Nice rust, can ya break me off a piece? in Normal entries

When I was collecting pipes, the only reason serious American pipe collectors would get a meerschaum was to coax a patina over the years. That, or, liking meerschaum, which meant getting serious Turkish … I’m led astray, except to say you wanted single block and not the equivalent of pressboard.
Now that I’m collecting watches (ok, looking at a lot of watches and scratching my chin as though reflecting, but, more often than not, because my chin itches) it bugs me to see the word patina applied to the casing, up until recently, the casing. I’m not sure when all the foolishness started but brand new watches are being marketed with CuSn8 bronze casings (I could tell you what the cusn8stood for and why some parts are capitalized and others not, but I don’t know and don’t care to look up) and, sometime, the strap buckle or hands or everything.
Part of the marketing is how they will develop a great patina. When being sold used you are told it as a great patina. You know the really cool gold ring you bought from a bigger kid for all your paperboy money, and how after an afternoon of wearing it your finger turned green and the ring looked crappy? Yeah, these watches have “that” kind of patina. I suppose if as a kid you went to some nautical museum and were impressed by an old bathysphere or diving bell, that “patina “ would seem, I don’t know, nostalgic?

And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you are drawn to ugly ass shit who am I to dissuade you? Heh, I’m funny. If there was only one such watch and the price had been seriously cut, I might have it for the conversation starter aspect. But I can’t imagine my liking to start a conversation with “Yeah it was 200 bucks more that the same model from the same company with the same specs so that I could show off the magic of oxidation, you might just call it rust, but no, not on bronze, I’m developing a patina, all that green shit and the white stuff that looks like seagull shit? Isn’t it beautiful? And rust chips away at the integrity of the metal, this just makes the metal uglier for aesthetic reasons.” Again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder no matter how blind that beholder.

Oh, yeah, shit. I’m part of this Facebook group called diver’s watches, which, during the week I joined, became the largest watch group … in the world? On Facebook? I don’t recall, but it’s genuinely impressive and they have commissioned some microbrands to make limited models just for them. They seem to be treated like royalty, um, we, we seem to be treated like royalty, that one amuses me, off with his head and bring that Meghan Markle woman to my chambers. Before I give them to big of heads in absentia, they seem to have the same petty bickering and back biting as everyone else, but, at fifty thousand it is remarkably less per capita than any FB group I’ve been a member of. Wherever there are opinions everyone is an asshole. I know that’s not how the saying goes, but it should be.

Um, to explain the previous paragraph; bronze cases for diving watches. I have never seen a bronze case for an inland watch, I mean how would you get that lovely patina (snicker snicker snort), take an Epsom salt bath with it? I suspect that a number of my comrades (just fishing for commie hunters) aren’t divers any more than I am (though a thousand miles is the nearest salt water from here). The diving watch does have a unique aesthetic. Again, not the conversation starter I would hope for;
“Haredawg, what the hell is that moldy shit on your wrist?”
“A diving watch with …”
“So, it’s an anchor?”
“It’s a watch, with a lovely patina.”
“Is it alive?”
“Dude, what the fuck?”
“Oh, Hey, Sorry Haredawg, I’ve got … to do … something … over there … yonder.”
I don’t really need conversation starters. I’m getting so crusty here in my dotage I need conversation enders that don’t involve 911 or a restraining order. As far as collections go Pipes were great conversation enders, but I still had a bit of a social animal in me when I was collecting pipes.

And it’s not that I’ve become less social, not exactly. It’s that people suck, collectively and it’s starting to rub off individually, and I’ve gotten less social. I mean if I was instantly transported to a party, after I explained why I wasn’t dressed, I’d go looking for a motherfucker with a “lovely patina” on his wrist”.

It’s another day. Which one you ask? I’m getting tired of your shit, g’won gimme your dementia test, I’ll pop you in your nose, which one’s yours? So, I haven’t the patience to read all that, I vaguely recall it has something to do with calling an ugly duckling a swan. What I probably left out was some scary stats; the conversion of USD to the euro; euro is 1.14 of the Buck and England’s pound sterling is 1.27 to the US buck. It’s not that the value of the dollar has gone up (in any appreciable way, the inflation rate has, but that doesn’t positively affect the value in Europe or Asia). I’m oversimplifying because I’m a simpleton and I don’t have the energy to type out the alchemy of economic prediction. The tom fuckery with the GBP and the EURO is Brexit and rumors of Brexit (comparatively the CHF looks relatively strong, I think, in 2008 is .98 percent of a dollar, today it’s 1.02, relatively stable).

So, if you want to buy a rotting swiss watch with Patina and barnacles, your buck goes farther across the pond, you don’t pay VAT and you don’t pay tariffs or customs. It’s kind of cheaper, on some things, than it is in the states. Japanese movements, sometimes, are cheaper to get in the states.
A number of German watch makers are making entry level watches with Japanese movements. No one is really calling Japanese movements junk anymore, not in the industry, some Chinese movements however … Shit, I’m not sure if I’m being redundant. I just think I should use these journals more often