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 November 2005

Sunday Night Roundup At the Shack

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Ok bloggers, I am listening to Brad Paisley sing Mud on the Tires and itching to Two-Step. Really, I am and it is one of those dances that I can do and feel cool and there are too few of those.

Here is what I pumped out this evening:

Two Kinds of Pain
Searching for My Muse
Professor in Your Pocket
The Internet’s Impact Upon Sex & Relationships
Schnappi das kleine Krokodil

And if you are wondering what is churning up the stats as most popular here is a sample:
Interfaith Relationships- Jews and Christians Misunderstood Again
Sex At the Synagogue- An Oral Report
Happy Holidays is An Appropriate Greeting
The Story of Two Souls

Lailah Tov from LA

Two Kinds of Pain

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As I mentioned the other day, I am trying to start working on Fragments of Fiction again. Here is an old section that I am looking at again.

Life offers two types of pain, one physical and one mental. Man still hasn’t found a tougher prison than the one he encages his mind in. There is no greater pain than the mental anguish we inflict on ourselves and there is no tougher warden than the person we see in the mirror. For some there is no midnight reprieve, the governor doesn’t offer clemency. There is only one way out and no two people can share the path.

We all live in our secret worlds, but some of us never have the strength to leave our shelter and walk under sunny skies.

I used to.

I used to live in a place I called paradise. I could look out on the world and from my window and gaze upon waters that called out to me. Deep blue seas that embraced me like a child in the womb. The seas were always calm and at night they would gently rock me to sleep.

But it wasn’t real. I didn’t live on a boat. I didn’t live on the beach or remotely close to the water. It was all an illusion, a mindfuck that I created to make myself happy. The problem was that I hadn’t realized it. I didn’t have a clue as to how precarious my own happiness was and once that was shattered I knew nothing but darkness. I wandered aimlessly in a fog, not knowing where I was going or what I was doing. It didn’t matter, I didn’t care.

I said it before, there are two kinds of pain and mental is far worse than physical. You can always find a way to escape physical pain, but you can’t run from your own mind. Philosophers had long ago figured out that hell existed, that there was a devil, except he wasn’t a guy with horns, a pitchfork and a tail. The church had made that guy up. The devil was someone familiar with you, someone who knew your most intimate secrets and your darkest fears. The devil knew you, knew how to torment your soul.

The devil knew all this because he was, he is…you.

That’s right, the devil is not supernatural. There is no Lucifer, no Satan, and no Beelzebub. It would be better for us all if he did exist. No, the devil is just a man, a person that lives inside us all.

See when they wrote the bible and told the story of getting banished from the Garden of Eden they were not talking about a mythological place, they were referring to the end of innocence. They were talking about that time when life hits you in the mouth, knocks you down and beats you senseless. They were talking about getting hurt in places that bandages don’t stick, cuts that you cannot stitch, they just keep bleeding. And even if you manage to stop the bleeding that stinging sensation never really does go away.

Searching for My Muse

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I have been working on Fragments of Fiction or should I say tinkering with it. I haven’t really jumped back into it…yet.

I want to, I really think that I need to get back there and start pounding it out again but I just haven’t been able to get myself into that place that I need to be to present the material I need.

Fragments of Fiction is just that. It is bits and pieces of fiction wrapped around pieces of my life and people I know. I don’t think that this is any different from any other writer. You tend to write about what you know about and go from there.

The thing about Frags is that at this point in time it is not what I would characterize as a happy story. It may end up being a happy tale and it may very well have a happy ending. I am not sure yet because I haven’t mapped it out. I really should do that. I really should plot it out so that I have a roadmap to follow but that wouldn’t be in character and part of me is really fighing that.

The thing about Frags that grabs me is that I think that the best material has been written when I have taken myself back in time to that dark place so many of us have experienced. It is that cold and desolate place you hit when your heart has been broken and you have trouble seeing daylight. It is a place where you look around you and wonder how anyone can be happy and smile because you just can’t conceive of it.

I think that when I open up the vault and dive down into the depths I find the best material, or maybe not. The good news is that I am having trouble getting there. It is hard for me to make myself feel that miserable. In part it is because I have a certain maturity and perspective on life that I didn’t have when I was 20.

My children do such a fine job of making me smile that it is hard to be upset. When I think about all of the blessings in my life it is tough to really stay depressed. There are things that make me angry. There are things going on right now that light my fire and not in a positive sense. So I suppose that I could latch onto that anger and use it but I am not sure that I want to do that.

Do I have to use passion to create. Do I have to rely upon finding those happy/sad places to make myself produce at the higher levels. I am not sure. It is something that I think about because I am interested in learning more about myself. It may be egocentric, it may be narcisstic, but I find myself to be a fascinating subject. So what.

Life is a growth process and if you are not doing what you can to keep growing in some fashion you are setting yourself up to die. If there is one thing that I know it is that when I die I want to die knowing that I never stopped trying to learn about myself and the world around me.

Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot.
Ethics of the Fathers 4:1

Professor in Your Pocket

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Also from a recent edition of Newsweek comes Professor in Your Pocket. This is another article that deals with the impact of technology on society. I found it to be interesting.
Professor in Your Pocket

“Nov. 28, 2005 issue – When Duke University junior Eddy Leal took a research trip to Puerto Rico recently and missed his macroeconomics lecture, he didn’t sweat it. The lecture is usually attended by about 75 students, so his professor was unlikely to notice his absence. He didn’t worry about falling behind, either. When he returned from his trip, Leal went to a Web site specially designated for Duke students and downloaded the lecture (which the professor had recorded and uploaded using an iPod) onto his personal computer. In the relative tranquillity of his dorm, Leal learned about models of government surplus. “It isn’t the same as being there,” says Leal. But for the chance to go to Puerto Rico, it was close enough.”

I think that there are a multitude of advantages to being able to download a lecture and listen to it as many times as needed to try and understand a concept, but it doesn’t substitute for being there.

The ability to interact with the professor and other students is a critical component of education. You miss out on a lot when you take that out of the equation from both an educational and social standpoint.

The Internet’s Impact Upon Sex & Relationships

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I am always interested in learning how the net impacts our lives. Here is a Newsweek story that deals with this. Here are a couple of selections for your review.

A sex columnist explains how the Internet has revolutionized our love lives—and why cyber breakups hurt just as much as real-world splits.

“Nov. 23, 2005 – Is the Internet transforming our sex lives as much as the birth control pill did? Yes, says Regina Lynn, Wired.com’s ‘Sex Drive’ columnist and the author of a new book about modern sexuality. Thanks to e-mail, blogging, instant messaging, Web cams and the myriad ways we now have to stay in touch electronically, Lynn says we are in the middle of a new relationship revolution. “Forget what they told you about defense departments and universities. The Internet has done more to help us upgrade our sex lives than any other technology in history,” says Lynn in “The Sexual Revolution 2.0” (Ulysses Press). And she’s not just talking about porn or dating sites. Lynn contends that having constant e-contact has created new kinds of relationships and increased intimacy in existing ones. The Web has been particularly liberating for women who, she says, might not cross a crowded bar to ask a guy out, but might e-mail him first or boldly flirt via instant messaging.

There is a downside, though: keeping a lid on all those steamy notes and blogs out there in cyberspace. By default, we’re creating “a transcript of a lifetime,” says Lynn. And now, instead of just burning a box of old love letters, she says we may have to find “50 ways to delete your lover.” Susanna Schrobsdorff spoke to Regina Lynn about the pleasures and perils of love in the digital age. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Has the online world changed our sexual behavior as much as the pill?
Regina Lynn: I think it already has changed us almost as much as the pill, and will continue to. It is perhaps more gradually—we’re already used to using e-mail and we take it for granted that we can talk to each other and build relationships—love and friendships—with people all over the world. But it’s a big change. Women feel safe to do more sexual exploring online and a shy guy might find he’s got the ability to seduce in e-mail. The Internet is about communication, which is the foundation of relationships.

You say that relationships are “real” even if they are conducted mainly online.
The Internet is the tool we’re using, but there’s still a person on either end. Online relationships kind of happen inside out whether it’s e-mail, or instant messaging. The anonymity of online lets people get right to the heart of the matter first and then they start backing out to the more superficial, this is what I do for a living, this is where I live.

How have Internet relationships changed in the past few years?
People are meeting in puzzle or role-playing games more than in sex chat rooms now. Places where you are engaged in shared imaginative experiences with other people tend to give rise to other kinds of relationships. And because of the skills required for these games it often means the people who are coming just to troll for sex have been weeded out.

With so much of our intimate communications, like e-mails, out there in cyberspace, are there new risks?
You have in the back of your mind, ‘I now have no control over this.’ If someone gets hostile or vindictive or becomes a stalker, they have digital copies of the love letters you sent them. I think the way to deal with it is to accept this and relax and not let it make you crazy. You can’t say what if my writing is so good that he starts copying and pasting it to the new woman he’s having an affair with? You have to let that thought go.”

It is a whole new world. I have been conscious and conscientous about what I write because once you post it is out there and you have to assume that you can never take it back. I sometimes wonder what this all means in the grand scheme of things.

I like using my blog as a diary, but it is easy to see how someone would take snippets and segments to formulate an opinion that may not really be based upon a real understanding and instead is based upon a one sided perspective.

Schnappi das kleine Krokodil

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Ok, so a short time ago I was out traversing Costco when I heard someone singing a familiar tune. It took a moment to place it and then I realized that it was Schnappi das kleine Krokodil. Now I never would have recognized Schnappi das kleine Krokodil were it not for my favorite Red Sox fan.

Now if only I could get that song out of my head.