Boomerang Bits

No real big news to report from Peru.  Mid-service medical exams showed that I don't have worms growing in my intestines.  Thanksgiving was pretty uneventful.  Etc. etc.

I'm writing, though, because I wanted to post some funny passages from a book I just finished reading.  I'm a huge fan of Michael Lewis (think Blind Side and Moneyball) and just finished reading his new book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World.  The book follows the global financial woes we're seeing today, from Greek's insolvency issues to the debts issues faced by local and state governments, like California.  Lewis' The Big Short tells the story of the 2008 financial crisis and this book is a follow up to that.  The book itself was pretty good, but not great and, in my opinion, not at the same level of his other material.  Still, I found a couple passages from the book pretty amusing and wanted to share. Enjoy.

“As the fish lives in water, so does the shit stick to the asshole!” - German saying

(Arnold Schwartznegger on running for Governor, while him and the author ride bikes) 

“I thought about it but decided I wasn’t going to do it. I told Maria I wasn’t running.  I told everyone I wasn’t running.  I wasn’t running.” Then, in the middle of the recall madness, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines opened.  As the movie’s leading machine he was expected to appear on The Tonight Show to promote it.  En route he experienced a familiar impulse – the impulse to do something out of the ordinary. “I just thought, This will freak everyone out,” he says. “It’ll be so funny. I’ll announce that I am running. I told Leno I was running. And two months later I was governor.” He looks over at me, pedaling as fast as I can to keep up with him, and laughs. “What the fuck is that?”

(old Irish man, upset with big, bailed out Irish banks)

            Gary Keogh thought about how Ireland had changed from his youth, when the country was dirt poor, “I used to collect bottle caps,” he says. “Now the health service doesn’t even bother to take back crutches anymore? No! We’re far too wealthy.” Unlike most people he knew, Keogh had no debts. “I had nothing to lose,” he says.  “I didn’t owe anyone any money. That’s why I could do it!” He’d also just recovered from a serious illness, and felt a bit as if he was playing with house money. “I had just got a new kidney and I was very pleased with it, but I think it must have been Che Guevera’s kidney.” He describes his elaborate plot the way an assassin might describe the perfect hit.  “I only had two rotten eggs,” he says, “but by God they were rotten! Because I kept them six weeks in the garage!”

            The AIB (big, Irish bank with solvency issues) shareholders meeting of March 2009 was the first he’d ever attended. He was, he admits, a bit worried something might go wrong.  Worried parking might be a problem, he took the bus; worried that his eggs might break, he designed a container to protect them; worried that he didn’t even know what the room looked like, he left himself time to case the meeting hall.  “I got to the front door early and had a little recce,” as he puts it, “just to see what was going to happen.” His egg container was too large to sneak inside, so he ditched it.  “I had one egg in each jacket pocket,” he says. Worried that his eggs might be too slippery to grip and throw, he’d wrapped each of them in a thin layer of cellophane. “I positioned myself four rows back and four seats in,” he says. “Not too close but not too far.” Then he waited for his moment.

            It came immediately. Right after the executives took their places at the dais, a shareholder stood up, uninvited, to ask a question. Gleeson, AIB’s chairman, barked, “Sit down!”

            “He thought he was a dictator!” says Keogh, who had heard enough. He rose to his feet and shouted, “I’ve listened to enough of your crap! You’re a fucking bastard!” And then he began firing.

            “He thought he had been shot,” he says now with a little smile, “because the first egg hit the microphone and went Pow!” It splattered onto the shoulder pad of Gleeson’s suit. The second egg missed the CEO but nailed the AIB sign behind him.

            Then the security guards were on him.  “I was told I would be arrested and charged, but I never was,” he says. The guards wanted to escort him out, but he actually left the place on his own and climbed aboard the next bus home. “The incident happened at ten past ten in the morning. I was home by ten to eleven.”