Yhosephus wrote that in the original "about" section, and how about a Chanukkah destruction, during the very 7fatcow week in parshas miketz? In all seriousness I plan to take down 7fatcow.com in the coming days. Any protests and disagreements can be voiced in the comments section. I guess this post is a vote, but the voting populace is like AWOL
Depressing to recive the chulent email with the great news for our economic and social well being… and this for a group as brilliant as any around… the beatnicks: check. the algonquin round table: check. the romantic poets: check. or so i feel. but isaac schonfeld's aspirations are more practical?
H'moon hotel leap
By Liz Sadler and Kirsten Fleming, New York Post
A newlywed groom on his honeymoon yesterday plunged to his death from a Brooklyn hotel in an apparent suicide — as his bride slept, unaware of the tragedy, sources said.
Motty Borger, 24, died at Lutheran Medical Center after the seven-story plunge from The Avenue Plaza Hotel in Borough Park — just two days after marrying his love, Mali, in a lavish ceremony, according two sources.
Borger's bride was sleeping in the room when her husband, who worked with his videographer dad, opened a window, stepped onto the balcony and jumped at 6:45 a.m.
Mali didn't know what had happened until she was awakened by the hotel concierge.
Friends were shocked at the young man's death, saying there was no sign at Borger's wedding in Williamsburg on Tuesday that he'd try to end his life.
"He sang, he danced, he was the happiest kid on the planet," said a friend who was at the wedding among 500 pals and loved ones.
"The guy was super energetic," said another reveler.
The couple shared a meal of boiled salmon Wednesday night in a postwedding celebration and seemed to be in good spirits.
"They were both happy," said a waiter.
"They were laughing, talking about what they should order."
Detectives were poring over security video, including a clip that shows an agitated Borger in an elevator with his wife.
A police source described Borger as "emotionally disturbed."
The apparent suicide stunned family members who just 48 hours earlier were celebrating the young couple's union.
"The guy was so full of life," a friend said. "He was so happy to marry her."
Friends said they couldn't believe Borger would want to kill himself or that there could have been any marital strife.
"She's a nice, sweet girl," a friend said of the bride. "They have money, so that wasn't a problem
For a while, i've preferred quietly bowing out to dramatic public announcements, not wanting to endlessly retire like an aging rock band. But now, a solid three years into the exciting creation and invitation of theis forum into being, i'm stepping down formally, from any inolvement with 7fatcow, unconvinced that it exists at all.
No bitterness. Dissapointment would imply expectations, and all my hopes and expectations for this blog where satisfied right away, constantly, along with all my concerns and suspicions, re: the inevitably difficult nature of True Expression and Engagement. That was understood from the beginning to be OK. Sometimes, when you talk with people, a lot of bullshit comes out as cushion for any insight and genuine heart-of-self that might be revealed, and that condition was understood from the beginning: along with the genius in our wider community of not-quite-ex/not-quite-ohs is a multitude of protective layer of ego and dogma; of noise and principle, of assumption and of flawed language, furious at the implication that it must be probed to be understood. That's OK, as much as any of the troublesome nature of our world is to be called OK, it's part of who we have been, and how we have expressed.
All that said, it's boring now, because maybe we've gone as far as any of us wanted to go. One of our founding members has moved beyond interest in the conversation here, as a funner life beckoned where the wit was expresseable and the company close enough that trying to blog in a noise filled room of cheesy links and ironically repressive vulgarity became uncompelling, especially once the Twitter and Facebook Status update was given unto us, to let the impulse sound more immediately, without need for context, or consensus. And so, the chance to say just a few things here was all he needed.
Another founding member has tried to give up so many times, and the clamor of each dramtic farewell, combined with the unelaborated links and occasional disavowels of entire identities for fear of Who May Be Listening, and Who May Be Judged along with him, often prevented the depth of his insight from being expressed. He erased all his posts, psuedonym after psudonym, and tried to convince somebody that he was somebody, and not actually somebody. And in that noise, his genius is silenced, and a certain unconfrontational decadence tried to grow around him; alas, woe unto those who think their sacrifices will provide security, money, or love.
And around that, behind that, so much genius was expressed. Zoroastro/IslamoYid's and Atgate231's Scholarship, Class and Humor, Shitalpin's withering and ultimately humanist hot/cold sarcasm-masking-authenticity, Hashemsucksdick's marriage of post-religious concience and artistry, Mohammed's strange and shocking form of concience, Anivaho's Mercurial genius to let words permute into sublime association (even as any conceit towards divine synchronicty was despaired of) Yalhak's Majestic magnimamity and wholeness of vision/purity of impurity of perspective (along with the lucid clarity of Yesod, Aisav, and the other maaminim he brought) and the writers we never even really identified, who bought so much class, genius, and perfect kvetchery to the conversation (who was Hiavrom anyway? he was brilliant! I hope he's OK.)
All the Neo-Nazis who stopped by to let us now what was going on, all the feminists and fetishists, all the excited Chabadskers, all the grieving relatives– so much got circulated, and maybe so little was heard, who knows? who knows. Who knows how much we ever hear from each other that we weren't ready to chap. But I feel like a lot of rare expression and relative taboo was aired here, and i'm really proud of that. As proud as one can be of something that one just let happen.
All the martyrs and all the victims; all the heroes and all the wimps. All the Faggotry and all the ugly, ugly Charedi shock-porn. All the piety and simple faith. Everything but the bullshit, and the noise, and the hiding of ourselves inside of our conceptions. It really has been a great ride, and I can only pray that some of this survivesinto the annals ofHistory, the story of how the Jewish Problem was, if only for a moment, touched upon, if not successfully adressed, from within, rather than just from without. God bless you all, to move on, and see how easy it is just to start up a crazy fucking conversation in this great, wide future of accessible interests, may we one day merit to see it to it's end.
Shana Tov, and i'll see you at the Jubilee
Yoseph Leib,
AKA Yhosephus,
AKA the guy that fucked your sister, back when she was still cute.
Some 7fc New Year's posts:
http://7fatcow.com/2009/08/29/the-letter-of-the-rebbe-reb-bunim-on-rosh-ha-shanah/
http://7fatcow.com/2008/09/24/shofar-concerto-op-1-1885/
http://7fatcow.com/2008/09/29/the-jews-the-jews/
http://7fatcow.com/2008/09/29/time-is-in-the-mind/
http://7fatcow.com/2007/09/13/caught-dipping-his-apple-in-a-honey/
Updated: Saturday, 29 Aug 2009, 5:14 PM EDT
Published : Saturday, 29 Aug 2009, 3:03 PM EDT
(MYFOX NATIONAL) - More than two dozen cattle have mysteriously fallen from a cliff to their deaths in the Swiss village of Lauterbrunnen, leading some to wonder if the bovines committed suicide.
The Daily Mail reports that in just a span of three days , 28 cows and bulls plunged hundreds of feet and were killed instantly.
"'We are investigating because cows growing up in the mountains normally can estimate dangers and do not plunge down cliffs," a police spokesman said. Rescue crews flew helicopters into the valley to retrieve the carcasses, which posed a pollution threat to the local groundwater.
Cows are usually let loose by farmers at high altitudes in the Alps so they can graze. Some occasionally do fall to their deaths, but many agree that to have so many fall in such a short span of time is unusual.
Locals speculate that recent thunderstorms may have spooked the animals. But scientists dismiss the notion that the cattle committed suicide. They said the more likely explanation is that the animals were migrating in huge droves in search of more food and tightly followed each other one when they fell off the cliff to their deaths.
Last week more than 30 cows fell to their death off a cliff into the Fresno River near Coarsegold, Calif. Neighbors complained after the carcasses were left to rot for more than a week.
I was going to write a poem while walking on Eastern Parkway but chanced upon a Psalm when I suddenly found myself outside the Rebbe's room.Forget the poem, David's way better…
PSALM 88
1 1 A song; a psalm of the Korahites. For the leader; according to Mahalath. For singing; a maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 2 LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in your presence. 3 Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. 4 2 For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol. 5 I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am weak, without strength. 6 My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from your care. 7 You plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the darkness of the abyss. 8 Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. Selah 9 Because of you my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape; 10 my eyes grow dim from trouble. All day I call on you, LORD; I stretch out my hands to you. 11 3 Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades arise and praise you? Selah 12 Is your love proclaimed in the grave, your fidelity in the tomb? 13 Are your marvels declared in the darkness, your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? 14 But I cry out to you, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 15 Why do you reject me, LORD? Why hide your face from me? 16 I am mortally afflicted since youth; lifeless, I suffer your terrible blows. 17 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have reduced me to silence. 18 All the day they surge round like a flood; from every side they close in on me. 19 Because of you companions shun me; my only friend is darkness.
We gatta protest Apple generally and the i-phone specifically.
hat tip to Ben Atlas
View through open gate shows empty expanse of former camp
The photograph above shows the entrance into the former Buchenwald concentration camp through the iron gate of the gatehouse. This was one of several entrances. The sign on the gate can only be read from the inside. Unlike other Nazi concentration camps which had "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes Freedom) over the entrance gate, the sign over the Buchenwald gate reads "Jedem Das Seine" which means "To Each His Own" or "Everyone gets what he Deserves."
now i cannot help but think that every insect that gets incinerated in my zapper is exactly like the jews in the camps. the fact that i take great joy in every electrifying snap only enforces the holocaust scenario. now, my first instinct was to create a little sign that said arbeit macht frei but i felt that the promise of work was a lie and though the nazis never intended freedom for the inmates their culture was so jingoistic that somehow it had meaning to them. they probably told similar things to the soldiers they sent to the eastern front. so i thought this buchenwald epithet would be appropriate but i find that worldview so patently false i can't do it. in my limited judeo-german i could go with "scheisse passeirt" - shit happens.
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