who last wrote on OCtober 18 "I aint got no time". I had sent him tons of music. I have searched the list of dead soldiers, Called internationally to anyone who could find him. i don't care if i ever take another krav maga lesson from him. I hope he's not dead because the army would send him on super dangerous missions or he is completely fucked up somewhere in some hospital or captured and being tortured although he may die. His last voice communique sounded like he was cracking. He is a super tough guy about 32 maybe who has been sent all over the world to teach krav maga.
I give up. God either takes care of him because i can no longer even try to find him and i'm crying.
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
Moderator: Dux
-
motherjuggs&speed
- Top
- Posts: 1685
- Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2019 6:08 am
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
I see three possibilities. He's on a mission for the government. He's been abducted. He's been killed. In cases one and two, you're putting him in some danger by looking for him. If he's gone already there's nothing to be done. So I would think the thing to do is wait. Hard to do, but you've already done everything you could do, short of putting his name out there which would endanger him if somebody thinks he's an agent.
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
There's a fourth option. When he said, "I ain't got no time," he could have meant he was busy. And maybe he's still busy doing whatever it is he's doing.
"You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain." —Miyamato Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
-
motherjuggs&speed
- Top
- Posts: 1685
- Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2019 6:08 am
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
That's true. I assumed he was missing but maybe he just doesn't want to reply. Or fifth, he's gone off the grid.
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
He actually replied. I cried. If you think I'm going anywhere near Gaza looking for him, you really have zero understanding of what's goin on here. The army won't let anybody near the fuckin place. No matter how much compassion I might be able to muster for whatever people are innocent, and there are some, this ain't no joke, this aint no disco.
Young people are dying needlessly. On both sides. Knowing myself I'd be in Hamas if I was young and one of them. But even they're fuckin stupid if they think that Allah will reward them for all this killing. My teacher was in Gaza fighting and has to go back soon. I know him. He's a really tough guy. When he said he aint got no time if you heard his tone of voice, you'd know he sounded dreadful and about at the end. I never heard him sound like that. We are really fuckin sick here. And that includes the people that hate us.
Is it really worth all this killing suffering, destruction? I'm not gonna answer that.
I hate to do this but here goes. Top American general shows up and is told by some idiot top general from here before the war, "If we go to war with gaza and all their terror
tunnels we lose hundreds of guys." Top American general laughs and says, "We lose nobody. We flatten Gaza. Nothing is left." Is it worth it appease the rest of the world for the lives of all these young guys. Draw your own conclusion.
Why were we fighting in VietNam in the 70s? The French had been kicked out in the 50s. There had been war with China on and off for God knows how long. What the fuck was America doing there. Eisenhower who warned against the military industrial complex (industry building weapons for war to the military) because he was a patriot. I was a kid but remembered he was the president who had never had any political office. He was a real patriot and knew the cost of war unlike the dumb motherfuckers who run the American government. Listen to this which isn't even 2 minutes long. If you don't want to hear Sanders stop at 1:18. The Pentagon wants 740 billion and Sanders wants to cut it by ten percent. I think if Ike knew just how right he was and how much money the world spends on weapons he would vomit his guts which is what i feel like right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGpTu8 ... nieSanders
Back to VietNam. Check it out. There was what was called the domino theory. If you ever played it, you could line up a zillion dominoes and the last one goes down. People bought into that shit because the Commies said they were takin over. General Patton wanted to chase them back to Moscow after Germany surrendered. Patton didn't get his wish but America sure spent a fortune and a guy on our high school football team who once tackled me so hard in a pickup game died after he enlisted at the age of 19. Idiot lenny had no business playing in a 3 on 3 pickup game with guys from the varsity team. They knew I was a little bit of an athlete but come on. The tennis team and I was number 4. I wasn't much. I had no business being out there and finally after 30 minutes one guy who died of AIDS not that long ago said, Give him the ball. idiot lenny starts to run and the guy who died tackled me so fuckin hard i flew out of bounds as did the ball. I never was given the ball again and never played again. idiot lenny has been way too lucky.
Domino theory assumes every domino is the same size. Really Viet Nam was worth dying for. No oil, no natural resources. They got discos, parties and even the leaders are all motherfuckers who steal. Let's say Saudi Arabia with all its oil is a big domino2 inches. Tell me how big is VietNam. 0.00001 inch. People are so fuckin dumb who were in World War II and thought now it's your turn guys Go kill and die and get fucked up for a lifetime. You know it's true. idiot lenny has an ulcer cause he lucks out. His parents are so violent and sick they make him and crazy and sick and he has an ulcer probably at the age of 5. I never have to go.
There are guys at the top of my hi school class academically who supported the war. It's a good thing I don't see em because it would be really hard for me not to do some kind of serious damage to them. You motherfuckers never have to go. you are smart enough to keep goin to school. Let the poor blacks and whites and patriots like the guy who tackled me die for you bastards. There was a guy at the top of my class who was number one I talked about 6 years ago. He told me how he supported the war. I thought if this were 1968 we'd have been at war with each other. I couldn't believe it. He was 125 pounds overweight at least and had never been overweight during high school. He is a doctor who advises his patients not to take medicine. He writes me some time ago I do what I like. As I was saying goodby to him, I said for the 3rd time, You really oughta exercise. He says I know I know. He won't do it. Maybe he does make it to 95. He works his ass off. I give him that much. There was somebody here with a slogan on this site to the effect that most people do what they want, be lazy fucks. He aint lazy. He is really fuckin stupid and what about me I'm worse. I could want to do somebody in I aint never gonna see cause I know if I do any damage I pay and not dumb motherfucker whose memory was already goin down. We were never friends in high school. I didn't have any. I risked another friendship screaming my guts out at a guy whose sister has saved his miserable God knows how many times telling him the truth she won't tell him.
I"LL GO BANKRUPT SAVING HIM. I think you know what that means in Amerika which is how a lot of my generation spelled it in during Viet Nam. I almost cry to her PLEASE DON'T DO IT. SAVE YOURSELF
SHE AINT GONNA SAVE HERSELF. SHE SAYS I HAVE NO CHOICE. I KEEP PUSHIN HER. PLEASE DON'T GIVE YOUR LIFE. MY FRIEND IS SUCH A DUMB MOTHERFUCKER WHICH IS WHAT I SCREAM AT HIM. HE'S IN THE HOSPITAL NEEDING OXYGEN. I BEG HER JUST TAKE 2 WEEKS OFF AND DON'T CALL HIM AND LET'S SEE IF HE GETS A LITTLE MORE LIKE AN ADULT. SHE SAYS I CAN'T BUT I DIDN'T TRAVEL ALMOST 3 HOURS EACH WAY AND STAY AT SOMEBODY'S HOUSE WHERE HE'S HOSPITALIZED. THE LAST 2 WEEKS TO BE WITH HIM AND IT WAS WONDERFUL. SHE SAYS I GOTTA BE LIKE DON'T ASK ME WHY. SHE HAS TAKEN CARE OF SO MANY PEOPLE. MY FRIEND WHO MAY BE MY EX-FRIEND AND I APOLOGIZE AND TELL HIM I HATE MYSELF FOR TELLING HIM ALL THIS AND I DID BUT NOT NOW HAVE A 69 MINUTE CONVERSATION
HE TALKS ABOUT A HENDRIX DOCUMENTARY OF A COUPLE HOURS HE SAW THE OTHER DAY. I LEARN A FEW NEW THINGS. I AM SUCH A HENDRIX FAN I KNOW MORE THAN HE WILL EVER KNOW. HE REALIZES 53 YEARS AFTER HENDRIX' DEATH THAT HE WAS REALLY GREAT. HE FINALLY PUTS ON OXYGEN AND CAN'T TALK AND I GET OFF THE FUCKIN PHONE. SEE HOW STUPID I AM. I GOT GOD KNOWS HOW MANY SECONDS LIFE ON PLANET EARTH AND I'M WRITING THIS RATHER THAN JUST DEALING WITH MY FEELINGS AND CRYING MY EYES OUT AT HOW MUCH IT HURTS THAT MY TEACHER HAS TO GO BACK TO GAZA. I STOP WRITING FOR 15 SECONDS.
I'M SHAKING. I WAS ALREADY SICK I DIDN'T KNOW HOW LONG THIS WOULD TAKE. I'M GLAD I DIDN'T SET A TIMER. I MAY AS WELL VOMIT MY GUTS OUT. I THINK IT'S BETTER THAN FEELING HOW HORRIFIED AS I AM AT THE STUPIDITY OF THE HUMAN RACE AND IDIOT LENNY
Thanks for replying. I appreciate it. I hope you guys live healthy happy lives especially you Bram. I know my luck won’t hold out forever. I won’t deadlift from official height again. I was doing round back deadlifts yesterday according to the video. I have zero idea how much damage I may have already done to a spine that shouldn’t be lifting at this height according to one PT who I thanked 8 years ago. You can read about an expert here and there’s a part 2 if you want to learn more. I have read this maybe 5 times over the years but the last time spend hours trying to understand where the fuck laminae are. I won’t tell you but it could take 10 years for them to heal. I may not 10 years to live. I only do it because one strength expert who shall remain nameless says you gotta do some kind of hip hinge. It’s true for football players etc. who are really young compared to idiot lenny who realizes he better stop and get some real information and pay some expert to tell him how to train if he expects to continue to surf etc. Believe me I’m fuckin lucky one idiot who tried to run me over with his surfboard while I watched in disbelief that he didn’t veer out of the way until I ducked under at the last second and my fingertips grazed his board. Bram you are probably the only guy who understands just how sick idiot lenny and the surfer was. You heard the story. He was in his 50s when I recognized him on the beach and was too much in shock to say a thing. That better not happen again if I survive this war. I aint goin surfin now. Maybe never. But I would like to. Idiot lenny better not haul off and try to do serious damage. I was told what to do. Krav maga is a last resort. Do anything not to fight but if you have to do it. It’s over in 20 seconds max and just get the fuck out of there as fast as you can if the guy aint a terrorist. I know the beach has cameras. I better not fuck around. I better grow the fuck up and not even think about talkin to anybody who might even accidentally fuck me up out in the water. I’m the one who will take the blame. I will pay a much heavier price most probably than whatever damage is inflicted on me. I think you know why. If you don’t I aint gonna tell.
https://www.t-nation.com/training/an-in ... ll-part-1/
I know what kind of spine I have. As rotten as my mother was most of the time, she wouldn’t even let me try out for the jr high football team. She knew the truth Idiot lenny will get killed out there even in a tryout. I was lifting from official height because I had done it so many times that I actually had the best form and didn’t scrape my shins from a height a few inches higher. I usually edit these posts. i'm too sick with a virus having written all this to even think about it.
over and out
Your friend who actually does try to put out helpful information cause I know more than you guys because idiot lenny has learned some life wisdom after more than 7 decades on PLANET EARTH. Believe me talk to a lot of people my age and ask them what they think is important in real life. Way too many have learned about nothin useful believe me.
Young people are dying needlessly. On both sides. Knowing myself I'd be in Hamas if I was young and one of them. But even they're fuckin stupid if they think that Allah will reward them for all this killing. My teacher was in Gaza fighting and has to go back soon. I know him. He's a really tough guy. When he said he aint got no time if you heard his tone of voice, you'd know he sounded dreadful and about at the end. I never heard him sound like that. We are really fuckin sick here. And that includes the people that hate us.
Is it really worth all this killing suffering, destruction? I'm not gonna answer that.
I hate to do this but here goes. Top American general shows up and is told by some idiot top general from here before the war, "If we go to war with gaza and all their terror
tunnels we lose hundreds of guys." Top American general laughs and says, "We lose nobody. We flatten Gaza. Nothing is left." Is it worth it appease the rest of the world for the lives of all these young guys. Draw your own conclusion.
Why were we fighting in VietNam in the 70s? The French had been kicked out in the 50s. There had been war with China on and off for God knows how long. What the fuck was America doing there. Eisenhower who warned against the military industrial complex (industry building weapons for war to the military) because he was a patriot. I was a kid but remembered he was the president who had never had any political office. He was a real patriot and knew the cost of war unlike the dumb motherfuckers who run the American government. Listen to this which isn't even 2 minutes long. If you don't want to hear Sanders stop at 1:18. The Pentagon wants 740 billion and Sanders wants to cut it by ten percent. I think if Ike knew just how right he was and how much money the world spends on weapons he would vomit his guts which is what i feel like right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGpTu8 ... nieSanders
Back to VietNam. Check it out. There was what was called the domino theory. If you ever played it, you could line up a zillion dominoes and the last one goes down. People bought into that shit because the Commies said they were takin over. General Patton wanted to chase them back to Moscow after Germany surrendered. Patton didn't get his wish but America sure spent a fortune and a guy on our high school football team who once tackled me so hard in a pickup game died after he enlisted at the age of 19. Idiot lenny had no business playing in a 3 on 3 pickup game with guys from the varsity team. They knew I was a little bit of an athlete but come on. The tennis team and I was number 4. I wasn't much. I had no business being out there and finally after 30 minutes one guy who died of AIDS not that long ago said, Give him the ball. idiot lenny starts to run and the guy who died tackled me so fuckin hard i flew out of bounds as did the ball. I never was given the ball again and never played again. idiot lenny has been way too lucky.
Domino theory assumes every domino is the same size. Really Viet Nam was worth dying for. No oil, no natural resources. They got discos, parties and even the leaders are all motherfuckers who steal. Let's say Saudi Arabia with all its oil is a big domino2 inches. Tell me how big is VietNam. 0.00001 inch. People are so fuckin dumb who were in World War II and thought now it's your turn guys Go kill and die and get fucked up for a lifetime. You know it's true. idiot lenny has an ulcer cause he lucks out. His parents are so violent and sick they make him and crazy and sick and he has an ulcer probably at the age of 5. I never have to go.
There are guys at the top of my hi school class academically who supported the war. It's a good thing I don't see em because it would be really hard for me not to do some kind of serious damage to them. You motherfuckers never have to go. you are smart enough to keep goin to school. Let the poor blacks and whites and patriots like the guy who tackled me die for you bastards. There was a guy at the top of my class who was number one I talked about 6 years ago. He told me how he supported the war. I thought if this were 1968 we'd have been at war with each other. I couldn't believe it. He was 125 pounds overweight at least and had never been overweight during high school. He is a doctor who advises his patients not to take medicine. He writes me some time ago I do what I like. As I was saying goodby to him, I said for the 3rd time, You really oughta exercise. He says I know I know. He won't do it. Maybe he does make it to 95. He works his ass off. I give him that much. There was somebody here with a slogan on this site to the effect that most people do what they want, be lazy fucks. He aint lazy. He is really fuckin stupid and what about me I'm worse. I could want to do somebody in I aint never gonna see cause I know if I do any damage I pay and not dumb motherfucker whose memory was already goin down. We were never friends in high school. I didn't have any. I risked another friendship screaming my guts out at a guy whose sister has saved his miserable God knows how many times telling him the truth she won't tell him.
I"LL GO BANKRUPT SAVING HIM. I think you know what that means in Amerika which is how a lot of my generation spelled it in during Viet Nam. I almost cry to her PLEASE DON'T DO IT. SAVE YOURSELF
SHE AINT GONNA SAVE HERSELF. SHE SAYS I HAVE NO CHOICE. I KEEP PUSHIN HER. PLEASE DON'T GIVE YOUR LIFE. MY FRIEND IS SUCH A DUMB MOTHERFUCKER WHICH IS WHAT I SCREAM AT HIM. HE'S IN THE HOSPITAL NEEDING OXYGEN. I BEG HER JUST TAKE 2 WEEKS OFF AND DON'T CALL HIM AND LET'S SEE IF HE GETS A LITTLE MORE LIKE AN ADULT. SHE SAYS I CAN'T BUT I DIDN'T TRAVEL ALMOST 3 HOURS EACH WAY AND STAY AT SOMEBODY'S HOUSE WHERE HE'S HOSPITALIZED. THE LAST 2 WEEKS TO BE WITH HIM AND IT WAS WONDERFUL. SHE SAYS I GOTTA BE LIKE DON'T ASK ME WHY. SHE HAS TAKEN CARE OF SO MANY PEOPLE. MY FRIEND WHO MAY BE MY EX-FRIEND AND I APOLOGIZE AND TELL HIM I HATE MYSELF FOR TELLING HIM ALL THIS AND I DID BUT NOT NOW HAVE A 69 MINUTE CONVERSATION
HE TALKS ABOUT A HENDRIX DOCUMENTARY OF A COUPLE HOURS HE SAW THE OTHER DAY. I LEARN A FEW NEW THINGS. I AM SUCH A HENDRIX FAN I KNOW MORE THAN HE WILL EVER KNOW. HE REALIZES 53 YEARS AFTER HENDRIX' DEATH THAT HE WAS REALLY GREAT. HE FINALLY PUTS ON OXYGEN AND CAN'T TALK AND I GET OFF THE FUCKIN PHONE. SEE HOW STUPID I AM. I GOT GOD KNOWS HOW MANY SECONDS LIFE ON PLANET EARTH AND I'M WRITING THIS RATHER THAN JUST DEALING WITH MY FEELINGS AND CRYING MY EYES OUT AT HOW MUCH IT HURTS THAT MY TEACHER HAS TO GO BACK TO GAZA. I STOP WRITING FOR 15 SECONDS.
I'M SHAKING. I WAS ALREADY SICK I DIDN'T KNOW HOW LONG THIS WOULD TAKE. I'M GLAD I DIDN'T SET A TIMER. I MAY AS WELL VOMIT MY GUTS OUT. I THINK IT'S BETTER THAN FEELING HOW HORRIFIED AS I AM AT THE STUPIDITY OF THE HUMAN RACE AND IDIOT LENNY
Thanks for replying. I appreciate it. I hope you guys live healthy happy lives especially you Bram. I know my luck won’t hold out forever. I won’t deadlift from official height again. I was doing round back deadlifts yesterday according to the video. I have zero idea how much damage I may have already done to a spine that shouldn’t be lifting at this height according to one PT who I thanked 8 years ago. You can read about an expert here and there’s a part 2 if you want to learn more. I have read this maybe 5 times over the years but the last time spend hours trying to understand where the fuck laminae are. I won’t tell you but it could take 10 years for them to heal. I may not 10 years to live. I only do it because one strength expert who shall remain nameless says you gotta do some kind of hip hinge. It’s true for football players etc. who are really young compared to idiot lenny who realizes he better stop and get some real information and pay some expert to tell him how to train if he expects to continue to surf etc. Believe me I’m fuckin lucky one idiot who tried to run me over with his surfboard while I watched in disbelief that he didn’t veer out of the way until I ducked under at the last second and my fingertips grazed his board. Bram you are probably the only guy who understands just how sick idiot lenny and the surfer was. You heard the story. He was in his 50s when I recognized him on the beach and was too much in shock to say a thing. That better not happen again if I survive this war. I aint goin surfin now. Maybe never. But I would like to. Idiot lenny better not haul off and try to do serious damage. I was told what to do. Krav maga is a last resort. Do anything not to fight but if you have to do it. It’s over in 20 seconds max and just get the fuck out of there as fast as you can if the guy aint a terrorist. I know the beach has cameras. I better not fuck around. I better grow the fuck up and not even think about talkin to anybody who might even accidentally fuck me up out in the water. I’m the one who will take the blame. I will pay a much heavier price most probably than whatever damage is inflicted on me. I think you know why. If you don’t I aint gonna tell.
https://www.t-nation.com/training/an-in ... ll-part-1/
I know what kind of spine I have. As rotten as my mother was most of the time, she wouldn’t even let me try out for the jr high football team. She knew the truth Idiot lenny will get killed out there even in a tryout. I was lifting from official height because I had done it so many times that I actually had the best form and didn’t scrape my shins from a height a few inches higher. I usually edit these posts. i'm too sick with a virus having written all this to even think about it.
over and out
Your friend who actually does try to put out helpful information cause I know more than you guys because idiot lenny has learned some life wisdom after more than 7 decades on PLANET EARTH. Believe me talk to a lot of people my age and ask them what they think is important in real life. Way too many have learned about nothin useful believe me.
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
Obviously you guys know a lot more than I do about all kinds of stuff, but very unfortunately there are things you only learn the hard way over time. I am trying to spare you some suffering because no matter what I say you can’t get into my head and experience my experience. If you did you'd listen up and know this aint no joke this aint no disco. See I even like the song but can't bring myself to watch. Believe me my krav teacher is living some of the worst of this for real as fun as it may be for everybody else who doesn't have to live what life can bring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0DpBnU ... ie2112Rush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0DpBnU ... ie2112Rush
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
Happy to hear your teacher has remained safe so far!
War is a delicate subject. I get defending oneself, and defending those weaker. But flattening a city indiscriminately is evil.
If I was in your shoes, and it was possible, I’d just get the fuck out. I like where I live, but if bombs and terrorism were a real threat, I’d find another spot.
As for your surf incident…that sucks!!! Those things happen where I live too. A friend of mine got 12-15 staples in his head after a guy ran him over with a surf fin. I take comfort that almost zero surfers would consciously put someone else at risk. As for the few who would…I try and keep my head on a swivel and dive deep (without the board) if those things happen.
Hope your virus passes quickly and be kind to your body! Maybe some mellow Tai Chi would be better than caffeinated deadlifts? Did a loving-kindness meditation for you
War is a delicate subject. I get defending oneself, and defending those weaker. But flattening a city indiscriminately is evil.
If I was in your shoes, and it was possible, I’d just get the fuck out. I like where I live, but if bombs and terrorism were a real threat, I’d find another spot.
As for your surf incident…that sucks!!! Those things happen where I live too. A friend of mine got 12-15 staples in his head after a guy ran him over with a surf fin. I take comfort that almost zero surfers would consciously put someone else at risk. As for the few who would…I try and keep my head on a swivel and dive deep (without the board) if those things happen.
Hope your virus passes quickly and be kind to your body! Maybe some mellow Tai Chi would be better than caffeinated deadlifts? Did a loving-kindness meditation for you
"You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain." —Miyamato Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
Bram
I'm here because I don't see a better option to be honest. You can't possibly understand what it is to be in your 70s if you're even in your 40s or 50s let alone 20s or 30s. Obviously everything depends on so many factors. In some ways I'm stronger than I was when I was 20. I don't how many chinups I could do then but not as many as a couple days ago (I did 10 after not sleeping for probably 45 hours and some deadlifts.) Nobody I knew was doing chin-ups from elementary school through high school. If I was training for chin-ups as an 18 year old, I’m sure I would have been better.
About 6 years ago, I thought of moving to Costa Rica. The head of the surf club here said “Don’t. Stay here.” He was right. I went to Costa Rica 8 years ago. A successful surf teacher in his 30s told me that he had to rent an apartment in the capital San Jose for a month when his wife got pregnant. To get to Santa Teresa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Teresa,_Costa_Rica in an emergency might take longer than a day. There were no decent hospitals any closer than the 93 miles to the capital. Driving directly then seemed impossible through swamps. I doubt they built a good road. Why. The local government of Santa Teresa and I assume all of Costa Rica is so corrupt it is impossible to fathom when you are from the USA which has a legal system although from what I read it’s more and more corrupt. How do you get there. I paid 50 bucks for a 45 minute cab ride (forget about the bus which almost never runs if you want to catch your plane) over absolutely dreadful roads to get to a tiny airport and get into a small plane that held maybe 9 people where we were stuffed like sardines to fly 45 minutes to the capital to take a cab to a dumpy hotel near the airport. There are places in the capital where you get killed really fast so you better know where you are. I didn’t have time for sight seeing so I stayed overnight at the airport.
Unless you go to Costa Rica you can’t believe what it’s like. Food in Santa Teresa is very expensive. I spent 28 dollars a day, never ate out, never bought meat, lived on canned tuna, yogurt, fruits and vegetables. The town had the worst narrow asphalt roads I have ever seen that were paved. I had a knee injury and there were no sidewalks just sloped dirt with rocks. I could walk but not very well. To describe how crazy it seemed is impossible right now. All terrain vehicles (ATVs) with surfboards sticking out the sides could take up almost the whole road. Drivers were terrible and I didn’t want to get run over so I had to limp along. I’m laughing now but I never surfed (I got injured after my flight to the USA and assumed I would get better but didn’t. Eventually I had meniscus surgery on that knee which healed pretty well.) I did boogie board a couple of times. Once there was absolutely no one in the water. About 2 minutes later guys on surfboards are aiming for me and I left. It’s all very funny now and was sometimes then but I could never live there at my age. I might need to get to a hospital in an emergency and I was probably 30 years older than everybody. I didn’t go to the one night club. The only way to possibly make a comparison you could understand is Would you go to a high school dance now with teenagers at your current age? It would probably seem absurd. That was my reality.
I was told a 3 hour bus ride up the coast, to a retirement place for people my age with sidewalks etc. was called Tamarindo. The Costa Ricans called it Tamagringo. I said fuck it. I’ll stay here. Even if my knee doesn’t heal, I like talking to people a lot younger than me (they aren’t friends) than most people my age who I consider fossils, especially retirees looking for a nice lifestyle that I rebelled against about 50 years ago. Think of who you were as a teenager compared to who you are now and you might get a better comparison of what I’m talking about.
The jungle canopy over that road in Santa Teresa, the surf town, had been cut down some years before, and I was lucky I came at the end of the tourist season because there are terrible dust storms for months because of its destruction. I would have had terrible allergy attacks. One guy, probably from Australia, said he had been there for 26 years with 8 of them with no electricity, and he missed those days. I don’t use air conditioning here where I live not far from the beach. It gets into the high 80s and unfortunately this summer in the 90s some days with absolutely dreadful air quality that made it impossible for me to breathe. In Costa Rica I had to use air conditioning because of the heat and the humidity as it was probably May. I assume if I was about 25 I wouldn’t have needed a/c but I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t there then.
I talked to a lot of people there. Very unfortunately rich foreigners buy up property increasing the prices so that eventually the locals won’t be able to live there. I told one young really nice Costa Rican surfer (the only one in the water that day because it was over 8 feet and most surfers are too afraid apparently to go) that you shouldn’t even let me be there. I was joking around, but there should be a limit on foreign home and property ownership for the benefit of the locals.
The young Costa Ricans I met in that town are beautiful people. I would stop them and have conversations in English for a few minutes because I don’t know Spanish. They opened their hearts to me, frankly because I’m not like most other tourists there. I was so much older I probably seemed like a complete freak. It’s such a different culture than what I know America to be. Santa Teresa is crazy. Yoga studios, health food stores, organic restaurants, and God knows what else, all for relatively rich foreigners aged 20-40 I would guess. The Costa Rican locals were making so little money it actually hurts me to think about it. Life is unfair but why is the road so rotten when the taxes on food etc. is so high. A really nice Italian couple who owned an apartment hotel I stayed in said the local government officials steal almost all the tax money so the road never even gets repaved and is made with the worst asphalt to start with.
To be blunt I don’t like what the USA has become at least in 2015 the last time I was there. It’s a stupid statement because I was only in the midwest for about 2 weeks in the city I grew up in and Miami Beach. I hate to say this but what I saw is that money is the most important value for way too many people. Bram, I’m not talking about you or anybody here, but in general.
Here’s a crazy example. Before traveling internationally I had to call my 2 credit card companies to give them my exact itinerary. I was supposed to fly from here to New Jersey to Utah for a few days to Palo Alto for a week to LA and then to Costa Rica. I really fucked up and didn’t realize that I was injuring my knee before the flight and did a bunch of stupid shit before (not exercise related) and did something really dumb in the Newark airport that I won’t describe and my right knee was in agony by the time I got my luggage. It became almost impossible for me to walk for about five hours with one shoe off. I’m trying to remember how badly I was hobbling around. About 5 hours later I realized there was no way I was flying anywhere so I got a motel room near the airport.
I had to call the credit card companies to notify them I had changed my itinerary. One company said fine. The other said we have to know someone with your last name. I have a bunch of relatives by that name that don’t know me who I last saw in 1955. Obviously they couldn’t vouch for me. The credit card company reps basically said fuck you. You can’t use the card.
But the motherfuckers charge usurious interest if you pay even a day late and from what I know if you go bankrupt the credit card companies never let you go. Pay Pay Pay forever as the interest just keeps piling up.
I tried to pay about a week later and believe it or not the reps wouldn’t let me. I thought they were joking but they weren’t and I said “I’m going to a very dangerous part of Central America where there’s guerrilla warfare and I could get killed.” They basically said fuck you. We won’t accept your payment and we can’t even verify where you’re calling from. This actually happened believe it or not. I was in complete disbelief. I called my bank in that midwestern city and the rep said the credit card reps had to be lying because he could verify where I was calling from. About a week later I called the same bastard company in the middle of the night and talked to a really nice lady from Kansas City and told her the story. She actually accepted my payment and said the story didn’t shock her at all.
I have so many other crazy other disturbing stories about my time in the USA then. I couldn’t drive a car because of my knee for a number of weeks and took cabs. The nicest drivers by far were foreigners. I feel like crying because a lot of America seems so fuckin selfish, and one African guy told me he flew to LA and the cab driver who took him from the airport from that same African country who he didn’t know said to him, “You’re not going to a hotel. You’re staying with me.”
Another African guy let me use his phone in the Newark airport because I didn’t realize I had to get an international plan from Israel. My old phone could switch from the Israeli system to the American one (they have different frequencies) and the new one didn’t. He told me I have family living in my house for five years in that African country who pay me nothing. He wasn’t upset. He told me, If we’re not in the world to help each other, what are we here for?” I didn’t experience that at all in America. Maybe you do Bram and the other guys here also, but here is an example that still blows my mind.
I thought I needed knee surgery and could somehow at least rent a room in an apartment complex of one cousin who I known since childhood who had allowed me to do so numerous times before. I flew to my hometown and everything with me is a super long story. I’ll spare you all the details except to say I couldn’t buy a cheap phone in the airport to use in the USA and took a cab to a place I’d never been. Went to the Walmart and got a tracfone only to find out I couldn’t set it up there. What happened. I got a shopping cart and put my duffle bag and whatever I had in it and looked like a homeless person as I shuffled to a restaurant a few hundred yards away where I was told would have wifi. It was really cold out and I was sitting outside on a bench freezing my ass off. I very nicely asked a few people if I could use their phone for a minute to call one of my relatives. I didn’t look like a bum but they looked at me like I was from the moon and walked away. Eventually the restaurant opened and a very nice young black waitress actually helped me to get on the wifi where I was able to set up the tracfone so that it worked. What I understood then was that an awful lot of people would be unable to do so unless they had enough experience with the internet and a lot of people my age are just fuckin clueless. I was lucky that I knew enough about computers and the internet (I had been a programmer) to do so. This waitress wanted to go to med school and I gave her some helpful advice.
I needed to get a cab to get my knee checked out at the hospital. I call the cab company and the dispatcher says do you want a text message sent to you. I’m in utter disbelief. I told him I’d be waiting on the bench outside the restaurant and he needed to know the exact address which I thought was weird. It was in a major shopping plaza. I hadn’t taken a cab in my hometown maybe ever. There were no numbers on the restaurant so I went back inside the restaurant and got the physical number address and the dispatcher said again do you want a text message. I still couldn’t believe it. I said “I’m sitting on the bench outside the restaurant. How could the cab driver not see me? Why do you even need to know the numbers?” Idiot lenny thought the shopping complex was so large any cab driver from my hometown would know it. Anyhow the cab driver never showed up and the whole scenario starts over and I learn the dispatcher isn’t from my town but from Utah. I tell him “You know what’ll happen next year. You’ll be replaced by a dispatcher from India who will be replaced by a computer.” I got a cab and got to the hospital, paid some money with a traveller’s check and Thank God not with a credit card because they’d have hounded me forever. I no longer have those credit cards anyhow.
Dig this once I pay. I get to a metal detector with a fat 50 something woman in a uniform with a gun in her holster and I’m in another culture shock. I ask “Do people bring guns in here?” She answers in the affirmative and I’m think why don’t they get a tough 20 something ex-marine. I’m so fuckin stupid that such ex-marine is more expensive than fat 50 something who’d get her brains blown out in a second and a half at most by any punk with a pistol who’d already have killed the people I paid and whatever security I didn’t see when I walked in.
I ask once I finally reach the place where my knee is to get checked out about cost. Idiot lenny thinks he’ll get an orthopedic doctor but no - it’s a physician’s assistant (guess why - he’s a fuck of a lot cheaper and maybe even a fuck of a lot smarter than some idiot orthopedic doctors. How do I know? Some absolute dumb fucks from my high school are doctors.) I ask how much will this cost because I had traveller’s health insurance. Person at desk calls the accounting department or whoever handles the bills and I learn nobody fuckin knows. That’s nice. I call Israel to find out how much traveller’s insurance will cover and nobody fuckin knows. I decided fuck it. Let the guy do some tests which I later learn are the total wrong tests to determine if I have a meniscus tear. You guys think this is a total fabrication but it’s true. So what does that say about the American medical system and this is supposedly one of the best hospitals in the world for cardiac arrests.
Anyhow I somehow manage to get another cab to a house of the sister of my oldest friend from high school (the guy who fell on his head a few months ago) where he is going to be that evening. Cab driver tells me that the cost of a college education in some crappy local city college and probably worse law school is 350,000 dollars. I start thinking am I in the Twilight Zone or have I gone completely mad. He reiterates that’s the price. In the good ole days when I was in high school, tuition at that college was probably a few hundred bucks a quarter and most people lived at home so let’s say it was 4,000 dollars for four years. Maybe the law school was twice as much. I’m not adjusting for inflation which might up it to maybe 25,000 bucks.
A couple days later a college aged guy in a health food store says higher education is just an ATM machine and you can guess who is paying and who is taking the money for what I call brainwash education. Don’t rebel kids like I did. You just might not get a house in the suburbs with your beautiful wife and Life Underwater by the Talking Heads.
I tell said young guy, “You are all on Facebook. You don’t have to go out in the streets and protest like we did in the 60s and get your heads busted and tear gassed. Get one parent to represent you for the House of Representatives on one issue. Lower the fuckin tuition. Young guy looks at me as if I’m from the moon.” Later a friend who is now dying of some rare blood cancer says, “It probably costs that much for college and law school at those jerkwater so called schools of higher education. He goes on to say, “The kids who were then millennials don’t rebel.” I still think this is absolutely fuckin stupid. How much time would it take to get maybe 30 parents elected to the House of Representatives on that one issue and probably tuition gets lowered. I talk to a few young people about going on Facebook and I get the exact same result. I’m from the moon. Finally a young guy in Miami Beach who is maybe from some Spanish speaking country actually understands what the fuck I’m talking about.
I could go on forever with these crazy stories. It turns out that I can’t stay with any of my numerous relatives who I have known for 60 years and can not even rent the room in the apartment complex so I stay on the floor of my oldest friend. Because I did a lot of strength training and knew enough Feldenkrais I could get up from said floor without much difficulty on one leg and two hands and swing my self up to standing. I have forgotten how but could probably do it if I had to.
One thing I’ll never forget is a conversation I have with my friend who is on disability and lives in assisted living on 900 or so bucks a month. He has been into so called spiritual groups forever and has worked as a telemarketer, baker, cab driver and God knows what else and has never saved a cent. He has a BA in political science and without his sister he’d have died long ago. He tells me it cost 9,000 bucks to get disability and he used his cousins law firm who made him pay the full cost. Again idiot lenny wonders what world he is and says, “Why didn’t they do it for free?” Friend blows up at me. How dare I make such a suggestion after he has basically given his life away for a bunch of leeches who he has taught meditation and spiritual walks to for nothin’ and admits they screw him every day until he is too old to go on and the group he really helped for decades won’t even pay for him to go to the teacher’s camp one summer when he is living out of his car. He told me I didn’t realize I needed a home and he’s never done acid and doesn’t smoke dope. Who is the crazy one. Who is the dope? Him or Idiot lenny?
My one relative who actually returns my numerous calls including to one who stayed with me in Jerusalem where I teach him how to squat properly with some light weight which he probably never does again. He’s in his 40s and jogs so he’s not in such bad shape never fuckin returns any of my numerous calls until weeks later when I’m no longer in my hometown with a brief email, “How was your knee surgery (Motherfucker - my addition).
The one cousin who does call and lives in a huge house with just him and his wife who apparently he is enslaved to and says, “Stay in a motel not far from me where my brother stays when he’s in town.” Again I can’t believe what the fuck world is this? Why should his brother have to pay for a motel when these fuckers have not exactly a mansion but about five bedrooms, 3 floors, a billiard table in the basement, a small pond in the back. I’m almost choking on laughter. Said cousin invites me for lunch a couple days later. I’m at a store buying the friend I stayed with a flat screen TV. I feel like I should get him something for letting me stay there. Cousin calls and says you’re disinvited. He can’t give me lunch. I’m roaring in laughter as I write this. I don’t glorify 3rd world people but the ones I meet have some values that are a lot more human and will keep the human race a fuck of a lot longer that what I see in the USA.
To top it off I’m in a health food store some days later and see a young beautiful woman all covered in white obviously from some Middle Eastern country with her very aged father in the check out line behind me. I turn around and say “I live in Israel and you can’t believe how badly we want peace.” She looks at me in total sincerity and says, “God Bless you.” Outside the store I see one of my co-religionists all dressed in black so he’s obviously an orthodox Jew. It’s a major Jewish holiday and I wish him something in Hebrew that he should enjoy it. Honestly it’s a little bit flippant but I mean it. I’m not dressed in black and he doesn’t even reply. What am I supposed to believe about the USA I see.?I don’t want to go back.
It’s impossible for you to know what it's like to be from a generation that had so much idealism like mine when we were closing campuses. All of France went on strike in the spring of 1968 when we closed the Columbia University campus over a number of issues - the Vietnam war being a main reason.
I really believed we'd change the world for the better. I was very anti-war then and still see it as a last resort but if we don’t kill every Hamas terrorist we are all dead because they will just get new ones in Gaza and we will probably all die anyhow the way we’re going. Most of my generation long ago sold out all their ideals. I get it that people need a home, food, health care clothes, but what I read about a lot of Americans my generation who want to cut all social spending except for their own health care and social security sickens me. Think about the young. When we were young we were taken care of by our elders. You motherfuckers don’t give a shit about the young generation. It’s not everybody but it’s way too fuckin many.
As far as flattening cities being evil I agree and disagree. It depends. Dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima ended the war really fast. Would it have been worth the death of an estimated 30-50,000 American soldiers to invade and bomb cities and probably killing as many as those who died in those cities that got nuked. The Japanese knew what was potentially coming. They could have surrendered. America was conducting above ground nuclear bombing tests in the Pacific. The Japanese knew. They thought dumb Americans would be willing to lose a lot more soldiers. President Truman said fuck you to the Japanese who the Chinese still hate for raping their women during the war. Very very unfortunately a lot of people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima died but they didn’t have to. The Japanese culture was changed by America after the war. I read about it a book called Made In Japan
by the former head of Sony where he details a lot of changes in Japanese culture among them a very minuscule military, a constitution, the emperor being a figurehead, labor laws etc.. Japan could no longer be a threat to the world militarily.
Bram if you had a son who would be sent to fight in some foreign war like World War II that had gone on for 4 years in which hundreds of thousands of young Americans who had died and the options were - lose another 30-50,000 Americans and possibly your son to do an enormous amount of destruction or flatten a city that would probably kill as many people as an invasion what would you choose? America purposely stayed out of the war until Japan chose to attack Pearl Harbor thinking Americans wouldn’t fight back. President Roosevelt was willing to let Germany take over all of Europe and Great Britain until then.
As far as Israel I’d rather flatten all of Gaza than let my krav maga teacher and a lot of young guys die fighting. Watch this video and tell me what you think.
The fuckin Palestinians reject every chance they have to make peace including taking 99.9 percent of what they claim to want. They want us all dead period. I’m not saying all of them but there is no Palestinian peace movement. So watch this and tell me what you think.
If you can’t watch the whole 4:20 then start at 2:33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty5GFIo ... sAustralia
Also watch this about moderate Moslems and their peace movement. It's 5 years old but there aint one here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z_RAbOJ ... l=Indicrat
Tell me what you think. I may not be on here for weeks so take your time.
I’m not putting you down. I hate the idea of war but like I said it’s a last resort. Hamas killed a lot of people brutally, burnt babies alive, raped women etc.. They’re monsters. If I could waive a magic wand and bring peace and end war I would. I learned the hard way. If you want something work your ass off for it. My generation in America didn't or couldn't or wouldn't do it. I left America for Israel 45 years ago, thought about moving back numerous times and finally gave up one weekend about seven years ago. I don't regret it. I had an uncle who said about my ailing father. "Life is tough all over.
Everybody has to die." Like Jim Morrison of the Doors said No one here gets out alive. I don't know how long I have left but i sure had a good time writing all this.
As far as getting over my virus idiot lenny did a completely fuckin stupid workout for a lot of reasons I won’t begin to describe and now has the flu. It’s probably for the best. I gotta stop workouts for probably 5 days and hope to recover finally after a few months of self inflicted viruses.
Goodbye originally meant God be with Ye so over and out from your friend
Mr Idiot lenny
I'm here because I don't see a better option to be honest. You can't possibly understand what it is to be in your 70s if you're even in your 40s or 50s let alone 20s or 30s. Obviously everything depends on so many factors. In some ways I'm stronger than I was when I was 20. I don't how many chinups I could do then but not as many as a couple days ago (I did 10 after not sleeping for probably 45 hours and some deadlifts.) Nobody I knew was doing chin-ups from elementary school through high school. If I was training for chin-ups as an 18 year old, I’m sure I would have been better.
About 6 years ago, I thought of moving to Costa Rica. The head of the surf club here said “Don’t. Stay here.” He was right. I went to Costa Rica 8 years ago. A successful surf teacher in his 30s told me that he had to rent an apartment in the capital San Jose for a month when his wife got pregnant. To get to Santa Teresa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Teresa,_Costa_Rica in an emergency might take longer than a day. There were no decent hospitals any closer than the 93 miles to the capital. Driving directly then seemed impossible through swamps. I doubt they built a good road. Why. The local government of Santa Teresa and I assume all of Costa Rica is so corrupt it is impossible to fathom when you are from the USA which has a legal system although from what I read it’s more and more corrupt. How do you get there. I paid 50 bucks for a 45 minute cab ride (forget about the bus which almost never runs if you want to catch your plane) over absolutely dreadful roads to get to a tiny airport and get into a small plane that held maybe 9 people where we were stuffed like sardines to fly 45 minutes to the capital to take a cab to a dumpy hotel near the airport. There are places in the capital where you get killed really fast so you better know where you are. I didn’t have time for sight seeing so I stayed overnight at the airport.
Unless you go to Costa Rica you can’t believe what it’s like. Food in Santa Teresa is very expensive. I spent 28 dollars a day, never ate out, never bought meat, lived on canned tuna, yogurt, fruits and vegetables. The town had the worst narrow asphalt roads I have ever seen that were paved. I had a knee injury and there were no sidewalks just sloped dirt with rocks. I could walk but not very well. To describe how crazy it seemed is impossible right now. All terrain vehicles (ATVs) with surfboards sticking out the sides could take up almost the whole road. Drivers were terrible and I didn’t want to get run over so I had to limp along. I’m laughing now but I never surfed (I got injured after my flight to the USA and assumed I would get better but didn’t. Eventually I had meniscus surgery on that knee which healed pretty well.) I did boogie board a couple of times. Once there was absolutely no one in the water. About 2 minutes later guys on surfboards are aiming for me and I left. It’s all very funny now and was sometimes then but I could never live there at my age. I might need to get to a hospital in an emergency and I was probably 30 years older than everybody. I didn’t go to the one night club. The only way to possibly make a comparison you could understand is Would you go to a high school dance now with teenagers at your current age? It would probably seem absurd. That was my reality.
I was told a 3 hour bus ride up the coast, to a retirement place for people my age with sidewalks etc. was called Tamarindo. The Costa Ricans called it Tamagringo. I said fuck it. I’ll stay here. Even if my knee doesn’t heal, I like talking to people a lot younger than me (they aren’t friends) than most people my age who I consider fossils, especially retirees looking for a nice lifestyle that I rebelled against about 50 years ago. Think of who you were as a teenager compared to who you are now and you might get a better comparison of what I’m talking about.
The jungle canopy over that road in Santa Teresa, the surf town, had been cut down some years before, and I was lucky I came at the end of the tourist season because there are terrible dust storms for months because of its destruction. I would have had terrible allergy attacks. One guy, probably from Australia, said he had been there for 26 years with 8 of them with no electricity, and he missed those days. I don’t use air conditioning here where I live not far from the beach. It gets into the high 80s and unfortunately this summer in the 90s some days with absolutely dreadful air quality that made it impossible for me to breathe. In Costa Rica I had to use air conditioning because of the heat and the humidity as it was probably May. I assume if I was about 25 I wouldn’t have needed a/c but I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t there then.
I talked to a lot of people there. Very unfortunately rich foreigners buy up property increasing the prices so that eventually the locals won’t be able to live there. I told one young really nice Costa Rican surfer (the only one in the water that day because it was over 8 feet and most surfers are too afraid apparently to go) that you shouldn’t even let me be there. I was joking around, but there should be a limit on foreign home and property ownership for the benefit of the locals.
The young Costa Ricans I met in that town are beautiful people. I would stop them and have conversations in English for a few minutes because I don’t know Spanish. They opened their hearts to me, frankly because I’m not like most other tourists there. I was so much older I probably seemed like a complete freak. It’s such a different culture than what I know America to be. Santa Teresa is crazy. Yoga studios, health food stores, organic restaurants, and God knows what else, all for relatively rich foreigners aged 20-40 I would guess. The Costa Rican locals were making so little money it actually hurts me to think about it. Life is unfair but why is the road so rotten when the taxes on food etc. is so high. A really nice Italian couple who owned an apartment hotel I stayed in said the local government officials steal almost all the tax money so the road never even gets repaved and is made with the worst asphalt to start with.
To be blunt I don’t like what the USA has become at least in 2015 the last time I was there. It’s a stupid statement because I was only in the midwest for about 2 weeks in the city I grew up in and Miami Beach. I hate to say this but what I saw is that money is the most important value for way too many people. Bram, I’m not talking about you or anybody here, but in general.
Here’s a crazy example. Before traveling internationally I had to call my 2 credit card companies to give them my exact itinerary. I was supposed to fly from here to New Jersey to Utah for a few days to Palo Alto for a week to LA and then to Costa Rica. I really fucked up and didn’t realize that I was injuring my knee before the flight and did a bunch of stupid shit before (not exercise related) and did something really dumb in the Newark airport that I won’t describe and my right knee was in agony by the time I got my luggage. It became almost impossible for me to walk for about five hours with one shoe off. I’m trying to remember how badly I was hobbling around. About 5 hours later I realized there was no way I was flying anywhere so I got a motel room near the airport.
I had to call the credit card companies to notify them I had changed my itinerary. One company said fine. The other said we have to know someone with your last name. I have a bunch of relatives by that name that don’t know me who I last saw in 1955. Obviously they couldn’t vouch for me. The credit card company reps basically said fuck you. You can’t use the card.
But the motherfuckers charge usurious interest if you pay even a day late and from what I know if you go bankrupt the credit card companies never let you go. Pay Pay Pay forever as the interest just keeps piling up.
I tried to pay about a week later and believe it or not the reps wouldn’t let me. I thought they were joking but they weren’t and I said “I’m going to a very dangerous part of Central America where there’s guerrilla warfare and I could get killed.” They basically said fuck you. We won’t accept your payment and we can’t even verify where you’re calling from. This actually happened believe it or not. I was in complete disbelief. I called my bank in that midwestern city and the rep said the credit card reps had to be lying because he could verify where I was calling from. About a week later I called the same bastard company in the middle of the night and talked to a really nice lady from Kansas City and told her the story. She actually accepted my payment and said the story didn’t shock her at all.
I have so many other crazy other disturbing stories about my time in the USA then. I couldn’t drive a car because of my knee for a number of weeks and took cabs. The nicest drivers by far were foreigners. I feel like crying because a lot of America seems so fuckin selfish, and one African guy told me he flew to LA and the cab driver who took him from the airport from that same African country who he didn’t know said to him, “You’re not going to a hotel. You’re staying with me.”
Another African guy let me use his phone in the Newark airport because I didn’t realize I had to get an international plan from Israel. My old phone could switch from the Israeli system to the American one (they have different frequencies) and the new one didn’t. He told me I have family living in my house for five years in that African country who pay me nothing. He wasn’t upset. He told me, If we’re not in the world to help each other, what are we here for?” I didn’t experience that at all in America. Maybe you do Bram and the other guys here also, but here is an example that still blows my mind.
I thought I needed knee surgery and could somehow at least rent a room in an apartment complex of one cousin who I known since childhood who had allowed me to do so numerous times before. I flew to my hometown and everything with me is a super long story. I’ll spare you all the details except to say I couldn’t buy a cheap phone in the airport to use in the USA and took a cab to a place I’d never been. Went to the Walmart and got a tracfone only to find out I couldn’t set it up there. What happened. I got a shopping cart and put my duffle bag and whatever I had in it and looked like a homeless person as I shuffled to a restaurant a few hundred yards away where I was told would have wifi. It was really cold out and I was sitting outside on a bench freezing my ass off. I very nicely asked a few people if I could use their phone for a minute to call one of my relatives. I didn’t look like a bum but they looked at me like I was from the moon and walked away. Eventually the restaurant opened and a very nice young black waitress actually helped me to get on the wifi where I was able to set up the tracfone so that it worked. What I understood then was that an awful lot of people would be unable to do so unless they had enough experience with the internet and a lot of people my age are just fuckin clueless. I was lucky that I knew enough about computers and the internet (I had been a programmer) to do so. This waitress wanted to go to med school and I gave her some helpful advice.
I needed to get a cab to get my knee checked out at the hospital. I call the cab company and the dispatcher says do you want a text message sent to you. I’m in utter disbelief. I told him I’d be waiting on the bench outside the restaurant and he needed to know the exact address which I thought was weird. It was in a major shopping plaza. I hadn’t taken a cab in my hometown maybe ever. There were no numbers on the restaurant so I went back inside the restaurant and got the physical number address and the dispatcher said again do you want a text message. I still couldn’t believe it. I said “I’m sitting on the bench outside the restaurant. How could the cab driver not see me? Why do you even need to know the numbers?” Idiot lenny thought the shopping complex was so large any cab driver from my hometown would know it. Anyhow the cab driver never showed up and the whole scenario starts over and I learn the dispatcher isn’t from my town but from Utah. I tell him “You know what’ll happen next year. You’ll be replaced by a dispatcher from India who will be replaced by a computer.” I got a cab and got to the hospital, paid some money with a traveller’s check and Thank God not with a credit card because they’d have hounded me forever. I no longer have those credit cards anyhow.
Dig this once I pay. I get to a metal detector with a fat 50 something woman in a uniform with a gun in her holster and I’m in another culture shock. I ask “Do people bring guns in here?” She answers in the affirmative and I’m think why don’t they get a tough 20 something ex-marine. I’m so fuckin stupid that such ex-marine is more expensive than fat 50 something who’d get her brains blown out in a second and a half at most by any punk with a pistol who’d already have killed the people I paid and whatever security I didn’t see when I walked in.
I ask once I finally reach the place where my knee is to get checked out about cost. Idiot lenny thinks he’ll get an orthopedic doctor but no - it’s a physician’s assistant (guess why - he’s a fuck of a lot cheaper and maybe even a fuck of a lot smarter than some idiot orthopedic doctors. How do I know? Some absolute dumb fucks from my high school are doctors.) I ask how much will this cost because I had traveller’s health insurance. Person at desk calls the accounting department or whoever handles the bills and I learn nobody fuckin knows. That’s nice. I call Israel to find out how much traveller’s insurance will cover and nobody fuckin knows. I decided fuck it. Let the guy do some tests which I later learn are the total wrong tests to determine if I have a meniscus tear. You guys think this is a total fabrication but it’s true. So what does that say about the American medical system and this is supposedly one of the best hospitals in the world for cardiac arrests.
Anyhow I somehow manage to get another cab to a house of the sister of my oldest friend from high school (the guy who fell on his head a few months ago) where he is going to be that evening. Cab driver tells me that the cost of a college education in some crappy local city college and probably worse law school is 350,000 dollars. I start thinking am I in the Twilight Zone or have I gone completely mad. He reiterates that’s the price. In the good ole days when I was in high school, tuition at that college was probably a few hundred bucks a quarter and most people lived at home so let’s say it was 4,000 dollars for four years. Maybe the law school was twice as much. I’m not adjusting for inflation which might up it to maybe 25,000 bucks.
A couple days later a college aged guy in a health food store says higher education is just an ATM machine and you can guess who is paying and who is taking the money for what I call brainwash education. Don’t rebel kids like I did. You just might not get a house in the suburbs with your beautiful wife and Life Underwater by the Talking Heads.
I tell said young guy, “You are all on Facebook. You don’t have to go out in the streets and protest like we did in the 60s and get your heads busted and tear gassed. Get one parent to represent you for the House of Representatives on one issue. Lower the fuckin tuition. Young guy looks at me as if I’m from the moon.” Later a friend who is now dying of some rare blood cancer says, “It probably costs that much for college and law school at those jerkwater so called schools of higher education. He goes on to say, “The kids who were then millennials don’t rebel.” I still think this is absolutely fuckin stupid. How much time would it take to get maybe 30 parents elected to the House of Representatives on that one issue and probably tuition gets lowered. I talk to a few young people about going on Facebook and I get the exact same result. I’m from the moon. Finally a young guy in Miami Beach who is maybe from some Spanish speaking country actually understands what the fuck I’m talking about.
I could go on forever with these crazy stories. It turns out that I can’t stay with any of my numerous relatives who I have known for 60 years and can not even rent the room in the apartment complex so I stay on the floor of my oldest friend. Because I did a lot of strength training and knew enough Feldenkrais I could get up from said floor without much difficulty on one leg and two hands and swing my self up to standing. I have forgotten how but could probably do it if I had to.
One thing I’ll never forget is a conversation I have with my friend who is on disability and lives in assisted living on 900 or so bucks a month. He has been into so called spiritual groups forever and has worked as a telemarketer, baker, cab driver and God knows what else and has never saved a cent. He has a BA in political science and without his sister he’d have died long ago. He tells me it cost 9,000 bucks to get disability and he used his cousins law firm who made him pay the full cost. Again idiot lenny wonders what world he is and says, “Why didn’t they do it for free?” Friend blows up at me. How dare I make such a suggestion after he has basically given his life away for a bunch of leeches who he has taught meditation and spiritual walks to for nothin’ and admits they screw him every day until he is too old to go on and the group he really helped for decades won’t even pay for him to go to the teacher’s camp one summer when he is living out of his car. He told me I didn’t realize I needed a home and he’s never done acid and doesn’t smoke dope. Who is the crazy one. Who is the dope? Him or Idiot lenny?
My one relative who actually returns my numerous calls including to one who stayed with me in Jerusalem where I teach him how to squat properly with some light weight which he probably never does again. He’s in his 40s and jogs so he’s not in such bad shape never fuckin returns any of my numerous calls until weeks later when I’m no longer in my hometown with a brief email, “How was your knee surgery (Motherfucker - my addition).
The one cousin who does call and lives in a huge house with just him and his wife who apparently he is enslaved to and says, “Stay in a motel not far from me where my brother stays when he’s in town.” Again I can’t believe what the fuck world is this? Why should his brother have to pay for a motel when these fuckers have not exactly a mansion but about five bedrooms, 3 floors, a billiard table in the basement, a small pond in the back. I’m almost choking on laughter. Said cousin invites me for lunch a couple days later. I’m at a store buying the friend I stayed with a flat screen TV. I feel like I should get him something for letting me stay there. Cousin calls and says you’re disinvited. He can’t give me lunch. I’m roaring in laughter as I write this. I don’t glorify 3rd world people but the ones I meet have some values that are a lot more human and will keep the human race a fuck of a lot longer that what I see in the USA.
To top it off I’m in a health food store some days later and see a young beautiful woman all covered in white obviously from some Middle Eastern country with her very aged father in the check out line behind me. I turn around and say “I live in Israel and you can’t believe how badly we want peace.” She looks at me in total sincerity and says, “God Bless you.” Outside the store I see one of my co-religionists all dressed in black so he’s obviously an orthodox Jew. It’s a major Jewish holiday and I wish him something in Hebrew that he should enjoy it. Honestly it’s a little bit flippant but I mean it. I’m not dressed in black and he doesn’t even reply. What am I supposed to believe about the USA I see.?I don’t want to go back.
It’s impossible for you to know what it's like to be from a generation that had so much idealism like mine when we were closing campuses. All of France went on strike in the spring of 1968 when we closed the Columbia University campus over a number of issues - the Vietnam war being a main reason.
I really believed we'd change the world for the better. I was very anti-war then and still see it as a last resort but if we don’t kill every Hamas terrorist we are all dead because they will just get new ones in Gaza and we will probably all die anyhow the way we’re going. Most of my generation long ago sold out all their ideals. I get it that people need a home, food, health care clothes, but what I read about a lot of Americans my generation who want to cut all social spending except for their own health care and social security sickens me. Think about the young. When we were young we were taken care of by our elders. You motherfuckers don’t give a shit about the young generation. It’s not everybody but it’s way too fuckin many.
As far as flattening cities being evil I agree and disagree. It depends. Dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima ended the war really fast. Would it have been worth the death of an estimated 30-50,000 American soldiers to invade and bomb cities and probably killing as many as those who died in those cities that got nuked. The Japanese knew what was potentially coming. They could have surrendered. America was conducting above ground nuclear bombing tests in the Pacific. The Japanese knew. They thought dumb Americans would be willing to lose a lot more soldiers. President Truman said fuck you to the Japanese who the Chinese still hate for raping their women during the war. Very very unfortunately a lot of people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima died but they didn’t have to. The Japanese culture was changed by America after the war. I read about it a book called Made In Japan
by the former head of Sony where he details a lot of changes in Japanese culture among them a very minuscule military, a constitution, the emperor being a figurehead, labor laws etc.. Japan could no longer be a threat to the world militarily.
Bram if you had a son who would be sent to fight in some foreign war like World War II that had gone on for 4 years in which hundreds of thousands of young Americans who had died and the options were - lose another 30-50,000 Americans and possibly your son to do an enormous amount of destruction or flatten a city that would probably kill as many people as an invasion what would you choose? America purposely stayed out of the war until Japan chose to attack Pearl Harbor thinking Americans wouldn’t fight back. President Roosevelt was willing to let Germany take over all of Europe and Great Britain until then.
As far as Israel I’d rather flatten all of Gaza than let my krav maga teacher and a lot of young guys die fighting. Watch this video and tell me what you think.
The fuckin Palestinians reject every chance they have to make peace including taking 99.9 percent of what they claim to want. They want us all dead period. I’m not saying all of them but there is no Palestinian peace movement. So watch this and tell me what you think.
If you can’t watch the whole 4:20 then start at 2:33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty5GFIo ... sAustralia
Also watch this about moderate Moslems and their peace movement. It's 5 years old but there aint one here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z_RAbOJ ... l=Indicrat
Tell me what you think. I may not be on here for weeks so take your time.
I’m not putting you down. I hate the idea of war but like I said it’s a last resort. Hamas killed a lot of people brutally, burnt babies alive, raped women etc.. They’re monsters. If I could waive a magic wand and bring peace and end war I would. I learned the hard way. If you want something work your ass off for it. My generation in America didn't or couldn't or wouldn't do it. I left America for Israel 45 years ago, thought about moving back numerous times and finally gave up one weekend about seven years ago. I don't regret it. I had an uncle who said about my ailing father. "Life is tough all over.
Everybody has to die." Like Jim Morrison of the Doors said No one here gets out alive. I don't know how long I have left but i sure had a good time writing all this.
As far as getting over my virus idiot lenny did a completely fuckin stupid workout for a lot of reasons I won’t begin to describe and now has the flu. It’s probably for the best. I gotta stop workouts for probably 5 days and hope to recover finally after a few months of self inflicted viruses.
Goodbye originally meant God be with Ye so over and out from your friend
Mr Idiot lenny
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
Lenny,
You’re right. I can’t put myself in anyone else’s shoes. I don’t know what it’s like to be in one’s seventies, and even for people my own age (44), I don’t live a similar life to many.
I was in Costa Rica twenty years ago for a few weeks. Tamarindo was a party town then with a lot of gringos, but it also had the most playful waves of all the towns I visited. I got bad vibes a few times on that trip. One was from some locals in Monteverde who seemed to look at me with hatred (which maybe I imagined) and another was from a cab driver in Mancora (near Ecuador) who picked up a friend and they both tried to bully me into paying double. I had already taken to carrying a rock in my pocket as protection.
As for the attitudes of Americans….I’m lucky enough to live in a special part of it. There is some elitism, but maybe that’s 5-10% of the people I encounter. And everyone (them included) seems to appreciate genuine warmth and compliments, and small acts of kindness. So I just set out each day to put out that energy. Sometimes it’s met with coldness, haha, but I’m relentless with it. There’s no one in my neighborhood whose walls haven’t been worn down by my smile. And it feels like the universe appreciates when I do this, which might mean a good wave coming my way.
I really loved your story about the African guy that was housing other Africans. “If we’re not in the world to help each other, what are we here for?” What a beautiful attitude!
As for nuking Japan….I read a kids book “Bomb” by Steve Sheikin. In it, the pilot who dropped one of them described it roughly as “opening the gates of hell.” I also read “Hiroshima” by John Hersey, a journalist who looked at people’s stories of surviving it. What a hideous thing to unleash! Knowing the goodness that exists in the hearts of humanity, I can’t believe that this was the best solution.
I’ll check out your videos later and respond to them. Be well!
You’re right. I can’t put myself in anyone else’s shoes. I don’t know what it’s like to be in one’s seventies, and even for people my own age (44), I don’t live a similar life to many.
I was in Costa Rica twenty years ago for a few weeks. Tamarindo was a party town then with a lot of gringos, but it also had the most playful waves of all the towns I visited. I got bad vibes a few times on that trip. One was from some locals in Monteverde who seemed to look at me with hatred (which maybe I imagined) and another was from a cab driver in Mancora (near Ecuador) who picked up a friend and they both tried to bully me into paying double. I had already taken to carrying a rock in my pocket as protection.
As for the attitudes of Americans….I’m lucky enough to live in a special part of it. There is some elitism, but maybe that’s 5-10% of the people I encounter. And everyone (them included) seems to appreciate genuine warmth and compliments, and small acts of kindness. So I just set out each day to put out that energy. Sometimes it’s met with coldness, haha, but I’m relentless with it. There’s no one in my neighborhood whose walls haven’t been worn down by my smile. And it feels like the universe appreciates when I do this, which might mean a good wave coming my way.
I really loved your story about the African guy that was housing other Africans. “If we’re not in the world to help each other, what are we here for?” What a beautiful attitude!
As for nuking Japan….I read a kids book “Bomb” by Steve Sheikin. In it, the pilot who dropped one of them described it roughly as “opening the gates of hell.” I also read “Hiroshima” by John Hersey, a journalist who looked at people’s stories of surviving it. What a hideous thing to unleash! Knowing the goodness that exists in the hearts of humanity, I can’t believe that this was the best solution.
I’ll check out your videos later and respond to them. Be well!
"You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain." —Miyamato Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
Bram
I was in Encinitas in the fall of 1977. It was so fantastic. Hardly anybody around. I was doing Tai Chi on the beach and a guy said to me Keep the chi flowing. There was a parking lot overlooking the ocean where a bunch of us would gather to watch the sun go down. It blew my mind. I had never imagined a place could be so beautiful. I'd walk down Main Street and see the Ocean from the side streets. There was a guy doing airbrush shirts that were so beautiful I bought a couple. I went to the Yogananda service once. It wasn't for me, but there was a health food restaurant staffed by some Yogananda people that had such great vibes. It wasn't all beautiful. One Sunday morning (I was there 3 or 4 days) pretty early a guy was using a very loud sander probably for a surfboard. Another guy starts screaming his guts out for the guy to stop. It probably was around 7AM. It happened a couple times before the sander guy stopped. I thought the other guy would haul off and kill him. I really considered moving there. I had been in Orange County on business but decided I needed to get out of the USA and travel around the world on some kind of spiritual quest and learn to surf. I ended up in Israel. I don't know if I’m on a spiritual quest and what the fuck that means. I'm in and out of it. I haven't surfed in a long time. I gotta get over this illness. I whacked myself out good. I think I needed it. I hope I don't in the future.
I went back to Encinitas in 1993 and didn't understand what I had thought was so beautiful. People were walking with booze in paper bags. There were tons of cars. The airbrush guy was selling the most ugly shit (he had to make a living and that's what was in demand.) I thought I lost some traveller's checks and went into a bank. I asked the bank teller lady. Have you been here a long time. She said Yeah. I asked What happened to this place? She said It got really ugly hasn't it. I went again about 12 years later and it was a lot worse. All of a sudden though there was a break in the traffic on Main Street which usually had constant flow of cars and guess what I could see the ocean again for about a second. I checked the population growth of Encinitas. It had exploded from about about 5,500 in 1980 to maybe 8 times that size. I can't find it now for some reason but I'm glad I didn't grow up there. There were maybe 4,000 when I was a kid. Now there are over 60,000. There are places near the beach here i can walk down and see the ocean.
Here's about a one minute clip from the Pt Break with Swayze etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ-dPBo ... =burakuslu
I learned a bunch of things the hard way. When I was skateboarding in my 20s (I only started in my mid 20s) I learned if I took one step beyond my ability level (I wasn't much) I was OK. Two steps beyond I fell. I thought that was a good metaphor for life. I was so wrong. I have learned that it could take decades to try to heal the damage I have done. and that's if I'm lucky. I hope I can do it a lot faster. I don't think i have anything near that long.
I spent five minutes trying to find the scene after the first skydiving scene where Boddhi takes Johnny Utah into the van and says, "Special agent Utah this may sting a bit but it's for your own growth Brah." I think you know what happens. I hate to say this but there are things I learned that I can't believe I lived through they hurt so badly at the time but they were for my own growth. I just hope I can keep believe it when the final bell rings.
I was in Encinitas in the fall of 1977. It was so fantastic. Hardly anybody around. I was doing Tai Chi on the beach and a guy said to me Keep the chi flowing. There was a parking lot overlooking the ocean where a bunch of us would gather to watch the sun go down. It blew my mind. I had never imagined a place could be so beautiful. I'd walk down Main Street and see the Ocean from the side streets. There was a guy doing airbrush shirts that were so beautiful I bought a couple. I went to the Yogananda service once. It wasn't for me, but there was a health food restaurant staffed by some Yogananda people that had such great vibes. It wasn't all beautiful. One Sunday morning (I was there 3 or 4 days) pretty early a guy was using a very loud sander probably for a surfboard. Another guy starts screaming his guts out for the guy to stop. It probably was around 7AM. It happened a couple times before the sander guy stopped. I thought the other guy would haul off and kill him. I really considered moving there. I had been in Orange County on business but decided I needed to get out of the USA and travel around the world on some kind of spiritual quest and learn to surf. I ended up in Israel. I don't know if I’m on a spiritual quest and what the fuck that means. I'm in and out of it. I haven't surfed in a long time. I gotta get over this illness. I whacked myself out good. I think I needed it. I hope I don't in the future.
I went back to Encinitas in 1993 and didn't understand what I had thought was so beautiful. People were walking with booze in paper bags. There were tons of cars. The airbrush guy was selling the most ugly shit (he had to make a living and that's what was in demand.) I thought I lost some traveller's checks and went into a bank. I asked the bank teller lady. Have you been here a long time. She said Yeah. I asked What happened to this place? She said It got really ugly hasn't it. I went again about 12 years later and it was a lot worse. All of a sudden though there was a break in the traffic on Main Street which usually had constant flow of cars and guess what I could see the ocean again for about a second. I checked the population growth of Encinitas. It had exploded from about about 5,500 in 1980 to maybe 8 times that size. I can't find it now for some reason but I'm glad I didn't grow up there. There were maybe 4,000 when I was a kid. Now there are over 60,000. There are places near the beach here i can walk down and see the ocean.
Here's about a one minute clip from the Pt Break with Swayze etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ-dPBo ... =burakuslu
I learned a bunch of things the hard way. When I was skateboarding in my 20s (I only started in my mid 20s) I learned if I took one step beyond my ability level (I wasn't much) I was OK. Two steps beyond I fell. I thought that was a good metaphor for life. I was so wrong. I have learned that it could take decades to try to heal the damage I have done. and that's if I'm lucky. I hope I can do it a lot faster. I don't think i have anything near that long.
I spent five minutes trying to find the scene after the first skydiving scene where Boddhi takes Johnny Utah into the van and says, "Special agent Utah this may sting a bit but it's for your own growth Brah." I think you know what happens. I hate to say this but there are things I learned that I can't believe I lived through they hurt so badly at the time but they were for my own growth. I just hope I can keep believe it when the final bell rings.
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
I go to Encinitas about once a week to surf Swami’s. It’s the surf break right below the Yogananda center, and that’s possibly the parking lot you’re referring to. I love it there! Sometimes I head up to the Pannikin in Leucadia after for coffee, a pastry, and to read. Two-and-a-half weeks ago, I watched dolphins surf Swami’s in a small pack as I was paddling back out. There can be people there with attitudes, but again, everyone likes genuine compliments and extra waves. I try to watch people’s eyes. If they really look like they want it, sometimes I say “All you!” Even if I’ve been waiting a while. I don’t always do that. But it does seem like sometimes you can a) catch another wave or b) give it away and make another friend. The b’s are worth considering :)
"You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain." —Miyamato Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
I'm goin crazy trying to find my krav maga teacher
i heard from my krav maga teacher the other day but he isn't responding
he had a break and had to go back to gaza
i tell. him what a hero he is and he says i'm so wonderful. i don't think i'm so wonderful i try to be a good person
i hate this group of jewish people living here. believe me recently i have met some really beautiful human beings in business who i offer more money to and they refuse and i think they're crazy and i offer again and they still refuse. i worked in business. if you're like that you're a saint so i have to remember there are
some beautiful people so because i get so enraged at how fuckin stupid this bunch is
did we learn anything in 2,000 years of being killed again and again. the Holocaust wasn't enough. in my not too humble opinion this country has earned nuclear war for not doing the right thing. bombing the shit out of hamas. you know what this does. it will bring more war and more destruction and death to masses. if Hezbollah goes to war with 130,000 smart rockets israel will destroy lebanon. it did that to a lot of beirut in the last war whenever that was
but these guys forgot. they only remember when they're terrorized by us. we are so fuckin dumb to care what the nations of the world will think.
Iran gets the bomb at some point. we got 400-800 nukes supposedly. they nuke us. let's say only a couple nukes hit Teheran in retaliation. this is a little country so a few nukes destroy us and the invading hordes kill us all. you think i'm joking . if all the communication systems are down here, how does the army get organized to defend us. maybe the enemies communication systems are destroyed. do you see where this is going. we don't kill them fast enough and our enemies get emboldened to do us in and we retaliate up to nuclear war. it only gets worse and worse with more and more killing.
how can this group of Jews be so fuckin dumb. i am ashamed to be Jewish. i really am. i was ashamed as a kid in america because christians were the real americans. the ones with the white picket fences. i didn't know there were differences between christian groups. to me they were all what we called goyim translated as nations. but had a very pejorative tone. in the Bible the jewish nation is also referred to by that name. i learned a lot at columbia. the one religious jew on my floor was an arrogant creep who I despised and the christian guys became my best friends including a devout catholic who hopefully saw that a jew could be a decent human being.
later on when i became an orthodox jew i was proud to be jewish. i almost got sucked back into a little bit of that recently by a maverick orthodox rabbi who will no longer respond to my emails not just because i'm nuts but because of questions he knows i will ask him from this book.
the author died recently. i missed my chance to talk to him. i read it and there are pages and pages of footnotes. there were a few statements without footnotes. i really wanted to know why. they were very important to me. i couldn't have believed he lived so long
his basic contention is that the 5 books of Moses as you guys call it was put together by Ezra the scribe i forget in what century long after orthodox jews believe moses received it from God. the author has a really interesting take. he believes in divine revelation and that he should be orthodox but that some of the bible is distorted because the Jews strayed from the original Divine revelation. he said at the end that's what he needed to keep his belief going on so he could remain an orthodox jew. i read the book a year ago not closely enough. I should have read more of the quoted texts in Hebrew or Aramaic I could understand to try and understand where he got his ideas from but it was going to be really time consuming so I didn’t. It is a really dense academic book
there are so many references to obscure journals in german from whatever year long ago. At least 100 textual references to the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Ten pages of footnotes in a book of about 100 pages. Each footnote could have another ten references to obscure journals. I could never read all that stuff. i got into reading this kind of material about 30 years ago about Judaism by professors. my conclusion was a genius couldn't possibly know what to believe unless they spent years in university past post doc in some specific narrow field of Judaism. I think Lee Levine wrote a very interesting book called the Rabbinic Class in late roman Palestine.
I got the title wrong. Here it is
Can you imagine this is. A professor who specializes in the time of the prophets has no idea what to make of Roman Palestine in late antiquity. He may think he does but he doesn’t know all the bullshit games these guys play and Levine seemed pretty clear at the time.
the original assumptions of these academics are never mentioned in any of the books. How do they know their translation of ancient terms have any validity. I can tell you from what I know of chasidic texts that if you translate some words like התלהבות. As ‘enthusiasm’ as it is in modern times your full of shit.
Here is a source for translation
https://context.reverso.net/translation ... 7%95%D7%AA
This is a fuckin joke as applied to jewish mystical texts. These academic fuckers are so dumb. The 3 letters להב at least in some ancient texts refer to fire or a torch. You are supposed to be on fire during prayer. I have prayed in Chasidic places where they are screaming. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement said that the same passion you have in sex you should have in prayer. Even the word ‘prayer’ is christian. Jews don’t put their hands together on their chest like christians. The dumb fuck professors who are secular think they can manipulate jargon and create new categories and understand jewish mysticism. They could get off their ass at least in Jerusalem - Hebrew University is maybe a ten minute drive from Meah Sharim the Chasidic sector and humble their monster egos and go learn from people who try to live it and pray for a while and at least fake it. (I know what’s going on currently in the Jewish mystical world is so different than what it was.) How do I know because I’ve read things like there were guys doing cartwheels in the synagogues when the Chasidic movement started getting bigger after 1760. Who can do a cartwheel who doesn’t train even a poorly done one. A teenager. Aren’t the kids filled with exploding hormones. Maybe not now people have ruined themselves with the internet, porn and God knows whatever junk they addict the kids with. I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with internet and I had to go to the library and the card catalogue that could literally take up a room and search for five minutes for a book in the stacks. Now it’s too fuckin easy in my opinion but at least I know the difference between typing in a search on google which I know is filled with political lies so I go to Tor browser if I want to know something about politics and even that is getting distorted.
sometimes the academics studying judaism used such bullshit jargon like ‘chthonic’ here is the definition from the internet
concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.
"a chthonic deity"
i probably even looked it up. i can't believe i even remember a word so obscure i last read 30 years ago. my conclusion is that so much of this shit and at taxpayer expense in public universities yet is just bullshit to enhance an already inflated ego of some jerk professor who thinks he/she now ze/ir
thinks is so high and mighty. i'm laughing these people are so full of shit. my psychiatrist in northern california said those so called successful people are the hardest to reach. they believed all the bullshit promises. work your ass off in school, be a professor or make a ton of money, get married, big house, kids, cars. they got it all and they're miserable. they gave their lives away. i wouldn't do it and i'm glad i rebelled.
i heard this song by the Jefferson airplane after i dropped out of columbia in december 1968 and was so depressed lying on my parents living room floor and i heard these lyrics from the song
Well life can be hard when you're holes in a card
In some electronic hand
You'll wander around from place to place
Disappear without a trace
And someone else will take your place
In line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpTY3r ... sonJukebox
i decide then and there at the age of 19 i wasn't gonna to be in the system and holes in a card. The original computers had cards of 80 columns and maybe 60 rows. You have to punch in the instructions. To say this was a pain that could take way too fuckin long is an understatement. Punch the wrong letter in column ten row 3. And you got start over. You had to take your group of cards to a special room with a computer about 6 feet long, 3 feet high, and the same width and drop your cards on a table someplace. That was outside the room. Then it could take 15 minutes to get your program back only to find you punched in the wrong thing in the next row and start the whole fuckin thing all over. Idiot lenny who learned he could write papers he hated in hi school like lightning now has to slow down and I couldn’t. I didn’t do well. A computer you guys have that costs a thousand bucks is a zillion times better than what costs 5 million dollars (about 40 million dollars in adjusted inflation in todays dollars) you could get a lot of computers for 40 million bucks. The old computers had zero movies, zero music , zero emails, no Skype calls for about zilch.
Was I deprived? I feel so lucky to have had what we had. I had friends in the dorm. We hung out together sometimes at least playing records. It was great. It’s true. It was for a year. The next year I got depressed and didn’t do that and quit on thanksgiving 1968. At Wisconsin I lived in a house with a couple of guys and then in a room with my girlfriend. I didn’t really have friends in Wisconsin. But I’m lucky I did one year and thank God for Yiorgos from the dorm who I talked to today. I’d never have believed a guy from Greece who I didn’t talk to much - he hung out with the greek guys from his home town of Athens sometimes. They spoke Greek and I didn’t. I’d never have believed that 56 years later he’d be such a good friend. You have no idea what that means at your age. I’m a dinosaur in this place.
Anyhow this is a really disjointed email I can’t keep editing it.
As relate to the Airplane song.
i did work with my dad in business for 3 years but he gave me enormous freedom i'd never had in another job cause i always did my work. he knew i would. so sometimes i took 2 hour lunches and did tai chi in a park or a course in psychology at a local university. sometimes i'd work nights or weekends. it didn't matter i got the work done. so it wasn't 9-5 which i couldn't have done.
i decided i wouldn't write emails and all i've been doing is writing emails the last 2.5 hours which is now 3 hours. i gotta stop.
i can't respond to everything everybody wrote. i'm nuts but at least i can laugh. a couple song lyrics changed the course of my life by some freaks 56 years ago.
for me who isn't much of a materialist. With mats on the floor of my living room, a stereo, skateboards, balance boards, no furniture except a table and a few chairs
When people come here to fix something they are so bewildered. I also have book cases with books and papers I wrote.
the place is a mess but it's rented and i assume i get kicked out of here in a year or two
the landlord doesn't own this place. his wife's family does. he gives me a special price and i believe him. the wife's family want to know why. because i don't cause any problems for the last 6 years and don't blow up at him when he breaks promise after promise. other tenants and a lot of landlords are real motherfuckers. i give him post dated checks he knows i'm good for the money. Leo Durocher manger of the Brooklyn Dodgers said nice guys finish last. maybe in baseball but sometimes nice guys win. you never know but i'm learning
i aint gonna be a nice guy to my wife. if she pulls that bullshit move of waiting in the parking lot i won't let her come in here. if you die honey in a missile strike it's own your godamn fault. i could never imagine being such a person but you never know how you'll act when pushed. honestly i'd wish she'd hire a hit man for a few hundred bucks to kill me. i won't let her destroy me. not yet anyhow.
That’s it
The idiot signs off for the night. I hope. I gotta quit
I get more and more nuts writing. I gotta bring myself back down and eat something. I have not been eating drinking water or sleeping nearly enough recently and it’s really bad for my mania
he had a break and had to go back to gaza
i tell. him what a hero he is and he says i'm so wonderful. i don't think i'm so wonderful i try to be a good person
i hate this group of jewish people living here. believe me recently i have met some really beautiful human beings in business who i offer more money to and they refuse and i think they're crazy and i offer again and they still refuse. i worked in business. if you're like that you're a saint so i have to remember there are
some beautiful people so because i get so enraged at how fuckin stupid this bunch is
did we learn anything in 2,000 years of being killed again and again. the Holocaust wasn't enough. in my not too humble opinion this country has earned nuclear war for not doing the right thing. bombing the shit out of hamas. you know what this does. it will bring more war and more destruction and death to masses. if Hezbollah goes to war with 130,000 smart rockets israel will destroy lebanon. it did that to a lot of beirut in the last war whenever that was
but these guys forgot. they only remember when they're terrorized by us. we are so fuckin dumb to care what the nations of the world will think.
Iran gets the bomb at some point. we got 400-800 nukes supposedly. they nuke us. let's say only a couple nukes hit Teheran in retaliation. this is a little country so a few nukes destroy us and the invading hordes kill us all. you think i'm joking . if all the communication systems are down here, how does the army get organized to defend us. maybe the enemies communication systems are destroyed. do you see where this is going. we don't kill them fast enough and our enemies get emboldened to do us in and we retaliate up to nuclear war. it only gets worse and worse with more and more killing.
how can this group of Jews be so fuckin dumb. i am ashamed to be Jewish. i really am. i was ashamed as a kid in america because christians were the real americans. the ones with the white picket fences. i didn't know there were differences between christian groups. to me they were all what we called goyim translated as nations. but had a very pejorative tone. in the Bible the jewish nation is also referred to by that name. i learned a lot at columbia. the one religious jew on my floor was an arrogant creep who I despised and the christian guys became my best friends including a devout catholic who hopefully saw that a jew could be a decent human being.
later on when i became an orthodox jew i was proud to be jewish. i almost got sucked back into a little bit of that recently by a maverick orthodox rabbi who will no longer respond to my emails not just because i'm nuts but because of questions he knows i will ask him from this book.
the author died recently. i missed my chance to talk to him. i read it and there are pages and pages of footnotes. there were a few statements without footnotes. i really wanted to know why. they were very important to me. i couldn't have believed he lived so long
his basic contention is that the 5 books of Moses as you guys call it was put together by Ezra the scribe i forget in what century long after orthodox jews believe moses received it from God. the author has a really interesting take. he believes in divine revelation and that he should be orthodox but that some of the bible is distorted because the Jews strayed from the original Divine revelation. he said at the end that's what he needed to keep his belief going on so he could remain an orthodox jew. i read the book a year ago not closely enough. I should have read more of the quoted texts in Hebrew or Aramaic I could understand to try and understand where he got his ideas from but it was going to be really time consuming so I didn’t. It is a really dense academic book
there are so many references to obscure journals in german from whatever year long ago. At least 100 textual references to the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Ten pages of footnotes in a book of about 100 pages. Each footnote could have another ten references to obscure journals. I could never read all that stuff. i got into reading this kind of material about 30 years ago about Judaism by professors. my conclusion was a genius couldn't possibly know what to believe unless they spent years in university past post doc in some specific narrow field of Judaism. I think Lee Levine wrote a very interesting book called the Rabbinic Class in late roman Palestine.
I got the title wrong. Here it is
Can you imagine this is. A professor who specializes in the time of the prophets has no idea what to make of Roman Palestine in late antiquity. He may think he does but he doesn’t know all the bullshit games these guys play and Levine seemed pretty clear at the time.
the original assumptions of these academics are never mentioned in any of the books. How do they know their translation of ancient terms have any validity. I can tell you from what I know of chasidic texts that if you translate some words like התלהבות. As ‘enthusiasm’ as it is in modern times your full of shit.
Here is a source for translation
https://context.reverso.net/translation ... 7%95%D7%AA
This is a fuckin joke as applied to jewish mystical texts. These academic fuckers are so dumb. The 3 letters להב at least in some ancient texts refer to fire or a torch. You are supposed to be on fire during prayer. I have prayed in Chasidic places where they are screaming. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement said that the same passion you have in sex you should have in prayer. Even the word ‘prayer’ is christian. Jews don’t put their hands together on their chest like christians. The dumb fuck professors who are secular think they can manipulate jargon and create new categories and understand jewish mysticism. They could get off their ass at least in Jerusalem - Hebrew University is maybe a ten minute drive from Meah Sharim the Chasidic sector and humble their monster egos and go learn from people who try to live it and pray for a while and at least fake it. (I know what’s going on currently in the Jewish mystical world is so different than what it was.) How do I know because I’ve read things like there were guys doing cartwheels in the synagogues when the Chasidic movement started getting bigger after 1760. Who can do a cartwheel who doesn’t train even a poorly done one. A teenager. Aren’t the kids filled with exploding hormones. Maybe not now people have ruined themselves with the internet, porn and God knows whatever junk they addict the kids with. I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with internet and I had to go to the library and the card catalogue that could literally take up a room and search for five minutes for a book in the stacks. Now it’s too fuckin easy in my opinion but at least I know the difference between typing in a search on google which I know is filled with political lies so I go to Tor browser if I want to know something about politics and even that is getting distorted.
sometimes the academics studying judaism used such bullshit jargon like ‘chthonic’ here is the definition from the internet
concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.
"a chthonic deity"
i probably even looked it up. i can't believe i even remember a word so obscure i last read 30 years ago. my conclusion is that so much of this shit and at taxpayer expense in public universities yet is just bullshit to enhance an already inflated ego of some jerk professor who thinks he/she now ze/ir
thinks is so high and mighty. i'm laughing these people are so full of shit. my psychiatrist in northern california said those so called successful people are the hardest to reach. they believed all the bullshit promises. work your ass off in school, be a professor or make a ton of money, get married, big house, kids, cars. they got it all and they're miserable. they gave their lives away. i wouldn't do it and i'm glad i rebelled.
i heard this song by the Jefferson airplane after i dropped out of columbia in december 1968 and was so depressed lying on my parents living room floor and i heard these lyrics from the song
Well life can be hard when you're holes in a card
In some electronic hand
You'll wander around from place to place
Disappear without a trace
And someone else will take your place
In line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpTY3r ... sonJukebox
i decide then and there at the age of 19 i wasn't gonna to be in the system and holes in a card. The original computers had cards of 80 columns and maybe 60 rows. You have to punch in the instructions. To say this was a pain that could take way too fuckin long is an understatement. Punch the wrong letter in column ten row 3. And you got start over. You had to take your group of cards to a special room with a computer about 6 feet long, 3 feet high, and the same width and drop your cards on a table someplace. That was outside the room. Then it could take 15 minutes to get your program back only to find you punched in the wrong thing in the next row and start the whole fuckin thing all over. Idiot lenny who learned he could write papers he hated in hi school like lightning now has to slow down and I couldn’t. I didn’t do well. A computer you guys have that costs a thousand bucks is a zillion times better than what costs 5 million dollars (about 40 million dollars in adjusted inflation in todays dollars) you could get a lot of computers for 40 million bucks. The old computers had zero movies, zero music , zero emails, no Skype calls for about zilch.
Was I deprived? I feel so lucky to have had what we had. I had friends in the dorm. We hung out together sometimes at least playing records. It was great. It’s true. It was for a year. The next year I got depressed and didn’t do that and quit on thanksgiving 1968. At Wisconsin I lived in a house with a couple of guys and then in a room with my girlfriend. I didn’t really have friends in Wisconsin. But I’m lucky I did one year and thank God for Yiorgos from the dorm who I talked to today. I’d never have believed a guy from Greece who I didn’t talk to much - he hung out with the greek guys from his home town of Athens sometimes. They spoke Greek and I didn’t. I’d never have believed that 56 years later he’d be such a good friend. You have no idea what that means at your age. I’m a dinosaur in this place.
Anyhow this is a really disjointed email I can’t keep editing it.
As relate to the Airplane song.
i did work with my dad in business for 3 years but he gave me enormous freedom i'd never had in another job cause i always did my work. he knew i would. so sometimes i took 2 hour lunches and did tai chi in a park or a course in psychology at a local university. sometimes i'd work nights or weekends. it didn't matter i got the work done. so it wasn't 9-5 which i couldn't have done.
i decided i wouldn't write emails and all i've been doing is writing emails the last 2.5 hours which is now 3 hours. i gotta stop.
i can't respond to everything everybody wrote. i'm nuts but at least i can laugh. a couple song lyrics changed the course of my life by some freaks 56 years ago.
for me who isn't much of a materialist. With mats on the floor of my living room, a stereo, skateboards, balance boards, no furniture except a table and a few chairs
When people come here to fix something they are so bewildered. I also have book cases with books and papers I wrote.
the place is a mess but it's rented and i assume i get kicked out of here in a year or two
the landlord doesn't own this place. his wife's family does. he gives me a special price and i believe him. the wife's family want to know why. because i don't cause any problems for the last 6 years and don't blow up at him when he breaks promise after promise. other tenants and a lot of landlords are real motherfuckers. i give him post dated checks he knows i'm good for the money. Leo Durocher manger of the Brooklyn Dodgers said nice guys finish last. maybe in baseball but sometimes nice guys win. you never know but i'm learning
i aint gonna be a nice guy to my wife. if she pulls that bullshit move of waiting in the parking lot i won't let her come in here. if you die honey in a missile strike it's own your godamn fault. i could never imagine being such a person but you never know how you'll act when pushed. honestly i'd wish she'd hire a hit man for a few hundred bucks to kill me. i won't let her destroy me. not yet anyhow.
That’s it
The idiot signs off for the night. I hope. I gotta quit
I get more and more nuts writing. I gotta bring myself back down and eat something. I have not been eating drinking water or sleeping nearly enough recently and it’s really bad for my mania