The Zombielections Are Coming!

This whole US election campaign season has been nightmarish. Presidential candidates from the Black Lagoon, Ghoulish VP choices, Zombie Hordes chanting, “Yes, we can!” Makes me want to run and hide in the deepest, darkest mausoleum. Hopefully we’ll wake up on November 4th with our eyeballs still in our skulls and skin still on our faces!

(What? You were expecting serious discussion of the US elections on Halloween? And while I’m not even going to touch the Israeli elections, though the fodder is overripe, I will say that it should be clear by now that our PM is a member of the Undead. It’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” all over again.)

Geeky WP Halloween fun!

(via Matt)

In further news, the MarsPhoenix lander is holding a contest to pick its own epitaph. R.I.P.

Time again for WordCamp Israel

WordCampIsrael

WordCampIsrael 2008 is set for November 16 at ZOA House in Tel Aviv, less than a month away. Already there are over 260 WordPress users, aficionados and just plain curious people signed up. That’s me down at #206. Next to WordCamp Beijing, Israel is the next largest WordCamp to take place outside of the US. Yes, we Israelis love our Internets and WordPress. (It’s actually rather astonishing how many Israelis write plug-ins and the like for WordPress.)

Like last year, WordCamp will be a one-day, free event. The schedule hasn’t yet been published, so we don’t know who the speakers are, but looking at the list of attendees, it looks like Automattic’s Raanan Bar-Cohen will be there. (see update below) Exciting to see lots of familiar names, Gravatars as well as many fellow WordPress.COM bloggers, too.

(Have we sent a personal invitation to Automattic’s CBBQTT?)

WordCamp Israel will be one of the first WordCamps following the official release of WordPress 2.7, scheduled for November 10. (Guys, may your 5-minute installation/upgrade go smoothly and make sure those presentation screenshots are up to date!)

Why are you still here reading? If you’re in the neighborhood, go sign up!

UPDATE at midnight 23/10/2008: Well, there you have it. With almost 300 people signed up, registration is now Waiting List only. So if you’ve registered and find that you can’t make it, tell the organizers so some lucky person on the Waiting List will be able to go.

The nice discovery was finding at least 15 other WordPress.COM bloggers registered for WordCamp Israel! This doesn’t include COM bloggers that have mapped domains (i.e. whose blogs don’t end in wordpress.com) and there are at least 5 more Israeli COM bloggers I know who aren’t registered but probably would have if they’d known about it. Looking forward to meeting you on the 16th!

UPDATE 24/10/2008:Hanan Cohen has created an RSS feed aggregater for all the blogs that were listed on the WordCamp Attendees page.

UPDATE 30/10/2008: There are now nearly 370 bloggers registered for WordCampIsrael!   And the schedule is up as well (Hebrew only).

The Small Hadron Boobie Smasher

Yep, tomorrow’s the day. At 9 o’clock in the morning, unless the laws of the universe conspire to have a major fail, or the bus is late, I will appear at my health fund’s radiology unit for the annual smashing of the boobies. You may wish to avert your eyes or hurriedly acquire protective eyewear.

Listen, I can either choose to approach this subject with black humor or be deadly serious.  My mother’s younger sister was taken by juvenile leukemia while in her 70′s. My mother developed breast cancer in her 70′s (Me: “Mom, that lump is the size of a quail’s egg!” Mom (Minnesotan to the core): “Well, it doesn’t hurt!” If you’re wondering, my mom lived into her 80′s and died of complications due to pneumonia.) My other aunt, my mother’s other sister, developed breast cancer in her 70′s. Statistically speaking, things for me and mine aren’t looking too rosy. If you know me, then you’ll know I prefer black humor. But I digress…

Inevitably, once the smashing has been completed and I’ve sat sufficiently long in the waiting room watching the other fidgety women around me waiting for their turn at the boobie smasher, the interpreting doktor will emerge from a small office with a suitably grim look on his face, call me aside and say, “Now that we’ve smashed them, we need to smear cold gel on them (you may feel like you’ve been slimed) and run a sonic gun over them. Maybe later we’ll poke them with needles.” Just thinking about this will make the fibroid cysts in my breasts swell to the size of meatballs. That should be fun.  [At this point in my life, I can hardly wait for menopause for the cysts to finally disappear (fingers crossed).]

If I’m still standing after all this, I will compensate myself with a foray to my favorite yarn shop, which is conveniently located right across the street from the clinic. After all, I’m worth it.

If you haven’t yet done so this year, take a moment now, find the phone number of your health clinic or doktor and make an appointment to get your boobies smashed. Then call your girlfriends to do the same. They’ll thank you for it.

(Please click here to donate free breast exams for women who can’t afford them, and if you are in Israel, please click here to make your donation. )

Just Another Weekend in the WP.com Forums

The forum posts that inspired this have been deleted by Staff, but it doesn’t matter because tomorrow will bring more of the same. (I really must remember to take screen-shots.)

Some days it’s just better to laugh about it.

and a classic Monty Python sketch done in Lego

And here’s someone who’s taken spam and creatively turned it on its head. (via Drawn!)

UPDATE: “Highlighting The Best Moments Of The WP.com Forums“

Farmer’s Market

Last Friday morning at the height of pre-New Year’s holiday preparations, we decided to finally check out the once-a-week Farmer’s Market at Tel Aviv port. Tel Aviv already has a well-established and famous outdoor market, the Carmel Market (Shuk HaCarmel), which is filled with hawkers and gawkers morning to evening, Sunday through Friday (Sunday being a regular workday here in Israel). So the idea of a Farmer’s Market, in part supported by Israel’s “Slow Food” movement, was to me a little odd. What could possibly be different about this market, which my Israeli husband immediately dubbed “Shuk HaYuppie”? (Somehow I don’t think you need that translated.)

Fresssh Produce

Leeks

Asparagus

Dancing Camel

Fisherman’s Friend

Pomegranates

And More

Boardwalk

Aftermath