How to dip your apple in honey

Shana tovah!

My adventures this week(end)

Earlier this past week I went out to water the garden (I was wearing a skirt; this detail will become important). I spent about 15 minutes outside and then came back in. When I sat down at my desk, I felt a sharp sting on my ass. Then another. I looked on my office chair but saw nothing. Sat back down. Another sting on my abdomen. Youch! Now I was freaked out and started shaking out my skirt. Sure enough, a yellowjacket flew out. My sweetie, hero that she is, caught it and put it outside, where, presumably, it is happily stinging somebody else.

Three stings and a lot of baking soda paste later, I was fine, if annoyed. Good thing I'm not allergic.

Then today I put a burned CD into my car stereo and couldn't get it out. When I went online to search for a solution (ain't the Web wonderful?) I found this:





Not sure what language he's speaking (it's not Swiss-Deutsch or French; could be Romansh), but you don't need to understand what he's saying to get the gist.

The fun just never stops here...

Don't look for explanations in 9/11 remembrances

I've been hearing lots of people's reactions to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and I heard several people complain that even though the media blitzed us with commentary, photos, video, interviews with survivors and families of victims, there seemed to be a lack of discussion about the underlying causes of 9/11.

I wasn't particularly surprised at this absence; nobody agrees about why 9/11 happened. In my New Yorker this week, Lorrie Moore, quoting writer David Rieff, summed up my take on it more eloquently than I ever could: "Politics is the ghost at the banquet of any national commemoration."