Tag: social commentary

Conversations with the wife and politics

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2014/07/21
No Comments on Conversations with the wife and politics

Putin knew what he was working with

Felt rough all week; my leg was swollen like a sausage and I was under the weather. So I stayed home one day, put on my most comfortable, ratty tee-shirt and what can only be described as capris for men.

I’m not (terribly) proud.

The wife saw me puttering around and pulled me close, nuzzled me, and gave me a kiss. She then pulled away and looked me deeply in my eyes.

“You look like a homeless person,” she said.

———-
On a more somber note, the news is full of what’s going on in Israel and Ukraine. On the former, it’s a complex subject and one I’m not qualified to address, although I have my own particular views on the matter.

On the latter, however, I read with interest how Putin is publicly shocked at what’s gone on despite being actively involved in the unrest in Ukraine since the first day. Which immediately recalled to mind a story I once told you years ago.

Putin’s been working with murderous thugs for years and he’s suddenly surprised when they start acting like murderous thugs.

He knew what he was working with when he started.

Location: home, with an ice pack
Mood: old
Music: Tell my wife I love her very much (she knows!)
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Tags family, human condition, news, social commentary

personal

Stephen Colbert and the good ole days

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2014/07/14
3 Comments on Stephen Colbert and the good ole days

Depth of character goes deeper than an accent

Stephen Colbert was born in Tennessee had a southern accent growing up. He realized that having it was a detriment to how he wanted to be seen in life and worked to get rid of it.

I realized something similar when I went to college in 1990 and met non-New Yorkers, you see, New-Yorkers like to share Sublets in NYC, this is because of the high prices and population density. It’s probably more of a necessity than preference!

That year, New York City was the murder capital of the United State. Here are the murder and assault rates when I was a teenager.

And the little slice of the world I called home had one of the sharpest increases in murder and violence in 1988, two years before the height. It wasn’t Bed-Stuy, but it sure as heck wasn’t Stamford, Connecticut.

As I’ve said a number of times before, it’s always someone invariably not from NYC that pines for the good ole days of “gritty” New York. I figure they imagine it from reruns of The Cosby Show or Fame.

Lately, though, I’ve been having strangers tell me that I must have lived an easy life growing up. And my roll my eyes as they try to impress me with the the time they were once mugged outside a suburban mall.

I grew up carrying two wallets, just so I could still have some scratch to get home when I did get mugged. Still do when I travel.

Everyone is so quick to judge others based on how they speak or appear, which reminds me of that quote: We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anyway, Stephen Colbert lost most of his family in an airline crash when he was 10, which is more horrific than anything I could ever imagine – or ever want to.

But you’d never know it from how he is or how he speaks because he controls how people see him so well.

Most people assume that, because the depth of their character only goes as far as their accent, the same must be true of everyone else. I don’t talk like the poor son of a fish monger so I must not have been one.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Him: It’s one thing to grow up in a rough area, it’s another thing to stay there.
Me: Why would we stay there if we didn’t have to? No one who was born poor wants to stay poor. It’s not like you see on TV.

Location: start of a new summer workweek
Mood: amused
Music: Wait for the day when I can save face and come to a happy home.
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Tags conversations, dialogue, interesting facts, observations, overheard in ny, social commentary

personal

What color is the sun?

We don’t see things as they really are

After the craziness of the past weekend, was hoping to find some time to decompress.

Unfortunately, had a full blown night of insomnia that’s thrown me off kilter for the rest of the week.

In any case, my friend Paolina asked me if what happened over the weekend was a Big City thing or not. Didn’t know how to answer her since I spent my entire life here.

It’s like that thing I told you about years ago where a frog in a well knows nothing of the ocean.

Wonder if the fish in the sea’d be surprised to know that that we’re up here shooting each other to death over parking spaces?

Most of us spend our entire lives unaware that we’re in our own little fishbowl in the universe. Some of us realize the net result’s usually the same.

Me? I read anything I can get my hands on, trying vainly to see the world as it is, rather than what I think it to be.

But every once in a while, someone reminds me that I don’t actually see things as they are, I see things as I am. Who I am. Where I am.

The sun is white.

It’s the atmosphere that makes it seem yellow. But it’s not yellow at all and only a handful of people ever has seen it as it really is.

That bothers me some.

But then I get some sleep, eventually, and forget that I once cared to know.

Location: in a newish room
Mood: philosophical from lack of sleep
Music: You want me down on earth, but I am up in space
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Tags interesting facts, observations, quote, self-improvement, social commentary, tiny wisdom

personal

Bowe Bergdahl, Tiananmen Square, and exchanges

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2014/06/04
No Comments on Bowe Bergdahl, Tiananmen Square, and exchanges

Danger invites rescue

One of the most eloquent judges ever was a New Yorker named Benjamin Cardozo.

He had a case called Wagner v. International Railway where a fella and his cousin are tossed from a train. The first guy goes to look for his cousin and is injured himself. He then sues the train company, which says, “We didn’t ask you to search for your cousin!”

To which Cardozo said, “Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief […] The emergency begets the man. The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.”

Essentially, Cardozo said, “You made the situation happen where a normal guy did the normal thing: tried to help. You can’t create a situation that causes danger and then say, Well, we didn’t ask you to help!”

Danger invites rescue. Because, while human beings – by and large – are animals, there are those that aren’t. There are those that point at burning buildings to laugh and those that run in to help. We are in need of all you dormant warriors for justice, the people need you.

That was very first thought three years ago when I first heard about Bowe Bergdahl. It remains my thought now.

While we’re on a rare political bent I note that today is also the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square ~~protest~~ massacre.

Him: But don’t they have freedom now?
Me: When it happened, the government said, “Holy crap, we’re in trouble – give them everything they ask for, except the one thing we really want.”

Property ownership? Done. Capitalism? Done. Private industry? Done.

Everything but what really mattered to the government, which was power. Political freedom was the one thing that mattered to the government and the one thing that should have mattered to the people.

Whenever you trade X for Y – $499 for a toy called iSomething, freedom for basic rights, one man for five, etc – you’re making a conscious choice of what you really want.

Only afterward do you ever find out if it was really worth it.

It’s the lawyer in me that always wonder what’s really for sale.

Location: in a new laundry room
Mood: injured
Music: you’re taking these pills for to fill up your soul
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Bowe Bergdahl was traded for 5 Taliban commanders. Here’s who they are.

Tags conversations, dialogue, observations, overheard in ny, quote, social commentary

personal

Why it’s so hard to get from Brooklyn to Queens

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2014/05/19
1 Comment on Why it’s so hard to get from Brooklyn to Queens

Frankie, Sofie, and the trolleys

Had to work over the weekend so I found myself in the middle of Brooklyn early Saturday morning. The nature of mass transit here in NYC is that: (a) there’s a lot of track work over the weekends and (b) it’s nearly impossible to go from Brooklyn to Queens without first going into Manhattan.

The former means that trips that usually take an hour take twice as long.

The latter is just a constant annoyance because that initial trip shouldn’t take an hour in the first place.

There was a great article written about this time last year called A Very Brief History of Why It’s So Hard to Get From Brooklyn to Queens that says that we used to have a really extensive trolley system here in NYC but these were destroyed by corporations that wanted to create a bus system instead.

The short-term greed of a handful of men has resulted in decades of wasted time and money for millions.

That’s probably why I enjoy history so much, because so much of the past still affects our lives to this day, we just don’t know it.

Right now I’m reading about Franz and Sophie Ferdinand and I am amazed how one couple’s death changed the world so profoundly.

In any case, made it home in time drive my dad to the supermarket, pick my brother up from the airport, and see my sister and her kid. Pretty full family weekend.

Right now, I’m back in Manhattan but I have to go to midtown to argue with someone over a bill, then the gym, then out to Long Island for some more work.

I’m traveling a lot. Just don’t know if I’m going anywhere.

Location: midtown
Mood: irritated
Music: been traveling a hard road Had been looking for someone
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Tags interesting facts, social commentary

personal

Painting oneself into a corner

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2014/03/24
1 Comment on Painting oneself into a corner

The new Old World Order

This whole Ukraine/Russia world event is interesting to me as someone that grew up in the 70s and 80s.

As a kid, the “commies” were the bad guys. They were what we taunted each other with in the playground, what adults discussed in hushed tones

The Berlin Wall fell and then the Soviet Union followed.

Suddenly, these guys that we’ve been hating all this time just up and disappeared. But on the flip side, we’re still the same. We’re still the Americans. We still have the Republicans and Democrats (for better or worse). And that rhetoric is still there.

For the Russians, there’s an element of their own success at painting us out to be their enemy. Decades of it, plus the fact that the West triumphed in the Cold War, plus our own self-inflicted stupidity and arrogance, means that it’s easy for us to remain their boogeyman while they’re no longer ours.

They’re victims of their own propaganda success.

As for me, I try as much as I can to be even-keeled. Because I never know when the situation may change. On a related note, spoke to an old friend the other day and was reminded why we stopped speaking in the first place.

He’s 42 and still angry, still suspicious, still sure that conspiracies abound. He’s 42 but really still 18.

At 18 his convictions were hills from which he looked; at 42 they’re caves where he hides. The world’s changed around him but he hasn’t.

For the Reddit Ask Me Anything this Thursday, I dropped the the price for The Men Made of Stone to $0.99 and A Great First Date to $2.99, so pick up a copy!

Here are some details about the novel.

Location: the weekend, the local diner getting a Cobb Salad
Mood: good
Music: everybody’s gotta get there somehow
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He dug himself into a corner

Tags human condition, observations, opinion, social commentary

personal

It’s the Ides of March again (and again)

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2014/03/17
1 Comment on It’s the Ides of March again (and again)

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

My brother’s in town again so he stayed over the other night.

For over 15 years, he’s been reading Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization – he’s finally on the very last volume of the series (11). The author spent his entire adult life writing the series from 1935 to 1975; he died in 1981.

We both like history because it’s fascinating just how much it repeats itself. You could take the news about the latest scandal on cheating, double-dealing, and influence from the Roman Senate and change it to the DC Senate and no one would notice.

We’re such predictable creatures. There are the occasional surprises, though.

Right about now are the Ides of March so it was 2,058 years ago that Brutus killed Caesar.

Roman historians like Plutarch commonly note that most people – including Brutus himself – thought that Caesar was Brutus’ father.

So Brutus wasn’t just killing a politician, he was killing his father. It makes Caesar’s last words all the more pitiful, “Even you, Brutus?”

Was pretty young when I learned this and found it completely unbelievable that something as mundane as politics would drive someone to kill his own father.

But just recently an article called I lost my dad to Fox News, which talks about how politics split a father and son. It’s not really so unbelievable now.

As for me, I’m reading about the 1683 Battle of Vienna and the struggle between Muslims and the west.

There’s this French saying that goes, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more things stay the same.

There’s something comically tragic about that.

Me: What are you going to read after you’re finally done with the series?
Brother: I have no idea.

On a different point entirely, next Thursday, I’m doing a Reddit Ask Me Anything on the first book I wrote about gangs in the 1990s, The Men Made of Stone.

If you’re a Reddit user and/or have read the book, stop on by here and support!

Location: last night, kitchen making more chili
Mood: good
Music: Wheels are turning in the bed you make
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Tags conversations, dialogue, overheard in ny, social commentary, tiny wisdom

personal

It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Post author By Logan Lo
Post date 2013/12/02
3 Comments on It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

What’s the Point?

Him: What’s the point? You’re 40, when are you ever gonna get into a fight, let alone a sword fight?
Me: Why do you play the guitar? You’re never gonna be in a band.

Spent most of the holiday weekend traveling around the city – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island – and New Jersey as I did work, saw my rents, and the wife’s family as well. Exhausting.

Was debating going to the gym last week because my leg was killing me but I ended up going, knowing I’d be eating my weight in complex carbohydrates.

While I was there, a buddy, who forgot my leg was injured, was goofing around and kicked my knee. I went down like a sack of bricks. Still not a 100% now so I’m using it as an opportunity to catch up on some work and my social media.

Speakinga which, I’m genuinely amused by people that are so critical of the whole Black Friday shopping frenzies.

The way I look at it, everyone’s got a thing. Something that makes no sense to anyone else, but matters to them.

One guy whom I’m friends with, wakes up at the crack of dawn to hit the gym, goes to work, goes to the gym again, and lives to punch someone in the face or get punched in the face. To anyone else not in the life, this probably seems crazy. “What’s the point?”

To him, there’s a point.

Yet he had this whole rant as to people waking up at the crack of dawn to get a good deal on a television, essentially saying, “What’s the point?”

I remember my parents waiting in line for a 13″ black and white TV for me years ago. It was my favorite possession as a child. It made me feel less poor.

For all I know, that’s why these people braved the cold and the sneers. What does he know? For that matter, what do I? And who really cares what people hang meaning upon?

There’s a hypocrisy with people that point out the inane in someone else’s life while not realizing it in their own.

I know it’s a bit ridiculous that I spend so much time either rolling around the floor or whacking someone with a blunt object. Yet to me it has meaning.

And look, I think it’s nuts that someone would want to risk life and limb to try to get a cheap toaster. But I’m not them. And they probably think it’s nuts that I spend so much time icing my leg because I can’t accept I’m 40.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the fella that climbed Mount Everest, once noted that, It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Personally, that someone has a goal – however silly I might personally find it – is a laudable thing in and of itself. It’s better to have some passion for something than live life as if in a haze. Even if no one else understands it.

Me: Spent Friday upgrading the two computers. I installed about 40 updates and a wireless 802.11n card into the living room MCE. We can stream full HD wirelessly.
Her: That’s nice.
Me: FULL WIRELESS HD! Not 720 like a chump. 1080p!
Her: …
Me: Clearly, you’re not affording this the attention it deserves.

Location: icing my leg at home
Mood: amused
Music: I have to climb Up on the side of this mountain of mine
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Tags conversations, dialogue, friends, observations, overheard in ny, self-improvement, social commentary, tiny wisdom

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