I can bring you a note from my mother

My colleague P., who had not written in his blog for about 2 months, picked up the thread with an apology and an explanation for his long absence: he was busy with his exams. For P's sake, I hope that he has ardent followers who really missed his blog, accepted his apology and explanation, and were delighted to read him again.

As for me, I have two excuses, or explanations, for my longish silence:
1. I had nothing interesting to write about
2. I've been dealing with a family crisis – Mom (90+) is in hospital with a broken hip. I can provide you with a note from her, or from one of her friendly orthopedic surgeons; I like Dr. Shapira best, he has incredibly good bedside manners! I suspect he studied abroad; perhaps on the set of E.R. or some such place, where doctors are so sympathetic, understanding, caring, and always have time to actually talk to the patients and their families.

Of the two explanations above, #1 is actually the more inexplicable and disturbing. Weeks go by, and I have nothing to complain about? How is that possible?! Has everyone started writing perfect Hebrew/English, or have I stopped reading, lost my critical skills, or what? I've been roaming the corridors of Ichilov hospital, a.k.a. Sourasky Medical Center, for over two weeks now, and haven't yet seen anything worth reporting to you folks. Not one misspelled sign or awkwardly phrased notice. Weird.

The good ol' J. Post and the local weeklies, of course, continued to supply me with "material", but it's all such petty stuff. For instance:

1. In honor of the new school year, the Gal-Gefen weekly carried a full page color ad for what the advertiser calls Israel's largest tiks portal… I kid you not: www.tiks.co.il .

2. Danone wants to convince you all to eat more of its health-promoting yogurt. So first they place a plain text ad that looks purely informative. In this ad they manage to spell their product both "yogurt" and "yoghurt" within the same line; they claim that their product contains – get this – bio-bacteria (er, as opposed to what other kind of bacteria?...) and invent a fancy, scientifically-sounding name for it. Then they follow up with a huge color ad, with English text that is painfully translated from the Hebrew: "I have a terrible 'balagan' in my stomach, I feel so bloated…", complains Girl in White; "I felt the same until I tried Activia…" chirps Girl in Blue.
I agree that an Israeli English speaker may indeed say something like that. And since the target audience is us English-speaking Israelis, maybe this Heblish is fine. Maybe.
Forgetting about the Heblish, I always get upset by the way the gullible public drinks in the dairies' pretentious claims about their "special" products with their "special" bacteria.

3. And last for today, before I rush off to visit Mom in Ichilov: The J. Post, in its Classifieds section, carried the most amusingly written ad today, and I quote, verbatim:

We are looking for job seekers that
will server as our representatives
and receive money from our clients
abroad which will be earning 10%
Of the amount received every week.
(Average Income Every
Week $1,200)
-----------------------
If you are Interested, Get back to me
with the below information's (Full Name
+ address, Tel. number, Sex, E-mail,
Occupation) and respond to this email address
xxxxx.yyyy.@zzzz.com