Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

After assiduously avoiding sight-and-sound political chatter this season, and being about 99% successful, I inexplicably found myself, along with Mrs. Perils, at a downtown Seattle luncheon featuring Al Gore in support of Governor Chris Gregoire, who is in a close re-election race.

We were lured there by a young friend and former employee who has been working on Democratic campaigns this fall.  She was a “table captain” for this event, and I believe it’s the first time I’ve been in a situation where she out-ranked me.

Our table was a Silver table (the lowest contribution level), and while we were located in the same area code as the Goreacle, it may not have been the same electoral precinct.  Nonetheless, I was able to grab these photographs, with the aid of the zoom on the S3 IS (Click to enlarge):

While I’ve always agreed wholeheartedly with the goal of reducing carbon emissions and inhibiting global warming, I’ve tended to think it was a pipedream, owing to burgeoning populations and development in the rest of the world, as well as willful myopia domestically.  I’ve sort of resigned myself to its inevitability, as I believed that it could only be avoided by a severe dampening of economic activity that would have miniscule political support anywhere in the world, even Seattle.

Then, yesterday for the first time, a nickel sort of dropped about how an initiative might actually move forward.  And, while a nickel won’t buy you the whole candy bar, here’s how you might get the other 95 cents: Al compared the push to develop alternative fuel sources to the industrial revolution of 19th-century England, a period of rapid dislocation and transformation, driven by a perceived necessity. I started to see that an economy, an alternative economy, might be built on the pursuit of alternate fuels and more efficient use of carbon fuel, spurred by the specter of Peak Oil.

I think it’s still a long shot, but for the first time I thought I felt a zephyr of a fresh wind blowing.  Here’s a video of Al winding up his speech:

As I was leaving the event, I had the most humiliating and frightening experience. I was at at ATM machine when I was approached by an old lady wearing a McCain button. She beat me senseless with her cane, pinned me to the sidewalk with her walker and drew a big, red “M” on my forehead with her lipstick. If this doesn’t scare you about who will be running the country in a McCain administration, I don’t know what will.

Yeah, the police didn’t believe me, either.

Glacier Peak from my plane on Sunday.

I’m not sure what happened, but Wordpress apparently didn’t like the company I was keeping and decided to turn on password-protection to my comments section over the weekend. After reading about it in Wired, I quickly remedied the situation, so please stop in and leave your scent.

Well, despite the whinging tone of the previous post, I’m looking on the sun more and more as an enemy.  Everywhere it goes, it seems, it sucks value out of the stock markets it shines on.  The International Date Line seems like the Maginot Line for financial markets.  I really wonder if it’s (the sun) not a rogue ship from The Day The Earth Stood Still.

The government has been very busy running around with buckets of cash, trying to shore up the system.  And then this slithers in under the radar:

The five-member Financial Accounting Standards Board decided to provide some flexibility in applying “fair value” accounting where there is no market for a security — like the market for banks’ mortgage-backed assets that has been dysfunctional for months.

The board expects the new guidance to take effect Saturday.

“We’re giving people a wider range of options and input to get to fair value,” said FASB spokesman Neal McGarity.

Fair value accounting, also known as “mark-to-market” accounting, requires banks to value their mortgage-related assets at current market prices. Devastated by the write-downs they have taken on mortgage assets since the collapse of the housing market, banks — with the backing of congressional Republicans — have been pushing hard for the Securities and Exchange Commission to suspend the requirement.

So a central technique for resolving the problem is to change the accounting rules so as to obscure further the toxicity of banks’ assets.  Republicans haven’t lost their taste for Enron Kool-Aid.  Is there a pig these guys won’t put lipstick on?

October.  It’s not an illusion, it’s apparently a reality.  For the first time in months, I was tempted to turn on the heat this morning as my commute led me from bed to espresso machine to desk.  I can’t verify that I could see my breath, because I can’t see much of anything at that hour of the morning.  But it was chilly.

As sobering as it is to contemplate October as the harbinger of fall and inevitable winter, it has a double-witching quality for me because it’s also my birthday month.  Triple-witching if you throw in Halloween.  And while this year isn’t one of those milestone birthdays, 59 seems palpably different from 58.  When you’re swirling some distance from the drain, you feel like you could swim to shore whenever you choose.  As you swirl ever closer and faster, the shore becomes more of a concept than a reality and, for a sinner such as me, your thoughts turn more toward what unmentionable future awaits you in the drain trap.  59 just sounds so much more fourth-quarterish than 58, somehow.

Well, there’s your medley of metaphors for tonight.  Those long summer evenings, especially at this latitude, that allow one to procrastinate criminally and still have lots of daylight to salvage at 8 pm are gone.  But there’s Buckeye football to look forward to every weekend, along with the resultant chatter during the week.

And every now and then, a day comes along full of sun and maturity and experience, doing her best to hide the wrinkles of autumn in golden haze and come-hither eyebrow-arch, and if you’ve played your cards right, you can lock arms with her and kick joyously through the leaves, still in shorts and a t-shirt.

The former Washington Mutual Building, photographed from the Bainbridge ferry, Seattle, WA, 9/27/2008

Well, I really can’t let a historic week like this go by without posting.

I’m a child of children of the Depression, and I’ve always adhered to the ethos of conservative conduct in my financial affairs that my dad and grandparents ingrained into me, even if my politics became more progressive as I swung further from their genetic orbit.  I’m lucky, of course, to have been their child, raised in a cocoon of relative comfort.  But that comfort was the result of careful spending and investing, blue-collar midwestern people who distrusted fads and stuck to their fucking knitting, even if that meant that I drove a 60 Chevy station wagon on my 65 - 67 high school dates, and I didn’t hit a golf ball until I was well over 30.

I’ve cleaved to their cautious approach, even when, through the 80’s and 90’s, a smarter person would have bought as much Seattle real estate as the (now evidently stupid) banks would have allowed.

So, I arrive at this pivotal moment in our civic life sort of conflicted.  The prudent child-of-children-of-the-Depression is totally disgusted at the calamitous result of the profligacy of the Wall Street money-jocks, aided and abetted as they have been by the Reagan-induced paucity of regulatory oversight.  I really buy into the whole revenge thing that the populist rhetoric is espousing.

And then, there’s the retirement investor side of me, worrying about my portfolio.  I’m sure I have a lot of company here.  Our guts are telling us to scream, “let the fuckers stew in their own foul juices!”, while we realize that our own nest eggs are redolent with those same juices.

I’m not so worried about the part of my paltry portfolio that’s managed by Warren Buffett.  It may rise and decline with the market, but it’s invested in diverse and proven businesses.  It’s kind of cool to see my stock price jump every time he’s quoted in the Wall Street Journal.  This quote from last week epitomizes why I cling to my BRK investment even in the face of Warren’s imminent demise.  Berkshire has been sitting on an inordinate amount of cash for several years, with Warren being frustrated that prices were too high for him to make many major acquisitions.  Then, these Wall Street firms feeling the Arctic breeze on their naked asses started calling him:

Mr. Buffett received a call at 4:30 p.m. that Saturday from a private investment firm trying to assemble a group to buy the embattled financial giant. “I’m calling about Bear Stearns,’” the private investor began, according to Mr. Buffett. “Should I go on?’”

Mr. Buffett recalls thinking: “It’s like a woman taking off half her clothes and asking, ‘Should I continue?’ Even if you’re a 90-year-old eunuch, you let ‘em finish.” Mr. Buffett says he passed on the proposed deal. Bear Stearns was bought by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. the following day.

So now he’s made a couple of adroit investments in Constellation (an energy company that was teetering) and Goldman Sachs.  Presumably, he got the full frontal, but we’ll have to wait for his next quarterly SEC filing to know for sure.  Even in today’s bloodbath, BRKA only got a scratch.  While that’s not guaranteed to continue if things continue to deteriorate, I’m in for the long term.

So I’m torn between emotion and pragmatism regarding this taxpayer bailout.  I don’t want to take it in the shorts as a taxpayer while Wall Street geniuses skate on their golden parachutes, and I don’t want to take it in the shorts as an investor while the Wall Street geniuses still skate on their golden parachutes.

I’m glad I can still earn a living by working and can take a (not-as-much-as-previously) long-term view, but I still cleave to my 1983-vintage feeling that “the “Reagan Revolution” was built by invading all of society’s safety margins.”  Environmental, financial, social.  Line ‘em up and mug-shot ‘em: Social Security, mentally-ill homeless people, savings & loans, a coordinated energy policy, the coddling of a DOA auto industry that should have been left to die, Lehmann-style, in the mid-80s.

Who knows what happens tomorrow.  I’ll still get up and do work for clients that seem to be able to pay me, I’ll still watch in gob-smacked horror at the stock market, wondering if it’s a once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunity, or a ruinous armageddon.

The good thing is, I’ll probably still get up tomorrow.

So, my mom had a birthday last weekend, another one of those that can only be expressed in logarithmic notation, but I’m delighted to have her every day, let alone every year.

And she’s squeezing everything she can out of these years of sentience and energy.  She plays bridge at least 2 times a week (and wins with a suspicious frequency), participates in a book group at her community library, attends plays, operas and zoo concerts.

But when I saw this bumper sticker:

I knew she was underachieving.  Mom, you need to go downtown and get kicked out of one or more bars if you want me to still respect you.   I know you’re up to it.

Perspective! (Click to enlarge):

I’m attending a sea kayaking “symposium” in Port Townsend, west of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. “Symposium” seems a little over the top, but it’s a fairly large event, with classes on & off the water, and, of course, lots of gear vendors hoping to snag some of our dollars.   (Click photos to enlarge)

I took a short class on advanced paddle strokes yesterday and actually learned a few techniques I hadn’t known about before.  During the class, one of the women capsized and was rescued by our instructor.  He was something of a hunk, and I couldn’t shake the suspicion that she did it on purpose.

These “Jesus boats” are gaining in popularity, though I can’t imagine spending more than half an hour on one.  They’re basically a surfboard:

I paddled out into the Strait (of Juan de Fuca) to get a larger view of the coast and to look over this lighthouse.  It had been drizzling for a lot of the day, and I was surprised, as I turned the corner, to actually see some sun.

OK, I’m headed out to the water again.

Harvest moon, taken last weekend on a neighborhood stroll.

Did I ever come back from Columbus?  I’m looking for me because the bastard owes me money, and he’s hiding.

I found a bit of evidence on the memory chip of his camera - he apparently went kayaking last Saturday:

A barnacle-encrusted necklace adorned this prosaic fishing boat.

Lake Union is festooned with “floating homes”, which have become increasingly elaborate. These two present a stark contrast - on the left, a full-on suburban experience, while on the right, and just a few paddle-strokes away, is a hippie-pad melange festooned with parasitic willow and situational art.

A commercial float-plane airline, Kenmore Air, makes its home in Lake Union, ferrying people to the San Juan Islands and other water-related destinations. I fastidiously maintain my distance from this departing aircraft, nd enjoy getting sprayed by its propwash.

After circumnavigating Lake Union, I paddled west through the ship canal. As I returned, I took this pic of the Fremont and Aurora bridges forming a tunnel to paddle through.

There was a fair breeze that day, and this sailboat seemed particularly picturesque as it glided in front of the skyscraper backdrop.

OK, I’m back in town after a couple weeks of traveling.  Watch this space.