Introducing the Hardline According To
     ...Ofer Maimon

The United States of America what do I care about your super malls and deserted dusty desert highways the lonely light of a homesick highway electra glide patrolman draws a lonely golden creek between the mountains your war on terror communism and drugs lost and won and lost again and stars and bars and drunks and stripes on your shoulders and around and your single mothers working the split shift at Norms your suffocating suburbs with their rows and rows and rows of homes your working class in black and white and your heroes in technicolor apollo, vietnam and saginaw and dead presidents, money on your mind your great lakes who took a thousand sailors to her depths the new jersey turnpike, winter dawning of walden or Kafka or mice of men or saviors in ryes or bright lights big city flakes of ash and soot and snow still falling through your dreams there is a girl in new york city that paul simon called the human trampoline i call her blue for the the colo...

So it's that silly day again. We've all seen the movies and heard the cheesy song about the boy/girl who doesn't get a card in the high school mailbox or posted flowers or whatever is the Godot of this day. It's a cultural cliche even for all us peeps who were lucky enough to have seen light outside The Home of Fly-over states and bad posturing. In the end, the girl get's the boy or vice versa. Here in Israel it's two hours left of this florist-invented day and I haven't gotten a single lousy binary FB salute or digital bouquet of flowers. Reason to believe my admireresses can be counted by the dozen minus twelve. Makes me think of a conversation I had the other day, when one of my friends in this my new homeland came for a visit. For whatever reason we started talking about the notorious " Shidduch Crisis " in the religious Jewish community – meaning the fact that a large crowd of religious singles nowadays tend to stay single forever, until th...

...is now back on track, but now the darn images won't display:-( Instead of doing homework, I found a new way of procrastinating - re-designing my blog! Let me know what you think!

I was going to write something witty about today being my birthday, but all that came out was everything but. It came out more like the lyrics of a Country song, so I ditched it. Suffice to say that according to the Gregorian calendar I'm a year older, and Jochanan was kind enough to invite me to a sushi place in the "Old City" which to my astonishment actually served OK sushi. So we had sushi and debated the Middle East future in light of the Egyptian revolution, and to a slightly lesser degree, the Hizballah takeover in Lebanon. In short he took a slightly gloomier view than me, in the short run I don't believe the consequences  for Israel will be disastrous. In the long run it might mean war, but as J.M. Keynes so eloquently put it, "In the long run we're all dead". For the time being I hope Egypt manages to get some sort of democracy going, and that the Old Guard don't decide to start murdering people as soon as the media limelight goes elsewhere...