Welcome to my new blog. I haven't posted to a blog since February 2, 2011, which was the farewell post on my other blog which was simply titled "Air." Air was about my getting sick and almost dying in February of 2010 and then getting better and almost living. During the year that I kept that blog active, I posted to it 167 times. Then I ran out of clever or witty or deep things to say and lost interest and shut the whole thing down. Actually, I had run out of clever or witty or deep things to say way before I shut it down, but I wanted to at least make it to the anniversary of my almost dying, so I kind of coasted for a while. I set this blog up shortly thereafter and called it "This Too Shall Pass," because that had kind of become my mantra since I got sick, but I never posted to it. Until today.
It's Saturday night, (actually Sunday morning, since it's 1:09 AM) August 2nd (actually August 3rd.) I've decided to resurrect my blogging career because many people who read my almost weekly letters in the Flatbush Jewish Journal have suggested that I start a blog as well. The reason they suggested it is twofold, which means there are two reasons. As far as I know, there is no reason the word "twofold" exists in this context. I could perhaps understand using it when discussing, gee, I don't know, a towel or a piece of paper or even a slice of pizza, but not a reason. After all, all you really have to say if there are two reasons for something is, "there are two reasons for _________ (You're supposed to fill in the blank. You can be creative. For example, you can write "there are two reasons I don't like wolverines." Or maybe, "there are two reasons I don't wear underwear." Go a little crazy; no one's gonna read it besides you, and maybe you'll giggle at yourself a little; I do that all the time).
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. And that's another thing: "At hand?" Where did that idiom come from? We already have "on hand," ("the caterer had no sweetbreads on hand") and "in hand" ("A bird in the hand..." Okay, there's a "the" in the middle, but try not to be so pedantic and picayune okay? And no, "pedantic" has nothing to do with feet, and "pedantic and picayune" is a nice, albeit brief, example of the literary device known as "alliteration." And did you notice how I just snuck another reference to underwear [see 'brief"] into this post?). On hand kind of makes sense, because you can put something on [your] hand, like a Band-Aid or a radish, and you can certainly put something in [your] hand, like a potato or a tree. But at hand?? How can something be at hand?
I need to learn a new language because English gives me a headache. And why is it capitalized? I don't know. But I never learn a new language because I can never decide which would be the most useful: Spanish, Russian, or Sanskrit. And those "Rosetta Stone" things are crazy expensive. My granddaughter is three and a half and she's bilingual, and she only has one tongue. I think. I never really checked, but I assume she only has one tongue because I think I would have heard about it if she had more than one, probably soon after she was born.
Here are the reasons for this new blog. There are two of them, by the way:
1. It gives me a chance to say things I can't say in my letters to the FJJ, because they would be too controversial or confrontational or con carne. Lots of times I send in a letter and Mordy (Mehlman; he's the Editor-In-Chief, which, I'm pretty sure, is also capitalized) sees fit to redact it and leave out all the good stuff (note to self: check to see whether the word "dact" exists, as in "I dacted the letter, reread it, and then redacted it."). Sometimes he brings it to certain rabbis to read and they say, "Are you insane? You can't print that!" Two of the rabbis he brings my letters to are Rabbi Yisroel Reisman (pretty normal guy) and Rabbi Eliezer Ginsburg (not so good normal). See? That was a perfect example of something I could never write anywhere else, not even in the Coffee Room of theyeshivaworld.com. Did you know that it's called "The Yeshiva World," not just plain "Yeshiva World?" Do you care?
2. It affords me the opportunity to reach a wider audience and thereby spread my rather skewed humor and opinions and manly seed throughout the world. Okay, maybe not that last one. That ship has pretty much sailed, anyway.
Hopefully I'll post more things to this blog as more epiphanies and/or brilliances pop up in my little pea brain. That doesn't happen too often, so don't hold your breath, but you might want to check back here every so often, like maybe once a day or something.
