Out of Control!

I cannot handle how over-the-top the Survivor finale is right now.

My sister took this incredibly flattering picture of me watching the show.

Thank god Netali was voted off. I voted for Arik in the last minute. OMG WHO WILL WIN? I die.

The Transitions in This Blog Post Are Lacking

Things have been rather quiet on ye olde mfthewebsite. That's because one of my only readers, my little sister, is visiting me from Obamaland. I "blog" to her on a regular basis by "talking," so "blogging" seems rather redundant.

I will say this, though: Visiting your favorite serene artists' village is not as fun once you realize the artists created this village by taking over "abandoned" Arab houses. The visit is further dampened by your realization that all the Arab owners of the houses live 5 minutes away in a makeshift village of their own.

But the Dada museum in the Ein Hod Artists' Village is still pretty cool. Check it out.

I will also say this: The Survivor finale is coming up, and I barely even care who's going to win. What is happening to the world? And how will I pass the time after Survivor ends? Only time will tell.

I will finish with this video:

Reason for video: An obnoxious blond with a Paris-Hilton-like baby voice and a tiny puppy was parading herself around the cafe where my sister and I were eating breakfast. After a while, I realized she was Rony Superstar, the lamest Israeli pop sensation of all time, and singer of the "song" in the video above. I'm still embarrassed by the lameness level of Israeli celebs I recognize.

Oh, that reminds me: I went to see Yona Wallach: The Play the other day. They actually performed Tefillin (though without the last stanza for some reason). And they performed Strawberries, one of my favorite poems. The play was aight, though I think they could've done a lot more with the poems. I also think I should've been able to watch Tefillin performed without giggling. This was not the case, unfortch.

Mehover

I have gotten a She's-All-That-style makeover so I can win Homecoming Queen. This makeover includes new, dorkier glasses, and hair befitting of early-90's-Mariah-Carey and/or Russell Brand.

The evidence is to your left.

My hairdresser was a crazy older guy with short gray hair cut in a triangle shape the middle of his head, and shoulder-length gray hair on the sides. He was dancing around while cutting my hair and did his best to give me a Jewfro. Israeli hairdressers are out of control. I was very entertained indeed.

My goal of becoming the physical embodiment of the following song is now underway. (Song starts at 0:40).

This Thing is Like That Thing

Sometimes, living in Israel feels like the following video. The video is about pay discrimination between the sexes, but I'm just talking about how living in Israel feels like for a person, not a woman.


Now if I had to go on about what it feels like to be a woman in Israel, that'd be a whole other post. A post filled with descriptions of people talking to you about beating women (almost every day!), people trotting out cliches about all the things women "can't do," and people thinking of slutty bachelorhood as some sort of male-only thing (that one just confuses me).

Overbearing/Upsetting/Funny

My day in Tel Aviv today included:

1. I was walking by my house and yawned, as I often do. A storeowner got out of his store and said "Cover your mouth while you're yawning or a fly will get in there!" I wish this was the first time a stranger on the street in Israel told me to cover my mouth while yawning.

2. This is really upsetting: I walked out of my house and saw a cat lying down and moving around in the middle of the road. I thought he was just hanging out, but then I saw all this blood around him. He was dying! I called my cousin who has a lot of experience with animal shelters and asked her if there's a service I can call who can take the cat to an animal hospital. She said no! It was so disturbing. Poor cat.

3. I was waiting for a sherut (mini-bus cab) and these two girls walk by and stand on the road in front of me. At first, I thought they were trying to steal my sherut when it comes by, and that I'd have to fight them for it, and that it'd be annoying. Then I realized they were hookers trying to get a "free ride" somewhere. They kept stopping traffic by talking to potential johns, who didn't even pull over for some reason. There was a traffic jam because of all this potential hooking. Let's hope Richard Gere stops for them.

In conclusion, Tel Aviv can be summed up by overbearing strangers, dying cats, and hookers.

All the Problems in My Life Are Now Solved

The biggest problem in my life used to be "Where do I put all the important forms and other pieces of paper that I need for stuff?" Then I got a box filled with folders (that stand upright, and that are all labeled) and my life changed forever. I even took the box-o-folders with me to Israel even though it was super heavy and I didn't have room for it.

After I moved to Israel, I was presented with a new problem: not knowing army abbreviations. My theory is that if I knew army abbreviations, I could get whatever I want in this country. It's like having an inside joke with the vast majority of people you encounter! ZOMG! I could charm salespeople to give me discounts; I could successfully hit on every guy; and I could tell so many great jokes. I would be a winner. Well, today, I found the solution to all of life's problems. Readers, I present you with a wiki list of army terms!

I can die happy now.

With My Teeth Clenched Against the Next Assault of the Unfamiliar

On the bus (wow, every story I tell begins with that phrase), I often see women (they're always women) reading and chanting from a Bible-looking book of some sort of Jewish verses? It creeps me out. While I do not have a book of Jewish verses (or whatever that book is), I do carry my personal Bible with me: the autobiography Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman. Praise it.

The Book tells Eva's story as a young daughter of Holocaust survivors in post-WWII Cracow, Poland. It then goes on to tell the story of her life from the lens of her immigration. When Eva was 13, she moved to vancouver with her family. She later went to Rice University in Houston, and way later went to Harvard for grad school (studied literature, obvi). She then lived in NYC for a while, and I hear that now she lives in London.

I first read Lost in Translation in my Lit of Exile class my sophomore year. I was especially obnoxious in that class and would get mad whenever my bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshmen classmates would say anything too annoyingly American. I'm sure a few people in that class hated me.

I took the class because the syllabus featured The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which was my fave book before LiT came along (yes, I was a stereotypical 18-year-old who loved Milan Kundera and esp. Karenin the dog, shuttup). But then I read LiT and Kundera didn't stand a chance.

While reading LiT, I would often go back to my journals and find passages that described exact experiences to Eva Hoffman's (much less eloquently written, natch). I felt like for the first time in my life, I was finally reading the story of someone who was a lot like me. No other book before or since describes so completely the vertigo of immigration. Immigrant writers usually skip over the specific weakness and alienation they feel, though it often seeps into their work in more indirect ways. Eva just deals with it head-on.

And finally, a female character I could relate to. This is the Holy Grail for those of us caught Reading While Penis-less (RWP is a great offense to most authors, you see).

I relate to so many aspects of Eva, but most of all, I relate to her bitchiness and cattiness toward people.

Exhibit A, P. 203: "In the conversation of my friends, I sniff out cultural cliches like a hound on the scent of hostile quarry. An innocent remark like 'Well, I don't know what to tell you, it really depends on how you feel' provokes in me the most bitter reflections on American individualism, and how a laissez-faire tolerance can mask a callous indifference."

Sing it, sister.

These days, I'm concerned, because mine and Eva's paths have diverged. She continued living in the US after college/grad school. I, on the other hand, moved back to my pre-teen homeland, am not in grad school at all, and have no direction for my life. The last pages of her book are even more poignant to me now that I'm no longer in the States:

"As long as the world around me has been new each time, it has not become my world; I lived with my teeth clenched against the next assault of the unfamiliar. But now, the year has assumed an understandable sequence within which I play the variations of a professional New York life. The social world in which I move has comprehensible elements and dimensions. I am no longer mystified by the rules and rituals of friendship and love . . . Pattern is the soil of significance; and it is surely one of the hazards of emigration, and exile, and extreme mobility, that one is uprooted from that soil."

Waaaah. As a person who is still mystified by the rules of friendship and love, and who constantly uproots myself from my soil, I am so jeal. I want so badly for my life to finally become familiar and orderly instead of being so full of strangeness. I want to master Hebrew like Eva mastered English. Actually, I'd like to master both Hebrew and English, if possible. I want her success, her pride, and her ability to be so sure of herself.

For a while in college, I assumed that just like Eva, I'd go on to graduate school in literature, and then get married and divorced and have no kids. I almost saw the book as some sort of prophecy for my life--a prophecy I was a little scared of, to be honest. But now, the book is becoming less and less relatable. I can't fit my experiences into the schema of assimilating into US culture and mastering it. Instead, I'm in this mindfuck of trying to fit into my home-yet-not-home land while also trying to maintain my assimilation skillz of yesteryear. I'm trying to be Nabokov when I could just as well end up a boring cultureless loser.

So here I am, mourning my Bible's status as the book of my heart. No matter, I'm sure another one will come along soon enough.

Slow Clap

I cannot stop watching this video or singing this song in my head. The video might not make sense if you don't know Hebrew (or if you do know Hebrew, actually), but it's a satire on hasbara (the Israeli government's "PR" around the world). What I like about it is that it's vague enough that half the people don't get that it's a joke. That is my favorite type of video.


The video comes from Eretz Nehederet ("Our Great Country"), a fake news show in Israel--like the Daily show, but much darker. I don't know how I haven't mentioned this before, but one of their recurring sketches is called May's Blog. The character May is a blond, bitchy, and rich Israeli teenager who forces her friend to be bulimic. Naturally.

I ROBOT

My last two journeys to Northern Israel were rudely interrupted by "suspicious objects." In Israel, whenever someone leaves a bag lying around anywhere (bag = suspicious object), the police takes it and BLOWS IT UP USING A ROBOT. A robot! Everyone has to stand really far away while the kewl robot blows up the object, and then you go about your business, while all day you imagine ways to decorate the robot and befriend it.

I think this robot is really cool. Here's a short video of the robot walking around, waiting to blow some shit up:



The other day, after I was stuck in traffic due to robot happenings, I saw the robot go into its police car post-suspicious-object check. It was rolling around into the car, Wall-E style! I think this robot will one day take over the world.

Recently, I went into a bus station, and everyone was standing outside the station, and there was all this police around. I start freaking out and hide behind a tree (?) because I'm scared. Turned out it was just a suspicious object. I love how Israelis are always just standing around nonchalantly when these things happen, while I'm hyperventilating, running around in circles (seriously), and hiding behind trees.

Here is a video of Israelis standing around all cool, watching the robot:

I act most like the girl with the scarf who's blocking her ears.

My last and most important point (it's always important to save your coolest point for last) is that there is a very funny PSA on youtube about suspicious objects (a SO is called a chefetz chashud in Hebrew). The best part is the last two seconds, when the girl's 40-year-old cigarette smoker's voice is revealed. The second best part is when suspicious objects are shown while cheesy sitcom music plays. Here it is in all its glory:


I have nothing else to say.

Smell you later.

The Change Has Come

So, naturally, for May 1, I went to the kibbutz, to experience socialism in action. Actually, the particular kibbutz I went to is no longer socialist, but it's the thought that counts.

I went to Kibbutz Eilon, where I was born, and where my dad was born. Going to my dad's kibbutz always makes me feel so cool, because everyone knows who I am and talks to me. This rarely happens in kibbutzim, where people are generally snobs who don't talk to strangers.

I went to the kibbutz bar (10 shekels for a glass of wine. OMG.) and I didn't need to be introduced to people because I'm "an F." so they already knew, apparently. I also was educated about the different types of avocado, and about a field day that kibbutznikim from Eilon call a "shtafetta." Yeah, I dunno. I offered people the little gossip I had about the kibbutz, and asked everyone who their parents were, so I could tell my parents whose kids I saw (this is all my parents will ask me about the next few days, I'm sure).

Everyone at the kibbutz was very happy that I voted Meretz in the election, and did not laugh at me when I told them I volunteer with Peace Now.

This has been my essay on why the kibbutz is super cool, awesome, and gnarly.

And now for something completely different. It is fun to watch this video and pretend that all the girls in the audience are fainting from the sheer idiocy of the lyrics. They are also trying to get on stage to punch Jagger in the face. The Rolling Stones should hope they never see me on the street and find out the way I talk when I'm spoken to. Because it's not very nice. The way I talk. When I'm spoken to. By the Rolling Stones. Fuck this song. Though it's good. Yet the lyrics suck.


PS Doesn't Mike Litt kinda dance like Mick Jagger? Anyone from Austin who still reads may blog, let me know what you think about this matter.

EDIT: Who am I kidding? He's totally Pirtle--that's who the dancing reminds me of. A Mike and Pirtle combo, I guess?