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!