Couple Snaps

Perfect avocado. 

Venice biker gang.

Can't get more Venice than this: Mikey, Otheroom, Abbot's Pizza. 

Mom made buffalo wing meatballs. Amazing. 

(Gratuitous sunny day photo) 

Purple sky. 

4th of July, booze, King's cup. 

Mo daddy looking smooooooth. 

Townie.

The Porn Conundrum

One day, long ago, man's sole responsibilities were finding food and sex by any means necessary. He hunted and usually found a mate who would gather other food as well as bear children. She didn't have to be perfect, just good enough.

In the last 100 years, as the Western world has become industrialized things have changed. People started to marry for love more than family pressure or business sense (though we still do this all the time). Men and women connected, accepted each other's flaws and lived satisfactory lives.

In the last 10 years streaming video has changed everything. Enter the Entitled Generation and the porn conundrum. Today, our food needs are cheaply and easily (not nutritionally) satisfied through fast food. Our generation is proud to say we don't cook and we plan on staying single for a long time. As one handsome British gentleman I spoke to the other day put it, in light of a conversation about his bride-to-be, "People around here wait forever to get married as though they're waiting for something to happen, like 'Oh, I'm 36 and I've only fucked 150 girls, maybe I'll find the right one soon.'"

He had a point. There is a difference in the type of person who seeks relationships and marriage. Our generation feels entitled to cheap thrills. The good life. Fun brands! Coachella! If we don't like a girl, we have a catalog of 10,000 gorgeous women ready to look into out eyes and please us at 500 KB/sec. No wonder we go from woman to woman. The average relationship with a porn clip lasts about 45 seconds.

None of this is bad per se, I just wonder how it affects social structure in the next couple decades. Do we grow out of this or do younger generations begin to accept this as the way to organize? Do women start to accept that men also like to beat their drums, or as I once heard it described, accept that sex and masturbating are like eating and drinking? They're similar activities but both are required to survive.

As is often the case with WisslinDixie, I don't know how this one ends. If you'll excuse me, it's time I get back to my YouPorn.

Statistics Don't Lie

Statistics don't lie. They're cut and dried, and come from calculators or excel formulations. People, however, lie and make mistakes quite often. I have 2 examples of lying: market research on the Hispanic community and the Wal-Mart class action lawsuit.

One of my professors was talking about PRIZM research. This company conducts demographic and psychographic research for the United States and creates categories for different types of people. (Click here: http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20&SubID=&pageName=ZIP%2BCode%2BLook-up , put in your zip code and see where they place you, it's hilarious.) This company did some research on Hispanic Americans' consumption habits and found that they love BET, Jet Magazine, The New York Times, and canned chili, but don't like pork sausage. Interesting huh? Sounds like some companies need to adjust their marketing strategies.

Here's the problem.

Hispanics are most prominent in Los Angeles, Miami, Texas and New York. What Hispanic person in Los Angeles, Miami or Texas reads the New York Times?? What countries do Hispanic New Yorkers come from? What ethnicities, outside of Hispanic, do New York Hispanics belong to? The research shows a strong bias toward reporting done in New York, where people of all ethnicities read the NYT, and Hispanic people are more likely to have Dominican or Puerto Rican roots, along with African roots.

Then there's food. Do Mexicans really like chili? The reporting indicates that Hispanics were asked, "Do you eat chili?" to which they answered an emphatic, "Yes!" because they eat chiles in almost anything they make. And pork sausage? They eat it all the time and call it "chorizo."

Now to the Supreme Court's denial to hear the Wal Mart class action suit, in which 1.5 million women sued the behemoth for gender discrimination. Something like 70% of Wal-Mart's hourly workforce is women, but less than 1/3 of management jobs are held by women. That's statistics!

Almost.

First of all, this compares management jobs to hourly jobs, which are not the same thing.

Second, the women in the class action suit were not part of the same "class" of worker, as the Court pointed out. Some are looking for management jobs, while others are grandmas trying to make a couple extra bucks, and other are in between.

Third, similarly to the last point, women often have different orientations toward work than men. True, gender is a protected class as it should be, but many women choose to place family as a higher priority than work. The kind of women who work at Wal-Mart likely over-index when it comes to this. Women who want to have management jobs should be able to reach them if they have the skills and put in the work. (And I do believe that Wal-Mart discriminated.) However, to use statistics to say that men are overrepresented in management jobs to prove systematic discrimination is systematically flawed. What if these hourly workers simply weren't trying to get promotions? Or continually requested schedule changes in favor of family obligation? That's fine if they can keep their jobs and do this, but it doesn't make them promotion material. And it shouldn't make them part of a discriminated-against class worthy of a large judgment.

The point is that the specifying kind of women who work in hourly Wal-Mart jobs matters, just like the location of Hispanic market research matters, and specifying food names matters. Otherwise statistics can't uncover actual lies.

SB, HB, VB

Aww.

Relief.

Purple People Eater.

Yeah, I love clouds.

Pontificating.

Globetrotter.

Leave A Message

A couple weeks ago Nike came out with a women's surf video called "Leave A Message." I watched some of it and the girls were ripping, except for the hot ones who were just hot. I'm cool with that.


In the aftermath of this release has been an interesting discussion and series of op-ed pieces in the surf world about women's sponsorship money and the whole female professional surf world. It's wrong, claim some women (http://www.theinertia.com/business-media/proliferating-stereotypes-for-profit/), to sponsor women for their looks while men are sponsored (ostensibly) for their talent. Not so fast, says I. 


This whole debate functions around this assumption that the powers that be in surfing have some sort of conspiracy against women who are talented at surfing but don't look cute in bikinis. They must be a member of the same secret society that chooses good looking women to sponsor in every other professional sport. Or the slightly larger secret society that chooses attractive women to be more successful in the workplace. My point: It's fucking nature.


Men are athletes who like to look at good looking women. Women like to watch men compete and like to see good looking women modeling the clothes they're considering buying. There is no sport at which women compete at a higher level than men. Tennis is close, but Kim Clijsters gets smoked by a one-arm, one-legged Rafa Nadal any day of the week. 


The author of the article I linked above is a former professional longboarder and is not particularly attractive nor unattractive. I get her perspective that we should focus on talent. The problem is that men and women alike prefer to watch men compete because men are better. She points out that men make $3.45 for every $1 female professional surfers make. Well, fine. Men make more money for the surf brands that sponsor events and the men themselves. There are other careers that are more lucrative for women than men, like hosting talk shows. 


At the end of the day we only have nature to blame. Men and women are built differently with brains that operate differently. Trying to force equal prize money for men and women does not make a lot of sense. We can promote fairness (like not always sending the women out in the shittiest conditions), but how do we determine what is fair? Is "fair" is taking sponsorships away from cute girls who can surf decent, and giving them to a girl who rips but looks like a trog?


If we look at how much female professional surfers contribute to the sports popularity and profitability versus what percent of prize money they get, they're probably overpaid. You can fight it, but you'd just be fighting human nature.

Pixx

Venice Pier

El Porto, windy and tiny 

Mr. Fox 

Yum. 

This morning, Venice/ MdR 

Wind= bad surf and awesome clouds

Deaf to Dumb

The last few days I have been watching the live webcast of the Nike Lowers Pro - one of the biggest surf competitions of the year taking place in San Clemente, CA. At the end of each heat the winner is interviewed on the beach. Many of the heat winners of this event have been from Brazil so they give interviews in English then address their fans in Portuguese. It's forgivable that some of these young gents may not speak the best English and appear less than articulate. It happens all the time with anyone who has learned a new language (See: me in France last year).

However, one young man stands out as particularly lacking of intellect in spite of his athletic brilliance (I met this young guy in France last year, as it turns out, and he was one of the nicest pros I have encountered). While he did not sound too bright in English I noticed that his simpleness came across just as clearly in Portuguese. I know little (i.e. no) Portuguese; the cues were couched in his tone, mid-word chuckles, and facial movement.

I was fascinated. How does this "translate" to those speaking our own language? Is it possible to appear smart without actually being smart? This could explain the master bullshitter/ scam artist. Do other people who are actually smart appear dumb because of their inability to portray the preferred non-verbal cues? The inability accurately display one's intellect could be a huge barrier to opportunity.

Writing Sux

 Venice

 Go Burger, Hollywood

 Matty B and CB, Jello shots, Newps

 Pepper Sky

 Rich

 Tarp up

 Bike bath on a windy afternoon, Venice

 Don't mind if I do

Marina del Rey

Freedom

*Warning: This piece contains issues that could be accurately described as "white people problems."

There is something to be said for freedom. America is based on it. We fight wars for it. We take it away from people who do harm to others and society. But is all freedom good for us?

Being unemployed affords one a couple luxuries: a new perspective and time to think about the things that perspective makes one see. I see a difference between freedom to do things and freedom from doing things.

Freedom to do anything seems like a natural state of being in which one is left with nothing but his free will and desire to make some things happen, but I don't think it's so simple. We need some structure around which to make decisions and build our careers, relationships and hobbies. Our families and hometowns provide some of this. I consider the difference between different friends who are the same age in medical or law school or have great careers going versus friends who are chronically unemployed.  They all (at least from my perspective) have the freedom to choose any career. The former simply had an easier time making that decision. The others - myself included - have to be a bit jealous.

The ability to choose one's own fate is a cruel mistress. It's like being offered three wishes, or choosing which mutual fund to invest in: sure, you can pick anything, but choose wrong and you could regret it forever. Do I favor the extreme of this, such as arranged marriages or parents forcing their kids into certain careers? No. But freedom, as the brilliant Team America said, isn't free, it costs folks like you and me.

I feel that most people value freedom from more highly without knowing it. For example, we want to be free from unsafe work conditions, pollution of the environment, crime in our neighborhoods, government intrusion in our lives, etc. As long as we are free from oppression our lives are at least decent. Recent uprisings in the Middle East can be ascribed to this. They have relatively similar socioeconomic stratification and unemployment rates as the US, but are not as free from the bad that goes on around them. Freedom to choose can be nice, but I'll take freedom from.

Visible Accessories

In the field of sociology, that in which I was classically and expertly trained as an undergraduate, theorists speak of "symbolic interaction." Covering aspects of social psychology, this generally states that people interact with what they see in other people. For example, we treat the same person different if he is driving a Lamborghini versus riding a skateboard. That guy could be Shaun White. Same guy, different treatment.

We all do this to some extent and it's not really a bad way to gain information about somebody, but I recently noticed a couple examples of this with people in my life who do it so blatantly that it's almost offensive. One does it for narcissistic means; the other as a mating ritual.

-First, a guy I used to know. This gentleman was an aspiring artist an serial accessorizer. Any activity that he did, he took a photo of it and put it on facebook and on his actual wall. His living room was full of every book he had ever read, and they were as esoteric as he could find. His music selection was always some shit you had never heard of. On the surface, judging from all his apparent activities and interests, this guy seemed really cool, but when people met him they would realize what a douche he was.

-Second is a girl I went out with recently. She approached me at a bar so I assumed she was interested and we ended up meeting up after for drinks. She was quite friendly if not a little dumb. She was from the 909 and didn't defy the stereotype. While we were at a bar, she asked me if I was attracted to tattoos. I said I wasn't particularly attracted to them but didn't mind. She said, "I looooove tattoos. I just think they're soooo sexy. They drive me nuts."

Later, she asked if there was one thing in the opposite sex that I'm attracted to and don't know why. I said not really. Again, she said, "I am sooooo into dreadlocks. They're so hot!" When I was leaving her place I noticed a firefighter's sticker on the back of her car and, displaying my sad sense of humor, asked if she was a firefighter. She replied, "No...but I date them!"

Ahem, she knew I do not have tattoos or dreadlocks, and am not a firefighter. It seemed that she was choosing partners based on select accessorized characteristics. That is, characteristics that can be purchased or are selected to make one seem a certain way. I consider many careers to qualify for this. I wondered what my accessory was the night she approached me. Then I realized she looked much cuter and fitter when I was drunk. By the way, another thing she loved, "LA. It's the best city everrrrr!"

Again, I think we all do this to a lesser extent. We dress as shredders, businesspeople, artists, or whatever we are, but knowing the personalities of these two people, it doesn't work when it is performed in the extreme and without a backup of viable personality. It seems to follow the hipster model of "look cool first, be cool second." I hope these people find each other and leave the keepers and good friends for myself and those who are like minded because they are lame.

The Life Quixotic

Quixotic [kwik-SAW-tik]

1. Resembling or befitting Don Quixote.

2. Extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.

3. Impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

            Don Quixote is a character made up by an author with a dream, not unlike any other character. However, unlike just about all others, his life would be not ephemeral, but eternal. The guy has his own adjective! And just as Don Quixote roamed the countryside armed with a donkey, a thirst for adventure, a simple but insightful squire, and the knowledge of a long-forgotten era of knighthood and chivalry, there are people today roaming all parts of the globe in search of adventures of their own. I unwittingly joined them for about a week in Bocas del Toro, Panama and tried to decide if what they do is noble, quixotic, or simply dumb.

            I am not the most rugged traveler, nor the softest. I tend to stay in cheap hotels or motels over hostels, or on friends’ couches over hammocks in the woods. On this trip I would stay in a hostel at which I paid $14 per night for my own bathroom and shower. The place featured the three most important elements an accommodation can possess – location, location and… cockroaches. It wasn’t high living, but it certainly did the trick.

            My friend Max stayed down the hall in a room shared with up to five other people during our stay. They came from Argentina, Spain, Canada, Czech Republic and other parts of the US. We would meet many more people along the way from Finland, Israel, Germany, Brazil and El Salvador. Each of them had a story to tell. The whimsical kid in me wanted to join them to jump on the next sailboat across the Caribbean or on a bike ride to Tierra del Fuego. The logical adult simply wanted to ask what they fuck they were doing with their lives. Somewhere doing neither of these things an answer started to surface.

            A few different ideas had come to my head regarding these travelers. Many people would, and do, refer them simply as backpackers, but I think that fails to differentiate them. I see backpackers as well-to-do college graduates with new dreadlocks and six weeks to explore before rejoining the real world. These other people are road warriors. This is their life. I just wondered what the war was.

            I started talking to Jeff and got a strange, but comforting vibe. He kicked his kickstand in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska twenty months ago to ride from the northern tip of North America to the southern tip of South America. Geographically speaking, Panama is barely halfway to southern Argentina, but he has no plan to hurry. He knows how to pace himself, though, because he has also ridden the entire north-south length of Africa after serving in the Peace Corps in Ghana. The light was low and he sounded young, so hearing he was 37 was somewhat surprising.

            Not much older was the guy who would come to be known as “Lo Tengo.” Max and I were surfing a fun reefbreak before dark one evening with just one other guy in the water. A man with long blonde hair and a wide build paddled out in the channel then outside of us. When a set came in he paddled deeper than Max and I, who had been waiting for said set (this is a no-no) and yelled “lo tengo” (I have it) in heavily American-accented and grammatically improper Spanish before taking off. (He should have said “la tengo” because the word for wave, ola, is feminine.) Picture Spicoli learning Spanish and you have some idea of how this guy butchered this beautiful language. A couple days later he and Max exchanged words, squashed it, and Lo Tengo and I got to talking.

He was from North Carolina and immediately began to talk shit about everyone from pro surfers who had come to surf this particular spot, to a prominent surf photographer who he claimed to have smoked repeatedly in their younger days as surf competitors, as well as the “Niggerastas” who dominate the break. He got excited when I told him I was from San Diego and quickly told me a story about him surfing 20 foot Black’s. The guy could only accurately be described as a complete douche.

A few days into the trip a young couple from Argentina showed up with their baby and a Quebecois. The baby was absolutely adorable though annoyingly out of control. She paints murals and henna tattoos, and I wasn’t sure what he did. When I stepped on glass he supplied the tweezers and rubbing alcohol, and was very friendly.

Around the same time as the Argentine couple arrived, three girls from Argentina in their early twenties moved into one of the rooms. One was clearly the hungriest and rather unfortunate looking, while the other two were very cute. Of course, they didn’t speak English and Max and my Spanish can make it difficult to work any type of decent game. We tried to talk to them and figured we just weren’t their type. Turns out they are what Argentines call Tortas – lesbians. Max tried his best and I gave him odds that if there was a chance, he had it, but it was not to be.

            The story could go on for a long time, as Don Quixote’s certainly does, but it did not take much research to see what was going on. There was a time in which being a rebel meant telling the government to suck it and going to live in a different country. Hippies soon followed, sans rebellion but with attendant garb.

There is a saying in Bocas that people who travel there are either wanted or unwanted – wanted by the law or unwanted by society. In a time where people are expected to do certain things and live a certain way, not everyone is going to fit the mold. Instead, some of these people choose to explore. Some explore drugs, while for some the drug is a new town every other week, a crazy hike and some colorful sea life.

Their mission is certainly quixotic in that is closely resembles that of Don Quixote, which seems to be to fight battles that don’t need to be won. However, how many of us do fight necessary battles or do anything that offers great impact on the world? Are we somehow leading more noble lives by going to work everyday rather than working three months to roam for nine?

I suppose that with some clarity comes more fuzziness. At the same time I envy these warriors, I am glad I am not one of them. At the same time I am working on an MBA that seems like it will take forever to finish and much longer before it will pay off financially, not to mention pay dividends of satisfaction, I want to figure out a way to roam around places I’ve never been in search of battles that do not need to be won or even fought.

In the film Waking Life a group of scholars walks by a man working power lines and one of them says, “We’re no better than he is. He’s all practice and no theory and we’re all theory and no practice.” If nothing else, I envy these quixotic warriors for deciding that it’s ok to be all practice and no theory, because I can never seem to find the right balance for myself. 

Tweeter

Any twats out there tweeting can follow me on Twitter @wisslindixie - creative, I know.

My best materials is there. As is the case in the bedroom, my best work comes in quick, powerful bursts. Enjoy.

Boardshorts in my backpack, nothing else.

I just booked my ticket to go to Panama in 10 days. I have to say I feel a bit like this guy right now:

Toes

Innovation = Emancipation

We are enslaved by our own lack of creativity.

Everyday billions of people go to work at jobs they don't like. You are probably one of them, and I may be soon. But what if we were able to innovate our way into better situations?

Apple (hardly enslaved with $50 billion in cash reserves, but go with me) had reached a limit in revenue growth in early 2010. With popular products that would keep selling year after year at a strong growth rate, it would be considered one of the more successful consumer products companies in the world.

Apple needed to add to its product line, so it continued to innovate and created the iPad. The iPad accounted for 17% of Apple's revenues in 2010 in only seven months on the shelves. Apple expanded its pie by 17 freaking percent. Seventeen percent of a shitload is a fuckin' lot. (I learned that in business school.)

The question is: what is your iPad? The status quo exists and will lead to a predictable path. If we develop new ideas and take risks the pie can expand rapidly.

Surfline Translator App

I am soon to join all you toolbags with iPhones and I need some Apps to take up my time. I have a great idea for an App that many of us shredders will enjoy: I call it the Surfline Translator (Copyright Wisslin Dixie Enterprises 2011). This app uses a proprietary algorithm to take a report from a given spot and translate it into actual useful information. Consider a couple examples from today:


El Porto
This morning's dawn patrol: Clean lines with fun, scattered corners. Larger sets are a little inconsistent and overall shape looks a bit soft, so it might be a good idea to pack a fatter/fuller board today.

Translated: Small, closed out and already windy. Crowded as fuck. Go out if you want 3 new dings - 2 from the guy who hits you with his funboard and one from you punching your own board.

Rincon

This morning's dawn patrol: Clean, slow lines looking best for a fatter/fuller board. Workable with good shape but smaller and less consistent than yesterday.

Translated: Really small. If you leave now you can get to Mammoth by the start of the Super Bowl.

Cardiff

This morning's dawn patrol: Sectiony lines with a bit of a wobble/bump on it. Set waves show more definition. Cloudy with dense fog pockets and light winds too.

Translated: Pretty fun out there. You're lucky it isn't sunny or there would be 200,000 guys on longboards. Go rip pre-Super Bowl.

Ocean Beach SF

This morning's dawn patrol: Gusty N wind with some side-offshore funk/crumble to it. Definitely less size on tap today. Shape is just sectiony, crumbly and a bit mixed-up with a rare corner scattered around.

Translated: It's finally small enough to surf and not risk drowning and now it's windy. You're going to freeze you nuts off but go have a slay.

Venice

This morning's dawn patrol: Clean but looking pretty small overall with mainly knee high waves and occasional plus sets. Shape is mainly walled up with the best sets offering a short end corner.

Translated: It's Venice. It's closed out. If you don't know this by now then my Algerian prince friend has some Power Balance bracelets to sell you.

You got your MBA, huh?

An MBA can be a valuable piece of currency. That is one reason I decided to pursue one, in addition to the education and mountain of student loan debt I would accrue along the way.

The worlds of LinkedIn and Twitter can offer creative interpretations of what an MBA is. One LinkedIn user in my network claimed that he got his "MBA" (his quotes) while working on the road as a tour and team manager for a skateboard company. A guy I follow on Twitter an respect for what he has done in the business world recently tweeted that he "got (his) 'MBA' last night from knowledge dropped from" the founder of a large company he works for. (I know he doesn't read this, but I'll protect his identity anyway). Heck, the founder of his company deserves a ton of props because he has built a successful, wildly profitable company that markets its products better than almost anyone in the world. I would love to have a chat too.

The issue is the idea that a 45 minute chat constitutes an MBA. An MBA is not just some inside information. It is a series of seminars with different business professionals from different backgrounds. It takes years to complete, full dedication, and over a thousand hours of work when it's all said and done. It is meant to prepare one for any business situation that may arise, not unlike a law degree prepares one for any legal situation. You don't hear people claiming they got a JD after having coffee with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Please stop this, people. No doubt you have had experiences that are probably much more valuable than what is offered in business school, but you don't have an MBA. If you mean it as a joke it's a dumb one, and the joke is on you.

Elitist rant ends here.

Searching for things that don't exist

I enjoy people, especially smart ones.

Paulo Coelho wrote "The Alchemist" and other rather quixotic novels, and he always seems to have a (sometimes annoying) positive message on Twitter. However, I enjoy Mr. Coelho. So do 4.2 million other tweeters. He interviewed Napster founder, early facebook contributor and guy-who-was-played-by-Justin-Timberlake, Sean Parker.

Parker and Coelho discuss facebook, The Social Network and happiness in general. Coelho and Parker ask each other if they are happy. Instead of dishing out some boiler plate bullshit on happiness being the only thing that matters, seeking the light, etc, Coelho says,

"No. I'm never happy... It was not one of my goals to be happy. One of my goals in life was to have challenges. It was to have joy. At the end of the day it was to have fun, which I have and I'm sure you have... in the sense that you and I are never satisfied. We need the next step, the next mountain to climb."

I like this. It's simple to make happiness a goal, but that is like making wellness a goal without focusing on our health.

People like Paulo live in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction. I feel like I constantly need challenges as well to attain any state of happiness. I will never surf as good as I think I can. I will never travel to enough places or have enough knowledge of all the things I am passionate about. My career goals are impossible to define and thus impossible to achieve.

I know how to find happiness and simple satisfaction. I am easily pleased, but I am looking for more. I am working toward something I will never get and I don't plan on changing that any time soon.