A Retraction, A Clarification, and a Suggestion to Take Action...

Congratulations, it seems, are not in order. After reading the post I wrote last week announcing our engagement, Christena provided some "clarification". As it turns out, it was her intention to coerce me into proposing, not to actually propose herself. When I told her it was too late, I'd already accepted her proposal, she informed me that as no proposal had been extended, my acceptance was rendered invalid. As you can see, this unforeseen turn of events has left me in the uncomfortable position of being stuck somewhere between engaged and not engaged. We'll call it some form engagement-purgatory, duration of sentence unknown...

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One other housekeeping item. There was a news item circulating around last week regarding former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville and his association with an apparently fraudulent investment outfit run by David Stroud. I received numerous inquiries from concerned Slicers curious to know if David Stroud was the same person as The Strowd, who I have written about so many times on the Razor.

Thankfully, they are not the same person. In fact, they don't even spell Stroud (Strowd) in the same way. Further, The Strowd's real name is Michael.

I decided to call him "The Strowd" because I didn't feel a generic name like Michael adequately illustrated what a unique individual he is. When I was first getting to know The Strowd, and was trying to come up with a more representative name for him, I mis-remembered that his blog URL was www.thestrowdblog.com. So I decided to call him "The Strowd". As it turns out, his blog URL was actually just www.strowdblog.com without the "the". This was an error on my part, but I think "The Strowd" still does a reasonably adequate job of denoting that he is an enigma and not an average character. (You will notice the link to his blog no longer works. The Internet was not big enough for the both of us, he conceded that I am the superior blogger, and took his offline.)

As an aside, I actually do know David Stroud. I went to college with him, we interned with the same firm, and I think I still have the sweatshirt he gave me for Christmas in 1998. I have no idea if he is guilty of what he is being charged with. I haven't seen him or talked to him in years. If my memory is correct, I ran into him in St. Louis in 2003, and I haven't talked to him since.

I have no idea how anyone could misconstrue the previous paragraph as investment advice, but just to be clear, IT IS NOT. I only mentioned it, because I thought it was funny that when people asked me if David Stroud was The Strowd, I would say no, The Strowd works in the IT field, but coincidentally I used to be pretty good friends with David...

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Kony2012

I'm sure most of you have seen the people linking the Kony2012 video that details the crimes of Joseph Kony and shines a spotlight on the atrocities he's commited against the children of sub-saharan Africa. After watching the video, viewers are encouraged to donate money to Invisible Children, so they can continue to support the children of Africa and raise global awareness of their plight. Just hours after the video went viral, detractors began posting links questioning the motives and efficiency of Invisible Children.

If you watched the video and want to help out, but don't want to do it through the Invisible Children organization, I would encourage you to consider http://causelife.org/.

I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with a Ugandan orphan last year and I'm thrilled that awareness has skyrocketed due to the efforts of Invisible Children. With that said, they don't seem to be particularly efficient with the way they allocate donations and they certainly aren't the only organization that you can donate to...