fyi

and my doormen can go to hell, too.

fyi

i also kind of want to shove my roommate.

fyi

also, my old therapist is going to get a fine knuckle sandwich from me the next time i see him.

fyi

i'm going to punch the daylights out of my old boss the next time i see her.

throwin' elbows

networking is the professional milquetoast's term for hustling. (N.B. to my sister: milquetoast does not mean bland!!)

i've been networking myself silly of late, and it sometimes feels much more like i'm throwing elbows.

as civilized as you behave at such functions, you are working people and the room with an agenda. it's a constant hustle, this profession.

i talked with one gentleman this evening who clearly was not buying. his lost interest became evident some time after my attempt to salvage an early unguarded answer. he makes a good point--candor is not the name of this game (so sue me, i'm rusty).

but the problem with him is that he completely obliterated all sport in the evening's activity, veiled hint of ulterior motives and all. stripped down to sales pitches alone, all conversations are entirely unpleasant. and this is what he wanted from me. but why? whyyy?! was it his validated sense of entitlement? probably. in addition, however, i think he was actually disinterested from the get. to overcome same, he deigned to give me a chance to persuade him otherwise, lest he come off as rude. this was a small, tiny opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless, and i failed to utilize it to my advantage. lesson learned. 1) know your fans. 2) know your audience (usually not my fans). 3) know the game (barf).

beefcake

What you are looking at is a disgustingly large number of cows at feeding time in a feed lot in CA. This picture accompanied the New York Times article mentioned below.
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All these years of not eating much meat for selfish reasons, and it turns out I was conserving energy for the world to boot! Also, reading this article reminds me that meat is for plebs. Ever the snob, I find myself wanting to avoid meat even more now.

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Excerpt from "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler"*(NY Times)

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A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.
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It’s meat.
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The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.
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Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.
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Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.
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The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”
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Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.
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Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.
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To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
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Grain, meat and even energy are roped together in a way that could have dire results. More meat means a corresponding increase in demand for feed, especially corn and soy, which some experts say will contribute to higher prices.
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This will be inconvenient for citizens of wealthier nations, but it could have tragic consequences for those of poorer ones, especially if higher prices for feed divert production away from food crops. The demand for ethanol is already pushing up prices, and explains, in part, the 40 percent rise last year in the food price index calculated by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.
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Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.
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The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Evironmental Protection Agency.
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Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.
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Those grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes. The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t harmful, it’s way more than enough.
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Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources .

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***

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*By the way, Mark Bittman wrote this article. He is the author of some reknown cookbooks, both meat and non. I've looked at his renderings of vegetarian cooking in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, though, and the dishes suck. Oh, bother, I say! Because if this meat-eater is going to write a meat-bashing expose, should not there be an offering of tasty non-meat alternatives at the ready?

the square community

i suppress 85% myself in my working life. is this choice or necessity? i feel it's necessity. in an effort to be who they want me to be, i feel i can't be me, and so i turn into an empty canvas. no personality, no opinions, no style.
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i've been waging a war against the square community for almost a decade now, and it's starting to feel like the squares are winning. they're making me bland. i'm conforming to their lackluster desires. i'm wearing their lackluster clothing and following their lackluster schedule and letting their pathetic hopes, dreams, fears, comforts, and existence seep into mine.
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i need to move to an abandoned warehouse in the country.
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i need to know what claude monet and rainer maria rilke did besides paint and write.
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these 2 writings are helpful:

1) Failure is the best thing ever because it broadens your horizons and equips you in ways success never could - an article in Men's Health (as posted in someone else's blog). Excerpt:

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Maybe failure isn’t the problem. Maybe expectation is.
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After I was fired from my TV show, I was certain I’d never work in television again. I’d been given a great opportunity and blown it. The studio and network were out millions of dollars. But then the phone started ringing, with studios and networks asking whether I’d consider doing TV again. What had changed?
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Nothing. I’d simply forgotten what folks working in TV take as a given: Most shows fail. Every spring, the networks introduce new products to replace the fall and winter die-off. When a show tanks, they don’t spend weeks wondering why. They put a new show in its place.
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They expect failure, and are delighted when it doesn’t come.
In the case of Tom, my hunch is that he’d become stuck in an expectation loop. He’d spent years carefully mapping out his ascent: student-body president, law-school review, a great internship. He expected to succeed - we all should - but he hadn’t considered alternate paths to success. One misstep sent him scrambling, questioning all his other assumptions. Of course, it’d be wrong for me to write Tom off. Maybe his latest failure will force him to reassess his expectations. Maybe it’ll be what finally propels him to success.
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Most of us will never run a TV show or run for elected office. But we will all fail, repeatedly. Failure is a universal condition. We lose our jobs; we lose our marriages; we lose to the dealer’s flush in Vegas.
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When these traumas happen, we generally find ourselves on the familiar Kübler-Ross stages of loss: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But how we cope is less important than how we remember the experiences afterward. The best failures aren’t forgotten; they’re incorporated into our life’s narrative.
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My D.C. debacle, as miserable as it was to live through, has become a cherished memory. It’s a small scar that invites a big story, with big personalities. At first, I framed myself as the innocent victim in the drama, but over the years I came to view the whole thing as more of a hurricane that we all weathered together.
The great thing about surviving a storm is that you’re much better prepared the next time the winds start kicking up. You recognize the early warnings. You stock up on essentials. And, most crucial, you go in knowing that no matter what happens, you can always rebuild.
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Failure makes you ready in ways that success never could.
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The next time I found myself pitching a show, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted. I knew what I was good at and what I was better off delegating to others. I knew that as much as I believed in the show, if it all went south, I’d be okay.
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Because I’d failed, I wasn’t afraid of failing. And that enabled me to push a lot harder for what I believed in.
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The movie is unconventional and questionably commercial. In its wildest success, it might play festivals and arthouses before hitting DVD. Given all these risks, why do it?
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Because even in failure, I knew I’d grow from it. There were things I needed to learn about movies - and myself - that I wasn’t going to learn from writing another script.
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It’s just like weight training, really. You push yourself until your muscles fail. That’s how you grow stronger. Likewise, in life, unless you seek you’ll never mentally develop beyond that scrawny kid from high school.
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That’s why you have to drop to one knee and propose to the girl you’re pretty sure you love. That’s why you have to send out your résumé, even though your job is just fine. That’s why you have to climb that 14,000-foot mountain. It won’t always work out. You may get divorced. Or fired. Or frostbitten. But the alternative is a life of vague disappointment.
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When that nagging little voice pops up, wondering what’s going to happen if you fail, just ignore it. Yes, it’s hard. As humans, we’re programmed for loss aversion. But money is just money. Your job is just your job. Your life - the adventure of your life - is all you really have that’s yours.
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When things go wrong, when you’re sliding toward an unavoidable crash, don’t panic. In those long seconds before the impact, look around and figure out how you entered into this mess. Think about how you’ll frame the story a year from now, over a few beers. Can you come up with an honest version that ends, “So in a funny way, it was the best thing that ever happened to me”?
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Perfect. Then brace yourself.

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2) Perhaps it's time to take a leap instead of muddling through - Passion Ave & Conformity St, a blog post about making a choice when faced with crossroads. Not all that insightful in and of itself, but it does have that great title and these quotes that make me restless and keep me questioning work, my job, money, life, etc.:

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Work is necessary: “Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” —Albert Camus

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Stupid 401k: “Chase your passion, not your pension.”— Denis Waitley
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Don't settle: “Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?”—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Need to love the work: “With out passion you don’t have energy, with out energy you have nothing.”— Donald Trump

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The time is now: “Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself!”-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
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You have to try: “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”-Oprah Winfrey

Rejection Letters

got 3 today. boo.

Waste (The Swan Song)

Waste pains me. Not so much the waste of money (there are some things I can blow my wad on as fast as the next guy) or food (my interest in physical/mental health trumps this one) but most certainly the waste of:

1. another man's treasure (please donate/sell instead of throwing out) and
2. small-scale natural resources (please print double-sided).

The endeavor in Sweden discussed in this Reuters article both pleases and disgusts me:

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish state-owned firm has found a cheap, eco-friendly source of energy to warm one of its offices: body heat from a quarter million commuters steaming through Stockholm's central train station.
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Body heat already warms the station itself but the surplus, currently let out in thin air, will be redirected to provide as much as 15 percent of the heating in a planned 4,000 square meter office building, real estate firm Jernhusen said.
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"We had a look at it and thought 'We might actually be able to use this'," said Karl Sundholm, project leader at Jernhusen, which also owns the station. "This feels good. Instead of just airing the leftover heat out we try to make use of it."
Jernhusen markets the building as "environment smart" and aims for its energy consumption to be half of what a corresponding building usually is.
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The bodily warmth from the central station will be redirected to heat up water. The investment will be around 200,000 Swedish crowns ($31,200), Sundholm said.
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"The ventilator aggregates are already there, and even some of the pipes. All we need to do is complement with a few pumps and pipes."
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom)

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My disgust with my fellow man and woman on the subway during rush hour has already caused me to start walking to work in wintry mornings as often as possible. Should my workplace follow the Swedes, I'd probably risk contaminating myself with my own E. coli over washing my hands using malodorous infectious warmth.

you want some of my brown sugar?

killing them with kindness just might have worked!! more details to follow . . . .

86

i am 86-ing my use of the term "86" up in here. it shows up way too often, thereby rendering it cliche and passe. (can i get a "touche?")