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Thu, 23 Dec 2010 07:34:32 +0200

Chuck Norris only gets stuck in traffic during rush hour.

Cookies

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:46:06 +0200

Chuck Norris once made cookies that were so good that other people commented upon them while eating them. Some people even had two.

A response to the latest posting of the evil overlord, JH....

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:45:56 +0300

A response to the latest posting of the evil overlord, JH. Sometimes only a video can truly encompass what needs to be said.

Even if his post is serious.

The City of Stone

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:46:56 +0300

Disclaimer: It is not easy for me to be serious. That said, the occasion called for it. In all likelihood this post will be removed in the next 48 hours. Have an easy fast.

For the past couple of years, I have had the unique opportunity to take in Eicha while sitting on the promenade in Yemin Moshe. The promenade is a stone throws south-west of Jerusalem’s Old City and sitting on the floor, made of Jerusalem stone still warm from the afternoon sun, you can see the walls of the Old City, lit up and glowing in the dark, throwing off a tangibly vibrant aura into the air.

I explain this because I have rarely found myself able to connect to Tisha Ba’av. Clearly, the destruction of both of the Temples were landmark milestones in our nation’s history; defining moments which dictated how eons of generations would lead their lives. But it is difficult for me to not feel somewhat disconnected from the whole thing. And inevitability, the pent-up frustrations starts to bubble up as I am reminded once again that we are a nation which lives in the past but fails to see the present.

But this time I realized something else. With the words of the Eicha chanted behind me, I found myself staring at the city walls. At the pools of shadows casted by the ancient imperfections. At the archaic ramparts which once held warriors and now play host to tourists. At the trimmed grass growing around what was once the city’s moat. And it began to dawn on me that this was, and still is, the heart of the nation. But it remains flawed. It is the heart of stone; a foundation, a material witness to what we once were and what we still are. But like a true heart, it has no purpose without the lifeblood to pump.

At this point, I departed a bit from the traditional sense of Tisha Ba’av. The lifeblood I was looking for is not the Temple. The Temple was also an extension of the stones. What was important was the People. Not the priests, not the farmers, not the porters. The existence of the entire nation as a whole, as a living, breathing, cohesive and united entity.

And that’s what I decided this Tisha Ba’av meant for me. Living in Israel and traveling between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem every day, I get the chance to see Israelis from every walk of life. And I remain amazed by what we have created here. Within the desert, we have built a shining mirage, a testament to our tenacity, our devotion and our ingenuity. We have formed a democracy which is the envy of the Arab nations. We are global leaders in the technology which forms the nucleus of the world’s development. From humble and troubled roots, facing persecution with hunched shoulders and self-deprecating attitudes, we have grown into giants.

But still, we remain fragmented, torn by our inability to make the slightest effort to engage each other. And thus, we deny ourselves the ability to rise higher. We have built ourselves a city from stone but cannot open the gates.

As Eicha says:

“He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.”

And so, tonight I came out with my own personal revelation. Our strength as a nation lies in our flexibility, our ingenuity and our history. But as strong as we each are, pulling in opposite directions will bring us nowhere. We lack a common direction, a direction which no compass can determine but which can only be discovered by truly engaging our fellow man.

And pared against the mighty power of a nation prepared to return to their city, the stone prison which holds us captive will tremble and fall.

Kilts or leather pants are fine. Lipstick? Not so much.

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:19:11 +0300

Groups.

Now stop before you get excited, you bubble-gum cracking, MTV on an IV and braces-weilding 14 year-old. I am not talking about Facebook. Nor will I unless I am forced to by a herd of Dutch midgets dancing traditionally while hurling machetes at me. I am talking about social constructs which rise like skyscrapers through this disgrace we call humanity.

Any number of elements can unite a writhing mass of people into a group. Those middle-age guys who don Pink Floyd shirts are a group. So are older guys from Pink Floyd who make out with middle-age guys named Don without shirts(albeit a much smaller group).

I would like to begin with a much larger group. The word “disaster” is thrown around all too much lately. Swine Flu. Al Qaeda. Norway.

What I speak of is an endemic of global proportions. While I am proud to dub myself a commuter, an urban warrior of sorts, I am exposed to this group on the bus nearly every day.

Without further adieu, I present to your their profile:

Hairdo: Hair slicked back with a can of Pam

Odor: Decomposing Desperation by Calvin Klein

Intelligence: Lower than asparagus in sour cream

Seat: ALWAYS RIGHT NEXT TO ME

No name exists for them so I am forced to create one. Bus Inhibiting Traumatizing Contemptible Has-beens. (Eytan and the Acronym for the win). What annoys me the most, more than an upside-down hung roll of toilet paper or a dead MP3 battery on the beginning of a roadtrip, is their tendency to blather on the phone as they ride, turning my busride into a hellish journey during which I can only contemplate shoving their heads into meat grinders as I cackle hellishly and eat Rice Krispie Treats (I just love those things).

I bring this up not because I need people to rant to. I bring this up because social groups are created by the mere existence of similar people. Their existence in no way justifies them wasting the oxegyn on my planet, nor does it make them legitimate. And so, I say to you oh Bastard of the Blog, oh Imbecile of the Internet (aka Jon), the fact that the term metrosexual exists doesn’t validate it (view his post here, if you feel like retching violently). You can dress nicely without spending a full trimester in stores. Your skin will survive without ladies’ handcream (we still have the same leather couches my grandmother owned - I guarantee the cows did not use Neutrogena). And if David Hasselhoff can wear a clip-on tie, so can you.

As for chart of the day, I give you you a chart delineating the word “middle”. As in…I am in the middle of bashing Jon and will not finish in the near future.

The Importance of Being Not Moronic

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:09:00 +0300

The afternoon sun pierced lazily through the August afternoon, playing shadows over a hot sidewalk littered with cotton candy sticks and dropped ticket studs. I wandered through the zoo, lost but for just a second, not caring, so busy was I concentrating on the life-like behavior of the primates, blissfully ignorant as they chattered away between themselves, their hands combing through their mates’ hair as they ate their sunflower seeds and discussed their plans to mosey on down to the soccer field, in this case, a field belonging to Beitar Yerushalayim, after they finished watching the monkeys peel bananas.

*End recollection*

The vigilant reader, which you no doubt are, will realize what I did there. I conjured up a scene and forced the reader to pick a specific mindset, after which I rapidly turned the scene around, in the process snidely insulting an entire socio-economic group. Yes. I burned them. Which brings me to my main subject for this evening. Robert Burns. Known by a number of names, including “The Ploughman Poet” or “The Bard” (according to Wikipedia), the “Saviour of Scotland” (according to this site), “That Guy Who Kept On Winking At Us Until We Realized He Had A Tick” (according to Sara O’Conner ) or Ralph (according to that old drunk guy who calls anyone Ralph until you buy him a Happy Meal). Burns may be best known for his quote of:

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”

According to the story, Burns, a farmer by trade and a righteous dude by night, was plowing and accidentally plowed through a mouse nest, built by a mouse who was unable to expect this. There are a number of possible conclusions which could be drawn.

Burns was a sick and depraved man who loved his Beef Jerky with a little special mouse sauce. Needless to say, this conclusion, while entertaining, is wrong.
Sometimes you should plan a little better. This is a good conclusion to draw. If you are a goddamn Sesame Street character who just shot up on super-happy-unicorn pills.
The mouse had gambled too much, went into debt at the Cheese Man, who started running the juice, so the mouse built his house right in front of a plow cause he wanted to kill himself. His wife took out insurance policy but was killed by the plow and the mouse, who was busy getting drunk at the church mouse strip joint, collected and lived like a king.

Clearly, C is the right answer. And thus we come to the daily Jon-a-Burn. Jon, cleary concerned that people think too highly of him, has gone out of his way to ooze stupidity in a way that would leave even Lindsy Lohan jealous. His most recent posting, or brain flush, as I have come to call it, focused on:

Okay, so this leads me to the topic at hand - how drunk should one get at a social gathering of “eclectic” people?

No, Jon. This is not a good topic. This is known as over-thinking. Excessive thinking. Too much planning. You know where they planned a lot? In World War Two. And 22 million people died. Jon, stop trying to kill 22 million people. Sometimes, you just have to let it go. Live a little. As Calvin once sagely pointed out in a Calvin and Hobbes strip - “Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.” And pointless can’t be planned (go ahead, followers. Quote me on that.)

As for the chart of the day. Enjoy. And respect me for I managed to do this on Windows 98. Which is liking flossing with a rope ladder. Not easy.

Why I Do What I Do (and you should too)

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:11:10 +0300

Henry Kissinger. My, what an illustrious name to shout from the proverbial heights of this here online web log. Ahem. Blog (look at me, I’m hip and cool!). In a recent interview with Der Speigal, Henry Kissinger, a cynical politician so old he used to babysit Yoda, said “There are kinds of evil that need to be condemned and destroyed”.

And thus was born the purpose of this blog. Jon’s blog is evil. It is malicious and heinous, and while Swine Flu predates it, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jon’s blog was so evil that it created a time machine in order to disseminate the flu in the past. Cause that’s just the kind of thing his blog would do.

I realize that while this may be fun to just bash him, it wouldn’t exactly qualify as journalism. So without further adieu, I present to you my mission statement:

Expose the evils of Jon’s post. At least one evil per post. Follow it by a false fact which amuses me. Not for me nor you…but for the world. Because if the world doesn’t know, who does?

And so we begin. Jon has recently decided that in an effort to increase readership, he should begin to bash sectors of society who are not only on a lower socio-economic level but who also work hard to keep us safe and warm as we gorge ourselves on the byproducts of capitalism. Jon’s recent posting blatantly stated:

“So don’t give me an option here either. I am more than willing to pay for the service [security guards - E.B], I just don’t want the breakdown - let me enjoy my T-Bone, without the gory details”.

If this was an election commercial, my response would be something along these lines.

Hot dogs. Cotton candy. Leather body suits. All of these shout freedom. Because all of us love freedom, don’t we?

The answer is no.

Jon Hauser does not love freedom.

Jon Hauser knows that freedom relies on security guards. But he doesn’t want to know about them.

Jon Hauser doesn’t like the gory details.

Jon Hauser fries kittens on olive oil.

Why do you fry the kittens, Jon? Is it because they like FREEDOM?!

Stop the kitten frying. Stop the Osama Bin Jon. Stop parking in my parking spot.

I think that says it all. As for the interesting statistic of the day, recent number crunching has allowed me to create the following graph, which tracks a number of events over Jon’s first two posts, as well as projects the future based on these trends. A grim future indeed.

Thank you for reading.

Let's Not Get Crazy

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:06:00 +0300

In order to understand some of these posts, you should probably read Jon’s blog first. I refer you to this pit of despair not to condone it but in accordence with Sun Tzu’s belief that you should keep you friends close but your enemies closer.