If only I had time to blog…

If I wasn’t busy shamelessly neglecting my blog, here are a couple of things I’d probably be writing about:

1) With good reason, the Israeli Olympic swimmers’ extremely impressive achievements have been the talk of the country

But as far as the Shiputzim family is concerned, the best part of the Olympic swimming competitions is Moshe Gartel, Israel Television’s colorful and entertaining commentator, whose amusing sayings never fail to crack us up.

For instance, two nights ago, during the semi-finals, Gartel memorably begged an Israeli swimmer’s international competitors to slow down.

“What do you care?” he asked the swimmers (who obviously couldn’t hear him and wouldn’t have understood the Hebrew anyway). “Won’t you let a Jewish boy advance to the next level?”

And earlier in the week, when a different Israeli swimmer entered the arena, he burst into song (yes, on air!) and greeted her with the words, “Ta’aleh v’tavo, ta’aleh v’tavo…”

Many more of Gartel’s gems can be found here.

2) A few weeks ago, we lost power here in TRLEOOB*.

Ever mindful of my civic duty ever reluctant to spend more than a few minutes sans air conditioning, I called the electric company to report the blackout and to check how long it would last.

As expected, I was immediately put on hold.

And that’s when I made a surprising discovery: Apparently, someone over there at the electric company reads Our Shiputzim!

I mean, why else would s/he graciously provide me with a bit of much-needed blog fodder?

You see, as I was waiting on the phone, a recorded voice came on the line and informed me that all the operators were busy.

Then, after apologizing for the delay and thanking me for my patience, the voice suggested that I could save time by heading over to the electric company’s website. (“DAAA-bell-yoo, DAAA-bell-yoo, DAAA-bell-yoo. Nekudah. Aye, Eee, See. Nekudah. See, Oh. Nekudah. Aye, Ell.”)

Normally, this would’ve been very good advice, but under the circumstances (see: the dictionary definition of “electricity blackout”), I could access neither my computer nor our wireless network…

But I certainly appreciated the gesture, and it’s always nice to meet an Our Shiputzim fan – even if that fan is only an automatic voice recording.

 

And so, dear readers, there you have it: the blog post I would’ve written – if only I’d had the time…

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*TRLEOOB=the real life equivalent of our blog