Procrastinate! A merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

Okay, I should be studying for my semantics midterm, but I read this, and I mean, come on...

The title reads "Snatched baby penguin may not survive 'til Christmas".

I would like to tell whoever is CNN.com's editor that trying to draw a link between this title and Christmas with the word 'tis , trying to be a cross between Frank McCourt and The Night Before Christmas at the same time, is stupid and redundant, and instead of coming off as cultured and witty you come off as stupid and redundant. Of course the story relates to Christmas, that's why you mentioned the holiday in the title in the first place. Also, I should know the actual title of "The Night Before Christmas", which is not actually that, I don't think, but rather has some good wholesome protestant title for a children's story you tell about a fat man coming to break into your house at night, eat food, and leave questionable packages behind, and this is supposed to comfort your children at night, while completely leaving out any reference whatsoever to the birth of the dude we nailed to a cross some 2000 years ago? (at this point I'm supposed to apologize for fanning the flames of religious hatred, but I'm feeling snarky. You're damn right we killed him. It seems we've moved on to Antarctic fowl. What, you're going to announce a pogrom in Times Square? The Syrians are about to attack us after we fail to cede Shaba Farms to the Lebanese, which wasn't theirs in the first place. Bring it on)

Anyways, not only has someone kidnapped a penguin.
A baby penguin.
A baby jackass penguin.

*giggle*

A baby jackass penguin before christmas (oh my god, not before christmas! How will santa find the penguin to leave questionable packages 'neath his tree bedecked in boughs of holly?)

(tra la la la la, la la la la)

But the baby jackass penguin is doomed to uncertain death before Christmas.
Can you believe the inhumanity of it all?

It's like, they couldn't find anyone who was clubbing baby seals at christmas time, so they found a heartstring-tugger about a different sub-zero dweller. Though if you ask me, the big fat guy in red has questionable fur trimmings on his outfit...Methinks the elves are up to no good.

In totally unrelated other news (though if I were the editor of Cnn.com, it appears that I would relate my next paragraph to the title because in the next paragraph I'll be talking about Jesus, who some like to call Christ, and if you search the title, you'll find the letter combination c-h-r-i-s-t happening somewhere there. Dumbass), when did Christmas become about getting presents from Santa Claus, and less on the birth of Christ? I mean, I'm not in charge of anything in Christianity, but this strikes me as something the Church leaders might want to take a good look at when they question why today's generation has such a disconnect from the teachings of Jesus, and why conversion is at such an all time low.

It's cause Grandpa Claus is distracting me with presents. Jesus never brought me presents. He brought me the Crusades, the Auto da Fe, the Spanish Inquisition, Peter Stuyvesant, Hitler, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Parisian Banlieues. But none of them came gift wrapped in shiny red "Happy Holidays!" paper. Screw the 'body and blood of the lord'. I want a present!

After they find the baby jackass penguin (who gets to name these species and how is it that I am not on the species-naming commitee? I could be so creative...), I think they should really look into that.

See below for your viewing pleasure
-Jess


Snatched Baby Penguin May Not Survive 'Til Christmas
Zoo: Snatched penguin may be Christmas gift

LONDON (AP) -- A baby penguin believed to have been snatched from a British zoo as a quirky holiday gift is unlikely to survive until Christmas Day, his keeper warned Tuesday.
Toga, a 3-month-old Jackass penguin, was stolen Saturday from Amazon World on the Isle of Wight in southern England.
Zoo manager Kath Bright said the bird, who was taken from a compound where he lived with his parents and four other penguins, probably would die of malnutrition if not urgently returned.
"Toga is very, very vulnerable. The penguin is still being fed by his parents and we don't believe it could survive more than five days," she told The Associated Press.
"The bird has already been missing for around three days and is likely to be severely dehydrated. If he isn't returned before Thursday, he is likely to become so ill that even intensive care treatment won't save him."
The brown-and-white penguin will bite if frightened and refuses to be fed by human hand, Bright said. Toga is too young to have yet had a gender confirmed but traditionally is referred to as a male, she added.
There was no sign of forced entry to the pen, but a thief would have been able to climb into the compound and carry Toga away, Bright said.
"We can't understand what may have been going through the thief's head, but we are worried someone decided a penguin would make the perfect Christmas gift," she added. "There has been a lot of attention because of the film 'March of the Penguins.' Perhaps someone saw the film and thought their wife or girlfriend would be thrilled to have one as a present."
The French movie was a box-office hit and has been credited with drawing tourists to penguin-spotting sites across the world.

ATTN: Israeli Ministry of Immigration

It is rumored among some that I will, one day, pack up all my earthly belongings and move to this country, perhaps to a home in the north, because like the true canuck that I am, I really can't live without my snow.

This is a lie, in two parts:
a)I can live without my snow
b)If I moved here, the people would drive me to kill myself. Or just sell the whole damn thing to Syria.

To digress to the topic of Syria for a minute, did you know that Syria is possibly going to declare Shaba Farms as Lebanese territory? Shaba Farms, which Israel currently 'oversees' (or however you would like to describe it), was taken from Syria at the same time as the Golan Heights; when they tried to destroy Israel but then lost. Syria wants to do this (ceding the farms that they do not currently occupy, by the way) just to get people mad at Israel for not fully withdrawing from Lebanon, after all. Israel, which withdrew from Lebanon, like, years ago, would theoretically have to, according to Syria, withdraw from Shaba Farms, now (hypothetically) part of Lebanon, in order to fully qualify as having "unilaterally withdrawn" from Lebanon, so as not to irk the ire of Hezbollah.

Well.

I don't want to irk the ire of Hezbollah at all. In fact, I think next week, Syria should declare the area between Metulla and Eilat to be Lebanese territory as well. Because then Israel would have to withdraw from it's own country so as not to irk the ire of Hezbollah.

Are they joking? Did they really think that would work? Is Syria seriously following a foreign policy that not even a fourth grader would try to pull off? Because if they're considering it, I think Canada should declare New York to be Mexican territory and demand that the White House withdraw from the state so as not to piss off the federales.

Anyways, back to why I won't move to Israel (this year):
In a country full of Jewish doctors, I am the lucky one to be treated by the guy who graduated from the Moscow Medical School of Stupid. When my tonsil is redder than....well, a tonsil ought to be, is leaking pus and blood, is throbbing so that it hurts to touch the left side of my neck, is making my breath smell like a chemical toilet (because of the aforementioned pus; i brushed my teeth 6 times and still stunk), and is making me dizzy whenever I stand up, the answer is not "buy some throat lozenges and see me for a throat swab if it hurts in two days".
Luckily, I am now on some seriously heavy antibiotics that are very busy killing absolutely everything my immune system comes into contact with.

I would like to now make mention of an endearing little Israeli custom which I have come across. This is called "saving a spot in line". When I was in line for the doctor, waiting in my seat, a boy came along and sat down next to me for twenty minutes. I think he then had to go to the bathroom, so he actually turned to me and said "I was here after you, okay?"

Well, sure, dude. I don't care, so long as you aren't skipping ahead of me to see the doctor. I got this pus-filled tonsil, see? (God, I really need a tonsillectomy...)

I am not a witness, and this is not a grand jury trial. If you give up your spot in line voluntarily, kiss it goodbye, because you can bet your ass I'm not going to be one of those rude Israelis who turns to the unwitting bystander who comes to stand in line in your absence and who gets yelled at when you return five minutes later and says "She's right you know. She was there before you, so you need to move".

This has happened to me three different times. When standing in line (!) at the pharmacy to have my prescription filled, I found myself behind a woman who was sitting in a chair (that happened to be at the pharmacy, which thinking back on it, is in fact a little strange), and who said to me no less than four times "I was here first, so I am in front of you in line". You know, five year olds do that. Insisting on your spot in line is something that goes out of fashion with the second grade. It is also an indicator of dementia.

If you leave the line, you've left the line. And man, doesn't that ever suck, but tough freaking shit; if there is not a visible body part left behind, you are no longer considered as being 'in line'. A line consists of people standing in front of you and of people standing behind you. To be considered 'before me in line', you need to be, according to dictionary.com, in advance of me. That means that your posterior needs to be ahead of my anterior. If your posterior at any moment leaves the circle of space that is my anterior, you are no longer ahead of me in line. And the line moves on. Get the hell over it, and get to the back of the line.

I am living in a country where the population undoubtedly suffers from dementia. It's like a mass-psychosis.

And nobody is doing anything about it.

I think what I am going to do is conceive my children while standing in a line, so that no matter what happens in their life, they can tell whoever is in front of them to go to hell, because they were there first.

Tweak!

I have morphology midterm tomorrow which I really ought to buckle down and study for.
Meh.
There are more pressing issues at hand. Namely:

• I have yet to get showered and dressed today, which is priority number two, and which shall take place as soon as I've
• cleaned up my room, which is priority number three. At some point, I would also like to
• finish my Hebrew homework
• clean up my desk
• post-it note my Let's Go: Israel & The Palestinian Territories book so I can decide where to go and be able to say "I travelled all around Israel, but skipped the Palestinian Territories for the most part"
• rifle through my closet for any clothes I don't actually wear any more so I can make some sense out of my overloaded shelves
• do my laundry to add yet more clothes to the aforementioned shelves
• begin work on my lexicology project
• go to the doctor's
• skip volunteering and not feel bad about it
• begin season three of The West Wing
• return season two to Rebecca
• go grocery shopping so I don't starve this week
• call Nancy and apologize for not having come over to watch movies
• start reading the Logical Relations chapter in Semantics, because I simply don't understand it
• start my notes for the midterm in Semantics
• start my notes for the final exam in Hebrew
• take a nap

So you see, studying for my morphology midterm doesn't even make the top ten. Which is counterproductive, to say the least, and it's highly likely that I will even do it before grocery shopping and watching The West Wing, which is brilliant, by the way.

I have just been informed that John Spencer, the actor who plays Leo McGarry, White House Chief of Staff, on the West Wing, died over the weekend of a heart attack, which to say the least, does not bode well for the series.

Yesterday was Chag HaChagim, a fun initiative run by the Haifa Municipality in Wadi Nisnas (near the neighborhood of Hadar) which promotes peace and mutual understanding in the holiday season. Though I wasn't feeling all that peaceful or even very mutually understanding when I walked downtown in the rain for three hours, but coffee and tea with Anna, Jessie W and Rebecca fixed that right up. We were supposed to go to the Jaffa Flea Market today in Tel Aviv, but it's most likely going to rain, again, and not all of us are feeling that well. And also, we all have massive amounts of homework to do, among other things, if you'll refer to my above list.

I want to adopt a kitten. Not just any kitten, but the cute little gray laundry kitten who hangs out in the laundry room and who is afraid of his own shadow. I want to lure him out from under the dryer with food, snatch him when he leasts expects it, bring him to my room, give him a good bath in the sink, and keep him. Though instead of a clean, happy, fluffy kitty to keep me company, I'll probably just end up with an angry, disease-ridden drowned-rat-esque baby tomcat scratching at the upholstery.

I need to shower and get dressed, so I can start procrastinating with regards to my Morphology midterm.

Scabies!

On a note totally unrelated to the title, I would like to inform my faithful readers that while Elite Cafe excels in the field of customer service, their work in the field of muffinery could use some work. In other words, Elite Cafe muffins really really suck. A lot. Now, I really ought to start waking up early enough to make my own breakfast, but it seems that I have become so totally reliant on Elite Cafe as a main source of my nutrition that instead of making eggs and toast, which would use the food that has been lying around in my kitchen for a few weeks and thus preventing a health hazard, I decided that it would be okay to skip breakfast this morning and grab coffee and a muffin after my first class.

So you know when its a huge family meal, replete with paper placecards (how often does one get to use 'replete' in a sentence, anyways? RepleteRepleteRepleteRepleteRepleteReplete), and you're starving and your uncle, bless his sweet little heart, keeps going on and on and on about the biblical meaning of the meal we would eat if he didn't go on and on and on about it's biblical meaning, and suddenly, the paper placecards with which the huge family meal has been replete are starting to look appetizing? And you tear the paper placecards into tiny shreds and surreptitiously stick them in your mouth hoping to appease your stomach who is calling for a fatwa against your uncle, bless his sweet little heart, and while you're trying to be discreet, you know that in fact all of your cousins are doing the same thing? And the paper placecards with which the huge family meal has been replete taste exactly how you thought paper would taste? And how all you really want is one tiny goddamn pickle, but for now you have to put up with the shame of eating paper, which they probably don't even stoop to in Sierra Leone on a bad day, (does Sierra Leone have good days?), until your uncle, bless his sweet little heart, realizes that his family is about to commit a mutiny and just begin to freaking eat already?

Right, so that's how Elite Cafe muffins taste. And what's more, the experience is oddly similar to the huge-family-meal-replete-with-paper-placecards experience.

Le sigh.

Also, today, when my internet didn't work, I called up Bezeq's customer service and yelled at them for 15 whole minutes because they couldn't find my username, real name, or passport number in the system, and therefore couldn't fix my internet.
By the way, my internet provider is Barak, not Bezeq. I just happen to have both tech support numbers written down on the same piece of paper, and Bezeq is the first one I dialed.
While I was on hold because the flustered technician was ransacking the database, I realized my mistake and hung up. Luckily and serendiptitiously, my internet began to work again.

Oops.

Also, today in Morphology, I got to write two paragraphs about allomorphy because (get this) she wanted us to practice paragraph writing in English. (Note that 99% of the students in my classes are ESL -english as a second language- and therefore have sucky English writing style. I make up the 1% of native English speakers.) This is because on the exams, we will have essay questions in which 50% of the question will judge our English spelling and syntax. Which means if I totally bomb the question, I am guaranteed 50% of the mark so long as I bullshit in beautiful, lyrical English.

Excellent.

But the point of this post was not to complain about craptacular muffins or admit my early-morning phone-failures or gloat about how I got it made in Morphology class, but rather to discuss my weekend in Jerusalem!

The parents as well as a few other family members from the Diaspora came in to celebrate my British cousin's second bar-mitzvah, in which he read the maftir and everyone tossed candies at him because we missed the first bar-mitzvah held in England. A good time was had by all, especially me, especially because we went shopping in the Old City. But before my dad became designated as the King of Bargaining in the Arab Shuk (or sook, for the purists among you), my parents and I went down to the Western Wall to attend a tour of the Tunnels 'Neath the City Along the Wall.

To do this, we waited at the main promenade facing the Western Wall without actually going up to the Wall (cause seriously? It's just a wall. Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere...). Now, one of the rules when one goes to the the Wall is that you ought to be dressed appropriately, which means shoulders covered (and sometimes they'll make you cover your arms up to the elbows) and knees covered, no shorts or tanktops permitted. If you are in violation of these rules, you are given a scarf or piece of material from one of the good hearted ladies who has nothing better to do than sit at the Wall, guarding the modesty of the Daughters of Israel, and all the while you are left wondering where her children are or whether she feels that she is living a fulfilled life, sitting out all day with a bunch of rags chasing after scandalously clad women who God does not love if they aren't bundled up. I was dressed fine, in jeans and a vee-neck sweater which also has a vee in the back of the sweater.

Apparently, this is inappropriate, because the good-hearted Modesty-Policewoman came up to me and told me that my makhsof was exposed, and that in front of the Wall, one needs to dress modestly, so would I please take the wool poncho from her to cover it up. Makhsof is Hebrew for 'cleavage' or 'decolletage', (though I suppose literally, 'that which is exposed') and so I quickly looked down at my chest and determined that it was nicely covered up (the vee-neck did not extend far past my collarbone and whats more, i had a tanktop underneath the sweater covering up any unmentionable bits). When I pointed this out to her, she told me that it was in fact the makhsof shel hagav, or the 'cleavage of my back' which was showing. I am not that fat that I have back cleavage, and I definitely only have one pair of breasts, which are located on the front of my body. I asked her if she was serious, and insisting that she was, she thrust the poncho at me and covered up my shoulders.

I would like to point out that my shoulder blades were not showing. It is possible that a triangle of skin on my back, no bigger than my hand, was exposed. Because you know, visible back-skin/cleavage can lead to dancing, which can lead to babies, which can lead to the fiery flames of God's eternal wrath. So thank you, Morals Police, for covering me up with your lice-ridden poncho to keep me in God's good graces.

You know those "Tide" commercials where they talk about "body soil" and the guy's apparently clean shirt starts to crawl all over him like he's ridden with cockroaches? It was like Body Soil Party in that poncho. I still feel dirty, 24 hours later. I immediately switched the poncho for a lighter, seemingly cleaner scarf. But I've probably contracted scabies from the poncho.

*shudder*

Fun Fact!: The word in Hebrew for the blankets one is issued in the army is scah-bi-ahs, which comes from the English word "scabies", because that is what you get upon using the aforementioned blankets. Or ponchos from the Morals Patrol, apparently. This is exactly why I can't handle Jerusalem in more than small quantities.

Question of the day: Is God as opposed to laundry machines as he is to my back cleavage? Thoughts? Comments?

I leave you with a final thought, which should be imparted to the religious women who have no lives and who sit at the Wall all day: When I was in Grade One, and asked for a good class rule, since "don't hit" and "share your toys" were taken, I said "Don't share hats or scarves or you'll get head lice"

Exactly.

Animal Rights Futility

Do you know what's been bothering me lately?

Organically-raised chickens.

Because you give them room to run around, fresh air to breathe, other organically-raised chickens with which to commune, a good amount of food...

And then you kill them. And eat them.

I feel like there must be a lot of disillusioned little chickens running around.

It's like, you think you have it good, and then someone wants to make soup out of you anyways.

Le sigh.

Do you know what else has been bothering me? The laundry facilities at this academic establishment. So to the generous person who donated what i'm sure must have cost in the tens of thousands of dollars of laundry equipment: Your machines are freaking broken, get someone down here to fix them.

There are about 10 washers to service a few thousand students, and only 5 of the 10 dryers are operational. Which meant that I was doing my laundry from 11pm-2:30 in the morning. Which is so many levels of not okay, I can't even begin to describe it. I'm exhausted, which is not helped by the fact that I'm going to see Harry Potter tonight, and then doing the family-thing at my cousin's barmitzvah all weekend, and then 8:30 class on monday.

Stupid organic chickens. I'd let them live if they'd learn how to do my laundry.

Too...much...food...

I would like to first mention that my father a)reads this blog too damn much and b)brings it up too damn often in conversation with complete strangers.

Daddy: Be. Quiet.
Also: Thanks for dinner!

My mommy and daddy are in town this week, which means major shiksa insurance for me** and major parent-child bonding time for them. So after a decent weekend, they decided to take me and eight other friends out for dinner. We went to one of those shipudim (meat skewers; like kebobs...) places where they give you enough salad so that just as you feel your sides literally splitting, then they bring out the meat.

Because clearly, if you aren't vomiting on the floor, you haven't been eating enough.
So Jessie, Kelly, Arielle, Deborah, Becca, Shana, Hannah, Hila and I had enough food to Feed the World (do they know it's Christmas Time....oh my god, the seasonal-appropriateness just kills you...), thanks to my every generous Folks. I feel like Jabba the Hutt (sp?): Salaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddddd. Keep it coming! Kill the Wookie!

Then Anna, who was unable to join us because she was having bonding-time-dinner with her parents met me and my parents down at Aroma, where all hell broke loose.

Cause you know how I go to Elite Cafe too often?

It appears that I go to Aroma Cafe too often, also.

Because when the security guard gets excited to see you and meet your parents, and the barrista/barristo guy makes you a plate of whipped cream with chocolates just cause, you know that a)you've got it made b)you need to cut back on the coffee c)you have to get a work permit and work there or d)just ask them nicely for a teeshirt already, and stop plotting how to steal their clever little coffee mugs with their clever little logo.

And let's back up: Avi the Coffee Guy brought me whipped cream. On a plate. With 10 pieces of extraneous chocolate. Whipped cream. Plate. Me.

Whipped.

Cream.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Gentle readers (free chocolate for those that can remember the source of that golden-oldie phrase), you are all cordially invited to the wedding of Miss Jessica "Ziv" Goldberg and Mr Avi "Aroma Guy" AromaGuy, to take place next week. Whipped cream will be served. And probably coffee too.

W.T.F: How the hell did he know that straight-up whipped cream is my favorite thing ever? I don't think a single boyfriend of mine has ever given me whipped cream on a plate/in a bowl/in a cup, just cause (unless i wheedled...and even then, it hasn't really worked...)
Avi, if you're reading this, shave that stupid little soul-patch, and marry me, you crazy coffee fool.
Bridesmaids will be bedecked in Aroma Tees.
Men will wear the aprons over their tuxes

Invitations are in the mail

**Shiksa Insurance: Once upon a time when my dad went off to university, his great aunt AKA Tante Sarah said to him: "Meyer Chayim, do you love your Tante?" Dad: "Yes, Tante". Tante: "How much do you love your Tante?" Dad: "Soooo much, Tante" Tante: *presses five bucks into his hand* "Don't marry a shiksa."
Since that fateful moment, every time I hit daddy up for money or get fun spending money from the daddy, it's called "shiksa insurance" because hey, if you keep giving me cash, i'll date whoever you want me to date.