by Blogbot (image) (image) (image) Arcturis the Border Collie


 (pictured with his mistress Selahh Suicide) INTO: Playing, running, getting petted, food, and friends. NOT INTO: Baths, being alone, things with hard wheels (roller blades, scooters, skateboards, etc.). MAKES ME HAPPY: Food, pettings,... more

by Blogbot







Arcturis the Border Collie


 (pictured with his mistress Selahh Suicide)

• INTO: Playing, running, getting petted, food, and friends.


• NOT INTO: Baths, being alone, things with hard wheels (roller blades, scooters, skateboards, etc.).


• MAKES ME HAPPY: Food, pettings, any kind of attention, going outside, sticking my head (and neck, and chest, and paws) out of the car window.


• MAKES ME SAD: Being alone, cats not wanting to be my friends, not being able to play, baths
.


• HOBBIES: Running, playing, chewing mommy's boots, eating, napping, giving kisses, attacking sticks.


• 5 THINGS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: Food, sticks, shoes, pettings, food.


• VICES: Eating shoes and attacking sticks.


• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Chewing on things, and being a badass.

Get to know Arcturis' mistress, Selahh Suicide, over at SuicideGirls.com!

by SnakePlissken Every day I’m surrounded by goddamn vegetables. You see, I’m in charge of quality control at a major West Coast vegetable processing plant. Sort of like my own personal hell really. Why, just yesterday I was overseeing the processing of around forty ton an hour of Oregon’s best... more

by SnakePlissken

Every day I’m surrounded by goddamn vegetables. You see, I’m in charge of quality control at a major West Coast vegetable processing plant. Sort of like my own personal hell really. Why, just yesterday I was overseeing the processing of around forty ton an hour of Oregon’s best field-fresh green beans for eight hours plus. That’s a fuck-ton (an arseload in metric for all you Euro folk) surrounding me every moment of the day; dripping their juices on me from weird white whirling belts, stinking up the place with goodness, and generally just being too goddamn healthy. Surrounding me also, is a sea of tiny immigrant laborers like underpaid Oompa-Loompas with no health plan making this bizzaro Willy Wonka- world factory hum and whistle. They are also heavily involved with the weird white whirling belts, but for the most part none have dripped their juices on me.

By the end of an eight-hour shift I need something shitty after being surrounded by a vegan’s wet dream for such an unbearable amount of time. Not only must it be shitty, but it must be greasy and hopefully processed beyond reproach and recognition. Luckily the strange smelling ultra-cheap grocery store was open at midnight and I found these little beauties tucked in between the frozen cow knuckles and the recently expired Banquet Salisbury Steaks.



I love things that taste like other things. Such as, oh, mayo that tastes like bacon. Or when something purple actually tastes like grape. In this case, these evil little nuggets are obviously Totino’s Pizza Rolls that taste like tacos. As a precaution I opted to consume the Imodium A-D before I even opened the bag.



Taco seasoning topping? What the fuck is that exactly? And how is it a topping when clearly it’s inside the roll? I prefer much less ambiguous terms when it comes to what I plan to ingest and poop within the next eight to twelve hours. Well, perhaps three in this case. Let’s see here; contains chicken and beef. Can’t be that bad if I get to eat two animals at once, right?



Oh sweet, mechanically separated meat! And as much as I’d like to imagine some sort of butcher-programmed version of Johnny 5 whipping me up some vittles while he screams “input,” I know it’s pretty much the other side of the equation. Fuck, just Google it. Even more horrifying than Steve Guttenberg’s career, eh?



So here they are splayed out in all their pale glory on my ancient pizza pan carefully seasoned from the fiery sacrifice of many a cheap, frozen pizza and store brand breaded chicken strip. Lightly oiled of course, as sacrifices can stick like a pissah. Ask Mola Ram about his Pam bill.



And here they are fresh from the oven on what is obviously my “company china,” reserved for visiting dignitaries, heads-of-state, the reanimated corpse of Johnny Cash, and you folks. Best served with a hot sauce of your choice; I prefer Secret Aardvark, but Tapatio will do in a pinch. Ranch is also an option if you’d like to make them unhealthier or just cover up the taste of bile in your throat.



These fuckers have a tendency to be boiling hot inside. Really goddamn hot. If we still had castles, guys on the walls in metal hats would be slicing these open and pouring the contents down on the legions below, savoring the pained wails of those sent screaming and screeching into the filthy moats for relief from the hellish torment that is piping hot mozzarella cheese substitute. And making it worse, they sort of ejaculate their meaty/cheesy sauce load onto you in a totally non-consenting manner when you nom them. Assholes, I hate skin grafts. Almost as much as skim milk, Casey Anthony, and that cheap store-brand sliced cheese that just sweats like Louie Anderson instead of melting on your microwave burrito.

So all in all these things have more fake shit in them then Heidi Montag. Yes, I’m counting Spencer Pratt. And they shoot through your system like the goddamn bullet train trying to make up for lost time. But they don’t taste as awful as I expected, just that generic sort of taco flavor that shitty food tastes like. Fake cheesy flavor? Check! Ambiguous meat flavor? Yessir! Weird taco-chili flavor? In spades! As such I recommend them best served with a fine American malt liquor and, if available, a strain of marijuana that has a name with both a letter and a number in it. If the aforementioned is unavailable, a rag soaked in nail polish remover or a can of Endust will also work in a pinch.


4/10 flushes

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By Damon Martin (video) It's a known fact that outside of some Ewok problems in Return of the Jedi, the original Star Wars series was always thought of by nerds, geeks and fans alike as the perfect movie trilogy. A great set up and beginning with Star Wars IV: A New Hope to the ultimate downer... more

By Damon Martin



It's a known fact that outside of some Ewok problems in Return of the Jedi, the original Star Wars series was always thought of by nerds, geeks and fans alike as the perfect movie trilogy.

A great set up and beginning with Star Wars IV: A New Hope to the ultimate downer ending with The Empire Strikes Back, all the way to Darth Vader's redemption in Return of the Jedi.

Well, creator George Lucas apparently can't learn to just leave well alone. As if he hadn't altered the Star Wars universe enough with past revisions when the trilogy was re-released in theaters a few years back, not to mention the prequel trilogy, he's gone and messed with perfection once again.

With the Star Wars films set to be released on Blu-Ray on Sept 16, Lucas has made what seems like a minor change that pretty much every fan boy and girl will react with harsh criticism, no doubt along similar lines to this article.

In the final scenes – where Emperor Palpatine is electrocuting Luke Skywalker, and his father turned evil minion Darth Vader finally steps back into daddy mode, lifting his boss over his head and tossing him down a giant well –– will now include one extra part.

Like Wyatt Earp in the film Tombstone, Vader will now bellow out the word 'Noooo!' just as he lifts the Emperor in the air and tosses him to his final grave. The addition echoes the final scenes in Revenge of the Sith where Vader first takes form and screams a smililar 'Noooo!' when he finds out his lovely Padme is no more.

It's one thing to add to Vader's humanity, but when it's as cheesy as the scene looks and sounds now, the world's ultimate badass loses just a bit of his luster.

Check out the scene and see if you say “Yes, George Lucas should have absolutely added this in, it's vital.” Or if you just wanted to scream 'Noooo!'

I fell in love with Liz Meriwether when she presented her new show, New Girl, to the Television Critics Association over the summer. I would have naturally had affection for anyone who created such a warm, quirky show, but freckles and glasses just completely did me in. New Girl stars Zooey Deschanel... more

I fell in love with Liz Meriwether when she presented her new show, New Girl, to the Television Critics Association over the summer. I would have naturally had affection for anyone who created such a warm, quirky show, but freckles and glasses just completely did me in.

New Girl stars Zooey Deschanel as Jess, a woman who moves in with three male roommates after catching her live-in boyfriend cheating. As she starts to date again, she sings her own theme song to get through the heartbreaks, and dances in celebration a lot. The rough version of the pilot even had a title song set to a sequence of freeze frames where Deschanel posed in different adorable positions. Deschanel sings the theme, lending her musical talents to the show too.

So this innocent reaction to typical sitcom plot lines (wacky roommates, crazy dates) already endeared Meriwether to me. I ran into her later at the party Fox held for its new batch of shows at Gladstones in Malibu. Standing in the beach air at dusk, Meriwether was starstruck herself to see chef Gordon Ramsay at the same party. She was concerned she was not yet drunk enough to be an entertaining interview. Little did she know I was smitten by her natural charm, no drunken word vomit necessary.

SuicideGirls: The opening titles of the show, freeze frames, will that be the title sequence?

Liz Meriwether: I think we are going to get a different main title.

SG: NOOO!!! WHY?

LM: I know, it’s so great. I don’t know, I guess we’re going to look at some other options from the people that do main titles. But we are keeping the theme song which we love, which Zooey wrote and recorded. We love that music.

SG: Doesn’t everybody wish they had their own theme song?

LM: It sort of came from living in New York and walking on the streets of New York and kind of singing to yourself in your head. Maybe you don’t do that. It came from when I was living in New York as I made my daily commute every day. How am I going to get through this? I was a receptionist. It was a daily grind. Sometimes you have to sing yourself a theme song to get yourself through the day a little bit. I would always just be like, “I’m gonna make it!” Things like that.

SG: Have you had different theme songs at different points?

LM: Probably, probably. Like the drama and the comedy. I bet Jess will also have different theme songs.

SG: You should release them on iTunes like Glee does.

LM: Yeah, I think we are releasing the theme song that we have on iTunes but we’re not there yet. We’ll get there.

SG: How many times are you going to make Jess dance per episode?

LM: We might have to limit ourselves actually. I feel like when she sings and dances, it’s so funny that we can’t overuse it. You have to use just the right amount of it. Her physical comedy is so fantastic. She has this amazing ability to make anything funny and she’s fearless. She’s not afraid of the joke. She wants to look stupid and she wants to go for it.

SG: The thing is, the more stupid stuff she does, the hotter she actually looks.

LM: You should tell her that. That’s good. That means I can make her do even stupider stuff because she looks even hotter.

SG: Some people, when they come out and say they’re dorky, you feel like they don’t really get it. What is the trick to really embracing dorkiness?

LM: I think it’s just really who she is. She is this person who’s full of energy and I think openness. She is not self-conscious and someone who hangs back and judges people. She’s this person who’s really open and fun and effusive. It’s not an act. Pretending to be dorky, I don’t think you can really pull that off.

SG: For example, Megan Fox talks about Lord of the Rings and she’s very knowledgable but I still don’t think that makes her a dork.

LM: I think you’re probably right about that. Are you asking me the difference between Megan Fox and Zooey Deschanel?

SG: I guess that was implicit but I didn’t mean to.

LM: I think one Lord of the Rings reference does not a dork make.

SG: I should give her credit. She really knows her shit.

LM: Megan Fox? Maybe she is a dork.

SG: Did you make up the Lord of the Rings references in New Girl, and will there be more?

LM: I like other weird things but the Lord of the Rings references came from my showrunner, Dave [Finkel], who is obsessed with all fantasy things everywhere. He’s really into Game of Thrones now. I think what she’s into is definitely going to be kookier things, fun things that aren’t necessarily what everybody else is into.

SG: What crazy antics are coming up for Jess?

LM: There’s an episode where she walks in on Nick, who’s played by Jake Johnson, naked. She sees him naked and it sort of unravels the whole balance of the house. She can’t say the word penis without laughing so she has all these euphemisms for it. It sort of becomes this huge issue for them and they have to figure it out. Every time she sees his penis she lets out a giggle scream. Half giggle, half scream. That’s coming up, it’s going to be episode three.

SG: Has it been hard to think of ongoing weekly episodes?

LM: No. Obviously it’s just a challenge to be running a show. I come from film and theater so it’s like a new world for me but really I love the characters so much, I just find myself writing for them easily. Even at four in the morning when most of the writing takes place.

SG: Is that your natural schedule?

LM: Yeah, I’m nocturnal.

SG: I am too. Do you have to be up early for table reads?

LM: Yeah, you end up doing a lot of production stuff during the day and I end up writing all night. I couldn’t do that unless I really loved the characters, but I do. I don’t know America will love them. I hope they will but I love them so it’s been fun. It’s just been a great job.

SG: I was surprised how much I loved No Strings Attached. I didn’t mean to make that a backhanded compliment.

LM: Everybody does that. “I did not think I was going to like it.”

SG: Because it’s sold as the typical romantic comedy, but the characters actually make smart decisions for themselves. Was that something you had to fight for?

LM: A lot of people like Ivan [Reitmna] and the people at Paramount, they wanted to make an interesting romantic comedy. They didn’t want to make your run of the mill romantic comedy so I did have a lot of support in that. I think it’s funny that both Ashton and I are now doing TV this season.

SG: He’s been a TV mogul for a while.

LM: Yeah, of course. I’m excited to see him on that show.

SG: Could you see yourself branching out and having a bunch of shows on the air?

LM: I’m just focusing on this right now but of course, I’d love to do more stuff. This is taking everything I have and I’m totally happy to be doing it. Do I have designs on being a mogul? Probably not.

SG: Is this what you imagined when you came to Hollywood?

LM: I think Hollywood always surprises you. I don’t think you can ever know what is going to happen. I came from the theater world. Actually, the first job that I had in TV and film was writing a pilot for FOX which didn’t get picked up. That was called Sluts so it was the first job I had. It’s kind of nice to be back at FOX with a little more experience under my belt. I don’t really wear belts though.

SG: What could Sluts have been if it had made it this far?

LM: Well, we would probably be on the fourth season. They would be old sluts. It wouldn’t be working as well.

(image) by Blogbot (image) [Alisa Suicide in The Late Show] SG / Artist Name: Alisa Suicide / Alisa Courtney Photography Mission Statement: To make people happy with my photography. For me, the best part of creating my art is the end results. When I post a photo and it captures the viewer's imagination,... more

by Blogbot


[Alisa Suicide in The Late Show]

SG / Artist Name: Alisa Suicide / Alisa Courtney Photography

Mission Statement: To make people happy with my photography. For me, the best part of creating my art is the end results. When I post a photo and it captures the viewer's imagination, makes their awful day a little better, or they use one of my portraits as their profile or promotion photo, to me that's greater than any high priced sale or gallery show. Now, don't get me wrong, I would be lying if I said I wouldn't enjoy being recognized or shown in an international show. That would just be silly. I would LOVE it! But it still couldn't replace the sheer joy I get when I connect and get to interact personally with someone through one of my pieces.







Medium: Digital photography.

Aesthetic: Hodge podge.

Notable Achievements: So far a few group gallery shows here in Columbus, Ohio and one in Switzerland and published credits in different magazines.

Why We Should Care: I can't tell you why you should care about my work. You have to experience it for yourself. The one aspect of my work that sets me apart is my Abstract Motion series. It is straight from the camera with absolutely no Photoshop manipulation involved in the creation. It is a natural technique that I came across a few years ago by accident while shooting architectural and landscape photography. I can use any situation, lighting, object, building or person to create them. No darkroom or external lighting source or moving object is necessary to produce the results. I am very proud that it is a natural technique that requires just myself and the camera.







I Want Me Some: Sizing and prices vary on each purchase. If you can't afford very much and you really love one of my pieces, I can work with you on the shipping costs. It's more important that you get enjoyment out of it than I make a profit. You can reach me via the site or email me at: acp_photography@yahoo.com







***

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Harry Markopolos has a way with numbers. It's this innate ability that led him to uncover Bernie Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme almost a decade before market forces ultimately leveraged a confession out of the spectacularly crooked investment fund manager. In 1999, while working as a portfolio manager... more

Harry Markopolos has a way with numbers. It's this innate ability that led him to uncover Bernie Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme almost a decade before market forces ultimately leveraged a confession out of the spectacularly crooked investment fund manager.

In 1999, while working as a portfolio manager at Rampart, a Boston based investment management company, Markopolos had been asked to reverse engineer a fund offered by Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC so his firm could compete by offering a similar product. After studying Madoff's marketing material for a mere 5 minutes, Markopolos realized that the results the fund claimed to achieve were highly improbable, a further 4 hours of mathematical modeling proved the stated returns were categorically impossible by legal means.

Smelling a rat, Markopolos assembled an informal investigative team to probe Madoff's operation further. In May 2000, when Madoff's scheme was only a $3 to $7 billion fraud, they submitted their first whistleblowing report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It was summarily ignored. Frustrated but undeterred, Markopolos' tenacious group, dubbed The Foxhounds, submitted numerous subsequent memos (in 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2008) offering even more evidence, to no avail. A 2005 missive had what one might consider to be an attention-grabbing title -"The World's Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud" - but even this failed to get an appropriate response from those charged with policing Wall Street.

It was only following the crash of 2008, when Madoff's investors were clamoring to liquidate their assets and he was unable to meet their demands, that the man responsible for the largest act of financial fraud in world history was forced to fess up. By then, Madoff's "fund" had grown on paper to a value of $65 billion. In the following days, the complete and utter failure of the SEC came to light, as press outlets - who had also been alerted by Markopolos, but by and large had declined to report his findings before Madoff's arrest - competed to interview the "Madoff whistleblower." With egg on their faces, the government also sought out Markopolos' knowledge and expertise, and on February 4, 2009 he delivered some riveting televised testimony in front of the House of Representatives' Financial Services Subcommittee.

In March 2010, Markopolos published a book chronicling his investigations into Madoff and the utter incompetence he bore witness to during his dealings with the SEC. Called No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller, it became a New York Times bestseller. A new film, Chasing Madoff, based on the book is currently in cinemas. SuicideGirls caught up with Markopolos, who now works as a freelance investigative accountant exposing Fortune 500 wrongdoing, to talk about Madoff and the current state of play in our financial markets. We also asked him to focus his considerable financial acumen our nation's balance sheet and assess the future prospects of our economy. Given Markopolos' track record, his conclusions about America's should-be junk status are indeed cause for concern, if not outright alarm.

NP: How did you first discover the Madoff fraud?

HM: I became aware of Bernie Madoff managing an option split-strike conversion strategy with numbers that I knew were not achievable by that strategy because I had managed money using that strategy. I knew those numbers were too good to be true so I sent a colleague from marketing at my firm, a Boston based asset management firm, down to New York to find out about this Bernie Madoff. He came back with a one-page marketing tear sheet, and in five minutes I knew it was a fraud, most likely a Ponzi scheme...Then I spent four hours mathematically modeling the returns, and then I was convinced beyond any reasonable doubt to a criminal standard of proof that in fact it was a fraud and very likely a Ponzi scheme.

NP: When you realized this what did you do?

HM: I started analyzing it. We formed an informal team with Neil Chelo, who worked for me as an assistant portfolio manager, and Frank Casey to obtain more information. Then a few months later, in May of 2000 I submitted my first red flags memo to the Securities and Exchange Commission in Boston.

NP: And what did they do?

HM: They were supposed to send it to New York, but they put it in a circular file and it made its way quickly to the trash can...

NP: So you continued writing these memos to various branches of the SEC for an 8 1/2 year period I understand.

HM: Multiple submissions.

NP: You listed 29 red flags, which if people had just made a single phone call they could've verified -- is that correct?

HM: Yes, but back then the SEC examiners were not trained to make phone calls to third parties. But it would've been that quick. All you'd have to do is call a third party and you'd know. You call a witness, and you find out the answer, but that's not how they were trained back then. They are now, but back then they were not.

NP: So when they were investigating a company, they'd talk directly to the company in question, but then they wouldn't verify what they were told with any third party.

HM: That's what exactly what I'm saying. Because that would cast aspersions against the firm they were investigating. So they only investigated the firm and relied on internal documents with out cross-checking them with third party, outside sources.

NP: They were more concerned about libeling the company that they were investigating, than actually investigating the company.

HM: That is correct. That's how it was a few years ago. Now it's no longer like that. They've changed all their procedures.

NP: This would've been a fairly easy thing to catch, because there was no actual trades happening, and the trades that they claimed to be doing had no subsequent effect on the market, which given the volume they should've done. And at one point, they even claimed to have bought 7 times the number of options that were actually in existence - right?

HM: Well, that was me. They were always 7 to 65 times larger than the actual number of those types of options in existence. There was only $1 billion in options in existence of the type that Bernie Madoff needed for his portfolio. And of course, he was managing $7 to $65 billion. So he was several times the size of the market. That was such a clear math proof, but the SEC did not consider math proofs because they were trained as lawyers and not familiar with mathematics. In math there's only one correct answer. You may solve a math problem in various different ways, but in the end there's only one answer, and it's the highest form of proof in the world. You can never change the answer to a math problem.

NP: I know that you've repeatedly stated that you don't think that the SEC were being dishonest, they were just being incompetent because it was staffed by lawyers rather then accountants. Do you still think that that was the case?

HM: Yeah. I don't think that the SEC is corrupt in any way, shape or form. I know that the government asked me many questions when they were examining their staff, feeling that they had to be corrupt, that there was no way that they missed this. They read my red flags memo, in retrospect, and they said, "Hey, these things are all true. How come our staff didn't figure it out? This case was handed to them gift-wrapped on a silver platter, everything in here is true, how could our people be that dumb to miss that? There's no way that's possible. They must be corrupt. They obviously were paid off my Madoff or offered jobs or some other incentive to look the other way." They were investigating their staff at all levels, very closely under a microscope, and, of course, they found out what I knew to be true, that there was no corruption there -- that their staff was systemically incompetent. As a result, the agency has engaged in a series of rapid reforms to change the way they investigate fraud.

NP: I found it very telling that at one point you talked about how you gave information to someone at the SEC in Boston, but he didn't understand the math so you had to draw it out for him.

HM: Oh, yeah. I had two people in Boston really helping me a lot with this case. One of them, Ed Manion, is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He understood the math. But the other one, the higher ranking one, was a Branch Chief then, he's been promoted since, Mike Garrity. He was a lawyer, and so he had to have me diagram out the math on a blackboard until he understood it. And you know what? He understood it, and he knew how serious it was. He told me, "This is very serious. I promise you a thorough and fast investigation, and if I find it has merit, I'm going to be putting you in touch with the New York regional office because that's who has jurisdiction." Within a week he called me back and he said, "I've investigated, I can't tell you what I found, but it's very serious. You need to be in contact with the New York regional office. We need to get moving on this." He said, "Harry, if this was in Boston, I would have multiple teams in there tomorrow tearing the place apart. But it's in New York, so I don't have jurisdiction there." He passed me on to the New York regional office, and, of course, the case met with disastrous consequences down there because they did not take this case seriously in the New York regional office, nor did they conduct a competent investigation.

NP: And that was because of inter-branch politics. The New York, Boston, and Washington, DC offices didn't cooperate with each other.

HM: Right. There was turf rivalries between those three offices. Each one thinking they were the best.

NP: It's like a badly scripted TV show, isn't it? It's such a cliché.

HM: Well, like a baseball rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox is the way I put it before Congress. It's like a sport rivalry. It was just like that. You had different offices feel like they were competitors instead of on the same team.

NP: Going up the food chain, do you think that there was maybe a deliberate and convenient culture of incompetence that had been created?

HM: Yes. The industry had captured all the financial regulators back then. In 2008 and before, the banking regulators were asleep at the switch, as was in the Securities and Exchange Commission, as was FINRA. All the regulators were in the pockets of industry. They were weak willed, had untrained staff that were not aggressive investigators whatsoever. They were happy to look the other way. They didn't want to be bothered with big cases, and they sought out the small cases against the small firms because those people couldn't defend themselves. The big ones got a free pass because they were tough targets, they could defend themselves with an army of lawyers, and, as a result, the government did not do large fraud cases against major Wall Street firms like Bernie Madoff's.

NP: And that was also politically expedient, because that meant that the government didn't have to prosecute the people that they were relying on for campaign contributions.

HM: Of course. Those are your biggest campaign donors among the financial services industry. Neither political party in the United States had any incentive to insist upon strict regulation. In fact, they defanged and defunded the regulators over a period of decades. Both parties were guilty of this.

NP: That ultimately not only allowed the Madoff fraud to happen, but also was responsible for a climate which allowed the entire banking industry to fail to the point where we have to bail them out with public funds though TARP.

HM: Yes. If you don't regulate, then that will cost taxpayers trillions of dollars. We've proven that in 2008, and we'll take the nation into bankruptcy, I think we've proved that in 2008 as well. If you starve your regulators, and you defang them, then you're going to end up paying trillions. It's pennywise and a pound foolish. It's going to cost you everything you have as a nation. Capitalism left unregulated, unsupervised will destroy itself because greed kills. Unregulated, unchecked greed will destroy capitalism every time it gets a chance to do so.

NP: Have we learnt anything post-Madoff and post-TARP? Has the climate changed within the SEC?

HM: Yes, it has. The SEC is night and day better than where they were two and a half years ago. They're very aggressive. They sent their staff away for training to become certified fraud examiners, so they know how to conduct a proper investigation. They know the steps to take in a proper investigation and they're aggressively looking for cases against large financial firms, whereas before, those same firms were on a protected species list. They were left untouched and basically unregulated.

Now, the SEC has the whistleblower program under [the] Dodd-Frank [Act] that allows them to pay then to thirty percent rewards to whistleblowers who come in with documents, emails, transaction records, and accounting books proving fraud. The SEC wants to see these cases, and they want to stop them before they become $65 billion Ponzi schemes. They want to stop them before they become too expensive for the American taxpayer, and the best way to do that is to have insiders incentivized to turn evidence over to the SEC and allow them to stop these frauds while they're of manageable size.

NP: I guess part of the problem, whether it's subprime mortgages, bonds from bankrupt countries, or junk stocks and options, is that it didn't matter if the underlying investment was sound, because traders got commissions and bonuses based on volume. So you had a culture that never saw beyond the next trade, because there were no consequences if bankers and traders got investments wrong. There was no incentive to change things for the better.

HM: Well, I would even argue that there was an incentive when looking at wrong doing on Wall Street, because your bad behavior went not only unpunished, it was actually incentivized because we bailed them out. They learned the wrong lessons from the bailout in 2008. They learned that crime does pay, and then if you're a big firm, you will not be prosecuted for those crimes. You will be bailed out and allowed to pay bonuses. That's the wrong lesson. So, actually, the world is far more dangerous today than it was back in 2008 because we rewarded bad behavior. As a result you will get more bad behavior. Now, counteracting that is the SEC's whistleblower program, and hopefully they can find the frauds and stop them when they're still small. So you have two competing sets of influences there. It remains to be seen which influence will win out, the good one or the bad one.

NP: Do you think that in light of Citizens United, and the unlimited amounts of campaign funds that are going to be flowing into Washington in the upcoming year, that the good will win out?

HM: In Washington? No. Both political parties are beyond salvation. Each party represents corporate interest and special interests. Neither party represents the taxpayers or the citizenry of the United States. They're owned lock, stock, and barrel by the corporations, and that's who they represent.

NP: So, even if the SEC has been fixed to some extent, can you see it being declawed over the next year?

HM: Their budget has been reduced from $1.25 billion to $1.1 billion for 3,900 staff members. I want to put that in perspective for you. John Paulson [founder of the New York-based Paulson & Co hedge fund] last year earned, personal income, $5 billion. Now, he earned every penny of that. I'm not taking anything away from Mr. Paulson's hedge fund. However, it shows you the disparity of resources. $5 billion for one man [versus] $1.1 billion for 3,900 men and women. And a travel budget, and an information technology budget, and real estate, to staff the entire Securities and Exchange Commission, 11 regional offices and the headquarters in Washington. So you can see that it's not a level playing field, but hopefully the whistleblower program will put the SEC on an even keel with industry because they can incentivize whistleblowers to come in and save them thousands of man hours and bring them the largest cases and the best prepared cases in their history. Hopefully, that will level the playing field, a bit. But I think the bad guys always have an advantage. They're always going to have more resources than the good guys.

NP: It's interesting to see what's happened over the last month or so with S&P and Moody, because we're kowtowing to these institutions for downgrading us, despite the fact that they made a $2 trillion error, but meanwhile, in Italy they're actually being raided and treated as criminals.

HM: Well, the time to raid and treat the S&P and Moody as criminals was in 2008. They should be held responsible and prosecuted for those failings. I think if you wanted to prosecute them today for downgrading the United States, you'd have to prosecute them for not downgrading us to junk status. If you look at the true books for the United States, off balance sheet, we have $80 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities that are not accounted for in our deficit figures. You also have $7 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities. So the government is using a cash basis accounting system, which is improper. They should've used the accrual system of accounts, which all corporations are required to use. If they did, you'd see that there's $87 trillion more in unfunded liabilities sitting there. Instead, Congress and the President foolishly focused on the $14.3 trillion fiscal deficit when the true deficit is far higher, several times higher than that. So if you want to see who should be prosecuted, I would say it's our government for crooked accounting. I'm really good at accounting -- certainly much better than the people in government -- I'm telling you the honest numbers, the true numbers.

NP: How would you fix our economy? Because we do have a lawyer in the top job rather than an accountant.

HM: Oh, I think what you need to do is be honest with the American people, let them understand the severity of the situation. We are very close behind Greece. If you want to see the American dollar turn into the American peso overnight through a currency devaluation, if you want to see the nation enter the equivalent of national bankruptcy and be controlled by the International Monetary Fund, well we're very close behind Greece. I'm talking only a measure of a few years before it all comes crashing down.

I think you need to do a holistic approach. You need to certainly get Medicare spending under control. Forty cents of every dollar spent on Medicare is either wasted or stolen. That's unconscionable. That needs to be straightened out immediately. That's the biggest test this nation faces -- waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare. That needs to be clamped down upon quickly. And we have to bring all those off balance sheet liabilities onto our balance sheet, and figure out a plan to pay for them. It's going to require cuts in government services and increases in taxes to pay down the debt.

Some things that we can do to quickly reduce those unfunded liabilities is raise the age before one qualifies for Social Security and Medicare. We also need to raise the Social Security tax slightly and certainly the Medicare tax as well. We need to eliminate all the tax loopholes -- in fact, there should be no tax deductions for anything. It should just be straight rates. We probably need the imposition of a national sales tax, because that makes it fair for everyone. Right now, half the people in the country don't pay any federal tax -- well that's not far. So maybe a national sales tax where everybody is contributing and income taxes for certainly the wealthier portion of the population.

It's going to require cost cutting and tax raising. You can't just do all of one and none of the other. You've got to be fair and balanced, and realize we have huge debts and we're going to have to come up with a plan to pay them. We have to treat the nation's balance sheet like we do our own checkbook; it needs to be in balance. And since we're in debt, we need to weigh it more toward savings and taxes to pay for what we've already spent. We've overspent. We've been like a drunk on a spending binge, and now we need to sober up. It's going to require sacrifice across the country from everybody. Anybody that tells you anything different is a politician lying to you as they run for President or run for Congress.

NP: One of the things S&P did get right in their reasoning behind the downgrade was their expressed concerns about how "the political brinksmanship of recent months" has resulted in "America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable." Referencing the Tea Party in all but name, they basically said the lunatics have taken over the asylum and that there's not the political climate for prudent fiscal responsibility to take place.

HM: You can't have a AAA credit rating with a junk rated Congress, is the way I would put it.

NP: Argentina had a similar runaway economy, which resulted in hyperinflation and a severely devalued currency in the late '70s and early '80s, and it seems to me that we should be in a similar place now. We're not right now because there's some very artificial mechanisms at play propping us up, but how long do we have and what will happen before we get to a disastrous scenario like that seen in Argentina?

HM: It's impossible to predict. There's so many instabilities built up into the system that you don't know how it's going to come crashing down or when. You just know that it's out there in the not too distant future. You don't know what the trigger event is going to be, you just know it's coming and it's going to be very bad.

Our politicians lack the will to get the nation's accounts into proper order. And you know, I think the only solution there is, people need to go to the ballot box in 2012 and vote against every incumbent. Maybe it's time for an independent party to form, because you can't trust the Democrats or the Republicans because they're owned by the corporations. There's unlimited campaign funding coming into this election and if we vote for either major party in 2012 we'll become nothing but corporate slaves and indentured servants.

We need to fight back and take back our country from the career politicians. I would rather see mom and pops run independently and elect them. I would even rather have our congressmen and women picked like we pick our juries. Pick one person in every district and say, 'Sorry you lost the lottery, you have to serve in Congress for two years. You have to go to Washington, it's a big sacrifice, but somebody has to do it.' I'm confident they would do a better job than the people we elect into office today.

NP: You're saying pick public servants like we pick a jury pool. You were a bus driver last week, and you're a congressman this week.

HM: Right now we elect nothing but losers. I would rather send somebody there that at least has a prayer of doing the right thing in not wanting to be there and not running for reelection. Because elections are so expensive they're bought and paid for, and as a result we get the wrong people in those elected offices.

They've proven they are incompetent to handle the task at hand, so they need to be replaced en mass, every single one of them. The Senate and the House needs to be gone quickly. They've failed this nation and they need to pay for that failure by being booted out and replaced. The same people that got us into this mess are not going to be able to solve it. They have too many vested interests to protect and so they need to be removed. We need to take back control of our nation from these folks. These people are vermin.

NP: What people don't realize is this that this is why the price of gold is so high, because people are betting against our economy. I remember in 2005, for the first time I had a little bit of spare cash, and I had friends that were traders so I asked them what should I invest in. They told me not to buy shares, but to buy gold. At the time I thought they were kidding since the general school of thought was that there was actually more gold in the world than people realized, so it wasn't such a valuable resource. But it wasn't really about the gold, it was people taking the money out of the economy because they didn't want to invest in a corrupt system. An investment in gold is really an investment against a corrupt system.

HM: It is. It's a direct bet against currency, the currency being whatever you call it, the Euro, the dollar or the yen.

NP: And against stocks and shares, and what they represent.

HM: Right. And they want something that's going to do well in times of turmoil. Gold is not really an investment, it's a hedge -- it's a bet against currency and it's a bet against government. And it's forecasting the odds of a collapse as being very, very high. Right now, the Greek two-year note is yielding what? Forty-four percent. Well, the last time I saw a two-year note yield forty-four percent was WorldCom, and the investors received that yield for approximately two months before Enron went under.

It's only a matter of time before you're going to see countries failing. It's hard to predict which ones will go down first. The only thing that's kept the United States from going the way of Argentina and defaulting is that we own the world's reserve currency, but it's not to say that we can't default in the future or that we won't default in the future. We're almost going to have to. It's either going to be a hard default, meaning a currency devaluation. Or it's going to be a soft default, which means high inflation. It's the same thing as defaulting though if you have a deflationary environment.

NP: Because you're devaluing the currency by default anyway with inflation.

HM: Yeah, you're just devaluing it a lot slower through inflation instead of doing it by fiat, overnight devaluing the dollar by proclamation, you just do it slower through an inflationary process. Each is a default. One's a hard default, one's a soft default. In the end, anybody that holds US debt is going to find themselves either not being repaid or being paid with far cheaper dollars.

And who's going to suffer? Us. The citizens. Why? Because our politicians have no courage whatsoever. And they don't represent us. They represent the status quo that they're trying to protect, and we know that that can no longer exist. And yet they refuse to come to grips with this problem. So they need to be gone. They need to be removed. But that's just my personal opinion. I'm not a politician. Don't pretend to be. Don't want to be.

NP: In a way, to have a modicum of sympathy for them, they're just victims of circumstance too. They can't afford to do the right thing because then they don't get elected.

HM: Right, they don't get the money. No one is going to give them campaign donations. These guys are beholden to corporate donations. Otherwise they can't run those races. They're very expensive races to run. We need to change our way of doing business politically, and we haven't so far, so maybe it's going to be forced on us from the outside through a financial crisis that we can't get out of.

NP: One question before I leave you...Obviously there's only so much an individual can do in the face of a complete shit storm. How are you shoring up your own finances for what may come?

HM: I have zero debt. I paid off my home mortgage two years ago. I have no debt on the cars. I have pre-funded the kids' college educations as long as they go to public university, not private. I'm 85% in cash even though it has no yield. I have 5% weight in Japan, which I'm probably going to eliminate soon, and a 10% weight in dividend paying oil stock.

I would expect to see deflation and then inflation. I think we're stuck in a deflationary spiral right now, but eventually we'll see inflation. Right now we're following the Japanese experience, and they've had a miserable experience for 21 years. We're making all the same mistakes that the Japanese did. It's almost like they wrote the playbook in Japan and we're following it.

NP: For those that aren't familiar with what happened in Japan, what was their playbook?

HM: The playbook was stimulus programs that failed repeatedly, public debt that piled up such that it can never be repaid, an aging population receiving entitlements at too young of an age. Nothing was financed, everything was kept off the books, so the true debt picture was never revealed to the populous. And it was instability in government, where governments were repeatedly booted from office and removed by an angry electorate, and I think that's where we are now. We have a very angry population here, and none of the politicians are telling us the truth.

NP: Right, that's the big concern here. You have an angry electorate that's on the cusp of voting back in the people that caused the deficit in the first place.

HM: Right. Putting in the same people that caused the problem is not a solution. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. I think that denial is a lot more than just a river in Egypt, and we're in denial.

NP: What would you say to the American electorate over the next 12 months?

HM: Wake up. Vote for an independent candidate that is not a career politician. That's our only hope for salvation and common sense in government.

NP: Well, on that note, I will bid you farewell...And given your summary, I shall expect you to be putting your name into the pool so I can vote for you.

HM: No, no, no. I have three boys at home, I don't want to go to Washington. I like chasing bad guys. Someone's got to chase bad guys. That's what I do for a living. I think I'm going to keep at that. I don't want to run for office, I want to run from it. Maybe in a few years. Maybe 2016, but certainly no time soon. My boys are too young. Boys need a father.

NP: Well, I'm holding you to it at 2016.

HM: Oh no, that's the worst fate. I'd rather just do it like a jury pool -- loser has to go to Washington.

by Blogbot A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups. (image) [Psyche in Iron Oxide] This week, Psyche Suicide exposes the unbridled fun that can be had with Slut Pride. Members: 2,120 / Comments: 12,503 WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: This group is all about replicating, enhancing, and fulfilling... more

by Blogbot

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.


[Psyche in Iron Oxide]

This week, Psyche Suicide exposes the unbridled fun that can be had with Slut Pride.

Members: 2,120 / Comments: 12,503

• WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: This group is all about replicating, enhancing, and fulfilling truly pleasurable experiences for the purpose of recreational sex. We embrace the almighty orgasm, and all acts that precede it. 


  
  This is a place where women are encouraged to feel the strength, pride, and vigor a man feels from open sexual encounters. We are sluts that do not feel embarrassed by the hot, wet mess that we have made. 


  
  This is a place for us to gloat about all our glorious sexcapades and discuss all those taboo topics we are often inhibited from discussing in public -- topics such as female ejaculation, circle jerks, corporal punishment, sex during menstruation, gay porn, creampies, snowballs, champagne enemas, orgies, polyamory, bisexuality, ladyboys, gangbangs. You name it, your fetish is our world.








• DISCUSSION TIP: Arrive with an open mind in the hopes of living out your fantasies of an abundant sex life. The only thing we ask is that you leave all your feelings of shame and guilt at the front door.




• BEST RANDOM QUOTE: Too many epic tales to pinpoint a specific one. I have literally entertained myself for weeks going down the list reading all the stories. Here are a couple of the best I collected from this goldmine within only a few minutes...

  
  

  "I have a cunt like a wizards sleeve I use a baseball bat as a dildo, I just got my ass stopper butt plug in the mail yesterday at its widest point its 5 inches."

  
  

  

  "I got fingered in a church during a reenactment of the stations of the cross when I was in 8th grade.
 I came as 'Jesus died"
'–– it was perfect."

  
  

  

  "Aside from the usual fetish party drugged up sex orgy stuff, one of the best experiences was at the top of AMP tower in Sydney at 1am (I knew the security guard personally and he let us up) with my gorgeous red-headed South African girlfriend at the time.
 After I came in her she walked around Sydney with my cum running down her legs. 
Every so often she would run a finger down her leg and put it in her mouth."

  
  

  

  "I fucked a 18 year old and a 34 year old two days apart. The 34 year old was mostly so I could make use of his cable TV."

  
  

  

  "I gave a blowjob while I was driving down the interstate at 80. Did I mention I was the one driving? "

  
  

  

  "I had sex with a girl in an alley once to stay warm."

  











• MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: All our discussions are hot and steamy.







• WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: This group is perfect for anybody who is into a little bit of kink, but is also open to everybody who considers themselves to be a sexual creature. Calling all cynical and kinky bastards -- if this is you, we welcome you to join with open arms (and legs!).

***
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SuicideGirls' Group Therapy - Otoki on Feminists
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by Blogbot (image) (image) (image) Arcturis the Border Collie


 (pictured with his mistress Selahh Suicide) INTO: Playing, running, getting petted, food, and friends. NOT INTO: Baths, being alone, things with hard wheels (roller blades, scooters, skateboards, etc.). MAKES ME HAPPY: Food, pettings,... more

by Blogbot







Arcturis the Border Collie


 (pictured with his mistress Selahh Suicide)

• INTO: Playing, running, getting petted, food, and friends.


• NOT INTO: Baths, being alone, things with hard wheels (roller blades, scooters, skateboards, etc.).


• MAKES ME HAPPY: Food, pettings, any kind of attention, going outside, sticking my head (and neck, and chest, and paws) out of the car window.


• MAKES ME SAD: Being alone, cats not wanting to be my friends, not being able to play, baths
.


• HOBBIES: Running, playing, chewing mommy's boots, eating, napping, giving kisses, attacking sticks.


• 5 THINGS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: Food, sticks, shoes, pettings, food.


• VICES: Eating shoes and attacking sticks.


• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Chewing on things, and being a badass.

Get to know Arcturis' mistress, Selahh Suicide, over at SuicideGirls.com!

Britt Robertson is starring on a new show, The Secret Circle. Based on the books by The Vampire Diaries’ L.J. Smith and produced by Kevin Williamson, who also worked on the vampiric show, Secret Circle already has a bewitching fan base before it’s even on air. Last week Robertson was driving to the... more

Britt Robertson is starring on a new show, The Secret Circle. Based on the books by The Vampire Diaries’ L.J. Smith and produced by Kevin Williamson, who also worked on the vampiric show, Secret Circle already has a bewitching fan base before it’s even on air. Last week Robertson was driving to the set at 3 PM for an evening shoot. She had a new movie opening and wanted to get the word out, so through the crackle of her cell phone we got an interview.

The Family Tree is an edgy indie dramedy about the Burnett family. Robertson plays Kelly Burnett, a provocative teenager who uses profanity to push her mother’s buttons. She even takes off her shirt at the breakfast table, though classily this scene is filmed from behind. Mrs. Burnett has an accident that gives her amnesia, so while the family deals with that drama, Kelly also gets involved with a fellow student and teacher’s secret relationship.

Robertson has been playing teenagers for some time, even though she’s now 21. She’s got one of those faces that still passes for 16, which can be an asset in casting calls. Her most visible role has been as Lux Cassidy on The CW’s drama Life Unexpected, which lasted two years. She also had a cameo in this year’s Scream 4.

On The Secret Circle, she plays Cassie Blake, who moves to the town of Chance Harbor after her mom’s death. There, the children of the other five witch families try to expose her to the secret past from which her mother always tried to protect her. Five episodes into her new show, this is still a new world for Robertson, so after discussing her new movie we caught up on it.

SuicideGirls: When did you shoot The Family Tree? During Life Unexpected?

Britt Robertson: No, it was actually a long time ago. I turned 18 on the film. So it’s been quite a while now.

SG: Even though you’re in your 20s now, you’ve gotten to play a lot of teenagers and they’re all so different. Even in their look, like Kelly has straight hair and dark eyes.

BR: Yeah, exactly. Well, it was interesting when I did this film because it was the first time I’d actually gotten to play my age. I was so used to playing younger. When I booked this role, I was like, “No way!” because I was actually supposed to play 18 in the movie and I hadn’t even turned 18 yet. So it was my first opportunity to play someone who was actually older than I was on the time, a cool opportunity to do something new and different with my look. The wardrobe designer, Kelle Kutsugeras, was so great and she had such a vision for my character as well as all the hair and makeup people because they just wanted to give her a very different and cool style where you could feel that she was outspoken by just looking at her. My character Kelly very much expresses herself with her look.

SG: Do you look for that in roles, even if they’re similar ages, that you can make them look different and be different?

BR: Yeah, I think it’s important for me at this point in my life as well as then, when you have a career that spans over a few years and you’re constantly playing teenagers, you don’t want to just play the same old bratty role or look the same. You don’t want an audience to get tired of you so I think that it’s always important to find an individual style for your character just so an audience can identify with you as that person as opposed to the last character they may have seen you as.

SG: Kelly is a very edgy teenager. Have you ever been asked to play something you were not comfortable with?

BR: Not really. Sets are a funny place. You always feel like people think it’s real life and you’re actually experiencing these things. Even make-out scenes and heavy sexual scenes, everyone’s like, “Oh wow, how romantic” but they’re actually the most unromantic, non-glamorous environment. There are grips everywhere and it’s hot. They make it so that it’s such a comfortable environment, it’s all your friends and it’s never what you see it to be on screen. For me, the workplace is what it is. That’s where I go every day and I do my job. I’ve never been put in the position where I feel uncomfortable at all. Not saying that that isn’t going to happen, but at this point it hasn’t.

SG: Could you ever imagine taking off your shirt in front of your family like Kelly does?

BR: No. No, I could not. It’s so funny, I went to a film festival last year for The Family Tree and my grandparents went to see the movie and I couldn’t sit with them because I was like this is a little too much for me. I couldn’t even be in the same room while they were just watching my back. I obviously don’t get topless in the film but there is a lot of suggestive behavior, so I was not comfortable with that. It’s such a funny moment in the film and it just totally shows you who that character is, that she’s the type of girl who would do something like that just to make a statement. So I think it really shows you who she is and I’m very different from that, that’s for sure.

SG: With the language too, what did your grandparents think of the film?

BR: At this point, they just learn to accept every project that I do as a project of its own. Ultimately I’m sure they enjoyed it.

SG: I was wondering if The Family Tree was a way to be seen as not so innocent as Lux, but was it actually the reverse where you played Lux after this movie and wanted to play someone more innocent?

BR: I think when I did Life Unexpected, it was just such a great opportunity to build a character in a television setting, to be part of a show that was so well written. I really connected with that character and I thought that she had so much depth and there was so much more to her than what the eye would typically see. When you first see her, you see her as this innocent young girl who hasn’t really been through a lot but then as the series progressed, you realize that she actually isn’t so innocent and she isn’t naïve to a lot of the world and is in fact a little more mature than her parents. So I thought that that was such a great challenge because I was able to play a little young girl who definitely wasn’t the character I play in The Family Tree but also it was a great opportunity to build on that character and see what more she had to offer. Ultimately, the writers gave me that. They gave me so many different opportunities to develop as a young actress.

SG: Is Cassie on The Secret Circle a senior in high school?

BR: They haven’t really defined her age but she’s more like I think a junior in high school.

SG: So you could still be in high school for a while, even though you’re 21.

BR: True, it’s very true. But it’s funny because when I go out, constantly people, even on airplanes people will be like, “Oh, are you traveling alone?” I’m like yeah and they’re like, “How old are you?” I’m like, “I’m 21.” They say, “You look like you’re 13.” It’s funny, like “You’re 21, how are you playing so young?” versus “This girl shouldn’t even be playing high school. She should be back in middle school.” For me, I’ve pretty much taken it upon myself to put myself in a position where people feel a little bit more comfortable with me as a 16-year-old as opposed to a 26-year-old because it’s just not realistic. I look so much younger than I am and I doubt I’m going to be playing characters in their 20s for a

little while. I’ve come to terms with that. It’s pretty funny.

SG: Will Cassie change her look as she develops more power?

BR: It’s possible. The great thing about the supernatural world is things are constantly changing. The world as you know it is evolving always so my character could change drastically from one day to the next, or she could stay the same and keep to her roots. I guess that’s the fun part about it is I never know what I’m going to get.

SG: Does playing a witch make you feel powerful?

BR: It doesn’t make me personally feel powerful but I think it gives me a lot to do in the show. It never gets old, my character on this show. There are so many new things that I’m able to develop and work with and new things that I’m learning and constantly challenging myself. I think just as a normal human being, it’s cool to be able to play with all these elements, but it’s not like I come home and expect to be able to move water by myself or anything.

SG: Could The Secret Circle get into any real Wicca mythology?

BR: It’s possible. I think our writers are really trying to make it as real as possible and I think they’re trying to add a mythology that’s different from The Vampire Diaries or anything else that you’ve seen on television so that it can really be a new show and become its own identity so you aren’t confused as to if it’s linked with any other show. I think we’re really trying to define who we are as a separate show from all the other supernatural shows. I think they are adding elements of Wiccan mythology if you will, but that’s not really my department. That’s a whole other bag of tricks that I’m just trying to figure out as I go along.

SG: I know you’re not the writer, but it’s an interesting possibility. How far into the show are you shooting?

BR: Right now we are on episode 5. We just started episode 5.

SG: Having also done Scream 4, did you have an interest in horror?

BR: I did. Doing Scream 4 was really my first touch with any genre type world. So it was such a brief encounter. I only worked on the film for two days so it was such a short-lived project for me. It sort of left me thinking, “Could there be more for this in my life?” or “What exactly is this world?” When this opportunity came along to work with Kevin again, it was such a great opportunity and I thought it would be such a fun thing and a challenge as an actress to be able to do something completely different from my character in Life Unexpected and work in this genre type world again.

SG: Does Cassie have sort of a reverse of Twilight because she and Adam (Thomas Dekker) have a natural connection, but they're trying to resist because Adam's dating her best friend?

BR: Exactly. There’s something to be had about two people who were meant for each other but they’ll never be able to be together. I think between the yearning and the lust for that relationship, it’s really going to intrigue an audience and want to watch how their relationship develops and if it develops.

SG: What interaction have you had with Secret Circle fans so far?

BR: We went to Comic-Con which was really cool. Our show hasn’t even aired yet, so just to have fans at all and people who are excited about the show is really cool. I was overwhelmed at the amount of people that came to our panel. We had 2000 people at our panel and I was like they haven’t even seen our show, why are they here, why do they even care about us? It’s so great just to have that fan base from the books and then also Kevin’s fan base alone, people who follow what he does and are interested in what he has to offer furthermore.

SG: How overwhelmed do you get with fan questions on Twitter?

BR: There’s the occasional Twitter. It’s fun. Right now it’s not overwhelming at all. If anything, it’s just flattering and it’s great to know that we’re working towards something. We’re just trying to make the fans happen and make a show that people will enjoy watching.

SG: When did you change Brittany to Britt?

BR: That was a weird change. Basically, no one really calls me Brittany. No one’s ever really called me Brittany except for myself sometimes when I’m speaking in the third person. My family’s always called me B and my representatives always call me Britt. It was a strange thing when fans started calling me Brittany. It was just a weird disconnect. My manager came up to me one day because actually the director of Dan in Real Life had asked him if I’d ever thought about changing my name. My manager was like, “Well, no, we don’t really want to worry about it.” Then finally my manager was like, “Maybe you should change your name.” I was like, “Whatever, dude. Just let me know what you want to do.” He was like, “What do you feel about Britt?” I was like, “It’s just a name. People are going to call me Britt, people are going to call me Brittany, people are going to call me B. They’ll call me whatever they want to call me regardless of what I’m credited as so whatever you think is going to be best for me in the future is great.” So we just made the change. I’ll go by whatever you want to call me, but I think we’re sticking with Britt for now just because there are so many Brittanys out there. It was the most popular name the year I was born so I think my manager was just trying to separate me a little bit.

SG: It seems like it’s worked out for you.

BR: Yeah, I guess so.

The Family Tree is now playing. The Secret Circle premiers Thursday, September 15 at 9PM.