Passover has (finally) ended, and now, once again, it's time for a linkfest of links that have been forming plaque on the walls of my intertubes for the past two weeks or so. Some of them are seriously OLD, but I want you to have them, anyway. Please stay with me till the end, because way at the bottom of this post, I have a couple of future classics from the Sunday New York Times that are almost worth the price of the paper.
1. In the past couple of weeks, the biggest issue in politics, in case you're a Japanese World War II fighter who's been holed up in the Pacific until yesterday, has been whether Obama flipped the bird at Hillary while speaking to his supporters following the final debate in Pennsylvania. The Hillarosphere demands to know. And Baseball Crank has another photo that may provide circumstantial evidence.
2. The Democrats' Nightmare Scenario (via Instapundit)
3. More popcorn, please!
4. McCain goes to NOLA, and an African-American participant at a town-hall meeting says this: "I want to inform you that everybody in the camp here is not a Republican." Does he mean (a) literally no one is a Republican, or (b) colloquially, not everyone is a Republican? Who cares, anyway, besides anal-retentive grammar wackos like me?
5. As Warner Wolf might have said, if you studied math in school since about 1961 . . . YOU LOST! On a related topic, Hillary Clinton does some math trolling for delegates and votes from Michigan.
6. Gov. O'Malley calls a special session of the legislature to pass a law declaring the official state dessert of Maryland. (Only kidding about the special session. Beats the hell out of raising our taxes, though.)
7. The man-cave: "Like most stories that end up with a man mowing his friend's lawn in a dress, it started out innocently enough." (via Fark, of course)
8. Sometimes it pays to test your personal machinery before reporting its theft by voodoo to police. As the police chief himself put it: "'I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke,' Oleko said.
'But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, "How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it",' he said."
9. Public Service Announcement: Be careful when eating in Canadian restaurants.
10. "Le Petit Singly is a farm that specializes in making cheese from women's breast milk." (via Ace)
11. This one's so old, it's already been overtaken by events. You remember the McLean school that banned tag in the schoolyard? Well, tag's back, but not before a week of "reorientation lessons on playground safety." I swear I'm not making that term up.
12. Patch (for women) aims to make you (not you, you) feel sexy. (via Ace)
13. Rick Monday saves the flag. In 1976. But now, there's a video.
14. American expat in Paris whines about the falling dollar. My heart bleeds.
15. False advertising from Moron Pundit: a very non-moronic defense of the tax deduction for child dependents.
16. Doubleplusundead on more misery with McCain. For me, if you want to know why McCain hasn't sealed the deal with conservatives -- I'm going to vote for him, anyway -- read George Will's column this morning. Two words: campaign finance.
17. The Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt by a Pharaoh who took great pleasure in persecuting gays, who were brutally forced to arrange flowers for the Egyptians. Hence, the orange on the seder plate. Funny, I had always heard that it was supposed to represent Pharaoh's fear of the vagina.
18. And finally, the moment you've been waiting for -- the two classics from today's New York Times: (a) In the travel section: "In 2007, nude recreation represented a $440 million industry — up from $400 million in 2001 and $200 million in 1992." (b) In Sunday Styles: A family adjusts to the father's sex change -- "Through Sickness, Health and Sex Change."
Showing posts with label Passover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Passover. Show all posts
April 27, 2008
Sunday evening linkfest
April 21, 2008
April 16, 2008
Kitniot and Godzilla
Passover is approaching, and just as winter turns to spring, the birds return from the south, and the sounds of baseball fill the air, I inevitably get a lot of visitors searching for the term "kitniot."
I'm pleased to report that if you search for the term "kitniot" on Google, the very first article you will reach is my three-year old post called "The four stages of kitniot." Now, I'm not going to claim that this post is the best thing I've ever written, but for some reason it's the one that's drawn the most over-the-top compliments, namely "approaching genius," "damn near perfect," and a "landmark." I still blush.
I don't mention this to toot my own horn. If you check the sidebar to the right, you'll notice I tend to highlight disparaging comments about me. But I was thinking about what makes the "four stages" post work, and I've concluded it's this: First, kitniot are baffling and a little scary, and thus they're a good subject for humor. Second, the allusion to Kubler-Ross lends mock seriousness. Third, it's topped off by my friend Martin's hilarious letter, which I quoted in full in the post.
So, in honor of Martin, I'm going to translate the entire post, including his letter, into Japanese. Why Japanese? I don't know. Why not Japanese?
Click here.
Chag kasher v'sameach.
Bonus: An article in the NY Times today about the author of the "Kosher by Design" cookbook series, which now includes "Passover by Design." To overcome being "frum from birth," she's quizzed chefs about how to duplicate certain tastes, like Thai, which she's never experienced. All well and good, but when I eat kosher Thai, I want it made by someone who knows what the tref version tastes like. Quizzing chefs may or may not work.
Super-de-dooper bonus: "Worrying about the propriety of eating kosher cheeseburgers is no different than worrying about eating kitniyot on Pesah." (via Kitniyot Liberation Front)
March 21, 2007
Kosher for Passover gasoline
You just knew that the story about kosher for Passover gasoline (ethanol-free) in Teaneck was too good to be true. Or maybe you didn't.
I got it today from my friend Martin I., who wrote the wonderful letter about kitniyot that I quoted in "The four stages of kitniyot" a couple of years ago. (For the record, the stages are denial, anger, fear, and humor.)
And speaking of kitniyot, I'd like to thank the Kitniyot Liberation Front for including me on the blogroll of its new blog. I'd also like to thank Rav David Bar-Hayim in Jerusalem for ruling that "that the decree against eating kitniyot is a ban that should be repealed."
Not to be picky about this, but I don't think I want to thank him for saying that his ruling "will cause a paradigm shift from 'small talk' about Kitniyoth to confronting the big issues such as the Pesah sacrifice." The Passover sacrifice is, to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
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