The so-called “storm” I wrote about yesterday was a flop. It snowed like 2″ and most of it melted by the time I got out of bed this morning.

Thank G-d. I hate jumping over snowbanks.

Ugh.

We’re headed for another winter storm here in Manhattan. I’m hoping it turns out to be a fluke, it doesn’t feel stormy so maybe we’ll get off lightly. As a precaution I went grocery shopping today because if it’s cold and snowy outside tomorrow I’m not going out of my apartment building, other than to maybe go to the gym.

This has been a calm weekend. Went out to Employees Only for dinner Friday and a party for a friend Saturday. Had around 3″ of my hair cut off, so it’s pretty short. Today worked out, studied and did some research.

I’m leaving for San Francisco the 9th through the 18th of March. I can’t wait to get back home.

I took my diet and exercise journal off-line after receiving three strangely garbled e-mails from someone accusing me of being “pro-Ana.” For those not in the know pro-Ana is comeone who is pro-anorexic, or pro-eating disorder, which I am not. These e-mails said because my blog comes up first when one does a Google search on “pro-Ana” I’m pro-Ana, and my food diary, which shows me eating less than 2000 calories a day, is encouraging eating disorders.

Let me address the 1st point of the blogger - that this blog comes up first on Google search strings involving “pro-Ana.” I wrote a piece on the pro-Ana movement in which I called it “scary” and “strange,” hardly an endorsement of eating disorders. Google uses algorhthyms for blog searches involving a number of different factors, and my blog is showing up on top, but I am not nor have I ever been “pro-Ana.”

The second issue is my food and fitness journal. I eat less than 2000 calories a day and do an average of 45 minutes of hard cardiovascular exercise 4x a week. My diet is varied but almost always is composed of 33% calories from fat, 33% from carbs and 33% from protein. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends
that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women
or 1800 per day for men. I am hardly on a starvation diet. I eat bread, vegetables, lean meats, cheese, milk, fruit, beans and lots of other things. I take supplements and try and live a balanced life involving good food and everything in moderation.

I do not have an eating disorder nor do I think eating disorders are glamorous or cool, they’re sad and terrible and if you’re reading this blog looking for encouragement on how to live with one I’d encourage you to seek professional help as soon as possible. Eating disorders kill. I am not pro-ana and I find the whole movement sad, perverted and strange. Please do not contact me for information on the pro-Ana movement because I am not nor have I ever been a supporter of it.

Serbia, backed up by it UN Security Council veto-wielding ally Russia, is in hysterics about the new UN-proposed plan for the independence of Kosovo. “Biased and working in the interest of the (Kosovo) ethnic Albanians” said Serbian government official Zoran Loncar who goes on to add “It is unthinkable that the Security Council would violate basic principles of the U.N. Charter.”

Loncar is wrong. What is unthinkable is that the UN or NATO would allow the present situation in Kosovo to continue, which is a strange half-way point between independence and UN protectorate, a state of affairs which makes no one happy - not the Kosovar Albanians nor the Serbs living in Kosovo.

The UN plans tries to balance the concerns of the Serbian and Albanian populations by mandating very strong protections for the rights of ethnic minorities in Kosovo and essentially giving the ethnic Serb population a veto over matters concerning their community.

Right now ethnic Serbs represent less than 10% of the population of Kosovo, neither they nor their compatriots in Serbia can expect the Albanian population to allow Serbia a veto on independence when the Albanian population is already giving ethnic Serbs in Kosovo so much control over the affairs of their own community - to the point that Serbia is allowed to directly fund and staff schools and other institutions in Serbian areas of Kosovo.

The alternative is grim. If Russia vetoes this plan in the UN Security Council the US and Britain will recognize Kosovo independence anyway and the Serbs in Kosovo will be left without the substantial and muscular protections promised them in the plan now before the Security Council. This will lead to further spasms of violence and ethnic cleansing followed by the exodus of the few remaining Serbian enclaves, the destruction of the many beautiful Byzantine-era monasteries and churches in Kosovo and the end of more than a thousand years of Serbian culture and presence in Kosovo.

There is no alternative to the UN-mandated plan. For the sake of the Serbian and Albanian people in Kosovo we should all hope and pray this plan is accepted because the alternative is grim. Bookmark this entry and refer back to it in 1-2 years time because everything that I am forecasting here will have come true if this plan is vetoed by Russia in the Security Council.

Since that debacle with my driver I’ve endeavored to do the following things:

1. Eat well, not more than 2100 calories a day.
2. Work out, strenuous cardio, everday.
3. Not go out so much.
4. Do new things, go to new places.

So far I’ve succeeded admirably. I mean, I hear the paparazzi are missing my boozy nightly exits from Bungalow 8 and Cain but that’s just something Page Six is going to have to do without.

The consequences (other than less exposure in the trashy NY press) have been excellent. I feel better, look better and am more balanced. On the negative side I’ve been sleeping poorly - which I attribute to the low calorie diet but pretty much everything else has been good.

So why am I so restless? I want to go out and have a beer and a ciggie but I know I can’t, at least not for now, because I can’t have just one beer and one ciggie and I feel a lot better now than when I was having a lot of booze and ciggies. Maybe it’s lack of sex - with my boyfriend on the other side of the country my sexual activity is limited to just me and that gets boring. It actually got boring about three days after I got back to Manhattan in January.

So I’ll watch more movies and work out more and count the days until I get back to California in March and we can play naughty doctor-patient games again.

Zimbabwe’s inflation rate has now hit 1550%! That’s a world record!

So in addition to being known as a thieving, genocidal, syphylis-infected, election-stealing tyrant Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe now holds the world’s record for inflation. At that inflationary rate prices double 18 times each year!

Maybe we should give him $1.3 million for his birthday celebration - who knows what other kinds of records he’ll break at the rate he’s going!

I recently watched a documentary on the Hasidic community in New York. Instead of feeling like they’re keepers of some semi-authentic Jewish flame I was left feeling like they’re welfare-Jews, great at studying Torah and having babies but when it comes to the hard work necessary to keep the Jewish community alive they contribute absolutely nothing, zip, ZILCH!

The way I feel is a continuing conflict in the Jewish community. Because of the dispersed nature of the Jewish people we have no central priesthood so our sense of who we are as a religious people is not centrally defined. This leaves an opening for those who consider themselves to be especially Orthodox or pious to present themselves as “real Jews,” meaning the rest of us are somehow not as authentic. Bullshit.

The Hasids have kept their same language and style of dress since they left Europe after the Holocaust. That seems to be a central theme of those who admire them so much, but tell me how wearing the same hat your ancestors wore in Poland or Romania or Moldova means you’re keeping Jewish tradition alive? Jewish tradition has nothing to do with clothes. Sure they’re devout and they have big families. But what have they contributed towards the foundation of the State of Israel? Many are anti-Zionist, some extremely so, but their first loyalty is always towards their rebbe and then their community, which they define very narrowly to exclude everyone who isn’t a Hasid. They bring to mind the schtetl Jew, religious to a fault and insular to the extreme, enduring years of pogroms and discrimination, still chanting Torah while being herded off into the gas chambers.

And who resisted the Nazi onslaught and then struggled to build Israel and establish Jewish political power in the United States? Non-religious Jews, Conservatives and Reform Jews and some Orthodox. Who built the Israeli Defense Forces into one of the most powerful armies in the world and defeated Arab armies again and again while the Hasids refused to join the IDF and demanded more and more monies for yeshivas and welfare payments? That’s right - Reform, Conservative and Orthodox, but not the Ultra-Orthodox or the Hasids.

I’m a warrior Jew, a Jew in the tradition of Kahina, the Jewish Berber Queen who refused to accept conversion to Islam and died fighting Arab armies in the 600’s CE. A Jew in the tradition of King David, of Moshe Dayan and the brave men and women who serve Israel in the IDF and the Mossad and in every way they can every day.

I have serious issues with the pious schtetl Eastern European Hasidic tradition. It holds no mystique for me, none at all. Yes they’re still Jews and I love them as I love any other Jew, but they’re not more Jewish than me and despite their continuing problems with conversion they should remember that King David’s grandmother was a convert - Ruth. My place in the lineage of Jews stretching back to Abraham is as secure, if not more than theirs.

The irony of asking the world to pony up $1.3 million to celebrate Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe’s 83rd birthday is almost too much to bear. The gall of the Zimbabwean government doing so, in the face of an economy that has shrunk by 30% in less than 5 years and with an inflation rate of 1280% is astounding.

The agony of Zimbabwe never seems to end. There are shortages of critical drugs, cooking oil, maize and every other necessary commodity. Strikes are paralyzing the capitol and the money is worthless. But the government is focused on making sure Mugabe has a fabulous birthday party, and they want YOU to help make it happen.

Zimbabwe - a microcosm of everything WRONG with Africa.

Chairman Mao said that with confession comes leniency. I’ve done a bad thing and my boyfriend wants me to confess on my blog before he’ll assist me in paying the bill for my bad thing. So here it goes:

I have used my driver in Manhattan excessively over the past month. I have a $2100 bill for being driven to various events at places like Gold Bar, Cain, Bungalow 8 and Da Silvano. I’ve been very bourgeois and inconsiderate of the people, who after all don’t have the luxury of a warm Mercedes to drive them to their events. As one who considers himself OF the people I’ve lost my way - transfixed by the glitter of Manhattan nightlife.

I now realize the error of my ways and in the future will only use a driver when it is absolutely necessary, not because it is 10 degrees outside or I have to (once again) hide from the paparazzi when coming out of nightclubs.

with bitchy New Yorkers anymore.

One of my New Years resolutions was to stand up for myself more, to not put up with shoddy service, bitchy or rude shop workers, crappy food or late deliveries. It feels great when I don’t put up with the little things that make life so miserable here in Manhattan on a daily basis, especially with the cold weather we’ve been experiencing.

An example was today at the pharmacy. I go to the Duane Reade that is nearest me in the W. Village. The pharmacy is staffed by this large, grumpy elderly Indian woman. Every time I drop something off she shoves a piece of paper at me and grunts for me to write down my name and DOB. I always do, despite knowing that the information she wants is ON the prescription I handed her 5 seconds before, she doesn’t write it down because she’s lazy and she’s also rude. When it comes time to find the prescription she always takes 10 minutes and looks around and goes in the back and then asks me to write down my name, AGAIN. Her English sucks so it’s even more difficult to get what you came for and in the end I’m in a worse mood than when I came in.

Today I had enough. She barked at me as I was writing my name down and I put down the pen and looked her in the face and said “Don’t talk to me like that, it’s unacceptable.” And she said “Well you’re not writing it down in the right place” and I said “I understand that but I don’t want you talking to me like that, you do it every time I come in here and I don’t want it to happen again.” And at that I dropped her pen down on the desk and stood there, her staring at me and me staring at her, sort-of a Western-Indian stand-off. She then sighed and picked up the piece of paper and walked to the back.

I’m sure she has a difficult life but you know what? I don’t give a flying fuck. I can put up with the myriad of annoyances that living in Manhattan brings - constant sirens, late subways, gross smells etc… But I’m not going to put up with rude pharmacist assistants who shouldn’t have the job if it makes them so unhappy in the first place. Treat me the way you want to be treated - it’s that simple. Don’t and I’ll call your shit O-U-T.