I have been negligent with my blog. I have it written in over a month. I know it. I’m sorry.

I mean the absolute worst thing a blogger can do is to stop blogging. Like I said before, I am sorry.

I know I probably ruined your whole holiday season because instead of making merry with friends and family, you’re thinking where is the third installment of Customer Service Apocalypse and why hasn’t Tom published the end of the story. How inconsiderate of him to make me wait.

Look, I’ve already apologized. Twice.

I had things to do.

And, like, I am artist. You can’t force the Muse to produce when the Muse has job interviews and Christmas to prepare for. The Muse must prioritize.

But, as you are my loyal readers, and I appreciate your loyalty, I offer you now an explanation.

As you remember, I was writing a three-part expose that was going to blow the lid off of bad Customer Service called Customer Service Apocalypse. I carefully wrote my notes on the back of an old envelope while I was on hold with the Customer
Service agent.

 

Which I think I should get some ecologically conscious points for. It’s not like I took a clean piece of paper and started writing. No, despite my irritation with the customer service agent, I retained my eco-consciousness; I scrounged for an old envelope so I wouldn’t have to fell a tree using a blank sheet of paper. Because I care, you know.

 

The notes were fantastic. They ran across three old envelopes. Every word of my conversations with the Customer Service agent and her managers noted. I scribbled the wonderful, witty, sarcastic thoughts I was going to write when the time came. I counted the minutes I was on hold so you would get the sense of the time I was wasting. I noted the number of times I was transferred to illustrate the company’s confusion about what I was asking. Everything carefully documented. It was positively brilliant. The blog was writing itself.

Then Thanksgiving happened. We had houseguests. And I am not blaming the houseguests in any way. They were here however. This can’t be ignored. After they arrived, the muse somehow slipped out the back door. And, of course, while she was away things happened. Drinking happened. Dinners happened. Nights on the town happened. Movies in the afternoon happened. Late rising mornings happened. The muse is a sensitive being. She stayed away the entire time we had houseguests.

After Thanksgiving, the Muse was ready but I had a job interview. The Muse has to eat too. I prepared for the interview like a demon. I investigated the company. I diligently rehearsed replies to standard questions. You know the ones about my strengths, my weaknesses, and what my boss would say about my work. This takes a lot of time and the Muse wasn’t about to stick around the house for that. She is an artist after all. She wants to hang out with Tom the artist not Tom the job seeker.

So the day of the interview comes and damn if the interviewer didn’t ask all of the questions I so carefully prepared for. He pitched a question about my strengths. Kaboom. Home run. Then another question flew across the plate about my weaknesses. Kaboom. Home room number 2. Then a question about what my old boss would say about me. Kaboom. Home Run number 3.

I was batting 1.000 until he threw a curve ball. A really tricky curve ball. He asked why I managed less work than all of my colleagues. Now where did he get that information and who the Hell gave him that information? Well, apparently, I did. He shows me these numbers from my resume and quotes some numbers I gave him during the interview. He does some fancy math that proves I was managing less work than my colleagues.

There is no way his figures be right. He surely has made a mistake and I am the person to show him the errors of his way. So I do the math.

Not like any sane person with a piece of paper and a pen. Or quietly in my head. No I use that sure fire double combination of the invisible blackboard and mumbling incoherently. You see, I have to see numbers, if only for second in my mind, in order to remember the numbers I am calculating. I raise my finger to the air in front of me and begin writing so I can begin calculating. The interviewer awkwardly stops speaking and watches me do my math.

He hears something like this. “Murmur, murmur, murmur carry the two, murmur, murmur that makes this sixteen, murmur, murmur, no that can’t be right.”

The numbers, of course, don’t add up. I erase the air blackboard and try to recalculate. I still can’t get them to add up. Finally, the interviewer puts me out of my misery and says, “it isn’t important.” Except, for me, it has suddenly become very important. Every question afterwards is tainted with me trying to redo the math. I become distracted and don’t hear questions. I ask him to repeat himself. The great interview I was giving slowly slips into mediocrity.

Needless to say, but I will any way, I didn’t get the job. Which bums the Muse out. The Muse and I take a few days off to mourn my loss. And then, what do you know Christmas happens. Christmas requires a lot of attention and travel and well before you know it is a month without blogging.

So here we are today. I am trying to write Customer Service Apocalypse Part III. The muse is ready. My fingers are rested and ready to type. Full Speed ahead, right. Wrong. Unfortunately, the envelopes with all of my notes have gone missing. Well, I think they have gone missing. They may be somewhere on my desk. Chances are it is there because I never throw any of the scrap papers the Muse writes her fantastic ideas on.

Indeed, I have maybe thirty or so old envelopes and scraps of paper scattered across my desk. I have checked each and every one looking for my notes. And I rechecked them again when I can’t find my notes. There there somewhere I know it.

No problem says the Muse. You can write your story from memory. It was such a vivid and emotional experience. Just the type of experience that will stick in the old noggin, right? Wrong. I am at a loss about what happened and even how it ended.

The Muse is irritated. She suggests writing about one of my other ideas on one of the many scraps of paper on my desk. “You can return to Customer Service Apocalypse Part III when you find your notes,” she says.

Her response, of course, irritates me. She is all art art art. She wants to create. Lives to create but has no business sense or feelings of responsibility to our readers. Besides, I think, it was her damn idea to write my notes on all those scraps of paper in the first place. Now that we have a crisis with the blog, she is all forget it, move on to the next blog, don’t worry about any obligation you have to your reader to complete a story.

“Would Charles Dickens leave one story incomplete and start another one leaving his readers in the lurch?”

“Would Charles Dickens lose his notes in the first place,” she replies.  “ Besides, there are no rules to blogging. That is the whole point of blogging. You can do what ever you want whenever you want. “

I let her bully me into starting a new blog but I insisted on explaining to you dear readers who are waiting for Customer Service Apocalypse Part III what happened so I can lessen any anxiety you might be experiencing.

I am sorry if this upsets you. All I can say in my defense is I am artist.

Damn it.

In reaction to yesterday’s shooting in Texas, Donald Trump stated that this was a mental health issue and not a gun access issue. Well yes it is actually a mental health issue. If you gave a loaded gun to most sane people, they can be trusted to use it responsibly.   It really is a small dangerous few that are causing all the problems. Given that there are new slaughters of innocent people at the hands of these mad men, it would be a good idea if we could act quickly to stop the carnage. Clearly restricting access to guns isn’t going to happen. The second amendment to the Constitution established the right to bear arms. Even if it were possible to change the Second Amendment, which I strongly doubt, it would take years to change.

This leaves us with Donald Trump’s assertion that this is a mental health issue. I know that this is a little outside the box but perhaps Trump is on to something. Honestly, I really don’t want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, and, if it is as Trump says, a mental health issue, I wanted to protect Americans from the criminally insane. Let’s make mental health a civic responsibility. If you are prone to be criminally insane then it is best for everyone, including the criminally insane, if they were off the streets and under protective medical care. Of course, we would need to change some laws but as long as they didn’t infringe on the second amendment, I am sure Trump and the Republicans could muster the will to get them through Congress. For example, once a year every American adult over the age of 18 must get a certification of sanity. If the person passes, then the process ends until the following year. If the person fails, then he would have to go through further psychiatric evaluations up to and including incarceration if psychiatric professionals deemed the individual criminally insane.

The advantages of such a system are so great that I am almost giddy from thinking about them all. I mean the unintended consequences alone make this project worthy of consideration. You heard me the unintended consequences make this a great idea. I mean, since everyone must get a psychiatric check up, we might get ahead of other run of the mill mental health problems like depression. Instead of waiting for a complete mental breakdown, like we do now, we might catch some of these conditions before they get out of hand. Also imagine the new data we would have on mental health. We would have the full range of the sanity scale from completely sane to totally out of their fucking mind and all the variations in between. This again would give us more information about everyone and we would better act as a community in stopping both the criminally insane and preventing your standard every day breakdown.

And let’s not take our eye off of the ball here. What we really want to do is stop mass shootings. If the psychological professional can determine these dangerous propensities before hand, we hopefully could stop shootings from ever taking place in the first place. Instead of police shooting and killing the mentally ill man who acquired guns and is running amok in a crowded mall. We can just take them off the street before they snap.

I know you are going to say. This sounds good and though I agree that this is a much better alternate than taking away law-abiding citizens right to bear arms but can we really afford this? And here is the beauty it will practically pay for itself. First, once people start coming in for their yearly examinations, there should be less mental health issues as we would begin to treat them before they got out of hand. We should see a significant reduction of urgent health care costs and move to the less expansive managed health care costs. Since more of mental health issues will be managed, there also will be a drop in time taken from work for mental health days, so productivity will go up. There will be less damage to public buildings and private property because fewer people will be shooting up public spaces. Since more people will be managing their mental health through medication, the pharmaceutical companies will be booming. There would be a need for more pharmacists and more psychiatrists so those professions should see an increase in their ranks. Best of all, the economic boom would be evenly divided throughout the country as every person in every state would need their sanities verified. And don’t get me started about the trickle down effect. It is a win win idea.

I agree with Trump completely on this. Let’s address this as a mental health problem. If it is a mental health problem then we need to hold him to coming up with a mental health solution because gun violence is now a mental health crisis.

 

When Americans talk about our national history, we tend to emphasize the positive. We like to talk about immigrants yearning to be free. It is a compelling national story which gives Americans a sense of pride in the nation we have built. Our history highlights our exceptionalism. The conversation grinds to halt however when we talk about the big divisive issue in American History – the Civil War and the racism that supported the institution of slavery. This is all rather unpleasant and difficult.

In the past few years, people have even tried to reframe the American Civil War. They say that most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, how could they be fighting for slavery when they didn’t own slaves? That had to be motivated by something other than slavery, something nobler. Or the rebels fought for states rights not the continuation of slavery. What upset southerners was the imposition of northern ideas on the South. We are told that Robert E. Lee hated slavery, so he fought for the South because he loved his home state of Virginia and could not fight his neighbors. The South’s struggle, in other words, had nothing to do with slavery and therefore racism need not be considered either when looking at the war.

More importantly, it saves us from thinking that our ancestors are racists. Making slavery irrelevant to the Civil War obfuscates the real causes of the conflict and makes the southerner’s position sound almost noble. It was just a dispute between two groups about how a democracy should function. One group believed that the Federal Government takes precedence over the State Government, the other side believed the opposite. After all, we still are debating the role of the Federal Government in American life today.

Except that it isn’t the truth. The truth, however, is pretty horrible and that is why people prefer to downplay the importance of slavery in the war. Because if slavery becomes the cause of the Civil War, then our ancestors are responsible for some pretty horrible things. What is slavery? Why did people want slaves? Why were black people made slaves and not white people? Why did white people think they could black people slaves?

Even now when we do learn about slavery, we learn about in the passive voice. Slaves were brought to USA. But exactly who brought African blacks to the USA? Who made them slaves? Who bought and sold them? Slavery and racism happened to blacks as opposed to someone imposing it on them. We use this passive voice because it is difficult to explain the ugly truth. White people brought African blacks to this country against their will for the purpose of slavery. The vast majority of white people in the south thought they were superior to blacks and that this gave them the right to use blacks as slaves. In 1860, white southerners thought that Lincoln would abolish slavery so they risked civil war to prevent him from taking away what they viewed as their property. Following the Civil War, when southern whites regained control of their state governments, Jim Crow laws were set up which created laws that blocked blacks from education, housing, jobs, voting and ultimately justice. While blacks gained full civil rights in 1965, whites resisted these new laws and continued enforcing Jim Crow laws on an informal basis well into the 21^st century. Blacks had to use the courts to force whites into complying with the new civil rights laws.

Racism didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It was created to defend whites owning slaves. This is why white people bear the burden of changing a racist society. Yes, there may be racist blacks but blacks have never held power over whites. And by power I mean the power to force whites to provide unpaid labor, to stop them from living in certain areas, to stop them from voting. Whites have done all of these things. You may argue – this is still unfair. Not all white people participated in slavery and Jim Crow. Yes but they did stand by when other white people did. Just because you weren’t a part of the lynch mob doesn’t exonerate your actions when you know who was in the lynch mob.

It is completely understandable why white people find it difficult to talk about slavery. It is embarrassing. Our ancestors were horrible. If white’s were to face up to this history, they would realize that, at best, their ancestors watched injustice go on for years without lifting a finger to stop it, and, at worst, were wrapping a rope around a tree. How do you explain this in school to students in a white majority nation? What would the students think about their history? Their ancestors? We can only change what we can face and it is time to face the ugly actions of our ancestors and move forward.

 

Today, I was trying to find new music. So, I googled top ten lists and I stumbled upon this song from Johnny Cash called “Hurt.”  I had heard Cash’s version of “Hurt” before and I knew I liked it. I can’t remember why I didn’t buy it back then. The song is an odd choice for Cash because Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails, wrote the song. NIN is, for lack of a better categorization, a metal band and Johnny Cash is traditional country.  Cash, however, found the perfect song. It is brutal and haunting.  Cash’s voice, rough, deep and resonant, cracks with emotion.  Cash gives Reznor’s words a deeper meaning as it is coming from an older man who has experienced a world of hurt and personal mistakes. Now he is looking at his pain and the pain he caused with pitiless eyes.   It’s a great rendition of the song but it hurts.  It really hurts. I think these type of emotional wallops should be taken in small doses. Which is probably why I didn’t buy it the first time.  But, God, you should give it a listen.

One day my mother and I were watching football on TV. She asked me if I knew that Joe Montana, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers at the time, was born in the same year as me. Joe and I were in our late 20’s then so it wasn’t all that surprising. Most professional athletes are somewhere in their 20’s or early 30’s. My mother had something and I only had to wait a few seconds for the real reason that Mom brought up is age. “He just bought his parents a new house.”

Ba-da-bing. My first instinct was to tell Mom that Elizabeth Taylor was a few years younger than her and she let her children lead a life of leisure and luxury. I restrained myself. In the mean time, Mom hit her intended target – reminding me of my seeming lack of direction or ambition. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she wanted me to work harder on my life, so I too could someday buy my parents a new house. However the result was something far different. I felt bad about myself.

This story came to mind the other day after I read some inspirational story that just pissed me off. This man became blind due to an accident when he was a teen-ager. Instead of letting the accident destroy his life, he went on to an Ivy League college, became an investment banker and now is a millionaire. The author’s intended message, I’m sure, was to inspire his readers to greater things. Unfortunately, there is also a barely hidden secondary message about all these whiners out there complaining about their hard lives when this guy was blind. If they think they have had hard knocks with racism or fatherless families or poverty, try being blind. There is someone who can complain about his lot in life but oh no he decided to become a millionaire instead.

I was uninspired to say the least.

I am getting this way with LinkedIn testimonies from the rich and famous. They have almost the opposite effect on me. These inspirational messages seem appropriate for a very narrow range of people, those with a driving entrepreneurial spirit and the money to support it.

Do something that you are passionate about.

You can be anything you want to be.

Know your value; don’t settle for less than that.

Don’t take no for an answer.

All, I am sure, very good advice, all not so relevant when you have bills to pay, food to buy and need to put a roof over your head. Those needs might require me to take a job I am far from passionate about or work a job that I would rather not do.  Asking millionaires and wildly successful people for their advise seems like a good idea on paper, in reality, their inspirational stories don’t match most people’s present circumstances or personality. It’s a one size fits all inspiration. When I read about the tech wizards like Jobs, or Gates or Zuckerberg, not their noble deeds now but how they got to where they got, I think these people are assholes, who wants to be an asshole. The spirit of work is not just entrepreneurial.

Perhaps this means I won’t be a billionaire who runs a tech company. And that is precisely the point. There are billions of people who probably won’t make that goal. There are billions of people who would very much like to work and do a great job. And, I am only speaking for myself and not the billions of other people, I just don’t think I can work up much passion for it. I will do a damn good job though.

Psychiatrists have an obligation to break their patient/doctor confidentiality if they believe their patient is a danger to themselves or to someone else. For some reason, I thought that lawyers would have the same obligation. It only makes sense that lawyers are ethically responsible, if they can, to stop their clients from hurting anyone. After reading about Harvey Weinstein, I realize I am woefully ignorant of legal ethics.

There are 8 known agreements between Weinstein and the women he has harassed and/or raped.  He paid his victims cash for their silence. All tied in a nice legal bow. Lawyers needed to tie this bow. Maybe, just maybe, you could justify a lawyer working with Weinstein once or twice. You could argue that there was some misunderstanding and that this is best settled out of court. Let’s give a two-time litigant the benefit of the doubt.

The problem, at least it is a problem for me, is there was a forth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth case. If it were me, I would begin to think Harvey has a problem here and that the women involved aren’t misunderstanding crazy Harvey’s intentions but, rather crazy Harvey might just be a sexual predator. What then is the lawyer’s responsibility in situation like these? Sexual Harassment is against the law. Rape is against the law. At the bare minimum, Weinstein is breaking the laws regarding sexual harassment but also might be breaking much more serious laws regarding rape. At some point, isn’t a lawyer required to say I can’t continue as your lawyer any more, I believe you are guilty and I can’t in good conscious represent you. To continue representing Weinstein would seem like an egregious breech of ethics on a lawyer’s part.

Don’t lawyers have an obligation to protect society at large? You have represented Weinstein several times regarding women bringing sexual harassment accusations against him. You see Weinstein continues to come to you with the same problem. You might argue that you don’t know that someone is going to continue harassing and raping women. You don’t know all the facts as no court has made a decision regarding the guilt of Weinstein. Besides it isn’t imminent harm and you don’t know who his next victim will be. Which I get and I realize it is a difficult issue. You should only break lawyer/client confidentiality if it is genuinely imminent and there is a known victim in danger.

And yet. And yet, from my understanding, Weinstein’s contract with his production company had a clause that states the company couldn’t fire him from sexual harassment suits as long as Weinstein took care of the payment himself and did not involve the company. Who puts that in an employment contract? Why would you put this in your contract if you were intending to change your ways? He obviously had no intention of stopping. What ethical lawyer would write a contract with such a clause in it? Is that even legal? Can you actually write a contract protecting someone from termination even when the person is committing a crime? So sadly, we know. The lawyers knew what Harvey was and, more importantly, they knew that Harvey planned on continuing harassing women. Isn’t this the point you get off the merry-go-round? I hope someone goes after Weinstein’s lawyers. Make them spend some of the dirty money they earned protecting Weinstein. Now that would be justice.

Finally, for anyone who doubts it exists, this is what privilege is. Justice, or rather injustice, can be bought. Rich people can buy themselves out of a whole lot of jams and, if their victims are poor, the victims will keep their mouths shut because they need the money more than the justice. How much better would life be if Weinstein faced justice when the first woman complained? Seven other women would have been saved their dreadful experience. Who knows, maybe even Harvey Weinstein could have been salvaged, learned his lesson, and moved on to still make great movies. We will never know now.