A Time to Laugh

So, we’ve had a rough time of it lately folks. The economy is in the crapper and our illustrious political leaders can’t even agree on what color it is we see in the toilet. The stock market plunge not only cost people their jobs, but for some it has pushed out that all too righteous reward for 50 years of hard work called “retirement.” If you aren’t yourself laid off you certainly know more than a handful of people who have been. Around our offices we’ve lost not just co-workers, but friends and mentors. At home, families sit around the kitchen table deciding on whether to cut little Jimmy’s baseball league or little Sally’s dance lessons; and sometimes both. Vacations are postponed and cancelled, the little fixes around the home have to wait, and for some, the local food pantry provides a vital pathway, if not an embarrassing one for some, to continue to put food on the table. We are in a recession and it sucks all around.

I’ve thought a lot about this as many of you have. What should I be doing differently? What is the answer for America? Am I the next one to be tossed out into the cold, fighting for the few open positions out there? Amidst all this and the echoes of “biggest recession since the 30s” resonating in my head, I asked a pretty simple question. Why the hell don’t we ask our grandparents what they did in the 30s? Too obvious for our government to do, I know, but for our own personal situations why not? Unfortunately, I am no longer blessed with any of my grandparents, but I know exactly what my grandmother (may her memory be a blessing) would say. How? Because we talked about it, the tough times, what it was like and what she did. What would she say now? You need to laugh. Every single day, no matter how bad it is, she said there was always something you could find to give you a good laugh. And she lived this. Even at the end when things were bad, I have a great memory, my last of her, of the family in the living room laughing. She had moments of clarity, and what shone through was her humor. So there, with her sick and unable to even stand, the family was momentarily whisked away on the wings of simple laughter. The family squabbles were set aside, the warmth pushed through the cold chill of eminent death in the air, and the giddiness of laughing like children overtook a group of adults in their 30s, 50s, 60s and one in her 90s. What we laughed about is irrelevant, and honestly, my memory to keep locked away for those tough days when I need it.

Laughter won’t cure illness, it won’t restart a seemingly lifeless economy and no, it can’t prevent wars. But what it can do is to rekindle a spark of hope. It can magically take us away from our troubles, if only for a fleeting moment. It can, in the end, renew the spirit to give it enough for just one more day. And day by day and laugh by laugh we get by. It isn’t the endgame we should relish, but rather, the little moments that get us there one day at a time.

So in this spirit, and that of George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, let’s laugh at what we shouldn’t. I’ve lost employees, mentors, and good friends from my job to layoffs as most of you have. But hey, there’s always a brighter side to it. Or at the very least, something to give us a spark of laughter, if only for a moment or two.

Top 5 reasons work is better since the layoffs

1) Three words, “front row parking.”
2) You now have at least 6 months to blame everything on someone who was laid off. “Yeah, that report… uhh… Jack was working on it. Boy, he must’ve screwed it up before he left.”
3) More coffee for the rest of us.
4) Lines in the cafeteria are shorter, and the servers are much nicer now too!
5) Not only are your chances of winning Buzzword Bingo greater now, but you have a full list of new words to use (RIF- reduction in force, right sizing, rethinking the paradigm, doing more with less, resource reallocation).

Keep smiling folks. And don’t be afraid to put up your list of things I missed above.
--J.R.

Top ten phrases I can do without in 2009

It’s a new year, so let’s try to make it a good one by putting some phrases, acronyms and words in the ground, 6 feet under, to never, ever, ever be seen or uttered again. The world will truly be a better place without them.

10) WMD. Seriously, I can’t take this crap anymore. It’s been 7 years. They weren’t there, America suffered in the world of public opinion, let’s move on.

9) Literally. This word has lost all meaning. I hear it all the time and I can’t take it. “I literally almost died!” Unless you missed getting hit by a bus by 2 inches or found yourself getting lit up with shock paddles in the ambulance, then no you didn’t you dolt! If society can’t use it correctly then let’s just kill it. That’s why we can’t have nice words around here kids, you just break them.

8) Web2.0. WTF is this anyway? No one can define it for me, so I guess in that way it’s like porn. No one can define it, but they know it when they see it. Thanks Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

7) Economic crisis. Ok, we get it, we’re in the worst recession in over a generation. Got it. Understood. Totally comprehend. Now let’s focus on how to fix it you do-nothing, waste of public dollars politicians.

6) Rocket surgery. It was stupid the first time we heard it. Now, it’s just embarrassing.

5) Maverick. Not only has the word lost all meaning thanks to the beating about of it by the McCain campaign, but the real killer here is every time I see, read or hear the word the only thing that I can think of is the unholy, live cat being put through a meat grinder tail first, demonic sound of Sarah Palin screeching “Maverick!” at the top of her lungs. I honestly feel auditorily violated each and every time.

4) Dick Cheney. Enough said.

3) Going green. This falls close to Web2.0. Put three people in a room and ask them to define “going green” and you’ll end up with four answers. Time to retire this phrase and focus on actually doing something good for the environment.

2) “Hope” and “Change”. For those that think I exclusively hate on Republicans, this one’s for you. Enough talk of hope for the future and change in America. The hope is spiraling down faster than my 401K did last year and enough talking about change. Stop talking about it and make it happen!

1) Reality TV. For the love of all that is holy, can we please agree that these “reality” shows are about as real and unscripted as professional wrestling? They’ve had their 15 minutes and made their millionaires, now let them go the way of Gilligan’s Island and shelve them never to be seen or heard of again.

So, what did I miss folks? Drop your most hated phrases into the comment section and we’ll try to bury them too.

Open letter to my representatives

Please go to http://www.congress.org, input your zip code, and you will automatically be able to write an e-mail to all of your political representatives in government. It’s that easy.

Open letter to:
President George W. Bush (R),
Senator John Cornyn (R-TX),
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX),
Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX 30th),

As a registered voter, I call on you to support the State of Israel not in blind devotion, but based on the following truths. As a national leader you have the unique ability to support freedom and democracy and reaffirm each country's right to freedom from terror and pursuit of happiness and peace.

Whereas, Hamas is an Islamic extremist terrorist organization, as designated by both the United States and the European Union, which calls for the eradication of the State of Israel;

Whereas, Hamas rockets from Gaza have purposefully targeted vulnerable southern Israeli cities, specifically landing on or near private homes, schools, colleges, hospitals, daycares and recreation centers;

Whereas, no sovereign government in the world would stand by and allow its citizens to be under steady and heavy attack;

Whereas, Hamas continues to hold hostage Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped on June 25, 2006, in southern Israel and refuses even basic humanitarian conditions or international Red Cross involvement;

Whereas, Israel is taking maximum precautions to avoid harming civilians in Gaza;

Therefore, let it be known that the State of Israel, the strongest standing democracy in the Middle East and long-time friend to The United States of America, has every right to defend their citizens from outside attack.

Let it also be known that The United States of America supports Israel unequivocally in its pursuit of measured and targeted military response and pursuit of peace within its borders and the region.

Pro-Israel Neo-Nazis?

From the file of “WTF” comes a story with the perfect definition of contradiction. As you may have already read out there in the webosphere, there is a new group out of Germany calling itself the “National Socialists For Israel.” (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/990228.html The link on the name takes you to their homepage, which is mostly in German. Read the second link for a brief summary.)

Seriously? Well, the members have yet to publicly declare themselves and hide behind the anonymity of their website, fueling speculation this may simply be a German leftist plot to simply stir things up. You can read plenty about this elsewhere on the web, but what I want to focus on is the underlining nature of such support, if it reveals itself as legitimate, not just to Israel and the Jewish people, but universally.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This ancient Arab and/or Chinese proverb has not only shown up in both the Hebrew and Christian bibles in similar form (Exodus, Chapter 23:22), but has also served as foreign policy and even business guidelines for the modern era. We’ve all taken it with a grain of salt for the most part, but something this ideologically converse in such tangible measures really forces us to ask the question, is the enemy of my enemy my friend? In short, would this group prove to be a true and honest effort on behalf of the organizers and members, should we willingly accept and embrace their support?

This reminds me of the outpouring of support from the religious right, especially following the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” for Israel. The question then, as it remains to this day, is should Israel and the Jewish community accept the support considering the motives behind the support? Evangelicals support Israel not for Israel’s sake, not out of an altruistic love of freedom and democracy in a sweltering pot of Muslim despotism, but rather for their own religious beliefs and hopes. Beliefs, I remind you, that the “Second Coming” of Jesus will happen only when the “Ingathering’ of Jews to Israel takes place (See Pat Robertson, among others).

Are we really all enemies? Of course not. Are we completely in line with each other’s motivations and beliefs? Obviously not. So, where does the acceptance of support end? Should it end with Neo-Nazis, and their support for Israel based on Social Darwinian precepts and espoused eugenic rationalization?

As a child I was taught you say a lot about yourself by the company you keep. Although good advice for our personal lives, we also need to view our political beliefs in similar reference. As a Zionist can I and should I accept support from a group who bases its support for Israel on a dogma that completely and wholeheartedly disgusts me?

I’ve struggled with this for years when considering the evangelical support. I like the ADL’s response, in form of an article by Abraham Foxman, in which he states we should accept evangelical support, but only in accordance with holding to our principles and faith and, in such, that we do not offer a quid pro quo, nor are asked for one. I humbly embrace the evangelical support for Israel and do so with the expectation that although our basis for doing so is different, both come from a genuine and well intentioned origin.

As for the “National Socialists For Israel,” well, as we continue to wait for the true identities of the organizers and something more than a website and some bumper stickers, I will, at this time, have to decline your support for my beloved Israel. I cannot, in good conscience, accept support based on Social Darwinism and pseudo-eugenics, the ideas of which were used in Hitler’s Nazi Germany as a means of justification for the genocide of the Shoah. Yes we are a people of few numbers and perhaps should welcome support from wherever it comes from, but in order to be the People of the Book, the people we are and the ones we aspire to be, we must chose our friends wisely and distance ourselves from this organization.

Your thoughts?