Not Anonymous

The day started last night, in which a furnace decided to be set on high upon the entire land. I suspect the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Due to the heat, I basically lay in my bed sweating like a sweating thing. I normally sleep in the buff with a fan over head and for fuck's sake it just did not help. I opened the windows and the air was still.

Sunrise was pretty though.

That was the high light of my day.

I had a cool shower and started getting ready to go to Uni, I had a paper to hand in and exams to take and what not. I thought I'd take an earlier than I normally would train to get to Uni, seeing as all my things to do on campus were an half past twelve, I left quite late regardless.

Now, I live literally two minutes away from the train station. It is a mode of public transport that has frustrated me in the past, but the convenience and comfort very much trumps the occasional extreme lateness of the train.

So there I was yawning away, being entertained by a bunch of kids playing a game of public Truth or Dare¹ and I was just finishing a discussion about sustainability with a fellow train passenger when the University station came into view.

I and a dozen other people walked towards the closest door and waited for the train to stop. It did. We pressed the "Open" button. It didn't work. By the time we all reached a different door the train wasn't letting people on and off.

I was very frustrated.

I got off at the next station, which happens to the Central Tel-Aviv Train station, the hub of the entire train infrastructure of the country. I checked the boards and the next train going back to my station was ten minutes away, so I stood on the platform and waited.
Waited the allotted amount of time + five minutes. Another five minutes and I stomped away from the platform towards the exit, I checked the boards on the way and saw that all the trains were in the twenty/quarter to the hour schedules.

This is me being frustrated that the station didn't even bother to announce that a train was cancelled.

As I stuck my ticket into the gate for the exist, I heard the PA announce a train heading north (the platform I was on not a minute ago) was arriving into the station.

I wanted to kill myself.

So, feeling quite miserable (and hot and sticky) I walked to the taxi bay (the campus is only a five-ten minute drive away) and went to the first cab in the queue.

The Driver was severely hearing impaired, with a very old fashioned hearing aid. Giving him directions was a shouting match between us.

I got to the Uni 45 minutes later than I intended and basically ran around the buildings, printing papers and finding people, it was fucking hot people! A freakin' furnace!

Fast forward a couple hours later and I'm far more calm, attempting to find the humour in my morning, because really, it's real life slapstick, Murphy smiling kindly down on me for a bit.

Little did I know.

It being hot like the hell down below, I decided to take the shuttle back to the train station, I had 12 minutes to spare, so I was speaking to a friend on the phone. I walked into the station, got my ticket and as I passed through the gates I heard the announcement for my train. I sped my pace and when I got to the platform the train was there! It was there! I pressed the "open" button and it wouldn't open! The fucking conductor could see me!

It drove away.

I literally screamed.

It was most opportune that my BFF phoned me as I watched the train drive away and I jumped up and down like a cartoon in rage. She asked what was up and I told her. She laughed as many a BFF would do seeing as I had spoken to her earlier that day and she knew about my predicaments from the morning.

Thus, I was twenty minutes behind schedule, and arrived in my town just in time to walk 15 minutes in the afternoon heat to work, rather than walk in a leisurely pace.

I am fortunate that I work for my dad who, though he mocked me, let me have lunch on the clock and let me leave early.

Damn it's been a long day.

Footnotes
1) I was momentarily irritated by the fact that when one of the kids, it was a group of three pre-pubescent girls and an older teenage guy, presumably a big brother or cousin, dared two girls to kiss each other and they shriked, "we're not Lesbians".
*sigh*
A change is gonna come, you say?
Back to text

A little back story to this anecdote. I hang out with a certain a couple of girls on campus, they are a few years younger than I, due to this and my own youthful appearance people sometime mistake me for being a few younger than my actual 25 years of age.

The story begins thus. There is a guy I and the aforementioned girls know. He's a bit rough around the edges and delights in being rude. I've managed, by rule of my iron fist, to cease his borderline offensive behaviour and he ends up pretty entertaining otherwise.

This week I was hanging out on campus with him sans the other girls. We were talking about this and that and the conversation turned serious and we began discussing the fact that we are both students of the Humanities without much skills. I mentioned I was planning on doing Library Studies at some point and said:
"I'm dreading the Statistics I have to learn!"

He replies: "Nah, statistics is easy"

I say: "No, no it's not. I matriculated with the lowest amounts of points I could with math so that I could get a good grade... seven years ago!"

He looks surprised: "What, you're 25?!"

I think he's silly: "Yeah and you're 26, how old did you think I was!?"

He says, slightly embarrassed: "I thought you were the same age as [the aforementioned younger girls]".

I reply jokingly*: "Didn't you ever wonder why I was more mature than them?"

He says, utterly seriously: "I thought it was because you're a Lesbian".

Many LOLZ!

Yay Pride!

* Tinged with ageism. Guilty.

I'm reading this (quite long) article in the NYT titled: "Can Animals Be Gay?.

What an absurd thing to ask.

That question simply reflects science's own human biases.
Who said the life sciences were objective?

Nothing can be spoken about without subjecting it to human categories. We're so used to everything being about us, that we've forgotten that we're a part of it.

Evolution is a tricky beast. It's the reason why it's so interesting, fascinating and ultimately, the only way you can explain the diversity found within animals (human included).

The biggest misconception regarding Evolution is that we're going somewhere with it. That the changes that have gone on for billions, millions and other large sums of years, are progressive. There is no proof, nor is there any way to prove, that our gradual changes, that the fact that we have retained an appendix and Wisdom teeth - commonly known as vestigial organs, as far as this lay person is aware - are positive changes. That is, we have no way of knowing whether we are actually better equipped for "survival" than we used to be.

"Survival of the Fittest", "Natural Selection" - possibly the two most disastrous terms to ever be written and adopted into human functionalism.

I'm digressing.

Are humans animals? ( Come on in and find out )

I took the Belief-O-Matic quiz, which I enjoy taking once in a while.

My results under the top 5 are a little surprising since my "spiritual" journey has basically brought me to the conclusion that, haha, I have no "spirit". Also the fac

01. Secular Humanism (100%) - No surprise, kind of a given.
02. Unitarian Universalism (94%) - I suppose it's something to consider if I ever feel like having a community
03. Liberal Quakers (79%) - I know a few Quakers. Sure, Jesus was a nice guy! ;)
04. Nontheist (70%) - Only 70% percent... well, Agnosticism is basically "might, might not", the atheism is the life-style.
05. Neo-Pagan (69%) - Indeed for a time, I considered this as a path... it was not to be. I think it has more to do with laziness than anything else...
( The other 22 )

You see, I've never seen Christmas.
Never.
Not ever.

Why? Well, I don't live in a country in which it is celebrated at large and I'm not Christian so I wouldn't celebrate in small.
Also, December is an awful time for traveling to a cold place!

And in addition, there's ( XKCD )

At least the days are getting longer again. I'm sick of the Dark! I can't wait for the arbitrary date to go by all ready!

I was sitting at the bus station minding my own business.

A man of about 50-55 comes towards me and asks if it's all right if he smokes. I thought it was very (see, overly, for the society we live in) polite of him to ask and said "sure".

This was quite obviously a ploy.

He begins to tell me a story.

"I just couldn't sit at the other bus station. There was a girl there; dressed far too revealingly for me, her chest hanging out and short pants".

I'm staring at him as though he's grown an extra head. Instead his beard, peyot, kipah (yarmulke/skull cap) and tzitzit become glaringly obvious props for his forthcoming tale and story.

In my head, I'm screaming: "Why? Why is this man talking to me and regaling to me this bullshit story!?"

He continues (sans my loud thoughts that this man is a religious nut): "I ask [the aforementioned girl] do you believe in G-d?"

In my mind: "Mercy!"

He tells her words: "'Yes' she says and I ask you [that is, me and the universe in general most likely] if she's have said 'yes, but I sin', I could live with that... But dressed the way she is... how can she say that!?".

Meanwhile, I'm trying to understand why this woman (if she indeed exists outside this man's narrative) engaged with this man, seeing as I was doing my best to Not Engage with this person and his irrational tirade about how this woman's dress somehow marks her heretic - obviously I'm the best audience ever! What with my long jeans, trainers, long-sleeved shirt and high necked top underneath it.
If only we were telepathic, nay?

He goes: "She tells me her beliefs are simple. How can creation be simple?!"

How I wished I had a desk on which to bash my head and his continuously!

Throughout this entire time I'm dying for a bus, any bus to arrive to take one of us away! I'm also silent, grimacing from time to time and keeping away from him as much as possible while not leaving the bus stop - I really did not feel safe enough to tell to STFU... perhaps if there was another person there I would have told him to stop bothering me... but *Gah*, the situation just really did not encourage aggressive-aggression and I went for body-language instead.

"Creation can't be simple" this man says, "I tell her [still this very-well-could-be-fictional-girl] 'that table? You see it? Someone designed it, yes?' she replied 'yes'. So no tell me G-d doesn't exist!"

I was ready to throw up on him. I had been feeling queasy regardless, but I could have blown chunks over this.

He continued with this line of talk and thought for a good ten minutes, in addition going on to inform me that the Bible predicted Swine 'flu (o_O) and that according to Rabbi What-ever-the-fuck 14,5-and something are going to die because that's the Gimatric interpretation of the Hebrew letters of Swine 'flu (which are שפעת חזירים).

I actaully breathed a sigh of relief when his bus arrived and he was out of my life.

It was just too odd. I don't think I'd ever been proselytised to before. Obviously him asking me if he could smoke was a ploy to start engaging me in conversation.
Good tactic.

I now have a funny anecdote about Jewish fundamentalists... who are so different from all the other ones you encounter in the street (much to our annoyance)

---

Off Topic, but related to the fact that I'm home and talking about this.
I'm feeling queasy and at the last minute decided not to go the talk tonight, because I'd rather not be sick in front of people.
I'm disappointed, but hopefully I'll be able to catch the DAM people at a later date during their visit in the region.

This pic was taken at some point in 2007 and is from a random pic search.

I saw it yesterday over at Mark Allen via my brother.



My whole family are fans of Turing.
And of sarcasm.

I love sarcasm and parody.

Something to laugh at on this here Yom Kippur!

Israeli Weddings are renowned for the loud music and the hours of dancing that happen during the actual dinner party.

The following video has (most) of the music that one will likely hear and the moves we make when we dance.

Imagine that, + 200 people, the majority of them slightly wasted.

Yeah...

Caturday postage!

It's not my cat, but it's a cat!



Thanks to [Southern!Girl] for making me laugh!

The Israeli Socio-Political Satire show Eretz Nehedret - ארץ נהדרת - lit. Wonderful Country is probably one of the sharpest, most biting, satires on television today.
They are definitely up there (at least in my book) with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report".

On this week's show they had a sketch of hip-hop Hasbarah (Hebrew for "explanation" and what is colloquially known as Israeli for describing the efforts of explaining Israeli government policies, and to promote Israel to the world at large)

The video is brilliant - but unfortunately cannot be embedded at this time, so I've put the direct link here and translated the lyrics which are a mixture of Hebrew and English (everything emphasised is me translating the Hebrew/Hebrish terms)
Link to Video: It's Time for a War Anthem.
( Lyrics under the cut )

Hilarious!
So biting and true!
Though, I acknowledge... it may only be funny for the Israelis and other Hebrew speakers here.