Hurricane Katrina

Hi All,

I am going to try to keep this short and to the point. Also, I will try to not let this turn into a rant against the Bush Administration as it so easily can.

As you can read from the title, this post is about Hurricane Katrina and its devastation. That devastation hits home because my really good friend Mary Sunshine's , home has been destroyed and her life turned upside down. Mary is an New Orleans born and bred actress that I met in college. And she has been a regular commentor on my blog. Thank the stars that all her family is safe. But New Orleans. . . well, it looks like a war zone.

To turn this post into something positive I am going to recommend that you goto the Red Cross's website ( http://www.redcross.org) and donate money. This will be their biggest response to a natural disaster in the U.S. in their history. You can donate on this page: Donate Here!!! (http://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp )

Please give as much as you can. And to my fellow New Yorkers, remember that the country helped us out during 9-11 four years ago. We need to return the favor.

Choices. . . .(Answers to Random Deep Thoughts, Part 3.)

Hi all!! I have some fun stuff write about that I will post soon, but I wanted to get a couple of deep posts out of the way. I wanted to finish off Random Deep Thought questions. Today's post will be my answer to questions 5 & 6, which read:

5. Is joy really a choice? As in: "Pain is inevitable. Misery an option. Joy/Happiness a choice.

"6. Isn't everything else good in life, then, also a choice? Examples: real love, forgiveness, peace, health, harmony, etc.


Well, my short answer is. . . .YES!!! Ok, that's it. End of post. Just kidding. There are a couple of comments and quotes I want to touch on.

Why do I say yes to these questions? Simple, because "what we focus on determines our perception of reality at any given moment." (Anthony Robbins) What meaning we give a given situation determines our emotions about it. Here's an example.

I have a good friend who is a big hunk of a man. There isn't much that scares him. Hell, he's a NYC cop and carries a gun. But get him on a roller coaster (if you can) and he becomes the biggest pussy in the world!!! I once offered him $500 to go the roller coaster Nitro (perhaps one of the most awesome roller coaster I have ever been on) at Six Flags Great Adventure with me. Nope, he wouldn't do it. His perception of roller coasters are they are scary. Me? I love them. Let's go adrenaline!!

Let's take this now to some deeper emotions, feelings such as joy, love, happiness, forgiveness, peace, etc. To feel these, is it not also a choice? The answer is yes. My sister disagreed and said no. She wrote me, How can you choose to feel the emotion joy? Can you wake up in the morning and say to yourself I'm going to feel joy/happy today!

Actually, you can. It may be tough at first, but if you are practicing your fundamentals, then it becomes second nature to wake up feeling good, or to experience peace as the world collapses around you. Controlling your focus is what Viktor Frankl writes about in Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl survived the Holocaust by using the power of his mind to focus on ways to survive, to find a positive meaning to the hell he lived through. Few of us are living through a Holocaust right now, (though Kelly, I know the bombs are exploding around you), so shouldn't it be easier for us to control the focus of our minds. Here is a quote from one of the reviewers on Amazon.com:

"Frankl's thesis is that the ultimate freedom we have is to choose our response to whatever befalls us and that it remains for us to find the meaning of it -- as evidenced in our response. This would sound like so much emotional candy for people without significant problems except that he has a strong moral position to say this: 5 years in Nazi concentration camps. As he speaks of prisoners finding dignity in simple acts like giving away their ration of food or facing their death bullet with poise, I see how instead of crumpling from the weight of my misfortunes, I can use them to become stronger and reach past myself to help others."


My sister further wrote, in answer to question 6, "Jim can you choose not to love me? Granted I'm your sister, but I have done a lot of things during the course of our lives and did you choose to forgive me or did it just eventually come automatically, or for that matter Daddy? When it comes to real love that is something you're born with when it comes to certain people in your life and you have no choice in that. With time everything gets forgiven."

And this is where I complete disagree with my sister. (Just a little family background first. My family was extremely dysfunctional. I'm amazed that Kelly and I even talk to each other let alone love each other after all the shit we put each other through. It has been a long road to healing and the good.) Kelly, yes it is a choice that I forgave you and choose to love you instead of toss you out of my life. I have a friend whose older half-brother and half-sister put him in the oven when his was a kid and they were drug-addicted teenagers. He has never forgiven them, won't even visit him mom if they are over, even after the sister has been clean and sober for years and has asked forgiveness numerous times.

And the same goes with my feelings towards my Dad. I choose to call him at Christmas. I choose to stop keeping him out of my life. (Don't know if that was grammatically correct.)

You do have a choice with regards to who you love in this life. Even when you "fall in love." It's just unconsciousous then. And you still have to make the conscious choice to love the person after the "in love" period wears off. You have a script written in your brain as to what characteristics you are attracted to in another, and then your brain finds that person. That is why so many women fall for men who are assholes and so many men fall for women who are psycho, even if they say they don't want to do so. They haven't consciously changed the unconsciousous scripts in their head. (More on this in the upcoming post that deals with "settling down.") Here are two examples.

I have a friend who has repeatedly played the role of "rebound girl" in her relationships. She'll get with a guy after he breaks up with a girlfriend, help him back on his feet and then he leaves her. This has happens so many times. I don't know if this has changed for her by now. But I do know that it won't until she makes a conscious choice to change the script being played in her brain. How do I know that? Well, I had to consciously change the script in my head that caused me to be attracted to girls who need "saving." What is funny is that a friend identified to me way back in my senior year of high school (1993)! But still I ran the script of being attracted to, and attracting into my life, women who were emotionally unable to give and receive love in a healthy fashion. And it wasn't only until this year that I finally, and permanently, rewrote that script in my brain. "No more bad love!" to quote a song by Eric Clapton.

To sum it up, every action we take is based on an unconscious or conscious choice that we make. And "every action is a cause set in motion," as Anthony Robbins would say. There is a song we'd sing in my Unitarian-Universalist church back in Greensboro that I feel sums up the whole consciously make choices and saying "yes" to the good in life (love, peace, forgiveness, hope, health, etc). It's called Just As Long As I Have Breath, and I will close with it.

Just as long as I have breath,
I must answer, Yes, to life;
Though with pain I made my way,
Still with hope I meet each day.
If they ask what I did well,
Tell them I said, Yes, to life.

Just as long as vision lasts,
I must answer, Yes, to truth;
In my dream and in my dark,
Always that elusive spark.
If they ask what I did well,
Tell them I said, Yes to truth.

Just as long as my heart beats,
I must answer, Yes, to love,
Disappointment pierced me through,
Still I kept on loving you.
If they ask what I did best,
Tell them I said, Yes, to love."

(P.S. Here is a great sermon based on that hymn.)

Excuse Me -from the photo shoot yesterday

Double-Click on either to enlarge them.

Mama said "Knock you out!!!"

So life has been stressful the past month. I am insane by joining two bands. I know this is putting an incredible strain on my body, but I figured I’d be up to the challenge.

Well, I haven’t been taking care of myself as well as I should. Rather than be economical and go grocery shopping and plan out my meals, I’ve been buying lunch and eating fast food. (My body doesn’t like that.) Also, I’ve forgotten to keep up with taking my vitamins. So what happens this week?

I get two migraine headaches (BAM!!!!) that lay me out. One on Sunday and another on Tuesday evening. (This is after not having ANY for at least six years.)

Like I said, I know that I am putting my body under a lot of stress, but it’ll pay off soon. I just wish my mind/body would get with the program and not give me migraines on days that I can actually catch up on things so I wouldn’t be stressed during the week. That is something I don’t get. I go through the stressful days fine, but on my day to relax, Bam!! that’s when it hits me.

For instance, I had every intention of going grocery shopping on Sunday 3evening and then make/plan meals for the week. But NOOOOO! I have to be laid on my ass with skull-splitting head pain combined with nausea and vomiting. (Like you really needed to know that detail!) On Tuesday, when I could have done the same, catch up on things, or go to the gym to work out some of the stress. . . .BAM!!! Another migraine!! WTF!!!!


So here it is Friday morning and I still feel quite off-kilter. Thankfully, my brain worked with me last night to allow me to go grocery shopping, eat a decent dinner and then have a relatively stress-free evening. Also, I did some meditations and stretching to de-stress. One of things I hated about getting migraines in the past is the unpredictability of them. When I would get them regularly in high schoool, I never knew when they would happen. I hate not being able to trust my own body.

Now, I just have to work at getting things right here in the office to eliminate the triggers of the migraines (glare on the monitor, the fluorescent lighting, etc. . . ) I don't know. I never had any migraines while dating my ex-girlfriend. Though we gave each other a lot of stress, I never had a migraine. Maybe it was all the regular sex.

P.S. I know there is still some topics I need to write about. I’m working on them and hopefully will have them up soon.

Ladies, Things To Say That Will Endear You To Spider's Heart

Hello Ladies of Cyberland and Guy-friends who have sisters, cousins, friends who are single and looking for a good man,

Here is a list of things that you should say, or tell your lady-friends to say, to me that have gotten, or will definitely get, my attention. Some are actually things that have been said to me, others are. . .well, a geek can dream. So in no particular order:


-"I just love Einstein. We need a new Einstein these days."

-"Football? Eh!"

-"I love learning about quantum mechanics."

-"Jim, that burp you just did was child's play! Hold on, I'll beat that one!"

-"I'd really like to hear the music you hear in your head."

-"I love the movie "Labyrinth" too. Funny that you wanted to be David Bowie because he had that huge package and I wanted to be with him for the same reason."

-"Drummers are sexy, guitarists are sexier." (Hey, sometimes it's easy to stroke my ego.)

-"You know, I hate all those superficial people in NYC that read the all those celebrity magazines."

-"Oh, there's something I ought to tell you. . .I'm not left-handed either."

-"Just read 1984. That book is so what's going on in this country right now. People need to wake up!"

-"I love porn."

-"The Empire would so kick the Federation's ass!!"

-"Ok, I'll give you that Bush isn't the Devil. But Cheney has to be, or at least his agent. I'll be anything that man doesn't have a reflection."

-"There's no way you can beat me at Jeopardy or Trivia Pursuit! You're on!"

-"No way! I can't believe we've both watched "No Man's Land, Part 10." What a thing to have in common! Yeah, that scene with the Sybian machine freaked me out as well."

-"Jim, did you just see that license plate? It said "OB1KNOB." How cool is that!"

-"What's some new good music you can recommend to me?"

-"I love pizza!"

-"Dream Theater and Rush are my favorite bands, too!"

-"Hmm. . . .Earl Grey."

-". . .that's 'bout stupid as Greedo shooting first!"

-"Thanks for the offer, but I don't need your help to rewire my computer/entertainment system/electronic stuff. . .it's all built to my custom design."

Light-hearted Stuff for the Weekend

I had wanted to post today a continuation of my answers to the "Deep Thoughts" post, but I am really too tired to write or think that deep. Sorry to those that are awaiting my answers. I promise them on Monday.

I will share a couple of light hearted things. The first is a picture that my friend Steven drew. He has been drawing cartoon caricatures of me since high school. He's drawn me as Michael Jackson, on my bike, playing guitar, moving, etc. Apparently, I have now become one of Lil' Steven's favorite things for his dad to draw. (Steven is 2.) Here is the picture.


















-Ok, so my basement room in the apartment may be batchelor sparse, but it's not that bare!!

And second, here is a joke that I heard that I thought was hilarious. However, only those who know music will get it. Have a great weekend!!

A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says:
"Sorry, but we don't serve minors." So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the
G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat.

An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough. A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second." Then an A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor.

Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar
and exclaims, "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight."

The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next
night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who
used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized) says,
"You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development." This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and stands there au natural.

Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he's under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.

The bartender decides, however, that since he's only had tenor so patrons, with the sopranout in the bathroom, and everything has become altoo much treble, he needs a rest, and closes the bar.

I Miss Her Sometimes. . .

"I ran into an old girlfriend yesterday,
Then I backed up and ran into her again.
I miss her sometimes."

I wish I could make shit up like the following story from Reuters newsline:

Man accidentally runs over wife twice

RLIN (Reuters) - A 75-year-old German was so shocked he had accidentally run down his wife he started forward and drove over her again, authorities said Wednesday.

Police in the western town of Bad Nauheim said the man compounded his 73-year-old wife's misery after an onlooker told him he had just run her over while backing out of a parking space. The woman was rushed to hospital and survived.

Haiku Tuesday

To man in shorts with,
Socks up to knees: There are no
Ticks in N.Y.C.


Two Mexican Jocks,
Say stupid things in Spanish.
Don’t know I’m P.R. (Puerto Rican)


In gym locker room,
Old man, shower. Close curtain!
No need see penis!!


Pretty blonde, Stair-master
Frowns as she works for skinny.
Smile! It’s sexier.


Night, hot and sticky;
Sweating carrying guitars,
Crackhead gets no dime.


Me patient driver,
Red light just turned green for me,
Fucktard walker crosses!

Chinese food for lunch,
Ate General Tso's Chicken.
Could it have been cat?

Hope Happens

Hi All. This will be short post. Just wanted to say that hope is real and good. Something that I have been hoping for since last November happened this weekend. Can't go into the details, but it was really good. It was something that I said to myself, "I can't leave NY until this happens, no matter how long it takes."

Well, it happened Saturday. There is still much work to be done, but the big step was cleared.

So, yeah. Hope is good!

Fundamentals (Hope & One Day At Time –Cont.)

This was my horoscope for the week for July 13th from Freewill Astrology:

“Professional basketball player Tim Duncan has a nickname that I invite you to take on for the next two weeks: The Big Fundamental. To live up to the daunting yet fun responsibility of that title, you’ll have to put on your game face and get waaayyyy down to basics. Banish distractions, purge the inessential, and cut the crap. Give yourself with ferocious impeccability to the Three Things That Matter Most, and do it with a raging integrity that will scare away all the phonies, lazybones, and ethically challenged mediocrities.”

At first I through it was about kicking up my practice regimen on the guitar because I was joining two bands (Excuse Me and Nine Times Eternal) and needed to bring my chops to a new level. But the more I review the past few weeks, I realize he could be talking about a different set of fundamentals.

What are fundamentals?

I was listening to a Anthony Robbins cd this morning from his Personal Power II series. He talked about studying Tae Kwon Do from Grand Master Jyun-Ri. This master broke down all one needs to attain the black belt, i.e. mastery, down to seven moves. Students would ask, “Teach me something new today.” And the Master would respond, “But you haven’t mastered the seven basic moves yet.” These simples moves, practiced daily, were the fundamentals of Tae Kwon Do.

It is similar with teaching my guitar students. I am a stickler for emphasizing fundamentals from finger exercises, scales, and strumming patterns. In my own daily practice regimen I always start with the same warm up over and over. I start out slow and them increase speed. Just like NCAA Hall of Fame coach John Wooden (He coached the UCLA Bruins to 11 NCAA Championships.) would make his players shoot 500 free throws every practice, so do I play the same musical exercise/phrase/song as many times so I can perform it without thinking; just doing.

In the end, it becomes a practice in Zen. “From one thing, know many.” From the simple repeated exercises, I developed the skill to play more complex pieces. From the habitual practice of simple fundamentals, Michael Jordan was able to take basketball to a new level. Another example would be my sister Kelly (St. Sgt. US Army). I’ll bet that she can disassemble, clean, and reassemble her rifle without even thinking about it.

Virtuosos are not born. They are made from years of hard, daily practice.

How does this apply to other areas of life, particularly what I have written about the past few days? Well, I think making that choice, every morning, to live with hope, taking one day at a time, and any other activity one takes to work towards the positive qualifies as “fundamentals”; the fundamentals of well being if you will.

And since they are fundamentals, they need to be done everyday. The pastor of a church I attended years ago used to quote some famous classical musician and relate it to one’s walk with God. I think it applies in so many other areas of life, not just the musical or spiritual.

“If I don’t practice one day, I know it.
If I don’t practice two days, my family knows it.
If I don’t practice three days, my audience (i.e. everyone) knows it.”

So I think taking simple, fundamental ideas, and practicing them everyday can, does and will make a huge difference in one’s life. Even if you make just a 1% improvement everyday you will not have made a 365% improvement by the end of a year’s time. It will be a 3,778% increase!!!

What are some of the simple things I practice everyday?

“The Past Does Not Equal The Future!”

“Fall Down Seven, Get Up Eight”

“To receive love, I must give love.”

“I could choose peace right now.”

”This too shall pass. . .”

“No Day But Today!”

“I AM. YOU ARE. And LOVE IS ALL THAT MATTERS!”

“I Intend To Feel Good!”

“Forgiveness”

“I can control my focus, and therefore my reality”

“Smile Jim! Be thankful for this moment.”

Fundamentals, small things that when practiced consistently, add up to big things. Sure, to get to where I want to go will take a lot of work. However, I just have to keep the focus on today, and the simple things I need to practice, and eventually I will get to where I need to be. I’ll take tomorrow, one day at a time.

Hope (Answers to Random Weekend Thoughts, Part 2)

Hi Spidey-fans! Welcome back from wherever you were before you got back here.

If you’ve followed my journey from the beginning of the blog (and those of you just tuning in, you have a lot of catching up to do), then you know I have grappled with some pretty deeps topics (love, evil, losing my cousin to suicide, faith, lonliness, friendship, family, etc.). Today’s post is no different as I try to get a hold on the amorphous concept of hope. (And hopefully, I’ll be able to keep it brief.)

Question #3 from Deep Weekend Thoughts was:

Is hope real, or is it just denial candy-coated?

-The genesis of this question comes from having my beliefs about hope rattled after an argument. The person I was arguing with said that they didn’t believe in hope, that it was denial candy-coated. “You hope tomorrow will be a better day, but deep down you know it won’t be. It never is.” We argued back and forth, but didn’t come to a resolution unfortunately.

What shook me up so much is that if this person’s statement is true, then there is no point in my life. I might as well end it now. Now, I don’t want to get you all scared, but it is confession time. I lied a little in my post about my cousin’s suicide. I wrote “I can't imagine living with that kind of inner pain that he felt for close to two decades. Heck, after a year and a half of carpal tunnel syndrome I said, "If I feel this shitty in 6 months, I'm killing myself." Ok, that was a lie.

I do know what it is like to live with an inner pain for 20 years. There is a wound on my heart that never heals, a scar that never stops bleeding, that I hide from everyone. (This probably comes as a surprise to those who have known me a long time.) And believe me I have tried everything under the sun, with the exception of drugs, to stop that pain. There have been many a day that I have prayed for death. Nothing has worked. . .with the exception of taking life one day at a time and living with hope. (And I don’t think drugs are going to do it either.)

I am not going into the nature of the origin of that pain because hey, we all have our own crosses to bear. But I will share that everyday is a choice for me. A choice to live and not die, a choice to seek peace and happiness, a choice to actively focus on the good. (And if you are not actively choosing that which brings life, you are passively choosing death.) Am I always successful? Of course not. I still have bad days now and then, but that is ok. I used to have bad years.

So this is why the notion that there may not be hope was so shaking for me. Because I feel that Hope is like Love, one of those concepts that has to exist for everyone or else it doesn't exist. (Or like gravity, it is there for everyone.) It made it a bit hard to wake up the following few days after the argument, hence the question. I must say, many of you gave amazingly awesome answers. (Like my aliteration there?)



"Hope is VERY real. Without hope, there would be no happiness in the world." -Robin

“. . . hope is that thrill that no matter how much it's crushed, it still will remain... Some let fear overpower their hope, there is where the trouble lies I think...”
–Leluangel

“Anything is real to a particular person if they believe it. . . However, to someone who is closed minded or hateful, there is no hope because they don't see life that way.” -Win


And again, my sister, Kelly, gave an incredibly deep answer.

“Question, how can hope be denial? Candy-coated or not, hope and denial are two totally opposite aspects of life. And to be totally honest, I’m almost kind of offended that you would even ponder this question. Jim, HOPE is essential to life and someone’s well being. Hope is what keeps people strong and, most of all, alive. How can you candy-coat that!

For example our cousin Gordon, he wasn’t in denial that he would never feel happiness. Denial is knowing that something is really and truly there just not really wanting it or not really wanting to acknowledge that its there. He lost hope that it was there for him and in turn lost his strength to continue to live and work towards getting it so in turn he took his life. Hope is one of the few basic emotions that people forget about that are essential to living. When you get back to living the basics there is no candy-coating anything, it’s plain as day.”

I don’t know if I can write much more that can top that. So I will end with a quote from the movie Shawshank Redemption. See you soon for Part 3.

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.” Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption

(If you have any further thoughts on the concept of hope, please leave a comment.)