Old Folks

Why do they get the pass though? How come we have to be so nice to them - and have to defer to them if they were the one who hath erred?

In all likelihood they were more bigoted/misogynistic/ignorant that the generation that followed - why now do they become the receivers of deference (I'm sure this is an iterative process)? Should it not be the opposite? Should they not have to bear the cost of 1) the errors of their day, a generation that accepted, fostered, and embraced a less equitable society and 2) were responsible for raising the next generation that has as a whole done a less than admirable job at rearing the subsequent generation? Should they not be asking our forgiveness for the ills that they perpetuated? 

This is to say - the next time you decide to hold the door for an old woman or man, consider the behavior you are rewarding. 

He Surely Falls and Rises

A morning which spurns from the night surely aught return the eve?

So we moved -  but was it just me? Did she follow or did she sway?

Anyway... Today was a goo day. Rose, lived, fell. Ran for a few miles today - more than I ever had; this is not to say much. But it was an accomplishment nonetheless. Immediately following it was friendship (with friend), then further friendship (with friend) then it was solidarity. Self reflection . Self belief. Self worth. That's what the reflection believed it was worth.

 Baseball stuff, golf stuff. bbq stuff. Then ulterior events. Ended electing to escape. All was calm. Beach, earth, man, live.

The night came consumed and completed.

Papa Johns.  

What I Learned Today

About the world: The going on of most the people in the world on a day-to-day basis have no intersection with what I do on a daily basis ex-going to the bathroom. Even then - the way I and "them" go about it couldn't be more different. It could be said that I have little to nothing in common with most of the people in the world (China, India will suffice).

About this country: Charles Ramsay is an opportunity to see a real ass person do real things without filter.

About my life: (work) If you're not long this market - due to the mysticism of mathematics (read: compounding) - you are missing on a real part of wealth creation that the 1% is riding. This means increasing inequality, not less.

About my life: (home) Mostly that my inability to take advantage of the advatages I have at my hands (location, means, time, health, youth) continue to not be utilized in a happiness maximizing manner.

Looks Like The Issue From Yesterday On The Elevator Has Been Fixed

Well, it looks like yesterday's issue from the elevator buttons not lighting as they should has been addressed and there were no issues getting to my car today.

Hopefully there are no issues like this going forward.

This Funny Thing Happened When I Was Entering The Parking Structure After Work Where The Lights...

This funny thing happened when I was entering the parking structure on the way out of work earlier tonight where the lights on the buttons didn't function as they should have.

There were three other folks in the elevator who witnessed this. They each pressed their respective levels (and I mine) when the doors closed and then suddenly all of the lights on the buttons went out as if we hadn't selected and level. People were taken aback.

So we all selected our floor levels again and then the lights went out again! 

However, the elevator stopped at my floor even though the light (no light) was lit - so it appears that it wasn't a malfunctioning of the elevator not able to recognize what floor to stop on - just that only the LIGHTS themselves weren't working correctly!

Was a real interesting situation that happened today.

Day Off

Took a sick day on Wednesday and I went to Rite-Aid and the lady in front of me was returning some cellophane clear wrap because the label said that it should be "easy to start" - meaning it wouldn't get tangled and that it should rip cleanly. In fact, she posited, "this was a damn lie and couldn't be further from the truth." So she got her $3.71 back and shook her head angrily at the cashier when she couldn't get it in cash.

Brain Drain

So people in financial services receive undue incomes and are part and parcel of the so-called "brain drain" of the top minds, from the top schools to wall street. Agree? Let me go ahead and break this down for you. What I will do is first: agree and second: provide a list of professions which rival or exceed wall street in the qualities of rent seeking, undeserving incomes, questionable achievements, and contribution/participation in/to the continuation of the 1%. Yeah wall street folks make alot of money, but at least occasionally they allocate resources from those who have - to those who need for productive purposes. But I shall proceed:

1.  The ultimate brain drain? The greatest scientific minds of the 20th century got together and created the most destructive force known to man (not named Republican or colonialism <disease>)? Sorry Japan, wish these guys would have went to wall street eh? And even now in the 21st century, let's posit that there's a 2:1 wall st to defense industry ratio. Oh what you say? Think it's more like 5:1? OK. How about I give you 10:1. There's still a large amount of "brain drain" from top schools to the defense industry to go kill shepherds in Afghanistan  or some kids in Iraq. Best and brightest to go kill some 300,000 people in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan in the last 15 years - or to wall street to create credit default swaps? I'll take the latter. "Wow, today I put together an MBS that ended up getting a family evicted from their house on Christmas day." "Oh yeah, I helped design a patriot missile that killed one terrorist and 45 innocent family members." roflcopters
2. Artists. An career in probably the last 500 years that was only made possible by technological innovation elsewhere that allowed some of our less productive members of society create something that is only defined by the fact that it was created with the attention of being "art." Consequently, art is only a plaything of the rich and famous and it's proliferation is only a derivative of such. Art exists because of the excessive disposable income of the 1% and of the excess of time/energy of their progeny to study/create it.I will differentiate between it's many manifestations below - as I believe some are less a plaything of/for the 1% than others. In their most pure form - art in museums and the like meet this qualification.
3. Athletes. If you subscribe to the school of thought that a) People are born with athletic ability or b) not a, but that people are born with the unique ability to dedicate efforts, and have a work ethic that allows one to realize unique athletic abilities (NBA, MLB, etc) then you can somewhat agree with me. Some people are born 6'4 and can run sub 4.3 40's and can dunk a basketball and some can't - so those that were lucky enough to be born with these qualities deserve millions - and those that aren't, don't? Is this consistent with the concept of meritocracy? Or perhaps you realize that at the end of the day these athletes are just entertainers; providing a diversion whenever we seek. Are their abilities deserving of such salaries? Where's the outcry against these guys versus what Joe Six-Pack makes? "Thanks LeBron for entertaining me for a few hours, now I'll go back to the rest of my life struggling to feed 4 kids - and you have fun popping bottles and co-eds in the greater Miami area." How come I gotta pay $100 to go see you - so I can fund your life of absolute excess? Laker fan my whole life but did not go to one game with the entire family because it is simply prohibitively expensive. Hope that 54th bottle of Ciroq tastes nice. 
4. Actors. The argument is much the same as 3 above - but the difference is that they take themselves that much more serious than athletes. Turn on any award show from January to February (of which they are bountiful) and you will hear them expounding on their life altering colleagues or performances. These guys are making millions and millions and they're making it from Joe Six Pack trying to take his wife and kids out for less than 60 bucks for the lot. Thanks Brad, your performance was very compelling and I thought about it's life implications for 5 - 10 minutes after the movie until I realized that my daughter isn't going to be able to have the new iPhone and the implications this may have for her life-long self confidence and that I hope she doesn't become a prostitute simply because I wanted to give my kids a chance to be able to say "yeah I saw that too" on Monday morning when all of their friends had two weeks prior. Yes, (insert screenwriter name) you are amazing at what you do - but don't forget you are just a function of my entertainment. Very few people, if any, go to the movies to see a life changing performance - thats what real life and intelecutally challenging books are for. The movies? Where young people go to try to feel up on a girl - and where old people go to so that they feel like they accomplished something during the weekend. In fact, you are the entertainment source that is the easiest. If there was an easier way to get entertainment that required even less effort than sitting in a chair in silence for a few hours, than people would do that instead. Have fun with your eleventy houses Johnny Depp.
5. Lawyers. An arms race that mostly (simply) depends on who has the better lawyer. A profession that exists due to the increasingly (and tacitly complicit) complexity of the law. I am not talking about your day to day prosecutor/defense lawyer - I am talking about the ability of a profession to have outsized income due to the ability of other 1%ers to pay them so they can most benefit from the esoterities of the law. In a simple sense: I have a more expensive lawyer than you, the evidence could go either way -> I win. Multimilionare lawyers not helping further justice, the american dream, the access to happiness - but helping the Kardashian's contruct a bullet proof LLC. Some insight to the psyche of these guys can be seen here. (note go down to the blue text to read). 

Interesting

So you want to be interesting huh? Chances are if you are trying to be - you've failed. While there might still be hope for you, know that during the process you may have to lose all of your friends, lose contact with your family and/or sacrifice any principles you thought you held. It's not about you anymore - it's about who you want to be, and what you must do to get there.

Coffee. Don't like it? Think it stains your teeth or makes your breath bad? Makes you jumpy? Rather drink something with taste like OJ or some other juice? Doesn't matter. You need to be on your coffee game. You need to be seen walking into the office coffee in hand. You need to be seen in the meeting with a dramatic pause of two because you need to sip your coffee. Oh so it's the weekend eh? Then you need to step it into overdrive. Two words: (four bracelets) coffee shop. Need to spend ~ 30% of your weekend in the shop working hard on your next novel or studying for your preferred professional standardized exam.

Troubled past/daemons. Pretty much self explanatory yet needs to be explicitly stated because if you don't have this then you really aren't going to make much progress. The good thing is that the past is an always evolving status of being. Today is tomorrow's past. If Jean Valjean can create a new life and completely deny his past you can just as easily create relationship/familial/professional strafe to such a level that a few years from now it will become the deamons that make you intersting. Make it happen.

Cigarettes. They're cool. I've addressed this in many a prior post, but I would be amiss if I did not belabor the subject. Buy a pack. Buy a lighter. Have them on the ocld night when you can step out of the pub to look into the street as the cars pass; look into the people's faces and they go nowhere. It's no longer interesting to smoke a pack a day - but it will forever be interesting to be on a busy street, lighting up and really taking it all in while the masses run no where.

Solemn. The interesting thing about this attribute is that if applied broadly, it would result in people being outright boring and silent. But amongst a pack of sheeple - this attribute is interesting. Imagine this picture if you will. Coffee on table. You realize he has some real deamons that he will forever run from, but never outrun. Smoking a cigarette silently. Thinking. Not speaking. Yup.

Layers. Don't think the fashion game is not involved in this. You must wear layers. While this might partially confine the feasibility of interesting people to the east coast of the US and Europe (yes) - it is what it is. It matters how much you want it. Do you want it? You need layers. You need dark clothe layers. You need the understated jeans. You need the understated shoes. You need a very worn t-shirt, the hooded sweatshirt and the jacket. You need layers man. It needs to be interesting and definitely not clean. Stop washing your clothes.

Busy/not available. Are you the guy who is always available and ready to hang out whenever wherever?! Stop. Stop. Stop. Your availability is inversely proportional to being interesting so stop. There is a multifaceted reason for this - but it comes down to two things: if people see you alot, you are more well known and almost uninteresting by definition, and two: people don't want to hang out with someone that they can hang out anytime they want to. Why? BECAUSE ITS DAMN UNINTERESTING.

Ignorant? Yes. Ignorant. That is - ignorant to things most Americans are in to and things that are commonly discussed. It goes something like this: "I'm not sure exactly what happened with the fiscal cliff - but I do know that Haiti is still suffering under the same level of corruption as they were before the colonists left." Another common example is typically the "no I didn't see the movie but I read the book," but this line of commentary is possibly overused in the current sense. A good response to topical conversation from someone who is interesting would be "Nah, I don't really know much about that..." and just let it trail off. It's honest. It's interest. It could be you with enough practice.

Well I can't do it for you, but this should be a good start so get out there and alienate your friends for the sake of being interesting. It will pay off.

The Weeknd

Hi yall!

The thing about the weekend and time off from work in general is I don't know if these periods are a net gain or loss. Let me explain...

You wake up, you go to work, you get off work, you do an activity or you don't and then you go to sleep (repeat). After going through this sequence of events often enough you really get in a grove and don't think about going to work all the time and not being able to sleep in or just lounge or develop some sort of other real purpose or goal. It becomes not that bad and manageable/fine/okay. If you take time off or have weekends, this is when you really realize the fine feeling that is not going to work and time to think about the broader aspects of life. If you take an extended vacation this effect becomes particularly acute and you really get out of the zone. You may feel rejuvenated but you nonetheless recognize there is a difference between being at work every day and not. In any case, it's now the weekend.

So what I was doing was just going on my way home to relax on the couch when I had this idea to go to the store to pick up some things because 1) I am a tad under the weather and 2) my bike recently got stolen so my means of transportation is severely limited given my absence of parking spot and the trouble of finding parking in my area. So then this happened:

I haven't been to the store for groceries in probably four months, so it was something of a curious place to be and at first I was just taking in the nature of the human condition and studying the sheeple as they grazed. People were in a real rush to get where they were going and purchase their things. My purchases were focused on assessing the status of the health game which is one of the things I want to address here in the new year. Also, needed to get self back to health so wanted to maximize fruit type items. First group of items purchased:

This group of

This first group of items are really what I term my "staples" over the weekend. We've got some main dishes in the wraps that you see (thai and italian) and some sides (egg salad, and peanut butter pretzels). All these items address both goals mentioned above in that they are healthy (they are from trader joe's) but mostly just address having real solid food on hand when hunger rears its ugly head. We all know how that goes..

Second group is clearly and obviously about the health game. We've got smoothies, fruit, and yogurt. Lots of vitamins and minerals here so should be back in tip-top shape on Monday for work. 

This is the last item I bought, just some soap from TJ's because I heard that this soap is organic and better for you because my skin is sometimes sensitive to the harsh chemicals that is in the regular soap. Hope this stuff makes my skin 1) more soft and 2) healthier.

Well that's all I really got. Mostly just trying to talk about life and explore issues that come up and that I can teach lessons so you guys don't have to make the same mistakes.