2009: will walk around kicking people's asses with great footwear

Recently I've bought two pairs of heals that are so fucking luscious that I can hardly control myself! They are so comfortable I get to wear them all day long and sleep with them all night long and life has never been better.

The first pair I noticed at a great social event: the 4 year old's birthday party. Not on a four-year old.

Immediate case of MUST-HAVE-ME-THOSE-SHOES!

I rushed out that very weekend and got them. Or, I would have gotten them had they had my size in stock, so I had to order them in and then wait another week.

Here they are:
Top view:

Detail:

Birds eye view:


Other side view:


nab yourself a pair here!

Also, I got some red ones from in England from a well-known high street store.

Kick-ass!

OK, watch out! I'm coming to stamp on your face!

sublime pleasure is...

...eating a packet of beef hula hoops and watching a new episode of Grey's Anatomy in an empty house at 5.20 in the afternoon

not a hot dog...MY hot dog!!

Every now and then the universe brings together a melody of things that collide at the same time. And this time it’s hot dogs. We had hot dogs for dinner last night. (A well-balanced meal goes a long way. Amit was full for about oh-an hour and a half on his half hot dog and cried himself to sleep moaning “but I’m hungry, but I’m hungry!”)(TOUGH TITTY!) Also, we’ve been reading the well-known children’s classic (if you don’t have it, GET IT) The pigeon finds a hot dog by Mo Willems. It’s a great little story about (guess what) a pigeon finding a (guess guess!) hot dog! And a duckling who comes along and annoys him about it.

And now Ora sent me a GAZA-WAR news link: Islamic Jihad seizes IDF rocket, hotdogs. Apparently Hamas fighters seized some Israeli army equipment which included some Zoglovek hot dogs. The article suggests that the hot dog packets were already empty by the time Hamas got their hands on it, which is surely a good example of Israeli brutality and injustice in Gaza.

I especially like the quote by Islamic Jihad in relation to the incident: "Our message to the gutless enemy is that our fighters will ambush you everywhere," the group said. "They will surprise you and hurt you in response to your crimes in the Strip. You should be aware that we still possess many surprises that will hurt you and make you sorry."
Gah! They’ll be after our buns next!

pear guitar...interesting

Most people who know me just know that I do not care for a puppy in a field of daisies or propped up on a log. (The exception being my aunt whose love for the sweet puppy eyes or uplifting verses often overrides the will to not click Forward and enter my email address). Nor do I care for the Dalai Lama's Millennium Musings 9 years later. Nor emails that start with "Make sure you scroll all the way down and read what is written". Nor emails promising bad things if not forwarded to 10 people within 5 minutes. Nor emails parodying chain emails or emails that promise you GAP will track you down and give you $25 worth of t-shirts. Nor emails containing outrage over something or the other when a quick check in Snopes will reveal it as a falsehood. I hate emails containing pps files where you can't click through quickly. I especially hate pps's where pps-creator has flexed the tools available to him and has text appearing letter by letter, or coming in from the left corner with a swirl before landing at its place on the slide. No. No. No. And don't even think about setting it to any kind of music. Especially if it's a collection of 2 inch babies made out of marzipan.

I have a bunch of people who like to send me fwds. Most people know to only send me the highest quality kick-ass stuff. But apparantly, some don't. In particular, I have a former colleague who sends me fwds WITHOUT FILTERING THE CONTENT.

This morning I received an email containing 19 (19!) photos of fruit art. I kinda have to wonder about the people who create fruit art and marzipan babies. In fact, anyone who uses food as an art tool rather than just eating it must be pretty weird. Also, HOW MUCH TIME do they have on their hands?! I have so little time that even the thought of chopping a salad gives me conniptions! So I look at this email. The instructions state I must read all the way to the end. Here's a butterfly cut out of an apple. Here's a banana dolphin. Here's the bust of a man swimming butterfly stroke in a watermelon. Here's an egg pram (yolk and white still inside). Here's a loaf of bread fashioned to look like a homeless person's shoe complete with cut off toe section showing bread toes and crusty toenails! Here's a tomato wearing wire glasses talking to some cauliflower sheep. Here is a little man with an orange peel body and the top sixth of an orange-head about to ram it down onto a juicer. Lovely.

At the bottom of the email I am informed that it's International Disturbed People's Day. Damn right I am disturbed about witnessing that little orange man's impending suicide! "I don't care if you lick windows, take the special bus or occasionally pee on yourself…" Which category does my former colleague think I fit into!??!

And at the end, the email tells me:
You hang in there sunshine, you're friggin' special.

Well, I like that last bit.

bloody hell, this is a fucking shit-ass post!

My grandmother was Polish and lived in Poland. (I didn't really realize what this would mean until I got to Israel where the phenomena of having Polish in your blood is an understood and pitied syndrome, but that's another post!). As a child we would go to visit her and I remember watching television with her more than a few times. In Poland in the 80's, they didn't like subtitles or dubbing. But one man made a killing doing a voice-over of every single part in everything on the television in a non-emphatic monotone (female parts included). That way, in Ghostbusters II, Ray's yelling WHAT THE HELL IS THAT??! at the rumble of the underground slime would come out as a bland "what is that?". Luckily you could still kind of hear the English underneath it. My grandmother's reaction to monotone voiceover man was a sharp intake of breath in horror at pretty much everything he said. I hate to wonder what her reaction would have been had voiceover man put some effort into his job.

The sharp intake of breath trickled down a generation to my mother and was reserved for me for whenever I said anything that might be taken as my being rude. We were banned Grange Hill on the grounds that it was rude. Neighbours was more wholesome but Home and Away was also out. To be frank, we were lucky we got to watch Emu's All-live Pink Windmill Show!

Despite this, growing up in England, I would swear like a sailor with friends just because it was a way to rebel against the way your parents raised you. And saying an exam was a "fucking nightmare" wouldn't offend them in the slightest. It was a badge of commradary, a way to fit in. Still, I would avoid swearing in front of anyone I showed respect to. But I don't live in England anymore and here a lot of people use English swear words and it has lowered the effectiveness. For example, it is not uncommon for a fuck-up to be called a fuck at a meeting ("there was only one fuck…we didn't get the x's on time")(or for you: "hayah rak FUCK achad…sh-ha x-im lo igiyu bezman"). "Shit" is used as a loving expression for when things go wrong. Over time, the shock-value of swearing has dulled. I like ordering a big fuck-off coffee. In the good days, Nicole and Paris would be all Love you, Bitch, Love you, Bitch and that was ok. So all my environmental indications now suggest that swearing is becoming acceptable. And I still swear too.

It's generally considered not a good thing to swear in front of your kids. They are impressionable. Bad language is a sign of lack of education and lack of respect. But I am pretty relaxed, and I don't always remember to not swear in front of my children. In fact, my mother's sharp intake of breath is pretty much the only reason I fear using language around my own kids as we all know how they love to repeat things. But you know, it wouldn't offend me if they stubbed their toe and said "Shit!". I guess it might offend me if they said "Fuck you, you big fat fucker", but that's because talking about someone's weight, that's low.

top ten things that follow "i feel the need, the need for cheese"

10. "Brie..." (sniff) "you stink..."

9. "And there was that one incident with the Admiral's cheese"

8. "Your body's writing cheese your ego can't cash"
7. "She's lost that loving cheese" "She's what? Man, I hate it when she does that"
6 "Gooness gracious, great balls of cheese"
5. "It takes a lot more than just fancy cheese"
4. "You don't have time to think up there. If you think, you're cheese."
3. "What were you doing up there?" "We were giving them the cheese".

2. "That's right, Cheese...man. I am dangerous"

1. "Edam, you can be my wingman anytime!" "Bullshit, you can be mine!"

gaza war soapbox

How do you know that a tree makes a noise when it falls in a forest with nobody in earshot?
How do you know that the rest of the world exists when you are not looking at it?

When I went to Cairo in ’07, I was totally blown away by the crazy place. Cairo is not very far from here. It only took all-day on a bus trip to get there at 3am. But that’s only because you have to drive through Eilat as it would be too dangerous to go through the Gaza strip. And probably also because we got held up somewhere in the middle of Sinai for over 2 hours arguing about bakshish (rub fingers and thumb together).

Cairo is unlike any other place I have ever been to. Not the shuk. That's familiar. They sell the same drums, camels, keffiyeh, and trinkets I can get in Jerusalem. And they are suprisingly uncreative with the pyramid souvineers. The same "my friend, my friend" attitude that is customary in the middle east and I hear India though I wouldn't know haven't ever been. The same tea with mint we drink here. The same nargila although they call it something else there.
The difference was the streets. As many lanes as lorries, vans, cars, camels, bikes, donkeys, and people that can squeeze into. No-one stops at a red light. Like EVER. You cross the road because you've got the balls to do it. You've just got to cross and hope that the driver values his donkey more than life itself and doesn't fancy your blood on its nose. A couple of times my brother saw my life flash before him and yanked me back on the kerb. But he didn't convert so hasn't got the hutzpah that comes with being Jewish. And what really amazed me was that all this daily balagan (*chaos) was going on 250 miles south west of my life! And its been going on for like EVER! It's going on RIGHT NOW!

But it's quiet in my apartment. I can't hear the honking horns of Cairo. I wouldn't even know that there's a war going on 44 miles from my posh neighbourhood. That yesterday morning a rocket fell 14 miles away and injured a 3 month old baby. That every day for the last 8 years rockets launched in Gaza and fall within a 50 mile radius from my house. So how do I know? Unlike when I was 14 and I looked out of a Surrey school window in a History lesson and thought "wow, there's a war going on in the gulf and I can't feel it", I do feel it. I know that my husband will get called up next month if its still going on. I know what that means because we were at war with Lebanon 2 years ago. I know that the cubemate is at the border. And that the finance guy is in there. I know my husband's cousin's husband is in there. They put a box up at work next to the lifts asking for any spare army equipment that the male workforce is likely to have. My cubemate called his boss and said "make sure HR know I'm here...you get chocolates..." We have the news on all night. With the news we visit the shiva (*wake) of the killed soldiers and the hospital beds of the injured soldiers. We discuss it endlessly and we have the news internet sites on all the time. We're all nervous. We're all conscious that Israel gets a bad press for this kind of thing. And that no-one said anything to Russia about Georgia or the massacre last week in the Congo. We feel bad about the innocent victims but at the same time we know that these terrorists don't think twice before hiding behind a school child as body armour. We know that if another country had rockets fired upon them every day that they would retaliate. So we do and most of us want Gaza cleaned up. We left there 3 years ago and they are still blaming us for every problem in their infrastructure. Nobody is on the television shouting about how much money and how many chances they've had to build themselves a viable country there. They want more. They want it all. They want what was offered to them in the UN partitian plan of 47. And then they want the rest. They want us in the sea. So, forgive us for defending ourselves and for fighting back a bit.

Maybe you don't see what's happening here or maybe you don't see this at all. After all, you can't see it from your house.

PS> I bloody loved Cairo.