Blogowitz #1

So let's start off by wishing a hearty yashar koach< ("straight and strong" – doesn't quite translate well into English) to all those who participated in our name the blog contest. And as you can see, the winner was "Blogowitz". A close second runner up was Bloga Nagila which was actually preferred by our Supreme Leader, but the Jewlarious reformist candidate prevailed upon the Supreme Leader to institute open and honest elections. So Blogowitz it is. It also helps that we went to elementary school with a kid named Stanley Blogowitz and he was both funny and informative, just as we hope this blog will be. Now to the blogging...

We went to school with a kid named Stanley Blogowitz who was both funny and informative.

Starting with bad news, there was a robbery in a shul in Bazu. For those of you who don't know your Jewish Geography, that's in Azerbaijan. For those of you who don't know your world geography, it's between Russian, Georgia, Armenia and Iran – a big tourist destination. Anyway, apparently two charity boxes were taken from the synagogue. But there's hope. Local police have detained someone who was previously convicted for the same crime: Sergei Binyaminov. In his defence, Sergei said that he was not stealing the funds at all. He was actually trying to do the Jews a favour. He invested the money with a friend of a friend who guaranteed fantastic returns, even by Azirbijanian standards. Ya you guess it. His name – Bernie Madoff.

Sticking with the Crook-of-the-Century, Bernard ("The Fraudster") Madoff is headed to the slammer for the next 150 years or the rest of his life, whichever comes first. This really bad boychik's breathtaking swindles have even given Ponzi schemes a bad name. We wonder if Madoff will follow the well-worn path of other chiseling criminals and find religion in the cooler. After all, religion will be a heckuva lot easier to find than a Lord & Taylor or a Rolex store. As a first step, Madoff should begin studying business ethics on Aish.com. Then perhaps he could get time off for good behavior, and be released when he is 195 years old.

A strange story: apparently Tel Aviv is missing 324,000 parking spots. Where did they go exactly? Perhaps the Israeli government should place a picture of them on the back of a milk carton? Or maybe Palestinian militants have kidnapped them? In fact, one terrorism expert Jewlarious spoke with said that kidnapping parking spots was a natural evolution of the terrorist attacks on Israel: "Soldiers are moving and have guns and tanks and they shoot back. Parking spots are just sitting there, and though hard to find, rarely put up a fight."

But now a feel good Israeli item. Israeli architect Eyal Amitzur has invented a more sophisticated form of the popular game Sudoku, called Tredoku. The 3-D game is already syndicated in newspapers around the world, and has its own Facebook group of more than 4,500 fans. Amitzur, 33, got bored with Sodoku's flat game design, so, applying his Yiddishe kop, adapted the game to have an infinite number of possible 3-D shapes. We at Jewlarious have not yet mastered Sodoku, let alone Tredoku, but when we get to brag about Jewish accomplishments, we do. Our mothers force us.

The North Korean ship Kang Nam, which was headed toward Hawaii and was feared by many normal nations of harboring long-range missiles, has done a switcheroo and is now headed back toward China. Those hot-headed North Koreans had said anyone who tried to intercept the ship was risking a declaration of war. Yikes! North Korean leaders could not be reached for comment, as they were all at a Ray-Ban sunglasses trade show, but one guy on the ship revealed that the captain simply got lost and refused to ask for directions. Seems that this personality quirk is shared by men of both democratic and despotic nations.

Finally, in Iran, the family of a man killed in a demonstration against the country's contested presidential election has been ordered to pay the equivalent of $3,000 for the bullets that took his life. Let's deal with the non-tragic element of this story first: what are these bullets made out of? Gold? $3000?! Where are the Iranians buying their bullets exactly? Are they paying retail? The Russians, or the French or the Germans, or whoever is supplying those bullets must think the Iranian dictators are a bunch of schmednriks. Nu, so maybe they're right.

Now for the tragic element. If only there was something we could do to help. Wear green? I guess what you are wearing doesn't help much when you are sitting at the computer. Typing green? Eating green beans? Other suggestions?