Guy Hasson’s new comedy project, a daily podcast named The Voice of God, is now online. I recorded it and created the deliberately-bombastic opening theme. Try it!

(Why am I writing this post again, this time in English? Guy Hasson is to blame. He Did It.)

Guy Hasson, in a post in his excellent blog ”The Storytellers“, brings examples of writing humor, stressing the importance of timing. Some of the examples are marvelous (Dorothy Parker is a queen among men!), but none of them are familiar even to reasonably well-read people. When I asked Guy why he didn‘t bring some more familiar examples, he suggested that I do it myself. In fact, he suggested a blog-fight, in which each of us will try to quote the best humorous texts he can find. In order to make if a fair fight, it was decided that of the two of us, the winner will be the one whose name starts with an N.

I therefore sent a long hand into my bookshelf and, in one smooth movement, drew out a book by one Jerome K. Jerome. It was in Hebrew. There you go, Guy:

(The three are trying to pack a suitcase for their trip. After laughing at Jerome, it is now George and Harris‘es turn to try:)
When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.
It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and to get you interested.
Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.
And then it was George’s turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn‘t say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn‘t find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.
They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn‘t go in, and what was in wouldn‘t come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.

This extract (which is merely a part of a longer scene) demonstrates not only Jerome’s amazing timing, but also the impressive way in which he builds an escalating comic situation. Here’s another, shorter extract:

(The three try to open a pineapple tin)
Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.
It was George’s straw hat that saved his life that day.

Another escalating situation, with a brilliant ending which takes the reader a second to grasp before cracking up.
Here’s another one:

(Jerome, having decided that he’s a very sick person, goes to a medical man. The medical man -)
…opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn‘t expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.
He said he didn‘t keep it.
I said:
”You are a chemist?“
He said:
”I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.“
I read the prescription. It ran:
”1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don‘t stuff up your head with things you don‘t understand.“

I very rarely laugh out loud when reading a book, but with Three Men in a Boat it happens to me every time.
Ok, Guy. It’s your turn now.

After existing for much too long without having a show to… well, to show for it, Urbans are happy to announce that their (um, our) first show will take place on the 25th at the Carson Bar, Jaffa. Samples, pictures and a weird blue video can be found in the band’s site.

I've just finished writing my chapter for that book Lavie and I have been working on some two years now. My contribution brought the length of the work to slightly more than 56,000 words. It also, by a strange though somewhat expected turn of events, concluded the book.

That’s right. The novel’s first draft is now, at last, finished. I find it hard to believe, after all the time and effort and whatnot, but so it is. Moo!
Holy cow - what shall I write now?

I hate Windows' AutoPlay. That thing which, whenever you put a CD in the drive or connect a USB device, pops up and asks you what to do, or plays the thing, or scans it for all kinds of file, or whatever.
I hate it.
I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.
Here’s how to kill it:

1. Go to Start Menu and select the "Run" option
2. In the dialog that opens, key "gpedit.msc" (without the quotes, of course), then press the "OK" button.
3. In the dialog that appears, on the right side, double-click on "User Configuration"
4. On the right side, double-click on "Administrative Templates"
5. On the right side, double-click on "System"
6. On the right side, double-click on "Turn Off AutoPlay"
7. In the dialog that appears, select the option "Enabled".
8. Below that option, on the same dialog, there’s a "Turn off Autoplay on:" field. Select "All Drives".
9. Press the "OK" button.
10. Live happily ever after.

If you're not into writing VST plugins, or don't know what they are, this post isn't for you. Really. Get out. Don't prolong your suffering. Out, I said. Out!
So. Up until now I used to write VST plugins in Delphi. I got some very satisfying results, including a very complicated self-script-supporting modular synth system, but, well, all my algorithms are written in Pascal, which is all nice and dandee until one needs to copy them to a non-Pascal environment. So I've been wanting to write'em in C++ for quite a long time, but never got to it.
The original VST SDK is, of course, in C++, but the graphic-design option is simply a disaster. Borland’s C++Builder would be a very good tool, but for some reason it always refused to compile anything with even remotely resembled a VST plugin.
But not anymore. I found out how to do it, and in order to allow everyone to join the party, I created a demo project, source included, and put it online. Here.
Enjoy, people.
(I should also update my VST Plugins page, which is horribly outdated now. I hope I find the time anytime soon.)

My story The Word of God, which appeared in Trabuco Road, has been reviewed, along with the rest of Trabuco’s first issue, in Tangent Online.
Here.
I'm quite satisfied.

Just received the new issue of Shimmer, which includes a story by myself. It’s the first time I get to see a translated story by myself in print.
I wish myself many returns of the day.

Update: A review of said Shimmer issue has appeared in Tangent Online.

At the end of an old Muppets episode, I encountered the following joke:

"What’s this camel’s name?"
"Sopwith."
"What? Sopwith the Camel?"

Now, does anyone here understand it?
Or am I the only one who read "The Big Book of Planes" so many times that it crumbled and a new copy had to be bought?

(The explanation’s here.)

The habit of looking oneself up in google blog search is, of course, extremely vain, and I'd never have indulged in it was it not for my dear friend , who’s one of the greatest experts in the field and generally a bad influence on my innocent and virginal soul.
And so I found out three rather positive notifications of my recently published story, "The Word of God". One, Two, Tree.
Innocent and virginal as I may be, I can't resist compliments. Now excuse me, I'm going to bath some more in that lovely glow.