Genocide in Wilmington - Save the Corporations!

We hear all the time about the genocides taking place in Rwanda and Sudan and the Congo. But there is another genocide taking place much closer to home. Quietly, with little notice, during normal business hours every day of the year, people are being killed by faceless bureaucrats. It happens in all states, but the epicenter is in Wilmington, Delaware. The office responsible – operating under the sadistically ironic moniker “SOS” – is the Secretary of State.

As publicized recently by human rights activist Mitt Romney, the Supreme Court of the United States declared boldly and unequivocally in its 2010 Citizens United decision that corporations are people. The court noted that “certain disfavored associations of citizens – those that have taken on the corporate form – are penalized for engaging in the same political speech” as other kinds of people – those who have taken on the human form. The Citizens United decision has gotten a huge amount of attention in the national dialog about free speech rights. But, astonishingly, while we, as Americans, have gone to great lengths to assure that our corporate brothers and sisters can express themselves as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, we seem to be utterly un-phased by the fact that these same corporations are being systematically and summarily exterminated in clear violation of their even more fundamental right – the right highlighted in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence – to life.

Corporations are people. These people are being exterminated every day. Systematic and widespread killing of a people, based on the kind of people they are, is the very definition of genocide.

If a person in the form of a corporation ceases to be useful to its “owners,” it can be eliminated. The process is easy and doesn’t take more than a few minutes. It just takes filing a one page Certificate of Dissolution with the SOS and paying a $204 processing fee. It can be done by fax. No originals needed. Expedited 24 hour confirmation can be obtained for $50 more. The form has to certify that the dissolution was approved by the corporation’s board of directors and shareholders in accordance with the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, list some contact information, and that’s about it. No reason has to be specified. No due process. No testimony from loved ones. The execution is easy, efficient and – the moment the SOS worker’s rubber stamp hits the paper – absolute.

Government death panels can order “judicial dissolution.” Failure to file an annual franchise tax report can result in repeal of a corporate charter – one more euphemism for the same termination of a corporate life.

Corporations that have not paid their annual franchise taxes in Delaware are dragged out for what is essentially a gruesome public hanging by no less than the Governor of the state. Each year, shortly after the March 1 payment deadline, Jeffrey Bullock, Secretary of State and, Jack Markell, Governor, sign, and post on their website, an elegant certificate listing all the corporations whose charters have been repealed for failure to pay taxes. As a society, we decided centuries ago that people in the human form cannot even be jailed for failure to pay debts. But if you’re a corporate person who, when the bell tolls on the first of March in any fiscal year, is unlucky enough to owe the state a few bucks, you will be executed and your lifeless corporate shell dragged out in front of the masses as a morbid reminder of the government’s power to kill at will. This year’s genocidal proclamation can be viewed here (caution – graphic contents!): http://corp.delaware.gov/VoidProc/11VoidProc.html

It gets worse.

A large portion of corporate executions are performed in the context of what the killers call “reverse triangular mergers.” A reverse triangular merger is a way for a buyer to structure the acquisition of a target company. As part of this innocuous-sounding process, the buyer creates a corporation – often given an impersonal, throw-away name like “Merger Sub, Inc.” – for the purpose acquiring the shares of the target company and then being merged into the target. Very often, Merger Sub will have been created just two or three business days before the merger. The Certificate of Merger that must be submitted to the Delaware SOS to consummate a merger has required fields for the names of the “constituent corporations” and the “surviving corporation.” That’s all. It doesn’t ask for the name of the “sacrificed corporation” or the “murdered corporation.” It’s just understood. One of the constituent corporations will be the surviving corporation. One will not. Simple as that, a life is ended.

There are all kinds of other ways to structure an acquisition, including ways in which all corporate entities involved will remain fully intact. But structuring an acquisition as a reverse triangular merger can often save a buyer a few bucks in federal taxes. It’s hard to even imagine the outcry that would result if human babies were created to serve our commercial desires (organ harvesting? smaller bodies that can fit more easily into mine shafts?) and then thrown out. But if the purposeful execution of a week-old baby happens to be one of the externalities of a business deal, and if that baby happens to take the corporate form, well so be it.

I wish I could say that I was just a neutral observer of this genocide, but, unfortunately, no, I am an active participant. Over the course of my career as a corporate attorney, I have created and killed hundreds of corporations. Sometimes I have my subordinates do it for me. I can set the process in motion with a 20 second phone call to a friendly, smiling paralegal. The deed is done. I don’t usually have to give much more than a glance at the paperwork that will be filed. Until Citizens United, the process never bothered me. I thought corporations were just a web of contractual agreements and statutory constructs. But now that I know that corporations are people, just like you and me, how can I live with myself? A recently proposed amendment to the Mississippi state constitution declaring that life begins at conception would make it even worse. If a client wanted to incorporate an entity and I talked them out of it, or if I got to the SOS office after hours, effectively preventing the filing to be made, impeding corporate conception, what would that make me? A condom in a suit?

Now – disengage sarcasm. We are not bothered by corporate genocide because corporations are not people. They are not living beings, and they do not have inherent Constitutional rights that trump the desires of people – actual living, breathing people. That laws made by human beings, through their democratically elected representatives, can be overturned in the name of inherent free speech rights of corporations is ridiculous. The Citizens United decision does not even pass the laugh test. It is disingenuous and absurd. Yet it is the law of the land, enacted by the Supreme Court, interpreting the Constitution of the United States. The only real way to correct this ludicrous insult to our collective intelligence is to amend the constitution to say what it obviously was already meant to say – that to be a person, you must be a human being. Great minds are already at work on this. Check out http://movetoamend.org. In the meantime, like Heinrich Himmler, I’ll continue to just “do my job.”

Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

I was in a little bit of a funk last week. Nothing major. No discernible reason why. Just generally felt slightly annoyed and unsympathetic toward the rest of the world. Leslie brought me home a cupcake, which made me feel a little better. And then I listened to a song I had read about in Rolling Stone – “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” by Das Racist – and I was cured. Check it out:

http://youtu.be/EQ8ViYIeH04

The first time I played it, I laughed a little. Then I listened to it three more times. And I don’t know what it was, but my state of mind turned on a dime. My bad mood melted away and I just felt better. Strange but true. Strange because, in a way, this song is among the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. The lyrics are pretty much “I’m at the Pizza Hut. I’m at the Taco Bell. I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” There are a few different slightly-altered riffs, but that’s about it. It’s catchy, so I ended up singing it to myself all day. The more I sang it, the less stupid it seemed. And after a few takes, it became downright hilarious.

Maybe it’s because combination Pizza Huts and Taco Bells – those nasty, filthy not-even-real-fast-food-restaurant counters you sometimes see at rest stops and third-rate food courts – are themselves so profoundly stupid. Yum! Brands, Inc. (yes, the exclamation point is part of its actual corporate name), the international conglomerate that has grown Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (and KFC and A&W and, in China, the strangely-named Little Sheep) into their glorious current incarnations, doesn’t think they’re stupid. The holding company doesn’t discuss combination Pizza Huts and Taco Bells in its SEC filings per se, but rather refers to “multibrand units, where two or more of our Concepts are operated in a single unit.” It further notes that “each Concept has proprietary menu items and emphasizes the preparation of food with high quality ingredients, as well as unique recipes and special seasonings to provide appealing, tasty and attractive food at competitive prices.”

Seen through the lens of earnings per location, co-branding and product delivery, with synergies and distribution efficiencies to be found everywhere, a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell doesn’t seem stupid at all. But when you visit one, and look just a little bit closer at what the “concept” really is, it all starts to get a little dicey. Microwaved Chalupas glued together with sauces that come out of a caulk gun designed to be operated by barely-conscious human beings (at least for the time being, until machines can take over the very few remaining “food” delivery tasks that require some kind of human functionalities) served side-by-side with factory-made pizzas that just have to be fed through a conveyor belt oven and plopped into a cardboard box before being unveiled for an eagerly awaiting gourmand. A little shared freezer space and the same idiot-proof cash register / inventory management software, and there you have it – a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing at all against Pizza Hut or Taco Bell. I actually love their food. It’s quite delicious, albeit in a sort of awful, disgusting, self-loathing kind of way. As any college student can tell you, if you’re shitfaced, hungry and only have $2.36 in your pocket, there is no oasis in the world you’d rather stumble upon than a Taco Bell. The crack team of Yum! Brands executives assigned to the Pizza Hut and Taco Bell concepts are probably quite proud of the attractive value proposition they offer to consumers desiring an easily accessible dining product at a moderate price point. And they could probably make some quasi-legitimate claims about cost per calorie and even take some righteous position about preventing poor Americans from starving. But when you live your whole life subject to their ads and marketing campaigns, product placements and celebrity endorsements, and see their well-lit spaces and funny talking dogs and good-time-having people in their commercials, it’s impossible for some part of you not to believe, even just a tiny little bit, that Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have so much more – fun! happiness! excitement! – to offer. And if each one alone is so great, it’s almost incomprehensible how monumentally wonderful a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell must be.

But it’s not. It’s just a shitty little kiosk at the rest stop. When you sing a song about something, you put it in the spotlight. And when you shine a light on something that was never meant to be considered for more than those few seconds in-between pumping gas and taking a leak, trying to get back on the highway as fast as possible, what you see might be disturbing, provocative or just plain hilarious. Das Racist is onto something with their sort of idiotic tune. Maybe they didn’t mean for it to have any deeper meaning. Maybe it was just a joke. But something about it – the contrast between the promise and the reality? the focus on something so utterly mundane and stupid? – made me laugh like hell. The Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell song really turned my week around. I’m in a much better mood now. Maybe I’ll head out and celebrate with a Gordita and a P’Zone.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a Despicable Piece of Shit

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, is on his way home. The InterContinental Hotel maid who accused him of rape had too sketchy of a past to be credible to a jury. So that's the end of that. All will be forgotten in a few months, and we'll see if DSK throws his hat in the ring to run for president of France.

Here's why I think Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a despicable piece of shit. He fucked the maid. That's not in question. He admitted it. Probably because there was DNA evidence showing that he did, so denying it was not an option. My question is, why did the maid fuck him? By her account, and his, the "encounter" took place within a minute of her walking into his hotel room. DSK is a shrively old-ish man, and it's hard to imagine that the maid walked into the room and was so instantly juiced up that she just had to have him. So what are the other possibilities? DSK is such a smooth operator that, in 30 seconds, he can talk the clothes off of any tired service industry worker that crosses his path? Maybe there were quick negotiations for some money to change hands? Or maybe it went down exactly as the maid said and she was just plain ol' raped.

I simply cannot believe option one - that this was just a spontaneous, spur of the moment, fully-consensual, good-time roll in the hay. If I'm wrong, then sorry DSK. I take it all back, and I'll buy you lunch next time you're in town. If any of the other options is the true one, then DSK is more horrible by a thousandfold than any typical John or rapist. Why? Because he was, at the time, the head of the IMF.

The IMF is one of the most powerful organizations in the world. From the perspective of a poor person in a third world country - really poor, like a $1 a day tax bracket type - the IMF may well be the single most powerful organization in the world. The IMF provides economic relief, and is the enforcer of austerity requirements designed to assure that the money loaned to the third world does what it's supposed to do - prop up national economies. The IMF is often in a position of having to make incomprehensibly wrenching decisions regarding what proportion of funds can be used literally to feed and vaccinate children versus how much must be used to service national debt. An organization like that sometimes has to do things that look horrific. The only possible way to justify withholding money from dire, imminent life or death situations is to believe unquestionably that the longer term benefits will outweigh the immediate horror. Not an easy calculation to make.

I would hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the people making decisions like this at the IMF truly care about their fellow human beings. All of them. I hope that they care not just about their friends and families and colleagues, but equally about the poorest, most powerless people in the most remote corners of the third world whose lives are quite literally in their hands. Because if they don't, and if they are in positions where they sometimes have to take actions that effectively sentence people to death, then we have created a system that is horrific beyond words.

For the reasons I talked about before, I believe that the maid at the InterContinental fucked Dominique Strauss-Kahn because he was exerting some kind of power over her - physical, monetary or coercive. Her background is what it is, and it's not relevant to what was going on in the mind of DSK. If the maid - a person with virtually zero power of any kind (and, incidentally, originally from a mud hut in Guinea, the very kind of country whose citizens are most thoroughly dependent on the IMF) - didn't really, truly want to have sex with DSK, and if DSK- one of the most powerful individuals in the world - had sex with her by asserting some variety of that power, then his opinion of this one fellow human being is starkly clear. And if he could treat one single person like that, then why should we believe that his opinion of the hundreds of millions of people over whose fate he presides would be any different. That is why I believe, with all due respect, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a despicable piece of shit.

(Video) Runners Charge Through JP in Second Annual Sedgwick SLOG

On Saturday, August 20, 24 runners, 30 spectators and a dozen kids participated in the Second Annual Sedgwick SLOG – a team running relay race starting and ending on Sedgwick Street. The SLOG is organized each year by Sedgwick Street residents and includes runners and spectators from throughout JP and several surrounding neighborhoods. This year, organizers were able to obtain an official City of Boston permit to close off the street during the event, and enlist an officer and police cruiser from the E-13 precinct to lead the first wave of runners, siren blaring, down Sedgwick Street.

Runners were organized into three-person teams, with each runner completing a three mile loop down Sedgwick Street, along Centre Street to Pond Street, around Jamaica Pond and back. Passersby who saw small groups of runners wearing official race bibs, weaving through traffic and checking GPS running watches, may have wondered what was going on. It was the SLOGers, trying to hurry back to pass the batons to their next teammates and get dibs on some barbecue and beer. This year’s SLOG also included a fun run, where a dozen kids of all ages ran up and down the block, broke through the finish line tape and got custom-made race medals.

The winning team – Ben Carlson, Josh Borus and Scott Mays – completed the nine mile course in a total of 63 minutes, 40 seconds. The fastest individual male and female runners – Aaron Price and Sarah Price – completed their three mile loops in 15 minutes, 47 seconds and 20 minutes, 32 seconds, respectively. Local barefoot running legend Jeff Ferris completed three laps around the course in nothing but an old pair of shorts.

Sedgwick street will hopefully come alive again around the same time next year for the Third Annual SLOG. For video coverage of this year’s event, check out http://mediaslinger.com/danjanis/slog2011.mov or www.DanJanis.com. If you are interested in participating next year, either as a runner or a fan, please send a note to dtjanis@gmail.com.

The Freedom from being Sold Shit

I signed up for the ING Miami marathon last week. The on-line application had a bunch of mandatory fields. After name, age, address, shirt size and, of course, credit card number, there were three pages of questions that had to be answered before the application could be submitted. Occupation? Annual household income? Are you a “decision maker” at your company? Purchase an on-line marathon training program? Register to win a Nissan Leaf? Up to three trial magazine subscriptions? Would you like to be contacted by an ING financial professional? Clicking “no, goddammit, I just want to sign up for the friggin race” was not an option. So I answered all the questions (as obnoxiously as possible, of course – employer is Cumstein & Smegma LLP, annual income is fifty billion dollars, no thanks on the magazines) and got on with things.

The constant stream of low-level irritants in the modern world is made up in large part of people trying to sell shit. That’s nothing new. Hucksters came onto the scene probably about ten minutes after man learned how to use a rock as a tool – “Ug. Get Thor-o-matic super stone. Limited time. Less hairy cro-magnon ladies think you sexy.” Because hucksterism is annoying, we learn to ignore it. But, like a virus, more potent strains evolve, each one more ignore-resistant than the last. Visual ads become more prominent, more animated and more ubiquitous. As those become less effective, more audio ads sprout up. Airports are saturated with commercial announcements. Some cities have started selling air time in their subways and buses. Boston may be next on the list; the MBTA has started discussions with a company that creates GPS-triggered audio ads on buses that are tied to the locations of advertisers. Trying to read an on-line article usually means scouring the screen to find that tiny portion of non-advertising space where the text is located.

All of this stems from the fact that we are Consumers, and are somehow not offended by being referred to as such. How did that happen? It’s pejorative to say that our work efforts make us “cogs in the machine.” It wouldn’t be too flattering to reduce our sexual lives to their “procreation vessel” components. But we seem just fine with having all of our interests, goals and desires, all of the personal nuances that make us who we are, reduced to the act of consuming. Buying, destroying, throwing out and buying again.

So we’re Consumers, a colossal amount of energy is expended trying to get us to consume, and that’s annoying. Still, it’s possible to find some tranquility. Reading a book is nice. A book is a clever off-the-grid content delivery device that has absolutely no interface through which advertising can be delivered. Music can be relaxing. If you make a playlist you like and pop in your ear buds, you can circumvent the increasingly ubiquitous audio ad assault. There are even a few spaces left – even in cities – where you can walk around and not see visual stimuli designed to get you to buy shit.

Peace and tranquility don’t necessarily come from cutting yourself off from human contact. Interfacing with people is nice. An effective way to decompress is to just take a break from your role as Consumer. It’s not always easy to mute all communications whose purpose is to sell you shit, but it can be done, and it’s worth the effort. I know ING is going to try to hawk me some more shit when I go run in Miami in January. I’ll try to ignore them and focus on the nice views and breathe in some warm air. And I’ll get some perverse satisfaction knowing that they’re sending unwanted magazines to my fake law firm address.

Fuck the Starving Kids in Africa

There's an important meeting in my neighborhood every Saturday morning at 8:00. All the local 3 year-old boys gather in front of the fire station on Centre St. to watch the weekly testing of the fire truck equipment. The firemen raise and lower the ladders, rev the engines, test the hydraulics, sound the sirens. About as good entertainment as exists for a little kid. When I passed by this morning and saw all the action, I though, wow, all that stuff must be expensive. It is. And we're all happy to foot the bill for it. Because when an alarm is real and someone is trapped in a burning building, all that expensive equipment and all those well-trained firemen could save a human life. And a human life is priceless. Or at least the life of a human we can relate to.

This summer, 11 million people in Africa are at risk of starvation, due to some of the worst droughts in recent history. This fact has been covered in a few news one-liners, but has basically not caused so much as a blip in the collective US consciousness. But more on that later. First, let’s talk about global warming, in particular global warming caused by humans. There’s a big debate in the US about whether humans are actually causing global warming. For the most part, there’s nothing scientific about the debate. It’s all just good political theater – a fun and effective little way to get people on all ends of the political spectrum hot and bothered and rallying behind their respective leaders. Easy fuel for the culture wars, inciting the self righteous on both sides of the “debate” to solidify their positions on whether or not to use energy-efficient light bulbs.

But while reasonable people can disagree about which politicians’ narratives resonate more, reasonable scientists cannot, and do not, disagree about whether human activities are causing global warming. They are. There is a legitimate, fact-based scientific dialog going on about just how many additional carbon parts per million will cause an increase of one degree over however many years, but the notion that humans are changing the climate has been established as a fact. The rest of the industrialized world is baffled by the weird alignment of this scientific issue with the particular US roster of political hot button items, and amused and outraged by the willful ignorance it promotes. Professionals in the insurance industry – the ones with skin in the game, the ones who have to directly pay to fix shit when the shit hits the fan – have known for years that climate change is progressing much faster than geological business as usual. They adjusted flood insurance premiums long ago to reflect the fact that things are speedily changing. Like at any casino, the house never loses. The fact that flood insurance in some places is now exponentially more expensive than ever before, or not available at all, is as objective an indicator as exists that people who care only about cold, hard statistical probabilities think that the climate is changing fast.

The people advocating the position that humans have nothing to do with climate change are fake scientists and propagandists enlisted by industries with massive vested interests in the status quo, religious extremists who write off summarily any scientific fact that contradicts what their holy literature has to say, and people who just generally don’t have the time, energy or inclination to pay attention to the issue. This last group is the largest and scariest. If you don’t dig below the surface, any politician or pundit who dresses up like an expert and says that the whole issue is a sham sounds just as credible as any non-photogenic scientist who’s devoted a lifetime to studying the boring details that comprise the factual heart of the issue.

If our own lives, or the lives of our friends and neighbors and college roommate’s kid who’s blossomed into a really fine young man, were at stake, things would be different. Media serves up the news that we are almost biologically inclined to want to know about. The stories we want, the stories that sell, are about weird, shocking and, most of all, local events. Things that are intimate and familiar are just much easier to process. News that makes us think, “oh my god, that could have been me” engages us. The September 11 attack was in the epicenter of our national front yard. Just about everyone in the country has two degrees of separation from one of the 3,000 people who was killed in the attack. Nothing could be more familiar than an office building where average Americans were just about to get their workaday mornings started. Same with hurricane Katrina. 1,900 regular folks were killed. Wrong place at the wrong time. Could have been anyone we knew. The baby that Casey Anthony killed could have lived on any residential block in the country.

But the potentially starving kids in Africa are too far away. They don’t look like people we know, and 11 million is too big a number to comprehend. Global warming is too abstract. People who are supposed to sort out the facts for us say it might not be true anyway. Fixing it might not work at all and, in any case, could make gas six cents a gallon more expensive. No price could ever be affixed to a human life. No expense can be spared when trying to save a human life. That seems to be true after September 11. We’ve all agreed to a blank check to foot the bill, and even make some meaningful changes in our daily lives, to help assure that the murder of another 3,000 people like us never happens again. But 11 million people is 3,667 September 11s. It’s 5,789 hurricane Katrinas. It’s 11 million Casey Anthony baby murders. And although any politician, pundit or preacher who said out loud that we should value the life of an African child at about the cost of a tall latte would be decimated by the public, that is nonetheless exactly what we have decided as a country.

Each of us has earned our place in the world hierarchy. If we want to drive heavy cars and live in big houses and gunk up the atmosphere with carbon and ignore all the consequences of doing so, that’s our prerogative. And if kids in Africa want to complain about how hot it’s getting and how all their drinking water is disappearing, well they should get a paper route and save up for a plane ticket and move to Finland. If their lives aren’t important enough to make it onto the evening news, why should we care at all? Starving kids in Africa? Fuck ‘em.

We Are Animals: Naked Running and the Destruction of Planet Earth

Running is great. Running in the summer is even better. And running in just a pair of short shorts and shoes is heavenly (for me at least - can't speak for the people who have to look at me). I’d run naked, but even here in super liberal Jamaica Plain, I’m not sure that would fly. The breeze and the sun feel good. Breathing is easy. And it's good to remember sometimes that, underneath our button down shirts and pleated pants, we're really just animals.

The more fancy-pants we as humans get, the easier it is to forget that we’re animals. 99% of our DNA is the same as apes. Some probably large percent is the same as a slug. It's only very recently (relatively) that two evolutionary developments - thumbs and super-sized frontal lobes - gave us the ability to create all the tools and infrastructures that have separated us so profoundly from the rest of the animal kingdom. But at the end of the day, when we step aside from our thoughts and possessions and daily routines, we're just sloshing piles of bones and guts and fluids, same as all our other animal brethren.

You can't really be judgmental about something an animal does. Animals do what animals do. Animals don't make personal decisions about diets and carbon footprints and hits to their personal reputations. They just do their thing – whatever's in their DNA. So how did things get so much more complicated for humans? It seems to me that something big happened when humans made the leap beyond simple subsistence – something no other animal has been able to do. Other animals can't do anything more than survive. They can't do much to save up for the future, other than maybe hide away a few nuts for the winter. And they can't specialize – gain some specific skill that they can barter so that other animals will do stuff for them.

All the complicated human infrastructures that form the modern world – government, economics, skyscrapers, medicine, space travel – developed quickly once our human thumbs and brains evolved to the point that we could do more than subsist. Having arrived safely at the top of the food chain and domesticated virtually every natural power for use in feeding our insatiable appetite for more stuff, we diverged completely from all other animals. The lives we live today in the first world – covering ourselves up with designer clothes, pecking away all day at computer keyboards and driving around in our cars, has almost nothing in common with the way our predecessors lived just a blip back in evolutionary time.

Oh, and no other animal has ever been capable of destroying the world. As the population grows, as more people are able to live industrialized lives, and as the amount of natural resources needed to sustain all those lifestyles explodes correspondingly, we're changing the fundamental composition of the Earth. Whether we're destroying the Earth is no longer even debatable. It's only a matter of how many more generations it will be before we've changed the Earth enough that we can no longer live here. Or, there's always the more streamlined possibility of a few nuclear weapons getting us to the same place in a matter of minutes.

With great power comes great responsibility. It's my fatalistic view that we've thrown nature irreparably out of whack, but that we nonetheless have an obligation to make at least some effort to delay the inevitable. I think we should have the humility to recognize that while we're lucky to have evolved to the point where we can create so much, we also have an obligation to take responsibility for the damages we're capable of causing. There's an easy opposing point of view, I know – that just like any other animal, we should be free to do whatever we can using the powers we've been given. And if living the way we live is harmful to others down the line, so be it. I'm not totally opposed to that line of thought. The laws of physics were set in motion a while back. Based on those, modern organisms evolved the way they evolved. Our planet is one of a billion in a galaxy that's one of a billion, and so on. And if we blow it out of existence, the rest of the universe will hardly bat an eyelash. More intelligent life is out there somewhere. More will come into existence at some point. Earth is just a little flash in the cosmic pan.

Whoa. Heavy shit – a little sample of what goes through my mind when I'm clomping around some Boston path, almost naked, early in the morning. We're a pretty highly evolved species. We've got cool inventions and fancy tastes. And thumbs and abstract thoughts. But we're just animals. And that's a good thing to remember sometimes. Get naked and keep it real!

Enlightenment vs. The Methamphetamine-Fueled Bender

People have long debated whether you have to be crazy to be a good writer / artist /musician. The short answer is, yes. Chances are, if you have the wherewithal to produce a work of true genius, you'll also end up lopping off an ear or stuffing your head in the oven. At the very least, you'll need to be a run-of-the-mill alcoholic, womanizer, narcissist or recluse. As much as we hate to admit it, living an upstanding life, striving to achieve your goals, being a productive member of society is boring. There are some exceptions. James Taylor seems to be living a nice, mundane life in Newton, MA. He's a good musician. Society can handle some moderate amount of pretty good music about being a friend (and I think even JT may have had a heroin-junkie period at some point). Martha Stewart would be considered an artist by some - a master of creating pretty things out of mundane objects. But, seriously, there is not one person in a single first world, TV-watching country that did not feel some minimal level of smug satisfaction watching that woman get hauled off to the can.

As I continue to read more about Buddhism, all of this becomes very problematic. If I start to take Buddhist principals to heart and become more calm and at one with the forces of nature, if I start treating all other beings with love and kindness and compassion and understanding, if I wander through each day taking deep, full breaths, a half smile on my face and an overall air of tranquility, what am I going to talk about with other people? Beauty and peace are all well and good. But, really, who wants to hear about that? Kibitzing about the twisted train wreck that is global humanity is one of the great pleasures in life. It's a fundamental building block of human DNA that dates back to the dawn of time. People can spend a little time contemplating the soothing elements of life. That’s nice. But it's discussion about idiots, douchebags, criminals, losers, scumbags, know-it-alls and morons that really gets the juices flowing. Spotlights on benders, murders, raves, falls-from-grace, scandals and affairs sell a lot more magazines than tales about being relaxed or having a productive day in the office.

So what's a guy to do who's trying, at the same time, to find some tranquility and have interesting things to write about? Maybe the solution is as simple as "everything in moderation." Including moderation. I haven't come across any yet, but there must be some Buddhist monks out there who spend, say, ten consecutive days meditating in silence and then every eleventh day just going ripshit crazy. Wander in the woods, write letters, polish up the sandals most days. And, once in a while, rage through town on a methamphetamine-fueled bender, go out drinking with a pack of high school kids, beat up a homeless guy, steal a hood ornament, break into someone's house, swim naked in their pool, crash a rental car, and spend the night at a sketchy motel with some dirty women they met at a dogfight.

All of this is an advance plea for help. If the Buddhism thing gets to be too much; if the next time you see me, I smile kindly, gently touch your shoulder and ask you a penetrating question; if I lose my cynicism and my junior high sense of humor; and if I stop writing about what a ridiculous bunch of imbeciles all human beings are, please give me a forceful smack in the ass and a cocktail. I could also use some updates about what's happening these days in underground, lunatic-fringe circles. I was never that cool of a guy - more of a tag along, jazz band clique type. I'm afraid my Brooks Brothers business-casual professional career hasn't helped much on that front. And I'm probably not nearly insane enough ever to become a great artist. So if you're a hipster, dope fiend, jetsetter or suicidal nutjob, send me a dispatch from the inside. I may find eternal bliss one day, but I'd still like to stay in touch.

Andrew and Brenda's Fairytale Weekend

It rained for almost 6 days straight this week in Boston. Work was a drag. And getting resettled into my workaday life was grim. It wasn’t just the weather and work and the mundane banality of daily life. It was more that I was readjusting from three days of living in a fairytale. My brother Andrew and his terrific fiancée Brenda got married last weekend! And what a spectacular event it was! Like they say about drugs, the higher the high, the lower the low. With festivities like the ones Brenda and Andrew put on, there’s no way the week that followed was going to be anything but a downer.

The show took place in New York City at the University Club, an architectural landmark that’s been in the same location – a stand alone building on 5^th Ave. and 54^th St. – since the time the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts were putting the final flourishes on their nearby mansions. It’s a club, a library, a hotel and a restaurant, where members and their guests can read, have cocktails a swim in the nude (if you’re a man) and generally escape from the noise and bustle of midtown Manhattan. Piano music wafts through the place. The walls of the three story high rooms are dripping with ornate mahogany woodwork. The valets know everyone by name. Jackets and ties are required at all time. If you don’t pass the dress code, you have to shuffle in through the service entrance to get to your room.

It took a half a day after arriving at the University Club on Thursday for my class warfare instincts to settle down. I bet the chambermaids aren’t that impressed by the 6,000 square foot oriental rug in the reading room. I bet the back of house area here isn’t any nicer than at the crappiest Howard Johnson in East St. Louis. I wonder what the presiding host would say if I came with a jacket and tie and nothing else. Oh, there’s another rule that you can’t walk around with your dick swinging proudly in the breeze? How long has it been since families like ours – Taiwanese and Jewish – were allowed in this place anyway? This place should be burned to the ground and the charred flesh of the old men inside ground up into burgers to feed the homeless people outside!

But then I settled in. And once I got the hang of dressing right, and was allowed to pass freely through the lobby, and have my lemonade freshened in the reading room, I thought, well this isn’t so bad I guess. The very rich and the very poor have been around since the dawn of time. No need to have a fit of liberal guilt every time I hang out in a nice place. Nothing wrong with enjoying the finer things in life once in a while. And it is kind of relaxing to sink down into a plush chair, read a magazine, and look up every once in a while to gaze out at all the tired riffraff shuffling by outside.

I spent Friday running errands and helping Andrew and Brenda get ready. The million little details they had been ironing out over the past six months were all coming together. Everyone was excited and seemed relaxed. Relatives were arriving in town. Clothes were being tried on. Last minute adjustments. Schlepping stuff here and there. Anticipation. A buzz in the air. There was a fun rehearsal dinner in The Village at night. Families got acquainted. Back slapping and hugging. Stories about the bride and groom as kids. Pictures. Drinking. After hours at a bar in midtown. And back to the University Club, where I slid back between the high thread count sheets in our faux Chippendale bed.

Saturday morning the preparations really got moving. The florist arrived. Lighting guys and sound guys hauled gear into the rooms where the festivities would take place later at night. The groomsmen buzzed around getting suited up, learning how to tie real bowties. The bridesmaids took turns with makeup artists and hair stylists at the St. Regis. Photographers set up quirky scenes in Madison Square Park and back at the University Club. The wedding party ran down 5^th Ave., pictures snapping. Tourists gawked and took pictures of the photographer taking pictures of the bride and groom.

And then, the main event! At 5:30, all the preparatory hustle and bustle at the University Club came to a halt. The guests were seated, talking quietly. Calm. Some piano music started. Andrew walked with our parents down a candle lit aisle to the front of the room and waited under a beautiful, backlit canopy of flowers and branches as the rest of the wedding party walked down the aisle. Big smiles everywhere. And then came Brenda. Brenda, who looks outrageously, movie star stylish on any given Tuesday morning, was stunning. The dress, the jewelry, the giant radiating smile. Andrew and Brenda stood in front of their families and closest friends looking truly happy. I helped officiate the ceremony with Brenda’s cousin. Friends read poems and gave testimonials. A great aunt and uncle sang a Mandarin song about two clay figures being melded into one. Vows were read with cracking voices. Rings! Husband and wife! Kiss the bride! Break the glass! They did it! My little brother was married! He found a great one! So did she!

The reception was spectacular. The rooms were like from a castle. Huge and beautiful. Striking anywhere, but almost unfathomable in the usually space-starved Manhattan. Guests circulated around. Cocktails. Jazz. Everyone happy. Love in the air. Brenda and Andrew glowed. Their first dance was perfectly executed. More amazing flowers grew from the tables. Parents welcomed relatives. Friends gave toasts. Plates of delicious food came and went. People from all over the world met one another. Two families became related. Perfect in every way. The last song was played at midnight and people started shuffling out. The young crowd moved on to the next venue – the former Grand Central Station office of an old New York financier, now a speakeasy-like bar. Nobody seemed at all tired. Too much excitement. Too much fun. Such a fun reason to get together.

On Sunday, people got together one more time for a nice brunch. People said their good-byes. The bridal suite was cleaned out. Gifts gathered up and brought home. It was time for me to go. Leslie was going to DC, so she got a cab and left for the airport. I went alone to get my car, paid $120 to get it out of the scuzzy-looking garage and drove back to Boston in the rain.

It was very sad. Just like it always is when you’ve experienced something so wonderful. Which, of course, always has to end. Wouldn’t it be great to always be around your closest family members and your best friends? And to celebrate life’s most touching moments? And to have a valet? And to be able to sit in a plush chair and listen to piano music? Once you have a taste of all that, how could it not be depressing to go back to your regular house – where a towel thrown on the bathroom floor stays there until you pick it up – and then wake up the next morning and go to work – where you have to, well, work. Work was extra hectic and intense when I got back. Deals to close. Piles of documents to read. So much less fun than a fairytale wedding.

But I’m OK now. Real life is just fine. You have to have the ups and downs. If life were spectacular at every moment, after a while, it wouldn’t be spectacular at all. You have to have a little run of the mill dreariness to be able to appreciate life’s great moments. Life is good. And I’m happy to have one more great memory that I’ll be able to think about forever. Thanks Brenda and Andrew! And may your lives be just the right mix of mundane and spectacular.

Big Hitter, the Lama - My Buddhist Awakening

“You know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gungalagunga. So we finish the 18th, and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know. And he says, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Carl Spackler

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a blog posting. It’s not that I stopped having thoughts about how ridiculous the world is. Or got hit by a truck. Or got “disappeared” by the government. Mostly I’m just busy at work and haven’t had much evening brain capacity left recently. But I’ve also dropped of the grid and become a Buddhist monk. Well, I haven’t actually done it yet. But I might soon.

I initially got turned on to some Buddhist stuff when my first law firm drove me to therapy. My therapist asked if I’d be amenable to meditation kind of stuff and I said, yeah, I’d be up for pretty much anything that would help me stop thinking about throwing myself in front of the subway every morning instead of going to work. She recommended that I read The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk. What the hell. There was nowhere to go but up, sanity-wise.

The book was good. I found peace and tranquility for about a week until my high strung, type-A nervous default settings kicked back in. Then, recently, when poking around a bookstore in Brookline (ironically, the Hasidic Jewish epicenter of Boston), I stumbled across another book by Mr. Hanh that had only recently been translated into English. I took that as either a sign that I should continue my Buddhist studies, or that a publishing company marketing rep had done a good job of product placement. Either way, I bought the book.

I read it, and then read a few more things that Thich Nhat Hanh had written. And I gotta say, there’s some good stuff there. It’s a little disjointing to try to learn from the writings of an actual full-fledged, tea drinking barefoot Himalaya-hiking monk when you’re riding the subway on your way to the 37th floor of an office in downtown Boston. But on the other hand, this guy also spends most of his time working with lepers and dismembered children in war zones. So if he can find inner peace after a day in the field, it seems like I should be able to too, even if one of my clients is an asshole.

Here are some of the Buddhist principals that resonated with me:

(I’m paraphrasing).

You’re Not Such a Big Swinging Dick After All

It’s easy to get caught up in how monumentally important you are and what a crime against humanity it is when your latte gets made with 2% instead of skim, but consider this: all of the molecules that make up your body have been around for a trillion years. They’ll take the form of you, Joe Schmo, for a few decades - a blip in time in the grand scheme of things - and then you’ll decompose, get eaten by an animal or a microbe, and be recycled into something else. Buddhists don’t see people as individuals, but rather as brief “manifestations” of the larger universe. The current arrangement of molecules that is you is just a fleeting little moment. Nothing to get depressed about. But also no need to get all bent out of shape when the guy at the dry cleaner is being dickish to you. In a few years, his manifestation too will evolve and he’ll just be dust blowing in the wind, fertilizer for a shrub. You too. Relax, smile. It doesn’t matter.

Breathe

A huge component of meditation and Buddhism is breathing. Now come on. That is an attainable goal. However much of a loser you are, however much you’ve pissed away your life and led a sad, meaningless existence, you can at least breathe. And once you’ve got that down, it doesn’t take a whole lot more effort to think about breathing. Breathing is the interface between your body and the world around you. Without the oxygen pulled in by your breath, all of your systems - body, soul, consciousness - would shut down in a matter of seconds. That’s heavy. If you think about what a crazy process breathing is, and how nice it is that you’re able to do it every second of every day, that should make you a little cheerier.

Family, Community, Gravity, and Plate Tectonics Got You that Promotion

Everyone thinks that their successes are solely the result of their own brilliance, talent and dogged perseverance. That stuff is all helpful, but there are a lot more forces out there at work. I’ve written a dozen other blogs about the invisible-to-those-who-have-them forces of money, family and societal power that make privileged people think they’ve earned everything they have (or, as Molly Ivins put it when describing George Dubya, “born on third base and thought he hit a triple”). Buddhism’s less concerned about putting prep school kids in their place than on pointing out the larger environmental forces that contribute to the success of even the most Ayn Randian CEO. Like the oxygen that makes his lungs work and the rain that makes the plant grow that becomes food for the cow that gives its life to transform itself into the $400 midtown Kobe beef steak that feeds him. You get the point. A lot of forces in the universe have to converge to produce a human being. Have a little gratitude just for being one.

Live in the Present Moment

Here’s a mind-bendingly obvious concept: the past is gone and the future will never arrive. Thich Nhat Hanh talks a lot about washing dishes. I don’t think he has a dishwasher. He’s talking about doing them by hand. The Buddhist view is that if you’re 100% focused on doing the dishes, not thinking about anything else, just living in the moment, then washing dishes can be a wondrous miracle. OK, I know that sounds a little hyperbolic. Doing the dishes sucks. But I understand the point. Whatever you’re doing, it won’t get done any faster if you’re thinking about just getting done with it and moving on to whatever’s next. There never is any next moment. So why not just relax and engage with what you’re doing at the moment? This goes for anything - commuting on the bus, getting a root canal, pushing a piano up a flight of stairs. If you can make yourself see the beauty and relax in the face of that kind of shit, you’re really in good shape.

Getting a Sports Car is Not Going to Make You Happy

If, as so brilliantly articulated above, there is no moment but the present, you’re gonna be disappointed if you spend all your time looking forward to something that might happen in the future. That doesn’t mean you should stop flossing and making vacation plans. But don’t think that if you’re unhappy now, you’ll suddenly become happy if you get a raise or buy a new car or stop your receding hair line. All that stuff might give you a few minutes or weeks of satisfaction, but only until it hits you that you’re still you. And if you’re not a happy you now, chances are you won’t be later, even if you buy yourself a garage full of expensive stuff.

So there you have it. Three millennia of Buddhist doctrines distilled into a two page smartass account of all that’s important in the world. I gotta say, though, Thich Nhat Hanh and the Lama and those guys have some good things to say. If their ideas can actually get someone like me to slow down and relax a little, I guarantee it, it’ll work for you.