The Weather, or How I Learned to Love Climate Change

I don't follow the weather that closely, and wouldn't say climate change is one of my "subjects," not in the same sense that the health care insanity is (don't get him started!!). I don't typically go on about climate change like I do global finance and our utter dependence on, and mostly willful ignorance of, their psychopathic marionette activities. I come from Iowa, where the weather just comes every day, usually in some tedious form, but where, nonetheless, 100 year floods now come every 10 years, so everyone, every generation, can enjoy them. Kind of like Colorado and fires.

As for climate change, I don't so much "believe" in it as consider it a cure for the normal human irritation with boredom. Like when we broke up Ma Bell, or deregulated the airlines. Life can be merciful that way. Give you these things to keep you from sleeping the day away, from being in a constant state of wonder and doubt. Things like, for instance, puberty, or mental illness. You don't hear someone with a twelve-year-old daughter going on about how he isn't really sure that anything notable is happening to his little girl who used to be so sweet and loved watching "Arthur" and thought ponies were so cute, but now, well, she wants a fucking horse, and he's thinking it might be a good idea to get her one, real soon, despite the fact that the picture, the evidence, is still equivocal ...

No. If you heard that kind of talk coming from someone, especially a father, you'd think he was a full-on idiot. You'd pay for your drinks and get out of there. Just like you would if someone sat down next to you and started going on about how the moon landing was staged in a hangar in the desert, and fossil records are evidence of God's perversity, and Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison and Osama Bin Laden and Hitler are still alive and in fact share a duplex right beside Marlon Brando's old place in Tahiti.

Similarly, when the temperatures hit 100 degrees about as often as they didn't this last June, and fires raged across the state, and now, here in July, we hear talk—unironic talk—of our moving into the monsoon season that apparently has always been a standard feature of Colorado weather in July, I don't need to do a thorough Google search to think ... cra-zy, not boring. Thank you! Finally ... a weather system that isn't just nice all the time but is at long last off its meds, that has some pretty serious issues, having lived with its crazy family for a little too long now.

But hey, it's great, right? Charlie Sheen has a new show. I finally got around to buying an air conditioner to cool the master bedroom in my 4,000 square foot house that was built without central air back in 1988, because back then no one thought you needed central air in Colorado. What the fuck for? The weather was great here. Nice and sunny in the morning, with a nice little shower late in the afternoon.

Boring!

About as exciting as a balanced budget and peace on earth. Imagine what that would be like day in and day out. Watching fucking "Arthur" every day, listening to your daughter talk about ponies.

Still, we complain. Not more than two weeks ago I called my wife on the cell phone, for instance, in a very stressed state. Honestly, I felt I was about to lose my shit from being stuck in my 4,000 square foot house in Louisville with the shades pulled after, I don't know, the fifth straight day in a row of 100 degree temperatures and my throat feeling like an exhaust pipe. I started going on about how these MFs in the energy industry were making money hand over fist while the taxpayers were paying to put out the fires and how maybe, just maybe, if we took, say, half of Congress and buried them up to their necks in the open space and slathered their heads with gluten-rich, genetically modified foodstuffs to attract the coyotes and prairie dogs and maybe even a few people who would otherwise eat a burrito from 7-Eleven, well then maybe we might get some folks waking up in Washington ... which is to say I was talking crazy. Until I went out to the hardware store that very same afternoon and spent some money on an air-conditioning unit for our master bedroom. After that I was just fine. And now, after all that fuss, it's raining, hard. After all, it's July. It's monsoon season.

Heat, burn, douse. It's all good, natural, I see now, sitting here feeling pretty stupid looking back.

Kind of like that summer I rode my bike up Loveland Pass and thought, golly, if I don't get to the top pretty soon I'm going to kill myself; but then, when I got to the top, I got to ride down the hill so fast I nearly shit my Spandex. Which was fucking awesome.

And pretty soon, I bet, we'll have mushrooms growing in our yard again. And when we get bored with that, maybe the wind will start up again.

Wouldn't it be cool if it snowed in August?

Happy Bloomsday!

yes because she never did a thing like that before as make a nasty naughty bloody caesar for me to go with breakfast tomorrow god bless her on fathers day dreaming of lauren becall putting her lips together and blowing off on a cloud to look at saint larent couture at the museum with sensei all tough and soft feeling the pink deep in our bones and the kids and the greek fest and moonrise kingdom with the guys and the food and martinis at sundown crimson like fire for the smoke stinging the eyes and lungs if not the munificent heart of my flower of the mountain yes who knows she can always get round me who told me yes that silly girl fifteen years ago today when i lavished her with roses like the andulusian girls used and a ring dangling from one and read her the dirty parts from joyce and every year since and what a time it's been yes since she told me yes she said yes I will yes i do forever always yes my little minx Yes.

Streaming of Ulysses begins at 7:00 EDT (5:00 in Colorado) at the link below, with Fionulla Flanagan once more coming in as closer, reading the Penelope passage/Molly Bloom soliloquoy, unexpurgated, uncut, in its entirety, later tonight, with her feet up, sipping a stiff drink no doubt. Don't miss it.


http://www.symphonyspace.org/event/7093-31st-annual-bloomsday-on-broadway

When Timeshare Gets Ugly

Below is a letter I sent recently, via certified mail, to Diamond Resorts, a timeshare group out of Las Vegas.  It was sent in response to a letter I got from them.
 

May 16, 2012

Diamond Resorts

10600 West Charleston BLVD

Las Vegas, NV 89135

To Whom It May Concern:

First of all, on behalf of my mother, DeEtta, who will be 92 years old this summer, and myself, as well as my wife Donna, thank you for the instructive letters, certified and otherwise, regarding our upcoming reservation and what we need to do at this point to keep it.  Unfortunately, having already paid nearly $2800.00 toward the reservation we booked last year, prior to your springing the special assessment, we’re not inclined to give you another $7000.00 just to keep it.  Sorry, but that’s the way it is.  Moreover, I’ve tried, on two occasions since you announced the water intrusion assessment—for which I see you guys are getting sued; my friend over in Haena keeps me in the loop; good luck with that!— to simply give you back the weeks, the contracts, all of it, no questions asked, but on both occasions I was told you aren’t “accepting voluntary surrenders.”

And I thought: Could that be?  That you would want me, or anyone else, to pay thousands of dollars toward something you, yourself, won’t accept for free?

More on that in a moment, after we go over a little history …

Back in 1996, my mother and I bought two “Float/Float” weeks at what was then the Embassy Vacation Resort in Poipu.  Bill Fernandez was our Sales Representative.  Back in 1996, Mr. Fernandez indicated to my aging mother that he owned three weeks of Embassy timeshare himself.  This, I would soon realize, was a common statement made by timeshare sales reps everywhere from Morritt’s Tortuga Club in the Cayman Islands to the property that, like yours, has also changed hands many times in Pagosa Springs, CO.  He, Bill Fernandez, as well as others in the flocking sales group, mentioned a recent law on the island that would prohibit further timeshare building.  Thus, on the south shore of the Garden Island, there was the Embassy property (formerly luxury condos built by a Japanese concern, sold following the Nikkei crash in 1990; perhaps after your 68 million dollar makeover they will become luxury condos again, that you’ll sell), the Mercedes in the lot, and the Chevy property, the relatively shabby Lawai, redeemed only by its proximity to the Beach House and decent snorkeling waters. 

My mother, nearly eighty years old at the time, had already fallen in love with the island, and was, in the end—ironically, you have to admit—seduced by the “your kids will have this forever“ pitch.

The following year we visited again, with my future wife this time.  We asked about Bill Fernandez, but he was reportedly gone.  No one was quite sure what had happened to Bill.  Someone who could sell my wary, crotchety mother a timeshare and he wasn’t on property anymore?  Stunning.  Was he at least coming out to use his three weeks of timeshare?  No one could say for sure.

A few years later, the Marriott completed its timeshare property down the road, near Poipu Beach: a Lexus between us and the Chevy—so much for laws prohibiting further building of timeshare.

Still, being resourceful, my mother and I, and later my wife and I, and others, continued to use the property, booking early, paying the maintenance fees—which weren’t really too bad until you fine people came along.  As many other unhappy owners have pointed out.  But I don’t need to tell you how hostile the climate has gotten over just that one thing, not to mention this new water intrusion thing.  Money, money, money—and for something we literally can’t give away.

Then, in 2009, after thirteen years of fending off your sales team during our visits (“So, just out of curiosity, what would our weeks fetch on the open market?” I would ask, and the sales rep would reply, “I really have no idea,” and I’d reach over and honk his or her nose), my wife and children and I, along with some friends of ours, came to our “home away from home.”  Once we got there we were approached, as usual, during check-in, by the concierge—the earnest if likable John, whom I’d known for years—wondering if we were interested in an “Owner’s Tour.”  We indicated, as we always did, that we already had more timeshare than we needed given the realities of the (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) ownership; but he retorted, very clearly, that even though we had no intention of adding to our position, we should nonetheless come and find out what exciting things were happening on the property, for which we would get the usual gift card, good for use throughout the island. 

Why be difficult? we thought.  Take the tour!  Tell them we weren’t interested.  Get the gift card.  It was part of the drill.  They were used to it.

During the tour, I mentioned, straight up, over and over, that this wasn’t a good time for me financially because I’d recently spent roughly $16,000.00 putting solar panels on our home. Our Sales representative, Glenn Hughes, however, had likely heard such complaints (objections, as you call them) before, and, taking it as a challenge perhaps, told us that this meeting was a “one-time opportunity,” that next time the price would be much higher (this he showed us on a sheet, and, sure enough, it was much higher), and that, most importantly, the industry was going through transition and we would sooner or later have to go along, too, or feel increasingly like outcasts.  In plain words, we could either join “The Club”—transition to the point system and a higher tier of ownership—or find it more and more difficult to book our usual spot.  Home would feel less like home.

Which, give it to Glenn, was a clever way to attack us—hitting our one insecurity—since, after all, for thirteen years, while raising my two nephews, while getting our oldest birth son through cancer, while trying to write a book of my own, I’d always been able to book.  No one had ever implied that we wouldn’t be able, with our seemingly enviable float/float week, to book it as we always had.  And if we couldn’t book our usual oceanfront in Building Three by calling one year ahead, because others—Club Members who had bought into the Hawaiian Trust, as, it was implied, we would, if we had any sense—would be able to book thirteen months ahead, and what would happen then?  If we literally couldn’t give the property away, despite it being a beautiful place in a lovely location, and would very soon not be able to book our usual spot, well then, that was seemingly a bind we had to consider doing something about, or what was the point of paying the ever-increasing fees year after year?

When I mentioned that I owned these weeks with my mother, who wasn’t present at the time, this, oddly, didn’t seem to faze Glenn and the others.  I was told, getting out on three hours now, that if we, my wife and I, bought into The Club, my mother could sign later on.  We would be deeded members until my mother signed, through the mail, after which we’d become part of the Hawaiian Collection Trust.  I was further told that we could book our former property at Morritt’s Tortuga Club as a “club select,” and that this would bump us up to Gold status as owners, which would offer us copious benefits … we were told a lot of things that, in short, didn’t prove to be correct, for which, as you and I both know, there is recourse.  But let’s not get all excited just yet.

So after three hours and an afternoon of vacation wasted on a one-hour tour, we finally capitulated.  I had friends waiting on us, restless children; we decided not to remain outcast “weeks” owners and to take the one-time deal (which, we would later find out, at your property in Lake Tahoe, wasn’t exactly true; there was no such thing as a one-time deal, we were told by the smiling sales reps).  Purchasing the least amount of points necessary, we “upgraded” to “Club” status, feeling as if we really didn’t have any good other choice: one can either divorce, at great cost, or agree to the next set of terms. 

Again, I mentioned my mother, the primary owner on the 1996 contract that was being folded into this new contract.  I was still trying to understand how we could do this one-time deal without her being present, without her getting informed consent, as we used to say back when I was a transplant coordinator at the hospital.  Here I was potentially committing my mother to more expense—a lot more, as it turned out—without her even getting the benefit of the presentation.  Without her having a say.  And now here she is, getting threatening certified letters from Diamond, my 92-year-old mother, the primary owner of the “float/floats,” who wasn’t even there in 2009, when we joined your club, all three of us … with only two of us signing the documents, late in the day, in the “just sign and date here” fashion. 

Later, when, through the mail, I supposedly got my mother’s signature on the documents (I have still never seen the signed documents), I was told, by Kerry Rath, via email, that no, we in fact hadn’t opted to join the Hawaiian Collection Trust, but rather had decided to remain deeded owners.  When I replied saying that no, I seem to recall that we opted for the Hawaiian Trust, and was there anyway to get that arranged, I never got a reply back. 

Had I known that a special assessment was coming, I would have kept pressing.  Of course, had I known there would be a special assessment of this magnitude I might have decided that with a property that one can’t, literally, give away, it was time to cut my losses.

A lot of owners might have. 

Which is why you never told the owners that the special assessment was coming.  Not a whisper of it, in sales pitches or otherwise, even as recently as January 2011, when I was on property and there was a great deal of discord leading up to Board Elections, elections that turned out predictably, with all your stooges getting spots.  At no point was it mentioned by any of the candidates, or by any of your employees pitching owners groups at the time to hand over their deeds to the trust, that a few months earlier this water intrusion issue had been formally discussed in Las Vegas.  At no point, until the bill came last fall, were you honest with your supposed owners about what was coming, about why, if the assessment was a fait accompli, they might want to either join the trust or pay someone to transfer their deeds back to your sales force.

Needless to say, looking back, I am frustrated, embarrassed.  On that long afternoon in 2009, I mentioned on several occasions that we were not in a position to add to our timeshare costs, to buy an upgrade, and then, after doing so, I discovered that booking the same time in the same location on the resort would cost me close to 75% more.  And now this special assessment for “water intrusion.”  When we first bought, we were able to book time in an oceanfront unit, reliably, for less than one hundred dollars per day.  Now, the maintenance fees and “Club” fees, which were never mentioned in the presentation (only that Interval membership would be free for life), have taken the cost up over $200 per day.  For this “upgrade,” 4,000 points, I paid the bargain price of around $9000 in 2009.  For an “ownership” that is worth nothing, that I literally can’t give away. 

Which gets us to now.  In calls made to your resort in November, and again on April 30^th, I was told that the resort is not even taking “voluntary surrenders” of the weeks.  Imagine!  Quite a different story than what we were presented back in 1996, when our sales rep and others all owned three weeks!  When these weeks would prove to be quite an “investment,” since no further timeshare would be built on the island.  Before Club Sunterra, and now, The Club.

Alas, no one likes to be hustled, and this whole thing—all of it—was a hustle, a grand hustle.  And you guys, recently, have taken it to a new level.  There is no “investment,” and there is no longer even decent value when it comes to the yearly cost of a stay based on the maintenance fees.  For years, when we couldn’t make it to the resort, I was able to get people to take the weeks for the fees, but now, the fees are so high that no one in their right mind would pay them. 

And now you’re going to collect, or try to, upwards of 66 million dollars on the backs of the owners, who in fact own nothing, many of whom live in the delusion, as we did, briefly, unfortunately, in 2009, that the next set of terms is better than divorce.

Well, not this time.

I want my money back from our purchase to “Club” status in 2009, as well as the money returned from the booking of our reservation for this June, which came before the water intrusion assessment in October—which is to say I am not paying another $6800.00 and counting, in addition to the $2773.22 I have already paid, to stay in a unit that, a few short years ago, would have cost me $1400.00 for two weeks.  Furthermore, I am not paying you another dime toward my ownership in a property that I, we, quite literally, can’t give away, not even to your sales team. 

I want all these monies returned, and a release from any further expense and liability regarding my supposed “ownership” in The Point at Poipu, and, more broadly, from any relationship with your group, Diamond Resorts.  Should you find this disagreeable, consider that I am, among other things, a published author, with enough means and a mean streak to cause you far more trouble than you might imagine—which is to say I’m not your usual ranting chump.  I will write about you and your tactics relentlessly, and people will read it.  I have an agent in Manhattan, at Curtis Brown, who assures me that if it’s juicy—and it will be—there are many outlets eager to buy my clever telling on a subject as previously opaque as this one. 

Consider, also, in addition to the legal headaches, the media headaches, I would be more than happy to visit on you should you want to quarrel with me, screw with my credit, bother my mother, anything like that, that I have friends on the island, at least two of which have offered me gratis lodging should I decide to come over and pay a visit, and, say, spend a lot of time at the pool bar, at breakfast, on property, talking to your future clients, being politely and informatively disruptive, shall we say, and blogging about it, the posts of which would one day soon become a feature article, or a book, which might even lead to a documentary, with you in a featured role. 

Who knows, maybe no one would pay any attention to me.  Or maybe you’d have to call the police to the property again, like you did when my friends were visiting back in 2010, to settle everyone down.

Point being: the more interesting this gets, the better it is for me.  And I’m about done with my current project.

Let me know how you think we can settle this.

Aloha, and mahalo!

Craig Bueltel

After Listening to Meryl Streep on Teri Gross

I listened to Meryl Streep being interviewed on Fresh Air yesterday while I was driving to karate, a couple days after Donna and I went out on a snowy night to see her in The Iron Lady. Like many, I consider her to be, if not the best there is, then so close that it really doesn't matter. If I were dying, stuck in prison, stranded on an island somewhere that had decent power and access to Netflix, I can think of few better ways to idle away my precious hours than to watch her and Stanley Tucci in Julia & Julia, again and again and again.

So it kind of hurt my feelings when she told Teri yesterday that most men, unless they're gay, don't get any of her roles except the one where she played Linda in The Deer Hunter, a role that she was good in, excellent perhaps—a breakthrough role—but one that really doesn't stand out for me. Certainly not in the way that Robert Deniro stood out, or Christopher Walken, all the Russian Roulette stuff in Nam, and getting drunk and going on a deer hunt, and all the other shit in the movie that guys really get into.

Frankly, I remember the guy who played Axel better than I remember Meryl Streep in that movie. Which wouldn't flatly rule out the possibility that I'm gay (and just won't admit it), but couple that with the fact that I haven't seen Mamma Mia, and it would seem at least plausible that I might be one of those rare straight guys who like her, and get her, in pretty much all her roles.

Even the one, in Kramer vs. Kramer, where she plays the mother who runs away from her family, then wants to come back again after Dustin Hoffman has made the kids pancakes and taken them to school and done all kinds of other things that have him coming off as a fucking saint, while she, to a more common sensibility, comes off looking like shit—hey, I can understand that whole dynamic a lot better than Streep might imagine. Just sayin.

And I liked Out of Africa, way more than even a lot of gay guys I have a feeling. And not just for the landscapes, and the flying around in bi-planes, and Robert Redford—he and Paul, now those were some men. And I admire women like Isak Dineson, and Katherine Hepburn (who, as it turns out, didn't admire Meryl Streep, probably due to some deep-seated female-type bitchiness that I wouldn't understand, being a straight male), Beryl Markham, Amelia Earhart, the character Streep played in The Devil Wears Prada, where Stanley Tucci was, once more, great, if too short, and bald, for me, if I were gay, but alas ...

Madonna, can't forget Madonna ...

Can't see the point in being married to, or deeply involved with, any of them, I have to admit. Any more than Robert Redford's character in Out of Africa, before he died (like single men who want to fly around and do whatever they damn well please should, and will, if they don't settle down and get married and learn to love the joys and pleasures that can come, in rare situations, from commitment and domesticity), could see the point in actually staying put with Isak Dineson, great sex and food and Mozart on the Victrola notwithstanding.

But, having reflected further on Streep's remarks to Teri (very un-straight male of me, pondering such things while doing crunches, punching/kicking a bag—perhaps I should see someone about this), she did say it wasn't meant to be a generalization—though it certainly seemed like one to me: men, if they're straight, don't get my roles like women, and gay men, do—that really the crowd she was getting at were the male critics ...

Who, based on the reviews I've seen of The Iron Lady, haven't been as appreciative as, I think, they should have been.

Thus, she may have a point.

While many of the reviews say, in general, to see the movie for the performance rather than for the movie itself, since, well ... they aren't sure what the point of portraying this great woman (whom many of them probably hated, given their politics, or don't remember as well as they think they should, given their politics, and worldly sensibilities) in her senescence, looking back on her life with her husband (Jim Broadbent, reprising his role, partly as a ghost, as The Great Woman Who Is Losing Her Mind's husband [see: Iris—another film that no self-respecting straight man, even a writer, would be caught dead at, especially in a theater by himself, when he could otherwise be watching football, or Ultimate Fighting, but don't get me started], who is dead, talking to her, cracking jokes, being charming in smart, clever ways while often pointing out how selfish she could be, neglecting her family and the like, subtext being: as all kinds of men in the same position, with the same ambitions, would be, though that key isn't banged too hard, lest the movie be an obvious sort of polemic that even a straight guy might get, and get bored with, and want to get out of there as quickly as possible, to get back to the flat screen and Ultimate Fighting ...

Suffice to say, there are many subtleties to the movie, many of them overlooked in the surfeit of safe, similar, three out of five star reviews, not all of them written by men, but most of them.

And the performance, which is flat out awesome (in the old sense of the word), and bang on if you remember anything of Maggie and those days, takes little turns on commonly remarked upon themes—the woman, if she doesn't want to be wiping teacups on her dying day, having to become more of a man than the men, and to what consequence finally?—that in lesser vessels might have been less interesting, and felt even dated. Instead, it feels Shakespearean. As full of equivocation as "MacBeth."

Streep, understandably, perhaps, was disappointed that this not too abstruse point seemed lost on many of our best male critics. Though, to be fair, it was lost on a lot of the women as well—who, as a bunch anymore, at least those who have made it to the perceived safety of The Club, aren't any more courageous, or smart, or inciteful, than the men. Not reliably. Even Pauline Kael, especially when she got in the door, could be obtuse on occasion. How could someone not like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid? Redford and Newman ... music by Burt Bacharach, Katherine Ross, riding on the handlebars with her petticoats showing, BJ Thomas breaking into "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head" ... What kind of woman doesn't eat that up?

Yet, don't you have to admire a woman who doesn't? Who won't ... even if, as a straight guy, you wouldn't want to be married to them.

Leave them for the Jim Broadbents of the world. Who, sooner or later, if only on occasion, end up not quite what the Maggie Thatchers of the world had hoped they'd be.

And there's the rub.

Imagine fighting over who does the wash and the dishes with someone like Pauline Kael or Maggie Thatcher ... or Meryl Streep, for that matter. You'd just end up doing it, all of it, to spare yourself the brain damage, if you were a straight guy. Any guy, really. And then where would you be?

In the same position women, married to guys like those women, were in for years. Wondering WTF?

Donna and I saw another movie awhile back, The Descendents. Saw it at the Ellie Caulkins, at the Denver Film Festival. Afterwards, we were over in the Galleria Bar having a drink and this woman behind us was going on about how George Clooney's [Oscar nominated] character was "just weak." Why, it just made her sick ...

She didn't get it at all.

Donna and I looked at each other and didn't say anything.

I thought about that woman, that evening, the other day when I was driving to karate and heard Meryl Streep tell Teri Gross that men, straight men, didn't seem to get the full range of her roles, just the ones like Linda in The Deer Hunter, while women, and many of the gay men that presumably fussed over her, did. I listened to that and remembered that clueless middle-aged, well-dressed woman who should have known something by this time, going on behind us after The Descendents, about George Clooney's character—who, ironically, would have been one of those clueless men Streep was speaking of at the beginning of the film, but not by the end (Director, a man, straight: Alexander Payne, from Omaha, Nebraska), and thought: Meryl, be careful, and wake up ... there's plenty of clueless to go around.

The Good Life (on the Backs of the Sick)

Let us be glad that we live in a country where so many can make so much bank on the backs of the sick, and that few among us are troubled by it; let us be thankful as well that to keep this juggernaut going we spend twice as much per captita as any other developed nation on "health care", that, by law, taxpayers can't negotiate for the Medicare drugs they pay for, and that many of us who aren't over 65, or veterans, or destitute (driven to or otherwise), are at present paying more for their health insurance (much of it far less than adequate, though they won't realize it unless they get sick) than they are for their mortgages. Let us be thankful, mostly, that here in America one is allowed the opportunity to experience, along with serious illness, the tandem possibility of being financially ruined from it, which, after all, builds character in a way the rich and the fortunate and those with good plans in this country all the other developed nations will never understand, and wouldn't tolerate for a second--let us pity their lack of wisdom, and rejoice in our plentiful Kool-Aid. Amen.

Predictions for a New Year

One may as well start with politics.

Reliable Righty Rick Santorum is surging in Iowa, as nearly everyone in the Republican Field (except Jon Huntsman) did before him. The candidates and the media, still stunned from liquor and rich food and other holiday distractions, no doubt, haven't had time to give him the thrashing he's due to get, if not in time for the caucus voting on Tuesday. Thus, he could very well win on Tuesday, in Iowa. He very well might. Even though it's getting more obvious by the day what the final outcome will be ...

Romney. Versus Obama. Obama wins. Gets stuck for four more years unraveling a country from the excess and expectations brought on largely by its post-WWII good fortune.

Still—that doesn't mean Iowa has to set the tone and kill all the drama and pageant before potentially each and every Republican candidate has a turn at being in first place. Moreover, the Republican Show in Iowa, along with being a munificent economic windfall to the state, tends to give brief, unrealistic, and ulitimately fleeting hope to personalities such as Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee—and now, just maybe, to Rick Santorum.

So, expect Santorum to be the next candidate up, the next candidate down, in the Republican's surprisingly egalitarian nod to life imitating art, to Uncle Andy's famous prediction that all of us (with the possible exception of Jon Huntsman) will have fifteen minutes of fame.

Ron Paul? Newt Gingrich? Been there, done that. So last year.

And what are we supposed to do for fun when and if it becomes painfully obvious (well before the pageant directors think it should) that Mitt Romney is going to get the nomination?

Wait to see Ron Paul jump in as a third party spoiler.

Don't laugh, he probably will. Especially if he does well in Iowa. Especially if he figures the Republicans don't have a chance in November. Which they probably don't, regardless of the state of the economy, which, btw, won't so much recover as continue on like a formerly top-notch, ever hopeful, 46-year-old athlete who is accident-prone, with high deductibles.

Any other time in recent memory, running against even one Republican who wasn't either plain nuts or beset with a host of unruly contradictions, and Obama would be toast in November.

But not this time, not with this crowd.

This time conventional wisdom gets turned on its head, and a poor economy will work in Obama's favor. Ironically, what Obama needs to worry about, if not very much (and contrary to everything you've heard), is the prospect that housing and the stock market will rise up again, fueling a renewed belief in hunky dory expansive living brought about by tax cuts and giveaways to the fortunate, alleviating for just enough time the nagging fear that, if something doesn't give, and the Republicans axe our Medicare and Social Security, our grown children and poor relatives will be living in our basement—or us in theirs—leaving no extra cash for sushi, or a spa day, a trip to Cancun, none of that. And we'll all be living like people did before that evil socialist Roosevelt became president.

More likely, though, 2012 will be a tipping point, slouching toward aging Boomers (the vast majority of them reckoning with much less cash than they'd hoped to have by now) looking to protect their tax-payer funded entitlements more than their 401K returns. It'll be a difficult pill to swallow—getting by on 200K for the next twenty years rather than the 2 million they were counting on, if only their house and 401K had continued to go up 15%-20% a year for the next 15-20 years—but swallow it they will.

Which will have its consequences, like everything else the Boomers decide to do.

No, I'm thinking the Fear Vote this year, contrary to recent convention, votes Democratic.

And that many of those who left the fold to trust the hotshots and their methodologies will be coming home—like the Boomerangs.

And yes, it'll be hard when they discover that, eternal faith in compounded returns wasn't really where it was at, after some job creator who didn't, some faceless entity flush with cash and recognized as having rights by the Supreme Court of the United States, has taken from them everything they can steal ...

"How does it feel?" I can already hear Obama asking the crowd—at least I wish he would. And then Romney replying, "Hey, you fucked up. You trusted us!"

Wouldn't that be fun? We wouldn't need Ron Paul if we could count on that.

Another thing ... our faith-based currency, the almighty dollar, will continue to be strong, at least relative to the rest of the world's faith-based currencies currently in more or less precipitous decline. This so long as Europe's woes keep us on the brink of a global recession, and that traders on the FOREX, known to have the hearts and loyalty of lizards, don't decide otherwise. In any event, know that much of the world's fate is at their fingertips on any given day. Rejoice in the fact that they can bring excitement for no particular reason, with a simple pratfall, to a world that craves it, and makes bank from it.

Gold will still see $2000 before it sees $1000, and I will still take bets of up to $100 from anyone who thinks otherwise. Though gold will languish in the shadows and perceived safety of a strong dollar, test the mettle and faith of those crazy Gold Bugs, in time people without jobs, in houses under water, will cry out in unison with large banks and hedge funds hungry for hot money to leverage: "Help us, Helicoptor Ben! You're our only hope!"

And Ben will say, Better money from a keystroke, raining from the sky, than a depression.

And we shall be thankful, possibly, maybe (who knows?), that contrary to what history would suggest from a bunch of nations absurdly in debt, over-committed, and threatened with losing all that we've been trained to believe is near and dear to us, the narrative to our times may well end up looking more like a game of Monopoly (albeit, stuffed full with added dollars) than a game of Risk. After all, why go to war with China when we could just let them buy us. One of the perks of globalization. Of letting the Central Banks and Treasury Tim sort it out for us.

On lighter topics ...

Timmy and the Broncos, having luxuriated in their fifteen minutes of fame and endearment to the Almighty, will get beaten in a way consistent with reversion to the mean probabilities, with generous padding on the spread, next Sunday afternoon. By the fourth quarter John Elway will be imagining how, without incurring death threats from the Tim Zealots, he might pick up Matt Flynn in the off-season.

Tonight, the luck goes to Luck ...

And, sooner or later there will be snow in the mountains! Enough that you can ski or board without scratching up the equipment on rocks and gravel.

Brad Pitt will win Best-Actor at the Oscars, and maybe at the Golden Globes, whether for Moneyball or The Tree of Life remains to be seen.

Jonah Hill, however, will win Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moneyball—though he's had other good roles this year as well.

Meryl Streep will likely get nominated again for The Iron Lady. But who else, among the actresses? Help me out ...

What else?

If you're a pessimist, this'll be a good decade to get a book out, to crow on at parties, yet maybe not such a good decade to quit a good job, sell a profitable business, to write a book. Still, for another ten years or so, maybe longer if you're lucky, you'll feel as good as you'll feel your whole life being a pessimist.

That said, to the rest of you, quit worrying, it'll all be fine. The species isn't geared to manage luxury anyway. Having it all isn't our bag as humans. Seriously, the only thing we like better than a good mess to fix is a well-constructed, sturdy cage. And the desire between the two fluctuates; it's our idiom.

Look for lots of it in 2012.

And try to smile more.

Cheers!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Author's note: the following yuletide greeting comes from the pen of our legal staff, the august firm Dewey, Diddlum & Howe, at the insistence, we're sorry to say, of the esteemed partner who gives us most of what ends up, we're again sorry to say, being pretty poor advice most of the time. That said, we haven't mailed the firm a check in a long time (though we certainly have sent Les a lot of olives), so what should we expect?

Greetings one and all!

It's been another great year here at Dewey, Diddlum & Howe. We're doing more business than ever with some of the shadiest people imaginable, and yet they continue to pay and we continue to care, and the help continues to steal us blind while N Howe, who does all the work, looks the other way and, well, does all the work.

For this we give thanks.

And also for Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, possibly Ron Paul, and anyone else the Republican base believes, however fleetingly, is a better candidate to run for president against Barack Obama than Mitt Romney. May they all be our clients one day, with money in their checking accounts.

Let us also be thankful this holiday season for Mitt Romney, who was VC back when most of us still thought VC was Charlie, who, as someone else pointed out, looks like a guy who might play the president in a movie calling for a president in a bit part.

Let us be thankful, too, that the Good Lord gave us the eloquent atheist and apostate Christopher Hitchens to get after all the charlatans and clowns and sanctimonious folk who make this Hobbesian existence of ours even more Hobbesian.

Let us be thankful for Facebook and other fine social networking sites, for giving us the illusion that we are close and cosy and keeping in touch. As Ibsen said, a vital lie is critical to the sanity of most of us—lies, in my case. As in: All is well so long as N Howe is doing the work. And I have olives.

Let us be thankful for Greece, btw, for their olives, for giving us civilization, for being the kind of client we here at Dewey, Diddlum & Howe would love to have if they had any money in their checking account.

Let us be thankful for snow, which we here in Louisville (if not in Summit County) have in abundance, for the moment.

For a White Christmas, Charlie Brown's Christmas, and It's a Wonderful Life.

For fudge and cookies and stuffing and pumpkin pie.

For quiet nights with the associates, after a stiff drink ...

For our clients, even the ones who don't pay their bills ...

That is all.

Sincerely,

Les Diddlum, Of Counsel (Part-time)

Dewey, Diddlum & Howe

[You Pay, We Care]

Wishing all a very merry holiday season!

cb