Mr. Lawyerman, Ch. 5

Mr. Phillip Smith, Esq
Amalgamated Insurance
451 LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL


Dear Mr. Lawyerman,

On behalf of all the employees and shareholders of Amalgamated, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks at the results you achieved in the recent trial of Dr. Nobase.  Though it should have been a slamdunk, Nobase's commitment to self destruction made the resurrection of this case a matter of colossal achievement.   In short, you bailed our assess out, and we are grateful.   This does not mean that we still won't pull the account and give it to a competing lawfirm filled with less talented attorneys, but hey, its all good for now, go have some wine at Its all about Wine.

We were especially impressed at your storyline of treatment of the plaintiff.  Though Dr. No was too frustrated and upset to provide the jury with any justification for any of the meager treatments he provide the plaintiff, your medical training (sic) and scouring of the medical records for the month prior to trial (even while I hear your parents were in town) was able to find the reasons why the doctor eventually ordered the MRI and sent him for a neurological consultation even though the doctor was unable to provide any such justification for what he did.

And its not like you were trying the case against a bunch of amateurs.  We actually looked up the CV of that attorney for the large Chicago lawfirm who graduated at the top of his class from the University of Chicago lawschool and was a federal prosecutor in Chicago for 15 years before he went on to have a string of multimillion dollar verdicts.  In fact, its probably a good thing you didn't look at his biography before trial.   You probably would have been intimidated.   Of course, truth be told, he was kicking your ass after opening arguments and up until closing.   It probably fortunate for you dude that his closing sucked.   And that you spent half the night prior to your closing writing and rewriting what you were going to say.  You definitely pulled this one out of your ass.

We agree that Dr. No was not articulate and that no one would ever pay him $500,000 per year to testify.   And Dr. Vance who earns $500,000 a year to testify was too smooth for his own good.  I know that you never make jokes at trial because you know that you are not funny, but when the jury laughed at your remark, I'm sure you were relieved.  We heard reports from some of the jurors that during the middle of your closing argument your eyes were gazing upward as if you were in some kind of trance.   What gives with that?

Anyway, congratulations again.   You are not a litigator.   You are a trial attorney.   I'm not sure there is a difference, but on all the marketing from lawfirms we get, we hear that it is better to be a trial attorney than a litigator.   So if it means anything, there you go trial attorney....

 

More Information Than I Wanted to Know, Ch 1

If familiarity breeds a contempt routine

I'm a despicable case

It starts every morning and ends every night centered around the hand held extension of myself

When I sleep, it rejuvenates itself every night in the outlet

When I wake, it rejoins my hand and we search the overnight wine deals on Cinderella wine and Last call wine

Still in my hand, we then gyrate to the rewire meditation app for 5 minutes listening and grooving to the sounds of the Motet, Thinner Teed or LCD Soundsystem

After all we both need our exercise
Then its off to the insight meditation app.
I wonder whether its more important that I meditate or that I keep my consecutive day streak alive and rack up the practice points?
I wonder whether I want to know the answer to that question?

Speaking of being anal, do you really want to know how much effort and thought I put in each day so that the smartphone can keep its charge the whole day and completely exhaust itself by the end of the day?  We can't have any of this charging in the middle of the day crap.   The batteries last longer if you completely deplete them and then charge them completely.   Or so I'm told.   So what that means is that you must ration your usage accordingly.   Its a categorical imperative.

Then its off to see the wizard of facebook and twitter.
As if I will ever find the end to that yellow brick road.

Of course, lets not forget about the brain.  Must train the brain. 
Lets start with Clockwork Brain--we must make sure to log in to obtain the daily bonus.  Then its Einstein's daily brain trainer, Cogni Fit, and a host of others to ward off the advancing specter of Alzheimer's.  Can't be too careful about that.

And finally, the new obsession:  online Scrabble.   What started as a game with my mother has blossomed into a full fledged adventure with random opponents world wide.  Its starting to piss off the people around me.  I wonder if I'll be able to go cold turkey?

Speaking of cold turkey, imagine how good it feels that I am slowly diminishing the newly acquired wine cellar, one bottle at a time.  Burp!

Near Encounters of the Seventeenth Kind, Ch. 2

Anonymous Friend:  Westward Ho!   Let's start the search for the missing extra-terrestrial.  The long lost love of your strife.

I'm sorry friend.  Where I'm going, you won't be able to follow me.

Anonymous Friend:   And why is that? I'm the pimp of the inverse, always riding your shoulder.  How to you propose to get rid of me?

You are more like the dream I had the other night.  Involving William Macy with those sad intense obsessive eyes and where you absolutely know that he won't stop until he pushes his obsessions to his own doom.  This time Macy was at work.   Everybody at work was uncomfortable with him, off in the corner brooding like he was.  But his coworkers were too afraid to do anything about it fearing it might set him off.   Macy had a girlfriend.  The female version of him.  All skinny with small breasts.  She had slept with one of her coworkers and couldn't understand why the guy didn't want to see her again.  She kept following him around.  It was very embarrassing.

Anonymous Friend:  Wow, that was more information than I needed to know.

There is a little bit of Macy in all of us. Its to be avoided, just like you.

Anonymous Friend: Just think of how your life would be without me boring you?  If you didn't have me, where would you find all the cumin and coriander to make your Indian food?

I was doing just fine without you.  I had the most awesome female in the galaxy.   Well, she was sort of female anyway.  We bonded in so many ways.  I lost count.

Anonymous Friend:  I will weighs the count for you then.   Count I:   You were hallucinating.   There is no such thing as flying saucers, my friend.  That doubt must weigh a ton on you right now.   Count II:  Are your really sure you weren't dreaming?  A dream is but your life (whether you are rowing a boat or not).  Count III:   You are out, no strike that.  Maybe you had a ball.  You are tolling your own bell, whom does it toll for?   Give up the imaginary alien, dude.

She escaped through time.   She dropped out of time.

Anonymous Friend:  No, I think that you dropped out.  She tuned in, Mr. Leary.

You just don't get it do you?  She is no longer in time.   Can you imagine a world without time?

Anonymous Friend:  Sure, but it would be so much easier if I imagined a world with no aliens in it.  And no religion too.

Inadequet Instructions for Just About Anything, Ch. 7

How to make a Ulysses contract.

The phrase “Ulysses contract” derived from a strategy that Ulysses adopted on his journey home from the Trojan wars, which took him and his ship’s crew close to the Sirenusian islands. The islands were famous for being home to the Sirens, whose songs were so irresistibly seductive that seamen felt impelled to fling themselves into the waters, trying to reach the Sirens.  They never made it.  The bones of dead sailors littered the island.

 The call of the Sirens can be symbolic for shit loads of things.   At one level the siren call suggests  an addiction.  The sailors' act of diving into the water is the ultimate act of self-destruction.   They could not help themselves.   The Siren call promised too much to pass up.

And it says something about Ulysses that he wanted to be the first human to hear the Siren song and survive.  He was not a puritan: he wanted to have his cake and eat it too.  So he instructed his crew to fill their ears with beeswax to block out the sound, and then tie him securely to the mast and to ignore his pleas to be released. The plan worked.  Because Ulysses committed himself to a "rational" course of action at a neutral time,  (before he could hear the Sirens’ songs), he ensured that he stuck with his decision. This action of pre-commitment was the "Ulysses contract." 

But the Siren song was also the song of the immortals.    Like Prometheus before him, there is also the sense that Ulysses wanted to experience something transcendent.  And the experience transformed him.   He carried the song with him in all of his journeys.   For in dealing with the gods, the underworld, the Cyclops, there is always the sense that Ulysses was lifted above the mortal realm with the song of the Sirens.    

Sort of Deconstructing the Sacreligious Tendencies of the Irreligious, Ch. 1

Try this on for size.  It goes something like this:

There must have been a big misunderstanding all those years ago.  No question, Jesus realized something incredible.   The oneness of reality.   Achieving the living embodiment of  God:  theosis.   Probably something like the satori experience of the Buddha or tons of Hindus before that.  It probably has something do do with an ascetic life of eating wild locusts and honey in the desert for 40 days.  Or  meditating for seven years in a cave.  (but that was someone else:-)).

So at step one, everything is peachy.   We have this dude or dudess swimming around in the vastness of cosmic consciousness, becoming that cosmic consciousness without separation.   Like the Zen Monk who goes to the hot dog vendor and says:  "Make me one with everything." So what could be wrong with that?

Then come all the problems.  When you come down from the mountain top how do you describe it?  You might say that, "I am a part of the oneness."  " I have seen the god within myself."   Or even the short hand notation of:  "I am God."    Therein lies the problem.  If everyone can achieve "godness," if it is ultimately democratic, what happens to the people who have based their lives on doing something "special" to serve God?  Of course, these specialists would feel threatened.   So someone has the bright idea (or perhaps the poor translation) that salvation can only come through Jesus and we (the priests) are god's special servants.  And lo and behold, Jesus now is the "son" of God.   And to make matters worse, because priests were often the only ones in the community who could read, or even had access to writings (the printing press was not invented until way way later), there was no way to ever break the deadlock of the priest's consolidation of power. 

But now of course, with the Internet, any crackpot can write something that anyone around the world can read.  So what's your excuse, children of god?  The kingdom of god is within your hands:-).

Near Encounters of the Seventeenth Kind, Ch. 1

It kind of freaked me out when the giant Dragon Fruit descended from the sky and landed in the field next to me.   I was fortunate I didn't wreck my bike.

Anonymous Friend:  So it really was the fruit of all evil.....

No silly, she was never evil.  Maybe a little confused.  Who could blame her? She'd just traveled thousands of light years to get away from that cyborg husband of hers.

Anonymous Friend:  What was it then?  Love at first fright?

Well when the dragon fruit opened up and she emerged I admit I was a little taken by her. All those bright lights.    Those penetrating eyes.   All three of them.  I'll never forget the blue one on her forehead.

Anonymous Friend:  She only had thighs for you?

It was never like that.  I'm not sure she had compatible parts.  But once I went in her ship and she showed me the orgasmo orb--nothing else mattered.

Anonymous Friend:  Strangers in the night exchanging trances....

So we hung out for awhile.   I took her around the neighborhood, then around the city, then around the world.  She took me around the galaxy.   We were having all kinds of fun until he showed up.

Anonymous Friend:  Hell hath no fury like the wrath of the spurned android.

He shot her with some type of ray gun.  First I thought she was dead.   But she told me to take her back inside the ship and put her inside some sort of closet.   She said it was a close call.  But she was alive.   She told me he would find her again, unless she got away.

Anonymous Friend:  And just how did she to that?

She escaped through time.   At least I think she did.   And now I'll spend the rest of my dying days trying to find her.

Anonymous Friend:   If you could turn back time, maybe you can find a way.....


 End Chapter 1