Author: Logan Lo

My Google Profile+

Categories
business personal

Logan’s 39 / Travelogue Malaga Day 1

Malaga, Spain

It’s my birthday.

And like always, say something, all of you bastards that read me but never say anything.

Logan Lo at the AC Hotel in Malaga, Spain

2012.04.13

Me: Did we check the stove was off?
Her: Go check.
Me: I put on my shoes already.
Her: (shakes head and slips off shoes)

HG and I go on our first airplane trip together. As i did in Paris last year, I’m speaking about intellectual property issues and video games in Malaga, Spain.

We’re out the door, on the AirTrain, and in the airport in less than an hour. Except for one minor hiccup, we make it to the plane without issue.

Me: Shoot, I can’t find my ticket or passport.
TSA Agent: Sir, you just put them into your back pocket.
Me: I knew that.

Soon we’re in our chairs in the sky and I start taking things from HG’s bag of snacks.

Her: Didn’t you say we didn’t need to bring that? And now you’re going to eat it all in the beginning of our trip.
Me: If you weren’t here, I would strap this on my face like a feed bag.

Six hours and one tiny can of Diet Coke later, we arrive in Ireland for a two-hour layover at around midnight. We have the airport to ourselves.

Airport in Dublin, Ireland

Announcement: last call for Amsterdam.
Me: We should blow this thing and go to Amsterdam. (thinking) We could smoke pot.
Her: You’ve never smoked pot before.
Me: I’m away. I’d smoke a pot.
Her: (laughing) The fact you just said “a pot” makes me think it’s not for you.

Ended up heading to Malaga anyway.

We finally get to board our connecting flight. As I can never sleep, read the entirety of Digital Wars during the layover and half the flight to Spain.

About 18 hours we walk outta our door in NYC, we walk into our door in Malaga.

We drop off our bags and we notice that we have a balcony so I get a beer from the mini-bar and look over the city.

Overlooking Malaga, Spain

We both try to crash for a bit but I don’t get much rest. It’s only 1PM there so four hours later, we get up in search of food and a SIM card and we find both on the same block.

The organizer of the event meets us for a chat in the hotel lobby but we’re fading fast so we politely make it short.

Unfortunately, it’s a sleepless night cause Spaniards have dinner at 10PM and we’re essentially in the Times Square of Malaga.

It’s been almost 30 hours and I’ve gotten five hours of sleep.

The conference’s tomorrow.

Overlooking Malaga, Spain
Having a beer on a balcony in Malaga, Spain

Location: finally back home
Mood: another year older
Music: Just give me credit, I’m just sitting on the shelf
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Burn all them bridges down, to the ground, cause I won’t be coming this way again

UWS NYC

Him: So – y’think you’re back on your feet finally?
Me: (thinking) Yeah. I do.
Him: Good. (raises a weapon) Let’s go.
Me: (laughing and raising my sword) En garde.

Been spending my days with my nose to the grind and working like mad. Spending nights with my favourite person.

An old friend of mine crossed my mind today. We had some good times but he ended up being a different person; I’m sure he thinks the same of me. But in the end – like so many others – that relationship wasn’t worth the time and effort.

Thought about all of people that have come in and out of Venn Diagram. The people and relationships I cut, the boats and bridges I’ve burned.

They say never burn any bridges, but I say sometimes you gotta burn all them bridges down, to the ground, cause you won’t be coming this way again.

And the bridges and people I got left earned their spot in my life as I hope I’ve in theirs.

Got my pad, my people, my poison, and my person. I’m sickeningly content.

And boy, have I got stories to tell you. I’ll tell you one Wednesday tomorrow.

Me: I’m good at convincing people to do things they wouldn’t want to do normally.
Her: Well, you convinced me to marry you.

Location: AC Hotel lobby in Malaga, Spain
Mood: thoughtful
Music: I’ve got friends and they’ve got my back
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy

Him: Think I’ll bring my wife here for some wings and beer.
Me: (surprised) Your wife’ll eat wings and drink beer? She’s so health conscious.
Him: (laughing) I think you have a misunderstanding of what we’re like.

Met up with two buddies to discuss some business ideas the other night. Found it useful cause we all have our core competencies and the other two didn’t know each other – also bringing together disparate groups of friends is always interesting.

One guy’s a former athlete that’s trained world-champions so it was fun to sit and eat greasy food with him and chat about business.

Speaking of eating stuff, back on the topic of BLBT (aka Pink Slime), turns out that it contains a total of 0.02 grams ammonia per 100 grams of meat.

According to the previous link, that’s lower than what found in peanut butter (0.049), mayo (0.041), and onions (0.027) – at least in the 1970s when this report was made.

Whenever I hear about something that’s suddenly a huge scandal and we’re supposed to be immensely concerned, I always wonder what’s real and what’s for sale?

More and more, it’s the nightly news and internet news that’s for sale, clamoring for our attention – regardless of the cost. This means entire companies shutting down and people losing their jobs in this economic time. Just so we tune in tonight.

Comedian Louis CK hit it on the head when he said, Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy. Think it’s partly cause people are always telling us we shouldn’t be.

Now I want a burger.

Location: surrounded by clothes
Mood: excited
Music: Hey, kids – look at this, it’s the fall of the world’s own optimist
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Then kunckle up and swing

UWS NYC

Her: (watching the tourists at 30 Rock) It’s funny. People come all the way here to see our town.
Me: Yeah. It’s not notice things when we live here.

Had a date night with the wife; we don’t do it often enough but it’s nice when we get around to it. Went to the same place we went around last year.

Afterward, we took a nice stroll back home. It’s good, being tourists in your own city.

———-

Work’s finally slowed down a bit, for better or for worse. Had some time to work on some other projects of mine.

NYer Lionel Trilling once said, “Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.” I add that to that old Chateaubriand quote, “You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.”

Just don’t get why people think negativism equals reasoned intellect. If anything, unsupported criticism just makes you look like a churl. And a douchebag.

There’s this company with the following business model: for a fee – they’ll read your book and write an honest review of it. So I put my money where my mouth is and requested one.

What I got in return was a scathing review, which was disappointing. But then I read the review closely, noticed some odd things. The reviewer:

  1. only mentioned the hero in one sentence
  2. didn’t mention the antagonist – at all
  3. didn’t mention anything that happened after page 30.
  4. didn’t mention any themes (revenge, loyalty, etc) or really anything of substance
  5. instead focused a third of the review on a single minor scene (on page 24) out of 276 pages.

That’s when I realized that this guy just skimmed it, dashed off a review, and took my dough. There’s nuthin honest about that.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, saw that the reviewer, amongst other things:

  • doesn’t understand how to use a colon
  • doesn’t know the difference between “blonde” and “blond,”
  • doesn’t know how to spell “plot lines.”

There’s more, but that’s enough for now. And that’s when I went from being disappointed to feeling ripped-off.

So I actually contacted an editor and told him that I’m not just some disappointed author, I’m someone that reviews books regularly. And I know the difference between a real book review is and a slap-dash quickie dollar.

And I posited this simple question to the editor: “Do you and your company stand by this review?”

  • If he doesn’t, I want my money back.
  • If he does, I’ll print the review here and let you decide if it’s a valid review.

Should note that when I write a book review, my name is on it. I own it, good or bad. In this blog, on FB, at the NYJB, at Lawline. I own what I put out into the world and I stand by it.

Here’s an anonymous review from someone that clearly doesn’t understand basic rules of English, who didn’t read my book, and tells me it’s no good.

If you read me regularly, you know that I can handle lively debate or a fair disagreement. What I can’t stand is horses__t and bullies.

It’s like that time that guy ran out and said he would drop me. Remember thinking, You must not know ’bout me.

Told that guy to knuckle up and swing because I knew something he didn’t: I was qualified for the task at hand.

As he sulked away, he and I both knew he was not similarly situated.

And now, it appears we’ve arrived at a similar junction.

 

Location: yesterday, celebrating Easter
Mood: offended
Music: “Do you believe what you’re sayin’?” Yeah right now, but not that often.
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Hyper-Minimalist (wannabe)

The Pied Piper

Most of the images here are my copyright since it’s just a view of my little world.

But every so often, there’re things that I find so good that I wish it were part of my little world.

Here’re a buncha hyper-minimalistic posters that sum up classic children’s stories in a single frame. You can buy posters of them, and see others, from the original artist here.

Recently had an online “debate” about China versus the US and this fella wrote this long-winded explanation as to why China was so great. Told him that if it was great, why was he choosing to work, study, and live here?

That pretty much ended the convo.

Einstein once said that, If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Guess that’s why I like these; cause the artist “gets it.”

In some ways, when I write, try to use the least amount of words possible to get my point across. Figure that you’ll catch my drift and fill in the blanks yourself. And whatever you fill in regarding my life is probably more interesting than the real thing.

Here’re more posters. May buy one as they fit into my art beneath the canopy glow.

———-

Had a disappointing day yesterday.

It’s hard, shaking off all of your little miniature disasters.

Hansel & Gretel
Alice in Wonderland

Location: work
Mood: disappointed
Music: is this the ceremony? I don’t know. Well, I don’t mind.
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Becoming couth

Cocktails in the UWS, NYC

Like everyone else, we got caught up in the lottery fever.

Her: Shoot, our Powerball was “24” and the last winning Powerball was “24.”
Me: So we have ten tickets that have the same Powerball as the last winning ticket? I’ll just grab a quick-pick.
Her: (later) So? What’s our new Powerball number?
Me: 24.

Got good luck nor bad luck; just strange luck. This time, didn’t even win a dollar.

———-

Me: It’s nice spending time together.
Her: Yeah, in the five minutes you’re not on your computer.
Me: Three minutes. I have deadlines.

HG and I found time recently to chill out and watch Food Inc. It should be required viewing for all Americans – we really are too far removed from our food.

We also saw this flick called The Double, which we really enjoyed but got critically panned. On a related note, we struggled to get through The Descendents and have zero interest in The Artist.

We’ve come to this conclusion: those films that are critically acclaimed, we just don’t find all that interesting while the films that critics hate, we seem to enjoy.

Evidently, we’re uncouth.

How does one become more couth?

Location: running all over the joint
Mood: finally not sick
Music: wanna pillowfight in the middle of the night
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Pink slime and BLBT / insect vomit and honey

Mini-burgers in midtown, NYC

In my life I’ve helped or seen killed three things for food – two chickens and a snake. All three were with my grandmother. She wanted me to know where my food came from.

Was justa kid for all three of them but I remember that, while there was a businesslike quality to the whole affair, there was also respect. We had just taken the life of these things, after all. That respect showed through when every bit of those animals were used.

Recently read about the loss of jobs and the rising of beef prices due to the loss of boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT) – which we’ve been eating for years without issue – cause it’s been given the catchy name “pink slime” by a celebrity cook and ABC news.

This, despite the fact that from a microbial-pathogen point of view, it’s safer than ground beef.

As I said once before, there’s a no difference between insect vomit and honey except for the name we give it. Ditto for filtered burned bean soup and coffee.

It’s edible meat that’s been cleaned and put back into the chain of food; this is while most of the world doesn’t have enough, we sniff and say what we have isn’t good enough.

On the topic of food, am surprised how many people don’t know that almost all olives are treated with lye – the same poison used to burn the guy’s hand in Fight Club.

We don’t have an issue with that because we don’t have a catchy/horrifying name for it. How about green puke?

We’re too far removed from our meat sources; we’d waste less if people had to look into the eyes of the stuff we put into our mouths.

Ditto if we had to look into the eyes of starving people.

———-
Been working like mad but cool tunes keep me company.

Location: home
Mood: still less sick
Music: bird lands on my windowsill
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

The Babyklappe and why they don’t put eggs in cake mixes

UWS NYC

Have you ever wondered why most cake mixes require you to add eggs? I mean, they put everything else in a box, why not the egg part?

———-

Been working some pretty insane hours.

During the brief lulls – like when I print up 100 pages of pleadings, or wait while a huge file downloads – do all sortsa motley stuff.

  • Skim about a third of the Economist’s Style Guide. It’s a must read for the hardcore nerd.
  • Spend more time one Facebook than I would like to admit as a 38 year-old professional.
  • Catch up on some cooking shows, namely America’s Test Kitchen where I think about buying a replacement Crock Pot but it’s too soon. Too soon.
  • Watch random videos, like the one below where a German girl speaks pretty good Chinese. Probably only amusing if you understand Chinese/German.

Speakinga reading, the Economist, Chinese, and Germans, evidently there’s this thing called a Babyklappe where people can slip their unwanted babies into a box for pickup. The same thing exists in China and elsewhere.

It’s that parent thing I wrote about last time.

Dunno if I should be horrified something like that exists – that someone would just discard a human being; or comforted – that someone will try to take care of them.

Anyway, back to the egg thingy. This guy named Ernest Dichter postulated that women didn’t like the idea of “just adding water” to make food so to do more involve them, he suggested that they add eggs, a symbol of fertility.

Spend a lotta time wondering about cruelty, kindess, everything in between. And why we’re here at all.

Well, as much time as I have until the printer stops or the download downloads.

Then, snap outta my thoughts and get back to my slice of the world.

Which is evidently reading print so small it’s a wonder I can still read at all.


Location: in the gym yesterday; Brooklyn today
Mood: less sick
Music: This is the fear This is the dread These are the contents of my head
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

You are you who are because of the parents to whom you were born

Lobster tail dinner

How much do you think the US gives as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product? In other words, how much do you think we give outta the all the money the country makes in a year? 5%, 10%? Answer below.

———-

Had an interesting online exchange with a stranger:

Him: Poverty is … well to put it as unpolitical as I can, something that occurs because parents don’t know how to teach their kids any better. That’s as nice as I can put it without being sadistic about it.
Me: How did you get your parents? You didn’t work for them, you did nothing to get the ones you did. If you were born to parents in North Korea or Somalia, your life would be vastly different if not for sheer dumb luck. Don’t pat yourself on the back for having the brilliance of sheer stupid luck.

He gave a lot more nonsense answers before finally admitting that the only real difference between him and the world he snidely judges comes down to a child’s taunt: Heads I win, Tails your lose.

We are – almost completely – the product of the parents to whom we were born, good or bad.

Said this to someone at work who immediately quipped, What if you were adopted? which I said, proves my point. If you were born to a young mother who gave you up for adoption, that changes your life dramatically.

Likewise, if you were born to a pastor (the “PK” as we used to say) you were stereotypically either on one extreme or the other in terms of behaviour patterns.

You don’t necessarily ape your parents, but you are shaped by them.

To “be counted among the world’s richest 1 percent, a single individual has to earn just $34,000 a year. Members of the planet’s true middle class, meanwhile, live on just $1,225 a year.”

That’s astounding.

If you read me – ie, have internet, have a computer – you’ve won the real lottery of life by being part of the true 1%.

If you do nothing else to pay back the aether for your dumb luck, at least tell the people that gloat over their good fortune and look down everyone else, “Shut the _____ up.”

———-

The US gives a total of 0.19% of GDP to foreign aid; in other words out of every dollar we make, the US gives 0.19 cents to foreign aid.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2010/Pages/rich-countries-foreign-aid.aspx

(c) Gates Foundation

Location: sick in bed
Mood: sick – send soup
Music: Words as weapons sharper than knives
Subscribe!

Categories
business personal

Pushing all that doubt

Rainy day on the UWS in New York City

Her: I’m so excited! The Museum of Math is going to be open soon; it’s right next to The Museum of Sex.
Me: Great! I’m only good at one of those things.

A big part of my eat-what-you-kill life’s writing proposals for certain gigs. Afterwards, ship them off and write more or work while I wait. Usually both.

Back in they day, used to get one outta two back. Then from 2009 to 2011, it was more like one outta four or five would come back. No fun.

In the past three months, sent out maybe 16? About seven came back, which was good but then last week, eight more came in with only one outstanding.

Up to my eyeballs in work.

This has both it’s good points and bad: the good being scratch, which is always welcome; the bad being that all of my projects have to take a backseat.

Have y’ever watched any of those nature shows where this group of impalas’re just grazing in Africa next to a buncha lions? Then all hell breaks loose when the lions go after the impalas?

Regardless of outcome, at some point, the lions are back to chilling and the impalas go back to grazing.

There’s some innate ability of animals to compartmentalize their fear of the hypothetical; at some point, think that humans lost that and I’m no different.

It’s always the same. In my line of work, there’re days when when the seconds drag and days that the hours fly by.

When it’s the former, y’wonder if you should have  taken that cushy job downtown.

It’s not easy, to push all that doubt to the side of your mouth.

Doesn’t matter, got no time to philosophize. Got deadlines.

Location: The NY City Bar
Mood: sick
Music: We brave bee stings and all
Subscribe!