Far East Cynic

Yesterday was an interesting lesson for me. In the simple things-and how they can be nice.

I had been instructed by the S.O. not to get flowers for Valentine’s day. ” Flowers are too expensive at Valentines Day-wait till later and get them when they are cheaper.”

Yes! I’m off the hook!

We had talked about going to look for something shiny for her-after we went to play golf. Both of us had wanted to go-its been over 4 months since we played. The morning rains though, pitter pattering on our downspout, put an end to that idea.

So after breakfast, we decided that having dinner at home was probably a better option-than going out to a nice restaurant. Some nice pasta ( I have some pretty good recipes that I have made before) and some wine would be nice we thought.

Now we have been trying to find a particular wine brand that had been given to us, Talus Pinot Noir-2006.  We liked the wine when we drank it-both of us thought it was a pretty smooth taste-and hoped to have some more. Obviously we had some learning yet to do about savoring wine, because as I researched the Talus brand, almost to a man the wine critics hated it.

But its under 10 bucks-which has to count for something.

Package store on the Arsenal?- Stopped selling it when they re-organized all their wine shelves this week.

Undeterred, the S.O. and I set off for the local,  snooty wine store. You know the kind- that caters to the real wine aficionado.  Couldn’t help. Have not carried such a brand for a while-”but I do have a good Argentinan Pinot, 10.95″. We bought a bottle and a French Cabernet that I had heard about and out we went. To hell with this, we’ll just get the rest of the ingredients for  dinner. As we shopped-found a flower stand selling roses, nothing fancy, but they were in a hurry to get rid of what was left. Bought a bunch, since the S.O. had looked at them more than a couple of times. Came across another Pinot, Castle Rock-which unlike the Talus, did not offend the Wine Spectators tastes. “Nonde mitai?” (Try it?)-why not.

Heading for the checkout, past the DVD section. Madagascar 2 Two Disk Set.  “Shall we watch it?” , she asks.  ( A cartoon-On Valentines day?) “Sure”.

Rigatoni with Sausage and tomatoes?-4-5 dollars or so, depending upon  how you cost the ingredients.

Castle Rock Pinot Noir? $9.95

DVD set? Over priced at $23 ( Especially since there are only two Penguin cartoons-I was hoping for more).

But walking into the bedroom to find Pooh-san propped up with a Valentines card and a note from the S.O. that brought a tear to my eyes?-Priceless.

It was a really nice note and completely unexpected. Especially given her grumpy mood of late and impatience with the rigors of Stateside living. Sure took me by surprise. My card was just the usual pap.

It was a nice way to spend the day though. Nothing fancy, or record setting to be sure. Just a nice day-that I think we both appreciated more than I thought we would.

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Since we were not going out-the S.O. and I had kind of a wine tasting around our dinner.

WINE SCORES:

Castle Rock- I thought it was good, smooth and quite tasty.  I have a hard time smelling anything other than the alcohol to tell you the truth, but it seemed OK. Whatever that proves.

Argentinian Pinot-Alfredo Roca? Sucked with a capital “S”.  It was way too sharp for my tastes-it just bit you. S.O. had a much more unkind term for it…………….

The French wine will have to wait for another day. However I agree with the wine critic about the snooty wines store recommendation, “However, after trying it, I was disappointed and won’t be buying it again—nor will I be taking recommendations from the same person.”

Vermonte Savuignon Blanc 2008 ( another “free” wine from Christmas).-I liked it for an “after dinner, sit around and talk kind of wine”.

It has raised the bar too high for a certain part of the population.

H/T to E @ L!

It occurs to me that amid the rancor over the stimulus bill, there is a bigger problem the President needs to address head on.

Obama has a very different problem with Congress than GWB had. If he is serious about trying to get things done-he has to do it in a better manner than the Stimulus Bill got done.  Besides wondering if Paul Krugman may actually be right about it ( its not big enough and has too many tax cuts) , there is a bigger problem that the current debate highlights:

And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged……..

And the ugliness of the political debate matters because it raises doubts about the Obama administration’s ability to come back for more if, as seems likely, the stimulus bill proves inadequate.

For while Mr. Obama got more or less what he asked for, he almost certainly didn’t ask for enough. We’re probably facing the worst slump since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office, not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm.

Here is the political problem as I see it-because Nancy Pelosi got her named attached to what can only be accounted as a poor start to the bill in the first place, Obama will be handicapped in trying to do other things as the year goes on. There’s better Democrats in Congress ( Just as their are better Republicans than Mitch McConnell). How does the majority party get saddled with a worthless whore loser in the Speaker’s Chair?

It is not so much what she put in the bill to start with-it is the fact that idea of her trying to act  out of a sense of partisan vindictivness is totally believable.  People still remember most of the other windmills she has tilted at in the past. Her whiny, snide, holier than thou tone of voice totally undermines the Presidents more high minded tone.

She’s weak. Politically,  as well as intellectually.  She handed 30+ Republicans something to rally around and  the worst part is that she did not even realize she was doing it. Which I find totally amazing for someone who supposedly has been around a while.  The President would have lost nothing had taking a much stronger hand in writing the original House bill, keeping out provisions that Republicans would later use to portray it as stuffed with pork and programs that had little to do with the economy. If poor little Nancy got her feelings hurt, so what? Where is she going to go to?  The other side?

I repeat my earlier contention-Obama needs to find a way to show Pelosi who is boss. Or she will ride roughshod over any accomplishments that may happen.  The war was Bush’s alabtross. Obama has to keep Pelosi from becoming his.

Sovereign voters of San Francisco or not, she’s got to go- so more reasoned fellows can rise up. The bill’s bad start can be directly laid at her feet.

Feel free to forward this column to her house e-mail address. I did. If  nothing else you can clog  up their spam filters, and that’s good for something.

I have been watching the conversation on the stimulus package with interest. As the debate has gone on a graphic depiction of the problem is  etched in my mind.

It  is an analysis of the income disparity within the US:

Yes the bottom of the graph is wrong, it should be below 100K-but the bottom line is still the same. Rich bastards are getting a lot richer while the rest of us deal with about the same money as we always did.

Which is why I find it hard to cry salt tears when dickheads Senators like Mitch McConnell cry the blues: “The only thing we know for sure is that it increases our debt and locks in bigger and bigger interest payments every year. In short, we’re taking an enormous risk with other people’s money.”

Funny, he did not have the same heartburn while Bush was spending over 1 TRILLION dollars on a stupid and unnecessary war.  What makes it bad is that these are the same individuals who are now decrying “the debt we are putting on our children”-when only four short years ago, they were more than happy to burden our children with just as much debt-to finance a war for worthless Arabs. Who in the end could care less about us.

So maybe you can see why appeals to my better nature about the national debt fall on some deaf ears. ” So let me get this straight, its OK to spend billions on a war for worthless Arabs-but its not OK to spend money to help real Americans. And why is that exactly?”

BTW, the issue is not whether the war in Iraq was right or not. ( It wasn’t). It is about the fact that if you have to do something-you have to pay the bill for it. We should have charged a dollar a gallon tax on gasoline, or on businesses to pay for the war that protected them.

A bill is still a bill.

I’d rather do something to help Americans than I would to help Iraqis, that’s for sure.  ( although maybe if we had leveled Baghdad up front in 2003-we would be better off now).

The Republicans new found love of fiscal responsibility is a hollow one. And for that they deserve a beating with one of these:

Will the stimulus bill work? I’m not sure. However that was never the point was it really?

The point was to show the American public that someone, anyone, in a position of public trust-cared about more than some rich, greedy, Wall Street banker. In that regard, I find incredible fault with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They should both be taken out in back of the Congress and shot. Poorly begun is poorly done and Obama needs to shoot Ms. Pelosi for being a horse’s ass.  ( I would have used the “C” word-but I know c**ts who are better than her. I even hold Pelosi in lower esteem than Sarah Palin and that is a saying a lot). Had Pelosi not been so stupid and not allowed the House Democrats to load up the bill with projects that may have been worthy in their own right, but had no business in this particular piece of legislation-we all would have been better off.

Plus, nobody has made an effective case to me for the tax cuts. The issue of the bill is to allow the government to replace stupid businessmen as consumers. All tax cuts do is allow, people to take money and stuff it away. Good for them-bad for the economy. You can be damn sure that all I am going to do with any tax rebate is put it in a money market. Why?

Because the worst is yet to come.

I have mixed feelings myself about the package. I think a stimulus bill is necessary-but then again, I think the idea of a “shot in the arm” for the economy is moonshine. I think that what we are really looking at is the government becoming the replacement consumer-making up for the lack of consumption by people and business for a while till they can get their courage back. There is nothing wrong with that, but it would be nicer if I could feel the government was buying the right things to create the right kind of jobs.As they said in Goodfellas”

Fuck you-pay me!

Actually, if it were me- I would pass a bill that would grow the economy, not just stimulate it. I’d invest in high speed trains like they have in Japan. invest in space and defense-which creates really good jobs at high wages.  Work on roads, but more importantly do what it took to fix housing. A lot of whose distress has come because house prices are simply too high.

So if I could, I’d do this to house loans and the other facets of the cost of living:

Why did people get themselves in bad loans? Because they could not get into a decent place to live for an affordable price. Or rather, their expectations about what was a reasonable place to live was too DAMN HIGH! Tell me again why folks need 4 bedroom monstrosities for 700,000 dollars?

A side note-that I find disturbing for a whole bunch of reasons-all of the really big houses in our neighborhood are owned by non Caucasian people. There’s a reason for that, its probably not a good one. Go back and reread the previous paragraph. That did not say what I meant to say.

There is a point where both overseas, and at home-the US is going to have to reign in its appetite. That day has arrived, and we actually may be better off in smaller more affordable places to live. Particularly since whatever jobs that are created are not going to pay the bill for the  houses we have.

So forgive me if I have no sympathy for the Republicans right now. They are gambling that the stimulus will fail. If  it does-they look like heroes. If it doesn’t-they will look like the uncaring rich bastards they are. I’m rooting for the latter to happen.

The other 99% of us need more than lip service.

Speaking of stimulation by the way:

But the service inside still sucks:

When you stop charging for drinks-call me.

During my last little sojourn up north, I embarked upon an experiment. When the meetings were over, instead of staying the last night in small town New Jersey ( home of the roads with no left turns), I set off back to the Philadelphia airport and stayed the night at a hotel near there. In this objective, I saved my company money(this was on my nickle)-and I undertook to explore another facet to the city of brotherly love.

Arriving at the hotel-I took care of personal business and phone calls, took a nap, had a few beers at the hotel bar. Fed and beered-I set out on a my little experiment to understand the state of America’s city transportation infrastructure. Being an accomplished train rider from Japan, and the Burgh- I knew that I could easily navigate the short ride from the airport to center city Philadelphia.

Boy was I wrong.

If you ever want to understand why America needs investment in its infrastructure-ride the train from the Airport in Philly-a fairly modern and reasonably nice airport-to 30th street station or Suburban Street station.

It will depress you.

Now truth in advertising my frame of reference is Japan or Hong Kong-or even Singapore-where I can depart the plane, step on a train and in 30 minutes or so be in the middle of one of the fine metropolis’ of the world.  In the 1700′s-or even the 1950′s Philadelphia was considered a fine city. No longer,  it grieves me to say.

Start with the train’s schedule. 1 train every half hour-at a very unpredictable time. (8:09 or 8:39 from terminal B). Where is the value in that? Miss the train and you have to wait-as I did- in 28 degree weather on platform with some scary people on it.

Then look at the fare-$7.00. More if it is peak time. What is up with that? I could take a cab for $18 dollars and at least they were numerous. ( I checked the fare on the cab when I stumbled home). Time has value too. Now contrast that to Hong Kong where the station is right at the airport, bright and clean, and runs every 6 minutes-at twice the speed of SEPTA’s engineering AMTRAK marvel. The distance from PHL airport to 30th street is the same as that from HKG to Kowlwoon.

The train arrives. I embark. Four cars in all-no ticket box available prior to the platform. A scruffy, ne-er do well “conductor” takes my hard earned money. He takes his sweet time dispensing change-and then has to hole punch a paper ticket. Again, contrast that with Asia, where one would swipe a card, board a clean train, and have wi-fi all the way in side. ( Or even a little TV in the seat just like on a plane). The passengers were not travelers as it appeared to me-but a collection of various and sundry airport employees-tired after a hard day of catering to the needs of the nations jet set.

30 minutes later, said train arrives at 30th street station-home of AMTRAC and America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, the Acela. I cross through the historic and beautiful station, remarking to myself, ” I wonder what this place was like in the 40′s or 50′s?”

I’ll bet it was something.

Now, its still pretty impressive, until you walk out side. You see-you have to walk outside to make the connection to the Subway. Which was, a whole another adventure in and of itself.

Crossing the street, fighting my way  past homeless people, (who I have a new found appreciation for-I might be one myself someday)-and pushy taxi drivers, I set down the stairs to the Philly Metro. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

My destination was simple. Get to a street adjoining Walnut street, and near Rittenhouse Square. Had been told there was some night life there, including a couple of Irish pubs. The getting there was the adventure however.

No subway pass in my pocket, no token upon me, I have to pull $2 to hand to a non-descript, non -communicative representative of diversity hiring at work-simply so I could walk through a turnstile. Tell me again why I could not swipe a card and invest the man’s salary in transit police? Who were sorely needed when I descended the steps to the transit platform-where I quickly discovered what it was like to be a minority of one.  The trolley comes-who said this was a subway? I board, keeping my head on the swivel and figuring out possible escape routes.

Two stations later I depart.  Two blocks over I am on Walnut street.

At least this part of the journey turned out as advertised-there was some night life. However, walking down the streets gave me the creeps. And this from a man who has braved “The Gut” from the Via Roma southward to the Maritime Terminal in Naples at 2:30 AM-or climbed the hill from AFSOUTH to NSA Naples in the dark.  I was not quite as nervous as I was walking around Philadelphia at 10 pm at night. Street lamps? Dimmer than they should have been. Homeless people? Too many. Bars? Not enough.

However my ardous journey was rewarded when I arrived at my destination, just cold enough ( it was FREEZING) to have gone in any warm door.  I was just in time to join the crowd for QUIZ NIGHT! Sitting at the bar, I re-discovered why I enjoy , what I affectionately refer to as prowling. Sitting next to me was one of Philadelphia’s finest and his rather well endowed girlfriend. We struck up a conversation-and as he discovered that I was r.easonable fluent in useless historical trivia-we agreed to team up our efforts. Since I admire policeman deep down- I think they have a very hard job- I bought him beers. He in turn, allowed me the privilege of talking to his girlfriend with out hitting me when my eyes strayed, once or twice, down south on her sweater. A fair trade if you ask me.

The moral of the story? Philly has things to offer-but not if it can’t get people to them. Six cities in Asia that I know of,  have automated train systems-high speed ones too. Why would it be a crime to invest in that? Why do we still have people collecting tickets, when technology exists to pay with the swipe of card. And why not brightly light the stations like they do in Japan? The extra electricity costs could be offset by less people on the “Surekill”. With a modern train system and an interconnecting system of trains and busses I could have been in Philly every night of my trip-instead of Jay’s Sports Bar.

If I were the President-I would take 100 billion to invest in railroads. Not roads-but railroads as a part of moving energy consumption heavily towards electricity and away from oil. Screw the tax cuts-the country has an opportunity to fix itself, and in this area, if the government does not lead the way-no one will.

One final note-don’t try to save money going home by walking briskly down Broad Street southward in 27 degree weather. I folded after 8 blocks and hailed a cab. Scary too. Thank God  he sent lots of them along. Abdul got me home ok.

It could have been worse though-I could have ended up like this guy:

It has been a while since I have posted anything of substance, I know. This past week I spent most of it in New Jersey and Philadelphia. Faced with a choice of blogging after a long day , or eating-well I took the latter option. After that I collapsed on the bed. My apologies.

Yesterday, this blog turned 4 years old. I guess in blog years that makes the blog middle aged. (I’m assuming blog years are like dog years and the average blog only lives to be 6 or so….). During this past week I’ve been trying to assimilate my thoughts on the current state of my erstwhile hobby. I’m not sure where I stand on the matter anymore-I can feel my ambivalency level rising.

I began this blog out of a sense of frustration responding to a huge personal disappointment in my life; created by nothing but sheer stupidity on the part of other people……..on the part of the “big bad establishment”. My disgust with their belief that their position in life gave them even one iota of control of how I should live mine;- or worse yet, some idea that they had any right, ANY RIGHT AT ALL, to judge the manner in which I lived mine. More importantly, they did not have a right to tell me how to live it.

Had that situation gone the way it was supposed to, I would be in a much , much, different and better place. I would be living where I want to be living, with an eye to the future that would have kept me there for a long long time. Because of the evil indifference of some key people, I’m am now stuck struggling to get where I want to be, branded as I am with some other person’s view of how they think I ought to be. Screw that.

Furthermore, my passion with the hobby itself has begun to fade somewhat. Not because I still do not have things to say, but rather by my increasing inability to get people to listen to it.  Blogging is a lot like meeting a woman. When you first start you are excited by her newness and novelty. Its only later that you start to see the reality of her features.

Like all bloggers, I had that fantasy that someone of influence would pick up on my writing and become enraptured with it, enough so to enable a transition to a living based upon it.  Sadly, as the years and the hit counter have proven-that’s not going to be the case. Its probably like my oppressors listed above-blogs have a self fulfilling tendency to slot people into types. If you do not fit one of those, it does not matter how well you write-the crowds just are not there.

For me, I like to write about all kinds of things. And unlike a lot of people who share my background, the “all American”, Ozzie and Harriet, typical American middle class existence shares no attraction anymore. The suburban utopia, now that I have tried it twice as a matter of fact, simply sucks.  Fuck the house and yard, fuck the simple existence of going to work, going home, and living the typical family life.  Give me an apartment in Asia, money to live on and some night life-and I am happier than most of them.  In general, people from a military background regard such sentiments as nothing short of heretical. The fact that I refuse to embrace, a conservative brand of politics along side that rejection of so called “family values” simply accelerates the flame of their anger. Yet over 30+ years-it too has not delivered the desired results.

Which leads me to my big fault with the blogosphere.  It demands-over time-a conformity to a certain “type”. For example, in my early blogging career I had a chance to get linked to a big time “lefty” blog. They liked my aversion to George W. Bush-they hated the fact that I felt a special place in hell should be reserved for Pat Schroeder. The result was no link.  On the other side of the aisle-most of the “true believers” just can’t stand the fact that after 6 years: 1) I still feel the Iraq war was a mistake, 2) Afghanistan will fail as a nation no matter what we do and 3) that the so called “war on terror” , as currently defined,  cannot be won. On the domestic front-I’ve still not come to an acceptance that simply making the rich, richer-while not addressing the fundamental needs of the masses of people- somehow makes the nation stronger.  30+ years of adult life have shown me the folly of that point of view. That does not, unlike the opinion of some, make me a socialist.

More importantly, I’ve yet to come to understand, the herd of commenters.  Many blogs claim that they endeavor to embrace “honest dialogue” , but the comment herd will quickly descend upon an comment author who writes an opinion counter to the prevailing view of the blog. The word “troll” gets quickly thrown out-or worse yet, the blog author either simply bans them, or holds them up to ridicule.  In the meantime, the rest of the herd-will applaud the author of the blog for his wisdom, which in spite of how well written it is-generally constitutes right wing tripe. Or left wing tripe. Same phenomenon, different writers.

Which brings me back to my own personal blogging dilemma. I want to continue, and I will. But I can tell some of the old fire has gone out. On too many days, the desire simply to jump through the screen and club someone to death, wins out over the impulse to master the written word and argue their point -point by counter point. Especially if I read morons like this one and this one.

The need to find the spark of originality is there-lost a lot when you compare my early posts to my later ones. I’ve got to find the time to branch out some-and rise above the noise that is the military blogosphere.

Truth be told, my favorite blogs remain the expat ones-a lot of whom are linked to upon this page. Who tell the tale of dealing with life in every day terms-or more importantly, reiterate the point that the US does not have a lock on good ideas or a great standard of living. Or more simply, just talk about the wonder of living life each day. A lot of times that is just better than hearing about the latest failings of Barak Obama-or the latest hallucination of Sarah Palin.

Of course there is another possibility-that my current funk simply echoes a greater dissatisfaction with what I am doing and where I am in my life versus where I should be. This past Christmas I bought a coffee mug to place on my desk -to remind me not to lose sight of my goal: “Go confidently in the direction your dreams-LIVE THE LIFE you have imagined“.  Some days I am inspired by that thought-others not so much. I think to myself,”That’s rich. I would be the person I aspire to be if others would stop telling what I aspire to become. And if I could just forget about these annoying things like paying the bills.”

But of course the day you stop trying to get what you want is the day you start to die. This year, I know where I want to go-still not so sure how I want to get there.  And in the meantime I will still keep blogging.

Because-as E @ L pointed out:

So fragile our humanity, so tenuous our grasp on civility.
Our existence, it needs constant monitoring.
It needs people who push back:
- Against the unthinking crowd.
- Against the mindless masses.
- Against popularity, fashion.
- Against what is initially perceived as fun, as amusing.
- Against thinking that you can’t make a difference.
- Against not seeing that you do have a choice.
Going AGAINST the flow.… THIS is the role of gonzo bloggers, of artists.

The rolls of those who do that-has got to include me. So on I will press.

Here’s to me!

Back at home after freezing my ass off up in the North part of the country.

Some observations on American Public Transportation to follow. (Its not pretty…..).

And it is iffy whether I will have blogging capability there.

So enjoy yourselves and watch those Steeler re-plays.

Or argue about the stimulus bill.

Catch you when I can.

That game was a close one! I seriously thought the Cardinals might take it.

However God, in his infinite wisdom, loves long suffering Steeler fans, moreso than upstart Arizonians.

As it should be. The folks in Phoenix will still have jobs next week……….

As much as I like to complain, life cannot be too bad when the sun is shining brightly, there is not a cloud in the sky, the temperature here in Hicksville is nice , AND:

THE STEELERS ARE IN THE SUPERBOWL!

Beer is bought, TV and sound system checked, let the game begin.