Thursday, November 3rd 2022

I am sitting in my ex partner’s kitchen thinking about the end of this World series game number four. Christian Alvarez was taken out of the game after throwing a no-hitter for six innings. The Astros eventually closed out the no-hitter, the second no-hitter in the history of the World series, but Alvarez did not have a chance to take the glory for himself.

This is modern baseball. This is some kind of pitching metrics. He had thrown 97 pitches and for some reason the world is too fragile to let him go for it. Yes, it is possible that they might need him again for game seven. I just don’t understand how you take something like that away from him. There’s a big difference between a group of guys who throw a no-hitter and one guy who does it. That would have been the pride of the Dominican Republic, the city of Houston, of all people of color everywhere in the world who cares about baseball. Even all of the fans regardless of race who were at this game or watched it. I just don’t know why they stopped things like this. Much better to leave him in until at least they got a knock off him.

Breakfast this morning was outstanding. I haven’t had my ex partners cooking in a long time. I forgot what it was like eating vegetables cooked until they no longer resemble their original form. It was tasty, there is no argument that it was tasty. But it was a bit more of a dip than a dish. When I cook, I am notoriously after the absolute moment when the harshness leaves the food and a touch of sweetness takes over. I like vegetables that still have a crunch to them and I don’t even mind eating chickpeas when they are still chewy. It’s just a texture and a touch of life.

I need to be getting back very shortly. I’m only going to be here for a few more minutes. My ex partner is going up to Minsk today to see about this operation. She will be back probably Saturday morning or maybe Friday night.

I made a mistake though. There was this device. It’s an electric water heater. It’s just a plastic handle with a metal coil that you put in a glass or a mug to boil a very small amount of water. It’s the same principle as a soldering iron and it’s probably one of the most dangerous instruments in the history of the world. The Russians love these things. When I first moved into my house and we didn’t have any gas for cooking, my ex partner gave me hers if I needed it to boil water. I don’t think I’ve ever used it. But she asked me to bring it to her for her trip and I just forgot. I didn’t write it down in my list of things to do. It just went right out of my head.

The plan now is to get my final taxi going home and to give the driver an extra 10 rubles if he can make the return drive and give the heater to my ex partner for her ride up to the capital. I am pretty sure they will agree to this.

Our day and evening together we’re very nice and gentle. I never did eat dinner which ended up being my breakfast here today. A combination of baked and magic pot veggies. For the most part, we spent a lot of the afternoon in the kitchen arguing about how to acquire one of these water boiler things and drinking tea and eating boobleki. Boobleki are slightly sweet bread circles about the size of a fat finger ring that are dry and crunchy. A traditional Russian snack are things called sukhoiki, dried bread of various kinds. Maybe these are related to croutons or something like that. All I can say is these baked tasty things are on par easily with any fried potato or corn chips. Very addictive.

But after several cups of tea and a couple of handfuls of these little crunchy rings, I didn’t want to eat any dinner and I retired pretty early. I woke up in time for the game and now I am getting ready to get out of here.

And yes, I took a bath and it felt nice.

All In all, I can’t really complain about this trip to town. The bullshit from the land office doesn’t really stick in my craw. Once you understand who someone is, it’s very hard to blame them for their foibles. People need what they need and the government is what it is. Why they needed to play with the measurements of my property only to the extent that they had a right to extract money from me seems ridiculous and penny pinching. it is true that they nickel and dime you to death annoyingly so. The trick is only to keep them as far away as possible. It’s a stupid game. It’s a stupid and very unnecessary game.

I did have a look around at the daily map readers. I did get the latest death statistics from the war. I did have a talk with people who are doing their job dealing with the war in their own way. I have a sense of those who are working to help those either running away from or escaping the war. I didn’t hear of anybody who has relatives in the army who are now being deployed. The war has moved a bit to the west of the country. There is a slight feeling of relief for this. It’s better not to be in the direct line of fire if you have a choice.

Other than this, I never really got touched in a bad way anywhere since I left my house yesterday morning. I didn’t have so much human interaction but all of it that I did was friendly and respectful. I didn’t feel anybody particularly paying attention to me negatively, even despite the full beard. Nobody started any fights with me. Nobody screamed for my attention. Nobody felt the urge to explain their politics. It’s not like I made a point of walking around in public without anything to do. I basically just did my business and then came to hang out with my ex partner. Still though, it was a very easy ride and I have no complaints except for that 130 rubles which was bullshit.

***

It’s 11:30 and I am sitting in the bakery next to my cat. I don’t think I should call him my cat because he definitely lives in someone else’s house. Maybe it’s her. I don’t really know. I haven’t taken the trouble to really look.

He / she is sleeping next to me on the couch and I am a bit cold here. This morning had a bunch of activity. Almost from the moment that I arrived, I got a call from Tanya telling me she was holding mushrooms for me. I got a lesson in mushroom cleaning and drying. I also got a scolding. I took what she said and did an improvisation on the theme and she got angry at me when she saw smoke coming out of my chimney.

I asked her about her technique for drying mushrooms and she said that you use your Russian oven which is kind of like a pizza oven. You make a fire and then push the fire back away from the center and you put the mushrooms in hay and let them dry off of the residual heat. What I did was to put down some scrap wood from the table I built the other day on top of a metal frame and did the same thing. I think the same air flow will be there.

I also put the other mushrooms on the drying rack but this time I used heat with the ventilator I have there. Really, within about an hour all of the mushrooms that were there before had become extremely dry. I think that’s a pretty effective method as well. What Tanya was upset about was that there’s a particular flavor that you get from the hay. I guess she wanted to show me this. I believe that there’s a difference but really, I just wanted the mushrooms to dry out so that they don’t get covered in mold.

For what it’s worth, apparently Tanya has made friends with her husband again. The story now is that this is the way they are together. They fight and they make up and they fight and they make up. I’m okay with that. I told her that I was happy that she was happy at home and that I could see the difference between when she felt she was out alone in the world and when she is with her husband. She is much happier and more relaxed as a person when they are together.

Tanya by the way has one of the loudest voices of anybody. Lena has a ridiculously loud voice. Everybody basically screams at each other here. I have no doubt that people are deaf and that there are very good reasons why they go deaf. I tried to explain that I don’t really need to scream very much in my normal life and prefer the quiet. I can hear all my neighbors speaking to each other anytime they are not directly inside their houses. My ears work exactly well and I have no need for someone screaming.

She thought my suggestion was cute.

So at the moment, all of the excitement has died down. There’s not really so much going on and there won’t be so much going on through the end of the week. Tomorrow the big event is to make some bread and hummus for my Friday night meal. I’m not really expecting any guests and hopefully there won’t be any problems. On Sunday, I think my ex partner will be coming up to do something and maybe even a special guest will come with her. I don’t know if this is going to happen or not but I think it would be lovely if it did.

Now it’s quiet again. Maybe this is why the women talk so bloody loud. Maybe they think it’s their job to prevent the quiet from taking over. I can understand why they are afraid. I’m not particularly afraid of the quiet. To be perfectly Frank, I absolutely prefer it.

***

This week’s Torah portion is called Lech-lecha(לֶךְ־לְךָ֛), which means “go forth”. 

In the first portion, the Lord talks to Abram and tells him to go forth from his land to a place that God will show him a bit later and he will make from his lineage a great nation. He doesn’t particularly say that he himself will be a part of this. He simply says that from his line will be great people. And this is enough and so Abram gathers his things and heads off on a travel. There are some issues as they travel generally southward. I guess global warming was already in play at that point and there was a Great famine as they got closer to the equator. Pretty good warning right there. 

Because they are at a loss for food, he chose to head to Egypt. Egypt was of course the big city and a Great trading center. When times are tough people make decisions like this. Nowadays though the government understands this clearly and specifically tortures the rural landscape specifically to make people come and feed the meat grinders in the city.

However, Abram made an interesting choice arriving at the city. We don’t know what this relationship was like. Well, we understand that it was an ownership issue but between the two of them, we don’t know whether they got along well. In any case, the last line of the first part tells us that Abram told his wife to say that she was his sister. He was afraid people would kill him because she was attractive. If you’ve ever had a girlfriend who seemed Way beyond your station, you automatically know what this will do to you. If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky.

In the second portion, we find out that indeed the Egyptians thought that Abram’s wife was pretty hot and in fact she got picked up by the royal class. They went ahead and compensated Abram and gave him flocks and cattle and donkeys and servants and maidservants and she donkeys and camels. Or in other words, he came to the city and the first thing he did was sell his wife.

No? We don’t want to look at it this way? I mean they liked her, he made her say that she was his sister and then he took the money that they gave him. Are you sure you want to tell me that he didn’t sell his wife and that this was just a circumstance based upon his own fear? Or should we just say that women have been property throughout history and only about the last hundred years have had them be technically human beings with voting rights.

In any case, God didn’t like this and immediately put all kinds of plagues on pharaoh. It doesn’t say specifically what they were but I’m sure they were several packages of sanctions and frozen assets and European Banks and restrictions on travel for some of pharaohs closest people. In any case, the punishment was noticed and Pharaoh understood that he had been cheated and then strong armed to pay up. I’m telling you, this Abram character is looking awful Mafia like at this point. But pharaoh tells him to get lost and to take his wife with him and Abram and his wife/sister are escorted to the gate. However, he got to keep the money. Brutal. And it’s not even like he was paid hush money because the story is right here in the Torah for everyone to see! My advice is not to do business with this Abram character and definitely stay away from his wife.

The third portion is a little strange. As Abram left Egypt, he was accompanied by a fellow named Lot. Lot and Abram did not get along very well and parted company so as to avoid the argument. They agreed to go in opposite directions.

Here is where the weirdness starts because there seems to be a sentence fragment talking about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah at the same time that we see Lot looking at the plains of Jordan which were very much alive and well. Without bothering to finish that thought, Abram pitched his tent on the plains of Canaan and Lot went to live in the city and specifically the city was Sodom. And of course the sodomites were sodomites and I don’t need to say anymore about that. The Lord told Abram that because he parted ways with the pansexual Lot, he was into the bonus round and was given a huge plot of land. Abram was getting richer by the day and so he built another altar to the lord.

So far in this text we see that if you follow God, you get rich. And if you start availing yourself of too many pleasures of the cities, things are going to get dicey. As proof, in the fourth section, we get kind of a sketchy tale of Kings getting together to work as a group that eventually settled on their mutual hatred of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The combination of Kings won the war and took all of the possessions of those two cities and all of their food. Lot ended up being carted away as well along with the son of Abram’s brother.

Well, news got to Abram that his nephew was now a hostage so we gathered his men and chased after them. He caught him, beat them sufficiently and got back all of their stuff along with Lot and his nephew. This made the king of Sodom very happy and praised Abram for helping him out. This is also something to be aware of. You may not particularly like sodomites but there is a particular nuance of not having to pay for a family that sometimes leaves them with a lot of money so maybe it’s a good idea to be helpful regardless of prejudice. I think generally it’s better not to judge people. I think the biblical term is judge not lest ye be judged. I think they also say people in glass houses should not do sodomy during daylight hours or something like that.

The beginning of the 5th portion indeed says that the king of Sodom made Abram yet even more wealthy. Indeed, there is money in war and we see that even today. It’s not like anything has ever changed. Strangely though, it seems that Abram was impotent and had no children. Mostly he was worried about having to give his property to one of his underlings when the time came. But God told him not to worry about a thing, he had an amazing miracle known as sildenafil and everything would work out just fine.

In the 6th portion, the Lord again promises Abram that he will inherit himself a great land and that his children, his natural Born children, would be the heirs to all of this. He was told that there would be war and problems with the amorites but that in 400 years, everything would settle and his offspring would rule the region.

Well, there’s a twist in the plot. It turns out that Abram was not impotent at all but that the problem was with his beautiful wife. I’m not going to say anything about the potential of venereal disease to a woman that gets sold from man to man. I know that the Egyptian royalty are far above board and certainly not low people by anybody’s standards. Yet, the possibility of a few bugs nobody likes floating around in those Royal loins is ever possible. We don’t know. All we know is that she hooked him up with Hagar, one of her Egyptian handmaidens, and lo and behold Abram suddenly had heirs. And in case you’re keeping score, though people knew Abram as Abram the Hebrew, his kids were now half Egyptian.

The boy by the name of Ishmael was born. His father was 86 years old at the time. Hope for all of us. The Lord said he would be a genuine wild man with tons of life in him. For all of this, Abram was completely grateful for the Lord’s help and threw himself on the ground in thanks.

In the final portion, we begin with Genesis 17 where the Lord makes his covenant with himself and the artist formerly known as Abram but now becomes known as Abraham. Amongst the rules for the future, you have to circumcise the males. You’re even obligated to circumcise your slaves or people who come to be your slaves. This covenant is in the flesh.

His wife, the one who couldn’t bear children, must have been really hot for all of this attention to penises. In any case, they changed her name as well from Sarai to Sarah. Sarah by the way is one of my favorite names. And he also agreed to cure her internal problems and told Abraham that she would indeed give him children.

One nuance here and it is noticed that Abraham at this point is 100 years old and is a little skeptical that the newly named Sarah will actually Bear a child as she was 90 years old. God said it didn’t matter. There must be an Isaac appearing in this story and Isaac is not going to be half Egyptian.

With all of this in mind, they went around circumcising the males for a while. I’m pretty much sure this is not the happiest memory of all of these people to suddenly find out they needed penile operations. Nevertheless, they all joined the covenant and basically circumcised everybody they could get their hands on.

Well, I don’t know what to say. Obviously this is historical fact. I’m reading these words just like you can and I am obligated to believe that the story happened exactly as told. If you want to know why all Jewish boys are circumcised, I’m a Jewish boy and I was circumcised, it’s because of this right here in this chapter. Congratulations, you are Jewish, let’s start off your life with an operation. Don’t worry about it, we’ve all been through it. But if you play your cards right, God says we will get rich because of it. Just stay away from the Egyptians, the romans, the Christians, the english, the germans, the Russians, the Nazi Germans or any conservative after the 21st millennia. Stay away from these people and you’ll be fine.

***

This is a pretty interesting video. It went over my head about how the algorithm works. The reason I left it here is that I had never heard that there was an argument available globally to simply not have nuclear bombs anymore. According to this video, the Russians vetoed the agreement. They were simply paranoid that they were being tricked. I can personally attest to Russian paranoia and fear. There is no one here who is not paranoid about everything. It weaves its way into every moment of every day. And it is of course the number one factor in continuing this war.

***

It’s 8:00 p.m. and I have almost no energy. Today has been a ridiculous day. I can’t believe how empty I am right now.

Tanya came back again a bit later and we followed her instructions on drying the mushrooms in the wood oven. I don’t really see a massive difference between putting the mushrooms in straw or laying them on top of pieces of wood. She managed to cram more mushrooms together then I did but I don’t really see any other difference. She claims there’s a flavor difference. I cannot attest to any of this.

One thing that happened that was really surprising though is that I used my industrial heater with the heat on rather than just a fan and it dried the mushrooms extremely quickly. It was a very expensive way to do this because when you run the heater on that unit, it uses an unbelievable amount of electricity. But the most surprising thing was that it absolutely heated up the entire office. It even made it uncomfortably warm in there.

This was the strangest thing. I tried bringing that heater into the office last year. In fact, bringing some heat to the office was one of the main reasons I ordered the thing. But last year I would put the heater close to myself at the desk and found it almost completely ineffective. This time, the heater was on the other side of the room and pointed almost directly upwards to send the heat through the mesh of the drying table. I agree that we were not below zero but after some time, the entire room was ridiculously warm. I was falling asleep at the table it was so toasty in there. Again, very expensive but unexpectedly effective. I’m not saying I’m going to use it but I can. Pretty cool.

Now it is 8:00 and I am in the warm room. I had a lovely dinner of noodles and some fresh forest mushrooms. It is about the simplest thing I know how to make. A little olive oil to cook the fresh vegetables first. Then I lay on the noodles and a bunch of red lentils and throw in about a liter of water. The noodles and the lentils absorb the water and by the time it grows dry, it is the tastiest fast food in the world. I had two bowls.

I don’t know about tomorrow. I know I will do some cooking but I can’t believe how tired I am. I don’t know what the main factors for this fatigue are. Maybe I just did more and walked around more than I should have. Maybe it was Tanya’s visit. She’s kind of brutal as a talker and a teacher. Or maybe it’s just stress. All I know is that for now, I’m done.