This year you write the book

Whatever you may have said or written about it last year, or in any past year, he said to himself, this year you must actually write the book.

“What is this ‘he said to himself’ business? ‘More to see in 1983?'”

Never mind that, he said, vow that this will be a year without parentheticals…come crisply to the point. The clock has long been ticking, it is time to score some points, the shot clock winding down, shoot, score, ca-ching!

In a dream last night I had set up my electric guitar in the living room of Hitler’s house. My host had insisted, I’d gone to plug in in the living room. Hitler was busily rushing about with guitar cords. I didn’t notice what kind of guitar he had plugged in, but he was eager to jam.

“A jam session with Hitler?” the whoosh of a long sigh filled the air.

Yes, and in the dream I knew enough not to argue with him, knew he’d storm into the other room and come back with a pistol. He was famously psychopathic, I knew, and wouldn’t hesitate to show his irritation by shooting me in the face. The usual low stakes had been raised a bit in this jam session, I later thought to myself. I never heard him play, because I woke up before that point, but I suspect he played like he spoke.

“Don’t we all?” Some year without parentheticals (somebody said)

and forget ellipsis, too …

This is the year you do all the things you have not yet done, the things you gave up as impossible, improbable, too hard, too taxing. This is the year to unlearn learned helplessness, he said with waning faith. Meaning enough with the 57 varieties of brooding.

It is time to stop picturing yourself on the lip of that ravine in Vishenevitz just because the day, or year, dawns darker than expected. Just stop it. And stop talking to yourself, and pondering, with endless unprofitable invention, the slipperiness of the ground most of us are tap dancing on.

Suddenly, the music begins, and who is that coming overloud through the amp on the left side? We can only guess.

America’s Exceptional Exceptionalism

Other countries, other cultures, other People, may consider themselves ‘exceptional’. This may be true — to them — but American Exceptionalism is exceptionally exceptional, more exceptional than any other exceptionalism, as I’m sure you’ll all agree. As I shall endeavor to demonstrate again here.

I don’t say this only to be arch– or only to avoid doing things I must do today while I tap blindly at these keys. Those motives cannot be denied, I add in the spirit of complete transparency of the kind President Obama so forcefully advocated as a candidate. If you don’t feel like reading my bullshit but still want a good reason to be pissed off, just click this link.

Consider this: America has been exceptionally successful selling the ideas of freedom, justice and the American way. Selling is the American genius. This is beyond dispute. Nobody does it, or did it, better.

I don’t say this only out of bitterness at not being a sales genius myself, though admittedly that’s part of it. America has packaged and ingeniously sold any number of wonderful and terrible things. We are the undisputed genius of that ever-growing field which now encompasses advertising, public relations, spin-doctoring, marketing, branding, market research, demographic targeting, political persuasion, fundraising, data collection for targeted marketing, political advertising to influence the outcome of democratic processes, etc.

I think everyone can agree this amazing industry, employing many millions and influencing every American deeply (not to mention billions of others worldwide) is kind of exceptional. To have the genius and ability to sell millions of rocks as pets? Exceptional! To be able to expertly package and market candidates for political office, and launch devilishly targeted attack ads to torpedo enemy candidates? Truly exceptional! No shit, really, and no wonder these experts are paid enormous sums of money for the invaluable services they provide.

Of course, it’s mostly the bitterness speaking. And glibness, which, though I sometimes flash, I know is also a vice. So let me stop flapping me gums and post the link to the latest illustration of American Exceptionalism that has come across my desk.

Apparently, to avoid another threatened government shut-down by those elected government officials who are hell-bent on proving that government is the enemy, certain compromises were made here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Sekhnet warned me to take my blood pressure meds before reading this short article on five of the most infuriating political compromises that prostitutes, pimps and panderers struck recently in our name and in the name of preserving and funding our great democracy. I made it to the end of number two, before going into the small room to do the same myself. As I went I chanted “USA! USA! USA!” If you’re feeling strong today, click here.

And God bless our exceptional United States of America.

Fun in the Sun

I had something closer to my heart to write just now, but decided to write something closer to my inflamed baboon’s asshole instead:

Dear NY State of Health:

I had a message on the website congratulating me when I logged in recently. The green notice told me that there was nothing more I needed to do to keep my health insurance as it is for 2016. I then checked my Inbox for the message received on 12/20/25 and read that my subsidy was being removed. I called to straighten things out and two or three days later got an electronic disenrollment notice.

A confusing ninety minutes on the phone with NYS of Health on 12/22 resulted in erroneous information being inputted on my application on my behalf. The website crashed mid-conversation, which made things more difficult still. During the first call Marlon told me he would list my income for 2016 as zero, since my income for the last three months had been quite low. I described to him why it would be inaccurate to list my 2016 income as zero and then the call was abruptly cut off.

When I called back I learned, from the next person I spoke to, Izahn, that Marlon had filed my application listing my income as “zero”. I was unable to see my own application on-line because of the trouble with the website. Izahn assured me that he’d fixed Marlon’s mistake, submitted a new application for me and apologized for the website being down so I couldn’t see the application he’d filled out for my continued health insurance. He advised me to send the most recent tax returns. They are enclosed.

I had two emails on Christmas Day, the first referred me to a notice that turned out to be the disenrollment notice at the bottom of this letter. Marlon’s “zero” apparently triggered the other notice I was emailed on Christmas Day, informing me that the income information on the 12/23 application did not match income obtained from State and Federal sources.

I’d like to maintain my insurance coverage. Your assistance is greatly appreciated,

“Your assistance is greatly appreciated,”

He added ironically, disgustedly, clenching his face into a fist with which to smash the reader of his words to a powerless minimum wage bureaucrat working for the health insurance industry, under the guise of a program to help New Yorkers afford overpriced health insurance.

“They Can’t Do That!”

(note: this is a reimagining of a hideous courtroom encounter with an enraged young jurist who senselessly flogged a tired guardian with the unreasoning letter of the law. No similarity to the actions of the angry hearing officer, if such a person even existed, is intended, nor should any be inferred. Elpidio Ortega and Dave Levin, although arguably based on real persons, are also arguably not).

You don’t really understand how relentless the law is until you stand next to it for a long enough time. Years ag0, as my dying mother was impatiently waiting for me to finish in court and get her for lunch, I had a conversation with a judge, on the record, that went like this:

Judge: So, counselor, you’re telling you have never even made an attempt to speak to your ward and have no intelligent action plan for the octogenarian, Mr. Ortega, a non-English speaking client of Adult Protective Services.

Me: (pause) … that’s basically what it boils down to, Judge.

The Judge asks a series of probing questions, my nods, head shakes and other body language and gestures are captured only as silence on the record, as is my detailed explanation. Then the judge says.

So, basically, counselor, again, what you’re saying is you have never even made an attempt to speak to your ward and have no real plan of how to protect your ward, an 80 year-old man who is facing eviction.

Me: … outside of what I have already said, Judge, that is what I’m saying. There is only one plan now possible for Mr. Ortega.

Listen to the voice recording again, “outside of what I have already said” is a non sequitar when all I’ve said is that it boils down to me having no idea how to proceed in this guardianship matter.

My adversary in the Housing Court that morning, Dave Levin, remembers well what I’d said, the steps I was taking, that he had already agreed to my excellent terms. None of that is on the record. The cunning and ambitious young judge made sure to make a clean record.

“A clean record comes in very handy when anyone questions your ethics. If you can produce a transcript where everything that can be used against you has disappeared, you’re golden,” said his mentor Sheldon Silver. This young judge was one of Shelly’s golden boys, had skipped over several more qualified candidates to become a Housing Court judge. He dexterously rode the switch to edit our colloquy on the fly, delete the rest of what I’d said in the six unrecorded minutes.

But they have a clock in the courtroom, right on the bench, you will protest, surely when the judge and you speak on the record the transcript has a running time stamp that would show deletions.

Oh, of course, absolutely — in theory. But theory, we find, gets the snot whipped out of it by practice, almost every time.

In case a judge needs a break to make a phone call or look up a point of law on the computer, or use the bathroom, there is a switch that turns a tiny red light off and on and signals when the device is recording, when the transcript is being made. The judge turns the recorder off between cases too, otherwise the log would be one running mess of courtroom sounds.

Like so many things where the law is involved, keeping the system honest is on you. If you speak without making sure that light is on, you learn to your horror too late, your remarks will leave no judicially cognizable trace.

Once you know about the red light you can check it, point to it any time it is shut off, make a record of the light being off, correction to the record. But, if you don’t know about the little red light, and the ease with which a concealed button can be pressed and unpressed, you are fresh meat for thirsty blood drinkers.

“Off the record, please, your Honor,” means the tiny red light blinks off, the clock moves along, and all conversation is off the record, unless the judge decides something needs to be put on the record.

“When we were off the record counselor for the respondent informed the Court that his client has not been seen in three weeks, cannot presently be located. He reminds us that his client has evaded three psychiatric evaluations and a Heavy Duty Cleaning and that the last time he was in Court he spoke of having booked a reservation for a coach seat on an interstellar airline. Respondent confirmed his flight arrangements by consulting a large, hardcover note book, and reading a long confirmation code from a blank page, aloud to the Court.”

Outside of that kind of information germane to the case, there is almost never a reason to put something said off the record on to the record. Everybody knows the drill. On the other hand, an argumentative, angry judge, might prefer not to have an argument that makes him look like a cranky crybaby asshole preserved for all time.

“Well, your Honor, I’ve already been waiting over an hour for you to look at and sign the three line stip [a stip is an agreement, stipulated to by two parties – ed.] Mr. Levin and I submitted to your Clerk. You agree that the terms are reasonable and I have every reason to hope another Order to Show Cause will not be necessary. In the event that the agency unaccountably does not do what it has already promised to expedite, I have almost a month before I have to make a motion. Mr. Levin and I are in agreement about its terms and he has been generous in this negotiation.”

Judge: this is not a bad stip, I agree, but I have a question for you, counselor, as the Guardian ad Litem. As you know I am required to allocute this stipulation, even though your client is not in court, even though you and Mr. Levin are both attorneys. But I have a few questions for you, and as you can see, I have not been sitting idly by as you waited for me to sign your stip, which I could not have done anyway, until I’d allocuted it.

Me: You will recall, Judge, that I’ve appeared before you many times as a Guardian ad Litem. We have seen more difficult cases than this one, but the system doesn’t really have a good fix for this. Tenant owes over $9,000 and has zero income so there is no way to get him any kind of grant. He has to move. He has adult children, also living with him, also with no income. They will all have to find places to live. The City does not have such places, outside of homeless shelters. The best I can do is have APS get an Article 81 guardian appointed, that will stay this proceeding for up to a year, during which time they will find housing for him, hopefully. At least then he will have a proper guardian for the person, as opposed to a Housing Court GAL. Not many arrows in my quiver, judge.

Judge: Did you meet with your client? Is this what he wishes?

Me: Judge, the man is eighty, with no income and $9,000 behind in his rent, growing by $800 a month. He doesn’t speak English and my Spanish is weak. But Judge, even if he expressed to me, through a translator, his firm wish to retire to Kuai, I could not do anything more than I am doing for him now, everything within my legal means to get him an additional six to twelve months in a rented home he can’t pay for. It’s an imperfect system, I grant you, and we both know just how imperfect it is– and Mr. Levin’s client will be out close to $20,000 before this is over– but I don’t see at this point what Mr. Ortega’s wishes have to do with it, I have to protect him in his place as long as I can.

Judge: Why would you take this case if you could not speak Spanish? You’re telling me you never even made an attempt to contact him?

Me: I was in regular contact with his case manager at APS and her supervisor, Ms. White. They both confirmed that he does not pick up the phone or come to the door. Spanish was not an issue to your law secretary when she called to ask me to take this case. Is there some insight I’m missing here, Judge?

Judge (voice recorder on): So, basically, counselor, again, what you’re saying is you have never even made an attempt to speak to your ward and have no real plan of how to protect your ward, an 80 year-old man who is facing eviction.

Me: … outside of what I have already said, Judge, that is what I’m saying. There is only one plan now possible to protect Mr. Ortega’s interest in not being evicted into homelessness.

“They can’t do that,” you will say at this point.

I know, and dogs and cats can’t lick their genitals either.

“You poor fucking innocent chump,” I will say.

LOG INTO THE NY STATE OF HEALTH WEBSITE TO SEE IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR HEALTH COVERAGE

Two Christmas Day emails from the tireless Obamacare spambots after months without a peep from my ruthless benefactors.

Happy Christmas, sucker, (click the link to see, inter alia, the letter informing you that your health care insurance has been canceled, effective immediately, for unspecified reasons.)

On the website, the message is a bit cheerier:

Congratulations

The email arrives, arrives again, reminding you there is a message in your INBOX. It could be anything, it arrives on Christmas Day, should be some good news.

Have a nice day. You have ten days to produce all required (if any) documentation at our Albany offices before this decision becomes final and binding.

Obamacare website

Correspondence with a weasel

Looking for some papers just now to serve in connection with a rare payday as a lawyer, I came across this great correspondence from my early days at law. The first letter was sent by a guy who ripped a friend of mine off, almost 20 years earlier, for $750. It is priceless, as you will see when you read the detailed response.

When I got out of law school, my friend asked how long a judgment is good for (a judge had agreed the man, a lawyer, owed her the $750). Turns out it’s enforceable in New York State for 20 years, at 9% interest. The original $750 had grown to a considerable sum over the 18 or 19 years. I grabbed that sum from his bank, legally freezing the amount owed in his bank account.

When he found out he called in a rage, to tell me that I was a fucking low-life, scum of the earth, goddamned fucking piece of shit. I allowed that all this might be true, but I was more interested to know if he would consent to the money being released to my client. He was not at all mollified by this reasonable approach, cursed me louder and hung up on me.

Later that day he decided to take the high road. Here’s how it went:

November 2, 2000

via TeleFAX

Dear Mr. W____,

I take strong exception to your heavy handed collection methods on behalf of your client. This is an eighteen year old matter which has had no activity during the intervening years. Simple inquiry would have revealed that I am a member in good standing with the New York Bar, and that I still own, reside and work at ___ Street., Brooklyn, the situs of the dispute between Z___ and myself. A telephone call or letter would have sufficed. Your behavior is typical of that which increasingly places the legal profession in disrepute in the eyes of the public.

Please send by return FAX any and all documentation regarding Z___’s claim, whether in your possession or Z____’s possession. Additionally, please send me any and all correspondence between yourself and Republic National Bank/HSBC or any other institution which in any way relates to any attempt at collection in this matter.

If you do not intend to comply with this request please so inform me by return FAX.

You may rest assured of my best intentions.

Very Truly Yours,

To which I apparently replied:

Brother I____:

I regret that you found my collection methods heavy handed but I had little reason to expect you to pay this debt voluntarily, as you proved me right by not accepting my offer to lift the bank restraint if you paid it voluntarily now.

I relied on the representations of my client that you would do everything in your power to avoid paying the money as you had demonstrated a pattern of unwillingness to pay this $750 debt in the past; first when you breached your contract with her, then when you refused to pay Judge Michael H. F____’s judgment after trial, when you made an appeal that you never perfected and later when you brought various counterclaims that removed Dr. Z______’s next Small Claims case from the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Part– brought because there was no acceleration clause in the contract you had with her and the court had instructed her to bring a separate action for the remainder– to the Civil Court that you then had adjourned at least twice and finally defaulted on. Only the fact that M___ Z_____ was a pro se litigant saves you from having the marshal levy on twice the amount you still refuse to tender.

I had little reason to expect good will on your part and, in light of your attempts to weasel out even now, I’m glad I took the certain route to a tiny fraction of your wealth.

Regarding your belated discovery request (discovery is only permitted in Small Claims actions with prior judicial approval, by the way) nothing requires me to provide you with copies of anything, you have the ordinary access to them through the channels you know so well as an experienced attorney.

Yours sincerely,

(and I might well have signed it)

“Juan Snyde-Bastid, Esq.”

A taste of blood to a shark

Sekhnet periodically goes on a strict diet, cutting out most of the foods one should avoid to maintain a healthy weight: bread, pudding, pasta, desserts, fried food. During these healthy times she refuses to take even a bite of any of these foods. “It’s like giving blood to a shark,” she says, “if I have one bite I’ll have to eat the whole thing, and more besides.”

I’m thinking about that because, while I spend at least an hour a day tapping here at the keyboard, taking a sharp knife to my words and hitting “publish” at the end, it is only recently that somebody else took a dull knife to my words, published them and sent me a check.

“Cah-ching!” I said, as I signed those babies and fed them into the ATM.

Got a taste of blood, after years of honing rows of teeth to a razor sharpness. One may quibble with the things I write here, wonder about a man with so much time on his hands, so seemingly unable to do most other things that normal people do.

The hour or two I spent tapping out a thoughtful piece on the word “motherfucker”, for example, is it really worth writing about, for f-word’s fucking sake? (unsuccessfully searched this blahg for the piece I wrote about the fascinating etymology of the word and my father’s didactic role in bringing it to my attention. Maybe it was on my previous blahg?)

Anyway, that’s it. I got a taste for blood now. I want a nice tall glass of it, and another one after.

An Epidemic of Mental Illness?

This excellent article, which I found very convincing, was given to me by a very intelligent man who considers himself insane. He may well be right, although the piece he recommended is well worth reading if you are considering a psychopharmaceutical cure for what ails ye.

Or if you are a psychiatrist who spends hours talking to patients, while wondering how to make more money in less time, with far fewer head aches.

The second part of the fascinating two part book review is here.

Facebook Nation

I’ve got to face the muzak, I am a member of facebook nation, whether I ever click on facebook or not.

“Social media” connects us in the most superficial possible way. Which is cool, it is the least we can do to keep up the pretense of connectedness, and for many, also the most we can do. It takes a few seconds to see the update, and if we’re not interested we click the next tab, no need to be polite or interested in the privacy of cyber friendship.

What has long irked me in real-life irks me on-line: it is rare for people to simply answer a simple question. We are distracted all the time, much more now with powerful personal computers in our shirt pockets. I don’t remember the last meal I ate in a restaurant without somebody at the table consulting a tiny, irresistible glowing screen for real-time updates.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you say something?”

I had a friend of many years, somewhere on the Aspergers spectrum, I would think, very active on social media. We eventually had a terminal falling out, no doubt years in the making, after he promised to do a small favor in his area of expertise and then, after not doing it, was peevish about me not answering his missed call to let him explain why he didn’t do it. I wrote a series of pieces here about the unraveling situation, and in that month my “readership” spiked dramatically. In fact, it set a personal record for this largely unread blahg, a record that could stand as long as DiMaggio’s hitting streak.

The nice thing is that through writing about the situation as clearly as I could I emerged as the vicious bully and he, unrepentant but cruelly misunderstood, came out as the victim, at least in his mind. In our last call he actually attempted to bully me, which surprised me, but the point was made, if it needed making again: written words can wound. Over and over again, apparently.

After my final post on the slow-motion falling out went up I had an email from a friend. “Good thing he doesn’t have a gun,” wrote my friend about the piece. I hadn’t thought of that, but it was a good thing.

That’s the thing about being a cyber-presence, you don’t actually have to look anyone in the eye when you shoot them in the face. Look at the comments on-line sometime. I am often impressed by the level of civility and intelligence I see in comment strings on some sites. People actually support each other and try to exchange differing views in a mature and nuanced way. Then someone jumps in swinging virtual fists, light sabers, burning paper bags full of dog shit. There are some sites where fisticuffs is the norm. Put two of these bellicose trolls in a room and it’s unlikely they would be so fierce in each other’s actual presence.

Whenever I told the story of the end of the friendship with this former friend of mine I always added a line I never said, then admitted I didn’t think of it at the time. The line was “if you want to bully me, come on over, I’m home. I’ll wait for you.” This is the kind of line we would write for a laconic tough guy narrator, which I am not. But I play one on-line, you see. Not that I would have needed to be any such thing to get this particular fellow to stop talking shit.

Writing here is the easiest thing I can think of to do at the moment– it’s almost like scrolling down a friend’s facebook page. The least I can do and also, at the moment, the most. Once I send it into cyberspace I plan to get on to many things I have been thinking of doing for the last couple of weeks. In fact, let me do that now.

But first, how are you doing, my friend?

The power of “nice”

Nice people, while they may well actually suck, are a lot better, as a group, than mean people, a sour-smelling pack of unhappy assholes. Most of us are not strictly nice or mean. We swing both ways, according to circumstance. One good “fuck you” deserves another much of the time and the reciprocating can be done in every flavor from affectionate to sadist.

I was grown in a hothouse of rage. It took me decades to start to understand the obvious: that it’s better not to engage with insane anger. There are things you can do to become less angry yourself, to resist the impulse to engage with a person who is mad. But only if the pain of that pushes you to change the pattern.

One of the most important things is recognizing what is intolerable to you. This will help you stay out of situations where anger starts to look like the best option. Easier said than done, of course, in this often infuriating world, where the aggressive and unscrupulous always seem to have a much bigger say than the meek and kindly, but it is something you can work on. That’s all I’m saying.

My sister once gave me a great compliment, by expressing confusion that I wasn’t like either of our angry parents (although, of course, she noted that I am angry too, just not obviously like either of them).

“If the only option was being like one of them, I’d have bashed my own head in years ago,” I told her. It never occurred to her that there could be a choice beyond one from Column A or one from Column B. Given two bad options, she chose the seemingly strong one to model herself on and has done pretty well struggling against the mean side of what she learned from the Master.

It’s hard work, Brownie, to overcome deeply ingrained reflexes, but something that can be worked on. That’s all I’m saying.

So on the old “what is hateful to you do not unto others” tip we have the woman who told me the other day that it bugs her that the excellent writer she sends her work to usually writes nothing more than “nice!” in reply. “Sometimes not even the exclamation point…” she exclaimed.

“Whell, shoot,” I said, spitting a stream of terbaccer juice past my horse’s ass, “ain’t nothing wrong with ‘nice’, especially from an excellent writer.” I spat again, much more taciturn than I am in real life.

In real life I explained, in tedious detail and dispassionately, that I’d learned, after decades of aggravation, that most people you send creative things to are at a complete loss for how to respond. They think, incorrectly, that writing something like “nice!” is insufficient, perhaps even insulting. They figure they need to write more than that, the ones who even click on the link to see the unsolicited creative work.

And even if they opened the work in question and thought it was cool, not having the thirty second attention span it would actually take to make a comment more detailed than “nice”, they forget about it. Even if they were in that 5% that actually clicked the link and thought the thing was genuinely nice.

If someone has paid for the creative work, people are much more likely to understand why you did it and take thirty seconds to reply. “You’re so talented, glad somebody paid you for it. Good work, brilliant!” they will write of such things. But anything else? Good luck, kid.

Most people have no idea why anyone would spend time doing something creative unless someone was paying them for it. Just the Free World we live in, brothers and sisters.

“Nice is nice,” I told her. “Nice is excellent. Nice is all you need.” I neglected to tell her the excellent point some wise man made on a TED stage about the difference between a teacher who encourages and a teacher who discourages her students being one tiny, elemental thing.

Overworked teacher looks over the student’s work, searches it for completeness, hands the kid back the work without a comment. This is the way of the world and it is basically discouraging — all you get is a grade.

The other overworked teacher reads the work, searches it for completeness, hands it back with a small smile and says ‘nice’. Investment of time and effort– almost none.

But the second student’s work is no longer Sisyphic, as the man on the stage who described this said. That five seconds of connection and appreciation is all it takes to make the other person feel they are not talking to a wall, a fucking firing squad wall that stinks of the shit and piss (while mention the bile, blood and puke?) of everyone the commandant’s ever lined up there, the line of Nazi sharpshooters spattering their fucking guts on it. Can you dig that?

“Nice!”