Highly influential

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

Ger-mare

A brand new series of nightmares have been added to my fall psychic prime time schedule. And to be honest, since bad dreams are par for the course, having some fresh things to prevent restful sleep, is better than syndication.

Last night in a dream, I found myself in the kitchen on Shabbat morning. I hadn't made challah bread, which in waking life, is not my habit so who cares. But in the dream, making the braided eggy double manna was my weekly routine. Somehow I had forgotten. The horror.

I was that amazing combination of panicked and paralyzed. Again, awake, I think, who cares? That's what the Zomick's fairy is for.

For what felt like hours and hours, I sat looking at the stove, pondering if I should make it. Weighing the decision. No one was home to witness me break the prohibition and use the oven. Only I would know. But everyone coming to lunch would surely notice if we were sans challah. You can't do shabbat with challah and you can't do challah without heat.

Was it more important, I obsessed, to make the challah or keep the Sabbath.

I don't know if this a specially convertcentric dream or not, but I will file it under ger-mare. Undoubtedly more to follow.

The Way Life Should Be?

Upon entering the state of Maine, there is a sign on the side of the turnpike, which has befuddled me pretty much all my life.

WELCOME TO MAINE

The way life should be

Huh?

I challenge you to find a more loaded sign. It implies some sort of utopian blueberry picking cross country skiing ideal. A world of tanned Thoreauish utilitarian pragmatists, L.L. Bean boot wearing types, who can preserves for the winter and dine on lobster in the brief summer.

Or you can play the Method actor game with it:

The WAY life should be

The way LIFE should be

The way life SHOULD be

The reality of course is quite different. Not that there aren't truly charming parts of Maine. Eventually, I will write about a childhood that can be best described as growing up inside a Norman Rockwell painting, but not today.

This morning I'm embarrassed. My home state had a chance to make history for marriage equality, but will go down as just another example of what happens when the majority votes on the minority.

I understand that change, the real, lasting kind takes time. But this country didn't desegregate because we voted it so. So this morning, I understand the sign with sadness.

Civil rights is the way life should be, but even in the 21st century, not the way it is.

Sexy Anna Rexia

No, you're not hallucinating.

Introducing this year's most offensive Halloween costume, "Sexy Anna Rexia."

Certainly no explanation is needed on this one. It's obnoxious. It makes light (pun unavoidable) of a disease that kills people. It's not even clever word play. This costume is akin in tastelessness to sporting a "Mental Lee Retarded" get up.

I was reminded, as I stood slack jawed in the disposable Halloween costume section of my local drug store perusing the sexy pirate/cop/wench/nurse collection, how very little people really get this disorder. Anorexia, while a very different kind of illness, is what schizophrenia was in the 1950's.

Even on this, the High Holiday of inappropriate, Anna Rexia is too much. And this coming from a girl who has gone as a topless Gyro girl.

Moammar Khadafy and David A Paterson: Same Man?

You decide.

My smartest thought of 2009

About a week ago, maybe two, I woke up and had my smartest thought of 2009. So smart, in fact, I'm still somewhat trying to decode it.

Usually I rise with a jolt, prompted by my own personal psychic starter pistol and I'm off to the races mentally. A sped up scroll of the things to be done, what's left to do from yesterday's scroll, the things I'm dreading, maybe something good is on the roster, something embarrassing I did or fear I'll do, all the while digesting the series of bizarro dreams I just had. It would be a panic attack except I'm too tired. Waking up has always been traumatic.

Back to my smartest thought. I was waking, but there was no starting pistol. It was calm; a sedate swimming through honey, surfacing from sleep feeling, my beau's unbelievable snoring in the distance was even soothing. And eyes still closed, a massive mental supertitle appeared:

WITHOUT MEMORY, THERE CAN BE NO CONSCIENCE.

Weird, right? Who thinks that at 6am?

I rolled over and pretended to wake my beau with a kick by accident.

"I just had my smartest thought of 2009."

I repeated the phrase slowly to him like some kind of loony tune soothsayer.

His response, that kind of half snore/choke men do.

"Who said that?" Surely I was regurgitating.

"Jonathan Sacks?" He offered, probably praying I'd shut up.

"No, me I think."

The true irony is, of course, I meant to get up straight up and I write about it, but forgot. Or I fell back asleep. Or I got lost in the more mundane less super supertitles. I honestly can't recall.

Anyway, I remembered about an hour ago and it still seemed smart. If nothing else, an esoterically perfect sentiment for High Holidays.