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

Men and Women

Living The Bachelor Life

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I am man, hear me roar. Watch as I burp and scratch and revert back to my bachelor life. The family is as they say….Gone!

Here I sit at the computer, unshaved and unwashed. There are a couple of dishes in the sink and newspapers spread across the table. Last night I stayed up well past the witching hour and thoroughly enjoyed the silence and the solitude of my man cave.

I woke up this morning sans alarm, wife and children. In other words I woke up as nature intended. For a moment I wondered if it was all a dream and then I remembered that it wasn’t. With a yawn, a stretch and a big smile I rolled out of the bed and strolled through the house.

The quiet, oh, the blessed quiet.

I paused and looked around and smiled. It won’t be long before I miss the chaos and the racket. It won’t be long before it is almost too quiet, but for now I am doing my happy dance around this joint.

Truth is that it is not particularly messy or cluttered. I don’t like that much, but I don’t have to be the role model so I don’t have to do it all immediately. I don’t have to do anything that I do not want to do.

For a while I was tempted to get in the car and go somewhere. Last night around midnight I played with thoughts of going to Vegas. A short while ago there was no one who could play, but now that life has happened and some of the boys are single possibilities exist.

So at a few minutes past 12 I called and asked if was up for a road trip. I had a full tank of gas and offered to drive. He laughed and told me that he wanted to, but had to be at a dinner meeting today.

I said no problem and he laughed again. He believed that I could get us there and back in time for the meeting, but said that he didn’t think he’d be rested enough for the meeting.

And that my friends is the difference between who we were twenty years ago and who we are now.

Of course I should stipulate that I considered the state of my personal economy and remembered that Obama and company haven’t offered to bail me out. But I’d be lying if I didn’t think about how time at the blackjack table could solve that. With a little luck and a short run I could provide my own bailout.

Maybe next time.

Instead I consoled myself by playing Viva Las Vegas while writing a brief and sending out 1,876,993 emails for work. And then for good measure I wrote three posts that I immediately deleted.

And now I sit here, staring at the computer screen, wondering whether I feel like cooking or barbecuing my dinner. It is summer in LA and in a short time the weather will be perfect for dining outdoors.

All I have to say is that some days it is good to be a man.

Alysa Stanton Becomes First Female Black Rabbi

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From ABC:

“Growing up in a black, Pentecostal family in Cleveland, Alysa Stanton never imagined the day when she would be preparing to be ordained as a rabbi. But that day will come June 6 for the single mother who will be ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, becoming the first African-American female rabbi in the world.

“Ten years ago, if someone said I was going to be a rabbi, I would have laughed,” Stanton, 45, told ABCnews.com. “Me, a spiritual leader?”

Soon-to-be rabbi Stanton and her daughter Shana, 14, whom she adopted when she was 14 months old, will move to Greenville, N.C., in August, where Stanton will take her spot behind the pulpit at Congregation Bayt Shalom, which is both conservative and reform.

Stanton, a reform Jew, said that her mother encouraged her to explore different religions as a young child and that, at the age of 9, she was already asking her priest to teach her about Kaballah, which focuses on the mystical aspect of Judaism.

Then, at age 10, she received her first Hebrew grammar book from her devout Christian uncle who made it a habit to attend Jewish ceremonies, as well as his own. By her early 20s, Stanton said she’d decided to convert.

“Most people convert because they’re marrying or dating someone who is Jewish or for another reason other than just picking that spiritual path,” Stanton said.

“I did so because it was the path for me,” she said. “Not only from a religious standpoint but from an ethical and social and communal standpoint, it was important to me.”

Let’s see what the J-blogosphere’s Gil Student had to say about this, also from the same article.

“But the Orthodox Jewish community, which has historically not permitted women to hold leadership roles in its congregations, is less accepting of Stanton’s upcoming ordination because of her sex.

“My general feeling, as a rabbi, is that there is a great deal of room for everyone to have spiritual fulfillment in Judaism but the public role of a rabbi is only for certain people and that excludes women,” Orthodox Rabbi Gil Student of New York City told ABCNews.com. “That’s based on tradition and enshrined in law.”

As for race, Student said that neither he nor the Orthodox Jewish community finds any problem with African-American Jews. “There is no such thing as skin color in Judaism, it doesn’t exist,” Student said. “

Why Women Are Angry

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Now here is is an article that is guaranteed to start numerous fights. If the author were close enough I’d ask her to iron my shirt, bring me a drink and change into something sexier and then I’d duck.

“I never have a moment that’s just mine. Someone always wants a piece of me. Yesterday, in the middle of a bikini wax, I had an urgent call from the office and had to orchestrate a crucial meeting on the other side of the world, biting my fists to stop yelping at the wrong moments.

Frequently, as I reach for a file from my bag in the midst of a presentation, a pair of baby pants or a lollipop falls out. It hardly helps my image as a cool, collected professional. I watch the smug glances of the men around the table and want to slap them.

Recently, the Children’s Society published a report lambasting modern women for being too selfish to be good mothers.

Are they kidding? I’d like to see the authors spend a week in my shoes. Most of my days are a near-precipice experience. I’m so close to the edge that I’m in a semi-permanent state of panic. I have a constant list of things I have to do running through my head like a stock market ticker-tape.

What must it be like to live without the tyranny of the list? To sink into a bath and not be mentally composing tomorrow’s agenda? What is it like to be a man and have nothing to think about but the task in hand?

No wonder the vast majority of our great scientists, thinkers and artists are men. Think how much room they must have in their heads without all the domestic clutter their wives are taking care of.

Am I angry? You haven’t heard anything yet.”

Valentine’s Day- A Day That Should Live In Infamy

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If for some reason you are unable to listen to the audiopost above let me give you a basic rundown on what it contains. It is a repeat of my call to arms for men to free ourselves from the bonds of servitude of forced romance. It is time to rise up and remove the shackles, to no longer be burdened with trying to serve a cruel master.

Valentine’s Day is a fake holiday whose sole design is to use pain and suffering to guilt people into spending money on foolish cards and foolish gifts.

I say enough is enough. It is long past time for us to push this sad day into the dustbin of history. Ban the day from our lexicon, rise up and be free. Romance should be spontaneous and not forced.

Frak this holiday. So say we all.

We Leave The Toilet Seat Up

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Before we begin the exciting topic of what position to leave the toilet seat in let me share some of what I have been listening to this evening.

God Only Knows– The Beach Boys
My World Is Empty Without You– The Supremes ( I prefer the original- no time to search)
Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major– Bach (Played by Yo Yo Ma)
Gimme Three Steps– Lynrd Skynrd
No Leaf Clover– Metallica

Ok, let’s move on to the incredibly interesting topic of what position to leave the toilet seat in, up or down. I have to give credit for the topic to the illustrious Therapydoc. If you tool on over there you can see that she and I engaged in a bit of back and forth about whether the toilet seat should be left up or down.

Having grown up with more sisters than you can shake a stick at (I tried that once. Bad idea, my father had none of it and, well let’s say that I only did it once.) I learned that women have this funny idea that the toilet seat must always be left down so that if they decide to use the powder room it will be ready for them.

I take a different position and I hope that my fellow men will join me in overthrowing the tyranny of the toilet seat. It is time to force these dames to do as we do and learn how to look at the seat before sitting down upon it. Somewhere my mother is beginning to grimace and squirm, she has this weird knack for sensing when I am going to cause trouble.

And yes I am well aware that suggesting that we don’t have to put the seat down is a recipe for a fight. But ladies I ask you if you would consider crossing the street without looking both ways. You would not. You don’t drive with your eyes closed and you usually take a moment to check yourself out in the mirror before leaving the house.

So I ask why you who are capable of so many things claim to be incapable of determining what position the toilet seat is in. It makes no sense.

We can take this from a different position too. Every now and then we men have to respond to a need that requires sitting upon the toilet. We haven’t any problem checking the position. I have no more interest in falling into the toilet than you do.

Ok, that is about as much energy as I am willing to lend to this topic.