2019

● Tuesday, 1 January 2019: After scores of years without them, I started getting nosebleeds on 11-11-2018; I got them almost every day from then on, sometimes several times a day. After a few weeks, they just stopped, spontaneously; I haven’t gotten one since. I think I’ve figured out the cause: the Woolsey fire, which started just 3 days before the start of the nosebleeds, and which lasted about as long as the spate of nosebleeds. I heard someone on the radio say that this was a common symptom caused by the fire. That would explain it; I can’t think of anything else that would.

● I’d love to retire. But I can’t. I’m stuck. I don’t have nearly enough money to retire. I’m no longer living paycheck to paycheck (and that was a wonderful change), but I’m not very far from it; I’m considerably closer to that than I am to being independently wealthy.

● Sunday, 6 January 2019: You should vote for the right-wing if you’re wealthy and want to further your own selfish interest. You should vote for the left-wing if you’re poor or working-class and want to further your own selfish interest . . . or if you’re anyone who wants to further justice.

It’s interesting that people who vote right-wing always give a selfless reason for it—they’re for “good government” or “fiscal responsibility,” or such. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if, even once, they’d just come right out and give the real reason: “I’m voting Republican because I’m rich and I want to keep it that way.”

● 1-13-2019: Last Wednesday, 1-9-2019, on the way home on the freeway, my car stalled. There was no electricity. A highway patrolman gave me a push to get my car onto the shoulder, then a tow truck towed it off the freeway. Magically, the car then started up (I tried starting it and it worked). I suppose there was a loose cable that got jostled back into connection while the car was being towed. I then drove the car to A&J Automotive, where they tightened the various connections. I thus saved the cost of a tow. (The emergency tow to take the car off the freeway was free, but I would have had to pay a lot of money to get it towed to the repair shop.) The car seems to have worked fine ever since. The highway patrolman (later) complemented me on my driving while he was pushing me. He said that many people turn the wheel too sharply, but I steered the car perfectly.

[Later note (2021): Before the highway patrolman came, my car (with me in it) was stalled in the middle of the freeway. I could have been badly injured, by a collision. I find it interesting that, in recounting this event, the fortunate aspect I focused on was saving a few dollars of a towing charge, and not a mumbling word about avoiding serious injury. We (unreasonably) take certain elements of our well-being for granted.]

● I suspended walking for exercise a few weeks ago because I started having knee problems (and that’s why I bought the exercise bicycle, though it hasn’t been delivered yet). Today, for the first time in a few weeks, I walked again. I walked twice, but I shortened my usual route from 1.6 miles to probably about a mile. So far, so good, with my knees.

● 1-14-2019: There are exceptions, but sometimes I have the impression that, the harder I struggle in creating a piece of writing, the better it turns out. Or perhaps I appreciate them more just because I had to work harder for them.

[Later note (8-2-2023): Or perhaps it’s only the better pieces of writing that I find are worth struggling with . . ..]

● Wednesday, 1-23-2019: I had jury service today, and was called to a courtroom for a criminal trial. I, and the other prospective jurors, had to fill out a questionnaire; we go back next Monday, 1-28-2019, to finish the selection process. I hope I’m excused from service. I can’t afford to take the time off of work.

● Monday, 1-28-2019: I was released from jury duty today. I’d like to claim that it was somehow due to cleverness on my part. But all 75 jurors were released, because one of the prosecutors was ill and couldn’t start the trial. Nonetheless, I’m very pleased with the outcome for me. In the juror questionnaire that we filled out last week for this trial (a criminal trial of a man accused of oral copulation on his young niece) several questions pertained to whether we thought DNA evidence was conclusive. I said yes. But then today it occurred to me that a qualification was in order. DNA evidence may be conclusive as to the identity of the person that the sample came from; but it’s not conclusive as to how the sample got where it was found. For example, if this man and his niece lived in the same household, or even if one of them was a visitor at the other’s home, is it not possible that the man kissed the girl’s hand, or the girl helped clear dirty dishes from the dining table, and then, before she washed her hands, she touched her vagina, thus leaving a trace of her uncle’s DNA there (innocently)? . . . And yet, if the alleged oral copulation is fellatio, the defense attorneys will have considerably more difficulty explaining how the defendant’s semen ended up in his niece’s mouth!

● “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Perhaps. But if a few have yachts, and everyone else has no boat at all, a rising tide is fine for the yacht owners, but everyone else gets flooded out, and many drown.

● Tuesday, 2-5-2019: When I go to work in the morning, I arrive quite early (to avoid the heavy traffic) and sleep in the car (parked in a store parking lot). Today, about an hour after I arrived, while I was sleeping, someone in his car or truck made very loud car noises, including blasting the radio, I think purposely, maliciously, to wake me up. They succeeded. But I resisted my inclination to look up to see who it was. There would have been nothing I could effectively do about it. Instead, I remained still, pretending to continue to sleep, to deprive them of the satisfaction of having awakened me, and to discourage their doing it again.

[Later note (1-10-2024): I knew what to do instinctively; I’ve had lots of practice over the years with neighbors.]

● 2-12-2019: I have a sore throat. Usually, for me, that’s the start of a cold.

● 2-16-2019: I heard the question raised: Is being against Israel’s policies anti-Semitic? Of course not. A bully is not excused for his bullying because he’s a Jew. And objecting to the Jewish bully’s bullying doesn’t mean you’re anti-Semitic—it means you’re anti-bully, or pro-justice. Opposing the policies of Israel doesn’t make you anti-Israel—let alone anti-Semitic—any more than being against Donald Trump makes you anti-American.

● 2-17-2019: We want to live a long life, but we don’t want to be old.

● Regarding the 2-12-2019 entry, above, I did indeed have a cold. It was a mild one, and I’ve now almost completely recovered.

● 2-18-2019: Several years ago, I took a legal-writing course with Bryan Garner. He gave the class this exercise: “I bought a dog at a pet store. It subsequently died.” He asked what was wrong with subsequently in that context. Someone said that it was too big a word. I then raised my hand and said, “It’s also an unnecessary word: presumably the dog was alive when he bought it.” I sensed that Mr. Garner was impressed with my comment.

● 2-22-2019: I just awoke from another visually colorful dream: I was driving or riding along a pathway or street in my old Sherman Oaks neighborhood, just east of Van Nuys Boulevard, and just north of where the Ventura freeway is now, but this was before the freeway was built (a long time ago!). The flora was green; the sky was strikingly bright, clear blue.

● 3-4-2019: Today I drove my new (old) Toyota Camry car to Bakersfield for a deposition, just over 100 miles each way. The car performed beautifully.

● 3-6-2019: How do you define or determine when a motorist is driving too slowly? My answer: He’s driving too slowly when he’s going (even) more slowly than me.

● 3-12-2019: Our inability to predict is not the same as unpredictability. A more intelligent being might be able to predict an event that we can’t. Apropos, that our ability to predict has limits does not mean we have free will.

● 3-17-2019: Question: Which is better: one hundred moderately happy people, or one hundred ecstatically happy people? Answer: Whichever group I’m in; if I’m in both (or in either), then the second group.

● 3-19-2019: We tend to be more sensitive to our own pain than to others’ pain.

● 3-22-2019: I like to think I’m a great writer and philosopher. But as a human being, I’m only average, even mediocre.

[Later note (6-14-2022): Perhaps I’m only a mediocre writer/philosopher, too, but I suffer from delusions of grandeur.]

● Saturday, 4-6-2019: Haircut.

● I’ve noticed that, at night when I’m uncomfortable lying in bed, as when I have to urinate or my mouth is especially dry, but I don’t get up to relieve the discomfort, and I instead continue to lie in bed, sleeping very shallowly; the same dream fragments tend to repeat over and over again in my mind (where else, besides my mind, would that happen?). It’s like, when you’re awake, having a tune that you keep repeating to yourself, an earworm; you can’t develop it, so you just keep repeating the fragment; it’s unsatisfying, even unpleasant. Momentarily getting out of bed (to urinate or drink some water) seems to clear the pattern. (The downside of getting out of bed, though, is that sometimes when you return to bed, you’re even wider awake than you were in the half-dreaming state.)

● Sunday, 4-7-2019: A thought on Hinduism: Why do we feel compelled to construe reality as more complicated than it seems? Things are, sometimes, just as they seem. And they should be interpreted to be as they seem unless we have good reason to think otherwise. That we’d like to think otherwise is not a good reason to think so (if the goal is to perceive accurately . . . though it may be a good reason if the goal is something else, like to feel good).

● Friday, 4-19-2019: Comparing female genital mutilation to male circumcision is like comparing the severing of a finger to a manicure. One (the latter) is healthful; the other, extremely harmful, with no benefit or justification. The comparison (of mutilation to circumcision) is outrageous!

● Saturday, 4-20-2019: I pride myself on being good with words. And yet, it was not until I was in my 40s that I finally realized that the word XING, as in the road sign, “SCHOOL XING”, means crossing. Until then, I thought it was a single-syllable word, pronounced “Ksing”, and I had no idea what a “school xing” was . . . though I figured it had something to do with schools, or was located near schools. Similarly, for a very long time I thought that RSVP was a word, which I pronounced “risvipee.” I had no idea what it meant. Strange that I never bothered to look them up.

● Thursday, 4-25-2019: Men’s and women’s clothing styles tell much about the societal relationship between the sexes, thus: Women’s clothing typically reveals far more of the female body than men’s clothing reveals of the male body. For example, a dress reveals a woman’s naked legs; her arms and shoulders are bared; and her breasts are often revealed in one way or another. But men’s clothing usually completely covers a man’s legs and arms; the only skin showing on a dressed man is his hands, face, and a bit of his neck; the size or shape of his penis is rarely even hinted at. The purpose is to reveal women’s bodies to men, so that a man can judge women’s physical attractiveness and select a woman for her physical beauty. Women don’t need to see men’s bodies, because they (women) are passive in this regard. Women don’t select men; men select women. Women are sexual objects, not agents. Men are agents, not sexual objects. On second thought, it’s perhaps not quite so simple. The clothing difference reflects differences in the aspects of the opposite sex that men and women find attractive: by and large, at least initially, men are more attracted to women’s bodies than women are attracted to men’s bodies; a woman responds more strongly to a man’s character and personality. Moreover, even if men are typically the initiators in establishing romantic relationships, women are not completely passive. They feel romantic desire toward men; they want romantic relationships; and find certain men more physically attractive than others. Besides, for a successful romantic relationship, the attraction must be mutual. Which means that, to win a mate, a woman must make herself attractive to the man she likes, including by dressing so that he’ll find her attractive. So perhaps the clothing difference, far from signifying that men are agents and women are objects, simply gives people what they need in order to find mates.

● Saturday, 4-27-2019: When a Christian says “God” and a Muslim says “Allah”; are they disagreeing, or merely using different terms for the same idea?

[Later note (10-9-2023): To answer my rhetorical question, I think it’s the latter.]

● Sunday, 4-28-2019: I’m not so much committed to philosophy, as to being a great philosopher. I’m not so much committed to Truth, as to the truths that I’ve discovered and which I consider my claim to fame. Perhaps, while I’m alive, I’m a philosopher in that I enjoy thinking about philosophical subjects, and I’m good at it. When I’m dead, if anyone refers to me as a philosopher (and I hope they will), perhaps what they’ll mean is that my philosophical works are a significant part of the philosophical literature.

Sometimes I write down a thought, not knowing whether it’s true, or completely true. I write it down to record it, provisionally; I can think about it and amend it as further reflection may dictate, or even delete (or disaffirm) it if I later find it to be utterly wrong, or more wrong than right.

● Wednesday, 5-1-2019: When most people say that they fear that the planet will not survive, it’s elliptical for their fear that humanity will not survive. No matter what environmental calamities occur, the planet itself will survive, and probably much life on it. Our concern is for humanity. If humans go extinct, we don’t much care about what happens to the planet. My own concern is, perhaps, even more specific: my own work. I want my work to survive, which requires a continuing (human) audience.

● One half of the year is too hot; the other half is too cold. In between those two “seasons,” at each end, is a brief period of several weeks in which the temperature is just right.

● “President” Donald Trump is dramatic vindication of the wisdom of lesser-evil voting.

● Donald Trump is a cancer on our democracy. . . . But even that dramatic metaphor somehow seems too tame; it’s more like he’s taking a chainsaw to it.

● Thursday, 5-2-2019: I just noticed a new floater in my right eye. I’m worried about this. It’s quite prominent, and I think it may be permanent. It bothers me even more because it started just hours after I rubbed my eyes vigorously, so I think perhaps I’m to blame for carelessly causing it.

● Friday, 5-10-2019: I’m rather pleased with myself for effectively handling a certain neighborhood situation. I have a little garage that I park my (little) car in. It’s off of an alleyway. Often, other cars park in a way that makes it difficult, or less easy, for me to drive my car into the garage. When that happens, I leave a polite note on the offending car, asking the driver not to park there. It almost always works, at least eventually. But this April, for the first time ever (since I’ve lived here—8 years?), it didn’t work, and a car owner simply disregarded my notes and parked there every day. I escalated my response, by leaving twigs on the windshield under a wiper blade. When that had no effect, I escalated further, to little rocks under the wiper blade, and dirt thrown on the windshield. I kept that up every day, sometimes two or three times a day. Finally, on 7 May 2019, the car owner left an angry, threatening note for me, on her car (it sounds like a woman), where I put the twigs and stones. So I escalated to official action: I called Los Angeles Parking Enforcement and reported the illegal parking. I had to call twice to get action, but I presume I got action. When I got home the next day (5-8-2019), that car was not parked there. It hasn’t parked there again since, and I’ve seen it parked other places on the street, sometimes illegally. I saw it this morning with a parking citation on the windshield, for parking during a time, two hours, once a week, when the street signs warn drivers not to park there (for street cleaning). I was a little surprised by my own reaction: Instead of gleeful, I felt sorry for the driver. I guess it’s sympathy?, or compassion?

● A follow-up observation on my 5-2-2019 note, above (about the floater in my right eye): That may actually have been a good thing. If it had not happened, it might have happened at another time, when the consequent injury was more severe. Or I might not have remembered having vigorously rubbed my eyes shortly before the floater appeared, or I might not have noticed the connection. This way I’m warned, and so I’m able to avoid a more serious incident later. (Isn’t it interesting how the human mind seeks to view misfortune as good fortune, to rationalize. It’s like the familiar maxim “Everything happens for a reason.” And, come to think of it, everything [every contingent thing] has a cause; but not everything has a reason. Besides, if everything happens for a reason, does everything happen for the same reason, or for different reasons?; for what reason?; whose reason?) . . . Now, let’s explore that saying: “Everything happens for a reason.” It suggests that everything happens for a good reason (or a wise or a necessary one). Which is implied by the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-well-intentioned God. But if everything happens for a good reason, then no state of affairs is to be regretted; no human intention or action is to be blamed. If I get angry and massacre fifty people; if a madman (or an incompetent) takes over the government and causes a severe economic depression; if a Hitler kills six million Jews—we can’t blame it or even regret it—it was good; it happened for a good reason. And why should we try at all?—whatever we do, we were supposed to do; it happened for a good reason. (This, of course, is ridiculous. Hence, not everything happens for a good reason; and there is no omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-well-intentioned God.)

[Later note (8-5-2022): When someone says to me, “Everything happens for a reason”; I simply say, “What reason?”]

[Later note (10-10-2023): Every (contingent) thing has a cause; but only human action has a “reason”: the actor’s intention or purpose in doing the action.]

● Monday, 5-13-2019: Becoming your best self involves the twin pursuits of improving and avoiding damage. To take two simple examples, maintaining your best possible hearing involves avoiding loss: hearing doesn’t improve; it only deteriorates. To become a better writer, you must hone your skills, through reading and writing, and avoid brain damage.

● Saturday, 5-18-2019: The less money you make, the “harder earned” it is.

● Sunday, 5-19-2019: On “Moral Particularism,” the May 2019 Philosophy Club discussion topic. Following is the Club facilitator, Brian Gould’s introduction to the topic:

DO MORAL PRINCIPLES DETERMINE WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG, or is an action right or wrong, good or bad, by virtue of the particulars of the situation that cannot be reduced to or determined by moral principles? In philosophical ethics, the view called “Moral Particularism” is the idea that, as the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, “The moral status of an action is not in any way determined by moral principles; rather, it depends on the configuration of the morally relevant features of the action in a particular context. . . . The chief motivation for moral particularism derives from the observation that exceptions to principles are common, and exceptions to exceptions are not unusual. Moral principles, which are equipped only to deal with homogeneous cases, seem to be too crude to handle the delicate nuances in heterogeneous moral situations.”

Here are my own thoughts on the topic. The first thing to say is that morality is not objective. No action is objectively right or wrong, moral or immoral, whether based on moral principles or on the particular facts of a situation in which one might act. Because both doctrines seem to imply objectivity here, my arguing for one of them requires that I speak loosely. Speaking loosely, then, I favor particularism over—what do we call the other, “principle-ism”? But principle-ism is inevitably part of particularism, so to speak. When we look at a situation and somehow feel that we should act in a certain way in it, one of the factors that determine our intuition, is inescapably the various moral principles we all have in our minds. And moral principles are useful. We learn from our experiences, and we formulate rules to generalize what we’ve learned and to help us remember the lessons. And principles that we derive from the outside world, from having heard them, are not necessarily in our heads mindlessly. We filter them through our philosophical outlook and our rationality, and we keep those we find make sense, and reject the rest. Even if a certain moral principle has exceptions, a principle that’s “valid,” say, 95 percent of the time is a useful guide. The key is to accept them, not as absolutes, but merely as recommendations. Take, for example, the rule “Don’t use violence.” That rule occurring to you, even with the attached qualification “There are exceptions,” may help you avoid acting highly counterproductively, especially where you must act (or decide what to do) quickly, and violence is your first impulse.

● Tuesday, 21 May 2019: I just awoke from a dream in which a friend of mine was going to start a hotdog restaurant that he was going to call Big Dick’s. The idea started as a gag, but we thought the name would attract customers and make the restaurant a great success. We were making an elaborate film to promote the business. It was a very colorful dream. It was a good birthday dream.

● To paraphrase the famous maxim, The only thing necessary for the election of evil rulers is that good citizens not vote.

● Earlier this week, at a deposition, my client was sick, and coughing, and I sat several (empty) chairs away from her to avoid the contagion. When the opposing counsel came into the room, she asked me if I was a germaphobe. I replied, “I’m a getting-sick aphobe.”

● Sunday, 5-26-2019: Unjustified war should be a war crime and a crime against humanity, if it’s not already.

● Desert ride. Joyless.

● Thursday, 5-30-2019: New catheter: I’m finally replacing the urinary catheter I keep at home. I’ve used it for several years. It has essentially worn out.

● For the last few months, I’ve reverted to eating sweets. Specifically, I’ve been gorging myself on pastry for dessert two days a week. I’m going to try to stop. I won’t be giving up that much. The overall pleasure is not great. Whatever pleasure I have in actually eating the pastries is offset by the sick feeling I have after I’ve gorged myself, which can last for several hours. In fact, that discomfort may outweigh the pleasure. I never have that sick feeling after eating, except when I eat sweets. Which, to boot, may indicate an unhealthy effect on my body. Not to mention the added monetary expense, and the time involved. All of which adds up to a clearly bad habit, a good one to break.

● 5-31-2019: Science deals with fact; philosophy, truth. Therefore, if (as Michael Shermer says) the essence of the scientific attitude is openness to new evidence, the essence of the philosophical attitude is openness to new arguments—and, for that matter, to old arguments, which you may not have properly understood before.

● Sometimes when you try to take the bull by the horns, you end up taking the horns by the bull.

● If I were at risk of conscription for the military during wartime, I’d feel justified in trying to evade it, on grounds of utility: I’m too important, as a creative person, to be consigned to cannon fodder. How I would feel about my conscription for other reasons (like fear of battle) is a moot point—the first-mentioned reason is preponderant and sufficient.

● 6-6-2019: In our mouths, at the very front of the row of teeth, top and bottom, is a space, not a tooth.

● The Democratic Party is now hotly debating whether to impeach President Donald Trump. One factor in that decision is impeachment’s effect on our chances of winning the 2020 presidential election. In my view, impeachment will as likely help us as hurt us. Democratic politicians are commonly seen as cowards: doing what’s safe, rather than what’s right (like, here, pursuing impeachment). We may well garner more respect if we “grow a spine,” and borrow some Trumpian chutzpah! So on this point, the odds—ahem—are even. Yet we must also consider the election’s actual outcome. We’ll either win or lose. If we win, having pursued impeachment won’t much matter. Let’s call that, too, even. But if we lose, having foregone impeachment will be disastrous! If we lose, we’ll need to impeach Trump (to remove him from office); but it may then be too late to start the process, both because there may not be enough time left to complete it, and because, if we begin only after Trump wins reelection, impeachment will be easily impugned as politically motivated, which may preclude it. Tallying these results, we have two evens and a pro. Two evens plus a pro add up to a pro—for impeachment now.

● 6-7-2019: “God is love” strikes me as a very narrowminded conception of God. Surely, there are situations wherein what’s needed most is justice. If God loves the victims of a crime, shouldn’t He give them what they most need? Should we not then say that God is justice? Every creature is better off experiencing greater happiness. If God loves every creature, should He not make them all happier (except perhaps those to whom he dispenses justice)? Should we not then say that God is happiness? Surely, God wants to make things as good as possible. Should we not then say that God is goodness? . . . Of course, it’s all a bit ridiculous.

● Thursday, 6-13-2019: Appointment at Kaiser, via teleconference (i.e., telephone), with psychiatrist Kim Hoang, M.D.

● On 6-15-2019 I posted my “Impeachment” piece online. About 15 hours later, I got this response:

Richard,

I’m not the biggest Trump fan. But…

Go back and read your post. Then take a few minutes and read it again. Not all people in this country are clueless. Your thought process is why Trump will Win again. The only difference is this time by a landslide.

Now please turn off CNN and go to sleep.

To which I penned this reply:

You’re indulging in what I would describe as argument by insult. You don’t identify a flaw in my argument. Instead, you imply that you see one, but that it’s so obvious (1) that it would be beneath your dignity to actually name it; (2) that it should be evident to me just by rereading my item; and, last but not least, (3) that I’m stupid for having written such a transparently faulty piece. I think that people resort to attacking-by-insult because they have nothing better—no real argument or analysis.

Richard

I didn’t post the reply, because another reader came to my defense, saying that she thought the original critical response didn’t make any sense. So I thought I’d let that suffice. Don’t get involved in a petty squabble if I don’t have to. And now I don’t have to.

● 6-18-2019: A good person is not one who’s perfect (because no one is perfect). Rather, it’s a person who’s open to learning of his errors, and inclined to correct them when he discovers them.

[Later note (8-6-2022): Yes, but he must also refrain from committing atrocious acts. Some acts are so egregious that no amount of admitting the errors and learning from them will redeem them.]

● 6-23-2019: In my 1981 piece “For the Right to Abortion” I say that I favor capital punishment in some cases, to demonstrate that I’m not, on principle, against homicide. When I first wrote the essay, I did believe in capital punishment. Since then, I’ve changed my mind—I’m now against it. I’ve tried to think of a way to change my essay to make the same point without saying that I favor capital punishment in some circumstances. But I haven’t found an elegant way to do so. It occurred to me once that I could substitute “assisted suicide” for capital punishment. But then I thought that someone could criticize that example by distinguishing assisted suicide from abortion, on the grounds that assisted suicide is done to further the wishes of the one who is to die, but in abortion, the fetus does not wish to die. Perhaps I’ll justify leaving the essay as-is by artistic license.

● 6-26-2019: Donald Trump’s response to the latest rape accusation against him, “She’s not my type,” is revealing; it’s practically an admission. That is, if she were his type, he might do it. . . . The liar, grifter, and rapist in the White House.

● Sunday, 6-30-2019: I’ve believed for a long time that my “Ethics” is not only the best piece of work I’ve ever created, but also probably the best one I’ll ever create. I think it’s an anomaly among my works: it’s far greater than even the second-best work (and I’m not sure which one that would be). You might expect me to find it depressing that my best work is behind me. But my attitude is the opposite: I feel fortunate to have written it. I heard that the work of Nineteenth-century composer Englebert Humperdinck is now seen as constituting two parts, or divisions: his famous opera Hansel and Gretel, in one category, and everything else, in the other. I see my own output similarly: my “Ethics” on one side, and everything else on the other.

[Later note (2020): “Ethics” is not in my online essay collection. I had it posted on the Web, but the piece has graphic elements, which turned out badly on the website. And the effort was expensive. For now, I’ve abandoned the attempt to post it. Perhaps I’ll try again when my income improves.]

● 7-1-2019: I’m just a man who’s going to O. What does that mean? Nothing—it’s just another of my silly-isms.

● Wednesday, 7-3-2019: Haircut.

● Thursday, 4 July 2019: On Saturday, 22 June 2019, I got a facial at Western Beauty Institute. I told the operator that I cleaned the oil from my face by wiping it with rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol. She was horrified, and exclaimed that I shouldn’t do that, because it’s unhealthy. Someone else told me the same thing many decades ago. I’ve been doing that for I think probably 40 or 50 years. For the first time since then, I’ve now stopped doing it.

● I felt this morning’s earthquake while I was in traffic in my car. I was stopped at a red light at an intersection. At first, I thought that the car’s engine was perhaps surging. But I realized that was probably not the explanation. Then I theorized that perhaps there was a strong wind buffeting the car. I looked around at the trees and other objects outside, which seemed pretty calm, so I ruled that out. It was perhaps 5 or 10 seconds later that it finally dawned on me that it was probably an earthquake.

● I’ve heard people express fear that eventually computers will take over the world or replace human beings. I don’t share that fear. I can’t imagine computers being conscious or doing everything humans can do. I can’t imagine a computer being truly creative. I can’t imagine it doing the kind of work I do—I can’t imagine it coming up with anything like my “Ethics” (before I wrote it).

● Buzzards love gizzards . . . even in blizzards.

● Saturday, 7-6-2019: Well, if I wanted to feel earthquake shaking, I’m satisfied now. I was at home, sitting on the edge of my bed, when an even stronger quake (7.1) struck this evening. There was no damage in my apartment; but a few drawers actually opened, and water actually sloshed out of the pool in the apartment complex.

● Sunday, 7-7-2019: I just got an excellent pedicure, for $20.00, at Hands to Hold Salon in Van Nuys. (818) 995-1867 / 4419 Van Nuys Blvd., Suite B, Sherman Oaks, California. The pedicurist was Cathy.

● Monday, 7-8-2019: How hard is pulling teeth? (Presumably, it refers to the difficulty for the patient, rather than for the dentist?) . . . On the other hand, if it refers to the difficulty, not for the dentist, but for the patient, shouldn’t the phrase be “like having your teeth pulled”?

● Wednesday, 7-10-2019: I dichotomize my living existence into two aspects: accomplishment and experience. My goal in life is to maximize my creative output—that’s the accomplishment. But I also need a certain amount of pleasure and relaxation—that’s the experience (or part of it).

. . . Our creative work living on after we die is the closest we can come to immortality. For me, though, it’s a better form of immortality. My greatest value lies in my creative work, not in my experience. The endurance of my experience is less important to me than the endurance of my accomplishment.

● Thursday, 7-11-2019: I was sitting in a deposition today, bored out of my bloody mind, struggling to stay awake, and I said to myself, “Don’t ever forget how hard I work, how much I suffer, for this money!”

● Saturday, 7-13-2019: Here’s a Donald Trump joke: Question: Why did Trump rape the 13-year-old girl? Answer: Because she was his type.

● Sunday, 7-14-2019: At my level of income, it’s much easier to spend money than to make it. So I must use considerable self-restraint and planning, to avoid impoverishment.

[Later note (4-18-2022): Isn’t money always easier to spend than to make?]

[Later note (8-6-2022): Not, perhaps, if you have considerable passive income.]

● Friday, 7-19-2019: In deciding whether to retaliate against my next-door neighbors to the east, among the guidelines I’ve come to use is what I call the rule of one: If, during a retaliation cycle (one morning to the next), these neighbors are perfectly quiet, committing no offenses whatsoever against me—except one—and it’s an unusual kind of attack; then, even if I find that one act to be a genuine aggression, I suspend retaliation. That pattern suggests to me a carefully controlled experiment, to test whether I’ll find that act offensive, or sufficiently so to react to it. I refrain from retaliating because I dislike being finessed; I’m loath to gratify their little scheme; and I’m reluctant to allow them to build a dossier on me, or to give them a weapon to use against me. I wait for an offense in a less pristine background, for a more obvious or traditional offense, or for—my favorite—a cycle in which there are at least two offenses, when my retaliation will be ambiguous—it will be unclear exactly which action, or perhaps all of them, I’m reacting to. These people are no match for me.

Alas, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. I lose the war by having to constantly fight, by constantly being under attack. But if I have to fight (and I do have to fight—as much as I resent having to “dance” when someone shoots at my feet, the alternative is getting shot) . . . it’s better to win than to lose. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that the aggressors are suffering even more than I am. And I know that my (retaliatory) attacks on neighbors are more effective than their attacks on me, because, when I sometimes try to imagine their situation relative to me, I see their pain as unthinkable: if someone were doing to me what I’m doing to them, I couldn’t live with it—I’d have to move, or commit murder.

● Wednesday, 7-24-2019: Yesterday, Tuesday, 7-23-2019, while I was getting ready to leave the house in the early morning, I suddenly developed increased pain in the left side of my lower back. It steadily improved, until just now, at about 6:30 p.m., when it’s gotten much worse—so much so, in fact, that I felt justified in taking a codeine pain pill, or actually half of one (15 mg of codeine).

● Thursday, 7-25-2019: Instruction to a client for trial, on how to handle supposed contradictions with prior deposition testimony: Opposing counsel may try to contradict your testimony at trial with prior inconsistent deposition testimony. And he’ll ask you a question about the supposed contradiction to the effect of: “Not both of those statements can be true. Are you lying now, or were you lying then?” Here’s how to respond: First of all, consider whether your two statements are indeed contradictory. If you think your two statements are consistent, say so, and explain how they’re consistent. But if your statements are contradictory, you might say something like this: “My answers reflect the truth as I understand it. If my answer has changed, it’s because my understating has changed. If I think I was wrong before, I’m not going to repeat the mistake just to be consistent. I’m going to admit that I made a mistake.” And then candidly explain why you think your earlier statement was wrong—why you’re changing it.

[Later note (2-22-2022): Of course, that assumes that neither statement is, or was, a lie . . ..]

● Friday, 7-26-2019: This week I started a slightly new procedure for cleaning the urinary catheters that I use many times every day (every time I urinate). Specifically, I’ve taken to washing two at a time (instead of one at a time), which (two at a time) I think is a little faster (it takes less than twice as long as washing one).

● Sunday, 8-4-2019: In the last two weeks, I’ve posted several comments online, responding to other people’s remarks.

One concerned a discussion about a woman whose finger was chopped off by an automatically closing car door. The closing did not involve the door slamming shut, but rather a controlled, slow close by some door-closing mechanism of the car. Some said the woman had a good case against the car maker (Mercedes-Benz). A comment on the negative side was something to the effect that Mercedes-Benz would spend millions of dollars on engineering experts to prove that the car was perfectly safe. I had this simple response: “Wouldn’t res ipsa loquitur apply here? Obviously the car is unsafe: this happened!”

Another posting was this:

If client was rear-ended and pushed into the car in front of him, can he prove 100% liability against the driver behind him?

If first driver sues, will that driver be able to establish a prima facie case against middle driver? In other words, can first driver prove liability against middle driver just by virtue of the rear-end impact, without anything more?

Assuming no police report or witness statement from rear driver doesn’t help (I only know I hit the car in front of me, not sure if he was stopped or had already crashed with another car); statement of front driver vague and self-contradictory (I remember there was two impacts, but I thought the last car was the one that caused the whole thing).

EDR data may or may not be available.

Please share your thoughts. Thank you

My response:

You might argue it this way: First, the front driver’s statement is self-consistent. He could indeed have been hit twice, even without a prior, independent collision by the middle car. That is, the middle car stops close behind the front car. The rear car hits the middle car hard, pushing it into the front car. That impact causes the front car and the middle car to separate, the front car going forward, and the middle car stopping, or even recoiling backward. The last car, still traveling forward, and at a high speed, again forcefully rear-ends the middle car, pushing it into the front car a second time.

And not only is the front driver’s statement consistent with itself, but, further, both other drivers’ statements support the middle driver’s version. The driver of the last car admits at least that he rear-ended the middle car, and he does not say that the middle car hit the front car independently first. The front driver gives specific facts consistent with the middle driver’s version, and he offers an impression supporting that version. In fact, his statement that he was hit twice positively supports the middle driver’s version; if the middle car had hit him before it got hit by the last car, the front car would have been hit three times: once by the middle car independently, and then two more times when the last car hit the middle car (twice, as discussed in the foregoing paragraph). The one person who knows what happened is the middle driver. When the statements of both of the other drivers are consistent with or supportive of his version of the event, why would you presume that he’s lying about it? In the absence of evidence or reason to believe otherwise, a person should be presumed to be telling the truth. (And if he were lying about it, you’d think there would be some evidence of it.) Another way to put it is, Why not accept the version that all three drivers’ statements consistently suggest?

Finally, the greater simplicity of the middle driver’s version favor’s its truth. Traffic collisions are somewhat rare. On any given driving trip that you take, you usually don’t have a collision—or even see one. It’s even more unlikely—it would be an extraordinary coincidence—that two separate collisions happen at virtually the same time and place—as opposed to just one independent collision, with its inevitable chain-reaction sequela.
//

A week or so later, I posted this correction:

In the argument I posted on 4 August 2019, regarding the lack of fault of the middle driver in a three-car crash, I erred. The following statement in my second paragraph is wrong:

“In fact, his [the front driver’s] statement that he was hit twice positively supports the middle driver’s version; if the middle car had hit him before it got hit by the last car, the front car would have been hit three times: once by the middle car independently, and then two more times when the last car hit the middle car (twice, as discussed in the foregoing paragraph).”

The most that can fairly be claimed about the front car’s being hit twice is that it’s consistent with the middle driver’s version; it does not “positively support” it—it’s also consistent with the alternative version (the middle car hitting the front car independently). To assert that the front car would have been hit three times if the middle car had hit it independently assumes the truth of the middle driver’s version. So, in effect, I used the conclusion as a building block in the argument for that very conclusion. Which is illogical; it’s called “begging the question.”

I’ve rewritten the argument, as follows:

And not only is the front driver’s statement consistent with itself, but, further, both other drivers’ statements support the middle driver’s version. The driver of the last car admits at least that he rear-ended the middle car, and he does not say that the middle car hit the front car independently first. The front driver gives specific facts consistent with the middle driver’s version, and he offers an impression supporting that version. The one person who knows what happened is the middle driver. When the statements of both of the other drivers are consistent with or supportive of his version of the event, why would you presume that he’s lying about it? In the absence of evidence or reason to believe otherwise, a person should be presumed to be telling the truth. (And if he were lying about it, you’d think there would be some evidence of it.) Another way to put it is, Why not accept the version that the three drivers’ statements, taken together, suggest?

Finally, the greater simplicity of the middle driver’s version favors its truth. Traffic collisions are somewhat rare. On any given driving trip that you take, you usually don’t have a collision—or even see one. It’s even more unlikely—it would be an extraordinary coincidence—that two separate collisions happen at virtually the same time and place—as opposed to just one independent collision, with its inevitable chain-reaction sequela.

● Someone from a lawyer magazine left a telephone message for me saying they wanted a quote from me for an article they’re writing on me. I ignored it. But then I thought of a quote I could give them:

Achieve excellence, and the money will follow. If it doesn’t, that’s all right—excellence is more important than money.

I think I’ll call them back. I can give them several of my websites that they could write about, including 1-800-SUE-THEM.com and RichardEisner.com.

[Note from a few weeks hence: It turns out they were just trying to sell me something. I shouldn’t be so gullible!]

● Sunday, 8-18-2019: Would I murder someone were I convinced that I wouldn’t be caught? Not in present circumstances, because I have no strong urge to commit murder. And whatever urge I might have to do it is outweighed, not, I think, by a moral compunction about it, but by the selfish fear of the adverse psychological consequences on me of doing it. Whether concern about psychological consequences would be sufficient to prevent me if the urge to kill were great, I don’t know.

● Monday, 8-19-2019: I erred in my previous entry (the one of 8-18-2019). In deciding whether to murder someone, I would indeed consider the possible adverse psychological effect on me. But I would also feel a moral compunction against it. Why don’t I just delete that prior entry? Well, for the same reason I often keep my rough drafts: to show my thought’s evolution, including my errors. (Of course, I still don’t know, given a great urge to kill, whether the concern for psychological consequences and the moral compunction would be enough to stop me . . .. It would depend on the circumstances: How great is the urge to kill?; why do I want to kill this person?; how much time do I have left to live?; and so forth.)

● Thursday, 8-22-2019: Like the Chinese, I’m playing the long game, so to speak. Much of my behavior, though, is no doubt inconsistent with that: I’m lazy and complacent.

● Saturday, 8-31-2019: I think the neighbors in no. 3, next-door (I’m in no. 2) are gone. I think they were evicted, probably for non-payment of rent; the lock had been missing from their mailbox for a few weeks. Also, last night I saw them taking things out of their garage and putting them in their car, and this is the end of the month. It will be like a vacation for me until new residents move in (I hope they’ll be an improvement!).

● Sunday, 9-1-2019: A few times last night I thought the no. 3 neighbors were still there, or perhaps one of them, since I heard a few very slight hostile noises. But then I figured that it’s probably coming from another apartment. I suppose I’m hearing what was there all along, but now minus (which was the great majority) what was coming from no. 3. Another neighbor probably piggy-backed on the sounds of no. 3. I made my retaliatory angry-sound; and that other neighbor should know what it means.

● Saturday, 9-7-2019: Well, apparently I was wrong about the neighbors in no. 3 having left. They’re still there. Actually, that’s all right with me, because I adequately deal with them. New neighbors could be even worse.

● Monday, 9-8-2019: Sclooma-jooma!

● Today a lawyer said: “Looking for some creative analogies for when a defense doctor opines on your client from just a medical records review, without actually examining the patient.”

My response: It’s like a film critic criticizing a movie based on other critics’ reviews of it, when he hasn’t actually seen the movie itself.

● Monday, 9-16-2019: I departed from my usual diet yesterday, both in the morning (I ate meat, in the form of a patty melt at Tom’s #25 in Palmdale) and in the afternoon (I ate sweets, in the form of a pint of ice cream). Now, at 2:00 a.m., I may be paying for it; I feel slightly sick. I liked it, but I guess my body didn’t.

Most aches and pains are mild and transient, and I usually forgo taking medication for them. But if they linger or become significant, then I resort to medication.

[Later note (December 2020): I’m puzzled by the first sentence in that entry—I wasn’t aware of having been on a diet that excluded meat (was that a careless statement?; was I trying a new diet, which didn’t last long, and which I’ve forgotten about?).]

● For five days in a row now, there’s been some loud machinery used in an apartment across the street, and it’s mildly annoying. If it goes on much longer, I’ll complain.

● I started using my new laptop computer (the HP) today. Bryan Berman, my computer technician, brought it over; he took it a few months ago to set it up.

● Today I started using a new pair of driving gloves, the two-tone brown ones (the first of two pairs).

[Later note (8-3-2024): I wear (leather) gloves when I drive to protect my hands from the sun, and to prevent me from picking at my cuticles and fingernails. . . . I’m rather vain about my hands. Also, in cold weather, they keep my hands warmer, though that’s a disadvantage in hot weather.]

● Saturday, 9-21-2019: Donald Trump is stupid or dishonest. He’s not stupid.

[Later note (8-3-2024): That’s the closest I’ll come to complimenting Donald Trump.]

● Tuesday, 10-1-2019: To survive and thrive, humanity must now rise to a new challenge. People have shown that they can compete, and (some of them) win as individuals. Now let’s see if we can cooperate, and win as a species.

● Thursday, 10-10-2019: I used to buy salad from the salad bar at the grocery store and eat it for dinner (or for the main course of the dinner) every day. Several (maybe four?) years ago I got tired of it, lost my appetite for it, and stopped eating salad for dinner. Instead, to get my vegetables, I’ve been ordering the house salad at IHOP Restaurant as part of breakfast. Today, I happened to be at the grocery store in the early afternoon (I had left work early); I looked at the salad bar, and it looked appetizing to me. I bought a variety of vegetables (a salad), and salad dressing. I ate about half of it for dinner just now, and it was very satisfying. I hope this is the start of a long resumption of eating salad for dinner. Perhaps I should vary my meals, so that I don’t lose my appetite for it again.

● Friday, 10-11-2019: If a Republican opposes Donald Trump, is he a self-hating Republican?

● Saturday, 10-12-2019: Haircut (by Brenda).

● Tuesday, 10-15-2019: Today I got in the mail some kind of survey. Enclosed was a crisp, new two-dollar bill, apparently to bribe the recipient to complete the survey. As I put the bill in my pocket, I thought to myself: “They just lost two dollars.” (I didn’t complete the survey.)

● Thursday, 10-17-2019: I’ve given a great deal of thought to the question of how most accurately to characterize myself. And, at last, I think the answer is simple: I’m the great bisharoony.

● Friday, 10-18-2019: Charity is needed, and possible, only in a society in which the distribution of wealth is very unequal, where those who have much more wealth than they need, voluntarily give some of their surplus to those who have less than they need.

● For the past two days, I’ve had a pretty severe stomachache. I was going to go to the Urgent Care this afternoon, but it’s beginning to diminish, so I’ll skip it.

● Sunday, 10-20-2019: I just had a long, drawn-out dream in which I was a soldier in the U.S. Army. I remember one instance in which (in the dream) I was in combat. I longed to fly a fighter jet. Once, my superior officer landed his fighter jet right by where I was stationed, to ask me some questions about the location of the enemy soldiers, either on the ground or in the air. Someone played a video of two planes in the air, and the question was how many planes were there—one or two? I discerned that it was two, with one flying like a fly (the insect). In a later scene, I wanted a job, within the army, of defending the army in arguments. Someone (a civilian, it seemed) had criticized spending money on faster computers for the army. I responded, saying that a computer had saved my life and the life of another person recently by determining that a potential deadly threat was actually not a threat. I argued that such life-saving no doubt happened many times every day, and that if the army got even faster computers, even more lives would be saved. I turned to one of my fellow soldiers and said, “Why am I suddenly taking the army’s side on everything?” He smiled and said, “Cool.” Then I was thinking how easy a life civilians had, and I pictured a man working at a full-time job, as a civilian, and analyzing how even that was much easier than a typical day for a soldier.

[Later note (9-9-2023): Wait a minute: How would determining that a potential deadly threat was actually not a threat save my life?—if there was no threat, my life wasn’t in danger. If, instead, a situation seemed safe, but the computer showed that it was actually dangerous, that might save my life . . ..]

● An admission to a much more benign version of an accusation is tantamount to a denial. For example, the King of Saudi Arabia, when asked if he was responsible for the recent murder of the journalist in the Saudi embassy in Turkey, said that he was responsible for it because he’s the head of the government. But the accusation was, not merely that he’s responsible for it technically, but that he’s responsible for it actually, in that he ordered it, or at least that he knew about it in advance and could have stopped it, but instead approved it. . . . Or perhaps, rather, it’s tantamount to an admission: presumably, he knew what the real question was; he used a subterfuge to avoid the dilemma of having either to admit to a serious wrong or to lie (if he were innocent of it, he would simply—truthfully—have denied it).

● I’m a liberal, but I see many contradictions on the part of liberals in this country. One of them is this: For as long as I can remember, liberals characterized the traditional foreign policy of the United States as evil. But after Trump became president, they criticize Trump for making foreign decisions based on what’s good for him personally, rather than on what’s in the interests of the United States (the traditional foreign policy perspective). In other words, before Trump, liberals characterized the Unites States’ traditional foreign policy as bad; after Trump’s election, as good.

● I just awoke from a dream in which I was a student in a music composition class. I had an idea for a piece of music that I wanted to compose, and I told the teacher that I’d notate what I could, and, for other portions, I’d write a verbal description of what I intended and ask him for help translating it to musical notation. He apparently knew that I was a writer and admired me for my facility with multiple arts. Toward the end of the dream, he asked me something to the effect whether I’d unite the arts, and I said, “I’ve always assumed that they were the same.”

● To say of an illness or a symptom that it has “gone away” seems a curious locution. It’s one thing to say that it has “disappeared”; but that it has gone away seems logically to suggest, not that it no longer exists, but that it has gone somewhere else (“away”), changed locations, that it exists somewhere else, which surely we don’t mean.

● Wednesday, 10-23-2019: Vice President Mike Pence is Donald Trump’s assassination insurance: Anyone tempted to assassinate Trump would think twice, knowing that Trump would be replaced by someone (Mike Pence) perhaps even worse.

● Sunday, 10-27-2019: I had a dream last night (early this morning) in which, among many other things, I was riding on a bus. The bus driver was a pretty, young woman. At some point, for some reason, we (she and I) were walking together. To my surprise, she took my hand in hers; I liked that. Her name was Ester. I asked where she was from. She hesitated, and I said, just the city. And she said Esterville. I said, “And your name is Ester?” She confirmed it. And, feeling good about my ability to make conversation, I said, “So you’re Ester from Esterville.” Which she confirmed.

● Wednesday, 10-30-2019: Bone density test today.

● Saturday, 11-2-2019: I recently read this sentence in a book on writing, a sample thesis sentence: “Despite their immediate benefits, welfare payments may actually be eroding personal initiative and depriving society of needed workers.” That quoted sentence bespeaks a hypocritical hostility to the poor. Generally, leisure is considered a boon. We dream of making enough money to retire young, so that we can live a life of leisure. But when it comes to the poor, leisure is suddenly a bad thing, somehow leading to irresponsibility and moral decline. It’s really a desire to keep the poor in such a state of material deprivation that they must use all their time and energy working to advance the interests of the rich, never able to advance their own interests, to relax, to have fun, or to pursue education or art. And God forbid that we should have to increase workers’ meager wages a little, to insure their sufficient availability!

● Tuesday, 11-5-2019: Donald Trump’s election to the United States presidency is a very poor reflection on the American people. Who voted for him? Not to put too fine a point on it: basically, ignoramuses and bigots. . . . On second thought, that’s inaccurate and unfair. That describes some of those who voted for Trump. But probably most were well-meaning, reasonable people who just were lied to, by Trump (and fed up with the Democrats, only marginally better than the Republicans).

● Tuesday, 11-26-2019: I’ve just done something I thought I would never again do (or at least not till near the end of my life): ingest cannabis. But I contracted the flu yesterday, and one of the symptoms is nausea and loss of appetite, for which (I know from experience) cannabis is by far the best (and a very effective) remedy. Pepto Bismal isn’t cutting it. I figure that it won’t ruin my 23-year abstinence if, as I plan to do, I limit my use to this medical purpose—any more than my using opiates for pain or cough ruins my abstinence from opiates.

I got edibles (gummy candies), instead of flowers, for several reasons, one being that I have a chronic cough, and so I don’t want to smoke. Another reason is privacy: the neighbor(s), surely the neighbor in apartment 1, could hear me smoking, using my old water-pipe. If I smoke it in the form of a cigarette, a “joint,” the smell would be obvious. Of course, one drawback of the edibles is the lag time (45 to 60 minutes, they said) between ingestion and effect. I ate one 5 mg candy, waited an hour; felt no effect; and then ate another one. It’s been almost 2 hours; I feel nothing! I ate a third (5 mg) candy. Nothing!

[Later note (8-3-2024): I wonder if the illness wasn’t COVID-19. Not until several years later did that possibility occur to me.]

● Wednesday, 11-27-2019: Today my appetite is diminished, but the nausea is pretty much gone. I won’t use marijuana just for the appetite. Loss of appetite and nausea (both symptoms together) seem to justify using marijuana (where marijuana is the only, or the most, effective remedy)—that seems to qualify as a medical use. But loss of appetite, by itself, no, not unless the loss of appetite becomes chronic and a threat to my health. To use it now would cross the line between relieving physical discomfort (which is medical) versus generating or enhancing pleasure (which is recreational). If and when I try it again, I left off taking 3 of the (5 mg) gummy candies. It had minimal effect, though as I was lying in bed last night, just before falling asleep, I think I felt something, slight hallucinations, or visions. It was very pleasant. But too subtle. Today, however, I did feel a vague cannabis hangover, which was unpleasant. Next time (and there will be a next time eventually, if not soon), take 4 of the candies at once.

● Friday, 11-29-2019: Last night, it was so cold that I had to adjust the Radiant Heat in my bedroom. It’s controlled by a circular dial on the wall. A line just outside the circumference of the dial indicates the setting; advancing it clockwise increases the heat (and, of course, vice versa). Eight (actually, it’s four) straight lines through the center of the circle divide the circle into eight equal segments, or wedges. The marker had been exactly in the middle of the penultimate segment. I moved it to the end of that segment, which made the room warm enough, maybe even a little too warm.

● Well, perhaps my next cannabis experiment will happen sooner than I thought. I have loss of appetite and slight nausea. . . . No, the nausea was slight and fleeting. Admittedly, I wanted an excuse to use the cannabis, but, honestly, it (a good excuse) never came. To maintain my abstinence’s integrity, I must be strict with myself about making exceptions. Fortunately, I’m on the mend from this flu.

[Later note (1-22-2022): My resolve is good: I’ve had those cannabis candies in my kitchen cupboard ever since, but have consumed none.]

● Friday, 12-6-2019: Today I got the result of the retrial of a case (Kong v. City of Hope Hospital) in which I won the first trial. The retrial was a battle of the trial briefs. I won again! It was one of my very best legal briefs. I know the brief was excellent, and I did nothing wrong. So, in a way, the result didn’t matter. I don’t need the judge’s decision to validate my work. If there were a contest between Beethoven’s 3^rd Symphony and Brahms’s 3^rd Symphony, and the judges voted for the Brahms, would Beethoven feel bad? Would he feel that he’d lost? No. No matter what the judges say, Beethoven’s symphony is far superior, and he knows it. Nonetheless, it feels good to have won the trial (again).

● Sunday, 12-15-2019: I was recently invited to my employer’s office Christmas party. I politely declined. I really didn’t want to go. And I figured it’s better that people regret your absence than that they regret your presence.

● I no sooner got over the flu than, now, I have a cold, albeit a pretty mild one. It’s bad enough, though, that I’ve had to take codeine for the sore throat. I think I probably contracted it (the cold) in last Friday’s calendar meeting at Scott Warmuth’s office.

● Monday, 12-16-2019: Why do so many celebrities wear sunglasses? Because they’re rich. Not because they can afford sunglasses, but because they can afford medical care. Just last year, when I was 67, I started wearing sunglasses when I go on my walks (during the day). I didn’t know that using sunglasses was important until an eye doctor told me so. Because the rich see doctors regularly, they get doctors’ advice, which, in the United States, lacking a public health system, less well-off people get much less often.

● Friday, 12-20-2019: A familiar catchword for social economic fairness is “level playing field.” Though possibly better than a tilted one, a level playing field is not sufficient. Even in a sport played on a level field, one side loses. But why should there be economic losers? It’s like the phrase “equal opportunity.” In a lottery, everyone has an equal chance to win. And yet, just one person wins. Everyone else loses. Why should you have the opportunity to be a pauper? We should structure society so that everyone has at least enough wealth to supply his basic needs. Perhaps there should be opportunities for some to do a bit better, to be rewarded for what they accomplish, but the range or disparity of wealth should be relatively narrow. The problem is not the playing field, but the game.

● Tuesday, 12-24-2019 (Christmas Eve): Today I just finished a response to a legal malpractice complaint filed against me and my employer, Attorney Scott Warmuth, by Rito G, aka GTS. We had defended him in a substantial workers’ compensation case; we thought we got a very good result for him, then he turns around and sues us. I’m very pleased with my response, all the more so because Scott will see it, and I hope he’ll be duly impressed. In retrospect, this year was marked by two memorable triumphs of my brief-writing: this one, which is a legal brief of sorts, and the second trial brief in the Dr. Kong v. City of Hope case.

● Wednesday, 12-25-2019: Desert ride . . . pretty much joyless.

2020 >>