Trumpa-loompa revisited

I’ve done some more thinking about the Donald Trump–Oompa Loompa overlap, and I’ve stumbled upon something that I find quite remarkable.

Granted, I have only once seen a single episode of “The Apprentice” but from this episode I gathered that the show follows this basic plot:

A bizarre and eccentric capitalist who is prone to speaking in aphorisms and who has weird hair and scary acolytes wishes to recruit a new manager for his operation

A series of contestants are selected through some seemingly random process and are given this once in a lifetime opportunity to impress the man.

All the contestants represent some well known archetype, and all have some sort of hackneyed character flaw.

The contestants learn the inner workings of the organization and perform a series of bizarre tasks, each of which eliminates one of them from consideration

With each round of attrition, the remaining contestants learn some lesson that, with marginal imagination, can be construed to be less about business and more about life in general and

At the end of the series of tests, the lone survivor of the strange and horrifying ordeal is embraced by the strange man with weird skin and is promised a permanent role to play in this creepy, creepy world.

Does this trope sound oddly familiar to anyone else?

I see one of two possibilities:

Possibility the first: Roald Dahl was such a genius, that the entire television program is a case of “life” imitating art. (NOTE: “life” is used problematically in this context–I have a hard time justifying a reality TV show as “life” but bear with me).

Possibility the second: Oompa Loompas exist. Willie Wonka exists (or did at one point–I would not put it past Orangeman to find some way to make him disappear). Roald Dahl was reporting fact that is stranger than fiction, and Donald Trumpa-Loompa is descended from some escaped Oompa Loompas who told him the management secrets of Mr. Wonka and he now uses this strange form of management to run his operation.

Ordinarily, I would discount the second possibility as absolute nonsense, but for some reason I find it every bit as plausible as the first.

In other news.

June 1st marked the two-year mark for me since leaving Seattle for staging. Well I remember the northerly take-off, the view of the Olympics, Vashon Island, Puget Sound, the UW, Lake Washington, my mom’s house, and finally Mount Index and Lake Serene as we passed over the Cascades and screamed eastward. Two years. As of today it has been 732 days since I’ve seen home. Amazing. Looking forward to visiting home in August. And to attending Matan’s wedding in Pennsylvania too.

My extension project has been approved. All I need now is to go through the medical check-out and I’m official. This project developed a lot of momentum fast. So much work to do. I’m really stoked.

Storm season began a couple days ago, and as if on cue, the island has been subjected to a bout of serious rain that has pretty much halted life as we know it in Moore Town.

Yesterday, fed up with cabin fever, I donned my raincoat and walked 1.5 miles in the pouring rain to the neighboring community. Along the way pretty much every other person remarked on the fact that I was walking in the rain, told me to get out of the rain, or insisted that I needed to drink some rum with them to stave off the sickness that would almost certainly result from my walking in the rain.

Not to be deterred from my mission, I walked to the Seaman’s Valley junction and, after helping him to find a goat he had lost (this is an ongoing theme of life here), bought a 15lb jackfruit for 300j from my friend Rat.

The walk home was even more bizarre, as everyone commented not only on the fact that I was walking in the pouring rain, but also on the fact that I was walking in the pouring rain while carrying a jackfruit. You would think it was the first time in their life they had ever seen a hairy white man wandering around in a torrential downpour, wearing sandals and a raincoat and hauling a 15 pound spiny fruit. Wait a minute…when I put it like that their incredulity makes much more sense.

In any case, for the first time in my life, I am the proud owner of an entire jackfruit. Yep. The whole thing. Forsooth! The time will soon be nigh for fragrant deliciousness. And for strange and slightly gross stickiness.

Some photos of my prize! The pencil and nalgene are intended to give some idea how enormous the jackfruit is. They don’t do a great job.