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

The Shmata Queen Tales Or Tells

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Won’t be long before I am to pack my bags and get moving again because the Traveling Jack show can’t stay grounded forever.

Can’t say how long it will be before the Shmata Queen returns as a regular and we move from the Shmata Queen tales to tells because the woman has much to say.

We don’t agree on everything but enough to keep it interesting.

Hell if she was asked about what we can talk about and was honest she would tell you we can go for weeks.

Doesn’t happen much anymore because life has gotten in the way but there is no telling when it might start again and how long it will go.

Kids will be out and there will be fewer distractions and the burning questions will be placed in a position in which it will be obvious if they aren’t answered.

We’ll have to make some decisions then as do many others.

The best part of it all is that “then” is so undefined. Could be a week, a year, a decade or a lifetime.

Could be.


Traveling Jack

Going to head back to see my old man for the first time since his unveiling and it is weighing on me more than I like.

I think it is is because it is the first trip back that isn’t tied into going to visit while he was sick and we had the unknown of how long we had or because he was going into the hospice.

Beginning of a new chapter and I am torn between running towards it and staying away.

Won’t stay away because it is not in me. It is not how I was raised and it is not who I am.

But there is a piece of me that recognizes in a way it feels like he is dying again and I am in a new state of mourning.

The pain is visceral and I think it bothers me in part because it feels irrational. He died in 2018. I saw his body.

I took that time to say goodbye but here I am feeling a bit like it is happening again and this time I can’t look him in the eye and say anything.

This time I’ll sit at his grave and share the silence as we did so many times before knowing the only one to break it will be me.

I am mostly ok with it and not just because I have to be.

Kind of glad the kids won’t be with me because this time I just want to be his son and take that moment without looking out for them.

He won’t mind my saying that but if they were there he would expect other behavior and so would I.

This one is for me.

 

What’s A Little Chaos On A Saturday Morning

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Eventually the Shmata Queen will get back around to read this and I can tell her the 198 texts she sent me while writing this are why it is relatively short.

Not really complaining because the conversation and information is important.

We’re exchanging thoughts, ideas and information about the hostage crisis here which we both experienced though in slightly different ways.

Neither of us were physically there but we were on the livestream and had it not been for Covid there is no guarantee that we could have been or not been there when the terrorist showed up.

It is disconcerting and infuriating that this happened yet again and that we expect there to be another incident.

Certainly we hope that is not the case, but prudence and experience dictates that preparations need to be made for ourselves and the institutions we support, believe in and attend.

Put Anger Aside

I told the kids to remember in a crisis situation we need to put anger aside and be smart. We need to do our best to be logical, rational and deliberate in our actions.

Let emotion drive you during such things and bad stuff can happen. I also told them not to expect to be automatons or that I expect them to be such.

Irks me to no end, but I operate in reality as the world is and push to build the world we want to live in while recognizing the one we are actually in.

Be angry after. Use it to motivate you to take necessary actions, but prepare and try eliminate, reduce and avoid the problems up front as best you can.

It is a sad statement, but important.

Coding Issues-A Plague Of Blogging

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Been wrestling with coding issues on a variety of posts, most recently on one that received some nice comments.

Thing is, if you look at the link I put up you won’t see any of the comments. It was imported from an old blog of mine on Blogger and there are comments there that you won’t see here.

Actually that’s because I ran the post a second time here, so if you dug through the archives you would find it when it was originally posted 11 years ago and not the link I used to the 10-year edition.

That one had nice comments too, but they aren’t rendering now either and I am not sure why.

One of these days I have to figure that out because the comments sometimes provide context that is lost without them.

The thing is there are so many different issues here I haven’t got the time to deal with all at once so I take it on piecemeal and go from there.

That is the glory and shame of blogging for 18 years. There is an enormous amount of content and the detritus of theme changes, plugins and what have you.

Sometimes I think about ditching it all, but I always come back to the same places with that. There is some junk here, but there is also gold that I would miss.

A Placeholder For A Writer

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Consider this a personal note to come back and work on this piece, there is potential.

That is how this writing gig goes, you produce content, work, rework and do it all again. If you somehow catch fire you run like hell and hope it keeps up and continues.

So that is what this is about catching fire and rolling on through the deep.

So much good material and so much not so good, but so it goes. Keep plugging away and and find the magic.

If you are new here and looking through the archives keep digging. You have 18 years or so of material and some of it is pretty good, some less so.

But there are some gold nuggets. Keep digging.

Jack The Audioblogger

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I just stumbled onto one of my old Audioblogging accounts. I had forgotten about it.

Spent a few minutes checking out a few of them and smiled, reminded me how I got into that nonsense before everyone and their mother had a podcast.

Yeah, some of it is unpolished and primitive, but it was kind of fun. It was a novel experience at that time and I probably could have turned into something bigger had I thought about it.

Had I a little vision maybe it would have been huge or maybe I would have bored the hell out of people. Don’t know and am not going to worry about it.

Sometimes I forget just how long I have been messing around with this stuff. Hell, there is stuff from around 2004, though I am not sure it is still accessible.

But it would be fun, got a few where The Shmata Queen performed with me.

The S.Q.’s Walkabout

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It appears the lovely S.Q. has been on a walkabout for a while now and I haven’t decided if I wish to call, email, text or send a telegram.

Thought about it a bunch and have done some of those things in the past but I am waiting for something, not sure what.

Maybe a sign that clarifies circumstances, situations, possibilities and opportunities or maybe something else.

They say what is meant for you won’t go past you and I expect to learn the truth of that pretty darn soon.