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As for the end of your entry….it made me think of the Dilbert job I took to kill some time. I never thought it could be that bad. The boredom, the monotony, the mindless drivel that passes for conversation. I can’t imagine how people do that every day, but I think if we look closer…they are simply tuning out, which is the ultimate sign of giving up, because they can’t even muster leaving to do nothing.

PL: That’s a large part of why I wrote. I don’t give a fuck how ridiculous and childish it sounds, but I don’t ever want to go numb from the stress of an oppressive job the way so many people do. There’s more than enough vice to murder those sensory capacities, in a much more amusing and enlightening manner.

Funny thing is it doesn’t even have to be a bitchy, hyper-aggressive ‘tude either, pretty much any over the top ‘tude works. I scratch my head daily at work because I’m pretty sure there’s a company wide panic contest going on and I didn’t get the memo. If you’re not in a total state of full on “sky is falling” panic day in and day out well you obviously don’t get it and aren’t committed to the mission. Really? Was Skully or whatever the hell his name is “uncommitted” when he landed a wide body jet in the Hudson and made sure (twice no less) that every passenger was off the plane because he didn’t shit himself and cry like a little girl in the process?

It’s all so ridiculous I’m not sure how any mildly intelligent person makes it without regular and total intoxication. Can there not be an intelligent Moron in Utah?

PL: I’ll dispense with the Mormon thing first. Do any research on the religion and you will find that Joseph Smith was a con artist. That is fact. His religion was one of many created during a time of national fixations with the Apocalypse (sound familiar?). Around the same time, a drunken Irish ex-priest came up with the Rapture and many Jim Jones-like cults developed around the country. A nice social network and culture has sprung up around Smith’s creation (I have no issue with Mormons and like very much the ones I know), but we should be vigilant to never forget the history of the thing.

As to the attitude/aptitude thing, agreed. I’ve yet to meet a person of immense ego and bluster who wasn’t masking enormous insecurities. The lawyers who’ve scared me the most were never the loud or crass ones. It was always the direct ones. The guys who sent three sentence letters and said, “I’m not going to argue now… We’ll let the court decide at trial” during those silly arguments lawyers sometimes have on the phone were always the sharpest, nastiest bastards. The guy telling you he was going to kill you was always, to a man, an idiot.

Now I’ve had a few jobs where I was allowed a high degree of independence, and they weren’t looking for results in numbers. The pay wasn’t stellar and the hours sucked, but I didn’t mind going to work. I would get somewhat bored, but as long as I wasn’t constantly micromanaged, and you have a little music it’s pretty nice.

Best job was when I ran a security company. I had to drive from account to account, mark so much time, make a certain number of stops, and just keep an eye on stuff. I was paid to read books, go home for dinner, bang the wife, watch movies, stop off at the old fraternity hangout and have a few beers, and I got to work with one of my best friends. Unfortunately the checks were late if not occasionally bad, and I had to supervise a lot of retards that the boss sourced from the local gym.

Point? It all comes down to a decision of how much money do you really need to be happy.

PL: I don’t comment when I agree. Well said.

I can’t believe I told those fudgepackers I liked Michael Bolton’s music!

The reason this whole thing is fucked is because the lowest among us are the gold standard for labor hires. The students with no lives but schoolwork that turn into the non-equity/non-executive employees that get in early and stay late an extra hour or three on each end of 9-5 everyday (likely because their lives are miserable, if they even have one). These people have redefined normal for the workplace. It’s become unbearable.

What I’ve noticed too: with all of the efficiencies (read: email) in white collar welfare work and administration, nearly all of my busy work is coming from older employees at my clients. Young people will ask for a lot of shit at first as I “teach” them the business in the beginning. The older people continue to hound the shit out of me and are helpless no matter what is done for them. My theory is it’s a function of tasks getting done so much quicker that they are constantly looking for busywork to fill their day and be “productive” while the younger workers surf the web until their older bosses’ next “crisis” comes up.

That’s what contributes to the Boredom: older bosses and clients crying wolf all of the time while their young labor pool solves the problem in half the time compared to a decade ago and the boss/client none the wiser when 30 of the 60 minutes waiting for their request was spent on an employee’s escape on the same computer the work was done on.

PL: Fire all the Luddites and we would be 30% more efficient overnight. Problem is, those older folks have the insights the kids don’t, and the ability to talk to all the other older folks who run the vendors, other divisions, etc.

Brits basically start high school (college over here, uni comes after that) at 16. When we get there we do 6 hours less lessons per week, two or three lessons a day, no uniforms and it’s not compulsory. When you experience a few months of this you realise a few things:

1) You are doing 6 hours less per week and a third of the number of subjects, yet you are learning at a pace that is probably about four or five times faster than secondary school. In addition, you are keeping up with this pace.
2) When school is stripped of the future heroin dealers, chavs, mouth breathers and assorted cunts, it stops being so painful.Likewise, when the teachers are actually competent and there to mentor you instead of keep you in line, you start to really enjoy your subjects. Add the lack of uniforms and actual freedom and you actually feel like getting up in the morning.
3) You have to specialise stupidly early. By the start of year 2 you’ll have chosen whatever course you plan on doing at university (we have to pick from the start, we don’t just pick and choose classes); and that will already be restricted based on which four subjects you picked. If you picked artsy subjects you’re limited to the arts/social sciences at uni and if you picked sciences you’re limited to sciences.

People who might have been quite good at maths, or sciences, or english never found out because the pace was slow as frozen treacle, the teachers were terrible and the schools were utterly miserable places to be. Most intelligent people had one or two good subjects and the rest borderline. These people might have been chemists and engineers ended up a bunch of history/english/sociology students who end up innovating new legal arguments instead of epic techs. At the very least more people would have the tools to learn and do more. Phila, you’ve bemoaned the lack of public knowledge about economics and the like but how is someone going to get a decent grip of econ if they stopped learning mathematics at sixteen, and lost interest at thirteen?
It’s vaguely economic as well. You don’t get an improvement in living standards (that isn’t part of a ponzi scheme anyway) without improving productivity, and you don’t get improved productivity without technological growth, and if your school kids get into the world without any skills to produce technological growth, you don’t grow. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but raising taxes on everyone so you can afford decent schools might end up paying dividends.

PL: Never going to happen. I think we go in the Randian direction instead. We’re getting more bodies at the same time we’re getting less $$$ for govt involvement in societal adjustment. More of a kill or be killed future is what I see.

PL: Nice catch. I always fuck up that quote. Either way, people get the point.

As to the retarded thing, practice makes perfect. You sound ambitious and smart. I think with a little persistence, you can get where you need to be.

Weed should be legal, and much more widespread, but its buzz loses its fun in time. Nothing provides a good enough kick for long enough to keep the growing minority of us who think from getting restless while living in a cubicle and producing nothing. You burn out or you get that itch again, and go looking for something else.

PL: It’s a gas/brake thing. I’ve two sides to my brain on this stuff: Creative and Analytical. The Creative does the dialogue that works as the fuel of the piece, moving it forward. The Analytical stops it and delivers a payoff. Works like music – lyrics, lyrics, lyrics, chorus.

Recreate? I use something like Fear and Loathing as a baseline. The dialogue has to be funny, so it’s written from the angle of mining out out the funniest elements of conversations I’ve had with the actors. Also, the funniest aspects of their personalities. I write like I talk, which makes it simple, and the conversation at the bar is one I’ve had a thousand times with Martin. Don’t get hung up on the exactness of the verbiage utilized. Nail the general crux of the conversation and the language of the speaker.

You’re right on weed. Law of diminishing returns inevitably. BUT, it’s a hell of a lot better than pills. As long as I live, I’ll never understand our country’s need to numb itself with pharmaceuticals. I loathed most of the people I worked with in Philly, and I probably could have gone to see a shrink and gotten pills like so many other decent people I knew in the legal profession had done. But that, to me, was insanity. Life’s not supposed to be a fucking candy lane where everything makes you chipper. It’s a survival gig, and if you don’t take the highs with the lows, what’s the fucking point? Where’s the richness of the story? Writing the book has cost me somewhere in the area of a quarter million in lost wages to date and you know what? I’d never do it any other way. The weathering you get with the ups and downs and convulsions one goes through jumping around from practice area to practice area and throwing yourself into industries you know nothing about reward you with a depth of experience you’ll never get merely following The Track to Financial Security.

This isn’t to say, of course, that one can’t do both. You can run on the The Track and quietly be your own person. But it takes diligence in always reminding yourself that your job is Just a Way to Get Money, and Not Your Life. Never forget that. The minute you get caught up in the reindeer games and start viewing your every move as some form of “personal branding,” or thinking the hierarchy you work in is anything but an artificial diversion and mechanism from which to accrue money, You’re Done.

Well, unless you’re lucky enough to love what you do. In which case, there’s a 99.9% chance you don’t work for a corporation, but yourself.

Given all that, picking law as a career was a tragic mistake. There are lots of industries where I could be bouncing around to a new state and new job every 6 months to 2 years and no one would think twice. Not only would that kind of bouncing horrify a potential legal employer, there’s the whole bar thing to fuck things up, too.

Maybe pot is the answer.

PL: Ah, but once you learn three or four different areas and realize the necessity of specialization is a myth, you have accrued the benefit of being able to work for yourself as a high end generalist. For most people who can’t fully escape law, working for yourself is the best second place. And the market is moving to meet you. The trend right now for all but the monster companies and those going through litigation or deals that can break the entire corporation is away from the bigger firms, and even some of the mid-sized outfits, toward smaller shops that can provide real attention and real value. In that, you could learn any area you wanted.

I’ve worked in five allegedly distinct areas. It’s all the same once you learn the baseline rules of dealing and manipulating the levers. Every system involves people and people have a finite number of predictable reactions to certain stimuli and options. Learn to manage those and stay on the right side of the rule book and you can successfully litigate just about anything.

It isn’t brain surgery. I’ve done injury cases and disputes re: derivatives. After a small learning curve to pick up the specifics, it’s all the same game.

Caveat: Deal lawyering is different, of course. There, you have to learn to specialize a bit.

Shift to change work lifestyles so work isn’t so inherently shite, or just provide painkillers to ease the process?

PL: You hit the nail on the head. If there’s a difference between American corporate culture and an ant farm, it escapes me… And lord knows I’ve been looking.

As to your question, I think we’re still in the initial throes of a national nervous breakdown that started in 2006. Where it ultimately goes, who knows. But if I can borrow from Twain and Bret Easton Ellis, respectively, “Rumors of [a recovery] are greatly exaggerated”… and no, “This is not an ending.”

It’s going to get worse. A whole lot worse. Read anything Bill Gross from Pimco has been saying (and brush off the allegations he’s biased because he works in bonds) and for the long term meta problems, watch this: http://www.iousathemovie.com.