Scene setter

The S.O. and I have been here for over 6 weeks today. They have been pretty pleasant on the whole, and together we have settled into a nice a little routine. I’ve been trying for a while to coalesce my thoughts into some organized bit of writing, but I’m not quite there yet. This has not been an easily digestible piece of my life-job wise, town wise,  or life wise. Despite the fact that its 6000 miles from paradise though, our little life together is , as I said, actually quite pleasant.

The trouble is, that is all it is-quite pleasant. And that is all it will ever be: just quite pleasant. Which compared to many of the possible alternatives, is a good thing unto itself. For someone like me however, who has been used to excitement though-I mean real, kid on Christmas morning anticipation and excitement (like the kind I get whenever I leave the airplane and see the RBS sign over the exit to the Jetway in Hong Kong)- this is underwhelming to say the least.

Speaking of Hong Kong, I’d kill for a week in Singapore or there. Unfortunately I don’t have any vacation yet. So no trips to Mecca anytime soon.

So in the meantime here we sit in Pleasantville. So what it is it really like here? Gimmee some time to think about and I’ll get back to you.

In the mean time-here are some vignettes of life in Shopping Mall USA……..and a Blog Round up.

Fred makes a point that I have been saying for a long time. American feminists really don’t want men to be happy-if its not done so on their terms:

In countries of the Third World, you often find American men in their fifties or sixties who have wives twenty or twenty-five years younger. In my considerable experience, they seem happy together. However, the arrangement upsets people back in the US. Why, I wonder?

A couple of upsettances are common. The first, from feminists, holds that the man is exploiting the woman sexually (a flattering thought to a man in his sixties; more likely, she wishes he were) or that he wants a docile and pliable woman. The view springs from the common notion among American women that a female who isn’t intolerable isn’t really a man. I suggest that if feminists married more Chinese women, they would learn a great deal about docility and where it isn’t. But, as I have often said, feminists hold women in much more contempt than do men.

The second upsettance, from both men and women Stateside, is that the wife is a brazen-clawed gold-digger. We are left, I suppose, with a docile, pliable brazen-clawed…ah, never mind.

It is perhaps worth noting that marriage has always had a large element of self-seeking, and that women, when they have not actually sold sex, have at least bartered it. This practice is hotly denied, and as hotly pursued.

But wait, there is more:

Now, there is a curious social convention regarding guys in the later stages of life. A man of fifty is a silvering figure of masculinity but, somewhere around sixty, he becomes in the public mind a doddering idiot. The phrase “little old man” comes into play. He is either a dirty old man (implying that he has the instincts of all males from the age of fifteen) or a manipulable dunderhead subject to the wiles of any bit of fluff. How pitiable.

Actually he is much more likely to be a bush pilot out of Alaska or ex-Special Forces or a veteran of thirty years in the oil business in the Pacific. Dimwits and weak sisters don’t often show up single in such places. They’ve known the girls and the places where you find girls for decades, some going as far back as BC Street in Koza. They know what is what, and are unlikely to get flensed.

Here it is important to get beyond the often unconscious but powerful condescension that so many have toward Third-Worlders. This attitude urges that women (and men, but we are not here interested in men) in most of the world are ignorant if not illiterate, uncouth and, not to put too fine a point on it, not very bright. This view doesn’t hold up well to experience.

Women are naturally classy unless, like so many American women, they have consciously appropriated the manners of cattle rustlers, running backs, and rabid badgers as an intensely sought ideological goal. In most places women dress well if they possibly can, and behave well. Many are intelligent, which is more important than formal education in being good company. They generally are just plain good people. And they are far tougher and more self-reliant than are cosseted editresses in New York.

So things look pretty good from the guy’s point of view.

From the woman’s point of view, American (and in general First World) men also look pretty good. The cold fact is that American men treat women well. In a lot of countries, the men are—I’m trying to think of a polite euphemism for “real dickheads”; one will come to me in a moment. They beat their wives, cheat on them, treat them like chattels. American men don’t. (There are exceptions to all of this, of course, but they are exceptions.) A gringo wants his wife to be part of his life. He will go to dinner with her, take her desires into account, and treat her as an equal. Koreans won’t.

This is a novel concept in many places but, I promise, it flies really well.

And lest anyone think this is somehow me-I will remind you that the S.O. is actually a year older than me. Like every thing else in my life, I screwed that choice up. And as for sexual exploitation-well lets just say the dollar is not the only thing that has declined in value over the years. However, she is -as Fred points out-an excellent companion. For all her annoying little habits.

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One weekend while we were driving from mall to mall-which sometimes seems like all I do here-we came across an interesting scene. On one side of the road was a small, peaceful anti war demonstration. Across the way, a long way I might add-it was a big interesection-there was a counter demonstration complete with POW / MIA flags and American flags. Supporting the war. Interestingly enough the scraggy factor was about the same for both sides. However the pro-war side (no doubt due to military training) had the better real estate. They had a delicatessen and a Seven-Eleven at their backs. The anti war demostrators only had a monument to a tornado and townhouses behind them. Not sure how far tofu and granola goes in 95 degree heat.

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Head on over to ChairForce.com. They have the best words on the recent firings of the USAF’s top leadership. “I thought this was good for a little laugh.  Just think, there are thousands of former young Air Force officers cheering with glee as we speak …  “.

What goes around, comes around.

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Whenever we go out to check the progress on palatial Skippy estates (shown below), the lingua franca sure as hell is not English. Its all radio Unavision all the time. What’s up with that?

Housing crisis? What housing crisis?
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Andrew Sullivan pointed me to this article by Ben Stein, which makes a hell of a lot of sense about fixing gas prices. Want lower oil prices? To hell with drilling in Alaska or off shore, try balancing the federal budget. Stein has a great point, besides the fact that the rest of the world is really scared the US will do something stupid vis a vis Iran-which drives up prices-it also does not help that the dollar is so incredibly weak. Important point to consider when you think that oil prices are pegged to the dollar.

As I see it, the problem is not the price of oil generally. (I think that the price will decline somewhat before long, but the long-term trend is very much up.) The problem is the stagnation of wages. Please bear in mind that the numbers I gave are averages. Skilled workers make much more. Lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, accountants, dentists — they all make more. ( I just paid two dentists a total of more than $10,000 — I am not kidding — to have one poor old tooth get a root canal and a crown, and I’m not finished with that miserable tooth yet. I paid for 90 percent of it out of my own pocket. I do earn more than the ordinary citizen, but nothing by Wall Street standards.)

But, obviously, a heck of a lot of workers make less. Imagine what it means to minimum-wage workers for gasoline to surge past $4 a gallon.

What is to be done? The federal government can do little to make the price of oil fall in the short run, except, perhaps, for one basic thing: balance the budget. The world price of oil is denominated in dollars. The dollar is weak for many reasons, but a big one is the immense budget deficits run by our government. If President Bush and Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were to stand together in front of a camera and solemnly swear that they would balance the budget in four years, even if it required tax increases on people earning millions, the dollar would rise against the euro, and oil would fall in dollars.

Of course its tough to balance the budget when you are waging a 160 billion dollar a year war on behalf of the Arabs,  so that they can continue to make obscene amounts of those weak dollars. And do we even demand the Iraqis give us a “blood discount” on their oil? (e.g. like sell it to the US for half price in view of all that we have done for their ungrateful asses). Not a chance. Mr Wolfwitz, call your office-you’ve got some explaining to do.

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 This town probably has more churches per square mile than any other burg I’ve seen in a while. (And I’ve seen a bunch of burgs-including THE BURG). However it jarred me to see an add for a real estate agency that specializes in selling churches. Is there a market to buy them? I always thought protestant churches behaved in a manner like fission, they just got so big that a splinter group splits off and forms a new demonimation-and a new congregation.

Maybe they cater to that market.