by the pricking of my thumbs...

…I feel a post coming on! Today is Purim, the Jewish festival of costumes and of doing the exact opposite of what you usually do. Not unlike Hallowe’en, it has morphed into a dressing up day and nobody can really remember why. Hey, that’s not true. Half this country is filled with religious folks who take the reading of the gospel according to Esther muy seriously. Just not me.

Like any self-respecting heebie-jeebie holiday, this is about triumph over adversity and kicking the pants off of ancient nazi oppressors. This time there was some Persian dude who wanted all the Jews dead. We celebrate him by eating OZNAI AMAN, which the cleaners put out in the coffee corners of each floor on brightly colored tablecloths for a time window of 1 hour 15 minutes. At 11.15, the ears are gone and the tablecloths are neatly folded away ready for next year. As I’ve hinted, OZNAI AMAN are, translated, “ears of amman”. Not eating all the ears in the capital of Jordon, no. Aman was literally the dude’s name. The capital of Jordon may well have been named after him, I don’t know, and you can verify the yay or nay of it over on Wikipedia. So these oznai aman, they are the dude’s ears, as represented by some thick triangle of pastry wrapped around poppy-seed jam. Woah. That is some serious ear-wax, dude!

Warning: May contain a dead dude's ear wax.

This morning as I was eating an ear and idly procrastinating about doing some work (yeah, I wasn’t very good at doing the opposite of what I normally do, I admit), I received this on my mobile phone from a number that is not in my phone book:


I had to squint a bit but that’s got a striking resemblance to my daughter. As the policecop in me rose to the surface (those black tracksuit bottoms were at the top of her bottoms pile in her drawer yesterday, so it would make perfect sense that her daddy dressed her in them today, so yes that definitely is my daughter…), I started to be alarmed. Has somebody kidnapped my daughter and is sending me a proof of life photo? Are they demanding a huge lump sum due to be left at the end of a long deserted driveway in the middle of a dark and stormy night? Are they intending to pull off her toenails if I don’t cough up? I’m also worried about the background. As in, “We’ve got a bouncy castle full of zoo animals, and we’re not afraid to use it!” Is she about to be stomped to death by an inflatable zebra?

I calmed down when I got this one:

~ at least her brother’s with her.

Another way of celebrating is by drinking until you can no longer distinguish between the phrases, arur aman ("Cursed is aman") and baruch mordechai ("blessed is mordecai"). Pass the port, dear, the kids won’t be home tonight!