Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
H ere I sit cold in a hotel yet in my hometown because we have no internet access at our new place on Tichborne St. British Telecom is unable to fix “the fault in the exchange” (whatever that means) until July 4th. No, July 10th. No, July 12th. There’s broadband all around but not for me.
Why a hotel? We were invited to the local rabbi’s this past Shabbat lunch — I was very honoured and they’re a terrific couple and seem younger than what their years must be given they have nine — nine! — children, the eldest being 24. Also invited were another British-Israeli couple, he a Netanya man, brought from England at the tender age of eleven, back here to further his career in hotel management. He’s manager of the Premiere Inn right here on North Street. He invited me to come use the hotel’s wifi and here I am. Who would have thought a fellow British Israeli lived and worked here in this so goyish place!
At first it was a delight, the cool fresh hotel lobby feeling, reminiscient of exciting business travel days of yore. But oh how my extremities are getting achey in this unnecessarily air-conditioned space. There are signs up that it’s £7.50 for the all-you-can-eat hotel buffet breakfast. May just take them up on that.
So we’re settling in to the new place even though the carpets still smell rather ghastlily. That’ll be one of the necessaries for the next place I move to: no carpets. They are not color neutral for one thing (turquoise) so you’re already forced from the ground up into a color scheme you don’t necessarily care for. As it happens I can dig turquoise but still. The best part so far: the backyard is now set up and quite effortlessly picturesque, with its greenage and raw brick walls. Until we start trying to grow wee vegetables nothing else need be done except the daily maintenance of clearing the butts from the ashtray and the leaves from the ground. A weekly sweep as well. Small activities that so far are somehow pleasurable.
Speaking of hominess, let me relate a little eatiness I did recently. Use slices of cucumbers as your cracker. On them, place squares of Red Leicester cheese. On top of that, a big pinch of pickled cockles. Even better: skip the cheese and place on the cucumber a pinch of shrimps with small dollop of mayonnaise.
I did eatiness in the above paragraph. Is it ok to so abandon the language in which one is writing? Is it ok to so write with nothing but Red Leicester and shrimps to write about?
If wheat gives you heartburn too, then using cucumber as your cracker is like a Zeusy sashay among piled clouds in miniature.
Previously
Only the Rustle in the Trees