In Defense of Capitalism (or "Why Karl is Wrong")

I had dinner last night with some friends, one of whom we'll call "Karl." (I've given him the pseudonym because the allusion amuses me. If you don't recognize the allusion, perhaps it's best if you sit this one out, and wait for the next blog entry.)

[N.B. IF WHILE READING THIS YOU IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS "KARL," I AM WARNING YOU NOW, KARL, NOT TO CONTINUE ANY FURTHER. YOU MUST DESIST IMMEDIATELY AND CLOSE YOUR BROWSER. YOU MAY BE OFFENDED AT MY ANALYSIS OF YOUR ARGUMENTS, AND BECAUSE I HAVE PERSONALY RESOLVED NEVER TO RECOMMENCE THIS DEBATE WITH YOU, I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR WHATEVER REJOINDERS YOU MAY BE COOKING UP. MOREOVER, I CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY OFFENSE, INJURY, AND/OR PERSONAL SLIGHT YOU MAY INCUR AS A RESULT OF READING THIS, BECAUSE I AM WARNING YOU (FOR THE THIRD TIME), "KARL," THAT YOU SHOULD STOP READING NOW.]*

Karl, as it turns out, recently viewed a documentary entitled "Corporation," which claims that the corporation is legally recognized as an entity, or "individual." If the corporation's behavior were measured according to the standards we apply to individual people, it would display, according to Karl, "the characteristics of a psychopath." That is, the corporation looks out only for its own good, and is willing to promote its welfare ("the bottom line," as Karl puts it), at the expense of everyone else. It has regard for neither society at large, nor the environment, and will exploit either or both if the opportunity arises. Capitalism is evil, according to this line of reasoning, because it is based solely on self-interest, and thus, it delegates the cost of its activities to the environment, and to countries, societies, and individuals vulnerable to manipulation and marginalization. (But believe me, that is a considerably more articulate version of what was presented to me yesterday evening.)

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Let's take a step back, and define a couple things first. We'll start with rival school of capitalism, which as anyone sentient during the Cold War well knows is, communism. Because there are all sorts of communist variations (Lenninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism, "Eurocommunism", &c), we'll try to focus on communism proper, that is communism according to Marx and his Manifesto. Unable to read the original German, I am forced once again to (what may be construed as) my unhealthy dependence on Wikipedia for information. According to Wikiped', the Communist Manifesto has 10 "planks":

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c..

By ignoring planks ten (because I don't think it stands in opposition to capitalism as practiced in the majority of free markets) and nine (for the same reason, plus as economies develop, they tend to be much less dependent on agriculture as a share of the labor market or as a source of capital), we can sum up the communism by saying that the State owns all land and maintains a centrally planned economy, and that private property either ceases to exist, or is distributed more or less evenly among the populous.

So what is capitalism? There are even more variations of capitalism than of its rival school (due in no small measure to the fact that the former system has proved vastly more successful, thus eliciting more critical thought and experimentation), but Wikipedia [maybe I am becoming a Wiki slave...] provides a concise and easily understood summary: "Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned and operated for profit, and in which distribution, production and pricing of goods and services are determined in a largely free market."
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First, Karl's argument is annoying because it sounds like not too much more than a parroting of the documentary, which itself sounded like reductionism at it's worst. In other words, it's a bad copy of an original which itself was poor to begin with. One cannot treat a corporation in all the ways that one treats an individual, primarily because a corporation by definition must be composed of several individuals, whereas an individual can only be "composed" of him- or her- self. In this sense, a corporation is more like a family. And how do families behave? They act in their best interest, making decisions that help them, and often hurt others in the process. A family looks out for its own well being, cares for its members, usually to the exclusion of caring for those outside the family. Does Karl consider families in general psychopathic?

Second, let's pick apart the idea that capitalism is "evil" because it promotes self-interest. First, it does not "promote" self-interest, although this is a clear reference to the ideas of Adam Smith, one of the founders of modern capitalist thought. Smith merely observed that when people do look out for their own good, in a capitalist system, they can subsequently stimulate the economy and help the poor; I doubt the same can be said of the competing ideology, but more on that later. Moreover, we need to face the realities of living in a post-lapsarian world, namely that people are, on the whole, selfish. To build a system that tries to ignore—or, worse, to deny—this fact is simply foolish. A capitalist system can use people's innate propensity for greed and selfishness for good, rather than trying to impose an alternate reality (i.e. that people are selfless and benevolent). Capitalism does not promote egotism; it simply presupposes that this condition already exists among humanity, and allows for that natural impulse to be channeled toward a positive end. IMO, any system that takes an ineluctable evil and utilizes it to lift millions out of poverty and double (sometimes treble) the life expectancy should be not be summarily dismissed as "evil."

Third, although this in itself may be a bit simplistic, let's take a pragmatic approach to weighing the relative good of a free market versus a command economy.^† I have assembled two kinds of data: 1) indices of economic liberalism, as measured by the Fraser Institute^‡; and 2) measures of per capita GDP, adjusted by PPP, assembled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On another (once again self-congratulatory) note, I think it's good that the data were culled from two separate sources to avoid the appearance that they had somehow been doctored to artificially imply a link between market freedom and the creation of wealth.^α There are countries listed in one set of data but not in the other, and these have been removed since the absence of data can neither confirm nor deny the link I am suggesting. Another notice: the per capita GDP figures included 181 countries, the economic freedom figures included 130 countries, the economic freedom final score was on a scale between a low of 0 and a high of 10. [Click on any of the charts to see them enlarged. Thanks again to Ben for engineering a method to put Excel® charts on my teeming brain.]

10 Wealthiest Countries, Xref Economic Freedom Percentile:

10 Most Economically Liberal Countries, Xref Wealth Percentile:

10 Poorest Nations, Xref Economic Freedom Percentile:

10 Least Economically Liberal Nations, Xref Wealth Percentile:

Okay, so this entry is getting a wee bit Ross Perot with all the charts and tedious digressions into facts and figures, but just remember: at one point in time, Mr. Perot was leading both Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush in the polls (he was almost president!) (But don't worry, I won't start referring to my readers as "you people.") Anyway, because yes, I actually do have this much free time, I eliminated the data for all countries not in both the Fraser and IMF charts, plotted economic liberality on the X-axis and per capita GDP on the Y-axis, and asked Excel® to create a regression line and give me the coefficient of determination (R²), which came in at a decent 0.6349. Thinking I could do better, I eliminated seven outlying data points, re-plotted the points, and received an even better 0.7252! I'll be the first to admit that: 1) 0.7252 is not 0.9000, or even 0.800; and 2) the regression slope equation contains x², meaning that at some economic freedom level below 4.5, individual wealth is actually predicted to increase. These two points notwithstanding, given the enormous number of complex variables that affect per capita GDP, the primitive forms of statistical analysis available to me, and my very basic understanding of macroeconomics, 0.7252 is something of a minor miracle.
I am not unaware, however, that my magnificent coefficient of 0.7252 does not ultimately prove that capitalism is inherently a "better" system. (Maybe the only thing it really does show is that I truly do have too much leisure at my disposal.) Nonetheless, I think it provides weighty evidence that an increase in liberalism is correlated with an increase in personal wealth, which is a good thing.^β And in the end, I'm sure both Karl and "Karl" would rather be rich than poor.


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*For those of you prone to speculation, "Karl" is neither Alvin nor Shui.

^†Here is great potential for things to get quite hairy, potential to start down the dangerous path toward questions of axiological judgement. (E.g. "How exactly will we define 'good'?", "Is being rich inherently better than being poor?", or "How will we define and/or measure 'wealth and 'poverty'?") To save both the reader and myself the time, we will sidestep these labyrinthine questions [and, naturally, even more complex questions such as "Even if wealth by itself brings happiness, is such happiness diminished, cancelled, or even reversed by the associated income inequality and increases in crime levels?"] by noting a couple things: 1) It is true that several studies have demonstrated that more money does not, in fact, equal more happiness, and that over a certain point (in the US, approximately $50,000 per annum, according to Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert on KPCC's AirTalk—scroll to 5:00 of the interview for the source) increased income appears to have no effect on perceived happiness; 2) while preferred standards of living, and the requisite incomes to sustain those standards, vary widely from person to person, and from country to country, I think we can all safely agree that it is very hard to be happy in abject poverty (that is, starving and/or homeless), and that everyone's standard is somewhere above abject poverty; 3) therefore the system that has the most power to lift up the most people out of total destitution with the fewest adverse side effects is best.

^‡Really, what the Fraser Institute has done is nothing short of astonishing. You and I are the beneficiaries of a single, final computation for each country, but this number was arrived at by myriad other calculations which included gov't consumption as a share of total consumption, gov't subsidies as a share of GDP, judiciary independence, protection of intellectual property, mean tariff rate, freedom to own foreign currency bank accounts, compliance costs of import/export, foreign ownership/investment restrictions, freedom to trade internationally, competition in domestic banking, interest rate regulation, "[l]abor force share with wages set by centralized collective bargaining," "labor market regulation," and a vast array of other categories of "economic freedom," which demonstrates, if nothing else, that the people of the Fraser Institute have invested huge sums of time and capital into arriving at what you might otherwise fear to be somewhat arbitrary estimations. I know I already gave the link, but if you're into poring over economic data, click here for the aforesaid categories by country, plus many more.

^αIn fact, as of my typing this, I have not yet put together the Excel® spreadsheets that will demonstrate what I'm sure will be the correlative link between wealth and economic de-regulation. [I know Eddie will be quick to interject one of his favorite mantras, that "correlation is not causation," but I have every confidence that both he and the reader would rather live in a country with an economic model strongly correlated with wealth than in one whose model is strongly negatively correlated with it.] I am so smug and certain, in fact, that even if the data does not live up to my expectations, I will include it in this article to remind me of the consequences of hubris.

^βRemember that scripture teaches us that "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. " (1 Tim 6:10). Money of itself is, as Pam likes to say, "just a place holder." In fact, there are plenty of scriptural references that imply that wealth can be a blessing or a hedge against uncertainty: Ps 112:1-3; Pr 10:3-4, 10:15, 22:4. 13:22; Ecc 5:18-20.

The Prestige

N.B. To those who have not yet seen Christopher and Jonathan Nolan's The Prestige: 1) In what kind of cultural/social/cinematic vacuum have you been living? Get out there and (by the time I publish this overdue piece) rent this movie! 2) What follows is not so much a review as it is a gushing catalogue of reasons why I love this movie. Advance no further because what comes next contains not just plot spoilers, but hemi-critical analysis of how some of the movie's elements work toward its overall themes.

“Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge; the magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, or a bird, or a man. He shows you this object, and pledges to you its utter normality. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed real, unaltered, normal, but of course, it probably isn’t. The second act is called the Turn; the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because, of course, you're not really looking. You don’t really want to know: you want to be fooled.”

These, if you have followed my admonition, you will certainly recognize as the movie's opening lines, as delivered by Michael Caine. And, of course, they double as the film's equally-memorable closing lines (delivered by same). We all love it when the end of an essay, book, or movie returns to its starting point because this gives us a sense both of closure, as things seem tied up ever so neatly, and of infinity, as an ending that loops back around to the beginning creates a cyclical looping.

“But you wouldn’t clap yet, because making something disappear isn’t enough: you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call the Prestige.”

Similarly, a clever dénouement coupled with a recitation of the opening soliloquy is not enough to bring a movie-going audience to its collective feet, not even enough to elicit half-grateful applause. What a good movie needs (and what I think The Prestige delivers), the "hardest part," as it were, is for that long stretch between between the opening and closing monologues to be compelling, captivating, original.

I was no fan of the Brothers Nolan's other movie, Memento, which I thought relied too heavily on the conceit of running both forward and backward from opposite ends of the plot's chronology to engender in the audience the disorienting effects of anterograde amnesia, the disorder from which the main character suffers. It was a cute effect, but if the story itself, when told in normal chronology, is not particularly interesting.* Actually, after hearing that The Prestige was written and directed by the same people who made Memento, I was very reluctant to watch it, but rave reviews from several of my new friends in CYF (most notably Brandon and Yolanda) helped change my mind—and rightfully so!

As in Memento, time frame shifts are heavily employed in The Prestige; unlike the former film, however, The Prestige doesn't feel unnaturally bound to a gimmicky sort of time-hopping for purpose or meaning. True, the three time periods among which The Prestige's plot jumps do roughly correspond to the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige of a traditional magic trick, but the effect is considerably more subtle, and therefore more easily appreciated. (Crème brûlée, even when masterfully prepared, just doesn't taste as good when rammed down your throat by the quart.) Granted, the skipping around is not always easy on the viewer: Pam, with whom I watched the movie for the first time, was a little confused by the film's "time travel," and had to view it again the next day; Jean Oppenheimer (professional movie critic), who reviewed the film for KPCC's FilmWeek [scroll down to the very bottom of the page], was so totally perplexed that she confessed on air, "I never [figured out what the film was about], even at the end, unfortunately. From the minute it started to the minute it ended. Fortunately, I ran into Andy Klein [a fellow professional critic] after the film and he explained it to me."^† Yet despite this minor difficulty, the film more than rewards the viewer for investing the requisite attention, which it deserves! [Honestly, if a film can be understood while simultaneously talking to a friend, planning out your week's schedule and balancing your checkbook, there's a good chance it's too simple to be enjoyed.]

After leaving the theater, I was most struck by a (possibly unintended) form of misdirection. I was so focused on figuring out how Alfred Borden accomplishes the "Original Transported Man" (and coincidentally why he sometimes loves Sarah, and sometimes does not), that I utterly overlooked a part of the movie intended to be rather straightforward: Tesla's machine. I thought the multiple top haps had all been purchased by Tesla and his assistant, in order to run more tests on the hats that the machine was somehow ruining. When Tesla tells Angier, "they're all yours" (referencing to whom all the top hats belong), I mistook his meaning as, "they all belong to you. Since you paid me such a hefty sum, you can have them all." I also thought there are two ordinary black cats on the hill, not realizing one is a transported clone. I only figured out how the machine operates when Algier first tries it, and his clone is incarnated a few feet from him. Misdirection at its best! (Or just my being stupid...) Anyway, I was amused by the way the film's mirrored a magic act in this respect.

It was Eddie who pointed out to me that in repeating the opening monologue at the end, the film "brings it back," much like the Prestige of a traditional act of prestidigitation. I must also credit him with the observation that the two characters switch personalities in the film: early on, Algier is reluctant "getting his hands dirty," while Borden has no qualms about the daily sacrifice of canaries to the gods of magic. In the end, however, it is Algier who murders his clone (himself!) every night simply to prove he is the superior magician. (There is also the interesting way the rivalry between Edison and Tesla mirrors that between The Professor and The Great Danton, but I needn't get into that in this burgeoning piece.)

Matt Johnston, of the Chicago Maroon, does an excellent job summing the movie up:

This third act is the Professor’s specialty. He is a superior magician and pulls off tricks so well that the audience sometimes does not clap, too shocked to see how perfect the illusion has been. (Or was it an illusion?) Danton is the lesser magician but the greater showman by far. His megaphone charm wins the day. With this movie, the Nolans join the Danton school: They have an inferior trick, but they sure do know how to sell it. The Prestige has a great pledge and an even better turn, but, ironically, no prestige.

For a fellow blogspotter's review (not as well written as Johnston's, but still maybe worth a read), check out Ben Witherington.
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*N.B. By way of comparison, I absolutely love Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, a two-person musical detailing Jamie and Cathy's meeting, courtship, marriage and divorce all within (you guessed it) a five year span. The show opens with Cathy in the midst of, or just after, her divorce from Jamie; each song of hers thereafter relates an incident temporally before the one that precedes it. Between each of Cathy's numbers, Jamie tells his side of the story in traditional, forward chronology, starting from the couple's first date. The musical's only duet occurs in the middle, when both of their storylines intersect for their engagement and wedding. What's so fantastic about The Last Five Years is that it deals with a major logistical constraint (small budget = a cast of only two) by parlaying it into a strength: creative use of those two characters, especially by placing each character on a different temporal trajectory. While the story itself isn't anything new, seeing the dissolution of a marriage from the forward and reverse directions is simultaneously unsettling and fascinating. [Okay, I realize this sort of sounds like a big, fat contradiction since what I didn't like about Memento was its typical plot and its dependence on chronological trickery. In my defense: 1) I feel like the forward/backward effect was simply better employed and less jarring than in Memento; 2) I have a predilection for musical theater over film as a storytelling medium (and, of course, the song-and-dance numbers in Memento were pretty sparse); 3) while Brown's story is no more original than that of the Nolans', I simply found the former more engaging.] As always though, what matters most in a musical is its music, and both Brown's lyrics and his score are superb.

For more info, check out (what I suspect is) Jason Robert Brown's website, Goodbye Until Tomorrow, or Musical Theatre Audition.

^†I'm not sure, however that Ms. Oppenheimer should be a film critic, professional or otherwise, since later in her review she admits, "I'd never heard of a man named Tesla in history, and apparently that's quite important. I can't believe I'm the only ignorant person who's going to sit in that movie house [laughs, half embarrassed]." Yes, believe it, Jean. Did you even take history? If not, then you should have at least heard of Tesla in a science class. Public education fails another student.
"I could not understand a lot of what Christian Bale said because of his cockney accent. So the film didn't work for me because I couldn't understand a lot of what was going on, and when I did, I thought that they said it in the most confusing way." First of all, Mr. Bale's accent comes from his native Wales, not cockney. Shouldn't a film critic be more informed about things like linguistics? It seems a little unfair to a movie to say in effect,"It didn't work for me because I'm dumb as rocks, can't follow a plot that's anything other than linear, and remember nothing from either history or physics." Be honest: blame yourself, not the film.

Car Code Courtesy

I encountered an odious surprise on the way to work today. Next in the queue to merge onto the 91 west, I was waiting for the light to turn green on the Orangethorpe on-ramp, when I felt a sudden jolt that lurched my car and body forward. Oh my God, it's a terrorist attack! was my immediate instinct as my seat belt intervened to prevent my head from crashing into the windshield. A terrorist missile just hit the back of my car! It took only about a split second (at about the time my head was thrown back against the headrest) for me to realize this was illogical—a missile would have blown up my car rather than propelling it forward a few inches. Oh, I reasoned, then I must have been rear-ended. Casting a wrathful glare into my rear-view mirror, I espied the driver of a little black Honda sheepishly meeting my gaze. "Stupid women drivers," I mumbled. The considerable impact must have knocked the misogynic filter right out of me. We pulled over to the shoulder to exchange information.

"Are you okay?" she asked as she alighted from her vehicle.

"Yes, I think so," I replied, leaving room for contradiction by a physician's examination, should I need to solicit a professional medical opinion for the future lawsuit in which I would extract as much money from this woman as possible (which, from her freshly manicured French nails and sharp business suit could be a hefty sum, but judging by her clunking, dilapidated Honda was very likely not).

"I'm so sorry," she offered.

Of course you're sorry, lady. You're at fault. Totally at fault, and this could cost you big time. You're lucky I'm not a litigious person. When someone apologizes, my instinct is to say, "It's okay," but I fought that impulse tooth and nail. It's not okay, I told myself. Don't say 'it's okay,' because hitting other people with one's car is not an okay thing to do. Plus, in the unfortunate event that we have to go to court, she might misconstrue my 'it's okay' as a verbally binding dismissal of her liability. "What happened?" was the only thing I could think of to say in its stead.

"I was coming up behind you, and I meant to hit the break, but my foot slipped and I hit the accelerator instead. I'm so, so sorry." Sorry isn't going to repair my bumper. Though she seemed to have intended this as an excuse, I think it only made me more angry because by hitting her accelerator, she increased the velocity at which her car rammed into mine. Having done nothing would have been preferable to slamming on the accelerator.

[Above: photo of my newly damaged back bumper. Due to optical illusions caused by the reflective surface of the bumper, and loss of depth perception in depicting a 3-dimensional object in a 2-dimensional photo, the dent looks less malignant than it really is.]

After we had exchanged information, the woman, whose name is Joanne, but who goes by "Joey", asked that I "go through" her (her words) instead of her insurance company. "Actually, it doesn't look that bad—I don't think you need to fix it." Of course you'd say that, lady. It's totally in your interest for me not to fix it. "I mean, if you really care about your car, then you could get it fixed, but I think it's just cosmetic." Like I'm going to get automobile advice from a woman who doesn't know her break from her accelerator. On top of all this, our little incident made me late for work.

I am pretty darn furious about this. In full discloser, my rage is probably obstructing my judgement to a fair degree, but I'd say that only about half of my anger is personal; the rest is principled. The principle here, as outlined above, is fairly simple: do not hit people with your car. What if I had been a pedestrian, and her food had experienced the same sort of "slippage?" (Incidentally, this is an allegation of whose veracity I'm not altogether convinced. My pet theory at the moment is that she is one of those ego-centric drivers who care more about their own convenience than the lives and safety of those around them; on her cell phone, her inattentiveness caused her to hit me from behind.) If we had been at an intersection, and I were a pedestrian crossing the road, her foot's misstep on the gas would likely have (literally) cost me an arm and a leg, and possibly my life.

"I'm going to extract every penny from her I can!" I vowed in a pleasantly cathartic moment. "She is going to pay for what she did. This is not merely an act of self-interested vengeance; it's for the public good."

"How is you suing her an act of public good?" asked Alvin, with naiveté infused with a dash of skepticism.

"Because it is in the public good not to be the victims of vehicular manslaughter," I replied, trying to restrain the sarcasm and annoyance in voice. (Isn't that obvious?) "And by suing her, hopefully I will cement in that particular lesson, thus teaching her not to drive so carelessly, thereby serving the interests of the public."

I am still unsure how this impeccably cogent line of reasoning failed to win Alvin over. In his continued resistance, he asked, "So you think by suing her you're going to teach her not to hit people? Don't you think she already knew that it's bad to hit people with her car?"

"Evidently not," I said with no small measure of satisfaction at my quick reply. "And if she did, then obviously she doesn't care about right and wrong, because she completely ignored her axiological impulses. If she has to pay me $10,000, she still might not care about right and wrong, but at least she might think twice before starting her ignition."

"I think you just want revenge, and you're using 'public good' as an excuse."

And so it continued back and forth for what was probably over an hour, and in the interest of brevity, I will conclude our dialogue by saying as much.

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My accident today reminds me of an incident from the summer that (at the time) seemed just as incendiary.

My friends and I fixed on some place to eat at the Orange mall (I think it was Panera Bread, but it may have been somewhere else). As you know, the parking situation at the mall on a Sunday afternoon is something atrocious. Fortunately, after much searching, I found a space—or more accurately, three-quarters of a space. A very large, obnoxious, white pick-up truck had double parked, leaving me a fraction of a slot. My car being fairly small, and I being a quasi-skillful parker, I figured I could fit into the remainder of the parking space. And I did! It was quite a tight fit, but I made it without any inter-vehicular contact.

Coming out of Panera (or wherever we had eaten), I saw whom I presumed to be the owner of said obnoxious, white pick-up standing outside his car, and talking on his cell phone. Great, I thought, he hit my car trying to back out, and now he's reporting it to his insurance.

"Is this your car?" he demanded as I approached the Prius. I answered in the affirmative. "Why the hell did you park right next to my car?"

"There were no other spaces; look how crowded the parking lot is," I reasoned.

"Why do you think I parked in two spaces?"

Actually, I just assumed that you didn't know how to park. Though this answer was candid, I doubted that its veracity would win over my adversary, a very large, formidable, fuming Caucasian male. So instead, I opted to answer a different question. "There weren't any other space, and I didn't touch your car."

"I parked all the way out here, and took two spaces [noticed how he judiciously avoided the term "double parked" (twice!) to indemnify himself against accusation of wrongdoing] because I have a nice, expensive truck, and I don't want any a--holes like you scratching up my car."

I was driving Alvin and Chuckie back to church, and at this point the latter chimed in, "he's gotta nice car, too."

"What's it to you?" the angry white male grunted.

"Nothing, I'm just saying his car is nice, too."

"You're just lucky I didn't break in all your windows. You know, you'd better watch it the next time you park like this again [sic]."

Unlike my conversation with Alvin, my discussion with the jerk-parking, ecologically unfriendly truck-owning man lasted two minutes, three minutes tops. I came away, however, feeling just as outraged at the cosmic injustice of it all. He was the one who had illegally, knowingly double parked. He was the not only the inconsiderate one in this scenario, but also the criminal offender. He was the one driving a gas-guzzling, Islamist-fundamentalist-bankrolling truck. I was the one who had deftly manage to park in an impossibly small space without any harm to either his car or mine. I was the one who had broken no known laws (at least as far as this incident is concerned). I was the one saving the planet for future generations of pacifist, law-abiding parkers by cutting greenhouse gases in my environmentally friendly Prius. And yet I was the one being yelled at; I was the one being blamed; I was the one being called an a--whole, the one whose windows he was threatening to smash in. How is this fair at all?!?

For the next several hours after our confrontation, I was incensed at the gross perversion of it all. (I am still confused about what kind of warped reality his consciousness inhabits, a frame of mind in which it is okay to double-park, but not okay to park legally next to a double-parked car. Seriously, what kind of hermeneutic is this guy using?) After several months of reflection time, however, I can see that in the grand scheme of things, my complaint is actually laughably minor when weighed against some of the true tragedies in our world. As my friend Eddie sometimes says to me in moments like this, "if this is this biggest worry in your life, then you've got it pretty good."

Franken-lawn

[Editor's note: That several of my recent posts involve deaths of my relatives has not gone unnoticed. I guess I'm just in that point in my life (i.e. the point at which the lives of those two generations older than I are likely to be "rounded with a sleep.") If you've grown weary of this topic, feel free to sit this one out and wait for the next post.]

As mentioned earlier, the City of Cerritos has been breathing down our necks to fix up our house, which is actually, in my disinterested opinion, not in need of repair at all. If I were to concede a point to the City, however, it would be that there were some bald patches in the front lawn, which appears to be in overall-good health. Having just replaced some old juniper bushes with grass, I have leftover sod sections, which I have been cutting in to custom-sized plugs to fill in the missing sections of lawn. Now the gaping holes in the front lawn have been supplanted by a chimerical patchwork of old, broad-bladed yellowed grass, and new, thin, dark green blades.

In some places, the gaps were too gaping, so I had to rototill out entire sections, and replace them with 1'x5' sod sheets. These are the places that most resemble a franken-lawn, because you can clearly see where I have unearthed old sections to replaced them with new ones.

While working on the lawn, I considered how like my living in this house is the fragmentary replacement of some sections of grass: my old, decrepit uncle has passed away, and here I am, the replacement-resident coming in to take his place—to fill the spot that he has left vacant.

And in this respect, it feels somehow wrong, as though I were usurping his position, or booting him out. I know this is no more true than the suggestion that in an act of premeditation, the new sod sections maliciously ousted the former sections of grass, thereby creating the void for their arrival. It may be no more true, but feelings have the nasty habit of being immune to reason.

Yet in other ways, my occupation of the house feels like the blended sections of half old, half new grass. I planted inpatients in the front walkway, because uncle bill used to have inpatients there. In the backyard, I am growing many of the same vegetables as he did: tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini; I bought a camilla for the front to plant in a bare spot on the little mound, because I think he would like the camilla, and it works well with the existing plants. On the other hand, I have made choices in the landscaping that reflect *my* preferences. The little flowering maples (Abutilon) and the Angel's Trumpets (Brugmansia) show my penchant for papery, pendulous flowers, especially in yellows and apricot tones; the Bougainvillea also reflects this predilection.

Obstructed from concluding this episode gracefully—a problem compounded by laziness—I will simply mention that we still refer to the house as "Uncle Bill's house." For example, if my mom calls my cellular phone and inquires as to my whereabouts, I respond "at Uncle Bill's."

The Dying Day

Late in the afternoon today, after I had just arrived at work, I sat in my car in the parking lot and listened to the conclusion of an audio essay by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, in which she chronicles the last months of the life of her father, who was dying of lung cancer. I did not find the story particularly profound, nor did I think it possessed generally newsworthy implications. These deficiencies notwithstanding, the story was incredibly poignant because of its honesty; there are truly personal moments, and LeBlanc struck me as particularly brave in selecting them for her piece.

While listening to the story and reflecting on its merits (and defects), I noticed how anemic the late afternoon sunlight appeared. The western end of the parking lot is shaded by a row of houses and eucalyptus trees, and the light's filtering through the foliage only added to its anemic quality. The sallow light seemed barely able to illuminate the autumn grass, and this, combined with the brisk, breeze atmosphere, made me consider the season.

Fall archetypally represents dying in the great cycle of life; likewise, November is the near the end of the calender year, and twilight is the death of the day. This great conflation of moribundity seemed nearly overwhelming.

In truth, it wasn't just the end-of-year, end-of-season, end-of-day trilogy that created the somber mood, nor was it simply the wan rays trickling in over the rooftops. My work in Torrance is less than two miles away from my gma's house, the house in which she received hospice care (just as LeBlanc's father had before his death)—the house in which she died three years ago this week.

All of these forces, the belabored sound of Mr. LeBlanc's voice on the radio, the withering light, the memory of my grandmother's passing, created a new impression of death. Instead instead of the black, dark, powerful, oppressive and forceful specter one usually conjures as a visual representation of death (think Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal), death began to look like a wasting away: the dying light filtering through the nearly weightless autumn leaves; the sound of LeBlanc's father's voice, faint, and barely a whisper; the body of my own grandmother weak and frail, so thin it barely made an impression under her bedsheets.

In typing out the last paragraph—the last clause in particular—I recall what she looked like immediately after she had passed. There was some disagreement among my family members whether my sister and I should be allowed to view her. One aunt remembered that my grandmother had not wanted any of the grandchildren to see her post mortem, for fear we would remember her (my grandma) as looking very sickly and moribund; on the other hand, another aunt said that that only applied to my three youngest cousins, who are impressionable and didn't have enough historical memory to distinguish my gma's normal appearance from the way she looked in her final months and weeks. In the end, the latter aunt prevailed, and I was left alone to 'say goodbye' (as they put it) to her for as long as I felt comfortable.

There was little 'comfort' being felt on my end, (and presumably even less on my grandmother's). A large part of the awkwardness stemmed from the fact that I did not know my grandmother as well as I should have—that is to say, I did not know her as well as she deserved to have been known. (The subsequent guilt about this fact hitting me as I stumbled for words did not make it easier to compose a cogent monologue as I sat beside her.) It was like a conversation with someone with whom one shares only a vague friendship: too little confidence for a truly intimate heart-to-heart, but too much familiarity to employ the vapid pleasantries usually reserved for new acquaintances. Perhaps the only advantage I felt in that situation is that my grandmother remained in death, as she always had in life, infinitely patient: she lay there peacefully without adding undue pressure for me to fill the uneasy silence between us. Nonetheless, the fact that the burden of carrying the conversation, usually distributed more or less evenly among the interlocutors, fell entirely to me, and the complex layers of emotion brought on by the death of a close relative, made for a formula that felt like a very gauche soliloquy stumbling toward its end.

This is not to say that I regret having sat beside my grandma's emaciated corpse, nor that I would change what I said to her, or how I said it. Perhaps it is only to note that there are some situations in which there is no socially sanctioned response, or cheeky witticism that can dispel the tension. Sometimes there are only honest responses, and those that are less honest, but not necessarily less appropriate.

Below is a Longfellow poem, absolutely germane for this posting. Even if you usually skip the outside poems I include in my blog, check out the one below:

The Day is Done
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

That '70s Place

Life for the minimally employed can actually be pretty good *provided you are being financed by very generous patrons [parents] who are very tolerant of the less-than-ambitious appearance of your lifestyle. Though he very much will not appreciate my mentioning it here (but who cares, because he so rarely visits my site), Kevin Yap is one of my compatriots in the land of marginal employment. [If for no other reason, visit his MySpace—linked above—because he's a talented up-and-coming musician. If by chance he does see this, hopefully this plug will mitigate some of annoyance he will feel at having been publicly slighted.]

One of the joys of being a part time worker is all the free time, but until recently I hadn't been able to enjoy so much leisure—partly due to guilt, and partly due to the fact that I had no one with whom to spend it. While the former problem remains unresolved, Kevin has largely fulfilled the need of the latter. Our work schedules roughly coincide, so we are sometime swim-at-CPE/run-at-Liberty-Park in the morning buddies; some days, we hang out just to talk, or discuss a book we're both reading. At night, we've been doing alot of Guppy Tea House, but one can only stomach so many super spicy dumplings in veal broth, honeydew teazzers and so much banana-mango shaved ice (delicious as all that is).

At one o'clock in the morning, one's eating options in the Cerritos area are relatively limited, especially if one is tired of Guppy, and doesn't feel like In-N-Out or Jack-in-the-Box. Which led to our Norms adventure tonight. We drove to the Norms on Lakewood Blvd. in the city of Lakewood. Having never really been to a Norms other than the one in Anaheim, I expected the decor of all the branches of the chain to be pretty much the same.

Wrong! Stepping into the Norms in Lakewood, I thought I had been transported back two decades. (See photo below). One's eye goes immediately for the Brady Bunch inspired lampshades, the sallowness of which augments the already-yellow incandescent bulbs situated inside them, creating an eerie mustard light on everything around it. (Hey, Greg! Marsha! Where are those groovy lava lamps?) And check out the olive green vinyl upholstery of the counter stools, the olive green that was so ubiquitous in the 1970s. (The man sitting at the counter is a customer who, along with the vinyl seat covers, apparently has not moved since the Carter administration.) The "Mel's Diner" inspired waitress uniforms (à la the Alice TV show, circa 1976) only added to the time warp effect, as did the fact that our waitress's diction had remained more or less unchanged since the original airing of that show.

What really impressed me was how reasonably priced the food was. For $9.99, you can get a New York steak (and not a bad one! pretty juicy and tender) with soup AND salad, plus a potato of your choice (baked, french fries, or mashed potatoes and gravy) PLUS dessert! "Are these prices from the 70s, too?" I wondered aloud, only to be informed by my dinner companion that in fact, this is a special available at all franchises of the Norms restaurant chain, completely independent of which decade they happened to be serving from.

It's really late now, and although my grievously light workload tomorrow permits me to stay up longer and marvel at the wonder that is the temporal anomaly of the Lakewood Norms doorway, my heavy eyelids are compelling me to retire for the night. If you're ever in the area after midnight and feel a nostalgic hankering for the Energy Crisis, earth tones, Farrah Fawcett hair, and the days of Woodstock:

17844 Lakewood Blvd
Bellflower, CA 90706-6414

...Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Something borrowed: The Republicans are living on borrowed time. Although there is still much uncertainty about whom the Democrats will nominate, they are poised to take back the White House in '08. (Will Hilary be the first to make the jump from First Lady, to US Senator, to President?)

Something blue: The electoral map, (er, sort of). With the House under their belts, control of the Senate just around the corner, the wind at their backs, and the sun on their collective face, Speaker Pelosi's party looks ready to paint the town blue.

(Incidentally, the original name for this post and the last was "Out with the Old, In with the Blue," but I didn't think the Democratic takeover was sweeping enough to sustain such a title. I suppose this new title works out better since it can be divided into larger halves, references a favorite wedding superstition, and allows for four pieces of commentary instead of only two.)

As mentioned in the previous article, the Donkeys have already gained control of the House. Today's Washington Post reports that "[g]oing into the elections, Republicans held 230 seats in the House and the Democrats had 201. One was held by an independent who usually votes with the Democrats, and three were vacant." According to the math, this means the Ds needed to gain 15 seats previously held by the Rs; so far, it looks like they have picked up 27, with two more possible in close races down in Georgia (CNN.com). This election marks the the first time Democrats have held power over the lower house since the Republican Revolution of 1994, when Newt Gingrich brilliantly engineered the takeover with his 'Contract with America.' Speaking of the Revolution, here's a little graph I made to compare the relative victories in the midterm elections of 1994 and 2006 [with a special thanks to the genius that is Ben for helping me figure out a way to publish Excel sheets]:

If you're interested in the specifics on the some of the House seats the Democrats took back , here they are (lifted again from the Post):

Democrats reached the 15-seat threshold by knocking off Republicans in three districts in Indiana, two districts in Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and New York, and one each in Connecticut, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio. Additional Democratic victories over GOP incumbents then began to come in from others states, including Texas, where the Republicans lost the Houston-area seat formerly held by Tom DeLay, the once-powerful House majority leader. DeLay resigned in June after being indicted on charges of conspiring to violate campaign finance laws. Republican Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a dermatologist and member of the Houston City Council, ran as a write-in candidate but lost to Democrat Nicholas V. Lampson, a former congressman who lost his House seat after a controversial 2004 redistricting that DeLay helped engineer.

So far, the Democrats have taken Senate seats in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. The races in Virginia (Sen. George Allen-R. vs. James Webb-D) and Montana (Sen. Conrad Burns-R vs. Jon Tester-D) are still too close to call. [The Democrats ended up winning both of these, and the chart above was modified to reflect that. Nonetheless, they technically lost Joe Lieberman's seat when he switched party affiliation from Democrat to independent, giving them a net gain of five, not six, seats.]

The thing I'm wondering is whether the Dems will be truly be able to parlay these midterm gains into the big win in 2008; was it really the best political strategy to accept the war in Iraq and the host of other problems (including the fact that there is still no federal budget for the 2006 fiscal year) they have inherited from their friends across the aisle? Maybe they just should have let the Republicans govern and try to cope with the mess at hand, and use the ensuing calamity to their advantage in two years.

As promised earlier, here is the other half of the 'tribute' to former Secretary Rumsfeld:

To: Rummy. From: The Dems
Rummy, ol' chummy, you helped us ASCEND!
You savior, you hero, you maestro, you friend!
We love you! We love you! Can't say it enough.
(Though o'erlooking your defects was pretty rough.)

Your squinty-eyed schemings took us off track.
(As Kerry would say, "We got stuck in Iraq.")
You sent out our soldiers—sent them under the ground:
Our fury and mourning are deeply profound.

But now all is forgiven; the past is the past.
As mad as we were, we're moving on fast.
We hated you once, but we're now we're best mates.
(But we're not quite sure yet 'bout Robert M. Gates.)

We're celebratory, so why do you wince?
Rummy, you winner, you genius, you prince!
...Hold on a second, we're getting afraid:
Now what will we do with this mess that you've made?

Something Old, Something New...

The votes are in from yesterday's midterm elections, and the results are out: the GOP has lost control of the House, and the very probably the Senate too. The Donkeys have so far picked up half a dozen governorships (in Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio) giving them control of the majority of gubernatorial seats for the first time in a dozen years.

In case you're wondering about the title of this post,

Something old: Arnold is back again, this time in "The Governator, Back with a Vengeance: the Second Term."

Something new: Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House. Some have dubbed her "the Speaker in Waiting," (a clever play on "lady in waiting.") Speaking of which, not only is she the first female Speaker in US history, she is also the first Californian Speaker. Though she is not yet officially Speaker-elect, by all accounts the position is as good as hers.

Before going any further, I'd like to take this opportunity to let my readers know that I called this election over a year in advance—much earlier than those political pundits who needed the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal, the Mark Foley congressional page sex scandal, along with a host of polling numbers, to make their predictions. At the time, I really was thinking that I ought to put the prediction in writing on my blog, so I could say "I told you so" when the time came, but alas, I was too busy with my celebrity stalking escapades.

How did I know? Fall of 2005 saw a "perfect storm," if you will, of political disasters for the GOP. Here's a mini time line as a memory refresher:

September 20- The Associated Press reports allegations of insider trading against Bill Frist, then Senate Majority Leader.
September 22- Majority Leader Frist reports that the SEC (Security and Exchange commission) is investigating the charges of insider trading.
September 23- DOJ (Dept. of Justice) subpoenas Frist.
September 28- A grand jury indicts House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on conspiracy to violate Texas election law (he had allegedly taken illegal political donations and laundered them, then distributed them to Republican candidates).
October 19- An warrant is issued for Congressman DeLay's arrest.
October 25- US casualty in Iraq count reaches 2000 as public calls for reconsider troop presence mounts.
October 27- The Bush administration announces its withdraw of the nomination of Harriet Miers to the bench of the US Supreme Court, giving startling insight into: a) just how unpopular the president had become among the electorate; b) how unable he was even to command enough party discipline to push through a nominee when his own party controlled the Senate; and c) how disunified the Republicans were looking.

(Those little moments in history...if you're an American reading that, I'm sure walking down that little path off Memory Lane either brought a smile to your face, or a tear to your eye, depending on your political stripes.)

Anyway, again, I'd like to reiterate that in late October of last year, I foresaw the Grand Ol' Pachyderms losing control of Congress. Just throw a crystal ball in front of me, stick a deck of tarot cards in my hand and call me "Ms. Cleo."

* * * * * * *

In related news, the White House also announced this morning that Donald Rumsfeld submitted his resignation; his replacement nominee is Robert Gates, a former CIA chief. Clearly hoping to stem the political tide and bring confidence back to an administration that could use at least the facade of competence, President Bush asked Rummy to resign. To which I, along with the other 300 million other people living in America say, "Too little, too late." HELLO! If you wanted to win the 2006 midterms, you should have gotten rid of him prior to the elections, not after them. He was far and away the most unpopular of your Cabinet (which is no mean feat, really!); he was the biggest anchor in the star line up of anchors weighing down those poll numbers.

In saying this, let me clarify that I self-identify as a political independent (that rare demographic to which both parties work so hard to cater), not a Bush-hating liberal. In fact, I think I lean to the right-0f-center. Nonetheless, in the words of Simon Cowell, "if I'm going to be brutally honest," no one liked Rummy—it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's a closet self-hating, Emo cutter. Republicans wanted you to oust him months ago because they knew it would boost support for the GOP; Democrats wanted you to oust him because although they knew it would hurt them at the polls, they hated him so much they didn't care!

In any event, I have decided to have some fun by issuing a tribute to the 21st US Secretary of Defense: Donald Rumsfeld, a portrait in 2 poems. The first is presented below; the second will appear in the second part of this entry (I had to break the blog up into two parts, because I'm not sure how much political rambling my readers can stomach.)

To: Rummy. From: The GOP
Rummy, you dummy, you lost us the House!
You moron, you loser, you bastard, you louse!
You're stupid, so stupid! You squinty-eyed mole
You might be as stupid as Anna Nicole!

With Liberals in power on Capitol Hill,
We in the minor'ty (a most bitter pill!)
Without the control we're stuck in a bind—
Things haven't been this bad since Nixon resigned!

Saddam was no menace, so why'd you attack?
Now our sons and our daughters are stuck in Iraq.
We'd blame in on Dubbya, but he's stupid, too;
It's hard to believe, but e'en stupider than you.

Now some in our party are looking for work,
Rummy, you *sshole, you retard, you jerk!
They're on unemployment, and they're feeling blue,
Their sole consolation is that Rummy is, too.

Remains of the Pay

I'm in the Sunday school teaching rotation for this quarter, and I get to pick my own themes. The topic I selected for November is "Money & Finances," and the first lesson was today.

As a opening activity, I divided the class into two groups, and assigned the first to list what they think the Bible tells them about money, and the second what the world tells them about it; then I had the groups switch, so that in the end, each group had its own pair of lists. On the whiteboard I made two columns, placing all the "biblical" money ideas in one column, and all the "worldly" ideas in the other. I had hoped that the messages from the world would be fairly homogeneous, whereas the Bible's ideas would be all over the map; this would in turn allow me to make the conclusion that we are clear about secular ideas of wealth, but uncertain on what exactly the Bible says. This of course would warrant studying scripture to better understand what it teaches about finances.

In fact, the exact opposite happened: the list from the Bible was very cohesive, whereas the secular list was pretty disunified. (Note to self: these little open-ended experiments will not always yield desired/expected results.) So the alternate conclusion I drew was, "Scripture is clear on what it teaches, but the world is sending mixed signals." (Note to self: Even if an activity gives unexpected results, a lesson can still be culled from them.)

Then, I handed out a dollar to each person in Sunday school (this was also part of a Sunday school promotion I used to entice people to attend☺.) I instructed the class to imagine what they could do with that dollar (or what they could do aggregately if they combined their newfound wealth). After allowing half a minute for consideration, I told them to tear up their dollars! Muhahaha! Most people looked a little puzzled, some looked rather horrified. "You must do as I say—I am the Sunday school teacher!" I commanded. After a little hesitation and some more prodding from me, all but two students complied.

"What was the purpose of that?" I asked, hoping they would say, "To teach us not to value money too dearly."

"To teach us not to value money too dearly." One student proffered. Bingo!

Auggie had a different answer: "Tearing up my own dollar wouldn't have been too bad, since it's only $1. But since it was your money, I felt really bad wasting it. Maybe you wanted to show us that since we're really stewards of God's money, we must spend it wisely, and not waste it." Ok, good answer! Not what I had in mind, but that answer had alot of potential.

Shui suggested, "You're like God, and you gave us the dollar, and you were testing to see if we'd obey you, and do what you told us with the money. I didn't. I still have my dollar here, see?" You're like God, I like the sound of that, but wasn't too happy about the open rebellion part. Also, a good answer, but no.

"The reason I had you tear up the money was to show you that it is hard to waste money—so hard, in fact, that two people still haven't complied. The reason that it's hard is that money is useful and valuable. Today's lesson is we should value money and spend it carefully." Then we moved into the actual textual explication.

(If you want the notes & outline, leave a comment and I'll send them to you.)

Trains, Planes & Automobiles

[At left, a photo taken from the train down to San Diego.]
When I was a boy, I had a profound fascination with trains that even today I find difficult to explain. I remember loving the way my toy trains looked: a steam engine in front followed by a coal car, one or two passenger cars and the "caboose." (Isn't that a fun little word?) I loved the sounds they made: the chugga-chugga chugga-chugga of the engine, the conductor's whistle just prior to departure, the sound of the wheels flying over the tracks, clickity-clack, clickity-clack. I liked dressing up like a conductor, with my little cap, blue and white striped overalls and handkerchief tied around my neck.

I still enjoy trains, albeit not to the same extent, and not for the same reasons (though I do think I'd still look pretty good in those striped overalls and that little hat). Carbon emissions are reduced for all forms of mass transit, especially the electricity-operated AmTrak. One can sleep, read, or compose blog entries while on the train, none of which can be safely performed while driving a car. One can also eat, talk on the phone, or balance his checkbook on the train without endangering himself or fellow drivers. Best of all, as one surveys the land from his train window, it relinquishes its secrets to him. And given all these benefits, it's not surprising that I chose to travel via railroad for my little trip down to San Diego today to visit Brina and shop at Ruehl, a new over-priced store to which I was introduced in my recent trip to San Diego.

Things began to a less than idyllic start. Even taking the carpool lane on the 5 South, it took me over an hour to get to the AmTrak station in Irvine, meaning that as I ran into the ticket office, I saw my 8am train pulling out of the station. (Boo.) Fortunately, the wait for the next train was only slightly more than an hour.

After having embarked on the next available train, I wandered to the upper level of the car and located a seat on the western side, which would offer the best view of the ocean once the tracks were close enough. Things were looking up: a one hour ride with great weather, the chance to ogle the California coastline, and if the unthinkable should happen (my getting tired of the vista), I brought some reading material.

Then, suddenly, things were looking very down. The woman in front of me received a call on her cell phone. If you know me, you know that although I own a mobile phone of my own, I am a big stickler on phone etiquette, namely that in public places, phone conversations should be quiet and as laconic as possible. (Did you know in Japan, only text messaging is allowed on the phone? Aural conversations are strictly prohibited. What a country!) Anyway, not only was she loud, but her conversation was tortuously boring. Was this eavesdropping? No, because that would imply that I was the offender in this sad scenario, when in fact, I was a hapless victim being subjected to the insipid travesty she was trying so hard to pass off as a conversation. Moreover, when one is speaking loudly in a public place, she forfeits the right to site others for eavesdropping. [I did consider moving to one of several empty seats in other cars, but I: a) had already made myself quite comfortable; b) naively believed she would soon finish her chat; c) was afraid I might miss some wonderful sight from my window; and d) had no guarantee that people in the other cars weren't engaged in equally banal discussions on their mobile phones. Besides, I knew that the situation has potential for another fun rant on the blog.]

To my relief, after a few minutes that felt like half an eternity, she got up as the train was preparing to make a stop; it seemed that she was exiting. She had gathered her belongings, but forgot her jacket! It's her bachi the little Japanese voice inside my head screeched. ("Bachi" is a Japanese superstition in which bad things happen to someone as a minor karmic punishment for a minor offense.) I considered taking it to the conductor to be stowed in the lost-and-found. (I also considered rifling through her pockets to see what I could find.) I was prevented from both actions by a fear that her banality might be contagious.

To my horror, she returned after several minutes. Apparently she had only gone to the bathroom, or perhaps the cafeteria car, and took her things as insurance that no one would steal them (and based on my thieving impulse, perhaps she had made the right decision). I didn't think her previous dialogue could have been any more boring, but she proved me wrong. A second friend called her, and she repeated the whole dull, dull, dull "conversation" almost verbatim. It was like seeing a really great comedy for the second time, and the funny parts are even funnier because as you wait for them, the anticipation builds, and you can relive the best parts all over again. Except instead of a really great comedy, this was tragically depressing babble, and instead of "funny parts," there were tragically boring parts that induced a boredom so acute that it felt something more akin to pain.

As I sat there trying not to listen, but instead concentrate on how I would retell this story, I considered mirroring her redundancy in my own prose, to recreate for the reader the dread and revulsion I felt as she rambled on and on (and on and on and on...). Then I realized that unlike me in the train, my reader is not a captive audience, and would likely "alt-F4" their browser window.

Speaking of windows, look at the gorgeous photos I took of the view outside of mine! [See especially the photo at the bottom, of ocean and pier.] I was on the top of the double-decker car, on the right side going south, so it is the closest track to the ocean, sometimes not more than a few yards from the coast. For part of the ride I tried to to prepare this week's Sunday school lesson, but that was nearly impossible, given the absolute majesty of the scenes parading by outside. I can never resist looking out the window while on a train or bus, and my addiction to window-watching was not helped by the fact that the weather was fine, the sun was bright, but blinding, and the seaside was lovely.

Shopping was very good. From Ruehl I got two polos, a very heavy, gray hoodie with a fur-lined hood that should keep me very warm in China this winter. I also got two ties (one olive green, and one lavender with blue and yellow stripes) from Saks 5th Ave and Nordstrom.