Not so funny after seeing it in your sink day after day after day after day.

Just sayin’.

I mean, sure, that would probably happen in real life, but please—there was more than enough going wrong in that dream that I didn’t have to be insulted about trying to be helpful, too.

Le plume et le papier, my ass.

Stupid Frogs.

Talk amongst yourselves, about anything you want. But under no circumstances should anyone, say, post really bad jokes in the comments. Especially not elephant jokes.

I miss the unserious posts. Not just the cat posts, but the posts with pictures of wasps on my tap, or how much Coke2 sucked, or the ant wars, or a host of other posts that you guys actually commented on (and frequently).

Is it me? Am I too serious? Or is it you folks. There are so many of you out there who never post a comment, who just keep coming by and reading, day after day. I mean, I know that’s the way the world works. Some people talk, most people listen. But I seemed to have more talkers back in the day when I had fewer listeners, if you get my drift.

I should remember to post at least one unserious post per day. Maybe more than one.

In the Caribbean, Curacao is home to the oldest synagogue – Mikve Israel – in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere; it was founded in 1651.

Second oldest (?) (Though not in continuous use) – Synagogue of Bridgetown, Barbados

The first synagogue on the site was built about 1651 by Jews from Recife, Brazil, fleeing Portuguese lands to English territories during the Inquisition. The original building was destroyed in a hurricane in 1831, and rebuilt two years later. (Curacao’s synagogue, built in the 1660’s, is the oldest continually operating synagogue in the hemisphere.) The Bridgetown synagogue, deconsecrated early in the century, was seized by the Barbados Government about five years ago and scheduled for demolition. But through the tenacity of the island’s tiny Jewish community, it is now a Barbados National Trust property and is undergoing a $1 million restoration. The building, a short walk from the main shopping district, is to be rededicated as a synagogue when the restoration is finished by next winter. It will remain a National Trust property.Today, the building’s exterior, with its balustraded roofline, lancet-shaped windows and thick walls with rounded corners, appears much as it did in the 1830’s, the prosperous days of Barbados’s Jewish community, which led the island’s sugar industry.

Third oldest – St. Thomas Synagogue Virgin Islands

The third oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, this gracious building has a sand floor. This signifies the time during the Spanish Inquisition when practicing Judaism was punishable by death. Jews would worship in cellars with sand on the floors to absorb the sound.

Oldest synagogue – non-continuous use: Kahal Zur Israel, Recife Brazil.

Flanked by bustling cafes in downtown Recife on Brazil’s northeastern coast is a little-known treasure of Jewish history in the New World – the oldest synagogue in the Americas.Sephardic Jews built the two-story Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue before 1641 – most likely in 1636 – when they enjoyed religious freedom under the Dutch, who ruled part of the northeast region from 1630 to 1654 to control sugar production.

The Mikve Israel Congregation in Curacao, a Dutch Antilles island in the Carribean, was considered by some to have been the first congregation in the Americas. But it was founded only in 1651, also by Sephardic Jews from Holland.

Oldest synagogue in North America – Touro Synagogue, Newport Rhode Island

For over two centuries, the small synagogue standing on top of a hill on a quiet street in the New England seaport community of Newport, R.I., has occupied a unique place in American history — not only as a part of the American Jewish experience but also as a symbol of religious freedom for all Americans. It is her “that the right of the individual freely and without governmental restraint to follow the dictate of his own conscience in religious worship could be exercised without danger to the state”

UPDATE: Life at full volume visited Mikve Israel and has an account as well as a link to a set of photos of the Shul.

Well it turns out that Larry and I visited the oldest, Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, while we were on our honeymoon in Curaçao.We were there in June of 1992 and it was absolutely gorgeous.After a bit of digging I found a roll from our trip and I’ll share a few of the pictures we took of the synagogue and the Jewish Cultural Museum. First up is a picture of the organ and some of the chandeliers inside the sanctuary.

It was beautiful inside the building. My pictures really don’t do it justice, the dark mahogany wood, the bright sunlight streaming in and the white paint conspired to confound my film. But I did get a few good shots and if you click through the picture it will lead you to the picture set. I don’t remember much, other than the building being very cool and airy inside.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

A woman who called in a bomb threat to an airport in an attempt to break up with her boyfriend was sentenced to two years in prison, the U.S. attorney’s office said Wednesday.April Wormly, 36, of Hobbs, N.M., also was ordered to pay $19,761 in restitution for phoning in the threat to San Antonio International Airport.

(h/t Betsy’s Page)

Finland’s PM text messaged his “Dear Susan” note.

It was a Nordic fairytale that began with an internet date, developed between the shelves of Ikea, and ended when the Finnish Prime Minister texted “that’s it” to his lover on his Nokia.Now it is payback time for Susan Kuronen, a 36-year-old divorcée. Only days before the Finnish general election on Sunday, she has published a kiss-and-tell book designed to embarrass Matti Vanhanen, who was once dubbed “the sexiest man in Finland” by Jacques Chirac.

BTW, those Finns are really handy with text messaging, they’ve written novels with them and unlock public toilets too!

Consequences: jail time and tell all book. No wonder Paul Simon didn’t recommend them.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Virgina Heffernan explains in Sweeping the Clouds away:

Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings.

What?

Well for one thing, there was Cookie Monster doing his Allistair Cooke impersontation:

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Cookie Monster? wrong behavior?

As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.

No we wouldn’t want our children to follow his example.

Unfortunately one of the examples does strike as a reason to be careful.

Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

Some of the reasons why Sesame Street isn’t fit for children sound like warmed over political correctness. The last one mentioned here, though, reflects the our society’s loss of innocence. At the same time that our society has become overprotective of children in silly ways, in other ways new hazards have appeared that we must protect them from.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll adds:

Forty years from now, when the current season of Sesame Street is being assembled for release on whatever the successor format to the successor format of DVD is, how much of it will have to be reshot to comply with how much further the nanny state is sure to have expanded further?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Now I have.

Today is a good day for a blogwar.

Gee, I hope one of my old playmates decides to do something stupid.