Tag: social commentary

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Goldfish are limited to the size of their bowl

Your surroundings determine your growth

The title of this post is a bit misleading; it’s only partly true that it’s the size of a bowl that limits the size of a goldfish. It’s more accurate to say that:

A goldfish in a small bowl, that’s fed just a little bit, will grow slowly and most likely die as a small goldfish. A lot has to do with the nitrate concentration of the bowl whereby the smaller the bowl, the higher the relative concentration.

But for the sake of not boring you more than I normally do, let’s just say it’s (a) the size of the bowl, (b) the type of fish, and (c) how much crap that fish ingests.

I have an interesting cross section of friends. One group is made up of my college friends, the other is made up of my business/legal friends, the other is made up by my fencing/wrasslin/fighting friends.

If there is a plus with being almost 40, it’s that I can choose exactly what to do with my time, and with whom I spend it. I get to choose my bowl, if you will.

Another thing I do is try to minimize the amount of crap I take in, both literally and figuratively. Literally, I try to eat well and minimize my intake of processed foods whenever possible. Gyros not withstanding. Pureprovender helps me out with this.

Figuratively, try to minimize my intake of crap beliefs whenever possible too. I’m regularly surprised who I find on one end of a spectrum or another.

The hopelessly liberal that believe that every person of wealth is evil (type of fish) and the intransigent conservative that ignores environment (size of bowl).

The feverishly religious is as difficult to stand as the ardently atheist. The list goes on.

I recognize my own prejudices but, because of social media, have to put up all these shrill – unsourced – beliefs.

Luckily, I can block them out but I set up a reminder for myself to check in with them every so often. But it’s ever the same. They’re in their same bowls, ingesting the same nitrogen. A frog in a well knows nothing of the ocean.

It’s disappointing but living your own life is hard enough so I just let be and swim away.

As for me, I seek bigger bowls whenever possible.

Mood: upbeat
Music: I’m just a normal boy that sank when I fell overboard
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If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything

These are two people who don’t know the definition of “Great”

Hitler, I am beginning to feel, is a very great man, like an inspired religious leader…not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power, but a mystic, a visionary who really wants the best for his country….

— Charles Lindbergh on meeting Adolf Hitler (1936)

He’s a great guy.

— Dennis Rodman on meeting Kim Jong Un (2013)

Idiots.

Imagine for a moment that you remembered everything you ever learned. Ever high school lesson, every cooking recipe, everything. You would probably be the smartest person on earth.

But the opposite is also true; if you don’t learn anything from the past, you may end up the dumbest person on earth.

While we’re all stupid on different subjects, the universally stupid seem to be those people that refuse to learn anything about history. Because history is nuthin if not repetitive.

Michael Crichton once said that, If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.

Unfortunately, if Facebook has taught me anything, it’s that people have zero sense of history. Yet they’re part of a greater collective, a greater tree of stupid.

This worries me.

Then again, I can hardly count myself amongst the truly smart.

Her: Didn’t you just say those chips were making you feel sick?
Me: Yes.
Her: They why are you continuing to eat them?!
Me: (mouthful of chips) I’m not.

———-

My buddy Ji just started a blog too so here’s a little plug for him – Better Pickled.

And while I’m at it, please check out artist Dana Burns, who left NYC to be an artist in France and posts in both English and French! Grenobloise

Mood: busy
Music: He’s so simple minded he can’t drive his module
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People used to say “And the winner is…” not “And the Oscar goes to…”

All men are created equal; we don’t stay that way

Didn’t watch the Oscars last night. Just not my thing. But I did manage to catch the very end of it where they’re singing a song to the “losers.” Found that interesting.

Because, I don’t know if you noticed, but they never say: And the winner is… like they used to; now they only say: And the Oscar goes to… .

The reason is obvious, they don’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are, indeed, winners and losers in life.

Which brings me to a friend of mine. Like most people, he only knows part of a saying and not the whole thing: It’s not just that “Curiosity killed the cat,” the saying finishes: “Satisfaction brought him back.”

That means the saying is exactly the opposite of what most people think it is.

It’s only after the cat’s curiosity is satisfied that he’s made whole again. Without satisfaction, curiosity was killing him.

As for my friend. He thinks the saying is, Everyone is equal. That is not the saying. People are decidedly not equal.

99.99% of the course of your life depends on the parents to whom you are born.

All men/people are created equal, but time, tide, and effort means that no one stays that way.

I have been wrasslin for over a decade now, on and off. I’m terrible.

However, I’m a pretty good fencer. Certainly not the best, but definitely not the worst. And the reasons for the two are the same: time, tide, and effort.

Put in much more time at being a good fencer than I did at being a good wrestler and my injuries mean that I can still fence but not wrassle.

Getting back to my friend, he’s also my fencing student but refuses to show me the proper respect as his instructor. That’s forgivable to an extent because he’s my friend.

But the moment he even hinted at disrespect for my instructor, I had to ask him to stop coming.

He had an easy out: apologize, pay a fine, and we could all move on with our lives.

And yet, he refused.

He only knows me as his drinking buddy Logan, his equal. And when we drink, we are. But put a weapon in my hand and I’m far and away not his equal.

And the reason is simple: I earned it, I worked for it.

The problem is the same with the Oscars, with the the soccer trophies everyone wins for just showing up, and him.

They confuse equality to equality of effort. They are not the same.

The other issue is that the other students have been part of other schools, and teams with coaches. They understand that they submit to the will of the instructor for two reasons: (a) safety and (b) to get better.

He does not understand this. At some point, one earns the right to be treated as an equal but he has not – not yet in this arena at least. I’m disappointed in both him and the situation.

To excel in something, one must bend. The winners in life are not the ones that futility fight everything but the ones that bend, learn, and come back for more.

If I had to rename this blog from On (or close to) Schedule, it would be to: If you can be anything, be bendy. I’ve said it a million times to him and everyone else.

We face a choice daily to be broken or be bendy; those that consistently choose the latter are the ones that survive and excel.

The door is always open for him, if he’s willing to pay the price of admission.

And a major part of the price is to shut up and learn from someone that did just that.

Mood: disappointed
Music: I won’t be coming this way again. Burn them bridges down
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Hedy: King of two, Jack of four

Hedy Lamarr is one of my heroes; she should be yours too

Heady Lamarr - not my copyright, obviously

Met up with this nice fella who congratulated me on some of the work in one of my professions.

Him: At some point, you’ll have to pick one. You can’t be a Jack-of-all-Trades.
Me: I’m not, I’m King of two, Jack of four.

Hedy Lamarr was this major actress back in the day. If you said her name round the 30s/40s, everyone knew her like we know Angelina.

She was also a major spy for the allies against the Nazis, which is pretty cool.

But that’s not even the coolest thing about her. The coolest thing about her is that she changed my life; and yours. In fact, she changed the world.

She came up with the underpinning of Wifi and secure cellular/mobile calls.

In other words, I couldn’t write this sitting in bed if not for this actress.

  • The fellas I fence with probably only know me as the best fencer in the class.
  • The fellas I wrestle with probably only know me as the worst wrestler in the class.
  • My clients probably only know me as a tech lawyer.
  • My other clients know me as the guy with that fancy new designation.
  • You folks probably only know me as a NYC insomniac with an incredibly nerdtastic blog.

Funny thing’s that I’m none of these things in my head.

People always wanna peg you as one thing or another; makes it easier for them to know how to treat you. And when y’re young, you don’t know what you are yet so you try on different things as you figure it out – the bow-tie wearing conservative, the flower-power girl, etc. That’s fine when you’re a kid.

But at some point you gotta be something more than a cliche.

Be anything you wanna be; but I hope you aspire to be more than a cliche. Hope you aspire to have more than a big screen TV.

May be a dork, yeah, but I’m the only dork of my kind.

Location: no place special
Mood: conflicted
Music: my tears don’t show, but oh honey, they flow

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Make it alright

We only realize too late

The unlucky are nothing more than a frame of reference for the lucky, Mr. Fisher. You are unlucky so I may know that I am not. Unfortunately, the lucky never realize they are lucky until it’s too late. Take yourself for instance. Yesterday you were better off than you are today, but it took today for you to realize it. But… today has arrived, and it’s too late, you see?

—Lucky Number Slevin

So, another kid – a girl – killed herself because of cyberbullying.

Do you know about Lori Drew, the 47-woman that convinced this 13 year old girl to hang herself? She got off cause the laws never thought that a bored housewife’d torment a kid to death just for kicks over wire.

Always wondered what kinda douchebag you gotta be to torment someone just cause you wanna and then hide behind a computer screen or cell phone.

It’s a bitter thing to read cause I’ve lived almost three times longer than her and still feel like I’m a kid.

Wish you waited. Cause you grow up and wonder why people you barely remember ever affected you so much. Then they find you on some social-networking site and you think, “Man, they look terrible!” and start to believe in karma but then change your mind.

Maybe that’s just me.

Honestly wonder what people like Lori Drew tell themselves to make it alright for them to sleep at night.

I’d like to know, because, man, I could use the rest.

———-

On a positive tech note, pretty jazzed that as many people gave as much as they did to Haiti via text – something like $30 million in just a few weeks.

Didja know that Americans gave $1.8 billion to the Asian tsuanmi? I say the measure of a society’s humanity’s how they take carea those not as lucky.

Yet another reason I love this joint.

Location: a light green couch
Mood: wired
Music: Same birds that followed me to school When I was young (Spotify)

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Bully/I remember you

Me 25 years ago

Was recently mocked for being a 36 year-old man that carries the baggage of his 17 year-old self. Probably true.

Heard on the news that the woman that Roman Polanski raped when she was a child forgives him. Wonder what the child version of her would’ve thought.

There’s this line in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that says of kids tormenting other kids, exactly as they themselves were, They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.

To paraphrase my friend Somena, the hard part of life’s knowing much of your past to bring with you into your future. Enough so that you’re better for it, not so much that it hollows you out.

Finally realized why I detest Heartgirl’s creepy friend, Shawn.

Cause he’s a minority and, I suspect, probably a geek as a kid. And we minority geeks are bullied in the most spectacular fashion. Emmy award winning. Yet he’s learned nothing from it.

Never did tell you what happened, did I?

Without her knowing, he picked up HG’s phone and randomly dialed numbers to make them think that HG was calling. And when they’d pick up, he’d essentially just laugh at them for thinking a pretty girl would call them.

Recall saying to him, Not sure y’know who I am.

Guessing he didn’t think I’d end up her boyfriend.

He’s awfully brave for someone on the phone. Told him I hoped that he’d get the opportunity to say to my face what he said on the phone. And of course, he’ll say what they all say, I was drunk, I was kidding, blah-blah-blah.

Funny – been hammered enough times, and yet not once did I turn into a lout.

Still, just to refresh his memory – and cause he just happened to move a block from me – he’s said I’m not a man. And he’d show me what a real man’s like. OK, I’m in.

Cause an old bully’s the worst kind; the kind that’s taken none of his torment with him.

Evidently, the socially correct way to deal with this type of situation is to just let it slide. Not mention it again. As luck would have it, never had many friends growing up so I never learned that.

Look, can’t let it slide. Cause I owe that fat kid y’see up there. Call it stupid or insane, but I owe it to him to remember what it was like to be tormented. I owe it to him to remember him.

So yes, Shawn. Show me what a real man’s like.

Without a hint of sarcasm or irony, I’d like to see that.

ME now

Location: a block away
Mood: indignant
Music: Somewhere inside my childhood I missed

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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

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More Cowboys

Me on a toy

 

Me: Hey, step outside with me for a sec.
Him: Sure. What’s up?
Me: Just wanted to say thanks. When I was going through my breakup, thoughta what you told me about your divorce. How you came back one day to find an empty house. Was nice knowing that you survived the blow.
Him: (grinning) Glad I could help.
Me: Y’know, actually hoped it was you she was seeing behind my back. (laughing) Least you’re a decent fella, a successful lawyer and not half-bad looking.
Him: (laughing) Com’on, I think our ladies’re waiting.

Now, where were we?

A while back, wrote about cowboys. Seems every seven years, you lose more than half of your friends. The person you think of as your best friend only has a 30% chance of staying in that role.

One guy that made the cut was my buddy Steel; he got hitched in Central Park this past weekend. Appetizers included whole lobsters. That was the appetizer. Need to get invited to more weddings like that.

Steel’s like all of my good friends. Never really see them; we don’t interact much. But he knows that I’m onea the few people in the world he can always count on and vice versa. We’re different races but the same people.

That’s one of the main things about the Jaycee Dugard case makes me ill. Cause in addition to all of the sick things she had to go through – and they were seriously sick – she didn’t have her people. She didn’t have a family or friends. Real ones, I mean. What a terribly lonely way to go through life. Couldn’t sleep causa it.

Yet another reason, think I’m blessed – our dumb luck.

Speaking of blessed, thanks for the concern but said I was coming back, didn’t I?

If you read me, gotta think that there’s a good chance you’re onea my people too, yeah? Let’s face it, this is hardly an interesting blog and I’m not a scantily clad chick. But I suppose you read cause something I say makes sense to you.

Ergo, we gotta stick together.

Clumsy, geeky, optimistic dreamers’re rarer than y’might think in this world.

Lobster in Central Park!
Steel getting married

Location: 16:00 yest, my kitchen floor, scrubbing
Mood: concerned
Music: Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song

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Mike

We live in a Cliff’s Notes society where we think we know things

My friend Mike passed away; I just heard the news this weekend. Very sudden.

An older guy, he looked like he was 45. He had a six-pack! Paul and I joked all the time that he looked better than botha us. He was a student in my fencing class; 65 years old and still training hard.

I remember that when everything went down with me, so many people said, Well, the only way is up. Which is yet another one of those sayings that only has the air of truth but no real truth to it – dude, there’s always more room for down. Always.

Mike didn’t say that; he said: I’m an old man, I’ve seen a lotta things. You never know what Life will give you, but good or bad, you take it anyway.

We live in a Cliff’s Notes society where we know the punchlines, but never the whole saying:

  • Fools rush in (where angels fear tread)
  • Curiosity killed the cat, (and satisfaction brought him back)
  • Speak of the devil (and the devil appears)

Y’know the sayings: for whom the bell tolls and no man is an island? They come from a John Donne poem:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Mike, you bastard, you made a room fulla grown men with pointy sticks and aggression issues cry. We’re diminished.

I hope when I go, I’m half the man you were.
Location: writing this with a glass of rum for Mike
Mood: grateful
Music: Well, if it rains, I don’t care Don’t make no difference to me
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Australia

A Frog in a Well Knows Nothing of the Ocean

You ever hear of the saying, A Frog in a Well Knows Nothing of the Ocean?

This frog meets a turtle one day and the frog says to him, Dude, you gotta come check out my home in a well. It’s got it all: cool mud in the summer, protection from the wind in the winter, the whole nine.

The turtle checks it out and says to the frog, Man, have you ever been to the ocean? The water goes down deeper than a thousand of your wells. And you could swim forever and never see the land again if you didn’t wanna. And there are things of every color in the rainbow that you couldn’t imagine of in your dreams.

Y’only know your well, the turtle finished, but there are oceans you know nothing about.

Prior to 2001, I was the frog. Then I met this girlie…but that’s not really the point. Sometimes, I think I still am the frog. I told someone recently that I learned to ride a bike here. That kinda stuck with me. Anyway, remember how I’ve said, There’s no such thing as a line?

It’s true. Pretty much everyone I’ve mentioned in the past month or so, I’ve been asking, You know what we need to do? We need to go to Sydney, Australia. I’m actually interested when they say they’ve been there before. I spoke with one girl about traveling for hours the other night.

At some point, someone asks, But why Australia and why Sydney?

And I answer, truthfully, Australia because everyone’s got that cool accent. And Sydney – well, it just sounds pretty.

Doesn’t it though? We should go. It’s freaking cold here. And it’s not just the weather.

Location: 9:00 yest, driving crosstown
Mood: restless
Music: Break, eject, eject, eject, break, eject, eject, eject
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