Or 6 oz across two bottles?

OK, OK. So it took me a while, but I read everything. Yes, every post of the 300+ posts I was behind. You see, when you're having a hectic life, and then you're sick for a few days, you have to have even more hectic life to try and make up for what you've missed the few days you were down. I still have about 30% to complete. And hey, last time I commented here, Seska and The Girl were in Israel, and the PixDesigns weren't married yet.

And the only problem is that unlike my usual self, I didn't use the usual Gmail draft I keep to copy-paste stuff I wanted to react about (btw, I'm on Gmail-interface, so if you'd like to add me to the Gmail chat be my guest). So there's only my not-so-much there memory and Beep Me can serve. So here goes.

Congratulations, PixDesigns, and Erin!

{{{{}}}} and ~mas to smonster, P-C, Aims, JZ, and an interview~ma to Hil. You'll rock, dudette!

There was also a big issue I wanted to comment about, regarding Seska's trip to Yad Vashem. First, honey, {{}}. I've been there, and I know what it's like, in details. I also have Holocaust survivors in my family, including my grandmother, and 3 others who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau. But also, being raised here, I have a lot of critique regarding the way Israel abusing and twisting the Holocaust's memorial just to score points on the global public opinion. Also, the way they teach it in the education system... after 12 years, I want to hear nothing more about it. Our secular holidays system was designed to make us think in a certain manner (Holocaust remembrance day is a week before IDF memorial day, which is a day before Independence day). And the whole "mostly Jews suffered" bullshit. I just couldn't take anything like this, anymore. These days, I have the privilege to be in one institution with some of the best professors on this subject, and people I highly appreciate of; I cannot bring myself to take any class, eye-opening as it'll be, because I'm so sick and tired of the pornographic, abusive contempt my own country showed and still shows in so many levels to this period of time that it'll be too much. Holocaust survivors are starving to death and can't pay on their medications in my country this day, and we keep our gates locked from refugees from Darfur, but sure, the country can afford to subsidize youth's travels to Poland to see the death camps. Israel never learned the lessons that the Holocaust should teach any human being, and yet, it allows itself to lecture the entire world about it.

OK, these were my 2 cents about it.

In other news, I will now bitch (feel free to skip if you'd like):
I reached to the level where the semester is officially killing me. I have another 12 hours day tomorrow, and right now it feels like whatever I'm doing, and how hard I try, it's not good enough for the universe, or something (I'm around 85-95 in most classes, but I don't feel like I'm fulfilling myself anywhere this semester, and almost every day is a battle, unlike the previous year). So far, 16 Horsepower, Wovenhand, planning my big trip abroad after I'll be done with my degree and small accomplishments are helping, but I really need more... something. I don't know what. But I sure know that next year I will not build a schedule which leaves me with only 1-3 hours per day to myself. Sometimes before homework.

In other other news, it's starting to be hot in and around Gaza again, and my sister is going back there tomorrow. Everyone are talking about another op to take place. Joy.

I still have dizziness leftovers from the time I was sick. It's a blah.

Other than that, I'm gonna enjoy the next hour I got to myself by reading an article (it is good!) and watching a Kim Ki-duk.

Much safety~ma for your sister, Shir.

And here is the link to the story about the cat getting called to jury duty that I inexplicably forgot to include in my post about it: [link]

Shir, I truly appreciate you sharing your views with such enormous candor. I don't think I can respect you anymore than I do. And I look so forward to seeing how your life progresses and what dreams you'll accomplish.

I am in a weird headspace. Just finished watching Catch-22. Really need to take the Wigglebutts out, but just discovered that the DVD has commentary by Nichols and Steven Soderbergh!!

smonster, I wish you all success in this. It's a shame it had to come to this, but you're strong for taking this step.

Erin, seeing your glee is just wonderful. Shared squee expands exponentially, right? Feels that way, anyway.

Tell me I can't go out driving around exploring and sightseeing again today. I need to stay home and dig in on getting my closet reorged and more boxes unpacked. But it's pretty outside! Inside is work.

Close the closet door and hide the boxes. Don't waste the pretty day doing work when exploring new places is an option. t /enabler

Go explore.

Beverly, go explore! Go, shoo!

Shir, I don't disagree with you - mainly because I don't have the right. But your views relate to Israel. I come from a country where a disturbing number of people really don't know what went on in the Holocaust (and indeed, it shocked me how much I didn't know, despite having studied a fair bit of history and having Jewish family). Jewish people in my country are having their synagogues burnt down and being abused by people who don't acknowledge that they could be just a few steps away from repeating history. Muslims are having their mosques burnt down too, and asylum seekers are being attacked in the street, and mothers are being killed along with their disabled children, and to my mind it's all part of the same thing. And I don't ever want to be distracted by my liberal values so much that I can't see these things going on in my own country, or don't feel the need/responsibility to protest them.

As I've told you away from b.org, my trip to Israel was difficult for me on many levels, and not just the level where The Girl's parents were being idiots. The very fact that I'm marrying an Israeli is hard work for me on a regular basis, especially given the views of her family (not her) towards things like the Palestinian situation. I nearly avoided going out with The Girl entirely because I didn't think I could cope with what I (inaccurately) thought her views would be. I certainly was never going to visit Israel with her - she spent four years persuading me that I could do that without feeling guilty about Palestinians. So I have to put the visit to Yad Vashem, for myself, into that context of ignorance. I am someone who would never think of myself as having prejudices, because I'm liberal and an activist and all sorts of related self-righteous crap that I tell myself so I can sleep at night. At the same time, I'm VERY capable of being an oppressor, like anyone else with any kind of cultural privilege. I like to pretend I'm not, because I can debate British abuses towards colonial nations as well as any other conflicted Anglo-Irish person. But I am capable of oppression. I'm not the only person who needs to learn more about what happened so that I don't end up contributing to a repeat of history.

While I completely respect that you have a very different view on the Holocaust from other people, I also believe that any genocide, from the Eugenics projects to Rwanda, needs to be remembered. Because I don't know whether, if I'd lived during the Holocaust, I would have been brave enough to help people at my own risk (as the Hungarian Christian grandmother of a friend of mine did). More likely I'd have been among the millions who were looking at the ground a lot. And I want to be better than that - in all sorts of situations that I am in, in relation to everything from the way that detained asylum seekers are treated in the UK (horribly) to the situation of Western Muslims in the current political climate.

(FWIW, as someone who is gay, physically disabled and mentally ill, I certainly didn't perceive an 'only Jews suffered' undercurrent in Yad Vashem.)

Beverly, definitely go explore. The boxes will wait.

I bought a new bookcase today. I'm so hopeless.