy a — or think about — buying a farm.
And we go up 30-miles north of here and we find out that a farm up there can produce 120 bushels of corn, and it can produce 45 bushels of soybean per acre, and we know what fertilizer costs, and we know what the property taxes cost, and we know what we’ll have to pay the farmer to actually do the work involved, and we’ll get some number that we can make per acre, using fairly conservative assumptions.
And let’s just assume that when you get through making those calculations that it turns out to be that you can make $70 an acre to the owner without working at it.
Then the question is how much do you pay for the $70? Do you assume that agriculture will get a little bit better over the years so that your yields will be a little higher?
Do you assume that prices will work a little higher over time? They haven’t done much of that, although recently, it’s been good with corn and soybeans. But over the years agriculture prices have not done too much. So you would be conservative in your assumptions, then.
And you might decide that for $70 an acre, you know, you would want a — if you decided you wanted a 7 percent return, you’d pay a thousand dollars an acre.
You know, if farmland is selling for 900, you know you’re going to have a buy signal. And if it’s selling for 1200, you’re going to look at something else. That’s what we do in businesses.
We are trying to figure out what those corporate farms that we’re looking at are going to produce. And to do that we have to understand their competitive position. We have to understand the dynamics of the business.
We have to be able to look out in the future. And like I’ve said earlier, some businesses you can’t look out very far at.
But the mathematics of investment were set out by Aesop in 600BC. And he said, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Now our question is, when do we get the two? How long do we wait? How sure are we that there are two in the bush? Could there be more, you know? What’s the right discount rate?
And we measure one against the other that way. I mean, we are looking at a whole bunch of businesses, how many birds are they going to give us, when are they going to give them to us, and we try to decide which ones — basically, which bushes — we want to buy out in the future.
It’s all about evaluating future — the future ability — to distribute cash, or to reinvest cash at high rates if it isn’t distributed.
Berkshire has never distributed any cash, but it’s grown in its cash producing abilities, and we retain it because we think we can create more than a dollar present value by retaining it. But it’s the ability to distribute cash that gives Berkshire its value.
And we try to increase that ability to distribute cash year by year by year and then we try to keep it and invest it in a way so that a dollar bill is worth more than a dollar.
You may have an insight into very few businesses. I mean, if we left here and walked by a McDonald’s stand, you know, and you decided, would you pay a million dollars for that McDonald’s stand, or a million-three, or 900,000, you’d think about how likely it was there would be more competition, whether McDonald’s could change the franchise arrangement on you, whether people are going to keep eating hamburgers, you know, all kinds of things.
And you actually would say to yourself this McDonald’s stand will make X — X plus 5 percent — maybe in a couple years because over time prices will increase a little.
And that’s all investing is. But you have to know when you know what you’re doing, and you have to know when you’re getting outside of what I call your circle of competency, you don’t have the faintest idea.
Charlie.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. The other thing, you’ve got to recognize that we’ve never had any system for being able to make correct judgments on the values of all businesses.
We throw almost all decisions into the too hard pile, and we just sift for a few decisions that we can make that are easy. And that’s a comparative process.
And if you’re looking for an ability to correctly value all investments at all times, we can’t help you.
WARREN BUFFETT: No. We know how to step over one-foot bars. We don’t know how to jump over seven-foot bars.
But we do know how to recognize, occasionally, what is a one-foot bar. And we know enough to stay away from the seven-foot bars, too.
21. What Buffett wants as he hires portfolio managers
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 3.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: John Stevo (PH), shareholder from Chicago. Mr. Buffett — Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger, thank you for the great weekend.
In your annual shareholders letter, you stated that you’re looking for someone younger to possibly work at Berkshire, and I was wondering if you could expand on that, and how would I apply for that job? (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: I think you just did. (Laughter)
The — we’re looking for one or more. I mean, I would — I don’t think it’s at all impossible we might even find three or four that we would decide to have run some money and to take a closer look.
We’re not looking for someone to teach. I probably didn’t make that clear enough in the annual report. We’re not — we’re not going to be mentors or teachers or anything of the sort.
We’re looking for somebody that we think knows how to do it. And there are people like that out there. We’ve heard from 6- or 700.
I did hear — I heard from one that had a four-year-old son. I thought that was quite a compliment that — I mean, I knew a caveman could do my job, but a four-year-old? (Laughter)
The — but we’re looking — and we’ve heard from a number of very intelligent people. We have heard from a number of people that have had good investment records for — in recent years, and in some cases some time.
The biggest problem we have is whether they would scale up, because it’s a different job to run a hundred billion than it is to run a hundred million.
And incidentally — and you can’t do as well running a hundred billion as a hundred million, in terms of returns. You can’t come close to doing it. That doesn’t bother us.
But we do want to find somebody that we think can run large sums of money mildly better than the general performance in securities. And I emphasize mildly.
There’s no way in the world somebody’s going to beat the S&P by 10 percentage points a year with a hundred billion dollars. It isn’t going to happen.
But we think maybe we can find somebody or some group, several of them, that can maybe be a couple percentage points better, but we really are interested in being sure that we have somebody that, under conditions that people haven’t even seen yet, will not blow it.
You know, anything times zero is zero. And I don’t care how many wonderful figures are in between.
So we are looking for somebody that’s wired in a way that they see risks that other people don’t see that haven’t occurred, and they’re plenty cognizant of the risks that have occurred.
And those people are fairly rare. Charlie and I have seen a lot of very smart people go broke, or end up with very mediocre records where, you know, 99 out of the 100 things they did were intelligent but the hundredth did them in.
So our job is to filter through these hundreds and hundreds of applications, find a couple of them that we think can do the job who are much younger, perhaps give them a chunk — two, three, five billion — have them manage it for some time, have them manage it in the kind of securities that they would scale up to a larger portfolio because — and then either one or more of them will get the job turned over to them at some point.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Our situation in looking for this help reminds me of an apocryphal tail about Mozart. And a young man of 25 or so once asked to see Mozart and he said, “I’m thinking of starting to write symphonies, and I’d like to get your advice.”
And Mozart said, “Well, you’re too young to write symphonies.” And the guy says, “But you were writing them when you were ten-years-old.” And Mozart says, “Yes, but I wasn’t asking anybody else for advice how to do it.” (Laughter.)
CHARLIE MUNGER: And so if you remind yourself of young Mozart, why, you’re the man for us.
WARREN BUFFETT: We will come up with, probably, a couple of people. And, you know, it’s — I’ve known people over the years.
I’ve been in the job before. I mean, in 1969 I wound up my partnership, and I had a lot of people that trusted me, and I wasn’t going to just mail the money back to them and, you know, say good-bye, because they would have been sort of adrift, most of them.
And so I had the job of finding somebody to replace me. And there were three absolutely stand-out candidates. Any one of the three would have been a great choice.
Charlie was one of them. Sandy Gottesman was one of them. And Bill Ruane was one of them.
Charlie wasn’t interested in having more partners.
Sandy was interested in individual accounts and took on the accounts of some of my partners and they were very, very happy and they’re still happy that he did it.
And Bill Ruane set up a separate mutual fund called Sequoia Fund to take care of all of the partners, whether they had small amounts or not. And he did a sensational job.
So I really identified three people in 1969 that were not only superior money managers, but that were also the kind that could never get you a terrible result and that were terrific stewards of capital.
Now, they were about my age at the time so it was a universe that I was familiar with, and now I have the problem that at — the people I know that are even close to my age, we don’t want anyway, and besides, most of them are already rich. They don’t care about having a job.
So I have to look into an age cohort where I don’t really know lots of people, but it can be done.
And like I say, we did it successfully with three people in 1969. And it was done successfully in 1979 with Lou Simpson for GEICO.
And I never knew Lou Simpson before I met him down at the airport here, and I spent a few hours with him, and it was clear that he was a steward of capital. He was going to get an above-average result, and there was no chance he was going to get a bad result.
And he’s been managing money for GEICO now for 28 years, roughly.
So it’s doable. It’s a little more work than I like to do. I’ve been kind of spoiled. But I’ll — I’ve got a job to do on it, and I’ll do it.
22. Buffett and Munger differ on climate change
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 4?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Glen Strong (PH) from Canton, Ohio.
Please tell us where you stand on the global warming debate or where your managers at General Re stand.
In particular, perhaps you can give us your thoughts on the science of global warming and how serious you believe it is, and whether warming is actually more harmful than helpful. Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yep. Well, I believe the odds are good that it is serious. I’m not enough of a — I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty or 90 percent certainty, but I think that there’s enough evidence that it would be very foolish to say that it’s 100 percent certain or 90 percent certain that it isn’t a problem.
And since it’s — if it is a problem, it’s a problem that once it manifests itself to a very significant degree, it’s a little too late to do something about it.
In other words, you really have to build the ark before the rains come, in this case. I think if you make a mistake, in terms of a social decision, you should, what I call err, on the side of the planet.
In other words, you should build a margin of safety into your thinking about the future of the only planet we’ve got a hundred years from now.
So I think — I take it seriously. In terms of our own businesses, you mentioned General Re. Gen Re writes less — way less business — that would be subject to the annual increments in global warming that would have an effect on their results than the reinsurance division of National Indemnity, where we write far more of the catastrophe business.
It’s not going to affect, you know, in any measurable degree at all, you know, excess casualty insurance, property insurance. You’re thinking much more of whether it’s going to produce atmospheric changes that change materially the probabilities of really — of catastrophes, both their frequency and their intensity.
In my own mind, and in the minds of the people that run National Indemnity’s reinsurance division, we crank — we think the exposure goes up every year because of what’s going on in the atmosphere, even though we don’t understand very well what goes on in the atmosphere.
And the relationship between damage caused and the causal factors is not linear at all. I mean, it can be explosive.
So if temperatures in the waters of the Atlantic or something change by relatively small amounts, or what seem like small amounts, it could increase the expectable losses from a given hurricane season by a factor of two, three, four or five.
So we’re plenty cautious about it. It’s not something that keeps me up, in terms of our financial prospects, at all at Berkshire. But it’s something that I think every citizen ought to be very cognizant of and make a decision on.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, of course carbon dioxide is what plants eat. And so — and generally speaking, I think it’s a little more comfortable to have it a little warmer instead of a little colder. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: I hope you don’t get a chance to test that after death, Charlie. (Laughs)
CHARLIE MUNGER: It isn’t as though there’s a vast flood of people trying to move to North Dakota from southern California.
And so you’re talking about dislocation. It’s not at all clear to me that, net, it would be worse for mankind in general to have the planet a little hotter.
But the dislocations would cause agonies for a great many places, particularly those that would soon find themselves underwater.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. I was going to ask you. How do you feel about the sea level being 15 or 20 feet higher? (Laughs)
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that’s very unfortunate, but — (Laughter)
Holland lives with what, 25 percent of the nation below sea level? With enough time and enough capital, why, these things can be adjusted, too.
I don’t think it’s an utter calamity for man that threatens the whole human race or anything like that. You know, you’d have to be a pot-smoking journalism student or something to — (Applause)
CHARLIE MUNGER: — believe that.
WARREN BUFFETT: We’re finally unleashing him, folks. (Laughter)
Well, we’ll continue to have people in charge of insurance who are plenty worried about global warming, I promise you.
But it — we don’t know — we do know that 2004 and 2005, there was a frequency, and more particularly, there was an intensity of hurricanes that would not be expected at all by looking at the previous century.
And we were spared — even though we had Katrina — we were spared what could have been a far worse case by a couple of Category Fives that didn’t hit the mainland.
So I do not regard Katrina as being anywhere near a worst-case scenario.
And, like I say, I don’t know whether — how much of — I don’t know whether the water is a half a degree or 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than 30 years ago, but I don’t know — and I don’t know all the factors that go into hurricanes.
I mean, I know that, obviously, the water temperature, you know, contributes to energy and all that sort. But there could be 50 variables.
All I know is, on balance, I think they’re probably getting more negative for us and I know we ought to be very careful about it. And I know that it would be crazy to write insurance in 2007 at the same rates that it was being written a few years ago, in relation to catastrophes.
And since we’re in the catastrophe business, that is something I think about, and the people that actually write the policies think about it as well. So it’s a factor with us.
23. Bank problems don’t mean China will collapse
WARREN BUFFETT: Five.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I’m John Golob from Kansas City.
I have a question about the Chinese economy. Some observers have suggested that the Chinese banking system looks a little like Japan back in the 1990s.
Are you concerned that China could experience similar disruptions as Japan in ’90 or is China possibly — with different institutions — possibly more resistant to economic disruptions?
WARREN BUFFETT: I would have to say I don’t know the answer to that. I mean, it’s a very interesting question. It’s a very important question.
But, you know, I didn’t necessarily understand what was going to happen in Japan before it happened, and my insight into Chinese banks is about zero.
We’ve been offered chances to buy into various Chinese banks and, again, because I don’t know anything about them, I pass. It’s no judgment that there’s anything bad.
It just means that sitting in Omaha, Nebraska, not knowing what some item of loans and advances — what composes it or anything about the real operation of the place — that I can make a decision whether it’s worth X, half of X, 2X, a quarter of X, I just don’t know.
And I really don’t know — I just have no notion as to the answer to your question, but maybe Charlie does.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, if you stop to think about it, all of the remarkable economic progress that we’ve seen in China in the last 15 years has been accompanied by practices in their government banks that would make you shutter if you compared them to normal banking standards.
So everything you see in terms of progress has occurred despite — the banks were almost doling out money for aid as distinguished from doing normal banking.
So I’d be very leery of predicting that that’s sure to cause a huge economic collapse in Japan — in China.
They’ve been doing it for a long time, and they may actually be getting better now.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We’ve had our share of banking troubles in this country. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago in terms of the savings and loan crisis and all kinds of things.
And strong economies come through those things. So, you know, if ahead of time you’d seen all the problems with foreign loans that the commercial banks got into and all the problems with real estate loans that the savings and loans got into, you could have said, you know, it’s going to be terrible for the American economy, and it did produce a lot of dislocations and all of that.
But if you look at the regular American economy, it’s come through all kinds of financial crises with the real output per capita rising at a very substantial rate just decade after decade.
I don’t know what will happen in China, but I think it’s pretty amazing in terms of the gains that have been made.
And I think they’ll be — I think they’ll continue to be made, and I don’t know what will happen with the banking system, though.
24. Easy decision: stocks over bonds
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 6.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, Warren and Charlie. My name is Frank Martin from Elkhart, Indiana. I’m a shareholder.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. You’ve written a good book too, Frank. (Laughs)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks, Warren. I’ll do my best to be succinct with this question. As you know, my long suit is not brevity in the written word.
Recently, I sequentially read everything that you and Charlie have written, or that has been written about you, since 1999, including your help wanted ad in the annual report, which sought not a Ted Williams, but the consummate defensive player in your forcefully worded quotations in last Monday’s Wall Street journal.
When contemplating the chronology, I sensed a gradual but unmistakable sea change in your perspective on the investment environment for marketable securities.
The intensification of your preoccupation with managing risk is conspicuous by its absence among the other biggest players at the margin — hedge funds, private equity, mutual funds — who are shamefully mute both about what are likely to be anemic prospective returns and the unconscionable risks assumed to achieve them, all the while charging a king’s ransom for such low value-added services.
When I give free rein to my intuition, the post-1999 Warren Buffett reminds me of the Warren Buffett of post-1969.
Back then, when Berkshire was a small fraction of its current size, you spoke of the difficulty in playing a game you did not understand, that there was little margin of safety in the equity markets in general.
You weren’t forecasting what in its own time became the bear market of ’73-’74, but you were surely intuitively aware of what [former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan] Greenspan years later has repeatedly warned: the inevitable day of reckoning that follows long periods of low equity risk premium.
Imagine yourself, if you are willing, cast overnight into a new role with a clean slate as head of the investment committee of a $10 billion pension fund.
Today, would your decisions reflect the same risk-averse mindset that dominated your behavior in the post-1969 period? And might you anticipate that following all of this might appear opportunities that were as mouthwatering as appeared in ’73-’74?
Please explain, and I hope Charlie will weigh in on the subject as well. Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah Frank, when I closed up to the partnership, if I’d had an endowment fund to run then, the prospective return — and actually, I wrote this in a letter to my partners that I’d be glad to send you a copy of — the prospective return — and I was looking at them as individuals on an after-tax basis — was about the same, I felt, from equities and from municipal bonds over the next decade, and it turned out to be more or less the case.
I would say that I do not regard that as being the same situation now. If I were managing a very large endowment fund, for one thing it would either be a hundred percent in stocks or a hundred percent in long bonds or a hundred percent in short-term bonds.
I mean, I don’t believe in layering things and saying I’m going to have 60 percent of this and 30 percent of that. Why do I have the 30 percent if I think the 60 percent makes more sense?
So — and if you told me I had to invest a fund for 20 years and I had a choice between buying the index, the 500, or a 20-year bond, you know, I would buy stocks.
You know, that doesn’t mean they won’t go down a lot. But if you — I would rather a have an equity investment — I wouldn’t rather have an equity investment where I paid a ton of money to somebody else that took my stock return down dramatically.
But simply buying an index fund for 20 years of equities or buying a 20-year bond, I would — it would not be a close decision with me.
I would buy the equities. I’d rather buy them cheaper, you know, but I’d rather buy the bond with a bigger yield, too. But in terms of what’s offered to me today, that’s the way I would come down.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. I don’t think that was the answer that was expected, but that’s the answer. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: It doesn’t have a thing to do with what we think stocks — we don’t think at all — but where stocks could be or bonds could be.
We don’t have the faintest idea where the S&P will be in three years, or where the long-term bond will be in three years, but we do know which we would rather own on a 20-year basis.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Warren, we’d also expect that the current scene will cause some real disruption, not too many years ahead.
WARREN BUFFETT: That’s true, but if you go back a hundred years, you could almost say that, you know, in almost any period, you will get disruptions from time to time, and it’s very nice if you have a lot of cash then and you have the guts to do something with it.
But predicting them or waiting around for them, that sort of thing, is not our game. And I mean, we bought $5 billion worth of equities in the first quarter, something like that.
And, you know, we don’t think they’re anything like — well, they aren’t — they’re not — it would be a joke to even compare them to 1974 or a whole bunch of other periods. But we decided we would rather have them than cash, or we would rather have them than sit around and hope that things get a lot cheaper.
We don’t spend a lot of time doing that. It — you can freeze yourself out indefinitely.
So any time we find something — what we think is intelligent to do, we just do it, and we hope we can do it big.
25. Buffett bought and sold silver early: “Other than that, a perfect trade”
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 7.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Nathan Narusis from Vancouver, Canada.
Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger, my question concerns your previous silver bullion investment. I’m curious to hear more about why you sold when you did.
More specifically, whether you sold your bullion to the organizers of the silver exchange-traded fund in return for cash plus, perhaps, important noncash consideration in order to keep silver markets from either rising or falling sharply.
Thank you very much for anything you would care to share with us.
WARREN BUFFETT: I’m not sure who we sold it to, but whoever we sold it to was a lot smarter than I was. (Laughs)
I bought it too early. I sold it too early. Other than that, it was a perfect trade. (Laughter)
Charlie, do you have anything to add? Charlie had nothing to do with the silver decision, so that one falls entirely on me.
CHARLIE MUNGER: I think we demonstrated how much we know about silver.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. (Laughter)
The very fact you asked us a question on silver flatters us because nobody asks us about silver anymore. (Laughs)
But we’ll come up with something else at some point.
You know, the last part of your question, there was a small implication, I think, of perhaps a silver conspiracy.
We — as soon as we started — it got known that we bought silver, we started getting all these letters in the mail from people who had all these different theories about the fact that hedging was killing things or these kind of traders were doing something.
In the end, silver responds as supply and demand just like oil responds to supply and demand. Oil is — the price of oil at 60 or $65 is not a product of a bunch of oil executives conspiring or anything of the sort. It’s supply and demand on a huge commodity.
Silver is a small commodity, but on any kind of commodity like that, supply and demand is what determines prices over time. Although the Hunt brothers, I must admit, for a short period there, in a few years, managed to change the equation and they forever wished they hadn’t.
26. Why Buffett “outsourced” his philanthropy
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 8.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, Mr. Buffett. Eben Pagan, Santa Monica, California.
You seem amazing at keeping your composure in tough situations. I would be very interested to know what your thought process was when you were in that incredibly stressful situation, you knew the world was watching, and you went head-to-head with LeBron James. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: The game was rigged. (Laughter)
He was the one that had a problem. (Laughs)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: What I’d really like to know is, I’m a real big fan of you and Mr. Gates and your philosophy of channeling all the value you’ve created back into the world.
And I have a successful business, and I’d like to do the same, but maybe in 20 or 30 or 40 years, and with a time horizon like that, I’d love to know what advice you’d give someone like me.
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, there’s nothing wrong with your time horizon, in my view, as long as you’re going — as long as you plan to give it back, I mean, A) the decision is yours entirely, anyway, whether you want to do it.
But assuming you want to give it back, or give it to society in some way, if you’re compounding your money at a rate greater than people generally do, you are, in effect, an endowment fund for society.
And, you know, all kinds of organizations in the nonprofit area have endowment funds, and they think it’s wise to have it, and they do that in order to get standard returns, usually.
And if you can compound it more and you’re going to give it back later on, let someone else take care of current giving, and you can take care of giving in 20 or 30 years. But, you know, I regard that as a personal decision.
I always felt that I would compound money at a rate higher than average, and it would have been foolish to give away a significant portion of my capital to somebody who would spend it within, you know, months, when there could be a really much larger amount later on.
And, on the other hand, the time had come, I’d really thought my wife would be doing that, and when that didn’t work out, the time had come to do something with it.
And, fortunately, I had some great options available, and I get to keep on doing what I love doing and I let some — I farm out all the work.
But, you know, when my wife had a baby, we hired an obstetrician. I didn’t try and do it myself. I mean, when a tooth hurts, you know, I don’t have Charlie fix it. I go to a dentist.
So when I have money to give away, I believe in turning it over to people who are — and I’ve got five different organizations, including my three kids — and I believe in turning it over to people who are energized, working hard at it, smart, you know, doing it with their own money, the whole thing.
And I get to keep doing what I like doing. So as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t given away a penny.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I think it’s wonderful for the shareholders that somebody else is giving away the money. (Laughter)
I tell you, if all Warren wanted to talk about was interfacing with applicants for donations, we would have a different life. And we wouldn’t be very well adapted to it, either.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. You know, actually on the smaller ones I send them all to my sister Doris, and she does a great job with it, and enjoys it, spends lots of time on it, good at it, and I’m glad she does it and I don’t.
You know, the truth is, I haven’t given away anything in a practical matter. I have everything in life I want. You know, there’s no way I can sleep better, I can eat better. Other people might think I could eat better. (Laughter)
I haven’t given up anything.
Now, if you think about it, you know, somebody that gives up having an evening out, somebody that, you know, gives up their time working on something, somebody that doesn’t take their kids to Disneyland this year because they’ve, you know, they’ve given the money instead to their church, I mean, those people are changing their lives in some way with what they give.
I haven’t changed my life at all. I don’t want to change my life. I’m having a lot of fun doing what I do. And, you know, it’s just a bunch of stock certificates that one way or another they’re going to go someplace.
And what I really want to do is keep doing what I enjoy doing, and feel that the claim checks that I accumulate that comes about for this, are going to get used effectively for the same general purposes that I would want to use them for if I really had the energy and the interest in doing the job myself.
But somebody else can keep doing the work.
27. You can always earn big returns with small amounts of money
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 9.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I’m Eric Schline (PH) from Larchmont, New York.
My question is directed at Mr. Buffett. Mr. Buffett, you claim you can do 50 percent a year.
If you had to start over with a small portfolio, would you still be doing buy and hold, buying quality companies at a good price, or would you be doing arbitrage and really getting down to the nitty-gritty Benjamin Graham cigar butts that you did in the Buffett Partnership?
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. If I were working with a very small sum — and you should all hope I’m not — (laughs) — if I were working with a very small sum, I would be doing entirely — almost entirely — different things than I do.
I mean, there’s — your universe expands. I mean, if you’re looking, there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of times as many options to think about if you’re investing $10,000 than if you’re investing a hundred billion.
And, obviously, if you have that many — you’ve got all the options you got with a hundred billion, except buying entire businesses, and you’ve got all of these other options.
So you can earn very high returns with very small amounts of money, and it will always be such.
I don’t mean that everybody can do it, but if you know something about values and investments, you will find opportunities with small sums, and it will not be with a portfolio that Berkshire itself owns.
We can’t earn phenomenal returns putting 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion in a stock. It won’t work that way. It won’t even come close to working that way.
But if Charlie or I were in a position of working with a million dollars or $500,000 or 2 million, we would find little things here and there — and it wouldn’t always be stocks — where we would earn very high returns on capital.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. But it’s — there’s no point our thinking about that now. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT: But he’s thinking about it, Charlie. (Laughter)
28. Subprime mortgage defaults won’t be “huge anchor”
WARREN BUFFETT: OK. We’ll take one more, and then we will go to lunch and then we’ll — after that we’ll come back. So we’ll go to number 10 now.
Is the microphone open on 10?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello? Hello?
WARREN BUFFETT: Do we have a problem here?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Warren and Charlie, my question is, what’s your opinion regarding the subprime market relative to the foreign national market?
CHARLIE MUNGER: We can’t hear that.
WARREN BUFFETT: We can’t hear that.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: What’s your opinion regarding the subprime market relative to the foreign national market? Sorry. My name is Calvin Chong (PH). I’m from New York.
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the subprime market, encouraged by both lenders, intermediaries, and borrowers themselves, resulted in a lot of people buying a lot of houses that they really didn’t want to own or that they can’t make payments on for once the normal payments were required.
And the people, the institutions, in some cases the intermediaries, are going to suffer in various degrees.
Now, the question is whether it spills over and starts affecting the general economy to a big degree, and I would — my guess would be — it’s quite severe some places.
But my guess would be that if unemployment doesn’t rise significantly, and interest rates don’t move up dramatically, that it will be a — it will be a very big problem for those involved, and some people are very involved. Some institutions are very involved.
But I don’t see it — I think it’s unlikely that that factor alone triggers anything of a massive nature in the general economy.
I think it — you know, I’ve looked at several financial institutions. I’ve looked at their 10-Qs and 10-Ks, and I’ve seen that a very high percentage of the loans they made in the last few years allowed people to make very tiny payments on the mortgages, but, of course, those subnormal payments increased principal so that they had to make above average payments later on at some point.
And I think that’s dumb lending, and I think it’s dumb borrowing, because somebody that can only make 20 or 30 percent of their normal mortgage payments the first year is very unlikely to be able to make 110 percent of their normal mortgage payments a few years later.
Those people and those institutions were largely betting on the fact that house prices would just keep going up, and it really didn’t make any difference whether they could make the payments.
And that worked for a while until it didn’t work. And when it doesn’t work, you have an abnormal supply of housing coming on the market, similar to what happened in manufactured housing, the business we’re in, six or seven years ago, and that changes the whole equation.
From people on the demand side, you no longer have people thinking they’re buying something that’s bound to go up, and then you have the supply coming on from the people who were anticipating that before and really don’t want to hold the asset unless it’s going to go up.
So you’ll see plenty of misery in that field. You’ve already seen some. And I don’t think — I don’t think it’s going to be any huge anchor to the economy.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. A lot of what went on was a combination of sin and folly, and a lot of it happened because the accountants allowed the lending institutions to show profits on loans where nobody in his right mind would have showed any profit until the loan had matured into a better condition.
And, once again, if the accountants lay down on their basic job, why, huge excess and folly is going to come inevitably, and that happened here.
The national experience with low-interest starter home loans to what I would call the deserving poor, has been very good. But the minute you pay a bunch of people high commissions to make loans to the undeserving poor, or the overstretched rich, you can get loan losses that are staggering.
And I don’t see how the people did it and still shaved in the morning, because looking back at them was a face that was evil and stupid.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: You’ve seen some very interesting figures in the last few months on the number — on the percentage — of loans where people didn’t even make the first or second payment. And there’s really — that shouldn’t happen.
That happened, incidentally — you had a prelude to this in the manufactured housing industry.
I mean, in the late 1990s — and securitization accentuated the problem, because once you had somebody in Grand Island, Nebraska, selling a mobile home — or a manufactured home — to someone and they needed a $3,000 down payment and the salesman was going to get a $6,000 commission, believe me, you start getting some very strange things going on.
Now, if the person doing that had to borrow the money in Grand Island, the chances are the local banker would have seen what was happening and said, you know, we don’t want any of this where the salesman fakes the down payment and all that.
But once you just package those things and securitize them so they get sold through major investment banking houses and sliced up in various tranches and so on, you know, the old — the discipline leaves the system.
And securitization really accentuates that, and we have had that in subprime loans, just as we had it in manufactured housing six or seven years ago.
And, like I say, that has not all worked its way through the system, but I don’t think it’s going to cause huge troubles.
Now, we do see certain areas of the country where it will be at least a couple of years before real estate recovers.
I mean, the overhang is huge compared to normal monthly volume in certain sections. And the people that were counting on flipping things there are going to get flipped, but in a different way.
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The Undersea Vegetarians of Wakatobi
It’s fish-eat-fish on the reef, where almost everything that swims is both a hunter and hunted. But mixed in with all these ruthless carnivores and omnivores are some marine vegetarians. They play a small but vitally-important role in the marine environment. Their grazing keeps algae from overgrowing reefs and helps keep seagrass beds tidy and vibrant. These plant-eaters are present on every dive site surrounding Wakatobi Dive Resort, so let’s meet some of the region’s most interesting undersea vegetarians.
Get off my lawn
Some damselfish don’t just graze the reefs of Wakatobi, they farm them. These aquatic agrarians cultivate a personal algae patch by repeatedly biting live coral tissue. This creates skeletal lesions that filamentous algae then colonize. The damselfish’s polyp-nipping habits do actually cause some harm to the corals. But when the ecosystem is in balance, plenty of predators such as lizardfish, small jacks, sweetlips and frogfish prey on damselfish and keep populations in check. This is just one more reason it’s important to protect the reefs and maintain the marine no-take zones that ensure natural order.
Beware this hare
It’s easy to see how rabbitfish got their name. The combination of an elongated snout, large eyes and small mouths filled with dainty teeth evokes a certain resemblance to the long-eared mammal. Like their terrestrial namesake, rabbitfish emerge from sheltering nooks when the sun rises and spend their days placidly grazing on algae. There are 29 known species of rabbitfish in the waters around Wakatobi, and some can grow up to 1.6 feet long (.5 m). Youngsters often hang out in schools but rabbitfish pair up as they mature. Scientists think they mate for life. Though seemingly vulnerable, rabbitfish do have some survival tricks. The first is an ability to rapidly change color, transforming their bright markings and stripes into a dull, splotch pattern that resembles military camouflage. If concealment doesn’t work, the real deterrent is a line of venomous, spine-like fins that they can raise to discourage attacks.
A celebrity sighting
Yellow tail and yellow-tipped pectoral fins; a small, pouty mouth; a two-toned blue and indigo body — yep, you’ve found Dory. Paracanthurus hepatus to be more precise, though this member of the surgeonfish family has enough common names to give anyone memory loss. Stick with regal blue tang to avoid any confusion with the all-blue Caribbean cousin. These fish are social, often traveling in pairs or groups. The juveniles are actually bright yellow with blue spots. As they mature and adopt their signature color patterns, regal blue tangs also acquire a taste for algae and become an important member of the reef-cleaning crew. They sport poison-tipped and razor-sharp spines that give would-be predators reason to pause. If that doesn’t work, the regal may play dead by lying on its side and remaining motionless until the threat passes.
Trimming the grass
Green sea turtles are common on Wakatobi reefs, and you’ll often encounter youngsters in the seagrass beds close to the beach. Juveniles spend their early months nibbling on sponges, crabs and worms, but as they grow, they switch to algae and seagrass. And that’s a good thing, because their grazing helps the plants rather than harming them. Turtles don’t just grab a mouthful of grass; they focus on the younger and more nutritious mid-sections of the blades. They bite off older and less nutritious top portions of grass and leave them to float free and drift away. This close cropping encourages new growth. When turtles graze, they actually increase the productivity and nutrient content of the grass bed.
Saving for a sunny day
The name says it all. Sap-sucking sea slugs literally suck the juice out of algae. Most of the time, they simply digest the fodder, but certain shell-less species can transfer the algae’s living chloroplasts to their own bodies, and literally feed themselves off of sunlight. Scientists are uncertain how these simple slugs perform the complex genetic transfer known as kleptoplasty. What is known is that the slugs would rather just suck on the algae, and only revert to photosynthesis when other food sources dry up.
A fishy character
If Dr. Seuss had been a diver, he’d have loved the starry blenny. The spots, the antenna-like stalks that rise above the forehead, and the expressive and protruding eyes are all features a cartoonist would appreciate. Add in the seemingly bemused demeanor when this little fish poses with its wide mouth agape and you have a subject worth watching. And, chances are, the starry blenny will be watching back, with its eyes moving independently as it scans the reef. These fish may remain motionless for long periods then suddenly begin flitting about like a hyper preschooler while conducting a remarkable series of color and pattern changes. The starry blenny uses its comb-shaped teeth to scrape bits of algae from rocks and corals, a habit that has earned it the nickname “starry lawnmower blenny.”
These vegetarians are just some of the unique and intriguing creatures you’ll see on the reefs at Wakatobi. Plenty more fascinating stories await, so perhaps you’ll have a chance to meet some of Wakatobi’s vegetarians for yourself in the near future.
The post The Undersea Vegetarians of Wakatobi appeared first on Scuba Diver Life.
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Six Sentence Sunday
Sharing excerpts from works in progress and completed stories under the cut.
Snow White & Rose Red, Chapter 1:
Once upon a time in a cottage in the woods lived two lovely girls and their mother. The older girl was named Rose Red because when she was born she had the prettiest little red lips and rosy cheeks. Just so people would be sure to remember her name her mother made her a red cloak to wear when she went to town for her. Rose Red grew to be a beautiful young lady with lovely auburn locks and shining sapphire blue eyes.
The younger girl was named Snow White for when she was born both her skin and hair was white as snow. Like her sister, her mother made her a white cloak.
WIP- Reworking this entire series before re-release.
Silver and Gold, Chapter 1:
On the first fine Spring day Bilbo, Balin, and Gandalf left Erebor; Bilbo to return to his home in the Shire, Balin to summon the Durinfolk to their ancient home, and Gandalf to go wherever it is wizards go. Dori was never certain where it was Gandalf got off to and wasn’t sure he cared as it reminded him too much of Nori’s old rambling ways. All he knew was that it seemed rather irresponsible to go off somewhere else when one was expected and/or needed elsewhere.
That was why he had waited so long.
Dori hugged his family and friends and perhaps blubbered a bit about their leaving and his own. He would miss them all.
WIP- I keep going back and re-writing things.
Jackdaw:
In and out. In and out.
Dori would never approve if he knew, but Nori needed this. Mahal, how he needed this! He loved the thrill of it. He was breathless from the anticipation of it and his heart raced in the act of it.
Available for early access for $1 patrons. There is a teaser, a bit longer than this, available on AO3.
A Gypsy’s Dance:
Except for the tinkling of the bells about her ankles, her feet added almost no sound to the percussion of her dance. She didn’t need it what with the clacking of her many bracelets, the soft zyee-zyee of the coined belt and trim of her bodice, and the jingle and tap of the tamborine with its long streamers that she employed during the day. At night she had the little finger cymbals and the clapping along by the men of the village who had only given the gypsies looks of disdain during the day. No, the night was another matter entirely. Something in the gypsy music called the men from their judgment and brought them to the gypsy camp where they would toss coins at the feet of the dancers when the tempo of the music changed to something that aroused an unfamiliar feeling in the dwarf.
It had taken Bofur all of two days or perhaps two nights to get the feel for the exotic rhythms of the gypsies enough for him to join in with his pipe.
Early access phase for $3 patrons.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 1:
Hobbiton was indeed everything Hamfast had described and more now that she was seeing it with her own eyes. Gigi Gamgee had been raised in the seemingly endless fields of crops and sprawling hills of Gamwich which were much farther apart than the Hobbit holes of Hobbiton. In Gamwich, the nearest neighbor was miles away and it might take the better part of the day to get there. There was no marketplace, no township proper. In harvest season families alternated which home would host The Grand Luncheon and they would all take their carts of excess produce to trade. Depending on the ability of the cooks of the family, business would conclude just in time for afternoon tea or could go as late as after supper.
Chapter 1 is available to read on AO3.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 2:
“That’ll put her off, don’t you think?” Gigi asked as they hurried through the marketplace.
“Only a bit.” Hamfast pulled them behind a large cart of hay and watched from behind. “And not for long. She won’t give up.”
“We’re gonna get it when she catches us then. I’ll be out on my ear and you’ll be out of a job.” Gigi sighed. She could not even imagine the trouble they were going to be in when the nearest relative of their Master found out they had lied.
The entirety of chapter 2 is available on Patreon as early access for $1 patrons. There is a longer teaser available on AO3.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 3:
Now Gigi had spent the entirety of her stay wondering about Bilbo Baggins. When she had her hands in the rich, moist dirt of his kitchen garden she couldn’t understand how a Hobbit who had worked the same ground could think of leaving. Of course he left it in the capable hands of her cousin, so it would be well cared for, but who would possibly leave a garden in Spring? Who could? It must have been a terribly important errand or he was a decidedly careless Hobbit. Certainly she heard rumors he was a little odd, but as she felt the warm sun on her back, the cool, pliant earth between her fingers, witnessed the full greening and vibrant colors, and scented the fragrant breezes that whispered of flowers along the lane and pies cooling in windows, no one could be so foolish or odd as to leave a place that told every sense one was home.
Early access of this chapter is available for $3 patrons.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 4:
They’d been afraid of this. Lobelia insisting on a public outing that could only result in a Gamgee ousting. Half of Hobbiton was inside Bag End, with the Gaffer trying to stop the flow and stop the stomping of the flower beds. Bilbo would be angry if he knew how many people and that there was more than one Sackville-Baggins in his house at one time. It worried him, Bilbo’s coming back at that exact moment more than all of Lobelia’s carrying on.
She spied the marriage certificate on his desk and was sputtering mad when she saw Bilbo’s name in his own handwriting.
Early access to this chapter is available for $3 patrons.
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Patronage and engagement (comments, reblogs, bookmarks, etc.) unlock more writing available for all to read for free on AO3 each month. Patrons get early access to complete chapters, one-shots, and sfw art as well as exclusive access to epilogues and nsfw art. <3
Big thank you to @c-s-stars for patronage that unlocked this months writing for everyone to read for free on AO3. <3
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My younger cousin (16!!!!!!! Wtf???) watched season 2 of the legend of Korra, here's her opinion of the characters
Korra: "i have a love hate relationship with her bc what do you mean you couldn't tell your uncle was evil???"
Mako: "i don't like him."
Bolin: "so is he gonna do anything of actual importance ever or?" Me: "he stopped an assassination attempt on the president." Her: "ok sure but like did we really want the president alive?"
Asami: "she's a fucking badass where's HER happy end??"
Tenzin: "his siblings make him look more fun like i don't like him on his own"
Jinora: "literally the best fucking character here Aang would be so proud that's his granddaughter"
Ikki: "i just think she's a bit annoying"
Meelo: "a misogynist in the making jesus christ" Me: "yeah it doesn't really get better." Her: "his own grandmother would smack the shit out of him."
Lin Beifong: "gun to my head i don't remember what she did this season" Me: "she helped bolin stop the assassination attempt" Her: "hm."
Kya: "she's cool"
Bumi: "he's katara and aang's son? Not sokka's son? But then why is he like a new sokka?" Me: "beats me"
Varrick: "he reminds me of kuzco from emperor's new groove"
Zhu Li: "i hope she gets a bigger role than just being the assistant to avatar universe's elon musk"
Tonraq: "i can tell why Korra is the way she is"
Unalaq: "he's so obviously evil i don't understand why no one in the show realized until it was too late"
Eska and Desna: "the twins from the shining but creepier"
Avatar Wan: "why is he the hottest character and why was he in only two episodes"
#dori's younger cousin series#the legend of korra#tlok#atla#avatar#avatar the last airbender#korra#avatar korra#asami#jinora#tenzin#mako#bolin#varrick#kya#bumi#zhu li moon#tonraq#unalaq#eska and desna#avatar wan#wan#ikki#meelo
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Six Sentence Sunday
Sharing excerpts from works in progress and completed stories under the cut.
Snow White & Rose Red, Chapter 1:
Once upon a time in a cottage in the woods lived two lovely girls and their mother. The older girl was named Rose Red because when she was born she had the prettiest little red lips and rosy cheeks. Just so people would be sure to remember her name her mother made her a red cloak to wear when she went to town for her. Rose Red grew to be a beautiful young lady with lovely auburn locks and shining sapphire blue eyes.
The younger girl was named Snow White for when she was born both her skin and hair was white as snow. Like her sister, her mother made her a white cloak.
WIP- Reworking this entire series before re-release.
Silver and Gold, Chapter 1:
On the first fine Spring day Bilbo, Balin, and Gandalf left Erebor; Bilbo to return to his home in the Shire, Balin to summon the Durinfolk to their ancient home, and Gandalf to go wherever it is wizards go. Dori was never certain where it was Gandalf got off to and wasn’t sure he cared as it reminded him too much of Nori’s old rambling ways. All he knew was that it seemed rather irresponsible to go off somewhere else when one was expected and/or needed elsewhere.
That was why he had waited so long.
Dori hugged his family and friends and perhaps blubbered a bit about their leaving and his own. He would miss them all.
WIP- I keep going back and re-writing things.
Jackdaw:
In and out. In and out.
Dori would never approve if he knew, but Nori needed this. Mahal, how he needed this! He loved the thrill of it. He was breathless from the anticipation of it and his heart raced in the act of it.
Available for early access for $1 patrons. There is a teaser, a bit longer than this, available on AO3.
A Gypsy’s Dance:
Except for the tinkling of the bells about her ankles, her feet added almost no sound to the percussion of her dance. She didn’t need it what with the clacking of her many bracelets, the soft zyee-zyee of the coined belt and trim of her bodice, and the jingle and tap of the tamborine with its long streamers that she employed during the day. At night she had the little finger cymbals and the clapping along by the men of the village who had only given the gypsies looks of disdain during the day. No, the night was another matter entirely. Something in the gypsy music called the men from their judgment and brought them to the gypsy camp where they would toss coins at the feet of the dancers when the tempo of the music changed to something that aroused an unfamiliar feeling in the dwarf.
It had taken Bofur all of two days or perhaps two nights to get the feel for the exotic rhythms of the gypsies enough for him to join in with his pipe.
Early access phase for $3 patrons.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 1:
Hobbiton was indeed everything Hamfast had described and more now that she was seeing it with her own eyes. Gigi Gamgee had been raised in the seemingly endless fields of crops and sprawling hills of Gamwich which were much farther apart than the Hobbit holes of Hobbiton. In Gamwich, the nearest neighbor was miles away and it might take the better part of the day to get there. There was no marketplace, no township proper. In harvest season families alternated which home would host The Grand Luncheon and they would all take their carts of excess produce to trade. Depending on the ability of the cooks of the family, business would conclude just in time for afternoon tea or could go as late as after supper.
Chapter 1 is available to read on AO3.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 2:
“That’ll put her off, don’t you think?” Gigi asked as they hurried through the marketplace.
“Only a bit.” Hamfast pulled them behind a large cart of hay and watched from behind. “And not for long. She won’t give up.”
“We’re gonna get it when she catches us then. I’ll be out on my ear and you’ll be out of a job.” Gigi sighed. She could not even imagine the trouble they were going to be in when the nearest relative of their Master found out they had lied.
The entirety of chapter 2 is available on Patreon as early access for $1 patrons. There is a longer teaser available on AO3.
An Unexpected Return, Chapter 3:
Now Gigi had spent the entirety of her stay wondering about Bilbo Baggins. When she had her hands in the rich, moist dirt of his kitchen garden she couldn’t understand how a Hobbit who had worked the same ground could think of leaving. Of course he left it in the capable hands of her cousin, so it would be well cared for, but who would possibly leave a garden in Spring? Who could? It must have been a terribly important errand or he was a decidedly careless Hobbit. Certainly she heard rumors he was a little odd, but as she felt the warm sun on her back, the cool, pliant earth between her fingers, witnessed the full greening and vibrant colors, and scented the fragrant breezes that whispered of flowers along the lane and pies cooling in windows, no one could be so foolish or odd as to leave a place that told every sense one was home.
Early access of this chapter is available for $3 patrons.
AO3 - https://archiveofourown.org/users/FountainsOfSilver
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/FountainsOfSilver
Patronage and engagement (comments, reblogs, bookmarks, etc.) unlocks more writing available for all to read for free on AO3 each month. Patrons get early access to complete chapters, one-shots, and sfw art as well as exclusive access to epilogues and nsfw art. <3
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