BIZARRO MAIL: Or, one more reason to dislike the French. I just got this e-mail:

salut, je suis une femme bourgeoise de 30 ans j'aime me faire chopper par des mecs "motivés" !! hihi! je suis bi à mes heures, j'aime les femmes aussi. si ça t'intéresse, rejoins-moi vite en duo au tél au 08 92 103 103 ! (c'est un club coquin vraiment cool)

Not knowing French, I sashayed over to Babel Fish to translate it:

hello I am 30 years a middle-class woman I like to be made chopper by "motivated" guys!! hihi! I am Bi at my hours, I love the women too. if that interests you, quickly join me in duet with the Tel. to the 08 92 103 103! (it is a club rascal really cool)

What the hell? Reads funny, don't it?

A HALT TO FORWARD PROGESS: Given the headlines of late, you can be forgiven for thinking the tag line for this post has something to do with the war. It doesn't, but it's a good "hook," eh? Actually, I have been contemplating my utter lack of progress on the road to maturity as of late. In fact, I've become infatuated with toys. Not grown up toys like a phallus mobile or squishy things made of silicone, but real, honest-to-goodness children's toys. Case in point: My tiny studio apartment is being overrun by: a remote control dinosaur named Matilda; a Spiderman lunchbox (sidebar: my sister once observed that if you pronounce Spiderman like a Jewish last name, i.e. Spidermen, it sounds hilarious. Try it! "Harold Spiderman;") several Star Wars action figurines; a bauble headed dog; a Harvey Nagilah doll; A rabbit clock; and much, much more. Is this is a case of arrested development run horribly amuck? Or is it symptomatic of larger issues? Don't hold back, dear reader(s), be brutal, be brutal, be cruel!

SHIPPING NEWS: I just watched said movie and have some observations:

-Kevin Spacey plays against type. His modus operandi is usually to be the smartest person in the film. Here he clearly is not. He still gives his usual excellent portrayal, though, and it's hard to take your eyes off of him. -I have a crush on Julianne Moore. If only all women would age as gracefully as she, the world would be a far better place. Also, she satisfies my biological predeliction for redheads (how did that happen?) [Sidebar: How does this traditional Jewish soul keep gravitating towards classical Irish beauties? Is it the shiksappeal? I wonder.] -Mme. Dench is a presence, as usual. -I want to visit Newfoundland, Its bleakness and utilitarian beauty inspire the minimalist (as well as the frustrated poet) in me.

MY SO CALLED EVIL LIFE: Apparently, Saddam is an active blogger. Also, he does all of his shopping here.

PYTHONISMS: Jon opines that dynamically typed languages may never be fully and successfully ported to .Net or Java. Too bad because...

-I'm starting to get the gestalt of Python, which is a very flexible dynamically typed language that I'm taking a shine to in part due to... -The ease of which it allows the creation of hashes (which can't be done in Javascript) and... -The strict reliance on formatting to determine program structure and branching.

HOW THE WAR PISSES ME OFF: 1.If I hear "shock and awe" one more time, I'm gonna scream. 2. All the good TV has been preempted by crappy war footage. (Note that war footage isn't by definition crappy, just what's on the tube is.)

TORN: The war started right on time at 9:45PM tonight. Fine. But then the new season of South Park started right on time at 10PM tonight. You see my dilemna? P.S. South Park was hilarious.

A PRAYER: On this eve of what appears to be a major military confrontation I offer a brief prayer:

-May our soldiers be assured of a swift and total victory. -May the lives of innocent civilians be spared. -May our leaders be guided by their consciences and may their decisions be guided by the power above.

OH SALMA: Tonight's SNL made me realize that against my own predictions, the new SNL cast seems to be gelling as a creative team. In particular, Seth Myers is turning out to be a creative force. I think he'll be a repertoire player by next season.

PURIM: Rats! Purim is already upon up this year and I don't have a costume for any of the events surrounding it. For those of you who are unaware of Purim, it's a typical Jewish holiday (they tried to kill us; we won; let's eat) with a Mardi Gras twist: You're supposed to wear a costume and get stinking drunk. Anyways. I had planned to be Evil Jake this year, which is easy enough because all I need is a little black goatee. Purim snuck up on me though and I didn't get/grow a goatee in time. My back up plan, which is to dress up as Crispin Glover, is also on the rocks, as I don't think there's enough hair gel in my local CVS to pull this one off. Sigh, how do I get past the bouncers at Brother Jimmy's?

THE PRODUCTION COMPANY INSIDE MY HEAD: Man, did I have a duesy of a dream last night. For those of you uninformed as to my dreaming patterns, my subconscious has a long and colorful history of entertainment during my resting hours. I'm still piecing together last night's whopper -it takes me awhile to remember all of the details- but it was a full fledged comedy routine based upon some chance encounters on a walk in my old stomping grounds of Kew Gardens, Queens. Suffice it to say that myself and a friend are walking down Metropolitan Avenue, spot a large group of chaperoned co-eds and proceed to have a loud and diverting conversation about the injustices of the current school system. Hilarity ensues. Note that the conversation is nothing like you can possibly imagine, even given the rough context that I have supplied you with. I tell you, one of these days a full-fledged screenplay will pop out of me in my sleep. Sort of gives the twilight zone a whole new meaning, eh?

DOM INSPECTOR: For those of you geekerati who haven't tried Mozilla or one of its progeny (Netscape 7.x, etc.) there are two killer reasons and one intriguing one to give the lizard a whirl:

1. The DOM Inspector 2. Midas, the new rich text editing HTML capabilities. Finally, something to rival the IE rich text component. 3. There's also the spam filter. I've had limited success with these in the past, but what they hey...

MY AMAZING FAMILY, PART I: My oldest sister, Devorah, and her husband, Daniel, live in Beit Shemesh, Israel. In addition to the full time job of raising five beautiful children, they founded and run two elementary schools. The schools, one boys' and one girls', are both called Magen Avot (literally: Shield of our fathers) in memory of my father Rabbi Ephraim (Freddy) Ochs and Daniel's father Rabbi Shmuel (Sam) Simon. Together, they have close to six hundred students are are celebrating their first graduating class this year. My oldest niece, Chana Aidel, who is thirteen, is graduating in that class. Chana Aidel was also a general in the inaugural Color War and just lost -upholding the Ochs losing tradition splendidly, I'm told. [Sidebar: Apparently, Israelis never heard of Color War, but they took to it with aplomb.] Devorah is the most spiritual (read: hippielike) of my four siblings and has taken to life in Israel so much that she truly is a fish out of water when she comes to visit us here in the U.S. of A. I visit Devorah annually for the Succot (Tabernacles) holiday and totally love relaxing and spending time with her and the family. Stay tuned for additional installements of <reverb>MY AMAZING FAMILY.</reverb>

THE GREAT MYSTERY: I don't know how it happened, but somehow I got hooked on Stargate SG-1. I like the chemistry of the cast. The plots are warmed over Star Trek TNG ideas and such, though. I also dig the idea of the ancient gods as petty, squabbling aliens. Almost as good as Greek Mythology as camp. Speaking of which, when will Kevin Sorbo make a guest appearance?

WEEKEND UPDATE: Anyone catch SNL's idea for a new Fox reality show: Who Farted? Perfect! Just about sums up the direction the genre is moving towards. Also, some ideas for Jimmy's pencil at the end of weekend update:

-Have a guy with a butterfly net and a pith helmet catch it -Have it confiscated by a U.N. weapons inspection team -Have it shot down by an antimissile system -Have it hijacked by North Koreans and diverted to Pyongyang -Have it found and worshipped by aboriginal pygmies (I love using Aboriginal Pygmies in a sentence) -Have screaming fans fight over it (Ala TRL)

THE PITCH: Walking to work today on Ash Wednesday has given me an idea, what with the seeming resurgance of the Hollywood musical and all: A Barbra Streisand vehicle where Babs plays a disillusioned young Roman Catholic. Working title: Lentl

PEEVE: My e-pal Jon has this to say about blog commenting and mentions me in the process (YAY!) I have since taken the liberty of posting a discussion topic in his forum on Infoworld (Jon is the lead analyst for Infoworld) Incidentally, the spell checking feature on Jon's Infoworld webex instance seems broken for now. Clicking on spell check will cause you to lose your post. My peeve/post in Jon's space can be found here. Full text of post follows:

I've just about given up on ever getting proper usage out of a threaded discussion medium such as WebEx -or even NNTP (for the non-digerati, for sure) Most people just respond to whatever message they happen to have selected and thus end up only nesting a discussion further and further. How many times have you had to click on the "twistie" over and over again to drill down through a discussion topic? Well, for so many reasons, THAT JUST AIN'T RIGHT! (Jake's pet peeve?) I find linear webboard type discussions (such as that found on ezBoard.com) much more intuitive and useful and steer clients toward that type of solution when the need arises. Any thoughts?