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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 January 2011

Writing Tools

January 25, 2011 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

A reader asks me how I am able to produce so many posts and if I ever suffer from writer’s block.  The answer is that I rarely experience writer’s block. If anything I may find myself to be unhappy with the quality of the writing, but coming up with material is easy. One of the ways that I do that is by using quotes and or music as prompts/inspiration.

Music of course offers the benefit of providing the actual sound. beat and rhythm as well as lyrics. Here are some of the many quotes that I like to use for my writing. (Editor’s Note: This post will be updated. Check back soon)

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion –
I have shudder’d at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr’d for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you.
~ by John Keats ~

I’d like to run away
From you,
But if you didn’t come
And find me …
I would die.
~ by Shirley Bassey ~

You will never know true happiness
until you have truly loved,
and you will never understand
what pain really is
until you have lost it.
~ by Anonymous ~

The most precious possession that ever comes
To a man in this world
Is a woman’s heart.
~ by Josiah G. Holland ~

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~ by Mark Twain ~

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
~ by Ray Bradbury ~

Never, never, never, never give up.
~ by Winston Churchill ~

Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.
~ by Vince Lombardi ~

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Shakespeare- Sonnet 18

If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
(As You Like It, 2.4.33-5)

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(5.5.30), Macbeth

“A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.”

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

“Give all to love; obey thy heart.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Teddy Roosevelt

“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
General William Tecumseh Sherman

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Teddy Roosevelt “Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson

Filed Under: Writing

Visions of Paradise

January 24, 2011 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Something happened and I feel compelled to reach out. It is a message that I keep sending out because I know things. I see my own visions of the future. I hear that train a-coming down the tracks and I feel that I have to go the distance. There are things and reasons that send me on this road. At the end of the day I find myself scrambling to figure out what will bring peace of mind.

I had it once. I had confidence that all that I did was part of a giant puzzle that I was assembling and then I lost some of the pieces. Can’t tell you exactly what happened or how they ended up elsewhere, I just know that they did. Perhaps what I see before me now is that this was all part of a much larger puzzle and that I am still working on assembling it.

It reminds me of a story of a king who had the most beautiful diamond in the world. Every day he would take it out and admire it. And then one day, the unthinkable happened and it was damaged. How it happened doesn’t matter, what matters is that the perfect diamond had a long scratch in it. So the king sent his fastest runners out to search for someone who could repair it.

They looked far and wide and just when it seemed like no one could be found a man showed up at the castle gates and proclaimed that he would fix it. The king gave him the diamond with the caveat that failure was death but the man didn’t care. He simply smiled, placed the diamond in a bag and walked away.

More than a month went by before he returned with the diamond. The king asked to see it and quickly snatched it out of the man’s hands. As he held it up to inspect it he noticed that the long crack was still there. He roared in anger and told the guards to take the man away. Just before he was dragged off the man asked the king to look again a the diamond.

So he did and he noticed that the man had carved a rose into the diamond and that the long crack had been turned into the stem of the rose.

The point is that sometimes it just takes a little creativity to turn a problem into something beautiful. Perspective can be a wonderful thing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDSrHZwzngA

“Don’t tell me when
Something is beautiful
And don’t tell me how to
Talk to my friends
Just tell me the names of
The stars in the sky
What’s your favourite song
Tell me the names of the
Lovers you had
Before I came along
Don’t put your arms around me
And don’t hold me tight
‘Cause I could get used to
Your vision of paradise

And don’t ask me where
All of the pain goes
‘Cause you make me feel
That I don’t know myself
You say that you want me forever
And I say that love is no crime
So tell me the names of the children
We’ll have at the end of the line

So don’t put your arms around me
And don’t hold me tight
‘Cause I could get used to
Your vision of paradise
And don’t let me near the garden
Of earthly delights
‘Cause I could get used to
Your vision of paradise
Of paradise
Of paradise

Just use your heart not your head
While I fall apart in my bed
I find myself aching for you
I feel myself breaking in two

So don’t tell me when I should
Come on home
There might be a time you don’t
Want me around
Don’t build your world around me
And don’t hold me tight
‘Cause I could get used to
Your vision of paradise”

Filed Under: Life, Uncategorized

The Best Daddy Blogger Ever

January 24, 2011 by Jack Steiner 22 Comments

The number 1

My friend Keith of Almighty Dad has issued a call to all of the Daddy Bloggers.  He is working on a post in which he is going to rank all of the dad blogs so that he can come up with the top dad blogger. It is a great gimmick and something that I am sure will generate quite a bit of traffic for him. People like awards and they like notoriety so these types of posts are an easy way to garner attention.

Now before people go off half cocked about this or suggest that I am trying to wreak havoc let me clarify a few things. I think that Keith is one of the most genuine bloggers I have ever encountered. He works hard and he is authentic. Those are qualities that I don’t see in every blogger. Those are qualities that I wish I did see in more bloggers.

He has real content. He doesn’t fill his blog with endless giveaways and contests. He and I don’t see eye to eye on many things. There are more than a few posts where we have been diametrically opposed or close to it, but that never hampers our friendship. I won’t lie and say that we are anything but online friends because that is all we are. Maybe it could be more, but I don’t get paid for speculation. I just know that I appreciate his being a straight shooter and mature enough not to take disagreement personally. So I wish him much success with this.

I don’t expect to be highly ranked on his list. It is not because I just moved from Blogger to WordPress, although my stats have taken a hit. Nor is it because this isn’t a post where I try to suck up to him. Besides, that wouldn’t matter. I say this because from a honest evaluation of my blog versus others I don’t have the same numbers. I don’t have the same traffic levels, I don’t have a huge Facebook fan club or enormous Twitter numbers. Nor do I get the number of comments that some others do.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t see myself as being devoid of social media influence. I have quite a bit. I know an awful lot about how this all works and there is a lot that I could do to build things more quickly around here. I am not ignoring the value of Self Promotion or other challenges that come with blogging. There is a reason why I write about The Problems with Blogging. I like this medium. I am not blowing smoke when I say that you can Be A Better Parent Through Blogging.

There is not a day that goes by where I don’t think about ways to improve my blog. I want to do a better job of promoting my best content. My About page is constantly evolving so that it contains links to some of those posts that people love. I have a growing list of places that I guest blog for. I can also say that blogging has led to a number of paid writing gigs. I use Sponsored Tweets to earn money on Twitter.

But I do a lot of unconventional things here. I am prolific and have been known to go on posting tears producing anywhere from 3-8 posts a day. Some experts claim that people don’t have the time, inclination or patience to read more than a short post of around 500 words. I exceed that consistently. I don’t stick to just one topic. You’ll find a lot about parenting here or me talking about a favorite toy. You’ll find fiction and all sorts of other stuff floating around here.

So I suppose that some of the experts will say that I am sabotaging my efforts. They’ll be able to give you a list of things that I am not doing as effectively as I could be and that may be true. But I have no intention of changing my style, at least not without significant financial compensation and even then it is questionable. The loyal readership comes here because they identify and or enjoy this place. They know that I am particular kind of crazy. Not everyone will like or appreciate me and that is fine.

TheJackB is my online home. It is a cafe and a bar. It is a therapist’s office, an orchestra pit, a symphony and a garage. It is a zoo and a theater. It is a million different things and none. And as I repeat often, it is the platform that I am using to promote myself and my services. It is a virtual sandbox that just might serve as the training grounds for the project/job/story that makes me enormously wealthy or at least comfortable.

Whatever it is, it makes me happy and that is something that is invaluable. Where I come from that is enough to make me The Best Daddy Blogger Ever and that is pretty cool.  Stick around for a while because the fun is just getting started.

Filed Under: Blogging

A Musical Interlude

January 23, 2011 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

Somebody’s Crying– Chris Isaak
Have You Ever Seen The Rain– Creedence Clearwater Revival
Pictures of You– The Cure
Same Old Lang Syne-Dan Fogelberg
Layla-Derek & The Dominos
Can’t Get It Out of My Head-Electric Light Orchestra
Summertime-Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
The Magnificent Seven (Theme)-Elmer Bernstein
Burn Down The Mission– Elton John
A Little Less Conversation (JXL Radio Edit Remix)-Elvis Vs JXL
L’estasi dell’oro (The Ecstasy of Gold)-Ennio Morricone
How You Like Me Now (Single Edit)– The Heavy
Conviction Of The Heart– Kenny Loggins
Into The Ocean– Blue October
The Breaking of the Fellowship-Lord Of The Rings Soundtrack

Filed Under: Music

Sunday Night Reading

January 23, 2011 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

If you are not watching the Jets game and are in need of some reading material take a look at these recent posts:

  • Stuck In A Moment
  • The Dilemma
  • The Birthday Party
  • Best Of The Jewish/Israeli Blogosphere #301
  • TheJackB Broadcast System
  • It Was My Favorite Toy
  • A Woman Hit A Man

And for those who are curious, two weeks into the life of the new blog these are the most popular posts:

  • Whiny Bloggers Quit Because It Was Work
  • Be A Better Parent Through Blogging
  • Building a Better Blog- Be Authentic

Still working on a way to more effectively promote my best content. And in the category of shameless promotion, please become a fan of the blog. Click on the FB like button, follow it on Networked Blogs and tell your friends. You won’t gain any special powers from doing so. There are no 8×10 glossies to hand out or decoder rings, but you will make me smile and that is something. Really, help an old man smile. 😉

Stay tuned kids, the posts come fast and furious. Back later tonight.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Stuck In A Moment

January 23, 2011 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

Someone once told Johnny that all great love stories are filled with tragedy and triumph. They said that you cannot truly appreciate those you love most unless you have loved and lost. They told him that every relationship is filled with ups and downs and that he should listen to his heart because it would never sell him out. For a brief moment Johnny considered punching the man in the mouth. He pictured the man falling down and then slowly picking himself up off of the floor, one hand wiping the blood from his lip.

Johnny would look down at him and offer some sort of pithy excuse like, “I took your advice and followed my heart. Who knew it was so angry.” The thought made him smile. He could almost picture this leading to some crazy line of t-shirts which would also contain a mixture of pithy and sarcastic statements. These shirts would sweep across the nation more powerful than the Pet Rock craze and far more useful than stupid rubber band things for kids. More interesting than Cabbage Patch dolls and far more profitable they would make Johnny exceptionally rich.

Later on he would be courted by talk show hosts and asked to explain how he came up with the idea. “Well Regis, it came to me one day when I was sitting around trying to figure out what the hell to do about a woman.” Regis would laugh and Kelly would sputter at his retort. Later on Letterman, Conan and Jimmy Kimmel would all place their own spin on things. Maybe there would be a time or two hosting Saturday Night Live and perhaps an appearance on the new Oprah network. Johnny snorted at the thought.  He was angry with the fairer sex for being unfair so perhaps an appearance on such a show with Oprah would be bad.

Moments later reality slapped him in the face in the form of horns honking. He had gotten lost in his thoughts while stuck at a stoplight and the drivers behind him were anxious to proceed through the intersection. As he stepped on the gas pedal several made a point of coming along side of his car so that they could offer the universal salute of excellence in driving. The thing is, that such a salute is never meant to be friendly so Johnny opened his window and shouted out at the cars. It was kind of silly as they probably couldn’t hear him and in all probability all he had done was offend the people on the street corner.

It occurred to him that he could focus on inventing something more useful than the t-shirts. Perhaps he should focus on developing some sort of James Bond like device for the car.  You know, like some kind of arm that could be extended from the car. It would have a boxing glove attached to the end so that you could punch a driver ‘upside their head’ for driving like a jerk. That thought made him laugh. It was absolutely ridiculous, but he loved ridiculous so he thought about it for a moment longer. One of the challenges of this device would be finding an open window. If the driver of the other car wasn’t in a convertible or enjoying some fresh air you would have to break the window so that it could strike the driver.

Johnny shook his head and asked himself why he was trying to minimize the damage caused by punching a driver in the head. After all, it wasn’t really less dangerous to hit the driver through an open window than to break the window. “Fuck it,” he thought, “give me the damn James Bond Machine guns if I am going to have to go to jail I might as well earn it.”

It all came back to that damn woman, the same damn woman he had been in love with his entire life. Ok, maybe he hadn’t known her quite that long but it felt like it and he knew that she felt that way too. Damn if life didn’t sometimes resemble some kind of twisted version of Abbott and Costello. Stuck in a traffic he had plenty of time to replay the moments and to think about what had happened and what hadn’t. That damn woman had pushed him to marry her. She had poked, prodded, pushed and pulled and he hadn’t done it.

Eventually he had come around and said yes, told her that he couldn’t imagine life without her and what had happened. She had left. Told him that they had missed their window. Walked away and pretended not to look back. There were moments when Johnny figured that his penance for the sins of a past life was to have gotten a taste of something amazing only to have it taken away. Now he knew what could be and knew that he couldn’t have it. It was both tragic and cruel.

At other times he was convinced that they were stuck in a moment. Convinced that this detour through time and space wasn’t a life sentence. It was just a small blip in time and that they would find their way back to each other. In fact more often than not he felt her thinking about him and them. More often than not he felt like the universe was sending him messages that he should focus on himself and that when the time was right they would find their way.

It irritated him to no end to live life based upon fate and signs. It was too easy to say that you could always find an interpretation that favored the outcome you wanted. Yet at the same time the signs were increasing in frequency. There were constant reminders of her in front of him. Consequently he started to focus on things about her that he didn’t like. He thought about the pain and the hurt and tried to build a fire. It is always easy to say goodbye when you are angry. He had busted her on that more times than he could count. She was famous for starting fights for that very reason.

But this time was different. This moment was different. Everything about this was different. He was stuck in a moment because he was stuck in the moment. They never stopped loving each other. They never officially said goodbye or agreed that it was over. They just kind of faded out for a time. So to paraphrase the old line, for better or for worse he felt like there was a lot of life left.

And for better or for worse his heart kept telling him that she was waiting for him to come after her. She was waiting for him to get his act together and come find her. She wasn’t going to volunteer her feelings. She wasn’t going to admit that she missed him because this time around she was playing for all the marbles. She wouldn’t give him an out. He either came ready for forever or he didn’t come at all.

Maybe this was craziness he was feeling. Maybe it was nonsense. He really wasn’t sure. What he was certain of was that he was stuck in a moment that he couldn’t get out of and that until he solved the riddle of this relationship he would remain in it.

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

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