Dispatches From A Gay Tatooed Jew

Letting It ALL Go and Gaining Everything - New Blog

2010-08-31T21:11:00.001-05:00

http://frumfromrochamim.blogspot.com/

Chometz between the Straits and In The Pinch

2010-07-13T17:14:00.003-05:00

So, my first Rosh Chodesh Av being frum began quietly as most typical Mondays...discord. The day ushers in the nine days of deep thought and outright mourning for the fall of the beit hamikdash not once but twice and all of the many dark nights that seem to have found their inception on that fateful day Tisha B'Av - "9th of Av".

...the spies returned from the new land on the 8th of Av and insist they'd rather go back to Egypt instead of facing the Canaanites, the next day, the 9th of Av, G-d made it clear that generation would not enter the land of Yisroel, only their children. The First Temple was destroyed in 423BCE on the same date. The Second Temple was destroyed five centuries later on the same date. Bar Kochba and his rebels were slaughtered by the boys from Rome on the same day in 133CE. The Jews were explelled from England on, yeah, the same day in 1290CE. March 31, 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand gave the Jews four months before they would be banished from their "kingdom", right again, the exact day fell on Tisha B'Av. WWI began the fire of the Holocaust in the Second World War and it began on.......yep, 9th of Av.

I awoke this morning around 4:45 to rain and wanted so badly to stay under the covers as my dogs chose to do. I rinsed my hands, gargled some water, relieved my organs, armed myself for holy battle with tefillin and began the morning Shacharit as Abraham did centuries ago. A few minutes into reciting the words to the pitch black raining and thundering sky outside the window where I was standing was this loud explosion and light sparkling. I thought, "damn way for Meshiach to enter the world during the nine days"! I soon realized it was a transformer in my neighbors backyard and continued praying but noticed something a tad eery in the small light I was using to scan the Siddur given to us by the hands of Shneur Zalman from the heart of the Arizal, Isaac Luria...the light was abnormally brighter than it usually was. Then I heard the oven making a weird noise, then the refrigerator and noticed most of my electricity was gone. But these weird lights were confusing me. Meshiach? You there? oh, utility issue.

I came to my senses and thought it might be wise to walked outside in the pouring rain and flip the main breaker. I then called our local utility company, MLGW, and explained that I was for the most part out of power but there was a weird voltage "thing" going on. "We'll have somebody come check it." An hour later my utilities returned to the odd behavior and I went back to my breaker box and the crap had been turned back on. I walked to the front yard and saw a service truck driving off. I called the utility company again and told them they had a problem more than breakers being tripped and they said they'd have somebody come back out in a tone that made me feel like I had awakened them. About half an hour later I heard someone hollering out front and thought it was again another sign of "strangeness" and stepped out on the porch and saw some guy in running shoes, no shirt, jogging in the rain with his cell phone but simply thought: "those runners are all the same...a bunch of vegan fanatics." As I walked back in the door I smelled it...

...I looked to the right and dark gray smoke was billowing out of my neighbors roof and realized why the "fanatic" was running in the rain with his cell phone. I ran to the house also and found my neighbor frantically trying to get a hose into his attic but by this time it was not possible to ward off the one hundred year old dried wood cracking in tandem with the rain and thunder.

I took the day off becasue I wished to stay close to the house until the power was back on and offer any assistance to my neighbor that might be needed. Teh power returned mid-afternoon and I soon realized my refrigerator had fallen victim to meshiachs sparkling entry earlier in the morning. I took a prepackaged container of vegetable pasta and set it in the microwave and...uh oh, another victim; it was gone. Then I sliced a tomatoe and sprinkled it with salt and pepper and turned on my IPod station and UH OH, another victim. OK, that's three, "no more hashem" I said. I had two slices of pizza in the "fridge" which was approaching 48 degrees and figured they were still alright to eat. I made my way to the den and picked up the remote and, you guessed it..."FRIED". Huh. Self pity is so consuming and then I remembered...

...the first thing my neighbor came running out his house with was his guitar and it broke my heart. He had already secured his dogs but of all other things the strings to joy were his next most important belonging.

I sat back and munched on my tomatoe and thought about the nine days leading up to Tisha B'Av and thanked hashem for my cozy chair, job that I can call-in without repercussions, three dogs, good food, and the emerging sunshine.

May we move in health and usher the coming days of the Temple's rebuilding with speed.

Abiotic Gulf Coast Evacuation?

2010-07-05T18:08:00.006-05:00

Rumors are that there are "quiet" discussions about evacuating millions from the US Gulf Coast due to the existence of the famed abiogenic petroleum that might inevitably collapse the ocean floor in that area due to the continued spewing of petro from BP's hands...

...earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis in the near future for margaritaville? Some say look for the worst in 80 days.

The spill began a day after the the US pissed on Israel and the 80 days puts us around the time the Israeli government is supposed to lift the freeze on "settlements" that our president will surely try his best at redirecting Israeli PM Netanyahu tomorrow in Washington.

Maybe it is time for the old retired yids in Florida to be good Zionists and make aliyah (to Eretz Yisroel) soon.

FREE GILAD

2010-06-27T16:25:00.003-05:00

The Three Eagles

2010-06-27T15:02:00.008-05:00

I am going to use a phrase from my favorite female Muslim cousin (BO AKA Hussein Obama)... "mark my words" enjoy gas prices as they are for now! If you read the standard print or electronic media I am sure you aren't aware that the US has massed troops on the northern Iranian border in southern Azerbaijan, recently increased naval presence in in the Suez Canal and around the Strait of Hormuz, and the Israelis have "built" a small base in north eastern Sa'udi Arabia...not too far from the Strait.

The three eagles...Russia, United States, Iran. Hussein Obama is a passive little girl who's father is the King of Sa'udi Arabia (remember his bow to the King of Sa'udi Arabi last year at the G20 summit - picture included if you don't), the Russian people are an offspring of the lineage of Esav and Ismail, and the Iranians are a bunch of illegitimate indo-european-Ali-loving freaks.

All three use the eagle as a national symbol in one way or another. The double-headed eagle (very dear to the Ruskies) historically represents the East AND the West. The American dollar is practically worthless becasue our gold (what is left of it - do any of us really know how much gold we have in reserve?) is owned by the Chinese (and Russians quietly), and the Soviets have tons of Gold reserves.

We will soon bomb Iran using Israel as the "point-man" and the world of petroleum reserves and refining will be in chaos a while. Russian oil will flow freely and like any good wife the US will ask if we can "purchase" from them or one of their Wahabi children and they will demand payment in GOLD. "Uh oh" are the inventory books from Levinworth correct? Israel will be blamed for the mayhem due to their "insolence" toward the "poor little Arabs in Yesha (Yehuda-Shomron-Azza, also known as Yehuda/Judah, Shomron/Samaria/includes the fantasy home West Bank, and Azza/Gaza) and the three eagles will join together in a flight of commaraderie...but that Israel/Jewish issue will become their new world order anthem of libations for "peace".

Question: Would a faithful Baptist or Methodist (well, I guess we have to excuse some Methodists) bow tho the Pope? Would a non-Muslim BOW to the King of Sa'udi Arabia much less the President of the United States? That is treason!...and I know, old news.

BHO, Barakh, Hussein...whatever he is, continues asking for if not answering to the Russian's approval and his husband in Moscow loves it because the bluebirds over the whitecliffs of the Caspian are coming home plated in gold with greetings from MESHIACH.

Jerusalem, if I forget thee let my right hand forget it's cunning.

Make (Teshuvah) תשובה T'shuvah...Meshiach is around the corner.

Hey Helen Thomas - KAHANE WAS RIGHT!

2010-06-07T21:38:00.011-05:00

You know what Helen Thomas?

Go back to hell! Or Lebanon...wherever you came from.

I've refrained from using this word for a while...

...but FUCK YOU you nasty old stinky Nazi-Arab bitch...and all of your "Palestinian" cunts.

Eretz Yisroel doesn't need you or Hussein Obama...

N E V E R A G A I N !

Regretful Democrat Seeking T'Shuvah

2010-04-24T20:35:00.003-05:00

BHO - Designed (by Microsoft) with the best of intentions, (BHO's or 'Browser Helper Objects') are intended to be a feature of the Internet Explorer web browser which can be used to add functionality. Unfortunately, malware authors have also exploited the power of BHO's for other purposes such as spreading spyware.

BHO's, in and of themselves, are not bad. But, like a lot of other features and functionality, if the BHO can be used to install additional features or functions that are useful, it can also be exploited to install features or functions that are malicious. But, there are also many examples of BHO's which are used to hijack your Web browser home page, spy on your Internet activities and other malicious actions.

“Ooops”, wrong BHO.

BHO – Barakh Hussein Obama.

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch will be speaking at a rally today, Sunday 25 April, in a taped message outside the Israel Consulate in New York City, where thousands of Americans are preparing to protest against the Obama administration's increasing hostility towards Israel. Ed Koch has been a long time Democrat but has “crossed the aisle” at times before but this time he says he is “getting off the train”…the Obama train.

The rift with Obama and Israel lies solely in a complete perversion, not misrepresentation, of binding historical laws and decisions called The Balfour Declaration, League of Nations Palestine Mandate, Geneva Convention (Article 49) and especially the often cited UN Resolution 242. The perversion is an attempt by Hussein Obama to not only “strong-arm” and manipulate the world into further legitimizing Arab attempts to “judenrein” all of Israel but to also “break-down” Israelis and Jews in the galut (exile) into delegitimizing their own connection and right to Palestine.

What is a Palestinian?
Until the mid-fifties Jews who lived in Israel were known as Palestinians. The Romans changed the name of Judea to “Palestina” after the second Jewish Revolt, 132-135 CE, and dispersed many of the survivors as an attempt at psychological warfare.

What is Palestinian culture?
There is no distinct food, music, ethnic make-up, religion, language etc. It is all borrowed. Zahir Muhsein, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee said in a Dutch paper in 1977 “The Palestinian people do not exist…The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

The Fatah wing of the PLO (the “moderate” wing founded by Yasser Arafat and controlled today by Abu Mazen, aka Mahmoud Abbas) has as its official emblem the entire state of Israel covered by two rifles and a hand grenade. Faisal al-Husseini, the deceased former leading “Palestinian” spokesman, declared in 2001 that the West Bank and Gaza represented only 22 percent of “Palestine” and called the 93’ Oslo process a “Trojan Horse.” He said “we are asking all Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement…as temporary procedures, or phased goals, this means we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them.” He stated that the goal was “the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea,” the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, obviously ALL of Israel.

The Facts
Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria (Yehuda & Shomron) for a few thousand years…”Palestinians” have not.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 called for “the establishment in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people” and was endorsed by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. The mandate recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” The mandate further guaranteed the right of “close settlement” throughout Palestine and geographically defined this area as comprising land both east and west of the Jordan River – which became Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel.

The Geneva Convention was adopted in the shadow of the atrocities of WWII in 1949 as an attempt to protect people from ever falling victim to such horror again. Article 49 of the convention states that “an occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies” to forever prevent repetition of the insidious Nazi forced transfers of civilian populations to slave labor and extermination camps.

The British government offered to split Israel down the middle in 1948, the 48’ Partition, half for the Jews half for the Arabs…the Arab Ameleks refused.

The Geneva Convention does not restrict Jewish settlement in the West Bank because the government of Israel has neither “deported” Palestinians nor transferred Israelis there. But the Jordanians have. Jordan controlled the West Bank between 1949 – 1967 after they along with Syria, Iraq, and Egypt attacked the Jews in the Israeli 48’ War of Independence and expelled all Jews, moved Arabs from Jordan into the area, and destroyed many ancient Jewish sites.

Resolution 242 was adopted in 1967 after Israel was again attacked by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria with assistance also from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Sudan, Morocco, and Algeria. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Eugene Rostow, a contributing scholar to the decree states that “Resolution 242 calls on parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East is achieved.” And even then Israel is only required to withdraw some of its troops because the Resolution says to withdraw its troops “from territories”…not from “the territories” nor “from all the territories.”

The state of Israel has given up more than 40% of its land in the last fifty years seeking peace.

The West Bank, Judea-Samaria, includes some of the holiest and most important sites in Jewish history…the Arabs claim the abominating al-Aqsa Mosque which isn’t even a mosque.

Arabs have full citizenship and the right to vote in Israel…Jews can’t step foot in Saudi Arabia and many other Arab countries, of which many were the long time home to a lot of Jews.

Over 400,000 Arabs have entered the West Bank and Gaza via Jordan since the 93’ Oslo Accords and built almost 300 settlements since 1967…Less than 200,00 Jews have entered the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem area and built a little over 100 settlements.

Ehud Barak offered almost all of the territories to Arafat at Camp David in 2000.

The media refers to all Israeli citizens in Judea and Samaria as “settler” as an attempt to justify the murderous behavior of the Arabs in the area and to legitimize their “fight” against the “occupying” Israelis by such statements like:

“The Israeli army has imposed severe restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank town of Hebron after a Jewish settler baby was shot dead.”

The TEN MONTH old child, Shalhevet Pass, was shot in the head and killed by a Palestinian sniper while seated in her stroller on the streets of Hebron, where she and her family lived. Shalhevet's father, Yitzchak Pass, who was pushing the stroller, was also wounded by the same bullet. It is believed the snipers were intentionally targeting the baby.

And when Erez and Elanit Shmuelin along with their six month old baby were ambushed and shot by Palestinians near the entrance of their Har Bracha neighborhood in Samaria, the BBC explained that: “most Palestinian militants continue to consider Jewish settlers to be legitimate targets.”

Hussein Obama and his stinky coos Secretary of State remain pissed at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for building in Jerusalem…the only building going on in Jerusalem right now is by Arabs and most of that is illegal because they have not requested permits.

American Jews are being far too quiet!

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu offered a withdrawal from 60% of the West Bank so the Palestinians could establish a state with temporary borders (while the parties established further foundations) to the Chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas a couple days ago…Abbas refused it Saturday.

Jerusalem and Israel shall remain UNDIVIDED! There is no option to the current one state solution that already exists. The Arabs need to continue paying their taxes, voting, sending members to the Knesset, or move to Detroit.

Healthcare reform, banking reform, don’t ask don’t tell, environmental policy, I don’t care…I regret that I voted for this klutz Obama!

Help me with my bag-gage Mr. Mayor, I’m right behind you!

“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it’s cunning.”

Ham, Lamb, & Hashem

2010-03-25T20:24:00.000-05:00

Ham? The Korban Pesach mam' if you please.

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu, visited the US this week and among "shmuzing" with Hussein Obama spoke at an AIPAC fundraiser where he made it clear that he was confused why the world was so aghast at Jews building their homes in the capital of their country, Jerusalem. I so thought he was going to say, "OK Mexicans, you can't build any more homes in Mexico City, those areas should go to the Chabad Lubavitcher Jews that moved in a few years ago" or "OK America, you cannot build any more homes in DC (not Jerusalem DC, David's Capital), those areas should go to the Sudanese and Yemenis without passports who have moved there"...on and on.

One third of the 50,000 dwellings (so called settlement houses) slated to be built in East Jerusalem...or as the media says - Arab East Jerusalem - are for Israeli Arabs, which is proportionate to the population. So the Jews are building settlements for the Arabs?

Netanyahu simply raised the 'Kos of Eliyahu' and told us that "we are going to build and protect Jerusalem"...again; even after Hillary seemed to be more incensed over an already year old plan to build than her husbands extra marital proclivities. She must be a lesbian and Axelrod and Emanuel are simple "capos".

Jewish birth and growth was an issue prior to the Inquisition. Jewish birth and growth were an issue prior to the thousands of pograms in Eastern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Jewish birth and growth was a problem prior to, during, and after the initial advent of the Third Reich, G-d rest their Shoah souls.

Jewish birth and growth was a problem to the Pharoah!! So what did he do? Kill the Jewish lads.

Netanyahu reminded the "kus of Amalek' in Washington that Yerushalayim belonged to the Heebs and not the kikes and goy! If houses needed to be built for newborns then so be it. The Israeli capital has to be protected if not from the Arab 'koos zibs' then from the Husseini family meshiach wanna-bes.

I love the similarities: 'kos' in Hebrew is CUP. So kos elijahu is 'cup of Elijah' - 'Koos' in Arabic is a word the west transliterates as a word we use for a cat that sounds really bad! Zib is DICK!

Deserving of a completely separate paragraph and sentence: Elijahu means "YaHWeH is G-d".

Pesach is upon us and the Chometz is gone...it better be. The Heebs left Egypt too fast to let the bread rise so make sure your Chometz is locked away in a cabinet or sold to a righteous goy until Wednesday of the first week of April, Nissan 21 & 22, and then you can reconnoiter it.

You know, the Sykes-Pichot agreement ultimately removed the Husseini family from modern day Sau'di Arabia as the caretakers of Mecca and Medina and "established" then in Jordan (think, King Hussein), Iraq (hmmmm), and what is today called Syria...

Netanyahu has a ring in his office loaned by an Israeli antiquities group "moving dirt around the Temple site" with the name Netanyahu Shimon something inscribed in it...it dates back to the time of Melech David's temple if I remember correctly.

Hussein Obama needs to let go and understand that Eretz Yisroel is ALL of todays Israel, most of that sharmoota King Hussein's land, ALL of Lebannon, and Syria included, and even northern Egypt...let's include that shithead Ahmadinejads "hole" also, or...

...make a bunch of battery operated reed boats that can be floated down the river to Amalek.

Build, build, build, build....this year in Yerushalayem!

Pesach Sameach!

If I Forget You...

2010-03-14T16:55:00.000-05:00

So, Israel Apartheid Week ends today. It should be more like 'goyem against Jews apartheid week'. Did you know an observant Jew cannot go to the Temple Mount and pray - the Temple, you know, Melech David, Solomon, Adams "rib"....not that shithole adorned by Arab gold known as Al-Asqa mosque. Jews are allowed to go there only at specific times on certain days and if your eyes are closed too long or the body sways the gestapo bitches whisk you away to appease the Arabs.

Netanyahu apologized to VP Biden for the announcement of further settlements in Yehuda and Shomron aka West Bank and Secretary of State Clinton and Biden then chided Israel for the plan. How many Arabs have died at the hands of the Israelis in the last year? How many Arabs have died at the hands of Fatah, Hamas, and even Hezbullah in the last year? A "few" more than at the hands of the Jews! How many people have died at the US-Mexican border in the last year due to the fallout of failed goy christian policies in meso-America? Many many more! Why is Biden, or Obama, not chiding President Fellipe Calderon??

March 16, Rosh Chodesh Nisan is the first Annual Temple Mount Awareness Day. We don't want to kick the chara Arabs out, we'll offer them citizenship as long as they behave - no more... stones, bus bombings, pizza parlor bombings, cafe shootings, katyusha launches, tunnels, defilement.

I know, I know, Biden drank too much Golani wine:

"Substance dulls the mind, Traife wine clouds the heart, You can't sew a stitch with one hand while you are taking it apart."

Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand forget what it is supposed to do!

If Jerusalem isn't Jewish then what the hell is it??

Human rights extends beyond a Hamas or Fatah press release!

http://www.templeinstitute.org/

Brachas And Birth With Bertha - Part II

2010-02-16T19:29:00.000-06:00

Part Two – Cliff Hanging

I soon hit the road again and stayed at the community in Tennessee a few weeks and then headed west toward the magnetic pull of the four corners. The days passed with Bertha and I camping in National Forests, “crashing” a night here and there at friend’s places so I could work a day or two at various day labor organizations where you were paid at the end of the work day by check or receive cash minus a percentage cut. Some nights we would sleep in the car in the middle of nowhere - one morning we awoke with ice all over the inside of the cars windows from our own condensation – or pitch a tent in the woods. One morning outside of Santa Fe we awoke to several inches of snow all around us with a deer brushing up against the tent…Bertha and I both just sat there staring out the flap breathing heavily in tandem with the “foggy mist” of breath slowly blowing from the animals nostrils, looking at the frozen mist on the deer’s innocent gray snout and listened to the snow gently hitting the ground. Everything on the outside of your realm gets quiet in a thick snow yet all of the intricacies within your sensory circle become amplified. The deer walked slowly away and I lay back on the sleeping bag wandering what day it was while Bertha crawled up on my chest and peered into my eyes.

Next stop was another communal farm in the Zuni Mountains outside of Ramah, New Mexico that was fairly new and barren. When I stopped the car Bertha jumped out and immediately took off running with a dog that lived at the community and I stood in horror and watched her little black body quickly become a dot on the horizon and then nothing. One of the residents greeted me and said not to worry because “Artemis will bring her back safely.” A little while later both dogs came walking up to the main tent area and Bertha looked tired and had a dirty gray coat around her mouth mixed with dust and ice. It was her baptism of native life - she ran wild through the pottery-sherd grounds of Navajo land. When walking in this area it was impossible to go 100 yards without seeing pieces of pottery partially embedded in the dirt or maybe even lying on top of it. You could usually discern whether or not it was Hopi or Navajo by the design but sometimes it was not possible to do so. The area now was Navajo but remains in dispute because the Hopi have lost a lot of land to the Navajo since 1868 due to cultural differences, US interference, Navajo reservation extension, and Peabody Coal.

I had been in this area a few months before and at one time was travelling with a couple guys I met and a considerable amount of time had passed since I had last communicated with my mother or sister. One evening we were camped on the side of the “highway” in a rough road side rest area and were greeted the next morning by a Navajo tribal policeman who asked for our ID’s, what we were doing there, and if any of us had warrants for our arrests. The officer took our ID’s back to his vehicle and I heard him say “yeah he’s one of them.” Officer Guy returned our ID’s and asked me to come to his vehicle with him, as he leaned against his patrol car he said “you need to call your mom and sister, they are worried about you.” My sister’s persistence miraculously tracked me down 1200 miles away in the middle of nowhere in Navajo land. Officer Guy got in his car and as he was beginning to drive away he said “hey lost one, call them, or I’ll arrest your ass…glad you are safe.”

Bertha and I spent days walking in the Zuni mountains, watching snow in the higher elevations at times, holding pieces of pottery that could have been 500 to a 1000 years old, and lying under the bright reddish gold leaves of the Aspen’s rustling with gravity’s pull. These trees remain the most beautiful I have ever seen to this day. After staying at the community a couple weeks I decided it was time to move on because I was heading north and the winter’s snow would soon be much heavier.

I stopped off at a little grocery store in Ramah to get a couple things when I left and asked the clerk if he knew Officer Jim Guy. Ramah was one of the few settlements out of many commissioned by Brigham Young more than 150 years ago that survived its harsh environment and hostilities as a mission to the Native people. The clerk said he had been there about half an hour ago. I told him the next time he saw him to tell him the “lost one” said hello.

A few hours later Bertha and I stopped off at Chaco Canyon and made a walk through a couple of the Kivas. The feeling is indescribable when you climb down into one of the complexes “pit-houses” - it is almost as if gravity has finally pulled you into the warm womb of the earth and it was a time to appreciate a beautiful history. This area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is very sacred to the Hopi and Pueblo Indians; much of it was closed to the public shortly after my last visit there due to its fragility and erosion caused by tourists. I sat down to absorb the surrounding while Bertha walked around and sniffed, sniffed, sniffed then finally laid down against my leg and went to sleep.

The next couple days we travelled through Los Alamos and Taos ultimately heading to Wheeler Peak in the Carson National Forest, it is the highest point in New Mexico at 13,000 feet and is a splendid sight. Sometimes I got lonely, sometimes I got scared, sometimes I just didn’t exist and one day during one of my “moments” Bertha came up to me and looked at me with her deep dark eyes and gave me a gentle snout-touch and looked toward the setting sun that painted the Sangre de Cristo Mountains an amazing rainbow of colors bouncing off of the snow covered trees. I knew then that Bertha knew.

The next day we headed toward Mesa Verde and hit Pagosa Springs and stayed a night in Durango on the way. Mesa Verde was covered in several inches of snow and parts of the ruins were closed but some were still accessible. Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to see the Mesa Verde region in the 1760’s while seeking a Santa Fe to California route but never got close enough to see the ancient stone villages, they remained a secret for another century. Bertha and I spent a couple days there and for the first time I realized she was like a little child in the snow. She never tired of catching snow balls and wrestling in it with me. The nights were colder at Mesa Verde than they had been at Wheeler Peak even though it was almost half the height. As I drove down the road out of Mesa Verde I could see shadows bouncing off the cliff walls covered in bright snow as if spirits of the past were once again making their way back & forth and up & down the canyon paths and wandered what day they had disappeared. Or was it I that disappeared. That evening we slept at a rustic campground at the foot of Mesa Verde and as I laid down to sleep I wandered what day it was.

The next day we made the short drive to Moab, UT and had an early afternoon meal in town before “doubling back” to Canyonlands National Park. Moab is a great place - beautiful, serene, immense, and picturesque but not the most dog friendly due to the fragility of the ecosystem’s fauna and vegetation so we had to be careful and were even questioned once by a Park Ranger. Dogs generally are not allowed on the back country trails and roads.

Moab sits kind of in the middle of Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park and is one of the many cities in this area settled by early Mormon pioneers during the 1800s. The area around what is now Moab served as the Colorado River crossing along the Old Spanish Trail and is indescribable. Due to much of the areas lower elevation the weather was more hospitable than the previous few days so Bertha and I decided to hang out for a while.

Brachas And Birth With Bertha - Part I

2010-02-07T13:56:00.000-06:00

Part One - Ninth of Av

On Aug 2 1990 Iraqi ground and air forces began a concerted attack on the Kuwaiti capital Kuwait City after the beleaguered nation was denied financial reprieve of sorts from Saudi Arabia and others - two months later I received my Dept of Defense movement orders to deploy to Southwest Asia.

I returned home early summer of 91’ with a feeling of exuberance as if the moshiach had arrived not knowing that some of the days to unfold would derail my soul’s pains to that of apostasy and wonderings through darker nights than the smell of rotting flesh in the Arabian Desert. I finished college in 92’ while serving in the Marine Reserves and left the DOD a year later while working at a psychiatric hospital. Things were unsettled so I moved to Nashville winter of 93’ and “partied” for a while as if my soul was dancing on Tisha B’Av and wondered “How then are these dates to be reconciled? On the seventh the heathens entered the Temple and ate therein and desecrated it throughout the seventh and eighth and towards dusk of the ninth they set fire to it and it continued to burn the whole of that day. ... How will the Rabbis then explain the choice of the 9th as the date? The beginning of any misfortune when the fire was set is of greater moment. – (Talmud Ta'anit 29a)

That summer in June I found myself dancing “coked-up” on the floor of a gay bar thinking about the passing of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and wondered who would save me. Days passed, weary and constantly hung-over from medicating my soul with anything and anyone that appeared to offer blanket from the temple’s fire and then Jerry Garcia died in August 95’ and I was back on the same dance floor on the Ninth of Av looking for my next “score.” The Rebbe and Garcia’s death somehow led me to a young Israeli named Yuron - he preferred to be called Delilah - fresh out of the IDF who instead of travelling to India or somewhere more chic journeyed to a communal farm in rural Tennessee held in trust by a group of fairies. I spent weekends at the farm but remained floating through the days at times like an asteroid under gravity’s watch at other times like a piece of cotton fighting gravity’s strength. Maybe it was the gray beards that adorned The Rebbe and Garcia’s face. Before I realized it I was “crashing here and there” on different friends couches with no foundation remaining and answered the beckoning to stay with a friend’s mother in Florida who needed a “care-taker”. That was me…you got your man. It was more of a saving grace for me than anything else.

I stayed in Florida until late spring of 96’ and eventually hit the road travelling…Rainbow gathering, faerie gathering and eventually took a twenty hour bus ride home from New Mexico Hopi land later that summer with all of my possessions in a Kelty backpack on my shoulders. I stayed at my friend Karen’s house visiting my mom and sixteen year old lab Sheba that had been so damn loyal since I first brought her home when she was a tiny puppy.

I spent many of my young teen years “lost” in the woods surrounding our house walking and talking to Sheba, she always looked at me and listened with her deep dark eyes and gentle snout-touch as if saying “I understand”. Sheba gave birth when she was ten months old, was taken to the pound when she was a year old because she wouldn’t stop barking…but was quickly brought back. She simply wanted to be with me in those dark nights. The days seemed like they would never end.

When I returned “home” in the summer of 96’ Sheba’s eyes had turned gray, she had a beard of the same color and had begun having difficulty with some organ functions - bowel and urine mainly - and had become arthritic-ridden. Even though I had no place to live I refused to let her die without her soul carrying me further so I looked for a replacement…

…newspaper ad for “free gentle and kind lab to loving home” took me to Wendy in rural Alabama. I walked into the house after driving an hour and went through a two-part interview by the mother and a daughter questioning why I wanted “Wendy” and what type of person I was. Then I was introduced to a beautiful 14 year old child who was lying in a hospital bed named “Brad”. The mother explained to me that Brad had suffered some serious birth issues and was unable to communicate “normally” other than by blinking his eyes and Wendy had been a real “G-d sent” for him but they just couldn’t keep her. Brad looked at me with these deep dark eyes that seemed to hold centuries of pain and understanding and blinked quickly and as I felt a dark shadow blanket my soul the mother cheerfully said “now Wendy” and this little black piece of fir came sliding across the floor like a star zooming to earth. I knelt down and before I knew it I was lying on the ground with this six to eight pound ball of joy licking me and peering into my eyes with terribly deep dark eyes that seemed to hold centuries of pain and understanding and the boy’s mom said “please put her in Brad’s arms one more time.” I picked Wendy up and set her in the bed and she gently crawled to Brad’s chest and immediately laid down looking directly into his face with her snout practically wetting his motionless innocent lips – his eyes stared at her tiny face while blinking rapidly and after a couple minutes she looked up at me and Brad’s mom said “it is good.”

The drive home was painful thinking about Brad’s mom telling me that he probably wouldn’t live another year and I felt like centuries of understanding were knocking at the door begging me to let them in and I cried for the first time in a long time asking “WHY?”…while the Dead tune ‘Bertha’ played on the radio Wendy crawled into my lap and pierced my soul with her dark eyes that seemed to hold centuries of pain and understanding looking up to my face as my tears fell on her innocent lips.

I spent a few weeks going back and forth from my friend Karen and mother’s house “introducing” Wendy to the world of Sheba. Sheba actually seemed to brighten up and without any hesitation opened up true maternal knowledge of centuries of understanding to the young pup. The three of us spent hours romping through the woods, Wendy would gnaw on Sheba’s legs and crawl on top of her as she acted like she was going to eat her and Sheba would “growl” – it was more like a pleasant moan -Sheba would drop her treat for Wendy to take…

One day in August I saw Sheba asleep beside her dog-house that she had not been unable to get in for quite a while due to her back and hip problems and Wendy was inside of it asleep and I knew the time had come. I took Sheba the next day to a veterinarian that advertised “cremate and save”.

I had to carry Sheba into the office because she literally could not walk and sat her in a chair while I went back to the car to get Wendy. When the vet called us I carried Sheba to the room practically dragging Wendy with her leash and laid the old one on the table. The veterinarian’s technician came in and asked me routine questions for his paperwork and then began cleaning Sheba’s lower arm and I began sobbing…so too did he. The doctor, who was old and appeared wise beyond his years, came in and nonchalantly held Sheba’s arm in his and rubbed Wendy’s face who was curled up against my chest in my left arm, looked at me with deep dark eyes and asked “is this what you wish to do?” I mumbled something that was inaudible but shook my head yes and as the doctor inserted the syringe he began to cry also. I looked down at Wendy and her deep dark eyes momentarily peered into my eyes and then looked at Sheba and put her paw on her nose while I rubbed Sheba’s gray beard…shortly thereafter Sheba’s head drooped and the doctor left the room. Wendy’s little paw dropped with Sheba’s head and I realized that Bertha had been born.

“The Ninth (day) of Av. It usually occurs during August.”

The New Internationale/Arms Race

2010-01-31T16:35:00.000-06:00

So much for at least a breif delay in a new arms race after the new arms sales to Arab nations and Taiwan I recently (very recently) blogged about...CNN and Pravda reported yesterday that Russia has signed a $2 billion arms deal with Libya.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin confirmed the contract later yesterday, Saturday Jan. 30, and stated that the deal is "not only for small arms and light weapons."

Thanks new order neo-con Democrats!

2010-01-30T21:35:00.000-06:00

I decided Friday that I was clinically confused and after looking at the news tonight I discovered that I am the only sane person in the world!

Twenty days ago I blogged about the then “on the down low” development of a huge arms deal with several Middle Eastern countries that the US has been working on - MSNBC online posted US Speeds Up Arms Buildup With Gulf Allies today via The Washing Post - and Friday there was confirmation of a six billion dollar deal with Taiwan. That is the number 6 with nine zero’s, looks something like this $ 6,000,000,000.

The deal with Taiwan was reported as a fulfillment of a $11 billion deal pledged by former President GW Bush to that nation in 2001; after removing much of the all too familiar double-speak that was once owned by the neo-cons it simply is supposed to be a “threat” to China. This whole situation really reeks of the 40 years of backroom Pentagon mapping of the world. Hmmm, ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ or ‘Mein Kampf’.

Then today former President HW Bush went and had tea time at the White House with President Obama. I bet HW had GW hidden in his coat pocket and the three of them went and played army with little stick men painted yellow while son Jebulon snuck away with the First Lady and Chief Of Staff Emanuel davened over David Axelrod.

So, the next rightful thing to do is arm Lhasa. I am sure the monks could use a couple of the ballistic missiles, a few Black Hawk helicopters and one of the mine hunting ships from the Mid-East package to frighten China some more. While we are at it, might as well re-arm Shin Fein and play fair and distribute the same to the Orange Order. I’m sure we also could benefit from trucking a few missiles across the northern border to the Quebecois separatists in Canada and some across the Baja to the drug lords in Mexico. Let’s be fair about this now…in light of the new populist spirit of kind hearted “love spreading” from Washington in the way of guns, germs, and steel we might as well return some munitions back to the Serbian goats and some of the VX gas - we claim to be disposing of - to the Chechnyan rebels. Nor should we forget the poor Hamas and Hezbollah souls in southern Lebanon, they are in dire need of some kefer cheese and Katyusha rockets. Oh, can’t forget Cypress, we need to reignite shit there also…send them a few SAM’s and by all means please carry forward the Christian spirit and send some munitions to the stinky Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.

…might as well bring back the Third Reich since we need jobs and revenue so bad.

Who won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Why Are You Gay - Why Are YOU Pregnant?

2010-01-28T18:26:00.000-06:00

I really am not much different than most people in having a "closet" full of enigmatic contradictions and mysteries but I honestly do not get this one:

(From MSN)

"Another pregnant man is making headlines. He and his mate are expecting a baby very soon. The man is Scott Moore, who grew up as Jessica...Scott got to know his mate, Thomas, at a support group. Like Scott, Thomas was born female. Thomas has two children from a prior relationship, and Scott has helped raise them...Scott is the second pregnant man to come forward. The first was Thoams Beatie..."

This is like going to Sears and ordering a custom made refridgerator with an oven in it...but wait, there actually is such a thing, the Whirlpool Polara...google it, I swear! Unfortunately it was DISCONTINUED.

Some things are better left like they were when they were sitting on the showcase floor at Montgomery Ward. They opened their doors in 1895 and became a "cross town rival" to Sears in more ways than one. Sears now owns the Montgomery Ward properties/name. So, is the child bearing transgendered male-thing a rival? Nah, just an aberration. Please DISCONTINUE the spin cycle or maybe adopt a child from Haiti!!!!

Prophylacteries In The Sky

2010-01-25T18:41:00.000-06:00

Trying to be shomer Shabbat really opens the mind to many thoughts and observations crawling around quietly in the dark crevices of the soul pleading to be released into the days light, but the suns blanket keeps them begging at the threshold of reason.

Shomer Shabbat - when the sun goes down, when the first star is visible to the naked eye, when you decide to welcome the bride, or when my Chabad brethren define the proper zmanim – is the time set when one decides not to carry money, not turn on or off a light switch, not to bathe, not to pick up the channel changer, not to prepare food, not to drive, not to take medicine, not to pick up the phone, not to touch the computer, is supposed to create an oasis of sacred peace from the daily “hum-drum” of secular profanity. “Please sir, may I wipe my ass?”

Shomer Shabbat is a personal decision to separate oneself from all of the indirect 21st century “realistic” directives that we feel so overburdened to honor. I sat last night soaking up the nice aromatic smells of the beef stew I started in the slow cooker earlier in the day while watching the Hope For Haiti Now marathon and listened to some really awesome uncut/unplugged music: Taylor Swift, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crowe, Keith Urban, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and the almost finale…Dave Matthews with Neil Young! There were many others so if you were out partying you’ll have to settle for the I-Tunes download.

I remember hearing Leonard Cohen sing ‘Hallelujah’ when I was a young lad and fell in love with the tune, then I heard Jeff Buckley sing it (nothing has really compared since but…), then I heard the young guy at a local coffee bar sing it a couple weeks ago in front of three people (and I could not figure out which head my tears were coming from), then Friday night on the telethon I heard Justin Timberlake sing it. I must say that he redeemed himself to me; I never cared for him but thought he did a really good job because it obviously must be a terribly difficult tune to sing.

I didn’t want the show to end but as it was coming to a close those above mentioned “thoughts and observations crawling around in the dark crevices of the soul” began moaning to come out, like hands extending from old rusted jail cell bars in some dark musty smelling Gulag. I picked up the channel changer and thought, “this is not allowed if I am to be truly shomer Shabbat”. I can keep the television on as long as it remains on one channel and nothing is adjusted in any way. Yet, I am sure that the mere viewing of the TV can be ruled a violation somehow.

I set the changer down and began thinking about the latest news release I saw of Hillary Clinton. It was after she returned from Haiti and for some reason it all made sense to me. I had just finished watching the telethon for Haiti and as I decided to forego profaning shomer Shabbat my thoughts grabbed on to memories of a rather haggard looking Secretary of State Clinton and thought I could really see that distant and hollow looking gaze that one sometimes acquires when they have crossed a threshold of reality. I do not appreciate some of the recent Obama administration “policy stumbling blocks” but I cannot deny that Hillary is really revealing herself as a true statesman/statesperson. She is worn out! Have you seen her recently?

I personally did not give her enough credit during the 08’ campaign but am pleased with her even if I do not agree with all measures. By the way…where the hell are Biden and Emanuel? It is best that at least Emanuel stays out of the public’s eye I think.

Then my thoughts seized on the article in the paper lying on the table in front of me about Chautauqua Airlines flight 3079 from New York to Louisville being redirected Friday morning due to a “misunderstanding.” Give me a break! This was absurd.

Most people recognize Tefilin as an item of religious practice used by Jews, even though they might not know what they are actually called. I can understand “someone who does not get out much” might be alarmed by a clean cut, handsome young man strapping a box to his forehead and left bicep while wrapping his arm in a leather strap but this is an airline originally from Jamestown, NY (Chautauqua county) – 70 miles from Buffalo, 200 from Toronto and 400 from NYC – and I am sure this is not first time someone has donned phylacteries after boarding a Chautauqua flight in this region. I really hate that word and think people love to use it because it reminds them of prophylactic. It is a stupid Greek interpretation for tefilin; maybe we use it because we are so in love with the ancient nostalgia of Helene culture.

I decided to sweep the “thoughts and observations crawling around in the dark crevices of the soul” away for the evening and as I eased back in the lounger I reminded myself of the part of Republic Airways “vision” statement about their employees and customers “…regardless of personal beliefs or world-view, everyone has been created in the image and likeness of G-d: We seek to become stronger from our diversity.”

Warning: Please check your “prophylacteries” at baggage!

2010-01-19T18:38:00.000-06:00

Wow! All of the ranting I do doesn't even pale in comparison to the travesty that has unfolded before our eyes in Haiti. If the pain and suffering occurring there does not bring you to your knees then I feel for your soul.

This is awful! I can barely bring myself to rehearse my daily morning ritual of watching the news after I have dressed and tended to my proper rights without crying... 200,000 dead, numerous amputees, and unknown orphans, widows, widowers, etc. You know when your heart actually hearts and I almost think that for the first time I know what a true broken heart feels like. It hurts! I almost feel guilty...no, I do feel guilty.

I curl up in my warm bed and eat my food and en passant think of a devastated soul in Haiti. My heart cries for them and can only ask that whatever supernal being is listening will provide any comfort available immediately to the victims. The images should remind us of our very nice and neat comfort we have been granted.

If you find yourself drying an eye or holding back a flood of tears please use the American Redcross text option for aid to Haiti - text "HAITI" to 90999 and you wil be prompted for a donation. This option is by far one of the easiest and is secure. The bad thing with someone like me is that it is too easy so the number appears more than a few times in my call history. There is the normal bottleneck of time that will hold up the funds, some say 60-90 days, but it obviously will still be needed. Verizon, once again making me glad I have not "traded them in" in the last TEN years has advanced ALL donations through them as of Friday night!!! It was around $3 million of the total $27 million.

If you don't have the money and you are still reading then you are alright becasue you must care and one of the best things you can do is ask for the Haitians to be comforted in some way.

Nobel Peace "Sur-Prize"

2010-01-10T15:40:00.000-06:00

It's truly a blessing to have really nice friends because they can help ground you sometimes when your thoughts become fragmented and disenchanted, so I invited a few over Thursday evening to watch the BCS National Championship football game between Alabama and Texas. "Hey, who has to go to work tomorrow?" At 12:00 there were five to six people in my den "chit-chatting" and another three or four in the kitchen doing the same.

A few weeks ago I read a story about a new military armament deal for the US that was going to net a few billion dollars and some new jobs but purposely let it slide to the back of my brain because it seemed so preposterous and the president had just been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Why is the Nobel Peace Prize granted? That should be an easy answer but it seems that as the ideas and attempts at illegitimate nation-state building continue proliferating the answer is really muddied. I always thought that a destabilized Middle East and nation-state building was a neo-con agenda. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen...what has changed since GW? More troops and more weapons - more troops and more weapons - more troops and more weapons. What follows are the primary facets to this new deal for "peace" that is supposed to thwart Iran:

1. To Egypt - TWENTY Harpoon II anti-ship cruise missiles
How many military ships does Iran have??

2. To Egypt - FOUR missile boats

3. To Egypt - FOUR-HUNDRED FIFTY Hellfire anti-tank missiles

4. To Egypt - ONE-HUNDRED FIFTY F-16 jet engines to Egypt

5. To Saudi Arabia - TWO THOUSAND+ anti-tank missiles

6. To Jordan - ONE THOUSAND+ anti-tank missiles

7. To Jordan - ONE-HUNDRED SIXTY missile launchers with night vision

8. To United Arab Emirates - ONE THOUSAND laser guided smart bombs

9. To United Arab Emirates - EIGHT HUNDRED one ton bombs

10. To United Arab Emirates - FOUR HUNDRED "bunker buster" bombs

11. To Morocco - TWENTY FOUR F-16's

12. To Israel - N O T H I N G but a threat from Rahm "Sabbatai Zevi" Emanuel

Maybe he really is a Muslim.

The Mother Of Tribes

2009-12-20T19:23:00.000-06:00

Almost a year ago I ranted about an attempt from the Sau'di Prince Turki to force a peace plan on Israel via the Obama administration and at the time found it rather humorous. I now realize the error in my humility.

I now believe that much of the recent actions by the Netanyahu government in Israel toward the settlements are a direct result of the "schmoozing" that went on between the Sau'di and President Obama. The horrifying part of this is not only has the sovereignty of the settlements been abrogated but I fear Gilad Shalit's fate has been turned into a pawn by the US government. Shalit is the Israeli soldier who has been held as a hostage by Hamas militants since his capture in June 2006.

Tamar Yonah discussed the possible release of hundreds of known Palestinian terrorists held by the Israeli Government in exchange for Gilad Shalit with Suzie Dym, a member of the Mattot Arim organization today on her show on Israel National TV. Matot Arim - Cities of Israel, Tribes of Israel, Mother of all tribes...

Shalit is a duel French-Israeli citizen and Ms. Dym intimated that the Israeli government should let the French deal with his release becasue under no circumstances does she or her organization support the release of hundreds of Palestinian terrorists for his freedom. She stated that we cannot release hundreds of killers back to the streets. Her arguments were rational and stated clearly with very little "spin" on them except...

...the Israeli government has been very nice to the Arabs all through YeShA since Prince Turki's attempt at international extortion and extraordinarily rude to their fellow Jewish citizens.

The life of ONE Jew is worth releasing a thousand or even ten thousand "mullah-wannabes". They will simply crawl back into the crevices of the dung houses they belong in and continue a viral cycle of hate amongst the other two million children of Ishmael.

I will end here as I did my blog in January:

NO SLEEP FOR GAZA UNTIL GILAD SHALIT IS RETURNED

Hanukkah & Hounds

2009-12-12T17:27:00.000-06:00

I went to bed Thursday night trying to forge an armistice in my head between the ongoing conflict of self righteous indignation flowing from moralizing cobwebs begging to be swept away and heartless ‘realpolitik’; both battles fuelled by the continued situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, healthcare reform in Amerika, an eerie calm in Moscow, and settlement freezes in Israel…all with the “triple summiteers” – Netanyahu, Obama, and Medvedev - at the helm.

I awoke Friday morning, the day that would usher in Hanukkah, the time of dedication, rededication, lights unto the world, Maccabee soccer, latkes, dreidels, gelt, Tanya from the Lubavitch Rebbe but saw only President Obama’s tense and grim face standing at the podium in Oslo Thursday accepting the Nobel Peace Prize as I stood relieving myself at the toilet peering out the window on the blistering cold day…

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu is a Libra born Oct. 21 1949. He immigrated to Amerika when he was fourteen and earned a BS in Architecture and MA in Management from MIT. His father is a former professor from Cornell. All of his grandparents were Lithuanian Jews and he is a relative of the famed Goan of Vilna, Rabbi Eliyahu. His brother Yonatan was killed during the hostage rescue at Entebbe in the 1970’s and his other brother is a screenwriter/playright.

Do you know who else was born on Oct. 21st? Alfred Nobel, in 1833. Also, volumes of the Talmud were burned on Oct. 21st, 1533 and the first Jewish sports star Hank Greenberg was selected as major league baseballs AL MVP in 1935 even though he refused to play ball on Yom Kippur.

…my backcountry thermometer hanging on the outside wall said 19 degrees. The sun was brighter than the golden desert sunset in southern Utah and the backyard animals were looking for their food. I have a bird feeder hanging from the fence and a little table below it with a Buddha statue and a table below that made out of rocks with a big bowl of water for the “wild beasts.” Birds and a squirrel or two were swarming and climbing all around the feeder in a back and forth frantic manner and some others were pecking away at the frozen water in the bowl…doves, who were terribly malnourished – they probably weighed five pounds – cardinals, American robins, sparrows, and a lonesome albino dove pecking on the frozen ground. How do they know to come to this place every day? Do they just come up on the feeder and water by chance? No. I know this because the albino dove is a repeat. She is here almost every day and I swear I am beginning to recognize behaviors specific to certain other birds in the community and among the squirrels. No matter what is said, squirrels have a pecking order because I can almost certainly pick out the same alpha vermin every time he is around.

President Barak Hussein Obama is a Leo born Aug. 4th, 1961. His childhood was similar to Netanyahu’s in many ways. He earned a BS in Political Science from Colombia in 1983 and his Law Degree from Harvard in 91’. Queen Elizabeth was born on the same day in 1900 and Raul Wallenberg in 1912. Annie Frank was arrested by the Nazis on Aug. 4th, 1944…

So I wrapped myself in my robe and donned my thick winter hat that looks more like a shtreimel that was slept in and grabbed the bird seed. I felt like Noah; all the animals went to their safe perches, the birds a few feet away along the fence row and in the tree and the squirrels to the low lying roof on the shed. I could see their precious little eyes peering at me and could practically hear them panting. I poured the seed in the feeder and as I began removing the ice from the water bowl to refill it a few of the birds began swarming around. I filled the water bowl and placed it on the rocks and headed toward the cozy warmth inside and as I reached for the door knob a symphony was born; all of the birds were chirping and the squirrels were making that wonderful click-clack sound. I looked back for a moment and fifteen feet away from me I saw those angelic souls eating and dancing and for a moment I thought I heard them singing Cat Stephen’s ‘Morning Has Broken’ and was thankful for such a glorious rededication!

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is a Virgo born Sept. 14th, 1965. He also is no stranger to scholastic endeavors; his father was a professor at Leningrad Institute of Technology and Dmitry earned his Law Degree and PhD from there. Unlike the other two “summiteers” he spent most of his life eating food from the soil where he was born. The Provisional Government of Russia was established on Sept. 14th, 1917 and the Nazis gained 107 seats in German elections on the same day in 1930.

As I walked back in the house I had three four-legged angels ‘flying too close to the ground’ sitting a few feet away from the door looking into my eyes with pure innocence and unconditional love. I fed them and changed their water, ate a piece of toast and wrapped myself in a blanket with three dogs curled up to me and thought to myself “what dedication!”

I spent the entire day at the house with my dogs and as the moon rose on the first day of Hanukkah I curled back up under the same blanket as I did that morning with the dogs again and thought to myself “what a rededication!”

Happy Hanukkah!

Laila Aliz Chaim be Tel-Aviv

2009-11-28T20:17:00.000-06:00

Gay Night Life in Tel-Aviv...I have tried my best to live a frum life for many years but there is always something that pulls me back to the throes of goyim styles - boys, Saturday SEC football, the soap I rub on my body, Tequilla, Guinness beer, groceries, etc. But the essence lies in the journey.

I recently got introduced to the Jewish Havura movement (meaning in elementary terms, welcomes all souls from both a Reconstructionist to Orthodox view - very liberal to uber-conservative) which eventually brought me full circle back to Israel National Radio's Thanksgiving evening broadcast, "Yishai & Friends". He interviewed the Director General of Israeli Ministry of Tourism Shaul Zemach and the discussion was centered around Israel's recent attempts to bring more visitors to that country...they see themselves in direct competition with Egypt (but all good Yehudim know that of all places they are not to look back on Egypt), Turkey, Cyprus, and Lebanon and the idea of making Jerusalem the focus of that campaign and not the forged capital Tel-Aviv.

The discussions main focus was a lively diatribe on the differences between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem which led to a recurring joke about Jerusalem competing with Tel-Aviv's gay night life and one of the callers was a frum - observant - Jew who moved there a couple years ago...

So I spent Friday day cooking chicken soup, making pizza dough (whole wheat), and goat cheese...all Kashrut mind you, and straightened up my "cookware" further according to the standards of maintaining them in a Kosher manner - all meat and dairy items separated. I spent Friday evening and Saturday reading and thinking. I read Zalman Shachter, Albert Camus, New York Times, the Oxford American and thought, thought, thought...

...the gay Jew who made Aliyah to Israel a few years ago that called in to the show wished to offer his support in making Jerusalem the focal point of the tourist focus but took it another step by stating that the gay night life of Tel-Aviv was not what motivated his souls yearning but it was the "old walls" of Jerusalem, to him it was the "place" where his heart's synergy was plugged into and too many of his gay friends saw it the other way...their energy came from and was centered around being feygele in Tel-Aviv.

I recently had a friend that I had nothing in common with yet a lot. We both came from disheveled and dysfunctional spiritual backgrounds, were "mama's boys", well educated, wondering minds and souls...but I was the socialist proletariat and he the capitalist bourgeois. Discussions ran from Krishna to the Lubavitch Rebbe and met their climax in early summer when it was discussed that no physical relationship would evolve. Months later the friendship was "divorced" by my friend because of his infatuation with me...I assume sexually, physically, carnally, "Tel-Avivy". To me there was a lost sense of reality...what was he in love with? The idea of that had been discussed and I thought put to rest much earlier.

My last "ex" and I agreed to go our separate ways in March, a little over two years into the relationship, and I moved out from his place in May. I have had sex with three people in the last three years and since my separation that communion has happened twice...maybe it is crossing into the forties decade or maybe it is realizing that my Yerushalayim Shel Zahov (Jerusalem of Gold) is my own heart and not tied to purse strings at the end of some race track.

Being gay and observant actually go together very well, as the caller said. We bring both worlds in the flesh together as the Torah does, in not discerning between male or female souls, there are no separating words, they are one...so when a man lies with a man it is not an abomination but a procreation. We lose sight and connection when it is done with "being in love with the idea of being in love"....

...the caller to the Abramowitz show adjured all gays to "L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim -- Next Year In Jerusalem"...at least in our hearts!

Happy Birthday Marine

2009-11-11T18:17:00.000-06:00

Twenty years ago I stood hungover in a blistering bright but cold November day in North Carolina listening to some Marine Lieutenant fresh off the bus from Annapolis give a class on the new threat to world peace - the urban fanatical terrorist - growing out of Southwest Asia and I thought to myself: First - damn, the Berlin Wall is still falling and these brass-asses already moved on to a new game...next thing I know we'll be drinking Pertsovka with the Russkies. Second - South West Asia? Where's that? The west side of Laos? Mekong? Chosin? Urban? I thought they all lived in rice-huts in the middle of mud paddies.

The Veteran in the picture was a WWI Vet holding the flag that draped the casket of his son killed in the Korean War.

I soon realized that Southwest Asia was the new moniker for "urban fanatical terrorist" land. How new was it? When did we begin using the term South West Asia? I honestly could not find any direct reference to it's inception so I assume it was the manifestation from some smokey Pentagon room as an attempt to "make things right" with the Vietnam/South East Asia Veterans which really didn't make much sense.

Little did I know that less than a year after listening to that cute Lieutenant explain the new threat to world peace coming from the "middle east" I would be eating camel in the middle of the Arabian Desert marching north toward Kuwait City and Basra like some modern day Lawrence of Arabia on his way to Damascus! Just what went on in those dark smoke filled Pentagon backrooms? They knew.

Over the years I formed this growing disdain for military action abroad and I must admit that much of it was fueled by my dislike for the neo-con's but the thing I never could really reconcile was that I was a complete Israeli Hawk; which should find me on the same side as the Amerikan evangelicals and war-mongers following Pat Robertson and getting google-eyed over Ron Paul. Ron Paul? Huh? I'll take the Republican Whip Eric Cantor...I must say he is really pretty but he is the perfect embodiment of one of USMC - uncle shadai's misguided children. Just a joke, Marine's sometimes refer to themselves as one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.

As I was writing this my phone rang, call from my dad. A little over a month ago I decidied I was "done with him" as I said in my un-neutered male-hair-standing-up machismo-adrenaline-driven stupidity. As the phone rang I could feel beads of sweat building up on the head of my dick as I rapped my fingers on the table in some weird Chopin piano riff style and could hear Jerry Garcia whispering in my ear "take up your china doll, it's only fractured and just a little nervous from the fall...all I leave behind me is what I found...stranger ones have come by here..." I figured if Chopin and Garcia were sending me a message at this point the only rightful thing for me to do was to...................hit END CALL! Please, I am a Leo, a purring little cat so I answered the phone and my father and I spoke about Theodore Roosevelts setting the stage for our National Forest system (something we both enjoy), Franklin Roosevelts wonderful programs before, during, and after the depression and his own indellible marks left on the preservation of some of our nations wilderness through the CCC, our uncommon bond of both being die-hard Democrats no matter what!, my Uncle Joe's military service in WWII, the people who were able to continue their lives beyond a very bleak and tortured eastern Europe because cynicism did not determine what was right or wrong, the soul did.

Yesterday I had stepped out of my office into the showroom we have at work - my office has two doors, one into the showroom and one into the warehouse - and a few feet away I heard a really loud and hard knock on the door, more like a banging, and as I turned to go back I was met face to face by this mid-fifties stragly haired guy who grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest and said "Happy Birthday Marine! Semper Fi! names Terry Downs, they call me Tango and wanted to tell a fellow Marine Happy Birthday". November 10th is the Marine Corps birthday and it had not even crossed my mind. Terry was a medium sized guy with fairly stocky arms, bushy mustache, Marine Corps hat on, hair flinging out the sides...as he pulled my forearm to his chest in a hand shake gesture it all dawned on me: the Marine Corps was formed Nov 10, 1775 - one year before this country pissed it's colors, the president's own protect his quarters today just as those early blue coats did General Washington, they even guide his horse in the sky like they did his canoe... OK enough.

It dawned on me that my disdain for not removing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq was due to my own dark crevices selfishly absorbing the light from others. When I came in from work Wednesday, Veterans Day, I sat down and watched one of the evening news programs segment on a young veteran in his late twenties enduring the tumultuous recovery from injuries suffered by an IED in Afghanistan. He was on a morning run outside of DC hoping to become a drill Sargeant to train young recruits...he was running on two prosthetics, lost both legs but still saw the light!

I thought about my dear friend Karen's father who was an Air Force pilot in WWII who flew numerous missions over Germany - the compass, glasses, and miscellaneous military items issued to him that Karen gave to me. I thought about the berets, scarves, ribbons, and miscellaneous items I brought home from Iraqi soldiers.

So, Veterans Day. I thought about the nightmares and dreams we all brought home and realized that it's my fucking Marine Corps and the boys over there are my brothers and the ones that went before us are all our fathers.

No matter what the President decides I will support. Not for some nation building geostratifying nation building fantasy but for the hearts that march on led by the ones that went before.

To ALL Veterans...thanks and Semper Fidelis!

Karzais Klein Democracy

2009-10-05T18:52:00.000-05:00

As a former Marine and combat veteran I voted for President Obama hoping that he would remove our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and even though the Whitehouse has recently hinted there would be no reduction in forces protecting Kabul... I really thought that in Obama grandeur we would get a press conference later this week not only announcing the refusal to send more young men to that heroin infested shit hole but a proclamation of ENDING THE WAR! What war?

Close to 1,000 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan and almost 5,000 in Iraq. Do you realize it has been NINE years? We go on with our lives and do any of you recall the last time you watched an American-flag-draped coffin exit a plane at Dover? Do any of you recall the last soldier killed in Afghanistan? Has there been any reduction in troop sizes in Afghanistan or Iraq? This is a black GW!

To be honest with you, no other issue permeated my thoughts when voting for Obama more than Iraq and Afghanistan. I could give a crap about gay marriage, a new economic policy, or Iran...all I wanted was someone with balls to stand up to the narcissistic military establishment that runs through Washington, London, Moscow, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Riyadh and New Delhi and say E N O U G H !

I guess the decision to forego any troop removal was made behind closed doors last month in Pittsburgh...ermmmm, ever heard of the Group of Twenty? G-20. They had a little summit in Pittsburgh last month. This decision most likely bodes well for most of the G-20 whores. Think about it...the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have become to the world what the Palestianians are to Israel... a bunch of mis-fit kwanii kelbahs (faggot bitches) that no one else wants to help find a solution to or for so the international community has used our presence in Afghanistan as leverage to remind President Obama that our boys need to remain there in order to fight for Afghani womens suffrage, Zoroastrian freedom, education for the little kids, a fruitful life at least past 10 years old, an outlet to the abyss. Wait! That sounds like Memphis! We have one of if not the highest infant mortality rate in the country that is worse than some T H I R D W O R L D countries, our violent crime among young people is much more skewed toward black on black - try 99% - which is an abomination, more than a third of our highschool kids never finish school, and we wonder why Memphis was one of the first cities to receive the H1N1 innoculation - today, 10/05/09 - it is because we are in the middle of a mayoral race where everyone is talking about bringing the county and city together as one loving fucking entity and being equal.

Equal?? A 10 year old white girl with MS and other complications died last week in Memphis from H1N1 and a 13 year old very healthy black boy died yesterday two miles away. 6,000 cases have been reported in Memphis. Yet the G-20 have a new vision and the Pittsburgh summit's preamble stated:
"We meet in the midst of a critical transition from crisis to recovery to turn the page on an era of irresponsibility and to adopt a set of policies, regulations and reforms to meet the needs of the 21st century global economy..."

Afghanistan borders Irans eastern boundaries and that is the only reason I can imagine we have fooled ourselves into remaining there...it will force the Persians to talk more. This is so ludicrous. I despise Ahmadinejad but do not see why he has to be forced to "talk". I think it is time for Cyrus to just let it be.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we have troops on the other side of Persia/Iran also... I R A Q. Maybe there is some order in chaos in the new world idealogy of geo-stratified nation building... it's sheer madness to me. I just beg that we cut our losses and let the zibs (dicks) take care of themselves but no matter what, as Stephen Decatur said, "my country right or wrong , my country..." but this is the abbreviated version for quaint hill-billy southerners! What he actually said was: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Let's do what we can to set it right!

Semper Fidelis!

In The Ghetto...

2009-08-19T20:06:00.000-05:00

...the first time I remember hearing the word ghetto was when I asked my mom what it meant after hearing Elvis Presley sing Mac Davis' In The Ghetto...uh, maybe sometime around 1975 for me. The song was originally titled The Vicious Circle and Elvis recorded it as In The Ghetto at American Sound Studio in Memphis in 1968 - the same year Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, Neal Cassady, Yuri Gagarin, Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck died. Wow! Talk about a mouth-full! And the year before some of us saw Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix pass. WTF? Vietnam was a festering boil - Israel had won the Six Day War with G-d and Bob Dylan on their side, patriotiam had become the last refuge of the scoundrel, and Ivy League schools were prepping for the sneaky neo-cons!

Prefix: to place in front of, especially to add as a prefix - 'prefix a syllable to a word'. I preferred Websters because it is still a bit original and not so modern. So when did GHETTO become a syllable?

Most Anthropologists and Sociologists will tell you that one of the most common avenues used to destroy or conquer a nation, people, country, ethnic group, cultural entity, etc. was/is to subdue it's native language. "Subduing" a native tongue did not always mean completely doing away with it but often times more than others it included DE-SENSITIZING (there goes the prefix) original peoples uses of certain words initially and then indirectly deriding the entire language.

Not far from the gates of Graceland Elvis sang:

"People, don't you understand, the child needs a helping hand or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day. Take a look at you and me, are we too blind to see, do we simply turn our heads and look the other way? Well the world turns and a hungry little boy with a runny nose plays in the street as the cold wind blows In the ghetto."

Put ghetto before all of the following words and please explain to me what the meanings are: -food, -car, -soul, -house, -bootie, -hair, -shirt, -watch, -dog, -honey, -man, -gay (gay-ghetto), -school, -church, -medicine, -education ????????????????

I'll tell you what it means: an attempt by racist suburban pigs to subtly diminish an ethnic groups identity and self worth by further claiming that they are nothing without "whitey!" It means a place where Jews were pushed into well before Hitler that ended in the camps under the Nazis. It means a place in northern Africa where Jews were "quartered" in front of the ruling elites compounds to protect them from riotous crowds. It means a place where people end up living due to less than financial prosperity becasue there is minimal revenue remaining in the area - schools suck, medical care sucks, transportation sucks, grocery stores suck (have you ever seriously shopped a grocery store in an economically depressed neighborhood? The meat department is akin to what I imagine a meat "counter" looked like in 1870 famished Ireland! - seriously - neckbones, tripe, feet, etc) These are not so much cultural delicassies as much as they are FORCED dietary items. A Vicious Circle? What did Elvis say? Take a look at you and me, are we too blind to see?

Graceland grew from south Memphis - south Memphis did not grow from Graceland. Lisa Marie recorded a duet "with her dad" in August 07' of In The Ghetto to raise money for the Presley Charitable Foundation which caught a lot of shit from the "holier-than-thow" crowd because of it's depiction of toddler's with guns in the city. Toddlers with guns? Huh? Black teenage kids are killing each other in this city and they are toddlers in the eyes of g-d! Our eyes are not too blind to see, our souls are too dark to know. Do you have to know something to care about it? Or do we simply refuse to care?

As "white flight" began in our country (whites leaving the inner city for the suburbs) the FHA Mortgage Manual stated: "Recommended restrictions should include provision for: prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended …Schools should be appropriate to the needs of the new community and they should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups." Nothing else needs to be said.

Use of the word ghetto is unacceptable! Unless we (white people) are describing our own souls...it is a white-ghetto-diaspora-of-the-soul.

blind-man-ricky on the Orange Mound

2009-07-25T03:02:00.000-05:00

I had a scheduled doctors appointment due to a request to change my Ambien and general check up issues. My doctors office is in a "less than fortunate" part of town, on Park, close to Getwell where the Memphis Gay Chamber of Commerce recently discussed "removing the riff-raff from the area"... HUH? I wanted to extend my hand in the air and say "huh, please repeat"!!!!!! Riff Raff?? That is such a CODE WORD for/from whitey refering to black and other-than white non-owning tenants anywhere around. Riff Raff? Is it 2009 or 1969?

As I ws driving down Park I noticed out of the corner of my eye this middle aged black man walking with a cane and using it in a manner as if he had some eyesight handicaps and didn't think much else about it until...

..."wooosshh, kabam" the front door to the doctors office slung open and there he was slumbering straight ahead into the corner walls in a part of the front office where nothing was, other than paneling and saying "hello everyone, it's a beautiful day ain't it!" I honestly had to put myself in check becasue I almost laughed. This guy had walked straight into the corner where two walls meet but it quickly dawned on me "he's really blind." I arose and said this way sir, took his arm and led him to the receptionist window and I returned to my seat and magazine.

A few minutes later the blind man finished with checking in and turned around and said "where's my new friend?" I replied "here sir" and before I could say anything else he had sat down beside me and asked if I minded if he joined me.

"Ricky's my name, blind man Ricky some call me" and stuck out his hand. We began talking about me seeing him walking on my way to the doctor's office, if the city provided special transportation services, if he was from Memphis, family close by, young "skiddles" as he called young people - "skiddle" meaning stupid kid - how blind he was, his government assistance, etc.

Ricky grew up close by and said he had not been out of the house in the last month because it had been so hot. He told me about trips to the Pink Palace, botanical gardens, the zoo, and described the splendor of the beautiful geese in flight around the ponds, the huge pine trees, and all the flowers. I at this point assumed he was partially blind and asked him about his sight. Blind man Ricky leaned his head back and gently put two fingers in his right eye and removed this thin piece of "something" that looked like an abbreviated eye, that had been "looking" at me a few minutes earlier in his eye socket, and said: "I lost this one in 82'" and then did the same thing to the one on the left and said "and I lost this one in 02'...glaucoma...I have diabetes...that's why I am here today becasue my legs is hurting me bad." He pulled up his pants and had these huge baseball to softball size lumps (two or three) at the bottom of both lages shortly above his ankles. I honestly thought to myself "HEALTHCARE REFORM - 20 YEARS OF LIES and this man will probably lose his legs due to poor healthcare in the next few years". First his eyes then his legs. A whole new approach to ethnic cleansing! I have no right to feel any self-pity!

His walking cane was a golf club with the "head" broken off and I asked him why he didn't use a regular walking cane for sight. He said he'd been through so many in the last year it ws just easier to buy the golf clubs at the goodwill. He was blind, very blind. Said he got $65 on the 13th and another $450 on the 31st of every month, lived in a subsidized apartment, lost too many canes to the "skiddles" who would grab them from his hands while walking, explained how he bought groceries. The truth was that his insurance would not pay for any more canes because of all the ones he'd lost to the cruel little delinquents.

I asked him if he got depressed when he lost his second eye and he said yes. Said he stayed on the couch for almost a year. Said he couldn't stand not seeing the sun, frogs in the road, birds on the wire, "skiddles" chasing the ball, grass, his food, his mama's face...on and on. I almost had to get up. Then my overly maternal doctor Sudha came for me. I told Ricky if he was still there when I got out I would "holler" at him.

Soon after entering the patient-examintaion-room, Ricky was taken to one of the rooms also. The entire time I sat there I could hear his voice across the office carrying on with the nurse, laughing, telling her she was beautiful, talking about how nice the day was, and how sweet the staff were in the office. He never complained...

When the doctor finished with me I asked a nurse (she was Indian as my doctor is and had fraternal twins whose birthday was the same as mine, July 25th but considerably younger - she said "the girl has the devil in her sometimes and the boy is as sweet as Buddha") in the front office if Ricky was still there becasue I had not heard his voice in a while...the office was full, maybe fifteen people. Ricky came slumbering (once again) from around the corner slinging his cane with a tourniquet still on his arm saying "I am here Mr. Steve, where are you?" This time I laughed and then he started doing the same and our overly maternal doctor Sudha grabbed his arm and told him "don't be so stupid and get back in the lab room to get the blood drawn." He laughed more and said "it hurts."

I waited on Ricky and gave him a ride home. He lived on Spottswood in a part of Memphis I never had seen and never really thought I would, around Semmes and South Greer, this is rough Memphis - Hustle And Flow type Memphis - in the heart of what is called Orange Mound. He could tell where we were in the car within 50 feet. Said he can sense everything by memory and was glad "I could see for the first years of my life." Ricky said he still goes to the lake at the botanical gardens, can hear birds chirping, can hear the "skiddles ball when they kick it...but I can't touch my mama's face no more...I see it in my head but it ain't the same." Ricky had guided me into the small complex where he lived, odd setting, kind of like "quad-plexes" or something, brick, pine woods to the north and seemingly quiet. Then I heard the train and realized his $150 a month government subsidized apartment was literally a couple hundred yards south of the freaking Memphis Country Club. Blind man Ricky put his hand out and said he hoped to see me again at the doctors office, laughed, and said "you know what I mean new friend". I told him that tomorrow was my birthday and meeting him was the best brithday present I could have received. As he stepped out of the car he turned toward me and said he wished he had some birthday cake for me and told me to have a nice day and said "welcome to Orange Mound brother."

Happy 4th Of July - Welcome Back To Fallujah

2009-07-05T18:16:00.000-05:00

It was a cold, wintry, dark February day with the ground well covered in snow that I sat in what I then called “cattle rooms” smoking cigarette after cigarette and reading the newspaper in the Cincinnati Airport. The news always seemed to go from grim to desperate… the promising Lebanese politician Rafik Harari was killed by a car bomb in Beirut, North Korea and Iran screamed that they had nuclear weapons, another suicide bomb detonated in Baghdad, gay groups were considering adopting intervention tactics to track men with HIV who engage in risky behavior (read that one again! Talk about Orwellian life), ETA detonated a bomb in Spain, Bush and his military advisors had no exit plan for Fallujah, on and freaking on…

Fallujah was one of Arab histories pearls for many years. It was quiet, peaceful, scholarly, hosted numerous Jewish academies through the centuries, and fared better than many other urban areas through the advent of Islam from the Abbasid and Umayyad dynasties to the modern day “re-conquesting inquisition” led by the neo-cons in Washington and their lavender bitches in London.

I looked up from the paper and in walked this beautiful Marine with my defacto standard: small, baby faced, smooth skin, and a hollow gaze. I would be lying if I denied any immediate carnal ideations but those were quickly quelled when the young Marine sat down next to me and asked if he could “bomb a smoke”. I told him gladly and we introduced ourselves.

Fallujah for years linked the trade route from the Nejd Province in modern day Sa’udi Arabia to the areas of Mosul and Aleppo and was known as the desert highway between Amman and Baghdad; it rested at a crossroads then and is once again at a crossroads as both Sunni and Shia Muslims have joined together to rebuild the 70-90% destruction that the city incurred from the US Military beginning in 03’.

“Names Adam, thanks for the smoke.” Adam was a 19 year old fresh faced kid raised in Chicago, was 100% mid-west, and was on his way home for a few days from Fallujah due to the graces of the US Department of Defense granting him a seven day hardship leave due to “stress and unnatural acts of violence perpetrated against a member of the United States Military” to see his mom and girlfriend. He said he couldn’t wait to put his eyes on Wrigley Field and hoped he somehow could get inside for a brief reprieve…said it would make everything “good to go.”

We talked about why he was in the Corps, my time in, his love-life, mine, our families, baseball, hockey, his plans after the Marine Corps… told him I was gay and thought he was gorgeous; he laughed and said he had a girlfriend back home he would be seeing and appreciated the compliment. He hated the snow and ice and thought the desert was cool but didn’t understand the problems in Fallujah.

The city always had an air of independence: the Imams refused to eulogize Saddam Hussein during his reign and suffered horrible persecution, the British saw it as a “hotbed” of instability in the early 20th Century and suffered through a battle because of it that left several thousand Iraqis and a couple thousand Brits dead, the Wahhibi Sect of Islam practiced in Sa’udi Arabia took root in Fallujah years ago and is still practiced to this day, a couple hundred citizens died in the city in the first Gulf War when a crowded market was “accidentally” bombed, a couple hundred citizens died in 03’ when they were protesting the US Military setting up an operating unit in an old Baath Party Office building across the street from a school and troops opened fire on the people. Still the city of almost 500,000 remained peaceful, quiet and cooperative until…

“…we don’t know what the fuck we are shooting at most of the time dude. The other day we took fire from a corner store and we unloaded on those mother fuckers. When we got to the store there was this little boy lying in the doorway and a lady behind him on the floor. It was weird, they both had multiple gunshot holes and there was some busted milk spreading out on the floor around her and the kid…looked kind of like a piece of peppermint candy because the blood had kind of swirled in to the milk. We never knew who fired on us.”

This was the city where those four renegade Blackwater gaurds were drug from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and then hanged from the girders’ of a bridge crossing the Euphrates. The assault on Fallujah began in earnest in November 2004 primarily as an attempt to regain control of it from the estimated 600-6,000 insurgents in preparation of the January 2005 national elections. The only person at the time who was viewed as a serious candidate for the office of presidency was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim who had for the past 20 years slept with Hezbollah, Iranian politicians, and various Shiite thugs while living in Syria and travelling back and forth to Iran… FALLUJAH IS SUNNI AND WAHHABI and many of the citizens had fled by this time. Did the US Government wish to ensure a sweeping victory in the city for al-Maliki? The insurgents weren’t even 1% of the population. Nation-state building is too nice; this was coup de tat orchestrating.

Adam said he wasn’t sure what to say to his mom…or his girlfriend. I asked him what he meant and he said “I don’t know what to fucking say man…how can I talk to them.” Adam obviously was a perfect example of how the DOD takes care of many PTSD combat troops – ship them home for a while and hope that it all goes away. The Marine said he might not make it to see his mom and girl and may instead take a quick flight from Chicago to Detroit to see a friend and just stay drunk for five days. By this time he was teary-eyed, shaken, and all I could think was that our land of the free and home of the brave were bringing home an entire generation of KIDS that were going to be perfectly fucked up.

My flight number was called and I stood up, threw my smokes to my new friend, told him to keep his head down and said “Semper Fi”; he stood up hugged me and responded with the same. As I walked back into the airport I couldn’t help but wonder if he would make it back home another time because his movement orders (paperwork a soldier will carry validating their dress or leave of absence) returned him directly to Fallujah in seven days.

The fighting in Fallujah ended for the most part in June of 2007 but today the citizens are being practically starved and living off of handouts from Marine units close by and the citizens blame that Iranian kisich Maliki, the Shi’ite Hezbollah-loving bitch. Prior to the cessation of conflict in the city US forces had given out Christian coins to the children at many of the cities crossroads.

Happy 4th of July Amerika.

The Jew Under The Lotus

2009-06-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

So I have been thinking a lot lately about when I “came out”, gays, the so-called gay community, A-Lister gays, faerie gays, the Palestinians, the West Bank,Gaza, Golan, Baghdad, Beirut, Southern Lebanon, Bashir Assad in Syria, Afghanistan, Opium, Heroin, China, Jane Goodall, Lewis Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, Lucy, Sudan, Rwanda, Nepal, India, Pakistan, the Dalai Lama…and wonder where it all stops.

I first came out when I awoke that sultry Alabama summer day with my eleven year old BVD’s splattered with some creamy shit around the piss trap and thought I was dying…then I remembered this unbelievable feeling that I experienced a few minutes before in both my groin and head and remembered that I was feeling up my younger neighbor’s ass and inside thighs as he climbed up a concrete wall in the drainage ditch. As I removed my underwear I whispered to myself “Johan”. He was so beautiful and I had a crush on him until I graduated from high school.

I first came out at my friend Robbie’s sleepover when I went to the bathroom and could not understand why I was so engrossed in the remaining drops of piss left by him on the ring of the toilet.

I first came out when a family friend who was attempting to live a life of religious celibacy asked me up to his room to show me the L&N train set he had and then offered me a miniature caboose he made with my name on it.

I first came out when my mother’s pussy dilated a little too much and I weighed a whopping four pounds and a couple ounces as I entered this kingdom.

I first came out when I watched the space shuttle Colombia explode in the sky like a giant dick relieving itself of years of pent up frustration and pain…but then it became serious.

I first came out when I realized at ten that the Leif Garrett album covers sucked me in for only one reason…those TIGHT white pants and his beautiful face.

I first came out when my grandfathers died within a few months of each other and realized for the first time I had lost some pure innocence in my life.

I first came out when I watched Elvis' Cadillac meander up Union Ave while asking my mother where Graceland was and telling her I wanted to be there.

I first came out when the rounds began falling around me in northern Kuwait as I began entreating upon Mary, Jesus, Muhammad, Allah, G-d, Buddha, and Krishna, promising them all that if I lived I would no longer play charades with my life…

…I loved southern Iraq and Kuwait and first came out a few months later while eating Baskin & Robbins ice cream under a date palm grove outside of Kuwait City. My unit was given an eight hour reprieve to visit an Olympic sized pool with volleyball nets and all types of recreation that obviously was built for foreign oil workers. I was lieing on my stomach as this small group of British soldiers squeezed in and began removing their “cammies”. They all were wearing speedos and before I realized it I was zoned in on one particular beauty – dark hair, dark eyes, smooth skin - my dick became more painful when I realized I was lying on top of my own hard-on that was practically lifting me up. I quickly began thinking of some jerk-off Iraqis blood splattered on my face a few days before and got up with a limp dick to get a snow cone at the refreshment stand. As I took my change from some Indian guy sold into servitude to the Kuwaitis or Saudis my hand slightly smacked someone in the balls as it became rested back to my side. I looked up and attempted to say excuse me and it was that British beauty from earlier and he said with a smirk “oh it’s quite alright mate” and I ran.

That evening I walked up to the little compound/bazaar the size of four to five football fields enclosed by a fourteen foot concrete wall and walked past the Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, McDonalds… of which all were Halal, and decided on the Baskin & Robbins. I figured it was goat milk ice cream which sounded nice to me…cream once again. The line was unbelievable. I didn’t know Arabs loved Baskin & Robbins so much and could not help but enjoy the wonderful scenery of all the young Arabs wearing their thobes and the subtle yet very erotic outlines of every curve on their bodies…including their warmly welcoming manhood.

I retrieved my ice cream and walked to a small grove of date palm trees in front of these abandoned oil worker dormitory style apartments and began thinking back to the date shakes my grandma made me when I was a child that had a taste and flavor uncomparable to this day and my B&R serving began tasting the same. My daydreaming soon turned to disappointment when it appeared someone was walking my way and I figured it was some Arab wishing to engage in simple conversation or one who was sent by Muhammad to move me away from his property because I was an Infidel and then realized it was neither. The person appeared to walk in a “western” manner and it soon became obvious it was a soldier with a personal weapon slung over his shoulder and in fatigues. I sat up and choked on my ice cream which I never thought was possible and have not experienced that to this day when I realized it was the British beauty from the pool.

We introduced ourselves, traded recent combat stories, spoke of the heat, explored what would happen to Saddam Hussein, ruminated about TE Lawrence and then his hand began caressing my thigh and before I knew it I was being led by David to the abandoned building behind us. We began kissing, probing, groping, touching and whatever else goes on as soon as we found a door that would open. He found my gay virginity funny and told me he would be gentle. Before I knew it we were in one of the rooms showers and my dick had slid into his glory as if I had done it a thousand and one times before.

I first came out with Muhammad and the Seven Pillars of Islam on my mind and felt like I was Johnathan comforting David and have been under the Lotus ever since.

Pirates on Somali Shores & Fox News

2009-04-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

Alright, I usually enjoy watching all of the Sunday morning news shows starting with CBS Sunday Morning and close it out with This Week With George Stephanopolous and even includes Fox News Sunday...but not anymore. Today was the beginning of the end of my viewing of those idiot fucking nazi Christians and Christian "wanna-bes" on Fox Sunday. This actually breaks my heart and is one more thing thrown into the mix of my getting older grieiving for lost ideas becasue Chris Wallace has always rode on his father's coat tails (Mike Wallace) when it comes to admiration and respect, NOT ANYMORE!

The entire panel said that the Somali pirating is the true Obama Administration test and he must go into Somalia militarily and eradicate the pirates land bases of operations. Huh? What did Father Cristol say? What did Brother Juan mumble? What was that you asked your daddy Chris?

Forgive me if I am wrong but I do not think all of the pirating that has been occuring started within the last 120 days! There are people still being held captive by Somali pirates that were taken a year ago. Who was in the Whitehouse then???? The Republicooks! Geez, give me a break.

Also, they all were berating President Obama for still talking about GW Bush. Again, HUH? How can he/we not be talking about the Bush years when most of what we have to undertake as a nation right now is becasue of that fools failed narcissistic policies and command!

Take note Fox News: You are banished from my head! Removed from all of my thoughts and my eyes have been warned that they will be plucked from my head if they ever lay sight on your right wing idiosyncratic zenophobic nazi bull shit ever again.

Happy Easter Christians...I hope the lions were kind and your moshiach visited.

Hannukuh Harry & The Schwindling Sedar

2009-03-02T18:31:00.000-06:00

OK so my first question is what happened to Sarbanes-Oxley and it's requirement that "the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) implement rulings on requirements to comply with the law"? I know, it was intended for those dry and sometimes stinky-english-rose-smelling accountants but if you read the papers or purview much streaming media these days you will notice that under the Neo-Cons the SEC was nothing more than a castrated snake in the disguise of a white middle-aged college educated Christian! Oh wait, is that not what ALL white middle aged christian men in "finance" are, SNAKES? So where does my brother Bernard MADoff fall? Brother? Brother like Cain to Abel, Esau to Jacob, Ishmael to Isaac...Arab to Jew! Well, maybe not that extreme. I am sure sweet Bernie's house will be clean of all chametz and eat only Matzoh in a few weeks at Passover because he probably still pays some poor lady from Guadalupe $3 a day to clean his condo and make sure his holiday food is kashrut. Snake, Jewish snake, what a pity but redemption is possible, I will post the Lubavitch prayer line for Yom Kippur Mr. Madoff and we expect a few million dollars to go to Chabad Houses in the Southeastern US so we can continue converting their lost souls.

Where can we start with this G-d forbidden mess? Lives have been destroyed in their "golden years", elderly citizens and retirees who worked honestly and more than ethically have lost everything...who will repay? Young single-parent families who "squeeked by" at the loan office got that house loan and continued working 55 hours a week for minimum wage lost everything...who will repay? Ill-informed single parent moms renewed mortgages on the houses that their lame ass wet dick husbands gave up to them at the "courts" behest becasue of their infidelity, refinanced their mortgages and included one too many unsecured bills and found their house belonging to Chase with no where to go...who will repay? An 18 year old beautiful high-school senior died en route between the local prized Baptist hospital and the county medical center from an Asthma attack because his dad lost his job and health benefits three months ago...who will repay?

No one can repay nor should they. The bleeding has to stop now and I suggest it unfold in the following manner:

Sometimes I am afraid it all began a little over eight years ago on that beautiful Fall morning Sept. 11 2001. The seeds had already been sewn for some financial demise but not the rampant implosion that has occurred since then. I sometimes think that after 9-11 that many of the rightful needs to follow up and investigate rogue transactions and securities issues that our various governmental agencies - the SEC, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and other governmental agencies - became so stifled due to our countries stewards obsession with business as usual and maintaining a portrayal of normalcy that what fell in place was this sick neo-con quid pro quo way of getting in low in the mornig and out high in the afternoon.

We all fell into the trap. Our latest clothes, car buys, bling-bling wraps, we raffled our kids student loans off and they weren't even finished with their sophomore year, we signed off on our employers raffling of our health benefits outsourced to a third party in India...every freaking year! We didn't ask when a new no name securities firm sent us letters stating they just purchased our home mortgage. Then they offered us a second mortgage with lower payments and some really nifty little hidden agendas that helped them "get rich fast". We all became day traders and were playing the shorts for a long time, eventhough a lot of us have no clue what that means.

The Neo-Cons regulated and de-regulated whetever they wished to at will and we the people went along with it. This was hedonism at it's prime and possibly the time where the guf is empty and no souls are emanating from it any more. We all turned into a bunch of incestuous Romans lieing around eating fresh fruit matured off of growth hormones and antibiotics not yet approved by the FDA and sexually molested the little Aztec kids who harvested the produce for us. Now that the crops will not yield any edible portions we cannot figure out what the problem is...G-d, call in the EPA, FDA, FEMA, FHA, SEC. We look like the cosmopolitan crowd soon-to-be-christian / pagan revellers adjuring Pontius Pilate to crucify that Jesus. Oh wait, you have been comforted all this time by being told that it was the dirty Jews who crucified that Jesus, sorry, but it wasn't. It was those stinky fish smelling Turks, Romans, Syrians & Assyrians.

My suggestion to solve this mess: GLoBAL IMmUNiTY. Every banker, institution, fund, prior administration member, and citizen should be granted full immunity from any recourse from wrong-doing that may arise from the past 10 years of DTM (day trading mentaltiy) and offer the following cushion to those stupid homeowners that bought beyond their means: forgive all loans in arrears within a six month default or foreclosed status...if the payments were delinquent within only six months then the new banking loans should open up access to money for those people to get their payments back in order and enact a national six month forebearance law for these people so they can immediately begin payments up to date...the freaking banks will not lose anything but interest for a few months and in some cases may be able to work out a reduced payment or say a revised principal premium for six months.

Sarbanes-Oxley only removed the onus of accountability from the true bean counters onto individuals far removed from his books...some lowly guy working in a warehouse thousands of miles away required to quarterly validate that he has done specific requirements with the SOX standards and have on hand so if some jolly-jocker from Ernst & Young shows up he can authenticate his audit.

So, wipe it all clean President Obama. Approach it like major league baseball and the cycling federation - from this day forward any slick attempting to so much misappropriate or misrepresent a pencil will have hell to pay...whether he works for the SEC or on Wall Street. Forgive them, let it be....but carry a heavy stick from this day forward.

Bernie, you set the cup out for Elijah and I'll bring the Manishevitz!

This is why I am glad I am a Socialist.

Kosher Felching

2009-02-19T19:23:00.000-06:00

Let me begin by saying that at no time in the past 41 years of my life have I been treated for any type of obsessive quirks requiring psychotropic redirection or intervention but... every time I walk into the kitchen or think about food I immediately begin mentally scanning what I call a "kosher report card" and I fail every time. What/who is a Jew? What is frum/observant? What is Kashrut/Kosher?

It would take volumes beyond all of the ruminations on Talmud, Gemarrah, & Mishna to simply answer what is kosher so this is not an attempt to define it nor any of the other above three issues but I will say: being a Jew is easy, being observant is difficult, being kashrut is IMPOSSIBLE!

"You look Jewish"... What? Do I have curly dark hair? Do I have dark eyes? Do I have a big nose? Do I wear a Yarmulka? NO - I have light brown hair, a big forehead, blue eyes, a funky nose, and the last Yarmulka I owned got used as a coffee coaster. Did G-d tell Moshe Rabinu that he LOOKED Jewish? "You look Jewish" an acquaintance who is a college professor told me a couple months ago. Well, you sound like a institutionalized bigot.

You look Jewish are you Frum? To some you cannot be observant unless you are Kosher or Kosher unless you are observant. What is observant? I do my best to observe that the teachings of the Torah were imparted to mankind for us to use as a blueprint, schedule, plan, guide, etc. But I must confess that I have fallen short in remaining true to all 613 mitzvot. Which makes me "more Jewish": the PROscriptions or the PREscriptions?

To some Rebbe's it is all or none - you cannot be half Jewish, partially observant, minimally kosher. I have tried to maintain a kosher diet for the last few months and... when I use a knife in the kitchen drawer at work that was used to cut a piece of ham the day before my apple becomes trefah...non kosher, unfit. If I use a pan to cook meat that previously cooked dairy in it and have not cleansed it in a specifically prescibed arduous manner then all food in that comtainer has been defiled. Food products validated by the local Vaad brethren or Glatt Kosher flock are so exhorbitantly priced I need to make "six figures" just to afford snacks. The last time I checked the Talmud there was no exegesis on sanctifying my enjoyment in titilating my boyfriends sphincter with my tongue and he is a goy so that immediately is non-kosher. What do I do???

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew!

Robert Kennedy once said: "You will not be judged for what you change on this earth but what you desire to change."

The day that I cease trying to be more observant and more kosher is the day that I am no longer a Jew.

Blessed is He who divided the sacred frm the secular.

Hamas, Hizbullah & Hasidim

2009-01-24T22:12:00.000-06:00

I was trying my best to wait a week after President Obama's inauguration before I blogged again but spent most of Shabbat replaying over and over in my head the threat about Israel by that shit-head Sa'udi Prince Turki al-Faisal. Of all days, this Sa'udi koos has to interupt my time of rest, renewal and reflection and force me to think about his stinky bung hole and dream of pissing on his face!

Prince Turki stated that his nations relationship with America would be threatened if we do not force Israel to accept an Arab peace plan with the Palestinians. First of all, what relationship? Second, Arab peace plan? He can't be serious! This must be the peace plan that floated to heaven with Muhammed and all those virgin sharmootas.

Let's be reasonable for a moment. Not one of the countries surrounding Israel desires to assist in solving the Palestinian problem because they all have faced issues in the past similar to the current conflict and could face more in the future within their own borders. The Egyptians have maintained as tight of a border between them and Gaza as that into Israel due to the large amount of arms being smuggled from Egypt to the territory. The Jordanians already have enough Palestinians in their country to keep them busy and do not want any trouble stirred up there. Syria refused entry into their country of Iraqi Palestinians after Sadaam Husseins fall even though they were being murdered, raped, and pillaged by their own Koran-loving-jihadist-brothers in Iraq. Lebannon...pity the nation, couldn't help them unless they desired a Hizbullah membership card. As long as the conflict remains inside of Israel the Arab world feels like it can further neutralize Israeli influence and sovereignty in the region and at the same time use it to blow smoke up their own camels asses.

This is not a 'who is right and who is wrong post' on this issue...that has been discussed for many years and I personally do not care. I simply support the dissolution and or extrication of Hamas, PLO, and other terrorist groups from within the borders of Israel. I guess Prince Turki thinks that his countries continuous monetary assistance to Hamas, suicide bomber families, convicted terrorists, and armament smuggling all within Israel is a secret.

It may be to some people but it cannot be denied that Hamas receives assistance from Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, and Iran in their desire to form an Islamic theocracy over all the land of Israel "from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jorsdan River" ...and we are supposed to give in to the Sa'udi threat.

No sleep for Gaza until Gilad Shalit is returned!

A Wreath On Main

2009-01-19T19:47:00.000-06:00

I moved to Memphis about four years ago and one night while I was visiting a part of downtown that appears to struggle through necessary urban renewal projects I found myself gazing at this place called the Lorraine Motel... "hello" I had to say to myself out loud once I realized where I was. It was the spot where one of the greatest Americans died and becasue of him what will unfold tomorrow, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 will not be a dream!

Friday eveing, easing down Main with friends and strangers.
Gallery one, nice glassware, hot boy, cheap champagne.

Friday evening, easing down Main with feigns and bangers.
Gallery two, rasta-man speaks, good water, shares his pain.

Friday evening, easing down Main with love and hate.
Gallery three, fat lady makes love to old picture, cheap bourbon, asks if I want to hide on Main.

Friday evening, easing down Main with lonely spirits not nowing the innate.
Gallery four, empty space with a hollow pop, holy wine that smells like blood, across the street from that wreath hanging on the rail like a bullseye at the Lorraine.

Friday evening, the stroll down Main ended on the Fourth of April.