My previous post was intended to downplay a distinction I feel uncomfortable with but apparently all I succeeded in doing was in resurrecting it. Besides as some of the cogent comments point out, I didn't do the topic justice. Maybe it was premature. So today, I'd like to try something lighter. Ordinarily, that would mean baseball but not this time. First of all, as a Met fan I'm devastated by their hopelessness for the foreseeable future. Second, even though I can keep up with the stats from My Little Town in Israel, eino domeh shmiah le-re'iah. For example, I'm not quite sure from here quite how bad a shortstop Kaz Matsui really is. And reading Blissful Knowledge's sage analysis just makes me feel inadequate as a fan. (His blog is so good, I'm almost willing to forgive him being a Yankee fan. Almost.)

So to the point. I'm getting old, in a bizarre way. Last week I bought herring. If you must know, it was Matjes herring. You see, I didn't simply spear a piece with a toothpick on a whim at kiddush. I pulled it off the shelf, put it in the cart and payed for it, bemachshavah techillah. I actually had a yetzer hara for it. Lately I've begun to think that a nice shtik ayer kichel (must be shaped like a bowtie) would hit the spot. (I'm uncertain about the transliteration of ayer but this seems like a perfectly ironic way to pay homage to the great logical positivist philosopher, A. J. Ayer.) I'm also now farsighted and have taken to holding bottles of bromfen at arms length (my vision problem is rapidly becoming an orthopedic problem).

Do you see where I'm going with this? What's next? Will I soon be eating lokshen mit yokh, taking my chicken boiled and sucking the bones? Will I be slurping my tea and exhaling volubly after each sip? (And if I do, how will I keep that piece of sugar nestled between my upper and lower teeth?) Zug nor, you got a nice piece flanken maybe? Some schvartzen rettich to go with that? Promise me this: if you ever see me even contemplating the galleh/feese/ptcha or whatever they call it where you come from, just shoot me right on the spot and put me out of my misery.

(A nod to Cookie at MOChassid's comments area for putting me in a galleh state of mind.)