As a theme, "translation" recurs throughout my life.

It seems I've always been concocting and deciphering Bridges of Understanding between "places" that, otherwise, could not connect.


I am a math tutor.

I "interpret" technology on behalf of theoretical users.

I do not respect boundaries of dogma or conventional thinking that tend to keep things separate.

I speak from a place of basic intent, which only becomes meaning upon the ear of the listener.


The Translator, for speaking both languages, stands between disparate realms.

In that space BETWEEN langauges, where words shed their superficial adornments and become merely "slugs" of purposive communication, you will find the (quite extraordinary) freedom to stand astride ANY line you please and pass things between the places that line holds apart.

Here is an example of speaking a language BETWEEN things:

Is Communism a Religion?


j-

I think that's always the same answer for everybody -- the worst one is the BEST one that's OVER.

This was one was REALLY SMART, and her morality was all her own.

I wrote this about her brain:


Brain Report: No. M-7

Subject: B****, S****** L***
Subject Gender: Female
Estimated IQ: 165-180
Subject Age During Experience: 34
Category: Romantic



The evident mechanism of her thinking did not evoke pictures of an anatomically normal brain. Instead of the usual materia gris (with all its lobes and hemispheres, corpuses and meatuses), her smallish and pretty skull seemed rather to house a creature of altogether inscrutable alienness.

I have no picture of my own brain. That is an impossible perspective. But the thoughts of others usually appear to me as flashes of light, as tiny "pops" happening all over the surface and interior of their brains. The greater or lesser intelligence of a brain is visible in the overall "liveliness" of the activity (the frequency and extensiveness of the flashing), and by the presence of eccentric and interesting sequences of flashing, which mark the unlikely paths of truly exotic thoughts.

Like none other in my experience, this subject's brain was of an order which seemed to refute and refuse any anatomically deconstructive scrutiny, and, more startlingly, suggested even the obsolescence of such an approach. The only "symbolic picture" of her mind I could see was both beautiful and terrifying, strange and emminently seductive.

Instead of a normal brain's pulpy grey mass, the inside of Ms. B****'s skull was, in my mind's eye, home to a strange plant-like florification, which extended from the top-most end of the spinal stalk.

"Plant-like" is merely a gross approximation of its physical appearance. For this was no inanimate palm frond, though it was branched and articulated to resemble one. The frond inside her skull was in perpetual, oscillating movement. And after appreciating this phenomenon for only a short while, I realized any comparisons to plant-life had become descriptively useless.

Alive, it rather seemed a creature from unfathomable oceanic depths, an unknown Echinoderm from pre-history (genus Gorgonocephalus), or a fabulous fore-glimpse of Evolution's future.

In the creature's movements, there was a way to divine something of the workings of her mind. For it was very much like a basket starfish, "blooming" events of contraction and expansion all over its body, which would then die-out in ever-smaller circles, within the clutchings of ever-smaller tentacles.

Stimulation came into her brain just as plankton comes to a hungry basket starfish, seeming to drift or shoot in from all directions, to be ferociously embraced and devoured. My words would fall into that writhing mass. And I could see them being so captured and consumed. At times, a fragment I had given would be taken hungrily within, only to be liltingly caressed for days by the smallest and most dexterous of her fibers. At times, my offering was rather like a fine dust I had blown over her, occasioning a blissful shudder which passed in waves over her entire body. At times, I simply sat and watched how this fantastic creature digested its food and distributed nourishment throughout its secret systems.

There seemed to be an ever-inward progression to this process of "consumptive knowing". It was fantastically busy, but in-fed by the cosmos' own musical pulses -- quite a marvel to behold! A machine enclosing a perpetual cataclysm of data.

I could see captured fragments of information being worn smaller and smaller by the worrying of the primary tentacles, only to be passed as smaller and smaller bits to ever-finer sub-tentacles. Grains of sand so became atoms, which in turn became sub-atomic particles, to be handed over to the next smaller size of tentacle, and disappear!

All of this seemed to have the capacity to go on forever. As if the fruits of her analysis and contemplation could never be exhausted. The more closely I inspected her, the more intricate she became. Every increase in the magnification of my lens exposed a deeper, more hidden, more indecipherable level of activity, along with the terrifying knowledge that I could go deeper still.

There is a way to see, even the simplest of things, very deeply. There is a way to apprehend phenomena, given to an almost apocalyptic tendency to destroy one surface, only to reveal yet another surface, and another...

It was this apparently limitless capacity to give attention, and to ceaselessly reap the benefits of that attention, which led me to describe the most salient quality of S***** B****'s intellect thusly:

She has "... infinite fractal curlicues of understanding."


j-

doh sorry, overlooked that part. My bad

*stands in corner ashamed*

My mom died in February, 2000.

I got laid off from AltaVista in May, 2000.

And each "ending" left me with a demi-lump of cash.

I never expected it would be THREE YEARS before I made decent money again.

So Lauren and I blew through it (on rent, food, denial, etc.) in about 4 months.

My little "Egyptian Adventure" alone was about $15,000.

Ah, hindsight.


j-

I covered some aspects of this question already, in question # 13.



But there was also a very meaningful BUSINESS LESSON I learned during those 3 years behind a front desk -- the Service Ethic.

Many different service jobs can expose you to large numbers of people every day.

But a hotel is special for the breadth of people you meet, and for the fact that they are coming to you at a moment when they are hoping to be TAKEN CARE OF, HOSTED, MADE TO FEEL WELCOME.

I worked with some people at the hotel (and certainly we've all encountered them) who, for whatever reasons of temperament and personality, just CAN'T be nice to people who ask them for something.

I guess it makes them feel lower. :upsidedow

But I realized I could do so much (both for the guest and for myself) by just smiling, meeting eyes with them, letting them know "I see you. You ARE a person."

This was especially powerful when the person was not expecting to be well-received.

You should see the way their eyes would light up when they realized I wasn't judging or presuming anything about them.

Seeing the reaction made me feel good, too.

During my three years behind the desk, I cultivated that in myself.

I learned to treat EVERYONE I meet with respect, consideration and attention.

In my current career (in THIS industry), that ability has made an incredible difference.


j-

Even the word "blessed? is not enough to convey how I feel about the people I have met in this industry.

The non-Adult industrial world is filled with smart people who make a lot of money.

But, to be honest with you, money for its own sake is not so satisfying or interesting to me.

What has struck me most unexpectedly about the Captains of Adult I have been so fortunate to meet and befriend is that they are NOT the ?lawless bandits? we seem from the outside.

I think all of that may have been true once.

But, the industry today has come into the hands of a new generation ? they are both smarter, as regards the technology and the medium, and savvier, as regards the precarious position we are in, against the backdrop of the rest of the commerce universe.

To answer your question, my dear, dear friend, Scott, I had NO offers, not one ? but I had numerous conversations in place with numerous friends.

The kind of new opportunity I was looking for could not be sought on Monster.com, or even in the classifieds of our industry?s trades.

I was looking to find someone whose clarity of purpose and intensity of ambition were as great as my own.

I was also looking for someone who was as excited by the opportunity to improve the human condition in a networked world as they were by the enormity of the commercial opportunity.

I found all of that in Adam Small.

Adam and I met as rivals, insofar as his company is a threat to my former company.

But, as I have explained above, I don?t let my expectations control my perceptions.

Adam and I kept running into each other at conventions, and I think he was surprised, at first, by my desire to talk with him. I think he was even more surprised when I made it clear I wasn?t trying to draw him in to take things from him.

Though we never spoke for more than a few minutes, and only at conventions, we became friends.

This was possible only because we made it clear to each other that we both had the complexity and strength of character to BE friends, even though we had the jobs we had.

Long before I had directly experienced his intellect and his talents, I liked him and I respected him as a man.

As our dialogue became richer and more full of trust, of course I became aware of his genius, but even more striking was how similar our paths had been to get where we are.

Like me, Adam started in Finance. We both made a lot of money really young and realized it had to be about more than just money.

From Finance, I went to help turn IBM?s ship into the Internet opportunity.

Adam went to start his own Internet company, with both a sincere desire to SERVE and a winning BUSINESS MODEL.

We both succeeded in our respective objectives, then we both turned our interest on the same thing ? the nexus of Old School Blue Chip Business and the Uncharted Waters of Web-based revenue models. I went to work for AltaVista, Adam for Yahoo.

Inside each of those two companies was happening what was happening nowhere else in the world ? we were perfecting the art of alchemizing traffic into money.

In ultimate pursuit of that new, mysterious art, where we could we go but Adult?

And because it is in PERSONALS (in the models we will yet conceive and build for connecting people online) that the greatest power to effect change lies, we are both in personals.

And because it is through sex, and only through sex (and I mean the good healthy, get yours, I love you and all that you are! kind of sex) that we may lead the species into a greater acceptance of our differences, we are both working in SEX.

I hope I?ve made it abundantly clear, by the forthcomingness of all the answers I have given above, that I have nothing to hide.

My grandmother taught me: ?If you want to be trusted, you must begin by trusting.?

Tell me, is that FOOLISH in this industry?

I hope not ? because I intend to trust and collaborate and share, because the cake we are all about to be served is so large and so rich that to do anything but COLLABORATE to get it would be selfishness in its most costly and most stupid form.

Here is the only OFFER I received that appealed to me ? it?s called FRIENDSHIP.

http://www.fubarwebmasters.com/curre...ril/z01982.jpg

Thanks, Adam ? you rock!



j-

Great interview, I must say i'm suprised by your past background (to say the least)

Seems to be a common thing with many people (i.e. Lars, Baddog, Halcyon, Choker,etc..) funny the way the life of somebody can change.

Good ridance!

Awesome stuff Jack.


good to see you on top of your game as usual

Here, Here!

-Michael

This was by far the most insightful person I've never met. Great answers Jack. I do hope we get to meet in Miami. I know you are probably very busy, I tried ICQ'ing you a few times but never got anything back. If you get some time hit me up, I have some questions for you.



Pirate mode re-enabled
YARGH! Swab me plank! Treasure me maps! Club me Parrot! YARGH! YARGH! YARGH! OK that's better.

Interesting read :thumbsup

I really love the way you're going into full details in your answers. So often people cut to the chase and quickly reply in order to rush onto the next hurdle.

It's been so informative reading up on you. I love biographies, so these ambush interviews rock my socks!

Very interesting read about you Jack ;-)

Sleazy got to hand it to you. This is some really original and intersting thing you have going on ;-)

ANY MORE QUESTIONS?

Having answered all of Sleazy's wonderful assortment of questions, I'd be happy to answer others you may have.

A word of WARNING, however, if you take a low-blow, try to be mean, injure someone I care about, you'll win the appropriate response from me.

:)


j-

Your problem regarding drugs was with meth wasnt it?

The only drug use I've admitted was a "problem" occurred in the year 2000.

The substances involved at that time were assorted.

As regards psychotropic use in general, I'd like to offer the following insight into my thinking.

The historical relationship between human beings and psychotropic substances is as old as the species itself.

Since it has always been an aspect of the human condition to wonder -- in the largest sense of the word -- about the limits of the human experience, the limits of our intellect, the answers to the fundamental questions "Why?", "What for?", etc. the 100,000 year-old history of Homo Sapiens contains many examples of rituals and practices aimed specifically at breaking through to some greater awareness, to knowing something that requires an extraordinary effort of will and courage.

For their effects in breaking down walls and lifting veils, psychotropics have often played a role in these rituals.

In his famous book ?The Doors of Perception? Aldous Huxley described a ?reducing valve? that sits between our senses and a vast perceptual OPPORTUNITY, containing riches of knowledge and truth most people can never tap.

Yes, I am an intensely curious person.

Yes, I have sought truth and knowledge wherever it seemed they might be found.

But, I am also an exceptionally loyal, honest, considerate, tolerant, caring human being ? who HAS RESPONSIBILITIES to the people in my life.

Whatever the size of my curiosity, my responsibilities to the people who show me loyalty, love and honesty come first -- always will.


j-

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

I told Scott (SleazyDream) that I had no "taboo" areas of enquiry, that he could feel free to ask me whatever about whatever.

He is a friend, and it was EXTREMELY important to me that I comprise neither his personal integrity nor the integrity of the Ambush Interview Institution.

I want it understood that, although it would be SOOOOO easy for me to do so, I'm not reaching out to any of my friends right now and asking them to post questions that might serve my agenda.

I respect them too much for that.

I've put myself up here voluntarily because I want to show everyone that you can be true to yourself and win, without fucking other people, calling in "icky" favors, or otherwise being a sneaky, slithering creature.

I will answer any questions, but you must tell me what your interest in the matter is and how you came by any "givens" you wish to be accepted as such.


j-

pfff amazing to see a thread like this only 3 pages...

Anyway here are a few extra questions:

- What do you think will evolve the most in Adult Industry?

- What is your motivation (this one has potential), and what do you think is your place on the world?

- Do you have/work in any projects covering other markets besides dating?

I'm not sure what the benchmark is... :yinyang

The posts are one measure, the views another.

I guess some folks are happy enough to look and not touch -- :)



"...evolve the most..." ? -- Hmmmm -- I guess I'd have to say the basic definition of the term "Adult", itself -- to include more and more, until it loses much of the descriptive focus, and "sharpness of outline" that today keeps us both legally/politically vulnerable and ISOLATED.




I love the medium. Like no technology or medium before it, the Internet has the capacity to fundamentally transform the ways in which, and the ends to which human beings interact. That's pretty exciting, no? As for my place in the world, I dunno, we'll see. But for right now, there's so much to do right in front of me, it's hard to give time to such a self-indulgent (and profitless) thought. I'm just trying to be a good person.


Yes.




j-

Awesome read. Thanks for the insight.

hmmmm, you left me wondering a couple things:

1. What did you have against your job as an investment banker, morally speaking?

2. These words REALLY hit home for me, and from reading your replies, I feel as though some advice, from a person with as much experience and wisdom as yourself, would be really interesting and helpful

"I culminate a life-long tradition of selfish acts by leaving a woman who loves me, whom I have told I love her, because she is not intellectually my equal."

Could you elaborate on what you meant by that, how you changed when you came to that realization, or anything else you think a young person in the same position could benefit from.

3. Why do you feel its so important to bridge the gap between adult and mainstream sites?

You're very welcome.


Business is funny. The entire commercial universe -- everything from undertaking to hang-gliding lessons -- from dirt-cheap commodities to the esoterica of human wants -- all of it --- is full of LIES.

So, if, like me, you are a person who cares about honesty, and is trying really hard to live up to some IDEAL (however self-imposed) of "being good", you realize pretty soon in your professional life that you're going to have to walk along the edges of a few razors.

I was always a good salesman. When you're a kid, and can talk a little bit, there's a lot you can get away with -- people don't expect you to feel much accountability, so they tend to interpret your boldnesses with a tolerant, humor-inclined eye.

By the time I was in my late teens, I was running rampant in an absolutely amoral way. Imagine the idiotically arrogant teenager, but without any of the usual check-effect of being occasionally wrong, embarrassed or just insecure.

By my early 20's, I was an absolute passive tyrant. Manipulation, equivocation, even deception became languages at my un-self-policing disposal. I did a lot of things during this time I really regret.

Strangely, it wasn't my sensitivity to human injury that gave me pause. It was my sense of "theft".

It actually came as a little bit of a surprise to me to find this DILEMMA inside myself, that prevented me from being able to peddle worthless pink-sheet stocks to grandmothers and "retired" Navy Admirals who knew about Desert Storm 3 days in advance -- j/k -- never happened -- LOL.

It's as simple as that. I just couldn't steal. The black-and-white of that is what, I think, got me started down the path of looking at EVERY choice, and worrying about the morality of each one -- it's hard fucking, work, man.




One of the ways in which the arrogance and self-centeredness described above manifested itself was in my granting myself permission to act like the people of "normal" intelligence around me were so dense they couldn't tell they were being disrespected by an ass.


In the realm of sexual relationships, likewise, I would give myself to lovers with enthusiasm and sincerity of ardor, but, all the while, thinking -- "She can't do long division in her head..." or some other such distraction.

This was all I knew.

I met and married a woman who made me very happy to protect her, and with whom I had great sex. When I made the decision to do so, I DID believe it a sustainable arrangement, though I MUST CONFESS I KNEW my heart wasn't there.

A moment came when I realized I had to pursue a "fuller" (more multi-leveled) relationship...

Oh, fuck it: I wanted to be with an insanely smart girl. That's all.


Hey, if you could nudge these worrisomely wayward technologies a few degrees in the right direction and make a billion dollars, wouldn't you?


j-

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate it. I can totally relate to your answers 1 & 2, and well, #3 was unexpected but gave me a laugh!

Cheers.

interesting read. Hope I get to meet you sometime Jack.

[nods]

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/hpb-tm/hpbtm-74.jpg


j-

Great answers for a great thread.

Great interview

Wow.. I was out of town during this interview or something... I don't remember it.

Great answers!

Fascinating read. Thank you.

You are far too literate and intelligent for this board-
I hope those of you with IQ's over 60 were able to read that Ambush-
I for one, get more impressed by you daily...

The difference between being great and staying a nobody lies in the way you deal with failures. The nobodies will quit trying. The great ones will learn from their failures, put them behind them (sooner or later, more or less painfully) and keep trying. Very few (in fact I'd say NO ONE) people never fail. Being insightful enough to learn from this inevitable part of life is what makes for a better tomorrow. Well, at least in the case of the insightful ones. :)

Gentlemen, thank you -- !

Make no mistake, you are both among the people that I most respect in the business, and from whom I expect to see amazing things -- :thumbsup -- thank you for your friendship -- :)

2HP

Impressive interview... but I would expect no less from you, Jack. :)

it was at nyu i first publicly masturbated. it's been a while. the prospect excites me.

2hp

These interviews are pretty damn classic...

sad just plain sad

Such a tactful bump. :1orglaugh