#fuck off dad israel does NOT have a right to exist

[corvidcaeneus]

me in high school: my parents are such liberals! ☺️☺️☺️☺️

me after october 7th 2023: my parents are such…liberals….

[quincyplushie]

I’m not trying to be particularly antagonistic to you, and I don’t know your situation, but I hope you understand that Israeli society is incredibly conservative in regards to gay and trans rights, and you should at least consider that before you make aliyah.

Tbh, what society isn't? It's sad that reality is like that, even my own country's society is extremely conservative towards that.

But also, I have done my research, and I found out that it's just society that it's like that, trans health care is an actual thing that is in there compared to my country, in which is a completely non-existant thing.

This doesn't change my mind in regards to doing it, I'm not even out of the closet irl or even I am visibly trans, and I still already struggle with different types of abuse, I recently had to cut off my dad because I realized how manipulative he is and how he forces me to treat him like a fucking toddler. My grandpa is financially, emotionally and even sometimes physically abusive, Chile's economy is absolutely going to hell because of corrupt politicians that don't care abt any citizen's good, getting a job here is nearly impossible which is the whole reason I DON'T have a job! The only people who are absolutely willing to help me are my uncles WHO LIVE IN ISRAEL and who have not been abusive to me and who even offered me to get a PLACE OF MY OWN TO BE FREE AND DO MY OWN THING.

Israel is NOT perfect, no country is, and I acknowledge this, and it does not change my mind.

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 6x02 -- The End of the Yips

Okay, just two more recaps before I’m caught up... 

ELI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

ELI MOTHERFUCKING GOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

There is truly no better way this episode could’ve started than Eli Gold in an elevator, swearing gleefully. Alan Cumming looks so excited to swear while in his Eli costume.  

There’s a whole exchange in Eli’s first scene about how he loves salty language but can’t use it around the Florrick kids, so it feels right to hear him finally swear.  

“You’ve never heard me swear before? Well, aren’t you in for a treat,” Eli says. I know this is cheesy fan service and you know what? I am a fan and I am serviced, thank you.  

Someone tosses a grenade into Eli’s elevator... he doesn’t care. He’s used to it by now and just screams, “yeah, that’ll really get people agreeing with your politics, asshole!” at whoever threw it. This grenade also says that “11/10 is coming.”  

The receptionist asks Eli his name, and he says “Rahm Emanuel” who was, of course, the inspiration for Eli. It must have been so satisfying for the writers to get to reintroduce Eli. 

Also... some of y’all have probably never gotten to see Eli before! For anyone who’s seen Fight and not Wife, this is his introduction! I think it’s a good one.  

Eli does not wait in reception as requested. Instead, he walks through the halls of the firm, where he can see (through the glass walls that continue to make no sense), Ri’Chard playing piano. Julius tries to send Eli back to reception; he fails.  

Eli notices a camera crew in Liz’s office. It’s apparently for a documentary about the top 5 black prosecutors. Feels like a trap. Anything about prosecutors being good, in this day and age, is probably something Liz wants to investigate before agreeing to, no?  

Eli asks Julius to put Marissa back on the case she fucked up last episode. Julius refuses, so Eli offers to second chair. I’ve always been under the impression that Eli is NOT a lawyer, but I guess it makes sense he’d have a law degree... and I guess if he’s a lawyer, it makes more sense that he was a partner at LG back in the day? This still feels like new information to me, though. 

Now we find out what the “Lila case” is about – a pop star being sued for not honoring her contract because she refused to play in Israel. Julius says it’s in the client’s hands if Eli can join the team and heads out. 

Julius stops him and notes that Marissa was there for him, so he wants to give Eli a little advice: Make sure Marissa wins. 

Then there’s a loud explosion and the scene ends. 

Diane, looking stunning in red, is just about to start her first Mind Trip session.  

This Liz-prosecutor documentary feels like a trap. Have you ever heard anyone use “Kamala” and “prosecutor” in the same sentence when the sentiment was POSITIVE? Sentences in Kamala’s autobiography do not count. Also, Liz should be able to get information about who’s financing this project and how likely it is to actually get picked up to a major streamer. Liz should be able to get that information from Del pretty easily, if Del still exists?  

Liz instantly likes the filmmaker, though, because the filmmaker is playing up being a member of Liz’s sorority (SGRho) 

“Well, my father’s reputation did open some doors,” Liz admits when the filmmaker asks her how her dad affected her career. No easy questions in this interview!  

“Was it difficult working as a prosecutor?” “Tell me what you mean?” “Convicting people your dad would’ve defended.” Liz should have shut this entire interview down then and there. That is not a good faith question.  

Liz does have a pretty good, bland answer to this question – but even if the interview has to continue, alarm bells should be going off already. 

Liz definitely picks up on the weirdness by question 3. And then she’s asked about one very specific case she doesn’t remember off the top of her head... weird. 

But we cut away to a Carmen and Ri’Chard scene. Ri’Chard offers Carmen a pie crust cookie. I have never heard of pie crust cookies, but I would now like to eat several of them.  

Ri’Chard says his mom made the cookies, for a folksy touch. I LOVE his style. It’s kinda garish, but it’s also so interesting... and I love that he changes up his glasses depending on what else he’s wearing. 

Ri’Chard starts with the Jesus stuff again, which either makes Carmen uncomfortable or makes Carmen think hard about how she wants to approach her interactions with Ri’Chard; probably a little bit of both. He’s gotta stop this stuff in the workplace!  

Ri’Chard tells his rags-to-riches origin story. A man saw him studying at the library one day and offered him a paralegal job because he could tell Ri’Chard would make him a million dollars. The moral of the story is that Carmen is also a promising young person, and now Carmen will make Ri’Chard a lot of money. 

Carmen is, in fact, already making Ri’Chard a lot of money – more than any other associate and more than 90% of the partners. Ri’Chard notices Carmen’s not being treated like she makes that much money, though, and he wants to change that. He wants to give her her own office on the partner floor and a team of third-year associates.  

(One thing that’s weird about having only a few named characters in a large workplace – does Carmen KNOW these nameless third-years? Or are they new?) 

The third year associates will grab Carmen’s laundry if she so desires. And Marissa’s complaining about having to do paperwork as a first-year?!  

Ri’Chard expects Carmen to make $20 million in year one. That’s... that’s a lot. Isn't that like, close to ChumHum money?  

Carmen won’t accept the associates. She says she doesn’t like having people work for her and she doesn’t like having to explain herself – but she’ll keep the office. She just doesn’t want the attention. 

“Carmen, no one wants the attention, but Jesus marks some of us for greater things,” Ri’Chard says. Jesus marked Carmen to defend drug dealers so a bunch of rich people could get richer? Sure.  

“Oh, by the way, do you and Liz not get along?” Ri’Chard asks casually as he’s wrapping up his meeting with Carmen. If the writers are trying to show me that Ri’Chard is exceptionally talented at sizing up a new environment and figuring out how to manage it... they are succeeding. I don’t know what his angle is, but I already respect his strategic mind.  

Ri’Chard awkwardly takes over as Carmen’s mentor, which neither Carmen nor Liz want.  

Grenade update: All the buildings on the street are getting them and they’re counting down to some “last protest” on 11/10.  

Liz says they should up security. I repeat that they need to consider letting people WFH. 

Liz asks Jay to look into the filmmaker. You’d think she’d have done this before sitting down in front of a camera, but better late than never. We wouldn’t have this plot if Liz had done her research first. (This is honestly, probably the reason behind 99% of the little things I complain about, and I know that. I don’t love it, but I can acknowledge it.)  

Jay, in turn, asks Liz why Eli Gold is in the office. That’s news to Liz, who is not thrilled to deal with yet another chaotic thing in her life. 

Eli and Marissa reunite (though I’m sure for them it’s just another day). I swear, I can see the actors looking excited to see each other. I absolutely love that Marissa started off on TGW as Eli’s Sassy Teen Daughter and now she’s a series regular on a different show? Like??? That’s just the most Kings move ever. Always recognizing greatness and building on what works.  

Eli says that Julius made it a condition that Eli second chair. Sure. Marissa doesn’t buy it.  

Alan’s delivery on “It’s what a father does. Or so I’ve read.” is perfect – the only issue is that he looks too happy to be saying it, but please see my earlier point about effective fan service.  

Diane wakes up from her first PT-108 treatment and she’s very blissed out. She takes John Slattery (I have not yet remembered the character’s name and have not yet come up with a pet name for him... any ideas? Dr. 108? Should I go full on Grey’s Anatomy and refer to him as McDreamy since he’s obviously a love interest? (Please note I have seen exactly one episode of Grey’s Anatomy and it was the ghost sex episode. I’ve also seen the scene set to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, for some reason.)… 

Anyway, she takes John Slattery’s hand and, yeah, there is a 0% chance this isn’t meant to have a sexual undertone.  

I could’ve waited to make that point until the plastic elf on the Ficus with an erection. Damn, missed my moment.  

Can I call him Lyle because Diane does and it’s shorter than Bettencourt and I know how to spell it without googling?  

Diane describing her trip is about a thousand times more interesting than watching a trip, but I am not the type to care about most dream sequences and I am ESPECIALLY not the type to care about drug trip sequences.  

Diane takes a sunflower out of a vase on Lyle’s desk and starts stroking it as she describes her trip. This show is so weird. I don’t have many thoughts on the specifics of the drug trip, but I’m mesmerized by the acting.  

The word “erotic” has entered the conversation, in case it wasn’t obvious enough (see: elves).  

Oh my god it’s too funny that Diane mentions "Something's Coming” to Lyle. This might only amuse me, but “Something’s Coming” is the name of the Desperate Housewives where John Slattery’s character is killed when a tornado hits and a very bad CGI fence post impales him.  

In the elevator on the way out of Lyle’s office, Diane sings Something’s Coming quietly to herself. I suppose it makes sense that Diane knows her Sondheim. I kind of just assume every person of her generation and social class has an extensive knowledge of literature and theater. I know that can’t be true, and I know that perception is likely shaped in large part by how much TGW influenced my worldview, but I believe it anyway. 

Diane is so high she isn’t fazed by a literal explosion. Speaking of literal explosions, credits! 

While I’m thinking about Desperate Housewives and its disaster episodes, here’s a “fun” story. When I was coming back from vacation, the plane had TVs and I decided I’d watch Into the Woods because I’m hoping to see the revival while it’s still on Broadway but I’d never seen the musical. I thought Into the Woods would be the perfect plane movie because I didn’t really care if I had shit audio quality to hear, like, James Corden singing (why is he in so many movie musicals, pls tell me) and it probably wouldn’t include anything about planes or plane crashes and terrify me while I was flying. I WAS WRONG. To be fair, there are zero planes in the movie. The problem is that the title of the season 6 disaster episode of Desperate Housewives is “Boom Crunch.” That episode features a plane crash. “Boom Crunch,” as I learned while ON A PLANE, is a lyric from Into the Woods. Fun times. 

Lila is a pop star who seems sweet but not particularly bright. Or particularly knowledgeable about Israel. (Eli’s face when she says “conditions in the Gaza” lol)  

Neither Eli nor Marissa can help but be unprofessional here.  

Gonna just... not talk about the case. I don’t have any hot takes here. My main thought on the case is that it seems like an excuse for the Kings to say something about Israel and there is a lot of strategy switching/court stuff that doesn’t really make sense coming up. 

Today in pop culture references the writers probably did not think someone my age would pick up on (but I did!): the use of a cover of The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song played over protests for a healthy dose of irony.  

Diane, all in red, walking with a sunflower and sunglasses, through a line of policemen, makes absolutely no sense but it looks pretty cool.  

The address of the firm is 840 N Dearborn. Alicia also supposedly lived on Dearborn. Are the writers aware of other streets? Or that this address is a residential street?  

There’s supposed to be something here about the convo Eli and the client just had about having to show ID and Diane showing her ID to bypass the protests, isn’t there? I don’t really care to know. 

Diane greets Ri’Chard, who is also hanging by the protests for reasons we’re just not gonna think about too hard, with a big hug. She then gives him her sunflower in exchange for a smoothie.  

Ri’Chard was expecting Diane to be more formal. She usually is! It’s very fun to see this side of Diane. 

Ri’Chard asks if Liz is trying to team up with Diane against him. OBVIOUSLY yes, why would Liz want to go from having 100% of the decision-making power to 0%? (I suppose you could argue – and would probably be right to argue – that Ri’Chard’s presence proves Liz never actually had any power at all!) 

Ri’Chard says he’s there to rebuild Carl Reddick’s legacy. I can’t remember if it got publicly destroyed or not – I think yes? They act like it’s whichever is convenient for the plot. This gets Diane to start laughing, because, as she says, “I just realized that I just may have the most power because I don’t have any power.” I don’t think she’s wrong. If all power gets you is the illusion of control and a lot of expectations... Diane’s in a pretty good spot, no?  

Like, if Liz never even had power over her firm, what’s the point of being a name partner at a firm within STR Laurie? Is everything meaningless?  

Diane says she was never good at math. Sure. I bet she’s better than she thinks.  

Eli and Marissa are rehearsing in court and Eli is blowing spitballs at Marissa? This is fun!  

Eli is harsh but not wrong. “Oh my God, is this what my childhood was like?” Marissa quips. “No. Because I was never home,” Eli replies. I have missed him. 

Jay discovers that the obvious setup documentary is an obvious setup. Basically, Liz was involved in a case, and the case is important not because of anything that happened, but because 1) the trial was recording (good for documentaries!) and 2) a cop who was later convicted of other, unrelated corruption charges was involved. Sneaky. 

Old footage of pregnant Liz! Love it!  

“I was tougher then. I sounded tougher,” Liz observes. Oooooh, can I think of this plot as Liz not being in her element? Liz is good at the lawyering part of her job, but maybe management’s made her too eager to please? (She blames her pregnancy, though.)  

Jay warns Liz that if she continues with the documentary, the filmmaker can edit her however she wants. Good point. Which is why you do this research before you sit down for an interview.  

Case stuff happens. Here is where I have to nitpick. Eli thinks he’s being so brilliant for not bringing politics into it, yet he’s undercut by some... tweets his own client wrote that are directly relevant? This from the man who solved the mystery of @Upriser7 OVER A FUCKING DECADE ago? Okay sure.  

Diane got home and exchanged her red dress for a red silky nightgown. Respect.  

Diane video calls Kurt and puts on her sultry voice. She seems to think a cartoon lip filter is sexy, and let me tell you, it is not.  

Diane is the host of the meeting, so she can put dumb filters on Kurt, too. Do you ever think about how it’s someone’s job to develop the silliest filters they can think of just to amuse people for a few seconds?  

Diane transforms Kurt into a cowboy and herself into a sheep. Okay! She demands that Kurt come home right now, but he has to hop onto another call. 

Diane, in response, stares at and then sniffs Dr. Bettencourt’s business card (it’s scented; she notes this in an earlier scene). And then there’s a... I don’t have a description for it other than “stock footage orgasm montage”?  

Then Diane looks up at the ceiling and says “There you are.” Later scenes, I think, imply that she’s talking to her mom here (thank GOD she’s not talking to Ruth Bader Ginsburg again because I would’ve lost it). Weird thing to think about after the aforementioned stock footage orgasm montage. Something something Freud?  

Case stuff happens.  

Liz brings Julius into the documentary shenanigans, saying it’s firm policy to have a lawyer present. Julius is pretty aggressive with his questions. The filmmaker says some bullshit about how she intended for it to be an uplifting documentary and instead now it’s about prosecutorial misconduct. She’s realized she’s lost, so she’s changing her strategy by pitching this as Liz’s one chance to defend herself.  

Liz responds by giving the filmmaker a death glare.  

Diane is sad because her sunflower is dead. She remembers for a second that she’s at work, but picks up Bettencourt’s business card instead, then some birds crash into her window, then suddenly Eli is there just to say hi!  

I love how pleased Diane looks to see Eli!  

Eli immediately wants to know why Diane is downstairs lol he can’t turn it off for a minute.  

“And I hear Peter Florrick’s back in jail?” Diane says. LOL I DID NOT NEED THIS BUT OKAY. On the one hand, I don’t think Peter’s a bad guy and I’m not sure that I believe he was corrupt enough to commit an actual crime. I don’t like it when the show tries to suggest that Peter is some sort of evil villain – and yes, I know there are enough pieces of evidence to make a case for Peter being an evil villain; I have hated every single one of them and never felt that any of them were in keeping with literally anything else the show was doing. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s that serious. First and most importantly, the Kings have made it very clear over time that guilt in court is not the same as actual guilt, so this doesn’t necessarily have to be a comment on Peter’s guilt or innocence. (Relatedly, they’ve also made it clear that once you’re on a downward trend, you’re an easy mark.) Second, the Kings explained this choice by basically saying that it’s funny because a lot of former Illinois governors have gone to prison, which sounds completely abstracted from anything having to do with Peter Florrick the character. Third, I do quite like the theory (though I don’t believe it) that this is their way of addressing Chris Noth’s shitty behavior. 

“And Alicia?” Diane asks, even though there is a 0% chance she was unaware of what Alicia’s up to prior to this moment. “Oh, she’s still in the law. She started her own firm in New York. It’s doing well,” Eli responds. I don’t really care one way or another about this update. It’s the most basic, least interesting update they could’ve given -- “started her own firm in New York” is just a version of the “New York office” line TGW always used to use to explain character absences. The only reason Alicia moved to New York in this update is that... she can’t be in Chicago or she’d be on the show. Alicia starting her own firm and remaining in the law is the simplest path forward after the finale, and while I believe she’d move and rebuild... I don’t have much to say about this. I could analyze this and talk about how it’s interesting that after two years of searching for a new path, Alicia just ended up taking the path of least resistance, but that is entirely too much to read into this line.  

I miss Alicia. 

Diane and Alicia are no longer in touch. That’s obvious. I’m a little surprised Eli doesn’t know this part of the story since, like, he was at Peter’s trial.  

And now here’s the part of this scene that’s actually interesting – Diane realizes that it’s the anniversary of her mother’s death.  

She also looks up at the ceiling in the middle of talking about her mom, which is why I said earlier that the “there you are” line might’ve been about her mom.  

Diane says she’s trying to see her life from another perspective and she thinks she’s seeing it. How long does this drug trip last!? 

Diane says her life looks small and Eli nopes out of the conversation immediately. Diane thinking her life looks small just tells me that everyone occasionally thinks their life is too small.  

Case stuff happens.  

Oooh it’s a workplace bickering scene!  

I don’t know why this associate thinks it’s appropriate (or helpful, or strategic, or meaningful) to ask Marissa if she can take over the case once Marissa is off of it. Like Marissa would have a say in that decision?  

It’s very funny to me that in this episode about fathers and daughters, they chose to give this bit to Michael Boatman’s daughter. 

“Julius said that your Judge Wackner stuff put you in a bad position with the firm,” Eli says. Did it now? I like the continuity but they could have simply not hired her as a first-year associate if that was the case! They’re apparently looking for an excuse to dump her. Was the Wackner stuff NOT an excuse? This makes very little sense to me.  

And who is “the firm” here? Is it Marissa’s colleagues? It’s definitely not Diane. Is it Liz, who dated the guy who gave Wackner a TV show? Is it STR Laurie, who could absolutely come up with some reason to fire Marissa? I don’t understand. 

Especially if this is Marissa’s first week? And STR Laurie, if they really wanted her out, would have just fired her for the first fuck-up before Marissa could even call her dad?  

I completely understand saying things are really hard at the end of week one when under this much stress, but this scene with Marissa crying because things went wrong just reminds me how entitled Marissa can be. Did she think this would just be easy?  

Eli gives Marissa the advice that “life is hard because people are assholes,” which he says he also told her in third grade. In a weird way, that explains the entitlement. If you grow up being told the problem is always other people, of course you’ll think you’re always right. 

Julius demands to know what evidence the filmmaker has. She says she has “the friendship bracelet” as though it was the key to the case and not a trivial detail.  

One of Liz’s former colleagues said something to the filmmaker that looked bad for Liz. He’s apologetic about it, seems like it was a bad edit. Liz asks him for the case file.  

Case stuff happens.  

Hey, a mention of Liz’s ex-husband! Liz starts worrying that maybe she did a bad job and ignored a corrupt cop because it would’ve interfered with her case.  

Lila only has 3.2 million followers. That’s 1 million fewer followers than Charli XCX, if that helps with a sense of scale.  

Liz continues with the interview. “Deandra, what are you doing?” Liz asks mid-interview. “I’m trying to find the truth,” the filmmaker responds. “No you’re not. You’re not. Because if the truth really mattered to you, you wouldn’t have lied to me when you first got here, calling me a role model and using our sorority sisterhood bonds so that you could get me to lower my guard so that you could do to me what they’ve been doing to Kamala.” 

The filmmaker continues to act innocent; Liz interrupts her. “You are not here for justice. You’re here about entertainment, and you know how I know? Because we’re not even talking about Officer Tenny and whether he lied, because you’re so fixated on a fucking friendship bracelet that was found 50 feet from the crime scene, even though there was a mountain of evidence right at the suspect’s feet. Why? Because it’s visual. Because you want the audience to think that you found something that everybody else overlooked. So congratulations. You found QAnon.” Liz is the best. Amazing takedown of True Crime TikTok here.  It truly is just a giant conspiracy theory.  

I could rant about this for days. Misinformation on TikTok is so rampant. I know this documentary isn’t for TikTok, but it might as well be.  

There is more to this takedown; it’s delicious but not worth transcribing.  

Liz gives the filmmaker the case file so she can see for herself that there was no wrongful conviction. A risky strategy. 

Liz channels her anger and storms into Ri’Chard’s office. “Don’t steal from me,” she demands. He pretends not to know what she’s talking about. She’s talking about mentoring Carmen. Ri’Chard says he was just trying to be helpful, since Liz and Carmen don’t seem to like each other much. 

“I work with a lot of people that I don’t necessarily care for. Back off,” Liz says, not even denying his claim. Ri’Chard says he’ll back off.  

“You know, we need to figure out how we’re gonna work together,” Liz says. Ri’Chard seems open to this, but is he?  

Liz then notices the pie crust cookies on Ri’Chard’s desk and notes that her mom used to make them, too. She takes one, stares at Ri’Chard, bites into the cookie, and then starts shaking her head. She accuses him of trying to pass off store-bought cookies as homemade. 

Ri’Chard then asks his posse of associates (or whoever these people are) to leave the room. He asks Liz how they can work together; she says they need to be truthful, meaning that he shouldn’t treat her like an idiot. Fair point. 

Ri’Chard agrees, but Liz isn’t done yet. She knows she hasn’t fully won yet. Ri’Chard then initiates a prayer, which Liz eagerly leads. She includes a prayer for Ri’Chard to know his place and see that she’s not the enemy.  

Post-prayer, she throws away the rest of the cookie and says, “Now don’t fuck with me” before leaving. Ri’Chard puts the whole tin of cookies in the trash, which I assume is an acknowledgement that Liz was correct in calling them store-bought. 

Love this scene, don’t get this dynamic yet. Liz gains nothing from being polite, so she may as well show Ri’Chard she can play his silly game.  

Case stuff happens. Eli and Marissa lose, but the client ends up happy. 

And then we get the real reason Eli is back: he’s in legal trouble and wants Marissa to join his legal team so that she can’t be subpoenaed. Sounds about right!  

Marissa, understandably, gets upset, because it seems like the only reason her dad even bothered to show up was because he needed a favor.  

Liz recounts her interactions with the filmmaker to Diane, which is a touch I love – they're just talking about their days! Diane even has her shoes off! They are actually friends!  

Then Diane starts acting a little weird and Liz asks if she’s alright. “My mother died at my age,” she responds. “Well, then, she died young,” Liz says. “I’d forgotten she was my age until this morning, and now I can’t get the thought out of my head. No one said she died young,” Diane remarks.  

Liz keeps trying to comfort her. It doesn’t totally work.  

I feel like this is the most the show’s talked about death outside of, like, those certain season 5 TGW episodes. Combined with the violence in the air, this is creating a very eerie, unsettling vibe for season 6. 

Then Diane starts levitating. Why not!? (She has her shoes on now—when did she put them back on?)  

I’ve now seen episodes 3 and 4 (I was almost done writing this when 4 aired). I cannot wait to write about episode 4.  

[pro-bee]

While we’re on the subject of “Family First” (lol were we?), watching it now for the first time since “She”/”Daughters”/Season 17, with part of the pain dulled knowing that the ship was righted, as it were, and that everyone is now safe and sound and together at last--

What is really striking, when you unpack the unbearable grief of it all, is just how palpable Tony’s love of Ziva is throughout the whole episode. 

From the moment in the previous episode that they figure out that Ziva is on Jacob Scott’s hit list, to the last scene in FF where Tony makes his exit forever, you see just how unbreakable that bond is.

At this point in the series, he hasn’t talked to Ziva in almost three years, has had no indication from her that she wants any contact, has ostensibly tried to “move on” for his own sake (even though it took him actual years to get to that point). But the second he realizes Ziva is in danger, he’s vaulted right back into her orbit. The guy who’s gone to the ends of the earth for her (twice) rears his head, and nothing is going to get in his way. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t heard from her in years, could believe she wants nothing to do with him, could be protected by people closer to home. When he knows she might be in trouble, he’s the wild card.

[cut because this got waaaaay long]

And it’s even more revealing, because this isn’t like season 10, where they had a rift over Adam, but were still forced to be together and deal with their shit, as ugly as it was. So even if he was angry with her, it was still easy to tell Parsons that Ziva was his best friend and he would protect her at all costs, even when she hurt him. By season 13, they really may as well have been on different planets. We know he loved her, loves her, will always love her, but he’d resigned himself to the fact that she was gone and wasn’t coming back, and he was going to have to figure out a way to live without her. He wasn’t happy about it, and wasn’t doing a good job about it because even when he tried dating again, it was obvious how goddamn lonely he was. He didn’t make sense without her. And while he was trying his best to grow as a person and help himself heal, which was admirable, he was on his way to living with a wounded heart for the rest of his life. 

But then they see her name on that screen, and it’s like no time has passed, and they’re back on a mission to save her from the boogeyman yet again. Then Trent Kort comes in and pushes all the right buttons with the “girlfriend” crack, because he knows them, too, and again, it’s like we’ve been launched back into season 9-10, even without her physically there. 

It’s everything. From the way he goes after Kort in the bullpen (and no one tries to stop him) when he thinks he’s willfully putting Ziva’s life in danger (I mean, good call, Tony), to the way the pin drops at the end of “Dead Letter” when he sees the news about the fire at her farmhouse on TV and you see his vision tunnelling. From the way he says, “If that’s Ziva, I’ve gotta go” like nothing else exists in that moment, to the way Gibbs is already ahead of them and pushing him to go, and McGee already has his plane ticket ready for him because they know there isn’t a force in the world that’s going to stop Tony from going after Ziva. How he’s antsy at the apartment, packing for a trip that must feel way too familiar like he’s been thrown back three years, but can’t shake the feeling that she’s still out there, somewhere, because she always is. And when McGee and Abby break the news to him that she’s gone, his whole world shatters. And not in the big, dramatic breakdown (which comes next), but in the absolute shock that takes over his body that his worst nightmare is coming true.

Of course, there’s the “All hands on deck” scene, which wrecked us all, and is still probably one of the best moments of acting of Michael Weatherly’s career. (I go back and forth of my favourite moment of his being that scene or the orchard scene in PPF.) It’s not just the visceral pain of it all, the anger and the anguish. It’s that it’s so, so raw and primordial. Tony is running on pure id, all emotion and no rational thought at that moment. He’s drowning and he doesn’t want to come up; he wants to go down and be swallowed whole. You can see the absolute fear all over his face and in his whole body. This is his worst nightmare, has always been his worst nightmare since she came into his life. Somewhere you have to think that in the last three years, part of him has always worried that something would happen to her and he wouldn’t be there to help, or even worse, wouldn’t know about it until it was too late, and that has finally come to pass.

Tony isn’t a guy who loses control very often; he acts like a playboy or a class clown, but even that is often an act to hide who he really is. He keeps his emotions tightly wound, which is why the brief flashes we get occasionally (for instance, when he calls Ziva out on Adam) hit so hard, because he doesn’t usually get his feelings get the best of him, good or bad. But this scene throws that all out the window; Ziva is the one thing that makes him lose control, makes him follow his heart instead of lock it up tight. And the idea that she is gone forever unleashes every one of those feelings he’s repressed his entire life into the abyss. 

It’s in the way he slams his fists on his desk because he hurts and it’s in his warpath. it’s the way his eyes are absolutely wild like they’ve never been, unfocused and unhinged. It’s the way he will yell at anyone in the vicinity because every ounce of pain is begging to escape from his chest. It’s the way his voice hitches when he gets brought back down to earth, because the anguish constantly wrestles with the anger. And this time, I noticed that once Senior shows up and tells him to come home to catch his bearings, just for one night, he subtly shakes his head, almost like a child, because he cannot, absolutely cannot, believe what he is hearing. And going home, alone, is only going to bring it home that this is very, very real. It’s masterful. (Makes me wish MW had gotten more meat like this during his tenure on the show, because boy, can he bring it, when given the chance.)

Then, of course, there’s the Tali reveal, which is a while other post -- it’s bullshit and we all know it, but it happened and all’s well that ends well, now -- and again, we get all these subtle glimpses into their relationship, even through other people. The way nobody doubts that if Ziva had a daughter it could be anyone’s but Tony’s, because, of course they would have a baby. And it may be three years, but Tony knows Ziva and he knows that whatever they had, it was real, which is why he doesn’t doubt for a second that Tali is his. (I resent the fact that I have to write this sentence out because IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THIS WAY SHOW but it is what it is) It’s been years, and if he’s moved on then maybe she has too, but he realizes how old she is and how the dates line up and he knows how Tali came to be. They may be fucked up, but they had something that summer and that fall and it was theirs alone.

There’s only a slight tinge of anger when he finds out; I’m sure there was a lot more of it later on, when the dust settled and the shock wore off. But his first reaction isn’t to lash out: his first reaction is to embrace Tali and devote himself to her wholeheartedly. (The first scene of them together after he introduction is the two of them playing like they’ve known each other her whole life. They could have played up the awkward new dad route until the photo scene, but instead kid-phobic Tony instantly bonded with Tali.) Even if Tali weren’t his, she was absolutely Ziva’s, and that alone would have been enough for him to love her and want to protect her. The fact that she was theirs, that made them two halves of a whole.

From that moment on, Tony no longer keeps his Ziva feelings inside anymore. To be fair, he’d actually been pretty open about them ever since he came back from Israel in season 11, from his discussion with Gibbs about feeling like he made the wrong choice coming back (only it wasn’t him who made the choice), to the one with Abby about missing Ziva but needing to move on, to every little moment in between where he refers to his healing and his terrible year without her and how he feels restless (the subtext meaning, without her). But whatever tenuous lock was on his Ziva-fault, her loss breaks it open, and every feeling bubbles to the surface. 

We see the unbearable grief at her death (or, “death” -- THANK YOU SEASON 16), absolutely played like that of a lover and not just a friend. (See the different reactions of McGee or Jimmy or Ducky or Abby, compared to Tony’s.) The shock and betrayal of finding out he’s a father and had no chance to be one, but still seeing the importance of stepping up and almost relief because at least he still has part of her to hold onto. The way he smells her scarf, an act of such intimacy you almost feel like a voyeur watching him breathe her in. The way he slowly comes to terms with it when he’s with McGee -- the reality setting in and the doubts creeping in about why Ziva kept Tali from him, how maybe she didn’t fully trust him, but that doesn’t matter, because he loved her. Goddamn, did he love her. McGee may be shocked about what Tony and Ziva were getting up to after hours, but one thing he does know is that they absolutely loved each other.

We see it in how tender he is with Tali; Tony is a good man and would do right by any orphaned child who needed protection in a scary time, but knowing Tali is his daughter and Ziva’s daughter makes her the most precious thing in the world to him from the get-go. From the moment he meets her, you can see that he vows to take care of her the way Ziva would have wanted. Because he loves her and while he just met Tali, he knows instantly that he loves her, too. And loving Tali is how her can honour his love of Ziva.

I absolutely hate the scene where they take down Trent Kort. I will always hate it. I may hate Trent Kort, but I hate unnecessary use of force even more, and always have, and this has always been a scene that horrifies me. That being said, the important part of it is when he declares that “[ZIva] was my family.” It’s important that he says it to Kort, because Kort has always needled both he and Ziva about their relationship since his first appearance, and he used that against Tony in the previous episode. He needed Kort to see just what he destroyed by (supposedly) killing her, that this was not at all a professional beef that was about to go down, but absolutely a personal one. 

And it’s finally an admission of what he and Ziva were to each other. They weren’t just colleagues, or partners, or even friends (although they were all of those things and they were all important). They were family; they became intertwined in a way that made them inextricable from each other. Season 10 showed us this in spades, and “PPF,” while a punch in the gut, was basically an hour-long tribute to it. (As much as I hate how Ziva left, the orchard scene and the tarmac scene are two of the most beautiful scenes of their relationship. They are acts of devotion.) They were everything to each other, and all Tali did was become a representation of it. Becoming parents didn’t make them a family, it only entrenched it. They were each other’s family long before that. By the time Abby implores him to understand, he’s realized that in his own way, he did know. It just got lost for awhile.

In a way, “Family First” is a bookend to “Past, Present and Future,” albeit not necessarily in the way want. In PPF, Tony was so desperate to commit to Ziva, to make a home with her and love her the way he knew was ready for, to make a life with her, but she wasn’t ready, and that was the tragedy of it all. In FF, he does finally get to make that commitment to her, by way of Tali. Like he tells Gibbs, he’s now everything to her, and by doing so he’s finally everything to Ziva, too. It’s all backwards, of course, but Tali is everything he wanted in that orchard: she is their family. All those moments where he doubted whether he made the right choice, whether he should go back and ask Ziva to give them another chance, if staying would have made them happier-- ultimately, Tali makes that choice for them, and he does go back to find their home. It’s not in the way he, or any of us, wanted, but she is his answer. And he knows how much Ziva loved Tali, and that must tell him that somewhere, she loved him, too. And while the weight of his grief must press on him like a boulder, another weight that had been on his shoulders since PPF lifts, because he knows, finally, that he is loved.

Of course, the infuriating thing is that it took MW’s exit for the show to finally acknowledge it. And it took them killing off Ziva for them to get ready to show it. I can’t help but think how much the show would have benefitted if they’d leaned into these feelings and developments years earlier, how much richer the story would have been, how many amazing performances we could have witnessed, when every dangerous situation would have even deeper layers by virtue of the added weight of Ziva and Tony’s love for each other. I’m not talking about them making out all the time (although I wouldn’t say no ngl), but every dangerous situation, every life-threatening mission, every near-miss or serious injury to unfold-- we could have gotten some grade-A performances from these actors. Imagine even a fraction of MW’s range in the “all hands on deck” scene in a situation where Ziva’s life is threatened? Imagine Ziva’s barely-contained rage if someone harmed Tony? Imagine episode codas where we get those quiet moments of love as an antidote to whatever horror happened in the case, how much the characters could expand from acknowledging the love and support they have, instead of dancing around the word?

So, in conclusion, it sucks that this is how we had to see it, but if they had to make MW’s final episode all about Ziva, I’m glad they at least acknowledged the elephant in the room, which was that Tony was hopelessly in love with Ziva and had been for ages, even when they were oceans apart. We saw the beginning of it in PPF where he begged her to come home, where she told him he was loved-- but finally we saw the words out of his mouth, not that we needed them. But what I’m saying is that the show finally let Tony say those words out loud, voice the emotions he was feeling and lay them out in the open for everyone to see. 

Luckily, now, we can watch the episode through a different lens. It still hurts, because this was not the way it should have been. There was no way Ziva should have been pregnant and alone and raised Tony’s child without him for nearly three years, and there was no way Tony should have been deprived of that and only found out after she died. But now we know that the show basically wrote its own fix-it fic on itself to try to salvage some of this story, and I’m grateful. None of this is the way we wanted it, but on the other hand, they could have let it be. They could have doubled-down on it and made her really, really dead and have Tony move on without her. Instead, it’s canon that they love each other and are finally together for their happy ever after, so I’ll take what I can get.

Because Tony really loves Ziva, and Ziva really loves Tony, and that is the thread that holds this whole thing together.

[dayna-scully]

ncis/tiva s6 lb

season 3  |  season 4   |  season 5  |  season 7   |  season 8  |  season 9  |  season 10  |  etc

6x01

je peux pas resister

heeey it’s the Australian again

love child is a really sweet show, but he’s a dick in it

oh I guess Palmer and lee broke up

they’re not your a-team though, gibbs

wow over 4 months

ziva, always getting hurt

math gibberish

oh so pine gap really exists?

stuck with Bad Dad

we miss you, ziver

even, uh, tony

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

(especially tony)

oh I forgot about rivkin cool cool cool cool cool cool

dudnt

you are a geek, offbrand mcgee

I also always forget that ncis is a jag spin off

gibbs, retrieving his ducklings

I really need to come home, boss

you know I love you guys

miss you too dad

😖😖😖😖💔💔💔💔

oh lee

ziva!!!!! ziva!!!!!!!!!!!

he says Abby’s his favourite but let’s be honest

6x02

the origin of my otp tag for tiva

I wish michael weatherly wasn’t such a piece of shit irl

ziva staring at Tony’s empty desk

“all those who care about him” like you, ziva???

the favourite wants to talk to her boyfriend, dad

taller? hotter?/older

you could have called

she would have answered, dinozzo

totally normal platonic professional work behaviour to have multiple pictures of your work partner in a bikini on your wall in your bunk yep

what are those doing on your wall?

gibbs knows what they’re doing there

you get used to seeing someone everyday, talking to them, relying on them, and suddenly they’re not there

(terrible screen shot since they were moving too much but personal space jeez)

doesn’t make it any easier for mcgee

yes, sure, “mcgee”, you two are alone tony, you can say that you missed seeing her every day to her face

y’know, the face that you missed seeing every day

a dwinkaquink

you’re back in dc, which is what you wanted! Isn’t it?

that’s not what I asked

Michael Rivkin happened in Israel

you’re right, I don’t want to talk about it

lotta things take mcgee seconds

Michael who?

seems like old times

home

she loooves him

and still always has to be beside him

6x03

excuse me????????????????

you are such a control geek

hmm ziva feels really violated by Tony’s nosiness

tony…does not seem to get it

McGee found it with his butt

isn’t that just Jenny’s house redecorated

6x04

the same back alley they use every time, too

and other mouth related activities

who’s this tony?

gibbs’ son and ziva’s boyfriend

oh gibbs

6x05

tony is upset that she’s going back to Israel and also that he didn’t know

I am normal people

she got the bothersome part right

normal

me whenever tony and ziva do what tony and ziva always do

what is it you really want to know, tony?

thought you already mcdid that

or maybe his friends lied to him about a romantic attachment

?????? what tony

you would only care this much if you were jealous

nosy dinozzo

rivkin 😡

my ninja

?????????

god damn tony

he’s promoting me to head monkey

why are you showing me mould porn?

tony has a cruuuush

6x06

tony is going to make so many jokes

you certainly have your moments

he has his moments

lets see who the boss likes better/ziva

I told you she was his favourite

no personal space

wasn’t my type though/really? She was breathing

I have standards, ziva, otherwise I’d be dating you

suuuuuuure tony sure

6x07

ziva’s jealous of the recruit

your weird uncle jethro

a baby agent

ziver

6x08

oh come on seriously

same z

don’t say the word war game

well that did not go as planned

she’d kill all of them with her bare hands to get tony back

we never have to pay for a drink again

OH ELEVATOR

she’d kill to protect him

I’m tired of pretending/so am I

oh ziva

oh. That’s much worse.

tony knows it’s a part of the plan

McGee evidently doesn’t

circling sharks

6x09

tony knows about a very private tattoo 👀👀👀

they really like killing off women

6x10

that dude is 23?

this is less “you’re a lech” and more “please love me”

I always thought cougars like young guys

get dunked dinozzo

eat the rich

I like to have fun in more…adult ways

wanna go on a movie date, ziva?

6x11

oof mcgoo

6x12

her name is Hannah, she’s asked me out to lunch twice

that face says that ziva did accept

6x14

that’s actually pretty cruel

but like…McGee…likes tony

haven’t I taught you anything?

that amount of zoom is literally not possible

you cannot make pixels where there are none

why not just ghost him?

siblingsss

6x15

I miss s4 mature tony

ngl ziva shooting is pretty hot

there is a smurf war

la Bonita

they always have to be within three feet of each other

nice talking to ya Leon

too bad there aren’t little gibblets running around

6x16

😟are you going back to Mexico

we’ve just never heard you say that much at once

tfw you make your dad proud

6x17

don’t trust people who offer help in a case

oooh a hit man

6x18

it’s not likely he was shot by a bird

maybe you should be looking for something a little closer to home

yes, approximately 8 feet from your desk, z

but he’s fucking ancient

“pick the right woman” ye ye ye ye ye ye ye ye ye ye ye ye ye

6x19

what are you up to mcsneaky

little sister can’t tell them what to do

poor trash panda

6x20

damn girl

fuckin cowboy move

you’re the real victim here, aren’t you wall

6x21

all she can think about is tony when he’s not around

6x22

ugh backdoor pilot

Tele-friend from tel Aviv?/you’re jealous

yes, he has a name

why does that bother me so much

cover for me?

go? gone.

ahh, personal, not professional

the duck man is on the right track!!

I’m thinking she’s worried about something

oh tony

how did he not know about what happened?

Special Investigation, top Secret

a real lead? I mean, really, a lead?

angry, scared tony

ziva lied to someone she loved, but this time he found out

6x23

I always forgot that Michael is the one they’re after in 22

you did not think I would identify him

don’t ask that question

like how well you know him?

gibbo is worried about his daughter

6x24

I’m up a tree

oh tony oh dear

she’s so hurt

he would never date a coworker but he’s definitely thinking about it

I think “bad” is an understatement for how that went

6x25

this season is soooo looong

tony done fucked up

don’t lie to your dad ziva

you wanted to protect her

that music is so incongruous

a cruel way to get the truth for ziva, but effective

why do people always put the blame on ziva

it’s never actually her fault

for you

you felt it was you job to protect me?

but I should have been

oh z

I suppose this is ziva being on Jeanne’s side of the situation

and of course when ziva realizes she’s loyal to gibbs, he leaves her behind

LIKE AN ASSHOLE

oof

one short

she asked you to choose so you chose tony

Oh yes giving her time ends up being SUCH a fantastic choice gibbs

like why this assumption that ziva would just…live a normal life in Israel?

[anonforlackofabettername]

@tw0-ravens sent me these numbers over a week ago and honestly this is the first time I’ve been on my computer since then and I have a thing about not answering asks on mobile despite the fact that I’m on tumblr mobile 98% of the time.

40. Are you involved with any LGBT Jewish groups?

I’m not right now, unfortunately. I was a part of my college’s pride and hillel clubs which while not the same thing had a lot of the same people and thus had a nice queer jewish vibe. I need to get involved in both queer and jewish organizations now that I’m out of college but finding the time while working 9 to 5 is exhausting and I hate putting myself out there. There are some orgs I can check out but I heard something about the people and politics and israel and honestly that sounds more exhausting than anything else.

41. Is it easier to find lgbt Jews irl or online?

Online definitely. To me everyone is queer online and everyone is queer until proven straight. This extends to my irl friends. I just assume they’re some flavor of queer even if they’re in a straight-passing relationship. My neighborhood/city has a large jewish population but I haven’t figured out where to meet other queers my age, let alone jewish queers. I’m sure once I find the queers I’ll find the jews but first I have to get off my ass and meet new people.

8. What branch of Judaism are you?

Reform. My college rabbi was reconstructionist/humanistic but I’ve always been happy with the reform movement and haven’t felt the need to change.

And you asked for any I felt like answering so I picked some at random bc why not. 

34. What has been the best part about being Jewish and lgbt?

G-d loves me and I’m perfect just the way I am. Also I can’t go to hell bc judaism doesn’t believe in it. But for real, so many people have baggage about religion and sexuality and I just don’t have it. Maybe some people in my religious community would frown on my life and my decisions but I have never doubted that G-d loved me. Even when I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe in G-d (and I’m currently agnostic so you can see how well that decision worked out for me) there was no doubt that G-d made me the way I was and that is special. If my parents love me unconditionally and G-d feels like the parent of the world, then how can he/she/they not love me?

35. What has been the hardest part of being Jewish and lgbt?

The fun intersection of homophobia and antisemitism including antisemitism coming from within the queer community. The bullshit about banning the star of david on a rainbow flag which has made the news multiple times in the last few years makes me feel really uncomfortable. I’m already exposed to a lot of the acephobic discourse that exists in the online communities I don’t need mainstream discourse too. 

11. Do you have a favorite/most comforting prayer? 

Sorta? Most of what I like is stuff that I can chant and is repetitive. I don’t have one go-to so much as a couple of go-to prayers. I really like a version of Adonai S’fatai Tiftach that my temple uses sometimes. I also think its a gorgeous prayer when said/sung the right way. I got Hineh Mah Tov stuck in my head so many times as a kid it will always have a soft spot in my heart. And honestly when I need comfort sometimes the She’ma is the perfect thing to say. And finally, there is nothing that screams home and community than the whole congregation singing “Torah (x6)/ Torah tzivah lanu moshe.” The cantor used to sing that during Simchat Torah while the Rabbi made laps around the sanctuary carrying the Torah and its an acute sensory memory. 

50. What makes you feel most connected to being a Jew?

I wear a mezuzah around my neck that I’ve had since I was around 10 years old probably. I’m picky about my jewelry and symbols but its something I feel naked without. And because its always with me its something I feel connected to. 

1. What pronouns do you use for G-d?

She/they/her/he/him/them. So like whatever I feel in the mood for basically. I try to use feminine and neutral pronouns but the default that I was taught is masculine and I will still use it from time to time. I truly believe G-d is above all this petty gender shit and doesn’t care about what pronouns we use as long as we are comfortable. 

37. What do you wish more lgbt people knew about Judaism?

We ain’t fucking Christianity and we ain’t fucking Israel. You see all that hate? All that bullshit about leviticus? Yeah that’s a bunch of bullshit. I mean no community is perfect and I’m certain there’s homophobic jews out there, but stop lumping us in with the xtians. We are two separate religions with two separate points of view. Judeo-christian is not only wrong its antisemitic because all we have in common is a couple books. That’s it. Also Israel. IIsrael does not speak for the entire jewish community worldwide and you need to stop acting like it does. The same people who get mad when people say bullshit about the middle east representing all of islam turn around and say the same thing about israel and judaism and add in some condemnation of the palestine situation as well. Its such a fucking double standard. Yes the israel-palestine situation is bad. No it doesn’t have anything to do with all jews, especially jews who have not lived or even visited israel.

20. How did you come out?

So funny story. I’ve never really felt one way or another about the gay community and possibly liking people other then men growing up (I’m a cis woman). In high school I always felt like I’d find the right person when the time was right and it didn’t matter if they were a guy or a girl. Then I got to college and decided I was ace (still am woo!) and really tried to embrace the queer community at my college. I had a couple of discussions with my mother about being gay and the answer was shrug and to change the subject to show I don’t like gay as an umbrella term (I’m not gay. To me gay is cis male homosexuals and I’m not that). So anyway my mom and I were at home, probably the summer after freshman year of college and we were both chilling on the couch on our phones. I was scrolling through tumblr and someone had a set of pictures of stickers or buttons that said “Oy Vey I’m Gay,” which I proceeded to giggle at and show my mom with the comment of “Me” which prompted us to have a talk followed by a semi-serious one with my dad the next gay. Apparently this was a new thing that neither of them had known about me. (which I suppose is valid since I did deny it to my mother’s face six months earlier). They’re both supportive, especially since my older sister is bi, I just think I caught them off guard. But that’s how I came out to my parents with a jewish meme. 

I think that’s enough for tonight. 

LGTB Jewish Asks

Ask Me Stuff

[gharsonist]

1 - 150, please 😊

1. Who was the last person you held hands with? Like platonic hardcore hand holding? Lea. Real hand holding? You2. Are you outgoing or shy? SHY3. Who are you looking forward to seeing? You4. Are you easy to get along with? Duh, of course5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you? I sure hope so, though they’d probably be drunk too6. What kind of people are you attracted to? Honest, real people7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now? I plan on being8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind? Currently @danielhowell cause I’m watching his livestream from hours ago9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable? Um, yes, sometimes10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? You11. What does the most recent text that you sent say? “Ah fuck Bio”12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now? Young And Menace - Fall Out Boy, Empire Of The Clouds - Iron Maiden, Wicked Game - Stones Hour, Nine In The Afternoon - P!ATD, Thnks fr th Mmrs - Fall Out Boy13. Do you like it when people play with your hair? Mostly, yes14. Do you believe in luck and miracles? Not really15. What good thing happened this summer? Summer is yet to come16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? Ummm...jk, yes17. Do you think there is life on other planets? HELL YEAH18. Do you still talk to your first crush? Nope19. Do you like bubble baths? No20. Do you like your neighbors? Yes21. What are you bad habits? I can’t sit still for long 22. Where would you like to travel? Israel23. Do you have trust issues? Not really24. Favorite part of your daily routine? Not waking up, that’s for sure25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with? I dunno, EVERYTHING, jk, I really don’t know26. What do you do when you wake up? Turn off my alarm27. Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker? Darker28. Who are you most comfortable around? You29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up? What ex?30. Do you ever want to get married? One day, maybe31. Is your hair long enough for a pony tail? Yes32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with? I am not a fan of those kinda things33. Spell your name with your chin. No, I won’t look like an idiot doing that34. Do you play sports? What sports? Tennis 35. Would you rather live without TV or music? TV, def TV36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them? No37. What do you say during awkward silences? Something to make things even more awkward38. Describe your dream girl/guy? You, honest and real39. What are your favorite stores to shop in? Foot Locker, Snipes 40. What do you want to do after high school? Travel for a bit41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance? Depends on what they did to fuck up their first chance42. If you’re being extremely quiet what does it mean? Mostly that I just have nothing to say. Sometimes I’m tired and rarely I’m not feeling well43. Do you smile at strangers? I do44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean? Both? If I have to choose, I’ll take the trip to outer space45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? Knowing I have to got to school46. What are you paranoid about? A lot of things, probs47. Have you ever been high? No48. Have you ever been drunk? No?49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about? No50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore? Green51. Ever wished you were someone else? No52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself? I’d like to be a little bit smaller53. Favourite makeup brand? I don’t use makeup54. Favourite store? Media Markt55. Favourite blog? I can’t just choose one @capsharkis @gandalfthepretty @evanstanisbae @bescheuerter-name56. Favourite colour? Green57. Favourite food? Pizza58. Last thing you ate? Spätzle59. First thing you ate this morning? Cake60. Ever won a competition? For what? I’ve won tournaments61. Been suspended/expelled? For what? No62. Been arrested? For what? Never 63. Ever been in love? Yes64. Tell us the story of your first kiss? I don’t think I need to tell you about this one65. Are you hungry right now? I just ate66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends? No67. Facebook or Twitter? Facebook68. Twitter or Tumblr? Tumblr69. Are you watching tv right now? No70. Names of your bestfriends? Merle, Beni, Sammy, JB (and you’re still my bestfriend even tho you’re my gf)71. Craving something? What? Sleep72. What colour are your towels? Mostly blue72. How many pillows do you sleep with? One73. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? Nope74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have? Four75. Favourite animal? Wolf76. What colour is your underwear? White77. Chocolate or Vanilla? Vanilla78. Favourite ice cream flavour? Yoghurt 79. What colour shirt are you wearing? White80. What colour pants? Black81. Favourite tv show? Wynonna Earp82. Favourite movie? STAR WARS (all of them)83. Mean Girls or Mean Girls 2? I know neither84. Mean Girls or 21 Jump Street? 21 Jump Street85. Favourite character from Mean Girls? ...86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo? DORY87. First person you talked to today? Lea88. Last person you talked to today? My dad89. Name a person you hate? Hate is such a strong word and I’d rather not say that name on here90. Name a person you love? Myself, duh91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now? oh yes92. In a fight with someone? Define fight, they don’t wanna talk93. How many sweatpants do you have? Not enough94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have? Also not enough95. Last movie you watched? Guardians of the Galaxy - Vol. 296. Favourite actress? Cote de Pablo97. Favourite actor? Sebastian Stan98. Do you tan a lot? When I go out99. Have any pets? Quite a few100. How are you feeling? Well101. Do you type fast? Usually yes102. Do you regret anything from your past? Yes103. Can you spell well? Yeah104. Do you miss anyone from your past? No105. Ever been to a bonfire party? I wouldn’t call it a party per se106. Ever broken someone’s heart? I hope not107. Have you ever been on a horse? Course108. What should you be doing? Studying biology109. Is something irritating you right now? Fucking you-know-who who now, apparently, doesn’t wanna talk about it 110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt? But it’s a good kinda pain111. Do you have trust issues? Not really112. Who was the last person you cried in front of? A bunch of people at my granddad’s funeral113. What was your childhood nickname? Franzi114. Have you ever been out of your province/state? Of course115. Do you play the Wii? YES116. Are you listening to music right now? Yes117. Do you like chicken noodle soup? Nah118. Do you like Chinese food? Yes119. Favourite book? Don’t make me choose120. Are you afraid of the dark? No121. Are you mean? No122. Is cheating ever okay? NO123. Can you keep white shoes clean? No124. Do you believe in love at first sight? There’s a lotta nos but no, not really125. Do you believe in true love? I believe in love, isn’t that enough?126. Are you currently bored? Obvs or I wouldn’t answer 150 freaking questions127. What makes you happy? Spending time with friends, listening to music, you, sunshine, playing tennis128. Would you change your name? No129. What your zodiac sign? Gemini130. Do you like subway? Yes131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? He would already know I’m not into boys132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? You (are those questions repeating themselves?)133. Favourite lyrics right now? Nine In The Afternoon134. Can you count to one million? I’m sure I could135. Dumbest lie you ever told? There’s a lot of those136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed? Closed137. How tall are you? 1,75m 138. Curly or Straight hair? Kinda a mix of both139. Brunette or Blonde? Blonde140. Summer or Winter? Summer141. Night or Day? Night142. Favourite month? June143. Are you a vegetarian? No144. Dark, milk or white chocolate? Milk145. Tea or Coffee? Both146. Was today a good day? Yes147. Mars or Snickers? Mars148. What’s your favourite quote? “how rare and beautiful it is to even exist” (it’s actually a lyrics)149. Do you believe in ghosts? Yes150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page? “Are you hurt?” Jason asked her.   

[comepraisetheinfanta]

first lines meme

I was tagged by @actuallylorelaigilmore ^_^

rules: list the first lines of your last 20 stories. see if there are any patterns. then tag your favorite authors. 

tagging these talented people: @missanthropicprinciple @victorianoir and any mutuals who write fanfic (I didn’t tag some of you b/c I know you’ve been tagged before but if you want to go ahead and have another go ^_~)

PUBLISHED FICS:

1. THREE DAVIDS

There are three Davids.

Two of them don’t exist anymore, not really.

-= The First=-

The first David is the one Toby and his sisters try their hardest to protect, the one that is impossibly bright and not yet able to fight his own battles.

He can be annoying sometimes, this little puppy, always nipping at Toby’s heels, always wanting Toby’s attention and approval. Toby’s long-suffering sighs fool absolutely no one; they all see how he patiently teaches this David all the things he’ll need to know in the years to come. 

2. THE GODS HAVE CONSPIRED - PROLOGUE

Washington, D.C.

January 2038

Inauguration Day

A long time ago a friend of mine (though there was nothing amicable about our relationship at the time) told me what sort of man it took to be President.

“The man in that job shouldn’t have to be presented with anything!” he bellowed at me. “It’s for someone who grabs it and holds on to it, for someone who thinks the gods have conspired to bring him to this place, that destiny demands of him this service!”

3. KEEPING HIM SAFE

“Why does it feel like this? I’ve seen shootings before.”

Brooklyn - Summer 1965

  Ten year-old Toby Ziegler had spent the afternoon playing baseball with his sister Judith and her friends. Now that Toby was ten and the rest of them were about to enter High School they didn’t often let him play with them, but today they had relented and they had played until the sun had gone down.

   The twenty boys (and Judith, the only girl) had gathered their things and had split up to head home, with five of the boys making their way back home with Judith and Toby because they all lived on the same street

  They weren’t far from their street when shots rang out.

4. THE WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT 

1966

Westport, CT

 Miriam Lyman heard the wooden floor behind her creak. She put her book aside and turned to look at the little boy she knew she would find, his walk and the sound it made was unmistakable. At five years old Joshua Lyman already swaggered; it was a walk befitting a child who was his family’s little prince, spoiled and adored by all.

  In his small hands there was a large leather bound book.

 "What have you got there, Joshua?“

  “It’s one of your scrapbooks, Nana,” he said, lifting the book higher in order to give his grandmother a better look.

5. WHILE NORMAN SLEPT

New York City

December 1995

  With a quick flick of the wrist, Joshua Lyman, Esq. tossed his subway token. And, with the impatience of a highly-strung racehorse, he waited to hear the click that always followed the sound of his token clattering against a metal surface, the click that told him that he could push the turnstile and dash full speed toward the subway train.

6. INKBLOTS

  Josh is having a difficult time staying connected to what is going on around him. He wants to be aware of his surroundings, to be able to call out for help. But all he can think about as sirens wail and red lights flash is how hard it is to breathe, how much his chest hurts, and how much the blood on the concrete looks like an inkblot.  

 His mind begins to wander through memories dulled by time, made hazier by the pain.

 Rorschach. It’s a funny name, like one of Joanie’s composers.

 Rorschach.

  -schach, like Bach.

7. AN INVITATION

Late May 1987

Westport, Connecticut

Rachel Abravanel felt her bed dip beneath her and she groaned.

“Buenos dias, Rahelica,” said the distinctly deep voice Rachel usually found comforting, but that today brought back memories of the rare days she hadn’t wanted to go to school and her father would have to coax her out of bed.

“Dad,” she whined without making a move to free herself from her cocoon of blankets.

Rachel’s father responded with a low chuckle.

8. IT’S QUIET UPTOWN

November 18, 1969

It was Noah Lyman’s first day back at work since his daughter’s death.

The firm had been extremely sympathetic, had told him to take as much time off as he needed. They’d promised to farm his cases out, everything would be taken care of.

His colleagues felt guilty despite Joanie’s death being no fault of theirs; Noah and Ada had been at a dinner party for the partners and their wives the night it happened after all. 

9. PROMISES

  Ryan Pierce speed-walked past desks, flipped through papers, and managed to avoid crashing into any of the support staff that zipped by.

  Ryan had news for the President-elect on the people they had been vetting for Senior Staff positions. The majority of them had worked for the campaign and had made it through a round of vetting for their campaign jobs so it hadn’t taken long to make sure there weren’t any skeletons deeper in the closets of people who were going to be working in the White House.

10. SHIVA IN THE WHITE HOUSE - Ryan

Washington D.C. - 2043

  Ryan Pierce rounded up the most trusted members of the Senior Staff and told them that their jobs were going to be a little harder for the next few days and that he expected them to rise to the occasion. There would be no setting of fires that would require the President to put out, they would make sure that the West Wing continued to run like a well-oiled machine. Ryan was willing to move heaven and earth to make sure nothing ended up on the President’s literal and figurative desk unless it absolutely needed to.

11. SHIVA IN THE WHITE HOUSE - Sam’s Revelation 

Maryland - 2043

Sam and Toby were sitting in a secluded corner of Andy’s backyard. He’d come directly to Andy’s from the airport with Ainsley. Sam’s two Secret Service agents were parked in front of the house and Ainsley was in the living room with CJ, Andy, and the rest of Toby’s family.

 Toby had known that there was something on his friend’s mind the moment he’d seen him so he dragged him outside and away from everyone else as fast as his old joints would allow, and had waited patiently for whatever it was that was eating away at Sam to come out.

 “I loved him,” Sam whispered, half to himself, as if the statement was more for Sam’s own benefit than Toby’s.

—————

WIPs:

I don’t really have any other published stuff (nothing I’m particularly keen to share) but I do have a my massive af WEST WING vignette collection The Gods Have Conspired currently in progress. The following are excerpts from the beginnings of vignettes I’m working on for that collection.

————–

12.

The Catskills   1966

Several heads turn when Felix appears by the pool. He’s wearing short teal swim trunks that show off his long lean legs, a towel that hangs from his neck obscures most of his chest but a small gleaming Star of David, which hangs from a gold chain is visible in its nest of sparse chest hair, catches peoples’ eyes and makes them wonder what the rest of his chest looks like and hope that he’ll toss the towel off soon. Felix cuts a handsome figure. He’s no strapping David hewn from marble but there is something of a classical handsomeness to him, the contrapposto pose he assumed as he took in his surroundings was certainly giving the girls at the pool ideas.

 13.

2060

  “So, what's it like being a Lyman?” the young bikini-clad woman asked Josh*.

  “Honestly? It's a pain in the ass.”

  “Oh,” his companion responded, not expecting that answer at all. “But like, everyone loves your family, you guys are like a huge deal.”

 “Yeah, but there are certain things Lymans are supposed to do. Like,  just about my entire family is in politics, you know? And that’s not what I want to do with my life. I mean fuck, my mom is an actress and even she’s really involved in political shit. My grandfather was president, my great-great-grandfather was president, so what, I wasn’t around for any of that so why the fuck should anyone expect me to be involved?”

[*This isn’t Josh Lyman DCoS to Bartlet and CoS to Santos, this is another Josh Lyman entirely ^_~]

14.

200?

“Joshua Lyman, you told me you hated cats!”

Josh cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.

“I do.”

“Well you didn’t always hate them,” she replied, waving the picture she had found in front of him. “What’s that you’ve got in your arms?”

Josh snatched the picture from Donna’s grasp.

“That’s Heifetz,” he said as he looked at his smiling five year old self cradling the grey cat like a baby, the cat looking almost indulgent and completely used to being handled by a rough-and-tumble little boy.

15.

2043

   “I never thought- that in my lifetime-”

  “Dad, don’t you dare jinx it or I will make you go outside turn around, spit, curse, and whatever else you are supposed to do, I don’t care how old you are. We’re not done yet, and you are already trying to jinx it.”

  “To have even gotten this far, _____.”

 “Well, leave it to the Jewish President to shake things up in Israel,” _____ said, after flashing his father a cocky grin that made him look like a teenager instead of a middle-aged man.

16.

“Bee. Bee, bee, bee, bee, bee,” Zach shouted.

  “No Zachary, it is To-by, can you say To-by?”

  “Bee!”

  “Just give up, Tobus. He’s gonna be calling you that even after you quit fighting it,” CJ said. “Isn’t that right little man?”

   “Jay!” Zach shouted, raising his arms up toward CJ, his way of asking to be picked up.

 “While you’re busy being a grump over the name ‘Bee’ I am going to embrace the name I’ve been given by my diminutive pal,” CJ said as she lifted Zach up on began bouncing him on her lap, much to his delight.

17.

 ______ ran his hands up his wife’s sides and rested his thumbs under her breasts.

  Annie suddenly went rigid on top of _______.

  “Oh my god, my grandparents had sex in this room.”

  “What?”

  “My grandparents, they had sex. In this room.”

  “Yeah, well I am sure they’ve changed the mattress and sheets since then, even if it is the same bed frame,” _______ said with his attempt at an innocent smile.

  “______ ______!” Annie shouted as she grabbed a pillow and hit her husband with it.

“Ow, Annie, you’re hitting the President of the United States!”

18.

Beginning of 4th year of Seaborn Administration

  Josh Lyman had run as fast as his body would allow from the security check-in desk to the office outside the Oval.

  “Ainsley?”

  “Hello, Josh. You alright there?”

  “Yeah, I just need to catch my breath.”

  Ainsley nodded.

  “He’s in the situation room right now,” Ainsley informed him.

  “D’you know what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know much, I just know what they’ve been reporting in the news.”

 “Which really isn’t much, is it?”

  “No.”

 There was very little the news was able to reveal at this point, the rioters were making it hard for any foreign correspondents to get close to the embassy.

19.

Germany 1945 Jakob tried to steady himself when he felt his legs begin to weaken and threatened to give way underneath him.

He felt his chest begin to tighten and he found himself forced to lean up against the wall. He had managed to get through so much in the last several weeks without letting his emotions get the better of him but he could no longer keep up the pretense that he wasn’t affected by what he saw. The city of his birth in ruins.

It was impossible for him not to be conflicted, his liberators had been left with no options, and so his beloved city had had to pay the price for the sins of its inhabitants; it had to become a shell of its former self, a daily reminder of his neighbors’ transgressions.

20.

2066

~“Wild child full of grace Savior of the human race”~

“They love you to the moon and back, you know,” Margaret says.

“Huh?”

“Your parents, Jonathan, Abbey Rose, the whole family. They love you.”

Josh doesn’t say anything, he decides to stare at the IV port taped to his hand.

She’s so nonchalant about it, just throws it out there while skipping a marble across a chinese checkers board.

-=-=-=-=–

Ok… so patterns… I use way too many commas, I often state the year (because I’m a history nerd through and through and I love to skip around to different times in my massive epics). I lowkey feel like Sophia from Golden Girls… “picture it: Sicily 1922″ hahahaha. I don’t seem to open with dialogue in my finished drafts but my WIPs usually open with dialogue. I’m too tired and lazy to keep looking for patterns ;-P

[filmreviewsbyanidiot]

An Idiots Top 10 Films Of 2019

Oh hello. Lovely to be back on this blog. I was last here reviewing Slender Man in September 2018. Let me tell you, Slender Man will not be appearing in this list. Because it wasn’t released in 2019 and also it’s absolute shite. Also not on the list is Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse because it came out in the UK last year. The rest all came out in the UK this year. If you’re interested, it would have been number 2 if I had included it because it’s absolutely incredible. Thank you. As Bloc Party sang: so here we are. It’s the end of 2019 and I’ve seen some films and now I’m going to talk about them as if I’m at all qualified to tell you which ones were good. Imagine that. No need. Here we go! NUMBER 10 - Judy (Rupert Goold) This entire order is going to be wrong because I don’t have the time to sit and put them in the perfect order, I am a busy boy. Get off my case. Anyway, Judy! I love a biopic and I’m a homosexual man that likes the arts. So a Judy Garland biopic is very much up my Straße. She was a wonderfully messed up and fabulous woman. So tragic. So beautiful. So fascinating. I think this film does a really great job of showing all of that. Renee Zellwegar is a perfect casting, she really does Judy justice (working title for Judge Judy).  NUMBER 9 - Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar) Quite surprised this made it into the list but here it is. It’s a really beautiful film. Antonio Banderas is quite phenomenal in it and deserves the Oscar buzz he’s getting. It’s a captivating performance. One of the better depictions of addiction I’ve seen. It’s heartbreaking, funny, moving and you never get bored despite nothing huge happening. It’s a character study and it’s brilliant. NUMBER 8 - Green Book (Peter Farrelly) Uh oh. I’ve gone there. I understand the criticism and I understand that some would say “If you really got it, then you wouldn’t like the film”. All I can say to that is... I felt warm and fuzzy at the end and I can’t pretend I didn’t. I like feeling warm and fuzzy and this film did that. It may not be true to life. But neither was Bohemian Rhapsody and I still enjoyed that. As long as you’re aware of the jumps that these films make, then just enjoy them for the film that they are. They’re not documentaries. It’s a fun and moving film about a friendship that either did or didn’t exist, depending who you ask/what interviews you watch. I’m not sure what my opinion is on putting a filter on history. There will always be films that do so but there will also always be films that don’t. Shouldn’t we be able to have both? Genuinely don’t know the answer. But I enjoyed this film and can’t pretend I didn’t.  NUMBER 7 - Stan & Ollie (John S. Baird) Yeah mate, I don’t care. This didn’t get what it deserved. It’s stunning, quite frankly. Again, I love a biopic and this does everything I need from one. It’s incredibly similar to Judy in that it’s about Hollywood legends towards the end of their career trying to make a final bit of money by playing shows in Britain. There’s something so poignant about studying these legendary people at the end of their careers. People who were at the very top. Unbelievably famous and successful but their star is waning. It breaks my heart. This is also a beautiful look at a friendship and that sort of stuff gets me more than a romance. I’ve been single my whole life and friendships mean a great deal to me. I can watch a moving romance and shed a tear but films about long lasting friendships can leave me in pieces. I audibly sobbed when I saw this film. That’s enough to get it into the top 10. NUMBER 6 - Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller) I adored this film. Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant were sublime. What a fascinating story. It’s a film I’ve thought about here and there for most of the year. I can still picture so much of it and had no idea I was enjoying it so much whilst I was watching it. It’s really stayed with me. Again, friendship is a big element of this and a theme is certainly becoming apparent in the films I love. This film is funny and weird and makes you want to sit at a New York bar and just chat to someone and learn everything about their crazy life. I want to go right now and bump into someone like Lee Israel or Jack Hock. Cities like New York and London and full of people like them and that’s why I bloody love them so much.  NUMBER 5 - Honey Boy (Alma Har’el) A moving film written by Shia LaBeouf about his alcoholic dad. Noah Jupe plays the young Otis (based on Shia) and is exceptional. One of the most impressive performances from a child actor that I’ve seen.  Lucas Hedges is always a treat to see. What an actor. And Shia plays a version of his own dad and is also amazing. Just some really fucking great acting on display in this film. It’s really well made, looks incredible and explores the father/son relationship with brutality but also quite touchingly. It’s an impressive piece of work. NUMBER 4 - Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach) Having seen this film and not long afterwards seen the Tories win a majority... there isn’t much more heartbreaking to be honest. Ken Loach’s last two films (The other being I, Daniel Blake) have shown the stark reality of a Tory government and if anyone on the planet can watch these films and then put a cross in a box for the Tories without conscience... well I’m not sure you’re human. This film broke my heart because I knew it was a reality for so many people. I also knew that some families have it even worse. I can’t bear thinking about it but sometimes you have to put yourself through it because how else are we going to fight these evil pricks if we don’t remind ourselves what they’re doing to people? This is a beautiful look at a modern working class British family and some of the family moments made me cry. The teenage son in particular is a character that I wanted to slap and hug at the same time. As bleak as you’d expect from Ken Loach and I wouldn’t have him any other way. NUMBER 3 - Booksmart (Olivia Wilde) Quite the contrast to the previous film! I seldom enjoy American comedy films. American comedy isn’t really for me and comedy films usually aren’t either. So I wasn’t expecting much from this film but goodness me I loved it. I can’t remember why I loved it so much but I know that I did. I laughed out loud at least twice which is incredibly rare for a miserable old bastard like me. Again, friendship is the main theme here which is probably why I loved it so much. It’s also just great to see two young girls not giving a shit. I get really depressed by the way young girls feel so self conscious and are constantly worrying about what people think of them. Scared to look silly in front of people. It’s horrific and this film says a huge ‘fuck you’ to that bullshit. What a funny, silly and wonderful ride this film is. Hooray. NUMBER 2 - Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo) Quite basic of me but come on. It’s a pretty bloody incredible film. Not on its own of course. But if you’ve seen every Marvel movie, then this is one of the greatest things to experience. Every hero coming together in the most spectacular fashion. It’s a really impressive feat and I wonder how superhero films can ever better it. I would say, it’s hard not to pair it with Infinity War which is maybe unfair in terms of putting in a list of films from this year but still, to see that huge finale on the big screen this year was very exciting. I look forward to watching all of these films back to back in years to come. What a body of work. And there’s more to bloody come! NUMBER 1 - Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) What a film. The most perfect exploration of the awful things modern teenage girls go through. I cringed for her more than a film has ever made me cringe. It was excruciating. A heartbreaking look at how phones and the internet affect kids these days but not a film that’s entirely damning of it. It’s easy to be patronising when it comes to technology and how kids interact with it. This doesn’t do that. It celebrates being young today by showing how hard it can be but also how small victories can mean the world. Elsie Fisher gives the most spectacular performance as Kayla Day. Honestly, really quite astonishing for a 16 year old. Jake Ryan who plays Gabe is the scene stealer of the film. What a great performance. It’s just a really special film and I absolutely adored it. The whole year I was waiting for a film with Oscar buzz to come along and replace it as my favourite but it hasn’t happened. Watch it however you can! Well there you go. A load of opinions from someone who has no idea what he’s talking about. That’s the internet for you. Bye pricks.

[bloggerblagger]

86) Jeremy Corbyn would make a fine prime minister.                                                 (Irony: a type of usually humorous expression in which you say the opposite of what you intend.)

If it doesn't look like a duck - not remotely - but  it quacks like a duck and it acts like a duck, is it a duck?

Let’s face it. If it didn’t come with the traditional webbed feet and beak, you’d have serious  difficulty in accepting it was a duck even if laid perfect duck eggs and towed a line of  pretty little ducklings along behind it. And that, I believe, is one of the principal reasons why, despite the well founded charges of anti-Semitism made against Jeremy Corbyn, and all the attention they have received, he still seems to sail serenely on.

What makes it so hard for so many  to  believe that Corbyn is an anti-Semite is that it seems counter-intuitive. One may think he is completely misguided but his quiet reasonableness and ‘beard and sandals’ appearance and his do-gooder earnestness and his bloody allotment always make him seem so well intentioned. How could such a man be an anti-Semite? Has he not been fighting racism and equality all his life?

Tough to see beyond that. And yet, if you were a foreign power - the Islamic Republic of  Iran for instance - who thought it would be useful to get a virulent anti-Israeli  and anti-Semite into office here, rather than put him in a brown shirt and jackboots, would you not  produce someone just like Jezza? What better disguise would there be?

I am not actually suggesting he is an Iranian agent - although he’d been doing a damn good job if he were -  but I am saying, just to thoroughly mix my animal metaphors,  that it is very possible to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing if the disguise is good enough.

Labour, the party that cares, doesn’t.

As I say, that’s one of the reasons that the sainted Jezza has got clean away with such outrageous, blatantly anti-Semitic behaviour.

Oh - you don’t think it’s  really been all that bad? You don’t? 

That’s another reason.

And the rest of the current Labour leadership seems to agree.

I, and most other Jews too, I believe, have reached the depressing conclusion, that, frankly, they don't give a shit about anti-Semitism. (I am sure  it is has not escaped Seumas Milne, Labour’s Director of Strategy,  that with only 300,000 Jews in the country and, at a guess, a quarter of those children, we really don’t count electorally.) 

That would certainly explain the official Labour  response to any of these charges, which has been to lock His Corbyness away in a closet and  to send out attack dogs like Chris Williamson MP  and Owen Jones to rubbish the people speaking out, to flatly avoid answering any direct questions, and to repeat the mantra that Corbyn has always been a man of peace, and couldn't possibly be anti-Semitic.

L: Our Dear leader, man of peace.              R:ChrisWilliamson MP, piece of work.                                  

Probably futile but...

It has reached the point where one feels it almost pointless to try to explain why, amongst Jews, there is such profound distrust of Corbyn and why they simply do not accept his blandishments. But I will try one more time by dealing with the most grievous example of the profound offence he has given.

He has been caught on film saying that the Zionists in the room, despite perhaps having lived in Britain all their lives, did not understand English irony and needed a history lesson. 

As he will perfectly well have known, Zionists are overwhelmingly Jews. To argue, as he has, that he didn't know they were Jews or that he was using the term in the political sense  - whatever the hell that means -  may be enough for Ken  and Seumus  but it won't wash with me or 99% of British Jews.

To say that we don’t understand something ‘English’ clearly implies that we Jews, no matter how deep are roots here, are not fully English - that we don't quite get what it is to be English. It is one of the oldest tropes about Jews and it is was unambiguous anti-Semitism.

And let’s not pretend, as Shami Chakrarbarti did the other day on Radio 4, that these remarks were taken out of context. Utter bollocks. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition said exactly what he was reported to have said. And he clearly meant to say it. There was nothing in the ‘context’ that made the slightest difference to the meaning. Here is the film of his entire speech.  Judge for yourself. 

(Click on the link below but since the sound quality is poor, click also on the subtitle symbol. That’s the litte square with ‘cc’ on it, on the bottom right.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xf1hwfo2W0

This time it’s personal

I feel I cannot adequately convey just how angry I am about this. 

It wouldn’t make a jot of difference if my parents had been recent immigrants but, as it happens, I have ancestors who were in this country ten generations back. 

While Jeremy’s father was not in the Army, Navy or RAF in the second world war - but doing a Pike in the Home Guard - my father (older than his) spent six years as a private in the Eighth Army in Egypt, Italy and Greece. And he felt obliged to change his name. Jerome Abraham Phillips had to become Jerome Arthur Phillips because of the fear of anti-Semitism. (Anti-Semitism in the British Army that is.)

How fucking dare Jeremy Corby accuse me - because he was, by association, accusing me - of not being fully English.

Jeremy Corbyn’s father served in Dad’s Army at the age of 24

Despite a lack of irony my father was allowed to serve in the Eighth Army.

Enter an establishment Jew

For the ex-chief rabbi, Lord Sacks   to have intervened when this video came to light and charge Corbyn with being an anti-Semite  was a very, very big deal. It was unprecedented.  Rightly or wrongly, Sacks is the  Jew most venerated by the British media and the establishment.  ( As if to prove the point  he is currently hosting a Radio 4 series on Morality.) Yet his words have been dismissed by the Labour leadership out of hand. The fact that he unwisely  mentioned Enoch Powell in the same breath gave them an excuse to blithely shrug off the substance of his complaint.

But let's, for a moment, take Corbyn at his word, and assume he is so insensitive he didn't realise what the effect his words would have. What has his  response been? To apologise? To meet with Lord Sacks? Or to make up completely unbelievable explanations and then avoid the press and cameras himself and send out his emissaries with their pugnacious, unyielding messages of denial. 

What if it hadn’t been about Jews?

If he had made similar remarks about any other minority  group he would have been forced to resign immediately. Imagine if he said that those who advocate  the wearing of a burka  might have been born in this country, but didn’t understand English irony or know English history. 

Those who advocate wearing a burka may not  necessarily be  Muslims, but almost certainly are, in the way that Zionists are almost certainly Jews. It would certainly be something you might  expect  the leader of the English Defence League to say, but the leader of the Labour Party?  Do you honestly think Corbyn would still be in a job if he’d said something so Islamaphobic?  

But Jews don't matter to Labour. That is the message that Corbyn and his supporters have sent us.

Don’t just blame poor Jeremy

Jezza  and his acolytes are not alone amongst public figures on the Left in their supposedly unwitting ant-Semitism. Steve Bell, the cartoonist in the Guardian is another culprit. In two recent cartoons he has been profoundly offensive. He has been accused of anti-Semitism before so he can’t make the excuse that he couldn’t have known the risk he was running. Here’s the first.

What can this mean but that the people caricatured are not sincere in their complaints about Labour anti-Semitism?  One of those ‘sanctimonious humbugs’ (front row L) is clearly Lord Sacks and another, also in the front row, is Margaret Hodge, the MP and Jewess (to use a nice, old fashioned term) who called Corby an anti-Semite to his face. 

And here’s his other recent intended witticism on the subject. 

What can this mean but that these Labour grandees led by Margaret Hodge, who,  since she is holding the weapon is implicitly the executioner in chief, are being wholly unreasonable in asking Corbyn to apologise and recant? 

I was frankly shocked when I saw these cartoons, and probably should have complained but I didn’t. Shocked perhaps but not all that surprised. Katherine Viner, the editor, is the co-author of the 2009 play, ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’, which a writer in The Spectator called  an ‘unapologetically pro-Palestinian drama’.

I wouldn’t accuse her of being anti-Semitic but neither can we expect the Guardian under her stewardship to be entirely even handed on the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian situation. 

Which brings me on to the subject of anti-Zionism. And anti-Semitism. And why the two so closely intertwined as to be effectively indistinguishable.

Zionists v Anti-Zionists

To  be a Zionist is to believe that Israel should be a homeland for Jews.  And that is all it means. It does not mean you  support  the policies of Netanyahu and his government. Not the annexation of East Jerusalem. Not the building of settlements on the West Bank. Not the ridiculously provocative, recently passed, ‘nation state’ law. I, and almost all the Jews I speak to, are vehemently  opposed to all of these things, 

But I, like most Jews, am a Zionist. (Some, a very few, aren’t, but then again, too few to mention.)

So what is an anti-Zionist?  Clearly someone who takes the opposite view; who does not believe that Israel should be a homeland for Jews. That the Israeli state should cease to exist. An anti-Zionist hopes that that one day, we would wake up and find Israel was no longer there. 

In such an eventuality, if you weren’t a Jew you might be a bit concerned, even alarmed,  but you’d get over it.

For me, it is a simply terrifying prospect. Quite literally, an existential threat to my own life  and that of my daughter. I don’t want to rehearse all the arguments why that is the case here, because I’ve been through them all in a previous post. https://bloggerblagger.tumblr.com/post/143854734827/62-anti-zionism-anti-semitism-an-expert-explains (If you have the stamina click on the link and go back and read it.)

But the bottom line is this: anti-Zionism is  plainly inimical to the interests of Jews, as hostile as crude old fashioned ‘you’re not really English’ anti-Semitism. 

A history lesson for Jeremy.

There are always different versions of history.

It is said that the winners write the history and while I can’t help but admire Hamas’, Hizbollah’s and Al Fatah’s pretty successful attempts to buck the trend, I do feel the need to point out a few things in Corbyn Minor’s textbook that are factually incorrect.

1) Israel is not, as  anti-Zionists insist on calling it, an ‘apartheid state’. I lived in  South Africa at the height of apartheid so I  have the advantage of some direct experience. The 21% of Israeli citizens - those living in Israel proper - who are Israeli Arabs or Israeli Palestinians or just plain Palestinians (however they prefer to self identify) have the full rights of citizenship. They can vote, stand for parliament (the Knesset) own property, demonstrate against the government. None of these rights were available to non-whites (as they were officially called in South Africa) under apartheid - which was the doctrine of separate development. 

That is not to say that there is no racism amongst Israelis and Jews generally. Sickening bigotry can be found  in every country, amongst every ethnic group. Jews have no claim to be any better. Why should they be expected to be?

Today I heard an astonishing story which both proves that there is sometimes, official racism in Israel and, simultaneously and seemingly impossibly, that there  isn’t.

A friend of mine working in London, a Muslim with a family home in Nazareth,  who self identifies as an Israeli Arab, travels frequently between London and Tel Aviv. Whenever he goes through Tel Aviv airport, despite having been through all the security checks that every  passenger does, he  is asked to do more.  As soon as he hands in his passport, it flags that he is an Arab and he has to go off to have all the contents of his luggage checked piece by piece. What is that but racial profiling and what is racial profiling but racism?

But here’s the twist. In order to satisfy Israeli legal requirements that this is not racial profiling, whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing next to him in the queue is dragged off to suffer exactly the same irritating bullshit. The last time it happened it was a black hatted, ultra orthodox Hassidic Jew. 

Apartheid? Not exactly.

2) Is it often said that Israel flouts UN resolutions, most notably ‘242′, passed half a century  ago, which calls on Israel to withdraw behind the 1967 borders. But there’s another part to that resolution which its critics conveniently ignore. Namely, that in return, all parties should recognise the right of every country in the region - including Israel - to exist in peace and security. So far, after 50 years, only four out of twenty two Arab countries have done so.

As for the other 64 UN resolutions, do you think it is possible that at least some of them have been passed because there are 50 Muslim majority countries and most, if not all, routinely vote against Israel on any and every issue?

3) Which brings me to Gaza. We constantly hear of the Israeli blockade. But it isn’t just an Israeli blockade. It is, at the western end,  also an Egyptian blockade. Have you ever heard Corbyn Minor mention that? Perhaps he was sleeping through that part of the lesson, 

Gaza was territory taken in 1967 in the Six Day War by Israel and voluntarily given up to Palestinian sovereignty - as Sinai was earlier given back to Egypt - and that involved the forcible removal of thousands of Israelis who, wisely or not, had made their homes there. 

Within months the people of Gaza had rewarded Israel for this act of peace by electing an Hamas government which was, and still is, sworn to the elimination of Israel. If they were to recognise Israel’s right to exist, then Netanyahu would have lost his best excuse for maintaining the blockade and not actively pursuing peace. They could shoot his fox tomorrow but they prefer to fire rockets. 

It’s true that they wouldn’t get everything they want in a negotiated peace settlement but nobody ever does. It takes two to make peace on earth Jeremy, and they have to want it more than eternity in  paradise. 

Exactly who are the real racists here?

Then we have the charge that the very concept of Israel as a Jewish homeland is  inherently racist; that it was when it was created in 1948, and that it still is. 

It’s a point. As least, it is in the precisely the same way that Pakistan was always inherently racist and still is. Pakistan, created just a year earlier than Israel, came into being  for the specific reason of being a nation for Muslims and is still the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. 

There are differences of course. In Israel all religions are free to practise exactly as they wish, people are not murdered for blasphemy, and LGBTQI (and whatever else)  rights are fully respected.

it is different too from the Islamic Republic of Iran where the religious minority, the Baha’ai are not permitted to  go to university and where gays are hung from cranes.

In fact, Islam is the official state religion in many countries, of which more than a few discriminate against other religions and where anything but heterosexual sex is illegal. 

In Egypt a bill was recently introduced to outlaw atheism. That would put it in line with the thirteen countries where atheism is punishable by death: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Why is it that Corbyn and his gang are so obsessed with Israel and never seem to notice the racism of others? Isn’t the act of charging one nation with racism while ignoring all the others, racism in itself?

We, in the United Kingdom, shouldn’t feel too superior by the way. We have a state religion and all others are discriminated against. The Church of England is the Established Church and followers of any other religion, even other Christians,  are proscribed by law from landing the top job in the country. No Muslim, no Jew, no Hindu, no Roman Catholic, and I believe, not even a Presbyterian  can be our Head of State.

Even post apartheid South Africa is racist. It was openly discussed in the South African press that  the mixed race  Trevor Manuel, the much praised Minister of Finance in the noughties could never be President because he wasn’t black enough.

Trevor Manuel. Not black enough to be South African President

It would, of course, be marvellous if group identity - tribalism if you will - was outmoded and eliminated and  ‘content of character’ was the only thing that mattered. But the truth is that almost every country in the world is dominated by one ethno-religious group or another. And it doesn’t seem remotely likely that any of them would tolerate the  possibility of  their ongoing majority  being challenged.

About 5-10% of the UK’s electorate are Muslims. Can you imagine the reaction if they became 25%, never mind a majority? And would it not be the same in France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, the US and in most of the countries in the non-Muslim world. 

And Jeremy, ask your Mexican wife what she thinks the reaction in Mexico would be if the hegemony of Roman Catholics was ever under threat.

Calling a Jew a Jew

No Jew would ever argue that there isn’t anti-Semitism on  the political right. Or indeed anywhere in British society. There is always a low level buzz, probably not picked up by by the antennae of non-Jews, but  Nazi death camps, Russian pogroms, Spanish inquisitions  and yes, English expulsions (oddly enough, Corby, we really do know our history) have left   Jews super attuned to anti-Semitism  and it is always there in the background for us.

I will give you one simple example of endemic anti-Semitism  that flies so low below most people’s radar that even Jews unwittingly accept it. It is the use of the word ‘Jew’.  

How often do you hear even the most ardent supporter of Jews refer to us by the actual word? Christians can be referred to as Christians and Muslims as Muslims, Hindus as Hindus, Janes as Janes, but Jews are never called Jews. They must be referred to as ’Jewish people’. Why? To soften the effect. Because the word Jew is still, after all these years, somehow, unconsciously perhaps, regarded as pejorative.

To be a Christian is to be kind, to be generous, to be virtuous. To be a Jew is to be tight, to be clever - too clever by half - to be cunning, to be manipulative, sneaky. So even our friends and usually, even  we ourselves- would rather say we are Jewish.

To call us Jews is deemed to be too strong, too brutal,  too, too, too… well, Jewish.

Outing myself

Another example: whenever I meet new people who are not Jewish, I let them know almost immediately that I am, and I know that I am not alone in doing this. The purpose is to try to ensure that no careless remark - no Jewish joke about money, no casual mention of ‘front wheelers’ - is going to be made in my presence. Because I don’t want to be put in the position of either cravenly saying nothing, or calling them out and then feeling I’m responsible for  the embarrassment, the awkward silence that would follow. 

And yet it still happens, and shamefully, more often than not, I follow the example of another well known Jew, and turn the other cheek.

I know that these remarks are not made out of any deliberate attempt to give offence, but the moment you draw attention to someone’s otherness you take the risk that you will. So I try to draw any potential sting by identifying  my otherness before you can. 

Who could possibly have been the inspiration for these posters?

On Wednesday September 5th 2018  these posters were flyposted over other advertisements at several different locations across London. Less than 24 hours after the infamous meeting of the Labour Party National Executive meeting at which, late in the afternoon, it was finally agreed to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in full, along with the caveat that ‘it will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of the Palestinians.’ (Quite why they did this is a mystery to me as there is nothing in the IHRA definition to prevent either.) 

That wasn’t enough for JC though. He wanted to include a clause that said, “it should not be considered antisemitic to describe, Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict”

This suggestion was apparently defeated, but why exactly was Corbyn pressing a case for this, when he knew that, had it been adopted,  it was bound to pour a tanker of oil on the flames of the dispute between the Labour Party and the Jewish community? 

Why should he want to appear the most antagonistic and unyielding member  of this now very left wing, Momentum-heavy body? 

How and why  was the news of this leaked when all the phones were supposedly taken off all the participants on the way in? 

And how was it that these posters could suddenly have appeared, pushing the very same specious bollocks that Corbyn has been trying to get adopted the evening before?

They were obviously  professionally designed, printed and posted in what must have been a highly coordinated operation  involving a number of people with different skill sets. And all in less than 24 hours. Really?

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you:  the people who did the poster - the London Palestine Action group apparently - had advance warning of what their guru was going to say and had the posters ready to go. It  was Jeremy himself or one of his acolytes who sprung the leak. And it was all part of the same orchestrated publicity campaign.

Yes, I grant you, it seems pretty fanciful. Why would the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition risk getting involved in such a crazy scheme? if it were exposed wouldn’t even he be seriously, even fatally, damaged politically?

Crazy perhaps, but  I have a very nearly  plausible answer: Corbyn is a  lifelong idealogical purist.  A ceaseless campaigner for anti-establishment causes. A zealot. A rebel to the marrow of his bones. Would he really mind if he crashed and burned and became a hero and a martyr? Wouldn’t that be more attractive to a chap like him than having to deal with the quotidian mundanity of having to  read the boring contents of dispatch boxes  and deal with Sir Humphrey? 

Even if he didn’t have anything directly to with those posters, the timing tells you he was, at the very least,  the inspiration. 

And for all the reasons I have outlined here, those posters were unarguably anti-Semitic.

And Jeremy Corbyn is a duck.

[sincerelymrnaked]

45-seconds of free-fall adrenaline with an IDF Paratrooper

The door slides open and furious winds blast inside. I’m tightly strapped to the instructor I just met — some former Israel Defense Forces Paratrooper named Steve or Zeve or Zev — who I’m expected to trust enough to pull the chute on time to prevent my body from becoming a splattered yolk on the far below land.

And I can’t get a grasp on his first name.

He instructs me to scoot over to the edge and let my feet dangle out. “Keep your eyes open,” he calls in his Israeli accent, over the hissing wind.

12,000 feet hight, my stomach twists. The world below is like an immense quilt of green and yellow patches, vaguely dotted with thousands of microscopic buildings and cars. No turning back now; those dots are about to get a whole lot bigger.

And here’s the thing…I’m scared shitless of heights...

My heartbeat accelerates. I tremble on the rattling edge. Steve, Zeve, or Zev points to a little sign on the side of the open door. It’s a little bathroom symbol man with what seems to be a puff shooting out of his ass and a big red circle ex over top. It’s clearly saying: “Don’t shit your pants!” I wonder if its mostly to add humour to a stressful situation. Must be. Valiant effort, fellas. 

Wait...does that happen? Like, could I actually shit myself? Better not ask. Wouldn’t want to distract Steve, Zeve, or Zez when he’s busy doing his due-diligence in making sure the two of us don’t die and all. If I were him, the last thing I’d want to be thinking about before pulling a chute is whether or not the doofus who’s strapped to me is gonna blast digested shawarma up my mouth at 12,000 feet in the air. That’d be a shitty. 

Before deciding whether or not I wanted to risk my life for the exhilarating experience of jumping out of a plane, I thought long and hard about what I’d actually get out of it. My dad, an opinonated personal injury lawyer, would not approve of such an “idiotic excursion!” So why do it? Why would anyone dive face first off the edge of danger and harness their life to the hands of a complete stranger?

Now, there’s the typical group of reasons. An adrenaline junkie life style. The far too literal excuse of jumping out of your comfort zone. Refusing to let fear control you. Seeing if you could fall with more style than Buzz Lightyear. You know, all that heroic shit. 

But as I hold my breath and count down the seconds before everything that’s ever made my body secure is compromised, I consider a taunting philosophical theory (okay, I thought about it retrospectively — during that particular moment I was only thinking about not shitting myself): People jump out of planes because they know they’re going to die.

I’m not talking about bucket lists and adrenaline stunts.

In the Pulitzer Award winning novel, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker explained that human psychology — whether consciously or subconsciously — is innately mortified by the thought of dying. We’re so terrified that, in desperate attempts to conquer the ticking clock of our lives, we feel a need to test our mortality. By throwing ourselves into danger for fun, we are able to alleviate the psychological fear hardwired into our brains.

In other words, when we look death in the eye and survive its wrath, we convince our psyche of suppressed horror that we are, to some degree, immortal.

What’s this mean? Skydiving is more than just an adrenaline rush. But maybe it’s more than death denial, too.

One tap on the chest: bend knees and tuck my chin.

“Three!” shouts Steve, Zeve, or Zev.

My legs dangle off the edge and the current of wind whips against my old sneakers.

“Two!”

You know that scene in movies when everything slows down and the protagonist looks forward with a gaze of determination while the orchestral crescendo rises to convey a moment of heroism and self-discovery? Yeah, well life’s not like that. I look back at that “Don’t shit your pants!” sign and consider the possibility of losing control of my bowels…

“One!”

Two taps. Arms out, legs wide. Down we go.

My breath jams in my throat. My cheeks ripple outward. And Steve, Zeve, Zev and I rocket back to earth.

My greatest fear has always been leaving this world misunderstood, of dying with all my thoughts and memories. That’s where writing comes in for me; the one reassurance I’ve always had is that words don’t die. Words are the only anchor I’ve got, securing my existence to the ground, preventing me from drifting away and becoming forgotten. It is my safetynet of immortality. 

It’s the pursuit of our impending legacies and life experiences that make us feel grounded on our physical world. Sometimes these pursuits come in the form of scribbling your name on your cabin wall at summer camp, and sometimes it means jumping out a plane 12,000 feet in the air, or moving to Alaska and living in an abandoned bus as you slowly starve to death. (Into the Wild is a great fucking movie.) Take your pick.

As Becker explains, our entire lives can be seen as an endless sequence of “immortality projects.” Everything from climbing the corporate latter, to finding a spouse and raising a family, can fundamentally be driven by the psychological understanding that the clock is ticking. Immortality projects are our values. They determine how we want to live our lives, who we want to live our lives with, and what role we want to play in the turning gears of society. They determine just how much excitement we want to endure. And to what extreme.

Despite being well aware of our own mortality, humanity collectively spends our lives fighting to overcome it. But maybe there’s a sense of togetherness and beauty in our mortality as well. Maybe a unifying love for adventure unlocks an elevated, or high-as-fuck, understanding.

In those 45 seconds of free-fall, as I dart through the sky, strapped tightly to Steve, Zeve or Zev, quickly nearing the great quilt of green and yellow patches, it feels as if I'm flying. All terror ceases to exist and is replaced with absolute amazement. The earth below has never felt so spectacular. I feel on top of the world, and I am.

But it's not just that I'm flying. It was where I'm flying — over the coast of Dor Beach, just outside Haifa, Israel. A land constantly under political scrutiny. A region that has faced shit-storm after shit-storm and has grown stronger because of it. To say it's stunning is an understatement.

After the parachute deploys, immersed in the sudden silence of being several hundred feet above ground, Steve, Zeve, or Zev allows me to take hold of the handles that control the direction we glide downward, almost like saying: “You trusted me, so now I trust you.”

“What’s your name?” I call to him.

“Zadok,” he says.

Wow. I was way off.

Zadok teaches me how to do it. Pulling one handle slightly down would make us veer to the opposite side. Pulling hard and forward would cause an immediate sharp turn. It's simple enough.

With a jumping heart, I maneuver us over an immense body of blue water; it sparkles far below like billions of diamonds rolling for miles out. The beauty is overwhelming. It doesn't feel real.

As I turn left and right, sailing over the magnificent land below, breathing in the crisp Mediterranean air, I ask Zadok if he ever gets used to this place. I had heard so many different thoughts on what Israel means to different people.

“Not from up here,” he tells me. And this makes me laugh.

I realize it takes a change of perspective to appreciate beauty for what it really is. It’s easy to get lost in old views, to see life the way we always have, but a change of sight can allow us to see so much more. Especially sights like this.

There are countless social perspectives, political outlooks and conflicting ideologies that spiral through the Middle East like a destructive tornado. But up here, there was one view that everyone could agree on: the world is small, and we are smaller.

Perhaps a view from up high can fuel insight below.

What does this mean? We are all mortal, but we are not alone.

I’m not saying we should forget our problems and attain thoughts of drowning existential insignificance; I’m saying we should live our lives knowing that our problems are not the only problems, that the world we see is not the entire world worth knowing. That our fragility is not a curse because it’s simply what makes us all human. And that being human — in a world as drop-dead-gorgeous as this — is pretty fucking awesome.

Skydiving is about letting go of everything you know, everything that makes you feel secure, taking the risk and surrendering to the pull of gravity.

The only way to accomplish our greatest aspirations is to pursue that exact mentality: push beyond the bounds of your life and have faith you won’t end up a splatter yolk.

Surrender to gravity and let life take you wherever you need to be. Dive into new paradigms — without old perspectives intervening and blurring the view. Do it before it’s too late. Because here’s the bottom line: our time is limited.

Despite how much we build up the illusion of immortality, we will simply not last forever. The future is uncertain, so we must not devote our lives to it.

What’s important is simply now. This moment right here. This tick-tock of time where you are currently breathing and thinking and living. Nothing else is for certain except where you are as you read these words. No preconceptions. No assumptions. No facts.

My advice is as simple as it is cliché. Travel the world. Learn to play an instrument. Tackle a new language. Do something that scares you and look through the windows of new views. Live as if you’re falling and about to hit the ground. Because you are going to die, but today you are alive.

And if you ever decide to jump out of a plane, take the time to learn the name of the person you’re strapped to. 

Oh...and while you’re at it, try not to shit yourself. 

Sincerely, Mr. Naked.