2018
● Tuesday, 1-9-2018 (4:30 a.m.): I’m the Gabinkabish at patody! (Let me explain that: “patody” is my silly-ism for “four-thirty.”)
● I think Democratic and Republican politicians have distinctly different mindsets about their jobs. To perhaps oversimplify, the Democrats—or at least the better Democrats—try to help the country; the Republicans try to help the wealthy (usually including themselves). And yet, even the best Democrats are pursuing the welfare of this country exclusively, or mainly, not that of the rest of the world. How can we, then, criticize the Republicans for pursuing the welfare of their own group, when the Democrats’ good intentions are directed at their own group, even though their group is more inclusive (that is, their country)? I think eventually we should aim at the welfare of the whole world; but now focusing on the good of one’s own country is not unjustifiable. The difference with the Republicans is that they’re supposed to try to advance the welfare of the whole country—that’s their job.
● Wednesday, 1-10-2018: For the fourth time in a month and a half or so, the Law Offices of Scott Warmuth has sent me to Fresno, to handle a deposition (of an applicant in a workers’ compensation case).
● Thursday, 1-11-2018: I may not be as good as I used to be, but I’m still the best.
● The maxim “Where there’s life, there’s hope” is a little inaccurate; it’s over-inclusive: everyone who has hope is alive, but not everyone who’s alive has hope. You need more than just life to make your situation hopeful; you also need a certain amount of health (for example, if you’re brain-dead, or even significantly brain damaged, there’s no real hope, for you). Probably the saying is a bit of a euphemism, the positive version for the more exact (if slightly under-inclusive) negative statement: “Where there’s no life, there’s no hope.” But we each soon lose our life. Does that not mean that, ultimately, there’s no hope?
● 1-17-2018: It seems to me that, in a sense, my great discovery or breakthrough came at age 26/27, in my “Ethics.” My work since then has involved the mere use, or exploitation, or application, or development, of that great discovery.
● Thursday, 1-25-2018: There has been a controversy of sorts over the colorfully harsh language used by the judge in sentencing Dr. Larry Nassar after his recent conviction for sexual abuse of the U.S. Olympic (female) gymnasts, statements by the judge like, “I’ve just signed your death warrant” (whose meaning is a little mysterious, since she didn’t sentence him to death, but only to a long prison term—possibly simply a slightly illogical way of noting that the sentence is long enough to insure that he’ll die in prison). As a lawyer, I’m more highly attuned than the average person to the tone of judicial pronouncements. It struck me that the judge’s words did go a bit too far, and constituted a violation of judicial etiquette or decorum, if not of judicial ethics, though I don’t think the judge should necessarily be disciplined, or even censured, for it. With Donald Trump as president this past year, we’ve perhaps gotten somewhat used to the coarsening of government officials’ language. Perhaps that affected the judge, too.
● Sunday, 1-28-2018: I just awoke from a dream. In it I was back in law school. I had combined with three other students to form a study group or what partly seemed to be a law firm. We were having a crisis, unable to afford law books. Toward the end of the dream, I was in communication with my mother, alive in the dream. She was ill and in hospital. It seems I did some work, perhaps legal work, to get her out of the hospital. Almost the last scene of the dream was her having come home, though home was set at the law school. We greeted each other; she was glad to see me. And I was glad to see her. I had an urge to hug her, but I was too constrained, and I merely shook her hand. I felt some regret about not showing more affection and hugging her. I also, in the dream, mused that I should have become a more accomplished professional, either as a lawyer or as a psychiatrist. I thought I could have become a very prominent member of the profession.
Outside the dream now, the opposite has lately occurred to me: that my lack of employment, or my underemployment, over the years gave me time to do what writing I’ve done. At the time, I regretted the underemployment, and my reliance on my father for financial support. But now I see it as a blessing in disguise. I’ve learned to see it differently in this last year or two, as my income has soared (relatively speaking), but I’ve spent almost all my time working, and have done practically no (non-legal) creative writing at all. The only creative writing I’ve done is of legal briefs, but that counts for little in my oeuvre. The obvious question is this: Is my full employment now a curse in disguise? Partly yes, but mostly no. It’s a curse in that, with less time for thinking and writing, I’m doing less of it. But I should work (job-work) when I can, because I’m not independently wealthy—far from it—and I have no one who will bail me out if I run out of money. If that happens, I could become homeless, and lose everything I’ve managed to accumulate over the years, including all of my writing. So I must work to build whatever small financial cushion I can.
[Later note (2-22-2024): My underemployment over the years was a blessing, because it gave me time to write and because the great risk involved—that my father would die and, without his financial support, and unable to support myself, I’d become homeless and lose everything, including my writing—never materialized. I took a large-scale gamble, and won. All in all, I’ve been very fortunate (so far).]
● Sunday, 2-4-2018: I just watched most of the movie The Nice Guys. I stopped watching before the end, because it was so unsatisfying. It was too funny to be a good dramatic film, but not funny enough to be a good comedy.
● Thursday, 2-8-2018: I drove a rented car (Ford Fusion Hybrid) to Fresno for a deposition today (and back again). On my way there, I hit a rubber traffic cone, which did some minor damage to the front bumper of the car. I was very worried about the cost, and was very relieved when they charged me just $90.00 for the damage.
● Saturday, 2-10-2018: I’ve made a tentative decision. Till now, I’ve reacted to the new no. 3 neighbors’ hostility purely defensively. But now I’m going to institute positive retaliation. Next time they attack me, I’ll make a peculiar noise; that will establish it as my angry-noise, which I’ll then use for retaliation. . . . On second thought, perhaps let it play out a little longer. That their attacks are becoming more flagrant may simply mean that my defensive strategy is working—causing them increasing frustration. And my moving to active retaliation is irrevocable: I can’t go back, just as you can’t un-ring a bell.
[Later note (2020): Having had occasion lately to read through all of these Diary entries, I’m struck by what seems a very curious pattern on my part: virtually the same situation continually repeats—hostility from new neighbors—but each time it’s as if I’ve completely forgotten about the past experience, and think the hostility will somehow magically disappear if I simply don’t respond. And then, after I’ve begun to retaliate, when there’s a pause in their hostility, I think it’s a dramatic change in the situation, rather than just a lull. What’s wrong with me?! Is it a memory problem, wishful thinking, hope springing eternal? But it does help to read back over these entries, to more clearly see the pattern. Perhaps this proves the wisdom of the old saying, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”]
● Sunday, 2-11-2018: Very interesting development: This morning, the brazen door-slamming hostility continued, and I decided to prepare to retaliate. More than an hour later, I was dusting off the woodblock that I’d use to make my special angry-sound, when I accidentally banged it, and it sounded. That was apparently sufficient to give the neighbors in no. 3 the message, and, ever since then, there has been a noticeable decrease in their hostility. Amazing!
● Monday, 2-12-2018: On Donald Trump’s “fake news”: Discerning the truth, building your outlook on the world, is difficult. Indeed, philosophers disagree as to whether objective truth exists at all. But to accept as true those assertions you like, and label those you dislike as “fake news” is not a legitimate process for finding the truth. It’s just the opposite: it’s a perversion of the process. No, it’s not even that: it’s rather the position of someone who’s given up the search; it’s the obscenity he shouts in the process of renouncing it.
● If you’re in a position of power, like the U.S. presidency, it’s not difficult to generate accomplishments—if you count as an accomplishment something that does harm. It’s much easier to be destructive than constructive. To take a simple example, it’s easy to destroy an artistic masterpiece, but not so easy to create one. Almost anyone can destroy one; very few can create one.
● On the situation with the no. 3 neighbors: the flagrancy is slowly returning to their attacks. I’ll wait and lull them into a sense of safety from retaliation, and then, when the time is ripe, strike.
● Sunday, 2-18-2018: It seems to me that the basic idea of justice is that everyone’s enjoyment, or potential enjoyment, of society’s goods counts equally, and that we should be dispassionate, neutral, and fair in distributing those goods to people. (These words came to me in a dream.)
● Some years ago, I stopped eating cake for desert at dinner. But within the last year or so, I’ve regressed to eating sweets for dessert, now in the form of candy: See’s dark-chocolate candy, specifically. I eat a prodigious amount of it: two to three pounds a week. I’m going to try to significantly reduce my sugar intake. It shouldn’t be very hard for me to do. I’m pretty good at quitting bad habits when I make up my mind to do so, at least when it comes to the use of unhealthy substances. Now, I could either completely stop buying it, or I could try to reduce the quantity I eat at every sitting. I’ll see how it goes; and I’ll report my progress in this Diary. [Later note (2020): I’m sure that readers will be intensely interested to hear about that!] Today I ate less of it than usual.
● Monday, 2-19-2018: Well, cold turkey! Tonight, I completely abstained from sweets. I feel a bit different than usual after dinner. Usually about this time I feel heavy and a little sick. Not now. That’s a nice change. We’ll see what other changes follow.
● 2-22-2018: I just awoke from a dream in which I was sentenced to death, though I was out on my own recognizance (only in a dream would that happen!). I was planning my last meal, and when I got close to the time for my death, the next morning at . . . I think it was to be 9:00, I regretted the loss of the perspective of taking a pleasant interest in the progress of the world, an interest in seeing how events would unfold. But it was not a nightmare. The feeling was not fear or panic, but only wistfulness.
[Later note (2021): That sounds like a musing on life.]
● Saturday, 2-24-2018: The 14 February 2018 shooting rampage at the high school in Florida has stimulated a big public debate about gun control. I’ve written a new argument on the topic. I started working on it Wednesday afternoon (2-21-2018), three days ago, and have worked on it more or less continuously (during waking hours) since then. Although I’ve learned it’s folly to declare that a piece is finished, especially where I’ve been continually revising it, and practically no time has elapsed in which I’ve made no further changes, I think it’s finished now. I’m very pleased with it.
● Sunday, 2-25-2018: Well, it seems I actually did finish that new argument on gun control; I still haven’t thought of any further changes to it. And I sent it to the website people to post on the site where most of my essays are posted.
● Tonight, I broke my week-long See’s chocolate fast (I had several boxes in the refrigerator).
● Tuesday, 2-27-2018: Life is much simpler when you’re dead.
● Thursday, 3-1-2018: I had an interesting experience today. I usually eat at an IHOP restaurant most weekday mornings, very early, either the one in City of Industry or the one in Rosemead. Today, as every morning this week, it’s been the one in City of Industry. Yesterday the waitress asked me how much the check had been for the previous day. I happened to remember the exact amount and I told her. She confirmed it when she rang up the check (I had the same meal both days). Apparently, she was impressed by my feat of memory. Today when I came in, the other waitress was on duty. My usual table-setting was already out for me at my usual table (it was as if she was saying, “I have a good memory, too”), and the service was especially good. She told me she put extra onions on the salad. I suppose the other waitress told this one about my precisely remembering the amount of the previous day’s check, and they respect me for it. It made me feel very good.
● Sunday, 3-4-2018: This is a follow-on to my above first note regarding the new neighbors in apartment 3. The attacks have continued, but I haven’t retaliated yet. I’ve decided to start retaliating. At my first opportunity now, I’ll introduce my angry-sound.
● I just now, at 2:24 p.m., Sunday, 3-4-2018, for the first time, retaliated against the new (hostile!) neighbors in apartment 3! I used my angry-sound on them, which establishes it as a weapon of mine, which I can now use in various ways. No more impunity! It’s a new day!
● Yesterday, as I was driving to Walmart in Canoga Park, I was on westbound Victory Boulevard. Just before I crossed Winnetka Avenue, a car was driving fast in the westbound rightmost lane, just ahead of me. Another car turned right from southbound Winnetka onto westbound Victory, into the rightmost lane on Victory, and the other car hit it, forcing the car going straight on Victory to come partly into my lane. I had to (and did) immediately swerve to the left to avoid hitting them myself. My quick and skillful maneuver allowed me to avoid a secondary collision, with my car.
● Last week was an unusually good week. Among other notable things, I gave Web Strategies the go-ahead to post my masterpiece, “Ethics,” on the Web.
● Wednesday, 3-7-2018: Last Monday my 1991 Toyota Cressida passed the 300,000-mile mark (it had about 176,000 miles on it when I bought it).
● Haircut (Brenda).
● Saturday, 3-10-2018: I’ve called myself a “writer/philosopher.” And I like to think that I’m indeed both. But just how the two elements are related, I’m not sure. I’ve traditionally considered myself a writer first, a philosopher second. I’m a writer first, in that my motivation for doing the work is to make art. If I could write music as great as Mozart’s, I’d do that instead. But my art happens to be writing words. So I’m a writer, whose best raw material happens to be philosophical argumentation. And yet, I like to think that my philosophical thought is so significant that I may be studied by students of philosophy, as well as by students of English literature. I suppose I should be happy knowing my work will be remembered at all, for any merit posterity thinks it has. Perhaps I’m deluding myself.
● New tires.
● Sunday, 3-19-2018: I just woke from a bad dream. I was 37 years old, struggling to find a way to make enough money to survive. I had no profession, and the advice that I was given, or that I gave myself, was to sell school supplies and little trinkets to young school children on the street out of my car. I was advised to paint my car a cheery color scheme, perhaps with a positive or happy message, like, “I won!” written on the side. I was also painting; I had completed a self-portrait and given it to my father; I was considering asking him to give it back to me, so that I could sell it. It crossed my mind that someday I’d wish I could be that young again when I could make a painting on demand (even if my own demand), rather than having to wait for “inspiration.” I was also thinking of selling copies of Van Gogh’s self-portraits. This dream reflects my perennial concerns about making a living and doing creative work. It may also reflect the loss of prospects for my advertising properties. And then I think that the neighbors are making hostile noises and so I’ll just keep typing to make them think I’m unaffected by their noise. I could either leave the extra lines I’ve written here at the end, or delete them. I may just leave them, as a record of what happened. My life is like a bad dream, with the hostility from the neighbors making it very difficult, if not impossible, to feel good. Or perhaps I’m simply finding something external on which to blame my own failure, the failure to use my time more productively, for my advancement, both professionally and creatively.
● Wednesday, 3-21-2018: This is a follow-on to my note of 2-19-2018. When I wrote that note, I still had three one-pound boxes of See’s chocolate candy in my refrigerator. I decided, instead of throwing it out, I’d eat it, but gradually. So I limited my consumption (before, it was every night) to three days a week (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights). I did that, on that schedule, for three weeks, and I finally finished it last Sunday night, 3-18-2018. I have no more left, and plan to buy no more—at least not regularly; perhaps I’ll buy a box on special occasions, or only periodically.
[Later note (2020): Largely as a result of reading through these entries, I’ve come to see my behavioral pattern here, and therefore learned that I should avoid eating sweets even on “special occasions.” Doing so on just special occasions might be all right. But it seems that, when I do so, it doesn’t stop there—it continues long after the “special occasion.” I’ve heard this called “getting wise to yourself.” It involves what I call the membrane effect: Breaking your perfect abstinence is breaking a membrane; it’s a change of principle, a change from black to white, from no to yes; whereas, once broken, the length of the break is a mere matter of degree, there being no difference, in principle, between one day and two; between two days and three; three days and a week; and so on. Also, it’s like recreational drug use. If you abused, say, opiates, and you quit; you then use them only when medically necessary, as for example for intractable cough or severe pain. With sweets, there’s no medical-necessity analog. Eating them on a special occasion would be like using opiates just to get intoxicated, for a special occasion. With sweets—just as with drugs—doing so is unnecessary, and counterproductive.]
● Friday, 3-23-2018: When I take my (cleaned) laundry out of the dryer, the first thing I check is that I have an even number of socks. If I don’t, I look again . . . because an odd number signifies that you’ve lost one, not that you’ve somehow gained one. First, I re-look in my pile of collected clothes. If I still can’t find it, I look again on the ground along the route from the laundry room to my apartment, or in the dryer I used.
● Saturday, 3-24-2018: I sometimes tend to resist changing my waking state: I want to stay in bed in the morning, and I resist going to bed at night. Since both involve resisting a change of state, both are analogous to either inertia or momentum. I think that, since the waking state is an active state, and the sleep state is a resting state, the morning phenomenon is a tendency to stay at rest, and so is like inertia; whereas, the evening phenomenon, the tendency to stay in motion, is more like momentum. (Technically, though, inertia is probably the proper term for both.)
● Monday, 3-26-2018: Over the weekend, two lawyers declined Donald Trump’s invitation to join his legal defense team, citing potential conflicts of interest. In response, Trump commented, possibly meant as a snub to lawyers, that it won’t be hard for him to find lawyers because “fame and fortune [here, in the form of representing Donald Trump] will never be turned down by a lawyer.” But two lawyers just did, because of professional ethics. Perhaps Trump should be a little more lawyer-like and think before he speaks.
● Friday, 3-30-2018: On Tuesday of this week, I drove to Fresno in a smaller-than-usual rental car. The next morning, I woke up with severe pain in my hips and thighs, and nausea. I took two tablets of Aleve (a NSAID), and I forced myself to go to work (I had two depositions that day). The symptoms were gone in about an hour’s time. I feel as if I’ve dodged another bullet.
● I think many people worship God on the same basis on which they play the lottery: it’s a long shot; but if it pays off, it’s worth it.
● Saturday, 3-31-2018: I have a theory why older people seem to perpetually have an unpleasant facial expression. Many of us, when alone, have what would probably seem to be an unpleasant facial expression. But when we encounter another person, someone with whom we’re on good or at least neutral terms—anyone we’re not on bad terms with—we change our expression to a friendly or pleasant one. But an older person may not remember which category the approaching person is in; or he may not do so, or may not process whatever other elements are involved, quickly enough to act in time—before the other person has walked by. Knowing this, we should try not to take the older person’s dour expression as a sign of animus toward us, but rather as a symptom of a mental disability on his part; and we should react, not with hostility, but with understanding and compassion: don’t glare, but smile.
● Tuesday, 4-3-2018: Yes indeedy-do!
● Friday, 4-6-2018: I gave a presentation, or mini lecture, at the Lunch and Learn at Scott Warmuth’s office.
● Saturday, 4-7-2018: This morning I noticed what I think are four bedbug bites on the top of my left wrist.
● Saturday, 4-14-2018: With global warming, Winter is now like Fall; Fall is like Spring; Spring is like Summer; and Summer is like Hell.
● I consider myself a Jew; it’s not my religion, it’s my “tribe.”
● Friday, 4-20-2018: The garment of my personality is a motley thing: sumptuous and finely woven in places, but elsewhere shoddy and tattered.
● Sunday, 4-22-2018: In the last few months I’ve developed a pain in my left hip and thigh, caused by sitting in cars and driving. I’ve become quite worried about it. It took me a long time to figure out what was causing it; I finally saw a doctor about it yesterday, in the Kaiser Urgent Care. She referred me to physical therapy, and told me that I should fully recover. I was greatly relieved.
● Thursday, 4-26-2018: I had another deposition today in Fresno, a 215-mile drive (one way). At my usual gasoline stop, I pulled in, but saw that there was a huge swarm of bees (or wasps), centered in a trash can just outside the store entrance. It was as if someone had thrown a beehive into the can. I didn’t get gas there. On my way back in the afternoon, I stopped there again, just out of curiosity to see if the bee swarm had been abated. It had been; there were just a few stray bees flying around. But that was still too many for me, and I again got gas elsewhere.
● Sunday, 4-29-2018: I suppose it’s understandable that we want to learn about the lives and personalities of people we admire. But we should realize, at least in the case of great creators, that their personalities are not essential to their creative genius. The personality may be essential to how they use their genius, even to their using it at all; it may, for example, determine their motivation. But it’s not necessary to the genius itself. Absent his genius, the creator is pretty much like everyone else. His genius is like the pearl in the oyster—an extraneous element whose removal would, for the most part, leave an ordinary oyster.
● Monday, 4-30-2018: It’s often said that people need jobs. That’s not strictly accurate. Strictly speaking, a person needs money; he doesn’t need a job. With money and time, he’ll find his own activities to do (and they won’t include this job!). Of course, practically, he’ll get money just from a job. And a potential employer is more likely to give you a job if you flatter him and speak of your desire, not to get his money, but rather to work for him. So we’re tactful and polite, and speak euphemistically about wanting work, not about wanting money.
● When I was a small child, my father had an interesting way of helping me deal with bad dreams. When I expressed fear of having a certain bad dream, we did something he called “burning a dream.” He’d have me make a little drawing symbolizing the feared dream, and then he’d light it on fire in an ashtray, and let it burn to ashes. He said this would prevent having that dream. It seemed to work.
● Saturday, 5-5-2018: Rap music producer Kanye West (who is Black) recently controversially said that the slavery of Black people in the United States, since it lasted for so long (400 years), was a choice on their part. I think we ought to lock Mr. West in jail for ten years, and then confront him: “It’s been ten years now, Mr. West; your imprisonment must be a choice on your part.”
● Sunday, 5-6-2018: Often, in radio interviews, the interviewer finishes by thanking the interviewee for his time. I think that’s a great insult to the interviewee. It’s as if the interviewer is saying, “What you had to say was worthless; it didn’t help us at all. But you gave up your time for it, and we thank you for that.”
● Sunday, 5-13-2018: Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said: “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” I would propose this modification of that aphorism: The life of the law is not logic alone, but logic and experience. Which amalgam is “common sense.” Common sense is our innate sense of logic based on experience.
● We live in several environments: a physical one, like the atmosphere we breathe (for fish, it’s the sea), and another of meaning. Various persons, from various motives, express their understanding of the world; and we each take certain elements of these and combine them with our own elements of understanding, to form our own peculiar perception of the world, which perspectives we come to for our own peculiar combination of reasons: whether, for example, a genuine search for truth; rationalization; and/or pride of authorship.
● Monday, 21 May 2018: Happy birthday, Richard!
● Today, when I ate the salad at International House of Pancakes in Sherman Oaks, I pulled out the rotten pieces of lettuce and, when I was done and the manager passed by my table, I showed him the pieces I’d removed and told him, “That should not have been in the salad.” He agreed, and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. He took the plate and said he was going to show it to the staff, to admonish them. I’m usually not that assertive, or communicative. If there’s a problem, I just stop going to that restaurant. I felt good about having spoken up.
● Sunday, 5-27-2018: Pedicure, at Nails by Hien, in Tarzana.
● Saturday, 6-9-2018: I hate it when public-radio hosts describe 90+ degree weather euphemistically as “warm” instead of “hot.” Perhaps they’re saving “hot” for when the temperature goes over 100 degrees, as it surely will later in the Summer.
● Tuesday, 6-12-2018: I posted this comment online: We must give credit where it’s due, and acknowledge that Donald Trump’s meeting yesterday with Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea, appears to have been very successful. Now, if Trump could learn to be as good to those who are supposed to be his friends as he is to his adversaries (or those who are supposed to be his adversaries), he might actually become a decent president.
Someone asked me to define what I meant by “very successful.” In response, I wrote this: Two concrete results were achieved: North Korea agreed to cooperate in returning remains of soldiers who died in the Korean war, and we agreed to suspend war games with South Korea. Beyond that, just by creating a more friendly tone between two leaders who had been threatening each other with nuclear annihilation (and with the power to carry out the threat), the risk of nuclear holocaust is at least somewhat reduced. The meeting did no harm. Even if that was the only good accomplished, that’s a success.
Someone else then replied thus:
Richard,
Several generals, who know a little more about defense than Ol’ Bonespurs, wrote a piece today highly critical of suspending “war games” which are actually a necessary part of our combat readiness in defending So. Korea.
To which I replied:
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure . . . especially when it comes to war. And we should take promotion of military activity with a grain of salt . . . especially when it comes from a general.
Then someone wrote:
Richard,
I do not agree with you. While I feel for the relatives of those deceased soldiers whose remains were returned to the United States, the cost was not worth it. It is incredibly important that we continue to have military exercises (not “war” games) with the ROK military. Our ability to work with the ROK military in time of war is far more important than returning the remains of our deceased soldiers. Action speaks louder than words. Let Un take affirmative steps to reduce its nuclear capacity before we agree to limit military exercises. This strategy worked when we were negotiating treaties with the former Soviet Union.
The bottom line is that Lil’ Donnie is way out of his element. He was played by a despot half his age. As an American, Lil’ Donnie is an embarrassment to our nation, in particular, and humanity, in general.
I was tempted to respond this way (but I didn’t respond):
I agree with you about Trump: he’s a disaster. One good act—out of hundreds of terrible ones—doesn’t change that judgment. But we must acknowledge the good, or we lose our credibility.
No, I’m going to post it as a reply, but rewritten, thus:
I agree with you about Trump—he’s outrageous. But even a stopped clock is right—twice a day. Even an incompetent sometimes does things right—if only by accident. Even a pathological liar occasionally tells the truth, and even a narcissistic evildoer occasionally helps others—when it benefits him. When that happens, we needn’t change our judgment; but we must acknowledge the rare good deed, or we hurt our credibility.
[Later note (8-2-2024): On rereading these entries again, I tend to think that Andy Sigal was right.]
● 6-15-2018: More bedbug bites in the same place: top of left wrist.
● Saturday, 6-16-2018: I saw a medical doctor about the bites; he said they’re insect bites, but not bedbug—rather, a small spider. He said they’re nothing to worry about. They’re unavoidable, and harmless.
● Tuesday, 6-19-2018: I suffer for my pay. Most of the time, I don’t enjoy my work; in fact, it’s a bit tedious. But not intensely so. Not only is this (working for the Law Offices of Scott Warmuth as a workers’ compensation lawyer, representing injured workers) the best-paying job I’ve ever had; but it’s also the least painful—not saying much for my other jobs.
● My main aspiration in life is to write a book titled Schmoes, Schlemiels, and Schlimazels.
● I’d also like someday to write a book called Sheem and Crugar.
● Saturday, 6-23-2018: I had a deluxe facial at Western Beauty Institute today, with Tina. It cost $40 and I gave Tina an $8 tip. It was good. 20855 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 7 / Woodland Hills, California / (818) 703-1300.
● Haircut, Brenda.
● Friday, 7-6-2018: The euphemism I most commonly hear these days is conservative for right wing. These are persons in power whose actions, if not their words, evince a desire to make the rich richer and stronger, and the poor poorer and weaker.
● Saturday, 7-7-2018: We’re in a heat wave right now. Yesterday was the hottest day in the series: the temperature got to 116 degrees (Fahrenheit, I think). I took my accustomed walk at about 3:00 p.m., when the temperature was still 116 degrees, just to know that I could do it, and so that anything less intense would seem tolerable.
● Wednesday, 7-18-2018: Recently a talk show (hosted by a black man) discussed the topic: “Are all white people racist?” My own answer is this: It’s partly a matter of how we define the term and how we use it. If we define it so loosely as to include a technical sense in which every white person might be considered racist, and we apply it to Tim Wise and Bernie Sanders, as well as to David Duke and Donald Trump, we dilute the word’s power so much that it becomes meaningless, and we alienate the anti-racist movement’s friends and allies. In other words, we could do it, but it would be counterproductive.
● 7-26-2018: If we didn’t die, how would we regulate the size of the population?
[Later note (1-1-2024): We could impose the death penalty for a greater number of crimes.]
● Sunday, 7-29-2018: Desert ride, cut short. I had an unexpected day off. I finished my trial preparation early; it took less time than I expected. In the ride, I ate breakfast at Tom’s #25, in Palmdale, the one to the west of the 14 freeway.
● Tuesday, 8-1-2018: I’m proud to live in a country where each person is free to worship the Gippergoose as he pleases.
● Thursday, 8-9-2018: Donald Trump likes to come up with derogatory, nasty epithets to attach to the names of his political enemies, like “Crooked Hillary.” Well, I have a new idea on the subject. Why don’t we try to come up with descriptive names that are complementary, even about our adversaries. For example, Hillary Clinton was known as a politician with a great deal of governmental experience. She’s acknowledged to be one of the most qualified candidates in modern times. So we might call her “Experienced Hillary.” And Donald Trump is known for his prowess in the real estate development profession. Because he was a maker of buildings, we might call him “Fabricator Donald.”
● Thursday, 8-16-2018: Walmart is the poor-people’s store: the people who shop there are poor, and the people who work there are poor.
● Friday, 8-17-2018: In a dream just now, I was accompanying a woman to her friend’s home. She said her friend’s house was made of glass and steel, and she didn’t know whether to call that a glass house or a steel house. I said it should be called a glass house. She asked me why, and I said, “If you have wire-rimmed sunglasses, you call them ‘sunglasses,’ not ‘wire-rimmed glasses’” . . . In the dream, when I said it, or dreamt I said it, it seemed to make perfect sense.
● Saturday, 8-18-2018: I may write an essay titled Twenty Reasons Why Donald Trump Should Not be Assassinated. . . . I’ve begun it! . . . And now I’ve finished it! But it’s only four reasons; of course, I changed the title to Four Reasons Why . . ..
● Trump is calling the news media “the enemy of the people,” for their (according to Trump) propagating “fake news.” If lying is the standard, the real enemy of the people is Donald Trump; he’s the Liar in Chief!
● Sunday, 9-2-2018: If you own a house and it burns down, you still own the land it was on. But if you own a condominium and the building it was in burns down, what do you own?
[Later note (2021): I guess you’d better have fire insurance.]
● Wednesday, 9-5-2018: I’d like to write a novel with a main character called Dengley Dunkler.
● 9-6-2018: We’ve swallowed Trump. The question now is whether we’re going to regurgitate him.
● I left this note on my mailbox today:
Postman:
I can’t open this (no. 2)
box. Something
inside must be blocking
the latch. Please remove
the contents and leave
them at my door.
___________________
Richard Eisner
9/7/2018
● Sunday, 9-9-2018: I just awoke from the most profound dream I remember ever having. In it, I had two therapeutic sessions with psychiatrist David Viscott (in my early 30s I actually did have two sessions with him). In the dream, I felt profoundly changed, with profound insight into myself. As part of the therapeutic process, we analyzed a Mozart opera. Viscott pointed out a passage that Mozart used in other of his compositions. I commented that, yes, he had used it, but it was subtly different each time, adapted to the various requirements of the contexts of the pieces. I had an intense, heightened appreciation of Mozart’s genius. After the second session, he (Viscott) insisted not only that there be no further sessions, but also that I never again even get in touch with him. I frantically searched mentally for a circumstance, either very good, or very bad, in which I’d be justified in contacting him. At some point I asked him, “What if I win the Nobel Prize?!” I answered my own question, “You’ll know.” I ended up resigned to it; I intuitively knew the wisdom of his injunction. After the sessions, I felt I was launched on my way to live the rest of my life with a far greater understanding of myself.
[Later note (2020): What was the profundity?! . . . Perhaps that was my impression in the dream, but the details in it didn’t logically support the impression, or I didn’t remember the details—that’s common, that the details in a dream, when you awake, somehow don’t seem to justify the impressions you had in it. . . . The worry would be that this discrepancy obtains in your waking life as well, that what you take to be profound is merely a product of delusions of grandeur, or sophomania. I think that’s not true in my case, but ultimately I suppose others will be the judge, unless (the rest of) my writing is lost, preventing many others from even seeing it, let alone judging it.]
● Saturday, 9-15-2018: This past week (9-12-2018), I finished an essay, some short comments and arguments on Marx. It’s the first significant piece of writing I’ve done in over a year. I’ve been occupied with work (the making-money kind). I’d kept an article on Marx in my briefcase, and took it out to read when I had dead time. I read and then reread it many times. The most significant comment in the set (of my comments), an argument that capitalism is unjust and communism just, came to me only in the last week or so.
● Sunday, 9-16-2018: I sent this message on a neighborhood Listserv today:
That’s a double mistake. The first mistake is the rule “Never end a sentence with a preposition.” There’s nothing necessarily wrong with an ending preposition. In fact, it’s often the simplest, most direct way to construct the sentence. The second mistake is to say that a preposition at the end of a sentence can just be deleted. It can (and should) be deleted when the word is unnecessary. But other times (as in your example) the word is necessary; in those cases, if you’re going to remove the ending preposition, it must be put somewhere else in the sentence, like this: “Of which of my big feet are you speaking?” If you simply delete it, the sentence becomes nonsensical.
● Wednesday, 9-19-2018: Early Monday morning (9-17-2018), I think, I had another very memorable, very beautiful dream. I dreamed that I flew to Mars, and back to Earth. It was spectacular. I woke up (actually, not in the dream), used the bathroom, drank water, and returned to bed, where I had a sort of sequel to the dream, in which I was attending a school, and I was known as one of two students there who had gone to Mars. I was very proud of the accomplishment and gratified by my reputation for it.
● Saturday, 9-22-2018: Last Monday, 9-17-2018, my car (a 1991 Toyota Cressida) started running very badly. I brought it to the repair shop, and was told a few days later that it couldn’t be repaired; my mechanic, Jeff Hang, offered to sell me his used Toyota Camry. I went to see it today; I test-drove it, and it runs well. He’ll give it to me for $2,800. We have a deal. The car is in good shape, though it has 254,000 miles on it. It’s a good bargain. He was the one who arranged for me to buy my Cressida some 8 years ago, for only $800, but it has needed a lot of mechanical work to keep it running. I bought it at about 176,000 miles; it now has 311,000 miles.
● 9-26-2018: I know my hair is turning grey when it’s more effective to check for stray (shed) hairs against a dark background than against a light one.
● 9-27-2018 (Thursday): I picked up my new used-car today, a Toyota Camry. It has high mileage (255,050), but it’s a good car, runs well, and 6 cylinders!
● I’m amazed when people, even apparently fairly sophisticated and well-educated people, say, regarding today’s Supreme Court nominee hearings, that they found Dr. Christine Blasey Ford credible, and yet they don’t know whom to believe (Ford or Kavanaugh). To me, it seems obvious. First of all, prefatorily, they can’t both be right. And neither is honestly misremembering or misperceiving—one of them is lying. The question is, Who? I think Ford was credible. She would have no motive to lie about what she’s saying. Because of her allegations, her good life has been turned upside down, probably forever. If she were lying, it would be utterly bizarre. Whereas, Kavanaugh has a motive to lie: if Ford is believed, he not only misses getting on the Supreme Court, but he may also lose his existing position as a federal judge. And people often falsely deny accusations of bad conduct. It’s fairly common, and fairly easy. Just say “No, I didn’t do it.” It’s much harder to make up an affirmative allegation, an elaborate fiction, full of details, the disproof of any one of which would defeat the story. And histrionics, like Kavanaugh’s, is not inconsistent with guilt; it’s merely one of several available ways to play a false denial. And remember: Dr. Ford’s telling the truth means not only that Kavanaugh did the despicable act in question, but also that he’s lying about it—and under oath. And I come to the same conclusion about the other women’s allegations against him. As I see it, Kavanaugh is a rapist and a liar—nay, a perjurer.
● Saturday, 9-29-2018: Haircut, Brenda.
● Saturday, 10-6-2018: I think Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize just for not being George W. Bush.
● Sunday, 10-7-2018: Since UFO means unidentified flying object; instead of “Who saw the UFO’s Friday evening?”; it’s more proper to say something like this: “Friday evening I saw some unusual-looking lights in the sky. Did anyone else see that? Does anyone know what those were?”
● Around now I got my first “smart phone.” I like it. It’s much more reliable and generally much more satisfactory than the Blackberry it replaces.
● Sunday, 10-14-2018: I prefer the role of student to that of teacher; but the student is so brilliant and creative that, through his work, he in effect teaches.
● I’ve sometimes noticed a certain piece of weird reasoning in myself: If I’ve given myself a quota on consuming a certain substance, be it food or a drug, or anything else, I feel that a particular consumption somehow doesn’t count toward the quota unless I enjoy it! (If I don’t enjoy it, I’m entitled to keep consuming until I feel satisfaction.) Very strange.
● Sunday, 10-21-2018: Trump has been described as amoral. I think immoral is more accurate. Amoral is a euphemism here. Perhaps the idea that he’s “amoral” is that he doesn’t intend to hurt others; his intention is merely to benefit himself (or a small group of which he’s a member). But when you act to help yourself, knowing, not merely that it will hurt others, but that the harm to others will be great, and will far outweigh the benefit to yourself—that’s not amoral; that’s immoral. This is all the truer when you’ve sought, and been given (as president), the power to affect, and the responsibility to safeguard and promote, the general welfare.
● Saturday, 10-27-2018: Generally, I like the beginning of a meal better than the end. One reason is that we always like the beginning of something good more than the end, just because we’re happier knowing there’s a lot of it left (we have something to look forward to); whereas, at the end, it’s depressing to know that it’s about to end. This is why Friday night, the beginning of the weekend, is more joyous that Sunday night, the end of it. Another reason I like the beginning of a meal better than the end is that, at the beginning, my appetite is at its greatest; whereas, the more you eat (the closer you get to the end of the meal), the smaller your appetite. And the greater your appetite, the more satisfying the eating. (Hence the salutation to someone about to eat: “Bon appetit!”) Perhaps dessert is an attempt to counteract that phenomenon, by putting a sweetness at the end.
● Sunday, 10-28-2018: I had colorful dreams last night. In one, I was working part time for the CIA. I wanted a full-time job as an agent for the FBI, and I was interviewing with them for the job. They liked me, and I was confident I’d get the job.
● Tuesday, 10-30-2018: I just now took my 1991 Toyota Cressida to the crusher. The state paid me $1,000 to “recycle” it (the “cash for clunkers” program). I had the car for just over 8 years. I bought it for $800.00 in (I think) 2010, when it had about 176,000 miles on it. Today the mileage was about 311,150. On the way there, driving it, my eyes filled with tears, and I thought, “Poor old car.”
Of course, I can’t really be crying for the car itself; it’s an inanimate object. I wonder what I was crying for—perhaps it was for that eight years of my life, which is gone and I’ll never get back.
● Monday, 11-5-2018: Today I gave my boss, Scott Warmuth, Esq., my flyer and material on my 1-800-SUE-THEM.
● Thursday, 11-8-2018: Today, I finally figured out (with the help of an Internet tutorial) how to do text messaging on my smart phone, and I sent my first text message (to Maurice Lin).
● Sunday, 11-11-2018: I’m an extreme introvert. Yet I can speak up in a group, and I can perform in court. But I think I prefer small groups to large ones.
● I got a bloody nose today. When I was young, I used to get them very often, until the doctors finally cauterized that thin surface in my nose. Since then, many decades ago, I haven’t gotten a nosebleed until today, and today’s was pretty profuse. I was about to go to the Urgent Care for it, but then I thought I shouldn’t take drastic action for just a single, one-off occurrence; I should wait to see if it’s going to be a trend.
● Monday, 11-12-2018: Well, it’s not a one-off. I’ll have to go to the Urgent Care as soon as I get a chance.
● Thursday, 11-15-2018: Today, President Donald Trump revealed a shocking fact: many people in this country committed vote fraud, going into the voting station once, to vote, then leaving, putting on a disguise, and going back in and voting again—numerous times. If that weren’t outrageous enough, all those fraudulent votes were for Democrats. Something really must be done to prevent this abuse! I may start to vote Republican.
● Tuesday, 11-20-2018: I met with Howard Blumenthal, Esq., of The Barnes Firm, and gave him my advertising flyer with 1-800-SUE-THEM for his consideration.
● Saturday, 12-1-2018: I got my annual flu vaccination today.
● Sunday, 12-2-2018: I just awoke from a dream in which I was showing my sister a film about my life, focusing on my history of flying. It was probably stimulated by all the retrospectives presented today on President George H. W. Bush, who died yesterday.
● Monday, 12-3-2018: I wonder, when you hear that a certain celebrity “wrote” a song, how much of what you hear he actually notated on music paper. When you hear a piece by Mozart or Bach, you can be sure that the composer wrote every note of it (except some cadenzas in some concertos). But when today’s popular songwriter “writes” a song, I wonder if perhaps he didn’t merely write the words (or some of the words), and come up with a simple melody (if even that much of the music), and then went into the recording studio, and the studio musicians improvise to play music that fits, and eventually you get a recording that sounds good. I wonder.
[Later note (6-13-2024): When I say that Mozart and Bach did not write some cadenzas in their concertos, I mean, of course, not that someone else wrote them, but that they left the cadenza sections blank to give soloists an opportunity to improvise.]
● Sunday, 12-9-2018: I’m young enough to still make mistakes, but also to learn from them.
● Thursday, 12-13-2018: Another dramatic proof that I at least sometimes dream in color: I just awoke from a dream in which a client came to my door in the middle of the night. It was at my old home in Canoga Park (now renamed West Hills). In fact, in the dream I was living with my parents, who were still alive in the dream. I was reluctant to see this young man. But I asked him, looking down from the high bathroom window, what it was about, and he took out a bright, florescent pink billfold, revealing a considerable amount of currency, and I remembered that this was a matter on my To-Do list in dealing with clients. So I let him in. I asked my parents if I could have him come through the house to my (old) room. They said no. So I led him into the living room (next to the front door). We sat on a couch and I maneuvered a lamp to illuminate the papers he wanted to show me. He explained that he had gotten some seed money from his legal case (that apparently was my role as his lawyer), and he had invested it in the stock market; he was in what he called a stock verification program, which had yielded him $3 – 5 million dollars, and he wanted my advice whether he should remain in the verification program. I was very impressed with his “earnings”; in fact, I was downright jealous. I was about to ask him, hadn’t the program already done its job (by giving him that much money), when I woke up.
[Later note (2021): There’s another bit of dream-illogic: the question should be, not whether the program had done its job, but rather whether it might continue to do the same job, of making money for him.]
[Still later note (2021): That’s less about the illogic of dreams than about the illogic of first drafts, which, whether dreaming or waking, oral or written, are often imprecise and ill-expressed.]
[Later note (8-6-2022): Huh? Was I saying that I should have redone my statement in the dream? . . . No, I was saying that the general phenomenon is ill-conceived initial statements; and that dream utterances are an extreme example of those because they spring from the mind when some normal conscious logical control is absent.]
● 12-20-2018: In the long run, a tradesman’s or professional person’s best advertising is his good work.
[Later note (1-1-2024): That’s a quaint idea!]
● 12-22-2018: I’ve become rather prudent with money, maybe even a bit of a miser.
● You may long for your life to change. But, in a roundabout way, you may have changed your life many times without knowing it. For example, your alertness may have avoided a car crash that would have drastically changed your life for the worse; and if it had happened, undoing the harm would be your most ardent wish.
● 12-23-2018: What does Santa Claus have to do with Jesus Christ?
● This (2018) was the year of:
○ The coming and going of the left hip/thigh pain.
○ The new (used) car.
○ The Marx essays.
○ Posting “The $40 Million Vase” on the trial lawyers Listserv.
○ The 1-800-SUE-THEM letter to Howard Blumenthal at The Barnes Firm.
○ Starting to wear a sweater under the down jacket (in the cold-weather seasons).
[Later note (11-13-2023): I wore a sweater only a few times.]
● Monday, 12-24-2018: However “great” America is or isn’t, it’s less great with Trump as president.
[Later note (2021): As background information, Trump’s campaign slogan was “Make America great again.” Ironically, many may now share that sentiment, longing for a time before all the damage to the country wrought by Trump’s presidency.]
● I rented a plug-in hybrid Toyota Prius for four days, just to try it out, to possibly buy one. Yesterday, I drove it to Bakersfield. Overall, I didn’t like it. I liked the good gas mileage and the climate control system. The heating and cooling worked very well; and, in air “re-circulate” mode, I didn’t smell truck fumes when driving behind diesel trucks. Those, especially the latter, are good advantages. But it had a lot of road noise, wind noise, and engine noise, especially road noise. And I disliked the way the cruise control was programmed. Also, the windshield visor on the driver’s-side was too short to reach my head when I switched the visor to the side to shield my eyes from sun from the left side. I was able to work around it by improvising with a piece of paper towel. But that’s another negative. I figure that any new car now would have that good climate control system, so I can’t count that as a plus for the Prius in particular.
● Now, there’s a particular thing about the neighbors in apartment 3 that I despise. They’re unremittingly hostile. In fact, I had to write this entry just to avoid a coinciding of my stopping typing (the previous entry) with their hostile noise toward me. Freaking assholes! Oh, the computer spell-check system doesn’t recognize “assholes”! How ridiculous! (. . . Maybe because I used the plural?)
● On making mistakes: You can’t know where the limits are unless you occasionally exceed them. (Of course, one thing you learn pretty quickly, is that this is a hard way to learn these lessons, and that you can often get the same information in other ways, like observing other people. For example, you don’t have to get shot yourself to know that getting shot is to be avoided.)
● Tuesday, 12-25-2018 (Christmas): I just awoke from a dream in which I had a terminal illness: kidney failure. It’s actually not necessarily a terminal illness. But in the dream, I understood it to be terminal, by the distorted logic of dreams.
● Friday, 12-28-2018: The same amount of money seems larger when I have to pay it than when I receive it. (I wonder why.)
[Later note (6-6-2023): Perhaps it’s because I expect to receive it, but I don’t expect to have to pay it.]
● You can’t “fast-forward” your life: you have to live every slow, detailed moment of it. And yet, time seems to go by at different speeds. It seems to go slower when you’re in pain, and faster when you’re in flow: fully absorbed in working on a project. Sometimes, when I’m working on a piece of writing, I think it’s been, say, five minutes; but then I look up at the clock, and see that three hours has gone by.
● If God does not exist, and never did exist; then, when a person says, or thinks, that he loves God, what does he love?
[Later note (2021): Perhaps you love your idea of God. You can love what doesn’t exist: if you love your wife, but, unbeknownst to you, she dies in a car crash, you still love her, even though she no longer is. . . . Perhaps a poor analogy, since when you fell in love with her she did exist.]
● 12-30-2018: It’s easy to blame our parents for our shortcomings. But considering it now, with a little more objectivity (it’s been many years since my parents died), it seems to me that that’s too much to expect from them. A parent is just a person, with all his flaws, who decided to have children. Neither that decision nor the coming of children into your life, automatically changes you into a wise man or a saint. You’re just the person you were, but with kids. Honestly, I think I probably wouldn’t have done much better as a parent than they did. If you want to be a better person, the one with the greatest responsibility, the greatest ability, and the greatest incentive to make that happen, is you.
A related point: People often say that a parent did the best he or she could. But the very idea of doing one’s best is a misconception, I think. The times or circumstances when we literally do our best are very limited. We do our best when we’re in flow, when it seems as if the work we’re involved in pulls us along with little or no effort on our part. At most other times, though, to literally do our best would require an intensity of effort that, if exerted more than on select occasions, would quickly wear or burn us out. It’s the kind of effort we enjoy making when we’re high on stimulant drugs. Most of the rest of the time, we muddle along routinely and halfheartedly. We feel fortunate just to get through the day more or less intact.
● They say that something’s lost and something’s gained in living every day (I think Joni Mitchell said it). As you grow from childhood, more is gained than is lost. You reach a point, however, where you begin to decline, when more is lost than is gained. Perhaps we could define a person’s prime as a time shortly before that change occurs (or a time shortly before to shortly after it). On second thought, that’s not quite accurate, because one’s prime connotes a peak of ability; whereas, we lose and gain more elements than make up our abilities. On third thought, so to speak, perhaps we have various primes: our prime as a writer, or the prime of our enjoyment of life, etc. Perhaps we can define our prime as I first proposed above, but we must specify which prime we’re talking about.