Your seforim library isn't complete without...

For those of you that appreciated the link I posted a while back, to the article about "Britney's Kaballah Baby," you're sure to love the Judaism section of Chapters at Pinecrest. In next to classics such as "What to Do When You're Dating a Jew," are some amazing sounding kabbalah texts. Two of my favourite titles were "10 Minute Kabbalah" and "God Wears Lipstick: Kabballah For Women" by Kabbalist Karen Berg. Actually, Kabbalist Berg, no He doesn't. Sorry to ruin your book...actually, no I'm not.

These Rolling Stones gather no moss

This past Sunday, my parents watched a performance by a group of wrinkly, shrivel-faced old men who reached the end of their prime decades ago. And after they finished watching 60 Minutes, they went to the Rolling Stones’ concert.

On Sunday, the Rolling Stones gave a sold-out concert in Lansdowne Park in the first recorded attempt by a rock band to deafen an entire city. There were reports of people living in Alta Vista who could hear the entire concert from their homes (I am not making this up.) I pity anyone who lives in the downtown core who (a) values sleep (b) hates the Rolling Stones or (c) hates the Rolling Stones because he values sleep. The concert was very well attended, and included over 40,000 fans, all of whom thinking, as the lead singer of the band appeared on stage, “Wow, Mick Jagger looks horrible.”

True, the Stones are no spring chickens and probably engage more in Passing Stones than Rolling Stones, but that doesn’t mean they are without the vibrancy of youth. As you well remember from SARS-stock, (official slogan: It Made Sense At The Time) Sir Mick can still jump around the stage for close to 2 hours, singing at decibel levels sufficient to kill small livestock, and not appear to get tired. Guitarist Keith Richards (motto: Cheating Death Since 1973) who looked more skeletal than ever, can still play for 2 hours straight, taking breaks only to check his blood-sugar level.

But such a showing of liveliness by men in their 60’s, who, according to what we know about biological physics, should have been dead 30 years ago, also raises some profound sociological questions. Is this behaviour motivated by the inner actualization of their true Ego, or is it a result of subliminal messaging created by our youth-worshipping culture in which splendour is valued more than wisdom, and so by succumbing to a mass-scale peer pressuring, if you will, the Rolling Stones are merely compensating for an inner insecurity and a need to “fit in?” The answer is: Who gives a flying flamingo, but I have a better question. What kind of coke was Mick Jagger on, and where can I get some?

Caption #3

What a Scam!

As many of you already know I’m always on the lookout for scams, both for my protection and for my dreams of a life as a con-artist. It should therefore come as a bit of surprise that it took me so long to recognize the following scam. Everyday for the past couple of years on my way to the subway I would see around a dozen signs all proclaiming “Think in Spanish.” If you were to stop and read the sign you would no doubt be given all the necessary details on how to contact a tutor who’ll teach you to hable español.

Before you know it, you’re thinking Spanish fluently, but not being able to speak or understand the language things start becoming increasingly difficult for you. Within a couple of weeks your tutor decides it’s time for the final stage of the scam. Instead of giving you the final lesson in Andalusian (a Spanish dialect), which you had been looking forward to, rather which you unknowingly thought (in a language you don’t understand) you had been looking forward to, your tutor shows up with a moving truck and two really big men. Without saying a word the trio begin to load all of your possessions into the moving truck.

Unfortunately for you, you don’t speak or understand Spanish, so all you can do is sit there and watch as the clever criminals clean out the contents of your house (the last part of this sentence takes home the blog’s new alliteration trophy of the week). First goes your 78 inch plasma TV, followed by your fridge, oven, washer, dryer, all of your wife’s jewelry, and of course your stamp collection, but somehow they forget to take Philbert the farting dog. All the while you’re thinking “ellos roban todo” and your Hispanic housekeeper is yelling “ellos roban todo” but you don’t understand a word, so you sit there in your rapidly emptying house thinking “tome por favor Philbert el perro de farting.”

This is a particularly vicious scam because it leaves the victim incapacitated even after the perpetrators have gone, with only Philbert the farting dog for company.

I have to dedicate this blog to the people I went to for shabbos meals. I will not mention their names, but they served me food so delicious, fit for kings.

I would also like to know what some of your favourite foods are.

Right now I’m putting together a little midnight meal of:

Mac + cheese (foulds) with extra cheddar cheese, tuna and lots of ketchup. I also really like fruit juices like ceres or p.o.m. The most delicious things I have ever eaten of course were from my ex-wife.

This is also a great time to plug for J2, the best shwarma in TO.

Killer Bunnies from Georgia

First of all, I apologize for my extended hiatus; as many (all of you? Maybe except for that anonymous guy from Harlem...) of you know, there have been some fantastic changes and additions to my familial home.

Although I originally promised Gaby to go post for post with him, I'm a liar. What can you do?

The following post is about a story that I had heard often, didn't believe and never thoroughly investigated. The question is as follows: Was President Jimmy Carter attacked by a rabid, swimming bunny? He claims that he was and has the photographic evidence to prove it. Others are more skeptical. Let me make this very clear: I'm not making any of this up.

As kids growing up in the late 70s, we all remember the facts quite clearly. On April 20, 1979, Jimmy Carter was lazily paddling his birch canoe across a large pond in Plains, Georgia. He heard a splashing noise in the water, about 20 feet off his starboard bow (I think that's part of the motor?). He turned to investigate the source of the noise and saw (actual quote from Presidential press secretary Jody Powell) "a vicious rabbit hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president." Even more amazingly, a White House photographer was on hand to capture this fantastic moment for historical posterity.

Early press reports stated that the president attempted to strike the enraged rodent with his canoe paddles. This did not sit well with animal lovers; later articles claimed that he merely used the paddle to "splash water in the rabbit's direction."

As one can expect, the cynics did not believe the president. "Rabbits can't swim," they claimed. "And even if they did, they would not attack a person, let alone an eight-foot canoe."

Defending the president, the White House press corps claimed that this particular bunny was actually a "swamp rabbit," which sounded far more menacing and vicious. The President, distraught after reading a newspaper article that poked fun at his version of events, ordered the aforemention photograph published, enlarged and analyzed by zoological experts.

The full size photo is available here, courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. The blown up shot is reproduced below.

Liberal Jewish Guilt

I ate Shabbos dinner at the house of this very nice gentleman who originated from new york. He is involved in the smichah program at a yeshivah called Chovevei Torah. If you are not familiar with the school, maybe you are familiar with its rosh yeshivah, Rabbi Avi Weiss. If his name doesn't ring a bell, I will just let you know that he is the premier Rabbi in the "open orthodox" community. (and yes, they really refer to themselves as open orthodoxy). For more information on him, please contact Mr. Moderately Selassie. The prupose of this yeshivah is to combine the study of halachic process with the study of more modern issues such as pastoral counseling and social justice. To be fair, I am a big fan of pastoral counseling training for Rabbinical students who plan on being pulpit rabbis. However, the part that gets me is the social justice training (and yes, they actually refer to it as social justice).
The idea behind this program is to teach the students to be sensitive to the plight of others and to take this sensitivity, project it to their fellow jews and provide time and effort to remedy these inequities. The black community in America needs better education programs, the hispanic community is struggling to work its way out of the ghettos, the arabs are stereotyped as terrorists, the africans in darfur are being slaughtered by the janjaweed and well... I could go on forever with the inequities in the world today. As a specific example, the fellow I was eating dinner at was here in Chicago in order to empower hispanic women living in underfunded housing projects to fight for themselves and improve their conditions by speaking out to the housing commission (and yes, he used the word empower). Now, I do not diminish the problems facing these communities but one fact remains: These are not OUR communities! How many Jews suffer daily from poverty, anti-semitism and various ailments, inequities and tragedeies? We have our own communities, our own families and out own people. How often has the plight of the Jewish people been overlooked? Must we overlook it as well and find other causes to give our time and energy too? I do not object to speaking out or to sign petitions or even to join in a rally if you feel the cause is worthwhile, but do we need to be the ones who lead these rallies or write these petitions? Is this really the way we want future pulipt rabbis and community leaders to behave? There is a huge conflict going on between our fellow jews right now, and someone wants to focus on hispanic housing projects?
I am in total dismay as to how our priorities as Jews became so mixed up. Liberal Jewish guilt strikes again.

Retroactive Chutzpah-nik of the Month Award

Kudos to Mr. Selassie for the institution of the “Chutzpah-nik of the Month Award”, a truly worthwhile addition to this blog. Despite the award being such a recent advent, I have come across a candidate so deserving, that I feel he merits a retroactive nomination. Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you Sheikh Muhammad al Gamei’a, Chutzpah-nik of the Month Nominee, October 2001.

An inside account of the Bush Administration’s response to the 9/11 terror attacks that I have recently been reading mentioned of the American public’s unfortunate backlash towards various American-Muslim communities. In response to this backlash, Mr. al Gamei’a, who at the time of the attacks was imam of the largest and wealthiest mosque in America, promptly returned to his native Egypt to avoid the harassment and gave an interview in which he stated that “the Jews were behind these ugly acts”. Such an accusation, while significant on its own, was merely the tip of the iceberg. A transcript of the interview available online turned out to contain some of the most blatantly anti-semitic remarks I have EVER read. In this interview, Mr. Al Gamei’a claims that “although the Americans suspect the Zionists are behind the act, none has the courage to talk about it in public” because “the Zionists control everything and that they also control political decision-making, the big media organizations, and the financial and economic institutions. Anyone daring to say a word is considered an anti-Semite”. He continues: “The Jews who control the media acted to hush is up so that the American people would not know. If it became known to the American people, they would have done to the Jews what Hitler did!”

Mr. al Gamei’a makes further claims that the Jews disseminate “corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. Because of them [the Jews] there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world”.

Rarely have I read such strong words of hatred. Enough said! Muhammad al Gamei’a, I hereby retroactively nominate you Chutzpah-nik of the Month, October 2001.

As a side point, I find it interesting and noteworthy that this interview was given for a site of Al-Azhar University, the self-proclaimed world’s oldest university located in Cairo. Clearly, it must have a long and rich tradition of open and healthy academic debate.

For a transcript of the interview, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area-sd&ID=SP28801

The New Shwarma Place

I went to a new fleishig restaurant in TO with our beloved hevnsangel19 and we both ordered shwarmas in a pita. Actually we both got separate pitas, but that’s besides the point. The Israeli guy behind the counter didn’t speak any English, so when I asked him how he was doing he said “be’pita?” so I said “yes, be’pita.” My main problem up to this point wasn’t the mind-numbing conversation provided by the establishment, it was the fact that they had no laffas nor were they planning on adding laffas to the menu any time soon, so I was a little worried that I’d still be hungry after just one shwarma in a pita. Strangely the reason given to me for the missing laffas was that they didn’t have the capability to make them. When I asked where they get their pitas, the kind woman behind the cash register, who spoke English but lacked a brain, said that they buy them.

One thing that I did like were that they filled the pita entirely with meat, with almost no room for anything else, not like some other places where you’d be lucky to find a piece of meat with one of those metal detectors you see in the hands of a fat guy in a speedo at the beach. I am fully aware that a metal detector shouldn’t actually detect the meat in one’s shwarma, but why then did a certain Bounty Hunter Quicksilver metal detector with “digital target ID” and “push button sensitivity and discrimination” sound it’s alarm incessantly while I was sitting in my kitchen eating a hamburger from a certain unnamed fast food restaurant? Why?

Another thing that I liked is that you get to stuff your own shwarma. The Israeli guy puts the meat in the shwarma and the rest is up to you. A big complaint I normally have is that they never stuff the shwarma to full capacity. A common reason given for this is that the pita can’t handle all the stuffing and will eventually break under all the pressure. But you’re eating the darn thing! It’s not like you’re going to bring it home and put in on the mantel piece as a heirloom for generations to come. Within fifteen minutes the pita should be happily traveling through your intestine looking for a cheap place to spend the night, while sending on a message to the colon that he’s going to be working overtime tomorrow. Just a quick side note on the salads, vegetables, etcetera, that are available for stuffing. Many of you know how fond I am of green olives. In fact Jon and I once had a competition involving green olives which lasted the better part of two months (speaking of which, does anyone remember who won? I think it was Jon, but I can’t remember). Anyhow, the olives all had their pits. Who puts olives with pits into their shwarma? That’s like sticking the cardboard “Folds Macaroni” box into the boiling water with the macaroni, it’s completely retarted. Also why was the chef completely naked? In my opinion this detracts from the whole ambiance of the restaurant, and is that even legal?

So we get our shwarmas and we stuff them full of all sorts of things, most of them involving some sort of pickling or another, and yes I did throw in some olives (I’ve started to freebase olives on the weekends too). Now it’s time to find a seat, not an easy task on the first evening after the nine days, a task made even harder by the fact that Michael Moore and his two orca buddies are occupying more than half the seats in the whole joint. A waitress tells us that there is some seating outside on their patio. We head out and have the whole patio to ourselves. That’s when I fell into the dilemma of a lifetime. The table next to ours still had all of the dirty dishes and leftover food from it’s previous customers. That’s when I noticed the practically untouched shishkababs sitting on a long forgotten plate. They were crying my name. They were begging for my merciful mouth, my warm intestines and lastly my colon. I didn’t know what to do. My concern wasn’t that someone would catch me in the crime, I didn’t care if that happened. I was worried about the state of the meat. On the one hand it was calling my name! But on the other, perhaps it was all a ruse. The meat knew it was on it’s last legs, another ten to fifteen minutes and it’s in the garbage, destined for some scavenger like a dog, or worse even, a raccoon. What if the meat had been sitting there all day and was already rotten, or perhaps infested with ants or myrtillocactus geometrizans? Should I take the risk that the guy or more likely the lady eating (looking at?) the kababs had some horrible disease that’s transferable through the sharing of delightful meats? I didn’t know what to do! A quandary for the ages! Luckily there’s a happy ending. I had stuffed my own shwarma, and boy was it stuffed. Miraculously, once I had finished my own shwarma in a small but bursting pita, I was no longer hungry. I had defeated the kababs! The look of despair in the eyes of the kababs was one I’ll never forget.

Searching for Michael Moore's Stomach

Here's a game I made that I like to call "MOORE or ORCA?"

Below are 3 pictures. Each picture is a small part from a larger picture.

One of these pictures is of filmmaker Michael Moore's belly (don't worry - he's wearing clothes) and 2 of these pictures are of 10,000 pound orcas. Try to guess which is which!

Good luck! (see below for the answers)







(For answers click here)

Israel Today - uprooted Jews.

I would also like to offer my heartfelt sentiments and much courage to all those families who are being forced to evacuate their community and homes from the Gaza settlements which they so strongly dedicated their lives to for the past 38 years.

And to my fellow bloggers, I put forward these 4 questions:

1) Does evacuating Gaza really increase the security of Israel by solidifying its borders or make it easier to fight terrorism?

2) Will evacuating Gaza really increase Palestinian liability for their terrorist activity?

3) Is Gaza only a small piece of what that Palestinians are fated to inherit of Israel in the near future?

4) Is Israel losing to the pressures of Arab terrorism?

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

~

A really nice thing about Catholicism is how divorce is not allowed. I wish a lot of Bracha and hatzlacha to all the couples out there, young and old.

Re: Course Selection

Perhaps my limited knowledge of political history has caused me to misunderstand, but shouldn't the title of Dave's course read: Political Philosophy and Democratic Participation in the Context of Global Capitalism-From the Empire to the Nation-State? Titling it "From the Nation-State to the Empire" seems backwards to me. A nation-state is defined as "a political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language" whereas an empire is defined as "a political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority."

Now, it seems to me that the political philosophy, at least in the context of foreign policy, of todays capitalist democracies (read: the United States) has been to steer "empires" such as the former Soviet Union towards nation-statehood based either on policies of confrontation or appeasement (poor misguided liberals). And while it may be argued that no empire exists today (does China qualify?), certainly America's current foreign policy is obsessed with guiding "territories ruled by a single supreme authority", or every single Arab regime this side of Turkey and Morocco, to nation-statehood via whatever means necessary - which according to liberals would mean feeding their financial infrastructure in the hope that such a regime will actually reform itself.

Thus, to title a course "From the Nation-State to Empire" seems to me to be studying history backwards, especially if one accepts the argument that no empires actually exist today. Perhaps Max or Michael Fine can enlighten me as to why the above might actually be a logical course title. Otherwise, I am more than happy to simply accept that all university professors are liberal dimwits.

I honestly have no idea why this course title bothered me so much!

Course Selection

Here's some more nonsense from my masters program:

There is no guarantee that a course that has a short name will be good. On the other hand, the longer the course name gets, the worse you know it's going to be. As has been mentioned in an earlier post, one course I'm taking this semester is called "Making Sense of Theory in the Arts and Social Sciences". You can just tell from the name how the course is going to be. Anyway, this morning I was looking through the list of available courses and came across one that, judging by it's name, is probably the biggest load of BS in history:

GLST 652 - Political Philosophy and Democratic Participation in the Context of Global Capitalism-From the Nation-State to Empire

I can just imagine all of the people looking for work that say to themselves, "Man I'd be so much more qualified if only I knew about Political Philosophy and Democratic Participation in the Context of Global Capitalism-From the Nation-State to Empire. Then I could get a job!" Well, the wait is now over. Sign up for GLST 652 today!

Caption #2

Could there anything more wrong with this?

This morning, the Citizen had an article claiming to share Jessica Simpson's views on "God and Short Shorts". Then, later today I noticed a link to the following article. I think its headline is even worse. Check it out and you'll see what I mean.

http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/celebs/articles/1267296.armx

Chutzpah-nik of the Month: Nominees

As you all know, it has been a long-standing tradition of this blog (since August 2005, and possibly never again) to nominate, at the beginning each month, a number of individuals who we think qualify for the “Chutzpah-nik of the Month Award.”

These individuals, all of whom must be public figures, vie for this prize which will be given to the nominee with “the most Chutzpah-dik statement, action and/or behaviour actualized in the past month.” (I have not yet decided whether or not I will send the winner a certificate for “Chutzpah-nik of the Month,” but I think we can all agree that it would be funny if I did.)

Feel free to add your own nominations.

I humbly nominate the following for the month of July 2005:

#1 - Carolyn Parrish:

Her previous antics aside, her wanton act of Chutzpah this past month takes the cake.

Recently, Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier called terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world “detestable murderers and scumbags.” Offended by this for some reason, Parrish, taking time out of her busy schedule as a lunatic, wrote a letter to cabinet balloon-head, Bill Graham, Minister of Defence. In this letter, Parrish (Former Liberal MP, now Independent) called the Chief of Staff's comments “truly barbaric” and called on Graham to “muzzle the beast.”

Furthermore, in an interview with the Globe and Mail’s left-leaning Jane Taber, Parrish said, “I’m totally offended by [Hellier] … and I think somebody should put a clamp on his mouth.”

But here’s the clincher. Recently, in an attempt to get back into the Liberal Party, she met with the PMO. At this meeting it became clear that should she return, she would be asked to moderate her comments about subjects such as the Middle East and President Bush. Parrish responded to this by saying, “I'm appalled the Liberal Party wants to curb free speech as badly as it wants to,” she said.

“Appalled,” are you? So Hellier should be “muzzled” and “shouldn’t speak that way” about terrorists, and that “somebody should put a clamp on his mouth.” But when Queen Wacko of Looney Land wants to say ridiculous things about world leaders, it’s “appalling” that her party would want her to curb her free speech.

Carolyn Parrish, I hereby nominate you “Chutzpah-nik of the Month.”

#2 - David Ahenekew:

In December, 2002, Ahenakew, head of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations at the time, spoke to a reporter and praised Hitler for trying to “clean up the world” when he “fried” six million Jews in the Holocaust. He also said Hitler's rise to power was a response to the “disease” of Jewish world domination.

Ahenekew (aka Chief-Talks-Big-Bull) never disputed any of these comments. In fact, he acknowledged and apologized for them that same December. In his apology he even said “Such comments have no excuse.”

But later he decided that they did have an excuse.

In his four-day hearing in April he told the court the racist comments were made because he had not been feeling well the day he made the speech, because his blood sugar was up and his diabetes medication had been changed. Well that explains that! Everyone knows anti-Semitism and Holocaust-praising is a common side effect of diabetes medication! Also, at his most recent trial Chief Talks-Big-Bull said he still believes Jews started the war. Other than that though, his comments had “no excuse.”

And so on July 8, 2005, Chief Talks-Big-Bull was fined the massive sum of $1,000 (and that’s like, $1.50 American) for wilfully promoting hatred. Upon leaving the court, an angry Ahenekew said he's a victim of a justice system that's unfair to First Nations people and vowed to appeal. “My case was as much about racism against First Nations as it was about alleged racism against the Jewish community.”

Huh? So, in other words, he has admitted that he said every word he was accused of saying to a reporter and, therefore, was violating the part of the Criminal Code that says:

“Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty…”

But that pesky issue of “breaking the law” and all isn’t why he was found guilty. No! It’s obviously because of racism against the First Nations. And keep in mind he’s appealing rather than paying $1,000, even though the appeal will inevitably cost more than that fine (after all, famed Nazi lawyer Doug Christie does not work for free.)

And so, for blaming your racist comments on your medication, by claiming your self-confessed guilt was a result of racism, and by appealing the fine which will be less than the legal bills upon appeal, I hereby nominate you, David Ahenakew, “Chutzpah-nik” of the Month.

If anyone else has any nominations, feel free to add them.

Don’t forget to vote for the nominees!