Travelin Monkey

I know who you are

The photo albums are down because all the pictures got corrupted. I won’t be putting them back up until my entire site goes through a re-design.

Also, some of the links to my stories don’t work. Look at the right hand side under CATEGORIES. Rants & Raves has a bunch of my random writings.

In order to properly understand why we seek acceptance, we must first think  of acceptance as something tangible, allocating the properties of quantity and quality. When one thinks of these properties, one can imagine that there exists a hierarchy in both quantity and quality; you can have a lot of people accept you, but it could be a superficial acceptance. This is known in high school as the “most popular” person around. You can also have zero acceptance by all, also known as a recluse. These two situations represent the tail ends, the eccentricities of the acceptance spectrum. Hence, one can see that acceptance is proportional to shallowness. The more one seeks to be accepted, the more shallow that person is. Why?

Insecurities force us to not want to be rejected and when one seeks many for acceptance, it draws on the fact that those who will ‘accept’ do so on a superficial, what you see is what you get, level.  You can then conclude that this person seeks this level of acceptance because that is the depth in which they understand themselves, to the extent where they are comfortable and secure with themselves. The deeper one dives into the self, the less acceptance they seek, the more narrow the pool of people from whom they seek acceptance becomes.

There are four groups of people you would want to accept you; strangers, family, friends, and lovers. Those on the most shallow end seek acceptance not only from friends, but also mostly from strangers. They care what people they don’t know say about them. I feel that when you seek acceptance from family, you do so with a knife at hand, ready to cut the umbilical cord and become an adult, break free and become an individual to suffer in the adult world.

You seek acceptance from lovers because you share something sacred, something intimate, something that makes you feel special and yet very vulnerable, from your body to your heart, you let them in hoping they take better care of what they find than the owner. Acceptance from a lover is hard to attain, easy to lose, and more valuable and meaningful to the self than anything else in the world.

And finally, we reach what we deal with in a day to day basis, what we question day in and day out. Why do I care if my friends accept me? The answer is a very interesting one and ties in all the other ‘acceptances’ together. Although there are many ‘types’ of friends, the essence is still the same. When you attain a friend, you “let them in” less than a lover and not quite like family. They are visitors whom you tread your path of life with, they are your allies against hardships we all face.

Do you know what happens when you let them in? They walk with you, sometimes they push you forward, sometimes they carry you forward, but no matter what they do, the leave their imprint on your path of life, an imprint sometimes so deep that you can never forget or erase it. An instantaneous view of that short path with a friend can be said to add meaning to that part of your life. You tell the friend “You have augmented tremendous meaning to my life and it is something that will stay with me until my last breath. And in this instant, you have helped give this section of my life a more defined meaning with your imprint”

When one sums up the ‘instances’ of their life with the friends that left these never-ending marks, that is when they attain meaning to their existence. And thus, this is why we seek acceptance from friends, to help give the time we have a touch of spice by accepting their imprints as they accept ours. Mine, yours, your neighbor, it doesn’t matter who passed by. In the very end, at our funerals, if you could sum up the memories all these imprints that are being relived in mourning, you would end up with a movie of what that person meant to the world, to those people, no matter how deep nor shallow.

This is why we endlessly seek acceptance, to exponentially increase the value of our life, maybe selfishly for ourselves, maybe selflessly for the family itself, or maybe altruistically for someone we don’t even know, as a beacon of inspiration. In the end, Memento Mori, remember death, for that is when the movie of your life and your imprints will be relived. Make sure they play the movie you seek to be re-lived by living as if you are recording.

It has been a great 4 years for me and this series.

It all started in Brasil in 2003. I had an 8 hour lay-over in Sao Paolo, it was the only book in English and cost $35. I had watched the movie in 2000 or so and wasn’t too impressed, but man o man, when I picked up that book, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think, all I could do is read, and read, and read.

I landed in Los Angeles with blood shot eyes, in that one plane trip I was done with The Goblet of Fire. What next? BOOK 5! I had 24 hours in LA, the very next day I was to go on a flight to Frankfurt, connecting to Athens for my engagement. The first thing I did was drive to Price Club and pick up Order of the Phoenix for $15!!

I spent the ENTIRE trip to Europe reading that book also. I couldn’t sleep, all I could do is read, analyze, break everything apart, it was a GREAT book. JK does a fantastic job honing in on the innocence of childhood with the problems we face growing up… that mixed in with a fantastic imagination and great characters!

I had to wait 2 YEARS!! TWO!! Then in July, I skipped out of a class to go buy Book 6. Luckily I had some time off, or else I would have missed a lot of class time reading the book! It was so… amazing..

And since that day in July in Brasil, I have been eagerly waiting for the last book.. what really happens? How does it end? Will my theories play out the way I think they will?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what happens. All that matters is that a woman who had left her husband had a magnificent idea and cared so much to share it with the rest of the world, that she provided people with an adventure outside of the internet, outside of television, and in our own minds. It has been about 10 years for some of the people that were on the band wagon early on, less for most of us.. but WHAT AN ADVENTURE!!

Tomorrow I will be really sad.. There are about 4-6 weeks of Harry Potter mayhem left. No more changeling theories, no more reading up on the vector physics of spells, or any other crazy rendition of who RAB is and who will die and where Snape’s loyalties lay… It will come to an end..

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes

“It isn’t neither the beginning nor the end of the road that matter, only the path taken”

Which brings me to the people at NY Times & Sun and the other American companies that just plain didn’t respect the embargo. THESE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN FOR US FANS, WE ARE THE ONES THAT BENEFIT FROM THEM! We took the journey, we engulfed our lives in the magic. We could care less about spoilers, we could care less about what really happens… it is the anticipation that matters, it is knowing that there are millions of people waiting .. EAGERLY WAITING for the clock to strike midnight tonight.. it is the fact that hardly anyone will sleep this Friday night and that as soon as they are done reading, we will all meet up on the internet .. some to cope, others to brag, most for company.

JK has brought the world together through the magic of her writing, she has crossed over into the realm of innocence and childhood and given children what they have been lacking, what our governments, parents, and schools couldn’t do. She has given people a passion for reading, she has opened imaginations world-wide and has grouped people from all aspects of life together.

Was it strange when I went in for happy hour at the local bar to hear adults talking about July 21, 2007? No, not at all. It brought a smile to my face..

Thank You JK…

This is probably the first year in maybe half a decade that I am sad to see the year end. It’s been a wonderful and amazing year, with a lot of everything, especially travel and new friends.

We took off to Punta Del Este, the best beach area this side of the equator. It is where all the brazilian and argentinean hotties go for their summer break. The weather here is a little off, hot during the day and windy/cold at night. There aren’t a lot of people there yet, and the weather hasn’t hit the peak of summer, but this is also the first year that I am here for January, which I was always told was the hottest and best month for vacationing in South Amerca.

The food is still great and the entertainment is always fun. We are thinking about heading out to Buenos Aires for a couple of days, but from what I remember Argentina to be in the summer, you are talking about 100 degrees with 100% humidity.

In about an hour we head out to Mercado Del Puerto for the annual festivities of the end of the year. It will be somewhat similar to the partying and riots of Rome after the World Cup, but with nothing more than the end of the year to celebrate!!

I came home from Europe and found something I had not expected to find. There, in the pile of bills and garbage mail was a letter from a friend I hadn’t communicated with for about 6 years now. He was staying in Calipatria, about to celebrate his 9th birthday December 2, 2006, this year in a maximum security jail.

I can’t believe it’s been 9 years since then, but time does fly. I had visited him 4 times prior, the last time he said “I know what is going to happen, you are going to continue on with your life and so will everyone else while I stay here frozen in time in jail and soon everyone will forget about me.” Those words echoed in my head for the next 5 years. I had lost contact with him. His parents sold their house and moved to pay for the lawyer bills, he got transfered to a different jail, and there I sat with no way of writing him. I had since moved from my undergrad apartment, I had a stint in Washington DC for 3 months, then I moved to San Francisco for 4 years! So, it was a very nice surprise to see the letter. It took me a while to write back, mainly because I still had all my crap from SF in boxes and I had just come back from Europe, so I had some massive organization to do.

I wrote back and told him I would visit him for his birthday. He sent me a letter with his parents phone number and I coordinated. It turns out that Calipatria is about 230 miles west from Pheonix and about 100 miles north of Mexico. I went to sleep Friday night at 11 pm, but didn’t really get much rest because the guys were getting wasted at the house, laughing about how I was going to go for a conjugal visit in the morning. At about 3 am I got out of bed, found all of my breakfast food eaten, and aggravated, I hit the shower. I got in the car, filled up the tank, got a nasty cheese burger from AM/PM (it sucks to look for food that early in the morning), and made my way out to Calipatria.

KROQ had a concert in Indio and another one in Cochella. People told me that these places where in BFE, but let me tell you, when the place you need to go to is about 40 miles PAST that, wow wow wee wow wow! 102 miles on the 10 to the 86 Spur South was interesting. But then I drove past the ENTIRE FREAKIN LENGTH of the Salton Sea. At first I thought it might be interesting to check it out, but it sucks. I have no idea why anyone would ever EVER want to visit the Salton Sea, but hey, who am I to judge?

I got on the road at 4 am and arrived at Calipatria Maximum Security prison at 7:30 am. I parked my car behind a long line of cars and took a little nap. At around 8 am the cops opened the gates. They gave me a number, and I went to park at the visitor’s section. All jails look the same, it doesn’t matter what level of security you are at, they all look, smell, and feel the same. The difference is what happens on the inside.

I walked into the room and quit frankly, wasn’t surprised. There were a bunch of single mothers, mostly mexican and black, with their boyfriend/husband’s/gangster’s names tattooed on their necks, breasts, arms, wherever. The kids were not tamed at all, and just observing them the 2 hours that I stood around waiting for #109 to be called, I could tell that already at that young age they showed no respect for authority. Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that kids will be kids and are expected to not sit still, but I’ve seen children all over the world and it is very obvious when a child is being a brat vs when a child has no respect for authority. They just aren’t the same.

Luckily, I had already visited before and was cleared for entry rather quickly. I hoped on the bus the inmate was driving, headed to Building B, walked in through the door, and had it locked behind me. I sat at the table and continued to wait, but I was having a good time just people watching, observing, and attempting to understand. The women were interesting. Most of them were fat, and like I mentioned before, tatted up, but their reactions when they saw the inmates was ridiculous. They were legitimately heart broken, could you claim that they were in love?? I have no idea, but there they were sneaking to corners to make out and have a couple of cheap feels.

My friend finally came. It was interesting to see him. He, obviously, has changed. He explained the rules of the game inside, the different gangs that exist, how they take respect very seriously because the slightest disrespect gets you killed. He explained the initiation system and who gets hit first (rapist and child molesters). Basically, once you are in, you are either part of the mayhem or one of the people they ask to get hit for gang initiation. It makes for an interesting argument. See, jails started to seclude people whom were deemed unfit for our society, in complete solitude. That progressed to a ‘correctional’ institution you have today. People are removed from society, but to be taught how to integrate back into it, or so we think. What really happens is the behavior they are tried for is reinforced, even needed, for the basic animal instinct of survival.

We chatted for about 6 hours, after which I realized that his life froze 9 years ago. What he knows, what he asks about… you could tell that all he does is sit in his cell and think about memories of his past. He is allowed out for 5 minutes a day. 2 minutes to shower, 3 minutes to make a phone call. It’s Max security after all. He has a 2 foot 1.5″ window that faces another building. I asked him what he does all day… he watches TV and reads books. It’s weird talking to someone frozen in time 9 years back, but on the other hand, he was semi versed on world affairs and books. It was the first time I had a semi-intelligent conversation with the guy.

The drive home sucked. I hadn’t slept all day, visiting hours closed at 3 pm, all the women were off to go bang the pimp they probably worked for to make ends meet for their kids, and I got lost on the way home. The shit SoCo drivers mixed with some rain made for a crappy drive home. I got back at 8 pm and passed out.

And so ended my trip out to Calipatria…

I look forward to coming home, turning on the laptop, surfing the internet, enjoying some good music, probably a bottle (or three) of wine, and our projector on whatever. Part of my daily routine after work is surfing through Myspace and Craigslist, mostly for the entertainment value of it. I would have never joined Myspace if it hadn’t been for a friend I wanted to keep in contact with, and Craigslist was introduced to me while I lived in San Francisco.

So I move back from San Francisco to the San Fernando Valley (yeah, I know.. I know) and I realize that life.. is boring. The sidewalks are all cracked, full of weeds, and unkempt because NOBODY WALKS ANYWHERE! The garbage I had in my hand stayed there for a while because the lack of pedestrians yields no need for garbage cans anywhere in the valley!

Three of us moved in together, the three of us single and out of long term relationships. We went through the typical gambit of emotions (despise, hate, rage, self pity, and acceptance) until we came to terms with what had happened in life. That is when we started enjoying life and analyzing everything.

During that time I started to surf Craigslist. The first place I went to was the ‘Woman Seeking Woman’ section, just to see what was going on in the lesbian world. Wow, was I shocked. Women complained about women the same way men complain about women.

It then dawned on me. My female friends kept on telling me that they thought men were too emotional, but I was confused. Weren’t all these love novels written about a female’s desire to be swept away by prince charming on his white horse? Weren’t women waiting for that one guy to sweep them off their feet in their live action fairy tale? What about all this Hollywood garbage love stories that they throw out there (Titanic, anything J’Lo makes, etc etc)? Didn’t women want that emotional guy that listens?

Yes, but only if he was their gay friend or the ’sweet’ guy they would never hook up with. Women call men dogs, but in reality, there is a vicious cycle that begins with a woman and ends with the guy. Take, for example, your first experience with a person from the opposite gender (junior high times that is). Girls at the time watch these soap operas, read these stupid Seventeen magazines, and eat up the stupid Hollywood bullshit. They, unfortunately, are stuck with little boys. Yes, I’ll admit it, women do mature earlier than men. How could they not? They start developing before us, they have a hormonal surge WAY before our testicles decide to stray away from the warmth of our loins, they just… click before us.

So, they seek what the magazine tells them they need to look for. They test everything about the relationship to figure out “Is He Right For You” and beware if you get a 5/10!!! Innocence is still there, but it is being manipulated by… wait for it.. wait for it… SOCIETY!! YES PEOPLE! SOCIETY! When you are young, the only thing that matters is acceptance, being popular, and NOT sticking out. As you get older, those who understand life seek their uniqueness and go on life journeys to find themselves.

Now, imagine being this boy dating a girl who is on a different level than he is. Suddenly, he is thrown into argument after argument because of, quite frankly, nothing! His innocence towards relationships after a while turns into life experience. Suddenly, society (and I blame everyone, even myself in this) ruined another boy and another girl. The boy grows up to be the asshole all women despise but can’t seem to keep their knickers on for… and the girl grows up to be the “sexually liberated Sex and the City” whore (I don’t buy the stupid sexual liberation movement, sorry. If you are promiscuous, it is because of some deep underlying reason that you hate yourself and need to hurt yourself by humping anything and everything. Psychology owns you.)

Of course, these are the extremes of the Bell Curve that our society inevitably creates. Most of us will lie in the middle, somewhere along the lines of asshole and whore. We probably have made our mistakes, maybe even some regrets. There might have been a period of time of promiscuity, there might have been a ‘born-again’ virgin syndrome, but never the less, here we are… looking for the “hot, athletic, intelligent, mature, and can hold a conversation” person we never met.

All of this boils down to the ladder theory of relationships. I’m not sure if I read this somewhere or if someone mentioned it to me once, so I might not be on top of the entire theory, but let’s just call this the Webmaster Version of it.

There is no true friendship between a man and a woman. Under every friendship there is some attraction. It just makes sense. At some point during the friendship one will think of the other in a sexual way, it is the way we are programed, it is our animal instincts kicking in. Once a woman meets a guy, she almost instantly knows if she will or will not sleep with the guy. Maybe this isn’t a conscious decision at the time, but she knows. The guy, on the other hand, is a caveman. If she doesn’t have big boobs (not that there is anything against women with small breasts, but nature programs us to desire women with big boobs to better feed our kids, it’s a survival of our genes type of thing), a drop dead body, or a gorgeous face, we probably won’t think about sleeping with her until we think about it one day masturbating, or discuss it with the guys.

At this point, the woman has set up two ladders. One ladder is the friendship ladder, the other is the relationship ladder. If she decides that she will NOT visit on Hump Day, sorry buddy, you are stuck on the friendship ladder. The higher you find yourself on the ladder, the closer a friend you are OR the more likely it is she will sleep with/date you.

Here is where the confusion comes in, but only for the man. Men may misinterpret signs of friendship and compassion as “she wants to sleep with me.” Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong, but only the woman knows. So, we do what gorillas spend their free time doing, throw shit at trees until we find one where it sticks. And here comes the bottomless abyss. Once a guy tries to hop from the friendship ladder to the date/sex ladder, he falls into the abyss and is never heard from again.

Why? Because women are emotionally cold. Because when it comes down to it, they have better control over their emotions, they can expel desires better than men can, they can erase someone from their lives better than men can. Why is this? Because any woman anywhere in the world can find 15 idiots willing to talk to her and the rest of the world willing to sleep with her, and for us, it is a never-ending battle for the next piece of Pooty-Tang. Plus, who the hell can compete with a hormonal rage every month since the age of 13? The are just trained to be that way, nature forces it upon them!
And that is the ladder theory. I’ve heard rumors that the topmost rung on the friendship ladder could be the bottom-most rung on the date/sex ladder, but really, if that is where you find yourself, go get some self-respect and find someone worth your time.

You know, if I hadn’t lost the original database from this site and if I had invested wisely in a good host, I would have my original articles on the housing market. But, needless to say, we all make mistakes, and here I sit with nothing to show for it.

I’ve been following the housing industry for years. When I was in undergrad, I tried to buy a townhouse in Irvine so I wouldn’t have to burn my money on rent. The idea of assets and liabilities has always been crystal clear to me. Your house can never be an asset unless you can hop out of it in a heart beat, similar to what Robert Deniro told his girlfriend in Heat (will update with the exact quote when I find it).

Any which way, people seem to ignore trends, people seem to think that “it won’t happen again” and other tunnel vision ideas about the housing industry. Yes, there was this enormous boom in the real estate market over the last decade or so. And I say, so what? What that tells me is that the ruthless nature of agents from the 80’s has dwindled to nothing. When people had money (or pretended to have money via ARMs), all agents had to do was find the listing first. We have people in Orange County writing about how difficult it is to close a deal. Why? Because they don’t have those skills anymore. Now they have to be more educated than before. People are now looking for the hot deals, the lower prices, the better APRs. The illusion (delusion?) of buying any house and selling for a higher price in a couple of years, banking on a raise or an increasing economy to help pay the bills later on… is gone.

My advice? Go out, get a couple of good paying jobs. Get rid of your credit card debts, pump up your credit score, and have about $20,000 - $30,000 saved up and get ready to make a killing in about 1 year, when all the ARMs readjust for the new, much higher APRs.

Soon.. oh so soon..

If you had purchased $1000 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund, you would have $214. The best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It’s called the 401-Keg Plan.