I owe a debt to San Francisco.

So after I stole away from the "Mold Farm" of Santa Monica I found myself flying into Oakland to do dinner with a possible client in San Francisco. You can imagine that after experiencing Santa Monica I was a very Leary of the City on the Bay. I could not have been more wrong.

I got off the plane and was immediately assaulted by something I had not seen in two days. Smiles. Those wonderful expressive muscle movements that made me do the same. From the people I saw as I left the airport to the foreign born cabbie to the doorman at the renaissance Hotel in downtown to the desk clerk at the other renaissance Hotel in Knob Hill. (Yes, we went to the wrong one and the clerks at both were friendly, helpful, pleasant, and professional, all at the same time.) Everyone who came across my path was just nice.

Now I did come to San Francisco for business. I met with Jason, a CTO for a software company, and later his wife Sheila also met up with us. These two people represent the epitome of what San Franciscans are. Whether or not my company does business with his company I feel like I already got paid. Joy to meet and be around. We really did not talk a lot of business. Instead we got to know each other. The have been married for 2 years but have been together for 18 years. Not originally from San Fran but both love the city. They showed me around the Pine Street area. Took me out for a great dinner and even better company. I wish I could tell them about my blog site so they would know what a great impression they made. Instead I will have to just thank the city of San Francisco and hope it trickles back some how to them.

Thanks for cleaning all the Mold off me San Francisco. I was feeling down until I got to know just a small piece of your personality.

Believe me I will be back to get more of this Fantastic place and maybe pay my debt.

The Mold Farm.


So I just got back from a trip to California. Specifically Santa Monica and San Francisco. Talk about 2 different worlds. I do not like Santa Monica. The views are great. Nice beaches. Nice historic buildings. Nice restaurants. Crappy people. When you walk around Santa Monica not one person is smiling. Well that's not true. Some of the many homeless people wondering around may smile at you. At least they will smile while they talk to themselves and glance at you. The "normal" folk walking to and from their absolutely super important jobs, thinking about their absolutely super important lives, living in their absolutely super important city do not smile.

NOT AT ALL.

In two days of walking around this town and smiling at people in general( I now realize this might have made me look to them like a crazy person) not one person smiled back. Frowned and walked by happened a lot. But smile back??? Never happened. Not once. I did get a smile from all the employees of the Borders book store in Santa Monica while I was perusing the books. They asked if I needed help finding anything and even how was my day. And I felt that they actually ment it. Yes, I got some positive feeling at a book store. But not on the street.

When I did end up talking to some people in a bar/restaurant each day I was informed by every single person I spoke with that they are all super important people with super important lives living in a super important place.

How great it must be. To surround one self with like minded people living similar lives and having similar experiences with similar thoughts, values, ideologies,............... And apparently delusions.

This place was an emotional vacuum. I got not one wit of positive feelings/energy/impressions whatever you wish to call the overall personality of the place. As a good friend of mine said while we walked on the third street promenade there, "This place is like jackals feeding on the jackals. We have to get out of this place before we start doing the same. "

Great analogy. " jackals feeding on jackals."

You see I now believe I understand this environment. I do not like it. As a matter of fact I dislike it so much that I fear going back. However I understand it.

When you put some food in a jar and seal the lid and leave the jar outside, some mold will grow in the jar. Eventually that mold uses up all the feed. Then it starts to feed on itself. This is what has happened in Santa Monica. Its Mold feeding on Mold.

I would not insult jackals. These people are the lowest order feeding off themselves.

Later I will tell you how great San Francisco was

Chef Dino

Why would I Blog.
People have asked me" Dino, why do you think your opinion matters??" and all I can answer is " It really doesn't." And I mean that. My opinion when it comes to what really matters, means squat. I am as uninformed as the next average guy and really have no business throwing my two cents in. However I believe that I do represent the average guy on most things and would like my friends, family, distant relations, complete strangers and everyone in between to know what my opinion is if just to cause conversation or a knock down drag out fight. Sometimes I will be writting my own opinions and sometimes I will play Devil's advocate and write a conflicting view. Who cares as long as it keeps me thinking. I doubt people will actually be that interested in my thoughts it's just that I am so self centered and shallow that I want to see my shit in print.
Enjoy

Normally I would spend time writting this myself. However there is just no way I could have said this better.


To risk the scorn of your Jewish peers defending an action that could so easily be shown as the ignorant acts of ignorant people takes courage.

To logically show that no one group has the corner on common sense and are just as likely of being ignorant takes vision.

To make everyone who reads this feel a little guilty for feeling superior over the rioters

TAKES BIG BRASS BALLS!!!!!!!


Thanks Rabbi Gellman. I "WAS" one of the superior ones

-CHefDino-


Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Lessons from the riots over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad

By Rabbi Mark Gellman from the Newsweek website



Feb. 15, 2006 - When Jews are taught to study the text of the Torah or the Talmud, the first question the teacher always asks is not, “What does this mean?” but rather, “What do we learn from this?” Up to now, most of the commentary on the Prophet Muhammad cartoons has focused on what it means----not what we can learn. What it means depends on who you are and what you fear and hope. What we can learn is independent of what you and I are like. It is not a question about us, but a question about the world we live in, and that is a better, thicker, richer, more pregnant question.

So, what can we learn from the violence that has erupted over the cartoons?

Core beliefs are not funny. Religion, like race and ethnic identity, are core beliefs. Humor that is self-effacing is fine as long as the member is of the faith/race/ethnos, but when outsiders tell the joke, it is usually insulting or at least inappropriate. As a Jew, I can freely tell the joke about how the Yeshiva University crew team always lost to Harvard because the Harvard crew team had eight guys rowing and only one guy shouting (pause for laughter). If a gentile told that joke, I would … plotz (a Yiddish word meaning: to faint at a Jewish joke being told by a gentile). It is just not funny or in good taste or even in bad taste--it is just wrong--for anyone to insult other people's core identity and then hide behind freedom of the press. Yes, we in the West have the right to say any stupid thing we want, but when people get really pissed off about it, we can't hide or blame them because they can't take a joke. Making fun of Muhammad is just a stupid, insensitive thing to do even if you have the right to do it. Showing a cross in a glass of urine is a stupid insensitive thing to do even if you have the right to do it. Defending one's right to do or say something stupid and offensive as if that ends the conversation is more than naive. It just misses the point of respecting what people are at the core of their being. That is why Polish jokes and gay jokes and black jokes are wrong. They are not wrong because they are not funny. Many of them are hilarious. They are wrong because they are not told by the better angels of our nature.
The riots are not about the cartoons. The riots, we now are coming to realize, were almost certainly set up and arranged by Iran and Syria and other Arab states, but the anger on the street was not set up or arranged. It was real anger, and it is all about Muslim rage at being left behind in the eighth century while the world buys plasma TVs and iPods. Rage is not a scalpel. It is a bomb blast, and Muslim rage is exploding as they realize that the diet of hating the West they have been fed by corrupt dictators is like emotional doughnuts. It gives you a sugar high and then a sugar crash as your body realizes that it has been fed junk. I believe the Muslim world will learn to eat their vegetables and everything will be OK. My only fear is that the world will blow up before that happens.
Hypocrisy is best seen from afar. Most Muslim rioters no doubt have no idea of the shameful hypocrisy their rioting has called to mind. You cannot rage against bad cartoons against Islam while allowing bad cartoons against Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Uncle Sam to be published daily in state-run Arab newspapers. You cannot demand respect for the teacher Muhammad while blowing up statues of the teacher Buddha. You cannot claim for yourselves what you deny for others. The rioters are desperate to teach the West a lesson they will not learn themselves and the hypocrisy of all this is just stunning. The Golden Rule was, I now believe, created less to increase virtue than to decrease hypocrisy. What we want, we must also give.
We are not like the rioters, but we are also not as different from them as we may think in our self-righteous fog. Political correctness has given moral standing to what at root is nothing more than being personally uncomfortable. There are many colleges today where disagreement is routinely confused with insult, where honest debate is seen as personal derogation and where dissent is seen as diabolical. Our correct defense of the right of Danish newspapers to publish those cartoons does not always translate into our own toleration of diversity here at home. Try being a Zionist or a political conservative or an evangelical or a Boy Scout troop leader or an Army recruiter on many campuses today and you will soon wish that those who are attempting to silence you in the name of political correctness were as gentle as the rioters we have seen in the Arab street.
Rodney King was right. Can't we all just get along?

Chefdino says " Is anyone awake out there??"".

Why is it that things that make the world news are not world news and things that should be world news does not?? Let me give you an example. Vice president Cheney accidentally shot one of his friends during a quail hunting trip. No one is dead and the friend is not angry. In fact, he feels sorry for the position that Cheney is now in in relation to the media. This accident took place over a week ago. This is still the primary headline on MSN.com today. MSN further goes on to say this "Highlights the VP's secretiveness." How is someone like the VP's secretiveness world news? Is there a world leader that is not secretive?? Is that not part of the job?

Now lets see what should be world news but is not.

"Deadly Bird Flu hits India, and France."

This is listed under "Health Issues" not " World News" on MSNBC.com

Now I know that there has been plenty of information on the bird flu on the net and in the news. So why is this one different?? India is the second most populous nation in the world and is still considered a third world nation. The Bird flu could be the next plague and it just moved to great place to start a plague. This bird flu is moving toward Europe slowly but surely. This is historically a great place for a plague to go. It has been a while since we had a plague scare of this potential.

A possible plague moving across Asia into Europe is world news. The fact that Dick Cheney shot a friend during a hunting trip last week should maybe make the back page of front section at this time but the most important spot???

-March lemmings, march. Keep doing what you are doing and you will eventually lead to the sea. Maybe its time to make up your own mind. Go in your own direction. The worst that can happen is maybe you don't end up drowning with the rest of the lemmings.-

CHefdino