How Do You Jew

Too many words. You know what they say about pictures…

Also, how much do you think the Obama people would have to spend to buy this from The Daily Show and use it as the basis for their ad campaign from now until November?

and

I just got off the phone with a teller at my banking institution. I had to call in to transfer some money from our joint savings account into our joint checking account, and to my lovely wife’s checking account. I don’t need to tell you why, I just need you to understand that I’m talking about our own money, transferred between our own accounts.

The reason I called in is that I got an error message when I tried to transfer the money online, where we take care of probably 99.9% of our banking needs. The error number is the cryptic one in the title of this post, and the text of the error message was utterly unhelpful, saying only that if the problem persisted I should call my banking institution. It did, so I did. And the teller was kind enough to explain to me why I encountered this problem:

Apparently there is a Federal regulation that prohibits a customer from making more than six (6) electronic transfers per month from any savings account to any other account.

Let me rephrase that, just so we’re all clear on what’s going on here:

The government of these here United States has a rule in place that prohibits ME from moving MY OWN MONEY from MY OWN SAVINGS ACCOUNT to MY OWN CHECKING ACCOUNT more than half a dozen times in a month without walking into a branch of the banking institution that I’ve chosen to hold MY MONEY.

The mind, it doth boggle.

Then again, since money is an artificial construct that has absolutely no intrinsic value to begin with, what am I complaining about? Oh, yeah… my rights, that was it!

Well, I wasn’t using them anyway…

fucking fascists

I have to blog a thousand things, but I’ll just keep this to the top that I’m able to think of, in no particular order, before my fingers get tired:

1. The evil bastards who control the food packaging disaster that is hot dogs and buns are even more devious than I previously suspected: We recently got Hadarya a play kitchen (and PLEASE don’t start with the sexism/promoting gender stereotypes/etc. arguments - she is a very well-rounded child who spends time doing lots of other things, but she sees us both working in the kitchen and loves to pretend to do so on her own), and Grandma Bonnie came through with a ginormous vat of play food to fill the kitchen. The play food container has, I kid you not, six hot dogs and TWO buns. What the???
2. I’m completely engrossed in the audio recording of Wil Wheaton’s Just A Geek. His writing is excellent - the stories of his time on TNG, including the hindsight on what a bonehead he was to not appreciate it at the time (he WAS a teenager, after all; it would have been more surprising if he HAD appreciated it); working the con circuit with fellow cast members; his brutal honesty and openness about his emotional fragility over the lack of work, with the concomitant ups and downs of auditions and wasted hours waiting for phone calls; his beautiful stories about his family and his struggles to support them; all of this is good source material, and it’s well put together on paper. But his performance of his own material is evocative, moving, funny, and true, with occasional asides and deviations from the written source that make this feel at once like the special edition of the book with extra features and like he’s performing it exclusively for me (it helps that I’m listening to it in the car when I’m either alone or with a sleeping toddler in the back).
   I’m able to relate to virtually everything he talks about because I grew up with a father who worked in “the industry” (what people who work in the movie/television business call their line of work), so the terms are familiar, and so are many of the settings (walking around studio backlots and sets, the peculiar hurry-up-and-wait schedule of a typical shoot, etc.). In some of the stories, the empathy is even stronger because our paths were even closer - growing up geeky, playing role-playing and video games, seeing all the same movies and listening to much of the same music.
   Then there’s his audition for the co-host spot on Win Ben Stein’s Money. Listening to that chapter was amazing, since I was a contestant on the show. Wil was up for the co-host spot after Jimmy Kimmel’s first replacement, but that wasn’t clear from his description, and since I stopped watching the show after I played on it (that story will get its own post), I didn’t even know there WAS another co-host, nor that he was Jimmy Kimmel’s cousin. That was all cleared up by Wikipedia, thankyouverymuch.
3. It’s been a very long time since I was as wrapped up in a television show as I was in this week’s House, the penultimate episode of the season. I started watching the series when the strike took my other veg-out shows off the air, and haven’t been disappointed, but they really nailed it this week. I’m going to catch up on last week’s episode via Hulu before enjoying the season finale next week. Then Veronique and I can discuss amongst ourselves, dahling.
4. Is it just me, or is it weird that Hillary Clinton is ignoring the fact that her base, according to all the data I’m hearing, is essentially uneducated white people, while Barack Obama’s core supporters tend to be college-educated? I guess that explains some stuff, like her pandering to people with the proposed gas tax holiday, and how she can get away with calling him “elitist,” and other things. Meh. I so don’t want this blog to be about politics.
5. I’ve got basic show notes written up for like a dozen How Do You Jew podcast episodes. I just need to put some music together, do a little research on each of my core topics, and start recording. Actually, here are some of the things I want to cover. Any suggestions for straightforward sources of good, solid information about them would be appreciated. The idea is that I’ll introduce and briefly discuss/explain a specific Jewish tradition or halachic practice each episode:
   • Torah scroll, sofer, filling in letters to fulfill mitzvah
   • Kippot/yarmulkes - where is rule to wear, who’s obligated/allowed, different styles and their connotations in different communities
   • Yahrzeit/shloshim/shiva
   • Hamantaschen - Haman’s ears vs. Haman’s hat & possibly other traditional Jewish holiday foods
   • Pikuach nefesh

   Alright, Jenn should be home soon from the synagogue board meeting, and I need to fill out Hebrew High report cards, so that’s it for tonight… Also, Hadarya is restless and needs some comforting, so off I go.

Who’s gonna make it happen? EVERYBODY!
…
well, at least I know that when I go to Washington I’ll be able to get some change.

Yeah, it’s specific to one candidate, but the message is so universal, and so beautifully produced, that it’s well worth sharing: a song, based on Barack Obama’s speech after the New Hampshire primary, produced by the Black Eyes Peas’ will.i.am. I especially like the inclusion of the chorus phrase in Hebrew, spoken by actress Maya Rubin, and his use of the term “repairing the world”:

Best news about Ann Coulter so far today (hey, the day is young, she could still get run over by a truck, which would eclipse this story):

direct lift from the Subversive Cross Stitch blog:

Seems that some truly subversive and possibly off-balance soul hand-delivered a card to Ms. Coulter’s mailbox in Florida and, according to police reports obtained by The Smoking Gun, the card they chose to express themselves with was our very own “Go Fuck Yourself” card from the set by Chronicle!

I love the NY Magazine piece’s title: But Ann Coulter Always Seemed So Nice! Bwahahahahaha!

edited to add: I looked at the police report at TSG, and was delighted to see the evidence photo showing the “two words unclear” on the inside of the card mentioned by the cop. “They” are easily (to me) discernible as the single word “solipsistic” (adj., one who holds that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing; also : extremely egocentric). It gives me hope and cheer to know that someone with the kind of vocabulary it takes to use “solipsistic” correctly in a sentence took the time to compose this card to Ms. Coulter and hand-deliver it. Thank you, my friend, and Merry Christmas to you!

My first concert was Billy Joel on (I think) The Bridge tour, so I’ve been a fan for a long time. I went to that concert with my mom, who’s also a big fan. She was kind enough to point me to Billy’s latest social commentary tune (following up on, just off the top of my head, Goodnight Saigon, Allentown, We Didn’t Start the Fire, The Downeaster Alexa, and others; videos of all these and more available here), Christmas in Fallujah (buy from iTunes). Here’s Billy introducing the song and the singer (Cass Dillon does the vocals), and here’s the performance itself.

The first comment on the Youtube page for the introduction references another song by the same name, released over two years ago by a different, independent artist named Jefferson Pepper. THAT youtube now comments on the Billy Joel track, and, while it’s easy to understand why it didn’t attract mainstream attention, it’s worth listening to/viewing. You can also download the song here (a couple more of his songs may be heard here).

Yes, I know this hasn’t gotten physically violent yet, but it easily could. When is this going to stop?

A British schoolteacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

BBC story.

This whole business with images of the Prophet confuses me. Part of the issue in this story is the book the kids made with the picture of the bear and the name Muhammad on it. Does that mean that Muslim boys named Muhammad can’t get their picture taken? I wish I could figure it out, but the rules of logic and common sense don’t apply to fundamentalist religion. And until education becomes a higher value than blind devotion, things are only going to get worse.