Hello. If you’re wondering why you’re here, it’s simple. We’re working on the new version of Philalawyer.net, in a new format, on a new server, which will be up and running on this page by the end of the week.

Currently, we are working on the graphics and putting the material from the old platform into new architecture here.  This should be completed by the end of the week, and provide readers with a streamlined, better organized version of the pieces on the old site.  During the interim, if you have any questions, suggestions, whatever… offer a comment here.  I’ll address as many as I can.

My apologies for the delay and any confusion this may cause.  Transferring a site the size of Philalawyer.net from one server to another is a complex process.  It appears I wrote a lot more than I thought I had.

As always, thanks for your patience and support,
PL

I usually don’t update on a Friday night, rarely being in any condition to do so. But this is a unique occasion. Barring some unforeseen delay, this is the last thing I’ll be writing on the Rudius platform, most of which is closing on November 1. When you click on Philalawyer.net next week, you’ll be taken to a new site. Same material, same writing. Different organization.

My time at Rudius has been a pleasure. I’ve had an opportunity to work with many talented, devoted people, without whom I would never had the opportunities I’ve been given. The list of names is long, so I’ll just put this way – to everyone at the company who helped me, present and past employees, Thank You.

There isn’t any neat way to close this, so I’ll leave you with two final pieces of Happy Hour is For Amateurs covering my early days at Rudius.
Turn this song to 11, open the stuff linked below in a new window and read it.

“Most of them would like to buy you a drink.”

What if?

On sale October 13, available for online order now, Happy Hour is for Amateurs in paperback:

Why the change in subtitle? That’s explained below.

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Sorry about being away so long. Mid-August I had a minor health concern. Thankfully, the clinically suggestion of something bad ultimately turned out to be nothing. Still, it took me out of commission for nearly a week. Trust me – nothing reminds you just how asinine and immature it is to stress about your career trajectory, or any of the infantile sources of neuroses our Type A society elevates to primary concerns, like waiting out a medical test.
After that, I went to the beach, on a long vacation, and now, following a heroic bout of self-pollution and sloth with friends and family, I’m back. New material will resume this week.
In the interim, I’ve a couple links to offer – things I think you ought to read. The first is an interview of Rudius CEO/Author/Director and Producer Tucker Max conducted by the folks at Bitterlawyer. Why is this a must read? It’s funny, but it’s also enlightening. The back and forth of the thing touches an issue most of the 18-30 year old demographic reading this site will appreciate. In the past several months, as the harsher realities of our economic future have been clarified, numerous articles and editorials discussing the “entitlement complex” of young workers have cropped up in the press. Pundits and scowls are suggesting young workers downgrade their career goals and expectations – give up the notion of finding fulfilling work, of doing what they want to for a living. Accept that work sucks and adjust themselves to the concept of toiling at something that bores them to tears and they hate solely for money, as their elders allegedly did.
Max says otherwise. And his point has considerable merit. Can everybody do what they want and succeed on the level he has? Of course not. Most people aren’t talented or hard-working enough to even approach that level of success. But for those of you gifted with actual ability, and with a shrewd business eye and a willingness to work, meteoric success, or at a minimum, the mere modest achievement of having your own business – of not taking orders from a boss you can barely stomach or suffering the general idiocy and annoyance of the average corporate hierarchy – can accrue from an idea as simple as writing funny stories about your drunken, sex-addicted self.
The other article is an excellent follow-up to the last piece I did on health care reform, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” by David Goldhill, printed in September’s Atlantic. Of everything I’ve read on the subject, this is hands down the most articulate and insightful dissection of the health care mess, and what needs to be done to fix it. Chief among his list of problems in our current system, Mr. Goldhill highlights the same issue I did in my piece and numerous moderate analysts and economists have been citing for years – that health care cannot and will not be fixed until Americans are required to pay out of their own pockets for the majority of their preventative care. The present system, where a consumer hands an insurance card to a doctor and leaves a disconnected third party to reimburse, or not reimburse, the provider invites rampant abusive consumption.
As we’ve seen with the crisis of ballooning credit card debt, when the source of a consumer’s payment is a lender’s money, when the transaction does not involve an immediate debit against the purchaser’s bank account or exchange of cash for the service or good bought, people become spendthrifts. Make them pay out of their own pockets for something, however, and suddenly they’re bean counters. With a direct payment structure for all non-emergency and non-chronic care, the cost of preventative medical services, presently inflated by providers fivefold or more to offset the nickels-on-the-dollar reimbursements received from insurers, would drop, allowing consumers to be both prudent and vigilant in managing their health. That’s the devil at the heart of this health care debacle, and until we address that issue – until we force Americans to manage their own care and use health insurance like actual “insurance,” as opposed to a health care credit card that may or may not pay for all the elective and preventative care they feel like charging on it – there will be no true reform.
That’s all I have for now. See you in a few days with new stuff.

I did a couple interviews in the past two weeks, both with new college graduates, touching on issues ranging from the career choices they’re facing in our present economy to my book’s themes to whether Youporn beats Porntube. In the first, I answered the questions. In the second, which will be up in the coming week or so, I did the questioning and answered some follow-ups, not unlike the Sex Drugs and Death (A Trifecta of American Hangups) and A Running Conversation on the Intersection of Work and Life pieces I did with Dr. Rob of Shrinktalk a few months back.*
The first was for a writer calling himself the Velveteen Lust Catcher. Yes, the name caught my interest. Here are a couple excerpts and the link:
It seems that we have at least one thing in common when it comes to a Libertarian viewpoint, and you’ve mentioned in a past exchange that this sentiment is probably more widespread than it seems. I agree with you. The lack of cohesion among free thinkers most likely results from the absence of an appropriate atmosphere to express thought. What do you think the answer to that is? Can the mighty internets save us all? Or do you think we’ll see the same degradation that we have with most mainstream media platforms?
I don’t think individual thinkers will get together en masse because, by definition, they don’t easily congeal behind any movement. Most rational people – and I think there are a lot of them out there – compile bits and pieces of various ideologies to form their views. The Internet’s a wonderful device for creating independent thinkers because of the number of different viewpoints competing on it. But I don’t think it will create a wave of independent thinkers arguing for logical, sensible policies. Those people tend to look at the broader systems, recognize them as hopelessly flawed and corrupt and focus on taking care of themselves.
[Do] you think that your criticisms of human behavior in the legal profession are specific only to that, or can it be applied on a more general scale? Is there something about human nature that allows individuals to fall so easily into the power structure of social and “corporate” hierarchy? Do you think it’s just easier for people in general to buy into the illusion that they’re important, or is there something about the Legal field in particular?
I guess we’re just pack animals, and you have to play the game to compete for resources in this regulated jungle of ours. Regarding law, I think it attracts a lot of people – men, mostly – who are making up for shortcomings elsewhere. The title, the “prestige” it used to confer. The male ego’s a ridiculously fragile thing, and nowhere is its weakness more on display than in law. Wall Street, sales, entertainment… People say professionals in those fields are driven by ego. I think they’re driven more by money. Law’s different. It’s not a direct path to big money. I think the real currency a lot of lawyers are seeking is respect.

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To anyone wondering where I’ve been for the past three weeks, I have a few announcements. I’m still writing, and I intend to regularly update this site, but over the summer, things are going to be a little different.
I am focusing on my next book right now, and I can’t write that while publishing lengthy pieces here. Only so much time in the day, and I also have business interests to attend to. So for the balance of the season, I’m going to write shorter, more frequent pieces. The longer, dialogue-based material will return later. My idea for now is to offer rants and commentary on current events, along with the occasional “top five” list here and there – sometimes philosophical, sometimes juvenile, usually both.
But more than that, the aim will be to provide and create a discussion of some ideas, issues and observations neglected in the public discourse over the direction of the country. This is a unique time in history, a once in a century reckoning. And right now, it doesn’t appear we’re answering its challenge. What I’m seeing emerge is the usual Pendulum Effect. We swung too far in the direction of unfettered markets, greed and materialism and now we’re going to swing too far in the direction of regulation, confiscation and soft collectivism.
But this isn’t just about a failure in the way we manage the government, economy or financial markets. I’m talking about a broader intellectual laziness in the way this country approaches just about every controversy or crisis it faces. Historically, we don’t seem to be able to adjust to anything in a sensible fashion. It’s just one extreme to the next. Part of that’s a failure of our political system, a structure creating professional politicians interested in nothing but re-election. Part of it stems from the nature our spoiled, soft culture – a mindset thrilled to celebrate free markets in upticks, indulging in what it couldn’t hope to afford, then immediately crying for a generous safety net when the inevitable correction comes.* Part of it’s the media, which makes its money carving us into warring factions at the poles of debates, pretending fringe players like Limbaugh or Olbermann represent the views of a significant constituency of voters.
And part of it – the biggest part – is the reasonable middle of this country never opening its mouth. For years we’ve been running on treadmills, harried, on the edge of burnout – slaves to Blackberries in a vicious “efficiency cycle” where the corporations we served beat more and more labor out of fewer and fewer bodies, all while the cost of living exploded around us. We shifted to a culture of unthinking execution, of being too stressed and overworked to consider what we were doing… to wonder if maybe there was a better way.
Well, our economy’s in the shitter and unemployment’s headed for 12% before this thing is over.** We’ve got more than enough time to think now, and we’d better. Every element of our culture, from business to law to government – it’s all being restructured. And if the moderate middle of this country doesn’t open its mouth, the usual useless mouthpieces will again control the debates. The cures for the current problems will be crafted by politicians responding to the media’s Right or Left spin on public sentiment, with dissent given over to the blogosphere’s Molotov cocktail throwers and conspiracy theorists. And that’d be a goddamn shame, because good ideas – solutions beyond what’s “politically possible” or attractive enough to gain thirty seconds of interest among a pack of narcissistic Twitterheads – can be intensely powerful. They can catch fire and, given the current technologies, circle the globe, creating an army of supporters in less time than it takes to fry an egg.
I think most of the audience here shares my affinity for ideas outside those offered by the usual participants in the important debates. There seem to be four viewpoints in America today – the Left, the Right, the Crazy and the Reasonable, the last being nearly unheard. I think maybe, if among the filthy jokes, book out-takes and bizarre noodlings I post on the site this summer, I raise a few questions on some important issues, and you, the readers – many of whom have as much, if not more, insight than I do – respond or raise your own, perhaps a good solution or two will gain some traction online. At a minimum, it’ll get people thinking.
And really, what else are we going to do right now? Bust our asses for bonuses at work? Trust me folks – this is a Jelly of the Month Club kind of year.
The first new post will be up Wednesday.
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* This applies to both the “Capitalists” on Wall Street and the credit the junkies they enabled, and everybody else in this country who lacks the will to entertain the discussion we need to be having: Is our aggregate standard of living in this country unrealistic? Are we just deferring a brutal, inevitable collapse, in so doing making the pain worse for the poor generation that faces it?
** Many respected sources claim the real rate is already over 15%. Look up “real unemployment rate” on Google.