Rooting and losing

 I have never rooted for the easy winner. I haven't followed a team that made it easy -- that when you went to go see them, odds were, you would see a win. The closest I came to that was the 1986 Mets but the standards they set for themselves, high bars or low, made each day its own tension filled experience where we wondered what tonight's line up would be compared to the local police blotter. Even when the Dallas Cowboys were good, they weren't "dominant dynasty great". I'm jealous of those whose teams are automatics, of teams that are guarantees. And not the guarantee to be a laughingstock or cautionary tale.

But I have tried to stay loyal and not just jump to a winning team so I can be a happy go lucky front runner. So I stick with the Mets, and the Cowboys and a whole slew of other teams in others sports, none of which has any sort of lights out lock on even a winning season. It isn't that I have some natural affinity for the losers (or at least teh underdog). I haven't gone out with the intent of finding the sad sacks and then attaching my horse to that carriage. It just works out that I have developed a connection to teams which focus more on mediocrity than might be desired.

Does this say something about me and my life? I don't think so. But on the other hand, maybe that's exactly the kind of thing someone like me would say to justify being such a loser.

 

Parenting Post

I was trying to teach my students about a plot point in Ibsen's "Doll's House" and the universality of certain human behaviors. How many of you, I asked, ever broke a food rule? Y'know, like ate at a time when you weren't allowed to, or a food you weren't supposed to (not because of allergies or like that), or an amount you weren't supposed to?

Look ma: No hands.

I tried to clarify -- come on, like when your parents say you can have just 2 cookies and you sneak a third when no one is looking? I did it. No one snagged an extra lollipop at shul?

They remained unmoved and unmoving.

Then you are either you are all phenomenal liars or the most compliant and obedient people EVER.

I focused on one boy. Really really you never broke a single food rule?

Finally, he spoke. "I guess I never had any food rules. My parents just figured we'd be reasonable."

I then checked with all of my 10th grade classes; I asked "Does or did any of you have any rules about what you could eat, the way I did?" No one. Not a one. No one even asked for clarification or paused. 

When I was a boy there were a couple of food rules applied in the house:

No junk before noon

2 "junks" per day (weekday)

3 "junks" on Shabbat (the Yom Tov rule was never clearly stated but since it was honored more in the breach I saw no reason to inquire further)

There were probably other subtleties I forgot (no food upstairs after Purim), but these were the big ones. And my students had NO idea what I was talking about.

Analyzing possibilities:

A. My parents were control ogres trying to limit my enjoyment of life and draw their sustenance from my suffering so they invented these rules to sharpen my longing, sweetening my flavor as they absorbed my life-force

B. My parents innovated a reasonable set of controls using best available information and a sincere concern for our diet and health so they established standards that were reasonable compromises between a fascistic control and a devil-may-care attitude.

C. My parents practiced some policy implementation consistent with the practices of the time and approved of by experts in all things parental and associated fields.

D. Children today are not being parented as much as being aided and abetted. No limits leads to a variety of long-term mental and physical health concerns. They have no rules and they think that that's how life will always be.

E. Kids today have mutated to lack the "sweet tooth" as well as the "salty tooth" and whatever combination of teeth that makes pizza so flipping good. Basically kids today have no teeth. Prove me wrong.

F. Generations of successively successful parenting has led to a generation of naturally well behaved and well adjusted young people who have strong internal motivation and moral center. They need no rules for they have achieved pre-Edenic-fall-innocence and cannot even have awareness of "want."

I'm sure that there are other theorums to be explored and implored but right now I have to see if the NFL is still cheating (if you have been watching the games over the last few weeks, you know the answer.)

Worth

I was brought up with the credo "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right." I don't know where I first heard it maybe on GI Joe or something here's to good parenting but nobody bothered to explain to me was that at some point you have to figure out what's worth doing and that depended on what had worth at any given moment sometimes things that have no worth suddenly become really important and you want to do them really really well and some other things that traditionally have been worth doing right no longer seem at all important so you ust don't do them at all.

But why is it that as I get older fewer and fewer things seem worth doing it all is it because I have less and less energy to deal with things so fewer things are worth the dwindling supply of my energy or is it because experience has taught me over time that simply fewer and fewer things really are worth it because now that I've seen more things I know that most of it is garbage

Whatever the reason it seems clear that I intend to live a life in which I take on fewer and fewer responsibilities and duties so that I have less and less choice in the matter in terms of doing anything worth doing right I assume I will only saddle myself with those things that I actually care about therefore everything that I have on my plate at any given moment will be something that I believe is worth doing right no time fillers no time wasters anyway just some random thoughts as I try out the type of a voice not type of voice type by voice not the type of not type of voice type by voice not the okay stop no stop what you're writing down delete that do anything okay how do I turn off the type by voice this is really dumb send exit Okay well

Anti-semitism

While I think that the IHRA definition is a good working start, I wanted to put down some of my ideas about anti-Semitism which might help clarify how I understand the term.

First, the word was coined specifically to mean "against Jews." Look it up. It was never meant to be "against anyone who is called a semite".

Second, the Jews who are those who are defined as Jews by Jews and the canon of Jewish law. Deciding that a group is or isn't the "real" Jews because of some other set of beliefs is not in the scope of this piece of writing. 

Anti-semitism (and yes, I will be wonderfully inconsistent in my capitalization and hyphenation practices -- sorry, not sorry) is speech or actions which posit inherent negativity in Jews or Judaism (or both or a combination of aspects of each). If a guy kills a bird, and the guy happens to be Jewish, identifying him as Jewish in order to add detail to the story is already problematic. Would one identify the culprit by any other religious marker? Why does that fact become appropriate or relevant? Adding it in in an effort to connect the Jewish aspect of identity with the behavior is to operate negatively against Jews.

So simply pointing out the otherwise irrelevant religious affiliation is a problem. Pointing out the actions of a person as a function of his religion (when that is neither accurate nor in evidence) is anti-Semitism. This sometimes happens in conjunction with stereotypes but can happen in most any case. Trying to represent Jewish law in a negative light is inherently anti-Semitic.

A Jew can be equally as anti-Semitic as a non-Jew. If the intent is to criticize the religion without understanding the religion, or the religious practitioners by associating actions which are not based in religion with the religion, that is problematic.

Zionism is the movement to ensure Jewish autonomy in an ancestral homeland. Criticizing that (in order not to be anti-Semitic) would have to be done with a consistency that would criticize any nationalist movement. Claiming that Israel's government acts in a certain way against non-Jews as a homogeneous group then puts the government's behavior in the context of "Jewish action" even though the Israeli government is full of non-Jews. So isolating the jewish identity piece and claiming that it is what drives Zionist actions can be anti-Semitic. Holding Israel to a standard that is not applied elsewhere is clearly problematic and possibly anti-Semitic.

So ascribing a behavior to someone's Jewish identity (unless you can prove that it was done as a function of that identity/belief, as defined by the Jew, himself) is anti-Semitic. Ascribing beliefs and actions to Judaism as a religion (unless you can confirm that they are, as defined by Jews who practice the religion) is anti-Semitic. Denying Judaism the right to its own identity and autonomy as a valid belief system is also a problem, as is denying Israel a right to exist as a Jewish state by applying a standard which is not applied to other contemporary political creations.

Thoughts, as long as they stay inside a person's head, might or might not be anti-Semitic, depending on whether they are ever expressed in speech or action.

Just some ideas off the top of my head. I'm sure there is more.

2 versions of a joke -- looking for input (Language NSFW)

I thought of a scenario which (IMHO) is very funny, but there are 2 versions, and each one works the humor slightly differently.

The situation is in the end zone right after a player has just scored a touchdown, while playing away from home. He and his teammates are dancing in the endzone and there are boos rainging down on him from the home-town fans. Among the yelling, one voice, especially louds keeps yelling "Hey Jew! Hey Jew!"

The other players hear it and serious up, but quick. The player who made the TD walks over as the crowd quiets down and he confronts the guy who yelled. This guy has no shirt on and is 280 pounds of solid blob. He is covered in body paint and is wearing a ridiculous, themed helmet.

The player closes in on him and stares him down.

"Yeah, I'm Jewish. So what?" he challenges the guy.

The fan pauses and nods his head quickly towards the inner recesses of the stands and then says, "mincha? We have a chiyuv and need a 10th."

------------------

Same joke but the guy doing the yelling just says "Kike!" over and over.

also, the punch line might be better as just "mincha?" and nothing else.

opinions?

I need to go watch some football

 I can finally see how insanity begins.

 Take a man.

Take him and put him in a cage of any and no particular size. Stick him there for a good long time with nothing else and he very well might start to pace, just to “stay in shape.” Next thing you know he begins to count steps. How many across to here and how few accounting for this and that, just to “stay mentally sharp.” Then, struggling with mid-high school level math skills he starts computing and writing down. And he figures, if only to pass the time, the dimensions and square footage of the cell.

But even that victory fades and he must consider his confinement from another angle – the above and beyond. A new dimension in perception. So now a bit more climbing and counting and retooling the numbers. Quick estimations and the cubic feet appear leading to a consideration of the volume of the air and, as a passing gag, a joke about who pays for it all.

The years resume to refuse to resume and he, that man, stuck in a box, familiar with its every corner and cobweb, in an exercise to keep himself sharp reconsiders the question of cost and the volume of a human breath. He counts his own ins-and-outs, logging his lungs’ work and figuring his annual consumption of air. Bills had to be paid so a going rate, one that made sense considering comps, was established and he began to figure his daily air use in dollars per minute. He WAS sharp. He WAS in shape. He was the old man about the house – ask him any question about his cell and he can tell you a story. Ah, the adventures that that cell and he shared.

Then one day he is released. But where others see freedom he can only see disorder, unpredictability and an overflow of stimuli and no one else seems to notice. He is drowning in all that is happening, weaving uneasily through the street. He needs an apartment and insists on measuring its dimensions and working his numbers as he mumbles to himself.  He wonders aloud about the price of oxygen compared to the rate 24 hours ago and sounds as perfectly reasonable as any man who chooses to go into finance. He cannot interact with anyone, can’t leave his comfort zone and ends up recreating the world with which he is most recently familiar and retreating into that fantasy. He was more free when he was in a cell than when he wasn’t.

And we look at him, homeless, obsessed, angry and constantly shouting random numbers or words, and even prone to violent outbursts – this insanity might be so attractive to the patient because the real world cannot promise the same payoff.

I Can Fly

Over this past weekend, I learned something very important from my almost 3 year old great niece. She reports that she can fly. I see no reason to argue the point as she seemed rather insistent and it was not in anyone's best interest to disagree.

What I found most incredible was the variety of responses to the claim.

1. No you can't

2. How do you do that?

3. Can I fly, too?

only one person asked a really useful question: "Where will you fly to?"