This Is How Irrelevant the Post Office Is

I had heard the US Postal Service was considering ending Saturday delivery. Brilliant. No one really needs them anyway, might as well save the man hours. Personally, I never understood why they did add mail on Sundays by simply employing Jews, Muslims, and all other non-lazy non-Christians on Sundays. (Non-Christians who are also non-lazy, not a double-negative saying all Christians are lazy. You are some of the most industrious murders in history. Hi Crusades!) We've certainly gotten out of enough last-minute Friday meetings with that whole "Sabbath" excuse, and I still can't believe you buy this "Passover" thing, but good on us, I guess.

More to the point, I read that this was being considered in passing yesterday. Today I wake up and I read that it's been decided on the BBC. I was surprised I hadn't heard on any of my news sites. Surely this was a bigger deal than Monopoly replacing the iron with a cat, which is goddam everywhere today. (Guys, they replaced the least liked piece with the least hated new idea. Not earth-shattering.)

Yet no. All my sites are internet-related. iO9, Gizmodo, MacRumors, RSS feeds from astrophysics sites and blogs and tumblrs, and no goddam mention of the US Post Office, because why would that ever matter?

All I ever get in the mail are bank statements because fuck you, Chase, I'm watching my money and I want this written down for when the EMPs go off, tax documents, medical insurance bills, and junk mail. Like 80% junk mail. There are many days I don't even receive a piece of that. Honestly, making me walk to the mailbox on Saturday if I'm not working is a dick move. I'm glad it's gone.

But I shouldn't have to hear about this from the goddam BBC.

Let's check CNN. Straight-up news, right out of America, and if there's any political slant it's one I'll generally tend to not want to strangle a former Alaskan governor over.

Feel free to expand that.

Yeah, there was a story on it right there.

You see it, don't you? Under the 'World's Fastest Hillbilly.' Under Jennifer Lawrence. Below the break in the section without pictures.

Under business. Second row, second from the left, first story. At least it got that much.

And what's that at the top of "U.S." news? Right after Donald Trump?

Eff this, I'm signing up for email notification of everything and just wrapping my laptop in a Faraday cage for the rest of my life.

Merry War on Christmas | Zero Day

I think the real joke today is every time a Jewish kid makes a joke about how "Today, we rule the world. Every economy, every government, every media outlet, all are now under our control," and that moment right after when all the Christians' gazes zoom out into space for quiet contemplation, their faces grow serious a moment, and a small shiver of acknowledgement runs up there spines.

Jewish Holidays: Explained!

"So, yes, basically, our existence is God's version of Jackass.
Or Fear Factor. It depends if Joe Rogan is busy or not. But he never is."

Since I can't find the explanation I was sure I had already written on this very topic–despite prodigious searching I should say–I can only surmise that my burgeoning, bourbon-fueled artistic insanity is clouding my judgement. Thus, I present:

A Layman's/Gentile's Guide to Jewish Holidays

Passover - This is the one where we celebrate that time we were enslaved, and then God performed miracles to get us out of slavery, then killed all those people who were coming after us and it was through divine intervention that we didn't die. The happy ending is that we were kind of ungrateful and then wandered a desert for 40 years before God helped us kill and rout everyone who had moved into our house since we were originally enslaved.

Chanukah - The one celebrating that time some people we threw out of living in our old place came back and tried to kick us out, and we narrowly fended them off, but they trashed our temple and it was only through divine intervention that we didn't die, and then God let our lamps go long.

Purim - That one time we miraculously caught the guy trying to kill/enslave us beforehand, and didn't die.

Yom Kipur - High Holy Days, where we atone for all the past year's sins, and thank God that we haven't died before doing so.

Rosh Hashana - New Year's Day, where we finish Yom Kipur, read the last page in the torah, and then rewind it back to the beginning and reread page one, thankful to God we have lived another year but solemn in our understanding that we could die at any moment.

Sukot - Jewish Arbor Day. We celebrate a bountiful harvest and remember years past when instead of plenty, we starved to death en masse, and thank God that we ourselves haven't died.

Bar-/Bat-Mitzvah - Batman's 13^th Birthday, where Jewish children become legal adults and, traditionally, were expected to leave home, get a job, and start a family, because we didn't really expect to live all that long. Traditional gift is money, because we really need to to get out and make more little Jews in case the rest of us die suddenly, which, again, is to be expected, really.


Basically, we're just celebrating no one successfully exterminated our culture. Every time.

Look, we get a lot that a lot. Lot of genocide. You can pretty much trace our migratory patterns by it.

By which I mean you literally can do just that:

Israel from Eastern Europe (Holocaust)
Eastern Europe from Russia (Pogroms)
Russia from Western Europe (Spanish Inquisition)
Western Europe from Holy Land (Muslims)
Holy Land from Desert Slavery (Egyptians)
Desert Slavery from Holy Land (Also Egyptians)
Holy Land from Desert Slavery (Babylonians actually let us go)
Desert Slavery from Holy Land (Babylonians were kind of dicks at first)
… (Repeat several times. Reason: Palestinians/Philistines/other not-Jews)

Before that, it's pretty much just God trying to kill us then sending a couple of us to live somewhere else. Lot, Noah, Abraham, Adam & Eve.

We're just really, really glad we're not dead yet.

Half-Jewish: It's like being bisexual, but with cultures. But still no one likes you.

This is typically the time of year where I point out that every single Jewish holiday is a celebration of our often miraculous survival against overwhelmingly poor odds.

Screw that, find the link if you can. I can't.

This year I'm fascinated by the ability of certain religious groups to become so insular that they effectively do become an ethnic or national group. Case in point: I am half Jewish.

This icon actually describes most Judeo-Christian relations over time.

You heard me. I was born to two parents–as most people are–only one of whom was Jewish. When I refer to being Jewish, I'm referring to having been sent to Hebrew School and bar-mitzvahed, mostly as part of said parents' divorce stipulations. When I refer to being half-Jewish, I refer to the cultural appropriations of being generally frugal, respectful of authority to the point of developing stress disorders, and having no dance ability besides an aptitude for kicking, lifting chairs, or linking arms and running in concentric circles.

It's sort of like being bisexual. Full Jews look down on me for being lazy and sinful, while non-Jews basically do the same from the opposite direction. Really, only other Half-Jews can understand what you feel like on the inside.

On Yarmulkes

1. I can't believe I spelled that right on the first try. (My family and every Jewish person I know has only ever said "yah-muh-kuh" for the Yiddish יאַרמלקע, and the Hebrew really being a completely different word, pronounced "key-pah.")

Anyway, I like wearing my yarmulke under my Santa hat every Christmas season. It's multi-denominational, and I have about as much respect for either tradition as the other, but for the most I just get about one of two good laughs out of it every year when a person asks me, "Wait, aren't you Jewish?" and I get to pluck off my one hat to Bartholomew Cubbins another hat underneath.

But the significance of the yarmulke isn't merely comedic, nor is it ceremonial, or even terribly religious. It's so God can't see your wicked thoughts. That's the gist of it, anyway.

Yup, yarmulkes are Jewish tin-foil hats.

Alright, this guy's hat is clearly Druidic in nature, but it serves the
same purpose, gorram it.

On Patience

Yesterday, at my new job I answered the phone for a nun and looked up a her order. I had to put her on hold while I went rummaging repeatedly and finally asked for help.

Turns out they had input the client name backwards so while I was looking for one name, the product was tiny, hidden behind a stack of huge products, and listed under the other name.

By the time I had the package in-hand, she'd hung up. I made a nun hang up. I called back, and I had to go through the seminary automated directory, then a monk operating a switchboard, then another nun, then finally the right nun. Direct quote: "I ran out of patience."

Guys, I made a nun run out of patience. A nun. Pretty sure they're trained for infinite patience.

Also pretty sure they're trained in the use of Catholic guilt.

Too bad she didn't know she got the one Jewish person on help-desk. Bitch, we invented that game.

Fun story, the Epic of Gilgamesh is only long because everyone was honest
and had to be convinced of everything the hard way.
Old Testament: "No, no, don't worry about me, I'll just sit here reading alone
in the dark, going blind and hungry. You go out with your friends, Isaac."

Preorders: Like Credit Cards, But Backwards

Really, this time. We swear.

I'm told credit cards are a display of trust, on the part of the credit companies. They trust that I'll be able to pay them back later for fronting me some cash.

They also trust that if I'm even a little late, that they can surcharge and fine the hell out of me, up to the point where I have to declare bankruptcy and can't ever again get a credit card with anything resembling a interest decent rate. That's called getting "black-balled," kids and kidettes.

Really, it's a lot like loan-sharking; or, I more accurately suspect, loan-sharking is a lot like credit companies, insofar as it's closer to the original, dirty, pound-of-flesh, Jew-run industry/sin of simony. I think the only difference is that loan sharks retain the right to physically assault you, instead of just ruining you with an endless loop of financial miasma.

Suffice it to say a loan shark will help you pay off a legitimate hospital bill, and a credit card might pay off the hospital bill for not paying your loan shark, but neither will loan you money to pay the bill they send you. (Except those little checks credit companies send asking you to transfer balances.)

Something needs to balance out this social policy. Even money says it's internet preorders.

I pay a company some money up-front, and I trust them to deliver the product when they say they will. Duke Nukem Forever aside, this generally tends to hold up. I even get a discount for agreeing to buy so early. It's like I get to charge them for unreasonably withholding from me something currently unavailable. (Or they're banking that the product will be over-produced and hit the SALE aisle within a month.)

The few times things just die, you also generally get your money back. Hell, the website KickStarter has risen to prominence recently because its whole purpose is to take donations/preorders for projects and then only charge buyers' accounts if a set minimum for funding is reached within the originally allotted timespan. It's like preordering charity.

But here's the magic:

As much as you dread getting that credit card bill come January, bits of tinsel and wrapping paper still cloistered in the far corners of your living room, the potato-y taste of latkes still on your breath weeks hence, internet preorders are just as wonderful an experience.

I preordered the complete Star Wars Saga blu-ray collection six months ago. With the discount, I think I paid like 38% of the retail price. It was glorious. More glorious because back in January I had money. I could afford to spend $80 on a 9-disc collection of six movies I've already bought trice-over. Now? Not so much? But back then I was rolling in it. And I knew this was something I was going to inevitably buy, so I might have well have gotten the best deal I could.

Then I forgot about it.

I honestly forget about it every few months, until another brief geekery news site makes brief mention that it's still forthcoming. And for one split second I worry about affording it–since I still know I need to have it–until that glorious moment I remember the deed is done.

I swear to god, it's like Christmas morning, mixed with Christmas morning with the Red Rider BB Gun from A Christmas Story, mixed with three other Christmases and that spooky-but-awesome feeling of saving the day through time travel magic at the end of every Bill and Ted movie.

I trusted somebody enough to give them a lot of money half a year ago, and in another five months, my favorite thing in the universe is going to simply arrive on my doorstep as if by some kind of Jedi mind trick. It could even arrive early thanks to shipping miscalculation.

And I even put it on my credit card to improve my credit score.

Of Tax Season, Redux

So I got my taxes done yesterday. I don't make enough to really be worth taxing, it seems. In fact, the federal and state governments collectively feel bad about taxing me as much as they already have. They feel $23 bad, in fact. I'm actually kind of relieved I didn't qualify for some other benefits:

"Expenses for donating an organ for human transplant." As opposed to what? I know we put pig parts in people, but have we started putting people parts in pigs? Is this one of of those weird things the government has to throw into a document somewhere so it's not technically a secret that we're conducting crazy genetic tests somewhere? Have we actually captured Osama Bin Laden and transplanted his brain into, like, a parakeet or something?

Surprisingly, that's not the weirdest.

Really? Nazis? Are there really still cases being settled over Nazi cases? I mean I saw that Law & Order episode where a bank was convicted of taking money from Jews they knew were gonna die so they wouldn't have to pay death benefits, but I feel like this isn't necessarily common enough to pop up in Turbo Tax.

Hell, maybe Turbo Tax just really, really hates racists and wants to remind us. It's accounting software. I'm sure a Jew must have worked on it somewhere along the line.

On Jewish Christmas

Time for me to come out of the closet on another social issue: bi-religious December festivities.

As a completely not-proud lapsed Jew with a lapsed Episcopal mother, I get the best of both holidays in my family. Plus my birthday is in November. And that one year I was bar mitzvahed right in the middle. It was kind of awesome.

But anyway.

Today marks the official post-Chanukah season. Tomorrow marks two weeks until Christmas, and those two things mean just one thing:

Santa hat comes out.

Granted, I still have to hear your crap about being Jewish, but if there's one thing that Santa Claus isn't, it's definitely religious. Screw you guys, I love secular Christmas. It's all your favorite parts of Christmas, without going to church or thinking about babies in a petting zoo. Hell, in Japan they don't have enough Christians per capita to make much sense of it, so it's just a giant happy romantic holiday for couples. It's like Winter Valentine's Day. Awesome.

So screw it. It's going to be less than two weeks until Christmas, I'm done with all the shopping except for one Amazon order I need to time for delivery and some Hallmark cards. I'm going to put on the perfect Santa hat I spent like three years tracking down.

And I'm not even going to wear my yarmulke underneath it this year.

Causes of Head Wounds Which Have Drawn Blood

I hit my head today. It hurt a lot, but mostly pride until I verified that I was bleeding. So my brain's working about 20% efficiency. Enjoy a thematically related list.

Causes of Head Wounds Which Have Drawn Blood:

• Glass shelf (little blood)
  
• Cat bite (surprising amount of blood compared to size of puncture)
  
• Mid-air collision with another Jew (profuse bleeding)

It occurs to me Jews might be our own antimatter. It'd explain why we complain so much in close proximity to each other: we sense impending annihilation. Also why we're historically combustible.

In the Pirish Spirit

I didn't celebrate it with you all since I was out, busy having a life with people and events and things (a change of pace for me), but yesterday, September 19^th, was International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Sadly, I was in denial about my own Pirishness for many years, thinking and hoping that I was more a ninja type. Eventually my cavalier attitude and preference for samurai and that I look a damned good deal better in leather and pistols than black pajamas simply forced me to admit that I was not the ninja I had hoped deep down. Much like the child who grows up to accept that he he is not adopted, that his "real" parents are not the monarchs of some far away kingdom set to come for him in the dead of night, but are instead Don and Donna, the accountant and her husband from billing, I accepted that I was a pirate.

Of course I'm about as Pirish as I am Jewish. (There were actualy a great number of Jewish "privateers" back in the heyday of swashbuckling. Many were Sephardic Jews kicked out of Spain during the Inquisition, seeking either a better life of just straight revenge theft. Several even went on to become successful, legitimate merchants, which just goes to show you something horribly stereotypical.)

Anyway, I haven't been in a synagogue since my brothers were bar-mitzvahed. My own before that. I've been in more churches. Similarly, I tweeted in Pirish once today. I used the word "garr…." Last year I set my Facebook account's language setting to "English (Pirate)."

So to alleviate my Jewrate rum-guilt and cease paying lip service to Jean Lefitte, I am going to tell you my Pirate Joke. This is my favorite joke to tell because it is short but sweet, just a little off color and the only joke I can remember when I'm put on the stop that doesn't take ten minutes to tell.

Ahemm.


A pirate walks into a bar with the captain's wheel of a ship hanging from his belt buckle. He hobbles difficultly up to the bar and orders some rum.

The bartender gets him his drink and, as the pirate drinks, the bartender says to him, "Hey, um, I don't usually pry into people's lives like this, but are you aware of the very large wheel hanging off your zipper?"

"Yarr…" the pirate says.

"Well, doesn't it hurt?" asks the baternder, to which the pirate looks up at him from his drink and says, "Garr … it's driving me nuts!"


Garr….

Things Dumber Than Prop 8 Californians Have Allowed

I decided "Leaving a giant collapsed sign half-repaired because you're lazy" wasn't actually very dumb. Just really, really lazy.

Things Dumber Than Prop 8 Californians Have Allowed:

• The election of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the office of governor
• For that matter, the election of multiple-monkey movies actor Ronald Regan to the office of governor.
• "Limited" use of medicinal marijuana
• Naming tar pits a natural preserve
• The Matrix sequels
• The Hills
• Jews owning studios
• The Hills again, because it's that terrible
  

Of Stand-Up Routines You Will Never See Me Perform

Surprisingly, the popularity of Knock-Knock jokes has not been adversely affected by the advent of the doorbell.
Knock-knock.
"Who's there?"
"Doorbell repair man!"
"Doorbell repair man who??"
"Really???"

If I were Jesus I'd run the Rapture like a big game of Simon Says. "Come on, everybody get into heaven, now. Let's go.…HOLD UP! Haha, alright, all'a you fuckers gotta go to Hell now. Okay, Pete! Got enough room for the Jews, now. Let 'em on in!"

I just drove in from New York and boy are my arms tired! … Seriously, I think we stopped at every glory hole along the way.…Gas is expensive.

I actually came out here in part to visit a friend of mine. She's here tonight, so if everyone could just turn around and embarrass her right now we call all assure that I'll have absolutely zero chance of scoring with her tonight.

No, actually I have a girlfriend back home who I'm faithful to. She's really pretty … kind of an airhead but she's a real doll.…and by that I mean she's made out of polyvinyl acetate.

I love the look that comes over her face right before I do.

It's always so … surprised…. :O

Do you think cows go people tipping? I don't, but look at bullfights. So maybe.

Sometimes I think that I'm not depressed enough to be emo, and that makes me sad.

So I bought myself some horn-rimmed glasses and a woman's plaid shirt. They say, "I want to write you bad poetry," and "I think Streetlight Manifesto is totally not gay."

Now I'm so cool my pillow flips over to get to the other side of me.… I'm not even sure how that works.

Speaking of being asleep I used to hope that one day I could walk through my own apartment at night and not have to worry about zombies or ninja assassins. Nowadays I just figure if I'm about to be killed Austrian robots from the future will appear and save me. No, I'm not getting too much of an ego.

The zombies I don't worry about much anymore, but it's getting to the point where in my dreams I'm bored with the idea and just start taunting my subconscious. "Oh, a zombie dream? Alright. You never let your guard down? Well how about I zombify your friends and loved ones. Also, you have no guns. Oh, you need a knife? How about tiny Russian throwing knives? And you don't know how to throw those. Well just stab around blindly until you wake up. Then I'll make you dream you're naked in high school again. Fuck you, Dave."

One of my old roommates used to have a life-sized cardboard cutout of Xena he'd place randomly about the house to scare us. I knew her thin, pliable body said, "No," but her screen-printed eyes said, "I know you furiously masturbated to me in the nineties … and that makes me hot."

So yes, I like to fashion myself something of a sex-pert. I'm not accredited or anything; I'm self-taught.

They say most guys look for girls who remind them of their mothers. I'm looking for a short, twisted, argumentative and emotionally distant egotist. I'm looking for a girl like my father.

The last girl I dated was actually a semi-delusional insomniac, which makes me either imaginary or a rapist. I'm not sure which'd actually be worse.

My father once told me, after his third glass of whiskey, "Son, sexual attraction, in any relationship–even a brief one–is directly proportionate to emotional commitment…

… except in this case."

I said, "Wow, Dad! This is the best bar-mitzvah ever!"

"But could you please stop trying to set me up with my cousins? That's just gross."

"I mean they're from New Jersey…."

I like to be the smart one in a relationship, but I'd prefer not to be the pretty one.

I like tiny girls. I'm not that tall a guy, so I like to feel big around women. Having a huge dick just doesn't come up in conversation as often as you'd think.

Beyond that I'm really just looking for a girl who's not afraid to say, "I love you," or "Let's try it up the ass tonight.…Now bend over."

I've dated a big girl, who was very good with her mouth, probably because she was hungry. I've also dated a bulimic girl. She didn't have a gag reflex. I've dated a blond, a brunette and a redhead, a straight girl, a girl who said she was bi in order to attract men's attentions and a girl who really was bi because she was a complete whore with daddy issues. What I'm really saying is I just want to try all 31 Flavors.

Except tuna fish.

I'm actually a little worried about going to the doctor now. He's going to ask me if I'm sexually active and all I can say is, "Well, that depends on how long you take with my prostate exam."

And then I'll cough.

They say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away," but I find letter bombs are just as effective.

For the less extreme of you, the next time he asks you to drop your pants, just start talking dirty to him. If he doesn't immediately ask for a follow-up you're golden.