False Dichotomies

False Dichotomies is proud to present ‘the daily story’, a new project of instinctively written short stories. We welcome contributions from near to far, in every language. We just ask that a translation be provided. I have written the first story below, and look forward to receiving your contributions. Shout outs to Hagay Hacohen for the idea. One love.

On Gaza Street the testosterone flowed like blood as the bus-driver squared off with the man-who-was-too-late. The man-who-was-too-late, wearing jeans, t-shirt and a kippah, tip-toed up to the driver’s window as the bus stood in traffic. Every pedestrian stopped and gawked, the potential excitement of a puch-up too great to miss. The conversation was inaudible, but their deliberate gesticulations spoke volumes, like the melodramatic dances of some Broadway musical. We thought – we hoped – that the-man-who-was-too-late would punch the driver. Instead, he lolled away, disappearing from view behind the bus, another Yerushalmi on the edge, on the day I left the city.

“Last week, to mark the start of the new university year, Israeli President Shimon Peres took a jaunt around the Hebrew University campus. While doing the rounds, as one does on these occasions, he found time for a meet and greet with various students, not all of whom were pleased to see him.

According to Haaretz, Ali Baher, the chairman of the Hebrew University’s Arab student body, refused to shake Peres’ hand. Moreover, he called him a “murderer of children”, presumably a reference to Peres’ role in the Qana deaths of 1996’s Operation Grapes of Wrath, in which 106 civilians were killed in shelling from Israeli artillery.” Read on at the Z-Word Blog.

Don Joe redefines the word charisma. By redefining charisma as being born in 1980 in a small village north of London, he claims to be the most charismatic man alive. Now successfully alive for 27 years, he has been writing ever since he learnt the alphabet. His first words, ‘cat’ and ‘mom’, were widely praised, broadly acclaimed and critically renowned.

After writing several other words, including ‘camel’ and ‘wingnut’, Joe was accepted at Oxford to read biology. After reading biology and other words, he beat the pants off of everyone else in his academic year, except Rebecca Smith. Don Joe then took up a PhD at Cambridge. His PhD thesis, read only by two bearded professors, did not receive the wide distribution he hoped for. However, he did become a Jewish doctor and that scores highly with the ladies.

Leaving science to become a corporate whore in LA, he has worked hard on making his accent even stronger, because that too scores highly with the ladies. He ought to get laid a lot more than he does. He’s not bitter though; not at all. As a cathartic backlash against the minutia of corporate America “What the f*** am I doing here? A guide to working for large corporations” has become his passion, obsession and several other fragrances. It represents a wry writer’s rants through the boardrooms, break-rooms and bathrooms of banal bureaus everywhere. Joe also has a delicious barbeque chicken pizza in the oven.

The easiest way to convince people you’re intelligent and well read is to add “And then there’s China” at the end of any conversation. Discussing world politics? And then there’s China. Aristotle, Nietzsche, Foucault? And then there’s China. The only occasion when this doesn’t work is if you’re already discussing China. Everyone has to have an opinion on China; it’s dinner party law.

Understanding Chinese culture isn’t that difficult; indeed the Buddhist philosophy that underlies a lot of Chinese customs and business isn’t so different from the Jewish traditions that underlie world banking, Hollywood and the bagel industry. For example, in Buddhism your family will be respected if you have a lama in your family. Furthermore, Buddhists often approach lamas with their health problems, treating them like doctors. Everyone knows Jews love doctors.

To save you from having to read Confucius, Lao Tze and Mencius, here are the basics of what you need to know to do business in China: Read more

Hope breaks out; disappointment follows in its wake. This should not be dismissed as cynicism; it is just the way things are. We invest great emotional and intellectual energy in dreaming our dreams of the future, enjoy the sweet thrill of triumph for a moment or two, before resuming our lives as before, disappointed that the promise was not realised. “The test of a first-rate intelligence,” writes F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still be able to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” How are we to function in these circumstances? Read more

Falsedichotomies is proud to resurrect Guest Dichotomies with these reflections on London’s largest shopping centre from Josh FB. If anyone is interested in contributing anything to the Guest Dichotomies section, please be in touch. Look out over the weekend for reflections on Obama’s victory and next week for more Israeli election analysis. That long-promised piece on Indignation is on its way as well, as is the second part of the marriage series.

On the dreary, cold misery of a wet Wood Lane, Westfield looms, a soulless grey monolith; hard and dark and aesthetically redundant, a slab, on which the eye neither settles nor moves, towering to nothingness with no profound purpose whatever. A quick glide up an innocuous escalator, though, and the world changes: here is the death of God itself. Read more

Whenever I’m in London, my friends challenge me on Israel’s political system. It’s the democracy of fools, they tell me, when it leads to the kind of instability Israel experiences as a matter of routine. The country has had 31 governments since its inception, the result of its electoral system of pure, unadulterated proportional representation. Still, I tell them, it’s not so bad. At least our system authentically reflects the wishes of the people. If we choose to vote for chaos, then so be it. Isn’t getting what you want the point of democracy? Read more