Been super busy with a few projects that I’ll tell you about in due time.
Actually found out that only one of my legal lectures is still up as they retire them after three years.
Still, on the one remaining one I’ve got, I have over 1,000 4.5 star ratings from other lawyers. So that was nice to see.
Do you remember when I told you that the sun isn’t yellow, it’s white – just like all other stars?
Likewise, the sky is actually purple and blue, we just see it as blue.
Mentioned to someone that I was a lawyer once a while ago and she didn’t believe me at all.
It was strange. Remember being oddly offended by that but now I realize that I’m partly to blame cause people see what they want to see, yes. But they also see what you’re willing to show them.
Lately, I’ve been running into issues with how people – friends, acquaintances, strangers – view me. Partly because of the legal and weapons videos, partly because it’s just come up.
In the past, been pretty good at hiding a lot of my life but I’m at an age where I just don’t give a damn anymore. So that’s been interesting.
You wouldn’t get that from TV and movies but it turns out that NYC has so few that production companies keep filming the same one – Cortlandt Alley – over and over again.
Just happened to walk by it the other day while I was getting my clothes tailored – more on that later (thanks, Mike!).
My point is that that’s the thing; rare things don’t really seem that rare until you try to look for them.
The kicker is that I actually live right next door to an alley that was used in another famous movie. But that’s my little secret.
Speaking of secrets, people seem to tell me a lotta secrets. Think it’s because – even before becoming a lawyer – I was known as someone that could keep them.
RN: You can’t tell anyone about this. Me: I’ll put it in the vault.
And like the alleys, you think that people that can keep secrets are all over the place but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Cause I seem to field rando calls alla time from all sorts of people because they don’t have anyone else to tell them to.
Him: I needed to talk to someone. Me: You’re in luck. I’m someone.
That kinda bums me out, that I’m all they’ve got.
So people call me to unburden themselves and I usually offer them some unsolicited advice, even though I know I shouldn’t.
Cause what do I know?
But I get it. We all need someone, or something, to tell our secrets to. Cause secrets are lonely things.
Life’s lonely enough as it is.
Me: You’re kinda my best friend. So I tell you things… Her: Ditto.
On a related matter, my brother spends his free time talking to suicidal people and volunteering in dangerous foreign places.
I worry that he might be drawn into the abyss himself but he wants to help them. I can’t fault him for that. He’s a good soul and I”m proud of him.
This woman named Jo Cameron was born with two genetic mutations:
A different FAAH gene, which reduces her ability to feel pain, both physical and emotional;
A defective FAAH-OUT gene, whose sole purpose is to activate the FAAH gene.
Essentially, she feels no pain, no anxiety. She cannot suffer. She broke her arm when she was eight years old and only went to the doctor three days later because her arm looked funny. When she gave birth, it tickled her.
She’s a mutant with a superpower.
When I was a kid, outta all the superpowers, the one I wanted the most was the ability to become invisible. I think most bullied kids would welcome the ability to disappear and not be noticed.
But, after these past few years – barring time travel and/or the ability to detect and destroy cancer – I think that the superpower I’d like the most is Jo’s power.
Because, man, do I get people being hooked on painkillers.
This week/month has been a rollercoaster of emotional pain. Both from Alison and the Gymgirl. The kind where I’m sitting down on my shower floor hyperventilating.
I actually do have to take painkillers to manage it. That’s how severe it’s been. The insomnia’s back too, because, of course it’s back…
I’d like to tell you more about the Gymgirl but now’s not really the right time.
It’s my fault if she somehow heard that she wasn’t that important.
Her: (dismissively) I’m just a placeholder in your life. Me: (shaking head) That’s precisely the opposite of what you are. You’re not even a front-runner; you’re the only game in town.
That placeholder bit kept me up all night because it’s so far left field. I didn’t really fully appreciate the depth of what she was saying until I was alone in bed.
The worst things creep into my head in the middle of the night because it’s when the world and my thoughts quiet down. And I start to understand things.
I’m trying to wrap my head around everything but, FWIW, I was trying to do the right thing by her but it turned out that I did exactly the opposite of what she wanted me to do.
To top it all off, afterward, I behaved in a way that I’m not proud of and I’m disappointed in myself. It was rough all around.
I should remember that this never happens when I drink rum. But that’s neither here nor there.
There’s more, but that’s all I wanted to say for now.
Me: Hurry up, we’re gonna be late! Mouse: We? You’re gonna be late. I’m gonna be a pleasant surprise.
She was my pleasant surprise in all this shit. I thought she knew.
On that note, I’m just going to call her Mouse here from this point forward, for however long that is.
Because the only reason I used Gymgirl instead of Mouse, which is what everyone calls her, was because of our inappropriately possessive ex-coach and his insane jealousy, which is a whole ‘nother story for another time.
Gymgirl: I’m sorry, it must be bittersweet. Me: No, just bitter.
It sucked. That’s all I have to say about it.
There’s a mouse in my house.
The last time there was a mouse here, it was almost a decade ago. At the time, I’d trapped it in my bathroom and told Alison about it afterward. I remember that moment well.
This time, heard something in my utility closet and opened it to find that it chewed through every single thing it could in my pantry. I easily threw out $100 worth of food and there was sugar everywhere because it went through a huge bag of baking supplies.
We didn’t find it so, after spending most of the night looking for it, I decided to just call it and take a shower.
And while taking said shower, looked looked up at my shower curtain (which is made of a dimpled cloth) and there was the mouse looking right at me.
Right. At. Me. Eye level.
Mouse!I yelled and the Gymgirl came running over.
I told her to seal up the door with packaging tape to trap it and myself in the bathroom (they can easily slip under doors).
I then proceeded to chase it around my tiny, tiny bathroom with a rolled-up magazine.
The problem is my damn busted arm; I couldn’t move fast enough to get it and the mouse snuck into the space between my sink cabinet and the wall. So I sealed it up, all Cast of Amontillado-like.
It gets crazier; the Gymgirl noticed its tail sticking out from the side of the cabinet so we taped it there – but after a day, we felt bad and released its tail.
As far as we know, it’s still stuck behind the cabinet.
We set up what we hope is a one way tunnel out through a trap. Fingers crossed it works.
Me: Well, this has been quite a night. Her: Do you want a drink? Me: (nodding) Sheyeah.
Listening’s a lot harder when your ego’s on the line
Him: I don’t understand what happened. Me: Maybe there’s a reason why they went with someone else.
That’s a picture of the Citibank building here in Manhattan. I took it along with the picture below in March of last year for another entry.
About a month after I took it, read this article that said that the building was ridiculously flawed.
How ridiculous? There was a 1-in-16 year chance that the entire building would come tumbling down with a strong wind.
That’s pretty ridiculous.
But the weirdest thing about how this all unfolded was that a female college student from NJ figured out it was flawed, tracked down the lead engineer, and contacted him to tell him that his design was fatally flawed.
And despite haven’t any number of reasons to not listen to her, he did.
Then, as Hurricane Eva was barreling down onto the East Coast in 1978, NYC and these engineers all secretly fixed the problem. All without most of the city finding out. In fact, most people didn’t learn about it until 1995.
I thought of this recently when a colleague of mine was wondering why he lost a major account. I knew why. So I told him.
There’s this illogical argument called a genetic fallacy, where you don’t want to believe something that someone says because of the person saying it.
The engineer could have sneered at any one of the things about the person contacting him: her sex, where she was from, her age, her experience, etc.
But he didn’t. Because he was smart enough to realize she was right. That’s something I still find really amazing.
People wanna have any number of reasons they believe what they believe. Even if it’s not true.
Him: (later, upset) What do you know? You’re a lawyer, not a psychologist. Me: This is true. But what I said is also true.
But by 1924, we were allies and a statue was given by us to the UK. To honor George’s request, the City of London put Virginia soil down where the statue stands so that he kept his promise.
Similarly, when Lafayette died in 1834, he was buried in Paris, but under US soil.
And here in New York City, one of the two main highways that encircle the island is built on debris from Bristol, England after the Nazi’s bombed that place.
There’s something about taking a bit of the landscape of some other land that was part of home. Even if it’s only dirt or rubble.
As I said in my last post, I said goodbye to an old friend. It’s a joke. Kinda.
Harold came from a cutting of a plant that my mom brought decades ago from Taiwan to here. I took a cutting of that plant to my first apartment in NYC just off of Times Square.
Everywhere I moved, he came with me. And with every move, he got a little bigger.
But he just got too big for my small apartment. Brandon, who practically has his own nursery of plants, agreed to take him.
So in 9 degree weather, I bundled Harold up for the last time and brought him downtown.
Brandon: Man, the pictures didn’t do him justice. Me: He’s a big boy.
He’s just a plant, I understand. But he’s a bit of my hometown and my parents’ hometown. I found myself more sentimental than I might’ve imagined I’d be as I took him on his last subway ride.
A short time later, I asked another buddy that works there,
Me: How’s Harold doing? Cary: What is up with you and Harold!? Me: He was my roommate for over 20 years.
Like I said, there’s something about having a piece of the place you call home.
As a bit of comic relief, here’s the owner showing how to defend the jab – pay special attention to the quip he gives at 1:07, which is simultaneously brilliant, rude, and hilarious.
Thought I’d be done by now with my week but I’m not.
Had an unexpected expense of paying for some critical data I needed for a client project – which was astronomical because I didn’t know I’d need it until the 11th hour. Unfortunately, since this was a new client, it had to be done.
So I ended up agreeing to yet another project that will fill my time until the end of the month.
Maybe it’s just as well as it’ll force me to take some time off from the gym, especially since I’ve injured my rotator cuff.
One of the simultaneous pro/con things about getting older is that you really have to be thoughtful with how you spend the days you have left. I’m guessing I’ve got about 11,315 left.
There are any number of things I’d like to be able to try out/learn but my reserve of spare time is getting less and less by the day. I think in my 20s, I might have given this a go; it looks like fun.
When I was in college back, quite literally before the last turn of the century, I wrote my college thesis on The Hidden Asian in Film.
Did you ever notice that there were no Asians in any of the original Star Wars trilogy?
But the Asian influences were everywhere:
The Emperor / The Emperor
The Shogun’s helmet / Darth Vader’s shogun helmet
Martial arts / Martial arts
The force / Qi
Yin-Yang / Dark-Light Side of the Force
Jedi knights / Shaolin warrior monks
In fact, the story of the original Star Wars “borrowed” heavily from the Japanese film Hidden Fortress but Lucas didn’t think any actual Japanese merited any screen time.
And that’s pretty much how films and television treated Asians for years – Asian-ish. Even characters like Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan were Asian-like – caricatures played by Caucasian actors.
But there was this fella named Sessue Hayakawa, who is not the fella pictured above but was the first sex symbol of Hollywood – ever. He pre-dated Rudolph Valentino by several years.
And his story goes just a little bit in explaining why there’s always been an Asian influence in Hollywood and television but few actual Asians.
For that part of the story, I’m going to head over to my friend Jocelyn’s website: Speaking of China for part 2 of this entry.
Today is Columbus Day here in the States and for years, I rolled my eyes at people that felt it should be renamed. Tradition and whatnot.
Then someone sent me this Oatmeal comic, which I found pretty eye-opening. Ended up doing some more reading and he really was a horrible human being.
So now I’m in the other camp and agree that the name – although not the holiday itself – should be reconsidered.
Still, there’s this apocryphal story I like about him, which is called the Egg of Columbus.
The story goes that a buncha dudes were sitting around Columbus and essentially saying that, at some point, someone from Europe would have “found” America.
Columbus ignores them and, instead, asks for an egg.
He says to the men, “Stand this egg up one side.” The men can’t. So he then takes it, cracks the bottom of it, and then stands it up.
Then he says something like, Everything is easy once someone shows you how.
Here’s the story: A fella named Bill tried to recreate a French cheese called Neufchâtel here in the states. But, because of the differences in milk, climate, cows, etc., it wasn’t quite right. So he added cream to it to make it more appealing, resulting in what we call cream cheese now.
Decades later, with improved technology, companies were able to better mimic Neufchâtel without the cream. As an added bonus, they realized that, without the added cream, it was naturally lighter in calories and fat.
But, because now everyone was more familiar with the name Cream Cheese over Neufchâtel, they simply called it Light Cream Cheese.
If you read this blog, you’ll see that one of the themes I have is how location influences things – sometimes for the better and sometimes not
