A Few Ups, Lots of Downs

Plot and Duck, Mr. and Ms. Great Zinfandini and Schmeckl and Little Bear Plontik all went up to Amador County this past weekend for the annual Il Gioiello Wine Club Dinner. It had some ups but the downs were best -- walking down a hundred feet or so into the Black Chasm Cave, a vertical cave (no cave floor) first discovered by the Miwok Indians and then by gold rush gold explorers. Luckily they didn't find any gold or the 49ers would have dynamited the place.







There was time to get some wine tasting in too.



And the little town of Amador City was its usual, laid-back self...





...except for one disconcerting thing. There is a gift shop in town where last year they had quite a few local items to look at, gifties on that boundary that Plot and Duck like, not quite junk but not quite non junk either. They don't want to own any of it but they enjoy browsing through it for a few minutes.

This year, the shop had more stuff -- you know, old hooks for hats, old pieces of farm machinery, old l-brackets. Except: EVERY SINGLE PIECE CAME FROM CHINA. Every thing in the store.

Which is to say there are factories in freaking China that are even replicating our junk. They can make our junk cheaper than we can turn our own shit into junk. Chinese factories making American junk better than Americans can make their own junk. And they can ship it over an ocean and distribute it to tiny little stores in the middle of freaking nowhere, where American tourists can freaking buy copies of their own freaking junk.

Are you kidding? This is the kind of thing that makes people really really angry when they find out about it. Plotnik is still steaming. And he will surely never ever go back to that shop, and probably not to that town either.