Christmas in Caracas
Christmas in Caracas
A pirate’s life for me—who can afford anything else?
“So this is Christmas.” (That’s a quote, in case younger readers are wondering.) The BBC informs me that as I write this the world’s largest warship, the USS Gerald Ford, is parked just off the coast of Venezuela, all 100,000 tons of it. If you have any sympathy for Latin American narco-communism, I might suggest pouring one out for Maduro and the boys, who, among other things, are probably having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit.
Am I the only one who has already forgotten how we got sideways with this particular regime? At one time I was under the impression that it had something to do with piracy. In any case, the opposition leader’s recent Nobel Prize suggests that, after the inevitable changing of the guard, we can look forward to the obligatory series of horrifying recriminations in addition to another refugee crisis in our hemisphere, for which we will (wrongly) refuse to claim responsibility. And then what? By the time you are reading this, we will probably be preparing to invade Turkmenistan or the Coral Sea Islands. Readers who think this is a stupid idea, or that the present administration was selling a false bill of goods, are p*ssies with no tattoos and, at most, one ex-wife.
But enough about foreign policy. The pirates with whom I am most concerned this time of year are of the porch variety. Our front stoop has been raided more times than Port Royal. A week before Christmas a year ago, we lost $700 or so worth of gifts, which I was only able to replace just in time. The year before that, someone made off with an envelope of our family photos ambiguously labeled “Family Photos.”
“Can most pirates read?” is a question we landlubbers have probably been asking since the reign of Queen Anne. But I am more interested in the economic dimension of porch piracy. When Blackbeard made off with a pair of Sony headphones for my missus, he probably sang the Te Deum before listing them on Facebook Marketplace; but I would like to have seen the old corsair’s face two years ago when he opened a pack of batteries and a gently used copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends meant to replace a somewhat less gently used one. Up for grabs this year: a set of kitchen knives, a new pressing of Led Zeppelin IV (the 10-year-old’s Tolkien phase never ends), a Jonathan Taylor jersey (brother-in-law), and our semi-annual delivery of toothpaste and coffee filters.
Twenty years if you told someone that a band of freebooters had run up the Jolly Roger on your patio and made off with the stocking stuffers, you would have ended up on Good Morning America. Someone (possibly the host of Celebrity Apprentice) would have been photographed handing out replacements to the ill-used kiddos, perhaps with a helicopter ride into the bargain. These days all it elicits is a tut-tutting response from people who simply cannot believe you that you are unwilling to allow Jeff Bezos to be your own personal Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The post-9/11 security state has been privatized, and people love it. An Englishman’s house is no longer his castle; it is his strip mall jewelry store.
In any case, it wouldn’t matter if I did install one of those cameras. I know this because a few years ago a stroller containing my wife’s wallet was taken from us, and instead of canceling her debit card immediately, I pulled up the online banking platform and waited. Sure enough, within an hour some local wine-bibber had spent $50 at a nearby party store (an oddly round amount, no?). I rang the place, and the good-natured owner pulled the footage for me, offering to hand it over to the cops. When I contacted the boys in blue, I was told to leave a message on an answering machine. They never got back to us.
Lest I end this column on a note of unwonted holiday cheer, it should be pointed out that foreign policy is not the only area in which this administration has failed to deliver. Trump recently unburdened himself of the opinion that Americans are too stupid to ask AI to compile Javascript for them or whatever it is that programmers do these days. He also thinks we are too dumb to understand that wages and groceries and gas and rent are irrelevant; the stock market is the most reliable indicator of broad-based prosperity, especially for working-class MAGA chuds (duh!). Practically the only thing I agree with him on these days is his insistence that children do not need “37 dolls” for Christmas. I wonder how he came up with that figure.
Another thing that isn’t getting any cheaper: vehicles. I regret to inform readers that our long run of more or less serviceable and even endearing beaters is coming to an end. A few weeks ago my mechanic crossed himself when he saw the bottom of the 2002 Toyota Sequoia I had bought to replace our 2004 Chevy Express, the “Shaggin’ Wagon” of blessed memory. The frame was rusted almost through, and somehow I hadn’t noticed. Stupid me. There was no bill of sale, of course, and in the absence of an “as-is” clause I could technically seek a legal remedy.
My wife tells me that this would be incompatible with the Christmas spirit, and as usual she is right. I give the last word to John, Yoko, and the Harlem Community Choir: “A very merry Christmas / And a happy New Year / Let’s hope it’s a good one / Without any fear.”
I mean that.
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