Tag: discussion

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business personal

Socialism for banks, capitalism (and arrests) for the rest of us?

httpv://youtu.be/S6svA6Qvq1U?t=1m32s

We both know that it’s rarely political here. But every once in a while, gotta say something.

Got mixed feelings about the Occupy Wall Street protests. On the one hand, agree with the core tenet of it, which is capitalists cannot assert socialism for banks and capitalism for the resta us. On the other hand, just let people get to work and make a dollar already. There’s definitely an element of whiny in it to me.

Having said that, the above video enraged me. Fast forward to 1:33 where a woman outside a bank protest and not actually protesting – she’s wearing a business suit – appears to want to leave the bank. She’s then grabbed by someone in regular clothes, physically tossed into the bank and then either locked in and/or arrested.

Clearly, something is wrong with this picture.

While I don’t agree with the protesters, their right to peacefully protest is something the cops should be defending not making worse. Far worse, IMHO.

———-

Mentioned it in passing in my last post but there’s a seasonality to my work; summer’s usually pretty quiet and right around October, work picks up dramatically.

Last year, this was kinda true – this year, it’s definitely true. Keep wondering when the economy’ll finally turn around but this year is shaping to be onea my best outta the past three.

Which is not really saying a lot looking back at the last three years.

———-

 Gonna be tweaking this blog over the next month or so; don’t mind me.

Former LJ’ers, changed the comment system so (I hope) you will be notified if you leave a comment and someone responds to me – like me.

Leave a comment so I can test our a few things?

Location: this past weekend, out in Queens
Mood: busy
Music: had no idea of the state we were in
YASYCTAI: Leave a comment and I’ll response – let me know if you get an email? (10 sec/1.0 pt)
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personal

The world limits us enough, why do it to ourselves?

Train arriving at Columbus Circle

Her: It looks worse, you should go see a doctor.
Me: Nah, I’ll be fine.

Wonder how many people died saying those as their last words.

Been going to the gym like crazy cause summer’s usually my slow time and I wanna get in as much gym time as possible before things start getting mad busy. So I was rolling with my buddy Car when we got onto the topic of MRSA (pronounced “mer-suh”). If you don’t know what that is, do NOT google it, instead, just believe me when I tell you that it’s gross and deadly. I’m a germaphobe by nature – to the point that no less than a dozen people remarked why I’d wrestle since that’s so unlike me. Which goes to show, that as much as I hate touching stuff, hate not knowing stuff even more.

Feara ignorance > OCD hand-washing.

In any case, had just shaved earlier that week and rolled and had gotten some razor burn. After a week, it started looking bad. Like real bad. After HG put her foot down, went to the local medi-merge where the lady doc walked into the room, took one look at me, and said, “You’ve got staph, man.” It wasn’t MRSA – thankfully – but it was something dangerous and gross. She gave me some meds and told me to go home and shave, which I did for the first time.

Lemme tell you: (a) it was insanely painful and (b) it far worse than I thought.

Killed all of my weekend plans. A weeka antibiotics later, about 90% back to normal.

The psychological scars’re gonna take a bit to get over though.

Do you know I’m scareda flying? Was the international sales manager for a Fortune 500 company and terrified of flying. But I board that plane every damn time.

Cause the world limits me enough; don’t need to do it to myself.

So Thursday, back in the gym.

Course, gonna be covered in plastic wrap from head-to-toe but that’s really neither here nor there.

 

Location: in fronta piles of papers
Mood: better
Music: rolling in the deep the scars
YASYCTAI: Do the uncomfortable things. (always/3 pts)
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personal

My dull life / The Real F-Word

Wall Street subway station stop, downtown New York City NYC

Spent the day yesterday trying to track down a leak in my building that was causing a mini-waterfall in my lower bathroom. Stressful.

Water’s the single biggest danger in a small apartment building but finding the causesa water leaks are Sherlockian adventures. Traced it to a clogged main drain somewhere between the first and second floors. Waiting for the Phoenix plumber now.

Also, despite my best efforts, may end up the condo president again. It’s like the mafia. For serious.

Before that adventure began, broiled a flank steak for dinner last night. Never really ever broiled anything cause we didn’t have a working broiler until last year. Gotta say, it’s probably the easiest way to cook a steak. May never go back to any other way.

Reading this, realized how dull my life’s become.

Thank goodness.

———-

Seeing as how I rarely curse, rather enjoyed this.

And it’s totally true, it’s a offensive thing to have famine in this day and age.

Location: my pad, waiting for Godot and a plumber
Mood: insanely busy
Music: Talking bout if you had love
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personal

That the North Americans speak English

The little things we do have big impact in our lives

View of New York City's City Hall from Chinatown NYC

Him: I’m unemployed and live at home again. How’s this good?
Me: You have a college education, speak English, live in New York City, and were lucky enough to be born here. (gently) You’re doing better than mosta the world.

A quote that’s stayed with me my entire life’s from Otto von Bismark towards the end of his life. He was asked what he felt would be the most significant shaping event of the 20th century.

Rather than replying that it would be electricity, or firepower, or any of that, he said simply, That the North Americans speak English.

Speaking of which, there’s this interesting theory that part of why English, not French, is the world’s dominant language is because of barnacles on ships.

See, the English plated the hulls of their ships with copper, which stopped barnacles from growing. This meant they could move just slightly faster than French ships that had none.

The French lost control of the seas,  England became the a superpower by the 19th century, and I’m more Bugs Bunny than Pepe le Pew.

A fella recently asked me how I get so much done in my life. Thought immediately about the barnacle story. Cause big things happen with slight changes in trajectory. What’s a small change today can make a huge difference later on.

As a fat 13 year-old, decided to drink a cup of water before each meal. A slight change. Lost like 10 pounds that year. Then changed over to skim milk, lost another few pounds. Always tell people that I look young because of a combo of Asian genes and constant maintenance.

Anywho, back to my friend. He wants to know how to get things done. Told him that it’s all about fighting the inertia. He’s super talented but he’s held hostage by the fact he’s good enough. And good enough is enemy of great.

There’s no one huge leap from good enough to great, just lots of little steps – your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to take those little steps.

On that note, it’s a busy week for me. Nuthin big. Just lots of little things. Let’s see what happens.

 

Location: apartment, getting ready for the week
Mood: cheerful
Music: thinking about the good things to come and I believe it could be
YASYCTAI: Do one small thing today. (2 mins/0.5 pts)
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personal

What you think is true, what you hope is true, and what is actually true

An apartment in the UWS, NYC

Had a really interesting few days.

Firstly, randomly walked by a buncha workers and tossed them few hundred to paint my apartment. Totally spur of the moment. Looks great.

Anywho, dunno if I ever told you but I’ve had a real estate broker’s license since I was like 19. Some years, used it a lot; other years, not at all. Just rented a place less than 24 hours after the first showing. About half the people I showed it to said that the unit looked just like the pictures in my ad and that it was accurately described.

Which brings me to my other occupation; I work for a litigator who recently told me that, A Few Good Men jokes aside, the truth is the most powerful thing in a courtroom.

If all of my random dating has taught me anything, it’s that people sense and want truth. They crave it.

They know, on some level, what’s true and what’s for sale.

Which then brings me to an issue I’m having with one of my oldest and dearest friends. He’s got two email addresses, one personal, one work. He’s asked that I use one over the other for work related matters, which I’ve obliged.

However, the issue’s that emails to that address are never answered in a timely manner – in fact there have been several times where he’s dropped the ball completely. So another email has to be sent saying, “Did you get my email?” which also goes unread resulting in a phone call. Thus a one-minute question becomes a long drawn out affair.

After the very last time he promised me that he’d set up a forward to make sure he gets emails. And again it happens. So I told him that I’d never send another email to that address.

Now he’s upset with me.

Which’s odd, cause he takes no responsibility for failing to follow-through, it’s my fault that I now, a year later, refuse to write him there any more. He’s essentially saying, “All those other times I said that I’d read them? I was totally not being honest with myself or you. But this time? This time, I’m gonna read them.”

But there’s a difference between the lies you tell yourself, wishful thinking without action, and the truth.

Put another way: there’s a difference between what you think is true, what you hope is true, and what is actually true.

The three are not the same.

———-

My oldest and closest friend turns 40 today. I wish you courage.

Cause with courage, coupled with hope and a dash of empathy, you’ve got mosta what you need to get through this life unbroken.

Friends, cold hard cash, and rum do not hurt either.

So I guess what I’m really saying is that I wish you courage, hope, empathy, friends, cold-hard cash and rum.

Actually, rum will help with most of the above.

Lemme revise my thought then; I wish you rum.

Happy getting one-year-older-but-also-one-year-better day!

 

Location: sitting next to Diego
Mood: less busy, finally
Music: Come listen to my truest thoughts, my truest feelings
YASYCTAI: Pick up a new book; how are you on your reading schedule? (2 days/1 pt)
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personal

Proprioception / Do we have more than five senses?

Everyone thinks we have just five senses – we have a lot more than that

Bar in midtown, NYC

Her: Well, every human has the same five senses, so…
Me: Actually, humans have a lot more than five senses, we have like 24.
Her: Why do you have to be that guy, Logan?
Me: (shrugging) You got a lotta time to read and think when no one wants to hang out with you.

As you read this, think of the tip of your right pinky finger.

You know which one that is, without looking at it. In fact, you know that your right pinky finger is not, by any means, your left index finger. You can know this without looking at either or touching either. This is called proprioception and is our ability to sense the different parts of our body in relation to each other.

Think that what causes mosta the brokenness around us is the inability for people to be empathetic; that is to say, to know the relation of ourselves to others around us.

I’ve got like a dozen friends that have birthdays coming up. Came to the realization that the ones that’re the happiest’re the ones that have that strong sense of empathy; the miserable ones’re the ones that look from the inside, out versus from the outside, in.

It’s the bendy versus the broken.

Said it before, one does good things not to save the world but to save ourselves.

———-

Just for kicks, here are some more of the many other senses we have:

  • Spatial perception due to sound – If you hear a sound in the distance, you know if it’s near or far. This is different than hearing sine you can tell is a the growl of a lion is right next to you or several yards away – a useful trick when we were all hunter/gatherers.
  • Hunger and thirst – two more senses separate from all the others
  • Time – you know, without looking at your watch/mobile, that I’ve just wasted some five minutes of your life you’ll never get back.

For that last one, you’re quite welcome.

Location: waiting for new tenants in the UWS
Mood: melting
Music: with the restoration I’m running on my feet, I never stumble as I’m falling
YASYCTAI: Pick up a new book; how are you on your reading schedule? (2 days/1 pt)
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personal

Everyone’s got an opinion on something

View of Bryant Park Grill, NYC

The thing about the wired everything’s that everyone’s got an opinion that they feel’s crucially important for people to hear. Won’t lie, I’ve got my own opinions about the world. But the thing is that I know my opinion’s merely my own; for the most part, this here blog’s for me and my own purposes.

I mean, who am I to tell people what to do?

But you have people like this nutcase in Norway who kill 92+ people (mostly unarmed kids) cause he’s a got a goddamned opinion that he thinks is more than just that, an opinion. He wants his opinion to rule over others.

The need to feel important, to matter, is an overwhelming one for someone that feels that they somehow are.

The people that’re certain they’re right, that only they hold the keys to the kingdom, are the ones that make me the most worried.

———-

It’s been hot here in the big city. 100 degrees in the shade hot. It’s hard to stay focused when all I wanna do’s lie down in some air conditioned room.

Been writing a lot. Forced myself to put down my manuscript to work on something else. This fella named Paul Valery once said that A poem is never finished, only abandoned. Think the same is true of any writing.

I was just thinking the other day that

 

Location: a dark room, trying to stay cool
Mood: productive
Music: you went back to what you knew
YASYCTAI: Try to get motivated in this weather. It’s not easy. (24 hours/1 pt)
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Categories
dating personal

How to get the person you want most of all

Downtown NYC

Don’t have any comment on the Casey Anthony trial. It shocks me a bit how nothing shocks me anymore. Although, it does provide the useful lesson that, if you’re gonna commit a heinous crime, try to be pretty(ish), young, and white. Or a celebrity. Pick one.

———-

This monk named Thomas Merton once said that, The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. Think that’s totally true.

Got three friends, all of whom wanted to get good at dating. But they just stopped after a few months because they all just ended up with people that were good enough.

One of them told me that his girl didn’t want a guy that treats dating like an occupation. Which’s yet another onea those things that sounds good on a superficial level but doesn’t make any real sense.

I treated it like an occupation – more a hobby, really, but I’m going for parallelism here – started meeting people in September of 2006 and continued to be single until September of 2008. Two years and some 150+ dates later.

And it sucked. It makes you weary. And you have to be coldly dispassionate. The constant hellos and goodbyes.

But If it’s important, and valuable, it doesn’t come easy. Nuthin worth anything comes easy.

Early on, when I started dating, kept repeating favourite quote: With increased intelligence, comes increased capacity for pain. If you’re smart enough, you learn to push all that doubt to the side of your mouth. You get up, go out, and take your chances. S/he’s not going to just show up knocking. Most of all, you deal with the pain.

Bookmarks Lounge bar on top of the Library Hotel in Midtown NYC

Him: How do you know we’re gonna end badly?
Me: I don’t know. But I figure it will Cause I saw the first movie. In this sequel, all of the characters’re the same. You’re still you, she’s still her. Everything’s the same. Why would it be different this time around unless onea you were radically different? You were both single for just 35 days. How different could either of you be? You went back cause it hurt too much, and I understand that. But you deal with the pain to give her, and you, time to be different. 35 days’s not enough time. You should have waited and met more people.
Him: You met all those people, what’d that really get you?
Me: (shrugging) The girl I wanted most of all.

Location: desk, trying to not be insanely hot
Mood: insanely hot
Music: we brave bee stings and all And we don’t dive, we cannonball
YASYCTAI: Don’t make Casey Anthony a millionaire. Don’t buy her book, listen to her interviews, etc. Don’t reward evil. (20 years/0.5 pts)
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business personal

Justice isn’t blind, she chooses not to see / Don’t go to law school

Portrait of justice in the Musée du Barreau in Paris

To continue my odd fixation on things that have that have an air of truth but no real truth to them, y’know that saying, Justice is blind?

That’s completely wrong.

Not only is it completely wrong, it completely misses the point. Justice is not blind, she chooses not see.

Look at every statue, every portrait, and you’ll see she wears a blindfold. For example, the picture above is from the Musée du Barreau in Paris. Blindfold.

She has the ability to see, to judge with her eyes, but instead, she judges with her ears; listening to the facts and deciding. The problem with most things in life is that most people judge far too quickly on far too superficial data. Judgment without processing any true information is the key to injustice. Taking it all in and changing one’s mind in light of new information should never be a bad thing.

On an unrelated point, an election year is coming. Let’s see what’s for sale.

———-

On the topic of lawyers and law school, don’t go to law school. First of all, when I went, the job market was crazy-good; now it’s crazy-bad.

But if that’s not enough, don’t go cause you could start Facebook instead.

In fact, I started Facebook in 1999. Well, I started a website that let you post pictures, leave comments, write stuff, etc, called “cobaltblue.com.” But it never really took off causa a number of boneheaded moves on my part and cause I was going to law school.

While I do love the law and my particular field of it, there’s a sense that my life might have been radically different if I had never gone. Perhaps it woulda been far worse, or far better. Never know.

Think that law school’s a honeypot; it’s a place that many people go cause they haven’t figured stuff out yet. It’s one thing to spend three years of life and $150K if you’ve been dying to be a lawyer your whole; quite another if you’re just trying to be “safe.”

Especially cause it’s not safe.

With my love of my practice, I still mighta gone knowing what I know now. Not sure.

If you’re thinking of going back to school just cause you’ve got no other idea, consider paying back the aether instead. If you’re lucky, you’ll change the world and make a mint while you do it.

Just remember to hire me when you need some legal advice.

The above may potentially be seen as advertising for a real estate attorney in Chicago per NY Rule 7.3(a)(1). See what a pain being a lawyer is? Imagine you’re just writing something for your blog, which no one reads, cept maybe your mom hoping that this time, someone will see the genius that is her progeny, but no, mom, only you think that) and you’ve got to throw up a disclaimer. A disclaimer! It’s the height of ridiculousness. Between my mom and me, and occasionally Heartgirl out of pity, I’ve got three readers. And yet…disclaimer. I should have just stuck to building networks. Are you still reading this? If so, I’m thinking of killing the livejournal.com portion of the blog and just doing this at my regular loganlo.com blog. What do you think? Again, not that anyone reads either of them (mom, there’s no need to write a comment as “anonymous” as I’ll know it’s you. I’m fine, although under the weather; married life is great and the the house is spotless). Also, I’m contemplating selling canvas prints of my photos do you think there’s a market for them? What if I include a recipe for chili? Ok, I’ll stop now. Don’t go to law school.

Location: getting dressed for work while hoping not to pass out
Mood: really sick
Music: everybody’s got a price, I wonder how they sleep at night
YASYCTAI: Don’t waste your time, you have less than you think. (time/3 pts)
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Categories
dating personal

Staying home and wallowing’s never a good idea.

Mussels and hard cider in the LES, NYC

Him: I should get back.
Me: Why? So you can go home and wallow?

Went out with two buddies the other night. It’s funny how life works.

  1. Met this woman named Jane years ago, she introduced me to her ex, Gio.
  2. Gio and I became friends and he introduced me to WM.
  3. WM and I were out late one night and he introduced me to Heartgirl.

The moral of that story is: don’t be a jerk and you might meet someone nice.

Anywho – Gio, WM and I of us grabbed some wings, mussels and beers down on the LES last week. Afterward WM and I hopped into his whip while Gio took his bike over to a karaoke joint at St. Marks. Gio beat us there by several minutes. They both belted out some tunes while I just listened. Not much of a singer, me.

Man riding bike in NYC

The fellas are both dealing with breakups. Told them both that it’s time to clean their maps; one’s trying and the other’s not. Like with most things, y’get better when you’re not thinking about getting better.

Speakinga getting better I’m sick again. Aren’t summer colds the worst? So HG and I just stayed home and saw happythankyoumoreplease with music from Jaymay. More on that when I’m not feeling like hot death.

Him: (the next day) Good hanging out and thanks for the advice…By the way, I stopped by Whiskey Tavern afterward, met a cute girl and got her digits.
Me: Of course you did.

Karaoke bar downtown NYC

Location: desk, trying to not be sick
Mood: sick
Music: it’s too early to say goodnight (goodnight)
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