The Rage Diaries

Comics: a powerful medium for storytelling

It's not all tights and flight. Coco Wang has drawn ten comics illustrating stories that have come out of the Sichaun province earthquake. Because they show scenarios in which the very best of human nature rose and responded to a terrible tragedy, these comics are both hopeful and heartbreaking. They are also unforgettable.

Wang said in an interview:

My purpose of creating these comics is that I want to create a forever monument of the victims, dead people, rescuers and volunteers of 5.12 earthquake. A way to let everyone in the world remember this event, remember the sorrow and regrets, remember the love, courage, hope and kindness of every Chinese who was involved in the earthquake. Especially, I want the foreign people to know these stories.

She's succeeded.

What we miss out on when we go digital

I'm on the lagging edge of the LP listeners: I spent a lot of my childhood studying record album covers and trying to figure out what they had to do with the music (AutoAmerican blew my mind in the third grade). I'd make up stories -- perhaps the dragon on the Asia cover was summoned by the bridge in "Heat of the Moment"? And wasn't it nice that everyone in the Mamas and the Papas were such good friends, they could all hang out in a bathtub together?

Then I was buying CDs by high school and -- well, jewelboxes don't have the same visual cachet.

Perhaps we as a culture are poorer for that. Because how else can we see such delightful treasures as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has collected in "Worst Album Cover Ever?"

A lot of these covers are surprisingly poignant, as the subjects project nothing more than an earnest desire to entertain the listener, and by golly, they'll do that if it means covering themselves in sour cream and shocking the grandchildren. What can I say? I'm a sucker for sincerity. However, some of these album covers suggest richer backstories. Those are after the jump.

Fiscal fitness -- what price groceries?

I've been carrying around my receipts for the last two weeks, and apparently showing you all that I have completely missed the point to "regular" and "timely" updates. BUT ...

Food costs for the week of May 17 to May 24, 08 were:
$38.50 at the farmer's market
$64.77 at the grocery store

Phil tried to talk me down in the parking lot by pointing out that we did some righteous stocking up -- $5.89 for four packs of the good semi-sweet chocolate chips, $8.75 for a 12-pack of It's-Its, $12 for a 12-pack of Moosehead. But oh, I was not happy. Only the icy-cool sweetness of an It's-It made me feel better about spending $103.27 that week.

Food costs for the week of May 24 to May 31, 08 were:

$43 at the farmer's market
$57.10 at the grocery store

Man, the stone fruits at the farmer's market just about killed me last week. But the pluots -- so sweet and so cold. And speaking of sweet and cold, can you believe we only have two It's-Its left? I thought we were stocking up!

So how is your grocery spending this month? What were your smart buys? What were the splurges you are absolutely unrepentant about? Where are you cutting back?

What if I don't want to be what I eat?

I like to read two or more books at a time, and the two I just finished reading  seem weirdly complimentary: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Once I got past the situational amusement of the book by the non-chef including recipes while the book by the chef most decidedly did not, I realized that the two are united by a common belief that beats beneath each chapter: what we choose to eat, how we choose to prepare it and why we made these choices all reflect who we are.

It was all just a beautiful dream ...

Some analysts say the scrutiny is well deserved even if it slows borrowing and home sales because it will assure better loans are made. Compared with standards over a long period of time, these people say, lending guidelines are not all that conservative; it is just that the nation became accustomed to credit at easy terms.

-- "In Housing, Strong Turn Weak," NYT, May 28, 08

Is all this the end of the world? For the richest country on the planet, certainly not. But it does represent the end of a decade or more during which Americans were permitted and even encouraged by the rest of the world -- and by their own leaders -- to live way beyond their means. As a result, the United States has gone from being the largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor. For the first time since the early 1980s, Americans will have to endure several years of uncomfortably slow growth and uncomfortably high inflation as the U.S. economy regains its balance and creates a foundation for more solid and sustainable growth.

-- "The Fading of the Mirage Economy," WaPo, May 28, 08

One of the things the column mentions is that airlines are going to have to readjust their prices to reflect the real cost of flying. In other words: prices are going to go up for the same experience. And it appears that we'll see the same phenomenon in other facets of consumer spending.

What I'm curious about: so much of American identity is tied up in what we buy and how we spend. Will the need to tighten the belt prompt a self-identity crisis among people? Or will readjusting one's spending provide an exciting new opportunity for self-renewal or reinvention?

Every day will be like this when we're married

We're sitting at home, reading the papers (online) and just chillaxing. Isabel, our smaller and formerly smarter cat, launches into her mid-morning freakout, and goes to round the corner at a dead kitty sprint. However, because our floors are all hardwood, she goes sliding sideways, pinwheels against an opposite corner, then scrambles to get her legs underneath her so she can resume sprinting.

Once I stop laughing, I tell Phil, "See, this is why I am reluctant to get rugs for the house."

"Because we'd lose our cheap entertainment," he confirms.

(Wondering who the handsome couple is up there? Watch this and see why Phil & I have embraced them as gurus.)

If it's Friday ...

... it must be time for some presidential contender to talk about somebody shooting at Barack Obama.

Seriously, I'm beginning to think it's a trend. Last Friday, Mike Huckabee was joking about someone taking shots at Obama -- to the NRA, no less! Whose audience members laughed! Which boggles considering that any sort of assassination on the campaign trail is not going to reflect well on the gun-wielding-Americans demographic.

And now we've got Hillary Clinton all, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

Should we open a betting pool on who will make next Friday's "Obama's gonna get shot" remark?

(On a less flip note: I am saddened by how easy it seems to be for people to assume the worst of Americans here. "You've got an African-American running for president -- of course someone's going to take him out. Have you seen what kind of people are voting?" seems to be the default assumption here. If that isn't more dismissive than any one of a number of "bitter" assessments, I don't know what is.)

Revenge of the tiny houses!

The most recent issue of Money magazine has a feature, "The Incredible Shrinking House," which reports:

Generations X and Y seem more intrigued with life downtown where they can enjoy easy access to restaurants and entertainment, a minimal commute and smaller, easier-to-care-for living spaces.

"Ask anyone how many rooms in their house they don't regularly go into and most will admit that they actually live in a small percentage of their home," says Marianne Cusato, an architect who used to design 3,000-square-foot-plus homes but now specializes in cottages.

And then today in the WSJ, there's "Ceilings Come Down to Earth," which finds:

Major home builders including Pulte Homes, Toll Brothers and K. Hovnanian say more buyers are looking for the maximum number of rooms and square footage for their money, so they're opting to have a loft, bedroom or playroom built in the air space where the plans call for a double-height ceiling. "People don't want it anymore," says Ken Gancarczyk, head of builder services for KB Home. The big Los Angeles-based builder has stopped offering double-height great rooms in response to falling demand.

I know I've talked before about how weirdly unlivable the McMansions felt when I ventured into them. But I do wonder what will happen in these neighborhoods where these monstrous houses are currently packed cheek-by-jowl. Will we see a teardown effect where people will buy the land and build a smaller place on the lot? Will we see battles as people attempt to convert McMansions to multifamily units? Will we see these neighborhoods slide into crime? And how long will this shift away from giant overstuffed houses take?

Not identifying with identity politics

I have always called myself a feminist. However, after reading all of the below, I'm beginning to think someone's going to knock on my door and revoke my feminist cred.

Animal + vegetable != miracle

My tomatoes are doing beautifully. I have four plants -- two brandywine, one green zebra and one yellow plum -- across two raised beds, and they are now so hearty and vigorous, I've had to stake them to the skeleton of a vandalized "Yes on H" sign someone stuck in our yard.

(Side digression: Alameda's about to vote on Measure H, which would tax homeowners to make up a massive school budget shortfall. People who dig the prop have been putting signs in their yard. However, we can home last Friday and found that someone had stuck a "Yes on H" sign in our yard with a big, black "NO" spray-painted across it. Anyway, I huffily recycled the sign but kept the the metal frame for it. Thank you, vandals, for saving me the cost of a tomato cage.)

Because I had some room left over in the raised beds, I figured I'd do some co-planting. I have some French breakfast radishes coming up in one bed. But alas, in the other ... I have a pile of dirt and a suspicious hollow. There are no green onions coming up, because Zito has apparently been peeing on them. I've scooped out the dirt and have a screen over the bed now to prevent our idiot cat from jumping back in there, but still ... if it's not one thing in the garden, it's another. (At left: the pissy culprit lolls in "his" chair, which is parked in our garage instead of at the dump where it ought to be. He has no reason to look as irritated as he does.)

I can only imagine my headache if I really committed to urban homesteading, like these people: