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* Peter Jennings died. You know, whenever a familiar face passes away, we all reflect a little bit. I remember watching Jennings do the news most of my lifetime.
* Just as I was commenting that nobody was talking about fuel prices, comes the news that deisel prices have gone through the roof. This is followed by truckers saying how they're going to pass the costs along to consumers, which is then followed by dumb comments that "Here comes inflation." High oil prices do not cause inflation.
* Have you been to those fondue or melting pot restaurants? This is where they bring you steaming pots of liquid and raw food, and you skewer it and cook it for a few minutes. It's like a 3-hour dinner. Kind of fun, at least once anyways.
* Regarding steroids and sports, I read something about the number of baseball players who hit over 40 home runs a year, and how over the last decade this number has skyrocketed. Just seems like fluff to me. Meaningless in today's ripped-up pumped-up world. Steroids have tainted the record books.
* If oil costs more, people spend less on other stuff. So those truckers and retailers will see reduced demand and they won't have the ability to raise prices. They might have to reduce prices to increase volume.
* OK, cartoons are back thanks to easy image hosting at Blogger.
* The market easing off a bit, continuing the pullback from last week. The put-call ratio is high, so in the short term, maybe we're setting up for the options week rally. This usually starts wed or thurs preceding options week.
* If higher prices were inflationary, why is the core rate right around 2% when oil is at $63 a barrel? Inflation was higher when oil was $12 a barrel in the late 90's!
* Did you see Mr. and Mrs. Smith? I didn't know what it was about, other than starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I'll just talk about the latter. Are there any other females out there who can play an action star and look feminine (aka hot)?
* Positive sports news? Steve Young and Dan Marino enter the Hall of Fame. I remember the early 90's Young-to-Rice juggernaut. Nobody could stop it. They moved the ball at will. Incredible. And I'll never forget Marino at the goal-line against the Jets, where he fooled their defense into thinking he was going to spike the ball to stop the clock, and then flipped the ball into the endzone for a TD. Two awesome QBs. No steroids.