Oy.

And I mean that in the Yiddishe sense, not the British or Aussie sense.

1.) Blogspot went down in flames today and nobody's made any official comment as to why it happened. Blogger's own servers were still up, but the cluster devoted to Blogspot became a cluster...well, you know the rest. I'm kind of burnt out on dropping f-bombs right now after the last outburst here below.

2.) Jackie Mason should know better, but he appeared on O'Reilly bellyaching about the "War on Christmas." As a Jew he should be more interested in the covert anti-Semitism under the "We love Israel, we love the Jews" rhetoric of the Christian Right. Let's get real, landsmon. They love Israel and the Jews only because Israel and the Jews fit in the pre-Millenialist interpretation of the Book of Revelation. There has to be 144,000 Jews who convert and become evangelists for Christianity for their whole "Tribulation" scenario to work. No Jews, no Second Coming, according to their logic. Of course after this all happens it's back to "Convert or burn in Hell!" the same message the Crusaders gave the Middle Eastern remnant of Jewry, and the same message the Cossacks gave to my ancestors in Ukraine. Just like George Bush doesn't care about Black people, he really doesn't care about Jews either.

I think I understand now why my dad decided, on my 8th December, to get rid of the Chanukah Bush. Chanukah actually is a very minor Jewish holiday. The "great miracle" of Chanukah doesn't even merit a mention in the TaNaCh, the Hebrew Scriptures. I and II Maccabees is only found in Catholic versions of the Christian Bible, because neither the Jews who put together the Septuagint translation of the TaNaCh from Hebrew to Greek nor the people who put together the English Bible for King James I of England considered it a canonical book. The book is in the odd nether-region of "Apocrypha" for Catholics as well, considered interesting but questionable. However, Jews in the US inflated Chanukah into a major gift-giving holiday (something traditional Judaism never had, btw) to compete with the blitz that is Secular Christmas here. Since the rest of the world, except for Israel, ironically, has followed the US lead and celebrated the "Gimme Gimme" Season, the inflated Chanukah has also followed in places where there is a sizeable Jewish minority, like, for example, the UK.

3.) To put a cherry atop this whole sundae of "things that make you go Oy," I know it's been blogged to death by now but the Kansas University Prof who had the temerity to attempt to teach a course in "Intelligent Design as Mythology" (the course was cancelled) was beat up early this morning by two thugs. This makes me want to freakin' scream and break things. I hope these thugs are found and pay dearly for this.