Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Today in Three Vignettes

I can't decide which is more disturbing: penis/bust enlargement spam or spam that says...

Then he slowly rolled over on his side and began the terrible job of getting to his knees again. Because you went on living to find out what happened next, isn't that what you're really saying? Paul jammed his teeth together and grimly told himself he would not vomit, would not, would not. Paul jammed his teeth together and grimly told himself he would not vomit, would not, would not.

What's that all about? Maybe it's not spam. Maybe someone is just sending out a getting-to-know-you-e-mail. In which case, I would have told him/her not to include the word "vomit" in an initial correspondence.

***

Day-to-day happenings are fairly predictable out here on the Peninsula. We are simply not privy to the stories that play out so obviously in every coffee shop, laundromat, corner store, bus stop and whatnot all over a city like San Francisco. And while there are days when I view this as lamentable, I can't deny—certainly since I became a parent—that I find comfort in the relative lack of drama. Still, I'm occasionally privy to something more than people in tracksuits sipping their latte or whatever and reading the Wall Street Journal. Today, for example, while waiting for my order at Kinko's, I watched as a large homeless man busied himself laminating his "Homeless—In Need" sign. He then purchased some hardware to turn it into a banner. And this image has kept me company all day.

***

Our neighbors one block over invited us over tonight to light the menorah(s). First the dad gathered the kids around and read the Story of Hanukkah (one of his kids had removed the paperclip that kept five complicated pages of war scenes segregated, and the dad accidently read too far into said pages to extricate himself. Quite hilarious to watch him fumble around, editing all willy-nilly), then we lit the candles on the three different menorahs (two kid ones and a family one), then they played the dreidl game, and then we got potato latkes to go, came home, and made dinner.

And I gotta tell you: latkes and pasta are not a bad pairing. Anyways, some photos (though, sadly, not of the latkes and pasta):



2 comments:

the last noel said...

I've never played the Dreidel Game. What's the Dredel game? Though for some weird reason, I kept humming "dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, made it out of clay" for the last several days.

ver said...

So, here's my very limited interpretation: everyone starts out with a pile of chocolate coins, which I think are called gelt (sp?). Before spinning, all players place a coin in the center. The player spins the dreidl, and it will land either on a symbol for "none," "take it all," "take half," or "add one to the pot." I think that's it. Stripped bare, it's...gambling with chocolate. Hooray!