I found a license plate

Crossing the street at bayview and high tech road, I found this little beauty in the middle of the crosswalk. I'm going to call the cops to try and get it back to its owner (if the owner wants it back), but if anyone happens to know someone who happens to be missing a license plate, tell them to get in touch with me.

Final Minutes

In these final minutes of 2010, I've written up a few resolutions:

1) Be excellent in everything I do.

That is all.

A saying I'm going to try and popularize, also, greetings from mexico

"JCLV"
Just Chillin' Like Villians / Like a Villian
A friend of mine relayed this to me and I love it. Please, casually insert it into your conversations whenever you can!

Also, Greetings from Mexico!

Daniel Tovbis leaves the country

In approx. 19 hours I'm going to get on a plane and get the hell out of here. It's about time.

I'm going to Riviera Maya, Mexico - A jungly area of Mexico, just south of Cancun, in the giggle-inducing province "Quintana Roo".

It's a really nice place, albeit a bit rocky. They recommend bringing those special diving shoes, which my parents were nice enough to buy for the whole family. Thanks, guys!

The resort we're going to be chillin' at is called "Gran Bahia Principe Coba". As I always do before I go to any hotel, I read some of the worst possible reviews before reading anything else:


"The bugs, poor service, and body rash aside. The final straw that forced us to leave bahia was a small bag of my clothing was either taken or thrown away. I don't want to think it was stolen, and I'm hoping it was just accidentally tossed in the garbage by our housekeeper, but either way that kind of negligence just cannot be tolerated. We reported it and were basically not believed!

This hotel would be great for a drunk teenager who doesn't care anything else but beers and shots, because the bartenders couldn't mix a drink to save their lives.

All in all I would never recommend this resort to anyone. It was just inconvenient all around. We love the riviera maya and visit often, but will never come back to Bahia. We left the resort after a week and changed to a better hotel to enjoy the rest of our vacation. Avoid the hassle and stay away from bahia."
 --
"Many people we spoke to had bad stomachs and had been in hospital with food poisoning on drips for several days but the hotel would not admit they had a problem
What will it take this hotel to realise they have a major problem .
If you have booked here i would seriously think about changing unless you want to risk your life and get seriously ill.
I would welcome hearing from anyone that was there between 4 -19 th May.I will do all i can to expose this hotel for bad food hygiene." 
--
"So, if you trip is to just bake in the sun at the pool and not go into the Caribbean and you don't bring your own snorkeling and scuba gear, and your favorite activity is to drink yourself into a stupor, then this may be an okay choice. But really you can do that almost anywhere in the world and for a lot less money." 
--

SOUNDS LIKE FUN TIMES.
In all honesty though, The 5 star reviews outnumber all the other reviews combined, so it's probably not going to be that bad. I've been to a resort owned by the same company before (I've got pictures on facebook!) and it was great, so hopefully good times will be had by all.

I'm going to be bringing my little netbook with me to the airport. Message me up from 3:00-5:00 to say a heartfelt goodbye, or request a trinket with little sentimental value!

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man

Why is this page the most viewed one on my blog? Do people really care that much about the description of a Salvador Dali painting I mostly lifted from wikipedia?
--
Anyway, a delightful painting by Salvador Dali appeared on my Calendar today.

(click for original size)
As a history buff, this interested me immediately. The symbolism here is pretty intense.
 Dali painted this when he was visiting the USA in 1943, which explains the majority of what you see here.

In the painting, A huge man himself out into the world from North America. His hand is grasped firmly on England, showing the USA's now huge power in comparison. Also notice how large Africa and South America are in relation to Europe, which is tiny and shrivelled. In the decades to come, those two continents would be a much greater center of conflict and importance to global events than Europe, which had been on its' way out since the first world war.

Note the blood coming out of the crack. This man's entrance onto the global stage is not a smooth or simple one.

I still have no idea what he meanth by the child and hermaphrodite in the foreground, though. Maybe the child represents humanity's collective consciousness? It's obviously fearful about North America's violent exit from its shell.

Well, that's my essay for today, and possibly for a long time, until I decide to update again :V

Yep.

Yep.

Clearing things up

Okay, now I know that no one honestly gives a shit, but I get asked these questions so often, to the point that it's getting retarded.

1) Are you a Jew?
Get this - I'm a Jew by Nationality, not by Religion. Jews are a "peoples", just as the Slavs, Serbs, Spaniards, etc. Judaism is the religion, of which I'm not. I don't go to synagogues or wear black on saturdays. I did not have a bar mitzvah. I am an athiest - I have no religion.

2) How can you say you're Jewish by nationality? Jews don't have a nation, they live in Israel! Shouldn't that make your Israeli?
Not all peoples had a nation. Before Yugoslavia broke up, it was composed of serbs, slovaks, croats, bosnians, and the rest of those eastern europeans. Now they each have their own countries. The Jews got Israel, sure, but my dad's (I'm Jewish on my father's side) parents and their parents and their parents, and so on and so forth, were Jews before Israel existed.


Likewise, it would be good for you to know that Hitler did not order the death of Jews based on their religion - it would be stupidly easy to convert to christianity, the state religion of Nazi Germany. He ordered their deaths based on their race, something a bit harder to change.

3) You were born in Israel, shouldn't that make you Israeli?
I don't know how you know that, but sure. Yeah, I was born in Israel, but I consider myself a Ukrainian Jew.  I'm something like five eights of Ukrainian descent and three eights of Jewish descent. My parents lived in Israel for three years only because the Soviet Union had collapsed and they didn't want to stick around. I have no Israeli relatives or anything of that nature.

As a fun fact, Keanu Reeves was born in Lebanon, but he considers himself Canadian and not Lebanese.

And that's all I can think of for now, but if I can remember more I'll add them to this post.