As the book the Secret says, if you want it bad enough, it will come to you. And if you don't, you'll deserve the crap you get.

It's nice to be smart in retrospect. It's comforting to know you'd never have pushed the launch button on the Challenger or invested with the Hunt Brothers or bought a Newton.

In the book the Black Swan, Nassim Taleb points out that, "Nobody would publish a book about business failure." Because the business press, and media in general, creates the myth of the formula for success. How do you find this equation? Just get a bunch of successful people in a room and try to find something they all share in common. Do they get up early to exercise? Did they have sloppy handwriting in grade school? Do they lace their shoes all on the left and then the right?

Nassim says it's all bunk. Success is what we all know already, a mix of skill, perseverance, and luck. And luck is a big big part of it. If Bill Gate's mother hadn't been on the board of United Way with the CEO of IBM, he likely wouldn't have gotten that meeting to sell them DOS. And how do you control who your mother knows? I guess you just have to wish hard enough.

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Persia: Not Ahmadinejad's Iran

Calling yourself "Persian" was the only recourse. Either people could understand the reason for distancing oneself from Iranian politics, or they simply had no idea where Persia was anymore than Paraguay. Either way, conflict avoided.

However the issue hasn't gone away and it's the same as it always has been: racism. It's what keeps Carlos Mencia on TV making the kind of fat, gay, black, Asian, Mexican, Jewish, jokes that frat boys, anonymous website commenters, and Beavis and Butthead enjoy. At least Beavis and Butthead was supposed to be ironic.

It's the same thing that Jewcy has been pointing out about the ADL selecting which kinds of genocides qualify as "mean spirited enough" to be real genocide.

There's no point trying to shut up the idiots, but at least we can call their bluff and remind them that they are what they are. On a trip to Australia an old man I'd met said to me, "New York City? You know there are 3 million Jews there?"

"No," I responded, "Actually, there's 2,999,999, because I'm here with you."

The post Persia or Iran? appeared first on Jewcy.

I grew up with Danish Modern furniture and my father's desire to paint walls white, if for no other reason than having fewer paint cans. Also, I once was nearly forced to rent an apartment in London that was owned by a Persian man with unrestrained decorating taste. There were mirrors on the ceiling, and the walls were covered with either deep blue or red velvet. ("I am sorry, I ran out of red velvet.")

Now we must attempt to find a way to match our styles. And I have made this suggestion. We get a mirrored panther. Possibly on a red velvet platform.

I think such an object would allow a concentration of all Persianess into a singularity of Orientalism. An entire opium den/Rubaiyat/Tehran airport in one fused mass. The challenge is, where to find a mirrored panther? The Internet will make this easy, no? No.

The first couple I find certainly have the potential to make me ill, but they are not three dimensional enough.

Mirrored Panther Take 1: (A little to Chinese?)

Mirrored Panther Take 2: (Cool Panther, Scary Lady)

Alas! I could not find a mirrored, tiled, panther anywhere! That includes an entire site devoted to mosaic sculpture on one very very very long page. However, lest you think that I am an idiot Googler ("Did you try putting it in quotes?") or that the world is not full of mirrored, mosaic animal sculptures, I present:

A mirrored horse: A little large for our apartment, but maybe for you?

A mirrored dolphin: What does a mirrored dolphin have to do with cancer research? Also, definitely too big for the apartment.

A mirrored catfish: Now we are talking.

So, what to do? Nu? After much Internet searching, I have found the answer. Something that satisfies the Persian in her and the Jew in me: A mosaic (although sadly not mirrored) Hamen. (As in hamentaschen!)

A mosaic Hamen: (But what about a hamen Moses?)

The post East Meets East appeared first on Jewcy.

Actual bag of bolts from fan kit: I kept everything as required for "preparedness." So you watch out, I'm ready.

Friend on the other end of the phone: Try not to die.

It's true, I don't have a good record with D.I.Y. (For instance, for a long time I thought D.I.Y was a brand name.) And while it is true that knowledge is gained at the expense of practice, my current bank account includes bicycles falling on my head, lamps exploding, and a variety of deep hand wounds. I've also spent a lot of actual money. And, unlike my cooking projects, so far I've not always been able to get the burn marks cleaned off the ceiling.

For example, the ceiling fan that I actually took a stab at (it only hit me on the head so far, not yet in the eye) has cost me: a bunch of screws of various lengths, $5; a fancy wrench, $29; and a ladder, $180; an electrical tester I know realize I need, $30. Total, some number over $200. What am I a handyman and an accountant?

Estimate provided by an actual handyman: $75.

But where would the fun be in that? Where would be the surprise in not electrocuting myself? The thrill of realizing that "Oh! It goes in that way! I have to take it all apart again." The pathos of the part that seems to be left over. And the ultimate joy of, at last, calling the actual handyman.

No, not like some stupid '50s sitcom where everyone laughs at me. I mean the thrill of calling the handyman and having this conversation.

Handyman: Very impressive work. (shaking his head)

Me: I know! Did you see how I managed to get the wires through that tiny hole.

Handyman: Yeah, how'd you do that?

Me: (very very proud at thoroughly confounding another handyman)

Me "Working": My cat: Surveys my activity from a safe, out of range, out of focus, distance.From this persepective I seem even less sure of what's going on.

The post Home Improvement Maims Several appeared first on Jewcy.

An Allergy Free Cat: Is a Happy Cat

• Return the electrical breaker I bought that was wrong.
• Find something of equal or lesser value that I can now consider "free," like box of tiny screwdrivers.
• Return the shower head I'm not ever going to install and get a toaster oven in exchange. Alton Brown said toaster ovens are cool.
• Determine plan for convincing clerk that I do have the receipt for the shower head, it's just invisible.
• Rub down cat with anti-allergy shampoo.
• Rub down other cat with anti-allergy shampoo after moving all the furniture it has scooted under; includes bed, sofa, kitchen cabinet, front closet, my closet, my underwear.
• Disinfect and bandage allergy-free-cat inflicted wounds.
• Come to some kind of resolution on the 3 month old email about my expiring US airways miles. Hope that all deadlines have finally passed and it is now a moot point that I don't have to do anything about except gripe. ("Bastards just took away my miles! Just like that!")
• Reopen article about outsourcing that my publisher and PR team thought was, "Not up to your usual standard."
• Close article about outsourcing so as to reboot computer to install "Critical iTunes Update."
• Make plans to visit my girlfriends parents in North Carolina by checking prices on Expedia.
• Curse airline industry.
• Fight with girlfriend over travel plans.
• Fight with girlfriend over the way my job lets me "work at home."
• Attempt to define drooling on keyboard as real work, just like her job.
• Call girlfriend back to apologize after realizing I am hard to live with, again.
• Think really seriously about installing that ceiling fan that's on the floor. Maybe shift ladder again to determine best position for thinking seriously about it.
• Google myself.
• E-mail anyone who has even kind of mentioned my book.
• Mop excess moisture off of coffee maker.
• Revel in glow of dry coffee maker, and at least one task accomplished.

The post Much To Do appeared first on Jewcy.

Johnny Carson: As if you didn't know.

Now I'm an author and, while Johnny is gone, the thought of my book being pimped on TV is nothing short of pornographic. I turn on my Tivo'd Daily Show and wait for John Stewart to say, "And tonight, author of the engaging memoir about stupid business decisions, David Silverman."

Of course, that's not going to happen. Mostly because the show I'm watching is taped. And also, I already sent them a nice email and they said no.

I can't speak for all authors, but I can for myself and several friends. We are schizophrenics, all of us. We want nothing more than for you to buy our book and love it, and yet, when the chance comes to sell it to you, we kind of shrug our shoulders and say, "Yeah, um, it's about losing $4 million and ruining this business in Iowa and putting 200 people out of work. So, OK, I think it's maybe interesting to some people. I mean it's no Salman Rushdie, but it's a nice book."

The fact is, we feel guilty for trying to sell ourselves, and yet we secretly check our Amazon ranking every night at 2 am. (I just did, and I don't want to talk about it.)

Well, earlier this week I went to my cousin's funeral where two things were hammered in my head by all my relatives:

1. "The gravestone has two dates and a dash. What really matters is the dash and what you do with it."

2. "Hey David, how are the book sales going?"

So, without further ado, I give you an excerpt of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost $4 Million, as animated by the amazing Scott Bateman. And then I shrug my shoulders and smile hopefully.

The post And Johnny, I’d Like to Plug My Book appeared first on Jewcy.

My Mother's Art: My mother was an artitst. Johanna Liebman remarked that it showed none of the horror of most survivor art.

Honestly, I'm afraid. I know how difficult I became to deal with while writing, and therefore reliving my failure in business memoir. And that was just about losing $4 million and people being put out of work. How will I face the world trying to put myself in a time of millions killed?

That said, one night I Googled relentlessly on a town my mother may have lived in, Karlsruhe. This is how I found Johanna Liebman at the Queens College Holocaust Center.

And so, I share some of her story, which is likely very similar to my mother's. (The very formal style of the interview is because my girlfriend is both a wonderful person to document it and a lawyer. So it does read a bit like a very very scary Law and Order.)

On Saturday, July 9, 2005, David Silverman (“DS”), Carol Silverman (“CS”) met with Johanna Liebman (“JL”) at 10:30 a.m. at the Holocaust Resource Center (“HRC”) at Queensborough Colllege in Bayside, New York. JL recounted her experience at Le Camp de Gurs (“Gurs”) in 1940. Life In Germany Before the Deportation JL said that life in Germany for the Jewish population started going “down the hill in every way” in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. First, the Jewish population began to lose its privileges as citizens. For example, the cities took away Jewish citizens ability to have phones in their houses and to have radios. Additionally, JL said that the Germans were using propaganda to teach the children to be prejudiced against the Jews. JL showed us a book called “Do No Trust The Fox In The Meadow And The Oath Of A Jew,” published in 1936. This book was a picture book depicting horrific caricatures of Jewish men as compared to the angelic blonde Germans. CS asked JL why she thought that the Germans blamed the Jews. JL said that “Jews are used to that because we are always the scapegoats. We are thought of as poison that should be destroyed.” Then CS asked what the Jewish people thought about how far the treatment of Jews would go. JL said “I don’t think anyone had enough imagination to see how far things would go.” In fact, JL said that Jewish people were deported in Steltin (now part of Poland) outside of Berlin in February of 1939, but the Jewish population in Karlsruhe did not think it would happen to them. Still, JL recalled that she was horrified when she saw synagogues being destroyed every day.

It's a long story, but I felt it was worth being posted in its entirety, so more below.

The post Out of Germany appeared first on Jewcy.

When she was alive, her defining features were her inability to locate her reading glasses (which were usually on top of her head), her strong desire that I eat healthy (including "hiding" wheat toast on the bottom of a tuna sandwich topped with a disguise of white toast), and her inability to throw anything out (her modus operandi was to rifle through the refrigerator and pull out items with the plea, "Quick somebody eat this before it goes bad!").

After she died in 1997, I found her secret cache of documents in the basement. Among them were 4 postcards from France. (Apparently mail from the camps continued throughout the war.)

These postcards were from the Nazi concentration camp called Gurs in the Pyrenees mountains. She had never told me she had been in a camp. She'd never even told me she wasn't born in Queens until I was in high school.

When I had come home from 7th grade history class asking if she knew what had happened in Germany, she peered at me through those big glasses and "I remember a fence we had run under and some men got made at us." And then she had returned to folding the laundry and I knew not to ask more, but not why.

Before the postcards, my mother was amusing, annoying, and doddering. Afterwards, she was what now? A holocaust survivor? But she didn't have a tattooed number. She hadn't been to Auschwitz. And what about me? Was I the son of a survivor? How could my mother, who made banana Jello and packed me and my father lunch everyday be a survivor?

I didn't understand, and I still don't, and a blog entry is too short to figure it out. But what I do know is that what my mother tried to protect me from still shaped my life, if just through that act of protection. And that I must, in the end, make sense first of her love.

The post Postcards From My Mother’s Holocaust appeared first on Jewcy.

Pom Pom Hat: That's one happy hat.

German person: Collapses on floor in paroxysms of laughter.

Allow me to deconstruct. "Ich," means me. "Shau" is store. "Fenster" is a window. "Bummel" a walk or stroll, if you will. "Machen" to do or make.

The twitching German on the carpet explains that had I stuck only three words together said, "Ich mache einen Schaufensterbummel." I would have been happily going store window shopping.

After all, German is an agglutinative language. You can stick words together all day long, making sentences the size of football fields. For example, Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, "Danube steamship company captain." Or, Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung, "regulation requiring a prescription for an anesthetic".

But I got ahead of myself. And I thought I would be cool and stick together four words that resulted in: "Ich," still means me. "Schaufenstebummelmache." In this context, the "bumel" becomes the Bavarian slang for a hat with a pom-pom. The "Schaufenster" is still the store window. But the "mache" means that my "doing" is standing in front of the store window with a hat with a pom-pom over my genitalia. Where did the genitalia come from? The German couldn't explain.

But when I said my sentence, he instantly imagined me in front of Macy's on a cold winter's day with a hat with a pom-pom on my Johnston and nothing else. And, his first reaction to that was gut wrenching laughter.

Note: This only works on Bavarians. Don't try it on your friends from Hamburg. They won't get it.

And in reference to my previous post about the Franklin BDS-1860 German/English translator planning to take over the world, I got a lot emails saying "You are full of it, and your hat with a pom-pom is very small." To that, I counter that I do not lie, and my mother made that hat you're making fun of. Here is YouTube proof.

The post More Lost In Translation appeared first on Jewcy.

The Franklin BDS-1860: The Dictionary of the Beast

For my German language courses I purchased a Franklin Deutsch/English Professor PRO BDS-1860. As one of its many functions that include Tic Tac Toe, the game Conjumania (possibly a cross between naked Twister and Jumangi), and cultural notes on items such as Britpop ("Oasis, Travis und Blur"), my electronic dictionary offers up handy words to know when you turn it on.

Now remember that this is the German version of the dictionary. It's not meant to be purchased by English speakers, and they do their best to dissuade us using it by putting the Z key wackily in the middle of the keyboard. I spent hours trying to find the Y so I could translate "I have been sitting here looking at your stupid keyboard all day looking for the 'y'." So when it gives me words to learn, I can only assume it doesn't know my President is George W. Bush.

Here then are a sampling of what my dictionary wants me to know. And again, I am not making this up. If you want, get your own BDS-1860 or just come by and borrow mine. Just be aware that they know I have it now and may be watching.

Again, I am really not making this up.

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