Haloscan is dead! Long live Haloscan!

So, it happened. I could not wake up today for school because I spent the best part of the night coughing my loungs up (sorry for the graphic description). I decided to spend a leisurely day recuperating and doing things that I needed to do a long time ago. Among them I updated this blog to the new Google Beta version which makes it easier for cyberilliterates like myself to manage their profiles and to edit the look of their blogs (mostly I did it for the tags). I did not think though that by doing so I would be required to abandon Haloscan as my comment provider and, oh spite, oh hell, that I would also loose all the comments made to this blog through Haloscan since its inception.

I am really really sorry! This is what I get for not listening to good advice! Alas! I was charmed by the siren song of new shiny technology and the possibility of tagging my posts (which I could probably do before anyway). My only consolation is that, given how the industry works, most of Blogger is going to be updated to Beta anyway sooner or later.

I hope you can cope with the "boring" and slow comment manager of Blogger (which will be open to anonymous comments also for those of you who do not yet own a piece of the web). Even if diáspera has suffered from a little bout of amnesia, Bloom has not. Bloom remembers and cherishes your comments. Bloom never forgets.

Saudade

I am sick. I have been coughing up my lungs for five days now. I had to give the sermon (devar Torah) at my community this Shabbat although my throat could barely muster a whimper. I am also sick of people not commenting on this blog. I think I have lost all of my Colombian readership with the notable exception of Adon Pronek. In the beginning I wanted to create in this blog a space where I could teach Judaism to a Spanish speaking audience given the paucity of learning of this kind in this language. Alas! We bloggers are creatures of vanity and we do need the little nudges to our overinflated cyberegos once in a while. Therefore, I will switch the language of this blog to English since my Israeli and American friends do seem to care if I live or die. I am sick and grumpy! So there!

Just a surprising song I found in the Jewish blogosphere. You can listen to it in Rua da Judaria (a very nice Portuguese blog about Judaism).

Neighborhood Bully
Bob Dylan

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man,
His enemies say he’s on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin,
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He’s always on trial for just being born.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.

In Bob Dylan: Infidels, 1983

No importa tu ausencia, te sigo esperando

Lector querido, un mes sin escribir nada de nada. No tengo excusas. He estado de vacaciones. Descansando. Escribiendo. Trabajando en otras cosas. No obstante, después de este fin de semana (en el que se celebra Rosh Hashaná) podrán esperar más actividad en ésta su coqueta y hebrea esquina de la red. Posts que tengo preparados (o al mejor estilo perubólico: TAMBBBBBIÉN VIENNNE):

- Un post basado en una foto cordialmente enviada por bluelephant sobre la ignorancia del tema israelí en la izquierda colombiana y sus terribles consecuencias.

- Un post sobre el concepto de "pueblo elegido" (Para que luego la gente no diga barbaridades, como a veces pasa en Conexión Colombia).

- La segunda parte de "Funny, you don´t look Jewish"

Y la muy esperada:

- El retorno de Bloom a Jerusalén: Bloom de vuelta a una de sus ciudades con montañas.

¡No se lo pierda!

Colombianos, bienvenidos al futuro...

He decidido montarme en el tren tecnológico en el que andan mis amigos y, más por falta de tiempo que por odiosa antipatía hacia la palabra escrita, he comenzado a ser un podder (?), un blogcaster (?)...uno de esos seres que lleva su vanidad a la red no sólo a través de textos sino también a través de grabaciones de la voz humana (escasas décadas después de la ovejita blanca de María de don Tomás Alva). En este cast encontrarán parabienes y pequeñas notas de actualiadad sobre mi, por lo general, tediosa vida y, de vez en cuando, si el universo se pone necio, arengas y látigos...tal vez tangos o el chiste de la mazamorra si porfirio se comporta.
Sin más preámbulo, el cast.