Apres Moi, Le Deluge

During last fall’s presidential campaign, I listened as a woman from Marin County told talk-show host Gene Burns of KGO why she and her husband could not support Barack Obama. Their chief concern was Obama’s vow that in his administration taxes would rise only for those earning more than $250,000 per year. Her family’s income was roughly $360,000, she said, and there was simply no way they could afford to give any more money to the government.

As the call continued, it became clear that they were really scraping by, these people. While each of the three children had his or her own car, one child was mortified, because his car was nearly a year old. Some days, he was too embarrassed to leave the house. The kitchen remodel had been put off for almost three months, and the wine collection was not growing: they could no longer in good conscience entertain friends. The husband was under great strain, struggling to pour sufficient sums into the various civic, sports, and fraternal organizations that required his membership. They had recently had to wait several weeks before outfitting each member of the family with the latest Apple releases. The situation had grown so dire that some nights they now had to eat dinner at home.

Burns eventually exploded, lighting into this woman like a leveller. He had no sympathy for her. I, on the other hand, did. I know Marin County, and it is not easy to live there, on any amount of money. Marin is a vortex that can easily swallow all dollars thrown into it. I am sure that to this woman all of her family’s expenses seemed justified. Money induces in those who possess it a sort of special relativity: the more that is available, the more “needs” arise on which it “must” be spent.

I remembered this woman when I read about “luxury watchmaker” Yvan Arpa’s latest creation, a timepiece fashioned of dinosaur dung. It sells for $11,000. Now, I am sure that the Marin woman mentioned above would not “need” such a watch. But somewhere out there is somebody who does. Somebody also, I have no doubt, “needed” Alba’s “Crisis Tourbillon,” which was created as a “crisis-defying” response to the 2008-2009 world financial meltdown, and which retailed for $175,000. That is the watch pictured above. I myself am intrigued, for the sheer absurdity of it, with Arpa’s timepiece wherein he ”created the first ‘watch’ which does not tell time. That piece, which costs 300,000 [Swiss] francs, only tells day from night.” I don’t happen to have 300,000 Swiss francs, also known as $282,805.44, at the moment, so, for the present, I don’t “need” this watch.

Beefzebub

And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

—Job 1:7

Whenever I happen to drive into town, I pass a hillock upon which some pious soul has endeavored to recreate Golgotha. Three large wooden crosses have been driven into the earth, to remind motorists of the place where Jesus of Nazareth and two other fellows were crucified by the Romans. Every year, shortly before Easter, the unknown believer who maintains this crucifixion scene returns to the site, there to buck up the crosses, steady them in the earth. Then, he leaves them to the mercy of the cows.

For this ersatz Calvary occupies a site that is occupied, from late winter until the grass is crisped by the punishing sun of summer, by range cattle. Who aren’t much interested in respecting this California caricature of the Place Of The Skulls. Generally by the time the cattle have been moved to their range up in the mountains, they have knocked the hell out of these crosses, flattening them to the earth, or leaving them standing askew.

I once thought this occurred inadvertently, as a result of the cows rubbing up against them: cattle like to scratch. Until the day I saw a cow walk right into one of the crosses, push against it, back up, then move against it a second time, until it had been bent at a 45-degree angle. A second cow then moved in to knock against the cross from the side, skewing it closer to the earth. Finally, a third cow approached from the far side of the hillock, ambled up to and then sort of straddled the now seriously sagging cross, forcing it nearly flat.

This assault on the unknown pious one’s representation of the final earthly abode of Our Savior seemed deliberate to me. Which probably indicates that these animals are owned and controlled by their fellow Horned One. Dude is everywhere.