Wednesday

A ringing sound wakes me in the morning ..I hit the snooze button but it doesn’t go away ..I pick up the telephone and hear Emilio’s voice going : “You’re golden” ..which means my car is ready ..I walk seven blocks to the shop ..sit there and talk about cars for a while ..he tells me the Europeans aren’t going to raise prices ..they’re afraid of losing customers .. I’m glad to hear his business won’t suffer ..I drive to my doctor's office ..we talk about the possibility of giving his ‘stress reduction workshop’ at Esalen next year ..why not, I say ..it fits ..he writes me a script for medz that I plan to buy from Canada ..I arrive home feeling exhausted ..I lay on the futon but can’t sleep ..I worry about money I’ve spent ..then imagine myself breaking a bottle of milk in the sink and watching it run down the drain ..not much I can do about that either ..I go downstairs and watch an episode of law and order ..the one with Vincent D’Onofrio ..this time they get their man by taking advantage of his obsessive-compulsive disorder ..he spends the night tearing apart the garage looking for a mistake he didn’t really make ..cool.

Micro business

Shaun is the 23-year-old son of a friend of mine. He’s also an entrepreneur with a plan. He wants to sublet his one-bedroom apartment to two-or-more students ..for a modest profit ..then move ..rent ..and sublet again. It’s a ‘micro business’ he says “ ..start small ..create a stream of income with every move ..until, who knows ..maybe one day I’ll work my way up to like ..dormitories.” Before long, he says, he’ll have enough money for a place of his own. Well, I have to give him credit ..he would be filling a need ..we have a large population of students ..and a shortage of housing.

“Aren’t landlords already doing this kind of thing in Isla Vista ..?” I ask.

“Yeah, but I’m looking at the Mission district .. places like that ..who wants to live in a student ghetto like IV."

(Other students, I say to myself) “You’re going to have to stay one step ahead of the wrecking ball ..the only affordable rents in districts like that are in buildings about to be torn down.” (I don’t have to remind him that he lives in an apartment that was converted from a hospital ..and is scheduled to be torn down).

“But, don’t you see uncle Lee ..that’s where the opportunity lies, they all have to go through the permit process ...which can take years ..in the meantime, I’m providing income for the owner ..and living quarters for students .. it’s a win-win situation .. do you know what the dropout rate is around here ..? Shit, I’ll probably be able to rent the same place two or three times before the wrecking ball arrives."

“Sounds like a black-market ..do you suppose real estate offices are doing that already ..part of their ‘property management’ division ..have you considered working for them ..?”

“I’m not talking about work, uncle Lee ..I’m going to ‘manage’. I’ll hire people to do the work.”

Head banger

I caught myself doing it again last night ..banging my head against the wall until all hours ..needlessly. I could have simply walked away. My email service started mangling whatever I put into it from word processors ..on both of my computers. Since my email service is also my Internet service provider .. I felt like I was stuck .. I started fiddling with every setting I could find ..ran every antivirus I could get my hands on ..downloaded the latest version of JavaScript ..I had two techies on the phone ..and when they ran out of ideas ..I called them wimps ..which kept them going ..they told me they don’t work on ‘third party’ software ..I told them their service is made up of nothing but third party software ..they told me that my ‘network software’ is corrupt ..only when connecting to your service, I countered ..our switchboards would be lit up like a Christmas tree right now if that were the case ..what, my patronage isn’t enough ..and on and on. I launched a bunch of anitvirus antispyware antipasto anti-takeover suicide prevention pills and went to bed. Got up this morning, but still no luck (would you believe it was the first thing I did when I got up). I even re-installed my office software ..nada. Then, after walking away from the computer .. I realized that I had already found the solution. In my efforts to show the techies that it was only a problem with their service ..I opened accounts with google, microsoft and yahoo. They work fine ..

Getting inside voter’s minds

[This was my ‘letter to the editor’ of the LA Times ..in response to an article which talks about the way neuroscience can be used to predict election outcomes. I have just enough background to detect overblown claims such as these]

The techniques used by neuroscience to observe mental activity are so new; they’re like trying to envision life on another planet with nautical charts created before the days of Columbus. That’s why I’m doubtful about the claims made by ‘Neuro-marketers’ who say they can tell a person's reaction to a campaign slogan by looking at their EEG. It’s a matter of interpretation. A good example is the study mentioned at the beginning of the article. ‘Neuro-pollsters’ detect a burst of brain wave activity in response to the phrase “..people in need will never be invisible to me” ..taken from a speech given by Hillary Clinton. They take it as a signal of “subconscious fear” on the part of the listener. However, someone else may interpret it as a response to a double-negative .. requiring a little extra attention to understand. In other words, I wonder what they would have seen had Clinton said: “..people in need will always be visible to me” instead.

Medicine man

I’m driving south on I-5 heading toward Encinitas.  Portia, from the foundation, asked me if I would go there and check out an Indian medicine man who claims he can cure depression, anxiety and addictions using an herbal remedy and conducting a guided ceremony. “You always said you were interested in medicinal plants” she says with a grin. I arrive at a suburban house where I’m led to a backyard ‘Ashram’ where I’m met by Truenos, a Peruvian medicine man.  He greets me at the door with a bow and says “come in come in ..we’re about to begin” I detect the sweet nature of serenity, like walking into a Buddhist sangha ..reinforcing my belief that Indians and Asians have a lot in common.  Truenos stops, looks me in the eye and kindly suggests that I leave my preconceived notions behind.  I clench my teeth and wonder whether I thought that or said that. Either way who cares. I join a circle of people sitting on cushions around a big brass table.  There are feathers, candles, water, stones, and in the center, a large hookah.  So naturally, the next thought running through my mind is how similar this looks to the time I was in college ..when suddenly I hear Truenos say that this will be like nothing we have ever experienced before.

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Scenes from my life flicker by like images on a movie screen. Each one leading nowhere. Snakes crawl out of the patterns from the Persian rug I’m sitting on. Brought to me courtesy of my reptilian brain I suppose. Just then I hear our guide say “Pre-suppositions may get in your way .. like stones in the road.” Appropriate metaphor I think. Then I hear him say “Words are just a child banging on a drum .. the rhythm you hear is actually a loop playing inside your head” and I go, hey, another cool metaphor. Then I stop and think, how many times has that phrase looped through my head today ..then [poof] I don’t remember anything after that. Afterwards he explains to me how your own thoughts determine where the drug will take you ..and how often that can be nowhere.

Pacific Heights

Richelle’s furnace broke in November ~ an unusually cold November for California ~ she calls the property manager who tells her that they’ll send someone out immediately ~ after a week huddled by the fireplace with her daughter ..Richelle calls the property manager ~ the property manager tells her that they can no longer authorize repairs for big ticket items like that ~ she’ll have to contact the owner directly ~ Richelle calls the owner ~ the owner tells her that the problem is not the furnace ..it’s the thermostat ~ the property manager should be able to take care of that ~ so, the property manager sends his nephew over to fix the thermostat ~ the nephew takes the thermostat home to figure out what’s wrong ~ meanwhile, Richelle and her daughter spend another week huddled by the fireplace ~ she calls the property manager ~ the property manager tells her that the thermostat needs to be replaced ..and they’ve already put in a call for a new one ~ the new one arrives and the nephew installs it over the holidays ~ while Richelle is out of town visiting family ~ when she returns ..the furnace still isn’t working ~ the property manager repeats that he can’t authorize furnace repairs ~ so Richelle calls the owner ~ the owner says it’s not the furnace ..it’s the pilot light ~ the property manager should be able to take care of that ~ his nephew comes by and replaces the pilot while Richelle is at work ~ when she gets home the furnace still isn’t working ~ Richelle now knows to call the owner ~ the owner tells her it’s not the furnace ..it’s the burners ~ have the property manager send someone over to clean them out .. and if she doesn’t stop harassing them like this .. she can expect a big rent increase ~ I tell Richelle that I think she has won the right to make her own repairs and deduct the amount from her next rent payment ~ she talks to an attorney who advises her to stop paying rent altogether and move into a hotel ~ Richelle stops paying rent and starts spending nights at her office (she’s self-employed) ~ the owner serves Richelle with notice to vacate ~ Richelle calls the building department and has the property declared ‘uninhabitable’ ~ the owner takes Richelle to court ~ Richelle shows the judge the notice from the building department ~ the judge orders the repairs be made ~ awards Richelle relief from rent owed ~ as well as rents due for the next three months ~ and if she moves out before that time ~ then the owner owes her the amount of rent for the months remaining ~ Richelle comes home delighted ~ I help her move out the next day ~ total award : $15,000.00 in Richelle’s favor ~ the next day I see the owner in the yard planting posies ~ she tells me that she just succeeded in evicting a ‘problem’ tenant ..you know, the ‘professional’ renter who cheats their landlord out of so much money that they are forced to sell ~ then an accomplice ‘swoops down and snags the property at a discount’ ~ and I’m thinking ..if she spends that much time and money worrying over petty repairs .. she’s in the wrong business.