YIPPEE KIPPAH, MOTHERFUCKER! Hey ho. First off I'm sorry for neglecting so many emails, text messages and IMs. The PC has been hooked up twenty four seven downloading a pile of torrents. We have need of distraction. Every time I came back to the PC there was a small jumble of unanswered windows. Sorry about that. The weekend looks to be a continuation of family runaround stuff. Something like normal service will be resumed by Monday. Jess is doing ok. I've been blindsided by all this but it's a lot worse for Jess. She's crashed on the couch right now and hopefully dreaming of something sweet. Wednesday was a long one. Not that I expect funerals to ever be easy but this was my first full-on Jewish ceremony. The last time I met a rabbi face to face was to kick him and his godhorn off an intensive care ward. I'd like to say that the last couple of days have made me more tolerant to religion of any kind but it's just reinforced my belief that if you believe you are a fucking idiot. Carol herself was not remotely religious but had always said that she wanted to be buried alongside Jess' mum. This meant the whole thing was taken over by the zealots. The first dumb rule that we hit was the speed of the burial. It had to be done within three days. That would be fine if Jess' other aunt hadn't been out in Israel. You would have thought so many people with hard-ons for the old country would have maybe waited 24 hours for one of their own to grab a flight but it seems that 3 day rule is a tough one. Tradition. Nevermind that it's a tradition born in a HOT country where getting a corpse in the ground has to be done quickly for the good of everyone. We don't have that problem here but what does it matter that the only remaining sister is going to miss the funeral? The important thing is tradition and if we can squeeze a little extra misery out of the proceedings then that's a bonus. The actual service was never going to be easy but if there's a way to make this whole mess more difficult just get someone in a big black hat involved. Carol was mentioned by name twice. I gave up counting the times that Israel was mentioned somewhere after the twenty mark. And who needs pall bearers when you have a golf cart? Nothing says efficiency like having your loved ones brought into a room on Big Trak. Seeing the coffin for the first time was a big deal and of course Jess went straight to pieces. Good job I was there, right? Except of course I wasn't. They segregate the women to the opposite side of the hall so that when Jess needs me most she's surrounded by strangers and I'm with a bunch of dicks who see this as the perfect opportunity to talk shit. I have no problems with the actual burial - having the widowed husband (noticeably ignored for the majority of the day for his lack of faith) help fill in the grave sure creates no illusions about what is happening (I've never been a fan of the Catholic view of burial either). Watching the rest of the male congregation stand in line for a chance at throwing some soil around was sickening. I saw at least one person at the graveside that Carol never allowed in her house but because he wears a funny little hat he gets to do his part at her funeral. Fucked. The rabbi had the same mannerisms and physical appearance as the priest from Deadwood. That was disturbing. I had visions of him dancing with syphilitic whores... After the service we opened up our limo to the people we knew that Carol liked. Funnily enough they were all non-Jewish. The conversation on the way to Jess' grandparents was pretty much in the ilk of what the fuck was that? None of it had anything to do with Carol, what she believed in or the person that we remembered. The driver's knuckles went a little white a few times but he was being paid enough to drive and listen to us kick his terrorist-bait religion. We stayed late to see the evening prayer ritual through. This consisted of complete strangers turning up who had heard on the synagogue grapevine that there was some suffering to join in on. These guys are big on suffering. And talking about the poor American soldiers not being allowed to shoot unarmed Arabs in Iraq. And the dangers of Arab taxi drivers. I think I've mentioned on here before that Jess' mum was buried there against her final wishes. A woman who spent her life surrounded by nature is now resting in a place where flowers are not allowed. Makes me fucking sick. Of course the rest of the family see nothing wrong with any of this and I'm sure that Jess' grandparents would have been distraught if it had happened in any other way, but you'd think that at some point their own interests would take second place to their dead daughter's. In many ways it all helped us get through the day as there were a million and one surreal distractions. I loved the look of disgust from everyone in the kitchen when I revealed I was vegetarian. "You don't even eat fish? That is so weird" You have a bacon sandwich and then come back and talk to me about weird. I'm not even going to mention the foreskin. We finally got David back to his father's place at around midnight and then crawled back here to try and put the day into some kind of perspective. Once we had got the ridiculous ceremony out of the way we could get on with the actual mourning. This mostly involved going through old photos, rewatching some video I shot in the summer and just remembering the person we had lost. When I die please take it as read that I want to be illegally distributed in ash form over a large city. Maybe I can irritate someone's eyes or cause an asthma attack. And for the record I stole my skullcap. I intend to have the following stitched into it: I WENT TO A JEWISH FUNERAL AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID HAT. Mike is blogging to: The Ataris