Happy Blogoversary To Allison! Until 120, my dear.

I can't believe it's only a year since you started your blog. You seem to have been around forever (Oy, that doesn't sound very nice, does it? I keep putting my foot into it. The other day in the dining room at work, someone moved in his chair so I could pass behind him and I told him he was thinner than he looked. Big mouth).

posted by Imshin 12:20

Let the festivities begin!
Well, two girls have been sent off to school in all of their Purim splendor, one yellow and fluffy and the other, purple and gorgeous (and wearing a very expensive black velvet dress of mine that I’ve never worn). Purim is on Sunday, but there is a school vacation so they strut their stuff (literally, in the case of the yellow and fluffy one) today.

I think I was more excited than they were this morning. I was so nervous I couldn’t plait Youngest’s hair properly. ‘Now don’t be nervous,’ she tried to sooth me, ‘Think that it isn’t Purim at all, just an ordinary day, like any other’. Why is it I have two daughters who are both so much more sensible than I am?

And I couldn’t get the camera to work. Of course, it’s fine now. Grrrrr.

Purim always has this feeling of hilarity. I popped into the supermarket and the guys in the fruit and vegetable department had funny hats on. As I was leaving, one of the younger and livelier cashiers was trying to get all the other ones to put on colorful wigs. This cashier highly amused me last week, as I was going through her cash registry, by letting me (and the whole store) listen to her animated conversation with the girl next to her about thongs and sex. As I left the store I noticed the head cashier call her over and reprimand her for talking about sex in front of the customers.

I bought a gorgeous wig in Amsterdam, when I was there. It was pretty expensive, but the guy I bought it off was speaking Arabic, so I wasn’t embarrassed to haggle about the price, and got it for less. Anyway, I can’t find it now. How aggravating. Not that I’ve got any hot parties to go to, and I won’t wear it to work on Sunday because I sit alone and it’s a bit pathetic to be sitting all alone in a small office with a fancy wig, isn’t it?

On second thoughts, WTF? (Pardon my awful language. It’s down to Purim, of course) I think I will wear it, if I find it.
posted by Imshin 09:13

Aha!
A kingdom in Uganda is suing the UK in the International Court in the Hague for atrocities allegedly committed in the colonial period. I’m waiting for the Congo to sue Belgium next, preferably in the Belgian court.

posted by Imshin 00:08

I have just finished watching an Iranian film called The Color of Paradise. I cried continuously from the moving opening scene right up to the credits at the end. This is the most wonderful, wonderful film.
posted by Imshin 23:41

Hey, Allison is due for congrats - third one on the way.
posted by Imshin 16:43

Police Alert.
There’s a terrorist on the loose in South Tel Aviv. How nice for us.

Update: Alert has been cancelled.
posted by Imshin 16:24

News Flash!
We're not moving. It's final, we've just signed a new lease.

Phew.

[Oh, and
something really good happened at work today. I finally put in writing something I've been complaining about verbally for months and presto! all solved - like magic. I got exactly what I wanted.

Things definitely are working out for the best (thank you, John). Maybe it's this warm weather.]


posted by Imshin 21:56

Who would Hollywood get to play Tennenbaum? Steve Buscemi? I love that guy. He’s too good for Tennenbaum.

Many years ago, a good friend of my mother’s was riding an elevator in a building in Leeds, England, with a man she could have sworn she knew from somewhere. “Don’t I know you?” She asked. His answer was, “I’m Cary Grant”.

Yesterday was one of those days. I got home at six in the evening, falling off my feet with exhaustion. The week before Purim tends to be hectic, what with costumes to prepare and early events. It’s not that I had so much to do yesterday, but it was hot and I was wearing the most uncomfortable shoes. By the time I got home my feet were killing me.

In the evening, when Bish went out to see the basketball game at a friend’s home, instead of going straight to bed, which was what my body was telling me to do, I plonked myself down in front of the TV and zapped. I watched the last hour or so of the Count of Monte Cristo with Jim Caviezel. What are people talking about? I think he’s the perfect Jesus Christ. I believe early Jews looked more like present day Turks than Osama Bin Ladens.

After that I caught the beginning of North by NorthWest. There was Hitchcock missing the bus. Wait a minute, Hitchcock missing the bus? Was I dreaming? Yes, there he was, as clear as the day is long. Now this must seem to you a strange thing for me to emphasize, so I’d better explain. I must have seen North by NorthWest dozens of times, but I’ve never seen the bit at the beginning of the film where director Alfred Hitchcock is seen reaching a bus just as the doors are closing and the bus is driving away, leaving Hitchcock standing there. Don’t ask me why I’ve never seen it. I know it happens, I know when. I just never seem to catch it. I’m always on the phone, in the toilet, making the coffee, switch over to the channel after it has happened, or I’m just not watching very closely. “How could you have missed it?” Yes, well. It’s not that it is very important. I suppose I could have rented the video or DVD if it was all that critical for my mental health or personal growth, and run the opening scene again and again till I saw it. But what fun would that be? And it really isn’t all that important, is it? Just a very minor irritation, like…er…having the bus drive off just as you are reaching the bus stop.

Well anyway, yesterday I got to see it. Now I can die happy. After that exciting moment (Sadly, a lonely experience, the girls were in bed. Not that they would have appreciated it anyway, I don’t think they’ve heard of Cary Grant or Hitchcock or even of Mount Rushmore), I lasted out till the scene in which Cary Grant is drunk in the car on the dark cliff road, about to go over the edge. Then I fell asleep. Strange place to fall asleep, I know, but I really didn’t need to see the rest of the film. I’d seen what I came to see, as they say. I usually watch it right through because I just love that Frank Lloyd Wright-style villa on the top of Mount Rushmore (at least it looks like it is in the film). Now that would be nice to live in. A bit out of my price range though, I suspect.

It’s looking like what we knew about the freed captive of the Hizbullah, Elhanan Tennenbaum, the drug deal story, is the truth after all. No cloak and dagger treason, no million dollars in a Swiss bank, just plain old greed and weakness of character. He’s looking more and more pathetic as time goes on. He says he lied about what he was doing in Lebanon (he had said that he’d gone to look for missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad and do some private business at the same time), because he was ashamed. Well, he should be ashamed. And now everyone knows his true worth. That’s probably the worst punishment there is, for a man like that. The worst punishment, and maybe also the best thing to happen to him, in the long run - to be completely and totally stripped of his pride.

Update: Now if you actually want some NEWS about Tennebaum, and not just my loose ramblings, you might try Allison.
posted by Imshin 19:59

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