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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

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Archives for May 2008

Graffiti- Good To See That He Has An Edumacation

May 16, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Blog Fodder- How Do You Come Up With Material

May 15, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

A friend from the real world recently accosted me about my blog and asked if I ever run out of material to blog about. I laughed and said that it never happens, I can always find something to write about. Finding material is never hard.

The hard part is taking the raw material and making something meaningful out of it. If you post as often I am wont to do you will find that it takes a significant amount of work to produce a decent post. In the early days I had less concern about quality and just slapped stuff up there. It is a habit that I find less endearing so I have made a point of trying to more carefully manage things.

One of the advantages to having a blog like this one is that there is no topic that I cannot cover. I can literally write about anything and I do. As the seventeen long time readers know there are certain themes that continually crop up and I certainly go through cycles in which I focus more on specific areas.

Lately I have been spending more time pumping out pieces of Fragments of Fiction. I’ll keep doing that until I am bored with it and I’ll focus on something else.

Inspiration for the blog comes from all sorts of places. I look at what happens in my life and spend some time chronicling it. I take all sorts of news stories and comment on them. Standard resources include Fark, The NY Times, CNN and various other sources of news and information.

Some of my favorite posts come from experiences I have with people. The most popular posts tend to be those that touch upon some common human experience.

I am also inclined to look at the wacky, kind of out there post. Here in my corner of cyberspace it is not unusual for me to clean out the dusty shelves inside my noggin. Sometimes I find some real treasures and sometimes I discover that I am full of more crap than I realized.

Speaking of things that float through my mind, I have been playing around with creating a post about a mohel. Ever wonder what they are thinking about. From time to time I have. Do they ever find themselves distracted or bored by what they are doing. Does this make them want to take a shortcut.

Do any of them promote themselves with a goofy slogan like “Have scalpel will travel,” or “Just a a little off the top.”

I wonder.

Later on I’ll come back and share more of what I wonder about.

Filed Under: Blogging

I Am Going Get A Pair of Wings

May 15, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

BEX, Switzerland – A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane Wednesday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps.

Yves Rossy‘s performance in front of the world press capped five years of training and many more years of dreaming.

“This flight was absolutely excellent,” the former fighter pilot and extreme sports enthusiast said after touching down on an airfield near the eastern shore of Lake Geneva.

Rossy, 48, had stepped out of the Swiss-built Pilatus Porter aircraft at 7,500 feet and unfolded the rigid eight-foot wings strapped to his back before jumping.

Passing from free fall to a gentle glide, Rossy then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles per hour, about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver. A plane that flew at some distance beside him measured his speed.

Rossy’s website is here.

Filed Under: People

Seal Tries Sex with Penguin

May 15, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Found this story on Live Science and couldn’t help but wonder if the seal was half blind.

“A seal has been caught on camera trying to have sex with a penguin.

This seems to be the first known example of a sexual escapade between a mammal and another kind of vertebrate such as a bird, reptile or fish, “although some mammals are known to have attempted sexual relief with inanimate — including dead things — objects,” said researcher Nico de Bruyn, a mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

One summer morning, scientists observing elephant seals on a beach on Marion Island near the Antarctic spotted a young male Antarctic fur seal subduing a king penguin.

“At first we thought it was hunting the penguin, but then it became clear that his intentions were rather more amorous,” de Bruyn recalled today via email.

The roughly 240-pound seal subdued the 30-pound adult penguin by lying on it. The hapless bird of unknown sex struggled, rapidly flapping its flippers and attempting to stand and flee, without luck.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin and thrusting its pelvis at the bird in vain attempts to insert its penis for 45 minutes. Natural, unsuccessful sexual escapades by this variety of seal with members of its own species may last as long as this penguin assault did, “but yes, it is quite a long time and thus unusual,” de Bruyn told LiveScience.”

Filed Under: animals

I Can’t Stop The Bleeding

May 15, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

The story sort of continues. I am pulling pieces from here. One day I’ll find a way to weave it all together, but for now…

I still believe in love, even though you don’t love me anymore. I still believe in the dream. I still believe that I can reach your heart. I know that I can touch you, hold you, fill up the empty places. All I need is the chance.

The day you left I sat apart and alone and I have lived my life like that ever since. It is my choice. It is my decision. I sit in the dark and stare off into nothingness wondering if the door will open and I’ll find you there.

It is a dream that I have often. Alone in the dark I stare and wonder what I did to deserve such pain. I beat myself up wondering why. It is easier to blame myself and to keep you on your pedestal.

After a time the empty place in my heart feels normal as does the numb spot where my soul once lay. Do you remember the shirt you left at my place? I didn’t wash it because it smelled like you. For a while I would bury my face in it, smell you and forget that you weren’t really here.

For a while it helped me pretend that I wasn’t just a shell of a person and that once I used to know how to smile. Sometimes I look at the pictures of who we were and I am taken back to that moment. The sad part is that whatever moment I think of is one in which we are smiling and laughing.

I know that we had moments in which we didn’t get along. I know that we fought, but somehow those moments are clouded and hard to remember. It is just foolishness to be like this. I tell myself that you weren’t that special and that you had lots of faults. I make lists of everything you did that pissed me off. I try to convince myself that you were ordinary, plain and unworthy of the praise I shower upon you.

I fail.

The water in the shower is icy cold. My skin pruned and wrinkled and my teeth are chattering. When I first got in the heat scalded my back, but I forced myself to endure it. Eventually I found myself curled up in a ball on the floor, unable to move. I can’t tell you how long I have been there.

Sleep is not an escape. My mind provides no refuge. It works overtime. Again and again I have dreams that leave me unsettled. You are in trouble. You need me. You cry out for me. I fight to reach you, but I am always too late. Whenever I find you there is nothing that I can do to save you. I can’t stop the bleeding.

The sun shines but I just can’t feel the heat. It doesn’t matter what the forecast says, my sky is cloudy and gray. I feel like I am covered in ash. A leper who is barely tolerated.

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

Rocket hits Ashkelon Shopping Mall

May 14, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Ynet reports:

“Several Palestinian terror groups claim sole responsibility for launching of medium-range Grad rocket against crowded shopping mall in ‘message’ to Israel as foreign dignitaries gather in Jerusalem, including US President Bush. Paramedics race to free wounded shoppers trapped under rubble while IDF investigates why alert sirens failed to sound.”

This calls for a serious response that is more than just a verbal condemnation. Look at what Hamas says:

Senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar spoke Wednesday at a Gaza Strip event marking the 60th anniversary of the Nakba – the anniversary of the 1948 events which led to the induction of the State of Israel – and promised his listeners that “the right of return is closer than ever.”

The events of the Gaza pullout and the Second Lebanon War, he added, proved that the Israeli military is not beyond defeat.

“The Palestinians and the Arabs have crushed the Jews’ assumption of supremacy… The Zionist legend of invincibility has been destroyed.

“Now more than ever I tell you – we will never recognize Israel… We will form the Palestinian state on all of Palestine’s territories and the sun of liberty will burn the Zionists. To them I say – you will lose. You will leave and we will keep hounding you. The blood of our slain sons will haunt you forever,” he said.”

Fine. Let him be the recipient of a visit from an Apache. It is time rain fire down upon Gaza. They’re not open to diplomacy. For right now Israel needs to pull back and say that we cannot make peace with these people, but we can re-establish deterrence.

Let them reap the just rewards of their actions. Right now they act with impunity. Israel must remove that fearlessness and remind them of what the consequences are for this behavior.

Filed Under: Israel

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