Entry 94: More On Thanksgiving And A Few Other Topics

In my previous entry I indicated that there were 14 total people at my in-laws for Thanksgiving, but I mistakenly under-counted. There were actually 16 people there. It was madness. Good madness, but madness nonetheless.

Somehow S and I got the master bedroom to ourselves while many others slept on the floor. I'm not quite sure how things worked out this way, I certainly didn't push for it, and it didn't make sense to me, but I've learned with S's family just to go with the flow. It seems like there is some always sort of heated discussion over things like accommodations. I generally don't get involved (for one thing I usually can't understand what everybody is saying, because I don't speak Kannada or Telugu -- blissful ignorance), and then I just do what they tell me. If it means I sleep on the floor, fine. If it means I get the master bed, well, that's fine too.

[We watched this movie, "Hugo", over Thanksgiving weekend. It was OK. Not tremendous, a little slow, too artificially arty, but interesting. ]

It's also this way when it comes to paying for things -- always a struggle over who gets to pay the bill. I once witnessed S and her cousin argue for a solid 20 minutes over this. It only ended because her cousin threatened the server with physical violence if she took S's credit card. The server was a 95-pound Chinese chick, so the threat seemed credible even though S's uncle is a 5' 5" middle-aged accountant. (OK, maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture.) S's old childhood friends, two brothers N1 and N2, are the craftiest when it comes to paying. They'll do things like pretend they're going to the restroom and then find the server and pay the bill -- very sneaky.

Anyway, overall it was a great weekend. I must admit, I did miss the standard Thanksgiving fare -- it wasn't turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, it was roti, dosas, and chutney -- but it was delicious and I'm sure I'll have the more traditional holiday dishes over Xmas, anyway. Plus, Indians do it up right. Their food is delicious, well, except for the desserts. I have yet to have an authentic Indian dessert that I really like. S's mom made this thing that was like tortillas in sweet chutney, and I tried some, but couldn't get into it. Thankfully, there was pie, cheesecake, and chocolate to be had as well, so I didn't go unsated.

Changing the subject, we're zeroing in on buying a great house. Everything is squared away for it except our loan, which should be finalized next week. I said "should be" instead of "will be", because the mortgage company is really dragging their feet and starting to annoy us. To fair, it's more just one woman than the whole company, but she's annoying enough for everybody. It just amazes me sometimes how stupid people are. Well, she might not be stupid, she might just be lazy and apathetic. Either way, it's like, 7 million people are unemployed and you have a job. Wow.

Here are some reasons I say that. She's asked us for the same documents three times, which we've sent her three times, and then she can't understand them when she gets them. (And by the way, understanding them means being able to add three numbers. It took me 30 seconds and a calculator to figure things out.) She never uses "reply all" despite being asked repeatedly to include both S and I on all emails, and then she claimed yesterday to not have my email address at all, which is absolutely absurd being that I have 10 emails in my inbox on which we were both copied (literally, I'm looking at my Gmail now), and I sent her an email directly three days ago! Also, she sends messages like this

"Also on your 2010 W2’s that you had supply to us Mrs. [S's last name] it is showing [non-existent company] when did you work for this company need date and number if you have it."

I would be slightly embarrassed to send this to a friend, let alone a client. First, I would have pulled up the W2 to which she is referring and written the name of the company exactly as stated on the W2. As it is, she botched the name so badly that we literally didn't know what she was talking about, and S had to call her to get it straightened out. Second, and this illustrates my point perfectly, either she's stupid and doesn't know how to use basic punctuation (she really needs another period and a question mark, at least), or she's lazy and apathetic and didn't want to take the extra half minute it would have taken to proof read her message. Which is it?

And by the way, it's not like I'm expecting her emails to conform perfectly to the rules of the MLA handbook, or picking nits because of a typo (you could probably find dozens of small mistakes in every entry I've ever posted on this blog), I'm just asking for something that we understand, and that instills the smallest bit of confidence that we're in good hands. Is that too much to ask? We are essentially her customers after all. (Sadly, the guy at the other mortgage company we were considering was worse!) Well, at least her partner seems to be good.

Changing the subject again, I read an interesting article about a venture capitalist named Peter Thiel (you can find the piece here, but I think you need a New Yorker subscription to read the entire thing). He was a key guy at PayPal, an investor in Facebook and a bunch of other things, and now he's like a bazillionaire (although he recently lost a large percentage of worth by betting on a quick rebound in the stock market after the housing bubble burst -- he should've been heeding the words of my man Paul Krugman). He sounds like an interesting dude. He fairly young (44), super smart (a chess whiz), gay (a supporter of GOProud), and a hard-core libertarian, so he invests in some pretty out-there causes like the Methuselah Foundation, whose goal is basically to prevent dying, and seasteading -- building actual floating colonies in the sea that, I presume, are free from government tyranny.

[I wanted to put up the interview of Bruno with Ron Paul to tie into the whole libertarian thing, but I couldn't find an embeddable version on youtube, so instead you get this in which Bruno interviews a libertarian (certainly not a gay one). It's the second interview in the clip, but they're both pretty funny.]

It's all really interesting, and I'm down with exploring fantastical concepts like reversing aging and floating cities. (We need a health dose of investment into nutty sci-fi shit like this.) But, I can't get behind the avid libertarianism. Basically, libertarians are Republicans who can think. Like if Paul Ryan was smarter he'd be a libertarian. So the problem I have with libertarians is the same problem I've mentioned before that I have with many Republicans, they put their ideology ahead of reality. They see the world as they wish it was, not as it is. Yeah, it would be awesome if everybody was strong and smart and responsible and hard-working and made rational decisions. And it would be awesome if other people's bad decisions and mistakes and sicknesses didn't effect me. But, that's not the truth. We can either accept this, and try to forge a working society that isn't completely philosophically pure or fair, or we can go down the path of the laissez-faire ideologue. I'm not saying I know for sure where this path would take us, but I wouldn't bet much money on it being anything close to the great place libertarians think it would be.

Well, that does it for this entry. Until next week...