Funniest thing ever

Pirates make me laugh. So does underwear. The combination was unbeatable.

(Once again, thanks to Cary for pointing out funny comic)

Jewish web ring

I decided to add this blog to the Jewish web ring. Click on the link to the right, and maybe you'll find something interesting.

Delight

When I was in 9th grade David Mamet taught an after school writing class at my high school. I went a bunch of times. I don't think that it was a great class, but one thing he said stuck with me. The purpose of art, he said, is to cause delight in its audience. Not to educate, not to entertain, and no long complicated bullshit, but simply to delight. I bring this up because I am in the middle of Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, which is the most delightful book I've read in a long time. Nabokov creates a world that is so vivid, so real, that I can't help but believe in it, and characters that I can't help but love. I'm told that it is also a satire on the history of the novel as an art form, but I confess that I'm not knowledgeable enough to pick up on that at all. What I like most about Ada is Nabokov's sense of humor. It's wicked and sharp. I was wondering this morning whether there might be a large overlap between Nabokov fans and Elvis Costello fans. Their esthetic is somewhat similar, despite the fact that Elvis works in pop art and Nabokov in high art (though sometimes the distinction is blury). They are both extremely self-concious, ironic artists who have vicious senses of humor. They also both have very distinct styles, but are aware of their influences and aren't afraid to refer to them. Of course, one is a pop singer and the other is an author, so the comparison only goes so far. But they're both definitely delightful.

I'm not sure what this says about me

Get excited everybody, Ben Chorin will soon be posting on the mathematics of Sfek Sfeka. And that's not sarcastic. I'm really looking forward to it.

Bye for now

I'm going to visit my grandparents for the weekend, so I won't be posting. Not that I post much in general lately. In anycase, if you're looking for something entertaining, look at Something Positive. Start from the first comic and go through them. It will take the whole weekend, but you won't be disappointed.

Flash

When I was younger I wasn't much of a baseball fan. This may surprise the people who know me, but it's true. I wasn't really a sports fan at all. I followed a little, it couldn't be helped in my house, but I didn't care much. In 1998, one man changed all that. His name is Tom Gordon. He did something that year that made me want to turn on the Red Sox every night. He started a streak of saves that didn't end until the following year, with his 54th. At the time, that was the Major League record. He had 43 consecutive saves at the end of the '98 season. Now, the record has been broken a few times since, and is currently held by Eric Gagne. Also, the save is one of the more meaningless statistics in baseball. But Gordon captivated me. There was something about watching him come into the game in the ninth. He would get his three outs, then he'd point to the sky, acknowledging God's help, I suppose. Very simple, but I thought it was beautiful. Watching him battle those hitters... I'm descending into cliche here. Let me try again. I liked the competitor in him. He needed to win. Gordon was competing against history and the other teams, and by the end of that year, he'd beat them both. He injured his elbow in '99, but by then I was already sucked in. '99 was a great year for the Sox, but Gordon spent it on the bench. He wasn't the same when he came back. He bummed around the league a bit, played for the White Sox. This year has been a good one for him. He's playing for the Yankees. I'm rooting for him anyway.

It's about time...

Justice is finally served.

(Hat tip to Belle Waring)

You wouldn't have had much fun in Stalingrad, would you?

The good doctor over at Yuppies of Zion has an excellent post up on... Well, on Nazis and evil. In particular on how we relate to evil since The Second World War. I don't really have anything to add, but it's ver worth reading.

Blogroll

I thought that I'd explain how I decide to put somebody in my blogroll. Most of these blogs I don't read every day (unless I'm hopelessly not busy, which at the beginning of the summer was fairly frequently). In general, the rule is, if I've followed links to a blog a few times, and then I decide to go over there on my own, I put it up. All of the blogs on the side have made me think or otherwise entertained me in some way. Some of them may entertain you, so click on the link. If you have any blogs or websites you like, feel free to post them in the comments section here. That way we're all sharing.

In defense of jargon

I don't like the way that I write about music. I just composed a long post about the differences Gladys Knight and the Pips' version of I Heard it Through the Grapevine and the Marvin Gaye's version. After I re-read it, I said to myself, "This is crap. I can't seem to articulate my thoughts properly. I know what I'm hearing, but I don't have the words to describe it." So I deleted it. This is something I find very frustrating because I love music and want to be able to speak intelligently, or at least coherently, about it. I find that I have a similar problem with the visual arts, but that it bothers me much less, simply because I'm less interested in them. The root of the problem, it seems to me, is that I never learned the vocabulary. It's difficult to thing about something if you don't have the words to think about it, and it's impossible to talk about. So I might hear something in a song, but because I don't know the proper way to describe it I end up talking all around it. In the hands of a very good writer this could actually be very interesting, but for the most part it just turns out incoherent. Anybody else who's had this experience knows what I mean. Nothing is more frustrating than knowing what you're talking about, but not knowing how to talk about it.

Self-doubt

The Shaigetz has some thoughts on his choice of lifestyle. To be honest, I think that this is a post that touches directly on something that is an implicit theme through all of his blogposts, self-doubt. The chesbon nefesh that the Shaigetz presents us with throughout the year is made explicit. Some of his commentators accuse him of cowardice, because he doesnt have the courage to live up to his convictions. I disagree. As we head into the month of Elul, I hope that I have the same courage to evaluate my actions and to doubt the choices I've made that the Shaigetz does.

A kindness for a kindness

Amanda Doerty was kind enough to Blogroll me. I don't know how she discovered this blog, but I'm grateful for the traffic. I'm returning the favor (though I'm sure that she sends me more traffic than I'll ever send her).

Amusing anecdote

I have a Chevrusa who told me an interesting story yesterday, one that I think is worth repeating. He learned at Rav Adin Steinsaltz's Yeshiva for several years. When my Chevrusa first heard about Mechkar, a method of study which involves looking at the different layers of editing in the Talmud and has its (modern) origins in academia, he was concerned that it might be heretical. When he asked Rav Steinsaltz, his Rosh Yeshiva, he got this response, "Any Apikorsus (heresy) that you can think of about the Talmud has already been explored by the Tosefos."