I really like the office. It’s a friendly place and Lyn’s great to talk to. A real man’s man, like me. Full of hearty heterosexual bonhomie.
He began by diddling me with a machine that checked for inflammation and man was I inflamed. I was nothing but a swollen ball of pain when I walked in this afternoon. It gave me great reassurance to hear the buzzings from his machine that confirmed my suffering was not just in my head.
As he hooked me up to various machines, I kept telling him I would only give him my name, rank and serial number. Then I complained to him about women and sought his counsel. I said one had recently bit me and it made me feel like less of a man because I didn’t like it.
And then I said the f-word because he hit a sore spot and he said, "I thought you were a religious man?"
Finally, all the blokes cleared out and the two sheilas paid exclusive mind to me — though it wasn’t their minds I was chiefly interested in.
"I haven’t had this much attention since I got arrested," I said as they rubbed this white cream on my feet and ultrasounded me to the very heights of ecstasy allowed by Torah law — written and oral.
"When did you get arrested?" asked the karaoking Filipina.
"He wasn’t arrested," said the streetwise black chick. "He’s a writer. He loves to make up stories."
When it was all done an hour later, they charged me $215 and gave me an appointment for next week. I feel like my elbow problem is already solved. I’ve spent about $5,000 for acupuncture and other treatments over the past three years and while this had its own wicked pleasures, I finally feel like I can pitch again for the Dodgers (or at least my shul’s softball team).
My feet are an absolute mess. It’s not just the plantar fascitis aka heel spurs. It’s the stretched ligaments on top from sitting on my feet in prayer pose and other kundalini claptrap.
Yoga is bloody dangerous. This office sees a lot of people who put themselves out of sort doing that wild Indian thing.
Once you stretch a tendon too far, it doesn’t snap back. It will always be loose. While loose can be a wonderful trait in women, it bites the big one when it comes to tendons.
My advice is — don’t do anything in yoga or in sex that approaches pain unless you’re a pro.
I’m going to need to go back for several more sessions on my feet before I can once again daven for the entire congregation.
When it comes to carpal tunnel, Lyn Paul Taylor can usually get rid of it in one hearty go.
When it comes to chicks who like to bite you, Lyn got no advice.
Barnes & Noble at the Grove. 7:30 pm. About a hundred people gather, many of them women and children who’ve probably never read a science fiction novel. I know at least a third of the crowd from shul.
Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly review: "Fans of SF as a vehicle for ideas will devour this intriguing debut. Brilliant 21st-century tycoon Justin Cord is brought from cryogenic storage into a 24th-century society where people own stock in one another, safeguarding each other’s welfare only out of economic self-interest. This is anathema to the defiantly individualistic Cord, who soon becomes a danger to the corporations that control the world and a symbol of freedom to the downtrodden penny-stock people. Cord’s conversations with friends and enemies fill most of the book, alongside lectures on the mechanisms of the incorporated culture. The Kollin brothers keep the plot moving briskly despite the high proportion of talk to action. Their cerebral style will especially appeal to readers nostalgic for science fiction’s early years."
I’ve known Dani for a decade, since the year his favorite team the Raiders lost the Super Bowl to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
I prefer to do as much human interaction as possible via email because the rejection doesn’t hurt as much when the rejecter is not real, only virtual.
It don’t work too well with the ladies, however. They usually don’t reject, they just don’t respond. They want me to man up and pick up the phone and ask ’em out, which is hard for me. I usually have to change out of my knickers and satin chiffon to do this.
Texting can work if you choose the right person and the right moment to say, "I want 2 b 1 w u."
I bet normal people don’t walk around much of the time thinking, "I just did something horribly wrong. This was not ordinary wrong. This was unforgivable wrong. Boy, I burned that bridge. Oy vey, I was so inappropriate."
I wonder what it would be like to walk around with your moral compass pointing due north and know that all day and all week you had been acting in accordance with God’s will.
I walk around wondering what I can get away with, and how I can best express what I think and feel without getting beaten.
I suspect this is not normal.
Oh, spontaneous me! But spontaneously me is frequently so ugly and selfish and hurtful and inappropriate.
And screw morals! I don’t want to talk about right and wrong right now. I just feel on edge. I’m as spontaneous as hell on my website but it takes such a toll on my psyche.
I don’t know how to deal with rejection.
Here is what I do: Somebody rejects me. I pull out some napalm in my head and I light it up in my head and I just burn them up in my head so there’s hardly a shred of human feeling left in me for that person.
But what happens if I see the person again and I don’t have my guard up and I look in her eyes and then I melt and all those warm feelings come flooding back and I want to ask her out again but I don’t want to be a fool.
I was inspired by the movie "There’s Something About Mary" to work with the disabled to try to land for myself a Cameron Diaz-type hot blonde girlfriend.
I returned to EmpowerTech today to look for my Cameron and to interview Tom Lange, a blind man who helps those with little or no vision navigate the internet and learn computer skills.
Tom: "We have students come in five days a week and I show people…how to navigate the computer…using either screen readers or screen navigators. Screen readers look at what is on the screen and then read it aloud so that as you navigate around with the keyboard, it is going to speak the contents aloud to you."
Luke: "Are there things that [webmasters] can do to make their sites more accessible to these types of technologies?"
Tom: "I started using the internet in 1995. I was fresh out of a computer training program at the Westside Center for Independent Living. A buddy of mine said, ‘There’s this thing called the internet. You’ve got to take a look at it.’
"When I got set up with my first screenreader… We could use a DOS-based screen reader to get in and look at stuff… As I got familiar with Windows screen readers, I started using Windows browsers."
Luke: "How long does it take to pick up the skills?"
Tom: "I get to meet a lot of interesting folks. I’m showing people this technology and getting them into it. I let them feel the benefits of the technology that I’ve experienced. I use the computer all the time — shopping, reading the newspaper, corresponding with people."
Luke: "What were you doing before you got online in 1995 as far as work?"
Tom: "I signed on with IBM in 1978. I was an application programmer. I was writing software that was used by marketing reps and software engineers. I had a device called the opticon… I could run this cable across the screen or across a printed page, an array of pins would come up and vibrate in patterns that corresponded to the characters that I was reading. There were no screen readers at the time on the mainframe.
"I had a 16 year run with IBM. I left in May of 1994 and began to learn about PCs. My idea was that I would get back into programming. I went to UCLA and took a course in C programming. I took a course in Unix. Then I went to WCIL (Westside Center for Independent Living). I learned about Visual Basic and Microsoft Access. Then I went out job hunting. The problem that I ran into was that a lot of these companies would look at my resume and say, ‘Hey, the resume looks great! You’ve got 16 years of programming experience, but you’ve got to start all over again at an entry level."
Luke: "Why?"
Tom: "Because I was new to modern technologies… I decided maybe it was time to do something else."
Tom is blind from birth. One hundred percent. "I was one of those premature babies who back in the 1950s was placed in an incubator with pure oxygen and they didn’t know that pure oxygen was very harmful to eye tissue. It was one of those flukey things."
Luke: "How many months were you in the womb?"
Tom: "Between six and seven. I was in a hell of a hurry. I decided it was time to get out here and check things out."
Luke: "What percentage of completely blind people otherwise fully abled are able to work?"
Tom: "Sadly, the unemployment figures I’ve heard lately are in the ballpark of 85%."
Luke: "I assume that when you were at IBM, you weren’t in a special section for blind people."
Tom: "Oh no."
Luke: "You were right there in the mix."
Tom: "Oh yeah. I was in a programming shop specifically devoted to working with the marketing guys. I was the only blind guy in the whole bunch."
Luke: "Do you find in your work experience most people are able to relate to you as who you are or are there certain stereotypical responses you encounter?"
Tom: "I’ve found that most people are able to accept that. Those who have reservations about dealing with a blind person, after they get to know me, those will go away. I’m just an ordinary guy like anybody else. And I don’t give them any reason to think otherwise. I try to provide a good example of what they should see."
Luke: "Your productivity was close to the same as your sighted peers?"
Tom: "I would like to think so. I worked my way up through the ranks just like anybody else did. I started out as a junior programmer. When I left, I was a staff programmer. That’s nothing to sneeze at."
Luke: "What have been the principal obstacles you’ve faced in the work world?"
Tom: "Getting access to things in print and getting it in some sort of alternate format that I could work with. Fortunately, the opticon solved that."
Luke: "How much help do you need to get through an ordinary day?"
Tom: "I’d like to think that I am fairly independent. I’m a good cane traveler, so mobility is not an issue. The commute is fairly long so I use a paratransit service, but if that didn’t work out, I could certainly hop a bus. Been there, done that. As far as doing the job here, I’ve got all the technology I need. I try to do everything electronically that I can. If there is any print material, I scan it and read it."
Luke: "How important is braille these days?"
Tom: "I think braille is very important. I use braille all the time for taking notes."
"When I was a young boy, learning braille was compulsory. Any blind student had to learn braille. The educational system would devote resources to see that that would happen. Nowadays, as the technology has evolved and there’s been more text-to-speech and talking computers and books on CD and that sort of stuff, there’s been much less emphasis on braille… Last I heard, maybe 10% of the blind population uses braille. That’s a pretty dismal statistic. The remainder of those people are relying on speech and not on seeing the written word, figuratively speaking. That to me is tantamount to illiteracy. I find that unacceptable."
Luke: "Is America a friendly society for blind people, an indifferent society or a cruel society?"
Tom thinks before he speaks and I notice his eyes rolling up and to the left just as mine do when I have to think about this type of question.
Tom: "America is a friendly society as a whole. It still has a lot to learn about people with disabilities. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s unfriendly, because I think it is a mixed bag. There are places that you go where people are more aware and places that you go where the misconceptions are more prevalent."
Luke: "I just checked my blackberry as you were answering. Were you able to detect that I was doing that? I’m just curious how much you are able to detect."
Tom: "Did it make some sort of noise?"
Luke: "No."
It just vibrates.
Tom: "If it doesn’t make some sort of noise, there’s no way I would’ve known."
Tom pulls out his cell phone and shows it to me. "I’ve got an old Nokia with a screenreader that talks."
I tell Tom his eyes roll in the same direction as mine (up and to the left) when he thinks about certain questions.
Tom: "That’s good to know. They tend to roll about a lot anyhow because I don’t have a lot of muscle control."
After the interview, I email Tom: "I had this sense during our interview that your blindness enables you to see people, in some ways, more clearly than the sighted. That your blindness enhances many of your other senses. Is this true?"
Tom: "It’s interesting that you would say that. Perhaps that’s because it seemed that I was more tuned in to you as we were talking and not distracted by the visual. It is a common misconception that blind people’s remaining senses are innately sharper and that some blind people have some sort of "sixth sense". The latter, in my view, is somewhat ludicrous. It is true, that our remaining senses can and do become sharper, but they aren’t innately so. Rather, they become that way out of necessity. In other words, when vision decreases or is lost altogether, there’s no physiological "magic switch" that is thrown which immediately cranks up the other senses into overdrive. Instead, touch, hearing and smell become heightened because we use them more to gather clues about our environment. There are, however, physiological aspects to this that become apparent over time. Laboratory studies now show that when the visual cortex of the brain becomes idle following vision loss at an early age, the brain will, over time in effect "rewire itself", so that the visuall cortex, or portions of it, may be assigned the task of auditory processing to supplement the capabilities of the existing auditory centers. If vision is restored later in life, as was the case with Michael May, the person will be ill-equipped to process visual images and may in fact have to "learn to see" all over again, with varying degrees of success."
I email Tom: "One more weird question for my blog. How does being blind change the way you use language? As a writer, I am often commanded to think visually."
Tom replies: "This is a common question, actually. The simple answer is: it doesn’t. I don’t feel compelled to change the way I speak or write in any way, and this is also true for a number of my blind friends and acquaintances. Altering my speech patterns or writing style in any way implies and promotes the notion that I’m abnormal, and frankly, that idea is anathema to me. In every other respect aside from the visual, I am quite normal.
"If I were to say to someone "I went to see a movie" or "I watched the Dodger game last night", anybody who’s at all astute should know that I’m speaking figuratively rather than literally.
"If I were to write a story containing scenes which required me to convey a visual image to the reader, I would very likely draw on visual descriptions that I’d heard somewhere or read somewhere. Using visual imagery should be a literary device that’s available to me just as it would be to any other writer, and if I do it accurately, suspension of disbelief should not be an issue; the reader shouldn’t have a clue that the author is in fact blind."
These days, religious environmentalism is nothing new. It’s been five years since the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign and Evangelical Climate Initiative brought climate change into evangelical communities, and even longer since groups like Greenfaith began claiming that "God is green."
But fully twenty eight years ago, in April, 1981, a sermon on renewable energy was given by a very unlikely figure: the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the charismatic Hasidic leader who even after his death in 1994 was believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah.
The occasion was a little-known Jewish prayer called Birkat HaChamahin Hebrew, and is translated as the Blessing of the Sun. Most Jews don’t know about this prayer — it’s recited only one time every 28 years, when, according to the Talmud, the sun returns to the position it held when it was created. The prayer is next being said this Wednesday.
While this year, many ecologically-minded Jews plan to recite the blessing with much fanfare and celebration, back in 1981, few were even aware of it. Yet in a video which recently surfaced on YouTube, the Lubavitcher Rebbe used the occasion to advocate for developing solar energy, as well as exploiting domestic oil and coal reserves. In a Yiddish peppered with equal parts mystical symbolism and worldly understanding of global energy politics, the Rebbe argued that the United States must "overcome the subservience and the need to request other countries to provide these [energy] resources."
I’m so excited! I’ve never hosted a seder before. I’ve always been the guest. Now I’m taking ownership of my Judaism.
And it will all be live on my cam! (Just kidding, rabbis.)
Chaim Amalek emails: "Absolutely you should leave the web cam on for your seder. (And this could be in accord with rabbinical Judaism’s ignorance of electricity, as this would be no different from using electricity to power a light bulb. You could turn it "off" merely by draping a cloth over the camera.) Have you a guest list yet? I would imagine that this will be one of the THE hot invites for this year’s Passover season, especially given the limited space.
"Sadly, Monica seems to have given up on the idea of becoming a Jew, even though we need her blood. (A need that is especially keenly felt in this season of matzoh-making.)"
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In reply to my inquiries about his life and thoughts, Zan Overall emails me:
Dear Luke Ford,
We met outside the 2009 Academy Awards. You interviewed me and posted it as “I Interview a Holocaust Denier Outside the Oscars.” https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=8299 Thanks for giving me that little forum, although “holocaust denier” is a misnomer. Should be “holocaust revisionist.”
No holocaust revisionist denies that Jews (and many others) suffered in German concentration (not death) camps. We do not accept that there was a policy of extermination or that Jews died in gas chambers.
Luke, you are not interested in my contrarian views or evidence for them. You are, however, interested in my life story and what effect it had on my views. I agreed to give you some personal information with the carrot that I could intersperse some information on those views. So here goes:
I will be 83 on June 11, happily married to my third wife, father of one son and two daughters. Their combined ages=163 years. I work as a music copyist, not steadily enough to get by without a “day job” (Thanks to the alimony I am paying).
My father was an artist, wounded in the first World War. As a young boy I was proud of that wound. Now I see my father was a sucker as all soldiers are. As I was when I was drafted in 1944.
I now blame my father’s wound on the people who suckered the American people into that war: British Intelligence, the Rothschilds,=2 0ther Zionists. Read Benjamin Freedman’s speech at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. in 1961. Freedman was a wealthy Zionist who defected and related how Zionists told Britain and France to reject a German status quo ante peace offer. The Zionists assured Germany and France that they could get America into the war. They did so with a crude propaganda campaign, led by Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, father of the public relations industry. That’s the industry where liars for hire screw (have relations with) the public. The payoff for the Zionists was the Balfour Declaration, a letter from the British government to a Zionist Rothschild saying Britain “looked with favor” on a national home for Jews in Palestine.
One of your blogees, Fred, responded to your interview by asking 46—-46!!!—questions about me. (d) asked about “the extent to which I am anti-Semitic.” Answer: how can I be anti-Semitic if some of my heroes are Freedman, Gilad Atzmon, Jack Bernstein and Norman Finkelstein? I am “anti” people like Abe Foxman and Ariel Sharon. (God bless their immortal souls.)
Back to singing for my supper.
I did not have a good relationship with my father and have no relationship with my son. His choice, not mine. I regret it but have done all I can do to heal the breach. Now I love, respect and admire my father for his talent and for weathering the Depression as an artist, helped a lot by a $30 a month pension for that wound.
I was a loner in high school, a good student. More of a joiner in college. Joined a fraternity. Left college after three years for music.
Fred, re (m), I have never “been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness.” My father’s sister did spend some time in Elgin (Illinois) State Mental Hospital. I love what she would tell visitors who mentioned her “illness.” She would say “Oh, I’m not out of my mind. I’m out of your mind.”
Fred, Luke and most if not all of you Luke Ford bloggees: “I’m not out of my mind. I’m out of your mind(s).”
I came to Los Angeles in 1952 from Lake Forest, Illinois. Played string bass in groups around town, including Jimmie Maddin’s group. Played with Manny Harmon and with Skinnay Ennis (on the road). Stan Kenton recorded a song of mine, “Falling.” I had one other release on RCA-Victor. I am an excellent songwriter but have been a lousy song salesman. Still plugging with a lot of faith in some of my songs.
If you want to view me singing my 9/11 song, “I Want To Believe You, Mr. President:
Am working on an Obama version called “I Want To Believe You , Mister Presidents.” Chorus:
“About Nine Eleven, Mister President Obama, I hear you agree with George Bush Number Two. But the more that I learn about Nine Eleven Believing you guys gets harder to do,”
I presume that doubting the official 9/11 story, as I do, counts as a “delusion” according to Fred. Et tu, Luke? There must be some of you bloggees who don’t buy that ridiculous official story. If so, I would love for you to speak up and support the “Holocaust Denier” (so called). Got guts? Got milk (in your veins)?
Any of you who do think that ill-trained Muslim pilots did 9/11, I challenge you to go to ae911truth.org. That is the website of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. They will show you that explosive controlled demolitions brought down the WTC buildings!!!!
MUSLIMS DID NOT DO 9/11!!!!!
Who did? you ask. Answer: the Mossad, the Neo-cons in the Pentagon, Larry Silverstein and his gang in New York and flunky traitors like Cheney and Bush (in that order).
9/11 was a successful false flag black op designed to get the U.S. into an everlasting war with Israel’s Muslim enemies. The Israeli unsuccessful attack on the U.S.S. Liberty was intended to do the same thing in 1967.
I sense disagreement out there. If so, I challenge you to Google “The five dancing Israelis.” I challenge you to read 9/11 Evil 20by Victor Thorn or go to: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/stf1.html?q=s and read a paper called “Stranger Than Fiction” by Albert D. Pastore PhD (a pseudonym adopted to avoid repercussions).
Returning to my C.V.: Fred, your question (hh) asked: “Does he have a grudge or does he think life has shortchanged him in a significant way? Who? Why?” Answer: I think I alone failed to sell my songs. I blame no one. We create the circumstances of our own lives.
I am sad about the takeover of our European culture, particularly in music, by black culture. I love jazz and black music but wish there was coexistence between black music and what is called “The Classic American Song.” The latter is in the museum and in out of the way jazz clubs.
When I think of Frank Sinatra singing a song by Cole Porter and then view the Grammys or view the jejune musical groups at the end of the Tonight Show, I retch. Anybody out there agree?
BTW our alleged President is a fraud, not eligible to be President. He won’t reveal his purported birth certificate for examination and won’t let us see his college and other records. He was adopted by an Indonesian and never revoked that citizenship. May well be an illegal alien. He did not invite his black grandmother to the Inaugural, undoubtedly because she has testified that she was present at his birth in Mombasa, KENYA!!! Anybody out there with me on that? Visit obamacrimes.com.
In classical times, men testifying in court swore on their testes, not their heart. Can women “testify?”
Politically, I have been all over the spectrum. I worked for Henry Wallace. I have been a member of the John Birch Society. The advantage I have over many of you is that I have been “on both sides now” on many issues.
I was horrified at “Holocaust Deniers!!!” Now “I R One.” (A Holocaust Revisionist, that is.) How did I get there? Because I got around to actually studying what the Revisionists were putting down. Try that sometime—at your own peril. Visit codoh.com, the website of the Committee for Open Discussion of the Holocaust.
All of you should wonder why something supposedly “true” can’t be publicly discussed and debated. Why must doubters of that “truth” be IMPRISONED???!!! For God’s sake???!!! Wake up, you people and smell the bull shit!!!
This is getting long, Luke. I hope you will post it. If you want to ask me some personal questions to add to it before you post it, feel free. That would be to correct any perceived imbalance between confession and proselytizing.
I hope you find this of interest, Luke. I must say, however, that we learn NOTHING about the truth or falsity of my views by learning whether I am “well adjusted” or, on the other hand, “do not play well with others.” The only use for such information would be attack my unwelcome views with ad hominem arguments. That seems to be the reason for Fred’s 46 questions.
If the most well adjusted, successful person in the world tells you 2 + 2 = 5 and if a loner with Turett’s syndrome (sp.?) screams at you: “2 + f’ing 2 = f’ing 4, you lame MFer!”—————–go with the loner.
Reprehensibly* yours, Zan Overall.
*See Fred’s question (c): He wants to know “the extent to which many would assume he (Zan) is morally reprehensible.”
******************************
If you will permit, Luke. Let me add a poem of mine that is apropos. It is called “Eccentric? Me?”
ECCENTRIC? ME?
I plead no contest.
I am eccentric.
I do not stand in the center
Of a flock of sheep,
Thinking the collective thoughts
Of the flock.
I am far “out of the center,”
A wolf prowling the edges of the flock,
Looking for a likely victim,
A sheep who is ready
To think new thoughts,
To think eccentrically.
It’s so appropriate:
One dog is a “dog.”
Two dogs are “dogs.”
One cat is a “cat.”
Two cats are “cats.”
One sheep is a “sheep.”
Two sheep are still “sheep.”
With sheep
The singular merges with the coll
ective,
As with those bland and sensible people
Who are not “eccentric.”
Jeff emails: "If you’re into yoga and meditation, you might find interesting the book I’m reading now: Nathan Katz’s memoirs titled Spiritual Journey Home – Eastern Mysticism to the Western Wall (published by Ktav). He’s a professor of religious studies whose career focuses on Hindu and Buddhist practices. He talks about his journeys through the far east, studying meditation and ancient texts. I haven’t yet gotten to the part where he returns to Judaism. I’m kind of lost among the far eastern stuff but you might find it interesting."
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
