The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for April 2005

When A Fool Speaks Part 2

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This past December I offered When A Fool Speaks for your consumption. It reviewed the ridiculous and inane ramblings of Irwin Graulich about why he loves Christmas and why people who ask that we observe the proscriptions of the Constitution as being wrong. Silly us, we understood the Constitution when it discussed a Separation of Church and State and the reasons why.

Esther’s post on Jewlicious tipped me off to his latest nonsensical and illogical rant in which she discusses his explanation for why single Jewish women are not married.

According to our dear man the reason is because

In fact, attention all single women who want to marry. Do you know why you wonderful ladies are still alone most nights? Because, in general today, the idea of dating a conservative, God forbid Republican male, is the equivalent of dating a chimpanzee!


I am astounded by such a strong opening line. Insipid, vapid and meaningless come to mind. But I was dumb enough to read a little more to try and understand the man’s point.

As most men mature, they tend to depart from the secular college brainwash, based on 1960’s liberalism, and become somewhat more conservative. The macho caveman DNA starts to break down the indoctrinated feminization of the well educated male. Men are forced to go out into the real world to become corporate hunters, especially if they eventually plan to have a family.

Women are totally different, despite what elite college professors believe about the similar natures of men and women. As women get older they become more liberal, until they wed. Single men generally go towards the right, while single women head left; another one of God’s little tricks to make the mating process more complex.

It warms the cockles of my heart to see such insight but I would be curious to see proof of some sort other than one person’s opinion. It is weak and unsubstantiated.

These results can be proven in real life by studying any of the most popular dating websites of the day; the present Jewish favorite being www.Jdate.com. With the exception of a majority of Orthodox women, virtually every woman’s political viewpoint in her “dating profile” is liberal or left.

Anyone who knows anything about statistics knows that you have to provide numbers to use as a sample. Our boy here doesn’t bother to provide any of this. We don’t know if there are 3 million female subscribers to JDate and whether he reviewed all of their profiles, or if he made his weak assumption based upon the three he bothered to look at during the five minutes of research he conducted.

The disqualification of a Jewish Republican male from a date is the reason why many men stay registered Democrats, while secretly voting otherwise. Let’s be clear. Unless a guy hides the fact that he voted for George W. Bush, he will almost never get laid. Telling the girl’s parents at a Passover Seder that he voted Republican, places the potential suitor into the same category as a Nazi sympathizer (sic).


Who does this man speak with. Has he been locked in a closet. Where does he come up with this. People fall in love all the time regardless of political beliefs.

Within the Jewish community we have a million discussions about interfaith marriages because they are rampant and a regular part of life today.

The argument that Jews will not marry Republicans and that Jewish women are all liberal is flawed and fallacious in nature.

Maybe next time he can come up with a real topic and real evidence to support his allegations because this was so bad it was laughable. And that is my five minute response to this.

The Junior High Legend of the Hula Hoop

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When I was a younger man, so much younger than today, I never needed anyone’s help in anyway. Oops, must have been possessed by John Lennon for a moment. 😉

When I was in junior high one of the slightly older boys told us a big secret about girls. To give some context, I might have been 13 and he might have been just about 15.

He told us that if we wanted to find a girl who was good in bed we needed to find someone who was really good at using a Hula Hoop.

I remember being very impressed with this information but not having the slightest clue as to what she would do with that thing in bed. Of course I wasn’t about to share my ignorance by asking, so I just nodded my head and agreed.

And that is just one of the things I learned about girls/women from the guys who hung out on the corner in my neighborhood.

I Feel Your Pain And I Share My Own

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In a month I am going to reach the one year anniversary of my blogging experience. Happy early bloggiversary to me.

As I sit here and consider what I have learned and what I have experienced I have few words that are sufficient to express my thoughts in a way that is clear and truly descriptive. There are times when words fail me and all I can do is shrug my shoulders.

But you cannot see the shrug nor the quizzical look upon my face.

So many of the blogs I have read deal with raw human emotion, pain that is indescribable. Sometimes I can feel it emanating from the page as if I am some kind of codependent. It is a virtual howl and I wonder if the wave that smacks me has completely engulfed the writer. And then again I wonder if my reaction is solely based upon my own experience, if my own background is the source. I am not always sure.

On April 17th 2004 my parents left for New Jersey to attend to the birth of their of fourth grandchild. And on April 28th my father was taken to the emergency room where he was placed on a ventilator and then admitted to the hospital.

He had a series of things happen at once and like a house of cards his body began to collapse and shut down. When my sister called to tell me to start looking into flights it was because we were not sure if he was going to live.

I made arrangements to fly out the next day, but only after I was given pseudo-assurances that he would live long enough for me to make a few arrangements at home. Foremost among them was lying to my grandparents about why I was making an unscheduled business trip across the country for an undefined amount of time.

I couldn’t take a chance on upsetting them until I knew what was happening and there wasn’t time to try and figure out whether to take the two other siblings that live here with me. I hopped on the plane and prayed that he wouldn’t die before I got there.

As the plane landed I was on my cellphone confirming that I hadn’t flown 3000 miles to escort his body home. When I heard that he was still alive I exhaled and ran to the rental car facility. As I drove through unfamiliar territory I cursed the drivers around me and made my way to the hospital.

The sky was somewhat grey and forbidding, but the reality is that it might have been blue and free of clouds, but I couldn’t see it. My overactive imagination pictured me going into battle. Clad in armor and a broad sword, or wearing white trunks and a pair of 16 ounce gloves it didn’t matter. I was there to rescue my father. I was going to pull him out of the burning building, I was going to kill the evil people that had locked him up in captivity, I was going to be the hero because he would do it for me.

And then I stood at his bedside and for a moment I wasn’t 35, I was 5 or 6, maybe 7. It was early Saturday morning and I wanted him to wake up and play with me, but he kept snoring. Only this time the familiar snore was missing, there was no breathing noises other than that the machine made and the occasional grimace across his face.

His arms and legs were in restraints and he looked far smaller to me than I knew he must be. Even though I had long been able to look him in the eye and had been big enough to borrow his clothes for close to 18 years I had trouble seeing him as being so small. It was hard and even harder was knowing that I couldn’t go into battle.

I wanted to. I was ready to fight, but I couldn’t do it in the manner I wanted to. The help that I was able to give was of a different nature.

It is a year later and my father, baruch hashem is still with us. He survived the experience, he beat the odds and my doctor friends have all confessed that they really did not expect this outcome.

I have written about this numerous times because it was a profoundly disturbing experience. For a long time I waited for the other shoe to drop. There were so many little things that happened alongside the big things, so many challenges and we managed to overcome them. The truth is that I always expected to and that is in large part because of the man he is and what I have learned from him.

There are some things that happen that you just have to deal with. Life does not always have a happy outcome, but you keep going because you cannot lay down and die.

As I sit here and reflect upon the past year I am in the position of holding my breath again. My grandmother is not doing well at all, she is hanging by a thread. I could get that telephone call today, tomorrow or maybe in five years, I just do not know.

But it is hard not to tread water, it is hard not to worry and allow this to impact how I go about life. My grandparents have been married for just short of 71 years. I worry about how this will impact my grandfather.

If things go one way I could end up losing two grandparents within a short time of each other. And none of this takes into account the other grandfather who has his own health issues.

I love all my grandparents very much and know that it is a matter of time before I say goodbye. It is not a secret, I have written about it. I try not to harp on it because there is only so much that I can do. It is smarter and more productive to focus on the positive and to take advantage of the time we have and not worry about things that are out of my control.

And for the most part I have been relatively successful in doing that. I expect that part of the reason that this has been more prominent in my thoughts is for the following reasons:

1) The anniversary of my father’s experience.
2) The conversations regarding my grandmother’s doctor’s appointments last week and this week.
3) Pesach- It is one of my favorite holidays and I cannot have it without enjoying the memories of past seders. I cannot not think about my great grandparents and grandmother, their presence was missed but not forgotten.

But back to the initial topic. In truth I have to say that I have been very lucky, just fortunate that I have not had as much tragedy in my life as others. I thank G-d for what I have been given and am appreciative of it all. There are others who have dealt with far worse.

All that being equal is it so wrong for me to ask for some more time to share with the people I love.

My Daughter

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This past weekend my daughter officially became nine months old. She has now been out of the womb as long as she was in it.

Compared to my son I haven’t written about her all that much. In part that has been due to her age. For a long time there wasn’t much to say about her other than normal baby development stuff.

But for a while now she has really been making tremendous strides in showing her personality and interacting with the world around her.

Long time friends of mine have said for years that they couldn’t wait to see what happened if I had a daughter. They giggled and laughed about it, come to think of it most of the people who made such comments are female. What is it that they think they see.

I suspect that it is case of Daddy’s girl and I must confess that I can see that happening. When I walk into the room she gives me a huge smile and rocks back and forth to get my attention. She loves to sit in my lap and pull on my nose, or ears or mouth. She studies me so intently, I wonder what she is thinking.

We laugh and play and I read her stories and tell her that her daddy will always be here for her. When the little boys stare at her I glare at them. I have to practice for when she is older. It is one of the reasons that I work out so hard, when she begins dating I need to be big enough in my 50s to intimidate the young men that come calling upon her.

I remember going on a date many years ago in which my date’s father took me aside for a little conversation about how I was to treat his daughter. He looked at me and explained that he wanted her to be treated with respect and dignity. I agreed, didn’t argue at all and then he told me that he once was a boy and knew how boys think and that for that reason I couldn’t bullshit him.

I said that I wasn’t trying to and he said that if I meant that I would always stare at her eyes and not other parts of her body. I can remember wondering at the time if I had been so obvious, or if he was just guessing, but I didn’t argue with him.

And now I can see myself saying something similar on my own daughter’s behalf.

I saw her early this morning, around 4:30 am so I got a chance to give her a hug and a kiss before I left for work. As she went back to sleep I couldn’t help but stare at her and smile.

She is so busy trying to learn how to walk now. I know that it won’t be long and I know that it won’t be long until she can speak. I am looking forward to sharing special time with her as I have done with my son.

What can I say, I am in love with my daughter. She is so special to me.

Hybrid Animals- Liger, Zorses and More

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I read an interesting article on ABC News.com today. It was about hybrid animals. I have provided an excerpt here for your review.

April 21, 2005 — When it comes to the birds and the bees, sometimes Mother Nature slips some surprises.

Species don’t always stick to their own kind when getting down to business. The results are often compromised offspring who can’t reproduce, but occasionally can. And when they do, some biologists worry they can pose a threat to existing species.

Take Kekaimalu, the hybrid offspring of a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin who lives at Sea Life Park in Hawaii. Last week, park officials announced that the “wholphin” gave birth to a healthy female calf. It was the third birth for the 19-year-old wholphin and a combination of Kekaimalu’s mixed genes and those of a male Atlantic bottlenose dolphin.

Are combinations like wholphins natural? Some biologists argue that anything that’s possible in nature is natural and that interspecies mating has long played a role in evolution. Others, however, say such couplings are often the unhealthy result of human interference and, if unleashed in the wild, can threaten the rigor of existing species.

“Species are adapted to specific conditions,” said Susan Haig, a wildlife ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a professor at Oregon State University. “So I think it’s important to maintain the integrity of species.”

Whether or not they pose a threat, hybrid mammals continue making appearances both in controlled settings, such as zoos and farms, and in the wild.

“Some people think that what we’ve got is what we’ve got and anything new in the mix is bad,” said David Hull, a professor emeritus of philosophy and biology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “But evolution is still in motion and always will be.”

Breeding between species is rampant among plants and less complex animals that lack a backbone. It’s only among the higher mammals, the ones as Hull says, “most people pay attention to,” where it remains fairly rare.

Hybrid mammals may be rare, but they are memorable. There is the liger, a hybrid of a female tiger and male lion (alternatively known as a tigon, if the mother is the lion). The hybrids have manes like a lion, the sleek bodies and stripes of a tiger, and the 1,000-pound heft of a lion.”

It really is kind of interesting to me to see how nature interacts as well as the manner in which human interaction affects things. Take a look at this.

To create work animals with greater strength and agility, people have bred mules (sterile combinations of horses and donkeys) and zorses (a horse-zebra hybrid). And in an effort to create a terror-fighting tool, Russians have experimented with breeding combinations of jackals and husky dogs to form a hybrid with elite bomb-sniffing abilities.

Biologists have even turned to mixed breeding as a way of preserving a threatened species. The Florida panther was declared endangered in 1967 with just 30 animals remaining in the state’s forests and swamps. By introducing Texas cougars to the region in 1995, scientists provided new mates to the threatened animals that were a close genetic match. The two species mated and the Florida panther’s population — and genes — were preserved, at least in slightly mixed form.

Animals of different species have also been known to find each other without any human prodding. White-tailed deer and mule deer can mate and create offspring, as do domestic cattle and bison, cattle and yaks, wolves and dogs, wolves and coyotes, and coyotes and dogs.

In fact, in recent years, a policy battle has raged over the protection of the red wolf, which, some biologists have argued, is actually a hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote, not a distinct species. Hybrids are not protected under the act so this has created some confusion.

“Hybrids are not protected under the Endangered Species Act, so the red wolf has been ripping open politics over that act,” said Haig.

Perhaps I’ll blog more on this later.

Feedback From The Readers

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Dear Jack,

I really enjoy your posts about your life with your children, mostly because I have children and have no life. How do you do it?

Regards,

Mike

Dear Mike,

Balance, tenacity and dumb luck. Heck, I do not know how I do anything, I just do it.

****

Dear Jack,

I am getting married soon and was very interested in reading your post about sex and children. My girlfriends and I often speak about this because we do not want to be the wife that doesn’t put out anymore. Most women do not want to admit to this, but it is a known fact. Keep posting.

Regards,

Kathy

Dear Kathy,

You are going to make some man very happy and I suspect some women very angry, but what do I know, I am just a 30 something dad from Los Angeles.

****

Jack,

I have asked you numerous times to blogroll me and all you do is belittle me in your posts. What kind of man are you?

Screw you,

Ted

Dear Ted,

You are an attention whore who would be better off diddling the postman or haunting a house. How much do you charge, the Engels place is available. Can’t wait until I get your next note.

****

Dear Jack,

Happy Passover. Enjoy your holiday and I’ll enjoy my pizza.

Breadly yours,

Sam

Dear Sam,

Thanks for the good wishes.