Extremely insightful commentary on important election issues

So evidently John McCain’s pick for running mate is already proving to be a counter to the recession caused by the current administration’s whack-job policies.

Apparently perceived (presumably in trailer parks and Republican Women’s Clubs all around the country) as quite the style-setter, Sarah Palin has kick-started what the WSJ refers to as a “buying frenzy” for her fashion choices.

I suppose that counts in some circles as having an economic platform. No doubt it would lend her credibility if the occasion ever arose where she’d need to represent us at a G8 meeting.

I love the marketer at Naughty Monkey shoes, who has plans to work a deal with Palin—quickly—to promote the line of shoes. Obviously a realist, he points out, “We have to capitalize on it pretty soon.”

That’s because if the American electorate finally breaks out of its eight-year fugue, on 5 November Palin’s “style” will be so yesterday.

Meanwhile, I guess we’ll be treated to big hair, loud lipstick & pumps worn sans nylons. (For those with La Palin’s cosmopolitan pedigree, “sans” is a French word meaning “without”. I threw it in to show I’ve read actual, you know, books, & traveled beyond my country’s borders. & I don’t count the plane refueling at Fiji as a visit to that country.)

It’s interesting that the legit fashion industry (by which I mean firms that sell their goods in emporia other than Wal-Mart) has neither interest in nor comments on the candidate’s choices in clothes & accessories. After all, does an Orca really notice a Chihuahua?

(For another take on Palin, I refer you to The Onion, specifically to the beauty pageants she’s won.)

So, in the end, Palin-as-fashionista is every bit as genuine as Palin-as-maverick-fiscal-conservative.

Can you say bogus?

I knew you could.

A piece of my heart

It’s been a week since my beautiful, pushy, loudmouthed mackerel tabby cat Aji was killed. She got out of the house last Monday night, and Tuesday morning my neighbor two doors down found her little body in her yard.

She was with me for just a week over three years—she appeared on my balcony the weekend before Labor Day 2005; simply announced her arrival and waited for me to do my part. Which I was happy to do—she was bright, affectionate, lively and curious, and she was much more entertaining than cable TV.

When I let her in, I informed her that once she joined the household she would henceforth be an indoor cat. She agreed, but of course she didn’t expect that I meant it. Besides—she was a cat. She was always trying to get out. And she was so fast—she could get through a door before it was barely open.

The thing about Aji was once she realized something was a portal—that there was an Other Side behind it—she just had to go through it and explore. Those clever little paws of hers could get so many things open—she’d open dresser drawers and pick out clothes onto the floor to make room for her to get in and probe. I had to Aji-proof closets with bungee cords. She once got the above-counter kitchen cupboard doors open and I caught her high-stepping among the Czechoslovakian crystal cordial glasses.

I once opened the hatch to the attic and made the mistake of leaving the ladder in place while I went downstairs to check on something. A few minutes later I returned to see her mackerel butt disappearing into the attic and I had to scramble to get her back out. I closed the hatch but left the ladder propped up in the upstairs hall, because I needed to do follow-up work in the attic. For days Aji would climb to the top and demand that I open up so she could go exploring again. She knew there was extremely interesting stuff up there and she wanted to see it.

She was also a leaper—no height was beyond her powers. From a standing start she could jump to the top of the lingerie chest (more than four feet high) without knocking over any of the perfume bottles. In The Rambler it didn’t take her any old amount of time to realize there was a two-inch wide ledge at eight feet around the living room. She got up there and pranced back and forth, looking out the windows and informing me she wanted to go out.

Of course I bought her bags of playthings, but it turned out she’d brought her own toy with her: she chased her tail. It was hysterical to watch that. Only a few weeks ago, in the corporate apartment we were staying in, she was on a window ledge with vertical blinds, whirling about with perfect balance, going in and out amongst the blinds after that pesky tail.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have moved her here—it was too unsettling, there were too many New Things to explore and The Rambler was just too small for her and made it too easy for her to get out. I opened the door and she shot out into the night. I’d hoped she was starting up a gang but would return when she found there were no bowls of kibble lying around for her. She’d done it a couple of times in Virginia, so I had hopes.

But this isn’t Virginia, and she didn’t last more than a few hours. And it took King County Animal Control three days to come pick up her little corpse.

My insides are sore—I feel as though my organs were scooped out and whatever’s left has been mauled. I keep doing the block-Aji dance—crack open the door, look around for her and get ready to shoo her away.

I know—I should have done a better job of that last week.

Turns out Aji was a big part of my support system here, and it’s just empty without her. There’s so little sign of her left—I didn’t take nearly enough pictures while she was with me; I thought I had years ahead with her. I've got a few paw prints in places where she wasn't supposed to be--the floors of the Rambler hadn't been cleaned in a long time before we moved in, and she left a trail of tell-tale marks on counters, the mantelpiece and other high places.

There’s still Pele, of course. But she’s not the cuddly extrovert Aji was. These days she spends most of her time under a bed because in her mind if she comes out I could scoop her up, stuff her in a crate and ship her somewhere. Fair enough.

I expect Aji’s poking into all the closets and drawers in heaven, and leaping up into laps and demanding pets from all the saints. She always knew how to make a place for herself wherever she landed. It’s a lesson I wish I'd learned from her while she was with me.

Domestic tranquility

So, since I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I appear to have fallen down a time wormhole.

Or possibly I mean a black hole.

I’d pegged the metro Seattle area as pretty much the mother ship of the PC industry. So I expected to have at least the techno-amenities I was accustomed to in the Old Dominion. (I’d also assured those who, on hearing of my move, intoned, “I hope you like rain”, that I’d lived for three years in London, so the rain didn’t bother me. & I expected the architecture in Seattle to be better.)

Silly me.

I’m currently parked in rented digs that remind me of Britain’s National Health Service: probably cutting edge for its time; but its time was 50 years ago. It’s in the style known here as “a rambler”; back where I come from it would be called a rancher, but whatever. Single-story, three-bedroom, one bath, carport, 1100 sf.

The owners are four brothers, who inherited it from their mother not quite a year ago. They “fixed it up” & put it up for sale for $250K over the assessed value. That would be $680K. Surprisingly, it languished on the market for several months before my agent showed it to me & we asked if they’d be interested in renting it for the nonce.

(See above about ONE bathroom.)

Well, yes—they might indeed be interested. After much to-ing & fro-ing through agents to the Brotherhood, we finally worked out a deal (of sorts).

Another thing people assured me back in Virginia was that I’d love Seattle because, “the people are so laid back.”

Evidently they were talking about service providers.

It took more than three weeks to get a landline, a couple to get cable.

Verizon didn’t have The Rambler on their grid (see below), so I had to get connectivity through cable (to which I’m opposed on principle, but what can you do?). Comcast had to run the line out from the street & drill a hole in the wall to give me TV & Internet. Seems The Brotherhood had ripped out the connection when they “updated” the place.

I should have paid attention to that, because after three weeks of grotesque calls to Verizon (before they finally realized, “gee, we don’t SERVE that area”…), when the Qwest technician finally showed up (after more surreal calls, but over a period of days, not weeks), he also had to run a new line out from the street—into the “Bell Systems” box, which obviously dates from the 50s as well.

I signed up for delivery of the Seattle Times—it’s not a first-rate newspaper, but it is the local rag, & I always try to support journalism. However, it’s been two weeks since I subscribed & I still haven’t had a paper show up in my driveway.

Then there’s trash… After three-&-a-half weeks & three calls, I finally have bins for trash pickup. I’ve told them that I’m only paying for service I can access. Since I’m informed that the Russian mob runs the company, I may end up sleeping with the fishes in Puget Sound.

I wonder if they’ll be as lackadaisical about delivering the cement overshoes as they are about giving me bins. (BTW, this being the capital of Green-ness, I have three wheelies: trash, yard waste & recyclables. Plus a little plastic container for “food scraps”. I feel like I’m back in WWII; should I start a Victory Garden?)

Actually, I need that container—a garbage disposal unit wasn’t part of The Brotherhood’s idea of updating The Rambler. In fact, a lot of their choices seem odd to me:

• The circuit box is in what I take to be the master bedroom; it’s completely exposed, no cover.
• The sole bathroom has two sinks. The Brotherhood installed new faucets (those butt-ugly “brushed nickel” finishes), but one of them doesn’t return to true. Instead of fixing it, they simply instructed me how to leave the handle so it doesn’t leak.
• They installed a new shower head, which comes to the bridge of my nose. (I’m 5’6”) Plus, it leaked; I had to haul out my trusty channel locks & tighten it. This means no one ever turned on the shower head after installing it, much less thought about actually, you know, using it.
• The counter in the bathroom is 36” high. Think about it.
• There are also only two towel racks in the sole bathroom; they’re 15” wide.
• They installed new linoleum in the kitchen, but can’t have done anything about the under-flooring. When you walk on it, it kind of bounces. (’Kay, I know I need to lose weight, but still.)
• The redone kitchen has a total of five drawers; none is wider than 8”. (For the Y-chromosome-challenged, go look at the drawer where you keep your silverware.)
• The three bedrooms have single wall uplights; the bulbs in them can’t be more than 8 watts.
• Neither did the Brotherhood bother with updating the actual electrical outlets; there’s barely one socket per wall. I have drop cords & power strips snaking around the hardwood floors like strings of spaghetti after a college pasta party (without the tomato sauce). I hope to God I’m not creating a fire hazard.
• When they redid the kitchen, for some reason they left a 110-volt outlet for the dryer (for which, with a washer, I had to negotiate). Even I know that’s totally whacked.
• Perhaps my favorite is the wall o’ windows they installed in the living room. Not one of them opens.

I have to say that I haven’t roughed it like this since I lived in the UK. No garbage disposer? (At least I do have the dryer, so I don’t have to spread my wet laundry around the living room once a week. Which is good, because it would probably take a couple of days to dry.)

But it’s not all domestic bliss. The whole area is…interesting.

Traffic’s every bit as bad as the metro DC area. But their carpool lanes are completely, well, bizarre. Instead of being consistently on the left side, on some highways (not all) they’re on the right, & they start & stop without apparent reason. Which means that you’ll be driving by yourself perfectly legally, & then all of a sudden you’re in a diamond lane & you have to get out to avoid being nicked. Plus, there’s all the turmoil when you want to exit & have to cross at least two lanes to get off.

Seattle hasn’t discovered air conditioning, yet. I arrived at my temporary housing, an apartment in downtown Bellevue, on 18 July to find it a veritable oven. I frantically ran round the place looking for controls to turn down the heat & turn on the AC. But the heat wasn’t on & there was no AC. The week I moved into The Rambler we had temps in the 90s. No AC, no opening windows in the living room, can’t open the doors because the cats will get out. I thought I’d moved to Hell.

Then there’s alcohol. After just about 20 years living south of the Mason-Dixon line, I was so looking forward to being back on the Left Coast, where (among other things) I could count on being able to buy a bottle of liquor in a free market instead of state-run stores (in states that permit anyone to buy & use a gun but consider taking a drink to be tantamount to dancing with the devil; as if dancing weren’t enough of a crime in itself).

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that, while you can purchase wine & beer hither & thither, if you want a bottle of single malt, you have to find one of the dreaded state liquor stores. Well, boo; but what the heck—I found one on the Web & took a pass through it. In 27 seconds.

Washington has managed to accomplish what I just flat out hadn’t thought possible: they’ve made Virginia look positively progressive when it comes to attitudes toward booze. The stock & selection in these places is paltry in comparison to what was available in Virginia. Not that I’m a huge drinker, but I am a Californian, & I’m accustomed to having choices. & variety.

& the ABC stores in the Old Dominion were actually getting better. They opened a second store in Reston (population about 20K) within walking distance, & I killed about 15 minutes there one day waiting for the local hand-made pizza place to open. I just walked up & down the aisles, looking at all the types of tequilas & rums & whiskies for sale.

The operative term there was “aisles”. Of which there are none in any of the Washington state liquor stores I’ve seen.

I don’t know whether there’s a fear that state residents will tie one on if they’re allowed free access to booze & use their lumberjack & salmon fishing tools to go on a rampage, or what. But I assure you that the amount of liquor available in the stores I visited wouldn’t fuel a single frat party.

Something else that gave me pause: one of my employee benefits is free membership in the poshest gym I’ve ever belonged to. You need a map to make your way through the building; they have more personal trainers on staff than a medium-sized city has police officers; there are on-site medical services, a restaurant (‘scuse me, a “bistro”), a florist, a shop & a full-service spa. (One of my colleagues describes it as a casino, & it definitely has that ambiance, with its multiple rooms of phalanxes of exercise machines.)

So I was somewhat gobsmacked to find this sign above the water fountains throughout the place: “Washington State law prohibits spitting in drinking fountains.”

Thing is—if you have to remind people of the blindingly obvious requirements for the basics of decent public behavior, a mere reminder probably isn’t going to do the trick. Plus, I don’t know whether Washington state has a huge problem with people spitting in drinking fountains unknown in other parts of the country, or whether I’ve been drinking water from dual-purpose fountains/spittoons.

Well, I guess it’s going to be a new adventure. I should probably buy a plaid flannel shirt & workboots to blend in with the environment.