Dauer

I guess I must be a liberal.

2005-05-17T01:23:59Z

Your Political Profile

Overall: 10% Conservative, 90% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

How Liberal / Conservative Are You?

The Circle Dance

2005-05-08T03:40:37Z

In a certain place there is a circle drawn. There is a man inside the circle and a man on the edge.

Sometimes the man inside dances, like 36 men he dances. This brings the outside man great joy and sometimes he gets pulled in too to the dancing. At these times it's hard to tell one from the other.

Sometimes the man inside the circle wells up in a rage. He fumes and he spits. "I want to hurt them! Make them suffer!" This is when he does the madman dance. The man on the edge says, "Let's think this out. You can't hurt the ones you love." And he tries to keep the other man inside the circle.

--Sometimes the man on the inside whispers rambling screams of seduction until the outside man collapses in tears and overwhelming confusion and he can come out.

--Sometimes he grabs the outside man by the arm and throws him on his face inside the circle and then he comes out.

--Sometimes the outside man doesn't fight, and the two of them dance the madman dance together.

Lately the two hold hands and they sit together, eyes closed and minds focused. Now when the inside man fumes inside, the outside man can give him space. And then he hugs him.

dauer @ 2005-04-11T20:01:00

2005-04-12T00:11:59Z

New Update! Woo hoo.

I broke up with my girlfriend yesterday. I was thinking about this breakup in the context of Pesach. It felt so freeing. We'd been together almost two years. I stayed with her because it was the comfortable thing to do and because I knew leaving would hurt her. I think I did have to get rid of some chametz before I could let go of her. I had inflated my "me-ness" so much that I couldn't get out of it.

Yay liberation. I will not enslave myself again by ignoring the signs of a dead relationship. What are the signs? I will see them. Oh it's good to be on my own now.

Intro and a question

2005-03-03T21:56:44Z

Hi all. I was thinking of doing the Daf Yomi, but I couldn't find an English translation on the web. So someone sent me to e-daf and I watched the video, but I can't understand the heavy litvak well and with nothing in front of me to read it's difficult to follow. Someone suggested I get the Shocken... schockten...shocktenstein? Berachot volume I. Is this a good volume to work from in English? Is there a better volume? I think this is a great idea for a community.

Dauer

A story about a guy who works at a business

2005-01-31T15:42:19Z

A young man was chosen to enter a large computer business just out of college. He'd had a tough time in college and getting through was a struggle, but his father was well known in the industry and so he was selected for a job as soon as he got his degree. His new boss, a good friend of his father, took him aside and gave him a long talk about the way he should act if he wanted to succeed in the business. The young man heard every word and promised to do exactly as his boss had said.

A few years later and the man had been following the boss' instructions carefully. He saw the people around him getting promotions and becoming very powerful while he remained in the position he originally entered into. He thought to himself, These people around me are cheating and they're getting ahead. I don't need my boss' teaching. I can do without it. If I want to get ahead I need to be like my co-workers.

So for the next couple years he cheated and lied, but he never got power like the other people had. The boss called him into his office.

"Have a seat Mr. Owens." He took a seat. "I've been reviewing your employee records and it appears you haven't been keeping up with your half of the deal." The boss was looking at Owens but Owens could not look back.

"Y-y-that's correct sir." He was fidgeting in his chair, his eyes on the clockworking perpetual motion machine on the boss' desk.

"Owens, I gave you those rules for a reason." The boss leaned forward in his chair. "I expect more from you than I do from my other employees. I knew your father." Owens swallowed audibly.

"I can explain sir. You see I saw all of your other employees cheating and lying and getting ahead and I thought it would work for me too."

"Do you know why I gave you those laws?" Owens shook his head. "I made a promise to your father I'd take care of you when you joined this company, and part of that meant keeping you on the straight and narrow. Some of the other employees do cheat, and that is helping them right now, but I expect much more from you. You have the potential to be a leader of industry and I can't have you lying all the time. I'm watching you and them and I see what's going on. Sometimes I need someone down in the dregs to take care of things for me. If I gave you a corner office you'd have almost no contact with the people working on the floor." Owens looked up at his face.

"Do you understand now, Owens?" He nodded. "Good. Now go back and take care of things. Your behavior in these past couple years has caused enough trouble that now must be taken care of. They know who your father is and my relationship with him. Your actions make he and I both look like fools."

Owens got up and began to walk away.

"Owens, one more thing." He turned. "Good luck."

Dauer

dauer @ 2004-11-03T10:35:00

2004-11-03T15:51:03Z

Morning. 10:35 o'clock. The sleep on my eyes has rubbed itself out. Bush may be president for 4 more years. I want to vomit. I don't really want to vomit, but Bush makes me sick. It's not as if I actually have my own opinion, but I agree with the guys who hate Bush. Politics is hopeless. The electoral college is a sham. In a democratic state my vote counts for nothing.

I'm filling out my application for school. I have to write about a Jewish book or essay that I've read. I don't know what I'm going to write about. I've been reading a lot.

I spend far too much time on the computer. I'm going to cut back. Yeah I am. You'll see. You'll all see. And then I'll be productive. I'll write essays and meditate and read my books and study for school.

Have you seen this?

http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html

It's on the psychology of cyberspace. Quite good.

Dauer

Bumps, a Crazy Lady, and Waiting to Get by

2004-11-02T20:03:45Z

Hebrew College is on the top of a hill. They just started requiring permits for parking. The permits are cheap, $18 per semester. When I was trying to leave after my class there was a car parked in the middle of the lot by the place where the wall juts out like a clay brick redwood. The man didn't have a semester permit and he was filling out paperwork for a day pass. I stopped my car and waited for him to finish.

Once he'd gotten the white slip of paper that was meant for his window he started up his car. I squeezed to his right and he squeezed to my left. I had to stop again just out of the lot because there was a stop sign. I never saw anybody come down that road from up the hill.

Back in August somebody, whoever's in charge of the road, put great big yellow speed bumps, two of them, up to keep people from going over 15 mph. I like to get my front tires at the top of the bumps and then speed over them.

At the bottom of the hill there was some backup. Cars were moving slowly. There was this one car coming up the way with its left blinker on. I looked over at it, kept creeping forward. Then I looked inside it and there was this woman with a face like a Scream mask. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was blaring screams silenced by boundaries between us. I let her turn into the driveway as her eyes pulled for me from their sockets. As I moved the rest of the way down the hill I noticed a large truck had constricted the two-way road to one lane.

That's what happened. Now, I want to understand the significance behind these events. First, I am stuck behind a car and cannot move. The person in the car is doing something that does not concern me and I must wait for them to finish. Then I go over two giant bumps in the road. Finally, I do not notice that the woman driving in the other direction wants desperately to turn in front of me, and after I've noticed and she's gone I realize that her anger was at my inability to recognize the entire situation. In all of this I felt like a spectator.

In part one I am in a situation I have no power over. I can do nothing to help improve what I am dealing with and I must wait. This is the key to the other situations. The bumps are in my way and I can do nothing about them. But I must through them and I do so. I even enjoy it. Then the woman is upset. I do not understand why she is so upset. I think she's a crazy lady. But I let her go. I have to. What else can I do? It turns out it was the right thing to do. Otherwise we would both be stuck.

It's like life sometimes. We have to do what we have to do whether it's waiting for a car to move, pushing through the bumps in the road, or letting the people we think are crazy have a little space while trying to understand things from their perspective.

Dauer

That's what I call a book

2004-11-02T03:56:11Z

You know those things with the pages in them, all bound together, usually lots of type on the pages? That's what I call a book.

I was at my girlfriend's this weekend. Trying to explain Shabbat to her, the Sabbath, because at this point she looks at it and just sees things I can't do. Why did I have to fall for shikse appeal?

When I was in kindygardy my teacher asked my to talk to the class about Shabbat. So I got up in front of everybody. "I'm tawking to you awl about Shawbat." Then my arch nemesis, whose name has been changed to George W. in order to make this post confusing goes:

"Sha BUTT! Sha BUTT! ah hahahahahaha!" Well I screamed at Georgie and the two of us got into fisticuffs until teacher separated us. That teacher, soooo ignorant. Working with sponges and paint on paper:

"Here Benjamin. Because you're Jewish, you get this special star."

And she never realized the full potential of my harnessed intellect. Seriously, she had me counting apples and oranges when I could've been writing the sequel to Rocky. She was short.

This past weekend I saw Team America: World Police. This is comedy. This is what I wanted to see; little puppets with exposed strings running around having sex, blowing things up, and kicking some foreigner ass. Good movie.

I finally saw Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, unfortunately not knowing the second was a remake. I thought the first was better. It was more graphic and it was cheaper. I loved when the guy stuck is thumbs in the evil dead guy's eyes and ketchup came out. And the part where cream of corn came out of somebody's pants. It was an awesome movie. The second was awful. I hope that other one is much better.

I ate too much candy. I never eat it. I'm still on a sugar high since yesterday. Why don't candles ever burn in?

Dauer

3,2,1, 6.

2004-10-29T03:48:40Z

I'm starting this journal so I can join a community. It's dying. Looking for a new home.

I'm going to make up a story on the spot because I don't know what else to do.

My grandfather comes from England. His family comes from Russia and Poland. This is a story that his father may have told him about the time he went into the basement of his family's local synagogue.

"The men upstairs were davening. I could hear their words all pooling together. But I was just a child and I was curious. I had never been in the basement. I had seen the rabbi go down there... The door to the basement was locked. The key was in the rabbi's study. While my father and the other men were still praying shacharis I slipped into the study and took the key. It was on a high shelf on the bookcase against the wall with the very small window. I had to drag his chair over to get it down...

"It was a small key, but not like they have today. It was heavy brass, half my hand and dull, with no shine at all. I took it and I slipped it into my pocket and as calmly as I could I went over to the basement door -- which was over on the other side of the building so my nerves went like the strings on a fiddle with every sound. I saw Nozyk there, my father's friend, by the steps to the door.

"'Yakov,' he said. 'How are you today? Clouds, eh? Nice weather like always.'

"'Yes it is. Nice weather.' -- I laughed too and tried to make things pass quick.

"'You been a good boy Yakov?

"'Yes, always.'

"'Good. Take this.' He gave me a spool of thread and winked at me, then rubbed my head and walked away. For a moment I just stood staring at the door. I don't know what it was. Most basements are smelly and dirty. But this one, I knew there was something else. Something told me.

"When I put the key in the door it didn't turn. I tried to pull it out. It was stuck. Then, when I stopped fighting, it lurched open with a creeking sound. It was all dark and it smelled bad. There was a lamp on in the darkness in the middle of the room. When I came closer I saw a man. He was about a man's height, large dark beard, and gentle eyes. He urged me closer to him and had me look at this text that he was studying.

"It was something I had never seen before. And I don't remember a single world. When I saw the first letter, that was an א , an aleph. It grew off the page until that is all I saw, was the aleph. It was every color and every sound and I was overwhelmed. Then silence. It all vanished. I vanished. I can't tell you what it was that happened. When I found myself again I was sitting next to my father. The service was almost over. The thread was in my pocket, pulled out and hanging to my ankle.

"As my father unwound his tefillin before we left, I wound up the thread. I understood now. When we enter the unknown, we need something to tether us and help us hold on. I don't have the thread. When I was first working I had no money and I used it to sew up a pant leg. But I still attach myself to what I know when I head out. "

Eh, it's kinda crappy.

Dauer