Blog is Dormant

Dear Potential Readers,

I have not posted anything here for quite a while, and the reason for this is that I have started a public blog under my very own real name. Because this blog is still anonymous, I’m not going to post the URL here. Feel free to email me – countdowntothirty@gmail.com, for the link, if you’re interested. The new blog is about food, wine, whiskey, life in Israel, thoughts, photos, and all sorts of other things. Mainly about food and drink. Pretty pictures and the like.

Ciao!

Ms 30+

New World Takes on a Whole New Meaning

I am totally in awe of Crushpad. It’s brand-y new boutique DIY winemaking awesomeness.  They say they are democratizing the wine industry.  I say f*ck yeah!

In their own words:

Who is Crushpad anyway? Well, we’re a combination of wine industry veterans and technology industry refugees who want to liberate winemaking from the stereotype of the 5th generation wine family living on the chateau with the Golden Retriever. By bringing winemaking to the city, augmenting it with education and support, and taking care of the time-consuming parts, we want to enable anyone with a serious interest in wine to participate in the magic of winemaking.

Basically, you get to design and make your own wine online in collaboration with experts and advisors online. Monitor the growth in the vineyards online, participate in the harvest if you want,  choose your barrels, your fermentation techniques, everything. Here’s the very clear easy “how does it work” page.  Explains it better than I can.

And what’s even better? I learned about them through a joint twitter and charity initiative. For every bottle you buy of their 2009 “Fledgling” wine, pictured above, they donate $5 to Room to Read, a literacy program that brings books to extremely impoverished children around the world and whose motto is, “world change starts with educated children.” Here’s a link to a video on how this all works.

So, as I’m starting to “get” twitter more and more every day, I am awed at its ability to take on projects like this one.  Humanity.  The more things change…

There you go. I bought two Fledgling bottles for my parents. So should you!

Half-truths and Secrets

A Post Secret

Sometimes I’ve almost slipped. Facebook and Twitter and Skype and all sorts of other networking status update tools have started feeling so natural.  I started wondering about social niceties and unspoken rules.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did slip.  If I spoke some real truth, as opposed to the selected truth we use to build up our online and offline identities.  Even casually.

How would the world take it should an acquaintance type up (in 140 characters or less, of course): “Spent a couple hours masturbating this AM before heading to scrummy brunch. Mimosas and crisp bacon really completed my day ;-)” OR “Off my meds, ate a whole pizza, can’t get out of bed, afraid I’m going over the edge” OR “I am so horny for my boss I am this far away from jumping him in the copy room” OR “XXX should just die!  Just jump off a cliff or have a good samaritain pull the trigger once and for all!” OR “Oh God I think I’m a lesbian!” OR “F*uck you world! Just f*ck you up the ass and around the corner and out your nose!”

Etc.  Not that these are in any way my confessions.

A Post Secret

Good grief, right?

Maybe not.  I have friends who are far more frank than I dare to be.  Not necessarily in very personal confessions, but rather in provocative links, daring allusions, vulgar or eye-opening or disgusting photos. Or even in their use of profanity, which I use rarely.

And the world certainly does have a need.  Ever heard of Post Secret? My sister is a new addict.  What started as an interesting contemporary art project (people sending in anonymous post cards spilling their secrets, compiled now into books), is something of an internet sensation. She reads posts on facebook, on the website, and even on twitter.  I think she’s even submitted.

By the light of the Hanukah Menorah my sister regaled me and a friend with tales of the anonymous who just had to reveal their sordid secrets to someone.  A woman was told her fiance was killed in Iraq only to find out later that he had married someone else.  Someone claiming to be a good person, not a racist in any way, finds Hitler irresistably sexy.  A woman admits to putting boogers in her husband’s food when she’s pissed off at him.  And it goes on and on.

Should we be more open and honest? Could this all really harm our online identities, or rather, our real identities? Some secrets protect. Some things may be best left unsaid. But what if you really feel like saying them? We have such a real need to be heard, especially about the things we find the most difficult to discuss.

Image from the Post Secret book

I’m just saying. They say the truth can set you free. Maybe it provides some relief.  But in this world, unless you have a stone facade, are totally confident with your situation, and are perhaps even independently wealthy, the truth seems to be a luxury.  I wish it were the case that the world would come together more, that friends would be more compassionate to each other, that we would push to become our better selves, in light of all this honesty.  We are all human – fallible, petty, hurt horny vindictive bastards.

But no.

Who would hire a bitchy bipolar bisexual Baptist? Any takers? Didn’t think so.  But that’s totally not me.  I’m Jewish, after all…