Author: Logan Lo

Categories
personal

Juggling

Location: 23:00 yest, an orange chair
Mood: tired
Music: I don’t have a simple answer

Have y’noticed the disturbing trend in commercials and movies where people’re in a car and then another car comes outta nowhere and just smashes them up? I can relate.

S’for the shock value, yeah. But it does illustrate a point: y’never can tell what’s gonna happen, good or bad.

Finally got some significant scratch from a gig I did ages ago. Cannot tell you how excited I was about that.

But then another, unpleasant, thing popped up unexpectedly from a different area of my life. And I’m back to square one.

Juggling your health, wealth and relationships‘s never easy.

Sorry this post’s late, been busy. Juggling, y’see…

YASYCTAI: Get a prioritization system. (45 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Don’t really know

What’s the point of it all?

Cloudy day in NYC

Her: What was that sound!?
Me: Was working on something and the live power cable hit the fan.
Her: Logan! You’re going to kill yourself some day. (laughing) And your fly’s open.
Me: (slowly) Yes.

If something did happen to me, someone’d find that I’m 20% peanut butter (by weight, not volume). The remainder being rum.

Did y’have a nice Turkey Day? This year was different. Paul and WM hung up their club shoes to play board games by mine. Very Waltons.

The Professor wasn’t in town but I did see Johnny. With the exception of the Devil, he’s the onea the most dangerous men I know. That says a lot. And he brought his daughter over.

Her: I like you. You’re funny.
Me: I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen, keep your dad from punching me. He scares me.
Her: He scares me too!

This 25 year-old kid named Luis Armando Pena Soltren hijacked this plane from NY to Puerto Rico on 19681124 and went to Cuba where he spent the next 40 years in working as a day labourer.

At some point, he musta thought, What the #$@# did I do with my life?

So he came back an old man and’s sitting at some jail cell knowing that he’s thrown his life away on yet another thing that had the air of truth to it, but no real truth to it.

Him: 10 Million.
Me: Just this year?
Him: Yeah. (pause) Woulda made more if it wasn’t for this economy. Gotta fly back to China in three weeks.
Me: Why dontcha just sell it all? The factories, the buildings, all of it? Y’can spend time with your family, hang out with me. Start up that school y’always say you wanna do.
Him: (shakes head)
Me: Why not? You make more money than the pope but you’re miserable. What’s the pointa all that green if y’don’t get to see your family and I’m the only person in the world y’trust?
Him: Don’t really know.


Nietzxche was right, your convictions’re dangerous things. The choices remain the same: Change your map; Change your reality; or Keep crying.

Better work out. Next year, doubt I’ll have his daughter there to protect me.

Location: a grey, half-sofa
Mood: cheerful
Music: come with me we’ll travel to infinity
YASYCTAI: Have you considered fencing? (90 mins/2 pts)

Categories
personal

Thanksgiving 2009

Sunset on the Highline in NYC

Me: I’m gonna be 40 soon.
Her: (puzzled) You’re 36.
Me: Oh, it’s there. It’s there.

Don’t think I could write anything better than what I wrote last year for Thanksgiving 2008 so I’ll just direct you there.

My house still smells of fresh baked cookies from Heartgirl. Hope you have something similar.

Happy Turkey Day, people!

Location: 18:00 yest, baking cookies in the UWS
Mood: thankful
Music: Oh, I can cook too, on top of the rest (Spotify)

Categories
personal

You will

Location: my usual black chair
Mood: groggy
Music: a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee


Me: You mean you watch the whole thing? Y’don’t just fast forward to the action?
Him: No, I want to hear the plot.
Me: Plot?! There’s no plot; it’s always something like: guy shows up to deliver pizza, girl steps outta the shower, and oh, she has no money to pay him. What to do? What to do? Oh my! I’ve appeared to drop my towel…
Him: (laughing) I still like to see what happens.
Me: Y’know what happens – nuthin that ever happens in real life, that’s what happens. Grand thespians, they’re assuredly not.
———-
Been looking at a bunch of ebook readers lately for myself.

In NYC, the average rent is $30-35 per square foot per year. A bookshelf takes up about a three square feet of space. I would need three for all of the books I got. That’s a nine square foot footprint, or $270-$315 a year for rent just to keep my books.

Ergo, ebook reader.

The issue is that all of the screens’re too small. Don’t wanna have to get surgery on my eyes to repair them to save $270-$315; that makes no sense. The Kindle DX has a huge screen but no way to zoom; the iRex reader has a huge screen and zoom but’s crazy expensive and dim.

So, looks like I gotta wait.

Hate waiting for the future to come. According to television, we were supposta all get jet cars by now.

And television never lies.

———-

Then again – was 20 when those ads in the vid above first came out.

Funny thing is that every single onea those things the guy said turned true.

In fact, I’ve done all but threea those things he said.

Listen to the voice, know who he is?

YASYCTAI: Be hopeful. You’ll live longer. And happier. (525,600 minutes /3 pts)
www.loganlo.com

Categories
dating personal

Fridays Online

Location: 19:00 yest, cooking pork for the first time in kitch
Mood: inspired
Music: we the stars Steady rockin’ on y’alls boulevards

Picture of a bike in a park on the west side of NYC

Paul stopped by my place the other night. There was a time when I’d spend mosta my time with him chatting about Heartgirl rather than the other way round.

He’s still (kinda) living the life of a singleton – he’s got his front-runner – as’re lotsa my other friends. S’funny, the charm of being single’s the potential to meet someone that makes you not.

This salesman named Alan Stillman was tired of being single so he started a bar to pick up girlies on 63rd Street and 1st Ave back in 1965. Dunno if it worked but kinda shows what people’ll do to not be by their lonesome.

Which kinda makes me wonder why people don’t explore the avenues out there to meet someone appropriate.

Like online dating – dunno why anyone’s got anything against it. The actual meeting of a body makes it just as normal as anything else. Sides, how’s it any more likely you’re gonna meet your better half in some smoky bar?

Said it before, it’s like y’got this aunt named Match or something like that, who says to you, “I know that guy/girl that y’might like.” Plus, how often when you go out and about do you also get a resume of the person in front of your face?

Oh, the name of the joint that that guy Stillman started was TGI Friday’s – he also started Smith & Wollensky’s, the joint that HG brought me on my bday.

Y’probably aren’t gonna meet someone right for you in TGI Friday’s but you get my point.

YASYCTAI: Try cooking something completely new today. (30 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Monuments

Went with her to Washington DC again

Picture of the Washington Monument.

DC was nice, as always.

Went there and back via train. Neither my life nor the trains I ride run on (or close to) schedule.

The weather was amazing on Sunday so we took a walk to Lincoln and Vietnam Memorial. Turns out the reflecting pool does actually reflect – it’s a mobile phone shot but y’can still see it.

Nuthin like it on a nice sunny day with the blue sky.

Went to the Vietnam Memorial for the first time. Quite something. Dunno if y’know this but Ross Perot sponsored a design competition for it and when Maya Lin, a 21 year-old Asian nobody – a gook – won it with a black slab, he and a tona others were pissed. Onea them shouldn’t be building a Vietnam Memorial.

The New York Times, headlined, Insulting Vietnam Vets. Where were the statues, the flags? Looked like a tombstone.

Kinda reminds me of all of the political ruckus over everything these days. Everyone’s so sure they’re right; all this sound and fury signifying nuthin.

So a few meters away from the memorial that was actually built, Perot had a statue put up.

A teenage girl was talking on her cell phone when I went to visit and about a third of the way in, think she finally realized what she was reading, hung up her phone, and quietly walked the resta the way.

Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, all the critics did similar things when the actually saw the thing. Every organization that attacked Maya later apologized.

Cause Maya knew that when you put up names, a lista people kids that got themselves killed for a country that hated them, it’s hard to ignore that they existed.

It’s quite something.

Man doing a pencil rubbing on the Vietnam War Memorial
Wilted rose by the Vietnam War Memorial

 

Location: 20:00 yest, stuck outside Penn Station
Mood: grateful
Music: I’m down to a whisper In a daydream on a hill

Categories
personal

Me Again

Location: on my couch
Mood: refreshed
Music: Please allow me to introduce myself

At the enda Interview with Vampire, we find out this once wild vampire’s alive. But he’s a shella himself – scared and scarred.

Hold that thought.

Contrary to what most people think, the fast food fight isn’t between McDonald’s and Burger King. McDonalds has about 31,000 stores across the world but Subway will have more than 32,000 by the end of the year. Cause during this yeara horrible economic times, Subway profits grew by 17%.

It went from number whatever to number one cause it saw it’s chances and took them.

And Wayne Gretzky said that, You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. It’s all about seeing your chances and taking them.

There’s been debate as to JFK’s notion that the Chinese word for crisis is an amalgam of the characters danger and opportunity – but that doesn’t make it less true a concept. Crisis’s when y’can take your shots.

The breakup, the theft, the car accident, my grandmother leaving, and the cancer scare took their toll on me. Once told someone that as a lawyer, a fencer and a kickboxer, wasn’t afraida nuthin. But the last three years, was scared and scarred. Of everything (cept maybe the girlies).

A body can only handle so many crises.

Three years’s enough to not take my shots, to be onea those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

After three years, a twelveth of my life, not only am I home again, feel like I’m me again.

Gonna be in DC over the weekend. Catch you next week.

YASYCTAI: Take your shots. (0.5 secs/3 pts)

Categories
personal

Five miles in Manhattan

Location: my bed
Mood: artistic
Music: Never know what we will see. Come take a walk with me.


Me: Too nice a day to wrestle. Wanna take a walk?

Her: Sure.


Me: I think they extended the bike path on the west side. We can walk down the new park.

Her: That sounds like fun. Can we go to the High Line?

Me: Sure. (later) …that is if we can ever find the entrance.

Her: It’s funny, being tourists in your own city.

Me: I like it. It Reminds me of why I like this place so much.

Her: Do you want to walk to Trader Joe’s?
Me: (pointing) It’s past that white building with the blue clock over there.

Her: (amused) I’ve been to Union Square before, you know.


Me: Yes, I know. (laughing) I just pretend you never had a life before me.

YASYCTAI: Enjoy the nice days before they’re gone. (240 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Durian

I love being Chinese but I cannot stand China

A metro station's escalator in NYC

Got a Hello today from Roberta, the girl I sat next to on the plane years ago. She’s in college now and still traveling the globe from Italy.

What an interesting world we live in.

Subtle racism of lowered expectations sound bite

Had a full-on zero sleep the other night. The insomina’s creeping back. Wondering why, but suppose it’s just the way it is with me sometimes.

Saw the rents the other day and stopped by the local Asian supermarket for cheap produce and such. Saw a lot of non-Asians there; laughed to myself only cause I can hardly make heads nor tails outta anything – then again, maybe they’re all Asian scholars.

Can only imagine one them picking up say a durian and going, “Why don’t I give this a shot?”

A lot of young people too bouncing around. That’s cool, that they’re willing to shop in a joint where the only English spoken’s with an accent.

Speaking of younger people, a lot of them’re convinced that all Republicans’re evil and that good things’ll happen if everyone’s a Democrat.

Which is not to say that the Republicans haven’t bungled the last several years of power, they have. And there ae d-bags and hypocrites on both sides of the fence.

But the fence’s sort o my point. There needs to be conflict to make things the way they’re supposedta be. You know what you get when you only have one party supported by millions of fanatical young people that are absolutely certain their cause is just, their party righteous?

China. You get China.

Love being Chinese but I cannot stand China. The government’s as thuggish and vile as one can get.

Nietzxche once said that “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” The key to not being a jerk is by accepting that you might be wrong.

On that note, suppose I should really try a durian one of these days.

Location: my room, cleaning
Mood: groggy
Music: This is how it works You’re young until you’re not

Categories
personal

Halloween 2009

Location: 21:00 yest, Battery Park City
Mood: groggy
Music: you should be wilder, you’re no fun at all

Logan and Heartgirl in oversized Star Trek uniforms

Her: Pennsylvania’s not that far. It’s only two hours away.
Me: Good grief, woman…
HG: (finishing) …that’s exactly how far we thought it was!

Stopped by PB’s where I had my body weight in pixie sticks and rum after the rain. Heartgirl and I wore Star Trek uniforms that were way too big on us. Either medium in America isn’t what it used to be or I’m shrinking. Just realized right this moment that for the past five Halloweens, wore red.

Him: …so then I was like, “You’re the class of 2013? That’s crazy!”
Me: Tell me about it – that’s 20 years after I graduated.
Him: (surprised) Wait, what? How old’re you?
Me: 36 – it’s the Asian genes. Plus I drink the blood of a white baby every morning.
Him: (nodding) Of course, who doesn’t?
Another Halloween done and gone. Suppose it’ll be just a mattera time fore I’m the old dude that still gets dressed up for Halloween. I’m ok with that.
Me: Goodness, I do love Halloween. And women exercising questionable clothing choices.
72Suburbs: We love it, too. There’re so few chances to exercise questionable taste
Me: God bless you, 72Suburbs. God bless you.

Saw RE Mike last night. He’s been making lotsa deals and picked himself up a nice one-bedroom downtown. We were talking shop over some $6 Halal food and a bottlea red.

Me: …so you walked outta the bank with $40K in cash to put a down payment on this place cause some guy dared you to?
Him: I did get a little carried away.
Me: Y’know if I were there, totally woulda robbed you.
Him: Course. (phone rings) Speaking of which, this dude calling me’s in jail. Been there for two months.
Me: Why do you still talk to him?
Him: No idea (picking up phone) yeah…

Also met up with the lawyers been working with on some things. Went out to this crazy nice Italian joint and met their wives. Super nice, all of them. Says a lot about you when you meet someone’s favourite person and they’re exactly like y’thought they’d be.

November 2009, already. Where does the time go?

YASYCTAI: Buy next year’s costume early. Never hurts to be prepared. (20 mins/0.5 pts)