Category: etc.

From Cara: The Sarah Palin Name Generator.

I am Tarp Laser Palin. And, you know, I’m very pleased with the Laser part; less so with Tarp. Ah well.

Still, I do believe the overall effect is rather kick-bottom. And nothing is more kick-bottom than saying “kick-bottom” as we all know.

I am Tarp Laser Palin. Fear me. I will cover you with a tarp and shoot you with lasers.

Okay. So I’m a serial killer. Seriously, fear me.

What’s your Sarah Palin Name?

~ a toddler boy in the bookstore wearing a pink polo shirt with a tiny white skull motif

~ a large middle-aged man yelling at his very elderly father across the bookstore parking lot: “F*ck you, Dad! F*CK YOU!!”

~ me, yelling “Oh, that’s NICE! REAL NICE!” to the large middle-aged man yelling at his very elderly father across the bookstore parking lot

~ MB, trying to tell his wife to stop yelling at the large middle-aged man for yelling at his very elderly father across the bookstore parking lot

~ a neighborhood dude, strolling down the sidewalk with a sheer purple scarf tied in a knot at the back of his head, a single purple layer covering his entire face. Kind of like a gay bandito.

~ another neighborhood dude, walking his dog

~ oh, the dog was in a rickety old stroller

~ it kind of made me sad

~ although I think you should know that I did not yell at him

~ They Must Be Stopped by Brigitte Gabriel.

“Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It”

Yep. Americans have got to take off the blinders about the brutal agenda of Islamofascism. Wake up, Americans. Seriously. No more naivete!

I got an email last week — after this, uhm, frighteningly popular post — from a young woman in the Navy asking for the password on my Egypt Air post. She wrote me after she read it and told me:

“It might comfort you to know that the US Navy includes EA 990 as one of the
many in a pattern of terrorism– the yearly briefing lists it.”

I wrote back and thanked her for telling me that. Confirmation of what I know to be true.

And I really really don’t want it to happen to you or anyone you love.

We know of no absolute values besides total submission to the will of the Almighty. People say: “Don’t lie!” But the principle is different when we serve the will of Allah. He taught man to lie so that we can save ourselves at moments of difficulty and confuse our enemies. Should we remain truthful at the cost of defeat and danger to the Faith? We say not. People say: “Don’t kill!” But the Almighty Himself taught us how to kill. Without such a skill man would have been wiped out long ago by the beasts. So shall we not kill when it is necessary for the triumph of the Faith? Deceit, trickery, conspiracy, cheating, stealing, and killing are nothing but means. On their own they are neither good nor bad. For no deed is either good or bad, isolated from the intentions that motivated it.

~ Ayatollah Khomeini

Shivers.

Thanks to all who have linked to the story below. If you link and use pictures, please be sure to give credit to Roger Baumgarten for the last photo. I made the mistake of just willy-nilly putting it out there in my enthusiasm for it, but Mr. Baumgarten deserves appropriate credit. He’s been gracious enough not to call me on this, but I’m calling myself out here.

Please credit him for the beautiful photo.

Thank you.

Yeah, remember that?

How my silly shiksa self was going to bring theatahh and culchuh to wealthy Jewish kiddos at a local hoity-toity school?

Starting this week?

Weell ….. God has spoken from the mountaintop, I guess, because last Friday, I received an email from Vest Boy titled “Unfortunately …”

As in “Unfortunately, this session of classes will have to be postponed due to insufficient enrollment.”

Oh, and “Postponed” = “Canceled”

And “Insufficient enrollment” = “No one gives a tiny rat’s bottom”

So okay. Good thing I had a gnawing suspicion growing in my gut over the last week or so and had put practically zero effort or thought into my class. I did send Vest Boy a description of my class about a week ago — as he’d requested — and, if I do say so myself, it was a sublime masterpiece of fluff and nothingness. I wanted to give myself as wide a berth as possible in the class to do whatever the heck I pleased, basically, and I could tell from my conversation with Vest Boy that he would be easily wooed by certain buzz words and phrases that say — literally — nothing. I had such fun writing it. I embraced my inner wanker. My inner womyn’s studies teacher. My inner Birkenstock-wearing artist. I used terms like “unleashing creativity” and “freeing imaginations” and “inner journey.” I loved myself and I hated myself. About an hour after I sent it, Vesty wrote back gushing “ooooh” and “ahhhhh” and “faaaabbb.”

But now, alas, my super faaabbb class will not be happening and MB will have to stop chanting, “JEW-S-A! JEW-S-A!” all around the house as he started to do during Olympics when these two things — teaching dramer to the bubbellahs and world-wide athletic competition — were first colliding.

Now, I have a thing or two to say about this and I will only say it to you, dearies, because Vest Boy prolly ain’t gonna listen to me.

Which is too bad.

Because there are a couple of problems with this whole deal, as I see it.

— Vest Boy wants to create an “After School Arts Collective” featuring drama, art, dance, and music. Fine. I guess. But — Problem 1: Vest Boy is a towering bore. A huge turtlenecked bore. As he droned at me for that teeth-grinding hour, quite honestly, my mind began to drift fondly to the comparative awesomeness of the speculum and the Pap smear. Sadly, oh so sadly, Vest Boy utterly lacks any personal charisma or charm or joie de vivre or the ability to fake joie de vivre, like me. Still, he clearly wanted me to “catch” the excitement about the program that he himself didn’t possess. He wasn’t tingly with anticipation, but expected me to be. He was, however, very “serious” about the program, very intense. In a sort of tented-fingers intellectual sort of way. Blah. Boring. Kill me. Blech. To sell the notion of, uhm, staying after school to middle and high schoolers, you need a little more of a spark. A teeny bit beyond just an over-enunciated elitism. You need the ability to sell it. Make it sound desirable. Not just educational, but maybe even fun, dude, fun. I’m just not sure that Vest Boy — given his ponderous personality — is the person to sell this program to the kiddos. I don’t think he remembers fun.

— Problem 2: He seems to have no actual plan for promoting the Fyvush Finkle Arts Collective. The day I was in his class, as he dismissed them — as they were scrambling for the door — he called out, “Oh! Don’t forget to sign up for FFAC! Great classes! Sign up!” I sat there watching him and thought, “Dude, they stopped listening to you, like, 20 minutes ago. No way are they listening to you now.” I mean, it was a literal stampede to get out of that classroom. That’s not the way to do it. It can’t be treated as an afterthought or you end up with — what did he call it? — “insufficient enrollment.” He needs an actual plan to promote it. Regularly and with feeling, for Yahweh’s sake! I could give him some ideas. But … eh.

— Finally, Problem 3: I believe that for most kids that age to stay after school and participate in something, there needs to be some kind of payoff. In high school, I stayed after school for two things only: Tennis practice and play rehearsals. Those two things had payoffs. In tennis, I got to play matches where people watched me and I either won or lost. With play rehearsals, eventually, I got to perform in a show, in front of an audience, and feel the thrill and joy of doing so. Payoffs. Tangible goals. A finish line of some kind. Vest Boy is basically asking these kids to PAY to stay after school for these sort of meandering, exploratory classes. Some of the classes are just repeats of classes already offered during school hours! Uhm, what?? So if I’m a high school student, I would stay for that why? Why not tell the kids staying after school for the art workshops that their work will be shown in an informal gallery show at the end of the class? Why not tell the kids staying after school for the drama workshops that they’ll perform some scene work or something in a studio performance at the end of the class? Give the kids some payoffs. An audience. Show them they’ll be noticed and esteemed for their work. Don’t just make them stay after school for these rambling insular classes. It’s like Honors Detention or something. It’s weird and it bugs me.

So the whole first “session” of these classes has been canceled and I only committed to the first session. The next one starts late November and judging from the tone of his email, he seems to be assuming that everyone involved in the so-far-non-existent Fyvush Finkle Arts Collective will still be available in 2 1/2 months from 3:30 to 5:00 Monday through Thursday. Vest Boy, I’ve got stuff I’m doing and pursuing. To simply assume that everyone will just continue to keep that late-afternoon 90-minute time span open for the next two months is — well, is it rude? Wishful? Just unthinking? I don’t know.

It’s something that I don’t like, is what it is. That’s all I really know.

So. All this to say, sorry, pippa. I thought it would make some good blogging, but now I don’t know if my shiksa self will ever get to teach God’s chosen children how to be a tree or move like a grizzly or melt like an ice cream cone.

Or, you know, whatever the heck it is that drama teachers actually do.