Hey!

There are three new posts today, not including this announcement. So when you’re done reading one, keep scrolling down for more. I know most people just assume the first one is new and the rest will be old. Not the case for today.

Its Not That Simple

When I was in yeshiva high school it was obviously drilled into us that relationships (or just girls in general) were assur. Simple as that, right? Nothing good can ever come from a teenage relationship. I tried arguing the point once but was shouted down by an older guy in Beis Medrash who simply dismissed everything I said.

The first crack in that theory came in my first year in Beis Medrash, when I had a shabbos by a family close to the yeshiva whose daughter had gotten married a few months prior. He told me the story, of how she met her husband five years earlier when they were both fifteen and volunteering for the summer at a camp. Both families werent happy but decided against forced separation and according to him they carried on a five year relationship that (he believed, but… c’mon) was shomer negiah until they both reached twenty and got married.

Right now I know this girl, a teenager, who’s religious, davens, shabbos, kosher and all that, I know that for a fact, but she has a non-religious boyfriend. She’s on a plan to make him religious. He spends every shabbos at her family, which he seems to enjoy, he’s never really had a shabbos before. Today I saw her and she was buying tzitzis for him, because apparently he asked for them but his parents refused to get them as they decided it was a waste of money. I’m not going to pretend this is all kosher, I know they’re not shomer and stuff. But they do seem sincere, and through her he’s discovering religion which is doubtful he would have ever experienced under any other circumstances.

I don’t know what to think anymore.

Why Can’t Jews Spell?

Is it just me, or does Vos Iz Neias have the worst spelled comments of any blog ever? Its aimed at adults, and the average person there seems to comment from the perspective of an adult, but were it not for the content I’d think I was reading comments from a bunch of pre-adolescents. I don’t expect blog comments to read like letters to the editor or anything like that, but it seems to me that the average New York Jew cannot spell anything with more than two syllables or four letters.

I followed a link from another blog commenting an another abuse scandal. Its a heartbreaking story to read, but the comments just frustrated me. They say Jews have the highest average IQ’s, but whats happening here? I don’t want to trivialize the content of the story, I’m purely commenting here on the writing skills of the commenter’s. This is amazing for what I assume is people who speak English as a first language.

I’m up to comment twelve, and no ones yet managed to spell the word “innocent” correctly. Of course, this is the blog that whenever politics is mentioned, I can always count on one of the first few comments to include “Barack HUSSAIN Obama is a MUSLIM HE WANTS TO DESTROY ISRAEL!!!”. I actually saw an interview with the anonymous guy behind VIN who said himself he’s constantly shocked by the political ignorance present in the community and the people who comment on his site.

Some choice picks:

COME ON
15 YEARS LATER
GIVE ME A BREAK
NONSENCE

Where was engelman day one? He was just a bad student and faced tuff times with Richman now he want’s to clash him back No WONDER YESHIVA ARE AFRAID TO TAKE BAD BOY that because future lies!!!’ Hasem yinkom dumon

PLEASE DON’T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS, I know Rabbi Reichman and I can swear that this guy is totaly inoncese

you can writ a hole book on the englman family but here is not the place

By The Numbers

I realized this morning that September is my six month blogoversary (I also passed 15,000 hits sometime this week, but I didn’t notice either. It sucks not having internet). So before its over I’ve celebrated by crunching the numbers.

Total views: 15,172

Busiest day: 344 — Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Posts: 74

Comments: 709

Top Five Referrers:

frumsatire.net

426

jacobdajew.blogspot.com	314

onefrumskeptic.blogspot.com	313

hassid.blogspot.com	111

blog.ookamikun.com	104

Number of hits from the search term “i’m sick of being frum”: 20

Number of hits from the search term “you’re too frum”: 3

Number of hits from the search term “shidduch resume”: 21

Number of hits from the search term “obama achashveirosh”: 1

Other interesting search terms that directed to here: “when does boys start to get horney”, “my parents are such bt’s”, “lakewood frum affair”, “how to visit your mother”, “what does heimish mean”, “what does apikorsim mean?”, “tzitzit shirt problems”, “frum girls”, “blank shidduch resume”, “frummer then frum”.

Top five posts:

Things never heard enough on shidduch dates:	368
When Does BT Status Start?	352
Tonight on FOX: When Meshulchim Attack!	284
Seriously?	282
The Most Heimish Post Ever	277

Least loved posts: (To be fair, they’re hardly real posts.)

i need tzedoka for pesach	18
You say “to-mah-to…”	13
On the road	10
More Ears Breaking	8
I am now facebookable.	7

Number of uses of the word “gazombas” in a post: 1

Number of shidduch proposals recieved: 1 (I bet Frum Satire has me beat by a long shot there.)

Posts later deleted: 3

Most incorrectly spelled correctly spelled search term: “any wear you’re frum” (I assume that was meant to read “Anywhere you’re from”.)

Some previous headers that didn’t stay up too long: (Click them for the full size.)

The very first header

They love me, they really love me!

Frumster Wants You To Meet A Hot Jewish Girl

Facebook uses a typical targeted ads script that analyses your profile and delivers ads based on what you write. For example, I have Oasis listed as a band I like, so I keep seeing ads for “Liam Gallagher T-Shirts.”

Lately I’ve been seeing ads targeted at my being listed as both Jewish and single, and all of them link to a Frumster site. Seems Frumster has all these affiliate sites which are Frumster but under a different name. Most are run of the mill: “Marry Jewish: 1200 already married at Jwed.com – You can be next!”. I think there are others, but Jwed.com seems to be the most common. It is Frumster, just under a different name.

Today I saw the best one ever. “Hot Jewish Girls!”. And yes, it links straight to Frumster.

Update:

The Last Few Days

So it wasn’t until after I landed that I realized there was one specific thing I hadn’t noticed before about the difference between American and European mentalities. While in JFK I started to get a headache, but didn’t have enough dollars left to pay for the overpriced Tylenol or Advil from the overpriced airport shops. After we landed in Amsterdam I was feeling full-on sick and started wandering around the airport shops looking for something for a headache. I couldn’t find anything in any shop so I asked a worker who directed me to first aid where they gave out medication for free.

My last shabbos in New York was in Brooklyn where I had a shabbos lunch at Moshe from Insanity Now, Serenity Later. Two nice write-ups were done by Child Ish and Frum Skeptic, also in attendance were The Babysitter and Moshe’s friend, Allen, who sometimes contributes to Moshe’s blog. It was an… interesting meal. I thought the cholent was fantastic, but I think Moshe needs to let go of his Russian foods a bit. You’re in America now, no need to still eat raw fish. It was a fantastic meal though, lasting almost six hours fueled by conversation and Moshe’s world class alcohol collection. I don’t want to drop too many hints, but I hope The Babysitter doesn’t drink like that when she’s watching the kids! (I’m kidding, she’s a teetotaler, I swear.)

The flight back was much better than the flight going. This time I got an aisle seat instead of being in the absolute middle seat in an cramped economy row of ten seats. I even got an empty seat next to me, two pillows! And this time they gave me my kosher meal instead of giving it to a random passenger. Because we were flying forward in time we were served breakfast only three hours after dinner. I got my kosher breakfast and put it next to me to save for later when I would actually be hungry. Then a minute later when they gave out the regular breakfasts they placed one in front of me as my tray was empty. I was about to give it back when I noticed it was just a muffin and juice box, and both had OU’s. Kinda makes you wonder what the point of the kosher breakfast is.

Once the screens in front of us were activated, about a half hour into the flight I decided to watch ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ first. It was a weird thing to watch, as it’s a decidedly adult movie, so I’m torn between laughing at the comedy and cringing because I knew my fifteen year old sister had seen it when it came out and now knowing what she’d seen made it uncomfortable to watch. After that I needed to clear my mind with some more family friendly stuff, so I watched the new Indiana Jones. I’d heard it wasn’t that good but I enjoyed it. Then again, I haven’t seen any of the original Indiana Jones movies, so maybe in comparison this is like Star Wars Episode One. It was odd at the beginning, because Harrison Ford is now old and looks it, so every time he gets knocked down or something and the camera pans to behind him, its too clear that its a stunt double as the real Harrison Ford would probably hurt his back falling like that these days. It was a fun adventure movie once it got going for good.

I could probably write more, but I’m still running on an American bodyclock so I am, as they say here, knackered.

Edit: Also, on September first my blog was listed on WordPresses “Growing Blogs” list. Number 38. Just didn’t have time to mention it while I was away, as I had to be quick with every post.

I Tip My Borsalino

Frum Meets World, one of my favorite blogs (I enjoy their writing style as well as the content) is celebrating the 10,000 hit milestone. Their milestone looks delicious, and puts my celebration of a screencap with a circle and exclamation to shame. Then again, theirs is a group effort, so I guess its different when you have people to celebrate it with.

P.S. Far Rockaway is a ghetto. Why do people live here, and is it considered “out of town”?

Amtrak and Virginia Nowhereness

It’s been almost eight days since I’ve written anything, checked my email, responded to facebook stuff… This kind of internet deprivation is odd for me, even with travelling for the past two weeks or so, I’ve always been able to get near to an internet connection, even if it involved Touro subterfuge. Well since the last post from Chicago I’ve been in the middle of nowhere. Last civilized thing I did was have a very enjoyable lunch with Mr Modern Uberdox before taking the subway to downtown for my Amtrak to Washington DC.

I checked my suitcase and had a two hour wait to kill. Not too bad as downtown Chicago is pretty cool, apart from the black guys trying to hustle me for change by giving me directions. I gave the first one 65c for telling me to go where I already knew to go. When he asked for at least a few dollars “to get home” I told him point blank that I’m not going to apologize for not giving someone money for free. To my surprise, that got a laugh out of him. I guess most people aren’t too direct like that. With 45 minutes to go until my train in hits me that all I’ve got clothes-wise is what I’m wearing and that’s pretty sweated up from walking around the city. I start to look for a clothes shop and the girl in Walgreens tells me there’s an Old Navy six blocks away. I walk for more than that but don’t see it, but a block over by then I see a Filanes Basement. 20 minutes of browsing and I pick out some sleepwear that’s both cheap and comfortable for a 22 hour journey. After I pay, I check my watch and realize I’ve got 20 minutes to get back to the station. I ask the clerk for directions, but she doesn’t know. I dash out and ask a passerby, he tells me I’m about twenty blocks and a bridge away. I hoist my messenger bag under my arm and take off like a madman. I make the train, soaked with sweat.

I’ve travelled by air, train and bus and the most important thing is whether you can sleep during the journey. Amtrak scores a miserable four out of ten. I had two seats to myself, and the seats were reasonably big, but they don’t recline far enough to sleep comfortably on, and lying across both seats hurt my back because there’s this big metal bar between the seats just below cushion level that I could feel. Plus I was right across from the stairs, so while the rest of the cabin was in darkness I had sign lights shining on me. When you’re travelling for almost two days you need some sleep and I didn’t get much. Interestingly, there were a bunch of Amish people on board. I didn’t even know they used modern transportation like that, but I did get a kick out of watching them.

Amtrak has a slogan “The Best Scenery You’ll Ever Sleep Through”. It’s true, the train goes very slowly and travelling through the countryside is beautiful. I saw everything from cities, to rural villages to towns where I could see the whole thing from the top carriage. I think we went through five states, but I’m not totally sure. Either way I saw more of the country than I’ve been able to ever see by any other mode of transportation. By car all you see is the highway and by air you just fly over it all. The train goes through the countryside and the heartland. I recommend it if you can stand to travel for so long. A really cool thing to do is stand at the last carriage and stare out of the rear window just watching it all pass by. I loved seeing how everytime we went through a tunnel I could see after we passed it how they’d hollowed out a mountain and the size of what we’d just gone under.

I spent five days on a farm in the Blue Ridge mountains that my friends family inherited. They sold their house in Miami and moved up, now they live on a massive farm in a really cool farmhouse. His dads and electrician, so he rewired it all and modernized the central air and heating, though he says they still use the fireplace in the winter for the great room. They’ve adapted to farm life really well, with a collection of cats, dogs and some sort of mutated chickens that his mother says are “guinea hens”. All I know is they’re ugly and don’t even lay eggs. I kept dropping hints that we should have one for shabbos.

It’s really cool how well they’ve adapted. They grow a lot of vegetables and they have fruit trees. The only caveat is they have to drive over an hour to get kosher meat and cheese, so they stock up when they do. We did a lot of hiking and stuff. You have to like nature to live there because the closest town is half an hour drive away, so even things like renting a movie have to be planned ahead. Also, there’s no internet. The best they have is connecting through a cell phone, and that was very flaky. Best you get is two bars and it kept disconnecting randomly.

Well now I’m back in Brooklyn for a few more days. Looks like I have to go anyways, because the library computer popup just informed me I have two minutes left.

Dear Old Person

Dear old person across the aisle. You’re old. Nothing wrong with that. I very much hope to be old too someday. But I at least hope to have a modicum of dignity when I’m at your age.

I don’t know much about you but I’d put your age at around mid-70’s, and I can surmise that you’re either somewhat nostalgic or a spendthrift. You have a full head of thick white hair which is admirable for someone your age, and I’d call your glasses “retro” if not for the fact that you’ve probably had them since they were actually in style. Nothing wrong with that, they work for you. They’re even somewhat cool in a Michael Caine-ish sort of way. No sir, the issue I take with you is those tight blue short shorts you so proudly sport.

I touched on the questions of nostalgia and spendthrift earlier because as far as I can guess, the only reasons you could continue to wear those shorts is either because they remind you of a time when shorts like that were in style and presumably looked good on people, or you simple see no need to spend money on replacing a perfectly good pair of shorts that have served you well for at least thirty years.

But sir, please spare some thought to those of us who must sit across from you and be blinded by the sun glaring off of your spindly, pale, varicose-veined legs. It’s a long journey and I have food, but I’m too nauseated to eat due to your nose dripping, faucet-like, on the seat and floor. And I understand we all need to engage in some basic grooming, but I don’t think a bus is the place to clip your fingernails. Where are those cuticles going? I certainly don’t see you collecting them.

Sincerely, your fellow traveller.

Update: When we arrived at Union Station and he asked the driver something, “he” turned out to be a woman. I’m not sure if that makes it somewhat worse or not. At least it explains the full head of hair. Greyhound is a fantastic exercise in people watching. And it was decently cheap.

The Wedding

While holding up a table that my chosson friend was standing up waving to his kallah I couldn’t help but compare this wedding in Chicago to the one in Boro Park I went to last week. The Boro Park wedding was nice, basically extravagant by any standards. The hall was massive, the flowers were opulent and the schmorg kept going all through the wedding, serving everything you could possible want. Both the chosson and kallah at the Boro park wedding were apparently big machers in the community and the expected host of rabbinic royalty attended, dragging out the chuppah while the travelling trumpet band waited at the back to play the Siman Tov tune milliseconds after the breaking of the glass.

This Chicago wedding was far simpler. They rented a hall at the Midwest Conference Center (and apparently, retirement village) which was hosting at least two other weddings that day. His family was from Miami and there was almost no Miami turnout apart from relatives. Her family was from Chicago but had only moved there in the past three years so they weren’t too established. The overall turnout was nice but not packed, from our high school class there were only three of us. There was no schmorg and the meal was a simple salad, tomato soup, chicken and potatoes affair. But the atmosphere and dancing was unlike anything else I’ve ever been to. There were no extraneous guests, everyone there had a personal connection with the chosson and kallah and everyone therefore shared in the joy. I’ve never had such dancing in my life, and I’ve been to a lot of weddings.

There was a mechitza of course, but since everyone was close there was no need for an iron wall. We carried the chosson over to the other side where everyone stood together and watched the schtick. No one tried to outdo anyone and everyone tried to participate in something, even my friend with no dancing or juggling abilities did his but by putting on his suit backwards and trying to dance. Normally he would have been too embarrassed to do something so silly, but this wedding was a small family and close friends affair, there was no holding back for fear of looking silly. It may have been the only wedding I’ve ever been to that everyone was truly there to be mesameach the chosson and kallah.

For maybe the first time ever I’m actually at a loss of how to put my feelings about it into words. I just don’t think I can ever convey the experience of that wedding. I do know how jealous I am though. The chosson, who none of us ever knew could sing because he had always been too shy to try, had worked with the band keyboarding before and sang his own rendition of Ashes Chayil to his kallah and then utterly surprised us with a re-written version of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”. (I know, I know.) Where normally such a thing would have been cheesy, here it transcended that because it was so genuine.

Tizku LaMitzvos.