There was a Spanish fellow I knew a few years ago in the Bronx -- we'll call him Georges -- and he was a gang banger. He had a wife and many children with several women. He wore a bald head by choice and he was as wide as he was tall but muscles packed his small frame.
He used to hang out in the building where we lived and he was always around and if the guards would ask him to leave, he'd just meander back -- and that is the true definition of Evil -- always there, always percolating, forever readying an attack in the guise of friendship and faked normalcy.
Every time I saw Georges my stomach would twist.
A good friend if mine told me yesterday she lost 63 pounds in 90 days with the following diet plan.
She would take off all her clothes in the morning and stand in front of a full-length mirror and yell at her fat body:
"I hate you!"
Then she'd shower, eat a small meal, get dressed and go to work -- eat nothing for lunch -- and when she returned home at night she would repeat her morning naked "I hate you!" ritual before she had a sensible dinner.
She found success in her quest to lose weight.
We don't have a washing machine or dryer in our apartment building so every week I drop off our dirty laundry at the corner Laundromat for washing.
In our Jersey City neighborhood paying someone else to wash and dry your clothes actually costs less than doing it all yourself in Manhattan.
There is a thin line of blood between Love and Hate.
Love and Hate inspire the same fury of emotion as well as similar rises in blood pressure and changes in brain chemistry.
Some wonder how Love can so quickly turn into Hate.
Asking for help can be a hard thing to do and most people wait until it is too late to seek the help of others.
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness.
Are we our minds? Or are we our bodies?
I believe we are our minds and never our bodies. The body is disposable. The mind, with the right protections and preservations, can live forever.
The brain is a container for the mind and the mind is a neural network of memories.
Those memories, both the learned and the innate, form a perception of us and others.
When the container is unexpectedly corrupted -- when the brain is damaged by injury or disease or psychic trauma -- strange things begin to happen.
Cruelty is a lonesome cudgel.
Cruelty is rarely used in the midst of the majority.
Cruelty lurks in the shadows.
Cruelty attacks from silence.
Cruelty is intentional and premeditated.
Cruelty is lonesome but never lonely.
There is nothing funnier or worse than wandering into a packed men's room in New York City at a large venue and being forced to stand in line holding your water.
When I first moved to New York City I was going crazy while the tide rose within me as I was forced to eternally wait my turn.
I have learned to never wonder aloud -- especially when it comes to working on a creative project with other people.
It is much easier to pitch what you know is the right idea and run with it than open up the less good options in your mind to others who may not share your same gift to prioritize and evaluate ideas on-the-fly.
Wondering aloud often leads to "oh, let's try that, too!" and "hey, why didn't I think of that?" and neither of those responses are good for you or your newfound co-wonderer. The former makes more work for you and the latter identifies you as a threat even though you're all working on the same team.
Wondering aloud means you then have to show people why your ideas are just wonderings and not meant to be realities. You are forced to tear down your own ideas by actually realizing them beyond your mind and if you don't do that then you risk being labeled: "Not a Team Player."
Wondering is wonderful and if you are talented you keep your wonderments to yourself because to wonder in public is to tempt creation, is to create work, is to employ your own death at the hands of your own hand.
You do think grammar and spelling are important?
Do you believe your words define you and frame your intelligence?
If you agree, how then do you explain the steep decline in definition and brightness in written exchanges via electronic communication?
I was at a meeting the other day and I heard the phrase -- "He's running on CPT" -- to describe someone who was late for the meeting.
A few people uncomfortably chuckled.
not just the Jewish Deaf -- were killed by the Nazis in the late 1930's. 
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