By David Himmel

• When asked the question: “If you could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, who would they be?” I have to answer: “First, let’s be clear. At this dinner, I’m a journalist for the most legit, unbiased, unfunded, uncompromised news source and we’re gonna have an on the record casual conversation about the most inane and intense matters of the Human Experiment. This is not for fun. This is work.” Then I’d name my dinner guests: “Lee Harvey Oswald, Hunter S. Thompson, Blake Schwarzenbach. There’ll be whiskey there, right?”

• My birthday is this month. It is not My Birthday Month!. If you’re past the age of twenty-two, you don’t get more than the actual day of your birth and the nearest weekend reserved for gathering. Grow up and calm down. We’ll still love you when your birthday—day—is over.

• Static clings. Stasis kills.

• The Jewish American relationship to Israel is complicated because a tenet of the religion and cultural identity is nationalism for a country we don’t belong to. Tell me, what other religion sings the national anthem of a country not their own during religious services? This strange relationship is indoctrinated into the children as early as five years old. To break away from this is to challenge everything you’ve been told and risk being ostracized by friends and family as well as accusations of being anti-Semitic. Sounds a little like breaking away from Scientology, doesn’t it.

• The idea that all Jews must support whatever Israel does doesn’t quite play out logically. Let’s follow that logic. Looking at it through the lens of religion, if all Jews must support Israel then all Catholics must support pedophilia. And that’s fucking insane.

• The best advice I received this week is also the most obvious: Don’t engage with the people who annoy you. Is that nugget in The Secret? Didn’t think so.