I have mouthed off to the new gods. Or rather, I have mouthed off to the old gods - after all, they've taken over the throne a few years back, only I had failed to acknowledge it somehow.
Anyway, yesterday I took the liberty to use Buzz for a bit of humoristic (honest!) criticism pointed at the global emperors. Please, even if it wasn't funny one shouldn't mistake it for seriousness - just ask my friends if you need proof - this is a day to day failure of mine!
So.. as I am writing this I just know that a minor development team somewhere in Kamchatka is working on a substitute-tal, or if you will, Goo-Tal (i've taken the liberty to choose a name for the new app but am fully aware that this is not my prerogative).
Expect the release date some time next week. I can't wait to try it!
API documentation available tomorrow.
Start enhancing GOO-Tal with addons today!
Well… another person has been born again in Jerkdom and I thought it would be good to send you this update.
Background:
As many of you know, Y and I bought and lifted heavy wine barrels in order to plant plants in our Berkeley apartment’s deck. This was no simple task. The containers where expensive and heavy to lift, but we loved them. To complete the task we brought numerous beautiful plants, many of them from the Berkeley Botanical garden which we frequented in order to find the most beautiful saplings. Then we lovingly nurtured them. Even our neighbors helped with that – when we had to travel somewhere they were more than willing to help. And so in response the plants thrived to the point where they were the thing that we had the toughest time leaving behind.
When we did, we told our landlord that we would like to grab the containers at least, thinking to start over in our new place. But lo and behold: the man had already told the new tenants that we are leaving the plants as a gift. Problem.
Now what would the non-jerk person do to solve this quandary? As I pride myself on being a non-jerk, I can tell you: the non-jerk would offer to reimburse us. Especially since we discussed this and were willing to be reimbursed just for the containers and not for the plants (considering that we believed that the plants will not make the trip anyway).
Since he didn’t, Y suggested it. Male LL was shaken up by the suggestion. Said he will consult with Female LL.
So the two of them sat together until Eureka! They found a way to screw us and now they are walking around smiling: We had the cleaner come the day after we left and so we need to pay for the extra night. How gratifying!
To this of course he agreed explicitly. What’s more: when Y and I were in Israel we let them stay in the apartment. For that of course we were not reimbursed. But.. jerks will be jerks. I am not going to bother.
Thank you though Paul and Sylvia. I will always think of you with affection.
Overheard today, Valencia st. quaint antique shop doorsill:
A guy coming out of the store. Needless to say he is beautifully dressed. Lacquer shoes. Striped black and white pants and a short cylinder hat. He meets another guy. Even more superfluous to stress: this guy is again a fashion icon. Green handkerchief popping out of turqoise blue. I stare mesmerized and so the following sentence which is bounced from one to the other reaches my ears without difficulty:
"You simply have to see this: They have the most lovely 18th century tin box for moist clouts. I've been looking for one for ages and ages"
I am adding myself to a long line of israelis who are having definitional problems.
In a sense it is extremely strange that I am debating this issue. The answer for me should have been straightforward. No mezuza. Not even the amazingly pretty one we got for our wedding.
What was right in TLV should be right in SF, no?
Well, I don't know. Some ground data is necessary: I am intensely secular. In fact, I am decidedly secular. I think of being secular as my culture but am having a little difficulty in ascertaining the extent to which I can allow judaism to permeate my secularism.
In other words, I am not sure that judaism can be separated from its religious elements if it hasn't yet already, and secondly I am not sure that even if it can, that I want to allow my secularism to contain those elements. With the latter I have a political qualms which have to do with the fact that I want my cultural group to include israeli arabs.
And so, I can't understand the urge I am experiencing to place the mezuza on the wall. I adamantly rejected this option in TLV when Yoav suggested it. So what's going on?
Well... soul searching has produced the only possible analysis: that my secularism is already strongly influenced by americanism. In other words: the mezuza is really pretty and golden and it's mine and I want it on MY door stand.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Deranged looking afro-religious guy.
Here is a brochure about how everything is going to end.
Thank you. Not interested.
Not interested?
No.
Have a good sabbath.
You too.
Door closes.
I am using the term pin cushion instead of punch bag because i mean exactly that: being prickly mean instead of downright ferocious.
And now to my point:
I find that sometimes the best thing you can do for your mate is allow her to chafe you a little bit.
Those are the cases where words of consolation won't work. The reason why they do not is why taking a minor thump does a better job:
when the other person is in that type of a mood she suffers from offset proportion. In other words, she fails to discern the truly important from the merely irritating.
so when she lashes at you if you manage to look mildly hurt she will come around in a jiffy!
Hark to the words of the experienced!
I agree with the following argument out ofJohn Banville's analysis at NYBR on Richardson's book on Emerson (yes.. this is Tal on Banville on Richardson on Emerson. I haven't read the book so it might be that this is a direct analysis of Richardson's and not Banville's on Richardson's. Well anyway:)
"...His second major theme is that of Emerson the creative reader.[1] At no point does Richardson identify to whom his book is primarily addressed, but we may make a fair guess from the fact that he opens his introduction with that splendid piece of encouragement and accommodation from Emerson's great essay "The American Scholar":
Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books. "
so right. of course. but this interpretation preserves a lot of meekishness still: other than instructing us to read critically, it doesn't say a whole lot about how to write, or how to muster the courage to write.
That's it. I have decided to change route and aspire to becoming the perfect wife. I just know I can be good at that. In fact, I am starting to suspect that I should have known this all along, as my natural purpose. Yes, I can feel it in my ovaries - finally, I have my direction.
First and foremost, I am going to refrain from dealing with any type of professional which isn't the cable guy, the plumber, the grocer, the dressmaker etc... I can go on and on but I know that by now you are catching my drift. I am happy to report that finally I have come to the conclusion that all these interactions with academia professionals are standing in my way of becoming expert at wifing so I am going to put that into a halt since from now on, to allow myself to concentrate on my recently identified target.
And so I am going to get up early in the morning. Prepare coffee and eggs. Smile and chat frivolously in order to make sure that Y leaves home with a song in his heart. When he decides to leave I am going to kiss him with fervor so that he knows that at home he has a loving wife and that he can go out into the world full of manly confidence. As soon as he is out the door I am going to start fulfilling my chores one after the next with the ability of an apt homemaker. And let me tell you, I am just busy busy busy. I need to: wash the dishes, call the guy from the air conditioner company, start working on dinner, send Y’s shirts to the dry cleaners, clean the leaves off of the balcony, work on the menu for the dinner party which I have planned for the weekend to which I invited Y’s boss and his wife – this is making me kind of nervous, I hear her canard a l’orange is unheard of. After that I have to go buy a beer keg for Y’s Thursday poker night as well as flour for the home-baked nachos I am going to prepare for the guys (yummy!). I have to get all that finished before my wax, nails and hairdresser appointment at 5PM. That will probably take me around two hours. Just enough time to get home for setting the table and doing the final stage of my Beef wellington before Y gets home famished as usual.
I have to stop now. Y just told me – very authoritatevly I might add – to get back to my studies. Gotta go now – you understand…
So we came back from the land of milk and honey bearing it's best fruits: Bamba and Halva.
Y sought to inculcate his co-workers on the food culture of the promised land. So over violent contestations from my end he whisked both packages of Halva and the three bags of bamba and embarked on his daily peregrination over bridges and through hay fields, hills, waste pools, outdoor malls.
Three days in, the Halva was affronted to the point it became gray. Nobody touched it. I rejoiced over the prospect of having it back and did not care so much to understand the reasons for the rejection. Y on the otherhand was mightily perplexed. He sought to decipher the reasons for this lack of interest.
By now you are probably biting your nails, waiting for the key to this mystery and so I'll share it with you: They thought it was chicken.
1. can't resist:
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2009/10/ten-best-faculties-in-intellectual-propertycyberlaw.html
2. americanizing: spent a large part of our Sunday at a corn maze with my JSP cohort (just one eerie thing happened. It wasn’t an extra terrestrial abduction for those of you who know what corn mazes are. Instead it was a large woman sitting astride on a hay stack and wondering whether I too found hay to be arousing. Not the word she used exactly, by the way, but my fingers quiver on the keyboard when I try to write that one so I opted for the scientific term). And what do you do once you are out of the maze and yearning for food? Of course! You BBQ! What else. However, when your type of America is Berkeley-type, you barbeque tofu burgers which you eat on glutton-free rye buns.
* Two of the law school's professors had just been awarded faculty chairs. I offer my congratulations and part of the text of the announcment (the interesting part is highlighted)
Talley, a corporate law expert and faculty co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy, is the first holder of the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Chair. He teaches courses on corporate finance, contracts, and law and economics. Earlier this year, Talley was one of two risk-analysis experts tapped by the Congressional Oversight Panel to review the U.S. Treasury Department’s methodology in its stress tests of America’s 19 largest bank holding companies.
His chair was funded by the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, of which Martin Blank ’66 is a co-director. The foundation invests in programs that promote education, tolerance, social services, the State of Israel, healthcare, and the arts.
(excerpt from this morning's New York Times: I am well aware that I missing the point of this column. Still, being petted is pleasent and we should enjoy it before it turns to patting, rapping, etc. I've taken the liberty to highlight the "important" parts)
While the U.S. has struggled with enormous problems over the past several years, there has been at least one consistent bright spot. Its system of higher education has remained the finest in the world.
Now there are ominous cracks appearing in that cornerstone of American civilization. Exhibit A is the University of California, Berkeley, the finest public university in the world and undoubtedly one of the two or three best universities in the United States, public orprivate.
More of Berkeley’s undergraduates go on to get Ph.D.’s than those at any other university in the country. The school is among the nation’s leaders in producing winners of the Nobel Prize. An extraordinary amount of cutting-edge research in a wide variety of critically important fields, including energy and the biological sciences, is taking place here.
While I was roaming the campus, talking to students, professors and administrators, word came that scientists had put together a full analysis and a fairly complete fossilized skeleton of Ardi, who is known to her closest living associates as Ardipithecus ramidus. At 4.4 million years of age, this four-foot tall, tree-climbing wonder is now the oldest known human ancestor.
(just to set things straight so that nobody mistakes me for what i am not: this image only managed to capture my attention for a second. during the time it took me to open my posting application and paste my link i was overcome by curiosity and checked to see what "remoulade" was. then when the application opened i quickly pasted "remoulade" instead of the link... then i had to rethink the mental process which brought me to open the application in the first place because i was pretty sure it wasn't "remoulade". this proved to be a very difficult task because of the food images that flooded and still flood my psyche. anyhow, i believe the crowd you are seeing at the picture is waiting to be seated at its table at chez panisse)
People in my dreams have started to use English in order to converse with me. I think that this isn’t a new thing. Other Israelis in Berkeley are probably asleep concurrently and that’s why I am getting no guest performances of my compatriots.
Isn’t it swell? Robert Mugabe can show California the light. You can call him inhumane all you like but this guy certainly knows how to relieve HIS prisons when he needs to. And of course, we shouldn’t forget that his challenge is much more substantial than California’s – after all, dealing with drug-related criminals, homeless felons and petty thieves is naught when compared to having to allocate cell space for hoards of dissident miserables.
Anyway, I say we try and organize educational expeditions to Zimbabwe for the rapid resolution of the prison crisis.
I am dumbfounded by solicitor general Elena Kagan argument that was intended to shoot down the idea that campaign finance laws impinge upon the corporations 1st amendment rights.
"other people's money" is what is being used according to Kagan, which it seems to me stands in stark opposition with the idea that the fiduciary is the legal clone of the beneficiary.
It's funny to see how flexible these ideas are.
[this should not to be taken as suggesting that I am in some sense supportive of the absure idea of protecting the corporations right to freely express ITself. Obviously, we are stressing the notion of a legal person judge a tad too much]
I seriously thought that all these nice jews were doing a Rosh Hashana breakfast instead of Rosh Hashana dinner. It's a good thing Y explained that we aren't expected to arrive early for this kind of break-fast.
* just burned my hand on a potato. this is emblematic of life absent Y during the day. or in other words; when I don't go out I have to engage in such high risk tasks as fixing my own lunch.
I realized that it takes courage to become an expert in one's field.
Up until now it had been my mistaken impression that choosing a field to excel in would just tell you something, not altogether positive, about the expert's character; that it means a certain squarish tendency, but one which goes hand in hand with an ability to delve into the minutiae of a particular field of interest.
So, in a sense, I always appreciated these people as studious. And my mind had other variations for studious that sound less flattering: like narrow-minded, slavish, neatpicky and what have you. For myself, as my idea of the opposite of such people I reserved words that were my idea of antonyms of studious, for example, broad minded, fruitful, creative, etc. to suggest that those other people are a paritcular brand of ignorant, because their fascination with a singular stem of knowledge meant that they simply had no time to be interested in other things.
Now I've come to realize that in order to do what they do you need to believe in your ability to be THE expert, that there are high stakes to this approach and an admirable level of confidence. If you do achieve this goal you deserve appreciation for a remarkable project, but even if you don't, then at least you single out yourself as someone who was willing to set that mark for himself. Sorry, herself (and by the way, I no longer think this particular brand of academic affirmative action is idiotic).
* I'm only adding this line on top of what I really want to say here so that I don't feel like since this post is under 140 characters it is Twitter material instead of speaking, emailing, or posting material. The solution I had chosen for this media conflict, or in other words, the "Twitter sucks in all" trend, is to simply write a longer message. How is that for a pragmatic's cure? Incidently, I find it truly debilitating that North Korea twitted that it hoped that the world would be consistent in its reaction to S.K's attempted sattelite launch. And now to the gist:
Y has his first academic publication! It's a book chapter!
·Yep, I’ve been keyboard-tied for reasons that were beyond my control. Now it’s going to be the flood of posts as of right now.
I believe closeness between friends is all about rhythm and not much more.
I can think of many examples but this is becoming clearer and clearer to me as I have more and more experience at living: when people have a matching pace in terms of the way they think and express themselves, which ultimately affects their verbal ping-pong they would have a better chance of becoming great friends. Character, interests, other aspects of demeanor have less to do with it.
