Grabbing the Bull by the Dyke

I woke up early yesterday. I had breakfast in the hotel, and for once didn’t make a flaming pig out of myself at the buffet. Don’t get me wrong, I ate plenty, but I exercised an all-too-rare moderation.

Which was just as well, since I ate a lot at lunch. But before that I actually exercised in the hotel gym. Shocking, this newfound motivation. I have no idea from whence it came.

I met with Zoe Lee and her friend during lunchtime, and we ate Japanese food. It was good, so it was easy to eat a lot of it. It was even easier because Zoe and her friend wouldn’t eat much of it and insisted that I take up the slack.

So I did.

Lunch was a fun, because I got to make a lot of jokes that went over well. It’s a rare treat for me, who often makes jokes that go over like a fart in church.

Then I came back to my hotel and took a nap. Until about 7:00. Then I took a walk, ate dinner, and came back to my hotel.

Is it just me or does the innocuous nature of the preceding lines make you uncomfortable?

Let’s face it, it wouldn’t really be a blog entry for me if I didn’t complain about something.

As Zoe said yesterday while describing this blog to her friend, “ Everythingannoys him.”

I’m staying in a ‘business hotel. Not like the ones in Japan, which I like. They’re about US$70/night, fairly simple, but quite clean and they have free internet access.

This hotel, whose name shall remain unspoken (though it is a single letter), is more than twice as much, has no free internet, and has a huge fiberglass statue of a bull in the lobby.

It looks like a hood ornament for an aircraft carrier.

It’s not anatomically correct, either; I checked.

Hey, f@#$ these people, I’m a guest here.

Speaking of which, I at first wondered why you need a key card to go up in the elevator but not back down. The answer is obvious; that way the hooker can leave the hotel without embarrassing you by leaving the card at the concierge desk for you to pick up later.

But never mind.

Obviously the bull is emblematic of a ‘bull market.’

Which is a financial term and not to be confused with a lesbian pick-up joint.

They have TVs in the lobby with “the latest and most important news.”

Financialnews.

Because that’s what’s reallyimportant.

F@#$Korea, have you seen the price of carrots?

One reason I’m likely to never get married again is that I really don’t f@#$ing care about money.

Not caring about money in Hong Kong is like not caring about religion in Mecca.

Let me amend that. I dislikemoney, or at least the things it engenders.

I’ve met women whose interest in me was remarkably changed when they found out what I did for a living, because I was well paid for doing it.

Unsurprisingly, my interest in them was changed too.

From bad to worse.

I guess I’ve always considered money a means to an end rather than an end in itself. A few years ago, a friend told me that it would take US$10 million to have a decent middle-class life without working.

So when I see people who make two to twenty times that amount per year, I am stymied. Because as soon as I personally made the 10 mil, I’d send out an email that said “F@#$ you. Goodbye.” to everyone I worked with and go live in a small house surrounded by woods in New England.

And the woods would be surrounded by landmines. F@#$ every single one of you.

So as a reflexively critical/crass/mean person, I blame money for most of the larger issues we face.

Money is nice to have, but it doesn’t make you happy. What’s worse is that it usually makes others miserable.

Getting rich is glorious, but if doing so results in unbearable pollution, well, f@#$ you and your widgets.

I’ve been in the room with a millionaire who died of cancer. Fat lot of good the money did him. Although he did smoke expensive cigarettes.

The pursuit of money is a hamster wheel; if you make a million, you want two. You get 2, you want 5. At the age of 70, you’re a billionaire. And then you drop dead. Your estranged bisexual son goes on a (literal and figurative) 8-month crack binge and suddenly a good chunk of that money has gone up in smoke (or up something else).

Trust me, you can go through a lot of money on drugs.

From what I’ve read.

I once had lunch with an extrememly wealthy man in Hong Kong.

It was at the Sha Tin Racecourse. On the top floor. Just so you understand.

During the meal, we were discussing the idea of administrators either being appointed by the university or elected by the faculty. As a businessman, he felt that an appointed person would be more efficient and a smarter choice. When he solicited my opinion, I said that many people are more interested, metaphorically speaking, in the direction in which the car is going as opposed to the speed it achieves. This obviously was not the expected answer, because shortly thereafter, he turned to another guest and said “I think the reason there’s so much competition and conflict in academia is because the stakes are so small.”

Money can’t buy you class, obviously.

But his utterly classless remark, true as it may be, encapsulates the business mindset (I refuse to say ethos since business ethics is an oxymoron). Money is more important than any piddling things like integrity and accountability.

And if you have enough, you can be a total fucking prick to someone’s face as if you’re somehow entitled.

As someone who has been the butt of tall jokes most of my life, it was oddly refreshing to not only be perceived as insignificantly tiny, but to have such bald rudeness occur literally next to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that academics can’t be horrible people.

[Raises own hand]

One of the absolute worst, most irredeemable human beings I ever met was an academic.

She’s also French, which saddened me because it only reinforces one of my most regrettable prejudices. This last term, I had a student from France and so my lecture about war was, to say the least, modified. I try to be less mean (and American) about France.

Sophie Marceau helps.

So when I meet someone so thoroughly despicable and French, my inner Archie Bunker cackles with glee and lights a cigar.

But, as I have said to my students, education doesn’t poison the earth. The number of people killed or made ill by education is, compared to industry, pretty f@#$ing low.

People don’t go to war over education.

If anything, the opposite is true. Look at the previous American president. The beady-eyed dullard ignored history, logic, and common sense, launching America into a two-front war in which success is impossible.

Unless you’re a defense contractor. Then you’ve got more success than you know what to do with.

A classic soldier’s idiom speaks volumes: “Always be aware that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.”

Nothing but the best for our boys in uniform.

Unless a cheaper alternative is available.

Well, you wanted your rant, you got it.

Okay, I ought to admit that maybe my aggravation with business has been exacerbated by staying in this hotel with a bunch of business people who are doing God knows what in their rooms. A group of Korean women are (hopefully) practicing business pitches in front of one another, because the rest of them applaud and cheer at odd intervals. Until all hours of the morning.

The room next to mine has seen so much action the last two nights it ought to be part of the new casino. As I write this at 7:30 AM, Captain C*ck is at it again.

I feel much better now; as soon as the noise stopped, I beat out “Shave and a haircut” on the wall.

Educators never get laid.

Trust me, I know this.

And not, for once, from what I’ve read.

What happened to zero tolerance?