Thank you Ur-A-Jew for another example in your constant lessons in how to be completely open & honest!!!

ur-a-jew wrote on 25 Oct 2011 14:26:


Some related haaros to the overnight business trip post:

Society is obsessed with television and anything else that takes us out of the "real" world.

Over Sukkos I had a similar nisayon.  My MO family wanted to watch an episode of a show that they said was "clean".  I had my doubts and so did my wife.  My wife really wanted to watch it, so I left the room for the 25 or so minutes that it took.  My wife told me afterwards that certain body parts were prominently on display (hamaivin yavin) in this "clean" show.

Also, being that we travelled a lot (BIG undersatement) this yom tov, we needed some DVDs to keep the kiddies occupied on our seemingly endless roadtrips.  Someone suggested a certain movie which was ostensibly for kids and mixed live characters with cartoon charachters.  My wife and I previewed it before our trip.  It's amazing how many sexual innuendos there were in this "kids" movie.  Some obvious and some very subtle (some went over my wife's head and I had to point it out - we addicts are very tuned in to this stuff  :-[).  Anyway, just some post-yom-tov thoughts.

Hey, thanks for sharing all that. Stay gutsy, buddy.

yehoshua wrote on 25 Oct 2011 14:37:


Did anything - yes I turned them on.
Say anything - yes I told myself that I would not watch any movies particularly i wouldn't even turn to HBO. Since I know it would be really bad news if I did that, that I wouldnt be able to stop once I started, and I also didn't want to deprive myself of the ability to say that i have not watched a movie since i joined this site. Which basically shows me that its all where I draw my redline. Hopefully I've learned enough to see that I can't taste even regular television.

If 'we' never got rid of our TV ten years ago, I sincerely doubt I would be sober today.

We didn't do it, though, really. We never bought one, either.

Huh?

My sister bought it for us 25 years ago...we took it out for the Olympics 'only'. The first time, it went back in the box after. A few years later, it didn't...

When I got sober, I began to switch addictions, watching the TV till late instead of going out to act out till late. It drove me mad.

I began to let TV watching go, with intermittent success. Then one day about twelve years ago, my wife called me when she got home from her morning job to tell me that there was a thin residue of white powder on tables and counters and stuff all over the house. I said, "call the fire department!" She laughed, I went back to work.

Two hours later when she plopped our squishy five year old daughter in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street, but it would not turn on. Then she noticed a burnt plastic odor. She looked at  the back of the TV and saw that it was charred and melted in upon itself. Getting that call from her was a weird moment in my life. Hashem did for me what I could not do for myself.

Our home has been TV free ever since and it's great. Seeing TV as it is now, while I am at work with TVs around, I realize that the schmutz standards have changed quite a bit. If I had free reign of the TV, I'd lose my sobriety for sure. Sexual innuendo, sex, discussions of porn and crimes of sex, nudity, and stars, stars, stars...all treif up my head into being OK with lusting my brains out.

Can't afford it, so I have no business having one. Aside from what any posek may tell me. I can't control and enjoy it and maintain my sanity, sobriety, and any happiness, at all.

Ciao!

A couple of things.  I ended up in a waiting room this morning while my car was being worked on.  There was a TV of course (local anisthetic to prevent people from bugging them and asking "is my car finished", "is my car finished", ad infinitum.)  I tried to keep my eyes in my mishnayos. (I looked up a couple of times, usually followed by looking back down rather quickly  :-[ ).  Anyway, it's amazing how shallow TV is.  What we call news is a joke.  Each segment no longer than a minute or 2 (attention span is shrinking rapidly).  It's like reading the headlines of a newspaper without the story, no depth at all.  just very relaxing anisthetic, to numb us from life.  I understand reshoim bichayehem keruyim maisim.  ( i don't mean to imply that all ppl who watch TV are rishoim).  There are lots of dead people walking around.  I am one of them sometimes  :-[.

Anyway, about switching addictions.  One of the things I sometimes did to stay sober was to play video games at work for hours.  My job doesn't always keep me that busy.  I would be tempted to look at shmutz and decided that it was better (less assur at least) to play video games.  Boy did I feel dead afterwards  :-[.

Thanks for "listening" to me rant a bit.

gibbor120 wrote on 27 Oct 2011 17:06:


I would rather 'listen' to you rant than to look at shmutz!


Which brings me back to my GuardYourEyes addiction....  :-[

...... ad infinitum!



See the date of the following quote? Does this prove the adage "Once a GYE Addict, always a GYE Addict"??
Yosef Hatzadik wrote on 24 Feb 2010 19:24:

Yosef Hatzadik wrote on 27 Oct 2011 17:14:

Oh yes, I meant to mention that.  My GYE addiction has now over taken my video game addiction .

Is there an addiction manager app yet  ;D ?

[quote="The new GuardYourEyes Prevention Handbook for Parents & Mechanchim (Pg. 32)]On erev Rosh Chodesh Nissan, 5735, Rav Yaakov Yisroel Kanievsky, Elazar Menachem Man Shach, Rav Moshe Feinstein, and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, issued a joint letter against television, and in the years since then television has been effectively banished from the homes of Bnei Torah. With television, this was the obvious solution since it was not only noxious but unnecessary.[/quote]

Thank you Hashem for one our newest Global Moderators:

the Unique Ubiquitous Upstanding Undeterred and Usually Unerring UAJ

mazel tov!

Dear Ur-a-Jew,

I follow closely behind ZemirosShabbos in greater admiration than before!

fetter moshe says:
don't walk in front of me i may not follow, don't walk behind me i may not lead, just walk beside me and me my friend and together we will walk in the ways of Hashem

Yosef Hatzadik wrote on 31 Oct 2011 18:34:


Yosef - do you admire based on names and tittles? we can make you the Director of the history department on GYE. UAJ is always UAJ.

Mazel tov UAJ on you new job. MAy you continue to be  Oisek Betzochai tzibur.....

Tittles shmittles.  Doesn't the song, say "don't truck in front of me....just keep on truckin with me and we'll... bardichev wrote on 16 Sep 2011 02:53:

Why should a lonly boy like me thank Hashem?