On genies and rabbit holes

I love all kinds of treasure / scavenger hunting. My earliest memory of treasure hunting is from when I was six or seven: at summer camp in Colorado we went out looking for arrowheads and fossils. I never found anything “big,” but I found enough to stay interested all afternoon. Since then, whether it’s finding money on the street or hitting an auction or garage sale hoping for that long lost copy of the Declaration of Independence, I still enjoy it. I suppose it’s part of my enjoyment of hashing, and even playing slot machines when I have the chance… Maybe you’ll strike it rich by coming across something nobody else saw.

Last evening I got over to our local thrift shop, where I’ve found several fun and useful things before. I was actually looking for a cassette player, but that’s another story. No tape player, but these pretty old bottles caught my eye, part of a larger collection. For $1 apiece, hard to go wrong. They are all worth more than a buck, it turns out, but none worth more than $10… From a treasure hunt perspective, a big score by my low standards, but I’ll still report to work on Monday.

And so to the rabbit hole: bottle collecting. Like a lot of nerdy (as in “someone who cares about the details”) hobbies, I totally get why this would be fascinating. Luckily, I also get why it wouldn’t stay fascinating to one’s friends and family, and so I’ve been able to stay married and pursue non-collector friendships.

My bottles may not have much value, but they all have history, and somebody has already written much of it out and put it on the Internet. Next time you have a quiet moment, I dare you not to get caught up in the story of Moses Atwood’s Jaundice Bitters (the one on the left), of bottle collecting, of how glass is made, and why it turns blue over time…

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Round 2

I actually finished my second iteration of 99 beers back in the spring sometime, but there was a backup in mug production. Now, my status as a local (or a lush… 50 years old and this is how you spend your time?) is confirmed.

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If you own a Saab in VT, then everything is a political statement… Not fixing the headlight is a cri de coeur against the insurance-bodywork complex, and using green duct tape proclaims your solidarity with oppressed hemp growers.

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The port of Manila

When I was here last year, The city fathers had to adjust traffic flow to relieve congestion at the port. The new regulations were disastrous, and traffic got worse. Containers full of stuff rotted on the docks.

This time, the city fathers have adjusted traffic rules to accommodate delegates to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The new regulations are, so far, disastrous…

Note to the learned and powerful economic planners at APEC: however beneficent your ideas may prove in the long run, in the short term you’ve lowered productivity by an appreciable margin.

Aside: The gray building on the water left foreground is the U.S. Embassy.

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This billboard was one of the first things I noticed on arriving in Manila. It’s late, you’ve been flying all day, and so you have to really ask yourself if you just saw an ad for Prettylooks™ with the slogan you thought you saw. Hooray for photographic evidence.

Do real men care that much about their eyebrows? I’m reminded of the line that for me cemented Daniel Craig as a worthy Bond…

“Vodka martini.”
“Yes sir, shaken or stirred?”
“Do I look like I give a damn?”

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A very progressive keyboard indeed

I really like how the iPhone’s progressive keyboard feature automatically brings up “G&T” as soon as I touch “g.” I’ve never typed that phrase myself, so it’s not like it’s a learned behavior… Then again, I suppose there’s a point in the day at which one might type “G&T” and not really remember it…

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Last time I stayed in this hotel, I worried about a typhoon veering into me. This time, Manila is safe while Japan gets pounded. We did get a spectacular thunderstorm, however, and on the 30th floor you really feel like you’re right in the middle of it.

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Towel sculpture was one of the many little touches at the hotel in Jakarta. Perhaps too many little touches for my taste: walking across the lobby elicited 3-6 cheerful “hello, sirs” complete with little namaste-style bows. The chef who personally supervised the preparation of my omelette came to present his regards at such length that said omelette was kinda cold by the time I was able to eat it. Such eagerness for my stay to be perfect! I did have to put my own sugar in coffee, but milk was handled by a dedicated team in the service area.

I gained some empathy for the poor beleaguered movie stars, always trying to hide from the paparazzi and to simply go about the ordinary daily activities of movie star life. But I think I have more for the staff, who must exude such fascination with the every glance of every guest.

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An American Abroad

Last night in the surreal cocoon of the Executive Lounge, I heard an Australian ask an American “So what do they think of Trump in the US really?”

Impossible to answer, since we love him and hate him, and love to hate him, and hate ourselves for loving him. He’s a train wreck we can’t stop watching. And even if we could stop, we won’t be allowed to because CNN and Fox and even NPR are all rolling in the Donald-catnip (that’s an image for cat people… for dog people it would be rolling in a dead something discovered by the side of the road) (which I think is more apt).

The Yank’s answer wasn’t satisfying as I continued eavesdropping, because if you’re here in the Executive Lounge I don’t think you can understand the appeal of a Trump… you might even have dealings with a Trump company if you’re sitting here, but you’re certainly not expecting him to make your life better by Taking on the Washington Establishment or Using Tough Talk.

My liberal friends, which is to say most of my friends, point to the rise of Bernie Sanders at this point in the campaign as proof that the system works; that an outsider candidate, long on the fringe of his own party, can come along and speak truth to power, and that the righteousness of his ideas will carry him past the Mainstream Candidates into the halls of enlightened power. 

My liberal friends, which is to say most of my friends, point to the rise of Donald Trump, an outsider candidate long on the fringe of his own party, as proof that the system is broken; that any buffoon with enough money can buy some short-term attention from the fawning media and the benighted citizenry will support him for a while, no matter how offensive he is, but since he’s obviously not electable he’ll eventually fade away.

Those two positions seem somewhat at odds. But I hope my friends are right… and then again I hope they’re wrong, because what I really want is for the candidates to formally acknowledge that the technocrats in the shadows are the people actually running things: the Fed and the Joint Chiefs and Bill Gates and Sheldon Adelson. That way, I could enjoy the carnival without wondering quite so much about fingers on buttons in bunkers.

update 9/15: today’s International New York Times includes two articles that resonate against my thoughts from the other night… I can only conclude that they read this blog, which is awesome! The opinion piece called “losing faith in the process” by Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk goes into some detail on sentiments and research about people who actually consider whether representative democracy is as inevitable as it has seemed to me throughout my lifetime. One in six Americans are at least willing to tell a surveyor that they question the value of our entire system. Yikes. On another page, a column called “examining who runs America” by Anand Giridharadas describes something known as the “deep state,” which is those same technocrats in the shadows I mentioned earlier in this post.

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