Tonight's episode of "Our Idiot President!": "Tariffmaaaaannnnn!!!"

I had to send the following e-mail to UPS today:

"I dispute the tariffs charged in this invoice for the following reasons:

1. The item the tariffs were levied on is a "Genbu-Toryumon V2 Koshirae Iiato" replica sword manufactured by Tozando Co., Ltd. of Kyoto City, Japan (see attachment 1: Tozando components"). The cost of the item (less shipping) was $399.00.

2. Unless I am misinformed, the tariff rate on whole goods from Japan is 15%.

3. Unless my math is incorrect, 15% of $399.00 is $59.85, not $813.96 (see Attachments 2 through 4, "UPS Invoice 12456784523").

4. I paid $54.96 in tariffs upon entry of this item to the U.S. Therefore the balance of tariffs due on the item is $4.89, which I will gladly remit."

The foot-thick skull under the dumb shit's pathetic combover is impenetrable to many facts and logic, but the moronic insistence that these tariffs are some sort of brilliant America First plan is one of the flat-out, stomp-down, bull-goose, come-to-Jesus fucking stupidest things inside it.

No, you ignorant fuck. I'm the American and I'm paying the fucking tariff. How does that Make America Great in any sense? Are we protecting the country's vital strategic Imitation Samurai Sword industry? What the actual fuck??? 

Christ this asshole finds a new way to piss me off every single day.

How about this; I'll pay all eight hundred bucks plus, but in return I get a real blade and one cut at Felony Fats' fat neck.

One cut. Just one.

That seem fair, donnit? 

 

 

The Empty Cup

I know a cyberpal who is going though some serious renovating: personal, physical AND home-improvement-ological (she's removating and lookng for a new roof!). Part of her regimen includes giving up hot showers. Now let me say, for the record, that in the course of 20something years working for Uncle Sugar I've taken my share of cold showers. Panama? Honduras? The Sinai? Yeah, baby..! Bring on the good cold stuff. But New England? Oregon?

Brrrr. Not so much.

I remember having a conversation about something like this with the old Japanese sensei at my kendo school.

He was doing a drill with me where he made simple cuts at my head. I was supposed to parry them and immediately cut back at him; the purpose of the drill was to learn to riposte without thinking, to respond immediately to an attack with a stronger attack.

But I hadn't understood the instruction - I wasn't completing the parry and as a result was allowing him to hit me on the head. He was this tiny, wizend Japanese, probably 90 pounds dripping wet, but he'd been fighting with a shinai since Hirohito was a stripling and his arms and wrists were like steel springs. He snapped the tip of the shinai like a cracking whip; it stung every time it hit and he hit every time. Finally he lowered the tip of his sword and just looked at me.

"Why do you not defend against the men cut?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

I was puzzled: "Sensei, I thought we were not supposed to."

"Suffering you will get without trying," the master said to me sternly, "to make yourself suffer without need is to waste the lessons that suffering will teach you."

I get the deal about stressing the body to improve the body and mind. But cold showers sound so...hair-shirt. Brrrr!And yet...for all that my sensei expected me to protect myself from avoidable pain, the kenjutsu tradition is that the students practice until they drop and the sensei gets to whale the tar out of them with a bokken (wooden sword) when they screw up. Or not: some of the great kenjutsu training stories involves the sensei sneaking around and whacking the students at random just to get him all cat-like and quick. Remember, this is zen we're talking about. The nutshell of a good koan is that it makes absolutely no sense...until it does.

So do you find that self-imposed "suffering" - fasts, physical strain like yoga or types of training, minor deprivations like forgoing meat, sugar or taking a cold shower instead of a hot one - helps to focus the mind and tauten the body in the way that, say, great suffering and tragedy can bring about a sort of enlightenment? In what ways? What's your experience?

I'm genuinely curious. What do you all think?