A reply to offer

This is the sign I see from my office window (it's huge). If you can't read the text below the "WE SELL GUNS!", it says: "No id required. No background checks. Criminals and terrorists welcome!".

Luckily, I'm in Boston and not in wild west Arizona. The far right side of the sign says:

TELL CONGRESS TO CLOSE THE
GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE
stophandgunviolence.org

Conflagrant Fowl

When Tessa told me she was planning on visiting her old friend Carrie I couldn't imagine that it would eventually lead me to a heated one-sided conversation about burning poultry. And when I say burning poultry I don't mean fried chicken.

We picked up a car in St. Louis, Missouri and started driving towards Springfield, Illinois, home of Carrie and George, and their adorable baby girl, Lucy.

We did have one stop on the way - seeing as we were in St. Louis we decided to go and have a look at the Gateway Arch. This is a 192m tall monument in the form of a big arch (I'm sure you weren't expecting that). After seeing the long line outside we decided to skip the ride to the top and just wandered around the monument.

I was trying to take one of my "foot shots" when this crazy tourist decided to do a little photo-bombing on me:


The weather in Missouri was quite different from what we have become accustomed to in Arizona. The sun and warmth were replaced by clouds and chill but we did get to see the leafs turn a golden red.


After a couple of hours we arrived at our destination and were welcomed by Carrie, George, Lucy, and their huge dog Sam. Our gracious hosts decided to make us feel even more welcome by inviting some people over and having a little dinner party. The "dinner" part was great and normal. The "party" part was great and quite... unusual.

A couple of the guests brought with them a party game called "Quelf". This game is a bit difficult to describe if you've never played it before. Let me put it this way - at one point I found myself sitting with my shirt inside-out and the game's box tucked under it, while George, with a bicycle helmet on, kept telling me that "chickens are on fire" hoping that I would somehow guess that I was supposed to respond with the word "apple".


We spent a couple of days seeing the sights. First we went to the Abraham Lincoln Museum (well, Illinois is not known as the "Land of Lincoln" for nothing) which was surprisingly interesting. The following day we went to Hannibal, Missouri - the boyhood home of one Samuel Langhorne Clemens (you may know him as Mark Twain).


As we were making our way back to St. Louis for our flight back we came across another American icon - the Girls Gone Wild guys were travelling the country with their bus looking for "The hottest girl in America".


This made for quite an interesting few days for me: in one week I experienced two new states, good old friends, hallowed presidents, dead authors, burning chickens, and wild girls.

Goodwill Toward Men

One sunny Arizonan day, as we were driving along the highway, I noticed a sign declaring a gun show was coming to town. I'm not usually a gun-loving, moose-hunting, fancy-haircut-wearing person (though if I were I would probably run for vice president of the United States of America) but I decided to go and see what it was all about. After all - guns are an important part of American culture.

So I went to the Crossroads gun show.


I brought along my camera, hoping to capture a piece of this experience on film (it's a digital camera so this should actually be "capture a piece of this experience on solid-state electronic flash memory data storage device" but I think that misses the sentiment).

Unfortunately the gun-loving organizers of the show seemed not to be camera-loving. They let this fact be known by posting dozens of "No Cameras Allowed" signs. The only two things which were present in more abundance than the signs were people and guns. Now, I don't know if Guns kill People, or People kill People, but I do know that I had no wish to resolve this question once and for all, so I kept my camera out of sight and I only got one little shot before going in.


Inside I was greeted with every gun you can imagine. 6-shooters, semi-automatics, automatics, rifles, shotguns, Uzis, assault rifles, ammunition, machetes, daggers, swords - you name it. The air was heavy with the smell of gun oil and the sounds of people purchasing automatic weapons.

You could feel the holiday spirit in the air - people were walking around, buying guns and ammo as if they were getting ready to hunt Santa's deers.

Merry X-Roads!!!

Indi

Hi there!

Those are our latest news: we have adopted a kitten.

His name is Indi (in honor of Indiana Jones), he is about 3 months old.
He is still afraid of his own shadow, but he makes progress in trusting people every day.
Gal volunteered to be our food dealer :) So he's eating well and soon will grow bigger and bigger. That's why I'm taking photos of him while he's still a small kitten.
Oren, Maria - remember our cats deal? We are doing our part ;)

Say my name!

I like my name.

It does however create some problems at times. For some strange reason, whenever I travel abroad and I have to give my name people seem to have problems with it. This wouldn't normally be an unusual thing for people from our part of the world, but my name looks and sounds pretty much like a word in English. There's only one "F" differentiating Ofer from Offer so I'm always surprised when people mess it up.

This has happened to me on so many occasions and in so many countries that I already have local nicknames for myself in some parts of the world. To this day there are people in the Dominican Republic who think that my name is Paco. And after some recent experiences I'm thinking of switching to Arthur whenever I travel in English speaking countries.

But a couple of days ago the unexpected has happened - someone actually got my name right on the first try! Not only the pronunciation - the spelling too! Seeing my surprise she claimed that "Yes, I can spell" and after I explained to her the rarity of this she concluded with "I'm just talented this way".

This made me happy, mainly because it meant that I would actually get the sandwich I ordered (if this has never happened to you you should watch the Seinfeld episode that takes place in the Chinese restaurant - George Costanza is waiting for an important telephone call and fails to understand that when they call out for "Cartwright" they're actually calling him). It also meant that there was still hope, and that maybe I should wait with my switch to Arthur.

Best regards,

Arthur

a.k.a.

Paco

a.k.a.

Ofer

Halloween checklist

Halloween is here. And even though it's not Purim the same rule applies - not every day is Halloween. I looked this holiday up in wikipedia and among other things I found that:

"Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is a holiday celebrated on October 31. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting haunted attractions, carving jack-o'-lanterns, reading scary stories, and watching horror movies."

This was every tourist's wet dream - a Halloween checklist! Seeing as we've been preparing for Halloween for a while now, I decided to see which of these items I have managed to complete:
1. Trick-or-treating - DONE! OK, so I didn't go trick-or-treating myself but some kids came over to our place last night asking for some candy. I didn't hear them at first, even though they were screaming at the top of their lungs, because I had my earphones on. When Tessa finally made me aware of their presence I went over and let them pick out their own candy. Rookie mistake (or so I'm told). For those of you who don't know what a rookie mistake is I found this definition: "An egregious error (or altogether unwitting, on the other end of the spectrum of awareness) resulting in a response ranging from a harmless prank to serious vandalism". In this case the egregious error resulted in the greedy little bastards digging in and taking as much as they could in their greedy little paws.

2. Ghost tours - NOT DONE - I've been on several ghost tours around the world (e.g. London) but none in the states yet. So I guess this item is still "to do".

3. Bonfires - OVERDONE - what with all the bonfires we've had over the years (and probably will have over years to come) I think I can cross this one off my list. We could probably teach these pagans a thing or two about bonfires ;)

4. Costume parties - DONE! - we went to a crazy Halloween party last night - check it out here.

5. Visiting haunted attractions - DONE! - we went to a corn field which is not only haunted - it's also a maze! Check it out here.

6. Carving jack-o'-lanterns - DONE! - see my full guide on pumpkin carving here.

7. Reading scary stories - DONE! - I read ynet every day.

8. Watching horror movies - DONE! - a couple of weeks ago we saw "The Duchess". Even though the makers of the movie never really intended it to be a horror movie it really is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Pregnant women and people with heart disease should not go to this movie. Normal people shouldn't either.

Well, that's it for Halloween this year. Let's see what Purim brings our way ;)

Maze in the Maize

As part of my Halloween crash course Tessa took me to a haunted corn field. Not just any haunted corn field mind you - it was also a maze!

We met up with Misha and Ali and after going in what turned out to be almost the right direction we finally made it to Buckelew farm and were quite amazed to actually find a corn field there.


We got our maps and ventured into the corn field. After a short while we came to the following conclusions about the nice people who run Buckelew farm:

1. From the nice tall corn we figured that they are probably very good farmers

2. From the maze they had constructed we decided that they are definitely good cornogrpahers

3. From the very loose connection the map had to reality we deduced that they are not very good cartographers.

We came to this final conclusion as we were staring at our map and trying to understand where the hell we were.


We walked around the maze, stooping at the various checkpoints and scaring kids who were walking in the adjacent paths by making ghost sounds.


All in all it was a funny experience and we did get to see one monster in that field:

Halloweird

'T Was the eve of Halloween and Joe could feel how his girlfriend, the English Teacher, was slowly succumbing to her alter ego, the Roller Derby Girl "Foxy Moron". Joe the Plumber, with his blue shirt, which said "I am Joe the plumber and I approve this costume" on the back, reluctantly went with her to the car.

Foxy drove Joe through darkened streets in a part of town which he had never seen before. The flicker of Jack-o`-lanterns could be seen from many of the houses lining the streets. An uncomfortable silence engulfed them as they walked up the little trail that led to the house. The house's exterior held no clues to what awaited them inside - a small "Turn Back!" sign was the only hint that something was amiss.

Upon entering the house Joe found himself transported to a medieval dungeon.


Foxy seemed to be at ease with the Witch and the Gypsy that welcomed them into this horror world. This was enough to make Joe's spine crawl and made the flickering red lights, vampires, and spiders, seem welcome. As he was surveying his surroundings he came to realize that he was leaning back against something. Something you weren't supposed to lean on. He turned around slowly and was shocked to discover a life-sized coffin with a body in it:


Joe realized he was slowly losing control of his body and that he had started to tremble slightly. He stumbled towards the back door, thinking that the fresh evening air might help. Crashing through the door he discovered that the back yard was actually a graveyard.


A small, macabre band was playing songs for an audience of deranged people with strange outfits. Joe felt dizzy and held on to the walls as he made his way to the bathroom. The corridor which led there was also decorated in a ghastly manner. The world seemed to be losing its sanity around him.


Happy Halloween everyone!

Carving a pumpkin in 10 easy steps

So you want to carve a pumpkin (a.k.a. Jack-o'-lantern) for Halloween do you? Hopefully this guide to pumpkin carving will help you. Bear in mind that this was my first pumpkin carving and that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Step#1 - Get a Pumpkin

You need one of them large, orange things. Real big one. You can get them here in the store before Halloween but you shouldn't wait until the last moment as I've heard of some stores which ran out of them on the day before Halloween.

Step#2 - Get a Knife

Get yourself a couple of nice, sharp, pointy knifes. Not only are they good for self defence they will also prove quite useful in steps 5 and 7.


Step#3 - Get a Spoon

Apparently you can do more with a spoon than just eat soup - step 6 will show you exactly what else a spoon is good for.

Step#4 - Get a Cat

More on this later.

Step#5 - Cut the Top Out

Cutting the top of the pumpkin out sounds simple enough but you need to make sure that the piece you cut out can be placed back as a lid once you're done. Just think of yourself as a brain surgeon when you're carving the pumpkin - in order to successfully finish the surgery you need to be able to close the top, even if the patient is dead.


Step#6 - Get the Crap Out

Stick your hand into the pumpkin and take the insides out. Once you're done get a spoon and dig the rest of it out.


Step#7 - Carve Away

Now just carve the face/image you want out of the front of the pumpkin. Be as scary as you can (preferably more than I was).


Step#8 - Have a Cat Bless It

Cats have always been thought to have mystical powers and were many times regarded as witches' familiars. It is true that I'm no witch but I tend not to take unnecessary risks - so I just grabbed the nearest cat and had it rub some of its mystical energies on the pumpkin.


Step#9 - Light a Candle

Light a little candle and put it in the pumpkin. Close the pumpkin top.

Step#10 - Display the Pumpkin

Find a prominent place for the pumpkin to be displayed - your kitchen, your yard, or your neighbourhood elementary school could be such places.


That's it - you're done!

Thai-Chi and Things Askew in Pisa

Pisa is a lovely town. Already on the way from the train station to the historical center we were surprised by an original Keith Haring's mural, well preserved since 1989.


Other than that, I think, everybody heard about the leaning tower and other things that are there to see in Pisa.

I, however, want to discuss here a totally different phenomenon. Being in Pisa we discovered that the leaning tower is not the only thing askew there. I'm talking about people brains. What we witnessed was a mass tower-induced madness that strikes unaware tourists in this fine town.

Some people, after arriving to Pisa, feel a sudden urge to practice Thai-Chi:

Symmetry mastered to perfection.

Some other people are throwing an invisible basketball to an invisible basket. Do they score? We will never know...

"Children, who knows when the Leaning Tower of Pisa was built?" "Teacher, teacher! Me! Pick me! Please! I did my homework today!"

Some people actually understand that something is wrong. "It's time to get out of here" - they think and they try to hail a taxi. Poor things, it's too late. The madness has got them. Did you ever see a sane person trying to get a taxi on the grass instead of a street?

What struck me most was that there were a lot of paparazzi photographers, that shot pictures of those people in hundreds, instead of offering them help or at least calling the doctors! "Well ", I thought, " in Pisa act as a peasant". So I took some pictures as well :)

Hello Halloween!

Being in Florence, we picked up a brochure in a local tourist information spot. The brochure had different articles about Florence lifestyle and places worth visiting. One of the articles described a growing fashion of Halloween celebrations in Italy. Turns out that Italians are more and more adopting this day as another cause to party and celebrate. Exactly what I think about celebrations: if there is a cause to dress funny and party - let's do it!


Due to some misprint the article combined two different quotations in to one verse, which sounded like it was meant to be like this. I liked it very much and I want to wish everybody happy Halloween quoting this verse, though only part of us will actually see the real celebrations:

Double, double toil and trouble;
fire burn and cauldron bubble!
From ghoulies and ghosties
and long leggety beasties
and things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

First two lines are from Shakespeare's Macbeth, the other ones are supposed to be some old Scottish saying.

Fast and Curious in Rome

Okay, for those who didn't know - we were on vacation in Italy. Now we are back and there are pictures to show and stories to tell (although we can't compete with Ofer's fascinating adventures :))

So, as expected, we started with Rome. The first thing to strike us in Rome was a question: "Why for God sake there are cars on pedestrian streets?" Then we understood: there are no pedestrian streets in Rome. No matter how narrow a street is and no matter whether it has a sidewalk or not, no matter how many people are walking there - if a car can squeeze in, it will go there. Let alone scooters of course - they are everywhere. So you live in a constant fear of being run over.

On our first day we landed at 7 at the morning and went to sleep for a couple of hours after we checked into the hotel. After we woke up things happened very fast. We walked to the famous Trevi fountain.


After that we wanted to head to the Pantheon, but we lost our way and ended up near Colosseum. All the roads may lead to Rome, but inside Rome all the roads lead to the Colosseum - we found out.

Being there, we bought tickets and went inside the Roman Forum. Wandering there on our own we found a group guided by an American guide who told us that the tour was free and anybody could join. He had a nice American accent, which meant we could understand him perfectly (can't tell the same about British or any other English-speaking accent).



Turned out he was doing a free tour as a promotion for his other non-free tours. He was really good, so we took another tour with him an hour later. This way we ended up seeing most of the touristic sights in Rome in our first day there :)

On the next day we visited Colosseum and the Palatino and nothing extraordinary happened.
I'll post the pictures later in Picasa and place a link here.

One of the days we were on our way to see Piazza del Poppolo. When we got out of the subway station we saw a HUGE demonstration of Italian communists. They were going to the same direction we needed to go. Alona was wearing a red shirt, so we blended in nicely and moved along with them until our ways parted.


Some of them were carrying rainbow flags with a word "Pace" (Peace) written on them. We were kinda surprized at first, since as far as we knew communists never were big fans of the gay community, but later we figured that those flags must have some other meaning.


Later in the evening, just before the sunset we saw a scene which would make Hitchcock die of envy if he wasn't already dead. We were walking in one of the streets in the city center while we heard a distant sound of a multitude of birds. We looked up and saw this:

Stairway to Hell (or Running with the Devil)

I remember thinking to myself, a long time ago, that classic beliefs about heaven being somewhere above us and hell somewhere below must be wrong. This was due to the fact that people kept talking about a stairway to heaven. That would only make sense (to me) if it was going down. I mean - who the hell would expect you to climb what would surely be an endless series of stairs to get to heaven?

This all came back to me as the four of us (Misha and Ali, Tessa and myself) were looking for a parking place in the town of Bisbee, Arizona. We were all pretty tired. Waking up at 05:40 can do that to you. And I guess we were all feeling (to some degree) what Ali so nicely put into words: not only do I have to wake up so early on a Saturday morning and drive for a couple of hours, I also have to pay someone for the right to run!

The "run" was the Bisbee 1000 - a 5K race which goes up and down Bisbee's streets and surrounding hills. The "up" part of the "up and down" is done by climbing a series of stairs - over a 1000 stairs (1034 to be exact) in all.


Once the car was parked we went over to the registration desk. We picked up our number-badges and high-tech ankle timing chips and were getting ourselves ready when we noticed Ali's number.


All those stairs and now this.... to me this was proof enough that we were on our way to hell (if not already there). As if that wasn't enough the organizers also have a mini-race which is called the ice-man competition. This competition "requires that you climb a set of 155 stairs while carrying a ten pound block of ice in a set of antique metal tongs".


So hell had finally frozen over. Yikes. Bad news. The end of the world was coming. I was 99% sure of it. And the Bisbee church was happy to provide me with the missing 1%:


See you all in the next life!

re: serve

Yup. Got another summons to the reserves (Miluim to all you Israeli people types out there). This happened despite the fact that I had told my guys in the army that I was abroad several times. So I called them again and had a long conversation with the head dude.

We talked a little and I told him where I was and what I was doing and that I wouldn't be around for a few months. We then started talking about some of the other guys who had gone abroad. He reminded me of one of my guys who had gone to the US several years ago. I had completely forgotten about that. So I looked him up and found out that he was living in San Diego. This was quite the coincidence because we were set to go to San Diego the following weekend!

After the week had passed we set out toward San Diego. It was a long drive (6-7 hours) and there was nothing to see along the way. Tessa was grading her papers and I had to deal with the border patrol checkpoints that somehow failed to notice all the Mexicans we had hidden in the back.

Roy (the lost army guy) and Laura (his girlfriend) welcomed us into their home and after some introductions, re-introductions, and some pizza we all went to sleep.

We spent a couple of days just wandering around San Diego. We checked out the old town and the gas lamp quarter, walked around Balboa park, went to the zoo, and wandered around in La Jolla.


We were contemplating whether or not we should go to Sea World, after one of Tessa's colleagues said that we were probably old enough not to enjoy being splashed with "feces filled water". After some recommendations from Roy and Laura we decided to go there and one of the highlights, at least for me (muhahah!), was to see other people getting soaked.


During our last night there we went to see a live comedy show. This was the reason we were in San Diego to begin with. We had purchased the tickets in advance and were very excited to go and see Russell Peters perform live.

To finish our visit on a high note Laura and Roy showed us around for awhile and we ended up on the beach to soak our feet a bit.


A little lunch, some ice-cream and we were back on the road!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. Thanks Roy&Laura for your hospitality - it was so good we may just have to come back!

There are ways of telling whether she is a witch

During the summer we also set aside a weekend to visit my sister and her family in the Netherlands. It was fun seeing them again and spending some time with the kids. My parents were also around for a visit.

We also got to go to a little town which I had been intending to visit for a very long time. Its name is Oudewater and I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of it. The reason I wanted to go there has to do with one of my favorite scenes in Monty Python's The Holy Grail. It is, of course, the witch weighing scene.

For those of you who don't know the scene (shame on you!) here's a summary:

A crowd of villagers presents Sir Bedevere with a woman they claim to be a witch. Finding that the crowd had dressed her as a witch and put a fake nose on her Bedevere is faced with the difficult question - how do you tell if someone is a witch. A dazzling display of logic then follows:

1. What do you do with witches? Burn them.

2. And what do you burn apart from witches? Wood!

3. So, why do witches burn? Because they're made of... wood?

4. How do we tell whether she is made of wood?

4.1 Does wood sink in water? No

4.2 What also floats in water? A duck!

So, logically... If... she... weighs... the same as a duck,... she's made of wood. And therefore a witch!

Bedevere concludes with saying that they should use his largest scales.


As someone else once said, when I first saw this I thought it was brilliant - I had no idea that it was also true!

In Oudewater they have a building called Heksenwaag - Witch's scale. People used to come there and be weighed. They would then receive a certificate stating that their weight was proportional to their build. The "logic" behind this was that since witches could fly they must undoubtedly be very light and therefore weigh less than a normal person of the same build would.


As if that wasn't enough these Oudewater people have also come up with what is undoubtedly one of the world's strangest ice-cream flavors - Smurf! Not only do they burn witches, they also hunt and kill smurfs and make ice scream out of them!

Hairy Ofer and the Painted Room

Hairy Ofer, who is also known to some as the Half Brained Prince, boards his winged tube and sails through the clouds to the land of Engs. With him is his companion - Tessmione.

Upon landing they make their way to Oxford with one thing on their mind - find the Painted Room! In the Painted Room a great treasure was to be found - or so the legend goes. The companions know they must have a stout heart (Tessa) and a loud fart (Ofer) if they are to have any chance of overcoming the challenges that lie ahead of them.

The first clue is said to be a grave one, found across the great river. And so they make their way to the bridge of punts and take one of the flat-bottomed boats across the river. Punting, they soon find out, is not an easy business and best left for professional punters.


Across the river, beyond the hills, and a bus ride away they finally make it to the old city of Stratford. A great bard lived there once and the pair hope that they can find a hint to the location of the first clue. The bard was long dead, but his spirit seems to be guiding them.


After many hardships they find the first clue, carved into the living rock - the tombstone of J.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R. Tolkien.


The writing is in a long lost language. After consulting with the local scholars, and spending long days researching texts in the antique libraries of Oxford they finally realize that they must next go to Wales. Fear fills their hearts as they are reminded that Lord Vladimort has visited the very same place shortly before.

Upon arriving in the land of Wales they are captured by a group of Vladimort's followers who quickly imprison them and leave them to die.


With great difficulty they manage to escape and spend the following days rummaging through the land's many ruined castles, only to come up empty handed. The great university of Swansea is also, they soon discover, a dead end. They almost lose all hope when they suddenly come across a group of Harpies.


The Harpies reveal that in order to find one's Holy Grail you must first look for another's. Following the Harpies cryptic clue takes them to London where they eventually uncover the famous Holy Grail.


The end of their quest near now, they go to face the great beast guarding the path to the Painted Room.


The Headington Shark is a ferocious creature, and if not for the winter scaffolding holding it down it surely would have torn them apart with its massive jaws. At long last they stand before the Painted Room and realize that behind this last door they would finally discover the great treasure, sought for centuries by adventurers and scholars.


The door slowly opens to reveal a dark room. They stand there in awe and fear and eventually manage to step to the center of the room. There, bathed in bright, white light they see that most precious and rarest of treasures - Cat Milk!


The End

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. A great summer indeed :)