Author: Logan Lo

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personal

Well-Traveled Gentlemen

Location: rainy NYC
Mood: sweaty
Music: the wind will be wailing but I will be sailing faster

Brooklyn Bridge at night

Merriam-Webster says that a gentleman is a man whose conduct conforms to a high standard of propriety or correct behavior.

Recently on ABC, report Brad Garrett on GMA, said about the scumbag that raped and killed seven-year old Somer Thomson “Law enforcement does not have time to keep track of people like this gentleman.”

Could someone please buy Mr. Garrett a copy of MW or the OED and dog-ear “gentleman” and “scumbag” for him.

Evidently, he can’t tell the difference.

———-

Went out to see the girl’s family for dinner this past weekend. There’s little better than a home-cooked meal.

It’s a bit remarkable how different life is just an hour’s drive from the city. There’re deer there my friends, deer.

Onea of the most positive things about all of this blogging’re the glimpses into lives so different than my own.

Mark Twain said that travel’s fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness….Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Another quote I like’s by Letterman, who said that Wherever we’ve traveled in this great land of ours, we’ve found that people everywhere are about 90% water.

Sometimes, think I’ve lived a rather sheltered life. Fella I know’s off to fight a war ina dusty and dangerous place and another’s come back. They’ve my appreciation and respect.

The weather’s changing again so I’m thinkinga bridges again.

Her: Would you live there?

Me: (shrugging) Honestly, I be happy where ever you were. Well, you and the rum. (pause) Mostly you though.

YASYCTAI: Avoid shaking hands with anyone today. See how long y’can last. (24 hours/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Neufchâtel

It doesn’t matter what you call it

You know all of these annoying hyperlinks in all of my posts? It’s to keep myself honest.

Won’t tell you that the smartest man in the US’s was a Long Island bouncer or that what you think of as cinnamon is probably something called cassia unless I can prove it to you.

Recently told a young guy that the Republican Party was founded for the main purpose of stopping slavery and that Abe Lincoln the first Republican. He didn’t believe me.

Grew up in quiet appreciation of Reagan saving the world and Giuliani saving my hide.

But George W. Bush’s speechwriter David Frum noted that the Republican party went horribly wrong when they took the track of convincing people that the Democratic Party was looking to kill babies and grandmothers. They got the very dregs of the party.

Do you know why people become a genre of a person? The liberal flower power girl, the bow-tie wearing conservative? Cause it makes hard decisions easy. Simply parrot what the person to the right (or left) of you is saying and say it with enough umbrage that no one will question you.

Answering with reasoned thought seems to not be in vogue any more. Politics has chosen to let people who respond as children – with anger, hatred, and ranting – set the scene for discourse. And if I say anything, I’m not a true Republican.

It appears Nixon wasn’t a true Republican either, as it was his plan Obama passed. Nor is Yale educated Frum. Nor is conservative Harvard educated speechwriter, Ben Stein.

If Sarah Palin represents the best of what we can offer, take my business elsewhere, thank you.

One more stupid fact: what we call cream cheese is actually the screw up of an old French cheese called Neufchâtel. But what we call light cream cheese is actually Neufchâtel.

My point’s essentially the same point as the last entry: that I don’t care what you call it. Things are what they are.

Location: 5AM, awake in bed
Mood: annoyed
Music: love me or hate me, it’s still an obsession

Categories
personal

My will’s done

Unreasonable people are dangerous

Dreary, rainy, NYC

Rarely do a political post, but here we are.

In Underworld, the final words of onea the main character’s, “My will is done, regardless.”

When Bush was president, he made some jaw-droppingly poor choices, yes. But he also quietly tripled AIDS help to Africa. $9 billion to a continent where the average adult survives on $1,968 annually. He deserves recognition of that. But the people that hate him don’t wanna hear it.

Now it’s flipped with Obama.

Consider the health care bill; the actual form of the bill’s closest to the one that Nixon – the prototypical Republican – tried and failed to pass in 1974.

It’s a universal health care paid by a sliding scale to help small business-owners and entrepreneurs, the backbone of the Republican party. Here’s Nixons plan in his own words.

The current plan’s shockingly similar.

And yet, cause it was introduced by the Democratic party, it’s denounced by the same party that introduced it in 1974.

Prejudice in its simplest form, has nuthin to do with race, creed, or religion.

It has to do with making an uninformed decision.

Not married to any one ideology, my decisions are made on the best available information at the time. It’s a reasoned way to live.

Stay away from those that are convinced they’re right. Cause reason has no place in their world. And unreasonable people are dangerous. Insert my fave Nietzsche quote here.

As for health care, don’t care that it’s a Republican bill passed by the Democratic party or vice versa. My will’s done, regardless.

Location: yest, 8PM getting drenched on 7th Ave
Mood: disappointed
Music: had a dream That I could fly

Categories
personal

Red Blood, Green Beer, Red Envelopes

A green Cipriani sign

 

Her: (annoyed) Please, you’ve kissed half of New York.
Me: The female half!
Her: (glares)
Me: (thinking) That probably wasn’t the right thing to say.

A fella I know opines that only the Irish should wear green on St. Patty’s day or wish another person a Happy St. Patty’s day. That’s just ridiculous.

That’s like saying no one should wish me a Happy Birthday on my birthday cause it’s my birthday not theirs.

Y’don’t say Happy _____ to make yourself feel good, y’say it for the listener.

Like if y’wish me a Happy Chinese New Year, I’d take it, regardlessa your race, creed or colour. Likewise, if I wish you a Happy Chinese New Year and you’re not Chinese, I’m ok with that and hope y’d be too.

Plus there’s green beer for one and red envelopes for the other. Both good things.

Next Chinese New Year, drinking green beer.

Or green rum. Or just regular rum.

Probably just regular rum.

Delicious rum.

———-

Y’ever watch CSI or Dexter where they shine that light all over the place to show if there’s blood splatter to indicate a crime occurred?

My pad’d glow like a teenage rave party. There was:

  • the time I sliced open my foot two hours before a vacation on a piece of glass (emergency room).
  • the time I fell down my stairs and smashed my face in, almost bleeding out (emergency room).
  • the time I sliced my hand in the kitchen (emergency room).
  • the time(s) I performed surgery on myself in the bathroom. (almost emergency room).
  • the time I killed the mouse in my other bathroom.
  • all of times I get knocked around wrestling or fencing.
  • today.

Should never live without a roommate.

On another point entirely, my insurance rate just went up. They must be reading this blog. I better buy an inexpensive burial insurance before it’s too expensive for me to even afford my own death.

Well, at least someone’s reading.

Location: yest, 7PM, looking for gauze on Broadway
Mood: bleeding
Music: you cut me open and I keep bleeding

Categories
personal

Bahamas 2010

Ship at dusk

 

Her: So something happened today on the subway that’s never happened to me before. I got hit with a cello. On the subway. It’s like we didn’t even go on vacation!
Me: Can I put this in my blog?
Her: Please do. (muttering) Get hit with frick’n cello…

Went on a mini-vacation to the Bahamas last week. We’d planned it for a while now; a good friend of mine scored us a balcony cabin on a nice cruise ship.

At the beach.

Most it was quite nice and the Bahamas looked like the pic above.

The only portion that wasn’t fun was when we stopped by Cocoa Beach, FL, which did not look like the pic above. No jest, we got dropped off at a parking lot by the bus and had to step over a dead bird on the way to the beach.

Her: (looking out at the beach) What are we doing? This beach is like being on the Jersey Shore. Let’s go. (turning to leave)
Me: Yep. (shaking head) Cocoa Beach – where dreams and birds go to die.

At the beach.

 

Ended up going to Atlantis which was all sortsa cool although hella expensive. Spent it lying on the beach reading the Economist, BusinessWeek and Free.

Quite the wild life I lead, I know.

Logan not getting a burger.

Me: Do you have burgers right now?
Waitress: It’s 8AM, we have breakfast food.
Me: Burgers are breakfast food.
Her: We don’t have burgers at this time.
Me: I’m sure you can find a burger somewhere back there and throw it on the grill.
Her: (stone-faced)
Me: (sighing) Fine…

Location: not the Bahamas
Mood: eh
Music: I felt complete And now my body fades
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personal

Advice

Location: home getting ready to leave
Mood: still sore
Music: used to think I had to change the way I am

NYC’s expensive but my friends and I’ve been here so long that we know where to go when the scratch’s barely there – or non-existent.

Take Curry Row for example; just wrote about it for an LJ Group I read.

There, for about $9, including tax and tip, you don’t gotta unwrap or open your food, cloth napkins, and silverware madea some kinda metal.

Every place’s got a joint like this, yeah? Where’s your goto place for cheap decent eats?

Anywho, met up with a buddy of mine still smarting over the loss of his girlie. Always preface any advice I give with, “Could be wrong, but doncha think…”

Cause, really, what do I know?

On that point, irritated cause someone gave advice to a buddy of mine that wasn’t just wrong; it woulda seriously made him sick cause it woulda resulted in him eating undercooked chicken.

Advice’s usually worth crap. Cause people usually give it, feel good about themselves, and go on their merry way. The listener of said advice hasta deal with the consequences.

If you’re not sure, don’t say anything or at least say, “Could be wrong, but dontcha think…”

Say whatcha want about my profession – a lawyer’s just not permitted to give BS advice. He’s got a duty to say either, “I don’t know,” or risk his license.

It’s that lawyer in me that has to document every claim I make – like in this blog with all of my ridiculous links. Annoying, yes, but feel I gotta.

Whenever y’take any advice, always ask if the person’s just giving it cause they wanna or if they actually know what they’re talking about.

Even Especially me.

———-

Administrative note: Not gonna be publishing for a week. Tell y’about it March 16th – cya then?

Read this review I wrote in the meanwhile.

YASYCTAI: Tell me where y’go for good, decent food. (5 mins/0.5 pts)

Categories
personal

Fame

Location: heading to Queens
Mood: sore
Music: baby The fame, fame Isn’t it a shame, shame baby

Snow on Riverside Park in NYC

A dude I met once with Sheridan was in all of papers cause he stole all of this dough. As a by-product of my out-and-about-ness, meet a lotta people that’re marginally famous in my little city.

The desire to get famous for no reason at all’s odd to me. S’one thing to be famous for doing something particularly good, quite another for doing something shady, yet another again for doing nuthin really at all.

My buddy Bryson’s also in the papers a lot lately. Well, not him per se, but his work product; he’s onea the lead people working on the Roosevelt Island project in the city papers.

It’s parta the reason we had to hit Roosevelt Island together this past summer.

Said a number a times before, in addition to being an insanely talented architect, he’s also a lethal man in the ring.

I’m only lethal if the other guy laughs himself to death seeing that he’s gonna fight me.

Gotta be better to be well-respected than famous, dontcha think? And even more so if it’s for two completely different things. Or is that just me these days?

As an aside, like to tell myself that somea my pictures’re part of the tram project.

Which is probably only true in my head but, eh, like always, it’s my head.

YASYCTAI: What your small goal this week? (5 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

The Acquisition of Knowledge

Location: in the heart of snow
Mood: still @#$@#$ sick
Music: I be the same when it all goes up I be the same when it all goes down

Was wondering why this song – which rocks – didn’t get much airplay. Then I saw the video. Least it’s a good song.

———-

Always kinda surprised by the people that marry their high school sweethearts.

If I married my high school/college girlfriend, woulda had one totally miserable person here in NYC.

I wouldn’tve been too happy either.

People go through massive changes from 15-21, again at 25-30, and once again at 30. The issue arises when one person changes one way and the other, another.

Elizabeth Gilbert said it best, Marriage is not a game for the young. Janeane Garofalo said someth’n like, imagine being married to the person who’s sole qualification was that they had the locker next to yours.

Been having a series of parallel conversations with three different people. Alla them’re very prouda the fact that they’re the same person as they were in the past.

But suppose y’believe the earth is flat. And despite all evidence to the contrary, your answer’s that you’ve always believed the world’s flat and that’s just how it’s gonna be.

(Insert your favourite George W. Bush joke here)

Said once that being grateful is the key to not being broken. Lemme add the coda that it’s also a willingness to say, OK, tell me why you think I’m wrong.

Put another way, why should the beliefs of a 16-year-old – when my buddy decided on something – rule the mind of a 35 year-old, his age now?

Are you better or worse if y’can say, I value the acquisition of knowledge above all else?

On yet another related point, become a man without a political party. The choice seems to be between a group enamored of their own ignorance and another inhibited by their own incompetence.

Gonna write in my mom as a candidate next year; if nuthin else, she’ll stay until the job gets done and save taxpayer money by bringing her own coffee.

YASYCTAI: Consider the data. (10 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Play the game

Location: heading to see the accountant
Mood: still sick
Music: get knocked down, but I get up again

NYC Fighting gym

Her: What happened to you?!
Me: (holding arm) Fencing.
Her: You’re 36, why don’t you learn to knit?

Falling apart. Sick and, for some reason, my wrist’s in excruciating pain. Don’t recall doing anything to it.

S’a bit sad; my skills’re better than they’ve ever been (which is, admittedly, not saying much). But my body’s betraying me. Injuries take forever to heal, my stamina’s crap, my reflexes’re non-existent. While I was bad before, I’m terrible now.

Thankfully, the reality’s that I’ll never actually ever get into a real fight.

Some’ll find it silly, prepping for something that’ll never come. But there’re things that it teaches you that other things don’t.

Firsta all, movie stuff ‘s movie stuff. Real violence’s nasty, smelly, and…drippy. Y’want no parta it, lemme tell ya. Fight Club? That was written by a dude that’s never been in a fight in his life.

But it also teaches you how t’play the your game. It’s the stupid wrestler that tries to box a boxer; ditto for a boxer trying to grapple witha grappler. If it’s taught me anything it’s: never play someone else’s game. Fastest way to a whooping.

And, without sounding all Hallmark-y, it teaches y’to get up when someone’s trying his darndest – like for serious – to beat y’down. That’s something.

Just as the runner who runs though there’s nuthing to run for or run to, or the mountain-climber that climbs a big-ass rock just cause he can, I do it cause I dunno how to do anything else.

So I put on a ridiculous outfit, pop in the mouth guard, and pray that my insurance’s paid up this month.

Her: What happened now?!
Me: (limping) Wrestling.
Her: What about yoga?


YASYCTAI: Hit the gym. It’s one-thirda your life. (60 mins/2 pts)

Categories
personal

Time¬=Money; Time>Money

Time isn’t money; time is so much more valuable than money

Antique clock

 

To add to the list of things that have the air of truth to them but no real truth at all, lemme give you one I particularly despise: Time Equals Money.

A buddy of mine put up this thing quoting just that and it reminded me that that’s gotta be one of the stupidest beliefs a body could hold.

Time is so much more valuable than money. Money, you can make and spend; time you can only spend.

Put another way, if given X years to live, how much would you pay for one more year?

Any idiot can make a buck. But in 432,329,886,000,000,000 seconds, no one’s figured out how to make an extra second for themselves.

Working at jobs you hate, to buy things you don’t need, to impress those you don’t know. That’s crazy.

So, if given the chance to make an extra $1,000 or go see your grandma, go see your grandma.

I didn’t and I gotta live with that for all of the seconds I got left.

———-

Sick again. You know the drill, please send soup.

Location: in bed
Mood: sick
Music: with you I’m having a good time I don’t mind
YASYCTAI: At least give her a call. (10 mins/1 pt)