Hollywood

“I got another 15, 20 years before they say I’m old. For women it’s brutal. Bruce’s thing about if you’re 26, you’re menopausal? It’s only absurd because it’s a little bit further than the truth.

“I have actress friends who are being put out to pasture at 29. They just want to open up another can of hot 22. It’s becoming almost like kiddie porn. It’s fucking weird.”

-- John Cusack, press for "Maps to the Stars"

Saturday Morning

A light Saturday morning rain. Real cozy. Ideal for reading and reflection. Sometimes it really does feel good to be alive.

Israel Silences Dissent

My old debating buddies argued that Israel was fascist in its own right. I tended to dismiss such arguments, being convinced of the state's democratic nature, and I wrote off particular incidents as the work of Jewish extremists. However, although it might be true that it is the extremist who perpetrates the worst acts, it does seem that the state rather countenances them, and it is not something that is getting better.

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JAFFA, Israel — On July 12, four days after the latest war in Gaza began, hundreds of Israelis gathered in central Tel Aviv to protest the killing of civilians on both sides and call for an end to the siege of Gaza and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. They chanted, “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.”

Hamas had warned that it would fire a barrage of rockets at central Israel after 9 p.m., and it did.

But the injuries suffered in Tel Aviv that night stemmed not from rocket fire but from a premeditated assault by a group of extremist Israeli Jews. Chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to leftists,” they attacked protesters with clubs. Although several demonstrators were beaten and required medical attention, the police made no arrests.

-- MAIRAV ZONSZEIN, "How Israel Silences Dissent" in The New York Times

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Hardcover Journal

I finished filling out my first lovely hardcover journal. The first week I got it, as I was writing down my first entries, I had serious doubts about sticking with the project. My handwriting is so ugly that it did not seem worth it.

But now? It is consuming me. I feel so driven to fill out these journals that my book-blogging and Three Journal are almost forgotten. I think these hardover journals with their brief quotations are going to mean the most to me. I can see myself rereading through these volumes endlessly.

Brevity is the key. It feels good to be able to pick up a book and know that no entry is going to be more than 80 words, and that they are going to be words that mean a lot to me, including quotations from my old blogs and the conversations in them. Of course, not everything can be reduced to 80 words or less, and this is why the Three Journal still means a lot to me, even though it is much slower going now, now that I have this new passion in my writing and reading life.

Neighbors

It has been a long time since the next-door neighbors last had a virtual concert in their back yard. Over a year, I am tempted to say. But they are making up for it tonight.