Sideshow - TelevisionIn Business news, my uncle has now taken to giving me unsolicited financial advice, which he communicates—for some reason—using the methods and demeanor of a race-track bookie. He keeps trying to sell me on Verizon stock by sending me emails with a subject line of “Hot Tips,” (alarming on its own) and each email is just filled with links to news stories about Verizon and how they now have the iPhone, etc. Unlike my investment banker friends, who, when they deign to purchase stock at all, do so in blocks of billions of shares, traded on the NYSE3 (not for civilian use), I must use the regular old internet and make my purchase through a hapless vendor like Vanguard or ComputerShare, in order to indulge my bourgeois fantasies and watch my net profit increase by 1/100th of a cent. Since investing is such a rare ‘treat,’ I like to take my time and study a company, perhaps bounce around some valuation numbers in a meeting with myself (Q: What do you think about their capital? A: (long pause) I’m not loving it. Let’s have the associates run it again!), which is why I’m so wary of my uncle’s pushing of Verizon. I feel like he has some hidden emotional investment in the company, beyond the financial commitment, almost as if he were an insecure suitor and wanted me to come along as a third wheel on the date (stock-purchase) with him, in case things go south (insolvency) and he doesn’t get to consort with Verizon’s breasts (dividends). ETC.[Buy Admit One]