The Good Rabbi's Blog

So I'm taking a brief holiday interlude in North Carolina, the home of a certain disgracefully aging gentleman, where it's hot as balls out today. The females have been suitably distracted with a shopping mall, and now we're doing somewhat manly things, like yardwork, so that the women might (just might) stop complaining for a while. I haven't been down here since about three months BEFORE I moved to California, so it's been a while. True to form, the real owners of the house, two English bulldogs named Louie and Daisy, were somewhat pleased to see me. Spiritual advice is being dispensed, trips are being made to Lowe's, and various metrosexual aspects of our personalities are being explored. Regular posts will resume after the July 4th holiday (which by the way, commemorates events that actually took place on July 2). Have a good 4th, and watch for new updates!

UPDATE: I mentioned that the New York Times had an article about ten days that are misunderstood, or misrepresented in American Lore. That article can be found here.

Well, as if the world isn't fucked up enough already. As further proof that anyone can bring a lawsuit, here's a guy out of Oregon that is suing Michael Jordan and Phil Knight (the founder of Nike). For what, you might ask? For looking like Mike (really). What is this world coming to? I'm going to get some ice cream.

You know, I sometimes wonder what the world would be like without Japanese television. Those game shows are ridiculous. In this particular show, it's not a game, just a "candid camera meets Punk'd" sort of thing. No English in this clip, but you should get the point...

Well, it's happened again. The middle east has proven the iron law of its own geography: just when you think things are at rock bottom, they can always get worse. It started with some expatriate Hamas fighters ambushing an Israeli military unit, and capturing an Israeli corporal as a prisoner (presumably for use as leverage in negotiations to release militants). Then, on the northern border, Hizbullah militants (who admittedly, are just trying to stay relevant in a new Syria-free Lebanon) attacked a military base, killed a few soldiers and took a couple of hostages (presumably for the same purpose). What's more, they ran out of Falafel in the north country.

The activity in the north is surely the handiwork of either Syria, Iran, or both. This is why Ehud Ohlmert's reaction is both irresponsible and foolish. The attacks in the north were perpetrated by Hizbullah, and not by the Lebanese government, who likely is unable to control Hizbullah (especially since they're awash in Syrian and Iranian money), not to mention that they really can't stand Hizbullah (they represent the Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanese society). Personally, I believe that it's a coincidence that this activity happened around the time of the G8 summit, and that it happened around the time of the Gaza issues. This seems to represent more of the same from this part of the world, and the only thing that's clear is that all parties are to blame, and all parties must work to apply the brakes to this conflict.

An excellent analysis of how this has come up, and where it's going can be found courtesy of The Head Heeb, who generally has some very good perspective on the way things work in that part of the world.

I apologise for the recent dearth of posts, I've been tackling a home improvement project of sorts with the girlfriend. Basically, we've painted most of the house: two bedrooms, the "hallway" (all two square feet of it), the stairway, and the living room. The woman that lived here before I moved in had a slight obsession with wall hangings, so the amount of spackling (and later, sanding) that needed to be done was incredible. I'm still cleaning up the dust. The good news, however, is that I'm pretty much done. From this point forward, it's basically just touching up spots I missed. As such, I thought I'd post a couple videos I made that show the before and after shots. I apologise for the graininess of the videos, I shot them on my digital camera. We haven't gotten the decor done yet (the girlfriend is hard at work on that now), but everything is in motion. More posts are on their way. In the meantime, here are the before and after videos.