Great Moments In Penology

pe·nol·o·gy also poe·nol·o·gy (pē-nŏl'ə-jē)
n.

The study, theory, and practice of prison management and criminal rehabilitation.

Here at the Shack we're pleased to bring you some great moments in Penology. Sure, we could be serious and cover the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, but what fun would that be.

Instead we are going to cover great moments in music in prison

First there was Johnny Cash at San Quentin and then came the masters from CPDRC. You remember them, the prison where the inmates reenacted Thriller. These fellas are quickly gaining a special place in my heart. They don't just do Michael Jackson. No sir, they also perform songs by Queen and bits from Sister Act and do the Jumbo Hot Dog Dance.

Just in case you are interested in learning more about such a progressive institution they have a promotional video that you can watch here.

P.S. Technically this post is supposed to deal with real prisons, but just this one time we can adjust the rules to allow the king to participate. Elvis doesn't count but what the heck.

The Shmata Queen Has Left The Building

Another blogger has retired. The Shmata Queen has hung up her keyboard.

It Is Broken Now

This morning was rougher than I could have anticipated. One of the things about being a parent is that even when you are doing your job well you still have moments where you just feel lost and or upset.

Some of my children's relatives have decided that the best gift is green in nature. I suppose that one of the benefits of being part of a large and generous family is that in a short time the children have accumulated a nice amount of cash. This provided an opportunity for a good life lesson in which they have begun to learn about the benefits of saving money so that they can buy something nice that they might not otherwise be able to get.

This past weekend my son and I were running errands when he spotted a toy that he really wanted. Initially he asked me if I would buy it for him. I declined to do so and explained that we just didn't have the extra cash to buy a toy, and besides he has some really nice stuff at home.

He responded by explaining that he thought that he had outgrown some of his toys and that we could give them to charity and that he had his own money. I told him that I thought that this was a very mature way to approach things and that I was agreeable to him getting the toy in this manner.

On a side note, I happened to think that the toy was quite cool. I had something very similar when I was younger and was quite excited at the thought of using it with him.

Anyhoo, we used his funds to buy it and brought it home. From the moment he took it out of the box it became one of his favorite toys and as expected we had a great time playing with it.

Until this morning. That is when the damn thing decided to break. I wasn't in the room when it happened, but it didn't take long for me to hear about it. The big boy used the intercom system to call me over to take a look.

It didn't take more than a moment for me to realize that I probably will not be able to fix this. I won't be able to forget the look on his face when I told him that it was probably not something I could fix.

It was a combination of shock and disappointment. He was truly surprised that there is something that I can't do. And I realized that I have really enjoyed being his hero. And while there are any number of good lessons involved in this I have to say that I was surprised at how it affected me.

The time is rapidly approaching when he is going to see that I really am just a person and not the incredible man he thinks I am. Forgive my ego for being a little bruised, I just thought that this would go on a little bit longer.

The Celtics Still Suck

In theory NBA fans should be pleased to see the hated Celtics gain an opportunity to become a player again. But I just can't get behind that. All I know is that two of the hated Celtics colluded to make this trade happen. Feh. You can't tell me that McHale acted in the best interests of his team.

Bill Simmons says as much here:

My NBA guide claims that McHale retired from the Celtics in 1993, but apparently that’s a misprint. How else could you explain his decision to trade Kevin Garnett to Boston for the Al Jefferson pu pu platter deluxe? Just five weeks ago, McHale and Minnesota couldn’t close a potential deal in which they received Jefferson and Boston’s No. 5 pick. Now? They’re settling for Jefferson (a potential franchise player), Ryan Gomes (an intangibles guy who’s useless on a bad team), Bassy Telfair (a year away from signing in Italy), Gerald Green (a homeless man’s J.R. Smith), Theo Ratliff’s expiring deal, a 2009 lottery-protected No. 1 pick (congrats on picking in the mid-20s) and the return of Minny’s future No. 1 that was stupidly included in the Ricky Davis/Mark Blount-Wally Szczerbiak trade.

Does Love Last?

After I wrote about my grandparents 73rd wedding anniversary I received some feedback from some bloggers who weren't convinced that people can be madly in love for that long. They said that at some point in time love dies or changes and just becomes friendship.

I haven't provided a serious response to any of them because I have been trying to decide how I want to approach this topic. Love is a complicated beast and it deserves something more than throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks. At least my initial thought was to try and compose something that was based upon more than just anecdotal evidence and personal experience.

It was a good idea and I even had the beginning of a reference to use. The LA Times is running an article today called This is your brain on love. "When you're attracted to someone, is your gray matter talking sense -- or just hooked? Scientists take a rational look."

But like so many things in life the plan has changed, courtesy of my BIL whose timing and driving ability are less than impeccable.

So I'll roll with the punches and ask you a general question:

Does Love Last?

P.S. This will likely be edited or updated so feel free to check back in.

First Update: In A Story of Two Souls I wrote about a couple who fell in both love and lust. So lets add that to the mix. Do love and lust last forever? Can they last forever? It sounds a bit adolescent, but I am curious to hear you thoughts.

A Long Way to Find A Bathroom

Here is a cheap impression of Paul Harvey. Have you ever heard the expression about being up to your neck in crap?

Climbers and walkers can worry less about eating yellow snow in the French Alps, thanks to the installation of two public toilets on the highest mountain in the range.

Mont Blanc - Europe's highest mountain - can be saved the nickname of Mont Jaune thanks to the two public toilets that have been set up near the summit of the 4,800 metre high mountain.

The latrines will be the highest in Europe, according to mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains Jean-Marc Peillex, standing, or sitting if you will, at an altitude of 4,260 metres.

"This move was much needed. Our beautiful mountain's white peak was full of yellow and brown spots in summer. It used to look very dirty and was also wrecking the environment," the Times of India reported Mr Peillex as lamenting.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Apparently Disney Loves Me

Not unlike so many other bloggers I know I make no secret of checking my stats. You can find all sorts of interesting information in there. It is fun to see how people find the blog and what they do.

Apparently the Big Mouse loves me because I see Disney in my stats virtually every day. Now if only I could figure out a way to have that translate into free passes to Disneyland. My kids would love it and so would my wallet.

Do you have any idea just how much it costs to take a family of four to Disneyland. It is about $300.00 for admission. Add gas, parking, food and souvenirs and you have dropped a bundle. All for a one day adventure.

Hit By A Sturgeon

I find this to be pretty funny. Ok, it is probably not all that funny to the people who are being hit, but something about it grabs me. Can you imagine calling your boss to say that you are going to miss work because you were hit by a sturgeon.

It is a brilliant excuse. I'll post an excerpt from the story. BTW, I love the graphic that says Sturgeon Zone in big red letters. It reminds me of my room in college. I had a sign on the ceiling that said Men At Work. Caught a lot of grief from that one.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Boaters and other watercraft riders are being hit and injured by giant jumping sturgeons at record pace within a 40-mile stretch of water in Florida.

"People and sturgeons are colliding," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official Karen Parker said.

Sturgeon, which is one of the oldest genera of fish in existence, have been leaping out of the water without warning and striking people.

I'd like to see a newscaster say that with a straight face. I think that my favorite part is where they say that the fish have been doing this without warning. What do they expect. Are the fish supposed to wear a bell or sound some sort of aquatic air horn.

Do You Have An Accent

Yes, it is another recycled post.

So here is the question of the moment, Do You Have An Accent? Not clear on what the meaning is, take a look at this link.

accent

The latter part of the definition is really what we are talking about.

The word accent in English is also understood to mean the pronunciation and speech patterns that are typical of a speech community;

As a child I never realized that all people have accents, or should I say that it never occurred to me that people would think that my own speech has an accent. I grew up on the West Coast, Los Angeles born and bred. We didn't sound like people from Long Island, Brooklyn, Nashville or Alpharetta.

And we certainly didn't sound like we had rolled out of Tel Aviv, JoBurg, Sydney or Mexico City. To be clear, I have always enjoyed accents. It tickled me pink to hear people speak English yet sound so different. In fact, there was a point in time in which I was disappointed that I couldn't speak with an English accent, but that was short lived.

It was during that famous summer of 1985 trip to Israel that I learned that people thought that I had an accent. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I do remember some Israeli boy telling me that I speak Hebrew with a thick American accent.

Whoa. What do you mean that I have an accent.

One of the other people with me confirmed it. He was a Jewish kid from Buenos Aires. He said that I sounded like an American.

I was truly dumbfounded by this because until that point, I had never thought of myself as having an accent, that was something that other people had. But I had to admit that it made sense, it hadn't ever come up before.

In the years that have passed I have been told by others that I have an accent and I am sure that many of my international readers would agree with this. Upon occasion people tell me that they can hear some East Coast influence, or that pronounce some things like a Chicagoan.

I laugh when people think that I am from New York. IMO, my voice doesn't sound like that at all. If I am around people with a thick Southern accent it is not unusual for me to start to affect a drawl. I have been asked if I am from Texas.

As for Chicago, well half my family is from there, including my mother so there is probably some truth to that.

One of the funnier occasions came during a wedding I once attended. The bride was Irish and quite a large number of the guests had come to the states to help her celebrate her nupitals. During the reception I walked over to the bar and placed an order for a drink.

The bartender smiled and began preparing it. While he was doing so he looked at me and said:

"I have Irish relatives. What part of Ireland are you from?"

I laughed and said "Hollywood."

The bartender scratched his head and said "Wow, you know that we have a city called Hollywood too."

Now I'd like to say that it was an easy mistake to make. I'd like to say that he was competing with the band and that some trombonist was especially loud, but that wouldn't be true. The band was on a break. It was relatively quiet so I said,

"Begorra, this ale do taste mighty fine."

It probably sounded more like pirate than Irish, but it fit my mood and was lot kinder than asking him if I looked like Lucky the Leprechaun from the Lucky Charms cereal box.

And while we are on the topic of accents let me share something else. Someone once told me that Australian women loved to hear American men speak. The legend said that if you found a nice Australian girl your voice would give you an edge. As a scientist I have always been disappointed that I couldn't test that theory. In the interest of discovery and human development I would have enjoyed running a lab on that.

Anyhooo.................................................

Let's go back to the topic of the post. Do You Have an Accent?

Well, do you? And if so, how would you describe it?

Moshiach Now- Maybe Not

Chana verbalized a number of my concerns in this post.

An Alternate Means of Payment

This really should be the symbol at the gas station.

Children- Survivors of Terror Speak

73 Years Of Marriage

Today marks my grandparent's 73rd wedding anniversary. They are both 93 and g-d willing are on track for hitting 100. In the interim we have, rather I have big plans for them.

I am trying to convince my grandfather to start training for the 100 yard dash. The idea is that in two years we'll do a world tour in which we will promote him as the fastest 95 year-old man in the world.

It will also coincide with their 75th wedding anniversary so we'll plan a big bash to celebrate that as well. My grandfather agreed to this provided that he can still walk. As an extra incentive I told him that I would personally see that anyone who was at their wedding attends the party for their 75th anniversary party.

This made my grandfather laugh hard enough that his dentures flew out, which in turn made him laugh even harder. Once he stopped laughing he told me that everyone is dead which either makes me a cheap bastard or a very good businessman.

Then he got very serious and told me how happy he was to have seen me become a father and that he hoped that one day I could become a great-grandfather, even though I could never be as great as he is. At this point I reminded him that when I was five he promised me a pony and that 33 years later I was still waiting.

At this point my son walked in and spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what happened to my horse and why his great grandfather told him that Elmer had taken care of the pony.

All in all it was a fine day and I was pleased to celebrate with them, especially my grandmother who in many ways was the backbone that kept things going.

And in case you wonder what the secret to surviving 73 years of marriage is my grandmother has an answer. If you want to be married that long you have to take it one day at a time, or you can listen to my grandfather who says that it helps if one of the spouses is deaf.

All I know is that I cannot conceive of them as anything but a team. Seventy-three years, wow.

The Harry Potter News You Didn't Read

If you haven't read Deathly Hallows you might want to skip this. Now that the weight of protecting her creation has been lifted JK Rowling has been sharing more information about what happened.

Here is a partial excerpt:

Harry, Ron and Hermione
We know that Harry marries Ginny and has three kids, essentially, as Rowling explains, creating the family and the peace and calm he never had as a child.

As for his occupation, Harry, along with Ron, is working at the Auror Department at the Ministry of Magic. After all these years, Harry is now the department head.

“Harry and Ron utterly revolutionized the Auror Department,” Rowling said. “They are now the experts. It doesn’t matter how old they are or what else they’ve done.”

Meanwhile, Hermione, Ron’s wife, is “pretty high up” in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, despite laughing at the idea of becoming a lawyer in “Deathly Hallows.”

“I would imagine that her brainpower and her knowledge of how the Dark Arts operate would really give her a sound grounding,” Rowling said.

Harry, Ron and Hermione don’t join the same Ministry of Magic they had been at odds with for years; they revolutionize it and the ministry evolves into a “really good place to be.”

“They made a new world,” Rowling said.

This doesn't work well for me. It is too pat, too simple, too easy.

Israel & The Palestinian Authority

Dave at Israel At Level Ground links to an interesting opinion piece that was written by Khaled Abu Toameh the Palestinian Affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.

Within a few months after Abbas came to power, Palestinians started realizing that he was not delivering. Instead of fighting corruption, he surrounded himself with the same Arafat cronies. There was a decrease of perhaps 30-40 percent in the level of corruption but an upsurge in internal violence.

The January 2006 election that brought Hamas to power was mostly about: "Let's punish these Fatah thieves." Hamas was building schools and kindergartens and clinics, while the PLO was building a casino and villas for its leaders. I believe some 30-35 percent of the Palestinians who voted for Hamas did so as a vote of protest because they were unhappy with the way the Palestinian Authority was running the show.

Let Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO and Fatah start rebuilding their institutions, reform themselves, get rid of the corruption, and come up with a new list of candidates. Then run in another free and democratic election and offer the Palestinians a better alternative to Hamas.

The Palestinians do not need more guns and military training. If the U.S. has $86 million and wants to help the Palestinians, then help them build civil institutions, help them build freedom, educate them about good things. What's the point in taking 200 Presidential Guards to Jericho to train them? Who are they going to fight at the end of the day? In Gaza they were defeated.

What should Israel do at this stage? Nothing. There is no one to deal with on a serious basis on the Palestinian side. Abbas doesn't even have control over his own Fatah militias. Israel should just sit and wait. Don't repeat the mistake of unilateralism, when Israel left Gaza to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups.

It is ironic that the West is supporting the guys who are suppressing the moderates and people who want democracy. The West is actually undermining its own goals.

Incredible Sandcastles

These are amazing. They come from a contest that was held at Harrison Hot Springs.

Crocs

I think that I am going to give in and get a pair of Crocs for myself. I keep hearing/reading stories about how comfortable they are and that has my attention.

Fads don't interest me and I don't care much about style, but comfort is of major interest. And comfort seems to be the one thing that is always associated with these shoes.

Do any of you own Crocs, and if so, what do you think about them?

Barry Bonds

In a past life I had a dream of becoming a sports writer. In part it was due to the influence of Jim Murray. The man could take words and make them sing and dance in such a beautiful way. I am not half the writer he was, not even close to one quarter. But the nice thing about writing is that is one of those skills that can improve with age and with practice.

The same is not necessarily true of hitting a 90 MPH fastball. There comes a point in time in which your skills begin to diminish and you are no longer able to do what you once did. Most baseball players begin to see this change some time in their mid to late thirties. Rarely do you see their skills begin to improve.

Barry Bonds seems to be the exception to the rule.

As a fan of the game I'd like to celebrate this. I'd like to look at Barry with a mix of awe and envy and wish that I could do what he does. The problem is that I cannot.

I cannot because he plays for the hated Giants and as a Dodger fan that is not something you do. Ask a Sox fan if he'd like to get a Bucky Dent jersey and see how he responds and you'll get a sense of what it means. As an aside most Sox fans I know never speak of Dent without using the middle name they gave him, Bucky F*ing Dent.

But it is more than team loyalty that prevents me from trying to appreciate Bonds. By all accounts he is a surly and often obnoxious man that walks around like he has a chip on his shoulder. The persona he portrays to the public is not one of affection.

Still, that is only part of the equation. When I add in another factor it becomes even tougher to really get behind him.

Steroids.

And the truth is that part of me feels badly about that because I don't see it as a black and white issue. Bonds played during a time that can be called the steroid era. It is a given that the explosion in home runs we witnessed is not just due to bigger players, league expansion or other soft ball explanations.

Bonds has never admitted to taking steroids and to the best of my knowledge no one has proven that he has taken them either. In theory one should be innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn't apply everywhere.

And here is what we know. Major League Baseball hasn't embraced him. He is on the verge of breaking one of the greatest records in the game and people don't want to talk about it. Hank Aaron refuses to attend or acknowledge it and until recently the commissioner has refused to discuss whether he would try to be in attendance when Bonds breaks the record.

The lack of support from within the MLB bothers me. I think that it speaks volumes about this. It is just disappointing to see Bonds do this. I had always kind of hoped that Junior would do it.
I suppose that it is still possible that he might, but that seems like a bit of a stretch now.

The one thing I know for certain is that records are made to be broken. Bonds will have his time in the limelight. Regardless of whether he took steroids or not he is one of the great players of the game, I'll grant him that. But sooner or later someone like A-Rod will come along and take the record away.

I just hope that whoever does it has more to show for themselves than Bonds.

Reader Feedback- I Don't Care Edition

It is time to dig out the old mailbag and share some of the feedback that I have received.

Dear Jack,

You shouldn't write posts about grammatical mistaiks because you make plenty of your own....

Regards,

Sheri
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Sheri,

I am still wondering if your mistaik was intentional or not.

Thanks,

Jack
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Jack,

You used to provide more original material. What happened?

See you,

Trina
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Trina,

It is probably on the new blog.

Thanks,

Jack
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Jack,

I really don't care what music you listened to Saturday night.

Singingly yours,

John,
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear John,

You sound just like a rabbi I know, but funnier. Right now I am listening to an '80s CD. In particular the song is Talk Talk by the band Talk Talk.

Rocking out,

Jack

Thoughts About Cell Phones

Just some random thoughts about cellphones.

Is there a proper etiquette for handling a dropped call? That is, if you are having a conversation with someone that is abruptly ended by a dropped call what are you supposed to do?

Do you immediately try and call them back or do you wait for them to call you back. Here is a slight variation on that. You're in the middle of a call when someone beeps in for the person you are speaking with. They click over and while you are waiting for them to return the call is dropped.

What do you do then?

You have probably noticed that some people have a habit of yelling into their cellphones. As you can imagine I have as much interest in their conversation as they do in mine. Sometimes I'll react to their actions by singing quite loudly.

Other times I may respond by asking them if they still beat their wife or how do the neighbors feel about living next to a sex offender. I know, it is juvenile behavior and not very nice but sometimes ...

Actually if I could I'd respond the way that these musicians did when someone began speaking during their concert.

New & Improved Toilet- Fish 'n Flush

In a never ending quest for new and improved toilet The Shack is happy to present you with the Fish 'n Flush aquarium toilet.

"Both fresh water and salt water can be added to our 2.2-gallon aquariums, but live coral should not be used. Fish 'n Flush provides a dual-filter system, making it safe for children. It also provides two nine-inch plastic plants, a fill valve, and a complete flushing system. All you need are water, fish and food.

These acrylic tanks are fully functional, impact resistant and stronger than china. They are completely separate from the toilet tank and are designed to fit directly against the companion tank reservoir.'

Why I Am Not Getting Much Done

Several weeks ago I wrote about the challenge of working out of a home office. Today the challenge is even greater than normal because of a favor. A friend had to drop her children off so that she could attend to some business.

The influx of children has raised the terror alert to its highest level. In fact I would argue that I have already survived numerous terror attacks. Let's use the shrieking as an example.

Why dear lord must little girls shriek. My ears are ringing and the neighborhood dogs and I are considering the benefits of heading for the hills. The incessant shrieking has shattered three plate glass windows and caused every car alarm within a three mile radius to go off.

But the boys are not about to be outdone by the girls. Oh no, they wouldn't consider the advantages of building a clubhouse outside. Instead they have constructed a racetrack inside the house. Since they are too big for a simple oval track they have made sure that it runs around the entire house, including the little corner I call my office.

In between the races they have decided to engage in simple imaginary play. It is kind of nice to see them use their imaginations and not rely upon things that beep, whistle or tweet. They're pretending to be superheroes and supervillains.

Apparently I am supposed to be one of them too. I am some kind of giant. I don't know if I am good or bad, just that I am included. Did I mention that this involves being attacked with various objects and body parts.

Fake rays have blasted me. Pillows that are supposed to be some sort of device or something have been used to assault my person. And as mentioned body parts have been used. It seems that I have been struck by kryptonite hands, radioactive feet and a host of other items.

It also seems that telling the boys that I don't want to play and that I am angry enough to spit blood is not a deterrent. Instead it is viewed as encouragement to continue.

Of course my clients may not accept any of this as a reason for why I want an extension. Perhaps a better excuse such as my dog ate my homework would suffice.

Excuse me, I was just attacked by the Joker and Batman. I think that Giant Man is going to respond. Back later.

Recently Declassified CIA Video

Here is another failed attempt to assassinate Castro. Everyone knows that an exploding banana peel is much more effective.

Obsessed With the Blogroll

I have a habit of recycling posts. This one just seemed appropriate.

If you have been blogging for any length of time you probably have received an email from another blogger asking for you to blogroll them. Sometimes they phrase it differently and offer you a reciprocal link exchange.

Either way the question is still the same, "will you blogroll me?" They want a link on your site that can be used by your readers to find their blog.

I am a bit of a prickly and at times moody fellow so these requests haven't always fallen upon receptive ears. Sometimes I have just done it and sometimes I don't even bother to consider it. You may recall that in the past I asked the denizens of cyberspace to tell me how many blogs you read.

It was a serious question that I asked because I have noticed that many bloggers have blogrolled an exceptional number of blogs and it occurred to me that it would be tough for them to read them all. So I spent a few moments pondering this and considering whether I thought that it made sense to have that many blogs on a blogroll.

Part of me thought that it was similar to having more than a few pairs of shoes. You couldn't possibly use/read that many consistently so after a while it seemed a bit like excess and overkill. I even read a few explanations in which the blogger suggested that the more links they offered the more that they would receive. I remember snootily thinking to myself that I would never let my ego get in the way like that blogger had.

Well, I was wrong. My ego did get involved and I began to get more involved with this than I had intended. I started paying a lot of attention to Technorati and to my stat counter. In fact I paid enough that I noticed that after a period of time some bloggers had unblogrolled me. I admit to being a little miffed by it.

I wondered what had happened. Why the hell did they keep that really stupid and boring blog. They could have dumped him and kept me. I was bent about it. And then there were the occasional blog altercations in which another blogger and I disagreed so vehemently that we had to unblogroll each other. Nice to see that you never outgrow junior high.

Anyway, after a time I grew more settled into my blogging routine and began to see things differently. I am a voracious reader. I have around seven bookcases that are jammed full of books and probably 12 boxes of books in my garage. One day while I was looking for a new book to read it occurred to me that in some respects keeping a long list of blogs on the blogroll wasn't all that different from what I did at home.

It wasn't profound, but it made perfect sense to me. The other thing I learned about the blogosphere is that it is littered with space junk. There are tons of abandoned blogs. People start them and just leave them up, hanging there, leaving you to wonder if they intend to return or not. Some of my favorites no longer exist.

And then there is the other issue. You run into blog boredom. Some blogs just stop holding your attention. I am sure that there are people reading my blog now who are ready to move onto something new. It happens. It is hard to keep your muse employed full time. They expect benefits and a pension and you are often lucky if you can offer them a simple IRA or 401k.

Apparently my own muse just quit on me. You'll excuse me for a moment as I need to go chase them down and beg their forgiveness.

Things I Have Never Done

Here is a list that I plan on developing 0ver time. Here is a short list of things/places I have never done/seen:

1. I have never seen snowfall.
2. I have never driven in the snow.
3. I have never been to Japan.
4. I have never been skydiving.

As mentioned above this list will grow over time as I add to it.

What Are Your Favorite Blog Names?

***Sticky Post- New Content is Below***

AbbaGav deserves full credit for this post. As you can see from the link he did this last year but I thought that it was worth another crack at it.

Tisha B'Av- Redemption

We humans are a superstitious lot. If you think about it you can probably come up with a list of ten superstitions that are relatively well known. And if you really concentrate you can probably come up with a list of personal superstitions. I know that I have my own and in spite of what others may claim it has nothing to do with OCD.

Some of my fellow MOTs find the three weeks to be terribly distressing. They expect and anticipate that bad things will happen to them during this time. I can think of more than one conversation in which someone explained the real reason behind the car breaking down or a summer cold.

It all culminates on Tisha B'Av. On Tisha B'Av we see the end of this cycle and the beginning of a new one. In my mind I always like to think of redemption as being the second and in some ways more important part of the day.

I can attribute this attitude to how we observed Tisha B'Av at camp. The evening was always somber. We'd gather on the tennis court and listen to the chanting of Eicha. Under a star filled sky I'd try to imagine what had happened with varying degrees of success. It is not hard to remember heading back to my tent with a myriad of thoughts running through my mind.

In the morning we'd wake up knowing that although it would be somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees outside there wouldn't be any food or drink. It was a fast day that often moved slowly. Sometimes it was tough to be living in a place that was designed for so much fun on a day that was supposed to be so somber. But that was only for part of the day because in the afternoon we'd start to think about redemption.

And redemption is something that I find quite interesting. I am not speaking of the days in which moshiach comes. The truth is that I have kind of mixed emotions about that. It is a hard concept to wrap my brain around. It is hard for me to imagine that time and what life will be like. It is not that I can't do it, but sometimes it is just hard to let go of the concrete realities of the life I have now and picture that particular future.

So when I think about redemption I think of it as a time of growth. I picture it as being a time in which things can and often do get better. Life improves because we make it improve. For me it is a particularly salient point because lately life has been very tough. So now I am doing whatever I can to make that happen. And the thing is that I do feel like a weight is lifting off of my shoulders.

Perhaps that is just my own superstition or perhaps there is something more. All I know is that perception is often a major part of the battle and my own perception is that a positive change in the air. Redemption is here.

Study Links Diet Soft Drinks With Cardiac Risk

MONDAY, July 23 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking more than one soda a day -- even if it's the sugar-free diet kind -- is associated with an increased incidence of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors linked to the development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a study finds.

The link to diet soda found in the study was "striking" but not entirely a surprise, said Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, study senior author and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. There had been some hints of it in earlier studies, he said.

"But this is the first study to show the association in a prospective fashion and in a large population," Vasan said.

That population consisted of more than 6,000 participants in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been following residents of a Massachusetts town since 1948. When the soda portion of the study began, all participants were free of metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors including high blood pressure, elevated levels of the blood fats called triglycerides, low levels of the artery-protecting HDL cholesterol, high fasting blood sugar levels and excessive waist circumference. Metabolic syndrome is the presence of three or more of these risk factors.

Over the four years of the study, people who consumed more than one soft drink of any kind a day were 44 percent more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than those who didn't drink a soda a day.

That sound you hear is the collective groaning of Diet Coke addicts all over the world.

More Gun Than They Need

I don't know about you, but I don't think that I'd want to be standing anywhere close to these guys.

I Have To Try This

It looks like it is a hell of a lot of fun. Credit for the photo goes to Zorb.

She is a Butterfly

"Like the purest light in a darkened world
So much hope inside such a lovely girl
You should see her fly, it's almost magical
It makes you wanna cry, she's so beautiful"
She's A Butterfly- Martina McBride (Click to hear the song)

This has become one of my favorite songs to listen to. It reminds me of my daughter. Not just because the lyrics do an excellent job of describing her but because every time she hears it she insists that I dance with her. And that is not something that I can refuse.

My dark haired beauty will turn three tomorrow. So today we gathered family and friends and celebrated. Yes, I survived a birthday party for a three-year-old. Not only that but I survived the shrieking that seems to be part and parcel of little girls playing together. If I had planned more carefully I would have remembered to bring earplugs. Instead I'll suffer through a temporary case of tinnitus.

Her birthdays are always special to me. Not just because of her but because she was born two days after my father had a triple bypass. In many ways the days leading up to her birth were stressful and frightening. My father was exceptionally ill and the docs were suggesting that it was very likely that he might not make it. I remember the fear and the excitement I felt. If ever there was a time when my life felt like a soap opera that was it.

But now I have this incredible little girl who melts my heart. Long, dark, curls that are sort of like little ringlets dot her head. She loves to climb into my lap and listen to me read her stories and tell me about her day. She hasn't any clue how much I love these moments. She hasn't any sense of how much I love to dance with her, to take her in my arms and spin her around.

I know that time will change some of that so I am trying to absorb as much as I can now. I try to suck it all up and savor the moments we get. This special little girl melts me in a different sort of way than her brother.

The other day she asked me if I would be at her wedding. I don't know what prompted the question, but I do know that for a moment I choked up a bit. I can't quite imagine what she'll look like as a grown woman, but I do know that one day some other guy will become her hero and I'll just be dad. That's ok, but it is not easy to take.

Fortunately I have many years to go before I have to worry about that, but still....

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- A Simple Review

****There are no spoilers in this review***

Now that I have completed the seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series I have a few thoughts to share. Nothing too sophisticated or profound, just a few thoughts that are percolating inside my skull.

I enjoyed this book. It was pleasurable and I am happy to have read it, but I feel a bit let down. I haven't decided if that is because I devoured the book, if I am disappointed to see it end or what. I'll give it a little more time to mull it over and digest what I have read.

This much I can say with certainty. Rowling didn't catch me with any unusual twists. Nothing happened that surprised me and I was hopeful that something would. But then again some of the things that took place have been building for virtually the entire series so it is hard not to see them coming.

Still the story held my attention. At no time did I feel like I wanted to stop reading or flip ahead and that is worth a lot to me. I can also say that this is a book that I definitely want to read again.

After some more time has passed and more people finish the book I might write something more detailed than this, but for now this will suffice.

The Answer to Photo Friday

Here are some potential answers to David's Question.

Jinxed

I suppose that among the many reasons I miss my grandfather is that he knew more colorful phrases and expressions than anyone else I can think of. Right now I could use something more descriptive than saying I am having a run of bad luck.

Right now I feel as if I have been jinxed. Someone hit me with a hex, a curse, bad juju, that voodoo that you do is quite frankly fucking things up with the kind of regularity that makes me wonder if karma really does exist.

Ok, the truth is that I am a bit superstitious. There are some things that I have seen and experienced that I can't quite explain. The good news is that those things encompass both good and bad. I also believe in making my own luck. I know that I can turn it around. I can make things change.

But sometimes it is hard to walk through mud that is waist high. Slogging through cold slush isn't fun, there just isn't anything pleasurable about it. So I am doing what I need to do to get through to the other side.

I have been through the bad runs. I have been knocked down, kicked and trampled on. This is not the first time and it is not going to be the last. There is one significant difference between now and the past.

My kids.

They haven't any idea how much energy and strength I get from them. This morning my daughter climbed into my lap and just stared at me. Moments later she wrapped her little arms around my neck and said "You'll never know how much I love you." Had she asked me to give her the moon I would have reached right through the roof of our house and grabbed it.

Last night I told my son that I was sorry if I have been overly cranky lately. He looked at me and said "it is ok." I told him that it wasn't and that I was sorry if I snapped at him. He just looked at me and said "you're just taking care of us."

What can I say, they just make me smile.

Saudi Summer Marriages

Elder has an interesting story about Saudi Summer Marriages. The more I read about Saudi Arabia the more irritated I become that they are one of our allies.

If you spend any time reading about the policies and positions that Saudi Arabia takes on foreign and domestic issues it becomes all too clear that they are given carte blanche to do things that would bring down UN sanctions on most countries.

All because of the power of oil. It just disgusts me.

Cleveland Politics

Well here is an interesting story for you.

JULY 19--Incensed by the most recent arrest of an alleged drug dealer, a Cleveland politician wrote the perp a scathing, profanity-filled letter that referred to the man as a "crack dealing piece of trash" who should "go to jail or the cemetery soon." In a July 12 letter, a copy of which you'll find below, Councilman Michael Polensek, 57, tore into Arsenio Winston, 18, after learning of the teenager's arrest earlier this month on a felony drug trafficking rap.

For the full story click here.

Phillipine Justice

This is a novel punishment. Go to prison at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines and dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Click here.

Jew Talking To Me

New Orleans — 'DO you have a pioneering spirit?" read the recent ad in the Jewish Week newspaper of New York. "Are you searching for a meaningful community where YOU can make a difference?"

To generations of American Jews, the pitch had a familiar ring. But this was not an invitation to settle the Promised Land. It was a call to repopulate New Orleans, a city known less for its Jewish culture than for its shellfish, sin and pre-Lenten carnival.

New Orleans' Jewish population, in fact, has long been a subtle but important ingredient in this curious dish of a city. But its numbers, though always small, have declined precipitously since Hurricane Katrina. Of the 10,000 Jews in the area before the storm, 7,000 remain.

With fewer dues-paying members, some synagogues and Jewish service agencies have been kept afloat by donations from Jews around the country. But the bulk of that largess, provided by the nonprofit United Jewish Communities, dries up at the end of the year.

The Jewish community is by no means New Orleans' most afflicted demographic. But Jewish leaders do not want to see a single Jewish institution closed. They don't wish to consolidate any of the seven synagogues and two Chabad centers that offer a full range of religious observance.

The issue is plain.

"We need people," said Jackie Gothard, president of Congregation Beth Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue that has seen more than 40% of its members move away.

So Jewish New Orleans has cooked up a novel solution: a recruitment drive. With an ad campaign crafted by an Israeli public relations firm, the city's Jewish leaders are hoping to attract at least 1,000 Jews to the city over the next five years. They will appeal to potential pilgrims' better natures, stressing the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, Hebrew for "healing the world" — or, in this case, healing a broken city.

They also plan to lure them with cash. Starting next month, any Jew who has relocated to the city since Jan. 1 will be eligible for up to $5,500 for moving and housing expenses, interest-free loans of up to $30,000, half-price tuition at Jewish day schools, and a year of free membership at a synagogue and a Jewish community center.

I first read about the plan last week but what really caught my eye was this:

In the late 1990s, during one particularly uninspiring football season, local poet Andrei Codrescu remembers watching with astonishment as a rabbi marched through Jackson Square with a handful of congregants. He was playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" on the shofar.

Now there is something that you don't see every day.

My Personality Test

Call me a narcissist, but I love these personality tests. Wandered, bumped and stumbled my way into the bar to check out the ActualMe personality assessment and was pleasantly surprised with the results. Here is the abbreviated version, which is almost way too long to share.

You are a Motivational Visionary

Your Communication Style

A Natural People Person

When you are walking down a corridor or a street, you like to greet or stop to speak to someone. People just love to talk with you about anything. That's because the positive energy that you give off during conversations develops an instant bond with everyone.

You love to interact with people. It doesn't matter how many people there are or at what level you're communicating; you do it effortlessly. Conversation has been extremely natural to you your whole life.

You have a wonderful sense of humor. When people are with you, they smile and laugh a lot. Whether it's telling a joke you heard before or sharing a spontaneous ad lib, you're naturally funny and entertaining. Your humor and ways of communicating are constantly creating situations that relax and motivate other people.

Strategic Creativity

Unless people know you very well, they won't realize that you are quite capable of creating strategic plans, following intellectual pursuits and developing new, abstract theories about how things integrate or function. You're able to look at the whole picture, break them into discrete, unusual parts, and synthesize these into unique wholes or strategic plans. You thoroughly enjoy discovering creative options when thinking through difficult problems and challenging ideas.

Motivating and Leading Others

When it comes to dealing with people and problems, you use a combination of intuitive and rational thoughts very successfully. Your positive, personal and intelligent ways of relating to people make them want to follow you during times of confusion and stress. It's when the situations are dynamic and need optional thinking and/or in-the-moment organization that you're able to step forward, take command and lead others towards successful outcomes. This is when your style of leadership becomes most effective.

Even if you're not knowledgeable about a subject area under discussion, you come across as smooth and intelligent. It doesn't matter to you what conversations others are having or what topics they're discussing, you can join in without missing a beat. That's because you intuitively know how to listen to the underlying messages being delivered and how to successfully respond to people intellectually with just a few facts.

How You Learn

Besides reading and studying, conversations and dialogues provide you with an enjoyable opportunity to learn. It's during this repartee that you're able to ask any type of question: logical, analogical or just odd ones to serve your curiosity. One of the best ways for you to learn and to be motivated is to belong to a study group, particularly one that has members who are focused on the objectives and deadlines. The process of these groups can provide you with the focus and further detail to study and learn effectively.

Speaking in front of Groups

Speeches and presentations to small or large groups come naturally to you. You can either be prepared or wing it when making a speech. The latter, with a few notes jotted on a piece of scrap paper, is your preferred way to present. Also, you'll use theatrical intonations and gestures, personalized comments and anecdotes with humor, integrating them around facts, logic and important points. When you have finished, people leave your presentations feeling that you have presented a solid case, you have touched them personally and you have spoken to each one of them intellectually.

Your Leadership Qualities

As a leader, you're a powerful combination of intellectual insightfulness, future predictions and personal charm. The former allows you to plan and think things through intuitively and logically. The latter allows you to be empathetic and personal in your expression of motivation and planned action. The two of these combined give you the positive power that people trust and follow.

Glorifying Terrorists

Seraphic Secret has a story which is quite distressing.

Recently The New York Times carried a review of a film called Hot House that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates.

Click here to read the full story. And please click here to read more about Malka Chana Roth, or Malki, the girl who was brutally murdered in a senseless terrorist act.

Harry Potter- Deathly Hallows Thoughts and More

Last night I finished re-reading Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. It was a lot of fun. In some ways I enjoyed reading it more the second time around. This time there wasn't any concern or worry about someone spoiling the ending for me.

Rowling did an excellent job of creating all sorts of excitement and anticipation about the coming book. It doesn't hurt that there is an immense amount of hype surrounding the release of Deathly Hallows. If you are a fan of the series it is hard not to get caught up in it all. Not to mention that the media and Scholastic public relations department are working hard to generate more. That is part of why Rowling is asking the public to 'Help preserve the secrecy' of Potter.

"As launch night looms, let's all, please, ignore the misinformation popping up on the web and in the press on the plot of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,"' Rowling wrote in a message posted Wednesday on her Web site, http://www.jkrowling.com/.

"I'd like to ask everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan to help preserve the secrecy of the plot for all those who are looking forward to reading the book at the same time on publication day. In a very short time you will know EVERYTHING!"

Her last line about knowing everything touches upon something that bothers me. When I read Harry Potter or Tolkien I suspend disbelief. I don't try to view the world as I know it to be. I try to see the world as the author has drawn it. A place in which magic and magical creatures exist. It is a fantasy world and I know it to be that.

The thing that makes me a little crazy is the intense analysis in which armchair pundits try to claim that the author used character XYZ as a metaphor for life or scenario PDQ is really political commentary. That doesn't mean that sometimes these things aren't happening, it is just my commentary. I don't want to get caught up in whether the Ministry of Magic is supposed to be representative of a good or bad government. I just want to enjoy the freaking story.

And now on to my own suggestion of which two characters are going to die in the story. If you don't want to hear this please stop reading now. I haven't spent hours and hours thinking about this so consider this to be just the random mutterings of one more fan.

Death Watch: Hermione, Neville, Hagrid and Snape will all die. Stay tuned. It won't be long until we find out for certain.

Posts That Lack Substance

I try not to waste my time complaining about other bloggers. Some of this is because of the old saw about people who live in glass houses should not throw stones and some of it is because I don't expect that my words are going to affect any sort of change so I might as well focus my energy elsewhere.

Every now and then I break this rule. The most recent example is The Yeshiva Owes Your Parents a Refund in which I complained about some of the horrible writing I found on various Jblogs. The crimes against grammar and spelling are amongst my biggest complaints. I suppose that second on my list are those posts that seem to be completely devoid of logic and reason.

They're usually political posts in which the author has gone on some sort of a rant about a topic. The problem isn't just that the logic and and reason are missing or questionable, it is that they haven't any factual support. There is not a grain of empirical evidence, not one shred of proof of their position other than their whining.

To be clear I am sure that in almost 5,000 posts you can find examples of this in my own writing. But my word, it just irks me to see this repeated over and over again. So if you are wondering why I no longer visit your little world it is because the province you occupy has proven to be more than dull and I have enough tedium in my life.

What Is My Purpose Part 2

About 18 months ago I wrote a post called What Is My Purpose? This ties into that post because I am still searching. It is a search that began decades ago. I don't say that for dramatic effect but because it is the truth. It is one of the things that I love about blogging. I don't have just one chevrusa but many. In truth the list is abridged. I hesitate to share that because it is incomplete and I search for a complete picture.

My children ask for answers and I feel obligated to provide them. Often I turn the question back on my son. What do you think? I do it because when you deal with abstract concepts it is hard to provide concrete answers. Sometimes the child's perspective is more honest. They haven't had years of life experience to prove that something has to be a certain way. It is much easier for them to just accept.

I don't do that easily. I don't just accept. I fight. I fight. I fight. I battle and I fight. Wrestling is a way of life. There are days in which it wears me out. There are moments when I wish that I could just buy in and accept everything but I don't know how.

Faith is like that. Sometimes there are things that you accept because you can and sometimes you simply cannot.

We are in the midst of The Nine Days. If you are unfamiliar with what I am referring to email me and I'll try to bring you up to speed, but for now I am going to move on. Tisha B'Av weighs upon the community. Frankly I don't observe most of the laws and minhagim surrounding this time. I won't stop listening to music. Someone once asked me to justify why and I had to laugh. I don't keep Kosher, I am not Shomer Shabbos so why would they be upset by my listening to music.

Still they insisted that I answer the question. Here it is. Music is a tool that I use to help me engage in deeper introspection. Kavanah my friend, it is about kavanah.

Tisha B'Av weighs upon me for many reasons but not the least of which is from my experience in '85. We read Eicha while overlooking the Old City and it penetrated my heart. I felt it. I felt such sadness. In my mind I could hear the cries of the fallen and I just felt intense sorrow at what was lost. In my head I could hear the war and visualize the destruction. I have never forgotten that moment.

It was one of many moments in Israel. I never stop that search. I never lost the feeling. It is part of what ties me to Israel. There is a deep connection there that words never truly express. It is a love for the land. I love America and being American. I love watching the US take on all countries at the Olympics, but my love for Israel is a different sort of love.

It is similar to the feeling you have for you first love. It is deep. One day I will go back. If you'll forgive my inner geek it will be similar to when the elves visit Cirdan to leave Middle-Earth. For now and forever America is home but Israel will always occupy my thoughts.

So here I sit at the computer with so many thoughts still unresolved. There is a lump in my throat. I am torn. This is part of why I wish for a life that was a 1000 years. There is so much to do and so many things that I want to explore and so little time.

The blogosphere is such a good outlet because it provides at least one venue in which I can try to explore these dark and uncharted corners of my heart.

One day my children and I are going to have a long discussion about the choices we make and how they impact our lives. Sometimes it is hard not to wonder if this is the life that I am supposed to lead. Have I been true to my heart? Have I done right by myself or have I buried who I am so far beneath the weight of responsibility that it is lost.

I have a heart and soul that sometimes are at war with logic and reason. Equilibrium exists. More often than not it exists but the moments in which it does not are hard. I suppose that I'll finish this rambling by quoting myself:

When I ask what my purpose is I am not really asking. I have an understanding of that and it works for me. I suppose that what I am saying is that sometimes I want to skip the journey and see the finish. Tell me the who, what, where, why and how and I'll be forever grateful or maybe I won't. Maybe the most important part is the journey and that which is yet to come.

Come Play Quidditch With Me

I thought that this was interesting.

Dewey, a student at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, organizes the campus Quidditch club of about 40 Potter devotees imitating the aerial game of the book series.

Although Bucknell has not played its first official game -- that is expected in September -- Dewey's club has received $150 from the college to buy supplies, including hula hoops and a volleyball that stands in for the fictional "quaffle."

Also on the equipment list are the brooms on which J.K. Rowling's Quidditch players fly around during games and which Bucknell players are required to hold between their legs.

Clearly there are a few things that make this game more challenging than in the book, such as the inability to fly.

Each team consists of 12 to 15 players, seven of whom are on the field at a time. They include a "keeper" to defend the hoops through which scores are made; "chasers" whose job it is to put the quaffle through the hoops; and "beaters" who throw balls called "bludgers" at their opponents.

There is also a "seeker" who chases the elusive "golden "snitch" around campus during the game. The capture of the snitch, usually after about 15 minutes, signals the end of the game.

Dewey described the sport as "mildly full-contact" and said it requires some athletic ability, particularly for seekers, who are typically cross-country runners. It appeals equally to men and women, he said.

Death Is Not Good Enough For Them

I stumbled onto two articles that infuriated me today:

Man guilty of abducting mom, leaving daughter to alligators

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A man who had been released from prison early for good behavior was convicted Tuesday of trying to kill a young mother and leaving her 5-year-old daughter to be eaten alive by alligators in the Everglades.

Harrel Franklin Braddy had befriended Shandelle Maycock and her daughter Quatisha. Maycock testified that Braddy went to her home in November 1998 and grew enraged when she asked him to leave.

He choked Maycock until she was unconscious and then forced her and Quatisha into his car, the woman testified. At one point, Maycock gained consciousness, grabbed the child and jumped out of the moving vehicle.

Braddy stopped, choked the woman again and put her in the trunk, she testified. Maycock never saw her daughter again. Prosecutors said Braddy then drove to a section of Interstate 75 in the Everglades known as Alligator Alley and dropped Quatisha in the water beside the road.

She was alive when alligators bit her on the head and stomach, a medical examiner said.

and

Dad to child killer: 'My daughter has heard me cry'

Couey, a convicted sex offender, was staying nearby in a trailer with his half-sister. Couey kidnapped the girl from her bedroom and later, in a taped confession, admitted that he buried the child alive. "I went out there one night and dug a hole and put her in it. Buried her," he said.

She was found wrapped in garbage bags, holding a stuffed toy dolphin, her hands bound with stereo wire. Jessica died from asphyxiation after being sexually assaulted, according to a medical examiner's report.

Some times there are no words.

Things I am Thinking About

I have a number of different thoughts flowing around my mind. It is well after midnight and I really should be going to sleep. Instead I have been mulling over posts about the Nine Days, Minhagim and a half dozen other ideas.

Since I haven't finished thinking things through I am going to provide some links to old posts that tie into some of these thoughts. I'll take a look at it all in the morning and we'll see if I come up with anything brilliant.

Morality Without Religion- A Comment to The Self-Righteous
The Future of Judaism
My Brother- A Lesson in Simple Physics
Twenty Five Years of Torah Reading
Frum & Gay
Moments When I feel Closest To G-d
What is My Purpose?

If things go well I'll figure out how to put all these thoughts together into a coherent and thoughtful post. Lately that has been a task. Wish me luck.

What I Listened to Today

I had planned on going to bed well before the witching hour but a double dose of the news has left me wired so here I sit. I made the mistake of reading about people who murdered children and that upset me so I am trying to just mellow out. So as a bonus you get another post to read.

Here is an incomplete list of the music I listened to today.

Faithfully
Journey
Porcelain
Moby
Cat's In The Cradle
Harry Chapin
Drive On
Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson
King for a Day
The Thompson Twins
The Other Side
Aerosmith
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles
Once In A Lifetime
Talking Heads
Greenbacks
Ray Charles
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
Elvis Presley
All Along The Watchtower
Jimi Hendrix
Who Wants To Live Forever
Queen
Rapture
Blondie
So What
Miles Davis

Shopping Carts

When I was a boy I used to love it when my father would ask me to "take a ride" with him. It usually meant that he had some kind of errand to run and wanted a little company. In a house full of a zillion sisters and a mother it was important for the boys to stick together, or so I thought.

More importantly it was a chance to engage in what my son now calls special daddy and Little Jack time. I have vivid memories of climbing into the car and looking out the window as my dad drove. When I thought that he wasn't looking I would stare at him and try to imitate his gestures. Decades later I have them all down. When the family gathers I can bring down the house with a five minute impression of him, but I digress.

Usually these errands found us in one of three places, Builders Emporium, Gemco or the supermarket and that brings me to the heart of the matter; shopping carts.

Yes, that is right the ubiquitous shopping cart. The four wheeled dolly that we all use to transport the items we purchased from the store out to our automobiles.

One of the things that I learned from taking a ride with dad was that after you finished emptying your groceries into your car you had to return the shopping cart to the store or to the shopping cart parking lot depot. I can still hear my father explaining that we returned the cart because it was the polite thing to do.

Unfortunately it seems that at some point in the last thirty years the polite thing to do is no longer considered necessary. More often than not I find myself navigating parking lots that look like they have shopping cart measles. Just pulling into a parking space can be tricky because if you are not careful you'll end up hitting a shopping cart that was left there by someone else.

Still I always try to do the polite thing. When I no longer have need of the cart I take it back to the appropriate space. If there are people waiting for my parking space this sometimes creates an issue. Nobody wants to wait for me to return the cart. Instead of smiles they will honk and roll their eyes. Sometimes colorful words accompany the honking.

Maybe that is the new polite thing to do. I don't really know anymore.

He Is Not Really Dead

The latest issue of Newsweek has an interesting article called Back From the Dead. Some of you may be aware that I spent seven years working as a CPR and First Aid Instructor so these sorts of articles are of interest to me.

This is a story about what happens when your heart stops: about new research into how brain cells die and how something as simple as lowering body temperature may keep them alive—research that could ultimately save as many as 100,000 lives a year. And it's about the mind as well, the visions people report from their deathbeds and the age-old questions about what, if anything, outlives the body. It begins with a challenge to something doctors have always been taught in medical school: that after about five minutes without a pulse, the brain starts dying, followed by heart muscle—the two most voracious consumers of oxygen in the body, victims of their own appetites. The emerging view is that oxygen deprivation is merely the start of a cascade of reactions within and outside the cells that can play out over the succeeding hours, or even days. Dying turns out to be almost as complicated a process as living, and somehow, among its labyrinthine pathways

I find this to be fascinating. Not unlike so many others I have wondered what happens when you die. Where does your mind go? Do you feel any pain? Do you have any understanding of what is happening? Do you go off into the next whatever with the words, sounds and noises of those that were around you?

Becker's interest in mitochondria reflects a new understanding about how cells die from loss of circulation, or ischemia. Five minutes without oxygen is indeed fatal to brain cells, but the actual dying may take hours, or even days. Doctors have known for a long time that the consequences of ischemia play out over time. "Half the time in cardiac arrest, we get the heart going again, blood pressure is good, everything is going along," says Dr. Terry Vanden Hoek, director of the Emergency Resuscitation Center at the University of Chicago, "and within a few hours everything crashes and the patient is dead." It took some time, though, for basic research to supply an explanation. Neumar, working with rats, simulates cardiac arrest and resuscitation, and then examines the neurons at intervals afterward. Up to 24 hours later they appear normal, but then in the next 24 hours, something kicks in and they begin to deteriorate. And Dr. James R. Brorson of the University of Chicago has seen something similar in neural cells grown in culture; deprive them of oxygen and watch for five minutes, or even much longer, and not much happens. "If your car runs out of gas, your engine isn't destroyed, it just needs fuel," he says.

Cell death isn't an event; it's a process. And in principle, a process can be interrupted. The process appears to begin in the mitochondria, which control the cell's self-destruct mechanism, known as apoptosis, and a related process, necrosis. Apoptosis is a natural function, destroying cells that are no longer needed or have been damaged in some way. Cancer cells, which might otherwise be killed by apoptosis, survive by shutting down their mitochondria; cancer researchers are looking for ways to turn them back on. Becker is trying to do the opposite, preventing cells that have been injured by lack of oxygen from, in effect, committing suicide.

It's a daunting problem. "We're asking the questions," says one leading researcher, Dr. Norm Abramson of the University of Pittsburgh. "We just haven't found the answers." Until recently, the conventional wisdom was that apoptosis couldn't be stopped once it was underway. It proceeds by a complex sequence of reactions—including inflammation, oxidation and cell-membrane breakdown—none of which seems to respond to traditional therapies. Becker views cell death in cardiac arrest as a two-step process, beginning with oxygen deprivation, which sets up the cell for apoptosis; then the heart starts up again and the patient gets a lungful of oxygen, triggering what is called reperfusion injury. The very substance required to save the patient's life ends up injuring or killing him.

I truly do not fear death. How can I fear it? I don't really know anything about it. Don't misunderstand, I don't want to die. When I said that I want to live for a thousand years it is because I have so many interests. There is so much to do and so very little time.

To quote my grandfather I'll fight for every last breath because I can and because I am. It doesn't have to make sense to you, but it does to me.

My children are a huge part of my interest in living. It is not just because I can't imagine not being there for them but because I am intensely curious about who they are going to become. When they grow up who will they be. What will they do and with whom?

Anyway, I think that the article is quite interesting. Give it a read.

Some Links That Caught My Eye

15-Foot Python Pulled From Backyard- That is the kind of surprise that everyone loves to find.

When Monkeys Attack- Watch out.

Top 10 Most Memorable Movie Cars- My favorites are 2, 8 and 9.

Homer and the pagans

Hat tip to Meryl.

Pressured into Parenthood- A Guest Post

Friends I am pleased to offer the first ever guest post here at The Shack. Ambivalent Imma is the author of the post below. It is tangentially related to an old post here called Does Having Children Prevent an Active Sex Life.

I think that she makes some good points and that it is definitely worth reading.

Maybe you weren’t sure that you really wanted a child. Or maybe you were sure that you really didn’t want a child. But everyone was insistent—your parents, in-laws, family, friends, co-workers, the Jewish community as a whole, which considers it the solemn responsibility of every married Jewish couple to help rebuild the Jewish population after its decimation in the Holocaust. So here you are, responsible for providing a child (or more than one) with the love and care to which every child has a right. How do you feel, considering that you weren’t sure you wanted a kid in the first place?


I admit it: I’m selfish.

We had a delightful marriage. We did whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, within the limitations of our budget, work schedules, etc. Why would I want to have a baby and turn my life upside down?

Sigh.

First, I lost my place at the center of my husband’s world to this charmer who couldn’t even let me get a decent night’s sleep.

To make matters worse, our parents lived out of town, and our siblings weren’t available either, so we had absolutely no family support system whatsoever.

The result was that, while some of our friends could leave their kids with their parents or siblings and take some much-needed time away, we had to sharply curtail our “outside” activities for well over a decade because of the cost of babysitters.

And, to boot, it turned out that our kid had social, emotional, and learning challenges.

So while one of my girlfriends could brag about how her darling toddler sat quietly in a Chinese restaurant contentedly gumming bits of steak, our own child not only wouldn’t eat, but wouldn’t sit down or stay still, either. For several years, we could only take our kid to fast-food restaurants. Seriously, where can you go with a child who’s still throwing lying-on-the-floor-kicking-and-screaming temper tantrums well into elementary school?

Until our child was old enough to stay home alone, I honestly felt like a prisoner of my own kid.

And while one of my girlfriends used to go on and on about how well her little genius was doing in school, ours spent years in special-ed.

The teenage years were terrible, of course. Teenagers are generally a royal pain in the butt, and ours was no different. But, for me, that lack of difference was not entirely a bad thing. Already in early elementary school, our kid was a defiant know-it-all who honestly believed that I had little to teach her/him because he/she knew everything. It wasn’t until our child became an adolescent that I was finally able to say, in all honesty, that our kid’s behavior was typical of a child of that age.

I once told my therapist—back when we could afford one—that, while my kid and I certainly had our moments, for me, motherhood was an enormous amount of work for very little reward. There are some things that you can’t say even to your best friends—and that was certainly one of those things. Before the days of the Internet, the only way you could actually say some things without fear of repercussions was either to write them in a diary and pray that the person about whom you were writing would never find it, or literally to pay someone who was professionally obligated to keep your words confidential.

My particular sympathies go to ambivalent parents who ended up having a kid with disabilities. Parenthood is already a challenge, even for enthusiastic parents, some of whom have been known to have an additional child, or more than one, even after having a kid with special needs. But adding the difficulties of caring for a child with disabilities to the question of whether you wanted a kid to begin with is a recipe for extra frustration. Top that with the insistence of some that you go ahead and have another child anyway, and you get—in my case, anyway—one angry mom.


Everybody says it: “Enjoy it while it lasts. Kids grow up so fast.”

For me personally, the opposite was true. As far as I was concerned, my kid wasn’t growing up nearly quickly enough. I couldn’t wait for my child to move out, so that I could finally have my life back.

Not even among other mothers of kids with disabilities did I ever hear anyone admit to anything that radical.

Our kid is now an independent adult. I’m happy to say that we managed to have some good times together as she/he got older. I’m also relieved to inform you that, somehow, he/she has managed to flourish despite my dubious parenting. We’re very proud of our kid’s accomplishments.

Even so, I can’t help but feel that I lost over a decade of my life.

Back when I was in the throes of heavy-duty parenting, I would have given my right arm to have had a place to vent anonymously and get feedback from others going through similar situations. Having passed that stage of parenthood already, I’m not a good person for the job, but if some other soul who’s currently in a situation similar to the one I described would like to start a blog for parents in this position, I think it would be a real public service.

Urine For a Tale- Or Pissed Off About Peeing

Blogging is a wonderful thing. You get involved with all sorts of interesting people and all kinds of interesting stories. It is an ever changing adventure because you truly never know what is just around the bend. There is always a new story to tell and new blogs to read.

One of the aspects that truly drives me is the interaction with the readers and other bloggers. Blogging is voyeuristic. There is a certain interest in reading about other people's lives and in seeing their comments on your own. It is a real learning experience in which you receive an education about how others live their lives.

In March of '06 I published Teach Your Boy to Pee Like a Man. It was a simple post that featured Peter Potty, the Toddler Urinal. As you can see it is a real product. Sadly, Shack Enterprises is not responsible for this one, but stay tuned because our inventors are always working hard to come up with new and exciting products that improve your lives.

Anyway as it is close to18 months since I wrote this one I had basically forgotten about it. Like a good post it lay there hibernating in cyberspace patiently waiting to be called upon. And sure enough the call came.

This morning I was notified that a reader named Ali had left a very long comment in which he took me to task for my position.

Here is an excerpt: of his lengthy comment:

To my own, peeing while standing is a nasty actions, also it does not feet a man's character, that's like you imagine a respectable man standing up still some where, his penis is out and his piss line in front of him! Who made the rule that males MUST stand up while urinating? And don't relate it to the nature, potentially many things are natural as an ability; one can bring it out (gun), aim and kill, but he has choosing power, although he has the ability, but he may not do it if he is sane; one can just bring it out, aim and piss, but does it mean he can not do it in a way but that?

Why stand to pee? Why aim? Aiming is for the time when you are distant to your target and can't be close to it, but when you can be close to it, and if you are sane, you prefer being close to your target than aiming to the target. So sit down and be relax, the name of the place you are doing that in, is rest room! And why you waste your time and energy in cleaning bathrooms? You can save it for more useful affairs by reducing the need of bathroom to be cleaned!

Let's take this slowly.

You said "that's like you imagine a respectable man standing up still some where, his penis is out and his piss line in front of him!"

As a father and a son I have had this very important conversation. There are some helpful safety tips to bear in mind.

• You should always hold your penis when urinating so that it doesn't flip and hither and thither. It doesn't matter which hand you use, just whichever one is comfortable. BTW, I still have nightmares about how Captain Hook does this.
• Stand close to the urinal, but no so close that you suffer from sprayback.
• When urinating outdoors remember to urinate with the wind and not into it.

There are many other rules that I could list, but that might impede the flow of the post and derail this stream of thought.

You also said "Why aim? Aiming is for the time when you are distant to your target and can't be close to it,"

My friend, any woman can answer why aiming is important. Of course if you have a sense of humor you probably already know how much fun it is to leave the toilet seat up or intentionally dribble some water on the seat. There are few things that are funnier than hearing the middle of the night squeal of pleasure when she discovers the gifts awaiting her in the dark bathroom.

You also suggest that standing to urinate is not relaxing. Au contraire. Here is a simple test that you can use to prove otherwise. Drink a six pack of beer and then force yourself to wait several hours before answering natures call. I guarantee that you will find that standing fills you with a mighty sense of relief.

As I mentioned Ali's comment was quite long and involved. It also alerted me to the existence of a terrible organization that is clearly devoted to emasculating men. It is called MAPSU or Mothers Against Peeing Standing Up.

Forget the War on Terror, the War in Iraq and all other wars because now is the time for men of conscience and shlongliness to band together to eradicate and destroy this fowl organization. (Side note, fowl is intentionally spelled in this manner. There is a reason that they call them hen parties).

The good news is that I already know there are other bloggers out there who understand the import of this. You could always take a look at Pee Like a Man!
or Embarrassing Technology Malfunctions.

To quote Forrest Gump, "That is all I have to say about that."

Gas Prices

What I Look Like

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Most Popular Posts of July

Every so often I like to shine a light on the most popular posts here. This time I limited it to new posts from this month. Otherwise I could include some standards that consistently generate a ton of traffic.

Name a Song That Makes You Cry

Almost Time To Say Goodbye

Cast Off The Cloak of Anonymity- Lunch With Another Blogger

Angry Sex Can Cause Heart Attacks

Study: Women Are in Charge at Home

The Yeshiva Owes Your Parents a Refund

How To Really Hurt Someone

Dancing Around The World

Last July I shared a video about Matt Harding. According to YNET he was supposed to recently have made it to Israel.

Had I known earlier I would have asked the Waffle King to grab some of the other bloggers to make an appearance on the video. Something tells me that this could have been big.

Missed opportunities- one of the stories of life.

Haveil Havalim #125

Yid With Lid is our host this week and yours truly is included. Go check it out.

Alone In The Dark Part II

Here is another Fragment of Fiction. Part one can be found here.

If you have watched as many movies as I have you have come up with all sorts of different ideas for how you would handle the scenario I described above. It is just one more aspect of being male. Testosterone and pop culture have more influence upon a man than we might want to admit.

Still reality has a way of making sure that you understand the difference between a movie and life. I am strong, probably stronger than most people I encounter. But not strong enough to break the metal bracelets that adorned my wrists, at least not without a healthy dose of angel dust or some other chemical cocktail. But let’s be real, did I really want to break my wrists in the process of breaking free.

Not to mention two other minor details. My arms were numb. Whoever had cuffed me had made sure that they were so tight the circulation in my wrists was next to non-existent. Just to add insult to injury there was a steady thump between my eyes that was making it hard to focus on anything but the hammering in my skull. It was all I could do not to groan out loud.

Groaning was against the rules. I knew that much because the first time I did I received a strong kick in the side. If I learned anything from the movies it was that I needed to try and learn as much about where I was and who was with me as possible. The answer to the first question was simple. I was home. I knew that because I recognized the shapes of the various objects in my bedroom not to mention the smell of the soiled gym clothes I had left on the floor. Note to self, I need a girlfriend so that the next time I get my ass kicked inside my house I am not forced to inhale my own sweat.

Ok, second note to self. Whatever and whoever hit me knocked me into an alternate reality. I am married and I have children. For a moment the realization that I am not thinking clearly both scares and infuriates me. Someone is inside the home that my children live in. If there was any doubt about it, there is no longer. If I can free myself I am going to kill him. That is not drama. That is not the influence of pop culture. That is a hundred thousand years of evolution speaking. My inner caveman is yearning for a club. Given the chance I would gladly rip out my assailant’s throat with my own teeth.

Graphic, but that is how I think. And did I mention that my arms are numb. I can’t feel a damn thing. In between waves of anger and fear I have this sick feeling that I am going to have nerve damage. Ok, maybe I am a lot more scared than I want to admit. Maybe I am terrified. It was better when I was angry and frustrated. A good adrenaline rush kept my mind from wandering into places it shouldn’t.

Alone in the dark. At least I think that I am. I can’t tell. I can’t hear any breathing. The wood floors aren’t yielding any clues. There is no squeaking or tell tale tapping. The only thing that I can hear is the sound of my own breathing….I think.

For a moment the pain in my head has subsided and I have my first real moment of clarity. I know a few things. I haven’t a clue as to who hit me but I am fairly certain that it was a man. Can’t say that I know this for a fact, it is more of a gut feeling based upon where they hit me and how hard. Not to mention that when I was kicked I heard a tiny grunt, or maybe that was just me. Hell, I know enough to know that I don’t know much of anything.

I can’t say with any certainty who hit me or even if they are still in my home. For all I know they are sitting on the bed staring at me. My eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark and I can slowly begin to see the various things surrounding me. In addition to the open gym bag there is a pair of wingtips, a dumbbell, a suitcase and a nightstand. I am not sure about the other side. I am afraid to move. In spite of the anger and a full bladder I am worried about what might happen.

In another moment I am going to urinate all over myself. For some reason the thought is pretty damn funny. I have this image of my assailant slipping in my urine and then knocking themselves out on the dumbbell. Maybe that is the anger speaking, but I can’t help but smile at the idea of them falling face first into my own waste.

I Support This Kind of Profiling

Click here.

Angry Sex Can Cause Heart Attacks

Ok, according to this article that is not entirely accurate. Waking up is the worst thing that you can do.

Anger really can trigger a heart attack. But then, so can getting sick, being too hot, being too cold, air pollution, lack of sleep, grief, overeating, natural disasters, exercise and sex.

In fact, simply waking up is the worst thing you can do if you're trying to avoid a heart attack.

Heart attacks, strokes and cardiac arrests seem to come out of the blue, but actually most occur upon rising in the morning, according to the July 2007 issue of the Harvard Heart Letter.

Reading this makes me want to go back to bed. Goodnight.

The Challenge of Working From the Home Office

A number of years ago I decided that it would be nice to have a job in which I was able to work out of a home office. I won't bore you with the list of reasons why it interested me other than who doesn't like the idea of working in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.

Eventually I was able to make the dream come true and I found myself making my way from the bedroom, to the bathroom and then to my office. It has its perks. I don't find myself screaming at the guy shaving in his car or the woman applying eye liner in her minivan as often. There are times when it is among my greatest pleasures and moments when it is...not.

I have often written about how my children are my greatest joy. I derive such pleasure from them. They are nothing but a blessing and they add far more to my life than I can ever express. However, they haven't realized that when I am at the desk I am surrounded by the Cone of Silence. Unfortunately it works about as well in real life as it did on television.

So as I sit at the 'puter taking care of business I am besieged by laughter, crying, screaming, beach balls, power rangers, Dora The Explorer, Legos, Lincoln Logs, dolls, The Justice League, Diego, books and a thousand requests such as"Open this dad," "Abba! Look at me now!" "I can do this," etc.

As you can imagine it makes it challenging to get things done. I once finished negotiating terms for a contract while enjoying a tea party and fending off Lex Luthor and The Joker. As a matter of fact I think that my clients would want to pay extra for a man who can multi task as well as I can.

Fortunately for my sanity and everyone else I don't always work out of the house and the kids go to school. So there are large blocks of time in which we are not in each others hair. I try hard to do most of my work when the children are not around. It is not really fair to them to say that even though they see me I am not available to spend time with them.

And I'd be lying if I said that sometimes that they distract me even when they aren't trying to. Sometimes when I am wrestling with something particularly onerous it is easy to look their direction and think about switching places. As a matter of fact they often ask if they can come to work and do what I do.

This morning I was positively giddy thinking about how much fun it would be to watch my daughter handle one of my challenging assignments. She'd put her hands on her hips and start barking orders at them. It wouldn't matter what they said because at a few weeks short of three she is still the queen of the world. The Tyrant Tike doesn't brook any backtalk.

I have no doubt that in about fifteen minutes the other side would collapse and agree to her terms. If you'll excuse me I am going to go prep her for this. I think that maybe it is time to bring in the big guns.

Al Qaeda strongest since 9/11

CNN is one of many news agencies reporting that Al Qaeda is the strongest that it has been since 9-11-01.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it.

Despite a campaign of military action and counterterrorism operations, al Qaeda has regained its strength and found safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the report says, according to counterterrorism officials familiar with the report.

The five-page intelligence analysis remains classified and was prepared for senior U.S. policymakers. It was not issued in response to a specific threat.

Two intelligence officials said the report's finding are similar to what is expected to be in the National Intelligence Estimate anticipated to be released later this summer. The NIE is the intelligence community's collective analysis of pressing national security issues.

The White House's view is that "over the past six years, we have prevented attacks from al Qaeda by taking the fight to them," a senior administration official said. "But they are an enemy that adapts."

Am I the only one who is furious about this. I don't want to hear that they are growing in strength. I want to read about how we have placed a stranglehold upon their neck and a boot in their ass.

It reminds me a of a scene from The Untouchables:

Capone: I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy Eliot Ness, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!

I have written about Al Qaeda on numerous occasions including this post from earlier in the week. I haven't any compunction about calling them evil because they are. But they are also smart, resourceful, patient and very dangerous. You don't play games with people like this.

It is like cancerous tumor. You go in and remove it and then use aggressive treatment to see that it doesn't return. We have to do better than this.

Drafts of Posts That Might Have Been

If you are one of the fabulous 17 long time readers here you have seen that there are days when I can put up seven or eight posts. Sometimes I have to restrain myself because I could easily increase that. And then again there are those moments when I have almost nothing to say and it is an effort to update the blog.

Ok, those days are few and far between. In general I don't have much trouble coming up with material which is part of why my inbox is filled with drafts of posts that never managed to see the light of day.

Sometimes that is because I can't make the post work. That is, I don't like the end product. It doesn't flow. I can't stand the way it reads. I hate the way it sounds etc.

You might wonder what happens to these posts. I have often said that I don't do much in the way of editing or rewriting my posts. Well, I am glad that you asked. If I am having trouble making a post work for me I often save it as a draft with the idea that I'll come back to it later on.

The problem is that unless the topic really grabs me I often forget to look at the draft section of the blog. And now after three years it is filled with all sorts of odds and ends. It kind of reminds me of an old toy box that is full of toys that were once shiny and new and now have become a bit faded.

But like old toys some of them still have a little life in them so every now and then I open up the toy box to see if there aren't a couple of buried treasures just waiting to see the light of day again. Sometimes all that is really required is a little time and some perspective.

Words That Mean A Lot

If you don’t laugh you’ll lose your mind and if you never cry you’ll lose your compassion.

Study: Women Are in Charge at Home

Men might throw their weight around at the office, but at home, women are the bosses.

A study, which was just released, finds that wives have more power than their husbands in making decisions and dominating discussions.

"The study at least suggests that the marriage is a place where women can exert some power," said lead author David Vogel, a psychologist at Iowa State University (ISU). "Whether or not it's because of changing societal roles, we don't know.”

The results counter past research.

“Most of the research literature in psychology has suggested that women have less power,” Vogel told LiveScience. “They have largely based that on the fact that traditionally men earn more money and so therefore would have the ability to make big decisions in the relationship.” That wasn’t the case in this study.

Want to learn more? Click here.

On behalf of the men let us all say Shelo asani ishah. And now...duck. ;)

Once Again- Another Old Post Revisited

What have we learned.

From an earlier post Mark Steyn on Multiculturalism

"In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

This makes sense to me. It ties in well with stories about converts who face death sentences, riots based on cartoons or murders of people because of their ethnicity/religion. The time is coming when we are going to have to make a decision whether to push or be pushed.

Defending Liberty

I ran this post last year, but thought that it deserved another look.

He who cannot defend Liberty does not deserve Liberty'

Well Worth Reading- Thanks Dave!

A moving, powerful address an IDF Golani Brigade commander, Cap. Uri Lavie to his troops before going into battle against Hizbullah:

"This is our time to rise to the challenge, put on the helmets and the bullet proof vests and make sure that the northern border is secure.

We shall fulfill any mission in a most effective manner, in face of any challenge.

If we shall not fulfill our mission we shall forfeit the right to exist.

We shall not lose this war, which we did not start.

Our duty is to serve as a defense force of the Jewish People, and to secure the peace of mind of the civilians in northern Israel.

If we shall not do it, no one will do it in our place.

For two thousand years we waited for the establishment of the Jewish State, and we are not going to roll back because a bunch of terrorists assume that they can scare us.

He who cannot defend Liberty does not deserve Liberty.

If we will not be able to fight until our last drop of blood, in order to secure the Liberty of our People on its own soil, our People will not enjoy Liberty.

There is time to talk and there is time to act. At this time, when missiles and Katyushas afflict the North all the way to Haifa, in addition to the two kidnapped soldiers, the ten soldiers killed and the dozens injured, it is time to fight and not to talk. We are the force, which has been chosen to fight, and we shall perform in the most effective manner.

I will be the first one to enter the battle and the last one to come out, and will do everything in my power to get you out alive and well. On Friday, with G-D's help, we will rejoin with our families. However, I cannot do it alone. Once we cross the northern border, you should exercise full alert and full responsibility toward your fellow soldier." (Ha'aretz, July 27, 2006)"

The Yeshiva Owes Your Parents a Refund

I suppose that it is unkind of me to devote posts about the short comings of other bloggers. I have plenty of my own, but that is why I have a wife and kids. Those Virgos love to pick, point and poke. So it is not without a certain sympathy that I write this post about a group of bloggers.

Yidden, some of you need to contact whomever was responsible for teaching you English. In particular you need to contact the teachers who worked with your on grammar and spelling because they failed you. Your posts are practically illiterate. They read as if they were written by dyslexic fourth graders.

It drives me crazy to see this. It makes you look foolish, ignorant and often times boorish. I feel badly. I really do. I am almost ashamed to write this post because it is a bit unfair to pick on you this way, but that is why I am not mentioning names.

It just boggles my mind to see how poor your command of the language is. I don't claim to be an expert. I make plenty of mistakes and am not claiming to be a better person than you, but my word. Sometimes I just want to scream.

Written communication is a fundamental skill that impacts both your personal and professional life. It is a critical tool that you can use to do so much with, but some of you were robbed. Some of you were given the axe handle but not the blade. An anvil without a hammer is useless.

Oy, it is painful to read.

More Amazing Painting

Tales of Telephone Company Battles

Hat Tip to The Waffle King.

Almost Time To Say Goodbye

Fourteen years ago we added a new member to the family. Four legs, reddish fur and energy that seemed limitless ran circles around us. We all fell in love with the big rascal. He was a true puppy in spirit and action. At times it was hard not to get frustrated with him as he did what puppies do.

He ate shoes, hairbrushes, bag lunches, and the occasional steak. He tore up newspapers and chased shadows. At night he whined and moaned a bit. He was lonely and he did what he could to make sure that you paid attention to him. But in time his training kicked in and so did ours. We learned to read him and he us.

Family dinners were an occasion. The big lug would come over and bat our arms with a giant paw. You'd turn and look and see dark soulful eyes looking back at you. Sometimes he would take that massive head and force it in between your arms and your side. Even those times when you were angry you'd find yourself smiling. You couldn't help but love this giant beast.

He is the largest golden retriever that many people have seen. Certainly there are larger versions of him running around, but that is not the point. We have long laughed about his abilities as a watchdog. If you broke into the house you'd probably be scared of him, at least until he tried to bring you a beer. He is that kind of friendly.

But age has caught up with him. His body is starting to break down and he is having trouble getting up and moving around. We have done what we can to try and make life easier but the end is coming. The vet says that it won't be long before his body really begins to fail him and that even medication won't prevent that.

He said that somewhere towards the end of the summer we are going to be faced with a hard decision. I was a little surprised by how hard the news hit me. He is not gone yet, but the thought of losing him got me choked up.

I stood there looking a face that has gone white with age. So I reached down and gave the big galoot a hug and wiped away a tear. I am not ready to say goodbye. I am not ready to talk to my children about what happened and why. I am not ready to walk into a house, an empty house. The silence will be palpable.

That is part of what is so hard about having a dog. Our lives can be so interconnected yet at the same time our life spans are not the same. Their candle burns brighter and ends sooner. In some ways it feels unfair.

The good news is that he is not gone yet and we may have him for a good chunk longer. That crazy animal is like every other member of the family; strong willed, stubborn and determined to do things on his terms.

For now I'll continue to take advantage of the time we have together. I'll choose to be happy because that is a much nicer way to live, but I'd be lying if I said that typing this has been easy.

Cast Off The Cloak of Anonymity- Lunch With Another Blogger

Last week I did something that I almost never do. I ate lunch with another blogger. I gave up my anonymity. It is something that I have been reluctant to do. And aside from some very rare instances and the loutish of behavior of a few dullards my identity has remained unknown.

The decision to take off the mask and come out into the daylight was not easy. This blog has been a place in which I have shared some closely held secrets/feelings, but then again these secrets have been shared with you, the reader who often are bloggers as well. And that is what made the difference.

The blog has given all of us a chance to develop a relationship with each other and in some cases a genuine friendship has developed. So I can't say that I was surprised to find that the conversation with this other blogger was quite comfortable. It felt very similar to seeing an old friend that I hadn't seen in a while.

I left that meal with a lot to think about. Some of those thoughts may come out here and some of them are still being digested, but here is the general idea. Am I still being served by my anonymity. Is it something that is a help or a hindrance. Should I let my family and friends into my secret world. Should I invite them into my cyberspace living room or do I still limit entrance to the pseudo-secret club.

I wonder.

Potter fans to Rowling: Save Harry

So I see that CNN is reporting that Harry Potter fans have started a petition to ask J.K. Rowling to keep writing about Harry Potter.

The "Save Harry!" petition calls on Rowling to reverse her decision to end the bestselling series with the seventh and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

"Millions, perhaps billions of us, love reading his adventures and we never want them to end," says the online petition, launched on Monday at www.saveharrypotter.co.uk.

After spending 17 years writing the books, Rowling said she was both "euphoric" and "devastated" that it's finally over.

But in a television interview, she left fans with the tantalizing, if remote, possibility that she may one day return to the magical world of Hogwarts.

"I think that Harry's story comes to quite a clear end in book seven," she told the BBC at the weekend. "But I have always said that I wouldn't say never.

"I can't say I will never write another book about that world, just because I think: 'What do I know, in 10 years' time I might want to return to it.' But I think it is unlikely."

Even if she does write another book, it is unclear whether some of the main characters, including Harry, would play a part. Rowling said some characters will die in the last book, but wouldn't say if the boy wizard is among them: "It's not a bloodbath, but it's more than two," she said.

Much as I like the books there is something satisfying about seeing an end to the series. It is not that I cannot conceive of new stories or that I do not have an interest in them, it is just a matter of closure. There is something fulfilling about that as well as concern that the series not be tarnished by stretching a little bit too far.

Perhaps I'll write more about this later.

A Walk Through The 70's

Stumbled onto all sorts of old albums and thought that I'd share some of the music I came across. If you are a child of the 70's I am sure that you'll recognize most if not all of these.

Vicki Lawrence
Charlie Rich
Lobo
Convoy
New Seekers- Coke kind of stole this one.
Helen Reddy
Starland Vocal Band
Roberta Flack
Barry White
Barry White For LOR Fans
KC and The Sunshine Band

Name a Song That Makes You Cry

**Bumped Up Because I Find This To Be Interesting. New posts are listed below.**

Hi folks. I wonder if there is a song or songs that make you cry. I have a few that get me choked up. I'll share those later on. I look forward to seeing your responses.

What Hurts The Most

What can I say, I am a big sap sometimes.

Taking A Break

Taking a break from what I should be doing. Listed in no particular order of importance:

1) Painting a bathroom.
2) Cleaning my car.
3) Cleaning my house.
4) Organizing my bookshelves.

And a short list of things I'd rather be doing:

1) Playing basketball.
2) Reading.
3) Traveling.
4) Hiking.
5) Hanging out at the beach.

If I had five more minutes I'd give you the odds of these things happening any time soon.

Bonus: A little later I am going to enjoy eating one of Jameel's famous Waffles.

Al-Qaeda- This Is Evil

The following information comes from Michael Yon's blog but it has been widely reported around the net.

Since my reporting of the massacre at the al Hamari village, many readers at home have asked how anyone can know that al Qaeda actually performed the massacre. The question is a very good one, and one that I posed from the first hour to Iraqis and Americans while trying to ascertain facts about the killings.

No one can claim with certainty that it was al Qaeda, but the Iraqis here seem convinced of it. At a meeting today in Baqubah one Iraqi official I spoke with framed the al Qaeda infiltration and influence in the province. Although he spoke freely before a group of Iraqi and American commanders, including Staff Major General Abdul Kareem al Robai who commands Iraqi forces in Diyala, and LTC Fred Johnson, the deputy commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the Iraqi official asked that I withhold his identity from publication. His opinion, shared by others present, is that al Qaeda came to Baqubah and united many of the otherwise independent criminal gangs.

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family. (Emphasis is mine)

Other bloggers who covered this include: Seraphic Secret, Sleeping Ugly and The Right Truth among others. It is worth mentioning again that a US Army raid netted a copy of the Al-Qaeda Torture handbook.

In modern society we often hesitate to use labels. In many ways I am sympathetic to that particular point of view, but at the same time I understand that there are needs that over ride others.

And let's face it, an organization such as Al-Qaeda has no redeeming features. People who subscribe to this murderous and evil ideology need to be dealt with and handled with extreme prejudice. They would not hesitate to do so with us and we mustn't with them.

Haveil Havalim #124

Check it out here.

High Tech Toilet Seat

This seat deserves some sort of intro such as you would find here. Instead we'll just let you know that this is the Kohler C3™-200 elongated toilet seat. For the paltry list price of $1300.00 you receive the following benefits:

C3 toilet seats with bidet functionality use the naturally soothing quality of water as a refreshing, hygienic alternative to toilet tissue, offer cleanliness, comfort and convenience for all users.

• Features two separate water nozzles for the anterior and posterior that spray the user with warm aerated water
• Constructed of anti-microbial plastic
• A user sensor ensures someone is sitting on the seat before the functions are activated
• Heated seat with three different temperature settings
• Warm air with three temperature and fan speed settings
• Deodorizer helps to minimize unpleasant odors
• Continuous hot water is provided with an in-line water heater
• Quiet-Close Quick-Release toilet seat
• Remote control provides user-friendly function controls in the palm of your hand
• User presets, store to memory the control settings for two users
• Lighted bowl eliminates the need to turn on a light at night
• Energy save mode reduces energy consumption when the seat is not in use

Better hide the tattoo

The LA Times covered a story that is related to the post on body piercing below.

Last year Justin Miloro had to wear long sleeves to conceal the Buddha curling around his left forearm and the yellow-orange sun rays on his right. Pants covered the depiction of Earth on one leg and wings on the other. The sun spreading across his back was under wraps. The plugs in his earlobes were obscured by bandages.

"I thought it was really silly," Miloro recalled, "worse than seeing the tattoos."

This year he has nothing to hide — even though the 32-year-old worked last year for Whole Foods Market Inc. in Boston, where he was a salesclerk, and now works as a manager for the same company in Los Angeles, overseeing health and beauty products departments at 25 stores.

The chain has looser dress and grooming standards in some parts of the country than others. Setting degrees of tattoo taboos is how Whole Foods handles the increasing attraction to — though definitely not universal acceptance of — body art.

Once associated with drunken sailors, felons and Hells Angels, tattoos have gone nearly mainstream, putting employers in a bind. How to write rules that won't alienate un-hip customers on the one hand or eliminate talented workers on the other?

Different standards have emerged. A pink rose discreetly inked on an ankle might pass muster at a hospital but not a day-care center; an eyebrow stud will be viewed as charming at one store and a blemish at another.

In many cases, grooming policies are being set by members of a generation known for letting it all hang out.

"The baby boomers had hair out to the ceiling, cut jeans, ripped clothes that they washed sometimes," said Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXroads, a New Jersey recruiting and consulting firm.

And now boomers are passing judgment on nose rings.

The irony isn't lost on Fred Saunders, president and founder of FSPS Inc., which stages concerts and productions for companies including Nintendo Co. and Walt Disney Co. Some of them demand clean-cut crews: trimmed sideburns, long hair pulled into ponytails, no detectable tattoos.

Of course, Saunders, 57, doesn't often take his shirt off during contract negotiations: On his back is a tattoo tableau featuring a samurai warrior skirmishing with a dragon.

"There's a shock value to the art," he acknowledged, and some people get a "negative vibe."

Nearly 50% of Americans between 21 and 32 have at least one tattoo or a piercing other than in an ear, according to a 2006 study by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Men and women alike say their tattoos make them feel sexy and rebellious, a 2003 Harris Poll found, while the unadorned of both genders see body art as unsightly and think those with tattoos and piercings are less intelligent and less attractive.

I am not a big fan of tattoos or alternative body modification. I understand why some people might want to engage in some of this behavior. I once found myself in a tattoo chair but at the last minute pulled out. I opted out for two reasons, one religious and the other was a concern about how I might feel in 20 years. Would I still think that it was cool.

I know that as a business owner I would prefer to have non-modified employees interacting with the public, but that is based upon practical reasons. I'd rather err on the side of safety. Then again if I had a different sort of business I might feel otherwise.

In regard to my children, I'd prefer that they not get a tattoo, let alone any sort of outrageous body modification. Again that is based upon experience. You just don't know what the future holds and I'd prefer that they have more options than fewer.

How To Really Hurt Someone

If you are really interested in hurting someone there is no better way to do so than to inflict some sort of mental pain. Physical pain can be overcome. There is always a way around it, but mental pain is a different sort of animal.

Take whatever he loves most, break it and then give it back to him. It can be an educational experience. How does he respond to adversity. Does he accept the damaged goods? Does he try to repair the damage or does he discard it and go about his business.

When he reaches that place in which he can no longer feel the warmth of the sun upon his back he faces a choice. Does he allow the darkness to invade his soul or does he hold out hope for a brighter day.

A Different Sort Of Urinal

Something tells me that this is going to piss people off.

BEIJING, China (AP) -- They're flush with pride in Chongqing, where a recently opened porcelain palace features an Egyptian facade, soothing music and more than 1,000 toilets spread out over 30,000 square feet.

Officials in the southwestern Chinese city plan to ask Guinness World Records to have the free four-story public bathroom listed as the world's largest, state-run China Central Television reported Friday.

"We are spreading toilet culture. People can listen to gentle music and watch TV," said Lu Xiaoqing, an official with the Yangrenjie, or "Foreigners Street," tourist area where the bathroom is. "After they use the bathroom they will be very, very happy."

No Body Modification of My Uvula

Sorry, something is wrong with these people. I just don't get it.

Wish I Could Paint Like This Guy

Watch the whole thing and you'll understand why.

Amazing Science Experiments

I enjoy watching and learning about things like this. If you want to learn more about the man behind the scenes click on Robert Krampf and you'll be taken to his website.

Alone In The Dark

Samantha said that one of the biggest differences between men and women is that a man doesn't understand fear in the same way that a woman does. In a rather crude manner she suggested that the "hanging appendage" had only one useful purpose and that beyond that it was a tool for mischief. Good old Sammie J. had an interesting point.

I always pay attention to what is going on around me in a dark parking lot, but I truly don't spend any real time worrying about getting mugged. Some of that comes from being male and some of it comes from the neighborhood I used to call home. It wasn't a place that you wanted to spend time in, at least not outdoors. Survival dictated that you learned how to read a situation...quickly. National Geographic described it well, it was fight or flight. There wasn't anything in between.

It didn't take all that long to learn that sometimes it was worse to run because all it did was make the predators chase harder and longer. It is not that different from watching a shark attack. One whiff of blood is enough to set off a frenzy. So sometimes you stood your ground and tried hard not show fear. Eat or be eaten. That is how it went.

The best thing that could happen to you is to move. One way or another you get out of the hole. It is only when you are out that you start to realize that you cannot relax because you spent years training yourself to respond instantly to danger. Eventually those feelings go away. Given time you really do heal, at least I used to think so. And then I learned that there are feelings that never disappear, they are just hidden behind scar tissue.

Last Saturday night I headed over to Tommy's for a reasonably friendly poker game. In case you are wondering a reasonably friendly game is a euphemism for saying that the boys wouldn't shake you down for more than a couple hundred and that is only because we are friends. These guys all put themselves through school courtesy of The Bicycle Card Deck company. Or should I say that the company they kept all fell prey to the seductive properties of some geeky looking guys who understood that they could use the over inflated egos of other men to earn a living.

I knew better than to expect to win more than a couple of hands. At best I hoped to break even. What I didn't expect or anticipate was that the end of the night would be more eventful than the early evening.

It was close to 2 am when I pulled into my driveway. My own family was off visiting relatives. Thanks to a lack of vacation I had managed to earn the privilege of staying home alone. As I rounded the corner and headed towards home I noticed that it seemed abnormally dark. Another streetlight had burned out and clouds obscured the moon so it was as dark as the city gets, but as Sammie J. had pointed out being male meant that I didn't care. But maybe I should have.

When I opened the door and stepped into the darkened room I didn't notice that anything was amiss. I walked in, hung up my jacket and headed towards my bedroom. Still oblivious I wandered around the house not noticing that the dog hadn't bothered to greet me. I suppose that I figured that he was asleep.

At some point during my wandering he hit me and I went down...hard. I don't remember if I even had the presence of mind to react. All I know is that when I woke up I was handcuffed and lying alone in the dark.

Happy 4th of July

Happy Independence day to all.

My Kids Would Love This

Miniburger press from Williams-Sonoma

Cave Divers

I found this story to be very interesting.

Bushman's Hole, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, is one of the strangest places on Earth. It's a prehistoric crater on an otherwise endless track of desert, and for an elite but extreme fraternity of explorers, what happened there is the stuff of myth and legend.

The terrible beauty of the place can't be seen from the air, or even the ground. But if you trace the walls down, you reach a tiny pool covered in algae. Keep going, through a narrow shaft running for another 150 feet, and finally it all opens into a vast freshwater cavern tall enough to hold the Eiffel Tower, and deep enough -- nearly 1,000 feet -- to mesmerize the most experienced, technical cave divers in the world.

Don Shirley is one of only a handful of divers who has "gone deep" at Bushman's Hole.

"It's hypnotic," said Shirley. "When you get permission to dive in a cave, as it were, the cave, it greets you, and you just want to go and explore."

Verna Van Schaik holds the women's dive record there, and said that a good dive propels you to go even deeper.

"That's the lure, that's the danger," she said. "You kind of are able to logic yourself into the fact that the risks probably aren't so real."

The environment in Bushman's Hole is so alien that deep divers compare it to space walking: "Imagine floating," said Shirley. "So you've got no pull by gravity whatsoever… you're moving around in this cave and you can float up to a ceiling…you can float around corners. And if you couple that with silence, then there's absolutely zero noise. That's a magic experience … It is a different world."

Bushman's Hole is the kind of world a young man with a thirst for thrills might love. Theo Dreyer still remembers the day, 10 years ago, when his son Deon was invited by the South African Cave Diving Association to join them as a support diver at Bushman's Hole. Deon Dryer only had two years of diving experience, but it promised to be the thrill of a lifetime. "They wanted to go deep," said Theo Dreyer. "So [Deon] got invited along to do backup for the guys… He said 'Dad, this is an honor being asked to do this.'"

'He's Gone Down Too Far'

Exactly what happened on that dive, 10 years ago, is unknown. The dive team reported that while coming back up they looked down and saw Deon Dryer's cave light fading, sinking back into the abyss.

Theo Dreyer said the rest of the group tried a rescue, "but it was futile, he'd gone down too far."

There's a local legend that a man-eating serpent lives at the bottom of Bushman's Hole, but what likely killed Deon Dreyer was something more prosaic, and poisonous.

Read the rest. It is fascinating.

Tagged Again

Michael tagged me again with the Eight Meme. I have been mulling over whether to do this again and figured WTF. One more time and it is back to posts that are a little more interesting. But in the spirit of trying to play along I am going to really try hard to make this a serious response.

1) I can be very self conscious. I haven't got a bigger critic than myself and when I make stupid mistakes it sometimes takes real effort not to harp on them.

2) I have a long memory for those who do me wrong. If you have screwed me it is a safe bet to say that I remember. I may not always respond because so much of it is utter narishkeit, but for the bigger stuff don't think that I haven't considered it. And you can expect that my response will be done in my time, on my schedule. You know who you are so enjoy looking over your shoulder jackass.

3) It takes quite a bit to really get me angry but once I am there it takes a while for me to cool down. Don't piss off the bull unless you want to ride the horns and be gored.

4) I used to think that I had one perfect day, but now I know there are several different types for me. More on this at a different time.

5) If you paid me enough I would blog for a living.

6) I have saved one life and am responsible for setting up two marriages.

7) One day I am going to finish writing my book.

8) I own somewhere around 400 CDs, could be more or could be less. I don't really remember. Music is a passion.

9) Yes I know the meme said eight, but I don't follow the rules on most anything. I have tons upon tons of books. My dreamhouse is going to include a huge library and overstuffed chairs to read in.

Soundbites

I am a little kid. I just love this kind of stuff.

Here are a few more clips. Some may be more risque so consider yourself forewarned. Some of these come from some of my favorite movies.

Bogart
Stella
Land War In Asia
Mr Wolfe.
Mutants
Women
Trying to Pick Up Women
Dodgeball
Scarface
Three Up and Three Down
White Man In Dire Need
Kansas

Always
Close
Good Leads
Top Man
Mr. Hand
Dr. Evil
I could Have Been A Contender
TPS Reports
Everybody Needs Somebody
I Was Misinformed
Hello

Another List of Things About Me

I used to find these lists of things about bloggers to be incredibly self-indulgent and then I tried doing one and found out that I kind of enjoyed it. Beyond that it occurred to me that it might be interesting to do these periodically and see how I have changed over time.

Since my last attempt was kind of weak I decided to try again sooner rather than later. For those who like to play the home version of this game here are some other posts that deal with this.

Skills/Talent I'd like to have
My List of Things About Me
Things that Frighten Me

1. Yes, I know that this is an orphan, but...
   

To expand upon an earlier remark: I have a very broad base of knowledge. I love to read and can comment intelligently upon many things. However, I'd like to be an expert in many more things than I am now.

If you ask me to identify what I am an expert in I am not sure that I have an answer. I need to think about it.

If I had to pick something that I want/need to be an expert in it would be a desire to be an expert father.

I constantly look for things to teach to my children.

I look for books that explain how things work and then read them with my children. It is a great way to learn and teach.

I firmly believe blogging has enriched my life.

Names are important. It irritates me when people screw mine up. It is a common name but I find all often that sales people call me by another common name.

I think that I am going to be exceptionally successful because I can't believe that I won't be. Call me naive, but it just doesn't register that I could be anything else. Later on we'll talk about how to define success.

I have friends that I would die for and those who die for me.

I am extremely self conscious.


My life is different from what I thought that it would be.

The East Coast Bias- Sports

Out here in the glorious paradise we call The West Coast you sometimes hear people refer to The East Cost Bias. More often than not you'll hear this talk during the college football season in reference to the rankings of the teams. The complaint is that the East Coast sportswriters pay little to no attention to the teams playing out west and as a consequence do not factor them into the equation of who the best teams are.

During the past six or seven years we have seen it fade somewhat. In part this has been in conjunction with the dominance of the USC football program. Some of it also has to do with the the influence of the modern media age and the prevalence of satellite/cable television and channels such as ESPN.

Yet there are those provincial folks who haven't figured out that there is a big and often more exciting world to be a part of. The grouchy old bear constructed one of the silliest posts I have ever come across in which he pushed a flawed argument about the supremacy of sports calls.

I have written about the joys of listening to Vin Scully. In my post Walking With the Dead I even spoke a bit about how Scully ties into some special memories for me. But regardless of that conflict of interest I still find the Cub's assertions about a hockey call to be laughable.

Scully is both elegant and eloquent. He is a master at using just a few words to paint a beautiful picture. And within the last 20 years or so few moments can be matched up against his call of Kirk Gibson's homerun in the 1988 World Series. The text of the call doesn't do it justice, but here it is anyway:

"All year long they looked to him (Kirk Gibson) to light the fire and all year long he answered the demands. High fly ball into right field. She is gone! [pause] In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

Just beautiful

Dave's Not Here, Man

The title of this post comes from a Cheech and Chong routine. It is not a bad bit but the expression has a different sort of connotation to me. The reference is tied into memories of a dear friend who died after from complications surrounding cancer.

When he first became ill there was period of time in which the cancer impeded his cognitive functions so severely that he began to have severe hallucinations. During this time I received a number of interesting telephone calls from him in which he described being abducted by aliens and asked me to come save him.

As I look back in time it is interesting to see how naive I was about it all. Back then there was no question in my mind that the doctors were going to save his life and that things would just go back to normal. I truly never could have imagined that things would be the way that they are now, but that is a story for a different night.

The reason the reference has such meaning to me is that the docs were able to beat back the cancer and for a time he was hale, healthy and whole. He loved to tell the tale of his illness and how the hallucinations affected him. Every time he told it he referred to that Cheech and Chong bit with great gusto.

"Dave's not here man!"

We'd all laugh and the conversation would continue as if nothing had happened. Like I said, naive and innocent. Who would have believed that anything could happen to us. We were still in our twenties and invulnerable. But life has a way of opening your eyes to possibilities in a way that can be quite unpleasant. Four years later he was gone and it was only a short time before a few others joined him.

Hmm... I am on a real happy bent, aren't I.

How Big a Risk Must I Take

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that!
Rocky Balboa

Mick get's credit for reminding me of that quote. It is one of those quotes that resonates with me because it just makes so much sense. I don't care if it is a bit hokey. It doesn't matter that it rides off of cliche, the truth is in it.

Not a day goes by in which I don't try to teach my children various life lessons. Some are by example and some are spoken. My son is so very smart as is his sister. I look at them and I see so much potential. I am like every other parent, I want them to have a better life than I do. I want them not to have to struggle the way that I have.

That doesn't mean that life is bad now or that it has always been bad for me. But it has had its moments. During the past several years there have been many challenging moments. There have been so many times when I wanted to scream and sometimes I did. My father's illness was six months of unrelenting tumult and uncertainty. It came on top of some other challenging moments and segued into a few more because life doesn't ask you if now is a good time to kick you in the balls, it just does.

One of the lessons that I learned was that no matter what happens you go through some challenges all by yourself. It is not because help isn't being offered but because sometimes you can't turn off your mind. That little voice inside your head doesn't always shut up. Sometimes it keeps muttering, whispering and murmuring about the things that scare you the most.

Alone in the dark you have nothing but the sounds of the evening and your thoughts to help you drift off to sleep and even then you sometimes do not find the rest that you seek.

So I tell my children that they need to remember that part of life is hard work and practice. I tell them that desire and the ability to act upon it is tied into success. I remind them that they need to remember to balance work and play.

And then I try to forgive myself for the mistakes that I have made and I try not to worry about the risk. I could be macho and say that it takes balls to take on great risk for great reward. There is an element of that, but at the same time the world is filled with people who met with success as a result of birth and or dumb luck.

I don't really know if any of this makes sense. I just know that I am beginning to despise the words that I see before me so this post ends here.