NAT'S LETTER | THE HAVING

Dear Graduates of College University!

What an exciting time for you all to be entering the “Real World!” Everything is very stable here and you should have no cause for concern! Take it from me, the incredibly wealthy head of a major corporation, when I say that great things are achievable! For you see, the advances that Artificial Intelligence have made possible mean that…

Wait, why are you booing?!

Was that an over-ripe tomato that you just threw at me?!

Are those torches and pitchforks I see in the back of the auditorium?!

I am completely taken aback! I was expecting undying adulation! I can’t believe that I descended from my mountaintop fortress for this avalanche of disrespect! Listen listen - quiet - listen: I realize that the job market looks like a sour plate of old ground chuck right now, but would it make you feel better if I asked you to “deal with it?”

No, you say? That made it worse, you say? Security is suggesting we evacuate the stage, you say?

Well then how about I distract you with yet another newsletter? That always seems to do the trick. ‘Should at least calm about four or five of you down.

This month was a busy month elsewhere, but nevertheless here are two pieces for you. Let us begin, in the real voice of the actual author, with an…

ESSAY: THE WORLD-RENOWN LABUBU BOY

You have this friend who is obsessed with Labubu.

You know Labubu: the half-cute, half-hideous figurines that have been sweeping the world for the past few years. Popmart makes them. You’ve seen them before. Here’s a picture.

Anyway, your friend is absolutely head-over-heels for the ugly little bastards. Every conversation you have somehow ends up at Labubu. He has them hanging off his keychain, his backpack, his handbag - he never carried a handbag before Labubu and yet here we are.

He owns the 10th anniversary ceramic cup but will not drink out of it. He keeps the “Why So Serious” candy pouch in its original packaging. He came to your Halloween pumpkin carving party dressed as one, which made pumpkin carving very difficult. How are you supposed to hold the tiny plastic orange serrated knife thingy when your hand is stuck in a big old furry Labubu paw?

You’ll never guess what design he carved into his pumpkin. Hint: it rhymes with “badubu.”

And he collects. Sweet holy hell, does he collect. He buys, he trades, he gathers by any means necessary. Every room in his home houses Labubus. He’s even filled his backyard with those plastic garden sheds they sell at Home Depot to store the many many many many display boxes.

Also, he steals them. This is how you know that he has a proper problem. It started with your very own Labubu, the one your sister got you as a joke for your birthday. You didn’t even like that Labubu - for chrissake you’re a grown-up with a car loan to pay off - but the way that your friend lifted it and the fact that he refuses to own up to what he’s done has really put a strain on your relationship. Like, what the hell, Jeff?

Then he started stealing from others. From children even, from their grandparents. He’s shoplifted them. His appetite for Labubus is ravenous.

And then he found out that Labubus are not “made” by Popmart so much as they are borne, conceived from the tears of the tortured innocents, and that the newly born Labubus are immediately submerged in a chemical compound that converts them into the plastic objects we know and love today. A newborn Labubu will never know love or peace - they will never experience a dream nor will they ever see a sunset - their sole purpose is to die and be preserved as a piece of merchandise. Your friend has no problem with this. In fact, he loves this. To him, it makes each individual Labubu that much more desirable, knowing that each figurine contains a snuffed out life.

‘Point is, the guy really likes Labubus.

So imagine that Popsmart, with their entire Labubu “manufacturing” industry, is taken over by, oh I don’t know, say Donald Trump. Would you expect your friend, who possesses more Labubus than any other human being on the planet by a wide margin, to denounce the new ownership?

Or would you expect your friend, whose entire personality revolves around one thing - who is famous, in fact, for his Labubu-owning prowess - to kiss the ring so that he can continue acquiring Labubus and so keep his whole world-renown Labubu Boy persona going just a little bit longer?

“Why do I ask?” you ask? 

Thank you for asking.

~*~*~*~*~

WHAT IS THE POINT?

So, Jeff Bezos did an interview and now everybody is talking about it.

Are you familiar with this Jeff Bezos character? Maybe not - maybe you’ve been hiding out in an island bunker in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, trying to defend your charge from Allied Forces, only recently to reenter modern society and discover all of its many wonders and horrors. Maybe you know neither the Bezos nor the Labubu. Don’t worry, I got you:

Basically, he’s a wealthy person. 

That’s a bit of an understatement. He’s an incredibly wealthy person.

That’s still an understatement. He is one of the wealthiest creatures ever to walk the planet earth - so wealthy that he effectively shut down the entire city of Venice, Italy to have a wedding. His space company just blew up a massively expensive rocket on the launch pad and he hasn't even batted an eye. If you need more of a primer, allow me to recommend this Epic Rap Battle of History between Jeff Bezos and Mansa Musa.

Anyway, Mr. Bezos made a couple of pretty wild statements in the interview, which have garnered some pretty great responses. One of the general takeaways - the one I’d like to talk about here - may be best encapsulated by this video from Jamelle Bouie. Mr. Bouie is a NYT columnist, but don’t hold that against him. 

For those wary of clicking links from strange newsletters, essentially Bezos makes the laughably absurd claim that Trump’s second term is “more mature” than his first, to which Bouie asks, to paraphrase: ‘What is the point of being so insanely rich if you still have to suck up to Donald Trump.’

I think we can all be forgiven for our bewilderment. You see, here’s how hypothetically this is supposed to work: the more money you have, the less bullshit you have to suffer.

This is the promise, at least as we the underling class have been taught, of accruing wealth. You become your own boss so that you no longer have to answer to one. You move to expensive neighborhoods so you don’t have to see your neighbors. You pay more for groceries to get the groceries with actual food in them.

Here in America, where capitalism is more than just an economic system but also an ethos, rising up the social ladder is akin to climbing the stairway to heaven. The higher you climb, the worthier you are. The worthiest of us live atop the hills and the least worthy of us have our possessions confiscated while the city clears out our homeless encampment for the third time in as many months. 

Our class system is not hereditary (or at least not transparently hereditary) but meritocratic (or at least ostensibly meritocratic). You get what you earn. That’s the idea at least, right?

Why do you think we suffer through all of these banal interviews with these orc-faced goons (no offense to orcs), or read all of these biographies and autobiographies and tell-all books about the orc-faced exploits of the aforementioned goons? We’re supposed to comb through their words and deeds for little nuggets we can use to aid our own journey along the rocky path to financial nirvana.

These guys are supposed to be the best of us.

So what do we make of this guy, this paragon of fiscal virtues, this modern-day Saint Rockefeller, pretending like Trump’s second term - which in only sixteen months has already featured multiple wars (including one catastrophic, slow-moving failure with no clear way out), multiple economic crises, multiple attacks on free speech, and oh yeah also the rounding up of many many many of our neighbors and friends into “detention facility” camps to receive inhumane treatment (have you heard about this hunger strike?), and that’s the abbreviated list - that this is somehow “more mature” than Trump’s first term. What a silly assertion to make, especially from someone who is supposed to be the smartest and best!

I suspect even the most ardent Trump voter would at least begrudgingly agree that we’re not exactly getting the peace and prosperity we were promised.

Bezos’s kowtowing feels like a betrayal of our whole ethos, doesn’t it? Wealth should insulate you from this sort of ass kissing. If there exists anyone who can speak the truth of the moment, surely it should be one of the wealthiest men ever to live - so why are we only hearing from the people on the streets?

~*~*~*~*~

FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

We all want it. My thesis: it doesn’t exist. 

Let’s leave aside the actual economics - after all, what is an economy if not a complicated system of dependencies? Sales depend on suppliers and buyers and employees and book keepers and customers and investors and on and on, and each of those interest groups has their own dependencies, each tied to one another. Money is not just money but also the accumulation of people’s blood and sweat and time. Bezos may have lucked into the ability to extract more for himself than most other people to ever walk the earth, but he still depends on the whole rest of humanity for that wealth.

But leaving that all aside, my understanding of this phenomenon became clearer once I started thinking of Mr. Bezos as Labubu Boy.

Granted, one does not buy groceries with a Labubu. You do not exchange them for socks. I suppose one could use them to barter, but that’s not the point of a Labubu - the point is to be a silly figurine to enjoy for fun. But for a collector - for an obsessive - the possession becomes the point.

Is that what money becomes for someone who could never spend their fortune in a thousand lifetimes? What happens when ‘money’ becomes disconnected from the goods and services it provides to a person’s daily life? Does wealth become a series of adorably hideous monsters to horde? The way he and Musk and their ilk behave, it sure seems to be the case.

As an aside, Bezos claims that taxing him would not help the “nurse in Queens” making $75k and I wonder if that’s because he’s lost all contact with what money actually means to people who need it? You could double that nurse’s salary and her take home wouldn’t even be a fraction of his wealth. It’s a banana, Michael - what could it cost?

Anyway, as near as I can tell, Jeff Bezos owes everything he is to money - his properties and his possessions and his appearance for sure, but he also depends on money for his identity, his reputation, his notoriety, his importance. Surely, he owes his status as a cultural figure to his fortune. Who actually wants to hear this guy talk? Who likes that voice?

Like Labubu Boy, Jeff Bezos’s personality has become Labubu - his has been subsumed by Labubu. If Jeff Bezos had no Labubus, would anyone even care what he has to say about anything at all? Does he have any other guiding principles or moral directives besides ‘get as many Labubus as possible and never stop?’

Might Mr. Bezos have specific business interests that require him to suck up to Trump? Sure. But the wider issue, I believe, is this:

Standing up to the most corrupt, most fortune-obsessed administration in the history of our nation would require a rejection of the very core values that gave one Jeff Bezos value in the first place.

He has himself become a Labubu of a kind. Without the value placed upon it, a Labubu is just a mildly cute, mildly upsetting piece of plastic who’s smiling just a little too hard for it to be a genuine smile. Without his money, Bezos is, well…

And so I ask, can you really expect one of the most talented wealth hoarders in history to reject the greatest avatar of avarice ever to walk God’s green earth?

I don’t think you can.

~*~*~*~*~

And so we see truth spoken to power, but not by Bezos or Musk or their ilk and not from the various media outlets they’ve bought and desecrated. Instead we find it on the street or in person.

Most of us have never suffered the burden of massive wealth and so our identities were never shaped by an unhealthy, consciousness-warping relationship to money. Instead, we must find other things to live for: family or friends or our neighbors or a loving God. As the Quest for the Having of Things fails us, we develop other guiding principles: core values like kindness and respect and decency and equality and solidarity.

These principles give us the backbone to truly be independent, to say what we mean and to stand up for one another. You have a power that not even the wealthiest, best, brightest Labubu Boys in the world possess.

Foster that love for one another. Fortify yourselves and for God’s sake, stand for something decent. If all you have is the Having, then you have nothing.

By the way, I’ve witnessed the best use for a Labubu - although to be honest, it was one of many Labubu knockoffs. My mother gave one to my child for Christmas. Witnessing the bemused, slightly appalled and yet curious and entertained look on his face gave us all more joy than the owning or hoarding of them could ever possibly hope to give.

Woof that was a long one. Get to the point, amirite? Although, there is something about those furry little creatures that warms the heart.

It would be unfair to leave you with just the one long soap-boxy essay, so here’s one more niblette to satisfy your hunger for content while you kill time:

FICTION: THE GILDED STOOL - ONE STAR

There are razor blades in the food.

Let me back up.

I just got a small promotion with a little bump in pay and thought I’d treat myself to something a little fancier than what I normally eat. Basically I wanted a break from Jersey Mike’s. Nothing against ‘Mike’s but sometimes you need a change up.

I’ve passed by The Gilded Stool a couple of times while walking Spike through downtown. I’ve never eaten at a ‘gastropub’ before but I know people like them so I thought I’d give it a try. Worst comes to worst, I can get a beer or two.

At least I thought that was the worst case. I didn’t expect there to be razor blades.

The dining room was dirty as hell.  The hostess was the bartender and was also bussing tables. It looked like the bookkeeper also made the salads and washed dishes. I think I saw one of the cooks disappear into the men’s room with a large wrench of some kind. Not a great start to my evening, but I was already in the door and committed so I took a seat.

The server told me his name was James, but then I heard him tell the table next to me his name was Marcus, and the bartender kept calling him Numphie.

Anyway, “James” asked if I’d ever been there before. I said no, first time. He told me they do “old American” food, which was the chef’s take on “new American” food, and then he proceeded to talk smack about how bad the restaurant used to be under the previous owner, some guy named Brandon LoVecchio. Apparently the prices were too high then, even though they’re higher now or something? I still don’t quite get what he was saying. And he went on like this for twenty minutes before he even handed me a menu.

I should have known when the mozzarella sticks arrived that there were razor blades in them. They jutted out from the cheese and the breading had trouble sticking to the steel.

I took a bite anyway. I know I shouldn’t have. I guess I couldn’t believe that they’d serve anything other than edible food. I lost all doubt, though, when my teeth hit metal and once my tongue started to bleed.

Usually you expect the restaurant to be sorry. At first, James refused to admit that there were any razor blades. He told me they only served the best, highest quality mozzarella sticks in the world and that I was asking to be sued for slander. It was only once I showed him the third razor blade that he agreed to take the plate away.

Razor blades in the French Onion soup. Razors in the pastrami egg rolls. Razors again in the Spaghetti and Meatballs - both in the balls and in the spaghetti itself. Each plate, I complained. Each time, James told me I was crazy before finally taking the plate away.

My last course was key lime pie. I love key lime pie. It’s my favorite dessert. I knew, five courses in, that there was likely to be razors inside but I really didn’t want that to be true. I  carefully picked through the custardy lime filling and found not a single blade. 

I took a huge relieved bite, never imagining that a sheet of tiny razor blades might have been laminated into the graham cracker crust.

"James" told me that I should feel lucky and that anyone else would have killed to get so many high quality razor blades and, I don't know. I’m a pretty calm, even keeled guy. But there’s a limit to how many razor blades I’m willing to embed in the lining of my mouth and esophagus. I demanded to speak to the manager.

Well, out came the oldest, angriest, most profane sonofabitch I’ve ever met. I’ll be honest with you: I’d like to tell you what he said to me, but outside of certain profanities that I won’t repeat here, the man was bordering on unintelligible. The effect of all those sounds and curses and blasphemes resembled a magic spell - all I could do was sit there as wave after wave of horseshit crashed over me. At one point he asked if I wanted Pars Palace, the Persian restaurant on the other side of town, to have a nuclear weapon.

Finally, he paused to take a breath. I really wanted to tell him off, but I started to see spots and my vision blurred and next thing I knew I was in the back of an ambulance. Apparently I’d lost more blood out of my mouth than I thought.

Three weeks and fifteen surgeries later, I’m out of the hospital and my digestive tract is 98% razor free. I’d give this place zero stars if I could, although I have to admit that they had a nice and spacious parking lot. So there’s that.

My first meal once I could take solid foods? A number thirteen from Jersey Mike’s, no onions. I give that sandwich five stars.

Theeeeeee End!

Thank you so much for reading!

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Hope you’ve enjoyed!  Love each other! Take care of each other!