Search for Emes

Balut

2011-11-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

So, the other day I found out about balut and I have to say it really grossed me out. Which I feel guilty about, since I realize it is just a cultural bias and I am sure that vegetarians feel the same way about me eating beef, but still.

It's f*cking crunchy. Cue Monty Python - "If we took the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy, would it"

Start spreading the news... #2

2011-11-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just got back from NYC. Impressions:

Halloween in Times Square, weird but not crazy. Everyone was pretty low key. Much better than St Patrick's day which I experienced about 14 years ago...

Cab from the airport smelled like piss? Unusual for a indian/paki driver - they usually have some kind of incense or something which makes the car smell nice.

Found a bedbug in the first hotel room - switched rooms (no apologies from the front desk!!! F#$cking New Yorkers!) - checked the mattress and the rest of the room. Seems OK. Still hung everything from the curtain rod in the bathroom. Spent both nights awake imagining creepy crawlies all over me. No bites visible, so I assume it was my imagination.

Had dinner at Abigail's on Broadway and Olympic Pita midtown. Oh. My. God. At abigail's I ate on the first floor - there were no frum people visible. I asked the waiter if they were still kosher just to make sure. How awesome is that? In Chicago only crazy people and those of us who are ~~stuck~~observant will be found in all the kosher establishments (except maybe one). Also, oddly no certificates posted anywhere visible. Olympic Pita was the same way - chinese people, black people, a few Jews...

At 11:30 PM decided that I should bring back H and H bagels for the family. Walked over from Times Square to Pier 88. Scared shitless because there was nobody around on the street. Didn't want to get mugged on my last night in the city. But turned out OK. Garment bag filled with bagels, now smells like garlic and onion.

The New Colossus

2011-10-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

The other day I came across, by chance, the text of Emma Lazarus' poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. And I read the words out loud, as I thought about the ridiculous debates we are having in this country about "illegal" immigration...

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I wonder if I could show these lines to the Tea Party-ers and the neo-cons of this country, if it would make a difference. I guess not.

From Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression

2011-10-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

A Catalan curse:

Mecagum Deu, en la creu, en el fuster que la feu i en el fill de puta que va plantar el pi

I shit on God, on the Cross, on the carpenter who made it and on the son of a whore who planted the pine.

That's pretty impressive - even a Russian like me has to give this respect!

Viagra Online cracks me up

2011-10-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

Found this comment on some blog. Don't know if it is intentional...

Dr Baraban

2011-09-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

In a weird entanglement of reality and fiction, Grossman's short story "In the town of Berdichev" mentions in passing a certain Dr. Baraban.

Дети, -- говорила она, -- дети, разве вы не знаете, что это за несчастье, -- и она тискала и топила на своей груди самого маленького Тутера. -- Это такое горе, это такое несчастье, это такие хлопоты. Каждый день они хотят кушать, и не проходит недели, чтобы у этого не было сыпи, а у того лихорадки или нарыва. А доктор Барабан, дай ему бог здоровья, за каждый визит берет десять фунтов пеклеванной муки.

in my translation:

"Children," she said, "children, don't you know what kind of misfortune they are" and she squeezed and drowned in her bosom the smallest Tutter. "It is such sorrow, such misfortune, such troubles. Each day they want to eat, and a week doesn't pass, that this one doesn't have a rash, and that one a fever or an abscess. And Doctor Baraban, God give him health, takes ten pounds of fine flour for each visit."

And here is mention of the real Dr Baraban of Berdichev, in excerpts from Grossman's "Black Book" documenting the slaughter in Berdichev during WWII.

After that, people were led out in groups of 150 to be shot. They were formed into a paired column, and loaded on trucks. The men were taken first - about eight hundred persons - then the women and children. Some of those who had been imprisoned in the monastery looked upon death as a relief after their terrible beatings, torments, hunger, thirst, and four months of German brigandry. People joined this line of death without attempting to delay the moment of death even for a few hours.

One man pushed his way to the entrance and shouted: "Jews, let me go first ! Five minutes and everything will be over. What is there to be afraid of? " That day two thousand people were shot, among them Dr. Vurnarg, Dr. Baraban, Dr. Liberman, Dr. Blank ( a dentist ), and the family of Dr. Rubinstein (also a dentist). This execution took place outside of town, in the area of the colective farm, Sakulino. At this new execution, before the very pits, 150 of the best artisans and technicians were selected. They were taken to the camp at Lysaya Gora. Gradually the best artisans and technicians were brought to this camp from other areas. All together, there were about 500 people in the camp.

The Comissar

2011-09-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

Wound up watching the movie The Comissar on YouTube.

The thing is, I really wanted to like this movie. I so loved the short story it was based on, Grossman's "In the town of Berdichev". But I found the acting really stilted, and it just didn't have soul.

But to me, what's more interesting is the story of the making of the film - of how it was banned for decades, and how the man who made it essentially ruined his career.

The Man in the Iron Mask

2011-09-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

About three months ago I bought a small lucky bamboo plant at Home Depot and brought it home.

At first I kept it in the little plastic pot that the store planted it in. I watered it every day and kept it out of direct sunlight.

It did not thrive. I found out on the Internet that you need to water it with filtered water. So I began doing that.

Last night I transplanted it from the pot into a glass vase filled with pebbles. Apparently this is better...

I don't know why, even with four kids, I developed a strong need to take care of a living thing.

I feel like one of those prisoners who adopt a mouse in the cell and share their meager meals with the little creature...

Yeah - Boooh

2011-09-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

The good news - the new film about Serge Gainsbourg is gonna play in Chicago.
The bad news - it will be playing one night only - Friday night.

Translation?

2011-08-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

I wonder what this poster is all about...

Sabonim - Sabra mistreatment of Holocaust Survivors

2011-08-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

I have heard of the problems the Sephardi/Mizrachi community faced in Israel during the early days of the state but this is complete news to me. Apparently during the early days of the state, there was a lot of mistreatment of Holocaust survivors in Israel at the hands of the sabras. I am amazed that I've never heard of this before...

A couple of things I found so far on the Internet:

Moshe Sanbar, chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel - an umbrella organization for 29 groups and 300,000 survivors - links the lack of interest to the survivors themselves.

"Israeli survivors did not want to have anything to do with these issues," he says. "They wanted to close the book on the Holocaust."

Sanbar traces this attitude to survivors' experiences just after their liberation from the death camps and arrival in the nascent Jewish state. "They called us the sabonim," he says - using Hebrew slang for "cowards." But it also sounds like the Hebrew word "sabon," or soap, which survivors perceived as a reference to the soap the Nazis made from Jewish corpses.

With some justice, survivors arriving in Israel felt stigmatized. Israelis were creating a "new Jew," symbolized by the suntanned kibbutznik working the fields or the fearless underground fighter. They looked down on the passivity of European Jews, who they felt went like sheep to the slaughter. Eager to fit into Israeli society, Sanbar says, many survivors tried to shake off their Holocaust experiences.

[source]

Here is another:

“It’s all lies,” she shouted. “They didn’t want us, any of us, didn’t matter where we came from, what we had been through. On the contrary, it was precisely because of what had happened to us that they wanted nothing to do with us.

“They even discussed building a second dining hall so they wouldn’t have to eat with us, the sabonim. That’s what they called us: sabonim, nothing but bars of soap. Because the Germans are supposed to have made soap out of Jewish corpses.”

I was shocked into silence. It seemed beyond belief, such a level of hostility, such cruel contempt. Perhaps she had misunderstood? Edith shook her head. I had never seen her look so grim.

“In a way, I wish they had put us in a different dining room. As it was, the sabras, the old-timers, always kept themselves to themselves, joking in Hebrew. They would glance across at us from time to time, so it was obvious they were talking about us.”

“‘Us’? So you weren’t quite alone.” “Yes and no. There was a woman from one of the camps who had lost her husband and two children. She didn’t last long: hanged herself in the kitchen one night.

Hodja Nasreddin and a Good Cow

2011-08-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

Hodja Nasreddin had a good cow which gave lots of milk. Suddenly she got sick and died. Hodja was beside himself with grief. His neighbors began talking that when a month ago Hodja's beloved wife died he did not grieve so much.

"Of course," answered Hodja, "when my wife died, everyone consoled me and said 'Don't cry, we will find you a new wife that is even better...' It's been two days since my cow died and nobody is coming to me and consoling me - "Don't cry, we will buy you a new cow that is even better...' So what else is left for me to do?

Love Odessa Style

2011-08-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite old songs - a young man proposing to his beloved...

(Translation mine - UPDATE: looks like he is singing a slightly different version than what I know so it is not an exact translation, but pretty close. That's how it is with folk music, I guess)

One day, along the avenue, Man'ka and I strolled.
A half burned out street lamp was lighting us the way.
And to make our walk a bit more fun
Into Bendersky's pub we decided to drop in.

I walk into the beer joint,
Sit down at the table,
And throw my hat down on the floor.
I ask Man'ka "What do you want to drink?"
And she tells me "My head hurts!"

I am not asking you which part of you hurts;
All I am asking is what you want to drink -
Pilsner beer, moonshine, wine,
A "fragrant violet" or nothing at all!

We each drank a beer and then another hundred,
And started chatting about this and that,
And when the pilsner completely messed up my head,
About my tender feelings I began to speak to her:

Stupid woman, what are you waiting for?
A better lad you won't find in the whole world!
Am I not clever, am I not handsome?
Or perhaps you don't care for the contents of my bank account?

Ugh, you prostitute, go and love yourself!
I will find another, lah lah lah lah lah
I will find another on Deribasovsky street
To hell with you lowlife, to hell with you c*nt!

Understanding the Germans

2011-08-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

Great article in "Vanity Fair":

Perhaps because they have such a gift for creating difficulties with non-Germans, the Germans have been on the receiving end of many scholarly attempts to understand their collective behavior. In this vast and growing enterprise, a small book with a funny title towers over many larger, more ponderous ones. Published in 1984 by a distinguished anthropologist named Alan Dundes, Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder set out to describe the German character through the stories that ordinary Germans liked to tell one another. Dundes specialized in folklore, and in German folklore, as he put it, “one finds an inordinate number of texts concerned with anality. Scheisse (shit), Dreck (dirt), Mist (manure), Arsch (ass).… Folksongs, folktales, proverbs, riddles, folk speech—all attest to the Germans’ longstanding special interest in this area of human activity.”

He then proceeded to pile up a shockingly high stack of evidence to support his theory. There’s a popular German folk character called der Dukatenscheisser (“The Money Shitter”), who is commonly depicted crapping coins from his rear end. Europe’s only museum devoted exclusively to toilets was built in Munich. The German word for “shit” performs a vast number of bizarre linguistic duties—for instance, a common German term of endearment was once “my little shit bag.” The first thing Gutenberg sought to publish, after the Bible, was a laxative timetable he called a “Purgation-Calendar.” Then there are the astonishing number of anal German folk sayings: “As the fish lives in water, so does the shit stick to the asshole!,” to select but one of the seemingly endless examples.

Dundes caused a bit of a stir, for an anthropologist, by tracking this single low national character trait into the most important moments in German history. The fiercely scatological Martin Luther (“I am like ripe shit, and the world is a gigantic asshole,” Luther once explained) had the idea that launched the Protestant Reformation while sitting on the john. Mozart’s letters revealed a mind, as Dundes put it, whose “indulgence in fecal imagery may be virtually unmatched.” One of Hitler’s favorite words was Scheisskerl (“shithead”): he apparently used it to describe not only other people but himself as well. After the war, Hitler’s doctors told U.S. intelligence officers that their patient had devoted surprising energy to examining his own feces, and there was pretty strong evidence that one of his favorite things to do with women was to have them poop on him. Perhaps Hitler was so persuasive to Germans, Dundes suggested, because he shared their quintessential trait, a public abhorrence of filth that masked a private obsession. “The combination of clean and dirty: clean exterior-dirty interior, or clean form and dirty content—is very much a part of the German national character,” he wrote.

Boby Lapointe Monday - Ta Katie t'a quitté

2011-08-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

Boby Lapointe was the master of the tongue twister...

This is a very cute song about his encounter with a Russian dancing girl...
An interesting snapshot of history - after losing the Russian Civil War in the 1920's, most of the "White" Russians came to Paris where they formed a large community - but as often happens to immigrants, those who used to be refined and important wound up taking jobs as barkeeps and dancing girls.

2011-07-20T20:16:00.000-07:00

The danger of search engines

2011-07-18T11:02:00.001-07:00

Something I've noticed lately that really makes me very worried. My cell phone YouTube search seems to filter out curse words. I don't know why. So that often times when I search for certain videos they don't show up. Now, I happen to know that they are there because of my browser search, but this to me brings up a very troubling situation.

Search engines have become so popular that if we seek something on the Internet and we don't find it, we assume it's not there. Now, despite Google's assurances otherwise, I don't automatically assume that Google is not evil.

How easy is it to manipulate world opinion by just tweaking search results? It's quite a scary thought. The ease of Internet search has allowed us to cede our control to these corporations. But in the end, this is becoming an Orwellian reality...

Scary.

Beer!

2011-07-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

This week I tried Gulden Draak and Piraat, and did not either. I suspect it's the high alcohol content.

So, I think this weekend it will be Dunkel Hefeweizens and Kolsch...

Also, found this video of a robot programmed by some Bavarian college students to pour a perfect weissbier...

The Business Plan of the Underpants Gnomes

2011-07-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

Seems like between ATBOTH and myself, we have a theme going....

Here is the ingenious business plan of the Underpants Gnomes

Milsch? Nein, nein, nein...

2011-07-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

Reading a Holocaust Book

2011-06-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

So, I had this Holocaust book sort of thrust upon me. I am usually not one to read Holocaust books, but somehow I wound up reading it.

It's not a very well written book. I don't think the author is a good writer. But the stories are compelling. The history of another small town in Galicia that I'd never heard of. Really the same story as all the other towns.

The book is basically a guy trying to figure out what happened to a part of his family during the war. Just a regular guy, just a regular family.

Here's something he says that I didn't know about (assuming it's true). Apparently, the constant shooting of women and children eventually got the to German soldiers and they were having problems doing it. That is one of the reasons why they had to switch from mass shootings to gassings.

I have to confess, as I was reading the stories of the degradations and the depravity of what the Nazis did to the poor people of this town, I started having sort of subliminal thoughts - maybe this is being exaggerated. It was really hard to believe that this could actually be true. But then I remembered of what happened at Abu Ghraib with the US soldiers and the Iraqi prisoners and I thought better.

Some Ska for Friday - Midnight Sushi

2011-06-24T13:53:00.001-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, the St Petersburg Ska Jazz Review

Anxiety

2011-06-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Was listening to an anxiety researcher on the radio. According to her, Americans have very high anxiety levels, much higher than say Nigerians, or Chinese, or Monterrey Mexicans despite what we would think would be much less stressful lives.

According to her the key differences are - the rugged individualist ethic of Americans, which means no reliance on community or extended family, and the abundance of choice with the corresponding stress of making the right choice.

"I Married A Jew" - Atlantic Magazine, Jan 1939

2011-06-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting article...

To me, one of the interesting things about is the fact that she keeps referring to Jews as a race. I wonder if this was prevalent in the 1930's...

Operation Barbarossa

2011-06-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

At 4 am on the morning of June 22, 1941 Hitler's army began the bombing of the Soviet Union, initiating Operation Barbarossa.

We are the optometrists that say "Ni"?

2011-06-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

The Cynical Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Middle East...

2011-06-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

Saudi Arabia
You have two cows with endless reserves of milk. Gorge them with grass, prevent them from interacting with bulls, and import South Asians to milk them.

Iran
You have two cows. You interrogate them until they concede they are Zionist agents. You send their milk to southern Lebanon and Gaza, or render it into highly enriched cream. International sanctions prevent your milk from being bought on the open market.

Syria
You have five cows, one of whom is an Alawite. Feed the Alawite cow well; beat the non-Alawite cows. Use the milk to finance your wife's shopping sprees in London.

[full article here]

Joseph Conrad - born in Berdichev

2011-06-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

Yet another weird thing I learned today...

Klezmer Hip-Hop

2011-06-17T08:46:00.001-07:00

Well, everyday I learn something new. Today I found about two things. The first was Edward VII's siege d'amour, but that's not important right now.

Apparently there is an interest among (gentile) hip-hop musicians to remix klezmer music:

Some examples:

The Kiss

2011-06-16T14:25:00.001-07:00

Music Monday - Klezmasters - Charabanc

2011-06-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

Henley kills

2011-06-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia...

In a 2009 interview, Plain Dealer music critic John Soeder asked Don Henley this about the lyrics:

On "Hotel California," you sing: "So I called up the captain / 'Please bring me my wine' / He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.'" I realize I'm probably not the first to bring this to your attention, but wine isn't a spirit. Wine is fermented; spirits are distilled. Do you regret that lyric?

Henley responded,

"Thanks for the tutorial and, no, you're not the first to bring this to my attention—and you're not the first to completely misinterpret the lyric and miss the metaphor. Believe me, I've consumed enough alcoholic beverages in my time to know how they are made and what the proper nomenclature is. But that line in the song has little or nothing to do with alcoholic beverages. It's a sociopolitical statement. My only regret would be having to explain it in detail to you, which would defeat the purpose of using literary devices in songwriting and lower the discussion to some silly and irrelevant argument about chemical processes."

Music Wednesday, Y'all - My Friend by Jimi Hendrix

2011-06-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

Is Google making us stupid

2011-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

This article caused a bit of a stir... It's interesting how people get so defensive about the Internet.

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were mentioning Zuckerberg as one of the greatest inventors of all time for coming up with Facebook. And I was just floored. Here is a guy that found a fantastic way to have people waste their free time, and he is being honored? It's like a guy being given a Nobel prize for inventing a more addictive cocaine formula...

So while the Chinese kids are being drilled in multivariate calculus, our best and brightest are playing farmville or sending virtual pina coladas to their friends, or tagging shit of Flickr or whatever... For the one guy who posts something creative on YouTube, there are ten thousand videos of cats.

An endless trip down the rabbit hole of following one link after the other... Wow, what a senseless waste of human life.

Crazy Story

2011-05-27T10:44:00.001-07:00

When I was a freshman in college I signed up for a Russian Lit course in Russian. When I got there, I realized that it was a mistake, as it was intended for students of Russian and not native speakers. However, I managed to befriend many of these guys and began hanging out with them. It was a fair trade - they got to practice Russian with a native speaker, I was a minor with access to lots of free beer. Most of these guys were there on the GI bill, having learned Russian at DLI, and now getting college credit for it - I could never drink them under the table despite my Russian bona fides, but that is beside the point... I also got to drink with the professors from the Dept of Slavic and Eastern European Languages.

So last week I was reading a New Yorker article about Joseph Brodsky and how his best friend wound up sleeping with his girlfriend while Brodsky was running away from the KGB to avoid being arrested. What actually happened is a bit murky as according to the best friend, she came into his room and basically seduced him. A whole sordid and dragged out affair...

Anyway, Brodsky was exiled to the US, became a US poet laureate (which means nobody has heard of him) and died of a heart attack about fifteen years ago. His best friend also emigrated to the US a few years after Brodsky, and wound up teaching Russian literature at an American university.

And was the drinking partner of a kid who had no idea who was sitting across the table from him.

Miscellanea

2011-05-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

Bought some Bols Genever and made myself a nice Tom Collins last night. Not bad. This is allegedly some formulation which is supposed to be more like the traditional oude jenever but formulated for "American tastes", whatever that means. Pretty sure it's kosher (at least according to some Australian beis din, and if it's good enough for the Aussies, it's good enough for me)

Also drank a big bottle of Rodenbach. Yep - still an awesome beverage - highly recommend it.

Stumbled upon a blog of a call girl in Moscow - I think it's authentic, but hard to tell.

The cruelest movie review I've ever read...

2011-05-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion. So much here is guaranteed to cause either offense or pain, starting with the nineteen-twenties leather football helmet that Natalie Portman suddenly dons for no reason, and rising to the continual horror of Ewan McGregor’s accent. “Another happy landing”—or, to be precise, “anothah heppy lending”—he remarks, as Anakin parks the front half of a burning starcruiser on a convenient airstrip. The young Obi-Wan Kenobi is not, I hasten to add, the most nauseating figure onscreen; nor is R2-D2 or even C-3PO, although I still fail to understand why I should have been expected to waste twenty-five years of my life following the progress of a beeping trash can and a gay, gold-plated Jeeves.

No, the one who gets me is Yoda. May I take the opportunity to enter a brief plea in favor of his extermination? Any educated moviegoer would know what to do, having watched that helpful sequence in “Gremlins” when a small, sage-colored beastie is fed into an electric blender. A fittingly frantic end, I feel, for the faux-pensive stillness on which the Yoda legend has hung. At one point in the new film, he assumes the role of cosmic shrink—squatting opposite Anakin in a noirish room, where the light bleeds sideways through slatted blinds. Anakin keeps having problems with his dark side, in the way that you or I might suffer from tennis elbow, but Yoda, whose reptilian smugness we have been encouraged to mistake for wisdom, has the answer. “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose,” he says. Hold on, Kermit, run that past me one more time. If you ever got laid (admittedly a long shot, unless we can dig you up some undiscerning alien hottie with a name like Jar Jar Gabor), and spawned a brood of Yodettes, are you saying that you’d leave them behind at the first sniff of danger? Also, while we’re here, what’s with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. “I hope right you are.” Break me a fucking give.

Pomplamoose - La Vie En Rose cover

2011-05-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

Another odd coincidence

2011-05-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was reading an article in the New Yorker on David Deutsch's work on quantum computing, and especially his embrace of the "Many Worlds" hypothesis. This is the idea that anything that could have happened but didn't, happened in a different universe, and anything that may happen, but doesn't, will happen in a different universe.

After Shabbos, for some odd reason which I can't recall, I googled the Codex Seraphinianus, and was led through a series of links to the Borges short story - "The Garden of Forking Paths" which I had not read before. In this story written in 1941, Borges describes a "many worlds" version of a novel. He had this idea 16 years before Hugh Everitt came up with his theory in 1957...

Gandhi's Assassination

2011-05-06T14:05:00.001-07:00

When Gandhi was shot, it was the fifth attempt on his life. I think he knew he was doomed to be killed. Perhaps this is why he refused to have bodyguards around him in his last days.

One thing I realized is how Gandhi's philosophy was and is hijacked by everyone without truly understanding what he was preaching. Perhaps this is why he gave up on life. I know I would if I was in the same boat.

Confessions of a Nihilist

2011-05-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

I have become a nihilist. That doesn't mean that I sit around in coffee shops all day in a black turtleneck. It's not an act of rebellion. It is just something I became.

Which really sucks for everyone. It sucks for my kids - I don't have the will to teach them any precepts - I don't believe in anything anymore.

It sucks for my wife.
It sucks for my job. I have no purpose and no motivation.

But how does one revert?

RSS

2011-05-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.

– Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, We, or Our Nation Defined, Nagpur: Bharat publications, 1939, p. 37.

Gandhi and the Jews

2011-05-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

Something I have been thinking about lately... Article in Prospect magazine.

Non Normative Lexicon Music Monday - Leningrad

2011-05-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

New(ish) music from my favorite band - Leningrad ( now with a new lead singer, the talented Yulia Kogan)

Digging

2011-04-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

There is some story or idea about a man who for a long time digs to get out of his prison cell, only to find that he escaped into a different prison cell. Anyone remember the source of this?

The origin of Easter

2011-04-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well, the little kids wanted to know what the point of Easter was. Frankly, I didn't feel like going into it, so I asked them what they thought it was about.

I think the winning hypothesis is - "The Easter bunnies decided to attack the regular bunnies with big colored eggs. The Easter bunnies won, and this is why people celebrate Easter".

Seder @ my house :)

2011-04-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

Chag Kasher v'Sameach, y'all...

The many faces of e-k

2011-04-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

One of the things I have been struggling with lately is understanding my true nature (assuming I have one).

I don't know if this is true of many others, but I pretty much feel like there are two people inside of me with very different ideas about what I want out of life, how I should act, what I consider right and wrong....

What is confusing me is partly a confusion about whether there is something which is a "true nature" which cannot be changed, and hence acting differently is going against this true nature, or whether people can mold themselves into whatever they wish to be, or perhaps something they shouldn't be.

A humorous miscommunication between a mystic and a logician

2011-04-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, "See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That's what fish really enjoy!"

Huizi said, "You're not a fish — how do you know what fish enjoy?"

Zhuangzi said, "You're not me, so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"

Huizi said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know what you know. On the other hand, you're certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don't know what fish enjoy!"

Zhuangzi said, "Let's go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao."

Music Monday - The Peanut Vendor

2011-03-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

A classic of musica Cubana. This is the original by the Havana Casino Orchestra...

Music Monday: Bluegrass Speed Metal - Hayseed Dixie plays Ace of Spades

2011-03-21T09:10:00.001-07:00

Combining my love of speed metal and bluegrass:

Itamar was a Mossad inside job

2011-03-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

The Itamar murders of course rattled my psyche... I was reading some Russian Israeli reports on how this is reported in the Arab mainstream media. It seems like initially, the reports were very minimalist. For example, they would say that "five settlers were killed", without reporting that three of them were children.

As the photos and other details began to leak out even into the Arab media, the responses on the various forums hosted by the Arabic media sites varied. A few were outraged - "God, why the children? This is horrible" posted one commenter. However, many became convinced that this could not have been done by Muslims and had to be Mossad, in order to blame and provoke the Palestinians. One commenter posted "The Koran prohibits the murder of women and children. The goal of this crime is to make the Palestinians appear guilty".

This of course on the heels of the Mossad bringing down the twin towers and releasing man eating sharks into the Red Sea...

Death in Context II

2011-03-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

From a New Yorker article reviewing a book about Mao Tse Tung.

A great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants. Amartya Sen has argued that “despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former.” Describing China’s early lead over India in health care, literacy, and life expectancy, Sen wrote that “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.”

Reading another article in the New Yorker about the BP oil spill. One of the people interviewed pointed out how the images of the pelicans and fish covered with oil and sludge seem to be a rallying point against the evil corporations who are willfully destroying our environment. Yet, over four hundred thousand birds are killed each year by wind turbines...

Crispix brachas

2011-03-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

Say you're staring at a bowl of Crispix cereal and you're not sure what bracha to make on it... Star-K to the rescue...

*Recite Mezonos and eat the darker side (rice) first. Then recite Haodama and then eat the lighter side (corn).

Shit

2011-03-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

Every morning on my way to work I carefully navigate through piles of shit on the sidewalk.

Are we living in a third world country? I am walking through the heart of the financial district in downtown Chicago, and there is excrement piled all over the sidewalk. Often, it is not even contained in piles, but smeared all over the asphalt by unfortunate pedestrians who came before me, not as vigilant as they should have been.

I am not even sure if it came from an animal or a human. I'd hate to meet the dog that could produce such a pile of crap - it must be a truly Baskervillian beast.

Music Thursday - You Only Want Me 'Cause You Want My Sister

2011-03-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

A great song by "Evelyn Evelyn"

Vader Eunt Domus?

2011-02-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

Auntie Chaya and the mysterious package from Shanghai

2011-02-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

Seems like I've been reading about Chinese topics lately, especially on certain blogs,
which got me into a Chinese mood. Unfortunately, Chinese culture is completely foreign to me - so the best I can do is offer this little song...

It is a funny little tune with a mottled history. Originally, there was a song in 1920's Odessa which had a bunch of verses like:

Good morning Auntie Chaya,
There's a package for you from Shanghai [ Shanghai rhymes with Chaya in Russian]

It then went on saying good morning to a bunch of people with very Jewish names, making up a rhyme to finish each couplet.

Then, in the late 1960's a couple of famous Soviet underground musicians improvised on this song. They added music from an old foxtrot called "Josef", and came up with a story about a guy named Yozif (actually based on a real relative of theirs), who is suffering from painful corns and for some reason is really on the outs with Auntie Chaya.

They also elaborated on the refrain by adding a couple of lines to the end. The meaning is somewhat mysterious.

Good morning Auntie Chaya,
There's a package for you from Shanghai,
And in this package are three Chinamen,
Three Chinamen painting eggs.

So what's this about Chinamen painting eggs? Perhaps it is just a nonsense rhyme. Perhaps it is a euphemism for another expression - "eggs" in Russian, as in Yiddish, can also mean "testicles", and there is an expression to "scratch your testicles", meaning to sit around idly.Or perhaps it is actually referring to the ancient Chinese art of egg painting, called Eglomise in French.

Anyway, here is the song. Enjoy...

Charlie Mingus - Moanin'

2011-02-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

It's been too long since my last music post :) We need some classic jazz around here...

Solve terrorism - kill them all !

2011-02-14T14:45:00.000-08:00

A very disturbing article in the New Yorker about the Sri Lankan government campaign against the Tamil Tigers. Depending on who you ask, the Tigers were either freedom fighters or terrorists, but in either case, the government finally decided it had enough and so this is what it did.

It basically kicked out any journalist or NGO etc out of the north of the country and then proceeded to bomb the crap out of the Tamils - Tigers and civilians alike. It actually created "no fire zones" and told the civilians to seek refuge there and then bombed the crap out of the "no fire zones". So this is how they won the war.

A couple of things that are worth pondering that arise out of this...

One is that this strategy has one unanimous admiration from many military commanders in the West - it seems to be the most effective way of rooting out counter-insurgency.

Two - when the Western powers that be tried to set up various tribunals and investigations into possible war crimes, etc. Sri Lanka basically told them to go fuck themselves. They basically see China as the world power in the region, and could care less about what the USA or the UN think about their actions. Needless to say, China did not have strong objections to their methods of handling the Tamil Tigers.

Three - of course the hypocrisy of the world in ignoring this and standing by silently while at the same time treating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the next Holocaust.

If meat is murder, I'm a serial killer...

2011-02-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

This song will probably make my buddy BOTH pass out!

The Karaite Kenesa in Kiev

2011-02-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

Lately I've found myself learning about the architecture of Kiev, the city where I was born. To my surprise I found that one very famous building is the Karaite Kenesa (Synagogue?) which was built at the end of the 19th century. The project was funded by the brothers Solomon and Moisei Kogen, wealthy Karaites who came to Kiev from Crimea and founded a tobacco/cigarette factory which made them a fortune.

Apparently, Kiev was home to about 800 Karaites at the time. How they came there I don't know. I surmise that they came from Crimea to work in the Kogens' factory.

When I have some leisure time, I'd like to learn more about these Karaites. I am especially curious about their relationship with the non-Jewish world as well as the Rabbanite Jews. If I remember correctly, the Karaites were not bothered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, which is very puzzling to me. Did the Nazis only have a problem with Talmudic Jews? Clearly the Karaites were non-Aryan, they spoke Hebrew, and they maintained similar religious practices to the Rabbanites. Why would the Nazis make such a fine point distinction?

Wake up and smell the cat food in your bank account

2011-02-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

An oldie but a goodie by They Might Be Giants

Torah Prison

2011-02-03T12:12:00.001-08:00

Apparently, there is a prison named Torah in the middle of Cairo. I wonder what the etymology of that name is...

Snowpocalypse

2011-02-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

Sums it up pretty nicely...

Death in context

2011-01-31T09:08:00.000-08:00

After the bombing of the Moscow airport, I watched their government warn of the retaliation for the terrorist act. So I had this thought about how as human beings certain contexts make us freak out about death, while others leave us completely unperturbed. The fact that thirty some people died as a result of a bomb freaks everyone out, yet had it been a bus crash, it would not have made the news. By targeting rampant alcoholism, environmental pollution, poor healthcare, etc, Russia could probably save an order of magnitude more lives - but they don't focus on that.

Funny.

What an odd byline...

2011-01-31T07:39:00.000-08:00

... for this article.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist, medical director and cousin of President Obama. He blogs daily at miltonwolf.com.

Hong Kong Mambo

2011-01-25T15:41:00.000-08:00

In honor of fellow blogger ATBOTH's guest post on the LoveLoveChina blog...

Circle of Life Weekend

2011-01-17T08:16:00.001-08:00

Lots of births, bris, shiva calls, funerals. Another Holocaust survivor dead. Stories of close calls. Names of obscure Polish towns... Hamakom yenachem atchem...

Bossa Nova Monday - Desafinado

2011-01-17T08:12:00.001-08:00

If you listen to one Brazilian piece of music, it should be this...

So a couple of Jews decide to hijack a plane

2011-01-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

On June 15, 1970 a certain Jewish baby boy was born in Kiev. On the same day, a group of desperate Soviet Zionists attempt to hijack a plane and fly it to Israel. The attempt failed and they were arrested on the tarmac. The leaders were sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted after an international outcry. (Full story)

Did my parents know about this as they were taking me home from the hospital? Was it discussed in the Soviet press to set an example or was it completely hushed up to prevent others from getting any ideas? Does anyone remember this act today or has it been relegated to the cob-webbed archives of history?

Not in Kansas Anymore

2011-01-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

"The nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are."

L. Frank Baum, editorial in the The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, December 20, 1890

"Putin is always right"

2011-01-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

Wow, sometimes life makes me do a double take. With the trial of Khodorkovsky in the news, I saw mention of "Churov's Law". I had to look it up, since I'd never heard of it before. Here's what I found out.

Vladimir Churov is a Russian official and politician who became famous when he pronounced to a bunch of journalists - "Putin is always right!"

It took me a few seconds to realize why this slogan sounded so oddly familiar to me. High School English - George Orwell, "Animal Farm" - "Napoleon is always right".

Mr. Orwell - I take my hat off to you.

The Pit

2011-01-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

This past week was kinda hard for me... It started when I stumbled upon a video on YouTube. It's a clip from a documentary by a man, a fairly famous Russian Jewish poet, who went back to Belarus to search for his roots.

He is singing at a memorial to the Jews who were slaughtered in Minsk during the first couple years of the war. The place is called "The Pit". To my surprise, I hadn't heard of this place before. For some reason, when I looked at the video, I assumed he was in Babiy Yar. But I had been to Babiy Yar about the same time this clip was filmed, and I did not recall seeing the sculptures descending into the pit... Well, I guess there are more places where Jews were massacred than I was aware of.

The song touched me deeply. As did the video. I know that the people standing there, listening, with the bouquets in their hands, are there remembering their kin, and the suffering, and the sorrow. Previously, I made a promise to myself not to translate poetry and lyrics - it just doesn't work and it sounds terrible in translation, but I can't seem to stop myself.

My cheek leaning against my hand,
Tired from life's misery,
I look wistfully at a snapshot,
The year is 1920.
Dust whirls over the shtetl,
Cherry blossoms are falling,
My mom's name is Rakhil,
My mom is twelve years old.

Under a green carpet of grass,
My mom now lies,
The flimsy shield of David,
Alas did not protect her,
And whichever of my relatives,
I happen to recall,
Is either getting old in foreign lands,
Or is lying killed in a ditch.

Completing its scheduled run,
The sun is melting behind the hill,
The troubled 21st century
is completing its second year.
The tall grass is drying out,
The Old City is dressed in darkness,
My granddaughter's name is Rakhil,
My granddaughter is twelve years old.

May she be serenaded by spring songs,
May tears pass her by,
And staring directly at me,
Are my mom's eyes.
Lord, forgive us our sins,
And keep our children from harm,
My granddaughter's name is Rakhil,
My granddaughter is twelve years old.

Memento Mori Speech from "The Dybbuk"

2010-12-29T07:17:00.001-08:00

From dust you came -
To dust you will return.
For what, o foolish man -
is your strife and your sacrifice?
Your restless activity and constant striving.
In the end your bones will be carried to the grave.
And praying and weeping will be of no avail.
Everything which lives must finally pass away...
Though you have your joys, soon also you will weep-
For the life of man is like unto the DANCE OF DEATH.

The Dance of Death from "The Dybbuk"

2010-12-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

What an awesome clip. The music is wonderful - to me it sounds like another very familiar piece of music, though I can't quite put my finger on it - maybe a mixture of Prokofiev and Saint-Saëns. The choreography is also amazing - especially the skeleton, who is played by the choreographer herself, Judith Berg.

Apparently, the toytentanz, the dance of death, was a traditional dance at Eastern European Jewish weddings as a sort of memento mori... Similar in purpose to the breaking of the glass...

John Henry Fusili - Silence

2010-12-23T20:48:00.001-08:00

Tis the season

2010-12-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

If I have to endure Christmas music, I wish it would all be like this!

Frozen by ideology

2010-12-21T14:04:00.001-08:00

There was an interesting exchange between the head of the NYC livery/cab drivers union and the leading civil rights leaders in the city after he called for "racial profiling" on the people getting into cabs. This after a cab driver was shot by a robber.

What's fascinating to me is that instead of hearing the message this guy was trying to deliver, the Al Sharptons and such cannot get past this guy's communication problem and so can only respond in the cliche rhetoric of calling him a racist.

This is funny as the guy is both a Hispanic and (part)black. Apparently he has also done quite a bit trying to help poor people in his community.

Here are some of the articles, especially here where he tries to clarify what he is saying...

And what he is saying is basically - in bad neighborhoods, don't pick up guys that are wearing hoodies where you can't see their face. Don't pick up guys that look suspicious or like they may not be the most upstanding members of society. Err on the side of caution. The race point he makes actually doesn't make sense except to say that many people that live in poor, black neighborhoods are black or Hispanic. So, frankly, the profiling can't really be race based anyway...

Tango Argentino - El Choclo

2010-12-21T09:41:00.001-08:00

The foundation for much of Odessa street music...

Elohim, shmor al ima...

2010-12-06T10:24:00.001-08:00

It's so amazing to me what you find on the Internet. Here I found a video of a woman singing a song in Hebrew about a boy who writes a letter to God asking him to keep his family safe.

I'd love to find out where this clip is from and the story behind it. To me, it is truly bizarre, because the Hebrew is actually a very loose translation of a story that started in Soviet Russia many decades before:

In 1928, a four year old boy was taught the meaning of the word "Always". And when he understood the concept, he said:

Let there always be sun,
Let there always be sky,
Let there always be Mommy,
Let there always be I.

This little poem was captured by a journalist, who wrote about it in a magazine, which in turned made it into a book by a famous Russian writer, which in turn made it into a famous Soviet poster, which in turn, in 1962, made it into a very popular song.

But while this is a fascinating story of a proto-meme, what's bizarre is unlike the other singers in this clip who faithfully translate the words into German, French, etc, why did the Hebrew translation change the meaning - why did they bring God into it and remove the entire point of the song, which is talking about the notion of eternity. It doesn't look like the Hebrew singers in the video are religious...

I can't resist - classic Odessa music

2010-12-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

A great song about Chaim's shop...

The lyrics:

Once upon a time there lived Chaim,
Noticed by no one,
Chaim bought old junk.
Once upon a time there lived Chaim,
Noticed by no one,
Chaim sold alter schmattes.

Oh what a wonder it was!
Oh how exciting it was!
Often in friendly conversation his neighbors would tell him:
- Chaim, enough, lock up your shop for the night.

In Odessa lived Chaim,
Noticed by no one,
And his wife gives birth each year.
Sometimes she gives birth to two, sometimes to three,
Sometimes she gives birth to four at once.

Oh what a wonder it was!
Oh how exciting it was!
Often in friendly conversation his neighbors would tell him:
- Chaim, enough, lock up your shop for the night.

He died, poor Chaim,
Noticed by no one,
And his wife gives birth each year.
Sometimes she gives birth to two, sometimes to three,
Sometimes she gives birth to four at once.

Oh what a wonder it was!
Oh how exciting it was!
Seems like Chaim is continuing his business from beyond the grave...
- Chaim, enough, lock up your shop for the night.

Seems like Chaim is continuing his business from beyond the grave...
- Chaim, schlemazl, genug schoen,
lock up your shop for the night.

So, I bought an Android phone

2010-11-30T15:05:00.000-08:00

and joined the 21 century...

A mouthful...

2010-11-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

Ironic

2010-11-24T13:29:00.000-08:00

My sister is married to a Catholic.
My first cousin is married to a Muslim.
My second cousins: one married to an Episcopalian, one to a Russian Jew who hates Judaism and Jewish culture, one dating an Irish Catholic, one dating anybody as long as they're not Jewish...

It is somewhat ironic that the people in my parents' generation in my family emigrated from the Soviet Union, so they can freely be Jews in America, yet America seems to be the undoing of their Jewishness.

Bacteria Are US - A Novel Perspective

2010-11-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I read something that seems obvious in retrospect, but sounds so bizarre upon first glance. From the Nov 22,2010 New Yorker article on fermented foods - "Nature's Spoils":

"There is no such thing as an individual," Lynn Margulis, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me recently. "What we see as animals are partly just integrated sets of bacteria." Nearly all the DNA in our bodies belongs to microorganisms: they outnumber our cells nine to one. They process the nutrients in our guys, produce the chemicals that trigger sleep, ferment the sweat on our skin and the glucose in our muscles. [] They work with the immune system to mediate chemical reactinos and drive out the most common infections. Even our own cells are kept alive by mitochonidria - the tiny microbial engines in our cytoplasm. Bacteria are us.

Tentacle Grape - The most delicious hentai soda on the market!

2010-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

V'ha-mayvin yaavin :)

I'm sure that rejection during champagne snowballs has nothing to do with the fact that I am now a big fat dyke

2010-11-18T09:30:00.000-08:00

Funny what you stumble across on the web....

Sometimes I wonder...

2010-11-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Wandering Minds

2010-11-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

A US study out Thursday suggests that people spend about half of their time thinking about being somewhere else, or doing something other than what they are doing, and this perpetual act of mind-wandering makes them unhappy.

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind," wrote psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University in the journal Science.

Source

No, it's not St. Denis

2010-11-10T13:33:00.001-08:00

Poland builds world's tallest Jesus statue...

Olá, bom dia!

2010-11-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

Once in a while, something breaks the daily monotony... Like walking a mile to the Brazilian Consulate to pick up a visa for a friend.

The man in front of me in line was dressed in the robes of a religious order. Some type of Orthodox Christian. At first, I thought he was a priest, but he was not wearing a large cross on his chest, as is typical of the Orthodox priests. Perhaps he was a monk or a deacon. He had a small scarlet Orthodox three bar cross embroidered on his hat. He spoke unaccented American English. I wonder what brings him to Brazil.

There's a small chance of me heading down to São Paulo... Not looking forward to flying 10 hours to land in the same time zone...

Zaz Music Friday (Ha!) - Prends Garde à Ta Langue

2010-11-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

Do you like jazz manouche? But of course, you like jazz manouche!

A Tatar tale

2010-11-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

Long, long ago two mullahs and a peasant set off on the road. They went along and stopped at an inn. Once they had stopped, they cooked porridge. They made a hole in the porridge and set a great deal of butter in it. When they sat down to eat, one of the mullahs picked up his spoon.

"The path of shariah law goes this way," he said, and scooped the butter in the middle onto his own portion. The second mullah watched him do this.

"Our father’s mill used to turn in this direction," the second mullah said, and he scooped the butter onto his portion.

The peasant sat watching this and said:

"The world, mullahs, is constantly changing," he said. "In the future, the world might turn upside down like so," and he mixed the bowl of porridge up. The mullahs couldn’t fool the peasant.

Well then, on the second day they again stopped somewhere to spend the night. They had cooked a goose. In the evening as they laid down to sleep, they said to themselves:

"Whoever has the best dream can eat the goose tomorrow."

In the morning they got up and began to tell each other about their dreams. One of the mullahs went first:

"In my dream I was wearing a green robe and a pure white turban, and I had set off on the hajj," he said.

They thought this dream was pretty good. Then the second mullah spoke:

"I was a great swan," he said. "And I flew off towards the Qiblah."

This dream was also pretty good, they thought. Then they turned to the peasant.

"One of you wore a green robe and a pure white turban and set off on the hajj," said the peasant. "The other flew off as a swan. So I thought, well, they’re not going to come back right away, and I was afraid the goose was just going to spoil, so I ate it and that was that."

Washington Insiders

2010-11-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

Nothing amuses me more when I hear politicians promise that once they get elected, they will challenge the "establishment". They label themselves "outsiders" who will take on the "machine".

The people are either fools or more likely just liars saying what they think is likely to get them elected. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that the only way to get things done is to become an "insider". You do favors for others with the expectation that others do favors for you. You get "pork" for your state. You become part of the old boys network.

Any "outsider" if they actually tried something would easily get stonewalled. The only way it could possibly be accomplished is if there was an overwhelming majority of "outsiders".

Joe Dassin -Marie Jeanne

2010-11-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Melanie Safka on songs

2010-10-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

"'Brand New Key' I wrote in about fifteen minutes one night. I thought it was cute; a kind of old thirties' tune. I guess a key and a lock have always been Freudian symbols, and pretty obvious ones at that. There was no deep serious expression behind the song, but people read things into it. They made up incredible stories as to what the lyrics said and what the song meant. In some places, it was even banned from the radio. My idea about songs is that once you write them, you have very little say in their life afterward. It's a lot like having a baby. You conceive a song, deliver it, and then give it as good a start as you can. After that, it's on its own. People will take it any way they want to take it."

More bridges

2010-10-27T09:37:00.001-07:00

Bobbie Gentry crossing the famous, now defunct, "Tallahatchie Bridge" near Money, Miss.

Despair

2010-10-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

Reading "A Distant Mirror"...

It seems like if there is one word to summarize the 14th century it would be "despair". The Black Death, a mini Ice Age, the devastation of the Hundred Year War. One thing that is especially relevant to today's world was the rising recognition of the hypocrisy, especially in the failures of the mechanisms of society to deal with these crises, that ultimately made Europe transition out of the Middle Ages into the religious Reformation and cultural Renaissance.

The hypocrisy was present everywhere. In the Church, where despite preaching poverty and chastity, the corruption was rampant. In secular society, where despite the notions of chivalry and feudal responsibility, the knights and nobility debauched themselves at the expense of the peasants, consistently failing to live up to their responsibilities of protecting them. Once again, the parallels to today's world are scary. Perhaps, just as the crises of the Middle Ages finally precipitated a radical social change, the same will happen today.

Driving in through the beastly traffic this morning, I had the opportunity to avail myself of the barrage of attack ads on the radio - elections are just a few days away. Sometimes I wonder if others recognize all this blather for the bullshit that it is, and just cynically wade through the muck or whether people truly are swayed by this rubbish. All these ads sponsored by "Americans against Food Taxes" and other populist sounding organizations, when in reality they are just fronts for big corporate interests. I am beginning to sound like a conspiracy theorist - but I really am beginning to suspect that those guys are onto something...

Having left the Soviet Union as a kid, I didn't experience first hand the Communist propaganda machine, but nonetheless it left an indelible mark on my psyche. The homo sovieticus learned that anything that was said by official mouthpieces was a lie, and in fact the opposite was true. You had to be an idiot not to realize that. Is the same true in this country as well? The only difference being that instead of the Party, the message is controlled by a bunch of corporate oligarchs?

Oliver Stone, where are you?

Sur le pont d'Avignon

2010-10-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

Reading Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror"...

The Papal Palace @ Avignon