What do you write about when you have nothing to write about?

Well, you could write about the weather. Slightly cloudy, with a cool western breeze and a slight chill coming up as evening falls. Blah, blah.

You could write about your physical and mental state. Ouch, my head hurts. Oh dear, what a strange day. Bitch, bitch, moan, moan.

You could write about something random. Gosh, isn’t Avenue Q just an amazing musical? So funny, so daring, so damnably catchy! It’s really something that you can listen to over and over, and seeing it in the theater is even more incredible. Gush, gush, gush.

You could write about politics. GOD, Sarah Palin is stupid. I mean, she really thinks she’s able to be the vice president of a whole country? She thinks that women shouldn’t have a choice about abortions, and yet states that her daughter made the CHOICE to keep her baby! Rant, rant, rave, rave.

You can write about anything. Just as long as you still write.

Harcore Football Fan – In My Own Way

Since meeting Sir B. F. and becoming more interested in soccer – fine, fine, FOOTBALL – I’ve become even more aware of my gender’s stereotypes. Mostly because I’ve been them. I’ve opened up Sir B. F.’s eyes to a whole different aspect of the sports world.

For example, I remember what Newcastle wear because they look like prisoners and it amuses me. I recognize Tevez from his awesome hair and totally wicked badass scar. I enjoy giggling over the men jumping all over each other and gripping each other’s faces and asses. Giggs I remember because I feel sorry for him for being “ancient” in football years. Ronaldo I laugh at constantly, both out of delight for his amazing dancing footwork and for his choice of wardrobe while off the field.

If I have mortified anyone with my blatant girlish attitude towards serious matter such as these, all I can say is TEEHEE.

Happy New Year, Jews of the World!

It’s 9:47PM here in the Holy Land and the holiday is officially on! Marvelous holiday, this Rosh Hashana business. Better than Christmas even! Sure we don’t have big fur trees or snow, but we’ve got FISH HEADS. Nothing beats some fish heads and some strangely shaped fruit with lots of seeds.

So gather ’round the table, all you family folk, and sing the kindergarten songs that pass for carols and rejoice, for today is the first day of the new year and soon enough you’ll get to fast! Wonderful, marvelous, go, go, enjoy, have fun! Go hug all the family members that you hate and kiss their cheeks and tell them Shana Tova! Drink a bottle or two of wine, it’s OK, you can repent it in a few days!

New year’s resolution: Stop being so cynical about harmless holidays.

Ode to SNES

Love

Love

I plugged you in,
You seemed to work,
Until I discovered,
A little quirk.

Lines appeared
Upon the screen,
They made me sad
At what they did mean.

Earthbound, Batman,
Aladin and Racecar,
All worked slightly,
But not enough by far.

I shall not give up,
I refuse to, I do!
For I love you so much
That it’s almost not true.

So hang in there, SNES,
My consoling friend,
Don’t let this be
Your one final end.

Good Ole’ Fashioned Genuine, Corny Joy

The wind picked up, stirring loose hairs and chilling bare arms. The merest trace of a forgotten scent was in the air, blowing up and around and through the streets. The light of the half moon dwindled as clouds settled in the night sky. Dark and ominous they were, and yet still the harbingers of joy.

The first drop was dismissed as anything but rain. For rain it couldn’t yet be, not at the end of September. Fall could not have come so quickly to the hot and stifling cities. The second drop, and then the third, fourth and fifth were sweet, for they could not be ignored, could not be mere spray from some unknown spout.

The clouds seemed to groan and sigh with relief as they let themselves break open and spray the dry streets with rain, the first rain. They did not relent and disappear quickly, but stayed for an hour or more, sending small and icy drops down onto the unwary people.

The wonderful moist, wet scent brought tears to my eyes and joy to my heart. Winter is coming, I told myself. Winter is coming.

Where Is the Cake?!

In case you were wondering, NO, this is NOT a Portal/GlaDos reference.

It is a reference to the stupidest children’s song every to have mortified this planet. It is in Hebrew, which is already bad, because Hebrew is not a particularly pleasant language. The bulk of the song is this: “Where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is, where is the cake?” – The number of “where is”s is NOT exaggerated. I counted.

It’s bad enough to have to listen to that horrible monotonous song over and over, but what’s worse is that’s accompanied by the need to listen to horrible pop songs as well. All of these lovely tunes drifting, or rather pounding, through the windows of the house from the birthday party in the park. Of the hits I got to listen to over and over this afternoon: “I Want It That Way”, “It’s In Your Eyes”, “The Ketchup Song” and “The Macarena”. If you haven’t heard of any of these songs, consider yourself extremely fortunate.

I wouldn’t be quite as negetive if I didn’t know that it’s illegal to use huge speakers in our park. I’d like to hang signs up all over the park requesting, eloquently and politely, for people to stop using illegal loudspeakers for their children who are NOT deaf. Perhaps something along the lines of “You and your crotch-droppings suck for abusing my eardrums!” would suffice.

EDIT: Paul McCartney sang an awesome concert and is very much alive. Just so you know.

Cops are… helpful? What’s happened to the world?

I have great belief in the police force. Ok. Well. That’s a lie. I’ve never had to deal with them all that much, but watching The Wire does put our boys in blue in perspective. Mostly cause half of them aren’t even in blue. Decieving buggers.

Tonight though, I encountered two policemen doing very unexpected things. I was driving with Ms. M and Mr. B. B. and I was standing at a stoplight, waiting for the green light. Of course, because this is Israel, a woman in a hideous white SUV tried to push in front of me so she could turn left. A cop car was a few cars behind me, and a very pissed off elderly cop actually made the effort to get out of his car and go up to her window and yell at her to get back into her lane and not inconvenience everyone else and hold up traffic. Of course she ended up turning left illeagaly anyway, but still, the point was made.

The second thing that happened tonight was again, at a stoplight. This time the squad car was in front. A man walked up to the window and seemingly asked directions. Then he smilingly got into the front seat of the car. Meaning the policeman inside offered a lift. This is another piece of courtesy that is unknown of here.

Next post might or might not mention if Paul McCartney was or was not assassinated during his concert here that is tomorrow night.

Apparently I’m Almost Genderless.

I did the sex-ID quiz that Chris left in a comment a few posts back [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/index_cookie.shtml ] and apparently my mind is almost exactly between the male and female minds. I lean more towards the women’s mind, but not by much.

This would make sense – I like girly things like shopping, but I can be rather agressive or violent; I’m super empathic, and yet I blow people’s brains out on GTA. I used to be a tomboy, and now I’m rather girly. I know, I’m playing at stereotypes here, but it makes sense.

Still, I find it amusing that although I am very clearly and physically female, my brain is genderless. My brain is totally fucking the system. Cool.

Just to write a short disclaimer, because I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about that comic: I’m all for transvestites, transgenders and sexual freedom. I absolutely adore Frank N’ Furter. I just don’t want to have a beard…

Imaginary Friends and Make-Believe Games

Children have some remarkable imaginations about them. I was eavesdropping today on the two mothers at work, and they were talking about how their children went into the curious phase – they keep asking “What’s this?” and “But why?” and “How, Mommy?”.

It made me remember the awesome things that we could do when we were kids. We could climb up on the jungle-gym, and we’d decide we were on a ship, and lo and behold, we were on a ship. We could be animals, we could be oppisate genders. I had a particular friend who wanted to be Ariel, the Little Mermaid, and that I’d be her father. This friend was a boy. But it didn’t matter then, did it, because it was normal, we were all just curious.

Imaginary friends were the best thing ever. They were invisible, they had super-powers, they had everything we couldn’t have and everything we wanted desperately. But we never got jealous of them, we never got angry at them. They were the best companions we could ever have.

In Sophie’s World, an excellent book by the way, there’s a lot of emphasis on how the curiosity of children is what makes them demand answers to everything all the time, that philosophers are the ones who never lose that child-like curiosity, the intense need to know WHY.

Getting old and bitter and losing any trace of curiousity is, I think, the most scary thing in the world.

“I’m a genre too, you know,” squeaked the little book sadly.

So sue me. I like reading books that are written well but that are also readable. Books that I can enjoy reading without having to strain my brain enough that reading three pages makes me exhausted for the whole day. I like reading books with a good story- something exciting, interesting, philosophical and enthralling by turns.

You know what books fall under those catagories quite often? Fantasy books, sci-fi books. I wish people would stop looking down on books of those genres. Have you read Orson-Scott Card? Neil Gaiman? Terry Pratchett and China Meville? If you haven’t then how the hell can you make a polite but mocking face when you look at the book I’m reading?!

I loved Jane Eyre, I loved Pride and Prejudice. I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange immensely. But those classics are still not as enjoyable, fun or  wonderful to me as books such as American Gods or Un-Lun-Dun or Ender’s Game.

So please, World-At-Large, stop looking at fantasy and sci-fi as non-genres.