This story comes courtesy of one of my co-workers, Dav. I know it looks like a name from Invader Zim, but it’s pronounced “Dave”.

One of the things that me and Dav have in common is our ethnicity. Both of us are non-practicing Jews. Being Jewish comes with some advantages that gentiles don’t understand. One is a to have practically a supernatural affinity for the entertainment industry and money management. Another is the built in camouflage/amusement factor.

Like any other minority in the country, there are people that don’t like Jews. But unlike many other minorities, Jews are not color coded. If someone starts insulting Blacks in front of a black man, he is starting a fight. But if someone starts insulting Jews in front of me, they probably don’t realize I’m Jewish and are about to be embarrassed. Which is, of course, highly amusing.

Dav got to meet his girlfriend’s extended family during a big Easter Dinner last year. His girlfriend came from a large family of Eastern European immigrants. He hit it off and was fairly pleased that he seemed to be making a good impression with them. The grandmother served them lamb, which she explained was the traditional Easter meal for people from Bulgaria.

“We always have lamb for Easter. It’s the only time we can afford it. It’s not like we’re Jews.”

Dav looked uncomfortable for a moment and his girlfriend quickly intervened.

“Grandma, Dav is Jewish.”

Grandma quickly tried to make amends.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I didn’t think to look at his nose!”

Now every time he sees her family he complains about how long the meetings with the Elders of Zion take and most of them seriously have no idea if he’s joking or not.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/01/andy-olmsted.html?cid=95886692

Edit: By now my regular readers have all looked at this.  First of all, I’m sorry for the lack of warning.  I tried to write a some form of introduction for this and it just didn’t work.

I couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t just feel hollow against what Andy Olmstead wrote.  Plus I felt anything I said would just take away from it.  I’m still not sure that I feel qualified to comment on it at all other than to say that I think everyone who has anything resembling an opinion on this war should read it.

The military needs more leaders like him, and I’m sorry for what it took to bring his writing to my attention.

Today someone I work with showed me a link saying, “Some reserve PSYOP officer says that you made PSYOP look bad, and that you are an urban myth.”

This was great news, as I had been wondering what I was going to write about for my weekly update. Perfect, I now have a target.

So I forwarded the link to my home account, and got all ready to mock him on the internet. I was gonna make up new unit heraldry for him. (The 11th Battalion Fightin’ Hillbillies, and I was even going to add the latin motto “Vos fuimus pulchellus oris, puer”.)

So I got all worked up and I get home and look at the site. It’s an explanation of how PSYOP works written by a man called PSYOP Cop, who’s had some experience doing it in Iraq. It’s a pretty decent one too. So if you’re curious about that sort of thing, look here. Actually the site it’s on, OPFOR is worth looking at if you are interested in military matters at all.

It turns out the negative parts were just in the comments section. One reader thought that I make PSYOP look bad. To him, I repeat the same thing I said to the last guy who accused me of that: the military jokes on my site do less to harm PSYOP’s reputation that the one’s who possess commissions. (But I’m doing it here because I’m too lazy to log in there to do it, and beside he wrote it around six months ago.)

Another poster responded to him think that I do not exist and that no one has ever met me. This was a huge shock to my friends, family, and co-workers, who now want to know who the hell they have been talking to for the past several years. I personally never claim someone doesn’t exist without doing a Google search on them, just in case, I dunno, they have a webpage or a blog or something.

So dammit, once again the world thwarts me in my quest to be a righteously indignant smart-ass.

Some people may point out that I still acted like one. To them I say shut-up, nobody likes a smart-ass. Except for when I do it.

I’m gonna sulk, and maybe be mean to some fan-fic writers.