Hello Rage Comics

My first rage comic!

En Route: 19+ Hours from SFO to Singapore

Ravi and I boarded quite smoothly at SFO for our midnight flight to Singapore. Most flights to India from SFO run late in the night so there were few lines. At the departure gate the most striking feature was the large number of elderly Indians seated in wheelchairs, lined up to board the plane before all other passengers. After 10 or so elderly passengers boarded another pattern emerged, the 15-20 families with young children lined up for pre-boarding. It was quite a contrast to the typical New York or LA domestic flights to which I'm more accustomed.

Traveling Economy Class on Singapore is not bad at all. TV screens behind every seat, with audio/video/gaming options have been standard ever since my earliest memory of flying Singapore as a young boy. The quality of food is good and there are great snacks and cocktails available at any time. I'm thinking of living largely as a vegetarian on this trip so kicked of our in flight meals with the tasty "Indian Vegetarian" option. I got about 5 hours of sleep, otherwise I mostly read thru my India and SE Asia Lonely Planet guides.

After a 1.5 hour layover in Hong Kong we continued on to Singapore. Ravi and I each sipped a refreshing "Singapore Sling", the only cocktail either of us consumed on the whole 19 hour journey. The last, and perhaps most important point to note with Singapore Air's service (just kidding guys) is that essentially all the hostesses are demur, polite, and beautiful and all wear a traditional one piece Singaporean dress. Also essential to my sanity on the very pleasant 19 hour flight (can't stress the duration enough) was the awesome selection of movies, Batman I & II (the new ones), Wall-E, Entourage the tv show, so forth and so on.

Nov 5 Obama makes every Headline, Case Closed.

I just wanted to tie up the factual, but satirical newspaper-hunting essay from a couple weeks ago. In short, several days after the election I found a single Nov 5 SF Chronicle in a random liquor store in the Richmond district. I was somewhat tipsy and it was quite late so my mind wouldn't allow me to purchase it. I may have been totally incredulous at the time as well. Fear not, there is a happy ending. At 3x the original cost, I purchased 5 copies of the Nov 5 SF Chronicle edition from their website. I received the copies yesterday straight to my house with 5 "special edition" inserts (whatever that means). Last but not least, out of all the comments I received from the previous article, this story is the best: my friend in LA purchased 300 copies of the LA Times very early in the morning on the 5th, 2 weeks later he'd sold all the copies at a marked up price (anywhere from 2x-20x his original cost) not a bad profit! That's definitely a "hustle", if I've ever seen one.

PROMO: This week I'm starting my backpacking trip through Asia. Please visit gurublogstheworld.blogspot.com to keep abreast of my experiences.

God Speed.

More Megapixels, lower quality photos?

An explanation of why more MPs is not always a good thing for small digi-cams or digital SLRs. Undoubtedly, a good Christmas recession article.

Why My Hope & Optimism Flickered but Only for an Ephemeral Moment Yesterday: A Tale of Self Imposed Idleness and Newspaper Production Treachery

I was elated at Mr. Obama's election Tuesday Night. It became a Tuesday that surpassed even the most super of Super Tuesdays. When my drunken revelry ended I returned home and dozed off, dreaming of black sheep and change and the stuff fairy tales are made of (viz. Obama's sweat and the water that's collected in his shower drain). When I woke up it was a new day. A bright new day with infinite happiness producing possibilities all at my fingertips. I had a smile on my face and a spring in my step and I basked in all the post election reporting that was going on. I was consuming all the news: online, on cable TV, on the Radio... all the news, save for one exception: "all the news that's fit to print". Where was my morning paper? My family doesn't get the paper regularly anymore, who does these days? And that beckons a side note: yes, I live at home with my family. And yes, I'm almost 30 years old. I don't currently have a job and in my case that really does mean I do absolutely no "productive" work. Consequently, I have TONS of free time on my hands. It's a lot like that song by the Styx, which for some reason I always thought of as being by Foreigner until I actually wrote this essay. The chorus is "Too Much Time on My Hands". Ah, the power of the Internet to educate AND simultaneously destroy the newspaper industry's pursuit of revenue and growth. So where was my hard copy? My "GOBAMA" headline. Where was my November 5th edition of the WSJ or NYTimes or more realistically in the East Bay my Tri Valley Herald, Mercury, or Contra Costa Times? At 11AM I set out to find a copy; happy go lucky, carefree, optimistic of the bright future ahead... or was I? It seemed that I was already feeling the cold unforgiving burden of a looming shadow. I soon realized it was just our typical 60 degree Fall California weather, not a cold unforgiving burden. Whatever that is.

Before starting my quest for the election paper I ate lunch. I started my search at the Safeway complex where I'd eaten lunch. Not surprisingly the metal paper holder thingy that works on the honor system was completely sold out. It's noon, I thought to myself, I'll find a paper elsewhere. Little did I know how desperate I'd become.

An hour later I'd scoured 5 other locations, covering a 5 mile east-west stretch of the City. No one had the paper. I chatted cordially with Barnes and Noble customer service employees, gas station attendants, and even one other poor soul I encountered who was on an identical quest at the Valero near the end of Town. No one could give me answers, no one could give me a paper. I had started the bright beautiful day full of hope and earnest optimism. By afternoon my life was becoming quite dismal. And let's be clear I'm not exaggerating by saying my whole life was looking bleak. This quest for the morning paper - with the election headline, "Obaminator Wins!" his face proud and smiling on the front page -this quest consumed every fibre of my being. I have no job, I have lots of free time, the paper search was my sole objective and the singular measure by which this bright new day would ultimately be judged. And things were not going well at all. So it is no exaggeration when I say that by 3PM yesterday November 5th nearly all my optimism and hope saw a dramatic reversal to utter despair and hopelessness. Hope + lessness, not Hope.

Empty Metal Newspaper Containers Are Really A Public Eyesore. Seriously. They Need better upkeep.

I returned home dejected, feeling trodden upon in a downward fashion. I had no election paper, I failed in my quest. Around 4PM I started to become increasingly paranoid about this whole sordid affair. Maybe Obama and his campaigners were in cahoots with newspaper execs. Those corporate fat cats with their big cushy expense accounts and fancy wing tipped shoes, and they're who-knows-what newsy attitudes. Maybe Obama and the Dems were in bed with the liberal media after all. Conspiracy theories were multiplying at a pace akin to Sarah Palin's family. And by that I truly do mean I had about 1 or 2 new conspiracy ideas the whole day. It seemed as clear as a half empty glass of water to me that the Newspaper Industry big-wigs, what with their big wigs and cushy jobs and big salaries, had gone as far as to mastermind the election of our nation's FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT with only one purpose... to increase the revenues of the ailing newspaper business. It was clear as day, indeed, people were waiting in lines as long as the voter lines from just a day prior, to buy the election paper. Some were hoarding and purchasing as much as 50 at a time in the Washington DC area. It was like a post Great War German Bread line except without the wheelbarrows of horribly inflated German money.

There was something even worse than the thought that big wig liberal media corporate fat cats having masterminded and enthroned a black president just for profits. It ringed very wall streety like to me, that's for sure, but there was something even more unsettling. What if only a few people had emptied the tin-metal old rubbish looking newspaper dispensary units that are commonly found in grocery store complexes and strip malls? What if some opportunistic liberal fat-cat-aspiring SOBs had inserted the $0.75 or $1.00 for the morning paper and instead taken ALL the copies... that would certainly have been against the honor code set up for the metal newspaper dispensary contraptions... and it also provided a conspiracy theory to compete with my earlier one about the Dems and the newspaper industry colluding to increase sales on Nov 5th. Because why would the newspaper companies want their papers to be stolen... why would they want to increase revenues at corner newsstands in New York City and other places like New York City, while at the same time losing suburban newspaper post election day revenues from their metal tin can newspaper box units?

It's a mystery I have yet to solve with all my free time today, this Wednesday November 6th, 2008. And I have a lot of free time. I lost money in the stock market, I don't work at all, I live at home with my parents... saying that I have free time is an understatement of the facts.

I will say this though: my "healthy cynicism" in our "nation" has been successfully "restored".

My friends... Hope + Lessness... Hope + Lessness. My friends.

Vacant Strip Mall from the 90s Boom that now has no anchor store.

Napa Free Evangelical Church Billboard

A couple of us visited my friend's Cabernet grape harvest last weekend in a Napa family vineyard. The closest parking lot was the Napa Free Evangelical Church parking lot and I snapped this photo, it's a message that speaks for itself. I recall this strategy being used by Will Ferrell's character Ricky Bobby on Cal right before their last race towards the end of the movie.

Wamu & Karma; Slant Rhyme or Bad Coincidence?

I just wanted to get something out here after the Wamu failure. I was near-sightedly invested in Wamu and my shares were wiped out, which made me very very very sad. Thursday night the FDIC takeover and JP Morgan sale were announced and my stomach twisted up and plummeted down an abyss. Ok, dramatics are over now. The next day I made a couple deposits at my local wamu and it was business as usual. On my way back to San Francisco, I had forgotten my wallet and needed toll fare so I stopped at another unfamiliar wamu and haggled with the teller jovially, to please give me $100 despite not having any identification, she asked me several security questions and after making several notes on my account relented and gave me the money, which I primarily needed to pay the $4 toll (but I figured why not take out 100 while i'm at it). I'm glad everything has worked out seamlessly for depositors despite my being wiped out as a shareholder. I also wanted to say that there was a Sikh private bank security guard sitting at the entrance of the East Bay wamu I visited without ID and when I walked in to fill out my deposit slip I noticed he was fervently, to himself, reciting and singing in a low tone a constant religious hymn. Woohoo.