Livre d'Or

I've never been a huge fan of Purim and this year I really really wasn't feeling Zoom-Purim. I decided to make a token effort to dress up and go to my community's online Megillah reading anyway. I think that was the right thing to do; they made an effort to make it fun and silly, and it was nice to see a handful of kids enjoying their costumes. I think that did me more good than seeking out an extravaganza hosted by a bigger synagogue (which would have been an option; lots of communities have gone all out with their Purim celebrations this year.)

Anyway, here's some stuff that made me laugh.

( funny videos ) If you'd like to help me celebrate, send me something funny? Or link me a cause you'd like me to donate to?

I am doing a job that's both fiddly and intimidating, and I'm forcing myself to concentrate in very small chunks. So I would be most grateful if you'd join me in playing a silly game. I believe ceb invented this, and titled it pessimized twenty questions.

I'm thinking of something. In order to find out what it is, instead of asking yes/no questions as in traditional twenty questions, you are only allowed to ask me what my something is like. I will answer either: yes, it's a bit like what you guessed, or: no, it's more like French toast. I have to be honest, but I don't have to tell you in what way my thing is more like your thing or more like French toast. If you get a yes, your guess replaces French toast as the comparison object.

Like this:
Me: I'm thinking of something
Player: Is it like Guess1?
Me: No, it's more like French toast
Player: Is it like Guess2?
Me: Yes, it's a bit like Guess2.
Player: Is it like Guess3?
Me: No, it's more like Guess2.
Player: Is it like Guess4?
Me: Yes, it's more like Guess4 than Guess2.

Guesses should in general be specific things rather than categories of things. Eg "Is it like a tiger?" or "Is it like Cate Blanchett?" are legitimate questions, but "Is it like an animal?" or "Is it like a celebrity?" belong in trad twenty questions, not in the pessimized analogy version. And if you ask "Is it like [the thing I originally thought of]" then you win and you can think of something and lead the next round.

(I'm wondering if we can take advantage of threaded comments to make triangulating on the answer non-linear, but that's probably too complicated.)

I'll start the first round in the first comment, to make it easier to read if the game works and we want to try further rounds.

A lot of people have objected to the decade meme on the grounds that the new decade should begin in 2011, not 2010. I like pedantry as much as the next person, but this feels a little gratuitous. Fair enough, the Third Millennium really began on January 1^st 2001 (or some time in March 1997, if we're going to take things to extremes). But in my lexicon, a decade is simply a period of ten years. There's no good reason to restrict its meaning to the specific period from Jan 1^st --x1 to December 31^st --y0. But numbers ending in zero feel significant to our pattern recognizing brains, so the beginning of 2010 seems like a good time for a little reflection.

The other objection is to do with decades in the sociological sense. Does 2010 belong to the aughts or the teens? Well, for one thing it's too soon to tell, and for another, decade in that sense is a completely arbitrary division anyway. There's no specific date when we can definitely say, this is when the sixties began, it was a gradual transition some time between 1959 and 1961. Maybe the date of some significant cultural event, but those tend not to coincide with days when we switch over calendars. I feel, for fairly obvious reasons, that the world changed a lot more in 2001 than it did in 2000, but on a simple linguistic level, calling 2000 part of the "nineties" feels slightly off.

In conclusion, I say it's a decade, and I say fie on all the spurious objections.

For cartesiandaemon who blogged about it and redaloud whose curiosity was piqued:

( worksafe Amsterdam public art )

So, you know that old joke about How do hedgehogs make love? Well, ( cut for (somewhat im-)mature content )

So when I found my Amélie icon, catwithclaws pointed me to a whole collection of alternatives. I hated nearly all of them, except one by sevenages. So the question is, should I change over to this one?

The advantage of the icon I have at the moment is that it's most delightfully mischievous, and it looks like an icon, rather than a random 100x100 crop from a film still. The advantage of the alternative is that Amélie is drinking tea and I definitely need more tea references for my journal. And it's more original in a way.

And I can't decide between them. Yeah, I could have both, but then I'd have this dilemma every time I wanted to make a post! Solution: post a poll and obey the will of the majority.

[Poll #503221]Today is the 36^th day, making 5 complete weeks and one day of the Omer

So I started my journal exactly two years ago today. Since then ( excessively nerdy stats )

So all these words, and all the time I've spent on LJ (perhaps luckily, there is no automatic way of measuring how many hours this site has absorbed!) have done me more good than the statistics can ever reveal. I've made really good friends on LJ, and met several people who are on the way to being friends. And it's let me stay involved in the lives of people who are very important to me in ways that would have been completely impossible without LJ. It's let me get to know people who would otherwise have stayed casual acquaintances, and keep in touch with far more people from various stages of my life than I'd ever have managed by email. I've learnt a whole lot about all kinds of topics, and it's been a source of instant entertainment when I'm bored, and instant comfort when I'm down. Plus, it was a major, major factor in preserving my sanity while I was writing up. Much love and gratitude to all you guys.

Conclusion: I love LJ more than I could ever have imagined. I'm extremely grateful to darcydodo who talked me into getting an account. In fact, while we're on the subject of anniversaries and darcydodo, today is also her 25^th birthday, so many happy returns to her!

Today is the 28^th day, making four complete weeks of the Omer.

So blackherring wants some assistance from people knowledgeable about Christianity and Christian scholarship. And since there are more such people on my flist than hers, I thought I'd point some of you towards her request.

On 13^th October 2003, to livredor a new blogchild. Welcome to the LJ world, lethargic_man
Because it amuses me to mess with the implications of defining my bf as my memetic child. On that note, while I'm generally in the habit of writing a little introductory piece on the subject of why a new LJ person is cool, it's not considered good form to keep on about how cool one's boyfriend is. But anyway, here he is at last! And those of my friends who haven't yet met him should all be introduced. Thanks to everybody who helped persuade him that LJ is a good thing.

Now I'm getting very close to the stage where I can give up socializing altogether and just hang out here. Still need to entice J, EM and maybe a couple of others. *cackles*