Today, as I sat in the computer lab, faffing around, procrastinating and concentrating on myself and no one else, a guy startled me.

Now, I'm a very jumpy person, I will startle from most loud noises, even if I know that they are coming - watching action flicks with me is a treat no doubt - so when this guy touched my shoulder I basically jumped out of my skin and felt slightly humiliated.

He laughed slightly and said "Sorry, did I freak you out?" (in English, recall, I go to a Hebrew language institution of learning).
I laughed as well and said "Yeah, no prob" and went back to my screen.

The guy decided he liked me.

"What's your name?"
Which I told him.
He told me his and we shook hands.
Very short shake...
"Where are you from?"
Which I lied about.
"What do you study?"
Which I answered truthfully and then he mocked (dude, this is how you get women interested in you?)
"Can I have your number?"
How about you give me yours (and then I throw it away, just go away!)
"Are you on Facebook?"
Yes, see, there he is (in all his drunk profile picture glory), I'm pressing "add as friend", he finally leaves and I cancel the friend request.

He creeped me out.

At the time, he creeped me out and instead of being good ole', assertive, bitch-face Mel, I was smiling demurely and trying to hint (rather than be anvilicious) that I was not interested.

Now, he wasn't harassing me in any way, he was just wasting my time (and his) but still, I was so severely uncomfortable in this situation. I dunno if it's because I'm not used to being hit on (which I'm not, I don't usually get hit on) or if I was just awkward about the situation in general.

Seriously though, is body language that hard to read? I was inching away, and he was all in my space (like really) and he was really intense about getting information about me.
He happened to be American, which should mean nothing, but means something.

*sigh*

I should have just said "No, dude, not interested, better luck next time".

Why are we so much smarter in retrospect?

The power of "shushing".

Yes, indeed, as a newly appointed Library Book stacker I get to tell people in the reading room to be quiet and talk on their phones outside.

I'm pretty sure the effect was ruined due to the massive head-cold I developed over the past couple of days.

It absolutely sucks to start a job, one that revolves around much physical work, when you're sneezing, blowing your nose and pretty much feel as though your head is surrounded by cotton wool.

It was pretty good, got to know the other people, helped some Firsties get their bearings in the Library and such. Being that it was the afternoon there wasn't a whole lot of action, which I think I'll get tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I'll be able to breathe.

Oh, fuck, you don't want to know how many times I had to spell check this thing.

Here I go, off to be a slave of minimum wage!

Pre-Ordered Inception.

Huzzah!!!!!!!!

Now I need... a DVD player.

You guys! I have five seasons on New-Who, six (not seven, I know) seasons of Buffy, five seasons of Angel, movies containing Robert Downey Jr., Fawlty Towers, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and ALL OF TORCHWOOD... and no actual DVD player to go with our smacking new 37" HD LCD television screen.

This is just not on.

Not on.

I know, First World... I can't even call them problems can I? It's just too shallow for words. I'm too shallow for words.

I'm a horrible, terrible consumer of television and movies, aren't I. I should also get a portable hard drive. I'm really tempted to splurge on the 1TB, because damn! I could back up my entire computer onto that with room to spare. Room for more hours of movies and teevee! Hells yes!

Terrible. Have I mentioned?

( Meta about my thoughts regarding Inception Fandom and the issues of fetishisation, issues of consent and sexual violence )

I've been as sick as a dog for the past 36 hours, the first 24 consisting of a fever high enough to incapacitate me, make my parents threaten to take me to the hospital and have dreams in which I was Ellen Page pretending to be Eames (from Inception played by Tom Hardy).

Dude.

Currently, my body has simply decided to work against me in the ways bodies do after they've been through a high temp washing machine and dryer.

Well, at least it happened when the weather was somewhat pleasant. We're going through yet another unseasonably hot weekend. What the fuck, no wonder everyone here is fucking bonkers. I'll get into the bonkers and regional politics later, maybe, if I'm up to it. My higher brain functions have been siphoned by the awesome that is the coming Autumn/Winter BBC Season.



It would appear, that now that Harry Potter is done with all my faves are coming back to the Telly, hello Alan! Hello Emma! Even Helena (whom I don't particularly like, but has screen presence like whoa!).

And woot! Christopher, David and Matt! God, I love British television. There was even more than one scene of queer content in the trailer!
Some of it appeared historical, which is cool, but I'm kind of sick of Regency/Victorian Lesbians and Gays coming out (hur hur) of the Beeb.

I'm excited about my teevee!

I also finally finished the first season of Mad Men while I was still a bit feverish so my OMGWTFNOTBBC reaction may have been either too subdued or too over the top. I can't really tell.

Off to read the News. I hope my body doesn't betray me in the process.

That's me.

This time of year always brings out the contemplative side of me.

Despite the gravity of it being Yom Kippur and Saturday (i.e. Shabbat), I'm feeling pretty up lifted. Such is the price of watching cartoons with my 4 year old Niece while the majority of the other adults have gone to while away the fast at synagogue.

I don't know if I mentioned this at the time, but the synagogue my family attends is a Conservative one, which is a non-Orthodox branch of Judaism, and quite possibly because of that it was vandalised by Jewligans the day before Rosh Ha'Shana.
My mom got an email from the shul's mailing list informing us that the front of the synagogue was graffitied with "יחי העם" which I can only translate as "Long Live the Folk" because that is the spirit in which it is intended and not the more democratic "Long Live the People".
Also, they threw eggs at the door.

This is very disturbing, because our area is not especially religious, I mean there are synagogues all over, but for a quorum you traditionally need ten men over the age of 13 and you can pray as a congregation so, meh.

Our town is quite secular and I doubt Settlers living 20 minutes away beyond the Green Line came in the night to deface a synagogue that doesn't do gender segregation and believes that taking into account social and technological advances are good things would take the time to inform the few hundred people who attend that they're traitors.

I think it was the kids from the local Bnei Akivah (a religious Zionist youth movement who have a branch close to the vicinity of the shul).

I contemplated attending services that day, just to show presence, but I couldn't handle the feeling of hypocrisy so I declined.
Last night I did attend, as I always do, in order to hear Kol Nidrei, as sung by the best Cantor in the world. He's very old now and there's a new Cantor in the shul (who apparently no one likes, I've never heard him so I can't give an opinion) because the Old Man is old. I was telling my dad that (may he live long and into prosperity) once the Old Man can't sing any more tradition will no longer be able to bring me to shul.
He gave me a sad look.
Guilt may still be able to drag me to synagogue once a year for half an hour.

My plans today are to walk the empty streets (because it's tradition in this country to not drive on Yom Kippur, so there are kids running around outside, riding on bikes and basically taking advantage of there being no cars) and watch Mad Men with my friend.

A good year to my Jewcy readers, have a nice weekend to my non-Jewcy readers.

Now, I'm going have a cup of coffee.

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.

It was 36 degrees Celsius.

Seriously.

Two marches and a lot to talk about.

Will do so a bit later, but thankfully my apprehension was for nought and there was none of the violence that I anticipated.

I'll tell you all about it and maybe add pictures :D.

Now, I'm going to eat!

I'll be doing a lot of marching this Friday, as it the annual Tel Aviv Pride Parade.

However, it's a little different this year.

The Gay Youth Club attack kind of put the community through the ringer and a whole lot of splits occurred and, well, there are two marches happening at the same time this year.

The annual one, dubbed the Municipal March because it's funded by the Tel-Aviv Municipality and is sponsored by the bigger, mainstream LGBT organisations.
At the same time, from a different location, the one dubbed the Community March (Officially called "Marching For Change") is marching as contrapuntal to the Municipal one, protesting the commercialisation and homogenisation of the march and all that.

I will, however, be marching in the first explicitly Radical Left Queer march. Which is actually happening before either of those marches and is getting more heat than either of the marches.

Because see, the Community March is about the murder and the fact that not enough was done after the attack and that the LGBT community in a way retreated and licked its wounds. These are things I agree with, but I don't agree that there should have been a split.

After the Radical March, I'll be joining up with the Municipal March and doing the regular route.
Why? Because I don't think a split in over-all community politics is the way to go.
The Radical March is deliberately separate because we want to talk about our marginalised position in the LGBT community.
The position that looks at Queer identity in Solidarity with other oppressed minorities in Israel.
This is something that has caused problems with the higher ups, Yaniv Weisman, who is a member of the Tel-Aviv Municipal Council and runs the Tel-Aviv LGBT Community Center has verbally attacked the existence of the Radical March, saying that we're using our Sexual Identities to promote a skewed version of the Community, that not everyone is "like them" (as in... like me).

I have to say. This is not what I was expecting.

In Israel, "Queer" doesn't have the pejorative history like in Anglophone countries, which is nice, and makes it easier to use as a word. But it is a word so intertwined with the Radical Left here, that it feels as though I have no safe space in the margins. I need to be even more marginal in order to be viewed as someone whose thoughts and feelings deserve to be expressed like a human being.

I'm quite ashamed to see groups pop up against our march calling themselves "Stop The Occupation of the March... by the Left".

The irony, it is physically painful for me. It angers me. It shows me that the LGBT community are fine with resting on their laurels while human rights are trampled elsewhere... so long as I'm "safe" everything is all right.

I'm not sure how people don't realise that the attack last year (fuck it's been 11 months!) was a symptom of the direction our society is going. No tolerance for the other, especially if they're visible.
That my own community be willing to silence voices in the name of National Unity, WTFF!!??, is something I don't want to contemplate too deeply.

As most of you know by now, the humanitarian aid flotilla on it's way to Gaza was boarded last night/early this morning and it was... disastrous.

The death toll as far as I know stands on 19 with another 50 or so injured.

Anger, shame, shock... there aren't enough words to describe the feelings I've had throughout the day.

I'm so tired now. I was at the demo in front of the IDF HQ in Tel-Aviv and it was quite large. There were demo's happening outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem (I think) and in Haifa as well.

The whole campus was a buzz. Nobody was talking about anything else.

I cried this afternoon. I spoke to my Mom because I know one of the Commando soldiers who was out on the water last night and I asked if he was okay. I phoned his mother as well.
He's fine.

And then I cried.

Mainly for feeling guilt and shame that this was done in my name.
That there is honest to god talk of blaming the activists for defending themselves with whatever blades and blunt objects in the face of Commando soldiers, armed to the teeth, coming on board a boat in the middle of the night in International waters.

I don't know how any of this can be justified.

None of it.

I got home about an hour ago. Showered and ate and now I'm just telling you...

This is wrong.