At Long Last

There is a Craigslist Jerusalem and Craigslist Tel Aviv. I know there are other community sites that have similar functions in both places already, but the addition of a little Craigslist never hurt nobody.

And think how much easier it’ll be for the closeted Hasidim to arrange their clandestine hookups now–who needs to prowl Independence Park at night when there’s Casual Encounters?

Big big props to my boy Emerson for his hard work down thar at CL central, making all those computers talk to each other and stuff, on behalf of CL Yids everywhere looking for a sublet, and all those horny hasidim.

(X-posted to JewSchool.)

I’m just so confused

There are really only two possibilities to explain the existence of Cumming: The Fragrance by actor Alan Cumming. One is that he knows he has an entendre-worthy last name and is doing some sort of extended spoof/performance art piece making fun of celebrity product endorsements. The other is that he is, really, serious. The commercial and marketing for the thing is just serious enough that it makes me wonder.
Check out the commercial here.

still technically around

Yeah, hi, I’m still around. Just not posting much lately. It’s funny, it’s not like there probably isn’t plenty of things upon which I could comment re: my current surroundings, I just don’t have blogbrain on so much. Which is probably because I’m writing, mostly, and so my creative energy (and patience for sitting at the keyboard, and time) is being concentrated over there on that end. My days have pretty much found their routine: work at home or go to some coffee shop to work, if concentration’s not happening at home, max out and go running in the forest (most days) or run errands or something, come home, have a little downtime, then go socialize. It’s a good life, as lives go. I used to love this framework of a day when I was a freelance writer–very very similar. It will be a bit difficult to go back to school at the end of the summer and return to the land where my time and decisions about how to spend it are not just mine alone. Ah, well. To all good things, or something like that.

The great thing about being here is that there’s so much pretty. This weekend included camping up at a place called Deception Pass, lots of big beyootiful trees and clear clear lakes and winding trails. Yum.

This is what I’m reading right now: $elling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. I found it at the university bookstore. It’s awesome, even or especially since it was written by these Marxists with a tendency to rant. I appreciate a lot of what they’re saying, even though there are pages and pages of self-righeteous commie blather* that make me scream at the book, “You’re about to make a good point, now please go make it!” In a nutshell, they’re talking about how the means-nothing word of “spirituality” has been privatized, so that it’s only telling a story about individual rather than collective experience (as religion traditionally has), and corporatized, so that it’s used conveniently to suppliment rather than combat the current ultra-capitalist paradigm, promoting quick easy fixes to your life problems rather than over-arching cultural transformation. This is a quote from Erich Fromm that they use, I think, to good effect:

Religion has become an empty shell; it has been transformed into a self-help device for increasing one’s powers of success. God becomes a partner in business.

And on that cheery note, think I’ll leave you all to go have a day. May the force be with you and more soon.

*Commies, for the record, can be great, lots of fun at parties. Commie blather, on the other hand, tries my patience much more quickly.

I give up

Dear Caffiene,

You win, OK? Are you happy? Are you feeling proud of yourself that you’ve got another addition to your legion of minions? I hope so.

I don’t want to fight anymore.

yours (literally).
Danya

P.S. That new trendy white coffee stuff (coffee roasted much less darkly than a normal brew–more caffiene, less stomach upset) is goooooood.

I amuse myself

There’s a “vegetarian store” here filled mostly wtih leather-free shoes, preachy bumper stickers and tofu-based food. I was hoping they’d have a yummy snack for me, but they don’t. They also have a t-shirt that says, “Pigs are friends, not food,” which would be much better if I were a kosher carnivore, but still cracks me up because how I mean it is not how they mean it, (or at least entirely.)

I might have to come back and get it, but this definitely is one of those things that I have to wait and see if it’s still funny to me in 2 days.

P.S. Added a few new links to the sidebar….

from the files of the random subconscious

Just remembered my dream from last night. I showed up at Madonna’s house at 3 AM because it was suddenly urgent that I kasher her kitchen. The Kabbalah Center Berg guy was there, and he kept trying to help but not really helping, like he’d run the utensils under tepid sink water, smile weakly, say, “Is this OK?” and I’d very impatiently tell him no, they have to be immersed in an already-kosher vessel full of boiling water. And I couldn’t decide if I should tell Madge that her pots couldn’t be kashered properly or just kind of do my best because she wasn’t keeping a halakhic kitchen anyway so she wouldn’t really care and wouldn’t want to be bothered. (She was around at 3am–it was OK that I showed up at that hour.)

Yeah, I dunno.

about bloody time

I finally have internet at home. That was too long to go trying to time my days around hitting a coffee shop to check wireless from away. Maybe now I can even get some bloody work done. Hopefully.

No other news, except that I had the most Sunday-like Sunday I’ve had in a long time. I like Sundays. Woke up late, went running, met a friend for brunch and the New York Times and then one of the farmer’s markets around here, some wandering around town and sitting in cafes and token fun cheezy tourist item, and then home for a dinner of farmer’s market greens and a video. This, I suppose, is that “leisure time” thing they’ve been talking about all these years. Intriguing idea, that.

And on that note, back to work.

at the next place

I am here, in this beautiful city very far north, where I can go running around a lake that is clear and clean and pretty. The drive up was lovely, mostly, except that there was too much driving. There was a quick stop in Ashland (no time to take in the Shakespeare festival, but a decent veggie burger at least), Shabbos in a national forest outside Eugene, a hajj to offer supplications at the great temple that is Powell’s Books, and now here, the next place. I’m in a coffee shop where a barrista won the 2005 United States Barrista Championships. It’s like that, see. I’m enjoying myself immensely–4th of July was spent on a friend of a friend’s houseboat, seeing the prettiest and most impressive fireworks I’ve ever experienced, with a soundtrack and everything. If this rabbinical thing doesn’t work out, I might try to become a fireworks choreographer, one of the people who figures out what explodes in what order to what songs.

Anyway, gonna be working my little tuchus off a bit, so not sure how much blogging will be happening in the near future, but keep checking–I’m sure I’ll be poking my head up now and again. Probably more once there’s actually internet at my place of residence.

In the meantime, a couple of new good Jewy links, which I’ll put up on the sidebar when I get around to it. Morfix is a Hebrew-English dictionary with Arabic connections, and this site has a metric ton of sifrei kodesh online in Hebrew/Aramaic. Enjoy!

on the road again

I’ll be in my little green car and most likely offline for the better part of the next week or so. There’s a loaded iPod, a trunk full of stuff, and, tonight, a collosal run to the Berkeley Bowl for provisions. Wish me luck, and see ya’ll when I get somewhere else.