shiiiit

So I got a ballot for LA’s elections. It feels strange that I have the right to vote in LA when I feel like I haven’t spent most of the last three years living there, whether I was in Israel or Chicago. But I did live exclusively in LA until I was 18, so I guess I have some sort of right to decide what will happen there.

I do love the ballot pamphlets that you get at every election, you know, where under each candidate’s name they list the occupation? This year running for mayor we have a “Whistleblower,” and “Entertainer” and a “Union Meat Packer” among others. I’m not really sure how one’s occupation can be “Whistleblower.” I mean, I think it’s great if you call attention to things that are not right in your workplace or whatever, but I think if you make it your job to go around looking for things to blow the whistle on…that’s not a profession, that’s just you being a prick.

The current mayor is running for reelection, so under his name his occupation is listed as “Mayor of Los Angeles.” I’m not really sure that’s an accurate description of what he’s been doing for the last few years. I think more accurately they’d put “Pretends to be busy in an office but really just has sex with the Univision newsreader.”

Well, speaking of Univision and LA’s massive Spanish-language media market….I miss things like Sabado Gigante, this weird Spanish-language variety show thing that would come on every Saturday night. But I missed that when I was in Chicago, too. One of the things I loved about living in LA was that you could flip on the radio and the chances of you coming across a commercial about Disneyland in Spanish were immense—it was almost an unavoidable occurrence. I miss buying tacos out of trucks. ☹ Oh well. If I can just wait for this trend in aliyah from Spanish-speaking countries to continue, then maybe eventually I’ll be set…


Also, can I just address the issue of really good dreams? You know, dreams in which everything you ever wanted comes true. And then suddenly you wake up, realize that none of it was true, and then you’re like, “Shiiiiit…..” Well, that happened to me the other day. Not that my real life is all that shit or anything….it’s just that, in comparison, my dream was basically the ending of a particularly happy Disney film.


Today in class the teacher taught us different argument words, being just “I think…” or “I agree…”. Like, 10 different ways to say that we agree, or 10 different ways to say we disagree or that the other person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Stuff like that. We then had to do one-on-one exercises with different people as we argued over various topics. At the beginning we were all very polite and reluctant to shut down others, and the students from England were particularly reluctant. But the teacher kept saying, “Be like Israelis!” and kept saying, “Use this phrase, it’s very Israeli” and kept pushing the Israeli-ness. So gradually we all got a little bit more forceful, and by the end the noise in the room was deafening, and people were shutting each other down, and jumping out of their seats with angry disagreement. Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, but by the end I think the teacher was very proud of our Israeli-ness….