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 2007

This is Not Haveil Havalim #135

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Updated multiple times: I have received more than one email asking how I could just grab Haveil Havalim without permission. Obviously you missed Talk Like a Pirate Day or you’d know you know that Captain Jack- One-eared Dog the Damned doesn’t ask permission to do anything. ARRGGGH!!!!!!!!

Hoist the mainsail, swab the decks and read matey!

Welcome to the unauthorized, unofficial and up to now unrecognized edition of Haveil Havalim. Haveil Havalim is the weekly round up of posts of the JBlogosphere.

It is taking a brief hiatus for the chagim. Rumor has that at the break fast it ate too many hard boiled eggs and is suffering from indigestion, or maybe that was me, so you’ll forgive me for the brevity of this edition.

Here we go off into the wild blue yonder.

The Waffle King offers Interviewing the Enemy and RALLY IN NEW YORK AGAINST AHMEDINEJAD. Over at Israel Matzav you can learn How to sabotage Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia. Jewlicious offers their own take on this as well.

Dr. Sanity blogged about CHOICES (or, Do Two Half-Wits Make A**Hole?).

Seraphic Secret is among the many who ask what is wrong with Columbia University. LGF has a video that ties into all of this. Check out: Ahmadinejad: ‘If the World Is Calm, Europe Will Eradicate the Zionists’. You might also want to read Lee Bollinger, Tough Guy.

Take a look at Irrational in Iran: Plans drawn up to bomb Israel.
Shiloh Musings provided The Olmert Troika. Joe Settler says the War Has Begun.

In other news Treppenwitz reports The Pina Chama was robbed! It is an important post that you should read carefully. Daled Amos served What Would Mearsheimer and Walt Say About The Czechoslovakia Lobby?

Maybe we should have elected Billy Carter. Check out Mere Rhetoric’s post entitled Jimmy Carter: Iran Is Nothing To Worry About.

Ezzie has his own roundup of Yom Kippur posts. Take a look. Ren Reb shares a few of her thoughts from Yom Kippur. RWAC has his own post Yom Kippur thoughts as does Ra’anana Ramblings and lets not forget Shira either. Jacob reminds us that there are No Guarantees in Life. Gil has his own Musings. Therapy Doc provided her own thoughts too. And by all means remember to read If You Must.

Some more to read Juggling Frogs and Rabbi Sedley.

Elie has a touching post called May It Be Your Will as does Shifra’s tribute to her brother.

It might be nice to go back in time so that I could countdown my own 30th birthday again. Birthday celebrations tied up A Bisele Babka. LOR has some videos that just might make you smile. Rafi is building a Sukkah.

You might enjoy Rosh Hashanah: The Book of Life & Death and Next Year In Jerusalem.

How about listening to A Hard’s Day Night in Yiddish. Aussie Dave is slowly building his own army. Cro-Magnon man is back at the keyboard. Biur Chametz is still on an extended break. Apparently so are Amishav, AbbGav and so is the Shmata Queen.

Elisson shares an interview. KRG shared Polish Hip Hop Bhangra. Now there is something you don’t see every day.

And now a moment of silence for famous Jewish Mime, Marcel Marceau.

Ok folks, I have to get back to real world doings. Hope you are all recovered from the chag. See you later.

Useful information Regarding Pigeons & Mario

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Thanks to the magic of the internet I am pleased to present you with some useful information regarding pigeons and Mario of Mario brothers fame.

  • Mario was first seen in the video game Donkey Kong, but he was called “Jumpman.” He was also a carpenter then, not a plumber.
  • Mario was named after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America’s office, who barged in on a company meeting demanding an overdue rent.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto drew Mario as wearing a cap because he found drawing hair difficult. He also drew in the moustache, because it was easier to see than a mouth in the crude video game screen resolution back then.
  • For More information use this link.

On to pigeons:

To keep alive in the wild, a pigeon needs to keep its eyes open for predators. Having eyes on the side of its head gives it a field of view of 340 degrees and, in order to fly at speed, its brain can process visual information three times faster than a human’s. If a pigeon watched a feature film, 24 frames per second would appear to it like a slide presentation. They would need at least 75 frames per second to create the illusion of movement on screen. (This is why pigeons seem to leave it until the very last second to fly out of the way of an oncoming car: it appears much less fast to them.)

For more information on pigeons click here.

When A Bull Attacks What do you Do

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Basically you sit back and watch him trash your home. I have to say that Dept. of Agriculture’s response impressed me. Oh brother.

KILLINGLY, Connecticut (AP) — An escaped and raging bull attacked a neighbor’s home, tearing off siding, ripping down part of a fence and damaging a car.

Wayne Johnson said he found the bull in his yard Friday morning. It had wandered in from a nearby farm.

While he watched, the bull repeatedly charged his house, tore off clapboards, flipped a picnic table, rammed his car and tore down part of the fence around his swimming pool, he said.

“He was crazy,” Johnson said. “The thing was ripping my house apart.”

Johnson called police, who called the state Department of Agriculture. They suggested finding the farmer who owns the animal.

I Want to Go To India

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India intrigues me. It is on my list of places to visit. I know quite a few people who have been there with mixed results. For the most part the stories I have been have been quite positive. I can’t tell you exactly why I am interested, just that I am.

On a somewhat related note I have been listening to some Daler Mehndi videos. Too bad I don’t speak Hindi, I wonder what it is he saying.

Letting Love Go

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Still working on more Fragments of Fiction. One of these days I have to take the Fragments and weave them together.

I got the call in the middle of the night. The sharp ring of the telephone startled me awake. For a brief moment I thought that it was the alarm clock and got ready to go shower and get ready for the day. The continued ringing made me realize my mistake and I picked up the handset. With a muffled voice I mumbled something into the phone and waited for an answer.

The response made me gasp and go numb. It wasn’t like the movies. I didn’t drop the phone. I didn’t start to scream hysterically or sob. I just lay there in disbelief. You were gone. Death had robbed us of our future and now I had no future.

Ok, none of that actually happened. I sometimes wish that it did. It is kind of perverse to say that sometimes I wish that something so terrible had taken place. But sometimes it hurts too much to admit that I am the reason that our love was lost. The best thing in my life is gone because I let it go.

My grandmother used to say that the really lucky people fall in love three times. Two of them were to prepare you for the love of your life. I used to chuckle at the idea of training relationships. I told grandma that I’d like to quote her but I didn’t want my lover to worry which number they were. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a fight based upon insecurity and a quote like that seemed destined to create distress.

I never imagined that one day I would sit here and wish that I had paid more attention to grandma. She was so very right. I have been in love more than once, more than twice. In fact you can say that grandma was right because the third time was more powerful than the first two combined. And it was only because I had been in love before that I realized so very clearly the superiority of the third.

Chances are that most of you have seen a movie or two that deals with this very topic. Two people fall madly in love and seem prepared to ride off into the sunset of a perfect life. However the dream is interrupted and somehow they are torn apart leaving broken hearts and the question of whether they’ll ever find their way back to each other.

People like happy endings. They like to see the couple figure overcome the obstacles in their path reuniting in triumphant harmony.

My story doesn’t have that happy ending. My story has all of the elements I listed above, except one. At the end there is no couple. There is only heartbreak and the bitterness of unfilled potential.