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Be irreplacable

In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different


Was in the hospital again this weekend, although not for me. In the end, everything worked out ok, so that was a huge relief.

I’m there so often, I feel I should get some sort of frequent flyer miles program.

Me: Do we have a cat?
Her: A cat? No.
Me: Then I found your slippers underneath the bed.

After almost two solid months of working 12-14 hour days, took this weekend off. It was weird. There’s this underlying guilt when you live an eat-what-you-kill lifestyle that you should be working on something.

Picked up a book for the first time in months: The Lawyer Bubble – I have a preview copy I’m reviewing for the New York Journal of Books.

It looks bleak for future of the profession, especially for the current classes and recent grads: There are approximately 45,000 new lawyers each year but only 73,600 legal jobs expected in the next decade.

Not good.

My focus in the law is pretty narrow – mainly because it’s the part I find the most interesting.

Coco Chanel once said, In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.

Think that’s true but I like to add it: …and to be irreplaceable, one has to do things that one: (a) loves, (b) can be the best in the world at, and (c) can make money doing.

That last part is from Good to Great.

I think that the two ideas combined and lead to a happy and comfortable life.

For a number of my clients, I like to think that I’m irreplaceable. And I think I’m irreplaceable because I’m doing something I’m really good at and enjoy doing (workload notwithstanding).

As for those newly minted lawyers, hope they find something for themselves that fulfill all four criteria.

Life is way too short to spend your time doing something you don’t at least somewhat like.

And having $120,000 in additional debt around your neck while doing it is no fun either.

As for me, I’m going to try and take it easy today.

Maybe have a whole-wheat donut.

Mood: relieved
Music: Let them say I was a hard working stiff and sand of the golden age
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English is the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu of Languages

There’s a reason why the English language has taken over the world


On the way back from the fight, was chatting with the younger coach about books. He’s a voracious reader, which I both admire and envy. I used to read a book a week for years but then life got in the way.

Told him that the French and English are like Judo and BJJ.

In 1634, Cardinal Richelieu – the bad guy from the Three Musketeers – created the Académie française to preserve the French Language.

Essentially, the French language didn’t take on any foreign words if at all possible. In 1994, the Toubon laws were passed to make it a civil wrong to use an English word when a French equivalent existed.

Meanwhile, the English language refused to create an academy to “preserve” the English language so that soon, we had many words that all mean kinda the same thing like:

  • Give
  • Bequeath
  • Devise

But each one is slightly different. Because of this, the English language has far more words than French. Far more.

How many words does the French language have? Less than 100,000 words, and 35,000 common words.

How many words does the English language have? It has 1,013,913 as of June 10, 2009 at 10:22AM GMT.

If you think of a word like a tool, each tool is made for a specific task. To bequeath something means, “To give something that you can hold, to someone else, after you die.”

It’s the difference between “Keylock” (traditional Judo) and “Kimura,” “Americana,” and “Straight armlock” (three BJJ terms for the one Judo term). BJJ takes whatever it’s offered; if it works, it stays, if it doesn’t, it goes away.

It’s a pure meritocracy.

History has repeatedly shown one thing: Those things, people, places, cultures, that accept change, survive. The things that are rigid and intolerant, fade away.

French was the language of the world until the end of WWI. Prior to that, Otto von Bismark was said to have been asked what was the most important modern historical event? He replied, “That the North Americans speak English.”

He knew where the world was headed.

Wrote once that there’s a vast difference between broken and bendy.

If you aspire to be anything in life, aspire to be bendy.

Mood: full
Music:Demain sera pour tous un lendemain qui ne peut pas mentir
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Antifragile

We don’t have a word that’s the opposite of “fragile” – we should


This week is the first week I’ve had where I haven’t had a million deadlines so I’m easing back into normalcy. The weird thing is that high levels of pressure have been the norm for me for the past two months or so, so it’s hard for me to go back to having a bit of extra time again.

In some ways, it was a welcome distraction from not being able to go the gym and such.

Years ago, I wrote about this term called the Black Swan, which means a completely unforeseeable event that has a huge historical impact – like 9/11. A fella named Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a whole book on the subject with the apt subtitle: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

Anywho, Taleb coined another word he calls, Antifragile.

If fragility means that something breaks under stress, note that the English language has no antonym – we have no word that means grows stronger under stress.

In other words, the opposite of fragile is not sturdy nor resilient. When something is fragile, it becomes weaker when stressed. There is no word that means, Becomes stronger when stressed.

I think that most things do, though. Isn’t that how muscles are made, how iron is forged? One puts these things through stress and only then does it grow stronger.

Of course, if the stress is so great that it kills you, you’ve gone too far.

There are things, then, that happen that make us fragile and things that make us anti-fragile. I like to think that that most things make us anti-fragile.

We are still here, after all, no?

Mood: oddly relaxed
Music: these shoulders hold up so much, they won’t budge
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Hoplophobia

One of the rarest fears in the world is the fear of weapons

Don’t understand many things. Such as how the universe can constantly be expanding. Or the meaning of life.

Or how some people like Victoria Soto find the courage to give up their lives to protect others, while some others can do nothing but stand by the sides and point.

One of the rarest phobias is hoplophobia – the fear of weapons. It’s so rare that this is probably the first time you’ve ever heard of it.

Don’t understand that.

If you should fear one thing, it’s something that spits 800 bullets a minute.

In an ironic twist, the exact same thing that happened here with Sandy Hook happened on the same day in China. There, not one person – child or otherwise – was killed. The only difference between the two events was the lethality of the weapon used: in China, it was a knife, in America it was a gun.

There are 310,000,000 non-military guns right now in America – those are nine digits. Why do we need even one more?

Because it’s in the Constitution?
So is slavery.

Because it’s tradition?
So was the aforementioned slavery and lack of women’s suffrage.

Because we need to protect ourselves from the government?
The government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons. That’s laughable. I’m writing this on the most powerful weapon against oppressive government and this has been proven repeatedly through history both very old and recent.

So why then do we continue to add to that 310 million figure? Let’s be honest here:

It’s so people that love guns can continue to have them and the gun manufacturers that make a buck it from it can continue to do so.

This, I understand even less.

And I’m not discounting the need to discuss mental illness – I’m all for discussing mental illness – but it’s not a binary thing. It’s not (a) deal with mental illness or (b) have less guns. It’s both.

Been very ranty lately. I’m usually not. But I’ve repeated a quote on FB that I feel bears repeating ad nauseam:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do harm, but because of those who look at it without doing anything. – Albert Einstein

Victoria Soto gave her life to do something. The least we can do is ask of those that profess to represent us to do something about this beside talk.

Beside trade hot breath and lies.

People on my Facebook page were upset because I wrote that “I am shocked at how little anything shocks me any more.”

  • 310 million guns already, more being produced.
  • Mental illness as a stigma rather than a health issue that needs to be dealt with.
  • The Snookification of fame – where it doesn’t matter how or why you become famous, but merely that you get famous.

How is this – honestly – shocking to anyone? In 2012 alone we had sixteen (16!) mass shootings.

Don’t understand why more people don’t have hoplophobia and I don’t understand how any one can honestly be shocked by this.

Angry, upset, heartbroken, furious, livid, despondent – these words I can understand.

But shocked? Shocked?

I seriously doubt anyone is truly shocked that something like this happened.

———-

Here are 10 Arguments that Gun Advocates Make and Why They’re Wrong.

Location: my head
Mood: disappointed
Music: There is no music today.
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Truth is like gold

You don’t grow it, you wash away all that’s not gold

I’m in a pretty enviable position in life where, for the most part, get to cherry pick my clients. If I don’t like a client, I don’t take their work.

However, my issue’s that I have to work with support staff of other parties that I don’t necessarily like to deal with. As I get older, find that my tolerance for total horses__t gets lower and lower.

Recently got into a heated argument with someone that was plainly wrong on the law.

I find the more explaining one has to do, the less likely what’s being said is the truth. After a few hours of wasting time, just had to get on with my life and told her such.

The worst lies in the world, I think, are the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Female: (irritated) Who you do think you are? I’m trying to help.
Me: I think I’m the guy that’s right here. And miss, are you trying to help our mutual client or yourself?

Leo Tolstoy once said that, Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Man, I miss wrasslin. It’s gross, sweaty, stinky, and gross (did I say that?)

But it’s also pure. If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You can’t explain it away, you can’t cover it up.

You can always land a lucky punch in boxing, you can’t land a lucky clinch or armbar.

And as gross as wrasslin is, it’s less gross than the often piles of horses__t I find I have to wade through sometimes.

Location: getting dressed for another meeting
Mood: still sick
Music: Caught ya red handed in the biscuit tin
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Veterans Day 2012

Destined to repeat history

Prior to 1862, most guns were single-firing or revolver-type guns that had a relatively slow rate of fire. But in 1862, a doctor named Gatling created the Gatling Gun, which could fire at an unheard of rate of 200 rounds per minute.

Gatling said that:

It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine – a gun – which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.

His purpose was to make warfare so terrifying, so costly, that no sane country would go to war again.

Similarly, General Sherman’s widely considered to be the first modern general because of his policy of total war. He wanted to destroy “much of the South’s physical and psychological capacity to wage war.”

To this day, Sherman’s still considered one of history’s villains in the south.

I always thought of Sherman as the human equivalent of Gatling’s gun. He thought that he would perform actions so horrifying that the war would end and no one would ever want war again.

He wasn’t the first nor the last.

In the 50s, the idea was that a nuclear bomb would be so terrifying as to prevent war from ever happening again.

That’s where Gatling, Sherman, and all the others were wrong.

We consistently underestimate mankind’s ability to totally _______ each other over.

This entry is because my friend and other wrasslin instructor, Jason, said that he’s sad to see that WWII veterans are dying off. He’s worried that people will forget the lessons of war.

With every bit of respect to Jason – a war veteran – the bigger issue is that people never learn the lessons of war to begin with.

Sherman himself said it best: “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”

It was true when he said it and true now, as are his characterizations of those that seem to want it so easily.

In any case, this blog’ll return to more whining about my bum leg later on but for now, the deepest gratitude to people like Jason, Matt, Dennis, Danny and all the others.

Thanks.

Location: getting ready for work with popcorn popping nearby
Mood: grateful
Music: The old man said to me Said don’t always take life so seriously
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Saying things give them life

Have you left no sense of decency?

A strange bag of junk - or dog poop - tied to an awning in NYC

Before Tom Hanks was a major star, he was in this film called Splash where Daryl Hannah’s character picked the name “Madison” off a street sign because she didn’t know any better.

As of 2012, it’s the 4th most popular name for girls in America.

And then there was recently this fake news article by the Onion that the official Iranian news agency essentially copied and put up as true.

Finally, in the story of creation in both the bible and Greek mythology, a higher power – God in the former, Prometheus (or Athena) in the latter – takes clay and literally breathes onto them to give them life.

There’s something about words that live independently of ourselves. These throwaway things we say and do continue on without us.

Do you remember the pink slime thing I wrote a few months ago? As I thought, the price of beef is dramatically higher now. Another fake news story with very real world implications.

I’m much more careful about the stuff I put out into the aether cause I know that words put out into the world manage to take a life on their own. Even if we just want things to be hot breath and lies.

Write this because, as the political season heightens, I’m finding my online world being filled with more and more with things that are completely untrue – on both sides of the fence.

And I wonder if anyone feels at all even slightly bad about doing whatever it takes to win.

Cause what really is winning if we’re left with ridiculous names, high beef prices, and lies as truth.

What kinda prize is that?

Joseph N. Welch: Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Location: still home with a bum leg
Mood: (really) slothful
Music: I’ll settle for one day to believe in you
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Old Man Logan

Struggle is the meaning of life

A lone bicycle in NYC

Me: (watching a contestant on X-Factor) I find her really annoying.
Her: I wanna kill myself.

The wife got me a cane for my injury, which made life immensely better for me although I do think it makes me look slightly ridiculous.

A recent Wall Street Journal article entitled Dirtier Lives May Be Just the Medicine We Need notes that while we’ve destroyed a litany of diseases (tuberculosis, polio, cholera, malaria, etc), we may have replaced them with modern illnesses (asthma, eczema, hay fever, Crohn’s disease, etc).

The hypothesis seems to be that the body must struggle against something. And if it has nuthin to struggle against, it begins to overreact to the things around it.

As an aside, reading my FB feed, I’m starting to think I know a lotta crackpot conspiracy theorists. But I digress…

Bring this up cause my mom is – justifiably – upset that that I got injured yet again.

Her: Why can’t you do something safer? Like cycling?

And of course, nothing is ever safe.

Was gonna tell her that the nature of man is to struggle against something. That there’s this Swahili saying that goes: Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So celebrate the struggle.

And without the struggle, the body and mind will find its own thing to struggle with.

But my Chinese isn’t good enough, and I don’t have the words. So instead, told her I’d consider it.

My wife’s taken to calling me Old Man Logan and took the picture below for her blog.

It’s hard to argue against that characterization.

Columbus Circle before the rain

Forgot to mention that, after I left the gym, took a cab back to my pad. When I got out, a stranger holding two grocery bags looked at me trying to hobble outta the cab.

Him: Can I help you?
Me: No, it’s fine.
Him: (walking to me and leaning down) I insist.
Me: (Putting arm around him) Ah, the kindness of strangers. I’ve got to remember I’m not 17 anymore.
Him: (laughing) You and me both, friend.

Location: home, for the past five days
Mood: slothful
Music: Don’t go looking for trouble, it’s looking for you
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It doesn’t take much to feel rich

Luxury comes from the little things in life
Classic NYC Coffee Shop

Me: So I bought some bathroom tissue.
Her: Do we need any?
Me: Well, no. But they were on sale – 48 rolls for $23.
Her: You bought 48 rolls!?
Me: Well, actually it’s looks like I bought two orders, so 96. (thinking) I could cancel one order.
Her: (laughing)
Me: I’ll cancel one order.

It’s not a bad trade – I get to smell nice all the time, she gets bulk commodities.

Told her recently about how, during grade school, there was always this huge garbage bag fulla pretzels during lunch.

These were big, soft, doughy kinds you get on the street corner except they were cold and soggy.

For $0.25, you could get one after lunch. Usually didn’t have a quarter to buy one but one kid named Scott always bought one. Realized one day that he bought it in lieu of lunch altogether.

I think this is the first time I told any one that. Figured my family didn’t have any scratch either so why rat him out?

In any case, recall that my mom gave me a quarter once so I bought one. It was wet, soggy and dense. But I loved it. I felt rich.

There’s this scene in one of my favourite books where a mother is asked why she pours a cuppa joe for her kid if her kid never drinks it.

The mom replies that they don’t have much of anything. But she can afford to give her kid one cup of cheap coffee to dump down the sink.

Said once that I have more clothes than anyone else I know.

Just got another custom made suit. When I put it on, I immediately remembered the pretzel and laughed. Felt silly. Then I gave my mom a call.

Funny how the mind works, yeah?

“There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but Mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.

Neeley and Francie loved coffee but seldom drank it. Today, as usual, Neeley let his coffee stand black and ate his condensed milk spread on bread. He sipped a little of the black coffee for the sake of formality. Mama poured out Francie’s coffee and put the milk in it even though she knew that the child wouldn’t drink it.

Francie loved the smell of coffee and the way it was hot. As she ate her bread and meat, she kept one hand curved about the cup enjoying its warmth. From time to time, she’d smell the bitter sweetness of it. That was better than drinking it. At the end of the meal, it went down the sink.

Mama had two sisters, Sissy and Evy, who came to the flat often. Every time they saw the coffee thrown away, they gave Mama a lecture about wasting things.

Mama explained: ‘Francie is entitled to one cup each meal like the rest. If it makes her feel better to throw it away rather than to drink it, all right. I think it’s good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging.’

This queer point of view satisfied Mama and pleased Francie. It was one of the links between the ground-down poor and the wasteful rich. The girl felt that even if she had less than anybody in Williamsburg, somehow she had more. She was richer because she had something to waste. She ate her sugar bun slowly, reluctant to have done with its sweet taste, while the coffee got ice-cold. Regally, she poured it down the sink drain feeling casually extravagant.”

— A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Location: downtown in just a bit
Mood: groggy
Music: waiting At the counter For the man To pour the coffee
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Chinatowns and the Space Shuttle

Why does every major American city have a Chinatown?

When I was traveling around Europe once, had the idea of stopping at every Chinatown I could find and having the beef with broccoli there – yes, I know it’s not traditionally Chinese but, then again, neither am I.

In any case, went to the one in Paris, London, and (kinda) Berlin and Hamburg. None in Malaga.

This writer for Freakanomics wrote that every large American city he likes has a Chinatown. The reason, it turns out, is because in history, it marked a stage in development where a city was large enough to require a railroad. And back in the day, when you wanted a railroad built, you called the Chinese.

Instant Chinatown.

It’s all of these unexpected consequences that I find so interesting in life. Like when the British became a superpower by using copper-plating on their ships instead of plain wood.

It used to mark a point in development of nations when they headed to space.

In 2004, the Cassini spacecraft went to Saturn and the Today show had Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on. Matt Lauer asked him how America could justify a $3.3 billion dollar mission such as that.

Dr. Tyson replied, “First of all, it’s $3.3 billion divided by 12 – it’s a 12 year mission. Now we have the real number: less than $300 million per year. Hmmm…$300 million. American spend more than that per year on lip balm.”

Right now, we spend less than 0.5 of a penny out of every dollar on space.

Think it it’s a direct consequence that we stopped trying to go to space that America’s fallen behind in science and math. People like Matt Lauer see the dollar figure and fixate on that, not seeing the jobs created, the side technologies (like microwaves and the Dustbuster), and all of the inspiration for nerdy kids like myself.

By now you’ve seen a million pics of the space shuttle making like LL Cool J and going back to Cali. As a kid growing up in the era of the space shuttle, it’s remarkably sad to me.

At this rate, we’ll have to head to China and build Americantowns.

Suppose I’ll have to go there to get a traditional American Beef with Broccoli.

Location: about to go to the post office
Mood: nostalgic
Music: I’ll soon be back again, that’s what I said in China
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