quite a lot of trouble for such a pretty little girl

Urgh, the first week back to real life after the holidays, why must you suck so hard and be so boring? I keep meaning to update, I do, but by time I'm finished with my to-do list for the day it's late and I'm tired and I'm like "aw, fuck it". It's been a long week of cleaning this and moving that there and calling that doctor and re-scheduling that appointment and trying to sign up for this class only to realize that's the one night I can't go so attempting to get permission to take this other class blah blah telephone calls blah blah blah. There's no way even I, the master of making ordinary shit sound fake-exciting, can make that fake-exciting.

The most exciting stuff to happen to me are the four following things:

ONE - I have been having cracktacular fandom mashup dreams. I don't remember most of them, I just remember that they were fandom-y. But the one I do remember was last night's, which started with me and JGL somewhere where he was explaining what the shit his now second-to-last tweet meant. (He wrote "THE TREE OF LIFE", allcaps included, which I spent a bunch of time puzzling over. Did he see a trailer and therefore was excited for the upcoming film? Did he get drunk on Manaschevitz and have a reunion with old Hebrew School buddies and they were drunkenly singing that horrible song that's been stuck in my head ever since? (IT IS A TREE OF LIFE TO THEM THAT HOLD FAST TO IT AND ALL OF ITS SUPPORTERS ARE [clap] HAP-PY! Sing with me, fellow Jews. I can't have gone to the only Hebrew School on the planet that inflicted that monstrosity upon their students.) Was he just drunk and putting together random words because he could? I wish I could remember my dream, because I just have so many questions, real!Joe.)

Then somehow I was in this game with BBC!John and Sherlock, and it was like an escape the room game (been playing WAY too many of those) but had the same rules as the dreams in Inception. But we couldn't kill ourselves because it would compromise the investigation. Only I kept ruining that by accident and Sherlock was mad and eventually somehow this brought John and Sherlock together enough to admit their feelings and make out a lot. Which was cute for a few seconds, but then got awkward, so I went to walk around, only to find Ryan Murphy had left me a spray-painted graffiti note saying he'd come across my writing on the internet, loved it, and wanted me to move out to LA and start writing Glee with him. And then I woke up, and Dearest by Buddy Holly was stuck in my head.

Qu'est-ce que le quoi?

There are two types of dreams, in my experience, the ones where your subconscious tells you something meaningful and the ones where it's just throwing all the leftover shit together for the day and hoping you just roll with it. This week I am clearly taking a hefty sample of column B.

TWO - So, Merlin fandom, this is coming out in March:

If I don't see every variety and pairing of Sim getting it on and Sim babies, I'm gonna be disappointed in you, is all I'm saying.

THREE - Two nights ago I stayed up until 5 AM attempting to explain American politics to alexi_lupin and mcgooglykins, which, as always, just boils down to me explaining the whole American dream/bootstraps phenomenon. And when I explain that, I have never met a non-American who didn't go that is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard. Because it is. And it sort of made me like, aw, America, why are you such a shitty country? Why do I still love you more than anything?

But then I was browsing the Best of Wikipedia archives to see if I came across anything cool, and I found the perfect example of why America is my favorite. It's because we have a Supreme Court case dedicated entirely to arguing if tomatoes legally count as a fruit or vegetable.

Is there any other country in the universe that would be that wholly ridiculous? No! (Well, by common law in Europe, apparently a carrot is considered a fruit? I am unclear on why, but wikipedia tells me it is for "jam classification purposes". Which is kind of a delightful explanation.) Only in America would we fight the Supreme Court for the right to declare tomatoes a vegetable because that's how they're used, and besides, it would get us out of that pesky tariff.

OH CRAZY COUNTRY OF MINE, NEVER STOP BEING ADORABLE.

FOUR - for no reason I can discern, my bosses bought and sent me S2 of Merlin. Was it for my birthday? An addition to my Christmas bonus? They neither said when I asked nor left a note/return address with a name in it, which worried me because I forgot what town they live in an was like OH MY GOD WHO IS THIS THAT KNOWS WHERE I LIVE, IS THIS DVD TRAPPED?!?!? Thank Jesus for reverse address check-up, or I'd have been full-on Admiral Ackbar-ing it for way, way longer. Also, thank God for the best bosses ever. Seriously, the entire disc set? AW YOU GUYS. THIS MAKES UP FOR MY LACK OF SALARY.

So yeah, homes. Crazy week! Because that's how I roll.

So, I've mentioned this a few times, but in case the memo has been missed - I'm Jewish. Culturally, anyway. I don't really consider my spiritual beliefs to be adherent to any religion and thus I've chosen, as an adult, to opt out of the temple-going Hebrew-speaking part, but I've become increasingly enamored with holidays and traditions and such. And really, I enjoy being Jewish. My favorite part is probably the food (if any of you have never had kugel, or even a properly-made bagel, I apologize. You are missing out on life). But I also like having holidays and customs that are different from other people's, and I like having a strong, unique cultural heritage to identify with and carry on. I really, really appreciate what growing up Jewish has brought me in terms of valuing education and family and tradition. Also, I enjoy the fact that if someone is yelling at me about my white privilege, all I have to do to get them off my back is point to myself and go "Jewish", and then they stop. And that is super duper handy, let me tell you.

The point is, besides the food, my favorite thing about being Jewish is that you belong to a pretty awesome club. Not only are tons of super-famous and talented people Jewish or half-Jewish, but a lot of inventors are Jewish. You're welcome, by the way, for the polio vaccine, the cell phone camera, blue jeans, the remote control, the shopping cart, vinyl records, and the sports bra. Thus, when your dad does something like e-mail you this:

You can point at it and go "THEM'S MY PEEPS", and they are. They're your peeps. So maybe yeah, on a whole, Jews are not the greatest athletes, and we have a really high rate of mental health problems, and we will nag you and stuff your face with food until kingdom come, but we're awesome, okay? We are seriously, seriously awesome.