You're a Ravenpuff!: You are a very analytical and ingenius person, someone that likes to invent new things. The way you look at life is with wonder, and sometimes you're even a little naive. But people love you for that trait and they feel the need to protect you from the harsh facts of life so that you can retain your innocence. You are very capable person and when there is trouble people turn to you because you're able to stay calm and collected. You like balance in your life and you try not to make many waves. Even still, if there is something that you believe strongly in, you will commit yourself totally to that cause. Your weakness is that sometimes you can be indecisive and perfectionist, especially about little details and you drive people crazy sometimes with these traits. With the innocence of a Hufflepuff and the calm of a Ravenclaw you will be loved in life!

Which Mix of the Hogwarts Houses are You?
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I had yet another "Oh, you're Rebecca's brother" moment today at the post office when I met her friend, Neely (sic). She heard my name as I was collecting the first half of my recent order of books and DVDs from Amazon and recognized it as Becca's maiden name. With no other introduction, she simply stated, "You're Rebecca's brother." "Yes, I am," said I, with little surprise. After the briefest of introductions, she wandered off, and I finished receiving my package. But as I was tearing the box open to see the order of the episodes on the Wonderfalls DVDs (the proper order in which to watch my low-quality, bootleg copies of the episodes is rather suspect in some cases), she appeared once more. We chatted a bit about the quantities of the taxes applied to imported items in Israel, and collectively decided that the 17% VAT tax in my case wasn't too grievous an offense, considering that far worse tariffs are far from unknown.

Afterward, I went to a falafel stand to indulge in a slightly overdue morning repast. There I met a married woman named Shira who was somewhat pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was for me to ship stuff to Israel from Amazon in the US. She was nice company and I thought it was too bad that I didn't have any topics with which to prolong the conversation to fill the time while she waited for her order.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That's really the only interesting thing I did all Shabbos.

I just finished reading the sci-fi anthology that Seth got me for my birthday. It was a bit uncomfortable to read for a while there, because it got infused with kerosene fumes from my fire-spinning equipment on the bus ride home from Justin's wedding. But in the end, it was well worth the occasional choking fit, and by now it hardly smells at all.

As I predicted, Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" was my favorite of the bunch: a heart-wrenching moral parable that doesn't preach in the slightest. C. J. Cherryh's "Pots", a story centered around archeology which is not only intellectually intriguing but actually has a little exciting action, was a close second. Karen Joy Fowler's "Face Value" was poignant and haunting in a way I loved. Equally heart-breaking was Theodore Sturgeon's "A Saucer of Loneliness." I loved the intense quirkiness of Harlan Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" and R. A. Lafferty's "Eurema's Dam" not just because they were cute, but because they did a great job of turning familiar preconceptions upside-down, using their absurdities as effective tools rather than mere gimmicks. "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bison was touching in a mild and slightly weird way. I'm surprised that I don't remember Ray Bradbury's "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" from The Martian Chronicles: either it's a martian story that wasn't included or my memory isn't as good as I'd like to think. Either way, it's classic Bradbury, of which you just can't get enough. Similarly, "Dogfight" was a wonderful reminder of everything I love about William Gibson, especially with Neuromancer still fresh in my mind. Although Michael Swanwick co-authored "Dogfight", it feels like pure Gibson, but maybe I just can't detect Swanwick's flavor because I'm less familiar with his work. It seemed like I had read Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies--" before, but I think I had only read about it in an essay about science fiction which detailed its rather complicated gimmick of a time-travel paradox. I suppose I might as well have read it, because the story is basically nothing more than its gimmick, flavored with a hard-boiled-private-detective motif and more casual misogyny than I'd prefer to tolerate. (I expected better from a story about a transsexual.) Isaac Asimov's "Robot Dreams" was short and sweet and not a little bit chilling, but I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't reminded me of that utter travesty involving Will Smith. And Frederick Pohl's "The Tunnel under the World" made me wonder yet again why so many people were so amazed by the ontological speculation of that silly Matrix movie. Although the idea of the whole world being an illusion is genuinely interesting and far from hackneyed, it had been explored several times already in both film and print by the time The Matrix came out, usually with better execution, although without the glitzy special effects.

Rebecca's passing on the latest Harry Potter to me, so that will occupy me for the next few days at least. I stopped reading George Orwell's 1984 a couple weeks ago because it was too depressing, but I intend to restart it sometime soonish. My old linear algebra textbook has been keeping me busy on the long summer Shabbos afternoons lately, and I'm close to half-way through. (Even though it's not a terribly long book, my brain tends to melt in extreme heat.)