Erik Novales

Earlier this week, I packed my bags and drove out to Las Vegas, Nevada, to volunteer on the ground for the Obama campaign on Election Day. This was part of their “Drive for Change” campaign, which encouraged people from California (and other states) to volunteer in battleground states. I decided that, given the historic nature [...]

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On the way home today, I saw a sign spinner at the corner of MacArthur and Fairview in Costa Mesa. Here is the sign: “Vote for McCain. Obama is a socialist and a friend of terrorists ! (William Ayers)” The “socialist” label is just ridiculous – I also like the grammatically bizarre parenthetical note on [...]

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A somewhat famous quote from Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. The contents of the grocery basket belonging to the shopper in front of us at a grocery store in Arcata, CA: One loaf of white bread (store brand) A jar of peanut butter A [...]

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Recently, I went to the DMV in order to renew my car registration, as well as renew my driver’s license. Now, if this were a very tired comedy shtick, I would proceed to complain about how this experience wasted an entire day of mine and destroyed my soul. Instead, because I try to give things [...]

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Cities, locals oppose recycling centers: In Huntington Beach, plans for a recycling center at a Ralphs grocery store on Brookhurst Street and Adams Avenue have drawn strong opposition from city officials and residents, who say it would be unsightly, attract transients and generate noise. … Opponents say they already recycle through curbside trash programs and [...]

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Whenever someone says, "Get the facts!," I read it as, "Please don’t look too closely at what we’re saying." Today was the grand opening of a new Fresh and Easy store nearby. Fresh and Easy is UK supermarket giant Tesco‘s foray into the US, consisting of smaller grocery stores, generally stocked with pre-made foods and [...]

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Welcome to the bear market. I still occasionally kick myself for not staying in until Dow 14K, but as of late I feel better and better about selling out awhile back. I know that "market timing" is considered to be hocus-pocus but in this case I feel that I was better off with my money [...]

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Succinct, and hilarious. It actually applies to pretty much all Web-exclusive content, unfortunately. Sprinkle in useless metaphors and orthogonal pop-cultural references. This is pretty much why I don’t really like Bill Simmons’ writing very much — it feels like he’s just following a recipe for writing, and useless metaphors and/or movie references are his punchline [...]

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I’ve had some not-so-smooth experiences with rebates lately, which are reinforcing my habit of actually keeping information about rebate submission and checking up on them when I invariably don’t receive them. First of all, my cell phone recycling rebate didn’t come within the allotted amount of time. I called Sprint, who told me that I [...]

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Read this TrueHoop blog entry, which is an interview with a professional NBA gambler. The Tim Donaghy scandal has gotten pretty interesting over the last couple of days, with public allegations of game-fixing (including the playoffs) coming from the "rogue referee" camp. The timing of this, during the NBA Finals, is, naturally, very embarrassing to [...]

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