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 2013

The Bidet Is Not A Water Fountain

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BIDET * SPRAY * STOP

I like to think most people are kind-hearted souls who would never try to convince their friends that a bidet is a European Water Fountain and that it is customary to use it to both wash your hands and drink from it.

Did I mention I am grateful we didn’t have this sign hanging around the restroom during our trip to Europe because if we did I might not have convinced those drunk college students to foster their European sides by using the aforementioned bidet.

But karma is a funny beast and in the time before the Modern Age when we used to film the proof of those fellows proving they were more European than the Europeans was lost in the X-Ray machine at De gaulle Airport.

Yeah, that long wistful sigh you just heard was me thinking about how much fun I could have had if I could have uploaded those pictures to Facebook, talk about blackmail material.

They probably wouldn’t have appreciated it, but I bet they would have appreciated being able to ask a friendly European face to confirm that some friend of theirs was messing with their heads.

A Crappy Thing

Years later it is sometimes referred to as that crappy thing you pulled in Europe. I prefer to say that Crap Happens, but that is just me.

Hell, they are probably luckier it didn’t happen now because I could have turned the whole thing into a slide show or video about why people should use Cottonelle and not rely upon European Water Fountains.

Some of you are probably shaking your heads now trying to figure out how I could have convinced them to use European Water Fountains and wondering what could have pushed me to do such a thing.

Well I can neither confirm nor deny that such a thing ever happened or that I was ever given a reason to come up with a revenge prank of my own.

You Don’t Really Like Blogging

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Couldn't resist it!

7 Songs

  1. Sympathy For The Devil (Listening to GNR cover, like to mix it up sometimes.
  2. Gold Dust Woman- Fleetwood Mac
  3. Close My Eyes Forever- Lita Ford & Ozzy Osborne
  4. Pictures of You- The Cure
  5. All I Ask Of You- Phantom Of The Opera
  6. I’m A Man- The Spencer Davis Group
  7. Atomic Dog- George Clinton

Woke up around 4:30 or so, but didn’t actually leave the house until 7:30 so that I could spend an hour on the lovely Texas freeway known as 30.

Hit downtown Dallas, parked and took the elevator straight into the sky and had a great day at the office. Really, it was great, no sarcasm or snark in that last line.

What wasn’t great was the commute home or how freaking tired I was when I walked in at 6:15. Fell asleep on the couch and decided I would skip writing and go to bed and then I lost a couple of hours.

You Don’t Really Like Blogging

Is it just me or are there a metric ton of blogs out there being written by blogger who don’t like blogging. I could be wrong, hell it wouldn’t be the first or last time, but there doesn’t seem to be any joy in your writing.

Yeah, I said your writing but didn’t identify anyone because I am too tired to call some of you out, unless you are a Millenial because right now I am on a Millenial rampage.

I have had my fill of listening to a bunch of whiny talk about how life isn’t fair. Suck it up, it  is not.

Post by TheJackB.

Have I mentioned how cool it is to be able to embed Facebook posts or how I am going after whiny Millenials. Told one of my neighbors to take a double dose of STFU and be happy they have a full head of hair and a flat belly because sometimes you lose those things.

I don’t know if he is a blogger but if he was I would ask him if there is joy in his writing because so much feels flat and empty to me.

Am I One Of Those People?

Took a moment to ask myself if I am one of those people and thought about perception. You might read my words and instead of thinking I am a lovable curmudgeon you might think I am a salty son of a bitch.

Don’t know and only partially care. Got an email from someone who told me they don’t comment anymore because I have too many options. They ought to see the menu at Jerry or Brent’s Delis and then they’ll know what too many options really is.

I am writing these words because I love writing. There is joy in my fingertips as they dance across the keyboard. I like Peeling Back The Layers.

It is fun going through old posts to see what sort of gold nuggets lie in the darkness waiting to be rediscovered. Sometimes the joy is in the memory I get to revisit and sometimes there is joy in my words.

Phrases, Clips, and Drafts

Sometimes I want to be the guy on The Wall that screams “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat.”

Sometimes I like going through drafts and old posts because there are pieces of them that resonate with me now. Every post/essay I write professionally and personally is part of a giant puzzle that I am building inside my head.

When things work for me the pieces are interchangeable. You can pick, pull and choose from all that is out there and use them to improve whatever you are working on or at least that is the theory.

I could spend my time writing posts about how to monetize your blog. I could spend my time writing about my kids, politics and Judaism but I have already done all of those things.

And though I enjoy revisiting them I have found it far more enjoyable to engage in a cyberspace walkabout. I like just writing because there is joy in it.

Breaking Bad Commentary

Semi-Spoiler Alert- This last episode was intense and I loved it, but it was a rough ride. I am not a meth dealer, never have been and feel confident saying I never will be.

But when Walt screamed about all he has done for his family it resonated with me and when I was cursing the idiot drivers of Texas on the 50 mile ride home I thought about my kids and remembered I was doing it for my family too.

I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

Sometimes You Have To Let Things Go

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Sometimes you have to let things go is the kind of phrase I hate hearing because I am intimately acquainted with it, It is part of the joy and the curse of being passionate, opinionated and protective.

Word came from back home a few hours ago that the crazy neighbors were messing with my family and the fire in my belly went from 1 to 8 and I mulled over catching a plane home tonight.

Truth is that the event that triggered this thought wasn’t particularly egregious. But when you take a series of events even the trivial begins to carry some weight and as a father, brother and son it made me think about the flight because I want to be around for those just in case moments.

I am not the biggest, baddest, toughest or strongest SOB you’ll run into but I am one of the most tenacious and once you get my attention you gain the gift my trying to decide whether sticking your head in a vise would be more effective than putting a gun in your mouth.

Those Are Words Of a Writer

I don’t own a gun or a vise so you can look at that last sentence as being a writer’s way of adding color to a post. But it would be wrong for me to say that when you mess with my family my first inclination is to provide you with a dozen roses and my apologies for our upsetting your world.

When you mess with my family I see the list of infractions you are responsible for and remember any and every moment I felt like I didn’t come through for them.

There really aren’t many of those, but I don’t know a parent who doesn’t feel like there is something they fell short on. I don’t know a single one who doesn’t wish they could get a real life version of an instant replay.

Things happen and rarely are they of huge import. Rarely are they life altering events that shatter your world and turn it upside down so sometimes you really are better off letting things go.

But when you are far away things take on a different tinge and even if you trust all those that are back there completely it is hard not to want to be there because you think you should be the one telling the crazy neighbor they can either remove the barbed stick they shoved up their ass or expect to hear from the police.

Be Like Bluto

When things get a little tense I like to work out, to write, to listen to music and use humor to vent. My kids have heard me talk about all of these things but they aren’t old enough to have watched one of my favorite speeches. This one always makes me feel better.

Nor are they ready for the Caddyshack moment either:

Carl Spackler: So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas.

Angie D’Annunzio: A looper?

Carl Spackler: A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I’m a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter, the Lama – long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.

Actually, that is not completely true. I have said Gunga galunga to them a time or two. They probably think it is just me messing around but one day we’ll have the big reveal.

One day they’ll get to see there is often a method to my madness and a reason for why I tell them sometimes you have to let things go.

We Need To Move It Now- #LetsTalkBums

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Stop pushing me, 23 - I'm trying to throw a pass!

She was young, beautiful and had captured my heart at birth but it didn’t mean that she wasn’t capable of making me crazy.

My baby girl and I were spending some daddy/daughter time together at the mall when I felt a twinge and a rumble in my stomach and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before nature would ask insist I attend a meeting inside the closest facility.

We had just arrived at the play area and she was an almost five-year-old on a mission to suck the marrow out of life right there. She had told me she was going to climb on everything and run, jump and play because it is what she loves to do.

Things were beginning to look grim. It was the middle of the day and I was the only father there and the moms weren’t entirely certain what to make of me.

I looked around to see if I knew any other parents because I knew that rumble meant it wouldn’t be long before the situation would get um…ugly. Damn, I didn’t know anyone so there would be no asking for help.

That burrito had tasted great going down but I just knew that it is departure was going to be nightmarish and that it was going to create the sort of clean up where Cottonelle would have been a welcome help.

But the malls aren’t equipped that way and I didn’t see any friendly Brits wandering around talking to people about it.

Since I couldn’t see a clever way of asking the moms for assistance I knew I had to take action so I walked over to my daughter and told her it was time to leave.

She told me she wasn’t ready and that she hadn’t had enough time to play. I said I was sorry and explained we had to get going and instantly saw this was not going to go well. Angry females are not always easy to deal with regardless of their age, but the under five set can be particularly difficult.

Rational thought isn’t a big part of their daily routine. I told her I had to go to the bathroom and she said go.

I said I couldn’t leave her alone and she said she would be fine. She told me she wanted five minutes but I knew that could mean hours to her so I gave her the stern dad look and said it wasn’t up for negotiation.

And then I remembered how I ignored her nap time because I figured it would be a treat for her to play longer and that she would sleep in the car anyway. They say people plan and G-d laughs and man I am certain he was laughing then.

My decision to let her slip into overtired land because she would sleep in the car had just smacked me in the ass. It wouldn’t be as physically irritating as what was coming but getting her out of the mall on a timely basis was about to become an issue.

So I picked her up, grabbed her shoes and started speed walking towards the other side of the mall where we would have to take the escalator up three flights, walk across the parking lot, get strapped in and then drive 25 minutes to the local relief center, our home.

Assuming she didn’t find a way to slow me down, the parking lot wasn’t jammed and there wasn’t any traffic I figured it would be ok.

But we live during a time when adults can’t carry a screaming child through the mall without people paying lots of attention. Under normal circumstances I am grateful and appreciative for the attention.

The “it takes a village” to raise a child bit is good and it is nice to see other parents try to help protect our children by making sure the man carrying the screaming child is indeed their father.

But when you are in a rush to answer the call of nature it is less appreciated and people don’t respond well when you tell them to get out of the way or you will unleash the sort of biological attack upon them that will make skunks hide in shame.

And it was during those moments that I thanked G-d for having a deep voice and a glare that makes men move out of my way because those moms made way so that I could make like Moses moving through the Red Sea.

Somewhere in the midst of all the chaos my daughter started singing, ‘Move It, Move it’ the song from Madagascar and we managed to get to the car and somehow got home just in time.

Now if only I would have had those Cottonelle wipes waiting for me at home it really would have been a happy ending from top to my bottom.

(Disclosure: I was not paid a million bucks for this post but I was compensated by Cottonelle.)

Have We Become Enslaved By Social Media?

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Yom Kippur begins in less than 24 hours. “Normally” I write a post about how I feel unsettled and share thoughts around that but that’s not really where I am going with this one.

That is not to say I have no feelings regarding the day or that I am not feeling unsettled because I am and I do. But this time the unsettled feeling has me focusing on social media because tonight I censored myself on social media.

Tonight I didn’t make some changes to my Facebook page that I wanted to and would have because I was concerned about the potential impact those things could have and that bothers me.

The Lines Are Blurring

A dear friend of mine posted a picture of us from our fraternity days. We’re twenty-one and clearly drunk. I remember the night and I remember the party which is saying quite a bit because I drank enough for all of you who are reading this now.

Even though the picture is twenty-three years old I made a point to see that it wasn’t connected to me because I didn’t want it to come up in searches by prospective employers and that irritates me.

It irritates me because the guy in that picture doesn’t exist in anything but memory. There are a lot of stories about that 21 year-old and a lot of stories about the boy that once was and that man followed but because of social media I have become cautious about what could happen if some things came out.

Maybe it is paranoia. Maybe I am being silly but I have listened to conversations about hiring decisions and read more than a few articles in which social media profiles come into play and I am concerned because the lines are blurring.

Judgment Calls

Whenever we make hiring decisions we make judgment calls about whether the prospective employee will fill the needs of the position. We think about whether they’ll fit in and how they can help the company meet its objectives.

I understand why employers are trying to paint as complete a picture of candidates as they can but I am not convinced that Facebook profiles provide the kind of information that is truly valuable.

Some of them are sanitized and sterile and it is impossible to gather any sort of detail at all and some of them are populated by photos that don’t provide dates or any sort of indicators that you can use to determine when they were taken.

But I wanted that picture buried because I didn’t want someone to stumble upon it and think it represents me today. I don’t want to be concerned about whether they would look at the boyish face and wonder if how it could be tied into all the experience on my resume.

Snap Decisions

We live during a time of instant gratification and snap decisions. Do something foolish online and there is an excellent chance someone will jump on it.

Make a mistake and there is an excellent chance someone will try to make you pay for it because we are not allowed to offend anyone any more.

I can provide more than a few examples, but one jumps out at me now. A man I once worked with me was in a minor automobile accident.

No one was hurt and the damage to his car was minimal but he insisted on suing the other driver because he wanted to “make some easy money and their insurance company will pay.”

It never occurred to him how his actions could impact others because he just saw a big company that could “afford to pay him to go away.”

Electronic Bubbles

And that my friends is what occupying my mind after midnight on this Thursday night. As I wander through cyberspace safely ensconced in my electronic bubble I wonder sort of snap judgments I am making about people and what is being made about me.

It is one of those moments where I think about how nice it would be to have enough cash to just not care what others think because I worked because I wanted to and not because I have to.

But that is not the case so I think about these things and wonder if my concern is valid or not.

Tell Your Mom To Shut Up Too

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When Opportunity knocks I’ll see it.

Editor’s Note: Technically this ran last year but I’m feeling a bit ranty because I listened to some really ignorant people talk to their children about things they don’t understand.

I wish that some of you would just shut up. I am not kidding because I really do wish you would just stop blogging. No, I am not being nice and yes I know what your mother said about not speaking if you don’t have anything nice to say.

You can tell mom to just shut up too. Do me a favor tell her twice and say that Jack sends his love. Tell her that I use two spaces after periods because I don’t give a fuck if some typographers get upset about it.

They mean well but I have too many other things that are chafing my hide. I am too busy trying to figure out why our public school system is broken and wondering if I can afford to go see the dentist.

I have health insurance but I don’t have dental insurance. I gave it up so that I could pay for private school for my kids. I couldn’t afford to pay for everyone in the family anyway but I make sure that the kids see the dentist for their regular teeth cleaning.

When mom asks you why I am being rude tell her that I am not really being rude. Tell her that it is rude not to be angry about the homeless guys who are sleeping on the street because they have no other place to go. Tell her that people who are unemployed aren’t all lazy and that lots of them want jobs.

Tell her to be thankful that she has a roof over her head and food on the table. Let her know that there are educated people on the street because shit happens. Let her know that some of them got hit by medical bills that overwhelmed them and that when their companies laid them off they didn’t get severance and that no one wants to hire middle management because they have too much experience.

Let her know that it is time to stop blaming god for why things are good or bad. Tell her that we waste copious amounts of money fighting to stop gay marriage because we need to fight the moral decline here and that the decline of infrastructure isn’t important.

We don’t need to retrofit bridges, repair broken water mains or worry about keeping public libraries open. Tell mom that her dear friend Jack can’t be pigeonholed as a Republican or a Democrat because he has learned to hate both parties.

That is because it has become more important to make the other side look bad than to fix common problems. Tell mom that I will continue to tell people to shut up because they haven’t bothered to learn enough about the issues to explain why supporting or fighting them are important.

Tell mom that I can’t be bothered to listen to another tale about how Bush stole the election or how Obama isn’t really a citizen. Tell her that I can’t listen to Democrats blame every bad thing on Republicans and that I can take listening to Republicans blame the Democrats either.

Just Shut up

Tell mom that in the blogosphere I am sick and tired of blogs where the authors consistently take the easy road because their readers don’t hold them accountable. Not every post is great. Not everyone is a winner. Some posts suck. Sometimes we fall down and we fail.

I say ‘we’ because I include myself in that group. And when mom asks if I have an ego and think I am better than some bloggers you can tell her that I do and I am. Tell her that I don’t claim to have all the answers but that I am trying.

Let her know that the primary reason I am so damn angry is because I don’t see changes. I don’t hear coherent plans for improving things for all of us. Tell her that when I suggest that it is better to have an educated and healthy populace it doesn’t make me a socialist and that if you are going to call me names you need to understand what you are saying and why.

And then tell mom that this isn’t a rah rah speech. It is not me trying to be inspirational. It is just me venting because sometimes people really suck.