Luke Ford

Surfers Paradise. Thursday morning. I got caught in a rip tide and dragged into a bunch of teen girls learning to surf. I fought every meter but you can’t beat mother nature. I am the victim here.

Brisbane airport, Friday morning. My flight has a 250 pound stewardess but no obvious Muslims.

I did not spend a dollar on my trip, my family spoiled me.

Chaim Amalek: “Just think how much you would be saving by living with them full time.”

I left my work ethic in Australia 30 years ago, but despite glancing around during the ads, can’t find it. I miss my teen girl surfers.

Sit in the plane. There’s a Muslim lady all covered up with an adorable baby.

Chaim Amalek: “Yidden of LA — one of your own is tempted to go off the derech and live amongst the Wallabys and other goyim of Australia! Show him how valued and treasured a member of his community he is by greeting him upon his return to LA with a hearty cheer and a welcome back party.

“I will wager that the pouch of the average Kangaroo is warmer and more welcoming to Luke than are the homes and hearts of the average modern orthodox Jew in LA.”

“It has always been Luke’s dream to be the honored dignitary at one of those dinners the Modern Orthodox are always throwing for one another. The kind where the wives show some cleavage.”

I arrive at LAX 6 am Friday. I am the only Jew on bus amidst lots of blacks and Mexicans and poor Asians, but I have no complaints about LA Metro bus service. It’s not the nightmare I feared.

A fat beggar boards the bus. I recognize him from the streets of Pico Blvd in 90035. When we get off the Culver 6 bus at Pico, he puts his yarmulke on. Better to beg with, I guess.

Chaim Amalek: “I take it you were not greeting at the airport by any welcoming Modern Orthodox Jews.”

“Your bus is the future of America.”

“I saw an ad for a new kind of air conditioning system. It is very simple. You blow the hot air past a group of Modern orthodox Jews davening and out comes cold air.”

Mass transit back to reality.

Amalek: “In the future, his kind will find themselves walking along the side of the road, moving their possessions in a cart while free trading Asians glide on by in Mexican-built Buicks.”

It is so good to be back home on my favorite seat cushions after all those hard Aussie seats, and now I’m sipping a protein smoothie. I almost decided to move to Australia at one point on my trip but they don’t have the equivalent of amazon.com for cheap protein powders and supplements.

I took two packs of kashi kosher protein bars as emergency rations to Australia and brought the same two packets home unopened.

Ben emails:

Luke,

I’m a youngish author trying to break into writing. During my early twenties, I would read your blog on the adult industry from time to time. Based on your recent posts, it seems you’ve become more conservative. Something similar happened to me; a few years ago, I was a twenty-something liberal-libertarian democrat (if that makes sense).

Like you I was influenced by reading the paleocons (Peter Brimlow, Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis). Not that they convinced me, but their writing forced me to reconsider my deeply entrenched beliefs. The final straw for me was the Trayvon Martin case, or rather the behavior of my fellow Democrats.

One major area where you and I differ is religion, I did not become religious. My Dad is Jewish, (according to Halaca), and my mother was raised as a congregationalist. The congregational church was the only church I regularly attended, as my dad was a typical intermarried secular Jew. With that said, I spent a considerable amount of time around Jews, both practicing and non-practicing.

Although this seems like a very different background, you and I have both spent time in two unique worlds: the anglo-protestant world and the American Jewish world. Because of this experience I came to realize how unique and special America, and the anglo-sphere really is.

Anyway, I’d like to ask you a few questions about writing:

1) How do you make money at it?

2) How does one continue to improve ones writing?

And now some questions about porn.

1) Psychologist Gary Wilson (your Brain on Porn), has made a fairly persuasive case that porn addiction is real, do you agree?

2) Gary Wilson also argues that because porn is such a powerful surrogate it suppresses the desire to have sex in RL, (I have found this to be true). Since stopping watching porn I’ve found myself engaging in more high risk sexual behaviors. How does one cope with a high, (or normal), sex drive after years of porn suppressed libido?

You may, understandably, think these questions come out of no where, but I’ve felt a kinship with you since reading your old blog back in my early twenties. Perhaps this feeling of kinship is delusional, but I succumbed to it anyway.

Ben, I’m a bad one to ask. I’ve never earned more than $50,000 in a year. You could write a blog and if it is on topics of general interest, you could make a penny a visitor on average from advertising programs such as Adsense. If you want to freelance, there are books on how to sell your work.

2) How does one continue to improve ones writing?

Take writing classes. Audit some writing classes in your community and take the ones you love. Make friends with other writers. Join writing groups. Keep a daily journal, do the “Morning Pages” assignment in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, and then read back looking for material. Write out your manifesto of what you believe in most strongly.

1) Psychologist Gary Wilson (your Brain on Porn), has made a fairly persuasive case that porn addiction is real, do you agree?

Yes.

2) How does one cope with a high, (or normal), sex drive after years of porn suppressed libido?

Get yourself to a 12-step program for sex addiction. Get into therapy. If you need it cheap, Google “cheap therapy” in your area and get a center where interns are getting in their hours. Read TheFix.com. Read Amy Dresner. Read about developing secure attachment.

Barry emails:

Employment for curmudgeonly middle aged males is a real problem in this day and age. Especially if you have fallen out of the career ladder or were never much part of it in the first place.

It is a huge problem if you don’t like being micro managed, dealing with the public or having to work with women. The office I used to work in is typical. Two gay men. Five bitchy women. A craven male boss who hides in his office. And me.

It is worse if you end up working for cowardly male bosses who can’t control the women in their office. Often these cowards need to put a layer between themselves and the bitches who won’t raise a finger and take lots of time off.

So I get hired at cheap freelance rates to do the work the women on staff can’t be bothered doing. But I have another role – the bosses bullet stopper.

Because the moment I arrive I am now the target of the hatred of five women who feel threatened. The gamesmanship, the office politics, the pressure. You wouldn’t believe it Luke. There isn’t even a honeymoon period! Pure hatred from day one.

Pressure is when there is a lot to do at high speed. It can be very energising. But stress is a killer. And women love dishing it outl Stress can happen in the quietest most unproductive, lazy environments – like this office I ended up in.

I now know how you can turn the most indolent, lazy female into a blur of frenzied activity. Just add the missing ingredient – malice. For my presence soon energised these bitches into a buzzing hive of conspiracy. Old workplaces and colleagues were contacted. My email and browsing habits habits perused. They missed nothing.

The female human relations parasite even invited me in for an informal chat to ask me how I was getting on and why all the women felt “uncomfortable” around me.

I lasted ten weeks and one of the woman did a jig in front of my desk when I handed in my notice. How I didn’t plant one on one of these bitches I’ll never know. It was only the thought of the huge financial pay out that they would have received that prevented me.

If you ever get an answer let me know Luke.

Donald writes:

I am a 65 year old deracinated Jew from Chicago, living in Seattle since LSD was legal. I would likely be a Christian if I could believe the requisite dogmata, but I can’t.

So I am left wondering what led you to want to join a tribe to which you have no consanguinity and which offers you no advantage.

I am remembering a Norwegian man I met 20 years ago who was in love with my then bosses daughter. She would marry him only if he would convert to Judaism, which in his case meant that he first had to be brissed. The marriage didn’t last a year.

If you were soliciting advice, I think you should stay in Australia. America is coming down very soon in the greatest free for all racial and religious war of mass extermination ever imagined by a badly buggered bi-racial bi-sexual sociopath from a sketchy CIA family. Frankly, if I had kin in another country that loved me, I’d be there now. I’d certainly not be in LA, or anywhere near California or the west coast.

I converted to Judaism because I believe in God, Torah and Judaism. I find the practice of the religion makes me a better person, or at least it has the potential to improve me if I do it right, and I find Judaism adds more depth and meaning and excitement to my life and I find it intellectually challenging and rewarding. It makes life more intense. Most of the most impressive people I know are Orthodox Jews.