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 September 2005

Stories that Make Me Shake My head

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Here is a selection of stories for your review:

I don’t mind a parent making decisions for their child, but they haven’t the right to infringe on others.

Mom: Assigned book pornography

“DELAND — A mother concerned about what she considers pornography in her daughter’s reading assignment at DeLand High School wants the book in question banned from Volusia County schools.

Vikki Reed of DeBary plans to submit a written complaint today focusing on two passages she finds objectionable in “Cracking India,” a 1992 novel by Pakistani-born Bapsi Sidhwa.”

The Onion Reports the Following

Report: More Kids Being Home-Churched

“Home-churchers create their own services, emphasizing close readings of Old Testament books led by a parent, and sermons that often exceed two hours. Proponents of home-churching argue that, when handed down by family members, biblical teachings take on a more direct, personal meaning. Additionally, they say home-churching reinforces familial bonds.”

This sounds like it should have been in a movie.

“WHITE PLAINS, New York (AP) — A man who caught fire Tuesday in a car crash on a bridge jumped into the Hudson River, then was rescued and taken to a hospital, officials said.”

And in the category of how drunk were you:

“Spokane County Prosecutors are hoping to convict a suspected burglar who allegedly left his naked victim smeared with chocolate frosting.”

That is all for now.

Jibberish, No Gibberish, No Screw the midwest

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This story comes from way back in the days of yore when men ruled the land and women ruled…elsewhere.

Once it was an audio blog post built upon the Audio Blogger platform and it was a work of art in which the Shmata Queen and I debated the merits of many things but sadly Audio Blogger took their ball and ran home leaving us with nothing more than memories.

So you can read the comments and wonder what that thing was like and if you would like you can dream of a time when we might create a modern version of it.

I make no promises and give no guarantee that such a thing will or will not happen.

In the interim I recommend you go read other posts here like one of these:

An Uncertain Certainty
Four Generations & A Wedding
The Best Thing My Father Ever Said To Me
1 Foolproof Way To Become a Better Writer
The Story Of A House- The Final Days
He Died A Hero
Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger
Of Dads and Daughters

Random Musings

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I keep seeing signs in grocery store parking lots that warn you not to move their shopping carts outside of the parking lot or the wheels will lock. Call me a vandal, call me a miscreant, but I have a a burning desire to move as many carts as I can to just outside the lot.

But with my luck I’ll find out that this is just a ruse designed to keep people from stealing carts and instead of a hundred carts with locked wheels I’ll create a 35 car pileup on the street which is cool to see at the Indy 500 and not so cool on Ventura Boulevard.

If you are Catholic you may be offended by my next few comments, or maybe not. But when I read this story it made me shake my head for a variety of reasons. The story is regarding a probe that the church is making regarding homosexuality and the church.

“The newspaper said a Vatican document prepared to guide the process and given to The New York Times by a priest, surfaces as Catholics await a Vatican ruling on whether homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood.American seminaries are under review as a result of the sexual abuse scandal that swept the priesthood in 2002, the year the probe which is now starting was announced.

In a possible hint of the ruling’s contents, the American archbishop supervising the seminary review said “anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations,” should not be admitted to a seminary.

The Times said Edwin O’Brien, archbishop for the United States military who is supervising the seminary review, told The National Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or more.

O’Brien was once the rector of the North American College, a seminary for Americans studying in Rome and has familiarity with both the Vatican and the U.S. Church.

The issue has been in the spotlight because a study commissioned by the Church found last year that about 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys.”

Being gay is not equivalent with being a pedophile and it seems to me that the more important and more pressing issue is handling those issues as opposed to engaging in a witch hunt for men who like other men. I don’t understand this thought process.

In other news I perused various news sources who used the AP report about the current Three Day summit at the UN where Vlad Putin called for the UN to be a leader in the fight against terror. I also found this section of the article to be of particular interest.

“In his speech, Bush broadened the terrorism fight beyond the military arena, saying world leaders have “a solemn obligation” to stop terrorism in its early stages.
Declaring that poverty breeds despair and terrorism, he challenged leaders to abolish all trade tariffs and subsidies to promote prosperity and opportunity in poor nations, a move that would be worth billions of dollars.

“Either hope will spread, or violence will spread, and we must take the side of hope,” he said.

This approach and Bush’s support for achieving development goals such as halving extreme poverty by 2015 was welcomed by many leaders.

Geldof, who organized the Live Aid concerts and campaigns against poverty, said he was sitting in the General Assembly chamber with U.N. anti-poverty chief Jeffrey Sachs and they couldn’t believe what they heard.

“I think he’s really throwing down the gauntlet. It’s a very bold move,” Geldof said of Bush’s trade tariff proposal, adding that he was impressed with the president’s acknowledgment that terrorism “comes from despair and lack of hope.”

I think that the war on terror has to be a combination of diplomacy and force and this could go a long way in helping to curb terror and support for it, but it must also be remembered that a large portion of the war on terror is being fought for ideological reasons.

These are disagreements that are not based upon levels of wealth but upon ideas and that is a significant point that cannot and must not be overlooked. This must be given attention or the war will fail.

Thirty-One Years of Friendship

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Kirk & SpockWe met on the first day of kindergarten. Somewhere my parents probably have the paperwork to confirm the exact date, but for now it should suffice that it was early September 1974. We were standing in front of the school when G’s mom introduced us to each other and to a couple of other kids, Robert A and Damon if you must know.

G and I started playing together shortly thereafter both in school and outside. He and I both remember seeing our first bloody nose. Two of the kids got into a scuffle and when Robert punched the other little boy in the nose it bled for what seemed like forever.

As kindergarteners we worked on all sorts of projects together. I remember standing next to him as we hammered and sawed with real saws and hammers. G noticed that instead of sawing a piece of wood I had begun to cut my pinky. I still have the scar and for those of you who are wondering it didn’t hurt me, don’t know why, just that it did not and as a result I didn’t notice. As G will attest my attention to detail is sometimes sketchy but at the same time I can be incredibly focused on other things which is probably why I didn’t notice the pain.

G and I went to school together from 1974 through 1980. There was a brief separation from the fall of 1980 until the fall of 1984 when his parents sent him to a private junior high school. But even during that time we still spent a ton of hours together. We lived a block away from each other and it was uncommon for us not to spend the after school hours together, not to mention endless summer afternoons.

We rode our bikes everywhere, watched the Twilight Zone together and marveled over Kung Fu theater. We went to battle together as we fought some of the neighborhood bullies. There are stories from the week we spent as campers at Griffith Park Boys camp. I watched as the counselors helped him lace up a pair of boxing gloves and then stuck him in a ring where he fought Rashid.

G is a quiet and introspective. I suspect that they thought that Rashid was going to make G look silly, but they misunderstood and misjudged him. G and I had spent endless hours wrestling and I could verify that he was determined and stubborn. I knew that Rashid was going to go down in a heap and sure enough G set him on his ass more than once.

We were eleven years old and we knew that together we could not only take a grown man down but we would make him cry. All you had to do was ask us. We were partners, an unstoppable team.

It was a great friendship and an interesting one, the Jewish kid and the Baptist. I went to his church activities on numerous occasions, mostly because during the summers it cost 50 cents to take their bus to Zuma beach. Even though it was an evangelical church there was never an effort by anyone there or in his family to convert me. We have laughed about it because besides myself his other closest friend in the world is Jewish.

If anything it is more likely that he’d change teams to come play for our side. For that matter I have laughed on many occasions at the surprise people showed when they found out that he was not Jewish, but that is not what this post is about.

In high school we were on the swim team together. I don’t have to close my eyes to see him running alongside the pool during my races shouting instructions at me and if you ask I am sure that he remembers my colorful responses to his shouts.

For three years we ate lunch together almost daily, the few exceptions were generally due to Jewish holidays when I was in shul or the odd day or two when one of us were sick.

If you ever meet G ask him about the big fight I had with Victor Lopez. The truth is that Victor scared me but with G standing there I had no fear. He is the rock I really have always depended upon. The truth is that if G is next to me or close by there is no person I would be afraid to take on, he always is there if I need him.

We even went to the same university. The truth is that for almost my entire school education G was a part of it in one way or another.

For thirty-one years he has always been there. Ask him about how many times I knocked on his window in the middle of the night and made him get out of bed to go do something. He was my best man and I was his.

As you have probably gathered I have been privileged with the best kind of friend, a brother-in-arms who cannot be thanked enough for all that he has given me. There are so many stories, so very many that I could write about and perhaps I’ll share more of those at a later date, but right now I can’t because my heart is heavy.

G is leaving town. He is moving across country and the truth is that it is killing me. There is a quiet strength about G that just sums him up so well and in some ways it sums us up. There really are not words that we can use to share our experience. He is leaving for a bunch of reasons not the least of which is that he got screwed in a divorce in a big way so it is time for him to spread his wings a little and see some new things.

I am upset because my anchor is setting sail. One of the things that I have been blessed with is some incredible friends and friendships that are so special and so important to my life that I sit here fumbling for words.

He is not leaving forever and it is not like we will not see each other again. Our parents still live in the houses we grew up in and when we visit the old neighborhood we sometimes run into each other.

Our lives are so very busy now that we do not get to see each other too often and sometimes we speak less frequently than we might like, but there was something reassuring about having him around and I know that one of the many reasons I am going to miss him is watching him with my children.

But the bottom line is that I want him to be happy and even if I had real influence over the decision to leave I would not prevent him from going because I think that this is a necessary part of his life and personal growth.

G you know that I love you and that I am a plane ride away. You give the call and I am there. Like we always said we are the calvary and I will answer the call. You be safe and you do what you do to move on.

I’ll see you on Sunday and we’ll hang out a bit but I will not say goodbye because you know that I just can’t do that.

Dear Smoker

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Some of you are not going to appreciate this post because you are smokers and I am not always a nice guy, but if you read a curmudgeon’s blog what do you expect.

Dear Smokers in my office building,

I’d like to thank you for your lack of courtesy and respect for those of us who are not interested in serving as human ashtrays. I appreciate your addiction to nicotine and understand that when you do not get your fix you grow irritable because I too get irritable about little things such as having to wade through the carcinogenic cloud you spew in front of the building.

I know that your tiny overtaxed lungs beg for mercy and that you consider it an imposition to have to smoke outside. And I know that some of you think that it is funny to smoke a half step outside of the entrance to the building.

I know this because I have heard your complaints about the lack of a smoking section and your cries about discrimination and they do warm the cockles of my heart. Some of you have tried to justify your addiction by claiming that just breathing city air is bad for you and that smoking doesn’t make it any worse. Others have pooh-poohed claims of the danger of secondhand smoke and made other specious remarks about how intolerant nonsmokers are.

And you are right, many of us are not tolerant. I am not. I don’t need to be nice or understanding about a habit that is dangerous. I don’t need to apologize or pull punches for saying that I don’t want to breathe your crap and that your selfish needs are making a problem for many people.

Your addiction is part of the reason why healthcare costs are what they are. I can’t quantify it for you or give you an exact number, but we all know that smoking is bad for you. We know that the smokers suffer from more health issues and that there are many side issues. It is not a secret.

And we know many of the arguments about how you are only impacting yourself, but the reality is far different. At least be honest. Tell me that you are a selfish bastard who doesn’t care whether I like smoking or not. Be direct, be upfront, be a grownup.

I don’t smoke cigarettes, but I have been known to enjoy the occasional cigar. One day I think that I am going to help some of the building smokers understand what we undergo by bringing a few stogies. It should be fun to watch your faces scrunch up and listen to you cough.

This has been a message of the Jack’s Shack screw you broadcast system.