Tom Waits - Barcarolle

Sunset last Friday night heading west on Wilshire. The building is known as "Bullocks on Wilshire," a gorgeous Art Deco structure completed in 1929. A good weekend, but a busy week ahead to get ready for. And the week after I get to go to St Louis, and I haven't been there before, so maybe I'll get cool Arch photos! My daughter got contacts yesterday, so that's exciting. If she gets along ok with them I may try them again next time my eye exam rolls around... it's weird seeing her without glasses, even though I see her every day without them when she gets up and goes to bed-- it's odd. Anyhoo.

It's Purim-time and I have homentashen to eat. And I need to figure out how best to spell it as well. :) Homentashen, that is.

Wolf Parade -- Fancy Claps

It's raining. Very exciting. Also, a very low snow-level today. Here in Los Angeles, it never snows anywhere near sea-level, but usually in winter storms it's cold enough above 4000 feet to snow. So our local mountains get snow and we get rain. Afterwards, we have breathtaking views of snow-covered peaks without the hassle of being frozen and icy. This storm, I heard, is really cold arctic air, and as a result, our snow level could be as low as 1500-2000 feet. My girlfriend's house is 1500 feet, but it's by the ocean, and the ocean will keep it warmer. But our mountains should get a really nice dusting. Should be nice photos to take in a day or two.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

Wolf Parade -- Fancy Claps

It's raining. Very exciting. Also, a very low snow-level today. Here in Los Angeles, it never snows anywhere near sea-level, but usually in winter storms it's cold enough above 4000 feet to snow. So our local mountains get snow and we get rain. Afterwards, we have breathtaking views of snow-covered peaks without the hassle of being frozen and icy. This storm, I heard, is really cold arctic air, and as a result, our snow level could be as low as 1500-2000 feet. My girlfriend's house is 1500 feet, but it's by the ocean, and the ocean will keep it warmer. But our mountains should get a really nice dusting. Should be nice photos to take in a day or two.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

Wheat -- Don't I Hold You

another photo of the sunset by the same place as the other photo last week taken at the same time. I'm too lazy to post new ones. Suffer.

I am so wiped from my trip... one of my ears didn't properly pop when I landed Tuesday night and that made me dizzy and nauseous, and yesterday I was so tired, and I slept a lot but I was still wiped this morning... I think my brain gets bruised in the altitude changes. Remind me never to go scuba diving.. the pressure would do me in. I am so damn tired.

And I'm behind on phone calls. And the one phone call I do return turns into an hour-long tutorial on Basic Excel stuff. And I'm thinking I should "Just Say No" because I don't support Excel, damnit (or I'd be paid a lot more) but there's no one else who is going to help this person... companies and insurance brokers today are doing the human resources and risk management jobs with fewer and fewer people and the technical and fiduciary demands grow exponentially.... the folks I deal with every day are expected to handle vast amounts of responsibility. No one has time to learn how to use Word and Excel. Everyone just pushes through the slough as best they can, covered in leeches and filth, making do and trying to remind themselves how it could be worse. Anyway. I gotta go home and crash.

Echo and the Bunnymen -- Turquoise Days

I am getting ready to go on a last-minute work trip to the Bay Area. I'll fly up, drive to the hotel, take a bath, and tomorrow train two sets of people, go back to the airport, come home. Woo hoo! It's fun.

While I'm on the plane I'll watch part of Schultze Gets the Blues, probably half each way, since the flight is only an hour. so there.
Perhaps not the best choice for watching on an airplane? It's supposedly a slow, quiet film. We'll see.

South Dakota banning abortion? I remind everyone that most states defacto have no abortion already, because few places will do them. South Dakota has ONE place performing abortions. Check this out at ldi's anti-abortion website which calls places performing abortions "DeathCamps" --- it lists clinics per state. Take a good look. MANY states have very few places. Take a look on a map and see how going to seek an abortion is a huge undertaking for women not located near a clinic. Abortion is viewed as a right, but right now, even without a ban on abortion in South Dakota or a Supreme Court overruling of Roe v Wade, abortion rights in this country, for those not living in major cities, are a joke.

And this is just abortion. When you consider the rising trend of right-wing pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control, women not fortunate enough to live in major cities on the coasts are royally fucked over. You may find it hard to get birth control, and you may find it impossible to affordably have an abortion.

Imagine the situation you are in if you need to have an abortion and are in some rural area hours away from a clinic. How do you get there? If you are poor, you can't afford the bus fare, you just can't get there. A right only affordable to rich women is no right.

I love the politicians in South Dakota for pushing this issue because America needs to wake up. We like to give lip service to the idea that abortion is a right, but average Americans need to take a stand and insist that affordable abortion be made available all over the country. Otherwise this talk of rights is just stupid pipe dreams. We need to have an open battle on this issue on tv, radio, and in the streets. Most Americans are on the fence on this issue and we need them to take a side.

Bob Marley -- Exodus

The Academy Awards were fun to watch. I liked Jon Stewart's touch. I much prefer his sort of humor and presence to Billy Crystal's. Jon Stewart managed, to me, to poke fun at the fundamental nature of the awards and yet also manage to honor them more by the things he chose to comment on.

This is a bit late for Black History Month, but here goes...

I like that the hiphop song from Hustle and Flow won best song. Mainstream hiphop has long been corporate, leeched of any relevance except as the inheritor to disco's mixed legacy of music-to-party-and-foreplay-to; perhaps the sight of its practitioners, diamond-studded grilles in place, up there with the rest of the elites will spur creative kids to break off from the corporate hiphop of today and make new, vital music from the streets, much as punk rose in England as a response to the excesses of prog-rock, glam-rock, etc, etc... Imagine, the new Clashes, Jams, Damneds of hiphop could be out there right now on the streets. Who knows. Could happen.

Because I find it amazing how thoroughly hiphop has been coopted by corporate America. Is there anything more ironic in music? Think about it -- last night, we had the Academy Awards, pretty much the ultimate insider party, embrace pretty much the ultimate outsider song--

an it seems like I'm duckin dodgin bullets everyday
Niggaz hatin on me cause I got, hoes on the tray
But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water
Couldn't keep up with my hoes, that's when shit got harder
North Memphis where I'm from, I'm 7th Street bound
Where niggaz all the time end up lost and never found
Man these girls think we prove thangs, leave a big head
They come hopin every night, they don't end up bein dead
Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too
You pay the right price and they'll both do you
That's the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin
Gotta have my hustle tight, makin change off these women, yeah

Others had messed with this sort of embracing of the outsider -- Curtis Mayfield sang ABOUT thugs and pimps and hustlers in Superfly, and early hiphop adopted the same stance. Rappers would describe the streets around them and the characters they observed, but their stance was that of a chronicler. Often, those rapping about fringe characters took on the mantle of the "griot" or tribal storyteller and keeper of the neighborhood history... the idea was that the rapper was adopting, perhaps, the persona of the pimp or dealer for the song. This has, in time, changed. Over time, the stories stopped being about dealers and pimps and started being told by dealers and pimps, people who either admit -- no, brag of their gang, pimping and dealing pasts/presents, or failing that, at least embracing the ethic of being a pimp with all the nastiness that implies.

How quickly we saw Public Enemy's defiant and, to white America, threatening, Malcom X style strident calls for unity and pride-- things like the lyrics in "Righstarter (Message To A Black Man)"

Our solution - mind revolution
Can't sell it - no you can't buy it in a potion
You lie about the life that you wanted to try
Tellin' me about a head - you decided to fly
Another brother with the same woes that you face
But you shot with the same hands - you fall from grace
Every brother should be every brother's keeper
But you shot with your left while your right was on your beeper

where the hiphop artist stands like a prophet calling his wayward brothers away from their lives of dealing to lives of unified struggling against oppression, to today, where hiphop by and large ignores injustice and celebrates black on black crime. And White America is eating it up.

And how ironic that Queen Latifah, who started out with notably feminist lyrics and was one of the early challengers of the whole "bitches and hos" trend, has been so cleanly subverted by corporate hiphop that she was nothing but excited to have one more "bitches and hos" song win an award.

I am an observer, of course, and I don't really know much of Black American experience. Perhaps my rant is really one more way the white oppressor keeps down the Black Male of America. Perhaps last night was a good night for African-Americans and shows the acceptance of a legitimate mode of expression, and people like me who find fault are just racists who will poke at whatever minorities do. But to me, the gangsta/pimp persona seems to me to be a new wrinkle on the Uncle Tom, Stepin Fetchit, or Aunt Jemima persona--

Hattie McDaniel, a great, great actor (and who was noted by Clooney last night, was the first Black to get an Academy acting award) once remarked, in response to a question about the dearth of good roles for Blacks in 30s/40s Hollywood, that she'd rather portray a maid than actually have to work as one. And in the past, White America was only comfortable seeing Black faces on TV and movies when they were servants and amiable dunces, perhaps with some sort of innate wisdom that comes from being less civilized than Whites, but that's it.

Today, things have changed. Whites are comfortable seeing Blacks in capacities that threaten physically -- gangsta, dealer, pimp, convict -- and it's even better that they are threatening other Blacks, not Whites. Just as long as Blacks are not threatening intellectually, financially, emotionally. Just as long as Blacks are directing their anger at Black America. Black performers have a choice, just as they had back in the 30s... they can have principles and an appropriately limited audience at best. Or they jump on the bandwagon and pimp themselves out to the highest bidder and play the role that White consumers want them to play.

Sure, you can name Black actors who make good movies and play real characters on TV and in movies. You can name hiphop artists who don't buy into the commercially successful gangsta/dealer/pimp persona. But not that many.

Sidney Poitier was the first Black American cast for a part not specifically written for a Black in The Bedford Incident(1965). He played a newspaper reporter. His being black was absolutely irrelevant to the role. He was just a great actor (in a scary but mediocre movie). So how far have we come in the past forty years? When you look at actors who you know can be considered for any role in any movie, you can name Denzel Washington, definitely. Will Smith, as long as it's action adventure movies. Perhaps Morgan Freeman. Don Cheadle? A great actor, but he is always playing roles dealing with race. You can say Eddie Murphy, but we're talking Disney movies for kids. If you want to see Black actors allowed to play roles that depict the whole range of Black experience, all the range of characters that involves, you have to look at movies made by African-Americans, like Barbershop, Big Momma's House, or Roll Bounce.

Oh, I dunno. Back to work.

Sufjan Stevens -- They Also Mourn Who Do Not...

Ten, fifteen years ago, this parking lot used to be the dying remnants of a residential neighborhood. Then the houses were razed and parking lots put up until the time was right for the property developers to put up a new hi rise development. It seems that this will now happen within a year or two, making shots like this impossible.

It's very odd, when you think about it, something as unappreciated as a reflection in a puddle. And how it's so transient. The water is there for a few hours, then it's gone. And soon, the parking lot is gone, and that's the end of the potential for this photo.

Sure, sure, the seemingly solid and eternal skyscrapers are also transient -- each stands in a spot once occupied by buildings that were ten or twelve stories -- huge for the late 1800s or early 1900s when they were built. Those buildings, in turn, replaced bungalows and palm trees and lush gardens, and so on, back to an earth newly born, magma-covered, dimly aware, even as it startled into existence, of the vague, misty flickering of all these future changes.

Anyway. I have to go eat now.

The Jam -- Carnation

Really nice sunset last night. Interesting location, too. This is in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood of LA that sits a couple hundred feet above sea level, atop a cliff (palisade) with appropriately good views. The house that used to be here (and which doubtless blocked the view) went down the hill ten or fifteen years ago heavy floods eroded the cliff -- 'm not sure if the house was destroyed outright by the slide or was demolished afterwards, but it's not there anymore. Currently on the other side of this fence is maybe twenty feet of land and then it's a sheer drop. Bad for the homeowner (but they were certainly multimillionaires and doubtless made out ok) but good for me and anyone else wanting to take photos of sunset by the ocean.

There were better pics to be had facing East a bit earlier, but I was driving West and had no idea where to get off the freeway and have a good view...

Brian Eno -- Everything Merges with the Night

It rained yesterday. Today it's pretty much over and all we have are a bunch of pretty cotton-ball clouds scooting by. Very pretty. But, frankly, they are not that interesting. I just learned about mammatus clouds and, well, our boring old run-of-the-mill clouds? Well, never mind.

Michael Oldfield -- Hergest Ridge

The Original Mix!!!

This is something that's no big deal to anyone but Mike Oldfield fans. I'm not really even that. It's just that when I was in college, I discovered Hergest Ridge and loved it so much ago that I tended to play it when I went to sleep. A few years ago, I found the CD version, and was surprised when it didn't sound like the version I remembered. A quick Google revealed why -- the CD version was based on a remix that Oldfield did a year or two afterwards. He didn't like the original version, it turns out. It had too many instruments in it, and apparently he'd only done that because he was worried that the way he liked it wouldn't be popular without more layers of sound. So when he did the remix, he took out some of the instruments that he'd originally had on, so the remix was a lot more spare. It was frustrating that I could not hear it the way I was used to it. Some Oldfield fans swear up and down that the remixed version is better. But I had whole hypnagogic epics play out in my mind as I'd go to sleep listening to this music, with animals scurrying in brush, long blades of grass shimmering in the wind, even one time a huge magician's tower, into whose window I soared, with tables filled with crystals and potions and books and little puzzle things... listening to the remixed version was like listening to a Beatles song with the Harrison guitar work gone. It was just WRONG.

So. After years of searching, I got my hands on the original version! And now I can go to sleep listening to it again for the first time in almost twenty years. So good. It's like when Elisha raised that boy from the dead. But way better.

Rufus Wainwright -- Vibrate

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. -- Benjamin Franklin

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. -- HL Mencken

I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction. -- John Steinbeck


At the Israelisms website Tomer said

Bush steppin over people's rights... How? The wiretaps? I'm pretty happy with what he does for the most part, not as an Israeli, but as a Pro-US and pro-Neocons.

That kind of talk is common, of course, amongst Americans. We've lost touch with the founding principles of our country. We value security over liberty. And no matter how safe we are, no matter how long the average American lives, even living a life of relative sloth and laziness and terrible habits, we want to be safer. Safe from what? Safe from disease. Safe from drunk drivers. Safe from the consequences of our own actions. And all of these things end up being cheap little plastic masks, one slapped over the other, layers of distraction to cover the one thing we really fear -- Death.

We aren't afraid of Osama or terrorism as much as being stuck in a skyscraper with a still-hot Starbucks in our hand, thinking we were going to have a normal day of routine stress, and instead finding ourselves weighing the relative merits of death by burning versus death by falling one hundred stories and slamming into the ground.

The Jews among us know the different ways we may meet death -- Yom Kippur to Rosh Hashanah we have this prayer:

On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed: how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquillity and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted.

After which, of course, we say "But repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil of the decree." And by this we don't mean that we can prevent ourselves from being blown to bits by a terrorist if we repent, pray and do tzedakah. It means that the "evil" of the ways in which we may die is removed by our good acts. It is in our living lives of true torah values that we free ourselves from the evil of dying in these terrible ways. For, as we know, true holy people, whether renowned rabbis or simple peasants, die from all of these causes, have every negative experience possible, every minute of every day. Leading good lives connects us to G-d and eternal life and thereby conquers the temporary evil of death. It also conquers the fear of death.

However, the easier course is to look at the list as preventable occurences that can be reduced, both in frequency and severity. Safer cars. Safer medicine. Safer food. Safer streets. Safer cities. Safer sex. And until we conquer death, we keep at the list. Isn't it obvious that we cannot be living lives of good deeds when we are obsessed with preventing evil deaths? One thing I assure you is that our culture's obsession with staying safe is leading us inexorably to a very unstable and unsafe future. Because, to keep ourselves safe, we purposely make others less safe.

Look at the way we deal with democracy -- it's a wonderful idea, certainly. We promote it all over the world. Until an election goes contrary to our wishes. Then we, either secretly or overtly, work to topple the newly-elected government. We've been doing it since well before we toppled Allende and ushered in the dictatorship of Pinochet, and we'll be doing it long after we try to destabilize the newly elected Hamas government. We turn other countries into places where the people live in fear and despair of peace and self-determination, because we are so determined that things go the way we think will lead to us being safest. We are, literally, hell-bent on making the world into a place that will be safe for us. And in the process, we make the world a more dangerous place for all, and we pave the way to hell and to evil deaths.

So by all means, Tomer, let's be pro-US. Let's embrace the ideals of the United States that lead us to spend billions of dollars a year to help others, that lead us to fight for human rights and voting rights and democracy. Let's promote the US doing good. But let's get off this stupid idea that one can be happy with Bush stepping on our rights. The United States without its redeeming values, like civil liberties, turns into just another Sodom and Gomorrah. And for endangering our lasting freedom for temprorary security, Bush is a traitor that needs to be impeached.

Kate Bush -- There Goes a Tenner

Here's another look at Union Station's Information Booth. I love this thing. Someday I'm going to get some Information from these booth guys.

I've been under the weather all week and sleeping a LOT. Yesterday the only thing I did was take my daughter to In 'N Out Burger and watch her eat. Also, I took a nice long bath while reading A Hundred Years of Solitude and I listened to the new Cat Power CD again. And besides that, I slept a lot. A LOT. And I still slept a full night. Today I have to do laundry. Besides that, I think I'll sleep.

Oh. I also watched Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning. Great movie from 1959 that's about Japanese kids who want a TV and stop talking when their parents say "No." Very good movie, because you see Japanese life circa 1959, and besides that, just a a great quiet but great story.

Oh. the other thing I did yesterday was read "Are You There God? It's Me, Monica:

How nice girls got so casual about oral sex," by by Caitlin Flanagan in the Jan/Feb Atlantic magazine. Such an interesting and depressing article. I've wondered about our popular culture and exactly how the feminism of the 60s and 70s somehow gave way to the pure adolescent boy's world where boys are now saved the hassle of having to beg for sex by girls who think of blowjobs as "no big deal." Flanagan at one point notes that "A huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen. Obviously, there was no previous data to compare this with, but millions of suburban dads were quite adamant that they had been born too soon." And while reading the article about teenage girls "servicing" guys at parties makes me, as the father of a 12 year old girl, want to puke, as a guy, hey. I was born too soon.

But the article, like a LOT of handwringing about today's kids, involves upper middle class and upper class parents and children. In truth, the behavior has always been there. Maybe the only change is that now, people talk about it more and it's done more, perhaps, by wealthier kids, but so what? I'm tired of stuff that's common in working class and minority neighborhoods suddenly being a crisis when wealthy kids do it.

Well-off parents are constantly moving from crisis to crisis, convinced that their kids are eggshell children so easily breakable. if they don't have the perfect diet, perfect school, perfect summer camp experiences, their lives will be worthless. And this idea generally is directed by mothers at their daughters. Is my daughter bulimic? Is she giving guys blowjobs? Does she think Bush is a good president?! Girls are fetishized in our culture where normal teenage mistakes and experimentation are greeted with parental proclamations of ruin and disaster. Well-off parents are so obsessed with their kids getting into Ivy League schools I'm sure that some are convinced that sexual behavior of the wrong sort will ruin their kid's chances at Princeton. Now, I'm sure we all know a family where a child has real drug, alcohol, or behavior issues. I wonder, however, how the endless obsessing over kids feeds into things. Perhaps parents need to worry about their own sex lives a bit more and stop poking into their childrens'.

When I was a teenager, guys were getting blow jobs. Sure, I wasn't -- but some guys were. And while I wanted to have sexual experiences, I was always in love with some girl from afar. And I never went to parties that weren't my close group of friends. If I were a teenager today, I wouldn't be getting any of these easy blowjobs. I'd be worshipping some goth hottie from afar, writing poems and imagining how amazing it would be to smell her hair and hold her hand. I am not, as much as I sometimes would like to be, the kind of guy who would want a jaded girl to give me some anonymous blowjob.

Anyway, I gotta go.

Mirah -- Dogs of Buenos Aires

This is a sculpture in the courtyard next to my building. It's part of a large installation called "Zanja Madre." In English that's "Mother Ditch." Figueroa St and much of old downtown LA used to have stone-lined irrigation ditches carrying water to the residences and farms, and this particular sculpture is apparently some sort of screw device used in the transportation of water. I dunno. It's a nice sillhouette with the moon. This is from a couple weeks ago, but I haven't got any new photos to share. I have tons, but not here.

I've been sick all week. I've been sleeping a lot and drinking lots of fluids and feeling ripped off when I've awoken in the morning, after a good night's sleep, and found myself still sick.
Today I came into work though I am still sick because I can do a little work and help a few people. Considering I've been out all week, not that much to catch up on. I'm buried, but not that deeply. It's a shallow grave.

I'm reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have no idea how I missed reading this before now. I remember over twenty years ago my dad told me how good it was, but hey. I had lots to read. So now I'm reading it and it's one of the most wonderful things I've ever read.

Off to work. Or to kind of work.

Mirah -- Struggle

This is the view from our table at Ciudad, a wonderful, wonderful restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. It's basically Latin American cuisine, with all sorts of cool unusual tastes from all over Central and South America. On Sundays they have a Tapas-only menu. Tapas are appetizers, and you get a bunch of different appetizers and have yourself a wonderful sampling of incredible food, such as

Plantain Chips and Spicy Aioli
Goat Cheese Fritters with Sherry-Soaked Cherries
Grilled Asparagus with Romesco Sauce
Marinated Spanish Cheese and Oil-Cured Olives
Piquillo Peppers stuffed with Avocado Goat Cheese
White Grape Gaspacho
Argentine Empanadas with Tomatillo and Chipotle Salsas


and that's just part of the vegetarian options. If you eat fish you can have

Saffron paella with seafood, chorizo and chicken
Salt Cod fritters with Orange, Fava, and Fresh Mint Salsa
Fried Shrimp and Okra with Salsa Africana

and tons more, and for the meat-eaters there are things like

Manchego Cheese Buñuelos with Serrano Ham, Arugula, and Red Pickled Onions
Boneless Baby Back Ribs slow roasted in Chile, Spices, and Sweet Mistela
Seeded Lamb Chops with Algerian Eggplant Jam and Preserved Lemons

and tons of other cool-sounding things.

Anyway. It's a wonderful place for a special occasion. My favorite restaurant because it's an adventure every time. And I'm not even talking about the drinks...

Happy Friday, Shabbat Shalom...

Sufjan Stevens -- The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts

So. Bush trots out news from years ago. Four years ago, Al Queda was hatching a plan to get a bunch of guys from some Southeast Asian country to hijack a plane and fly it into the US Bank building here in Downtown LA. It's a half mile or so from here-- the biggest building in LA and on the West Coast, for that matter, 60-something stories high. The plot was foiled. Ok... whatever. Are the American people stupid enough to think Hmm... well, they DID foil that plot in Southeast Asia... even though that has nothing to do with the President illegally wiretapping US Citizens in direct violation of the FISA act, he's getting results, so we're OK with the wiretapping? Probably.

Funny thing is that right now, I'm hatching a plot to win Saturday's lottery. Using a highly complex algorhythm, I'm going to break the seemingly-random winning number selection and become the next mega-millionaire..... DAMN! Some woman with Corporate Real Estate just came into my cubicle with a tape measure and starting seeing how big my file cabinet was. Then a coworker saw this and cackled "She's seeing how you measure up!" Then I thought of how women always get away with the sexual innuendos and noticed how the woman with the tape measure was totally not even paying attention anyway, and also how she did have nice jeans on... as a result, my plot to become a multi-millionare has been ruined. If not for that woman and her tape measure, I'd be rich. Drats! Foiled again!

No photo of the biggest building in LA but here's one of the prettiest -- Los Angeles City Hall.

Dave Navarro -- Rexall

This is the only Dave Navarro song I have. Still, it's good.

The sky is gorgeous because of the smoke from the wildfires... I have to go take a walk so I can get some nice sunset photographs.

And the play was great! I had not seen it in years and had forgotten how timely a play it still is. I'd say more, but hey. I have to go get photos of the sunset buildings.

The Decemberists -- The Bagman's Gambit

I flit about from interest to interest like a hummingbird. Right now I am loving photography and learning more about composition and the mechanics of it, and here is a hummingbird I photographed last evening. It stayed on its perch in the lemon tree because it's always sitting there, and so as I stood four or five feet away it chirped its territorial chirps at me but stood its ground so I could get a pretty good picture. I can't find my bird book so I can't say for sure if it's a male or female, but I think female because a male would have more color around the neck. But I can't even tell you what species of Hummingbird it is, Anna's or Allen's or what, but anyway. We're off to see The Cherry Orchard production at the Mark Taper Forum, which stars Annette Benning and Alfred Molina...

Bruce Springsteen--Kitty's Back

Sunset tonight.

Cat Power -- Lived in Bars

This is one of the nicest photos I've taken. Union Station in Los Angeles is just a gorgeous old building. I don't know enough about it to know the style, but as you can see, archways, intricate lamps and ceilings, stuff akin to arts and crafts... I love the way "Information" seems to be glowing.

Cat Power -- Empty Shell

Check out the Sunset we had in Los Angeles tonight... it would have been a bit better had I not been shooting through the windowglass, but hey. You get the idea.

The Walkmen -- I'm Never Bored

What a wonderful day. Crisp and cool. Not clear -- hazy, in fact, but still, crisp and cool.

I have so much to say. But today I am saying it with my eyes. See? Hmm. The simplest wiggle of my brow speaks volumes. I'd post a vid, but I'm busy.

Trust me. Volumes.

George Harrison -- Isn't it a Pity

We've had such a mild winter so far that everyone is feeling like it's freezing, and it's in the upper 60s. Very funny.

You know what I want today? Not a $550 camera, no! Just a single piece of Mexican tamarind candy. I got some at a Mexican market I visited with my mom a couple weeks ago. It's dried tamarinds with the seeds in that are coated in chili and sugar and other stuff --it's the really good taste of sweet and sour and hot all together.

And like many other good things, terribly unhealthy, it turns out --just two days ago I learned from news articles that a new law took effect Jan 1 in CA that bans the sale of a bunch of different brands of chili-and-tamarind-based candies, including the brand I think I got, due to high levels of lead. I'm not sure how the lead is getting into the candies, but there you go. Figures. I think what I need to do is learn to use tamarind in cooking. Yeah.

One thing I got at the Mexican market that's NOT lead-filled, apparently, is dried Hibiscus( Jamaica en Espanol) flowers. I made Agua de Jamaica, which is a gorgeous drink that's kind of like Pomegranate juice in that it's a complex taste, not one-note like orange juice or lemon juice. All you do is boil the flowers with a ton of sugar until the flowers lose their purple color and turn almost white and translucent. By then you've boiled a bunch of the water away, and the remaining juice is nice and kind of thick. I managed to get mine perfect -- just enough sugar to balance out the sourness but not enough to make it sweet. It's good stuff and, as you'd figure with traditional Mexican food since before the Europeans came over, probably, it goes well with Mexican food.

Mmmm, tengo hambre... nos vemos!

David Byrne -- Glass, Concrete & Stone

2006 is going pretty well so far. I am working and for some reason, don't have a lot to say. It's odd. It's not like I'm really into my job or anything, it's just that I'm not into much I'd like to express. I am looking at new cameras, but it's a silly game because I can't afford one. My existing camera still works fine, and I just got a tripod to help with taking low light pictures that I want to focus on, like after sunset landscapes and that sort of thing, so it's not like I don't have a perfectly good camera. It's just that when I got my camera three years ago, what I really wanted was the Fuji S602Z, and I couldn't justify getting it. So now the current model is the Fuji S9000, and I certainly can't justify getting that, but in a year or so I will. It's got all the bells and whistles you can get in a non dSLR camera -- you can do everything auto or manually, and it's got manual zoom and manual focus rings on the barrel, so you use it like you would a dSLR. It also has dSLR things like a hotshoe for attaching an external flash, ability to do long exposures, so you can get cool night shots and junk, and it's got an insane equivalent range of 28 mm to 300mm, which is nice. Also, it has ISO equivalent sensitivity of 80 to 1600. The 1600 is "noisy" but the people who care about such things forget how "noisy" 1000 speed film was. And also, there are great plug ins for Photoshop like Neat Image or Noise Ninja that do a kick ass job of cleaning up noise, so I don't care. I want to be able to get more shots more places. I was toying briefly with the idea of getting a dSLR, since it's a couple hundred more but a big jump in quality in some respects, but SLR cameras with changeable lenses means dust in the camera, and I'm not good about keeping things clean, so that would be a pain, and I know I'm not going to want to lug around different lenses. I'll end up getting the S9000 or whatever Fuji makes to replace it and I'll be immensely happy. In a year or two when I am financially better off. Or perhaps I'll just tell people who give me birthday and chanukah presents to give me cash for my camera fund -- you can get the camera online for $500 or so, so it's not like it'll take forever to save if I am disciplined. Hmmm... I am totally chaotic and TERRIBLE with finances. Never mind. I'm never gonna get my dream camera....

It's amazing, because you can buy a film SLR that would be fine for me for $200, but I'd never take photos because of the cost of film. That's what makes the digital camera, especially a Fuji, worth three times the cost. You take however many shots you want and only print out the ones you want. And the difference between Fujis and other brands seems to be, from what I've seen and read, is that the Fuji electronics is tweaked a bit to ensure the best print quality, so it works out. I hardly ever make prints, but I'll be getting more this year as I find more creative ways to use photography in gifts.

Anyway. That's all that's on my mind, and it certainly wasn't worth typing out, was it?

Josef Myslivecek- Sym in G Presto

I am working. It's late, but this has to be done, and it's easy, though mindless. Basically, I'm comparing two sets of data, looking for discrepancies. It's exciting. Check me out, pluggin' away for The Man.

Beethoven -- Sym 5

So I had a really nice restful weekend. Watched movies, slept in, exercised a lot. Saturday I did 50 minutes of treadmill, basically jogging until I had to slow down, then walking until I could start jogging again. And Sunday I went hiking for a few hours.

And I hate physical exercise. I get hives when I exercise. If my heartrate gets too high, my heart starts to skip beats. And my knees hurt when I go downhill. But after I've been at it for twenty or thirty minutes, it starts to feel good, and I always feel better after exercising. I didn't make a New Year's resolution, it just has worked out that way. And I'm losing weight while I'm at it, and that's good.

I saw "The Machinist" this weekend. Creepy movie, really good, with Christian Bale. His character hasn't been able to sleep in a year. We know going in that obviously, at some point, we'll have to figure out WHY he hasn't been able to sleep, but it's really interesting getting there. The famous thing about this movie is that Christian Bale lost 60-something pounds for the movie. But it's his acting that makes the movie work. They could get any number of really skinny guys to act in the movie but Christian Bale was awesome. This movie really creeped me out, much more so than most thrillers or horror flicks, because it so marvelously "fleshed out" Bale's character and the environs in the movie... really affecting me.

I also saw "The Shipping News" and definitely want to read the book. I liked the movie a lot, but I could recognise a certain feeling of condensation, like there were markers on the screen for things much more weighty in the book.

Anyway. Today Ariel Sharon is breathing on his own. It's weird, waiting around to see what happens, wondering if he's going to be able to think or talk, billions of people around the world in the same position, really. The news shows are using it as education on strokes, and the different kinds, since he had both in less than a month... baruch ata hashem, rofeh ha'cholim.

Silver Scooter -- Pumpkin Eyes

Well, I'm back at work. The holidays are Done. And I'm trying to get productive. It's not happening today. Too many confusing things to try and organize. So I'm working, but it's like moving through the La Brea Tar Pits.

I am enjoying Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter immensely. And all the more because this is a great aunt or some such relative he is writing about. The book is a novelized treatment of the life of Teresita, who was a big figure in Mexican history and revered during her life as a healer and saintly figure. She died on January 11, 1906, at what then and there among the poor of Mexicon an old age of 33. So next Wednesday is the 100th anniversary of her death, and I'll be about finished with her story. Very cool.

Happy New Year!

I'm mostly on vacation, having fun. Just wanted to show you how my Israelisms mug improves the look of my mug.

Serena Ryder -- Unlikely Emergency

I just realized, except for the whole electricity and cooking thing, we were kind of Shabbat-y this Shabbat. On the big continuum of observance we were a lot closer to shomer Shabbos than usual. No driving, no buying stuff. We made pancakes, but SOMEONE got the TBS and TSP confused when putting in baking powder, so they ended up a awfully soda-y. We sat around. We played computer games. We napped. We walked the dog. I took gorgeous pictures and then, in a USB-to-Computer snafu, the photos got wiped from the memory card. So you can't ever see how wonderful it looked from the balcony to see the Pacific covered in clouds with the sunlight shining brightly on them. We're up at 1500 feet, so it's often like this, us in sunshine and Santa Monica and Malibu down below underneath the blanket of clouds. It was mid-70s today, early winter. If you squinted just right the clouds became snow covering the ocean, and at the horizon, Catalina Island barely managed to push above to bask its top in the sunlight.

We are off to an Xmas-eve dinner at this restaurant in Pasadena. We're going because my brother and sister-in-law and band are the night's entertainment and there's a big banquet, and my mom is a sucker for all the Christmas stuff. And I'm giving everyone their presents, so we'll see how they like their notecards. My daughter will get showered with way too many presents, which suits her just fine.

And tomorrow my girlfriend comes back and we all can start Chanukah!

Sufjan Stevens -- The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us

This is a photo of the homeless cat guy. I took a photo from really far off, and cropped out everything else and photoshopped about. I like the result because the image is really flattened and stylized, but you get the essence of the cat guy and his bent back. The smudge of orange in his lap is the cat. At least I imagine that's a smudge of orange. Maybe the cat isn't visible. I am such a coward, too, taking a photo far off, I know.

I am so tired, but I have to walk the dog before I can go to bed, but I don't want to put my shoes back on, so I am sitting here instead. How hopeless and silly.

Neil Young -- Expecting to Fly

So on the way to the subway yesterday after work I saw my cat man riding a bicycle across the street, a cigarette between his teeth, his cat crouching comfortably on his shoulders. Even riding a bicycle, he is bent forward, in this case, perhaps, to make it easier for the cat to keep its footing.

I am almost finished with all my Chanukah presents. Since I'm not giving that many, it wasn't that difficult. I printed out particularly pretty pictures I'd taken and made notecards for people, sets of 12, some desert wildflowers, some photos of Los Angeles buildings that I'd messed with in Photoshop. I'm always making presents. I never feel competent with it, but I do it, nonetheless. I never get past the feeling of being a kid and scribbling something and thinking it's the most wonderful thing ever and bringing it with pride to my parents, expecting them to burst into applause or tears at its beauty.

I remember when I was 6 I drew a picture of a zebra in a zoo cage with a zebra baby, and at the time I was very impressed with myself and my skill. Today, I wonder just how weird it must have looked, and how I managed to keep the zebra stripes separate from the cage bars... I can still remember the way it looked through my 6-year old eyes, and I can't see it as I'd see it at 40. For better and for worse, inhibitions develop as we age. However, mine are not as developed as most peoples', I think... they're big enough to make me wonder whether my mom will say, as she has done at certain gifts- "What is this? What am I going to do with this? I'll never use this..." but it's not enough to stop me from doing it. My need to give my notecards and framed poems and drawings, etc. etc. etc., overcomes my reluctance to risk people hating my work. Of course, my mom has probably reacted that way twice in 35 years of getting gifts from me several times a year. So that's over a hundred gift-giving occurrences, and she's responded negatively a few times, but I'm always a bit nervous. Such a fragile person, I am.

Thank G-d I don't live in some small town in a small state with a decent cost of living -- I'd probably get some bizarre idea I could make a living doing the artsy craftsy thing and quit my job and do something like calligraphy. In LA, I'm not even as good as the average amateur. But if I was in some small town, I'd be doing invitations and photography at weddings. In small towns (at least in my imagination) interest and passion is more important than talent and skill.

John Doe -- Repeat Performance

There's a lot of homeless guys begging downtown, especially where I work, because it's the financial district, and that's where the people with money are. Many are obviously suffering from mental illness (the homeless guys -- the people with money can afford medication), having conversations with themselves or people who arent' there. Many seem perfectly normal and amiable men, and if it wasn't for their grimy clothes and skin and unshaved facial har, they'd fit right into life downtown.

Most guys just ask each passerby for money and thrust out a paper cup. Some have cardboard signs declaring themselves homeless, Christian, veterans. All are standing.

All except for one. One guy sits silently, a cup in front of him, in the pose of a Buddhist at prayer. But his hands are not held in some meditative pose -- they are always cradling a full-grown orange tabby cat. He is very thin, with glasses. He's mostly bald with closely shaved head, and he sometimes has large scabs on his scalp. Lately, he's been wearing a cap, which is a good thing. On the side of each of his eyebrows is tattood "5150" in the plain, thin style typical of gang or jailhouse tattoos.

"5150" is a California code relating to the conditions under which someone can be involuntarily confined for psychiatric evaluation. One has to be a danger to oneself, a danger to others, or gravely disabled. My cat guy is probably suffering from a serious psychiatric ailment -- most homeless men are -- but it says something additional about someone that they would have their faced marked permananently this way.

But whatever problems and obstacles this man has aren't evident when he sits and pets his cat and politely thanks people who give him money. He's often on my way to work, and I've taken to thinking of him sometimes more as a Buddhist mendicant than a homeless guy, so singular a figure he is. When I give him a dollar or two, it's more like when someone bums a cigarette. When I used to smoke, I'd welcome the opportunity to give someone a cigarette. It was a little connection with someone else, an opportunity to do a little good deed. And it didn't matter if it was a homeless person or someone obviously well-off -- we had the nicotine bond. I think this guy and I have a bond because I have never been good at sales-- if I were homeless, I'd probably sit there with my cup, waiting for people to put in money while I tried to think about positive stuff. I couldn't ask people for money or hold a sign. And it would be so nice to have a cat in my lap all day.

This morning as we said hello and I gave him a couple dollars, he asked how I was. I told him "Fine, but I am dreading how busy I'll be at work today!" He said, "I'm sorry," and gave me a smile and wished me a Merry Christmas. And only after did I recognize that it could be considered off to complain to a homeless guy about my job or to say anything really personal at all. But I had seen my sitting cat guy and been happy he was there, and spoke with him as I would any other casual aquaintance.

Wilco - Reservations

I am making my Chanukah presents right now. Actuallly, I'm sitting while my printer churns out photographs, but that's pretty much my present. I'm making notecards with photos I've taken stuck to their fronts -- Joshua Tree National Park wildflowers and landscapes. Each set of notecards will have a couple copies each of five different photos. I love digital photography. Now we can take thousands of photos and only print out the ones that don't suck. I am not a photographer, my camera isn't that fancy, but I have good pretty photos. When you take dozens and dozens of photos, you get lucky. I'd share some with you, but I can't. For some reason, the blogger interface on my Mac is missing a few buttons like the Add Picture button. But boy, you'd have been impressed.

There are so many things I'd like to say, but I'm sleepy. And it's before 11! This is noteworthy, because I'm usually a night owl. But recently I've been pretty consistently getting to bed earlier. And ever getting up earlier. It's going to be a great 2006. I can tell.

Kate Bush -- The Painter's Dream

Saw King Kong yesterday. As a movie, in every respect -- plot, pacing, character development, special effects, etc. etc. etc., this movie kicks ass over Lord of the Rings. I guess because Peter Jackson wasn't as constrained as he was with Lord of the Rings. He's totally changed the whole point of the story, in a way. Peter Jackson can make really good small-scale movies -- Beautiful Creatures is a really good movie with a small budget, for instance, that shows that he has always been good with characters and emotional stuff-- but with these big stories he is such an exuberant filmmaker. The sheer joy of movies is on every moment, and it goes for three hours, but you seriously won't easily be able to say it would be better if you snip this or that. (And no three or four false endings like the LOTR.) You have your tearjerking melodrama, you have wonderfully over-the-top and perfectly paced chases, you have some of the best creepy-crawler thriller stuff you'll ever see. It's going to be a movie people will see over and over again. You'll have women seeing it for the romance angle, you'll have men seeing it for the cool chases and things getting smashed and squished real good. Or not -- I don't know that I'd see it again in the theater, at least not right away -- that's the problem with this time of year. Everyone releases their Oscar vehicles at the same time so voters have them fresh in their minds, and there are just too many movies to see. Anyway.

Hey.

Ofra Haza - Horashoot

OK. So now I know what's going on. It's not a game show thing, it's a stunt. The chair part is for a cameraman. A stuntguy is now attached to cables with some sort of harness over most of his body, with cables attached to his legs and arms. He's on his back, and they keep dropping him and as he plummets down, the cameraman is zooming up and past him on his chair and they are practicing the shot. And other cameramen are setting up their shots underneath. Anyway. It's pretty cool to see all the work that goes into something that will be on screen for a second.

Yes -- Perpetual Change

So, I'm at work and my cubicle has a nice window view, and the view (of Westlake buildings and the Hollywood Hills and the Hollywood Sign) today is obstructed by a huge crane set up in the parking lot next to my building. It's holding up a scaffolding to which are attached pulleys and cables, and apparently they are filming an episode of one of those shows like Fear Factor, because they have been doing test runs doing controlled free-falls with a fancy chair with harnesses and junk and there's guys setting up with cameras and the like. The chair, when hoisted as high as it goes before the dropping, is about at my level. I'm hoping they are filming today before I go home, because I have a perfect view from here, and I'd love to be working while people scream in freefall outside. That way, my internal state would be perfectly reflected in the outside world.

I am stressed and nervous about deadlines and major huge obstacles, but I'm feeling pretty darn good, so that's nice to experience. Recently I've been knowing everything is great and feeling like crud, and now I'm doing better. And it's Shabbat, and it's gonna be nice and quiet and relaxing. Shabbat Shalom.

The Magic Numbers -- I See You, You See Me

So I just got back from walking the dog. Nice long walk, the moon still barely full tonight, cold enough to need my jacket and just right so I can walk and walk and not get hot. Winter is my season, the moon my celestial body. At least in Los Angeles. In Hartford it was fun being in below-freezing weather for a few nights, but I'm sure living in it would quickly wear.

While I walked, I listened to "Supper's Ready," the best Revelations-related piece of art ever, my favorite Genesis thing. So I was walking the dog, admiring my moonshadow, humming and whistling along, having a wonderful time.

And then it got better, because on the way back, I passed by The Maserati House, and not only was the Gransport there in the driveway, very politely parked where I could appreciate it, but was was right next to it? A brand new Quattroporte! This guy is my hero. But perhaps it's a visitor's, because he's having a Christmas party. And a damn late one; as the dog sniffed the bushes and peed and I sniffed the air for new Maserati smell, people were pulling up in limos and getting out with presents, at 9:45pm. Now that's a cool Christmas party.

Vashti Bunyan -- Same but Different

Today I say Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet for Tookie Williams. Arnold followed in the trail blazed by Wilson and Davis and refused clemency for Tookie. I don't blame him as much as despair of all our elected officials and the Sodom and Gomorrah group they are now pandering after. Governers used to commute the sentences or pardon hundreds of people, and over the years, as the "law and order" stance has become popular, have stopped doing it at all. So we have the weird juxtaposition of huge numbers of people being released after decades of incarceration as DNA proves they were convicted improperly, yet when Tookie refuses to say he's sorry for a crime he's insisted all along he didn't do, there is no admission among the powers-that-be that, well, judging from all these folks being released left and right after decades in jail because they were innocent all along, perhaps Tookie isn't guilty. Perhaps he's innocent too. And it's not like clemency would have freed him. It would have merely made Tookie live for the rest of his life behind bars. Which is, in itself, an amazingly harsh sentence. But Arnold has to continue the masquerade to placate the hang-em-high set, the shoot-then-ask-questions set, the scared and hurt people who are so afraid of the world that they'd rather slaughter innocent people than let a killer live imprisoned for the rest of their life. (And this is just one of many masquerades we watch all to placate these people who want to hide their heads in the sand. Our drug policies are similar lies spun to make people feel like an unwinnable war is going well, we still try to treat undocumented aliens as if we could stop them from coming over if we cracked down harder and built better walls, etc...)

Last night, as I drove home in terrible traffic for almost two hours with a terrible migraine, I started to pray to G-d, chanting 'bring Moshiah now' over and over. I started to believe in Moshiach's immanent coming and hoping it would be last night, solely so Tookie wouldn't get executed last night. Usually the whole Moshiach thing seems silly, and the whining and begging seems so childish, but that was me last night, because was so tired of the death penalty and our society and I felt the sooner Moshiach got here the sooner we'd stop the craziness. I've been protesting these things since college and despair of change. So why not? Bring
Moshiach now!


Vashti Bunyan. One of the oddest names ever. But great music. She put one one album, Just Another Diamond Day, in 1969, and then, apparently disappointed in the response and with the music business in general, walked away, went off and had a family, and then in 2000, her album was reissued and people took interest. And this year, she released Lookaftering. It's very interesting to discover someone and be able to listen to pretty much her entire body of work in two hours with two albums that were recorded thirty-five years apart, and to hear the difference those years have made. This is, I guess, English Folk music. It's very pretty, but not cutesy at all. It's all acoustic guitar and clean chimey sounds and flutes and that sort of thing. Her first album is very much from a young perspective. There's lots of wood walking and animals and pastoral stuff and whispering fairy stories till they become real. Her new CD has her singing more about relationships and children and love and loss, but with the same gorgeous sounds. The reviewer on allmusic.com said that this album could have been made 300 years ago, but he meant it's timeless, not dated or ancient... anyway. It's remarkably singular stuff. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

T-Rex -- Wind Quartets

I've been in Hartford on business all week. It's been nice and cold, and today it's snowing like crazy. Very nice to be inside this warm office and look out at snow falling. My flight leaves late enough today it looks like I'll leave on time.

It's been a week of dinners and banquets and evenings drinking with work people, and while I love my coworkers -- our department is filled with really exceptional people with big hearts -- I don't do well with large groups and noisy conversations. I am looking forward to getting to the airport and reading. I have two new books-- Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper and Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter . These are some of the most interesting sounding books I've seen in ages. Then again, I have not been really paying attention. I've read whatever books everyone else is reading, stuff on the top ten lists, so perhaps books like these are filling independent bookstore shelves. Anyway, I'm sure to have a wonderful trip back, though I may fall asleep reading and doze the whole way back. I'm getting some good work done today, so I'll have a jump on next week's catching up.

Jews in Alabama Podcast

Well, Eric isn't going to brook bris discussion for a month, but I had a thought about this I have to post -- on the podcast, Eric and Raya have talked about their being pregnant. Eric is not sure if he wants to have the baby bris'd if it's a boy. So there's been discussion.

One of the things I said was that I was uncomfortable at his being a convert and having bris issues. I acknowledged it wasn't fair of me, and surely lashon hara and all sorts of other things, but it was an important reaction to note.

He reacted by saying it wasn't as if he was saying Jesus or the Rebbe was the Messiah, to which I replied, well, to me, not having your boy bris'd is worse than saying Jesus or the Rebbe is the Messiah. Which Eric disagreed with to such an extent that he says we perhaps both can't be Jews because the positions are so different. And he was terribly emphatic and certain that you can't be a Jew and believe in Jesus. Which is interesting, coming from someone who is saying this in the context of saying it's OK and appropriate to question all the mitzvot.. How one can be so emphatic about a belief while not being so emphatic about practice? Is this a sensible approach? Now, do I think that being Jewish and believing in Jesus is compatible? No. But is not getting your son a bris comparable in seriousness as believing in Jesus? Oh, you bet it is.

Saying that Reform don't require a bris, as Eric did, helped me see the truth in my odd little argument. I'm not looking towards Reform as the example I should follow. On anything. So when Eric says that perhaps we can't be in the same religion, I start to agree. I get the point of the Orthodox who insist that non-Orthodoxy is not true Judaism. And now I have to decide if I will be in Orthodox, or in the Judaism-is-whatever-we-want-except-you-can't-believe-in-Jesus (at least not THIS decade--- who knows what the uncircumcised Jews of a few decades will decide is appropriate Jewish behavior--).

I think this whole thing has been useful for Eric because I don't think he was aware of how the bris issue is really about as close to a third-rail issue as any in Judaism, and while it's possible to find Jews who don't get it done, it's an issue that stirs up emotion like few other.

That being said, I have a last point to make about WHY saying Jesus is the Messiah (or the Rebbe is) is right up there with not giving your kid a bris. I actually have many, but this is the main one.

The early believers in Jesus were Jews. What did they stop doing that directly led to their identification as Christians and not Jewish believers in Christ? Mainly dumping the mitzvot, two in particular. Kashrut went out the window when Peter had that cool dream(all the animals on the big tablecloth), and Paul won the argument against Peter re: no circumcisions for the new believers. With these two main mitzvot gone, Paul was free to get believers more easily, and we got Christianity. If the Jews like Peter who thought Jesus was the messiah had continued the Jewish practice as they were doing at the beginning of Acts, they would have ended up like the believers in any number of other false messiahs-- after a few generations, if that, they would have forgotten about their failed messiah and ended up back in the normative Jewish fold. When you stop the mitzvahs, however, you tamper with that which is central to Jewish identity. It is not so much falling in with a false messiah as stopping the mitzvot that sets you down the path away from Jewish identity and practice. Once they're gone, it's hard to bring them back, whereas beliefs are comparatively easy to take up and lay down.

And this is a big problem with all non-Orthodox Judaism... we are tossing the mitzvot that kept us Jews till today. That has done a lot more damage and led to a lot more assimilation than someone's beliefs in one person or another as a messiah --- a LOT more people convert to Christianity because they grew up secular, without practice or mitzvot, and fell in love with a Christian than converted due to deeply held belief. That's certainly why I did.

Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles -- Lamma Badah

This is a gorgeous CD, La Mar Enfortuna .Not only because of the very pretty cover, but because it's Sephardic love songs in Ladino as done by Bloedow and Charles Very, very cool. Some are done traditionally, others are done with English lyrics and jazzy sounds... Jennifer Charles has one of the neatest voices ever. Her voice is one you want to drape over yourself at night, because it's so warm and snuggly, except it's also arousing and teasing, so you won't sleep a wink. This is important, because I can't understand Ladino and so have no idea what's going on, except when the words are the same as Spanish and in my limited vocabulary. That Jennifer Charles sure can sing.

Oren Bloedow and she are also Elysian Fields, but this is a side-project thingie they did for Tzadik Records a few years ago. I read about it when it came out and I wanted it, but it wasn't anyplace I could get it online, and I don't buy real CDs anymore -- it's too cost-prohibitive. Then earlier this month, apparently, all the Tzadik Records releases got onto eMusic.com, which is really exciting stuff. There's tons of great music I'll be downloading the next few months.

So much happened over the Thanksgiving break:

Harry Potter
The fourth movie is the best one so far. As my g/f says, it's still not our kind of movie, but it was good stuff.

Thanksgiving
Currently I am putting aside my vegetarianism for Thanksgiving and Pesach. Thanksgiving we had a great spread and great family. I was the only guy there... the rest was my mom, daughter, sister, g/f, and her friend and her friend's two daughters. It was a great time. And lots of turkey.

Turkey
My body was totally thrown off by so much turkey... I ate turkey at every meal until breakfast Sunday. Now I'm back to eating vegetarian, and none too soon. I had very odd intestinal issues.

Beach
I love the beach in the fall and winter. Perhaps it's because my grandmother lived at the seashore in England and I remember when we lived there. But being near the ocean is important, and all the better the colder it gets. So we took a nice long walk along the ocean. Because it was so cold, it was deserted, and all the shorebirds were out, enjoying the solitude. The ocean smelled so clean... and the Santa Monica Bay doesn't always smell that good, trust me.

Bewitched
I fell asleep on this movie, it was so boring. But my daughter liked it. SO there you go.

The Drowsy Chaperone
This is a new musical at the Ahmanson. It's apparently Broadway-bound, and is a great choice for people who love musicals or hate musicals, because the neat conceit is that the audience are guests at this nebbishy guy's apartment and he's playing us the soundtrack of this old 20s musical... so it's a typical silly 20s musical but with the added dimension of the guy making all sorts of comments and stopping the action to tell us what became of the actor playing this character and that character, all sorts of stuff like that. It was a gloriously fun and interesting musical, which is a lot coming from me, because I am easy on plays but terribly hard on musicals. Almost a year ago my g/f took us to see Les Mis and I didn't like it at all. Anyway. Good stuff. Expensive -- but good stuff. All of a sudden the past few years we've been seeing a lot of plays and musicals and I'm almost thinking perhaps it's worth the cost.

Real Food Daily

I love this restaurant -- vegan AND kosher, in West Hollywood. A nightmare for my daughter -- she is happiest eating steak and potatoes and green beans, and finds anything else a real challenge, but I didn't mind that much yesterday. I had a great seitan fajitas thing... very different than turkey and stuffing and cranberries and gravy...

Matisyahu -- Got No Water

I seen the ways of the world intoxifying on pride
Young man don't you know drugs impurify your mind
When Israel left mitzrayim four fifths got left behind

I just downloaded Matisyahu's Shake Off the Dust... Arise a few days ago, and it's good stuff. How else can you learn Torah while listening to reggae? And the above part of "Got No Water" interested me. I hadn't heard that 4/5 of the Jews in Egypt didn't make the Exodus, so I googled it, and found that this interpretation comes from one of many possible ways a single word in a single line of Torah can be read... Shemot 13:18 says "...And Children of Israel were armed" and Rashi says that the word for "armed" can also be understood to be derived from the word "five" and this implies that one out of five departed Egypt and the other four fifths died in the plague of darkness. And earlier, when this plague is discussed, apparently the Jews who didn't want to leave Egypt died... so this would mean that four fifths of the Jews in Egypt didn't want to leave Egypt and died as a result. But how many of us can really say we honestly want to leave Mitzrayim today? After all, we never really left. That's why we are still doing the Haggadah every year. That's why we say Next Year in Jerusalem. That's why Jews living in Israel are still really in exile...

This reminds me of what our rabbi said on Shabbat about the real crime of Sodom and and Gemorrah (as opposed to the Christian idea that it's all about non-vaginal sex, which seems to spring, as many Christian ideas do, from poor translation of the Hebrew). So, according to the rabbis, what made Sodom so terrible? That they believed "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours." Simple. And scary. After all, isn't that basic common-sense property law? Isn't following this idea what defines one as "law-abiding?" The Sodomites forgot that they were wealthy because G-d had blessed the land and made it fruitful, and they started to think it was from their merits, and they wanted to keep from having to share any of their wealth. So this is the real reason the crowd came to Lot's house to harrass the guests -- it wasn't a crazy gay sex party, it was to basically beat the shit out of the guests because they wanted to discourage visitors and immigrants who would be a drain to their treasure. They were so greedy they did things like fence in fruit trees, even the tops so that no one, not even birds, could get at their fruit.

It's beautiful stuff. We are all in Mitzrayim, but we are also in danger of becoming Sodomites, and we can see Sodomites all around us! We have to watch ourselves and our attitudes towards those who have less than we. We must remember that the source of all our blessings isn't our hard work, but G-d, and that G-d gives some of us more than others just so we can act as G-d's representative and properly disburse this extra money to those that need it.

Kate Bush -- An Architect's Dream

Whew.

My g/f's youngest was Bat Mitzvahed this weekend. She and my g/f have been working on the various aspects of this along with the father and me and planners, etc, etc, for months and months. It's finally over. This Thanksgiving we're not going anywhere. We're getting the turkey and trimmings from the supermarket, premade. We're too tired to do anything else.

There's an awful lot of work involved -- first, there's the theme. And the decorations. And the invitations. WHo sits at what table. The menu. The entertainment. Learning the torah portion trope. ANd on and on.

ANd then there's the custom of doing custom prayerbooks for the service. So my g/f and her daughter had to pick special readings and prayers. And since the theme was "A Secret Garden" we got a good passage from the book into the prayerbook for the amidah part, and my g/f found other good garden/growth/plant-related stuff to put in... she stuck in one of my poems I'd written her years ago, and I got to do a reading-- something by Chabad rabbi Tzvi Freeman I'm sure was a reworking of something "the rebbe" said--

There are people who do many good things, but with pessimism, because to them, the world is an inherently bad place. Since their good deeds have no life to them, who knows how long they can keep it up? We must know that this world is not a dark, sinister jungle, but a garden. And not just any garden, but G-d's own pleasure garden, full of beauty, wonderful fruits and fragrances, a place where G-d desires to be with all G-d's essence.

If the taste to us is bitter, it is only because we must first peel away the outer shell to find the fruit inside.

My daughter helped me memorize and work out the phrasing, so when I read it at the bimah, I was reciting it, rather than reading it. I did a pretty good job, making good eye contact with everyone. It's a perfect shul for that, being in the round, with the bimah at the center and the seating all around on three sides. After I did the reading, as I was going back to my seat, the cantor pulled me aside and said I missed my calling and I should have been a rabbi. (Based on how I read a mystical Chabad thing to the rationalist Reconstructionist congregation, mind you. ;-) ) My reaction was "Who says I can't still become a rabbi!?"

(Part of the reason I did so well getting into that reading was that I was listening a lot to Matisyahu's CD, which is just great, great stuff for getting you into the appropriate Chabad/chasid mindset. I was finally the imperfect prophet I've alwasys wanted to be.)

Anyway, so we had a nice service, and then the party to end all parties, with all sorts of wonderful music and food and dancing, and then the brunch on Sunday, and by then I was so damn exhausted and grumpy my daughter and I spent yesterday afternoon and evening lying around doing nothing at all. The bat mitzvah girl and her mom, meanwhile, were up till 1am opening presents and making up thankyou list stuff.

So it's odd. time passing, kids growing up. Getting older. My daughter will be 13 next year. Very odd.

Kate Bush -- Pi

So. I got my new glasses -- they are cool Flexon Magnetics -- instead of 'clip-on' sunglasses, the sunglass part attaches with nifty magnets that sit unobtrusively in front of the hinges. When the sunglasses are on it's really hard to tell they are not just rx sunglasses, and you don't have as much of an irritating gap between lens and sunglass lens as you have with clip ons. The shape is a tiny bit boxier than my previous glasses. And they are matte black. My eyes had not gotten worse as far as distance, but had gotten a bit more astigmatic, so I got new lenses and frames, because my old frames were busted. And while I get a headache from new glasses, I love the odd 3-D feel I get from a new pair, when things are extra crisp and focused. I could tell especially looking at Mars last night and seeing it clearer, and seeing the Moon clearer...

A while ago I bought a book by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, "Growth through Tehillim" and now I am reading it as part of my lunch break. Pliskin has written all sorts of books I guess would be considered "mussar" in that they are all based on self-improvement. One my dad gave me years ago is called "The Gateway to Happiness" and is all about how being happy is a mitzvah. There are parts that detail why it's a commandment to be happy, and then there are parts that are all about how to become more happy... anyway, it's like regular self-help books but about twenty times as dense and more useful for learning Torah, since everything is based on some written or oral reference.

Anyway, so now I am reading a psalm a day and Pliskin's bit on that Psalm. To be organized, I'm starting from Psalm 1. I like Psalm 1 because it has a nice image of the tree deeply rooted next to brooks, so it's well-watered. Also, like Pliskin says, it purposely emphasizes positive behavior, when it starts out "Praiseworthy is the man who walked not in the counsel of the wicked..." rather than "Cursed is the man who walks in the counsel of the wicked..." That's always my weak spot when I parent -- I fall too easily into taking good behavior for granted and commenting on negative behavior, rather than commenting on positive behavior, for instance. And with me as well as with my daughter. And Pliskin points out that sometimes, doing mundane stuff, we feel like we aren't doing anything positive. And he points out that in just being occupied doing something mundane, we aren't at that moment doing anything wrong. And in avoiding evil, we are for all intents and purposes doing a mitzvah. That's my big struggle. It's really easy for me to lose focus at work and get distracted by stuff. Like blogging, for instance!

Maybe with my new glasses I can keep these lessons in better focus. Couldn't help that one.

Kate Bush -- Nocturn

Most of the lyrics are very good on this CD... my favorite so far is "Nocturn":


Sweet dreams...

On this Midsummer might
Everyone is sleeping
We go driving into the moonlight

Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
These prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea
No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic

We tire of the city
We tire of it all
We long for just that something more

Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
These prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea
No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic

The stars are caught in our hair
The stars are on our fingers
A veil of diamond dust
Just reach up and touch it
The sky's above our heads
The sea's around our legs
In milky, silky water
We swim further and further
We dive down... We dive down

A diamond night, a diamond sea
And a diamond sky...

We dive deeper and deeper
We dive deeper and deeper
Could be we are here
Could be we are in a dream
It came up on the horizon
Rising and rising
In a sea of honey, a sky of honey
A sea of honey, a sky of honey

Look at the light, all the time it's a changing
Look at the light, climbing up the aerial
Bright, white coming alive jumping off the aerial
All the time it's a changing, like now...
All the time it's a changing, like then again...
All the time it's a changing
And all the dreamers are waking.

Kate Bush -- Pi

Oh. I never manage to look at the cam in Antartica when it's daylight down there. I always think of Antarctica when it's summer here and winter and sunless there. But today I remembered, and it looks positively balmy!

Kate Bush -- A Coral Room

You know, last week I was reading a lot of Chabad-related stuff, especially about the apparently-prevalent belief that Shneerson, their last Rebbe, was Moshiach, and how Chabadnicks tend to believe one of the following three things as well about their Rebbe-- 1) the Rebbe isn't really dead at all 2) the Rebbe is dead, but is coming back to life as Moshiach 3) not only is he coming back, but he's Divine to boot!

Now, last week, this all seemed insane. It seemed like every Lubavitcher was some variant of kook. I mean, he was nice and all, but Moshiach? Where's the lamb lying with the lion? Where's world peace? Where's the rebuilt temple? But at the very same time, something odd was happening, something so magical and unexpected that it totally changed my opinion.

For Kate Bush fans, the last twelve years have been a long, long, long, long time. The wait for the next Kate Bush album even inspired a book called "Waiting for Kate Bush" that appears to be about a fan who puts off killing himself if he can be assured that Kate Bush releases her CD within six months -- he'll still kill himself, I think, but after hearing her new CD. And for me, I'd been waiting for such a long time, and seeing such sketchy information on the web, that I hadn't even been paying attention this year. I'd given up hope, I guess. She had her man, she had a little boy, she was probably too happy. It was just as well.

So imagine my surprise when I stumble upon her new CD and glowing reviews all over the internet! How did this happen without me knowing? Not only did she put out a CD, but a double CD with 16 tracks and two major song-cycle thingies and songs that are as unabashedly Kate as ever but even better. She has made a CD that's so domestic in focus it even out-domesticates Bjork's Vespertine. So it's all I'm listening to. It's just amazing.

When I was a little boy, I had a nap and dreamt I had a blue balloon in my hands. When I woke up I reached for the balloon. It wasn't there. The wonder and disappointment, all mixed up, as I realized the balloon wasn't real is something I still can feel today. Kate Bush releasing an album gives me the feeling of dreaming I have a blue balloon, then waking up and having the blue ballon in my hands, smelling of ozone and crackling with static electricity from its voyage from my dream to my waking life.

So now the silly, the impossible, the heretical? Bring it on. It's all possible. But I don't want Moshiach quite yet -- I'm busy listening to Aerial, a gorgeous, unexpected gift of an album.

Genesis -- Firth of Fifth

Well, I was starting to feel that perhaps I judged Frist too harshly. Just because he wanted to investigate the leak about the torture prisons didn't mean he didn't care about the terror prisons, I thought.

Hah. Today I learn that Bill Frist is even more immoral than I thought!

Kind of figures, doesn't it? He's a doctor, and all too often, we forget that doctors are involved in the torture process. I'm sure Frist knows just where to place the electrodes and knife-edge.

Israel lives with real terror threats all the time and has strong anti-torture laws it upholds fastidiously. If they can do it, the United States can, surely.

Sondre Lerche -- Things You Call Fate

Oh. Several things happened I forgot to mention.

1) The King Tut exhibit was a huge ripoff. Most of the artifacts weren't King Tut stuff. I remember when I was a kid in the early 70s they had the cool exhibit. This time, they used the sarcophagus images on ads, but no sarcophagus or anything else that was King Tut's beyond a few items buried in the sarcophagus. If they hadn't hyped it so much, it wouldn't have been a disappointment. My daughter had got it into her head that there'd at least be the sarcophagus, and of course it wasn't there. Some other Egyptian's sarcophagus was there, but of course, we were waiting to see King Tut's.

2) My g/f and I saw a David Mamet play this weekend, Romance. Very funny play. It was like a modern variant of a Marx Brothers thing. Cool.

It's raining today. In LA, that means everyone freaks out. Not only does everyone freak, but the roads tend to accumulate lots of oil and grease all summer, so until there's a huge amount of rain to clear off the roads, rainfall usually means slick roads... woo hoo!

Frank Black -- Pray a Little Faster

So. Word gets out that the US has set up prisons for terrorism suspects in former Soviet-era facilities in Eastern Europe. And the Republicans have quickly sprung into action. To denounce the US hiding its dirty work of depriving people of basic rights as laid out in the Geneva Convention? Of course not! Frist and Hastert have sprung into action to call for investigations to see who leaked. Yeah. That's effective leadership and moral character.

Oh, there's some quote about a people getting the leadership it deserves, isn't there? I am too busy to google it. So you know I'm damn busy.

Crowded House - There Goes God

This is a silly song. The best part is

Hey don't look now
But there goes God
In his sexy pants
And his sausage dog
And he can't stand
Beelzebub
'Cos he looks so good
in black, in black

Anyway. Today is election day in California, the special election costing $50 million or so that was called for by Arnold because he's a dork. The "reforms" he argues will fix California are typical Republican approaches. I have been back and forth on Arnold. I have thought highly of him at times. Admittedly briefly, but I don't think I've ever felt positively about Bush, for instance. Right now, I think Arnold is a dork. Bush's ineptitude is dripping onto Arnold and I see Arnold as hapless more than anything else. Oh, well.

And today my body is holding a referendum on whether or not I'm getting sick. The past few days it's been considering it, and I've been achy and exhausted. Last night I slept a lot, and today I seem to be a bit better. I hope they just do an up or down vote. Sick or Healthy. One or the other.

Wolf Parade -- Dinner Bells

I know nothing of The Wolf Parade except it's a band of guys from Canada. And I keep playing their CD Apologies to the Queen. I listen to a fair amount of new CDs each year, but I don't find myself listening to them over and over. This year that's been true of relatively few CDs, like The Arcade Fire, Spoon, Bloc Party, Fiona Apple, Bright Eyes, Paul Weller, TV on the Radio, the Magic Numbers... and now Wolf Parade. There's a ton of other stuff I've listened to that's been nice and all, like the new Franz Ferninand CD, for instance, that I've never found myself pining for. Apologies to the Queen. is a CD of songs that come to me in the middle of the day when I am not thinking of songs at all.

Tonight I'm taking my daughter to see the King Tut exhibit at LACMA. She loved studying Egypt last year, so she'll really enjoy herself. It'll be a weird commute--- I'll take the train back home 30 miles to get her and drive about 7 miles west of where my work is, but hey. Life in LA is endless commuting.

Shabbat Shalom.

Paul Weller -- Fly Little Bird

The Jam was the most interesting and exciting band to come out of England in the Punk years. Yeah, that's what I said. It wasn't just Paul Weller-- while his songs and guitar work were great, Bruce Foxton's bass and Rick Buckler's drumming were the solid base and soul of The Jam upon which Paul could hang his guitar work and lyrics. And though I will always resent Paul for breaking up the Jam (Pauls seem to break up stuff -- Paul McCartney broke up the Beatles, and Paul broke up the Jewish movement of Jesus followers and created Christians as his solo project), I do see the point of Weller partisans who say it was better for Weller to see their best work was behind them and to quit on top, rather than do a slow, agonizing slide into mediocrity. I dunno. When he started The Style Council, I hated the sound and tuned out until a few years ago, when Illuminations came out. I then went and got the rest of his solo stuff. And now we have a new CD, As Is Now, so I am a happy guy.

While many artists of the 70s haven't aged that well physically or musically, Paul Weller has. He isn't trying to be the angry young man he was in the late 70s, when Peter Townsend (one of Paul's Big influences) met him and afterwards said something along the lines of "he's a tougher egg than I ever was." You can still tell Weller's agressive guitar work immediately (if you don't know The Jam but know Peter Gabriel -- it's Paul Weller playing guitar on "Through the Wire,") but he's grown out of his youthful mimicry of Townsend's early Who tricks. And while he's still political, but it's not the raw stuff of his younger years. Here's what he did roughly twenty years ago, on the Style Council song "Money Go Round"--

The good and righteous sing their hymns
The crimpoline dresses who have no sins
Christians by day, killers in war
The hypocrites who know what they're fighting for
Killing for peace, freedom and truth
But they're too old to go so they send the youth

Watch the money-go-round, watch the money-go-round
I don't think he was an astronaut
Watch the money-go-round, watch the money-go-round
I must insist - he was a Socialist!

Perhaps not evident from this snippet but obvious from the lyrics as a whole -- he's talking about Jesus. Now, I am a Socialist kind of guy, I see the world in Marxist terms unless I work really hard at it, but when I read the Jesus narratives, I don't think "Socialist!" But thank G-d, Paul Weller did.*

And here is a bit of "Savages" from his new CD--

Savages, you can dress it up,
give it a name and a fancy uniform,
and a flag to fly, to hide behind,
can you not see the truth that's on the ground?

You have no love--
it has all gone cold on you,
you never had it so you take it out on
those whose love is growing,
that's what you hate most when you're savages.

See how much calmer and introspective he is now? :-)

Anyway. Power to the People. Except the People who watch Desperate Housewives. Or Bill O'Reilly. Or listen to Air America. Or voted for Bush. Or who care more about an embryo than a live child. Or listen to music on the radio. Or who drive BMWs. Or who have bumper stickers on their cars. Oh, forget it. Power to ME! I'll be a good dictator. You'll see.
-----------------------------

*Socialists in England have an interesting habit of trying to recasting old stuff in a Socialist light. Billy Bragg, in his wonderful album of Socialist anthems, The Internationale, does a gorgeous version of Blake's Jerusalem. And if you listen to it from a Socialist perspective, it can make sense that way, but I doubt it's what Blake intended.

Wolf Parade -- Dinner Bells

I am getting tired of wearing this brace, tired of holding my hands up off the keyboard and sitting up straight. I long to slouch back into ignorance of myself and my positions. I have had a resistance to using keyboard trays because they are wobbly, and wobbly things make me dizzy, so when we moved here last year I didn't even give this one a go, but now I'be been made to try it by my ergonomics specialist, it turns out that it works well for being a keyboard tray. Very solid. But my mouse keeps wanting to fall off of it.

Halloween today. My daughter is an AWD. Angel-Witch-Devil. Rather than buy a costume, she bought the appropriate props. Rather, I bought the props for her, and it cost a bundle. Angel wings, witch hat, devil tail. I wanted her to get a pirate eyepatch but she thought that would be overkill. Oh, well.

Every year at this time, when we start over at Bereshit (Genesis) again, I resolve to keep up with the Torah portion each week. Somewhere in mid-Vayikra (Leviticus) I get really lost trying to understand the commandments for sacrifices and boils and the like and stop. We'll see what happens this year. There's no point in me entertaining the idea of doing Daf Yomi (a page of Talmud a day -- takes 7 years to complete) someday if I can't read the Torah portion once a week for one year.

But so far, it's the second week, we're reading Noach, and I'm totally on top of it, man!

But they key to this is my getting a good night's sleep each night, and I always manage to stay up too late. Forget keeping Shabbat. If the world got 8 hours of sleep just one day, Moshiach would come.

No Music - iPod dead

I am working at a different office and my iPod is dead and I don't have a charger. Whatever.

I am doing a training over the phone with dozens of people soon. I'm a bit perturbed.

Destroyer -- Hey, Snow White

Naprosyn. It's special stuff. Very special stuff. My right hand is better but I have to keep it in a splint and rest it, so I am typing one-handed. Which merans this is all I am doing today. Except "Baruch atah adonai, rofeh hacholim." Blessed are you, G-d, who heals the sick." And who inspired scientists to make Naprosyn, a miracle drug if ever there was one.

Typing one-handed is no fun on a Microsoft Natural keyboard, by the way.

REM -- Everybody Hurts

I wasn't planning on writing about this, but when this song came on, it became obvious that I should write about this.

My right wrist is KILLING me. For the past ten years I have been dealing on and off with wrist issues. First it was wrist strain. Then it was tendonitis. And each time, I'd do exercises, take pills, try more "ergonomic" stuff, and get relief. But the past few months, my wrist has hurt more and more until now, it's constant pain. I start a new year committing myself to work on myself and improve my life and my wrist gets out of hand, so I have a full plate of changes I have to make to add to everything else! There's way too much for me to do in my work life and personal life! And I either stop working, because I have to type to work, or I work in pain, and it's very frustrating. I don't have any doubt that G-d has everything in my life for a reason, but I have no clue what the reason is. My boss routinely has aches and pains from her cancer surgery scars and my wrist hurting seems so silly and insignificant comparatively. And let's face it... I don't mind excruciating pain much if my hand still functions. But I think this sort of tendon issue can make it so I can't use my hand properly -- I had a friend whose carpal tunnel got to be so bad that she could not do ANYTHING with her hand -- so the whole thing is scary.

I have to stop typing this so I can go type other stuff... all the time, I have this glorious burning feeling in my forearm...

But tonight I will lay off my wrist and light the candles with my left hand and give my wrist a rest.... that's a tongue-twister, isn't it?

Shabbat Shalom!

Air -- Mike Mills

So, my computer likes to crash. Not all the time, mind you, just when I am doing something extra important. And it's not an exciting Blue Screen Of Death. No. It just freezes. No I/O at all. It's like it doesn't want to admit there's a problem. Perhaps it thinks I won't notice it if it sits perfectly still, like the response we see in some animals when a predator comes. Stop. Don't breathe. Blend.

So it did it again just now, and so I dutifully called in to the "Support Desk" and talked to a guy who dutifully took the report. We both knew it was for nothing -- the local IT guy will, rather than waste time trying to figure out my PC, just call for a rebuild, and I'll get it back, and after a while, it'll start crashing once a week again. And then I can call in another ticket.

I know what you are thinking. "Your computer only crashes once a week? Amazing! YOur computer is obviously state-of-the-art! Stop kvetching!"

You know what's funny? My iBook crashes too. You know what's funnier? Then only time my iBook crashes is when I am running Virtual PC!!. I know the reason it's crashing is that Virtual PC is a heavy duty program with all the software emulation of the Windows hardware, but still... when I am at work, I get authentic PC crashes, and when I am at home, I get the Virtual PC crashes.

Sometimes when you put your iPod on Shuffle, does it seem like G-d or some other Being is arranging the music? Right after the Air instrumental, now it's playing a Blur instrumnental. If the THIRD song is an instrumental, I'll know something is going on.

Anyway. I gotta try to make my PC crash again... but after I save this.