HOTEL WAIKIKI

Tuesday's Economics

My bike didn't come factory equipped with a gas gauge, so every so often you have to tap the tank and listen for how much of an empty sound echos back.  And even though it normally amounts to little over a gallon of gasoline, I make it a point to top off my gas tank nearly every day just to play it safe.  Reset the tripometer, then a see you tomorrow Mr. gas pump.  For sure.  I'm fully aware that filling up a bike is not anywhere as expensive as filling up a car, still I was appalled today to discover that the 87% octane gasoline that I buy had risen to $4.00/gal.  That is, today's 1.07 gallons rung up as $4.00.

It's amusing that some people still blame OPEC for high gasoline prices when a hefty 40% of the oil that the US consumes is from domestic production.  Of the remaining 60%, some oil does actually get imported from non-OPEC oil producing countries such as Canada.  So, OPEC oil amounts to less than 60% of the total oil that the US guzzles.  Even with a 40-60 percent ratio though, OPEC would not exert an overwhelming effect on oil prices if not aided and abetted by US oil companies who feign that they are bound and gagged to sell their oil to their own country at the same high prices that OPEC sets as dictated under the rules of some kind of mystical World Oil Consortium which the US oil companies along with OPEC are signatories of, and, and, if the people of our great nation was not the dummies that by all indications they lead the oil companies to think they are then the stupid suckus would get on the program and invest every last copper penny of their life savings into oil stocks and the profits from the oil stocks would subsidize their gasoline tanks.  Of course, if you can't afford to buy but a few shares of big oil stocks than it don't apply.  Inversely, if you were well enough off to afford to buy many shares, high gasoline prices wouldn't be a problem.

Gadget Monday

It's a bottle opener in the mold of Startrek's USS Enterprise.  Actually, rumor has it that the reverse was true, the design of futuristic spaceship on the sci-fi TV series was based on the identical shape of a pre-existing bottle opener those days manufactured in Taiwan instead of China.  Bet you didn't know that.  You do know though that a jellyfish warning has been posted for Waikiki beach today.  Fittingly, on some days there ought to be the Internet equivalent of a jellyfish warning issued for surfing the Web.  Case in point.  This.  At any rate, I might even inaugurate every Monday of the week with a Gadget Day to commemorate the infinite number of gizmos that people have bought on the spur and never used after a week.  After a while they even forget where they buried the comfort item in their backyard.  Begs the question whether these non-essential purchases are a plain waste money?  Absolutely, not.  Period.

via Slashfood

Sunday's Surcharge

Honolulu taxi drivers are alerting the public that they're financially running on fumes because of escalating gasoline prices at the pump.  The solution they honk is for the City to allow them to tack on a fuel surcharge to their fares.  Yeah, right.  I suppose they want fries with that, too.  Taxi drivers already receive an unofficial fuel surcharge in the form of the change that the customer is suppose to receive back after paying the cab fare, but which the taxi drivers pocket.  They hand you back the dollar bills.  However, if the change (coins) that the customer is suppose to get back is 95¢ (.95 US), that's theirs.  This morning the cashier at the grocery checkout stand refused to give me back my change because she drives to work.  She needs the change to subsidize her gasoline bill.  So the kleptomanic cashier kept the change.  To her credit she didn't tack on a surcharge to the receipt.

Saturday's Random

You know they're moving back to the mainland because they're putting their appliances and furniture up for sale.  Generally, you don't associate Waikiki with garage sales or yard sales but there's a few on the sidestreets in the neighborhood every week.  It's actually illegal to use public telephone poles for your own personal classified ads section.  The trick is to adorn your non-legal sign with a few balloons to cheer folks up on what happens to be a very voggy Saturday in Waikiki.  The other week I saw this For Sale sign stenciled on a car's real window with the printing done just as professionally as those on a store's front window.  Btw, how many more days of this voggy weather?  You could mistake Honolulu for LA.

Cirque du Honolulu Council

Let's play City Council.  Meeting is now convened.  Fuckin clowns.  On the very top of the Council's agenda is the question of which particular rail technology is best for Honolulu's Light Rail mass transit project.  I could have sworn that the City Council hired a panel of esteemed mass transit experts whom two months ago reveiwed the technology options and picked steel-on-steel technology over everything from magnetic levitation to rubber-wheels-on-concrete and fibre glass on resin.  Thus the technology issue was settled once and for all and planning could proceed at a faster pace.  Apparently, not.  The snag is that council members whom don't want mass transit to be built at all are determined to scuttle the Light Rail project by filerbustering every phase of the project down the road.  Off topic, but deep down all the City Council members secretly lust to be the next mayor of Honolulu.  Until the next scheduled meeting, *people get ready for the train to Kapolei, all you need is a ½¢ tax increase to get on board. If ewa.

You've seen the Olympic torch being protested every hop skip and jump along it's route.  What it brings to my mind is how an outright US boycott of the Beijing Olympics would effect the career of Hawaii's world class decathlete Bryan Clay.  By all appearances, Clay seems at his prime and stands a fair chance to win the decathlon at the Beijing Olympics.  If anyone asked me, human rights guarantees should have been written into the Olympic Committee's grant for China to host the Olympics at the outset, and not limited to Tibet.  You know what would be appropriate....boycotting the opening day ceremonies in combination with boycotting live worldwide television coverage of the opening day ceremonies, as if that day in China never happened.

Well before the US owed China $500 billion, the US boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics Games in Moscow in reaction to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.  Thereafter America rescued the mujahadeen from certain annihilation by smuggling shoulder harnessed stinger missiles to the Taliban and the Northern Alliance allowing the freedom fighters to shoot down an average of one Russian helicopter gunship per day.  The Soviet helicopter pilots were afraid to fly only to serve as a skeet shoot for the Afghani tribesmen.  Kicking things off with a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, the incidental beneficiary in all this became Al Queda.  That's not to insinuate that monks in Tibet will evolve into a future Al Queda, but with the US's track record, the US should be the last nation in the universe to propose righting the world with another boycott.  

Wednesday Being Hump Day

A recent court ruling seeks to portray Lady Justice as a slut.  Exhibit A: a man and a woman having sex.  Not uncommon.  Woman says to man, "Stop," while the act is fully in progress.  Man doesn't stop pumping the woman for a variety of reasons including but not limited to the laws of inertia.  Guess what, within 8 states in the US, the law condemns the man's inaction officially as rape.  Be sure to consult a lawyer before having sex within the jurisdiction of those 8 states.  Inexplicably, even had a woman granted her consent to have consensual sex with her male partner, under no force or threat of force, if the woman rescinds her consent mid-inning during the ball game, so to speak, and you, hypothetically, don't come to a screeching halt and withdraw your ding-a-ling immediately, you're at peril of a legal beartrap clamping down upon your pecker.

Furthermore, the puzzled man isn't alloted a token 5-seconds as a humane grace period to cease and desist under the eyes of the law in those relevant states.  He must halt in his tracks quicker than it takes for blood to return to his brains.  There is thus zero tolerance nay room for mitigating circumstances for the disobedient man, aka, defendant.  Tonight's discussion is not about wishy washy cock teasers, but by all appearances seemingly sane women buck naked spread eagle on the comfort of a mattress whom on a whim change their minds and switch modes for a plethora of cockamamie reasons.  Use to be, we simply wrote them of as strange cunts.  To say the least, the law holds a dissenting opinion.  "Stop" being the operative word, not consummation.  Suppose five minutes later, she taps the man on the shoulder and consents to resume sex again?

Ear This

An old lady lives in the apartment unit a floor below me, directly below my apartment unit.  She spends 6 months in Hawaii, and 6 months in her home in Australia.  Oh, and she's deaf.  It is not unusual for a deaf person to blast the volume on her television set due to hearing impairment.  But this daffy has her TV sitting next to her jalousie windows and the sound carries right up into my apartment unit and all the way to the Barrier Reef in Australia.  I realize that in outback country in Australia, wild kangaroos and neighborhood dingos gather outside a home owner's living room to watch TV and it's a standing tradition to turn up the volume so the audience in the back row can hear the action, but our apartment building only boards humans whom own their own television sets.  Is there anybody from Australia that would kindly instruct me on the proper Australian protocol to tell the iffing bitch to turn down the volume on her TV?

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Anyways, my sister Emailed me this photo that a friend of hers sent her just this morning.  Seems that a customer ordered a cake from Costco over the phone for a friend's going away party, leaving instructions with a Costco employee to have written on the cake, "Best Wishes Suzanne," and underneath that, "We will miss you."

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Saturday? No. 2

*This is not a test.  I repeat, this is not a test.

via Ursi's BLOG

Saturday?

I never seem to insert a battery the wrong way, that is, with the wrong polarity facing the other direction, into an electronic gadget.  That said, our story begins anew.  I mistakenly picked up the wrong kind envelopes the other day while at Long's Drugstore.  I meant to buy self-stick envelopes, instead I grabbed the gummed type envelopes off the shelf by miscue.  I know already that gum-envelopes have triangular flaps and the lapels are clearly pictured on the outside graphics of their boxes.  Apparently. 

Return the the wrong item to the store?  I already opened the box along the lines of the manufacturer's handy tear strip.  Yeah, I could lick the envelopes shut.  However, only geckos do that.  That'll be tantamount to licking the food photos that food bloggers post on their blog.  In this day and age, there ought to be a law banning saliva activated lids on envelopes.  Even with postage stamps, it has to be self-stick adhesive on the back side of the stamps.  I've used a moist kitchen sponge to wet gum backed stamps, in the process, the glue gets wiped off, and the stamps wouldn't stick to the letter.

Friday?

It's 2am in the morning and Aloha Friday hasn't quite dawned yet.  Being the insomniac that I am, just back from riding my bicycle to the beach and Kapiolani Park and there was nary a automobile on Ala Wai Blvd. allowing me to peddle the home stretch using the middle lane from the Waikiki Zoo all the way to my apartment on the Ala Wai.  Tour de France next.  The man needs some rest.

Friday's Screenplay

Every time I see a black man like while I'm stopped for a red light at an intersection or while a black male happens to be sitting in the same fast food restaurant as me, I don't see that person individualistically, as a person.  I see him as a "cause," as if the alphabets "c-a-u-s-e" was stencilled on the front of his T-shirt or stamped on his forehead.  Does that happen with you too?  For some reason, the same reaction doesn't take place with black girls who I happen to run across.

There's relatively few black people in Hawaii's population.  I probably know more black guys personally than the average island person, and everything's casual between me and my black friends.  Yet, when I see a black man whom I've never seen before, I still experience that "cause" sensation.  Okay, an analogy might be called for here....if the Spiderman movie had just been released and I saw Tobey Maguire, who portrayed the super hero Spiderman, walking around Waikiki town, the sight of Tobey Maguire would evoke me to think something like, "there's Spiderman," amongst us mere mortals.

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Lights, camera, action....and please turn off your cellphones.

If you're puzzled about the title of tonight's post, then without further ado....© In 2008, the US is holding a Presidential Election.  A relatively unknown to the national political scene, Barack Obama, had thrown his hat into the presidential race on the Democratic Party ticket not to win his political party's nomination but on lofty hopes that he might wow a Democratic Party front runner enough that the front runner would select Obama as his or her vice-president running mate.

However, things works out much better than Obama could have possibly envisioned.  Obama ends up leading his political party's presidential race, and goes on to win his party's nomination for president.  Now, it's Obama who's in the position to select a vice-president running mate.  The person whom Obama selects doesn't turn out to be Hillary Clinton.   

In November of the year 2008, Obama loses the presidential election to the Republican Party's John McCain.  McCain had selected Condeleeza Rice, an Afro-American, as his vice-presidential running mate to steal away the nation's black vote from Obama and apparently, the political strategy had worked out magnificently, aided and abetted by many friendly votes from Hillary Clinton's backers.

The year is 2012, and the US is holding another presidential election.  The Iraq War drags on and on with little substantive progress, as any blinking idiot woulda know better.  The American people are fed up with the Iraq War and specifically at President McCain at the helm.  Americans are marching from all parts of the nation to Washington D.C. to tar and feather the President.  Btw, nobody can afford to drive there, gasoline is at $25 a gallon.

Fearing a defeat at the hands of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party nominates Vice President Condileeza Rice as their next presidential nominee instead of McCain.  Condi goes on to win the general election to simultaneously become America's first black president, as well as, America's first woman president.  Dear reader, this is not the end of the movie.  President-elect Condi is still a single woman after moving into the White House and things can get lonely at the top. 

Final Scene.  Condi holds a news conference to announce that she has become engaged to....

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* I'm not the type to spoil the ending.

Ride of the Valkyries

On Tuesday, I mailed a cashier's check to pay for my Valkyrie (a.k.a. The Bike) to the seller on the East Coast via Express Mail.  Parcels sent through Express Mail are suppose to reach it's US destinations the very next day....however, from Hawaii, the postal service only guarantees a "2nd day" delivery.  Didn't know that til now about expresso mail.  Perhaps, from Hawaii to California, express mailed items would arrive there in a day.  The seller Emailed me that he received my payment today.  So, now The Bike's paid for.

A minor detail....so happens that the seller is off to the Caribbean on a cruise line for a week-and-a-half and departs this weekend with his family and perhaps a household parrot in tow.  As is customary, the cashier's check that I sent the seller has to clear his bank which takes up to 6 business days which would put him down the way in St. Croix or whatever in the Caribbean, subsequently, the seller won't be releasing the ownership papers to me much less The Bike, itself, until he returns back to the East Coast.  Obviously, there's little difference in clout between a nondescript personal check and a glitzy cashier's cheque in regards to T minus "Hello, this message is for RONW....your motorbike is ready for pickup at the Honolulu Harbor."

Monday's Towaway

Every monday, every friday, while the municipal ducks are enjoying their morning paddle in the Ala Wai canal, inexplicably people still get their cars towed away along the Ala Wai Blvd.  On those two designated days, the City street cleans Ala Wai Blvd. and there's a no parking ban in effect during the morning hours to clear the way for the zamboni driver.  It's been a bonanza for the contracted towing companies, some days, more than on others.  I look down from my lanai and I see this illegally parked car jacked up on a tow truck.  Ka-khing.

Seconds later somebody comes out of my apartment building sprinting across the street flashing some money at the tow truck driver to lower his car.  We just passed a drop law in effect if the driver of an illegally parked vehicle arrives before his hitched car is towed away, the driver gets to keep his car, contingent on the driver paying the stipulated drop charge.  In essence, an "in the rear view mirror law."  Does the tow truck driver pocket the money for the drop if it's cash as it was in this particular case?  Or does the tow truck driver turn in the cash, yeah right, to the tow company that he works for, asides the tow truck driver driving his own tow truck?

Saturday's Ride

Ladies and gentlemen, dignitaries, and unheralded bloggers, I am estatic to announce that I have just won the auction for a 2000 Valkyrie tourer on EBay identical to the models you see in the pics, but with an entirely different color.  Yes, I'll have to pay the seller for the bike first then have it shipped from the middle of the US mainland to Honolulu in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the course incur more expenses.  In the meanwhile, dear reader....make that, dearest reader....how about sending me a few thousand dollars to tide me over?  If ever there was a worthy humanitarian project to contribute your own scarce resources to, never mind the ressesion, this is undisputedly it.  In the motorcycling world, this motorbike is revered as a classic powered by a 6-cylinder engine, with 6 carburetors in, and 6 exhausts out, and was the fastest street bike during its heyday as clocked in both the quarter mile and at top speed not that I would ever need riding beyond Mach 5.  A Valkyrie's most redeeming feature though is that it whispers as it passes and doesn't set off car alarms in the neighborhood.  Have a nice weekend.

Friday's Panavision

Happy Aloha Friday, already.  I believe that the humpback whales must have maxed out their credit cards and decided to migrate back to their Arctic home because I didn't see a single fluke or flipper from the Diamond Head Lighthouse lookout.  It was so clear about noon that you could see Molokai (pictured) together with Lanai and Maui which doesn't happen all too often where you're able to see 4 islands from the same spot, including this island.  Maui and Lanai would be peripherally two-inches yonder the right edge of the photo.  I attribute the clarity to April showers cleasing the vog from the air.  I went buy two more T-shirts at Down to Earth healthfood store because they're discontinuing their original design, which I consider a classic, on their newer T-shirts.  I walk out of the Down to Earth store and I noticed that the cashier hadn't bothered to remove the clothes hangers from the T-shirts, simply stuffed the clothes hangers still in the classic T-shirts into the grocery sack.  That's a classic in itself.  My only guess is that the cashier use to work for for a drycleaner.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, surf at Diamond Head wasn't that great but the water was clear.

Rollover, Bob Marley

This morning on Tiny TV, a radio show that's simulcasted on TV, they was promoting Big Mountain's concert at Don Ho's Island Grill this Friday.  Big Mountain is a reggae band, and while airing some of the band's songs, Tiny, the radio host, came up with the idea that you could juxtapose Beatles' lyrics onto reggae music and it'll all work.  Every viewer including myself immediately thought that the radio host better drink a second cup of coffee.  In essense, genetically modifying music genres by all that corn.  However, to bolster his point, Tiny sung a few Beatle tunes with a reggae tempo.  It actually works.  Humming to myself lyrics from other music genres dubbed onto a raggae rhythm works too.  I'm not claiming the cross would ever be able to replace the special mystic that the original hit song engendered in its non-raggae genre, just that the whole idea's something new to me.

Wednesday's Scalp

I went to a new barber shop today because my old barber retired after decades of service.  Before this, I did try a lady barber located in the International Market Place in Waikiki town.  The bitch charged me $12 for the haircut.  Wait, wait.  I asked her to trim off my beard on the same visit.  Didn't even shave my face with a razor and lather after trimming off my beard.  Just left the stubble.  But she did charge me $16 additional for the beard trim which took less than 5-minutes.  It's not like she was styling my beard to make it look nice or went an extra mile by shaving my under arms.  All that was required was for her to swish around the trimmer, she could have closed her eyes and done it.  The $16 that she charged me for trimming my beard off was more than the cost of the haircut which took a while.  See, ya.  I be going somewhere else.  Which I did today.  Hair today, gone to Maui.

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*If this pic offends your sense of decency, don't look.  Myself, I prefer my bacon crispy.  via Slashfood.

An Iron Horse and a Diamond Head Crater

if you sense by the tone of today's pics that I'm enjoying life, then you've been there too.