Rec me music!

I have not actually talked about the State of Me on here, I think, but in general I am, 6 months after leaving my job, still in a state of uncertainty re: what the hell I want to do with my life - what direction to job search in, or alternatively study, or combine, or... something. It's the new year, which means I should take the time to reflect, and I am, but... it's really hard to reach any actual decisions. I read a metaphor recently about tahini, of all things, how the process of making it is neverending - you add water and it's too diluted, you add more tahini and it's too thick, you add more water and it's too diluted, more tahini and it's too thick, and it will never end until you decide: this is the tahini, and it's done. The metaphor was a little more sophisticated than that and doesn't apply to everything, but I wish that with regards to job/studies, at least, I could be decisive about something.

Sidenote: I couldn't remember the precise English words for 'thick vs ??' and googled 'thick vs watery' and every single result on the first page of google referred to thick vs watery semen. I feel like I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but it was still unexpected.

Anyway. Job/life situation aside, a few things I want to remember from the past week:

1. The one-year anniversary of Shimon Peres. ( cut cut )

2. Adventures in babysitting - a friend from the US stayed with me for three days with her two-month-old son. Despite the fact that lots of my friends have babies now, I don't have near aunt-like status with any of them, so while I've held babies, I haven't actually fed them formula or changed diapers since my sister was born in 1992. I am happy to have successfully done both now, as well as babysat all by myself for five whole hours and sung the baby to sleep multiple time, which was deeply satisfying - both being able to help out my friend, but also just that feeling of being able to soothe a restless child. I've been thinking a bit about having kids; when I was a kid I was sure I'd have kids just because I thought everyone had them, and I never thought about too hard, always knowing that there'd be time; but I'm 32 now and I'm thinking about it because whether I end up having kids or not, I want it to be by choice. I think I'm going to set up a meeting with a fertility doctor to learn about the process/options of egg freezing, which seems like a smart thing to do just in case? I've been setting up a bunch of neglected doctor appointments recently - I literally got my first pap smear ever last week - so perhaps my healthcare momentum will continue.

3. The day before Rosh Hashana, we went up north to my cousins in the kibbutz to watch their production of the musical Halehaka (The Troupe). It was a lovely event - as usual their community events always feel like Stars Hollow to me. They'd built the set in a clearing outside, and all of the participants were kibbutz members or adjacent; my cousin choreographed, her husband adapted the play from the original script, another cousin had a small part, and their kids had all watched rehearsals to the extent they knew most of the play by heart, and enjoyed it every time (the girls, aged 7-11, were thrilled. So it was very fun - except from that small matter of this being a play about (a) a military (b) singing group (c) from the '70s ----> which means so, so many sexist jokes or jokes about sexual harassment, which was just /o\. Disappointing, to say the least, and I was really kind of surprised that my cousin's husband, who is one of the loveliest human beings I know, didn't remove some of those jokes from the script. Because I found myself sitting next to the 7-year-old, who was enjoying the show, but then asked me: "I don't understand why that's funny, why is everyone laughing?" after the exchange between the band's director (and CO) and the lead singer, when he told her lasciviously: "So, how about you come to my quarters tonight and we'll work on your parts?", and the entire audience laughed, and like... ////o\\\. You are right, child, it is not funny at all and yet everyone is laughing at this joke your uncle wrote, and I can't begin to explain why right now. It was just a moment of, oh, society, let's just be better about this, okay? Halehaka is a classic and I love it for what it was, but it's 2017 and we can be better.

(That said, there will never be a fandom where I don't for a moment daydream about what the Halehaka AU for it would look like. It's the perfect teen drama/military/band on tour AU for everything.)

4. I have a bunch of thoughts on Conan O'Brien's Israel special, but overall I can say that it's one of the funniest outsider depictions of Israel I've seen and overall I really enjoyed it, especially Conan's interactions with random folks who are all super super real, and the small details that just feel so, so local. You can watch the clips here, including more clips linked at the bottom of each page. I was going to add another tangent here but on second thought I have deleted it and idk, if anyone wants to talk about the episode let me know I guess. I've also watched the fourth season of Transparent, which is set in Israel and the West Bank, and was certainly interesting and not off the mark for what it was trying to tell, I think. Lots of Israel in media, I guess.

5. The Good Place is back! And wonderful. Star Trek: Discovery was cool as well. And B99's back on tonight so hopefully September will be ending on a good note.

6. All of my Yuletide nominations have been approved! I encourage y'all to listen to The West Wing Weekly so that you may be inspired to write fic, to watch Younger if you're into romantic comedies and romance novels set within the publishing industry, and uh, watch youtube clips of Anthony Mackie being awesome in interviews so that you may perhaps be inspired to write fic about him as well.

I did not post this in time to with everyone a shana tova, but shana tova, y'all. Here's to an excellent תשע"ח or 2017-18, whatever you prefer <3