Dmitry Rubinstein’s Neighborhood

A telemarketer call.
- Hello this is Meirav from Yedioth Ahronot. There are some special deals I'd like to offer you today. Are you a reader of our paper?
- I don't know how to read.
- Sorry??
- I don't know how to read.
- Okay, thank you, good bye. *click*
That was quick.

Found this in one of my friends' journals, and just couldn't help myself from reposting. In the spirit of Christmas, here is "Hail Mary" in Syriac (a language closely related to Aramaic). Listen to the song, a beautiful performance in its own right, and see how close it is to Hebrew.

The past couple of days I'm staying home, recovering from some "unspecified upper respiratory tract infection", taking it easy, and reading some books and magazines. One peculiar article that caught my eye was in the National Geographic. It's about a small city bird called the "common swift". It says there, among other things, that the swift likes to stay airborne as much as possible. Fine, I don't mind it flying around. But what about this part: (also in Wikipedia) "Swifts spend most of their lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in their beaks. They drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing". Can someone please explain, how any animal can sleep while flying?

My first ever home-made postcard. Should I quit my day job yet?

Shot In Real Time

Watching "Monsters vs Aliens" with the kids. The big bad alien Gallaxhar had his plot to invade Earth completely foiled. He needs to use some strong language.
(English version, discovered later) Oh... Spaceballs!
(Hebrew dub) Cosssmonaut!

Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours. In short:

• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = hom.er.j.sim.ps.on@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = HOMERJSIMPSON@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com

At last, the stupid box started to do something useful. Yesterday my son and I decided we're not waiting any longer, and checking what's happening at the bottom of the rotting pile. To our surprise, it did contain compost. I was only brave enough to extract one bucket, but I think there's more in there. The compost is black, moist, lumpy, and almost odorless. There are some occasional twigs and chunks of wood in it, but it's mostly smooth. There was even an educational moment there, as we found an "unprocessed" candy wrapper made of plastic. I spread some of the stuff over the flower beds, but it doesn't look as natural as in US/European gardening sites: their soil is black, while ours is brown. But it'll all mix in the long run. Today I'm gonna dig for some more of that black treasure. We're also going to Haniel to rack up some dry leaves. We don't want the top of the box to become too green :)