Sainthood: Mason Ho performs a miracle!

By Chas Smith

8 years ago

Our favorite surfer saves The Inertia! And they said it couldn't be done!

You and I both know that The Inertia is like acid to the eyes. It is the worst thing to ever happen to the earth. Worse than anything. It is worse than if…

You are diagnosed with a chronic, painful illness.
Your business fails and you lose everything.
Your home is destroyed by fire.
Your mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Your best friend gets divorced and has to move in with you.
Your infant is diagnosed with an incurable disease and will need a transplant or he will die.
Your wife leaves you for another man.
Your husband loses his job and stays home every day drinking.
Your spouse leaves and takes everything and you are forced to file bankruptcy.
You get into a car accident and kill someone.
You are sent to prison for a crime you did not commit.
Your car is stolen.
Your home is broken into and you are raped.
Your are exiled from your country
You are exposed as a fraud on national TV
Your child is abducted
Your sister is injured in a car accident and is paralyzed on one side of her body.
Your son goes to war and is a prisoner of war.
Your wife gets breast cancer.
You lose all confidence in yourself and become a hermit.
You are fired from your job.
Your boyfriend sexually abused your children.
You are in the witness protection program and are forced to leave everyone and everything you know.
Your boyfriend/girlfriend leaves you after 10 years together.
You have to have a hysterectomy and won’t be able to have children.
You have an illness that puts you on long-term disability.
You have prostate cancer and will no longer be able to perform sexually.
Your husband leaves you alone when you are 8 ½ months pregnant.
Your home and neighborhood is destroyed in a hurricane.
You flunk out of college.
You get arrested and are sentenced to 10-20 years in prison.
You have to pay child support for a child you didn’t want.
You are 15 and pregnant.
You lost all your money and savings.
Your child runs away from home and lives on the street doing drugs and working as a prostitute.
You think of suicide all the time.
You know other people’s problems may be worse than yours, but you are still devastated.
You are forced to live on the street.
Your son is arrested for rape.

But guess what makes The Inertia ok?

Mason Ho! Watch this clip, which I think was made/produced by the big tent website, and dance in his miracle. Hallelujah! The Inertia swings!

Sorry. The video is little like the penises of “contributors” and “writers” and “editors” and “owners” at The Inertia. You can enlarge it or something. Like a miraculous surgery! And now that you are finished watching, The Inertia returns to being worst than if…

You were born without the ability to see.
Your daughter is convicted of murdering her children.
You are paralyzed from an accident.
You lose your entire family in a tornado.
You have a different, serious crisis every year.
You have to have your arms amputated.
You witness a gruesome murder.
You are drafted to fight in a war you don’t support.
Someone is trying to kill you.
You hate the way you look.
You fail at everything you do.
Your family thinks your beliefs are crazy.
Your boat capsizes and you are lost at sea.
All your friends abandon you.
Your mother won’t talk with you.
You lose everything and have to move in with someone who is abusive.
Your father beat you as a child.
Your dog is killed.
Your country is the victim of a terrorist attack.
You are stranded on a deserted island.
You were falsely accused of abuse and lost custody of your children.
Your business manager steals all your money.
Your spouse/partner cheats on you.
You are diagnosed with an illness that makes you lose your ability to think clearly.

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Jack Freestone loses hundreds of thousands of hypothetical dollars in two hours!

Wait! Billabong shares dive 300ish%!

By Derek Rielly

8 years ago

How does it feel to be poor again?

Don’t the stock market work fast! Earlier today, maybe even two hours ago, or less, it was reported on this website that surf clothing icon Billabong was riding a wave of unprecedented share price growth. From forty-ish cents to well over one dollar apiece.

Millions made etc. Obviously, the website was very quick to point out that it’d advised readers to spend everything they had on Billabong shares in the middle of 2015, when shares cost sixty cents.

It was like the glory days of the IPO when, soon after, shares hit sixteen-dollars and millionaires in Burleigh Heads were a dime a dozen. Well, as revealed in our comment pane minutes ago by BeachGrit reader Nick Carroll, who might be related to the two-time world surfing champion Tom Carroll and who is infinitely cleverer than the imbeciles who own this website, shares have actually swung hard the other way.

Down, down, down.

“Umm in case you didn’t notice, Bong did a stock merge in the interim. Your 5000 60c shares should now be 1000 $3 shares,” wrote Nick, “Except they’re not are they. No.”

To which I replied, quoting broadsheet newspaper The Australian.

“The firm has since made great strides in its rebuilding process, with its share price more than tripling from 45c at the time of the GE Capital agreement.”

To which Nick revealed the true tragedy behind the story, and behind the average man trying to play the market.

“The Australian has fucked up,” writes Nick. “In May 2015, being an idiot, I bought six thousand Billabong shares at 71c apiece, i.e. about $4300 worth. Some time later they conducted their stock consolidation and briefly I had twelve hundred shares worth around $3.60 each. I now have twelve hundred Billabong shares worth $1.23 each, about $1480 worth. This is not a threefold increase I am sad to say. Indeed it is almost the fucken opposite. Now there are analysts’ projections out there suggesting that in the next two years or so, Billabong will turn its current quite negative balance sheet into an impressive positive. Perhaps one day those shares will eventually regain their lost ground. But in the deathless words of Aragorn in The Two Towers’: “It is not this day!””

Were you, like me, briefly rich? Did you examine the price of prestige cars? Maybe a little house by the sea?

How do you feel now that the cold wind of poverty whistles through your threadbare t-shirt, now that the long and gloomy night gathers around you, the ghosts of hope haunting you?

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Jack Freestone loses hundreds of thousands of hypothetical dollars in two hours! | Photo: Billabong

Rich: Billabong’s Shares Up 300%!

By Derek Rielly

8 years ago

Did you buy Billabong shares at our behest last year? You're rich!

Most stock-market advice is shaky as hell. Ask the real money and they’ll tell you not to jump in unless you have some kind of insider trading, illegal as that theoretically might be. ‘Cause if you don’t get in, or out, early, you can’t even get close to licking the spoon.

On behalf of our readers, last year BeachGrit sought advice on the likely trajectory of Billabong shares, then trading at what seemed a cheap sixty-ish Australian cents apiece.

As we wrote at the time:

So why buy ’em now at sixty cents?

Billabong have halved the number of retail stores and sold off a few of their biz’s, reducing debt, but, tellingly, a couple of hard-nosed US private-equity companies have bought hard into Billabong.

And the CEO is Neil Fiske, who was instrumental in driving the fortunes of the king of US retail Les Wexner, turning Victoria’s Secret and A & F into the dirtiest of money spinners.

On the creative side, Billabong has hired Roxy’s head designer to help drive Billabong gals, RVCA is starting to soar and Tiger Lily is still an unfulfilled buy.

Most interestingly, Billabong’s founder Gordon Merchant recently dropped $2 million upping his share parcel from 8 to 10 per cent. It’s a move that hints that he is finding the price too good to refuse.

As soon as the market works out the new management with their PE Backers have a plan to restore their old margins and and with Billabong still turning over one billion a year hit makes a share price of little over a dollar likely.

Is it worth a punt? Yeah, if you’re going to stick around for a few years. It’ll jump around, as shares do, but don’t torture yourself by watching the share price on your phone every few hours. Take a long-term view.

Set, forget, and come back when it’s around a buck. Then sell.

Bullish? We weren’t bullish enough.

Today shares sell for $1.23.

You could’t turned that ten k into twenty, fifty-k into a hundred, five hundred into a mill.

And, if you’d got in a little earlier, say, late 2014, you would’ve made a 300 per cent profit.

Did you buy? Are you rich?

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I woke up super congested this morning. Gnarly sinus headache to boot. Fucking sucks, I really wanted to go dive. Try and kill some fish. But you can't do that shit when your head tubes are jam-packed with mucus. Or you can, but you'll only do it once. Sinus squeezes hurt like a son of a bitch.

Parker: “I’m taking to the hills!”

By Rory Parker

8 years ago

Two days left until the election. I've had enough.

I’m taking to the hills.

Two days left until the election. I’ve had enough.

The first election I was old enough to vote in was Bush v Gore. Total shit show. Lies and fear. Thought I’d seen the worst. Should’ve known better.

I highly doubt Trump will win, but nothing’s assured in this crazy, mixed-up world. People are sick of ‘PC culture.’ They want to go back to the good old days. When you could say ‘nigger’ without checking the room. When women who didn’t know their place were a non-issue because society denied them upward mobility. When you could be an idiot loser piece of shit with no skills or education or ability to reason. But so long as you were white you had a leg up.

I’ve got a cabin rented in Koke’e. No phone, no internet, no TV. Just silence and cool mountain air and a bunch of booze and some drugs. I’ll be back in time to cast my vote, just don’t want to spend the next couple days constantly checking election coverage. Poking at a gaping wound in my psyche. Reinforcing my natural cynicism.

They want to go back to the good old days. When you could say ‘nigger’ without checking the room. When women who didn’t know their place were a non-issue because society denied them upward mobility. When you could be an idiot loser piece of shit with no skills or education or ability to reason. But so long as you were white you had a leg up.

I feel like I’m in an out of control vehicle. Sitting in the backseat, spinning without traction towards a cliff’s edge. I’ve got no way to change the outcome. Rather than scream in terror I’m just closing my eyes and hoping things work out.

See you in a few days.

Until then, here’s a recipe for Vanilla Ginger Creme Brulee.

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sugar, plus a few more tablespoons for topping

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 egg yolks

Preparation:

Whisk together the milk, cream, ginger and vanilla, heat to just below a boil, then simmer for thirty minutes. Remove from heat and allow to sit for fifteen minutes.

While the milk/cream mixture is steeping, use a electric mixture to whisk together the sugar and egg yolks until they are fluffy and light in color.

Using a strainer to remove solids, slowly add the cream to your eggs. Press down on the solids to squeeze out the delightful ginger flavor. Stir gently using a rubber spatula until well combined.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

Now pour your mix into ramekins, you should have enough to fill five, then place them inside a roasting pan. Allow mixture to settle, then either skim off bubbles or burn them off with your kitchen torch. Both options work fine, the second is more fun.

Fill the roasting pan with boiling water to midway up the sides of your ramekins, then pop it in the oven for thirty minutes.

You’ll know if your custard is done if it jiggles slightly when shaken, but is relatively firm. If it’s still too soft return oven at a lower temp and keep an eye on it.

When the center wobbles slightly if jiggled, remove from oven and allow to cool. Then place in your refrigerator for a couple hours.

When you’re ready to eat it, sprinkle sugar on top (use white sugar for best results). Use a torch to burn the sugar, then allow to cool for a few minutes.

Lacking a kitchen torch you can use your broiler to caramelize the sugar.

But a torch is much more fun, and should only set you back thirty bucks or so.

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Texas Wavegarden Closed Indefinitely!

By Derek Rielly

8 years ago

NLand Surf Park shuts for repairs one month after swinging open its doors.

Do you remember when, just one month after it opened in 2015, the Wavegarden in Wales had to be closed for “urgent repairs?” The Surf Snowdonia tank was closed ’cause of a ripped pool lining and, perhaps, a re-think of its economic viability when sixty casual workers and eight full-timers were sacked.

In a mirror of the only other commercially operating Wavegarden, NLand Surf Park in Texas has been shut down almost exactly one month after loosing the plough that creates the rippable little swells.

A bummer since nearly every session y’tried to squeeze into had booked out, making a mockery of the naysayers who said they wouldn’t be able to find chumps willing to spend ninety bucks on a ten-wave session. For some visitors, the experience was… divine!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMbb8VzgbkO/?taken-by=ozzywrong&hl=en

As our pals at KXAN report:

Neighbors of a new surf park outside Austin say the park is making waves next door, spilling water into their neighborhood. On Monday, the park said they were closing for a week after finding damage under the lagoon. The park, which opened Oct. 7, said they would drain the lagoon and then make repairs.

The Austin Watershed Protection Department confirmed a release of water from the park spread onto nearby property.

“The Watershed Protection Department Spills Team investigated the site and found a discharge of clear water from the park, but they did not find any indication that the water was polluted or chlorinated,” wrote Scott Prinsen, a spokesperson for the watershed protection department. “The department can only enforce water quality issues at the site.”

“It was full of water, I couldn’t even walk through here,” said Patricia Garcia, referring to her driveway.

Garcia wants to make sure this doesn’t happened again and says it has happened before. NLand Surf Park also confirmed that it drained its lagoon Monday and the water ran off of its property.

“[The city] let us know about this and we immediately addressed the issue. We take every opportunity to be good neighbors,” wrote NLand spokesperson Chris Jones in an email to KXAN News.

And, in a poetic response from the pool:

President Theodore Roosevelt famously wrote, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means, effort, pain, difficulty . . . .” President Roosevelt, how prophetic you were, especially when it comes building North America’s first surf park.

The liner in our reef section has been compromised more so than expected by fin and nose cuts and we need to do more extensive repairs. Therefore, we will be closed through November and potentially beyond. If we open, we will personally rebook you.

The line, “If we open…” is a little haunting, don’t you think?

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Eat beach grit spam!