Running with Metaphors

Barbara Walters once asked then-President Jimmy Carter in an interview: "if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" I wish she had asked him instead, "if you were a gun-running gopher, what kind of cigar would you smoke while driving your V-10 Ford F450 through the Sonoran desert in your desperate attempt to evade the Mexican Federales?"

And then, once he had answered that, I wish she had followed up by asking him, "would you be wearing a lot of bling-bling at such a time?"

Sadly, she asked neither question. I can't remember which tree he revealed himself to be.

Where's my chainsaw?

Pantelope!

Well, the t-shirt site has finally gone live.

Pantelope.com

It took about eight months to bring this thing to fruition and there's no telling what'll happen next. The internet is littered with the wreckages of various little attempts and fly-by-nights that crashed on the e-commerce highway. Pantelope could join 'em in a flying ball of fire, but we're going to give it a heckuva shot.

There are seven people behind Pantelope, made up of a mixture of old VeggieTales colleagues of mine plus some friends from college: three artists, one coder, one e-commerce guru, one photographer and me as general frenetic. I find a sort of beauty in working in community like this, shaping a coalition of similarily minded people together into creative output. It's an occurrence that is sadly rare these days and I hope that this experience will generate other such associations, either via me and my acquaintances or via the inspiration that others take from what we've done.

Strength in numbers. Creativity in numbers.

Pantelope.

So, hey, take some time to stop and eat the roses.

California Housing Prices

If you live in coastal California and don't already own a home, then you're toast. Housing prices here are sky-high and do not reflect the national trends in prices. There's one main reason for this: environmental policies. Environmental pressures on the California coast are intense and manifest in various ways: restrictive policies coming out of Sacramento, local zoning ordinances that prohibit new houses in specific areas and/or dictate the number of houses that can be built per acre in specific areas (often 1 house per 40, on up to 1 house per 160, etc), Endangered Species Act restrictions that prohibit development in habitat areas of so-called endangered species, etc.

Another factor that compounds this is the unusually high presence of local busy-body environmental organizations in California who are quick to sue other locals intent on exercising their private property rights. I would think that such entities and their members do not exist in similar quantities in states such as Texas. Perhaps that's partially due to Texas' permissive laws on carrying concealed weapons, but I digress.

As I was saying, if you don't already own a home here (and intend to live here), good luck. Save yourself the heartburn and move to another state. You aren't going to buy a home on the coast unless you're making a minimum of 150k a year. Even then, you're barely going to qualify for a mortgage.