The Heeb Magazine inaugaral UK Jewish Film Festival is at the Everyman Cinema (Hampstead, baby) from next Thursday.

My spies tell me that (a) tickets are selling thick and fast, and (b) a small gaggle of uber-funky New Yorkers of the Heeb variety will be in town to see it happen, including editor Josh Neuman (I'm guessing).

Thanks to A Reader (hello, D, didn't know how you felt about me using your name, but anyway, everyone I know is called D) for pointing out Julie Burchill's piece in the Times on her first trip to Israel.

I love the but where she describes her and her companion as "we philistines".

I've probably said this before - I worked with Julie on the Modern Review in the early nineties, and she was a wholesale philosemite: I introduced her to my friend M, and she fell in love with him and kept sending him lillies. He was a bloke from North London who didn't quite know how to respond. Anway. Enjoy.

I can't believe I just said enjoy. It must be my cold.

It's like Friendster. But with kishkes. Chosennet.

Despite everything Yoz said about audio blogging, podcasting has really taken off. I know this because I just watched the Culture Show on BBC2, and saw self-styled Podcast Guru Adam Curry talking about how he thought up the whole thing.

Just then, a mate called to say have you seen the podcasting thing on TV right now? So I missed what the bloked who looked like (read - is) the web guy at the last magazine I worked on. He's a leading UK podcaster. Who knew?

Main question - should I get back to audio blogging?

Ze Frank knows just how I feel. I've been too nice for too long.

So, as it turns out, people in Cricklewood can sleep easily now.

In the States, I think they call them duvet days. Oh, hang on, I think that's calling in sick when you're not.

So - if I had a real job - this would be a legitimate day off. But having mainlined on Heinz tomato soup (the comfort food of my youth; sadly my freezer didn't have any fish fingers, which would have completed it), and watched more TV than is good for you, I know one thing.

Duvets and crap TV doesn't make you feel better. Lemsip and other proper drugs do. So I've watched food porn (just made me feel more ill), house porn (our dream home in Marbella is falling down), and that bizarre Channel 4 ad about what everyone's first job was. I don't understand how TV can be so bad. And I can kinda see why the stay-home generation can't finish a sentence or form an opinion. Do you think having a cold is giving me right wing views on education?

I'm considering seeking out some zinc lozenges.

I have the mother of all colds - perhaps as a result of all the stress - and I haven't been out since Friday, which includes missing two great parties, and lots of fun things I wanted to do yesterday.

Luckily I don't have any work today, but I am feeling a combination of sick and tired and in need of tea (herbal) and sympathy.

In other news, I've been considering whether I'm a Jewish blogger, or a Jewish blog.

This is what blogging is about. A blog from inside the Ukrainian revolution.

My neighbours have been renovating their flat for.... some weeks, I think. And obviously once in a whenever, people do that, and it's unreasonable of me to complain, so I haven't. It's just been bad luck that I've been mostly at home daytimes, due to loss of work, and whereas I'd like to commune with the (zone two) silence, it's kinda noisy.

And now, they've been banging and drilling since about 1030. When I met my neighbour when I went down to get the post, and intimated that it's a weekend, please, he didn't even apologise. In fact, he said "they've only just started."

I've had better days/weeks/months.

Bugger. I forgot to buy everything yesterday so I could buy nothing today (Buy Nothing Day - November 27th 2004). What should I do? Starve? Or buy something. Some choice, huh?

I'm clearly in the wrong job. If I - like Ed Black - was an employee of the CCIA, I might allegedly have received between $2m and $10m. Sheesh.

Oh, I really wish I'd seen Waits live on Tuesday.

Last Wednesday
I neither savoured the day nor collected my dry cleaning. But I saw a woman at the bus stop (that's my personal bus stop) who was pretty, but definitely had a little beard.

Seeing her reminded me that I hadn't plucked my eyebrows, or changed the world in any way, although I had fine-tuned my To Do list. Personal grooming and organisation is vital.

Staring at her beard, trying not to stare, mesmerised. Ripe raindrops fell from the sky at an angle perpendicular to the bus shelter, and hit me in the nose. I got my iPod out, to take my mind off it.

There was a heavy police presence at Kilburn station last week, and a police officer offered me a Minder Personal Alarm. For my keyring.

Do I look like I need protection?

And while I'm on a (Jewish) roll, (rolls? give me an egg cream please), thanks to M for sending me this link.

Maybe because I watched David Baddiel's search for his family last night, in the BBC family history series, partly lost in the Warsaw Ghetto, and partly interred as resident aliens on the Isle of Mann, I'm thinking about my family tree, too. I spent a lot of time doing my geneological research: I've been working on it for ten years, on and off.

I'm lucky that I didn't really lose any family in the holocaust, but this new database from Yad Vashem is an incredible resource for people who did (although I suspect it might be in beta, I just did some generic searches, and it came back blank).

But anyway, check it out: The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names

Four o'clock in the morning, I should make you an egg creme? Give me an egg creme please was last week's password. Two cents plain is ten cents now.

See, I am a veritable hub of the renaissance in Jewish culture. Thanks to everyone who sent me the Yiddish with Dick and Jane link.

It's fabulous, although in the interest of education, I should tell you there is - of course - a word for gradfather, zaide.

Likewise, turn your speakers down if you're at work and you don't want your coworkers to think that you've crossed the shtetl with some kinda hothousing lingusitics programme.

Thanks to Emma for sening me this, er, musical interlude at jew-heyya. Because Oy is just Yo backwards. Apparently.

I am a veritable hub for all kitschy Jewish stuff, especially if it has a rap/hip hop angle.

(If you're at work, turn your speakers down before you click).

Let's just say the bad karma fairy has my number.

In a big way.

It's obviously Tuesdays, this kinda time - remember last week when I was all over-dramatic (although some say revealing)?

And, in the scheme of things, life isn't so bad. I have a couple of good friends right now who are coping with family illness, or "battling" disease (how I hate that word, battling, I mean, in that context) and my tsores, taken in contextual perspective is nothing. Really. If you don't laugh you'll cry.

I have a (non Jewish) friend who teases me about my desire to overstock my cupboards with "supplies" "because of the war." And it's true: both that I buy canned food and Body Shop tea tree body wash in bulk, and that my collective history colours my actions. I'm a glass smashed rather than a glass half-empty person.

I don't want to be. But I am how I am, and I have to accept myself. So the upside/downside of genetic type A personality (disorder) is that I'm immediate. Faster. Some people read it as agressive, some see it as can-do-ness in the extreme and love it. Clients adore it because they get everything done yesterday. Sometimes, sooner.

Speaking of clients, part of my current hassles are a client who has pissed me around for coming up to six weeks about a particularly large, complex piece of work. And my immediateness means I want it all contracts-exchanged yesterday, and he's vague in the way most people are. But it riled me. A lot. Anyway, longstoryshort, I took other work and it's fine. But it's left a bitter taste. I don't like being taken for granted (they were always "owing me one" for my extensive goodwill, but that's turned a little sour now.) And they owe me 2,500 of your earth bananas, but that's a whole separate fruit salad.

And there was the thing I shouldn't mention that I mentioned last week, Tuesday. I still feel residually riled about that.

And there was another thing. In the summer.

Let's just say all this angst is both my inevitable heritage and bad for my skin.

I remember once, about 107 jobs ago sitting next to a lovely English woman - Belinda - who never got annoyed when the MD kept changing the business strategy while we were at lunch, thus negating all our work. She was just, OK, fine, I'll do it again. I was all, you're so crap, wouldn't the company be much better if I was running it.

This is all an extremely long winded way of saying.... what, exactly?

That I'm having teenage angst, as opposed to teenage kicks, about who I am and why I do what I do and if anyone cares. Or anything. And this time, I didn't even have any Baileys.

* * *

Also. Let's just say there's a lot going on on the home front. I am not thinking of being a TV show, but there's all kinda UPVC window shit happening, and friendlyish debates about parking five cars when only four fit, and buying our freehold and stuff. Stuff. Stuff. There's a lot of it out there.

* * *

In other news, I bought my parents the You Don't Have to Be Jewish record on CD, and I have discovered that their entire repertoire of jokes and passing comments (who's dying? in the front closet? does that mean you're not coming? hello, Louis) are culled from this - some say - seminal spoken word/shtick (there's a genre that's not yet on your iPod) coupla records from the 1960s. Go figure.

* * *

So - in long - let's just say things have not really improved since last Tuesday.

My work could be better - but then it could always be worse - my house is not exactly my castle right now (I get upset every time I come home and see the windows), some of my personal relationships have caused me a good deal of upset (see last Tuesday for details), all the stress has forced me to eat white Kit Kats on an almost moment by moment basis, resulting in bad skin and a rather sluggish feel to my whole body. I think my last cleaner stole my brown and black M&S lace camisole, and they don't sell it anymore, my freezer is very probably on her last legs (they're always female, dontya know), as is my kettle, I suspect, cashflow could be better, and I haven't written a word in my novel for two months because of all the above. And. And. And.

Am I boring you?

Don't read it, then.

The main thing to remember is, I'm a writer.

That is all.

For everyone who loves shoes: shoewawa. Like last night, S came over, and as she was leaving she spied my new Stuart Weitzman shoes (the ones that when I wore them round to a friends house on Friday night, his mother said "how can you walk in those?") and all coversation halted while we cooed like they were a baby.

I'm having one of those ought-to-do-more days; you know. I've got a fair amount to do and can't quite light the pilot light.

And I shouldn't admit that I've put the washing on and I'm watching Trisha . It's like junk food - you know it's bad for you, but you kinda find yourself doing it anyway.

I feel like some kind of social voyeur. It's the adverts, and I might have to go in a minute. Trisha is about to reunite Patricia with her brother Graham, who she's not seen for 25 years. Pauline's crying like a baby: I shouldn't be watching this.

They've just welcomed Graham and she's bawling again. Which is her complete right, but we shouldn't be watching. And now Patricia's told Graham that their mum died two months ago. He's crying.

I'm crying now. Now they're bringing on Wendy , her sister who she's not seen for 45 years. The whole audience is crying.

This is wrong. It's private. Just like I don't want to see Ken Bigley or Margaret Hassan begging for their lives, I don't want to see this. There's a level of emotion that's for families and close friends, it's not for national TV ratings or selling newspapers.

Maybe deep down we need these deep-emotion hits. It's like watching a car crash. The adrenaline reminds us we're alive in an increasingly numb world. But it's still wrong.

But I did watch it to the end.

Must take my washing out now.

And do some work. Maybe.

I've just read the new Habitat catalogue - the one with Very Important Products in it - and on page 268 it tells me to "treat my bedroom as your own personal stage set."

So I've got the lights on order, and the makeup woman is coming over at 11am. I'm learning the script, but I'm nervous of the stage directions.

And I - ocassionally - write copy like that. Oh dear.

Did you know the Economist has an online business encyclopedia?

I must do some shopping before Buy Nothing Day, on Friday.

Sasha’s Middle Eastern Flatbreads *

Ingredients
21g dried yeast or 30g/1 oz fresh
30g/1 oz honey
625ml tepid water
1kg/just over 2lb strong bread flour
30g/1oz salt
2 tblsp whole coriander seeds
2 tblsp whole cumin seeds
extra flour for dusting

For topping
olive oil
unspecified amount of za’atar **


Method
1. Dissolve the yeast and honey in half the tepid water. Leave it for a few minutes - it should bubble up slightly
2. Dry fry the cumin and coriander till the aromas are released – a few minutes. You don’t want them to burn
3. Crack the cumin and coriander a little in a pestle and mortar
4. Put the flour in a large bowl, add the salt and the toasted cracked cumin and coriander seeds
5. Make a well in the middle of the flour and seed mixture, and pour in the dissolved yeast mixture
6. Incorporate the flour and yeast mixture with circular movements with your fingers. Add the rest of the tepid water, till the dough is slightly moist, but hangs together
7. Different flours are different, so don’t worry if you have to add a little more flour/water
8. Knead for five minutes or so. This is both relaxing and good for the dough. Fold it into one final roundish shape, ready for proving
9. Leave the dough to prove – there are two options. One is to put it on a baking tray or bread board and leave it (covered in a clean tea towel). The other is to lightly oil your mixing bowl (don’t worry if it’s a little floury) and put the dough back in there, covered in a tea towel
10. Leave the dough for 40 minutes or so in a warm place – it should double in size
11. This is an ideal time to prepare the other parts of your meal (as if you needed me to tell you that)
12. Knock the air out of the dough with your hands, and then divide up into…. A lot of pieces. I usually make 30 or so, but it depends
13. Roll each piece into a ½ cm thick piece, use a pasty brush to brush with a little olive oil, and sprinkle some za’atar on top
14. Cook a batch at a time, directly on the bars of your preheated oven at 230C/450F – they take about 5 or 6 minutes. They also make your oven completely covered in flour
15. Fabulous served warm from the oven with good quality olive oil, humous, or roasted red pepper dip

* this recipe is based in a Jamie Oliver recipe, although it is now neither Moroccan or with chick peas
** Za’atar is a sumac-based middle eastern herb mixture that you can buy from Seasoned Pioneers, or a in a Lebanese shop, if you live in Kilburn. Don’t just buy sumac, it’s the blend that makes the difference

Saw Benjamin Zephaniah at the new Arts Depot in Finchley last night.

I am inspired.

But before I talk about that, let me just say that the Arts Depot is tucked away in a pedestrian precinct behind M&S, and their logo is a large, rounded, green arrow. I went there a couple of weeks ago for Limmud Live, and I was driving round and round this roundabout, looking for it, and only seeing M&S. Now, of course, I know different. So I could get straight there, but a client called me at 7.30 on my home phone, and I ended up talking with him about something that's been sitting on his desk for four weeks. I was running a little late, but then that's the story of my life.

The audience was a heady mix of serious Zephaniah fans, and Jewish people who live in Finchley, who turned to each other in the interval and said things like "wonderful rythmn," and "excellent use of language." Benjamin established that there were a lot of teachers in the audience, and they were all sitting near us.

He makes it look utterly effortless, and I know it isn't. But I left on a huge buzz - a heady mix of great poetry, a relaxed sense of humour (when people arrived late, he said "I'll be late when I come round to your house"), wonderful stories, and the sense that Benjamin is the kind of guy you'd like to have round to your house for dinner.

I ran into M, whose party I'm going to on Saturday night, and Y, with his Mum, who turned out to be someone who goes to my synagogue. This was odd, because I just wrote something in my writing class about coincidence and serendipity. Or you could say I just live in an extremely small world that only extends as far north as N12.

The buzz and inspiration are good, because after the conversation I had with my client last night, it's clear that the project I was supposed to start on two weeks ago might not happen. Because he's told me the contract's in the post every day for three weeks, and now he's starting negotiating some new terms and I'm feeling messed around. And, as you know, the new me doesn't take any shit.

So - like every freelancer out there - I'm constantly revising my schedule. So les of the big f-off project, and more of lots of small projects. And some writing. That, I like. I need to make more space.

The Heeb Film Festival at the Everyman. Because you don't want to leave North London when you go out, the Everyman has nice squashy velvet sofas, some of which are velvet and even purple. And you're edgy. Aren't you?

Where is the edge? "Don't touch me cos I'm close to the edge..." Words of the song? At a client's office so can't legitimately google around to remember.

By the way, the Opening Gala is apparently already sold out. Just so you know.

So I know I've been a little quiet.

Part of this is busy-ness: friend staying from Jersey, movies (Finding Neverland and The Corporation), friends over for dinner, new batch of Thai green curry paste, work-work-work, writing, Limmud stuff, catching up on my sleep. Doing a few CVs for people (one of my many sidelines) You know the kind of thing.

But part of this is that I've been thinking about why I blog. People often ask me, why do you spend so much time on it (answer: I don't), what's it for (answer: I like writing), why (answer: because I can) in general.

But I guess there's another reason.

I like the open-sourceness of blogging. I like it that I'm the number one search for people who want to find out about pointless British Gas three star contracts. I like it that if you have a Goodman's DVD and want the region one hack, you can find it here. I like it that if you are interested in Lady Windemere's Syndrome you come here, even if I don't know what it is either, I just once reviewed Lady Windemere's Fan.

While I like to say that I write for no-one but me, clearly that's not 100% accurate. Let's face it: like most bloggers (people?) I like an audience. The iterative nature of the conversation, the comments, the emails, the nutters who get in touch. It's all part of a dialogue that I'm excited, and to some degree honoured, to be part of.

So maybe this is the deal: I talk, you listen. I write, you respond. But it's predicated on my having the mental space and energy to want to keep doing it, and in January I'll have been doing it for three years, and I've written about 500,000 words.

I know, if it was a book, I'd be on the Prisoner of Azkaban.

And I think part of the reason I like doing it is some kind of generosity of spirit, or something like that. So I like finding interesting links that make people come back, and writing about things that engage people, as much as I like doing the stuff for myself.

But something happened to me recently that has made me review my general approach to life. My general approach can be summed up as "everyone is my friend." So I know a lot of people, and people often say to me "god, you know everyone," and I never know if it's a good thing.

And whereas some people find large circles of friends and acquaintanceship difficult, I thrive on it. Loose ties, sociologists call it. I like being connected to a vague web of people from vastly different backgrounds, and ocassionally even hooking up people who would never meet. I like it that a few hundred people came to my party, and I didn't even know some of them. Let's face it: I like it that people say I throw good parties.

But the downside of being broadly good-natured and generous, coupled with having a large circle of acquaintances, is that sometimes people can take the piss. And it's a numbers game: I know more people, more people take the piss.

So I'm not going to write up the details here, as (a) I don't particularly want to think about it, denial therapy being my modus operandi here, and (b) it wouldn't be particularly fair, but something happened that made me think that I had done something basically on a favour basis to help someone out, and it ended up backfiring on me in a really nasty way.

And I'm left feeling that I give a lot, and I'm not sure I always get stuff back. Not that everything is a trade. I mean, clearly it's not. But my trust in the benign reality of the world has been broken. Let's face it: not everyone is your friend. The world is not always nice. Shit happens. A lot, to some people. You don't always want what you get or get what you want.

I think this is a very long winded way of saying I may or may not want to take a break from this for a while. Because I need to feel a little appreciated, and sometimes blogging feels like giving and giving and you don't get anything back. Although sometimes it's just nice to write whatever you want.

And of course I reserve the right to change my mind about all of this in the morning. I should never have had that fourteenth Baileys.

So after quite a bit of googling around about courier flights to NY - and even discovering the The International Association of Air Travel Couriers which looks remarkably like a business to me - I discover this. US visa requirements post 9/11 means that no-one does courier flights to the US anymore. BA have some left till the end of the year, but only because they've sold the flights, and anyway, there's a chance most of their flights will get cancelled. Mmmmm.

Karl Lagerfeld's new range for H&M. Whatever next? Chanel at Tesco? Christian Dior at Iceland?

I have discovered the 460 bus. It goes from not-that-far-from-my-house to Finchley. It probably takes two hours, but it might mean that I finally divest myself of my car.

Gives Me A Happy
The world may be about to reach energy meltdown; there might be global warming at greater speeds than we've ever known; the chances of riots/explosions in the Middle East are far greater since the announcement of Arafat's death this morning; some of the people I know are not as genuine as they might be; shit might happen on a regular basis, but there's one thing that keeps me smiling.

(Aside: I actually typed slimming there. Freudian or what?)

Freecycle. Freecycle is about giving stuff away for no reason. I love it. I'm on the London mailing list, and I get a dozen or so mails a day of people saying "I have car to give away", "I have a computer to give a way". It's fabulous. It's the way the world should be. It makes me realise things are never as bad as you think.

I like Small Beautiful Things.

The thought of the day at Oval tube station. Perhaps they'll do an existential training course across the underground network and then I can get them at Kilburn.

While the parallel is unhelpful, I can't help likening the Yasser Arafat situation with matters arising when the Rebbe (Menachem Mendel Shchneerson, deceased leader of Chabad), was dying.

Remember? He was in a "coma" for weeks, as there was great concern about what would happen to his followers when they found out their leader was dead. As I remember it, a couple of factions set up camp either side of his hospital room, both claiming to be the "true leaders." There was lots of apparently cloak-and-dagger action, misinformation and press coverage. Sound familiar?

I've been meaning to read David Berger's book about the inside track on Chabad for a while. Maybe now's a good time.

And before anyone get's an apoplectic fit thinking I'm comparing the two people, I'm not. I'm comparing the circumstances, and what happens in groups when leaders die. That's all.

The specially weird prize this week goes to an Orthodox Chabad transvestite who murdered his landlord.

A new Malcolm Gladwell piece in this week's New Yorker.

Even Douglas Rushkoff has switched.

I am angrier than I have been for a long time. That is all.

This is exactly how I feel. Stayed up, dozing on and off, till threeish, then woke to the Today programme telling me it's all over bar the wailing. OK, I'm not American, but while we have a superpower, then their political leadership has an impact on us all. This is the complete oposite of how I felt in 1997 when Labour got in (elated, almost tearful), but then that was before I found out Tony's Maggie in drag.

The road to transformation runs parallel to the road less travelled, and it's a toll road, so you get a better class of passenger. More transformative, more transformation-enabled. The road to transformation is paved with purple bricks and a thick green line with an arrow like the arrows on the floor of a hospital. The alley cats stroll along the bus lane, conscious of their imability to connect on an ongoing basis.

I have a dinner guest (OK friend) coming over next weekend who doesn't eat garlic. At all. Not even disguised in a dish. Any ideas?

I want one of these. For no other reason than it's small, cute and well designed. Like my new mini iPod (pink, of course).

See, I knew I was doing something wrong. All this burning the candle at both ends - IKEA and Demos have a new report on the "sleepless society" (and if it's from IKEA, those leaders in social research, it must be good) which points out everything we're doing wrong.

Because, let's face it, everything we do is wrong.

Sometimes, you can't cancel your AOL account, even if you're dead. Not much chance for me, then.

Courtesy of bitful, the Coffee Table. No, not a coffee table, a Coffee Table. Never again will I resist the urge to tabulate stuff in excel for your delectation. This is just how I like to see any kind of information - thanks.

It's election day. Most of my friends won't go out tonight because they're staying up all night. But then some of them are US citizens. Do you think it's bad if I ask people what they're voting?

I'm always confusing Officer Krupke with Officer Dibble.

OK, hands up, who's staying up for the election tomorrow night?