cellio | short takes

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short takes

Someday I will figure out how one properly decorates a sukkah; the only decorated ones I've seen have been done up with stuff made by the kids in the family/congregation. If I decorate, I want adult decorations. Whatever those would be. But at least the strands of small white lights (bought on December 26 one year :-) ) are pretty. And, more importantly, provide ample light to see dinner by.

So far it's a one-splinter year for the sukkah. That's pretty good for me. :-)

For bizarre reasons, yesterday I found myself needing to know how to say "purple dinosaur" in Hebrew. My dictionary was of no help on "dinosaur", so I ended up settling for "reptile". Not the same thing, but good enough in context.

I found out recently that my parents have never, in their entire lives, eaten Indian food. Wow. Chinese food was a novelty for me when I was growing up, but I thought that was just due to the local restaurant options. No, my parents just haven't explored a lot of unusual foods. So we're going to take them to an Indian restaurant in a couple weeks. (And no, I haven't asked them about sushi yet.)

I've been getting a lot of spam lately for Vicadin, whatever that is. From googling it appears to be either a painkiller or a psychadelic, but I'm not sure which. (I suppose the latter is a type of the former, for some people.) Did it just come onto the market or something?

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Vicadin is a painkiller. But really, you should ask my husband about it....he's the expert! ;-)

oh, and no, it did not just come out recently. Unless I've got my drugs all messed up. But I don't think so.

How odd, then. Vicadin is now showing up in my spam subject lines as much as Viagra. Xanac (Xanax? something like that) is running a close third. I figured maybe a patent just expired or some cheap overseas source opened up or something. Shrug.

Xanax. It's for anxiety.
Vicodin is a pain medicine that I've taken as long as 10 years ago and I think it's much older than that. I think it had a fairly high street value for a while because people got high off it. I don't get that kind of reaction to drugs, so I don't entirely understand it.
As for Viagra, I guess I probably don't need to explain what it's all about.

It's funny, I never get spam like this. How are you so lucky?

You have an interesting definition of "lucky". :-)

I get a lot of spam. I don't use custom filtering beyonf what my ISP supplies (am am unwise in the ways of procmail), but my neural filters have gotten pretty good. I can delete it based on sender/subject with minimal processing by now. I'd still rather not get it at all, of course, but at least I don't waste a lot of time with it. But it can take a week or two sometimes for me to really notice new trends -- "gee, I've been seeing that word a lot; what is it?".

well, I was saying lucky in the sarcastic sense. ;-)

I don't use any custom filtering either, though sometimes Outlook thinks it's smarter than me and will randomly send things to the Trash... sometimes it's right, sometimes it's not. Heh.

On one of Lake's Einstein CDs, there is just that word, in Hebrew. I'll break it out and listen to it - phoenetics to come tomorrow.

Vicadin is a painkiller. It is very old. I haven't a clue why they'd be sending much spam about it.

Darn!! You got to it first. :-) Yay, Einstein CD.

On one of Lake's Einstein CDs, there is just that word, in Hebrew.

Nifty. Are they doing dinosaurs in lots of languages, or what? Just curious how that came to be.

phoenetics to come tomorrow.

My friends are cool. :-)

On the "Baby Einsten" CD, they introduce infants to the phonemes of: English, Spanish, French, German, Hebrew, Russian, and Japanese. On the end section of the CD, they go through the numbers 1-20 and the alphabet (Japanese is nifty), as well as the 30 most common words spoken by mothers to their babies. "Dinosaur" happens to be one of them.

Honestly, I think that Ray and I have listened to it more than Lake, it's actually really nifty.

"Dinosaur" is one of the 30 most common words to speak to your baby??????? That is bizarre.

Well..my daughter has her own bizarre set of the 30 most common words she hears they are either music, cooking, politics, or religion oriented.

I'm guessing that the "Baby Einstein" company did some kind of study, but most definately not at my house.

banana and monkey I can understand. But robot? Dinosaur?

And how old are these kids? I can see Dinosaur being one of the 30 most common words spoken to a 4 year old, but not a 1 or 2 year old.

Interesting.

I strongly suspect my parents have never eaten indian, and the only sushi they have had was veggie rolls I made for them once. oh, and some rolls had smoked salmon.

vicodin can be halucinogenic for some folks - it knocks me out entirely. I have heard the expression 'party like a viking!' with respect to taking vicodin and then drinking, etc.

Interesting. I knew that it knocked some people out, and made others feel "floaty" and a bit loopy, but hadn't heard that some people find it hallucinogenic. But I probably shouldn't be surprised. For me, all it does is knock the pain down one notch (two if I'm lucky) and I have to pay closer attention to my timing on guitar. Basically it changes "Find me a chainsaw and a tourniquet 'cause I'm going to cut my fucking arm off and see whether that makes it stop hurting" into "Wow, this hurts a lot." It works a lot better for me if I alternate doses of Vicodin with doses of Ultram (a non-narcotic, non-ibuprofen-family pain med).

Anyhow, it's synthetic codeine (hydrocodone), plus acetaminophen. Very similar to Percoset (oxycodone plus acetaminophen). There's also Vicoprofen (ibuprofen instead of acetaminophen). That Oxycontin stuff we keep hearing about being abused is a time-release version -- the abuse involves crushing it so as to get the whole dose all at once.

Percoset, Vicodin, and codeine are all really cheap to obtain legally, they're just in the highly-regulated class in the US (but codeine with caffeine and aspirine or caffeine and acetaminophen is OTC in Canada); I've got no idea how expensive they are to obtain illegally, nor am I sure why they've suddenly become so much more frequent spam subjects. None of them are at all newish.

"Purple dinosaur" is barni (if there was more than one, being male, the plural would be barnim -- thankfully, there's only one)

Ah, another word that enters the lexicon as straight transliteration from another language, assuming you're not pulling my leg. :-) (Similarly, I've been told that the Japanese word for "computer" is "computer", though I'm sure at least two of my readers will correct me if I have that wrong.)

In this case, though, I actually wanted the general concept (a purple dinosaur, as opposed to that particular one), so the general word for "dinosaur" would work better.

Would I joke about something as serious as that?

Well, yes, actually,I would ;)

Figured as much, somehow. :-) But it's the word I would use in a pinch if I meant that particular one -- on the theory that I would be understood, even if it's not correct.

...though I'm sure at least two of my readers will correct me if I have that wrong.

You don't. :)
Another word for specifically a desktop computer is "pasocon", which is a contraction of "personal computer", sort of.

There seems to be several schools. One is kid-projects. For that, you need kids and have to like soggy paper chains. (We do like them, but lack the kids.)

Another is plastic stuff - bright and gaudy milar, plastic posters of the seven holyland fruits, veggies and grains, brachot, things like that. We got a box of that with our sukkah, so that's what we're doing.

Third is rabbinical - posters of various rabbis and Chasidic rebbes, including improbable group pictures. These are all laminated, of course.

But I think what you'd want might be three dimensional versions of the fruits - plastic or *real* grapes, olives, pomegranates, wheat, barley, dates and figs hung around the top of the sukkah. Real looks better, plastic doesn't attract bugs. And maybe posters of scenes from Israel. That can be really lovely.

wow! what great suggestions!

Great suggestions -- thanks! I especially like the fruit idea -- probably plastic because of the bugs and spoilage that would come with real.

Our congregation puts a "sukkah" on the bima (of course it's not valid as a sukkah; it's just decoration), and they decorate it with veggies that keep without refrigeration, mostly squashes and the like. It's very pretty, and then since this is all indoors safe from bugs the veggies can be used when it's over. (I think we donate them to a local shelter where we also cook/serve meals a couple times a month.) I had considered doing that, got turned off by the bug problem, and didn't think of plastic at all.

Laminated posters from Israel would be a great addition.

I forgot to mention the most beautiful and appropriate decorations I've ever seen.

It's in my husband's teacher's sukkah. It seems *his* father would spend the year in between making decorations out of the palm leaves. There are braided chains and balls and elaborate pieces that look like a combination of wicker and macrame. This was a labor of love that took years to accomplish, but the result is spectacular.

Ooh, I've seen something like that. My paternal grandmother (the staunch Catholic) used to make little "macrame" crosses out of the palms after palm Sunday. I never saw her make anything else, though, and I wasn't interested in making crosses, and I was too young at the time to make the leap to "you could make other things" -- so I never learned how to do it. But whatever she did produced an interestingly-textured result with a square (not round) cross-section.

Use real fruit, pull a piece down after each meal, and eat it for desert. Replace with fresh fruit every couple of days. That's what my parents do, anyway. Decorative, and convenient!

The other theory on sukkah decorations is, "Damnit, if my neighbors are going to have something that tacky for Christmas, I'm going to get my revenge on Sukkot" -- six-foot tall light-up plastic ushpizin and the like, strobing lights along the posts and top, and so forth.

As far as I know, nobody MAKES six-foot tall light-up plastic ushpizin, but I'd really consider buying them if they did.

The other theory on sukkah decorations is, "Damnit, if my neighbors are going to have something that tacky for Christmas, I'm going to get my revenge on Sukkot" -- six-foot tall light-up plastic ushpizin and the like, strobing lights along the posts and top, and so forth.

:-)

Y'know, currently my sukkah isn't really visible to the neibhbors (fenced back yard), but something like that could motivate me to move it! :-) (I was thinking of rebuilding anyway; currently I'm using the fence as an anchor and for one of the walls, but I'd like more flexibility.)

Good suggestions. Monica might also want to look at Mayan's laminated poster inviting the matriarchs into the Sukkah. They've got a picture of it on their web page, and it's just $10 plus shipping. While it's a bit late (even with next-day mail) for the beginning of Sukkot, once you get it you can use it every year!

What's new about the drug spam is Internet-based drug "stores"; suddenly, lots of drugs which are controlled in the U.S. but not in other countries are now at least theoretically available to anyone in the U.S. via the "can import limited quantities for personal use" rule that (for example) people in Detroit used to get OTC Claritin in Windsor before the FDA declared it OTC here. The legality of doing so over the Internet instead of bringing them in as part of personal belongings is questionable, but that naturally doesn't stop either the drug outlets or the spammers hawking them....

Naturally they're pushing the sketchy stuff, because people who want to get antianxiety drugs, narcotic painkillers, and potentialy addictive sleep aids (e.g. Ambien) are more likely to go for sketchy distribution methods.

- Vicodin is a sythetic codiene-alike called "hydrocodone", which is mixed with Tylenol (or really the generic). It is a class III restricted drug, which means you need an FDA license to prescribe it (at least in the USA).

- Vicoprofin is hydrocodone + advil

- Oxycontin is OXYcodone in a time release format. It is not the same things as HYDROcodone. PERCOSET is oxycodone + tylenol. PERCODAN is oxycodone and aspirin, iirc.

I'm violently allergic to real Codiene and to any of the Oxycodone products. I can take hydrocodone products.

And Morphine.

I've had almost all of these in the past year. Whee!

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there's also robot, banana, monkey....

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Sukkah Decorations

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