Sunday's Sightings on the Internet

Due to some preoccupation with other projects* in my life I have neglected writing on my blog, though I have not stopped commenting in some of my favorite haunts. It's not as though I have no thoughts to communicate. I do.

I have a post in preparation concerning a really good and well-acted play I saw in Israel in August, called "The banality of love" about Hanna Arendt's love affair with Heidegger ;

Having only recently seen the movie "The Reader" there are things I need to say about it;

I also want to comment on an "alternative" weekly magazine issued in Montreal which seems to affirm a certain tradition on the Left of which I only recently became aware: the combination of lurid sexual material with a sharp anti-Israel bias which seems to be all the rage among the more rabid Leftists. I don't mean that the sexuality is embedded in the bias. I mean that the two trends seem to reside alongside one another quite comfortably. I wonder about it and I will write something as soon as I can figure some intelligent coherence between the two, or why the magazine seems to be awash with readers and commenters who walk very carelessly on the razor edge of soft core Holocaust denial.

But since I'm so caught up in my other daily doldrums, all these are still in supposition, so to speak.

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But here is a comment trail from last week:

@Bob's

@ Marty Peretz's The Spine: Here and here.

@ The Bitter Single Guy (a bit off the path usually beaten in my blog)

@ Solomonia: (about the moral authority of "asajew")

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And here a couple of curiosities sighted on the English-written Arab blogosphere:

@ Rowdy Saudi:

"The evil eye can also cause organic damage, like rashes, speech impediments and arthritis. These ailments are not curable by medical procedures, as they will reoccur like a demonic spore. The only way it can be removed is if the person whom originally gave the deadly gaze would spit on the victim (or the victim drink after the perpetrator, essentially, an exchange of bodily fluids must occur).

Many attribute their misfortune to the eye, losing in the stick market, a car braking one day after warranty expiration, or cake falling on their new carpet.

Overall, there would be some truth to this, but having the eye as a scapegoat for every misfortune is just an escape from reality. Just be careful if you have a bit of visual appeal, as beauty might end with the evil eye of the beholder."

Commenter on "Saudi Jeans" [Saudis will be able to buy handguns and other personal firearms
openly]

"its exactly all we need! education? infrastructure? valid income for when we run out of oil soon? who needs that!
know that saying: اللي تعرف ديتو، إقتلو+? taken pretty literally."

+ Translation found by googling: whoever you know their Diyah ["blood money"], kill them.

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*By "project" I mean family demands, weekly readings for a course I'm taking on the question of whether, why and how women think, trying to organize material I have assembled for a course I'm designing on friendship, and nursing a husband who has just lost his job...