Pen-Elayne on the Web

An Easy Fast

Only about five hours until sundown, and I'm not feeling any hunger pangs yet. This helped a lot. Also thinking about all the wonderful, erudite writers out there in blogtopia (y,sctp) buoys me during times when I feel my fellow Jews have let me down. I'm sorry, I remember what a horrific thing it was to have Israel attacked on Yom Kippur in '73; how is it any less horrific for the Jewish state to have been the aggressor on the same solemn occasion thirty years later? (Okay, technically it was Erev Yom Kippur, followed by complaints that the UN session condemning the attack despite the stupid US veto was called on Yom Kippur - yes, a new definition of chutzpah, particularly paired with comparing "Syria's calling the meeting to Osama bin Laden demanding a Security Council meeting after the Sept. 11 attacks"!) To me it just spits in the face of everything Yom Kippur is supposed to be about. How can we possibly expect the Almighty to believe we're atoning for our sins at the same time as we're continuing to commit some of the most heinous sins of all?

Yom Kippur is affecting me on a personal as well as a political level today. I keep trying to get perspective on things, and it keeps slipping away. "At least I have a roof over my head, and nobody's trying to drive us away from this lovely large conveniently-located apartment... even though the upstairs neighbors have gotten worse and I'm sick of climbing the damn hill and the rent keeps going up." "At least I have a job... even though I may soon have to take two busses and a train to get there if I haven't found anything else and I haven't had a raise in two years and I'm regularly berated and otherwise put upon." And so it goes. I keep committing the sin of dwelling on stuff about which I can't do anything more than I'm already doing. (Speaking of commissions and omissions, please read Lis Riba's list of blogging al chets).

So I like that reading other people's blogs gives me that missing perspective sometimes, as well as informing and entertaining me. Just today, for instance, I got the following from my blogroll:

Via Oliver Willis, this latest take on the "bash SNL" bandwagon that gets jumped on every few years or so. I dunno, SNL has taken lumps ever since it's been around, and it still keeps on chugging. And honestly, last year the worst ever? Have these people never seen the Charles Rocket years? But I will concede her main point that The Daily Show beats the worldwide pants off most other comedy and late-night talk shows.

Via Augie DeBlieck, it's Trek Wars: Kirk vs. Picard! This one made me giggle. From the same folks who created the brilliant Gulf War 2 and Ashcroft Online and, um, these.

Via Laura Gjovaag, Dave Barry's reaction to the anti-telemarketer ball that he got rolling.

And I'm not even halfway through the roll yet (today I'm going bottom to top). When I finish reading I hope to be back with a list of the things I love most about each blogger on my roll (well, maybe not all of them but I hope to get through at least a dozen or so).