I know this post may disturb some of you, but I have noticed some guys (who’s names I will not disclose here) find the sight of certain crippled people arousing. A friend of mine saw this blond girl on a wheel chair and I swear if I didn’t hold on to a nearby lamp post, his errection would send me flying to Zimbabwe…

Is it because supposedly that person in the wheelchair is helpless, and an easy prey? Is it this kind of inner ferocious instinct usually found in carnivorous mammals?

Or is it because he thinks she is desperate for Sex and will do anything? Or maybe he is imagining her stiff legs and the thought of her dead limbs is arousing in a very perverse way?

This reminded me of the story of Safran and his dead arm, from the book “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer. In that story, Safran, supposedly the author’s grandfather, has a dead arm from birth. This somehow gets him into the arms (and underwear) of most of his village’s women… to the point where it has become a sort of a “secret weapon” for him, which he used to “fish” for his gipsy, non-jewish girlfriend. I seriously recommend that book by the way, it’s awesome in so many ways. And definitely read the book BEFORE you see the movie.

What is nature? Nature is all around us. It is the people, the animals, the buildings, the roads, the atomic power plants, the power cables all around us, the oceans, the forests, television, mobile phones, the radiation we humans emit on ourselves, the trash we create, the metal cars we dismiss within a few years to rot, the vast amounts of plastic we throw into the environment, the floating islands of junk, the homeless, the airplanes, the effects we have on the environment, the wars, the poor, the rich, the enslaved, the enslaving, the sick, the healthy, the crazy and demented, the young, the old, the rivers we stopped, the rivers we created, the people we displaced, the species we murdered, the species we consumed to extinction, the new species we created, the people we medicated, some of which were healed, the people we medicated and killed by mistake, the people we medicated unnecessarily, the people we killed for oil, gold and diamonds, the people we rescued, the coca cola we made, the burgers we sold, the societies and cultures we created, the societies and cultures we abandoned or killed or stifled, the games we played, the drugs we made, the drugs we consumed, the drugs we sold to little children who don’t know better…

All this is nature. We are the planet, part of it. The planet produced us, and we can continue existing, or we might cease to exist soon. It is our decision, but our decision is natural, guided or misguided as it may be, and we will either kill ourselves, or allow ourselves to continue to exist. It is up to us, up to our “nature”, to control our own future.

At least until planet Nibiru comes for a visit in a few years and kills us all

I’m 35 years old today. Goodness…! <gulp>

I decided I’m going to skip being weird this year, on my birthday. I guess this defeats the purpose because I usually am weird on my birthday, so not being weird this year will be weird in itself

To all my friends and family, I’m proud of you all, and thank you for being part of the journey so far. Here’s to our future together, may it be a glorious one

[UPDATE: August 30] I ended up being weird anyway, the majority of the day. I took half a day to walk aimlessly (some call this “walking meditation”). After half an hour of walking without thinking about a thing, I started thinking about life, and ended up performing some inner accounting of the many strange events of late. My wife ended up coming back from University after all, to spend the evening with me, and this seriously raised my happiness levels to the point where I stopped being weird

I hold the people dearest to me in my heart, at all times. I miss them. Some of them are no longer with us… I still get “miss” attacks, and during the more severe ones, I still sometimes cry. Mostly in secret.

Grandfather, I miss you so terribly. I cherish the years I spent with you in my childhood. I come from you. I will never forget. I miss you and I love you, forever. For all eternity. Until all atoms in this universe freeze. My life is an inspiration to yours.

Grandmother, I miss you so much. No creature can be said to have been more good hearted than you. Your goodness and kindness lives on in the memory of those you left behind. It is an inspiration to all who knew you, and I hope to not disappoint your ways by being kind hearted, just like you were. I was very lucky to have had a grandmother like you. I will never forget your kind face, your kind eyes, your warmth which radiated from you like a beam of high powered energy.

If you use a Mac, and find yourself using some Java based Chat Applet, you will notice you can’t write Hebrew. The keyboard input refuses to even switch to Hebrew.

I googled for a solution, and found none. In the end, I found the solution myself. Here’s what you need to do, to get it working:

1. In spotlight, search for “Java Preferences”, and click to run this utility.
2. You will see a list of JVM versions: 1.6.0, 1.5.0, and 1.4.2. Simply switch to 1.4.2 and click “Save”
3. You are done! Remember to completely close your browser, before you try again.

I know, you want to give me a hug now, don’t you?