Facing my fear and fearing my face

I'm scared of a lot, and not even always in groups. Stuff scares me, but what really makes me soil everyone's underwear is the not stuff, and especially the not yet stuff. I live in fear of the hypothetical, afraid of who knows what will be. I'm constantly imagining catastrophes by the score then worrying if I'll have time for them all. Today's irrational fleeting moment of terror? Shaving.

You'd think that I would have some sort of normal concern about missing a spot and being laughed at by everyone, or about slicing my own throat and things going south from there. But no. There I was, besodden with Barbasol working my way back to cute, babe and shaving up a lather. I got towards the end and my ever lurking OCD insisted on a particular and symmetrical pattern of shaving. I acquiesced figuring nothing could go wrong. Cheeks, throat, ears, chin and then finally, approach the mustache in a balanced fashion, repeating left and right until my efforts meet smack dab in the middle of the philtrum.

Now when one shaves using the technology I have near my disposal, one must occasionally rinse the razor so the sharpest cutty-thing won't be dulled by layers of whipped cream and talk of insurance. There is also a tendency to glimpse up and evaluate progress, checking for those possibly missed spots which until now didn't faze me. I looked up and saw myself shaven except for a wonderful gray Hitler-esque mustache.

And that's when the worrying started.

What if, I considered, my razor were to stop working now and I was left with a Hitler mustache? I suspect that that would be frowned upon in a variety of establishments. But with no razor, I would have to go out to the store to buy another. People would see me in my not seen in a while whisker style.  Or what if I were to suffer a surprise qualifying medical event and was suddenly indisposed position of needing help? The medical providers would see me as a man with a Hitler mustache and they might draw the wrong conclusion regarding my personal opinion of Hitler (Hint: not a fan). And what if, what if, what if I died right there in that space, in that moment. I keeled over or under, around and through and ended up ended right there on the floor? How would the police report describe me? "Overweight Hitler enthusiast"? Ain't nobody have any time for that. Not now and not in the future.

All these thoughts possess me for the 6 seconds it takes for me to rinse the razor and complete shaving. But that 6 seconds, every time I shave, well, that there's who I truly, truly am.

the radius of convenience

OK. As part of my ongoing series of investigations into my own head I have decided to add in visual aids to put my feelings into pictures.

Today's topic is revisitng my feelings about travel. This time, with pix!

When I look at the world, or at least, parts of it, I start by creating a circle

There are things I need -- a place to pray, a place to eat or buy food, maybe a Judaica store. I look for places that are surrounded by the things that make my practice of my identity easy.

Then we have the world which is also, strangely enough, expressed by a circle

Jewish museums, Jewish friends, Jewish history -- I have no interest in most things, but I do like to visit people I know and see things that matter to me.

These circles overlap pretty completely when assessing my life in Teaneck, Bergen County and the NYC tri-state area. When I consider traveling, I use the same metric to decide whether a trip would be a reasonable decision to make. I find that in most places in the world, those circles barely overlap. The few things I want to see are not necessarily anywhere near a community where I can comfortably practice my religion.

In most of Israel, these circles are effectively identical. Why would I ever go somewhere where I would have to compromise either of the priorities that those circles represent? 

A giant ask

Because I have some time off from school and have been hanging around with family, my thoughts have been wonderfully bizarre. Today, I would like to address the elephant-sized mass in the room, elephantiasis.

As is well know, elephantiasis is a condition in which a human's pieces, and sometimes bits, swell to the side of an elephant and they insist on calling their teeth "tusks."

The classic case impacts a man's private areas, and is best represented by Da Vinci's "Vitruvian man with elephantiasis."

[that was my image -- this one was made by ChatGPT, while Gemini refused to cooperate

]

First, a question -- 

Would you say that this guy has humantiasis? How about this guy?

or even

The famous guy who had this condition was known as the Elephant Man. This was a stolen title, as that was already taken by Babar.

and this unretouched actual real life I mean it photo of Babar

And then there's this guy who clearly has elephantiasis of the heart

So please, won't you donate something to someone so that we don't have to worry about turning into elephants, part by part, and they won't have to worry about turning into people.

Bless.

Why Anti-Semitism annoys me

Weird that I feel it necessary to explain why I don't like the world's oldest obsession.

But anyway, I'd like to address a couple or few eternal stereotypes of Jews. I'm sure others have done this already and, heck, I'm not 100% sure I HAVEN'T but here we go (these are the ones that popped into my head as I wrote this):

1. Jews control the __________ industry.

fill in the blank -- banking, movies, political, educational etc.

This is why this claim is dangerous: it might as well be true. I haven't done the statistic-generating fieldwork and research to confirm it, but let's say that over 75% (I chose at random) of the businesses, entities, boards related to industry X is headed by/run by/owned by someone who, based on his maternal parentage was Jewish at birth, according to all sects of Judaism. So what? If we are picking a single demographic element, then pick others. How many are married? How many dye their hair? How many are lefties? How many are in some religion or another, or a political party?

Why is there an assumption that people who share a designation in the "religion" column share anything else? Why is there a baseline assumption that leadership immediately and exclusively provides to other members of our tribe certain advantages, or work together to control the minds of the rest of the world?

First of all, Jews never agree on things. The entire idea of a shadow group working to control things is laughable if you have ever been to a shul meeting. Then the idea of "Jew" is problematic. Many might not accept certain of your examples as Jewish. Doesn't that skew your results?

And of course, one would have to assume that being Jewish has an opinion and impact on your business decisions without any specific knowledge. This invents the conspiracy of Jewish collusion because all would be driven by precisely the same interpretation of Jewish teachings to agree on how to incorporate Jewish ideas in the mass consciousness.

Um, no.

Look at a sample: Mr. M (Jewish) controls Company M which is part of the ??? industry. He doesn't hire me (also Jewish) because I won't make him enough money. He is driven by an interest in making more money. Is there anything wrong about that in the U.S.?

2. Jews are good at ____________.

Don't start with me on this one. I'm no good at science and even less so at math. I don't know law, I'm not a doctor or in finance. I'm not even in real estate. Some Jews are good at. Same as "some Episcopalians." Same with "Jews are smart" (as supported by the Nobel prize lists). None of this is directly causally related so it does nothing but encourage people to think of the Jewish attitude as a superiority complex.

3. Jews are cheap.

Do you realize how dumb this sounds? Are you starting with the premise that spending money unwisely is to be admired? Do you speak with the privilege of always have been rich? This accusation only makes sense if it stems from a personal experience in which a Jew was stingy WITH HIM. So the behavior of one Jewish person became a collective trait through a process I like to call "laziness." Are there Jews who are thrifty? Sure. Are there some who spend more than they have? Yup. These are functions of being human and not robots. None of it comes from the religion.

Over time, Jews have had to be very careful about money because they never knew when they would be kicked out, taxed, rampaged or accused of treachery, locked in a tower and set on fire. Being limited in job choice also made earning a living tough. So people without a lot learned to be very careful with what they have. 

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Side note -- why do people feel comfortable assuming they know about "Judaism" because they read something somewhere? Are people that forward and arrogant when it comes to other ways of life? People never want to ask questions, and even less often want to listen to answers. But they want to speak with authority and tell me that when I object on the grounds that I live the life and she is wrong, I'm told I'm a liar.

New TV Show Idea!

Title: The Wandering Jew (negotiable -- studio wants "Black Hat"  or "Rabbi Bookman, Jewish Investigator")

The scene is somewhere in Mid-Europe in the 17th or so century. The time is difficult for Jews but one Jewish sage, who travels from town to town to hear questions and kill chickens, works tirelessly to protect his people, AND THE LAW.

Meet Rabbi Moses Jewowitzbergstein (check with legal; they'll know), known as Rabbi Magic. He goes to where there's trouble and sticks the long nose of Jewish law in to it. (guys -- is that offensive? Go ask 100 random teenagers, but if they don't get it, don't explain it; that's another vote for "not offensive") He works to defend the innocent and expose the guilty, regardless of race, creed, or ability to kill you if you don't help. And probably if you do, also. Following the 46 minute story arc model we get towards the end with the a-ha/reveal moment. The hook is that it is sourced in actual Jewish law and other canonical texts! He quotes the talmud when it makes a point about psychology or logic, he cites Maimonides when he wants a medical opinion and medrash to explain the origin of stories and beliefs. He uses verses from the Hebrew bibles (note -- find out about it; what's it called and where can we get one) and explains moral points with arcana from rabbinic, mystical works.

Once every few episodes he does some Talmud magic to whip up a solution. Often he sets a trap

Most of the people reject and attack him. but he uses his Jewish-folksy ways and a timely quote or two to win people over. Usually, anyone who is persuaded dies in some tragic but not quite exactly heroic way in the third act. Eventually, he threatens to leave and gets as far as 5 minutes out of town when he already hears sounds of gun shots, breaking glass, women screaming and general lawlessness settling in, so he sighs, turns around and returns.

 He takes from these textual sources (and he speaks of talmudic conversations as if they happened in front of him -- we will need some recuring Jewy looking actors and they should learn to speak Hebrew from that humus guy down the block. He's brown, right?) and assembles all those sources and then writes them all down, many times. He invites all the other cops, suspects and investigators, plus a number of hangers-on, and hands out the papers. He then proceeds to give a 35 minute speech going through all the sources and deriving from this the truth regarding the suspect at hand and a good lesson about how we need to be better people.

Here is an example of one potential outcome:

The truly guilty party will be the only one who doesn't fall asleep and is caught at the door by Mini Golem* and his pals who were opening up the door to see if the rabbi was finished talking and they happened to whack him in the head. One boy dropped his lollipop but his older sister rolled her eyes and took the one from her mouth and gave it to him to keep him quiet. Then she mumbled "I hate you, but in a good way" she smiles at the camera, and, scene.

* sorry -- forgot to tell you: suggestion from Bob that we have a feisty mini-Golem sidekick who gets into trouble but always stops the little altar boy (under orders from his evil and possibly abusive boss) from claiming a blood libel (I'm thinking more like a priestly Ren and the submissive-turned-sadistic altar boy, much more in the mold of Stimpy. Can the b plot be the A plot sometimes? Do Golems...is that the pl -- check. have girlfriends? Would she break her golem's heart if he had one (maybe longer arc -- Yosele Golem, he lovable and sweet, mute amnesiac who loves Jews but must remain forever alone as he is not Jewish and is really, really scared of knives+++alt idea, he can never become Jewish because when he was formed nothing was placed "there" and the rabbis are still arguing about it (once every few, he gets an update or letter or something about his case). 

Also, comic interludes while Rabbi Magic [NOTE -- idea for tagline -- each week a character says, "That rabbi's doing his magic again" or something like that] moves into town, meats locals, chants blessings (find out what rabbis did at that time) is killing chicken [note -- consider Turkey around thanksgiving**Marketing**) and looking at women's underwear (bloomers -- PG-13 for anti-chicken violence is as far as we can go). He explains ideas about Jews and Judaism (we will need some writers who know something about Jews so if we have any wikipedia editors on staff, lift him/her for this. Also for cred we should probably have a rabbi look things over so head over to Berkley and take the first one you see. They all think the same anyway. Bob suggests that we can just ask Chat GPT but on the prompt say "answering as if you are a rabbi..." and this could save the huge amount we otherwise would have to pay if we asked an actual rabbi to make a living teaching us about Judaism! Recurring joke -- the rabbi keeps missing a sale or a bargain.