Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: Jamezrant

  • Marvel Now – More of the Same

    No matter what Marvel comics may say, “Marvel Now” is a direct response to DC’s new 52. DC’s new 52 was and continues to be very controversial with decisions to radically change characters, history and relationships. When DC did its big relaunch I decided to buy the first few issues of all the comics and give them a fair share. Today, over a year later, I still regularly get about 10 issues and once in a while will pick up an additional book from their line. For some of the regular magazines I found I had no interest at all in the story line or characters as they had been revamped – this includes Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes to name a few. But as a result of the revamp I have loved Aquaman and Wonder Woman among others.

    I’m starting to judge Marvel’s move without all the new issues coming out – unfair I know. With Marvel Now, Marvel decided not a do a complete do-over of the universe but to reset the stage where certain characters were comfortable and change things up a bit – not a bad idea on some fronts (Hulk, Avengers).

    One of the first things that bothered me with the new books was the art in Iron Man, I found it lacking. The next book that I picked up was the Fantastic Four and surprisingly they seem to have 20 foster kids and their own kids as well – I have no reference point for all of these kids except Franklin and Valerie and I think Valerie is an annoying character. Then in Captain America they put Cap in another dimension or another planet, I’m not sure which yet – sure this was a successful ploy with the Hulk way back, but I don’t see this working with Cap. Finally, in the All New X-Men (really, that’s the title we’re going with?) they’re bringing the original X-men from 1960 something to present day – because having one alternate version of Hank McCoy running around wasn’t enough – not to mention the fact that the Phoenix Force (which has reignited the mutant gene) has an obsession with Jean Grey – how many times do we have to see this woman die exactly?

    On the plus side, I’m really looking forward to more Indestructible Hulk – Agent of SHIELD and Thor, both stories I thought were interesting and are risking things with the character. Thor in particular the story in issue 1 leapt across centuries to weave a story that may have him really risking his life and the life of other Asgardians. The Hulk story line might be ok for a while, but I think we’re just waiting for the time when Bruce loses control again, sometimes I think we strive for him being chased and demolishing things – HULK SMASH and all that.

    A few years back I wrote a blog post about killing characters off to sell comics called “…and it sold comics” (click here to read it) which is what DC’s new 52 and Marvel Now are all about – selling comics. But I fear Marvel is playing it too safely and it will come back to bite them later – after all Jubilee is still a vampire, most of the main characters have been killed and reborn so many times its ridiculous and we’ve had alternate versions of some heroes origins told so many times that I doubt even the writers know what they’ve got going on.

    I would have preferred them to remake the whole universe when the Phoenix Force was defeated and given us a chance to see a Captain America that was created using a super serum to fight terrorists. A Fantastic Four that maybe had one kid, but preferably not. An X-Men with just one Hank McCoy and one Angel that isn’t .. well I’m not sure what’s up with the current Angel, but I don’t like it. A Wolverine that isn’t a teacher at a school but the killing machine we all expect him to be. Villains once in a while for the Avengers besides Kang and Ultron – maybe a new villain once in a while for your multiple issue story arcs. Hell – go further than DC did, recreate characters as different races (like you did with Nick Fury in the Ultimates Universe and movie), genders and lifestyles. Give me a reason to care about Reed Richards and have someone write Dr Strange with some balls – taking risks and making interesting story lines.

    I’ll pick up the other number ones from Marvel Now, but at present I’m not really impressed with what’s come out and what I’ve read about.

  • Meditation

    Back when I was still a stoner I used to “meditate” with my friend Ted to the Rush songs on the 2112 and Hemispheres albums. Sometimes this involved pot, sometimes alcohol and once in a while candles – lots of hand movements and singing along. Very serious business that increased the presence of the 12 gods in my life.

    When I got sober a few years later I learned about Step 11

    Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

    Through the years in meetings all over the country I’ve had the opportunity to hear about how others have meditated. Some folks talked about how they meditated in the shower,  some how they meditated on their way to work in the car or even like I used to do – listening to music that inspired them (with or without candles 😉 ).

    I was pretty dumbfounded about the whole idea and just faked it mostly. When I’d pray or have a quiet moment I would consider that to be my meditation and “enough” of an effort to improve my conscious contact. It wasn’t very satisfying and truthfully, I didn’t do it very often and I never really felt calmer or centered as a result.

    Then a  few years back I was at a workshop where the leader of the workshop guided us through a Mindfulness Meditation. I was skeptical but learned long ago to “fake it til you make it”. I followed her instructions and guidance as we placed our feet flat on the ground, had our backs straight and breathed in and breathed out, simple counting and focusing on pushing out the outside distraction and noise – sure enough I actually felt more at ease, more centered and relaxed. This was what I was looking for.

    Granted, I’m still not a daily user – I have my faults that may be difficult for some of you to come to terms with.. sorry to disappoint – but when I do use it my day, my situations, my people places and things are so much easier to deal with. I’ve even used it when I’ve not been able to sleep – due to thoughts racing around in my head or something that was bothering me, it really helps to ease all the noise.

    At first I came to scoff… 😉 Anyway, meditation, Mindfulness Meditation in particular, has become a really welcome part of my life and I can’t recommend it enough to folks. There are some links here that you can click on and read more about it and I’m sure there are places in larger cities where you can be guided through. The thing is not to quit trying – you’ll gain peace in the trying to get there.

    Five Types of Meditation: http://www.fitsugar.com/5-Types-Meditation-18949375

    Mindfulness Meditation instructions: http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2125

    More on Meditation: http://www.spiritualnow.com/articles/20/1/The-Different-Types-of-Meditation/Page1.html

  • Date Night

    I was at dinner the other night and saw a handsome older man enter a restaurant and what follows is what I kind of observed and insinuated.

    The distinguished older gentleman enters the restaurant, dinner jacket and dress shirt with just a tuft of gray chest hair peeking through, pressed slacks and shined shoes, the spring in his step accompanies the smile on his face. He briefly talks to the maître d and approaches the bar glancing back over his shoulder at the entrance before motioning to the bartender and ordering a drink – nothing too strong tonight but something to help calm the tensions and nervousness.

    A date, it’d had been too long since he’d had a dinner date – he’d all but given up on ever having one again. He misses his younger days when he could pick and choose from the different guys that noticed his swagger or just begged for a kiss. But age catches up with you before you know it and the prime of gay life had passed many decades ago. He glances at the door and checks his cell, the young man should be here any minute. Maybe one more drink to sure up his confidence, this time a double.

    He’s almost finished his third drink now and the time has come for his date to arrive. The bartender has tried to start up a conversation with him and he tried to pay attention but glancing at his phone and the entrance to the door it’s hard to keep track of the bartenders joke.

    While he’s looking at his phone again it rings and he almost drops it. His eyes light up as he answers knowing his date is probably parking right now. Then his shoulders slump and his face changes the joy and expectation replaced by disappointment and confusion. He assures the young man on the that he understands, these things happens and he’s looking forward to rescheduling – trying to remain upbeat.

    Ending the call and just staring at the phone for a good long while the distinguished gentleman then orders another drink and settles in for a night of forgetting and resignation.

  • Deep Thought and the Ultimate Answer

    Today we are officially 42 days away from my 42nd birthday – that’s the more important birthday a person could have… well a person who loves the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and I certainly do.

    42, as you may or may not know, is the answer to Life the Universe and Everything. See when a group of pan-dimensional beings created a computer named Deep Thought which takes 7 1/2 million years to compute the answer they got exactly what they asked for the answer said Deep Thought: 42. Obviously they were a bit confused by this answer and their planet was patiently waiting for an answer with festivities and awe… Fortunately for them Deep Thought knew they wouldn’t be satisfied with the answer and told them of a great computer that could give them the question that would fit the answer to Life the Universe and Everything. Deep Thought even helped them design that computer and that computer is called “Earth”.

    Now Earth, according to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy a truly wonderful, totally amazing piece of technology – at first with the following description: “Harmless”. But after Ford Prefect had visited the planet he managed to add to the description, thankfully, and it now says “Mostly Harmless” (obviously the writers had seen the US Congress in action).

    Well as it turns out the day before Earth was to finally release the Ultimate Question to the Ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything it is destroyed to make way for a hyper-space bypass – if you’re not expecting these kinds of things to happen, you’re really not prepared to live in the universe with the rest of us.

    Now there really were really only two instances that anyone actually said they knew what the Question was… one was Marvin the depressed robot, one of the most wonderful characters in all literature, who said he could see the answer imprinted on Arthur’s brain (see Arthur was on the planet/computer Earth seconds before it was destroyed, fortunately for him he got to listen to Vogon poetry instead of dying horribly… well I guess that’s really a matter of taste, like any poetry really. And in the book Life the Universe and Everything Prak, a man who knows all that is true, confirms that 42 is indeed the answer and one would assume that if Prak knows all that is true he would also know for certain what the question was.

    Anyway, back to my birthday which as I mentioned earlier is 42 days from now, I plan to celebrate in style. I’m flying to Las Vegas for a conference about the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. (You should note that the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, references the number 42 in the chapter There is a Solution – coincidence? I think not. I have tickets to see the Cirque du Soleil show Ka at the MGM Grand and  reservations at  Craftsteak and a date local guy there.

    I will have a freshly inked tattoo from my friend Matt at Jinx Proof tattoos in Georgetown – Matt is designing it and is fully aware of the importance of 42 and it’s significance  to the universe so it might incorporate a lot of things including, but not limited to: two white mice, at towel, the words “Don’t Panic” (which are written on the cover of each Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy)… well, we’ll see what he comes up with in a few days.

    So happy start to my birthday celebration to one and all, I know you’ve all been waiting for this day all your lives and I thank you for being so patient. If we don’t make it through the end of the year (perhaps they’ll come and destroy our planet to make way for a hyper-space bypass) I hope to see you all at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe if not before then.

    Below you’ll find a few cultural references to the number 42 (from wikipedia):

    On the Internet

    The number 42 and the phrase, “Life, the universe, and everything” have attained cult status on the Internet. “Life, the Universe, and Everything” is a common name for the off-topic section of an Internet forum and the phrase is invoked in similar ways to mean “anything at all”. Many chatbots, when asked about the meaning of life, will answer “42”. Several online calculators are also programmed with the Question. If you type the answer to life the universe and everything into Google (without quotes or capitalising the small words), the Google Calculator will give you 42, as will Wolfram’s Computational Knowledge Engine.[18] Similarly, if you type the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything into DuckDuckGo, the 0-click box will read “42”.[19] In the online community Second Life, there is a section on a sim called “42nd Life.” It is devoted to this concept in the book series, and several attempts at recreating Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, were made. In Facebook Chat there is an emoticon for 42 created by typing :42: .

    Shortly after Adams died in 2001, the Darwin Awards Forums announced that, in his honour, the number of posts required for a member to get out of “newbie” status would henceforth be decreased from 50 to 42.

    In the OpenOffice.org software, if you type into any cell of a spreadsheet =ANTWORT(“Das Leben, das Universum und der ganze Rest”), which means the answer to life, the universe and everything, the result is 42.[20]

    ISO/IEC 14519-2001/ IEEE Std 1003.5-1999, IEEE Standard for Information Technology – POSIX(R) Ada Language Interfaces – Part 1: Binding for System Application Program Interface (API), uses the number ’42’ as the required return value from a process that terminates due to an unhandled exception. The Rationale says “the choice of the value 42 is arbitrary” and cites the Adams book as the source of the value.

    The random seed chosen to procedurally create the whole universe including all the regions, constellations, stars, planets, moons and mineral distribution of the online massively multi-player computer game EVE Online was chosen as 42 by its lead game designer in 2002.[21]

    Cultural references

    The Allen Telescope Array, a radio telescope used by SETI, has 42 dishes in homage to the number.[22]

    In the TV show Lost, 42 is the last of the mysterious numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. In an interview with Lostpedia, producer David Fury confirmed this was a reference to Hitchhiker’s.[23]

    The TV show The Kumars at No. 42 is so named because show creator Sanjeev Bhaskar is a Hitchhiker’s fan.[24]

    The band Coldplay‘s album Viva la Vida includes a song called “42“. When asked by Q magazine if the song’s title was Hitchhiker’s-related, Chris Martin said, “It is and it isn’t.”[25]

    The band Level 42 chose its name in reference to the book.[26]

    The episode “42” of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who was named in reference to the Answer. Writer Chris Chibnall acknowledged that “it’s a playful title”.[27]

    Ken Jennings, defeated along with Brad Rutter in a Jeopardy match against IBM‘s Watson, writes that Watson’s avatar which appeared on-screen for those games showed 42 “threads of thought,” and that the number was chosen in reference to this meme.[28]

  • Responsible

    I want to talk about Tradition 3: “The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.”  All you need to become a member of A.A. is a desire to not drink anymore, that’s it. The long form of this Tradition goes on to say:

    Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.

    That just gets you in the door, that’s it. You have a desire to stop drinking? That’s great come in have a seat We have a solution for you. Once you become a member you have certain responsibilities.

    What!? you say These are just “suggestions” you cry.

    “On the other hand—and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand—once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.” Alcoholics Anonymous, page xxv

    “Further on clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered.” Alcoholics Anonymous, page 29

    “If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us.” Alcoholics Anonymous, page 85

    Once you’re a member I suggest you have a responsibility to follow the program as laid out in our basic text, Alcoholics Anonymous. In there you will find detailed directions on how to find a solution. It states on page 20: “What do I have to do?” It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically.” And once you have followed the directions spelled out in our book then I think it’s your responsibility to share that solution with others.

    “I am responsible . . . when anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there. And for that I am responsible.” In short, when newcomers walk into our meeting rooms, we want A.A. to be there for them as it was for us— something we can do continuously only if we function as a group.” The AA Group Pamphlet page 18

    Essentially I think that also means that as groups and individuals we need to study and practice the Twelve Traditions.

    I’m a black and white person, it’s either this way or that way, usually there is no middle of the road where I’m concerned. However I realize that groups filled with strict Tradition following naysayers, like myself, would probably be very unpopular.

    At present we have a tip in the scales the other way, we have so many groups that have little to no practice or understanding of the Twelve Traditions that entirely too many A.A. meetings are group therapy and not the program of action that was shown to me in our basic text.

    On Sunday morning I was the lead at a meeting and shared my experience strength and hope. That experience includes watching others go to A.A. meetings and complain about how life had dealt them a bad hand again, and how there problems were the reason they drank or the reason they came to A.A. – to share them. My experience has taught me that A.A. is not a place I come to complain about my problems – if all I needed to get better was a place to complain about my problems I’d still be sitting on a bar stool drinking, but all my problems would have taken care of themselves. After I expressed that AA was for talking about solutions as found in our program of action and not for complaining about todays issues – six men, some with more time without a drink that I, disagreed with me.

    There isn’t anything I can do for those who think that A.A. is their group therapy, except be responsible (see the quote above). If I want the real recovery, the real message of hope to remain for millions of alcoholics to come then I have to be responsible. I don’t want a watered down solution for others, I want the one that was given me for free and for fun. I want others to be able to experience the entire psychic change that has happened for me and for countless friends like me.

    Friends of mine have suggested the reason we have such watered down A.A. in places is because of hard drinkers or moderate drinkers that weren’t true alcoholics, but needed to escape a bad problem and stayed. They’ve suggested those people don’t have to do those things we had to do to feel better.

    “Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation.” Alcoholics Anonymous, page 25

    Almost none of us liked it, but all of us have to take the steps as outlined in our book, and all of us are responsible to make sure AA is here for the man or woman suffering after we’re gone. Take a look at your meeting and think back to when you were new – is that the solution you were taught or is it the group therapy you remember from the treatment centers?

    The AA Group Pamphlet has a Group Inventory that I think most would find helpful in looking at their group. Often people who have been going to these same meetings for years see little reason to look at their group, they are comfortable resting on their laurels and don’t want change to rock the boat. But I say to you who have been shown the solution in our book – rock the boat! Talk about the solution, live the solution and be responsible.

  • You Kept Your Promise

    I recently had a story published on aagrapevine.org which makes me quite happy. This is the second time the Grapevine has published one of my stories, the first time was in the magazine back in May 1998 Issue. I’ve reprinted the story below:

    “You Kept Your Promise

    I work the graveyard shift at the local treatment center. It’s a laid-back job with not a lot to do, and there are times when I wish something would happen just to relieve the routine. One night that’s just what happened.

    A former resident called at two A.M., drunk as a skunk. He’d just been released the week before. He told me he’d always respected me and wished he could have what I had. He kept jumping from subject to subject but finally he said something that chilled me to the bone: “I have a gun. I just can’t live like this anymore.” I thought about myself having those same feelings before I sobered up. I remember feeling that hopeless. I tried to talk some sense into him which really didn’t work too well. He kept talking about how he liked my home group, the Eau Claire Pacific Group, how close we were, how family-oreinted. I kept telling him that AA could give that to him too. All I could do was share with him what AA had given me, how it had radically changed my life for the better. After this conversation had gone on for a while, he said he had to find something else to drink and that he’d call me back. I extracted a promise from him that he would call. When we were off the phone I called the police.

    When he called back, he agreed to go into detox if I’d send a bunch of people from AA up to see him in the hospital. I agreed readily. I started to tell him about the program of action  I’d been shown in the Big Book. He said he’d never experienced any of that. He hadn’t done any of the Steps except in treatment. He said he’d be interested in trying our solution but still wasn’t convinced it would help him.

    The police managed to trace the call, found him, and escorted him to detox. I started to call the people in my home group at six A.M., and didn’t stop until iI had gone through all my phone numbers. When I got off duty, I went straight to the hospital. It amazed me how fast he had deteriorated; he was hardly recognizable. The alcohol was just oozing out of his pores. When he saw me, he was astounded. “You kept your promise!” Throughout the day, fourteen more men from AA went up to see him. He was in detox for two or three more days, and by the time he left you could see that little spark of hope in his eyes had grown a thousand fold.

    Today this man is a member in good standing in our group. His family is slowly getting on the right track, and he attends three to four meetings a week with commitments at all of them. His little stay at the hospital opened up the doors for AA to continue to help drunks there. Every tie the hospital gets a drunk who needs help, they call us and we send a troop of AAs over there to carry the message. So helping that one drunk has led us to help countless more.

    James A. Eau Claire, Wisconsin”

  • Why Don't We Just Leave

    I’ve been thinking it a long while before the most current riots by Islamist that have led to destruction and death – Why don’t we just leave.

    Instead of having our young men and women scattered all over the world in military bases and embassies – I’d rather we had them here and we rebuilt our failing infrastructure and became better educators and students. I’d rather we spent the money we spend on wars and interfering in other countries right here.

    “We have to be responsible” you say or they say “the US is the world police” but I don’t know why either has to be true.

    I say we would be more responsible tot he human race if we focused on science, math, medicine, biology – hell learning and studying new ideas and concepts to better the world. Wouldn’t that be a better way to commit our citizens. If we have an army can’t it be an army for the betterment of man?

    Think of the billions of dollars we spend on wars and covert wars – think of the good we could accomplish if we focused on what we could bring to the world instead of meddling over there in others business. I’d rather our young adults were here building something instead of over there shooting, bombing and enforcing our way of life on others – who apparently don’t want it – and losing their limbs and lives for the sake of corporations after oil profits and opium.

    I mean I think it’s really stupid to protest over the US when an individual made a movie. Lets just get out and leave them to their ways. I say the same for all countries. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Israel or Beirut or anywhere else that decades of peace negotiations have come up with nothing – this is not our problem and clearly our involvement isn’t helping anyone, just pissing off others.

    So bring them all home, set them on a better world, but let that better world start here in our back yard with new innovation, new technology, advancements in medicine, philosophy and the arts.

    I may not be informed enough to make such a call, but I still think it’s a good move.

  • Why We Should Vote

    I’m going to try to write this without expressing my desires for you to vote for any particular candidate, yes it would be nice if you voted for the correct person, but it’s really just important to vote.

    In 2008:

    • 56% of the population (eligible voters) actually went out and voted.
    • 49% of eligible young people (18 – 24) voted
    • 69% of people 45 and older voted

    You should also know that:

    almost half of the people in congress are millionaires.  

    There are 362 Men and only 76 Women in the House

    There are 17 Women and 83 Men in the Senate

    • 44 of these folks are Black
    • 27 are Hispanic
    • 9 are Asian
    • and 1 is American Indian

    The average age of our representatives is 60

    Yes, young people, us old people want you kids to get off our lawns.

    I know you’re thinking, that’s nice Jamez but why should I care who voted that shit doesn’t matter. Lets stop and think about what these elected officials get to decide about you, your rights, your money, your wants and needs. The people of the government, not just the President and not just congress but all of them together get to

    change the speed limit, change the drinking age, increase  or lower your taxes, go to war, land use, property taxes, change which lightbulbs are made, keep your medical information private (HIPPA), the FDA approves drugs, how much time you get off for pregnancy, how much you get paid for overtime, your roads and the roads all over the country, your taxes and taxes of people not like you at all, the safety of your … (car, school, job, hospital)… the list goes on and on this site Government is Good will show you your average day and how government was there.

    If you don’t vote then you don’t really get a say in what goes on in this country. Sure you can whine about it, that’s the American way anymore. But if you want things to change you have to stand up this year and vote.

    But here’s the key, be informed, don’t take any political ad that you see on TV, the internet or a newspaper as fact – my opinion is that all politicians can stretch the truth like you wouldn’t believe. And remember, just because your friend posted it on Facebook doesn’t make it true either… Find a nonpartisan (that means: not biased or partisan, esp. toward any particular political group) website like Vote Smart or PolitiFact and research the person you’re thinking about voting for. Don’t have a closed mind about this, try to think about real issues they believe in, not just whether they drink the same soda as you or have hipper clothes.

    Look back at the top of this post where I breakdown the demographics of Congress, are those the type of people you want making decisions that affect not only our Nation but the world at large and even those closest around us.

    I say again, VOTE it can really make a difference.

  • AA Tradition

    I tend to get on my soapbox a lot about the 12 Traditions of A.A., I can’t help it, I was raised in early A.A. meetings where they were studied, practiced and debated amongst people with long term sobriety (that was 12 – 16 years of sobriety at the time that I was less than a year). I soaked up as much of that as I could, attended group conscious/business meetings, went to the DCM meeting, the Area Assembly, the Area Conference… I loved this stuff, it was one part of that triangle that makes up our program (Recovery, Unity, Service).

    the AA circle and triangle

    Every week at my first Home Group they read these paragraphs from page  561 in our basic text:

    The AA Tradition

    To those now in its fold, Alcoholics Anonymous has made the difference between misery and sobriety, and often the difference between life and death. A.A. can, of course, mean just as much to uncounted alcoholics not yet reached.

    Therefore, no society of men and women ever had  a more urgent need for continuous effectiveness and permanent unity. We alcoholics see that we must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone.

    The “12 Traditions” of Alcoholics Anonymous are, we A.A.’s believe, the best answers that our experience has yet given to those ever-urgent questions, “How can A.A. best function?” and, “How can A.A. best stay whole and so survive?”

    And then we’d read the Traditions, usually the short form, occasionally someone would read the long form but I can’t remember why. Contrary to what I’ve been told lately, it doesn’t really take that long to read the short form of the Traditions. 😉 We were, in my humble opinion, a better group for following the traditions and learning from our history.

    In our book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age – Bill creates a fictional character, Mr. Grassroots,  who talks about the Convention here’s one of the excerpts from that:

    “On Sunday morning—the last day of the Convention—I found those Twelve Traditions still on my mind. Each of them I saw is an exercise in humility that can guard us in everyday A.A. affairs and protect us from ourselves. If A.A. were really guided by the Twelve Traditions, we could not possibly be split apart by politics, religion, money, or by any old-timers who might take a notion to be big shots. With none of us throwing our weight around in public, nobody could possible exploit A.A. for personal advantage, that is sure. For the first time I saw A.A.’s anonymity for what it really is. It isn’t just something to save us from alcoholic shame and stigma; its deeper purpose is actually to keep those fool egos of ours from running hog wild after money and public fame at A.A.’s expense. It really means personal and group sacrifice for the benefit of all A.A. Right then I resolved to learn our Twelve Traditions by heart, just as I had learned the Twelve Steps. If every A.A. did the same thing and really soak up these principles we drunks could hang together forever.” page 42

    So I say if A.A. groups really followed the advice of the Traditions perhaps we’d have less meetings that are stagnant because of an old-timer or two that wont let go of the reins. Or maybe a Group here in DC wouldn’t have made the cover of Newsweek back in 2007. Maybe we’d have stronger meetings that focus more on the path to recovery as described in our Big Book and less that focus on how sad life can be.

    I have a couple of friends who carry around a pocket-sized red covered book that has the contents of the Big Book inside it. This book is not our text-book and it is not “Conference Approved”. [Recently online I saw a discussion where someone said there was no such thing as “Conference Approved” they’re mistaken, http://aa.org/en_pdfs/smf-29_en.pdf <== that link should take you to information on Conference Approved literature.] There are also several “recovery” or “A.A.” apps available in the many App stores, but only one of those is Conference Approved, this one: http://aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=440 It’s clunky, but someone probably donated the time and energy to make the app. So if you can help them out, I’m certain our Central Office would appreciate it. [The Grapevine, has actually started to publish books in Kindle and Nook format, which is really much better and I hope A.A. follows suit as their current application seems to need the internet to access and if I’m 30,000 feet above the earth and want to read the book I’d be unable to.]

    Why does it matter?

    It matters for a few reasons, one if because of the Conference Approved literature bit… “This process assure that everything in such literature is in accord with A.A. principles. Conference-approved material always deals with the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous or with information about the A.A. Fellowship.” [please note: the recovery program and the A.A. fellowship are two separate things] If you’re not buying it from A.A. then there is no guarantee that what you’re getting is what we’re selling… for lack of a better word. (I always think of Orwell’s Animal Farm when I see these red books… I know that’s not what happened in that book, but it’s what comes to mind.)

    and from Bill himself:

    A.A.’s far-flung Twelfth Step activities, carrying the message to the next sufferer, are the very lifeblood of our A.A. adventure. Without this vital activity, we would soon become anemic; we would literally wither and die.

    Now where do A.A.’s services—worldwide, area, local—fit into our scheme of things? Why should we provide these functions with money? The answer is simple enough. Every single A.A. service is designed to make more and better Twelfth Step work possible, whether it be a group meeting place, a central or intergroup office to arrange hospitalization and sponsorship, or the world service Headquarters [now the General Service Office] to maintain unity and effectiveness all over the globe.

    Though not costly, these service agencies are absolutely essential to our continued expansion—to our survival as a Fellowship. Their costs are a collective obligation that rests squarely upon all of us. Our support of services actually amounts to recognition on our part that A.A. must everywhere function in full strength—and that, under our Tradition of self-support, we are all going to foot the bill.” Bill W. October 1967 Grapevine

    So if you were to buy these items from our GSO you’d be helping to ensure our continued message across the globe, keep our offices open and you know what, just do it! that’s what my sponsor would have said… 🙂 There is a small, pocket-size version of the Big Book available from GSO or your local intergroup office. There is an app put out by GSO.

    I’ve also recently seen a post on Facebook about Tradition Three—The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking. That doesn’t mean you should just come and occupy a chair in a meeting, that’s all you need to get in the door. If you want the solution that we have to offer then you have to take certain steps. And if you want those steps to be here for the next guy then you should study and practice the Traditions, they matter and our program is too important to let them slip by the road on our journey. You’re responsible…

    I am Responsible.  When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.  And for that:  I am responsible.

    We can’t wait for the guy after us to pick up the torch and be a safeguard to our legacy, it has to be us and it has to be today. It’s a program of action and that program needs to be protected by the people that hope the program is still here for many years to come.

    Ok, I’m done… I think… now tonight I’ll go to my meeting and cringe as we only read one Tradition.. but at least we’re reading one of them.

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