I know, I know. I’m disappointed, too. I am absolutely not calling for any kind of grassroots campaign here. And anyway, remember when Bradley Cooper was named Sexiest Man alive in 2011, even though we all knew it should have been Ryan Gosling? We protested, and had letter-writing campaigns, and posted to Tumblr, and what good did it do? There are some causes we cannot win. For this reason we need to accept that I did not make Barack Obama’s 2012 Kill List.

It is a very competitive category. The United States military does only make up 54% of the total budget. We cannot be expected to murder everyone we want to. It’s not a realistic goal. Someone’s not going to make the list. And recall that George W Bush’s Kill List from 2002-2008 consisted of one person, and he couldn’t even get to that one. What I’m trying to say is that I know Kill Lists can be a challenge.

In 2011, Obama managed to kill between 400-500 people in Pakistan using drone attacks. About 5-10% of those were civilians. So even by using a system for killing that requires almost no human work whatsoever, he is not able to get this killing thing down. The more people we try to kill, it seems, the more civilians we will accidentally kill. So the list remains elite, and out of reach for many.

The first hint I might not make the list is the knowledge that two teenagers were killed by drones in Yemen recently. I live in West Hollywood, near Melrose Avenue, which is a very hip location to shop. It is also by a high school, so I see teenagers buying their clothes in those kinds of stores that appear to only have a single t-shirt on display on the wall, on sale for $46. These stores blast Skrillex and nobody inside them cares that it’s impossible to find somewhere to eat within a mile. I know that I am just not cool enough to experience the kinds of things teenagers experience, like following Kanye West on twitter or getting killed by missiles launched by airplanes with nobody inside of them.

There are certainly those who are going to tell me that I didn’t make the list just because I am an American citizen, and putting an American citizen on a kill list is a violation of due process. This is the kind of constitutional violation that led to Bradley Cooper on the Sexiest Man Alive list. It cannot be allowed to continue. But as the Justice Department explained in a secret memo, if the Executive Branch discusses an issue internally, it counts as due process. The Executive Branch is a bit like People Magazine’s editorial department in this way. In short, I am eligible for the Kill List.

I do think it’s all who you know, and who your publicist knows. And you know that I have no publicist. I’m just like you. Vote for me. And there’s always next year. But by this time next year I plan on being your President. And my Kill List will make sense, dammit. It will be a Kill List the American people can be proud of. It may include Bradley Cooper.

I recently had occasion to wear a suit. It’s a part of running for president, as it turns out. That’s fine. I was prepared for this. It’s not a surprise. And I have suits.

As a matter of fact, I have many suits. I have a reputation for not being the kind of person who wears suits - perhaps because of similarities my friends have been drawing between my wardrobe and that of a young Rick Santorum. But there was a time, years ago, when I only wore suits.

A friend of mine, who is about to be married to an Orthodox rabbi in Las Vegas (he is both a rabbi in Las Vegas and they plan to marry in Las Vegas, I think), introduced me to thrift-store shopping when we were both about fourteen. We shopped daily. I discovered that I could find full suits for under thirty dollars. I slowly discarded my whole wardrobe, and wore a suit to school every single day for about two years. I sat in front of one student, improbably named Jeff Daniels, in English class and every day he would brush my shoulders (there was a very popular Jay-Z song on the subject on the radio at the time). I briefly had a reputation at college as “the guy who wears a suit everywhere,” which was followed by the much longer-lasting repuation as “the guy who never wears shoes, ever.”

When I moved to southern California I started dressing more appropriately for the weather, including Hawaiian shirts, oversized shorts, and a constant sunburn. I also put on between ten and sixty pounds, depending on when you started counting. My suits, which i carefully put into a garment bag for the trip out west, began to exist only to make me sneeze whenever I tried to put one on to see if the waistline still fit me (no).

Then I announced that I was running for president. You are aware of this. Many of you have already donated to my campaign, for which I thank you. Being president requires wearing a suit, as does running for it, apparently. I have seen pictures of my opponent, Mitt Romney, campaigning and he seems to spend all his time in rolled-up shirtsleeves to indicate that he’s a man of the people. Perhaps he is a man of the people. I will say, though, that most of the people I’ve seen him around cannot wear dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up to work. A lot of these jobs require uniforms.

I dragged an old three-piece suit out of my closet. I’m not trying to be braggy; it’s just that I realized at a young age that you get more fabric for your buck when you invest in a three-piece suit. Plus, more pockets. I tried it on and was surprised to discover that it fit, and coincidentally was slightly torn in a few places along the waistline.

I wore the suit all day. I re-learned some old lessons, like:

• Suits are hot.
• Really hot.
• Especially outside in the sun.
• It feels weird to make a bowel movement when you are wearing a suit.
• Less so on a toilet (that is a joke).
• A soup stain on your crotch doesn’t look like a soup stain and it looks troubling.
• When did I eat soup in this suit?

• Who am I kidding, all my clothes have soupstains. Not all soup is memorable.

I may not wear the suit again for some time. I like the suit, and enjoyed the experience of wearing it, but it might just be a special occasion thing. Like inaugurations.

With the news that Mitt Romney was a homophobic bully in high school, I should probably clear the air as much as possible here. I am not concerned that the news will out on its own, but rather that with Mitt’s extant voting base, the news that he used to bully kids he thought was gay will help him in the polls. These stories are just free publicity for the Mitt Machine (which is what Mitt has called his campaign in private meetings, according to the Ryan Gosling-like figure my campaign attempted to lure away from his).

To get back on point: my confession. I have taken to Facebook and asked my former classmates what they remembered best about me. The response was nearly unanimous: When between meals, all I wanted to talk about was food, and also while eating. One former classmate who is currently working for the secret service, I think, noted that I once declared myself to be hungry with fettucine alfredo in my mouth. He asked, “Do you mean you WERE hungry?” I allegedly responded: “Absolutely not. I want to eat this fettucine alfredo forever.” He claims he recalls the specific language I used because he got a little bit of alfredo in his eye as I said the word itself.

I am not especially ashamed to have been so well-known for being hungry in my youth. Indeed, like Mitt, I have gone on to make my high school hangups a fundamental part of my campaign. For Mitt, that means his campaign revolves largely around his violent discomfort with homosexuality. For me, it is my own hunger and occasional back pain.

I should also explain that my back often hurt back then, too. Like my classmates, I carried an overfull backpack to class, and it took its toll on my back. For some of my classmates, like those that are currently in law school (I am not a lawyer; I’m just like you, if you are not a lawyer), their backpack was full of books and schoolwork and such. Mine was full of snacks. I sometimes suspect that the weight disparity between my backpack at the beginning of the day and my backpack at the end of the day is responsible for the stress my back suffered during those years.

I never encountered anyone like Mitt while I was in school, but then again I went to a public school, and was often distracted by faculty birthday parties and the question of whether or not I could access the cake in the teachers’ lounge. I did have long hair, though, and some of the nastier kids at school occasionally questioned my sexuality

There was one such kid at my school who rode the bus with me. He would toss a homophobic comment my way every day on his way off the bus. He sometimes claimed that my long hair made me gay, and sometimes remembered that his best friend had long hair, and the fact that I was gay made me gay. He never physically touched me until the summer between my junior and senior years, when we both ended up working as house painters for his uncle. We ended up forming a pretty casual rapport, and he stopped bothering me. I often wonder if that kind of growth would have been possible for my opponent, Mitt. I often wonder if having a non-CEO-job would have been possible for him.

There has been a lot of buildup about the announcement today. I do not want to drag this out, so I will quickly provide some background for the decision I have made. I know there are people who think it took me too long to come around to this position. To them I can only say: I’m here now. Let’s work together.

Yesterday, I ended up carrying a lot of boxes to different places. I was hired for the day to load up a truck with boxes, and then drive the truck to a second location and unload the boxes. I would rank the specific components of the job in the following order:

1. Driving a truck
2. Carrying boxes
3. Listening to the accountant sitting next to me describe his career, 1977-1984.

When I got off work, I went out to the hardware store to pick up some bricks, as someone I know plans on lining the bottom of a rat cage with the stuff. It was no more my business to ask about the bricks/rats situation than to ask why the accountant thinks David Bowie is “New Age.”

Between carrying boxes and carrying bricks, I had forgotten to eat between two and eight pm, a time period during which I like to slip in about two mini-meals, to prepare for dinner. These things can get away from you if you’re trying to remember if you were supposed to buy eight bricks or ten (ten bricks?!). When I got home, my back hurt, and I was hungry. That led to a startling realization: It wasn’t the first time my back has hurt and I’ve been hungry.

Every now and then, I’ve been hungry, and at other times my back has hurt, and sometimes both at once. This is unacceptable. I can do better than this. And we as a country can do better than this. In the year 2012, there is no reason at all for me to occasionally be hungry and have a sore back. I am as of this moment announcing my candidacy to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

My platform is simple and understandable: I no longer want to be hungry and have a sore back. Our country cannot support this broken system. If elected, I promise to do everything in my power to end my own hunger and occasional muscle soreness. This may include scheduling more regular mealtimes and lifting with my legs. I am not prepared to get specific at this time, but I am happy to debate Gov. Romney on the subject at a time of his convenience.

There are people who are sure to ask what distinguishes me from my primary opponent, Gov. Romney. Our platforms are distinct in the following ways:

1. I oppose my being hungry. Gov. Romney has YET TO COMMENT on the issue, despite my numerous comments left on the Forum section of his campaign homepage.
2. I do not think I should ever have a sore back (or shoulders, I just noticed). Gov. Romney does not have a plan for alleviating my back ache. I recommend every Republican considering voting for him rather than for me check the transcript of his speech yesterday in Lansing, Michigan. He never once articulates a concrete idea for how to make my back/shoulders hurt less. Not once. Check the transcript.

Ultimately, I’m just like you. I am wearing a hat and flip-flops inside of a public eatery, and I don’t think I should be hungry or sore ever again. We have an uphill battle - some people with very deep pockets will do everything in their power to keep me hungry and sore, even if that means getting Gov. Romney elected President. But I believe in the power of the electorate. I will update this space soon with information about how you can join with grassroots offices in your area devoted to keeping me fed and comfortable.

HARRY WAKSBERG 2012: FED AND COMFORTABLE, FOREVER.

Some people have seen me on television. I am not bragging, this is just a fact. I would not describe myself as a “reality star.” I am not Snooki’s babydaddy and I don’t know how that rumor got started. But the fact that I have appeared on television is undeniable. Unfortunately, my television appearance broadcast my failure to get a tattoo. This cannot happen again.

I am in an increasingly small minority among my friends. I don’t have any tattoos. I have one friend who has a single tattoo, on her back; she is the minority among my friends in having only one tattoo (in her defense, it is a large one, and biblically-themed). I have given thought to what kind of tattoo I would get were I to get a tattoo, but that has not impacted my actually-having one. Life’s like that sometimes.

When I heard that a tattoo parlor near enough to my home was celebrating their ten-year anniversary and was having a special deal: $10 tattoos all day, I knew this would be a great opportunity to get a tattoo in a very public way (in the interest of transparency). They opened at noon. I arrived at 10 am and got in line. I stood in line until they closed, at 7 pm. I was not allowed admittance. There was some speculation that the most photogenic among us were picked from the line and moved to the front for tattoos. I was not photogenic enough for such treatment, but was exactly photogenic enough to wait in line ahead of a gaggle of seventeen-year-old tweakers who’d been up for “about 36 hours” and showed up on a whim. While waiting they sang songs, attempted to explain the origins of the tattoos they already had, and bought weed from someone standing near us in line. It was an eventful day. The high point, for me, was finding a Robert Benchley book in a thrift store next door to the parlor. In summary, no tattoos. I was not even asked to do a talking-head interview for the show.

Recently, actor-writer-director-producer Lena Dunham has been finding tremendous success on television. She is the actor-writer-director-producer behind the movie Tiny Furniture and the television show Girls. I like both of these projects very much, and would consider myself a fan of Dunham’s. She’s also almost a peer. She’s approximately my age, and went to college with a cousin. She also has some pretty substantial tattoos, which have occasionally merited discussion on her show.

So I have come to something of a plan, tattoo-wise. Lena Dunham will take me to get my first tattoo. I do not know how this will happen. Even my cousin who took a class with her in college is not in touch with her (nor with me, come to think of it). Dunham and I also live several thousand miles away. But it has become a fixation, that Lena Dunham, actor-writer-director-producer, should join me in the vegan feminist tattoo parlor I have heard rumors of in Los Angeles while I get this tattoo. And with her level of fame (mild), it’s possible such a thing would be televised. That’s not why I am doing it. But if it happens, who am I to say no?

We weren’t allowed soda growing up. This was even in a pre-Michelle-Obama age. This was the 1990’s, when children’s health was less important than movies about Facebook. Today, children’s health is our number one priority, which is why we have spent so much time and money yelling at children and telling them that they’re fat, and that their parents need to take the time between holding down multiple jobs to home-cook meals. It was a less enlightened time.

We didn’t have soda in the home, because my parents knew it was unhealthy. I was a crafty kid, though, and snuck soda whenever I could get it - mostly at birthday parties and at my friend Vineet’s apartment. Vineet’s apartment was an amazing place, because his parents let him have anything he wanted, it seemed. He had soda in the home, and then in 2008 he voiced support for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign on Facebook. Take from this what you will.

When I got to college, I found that my friend in Boston loved Coca-Cola, and stocked his minifridge with it. He would share one with me any time I came over to his dorm room, along with clove gum, which I believe has been discontinued because it encouraged children to smoke. My friend in Boston was always a step ahead of me, because he was on the internet more, and bought up a huge amount of the gum, so it was hard to deny me. Eventually, I’d sneak multiple sodas while he was out of the room. I don’t know if he knew it was happening, but it was pretty clear from my changing figure that I was consuming huge amounts of sugar and never exercising.

Then one day I got a terrible stomach ache. And it lasted a month. I finally saw a doctor, at the urging of my friends and loved ones, who were tired of me moaning my way through episodes of LOST. The doctor didn’t spend very much time with me before asking about my diet. She explained, “You got a run-of-the-mill stomach bug. But it didn’t go away because you have terrible eating habits. Stop drinking so much soda.”

I gave it a shot, and found I was - possibly coincidentally - feeling much better. I also found it pretty easy to give up soda. But I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to stake out a high road I didn’t deserve. I began telling my friends, generally social-justice-minded people (I like to be the worst-informed person in a room) that I had stopped drinking soda “for moral reasons.” “What moral reasons?” they all asked. “Google it.” I told them.

I got lucky, as it turns out. Coca-Cola, and most soda corporations, have pretty terrible corporate practices. Don’t ask me for specifics, I remember none. But my friends were pretty impressed by my stance, until the health causes leaked. I am not blaming the person who leaked these details, they were bound to come out eventually, but I will say I no longer consider my friend in Boston a confidant.

Since then, I have not drunk much soda. When there’s little else to drink, I’ll have one or two, but I rarely order it when eating out. Then today I was invited to a film screening by a friend who runs in higher circles than I do. To clarify: when I walk places in her office building in her wake, we pass with impunity. When I walk a single step without her, I am beset on all sides by security guards. This includes the company kitchen, where she indicated a bevy of free sodas. Something about being in such a high-class place with so many free sodas snapped something in me, and I filled my pockets with soda. I am not exaggerating when I say I had no available pockets without a soda in them, and I was wearing cargo shorts (could this be why I had trouble walking around?). During the movie, I drank two root beers. On the way home, I had another. Thinking realistically, though, this place is a big corporation with some pretty awful practices. I was draining their resources - drinking their sodas, for moral reasons.

I’d say that my interests can be boiled down to two essential desires: long walks and long movies. If I am at home, I’d prefer to watch a movie that is over three hours than, for example, cook a meal or call my local representative. If I am outdoors, I prefer taking walks of six miles or more to, for example, gardening, or running/general exercise. I’m a simple man with simple pleasures. I also like cookie dough.

The problem with these interests is that they are hard to convince my friends to share with me. They both take a long time. Long movies take almost exactly as long as their runtimes. Walks can take longer.

Luckily, my friend Tanya has had some time on her hands lately. “Let’s watch Nashville,” I suggest almost daily. “Nah, not today.” “Okay, let’s take a walk.” “How long?” “Um…” “No dice.” This is difficult. We have instead watched a few Coen Brothers movies, and sometimes walked the mile or so to the library. The spirit of compromise is alive in this friendship.

Tanya went to New York, to visit her New York-based significant other, my friend Grant. She has been largely noncommunicative since heading east (I suspect this is because she has no one guilting her into using social networking as much as I do), but today we videochatted, and I asked her what she’s been up to.

Yesterday, she and Grant walked from 230th St in New York to Houston St. They took the entire day and walked sixteen miles. That’s a lot of miles. I have only rarely walked that many miles at a time. I have done it. Don’t get me wrong. I can and have walked that many miles. But Tanya refuses to walk more than three miles at a time with me.

Today, resting up, they watched Nashville. She liked it, of course. Who wouldn’t love Nashville? I am not jealous. I want this to be clear.

My friends have assured me that the reason Tanya is so willing to take endless walks and watch long movies with Grant is because they’re Involved. Look, I can understand how romantic relationships are different from platonic ones. I’m not stupid. But I don’t see how those specific activities are restricted to people with whom you’re dating. Walking and watching movies are about as nonsexual as you can get, if you do them right.

Tanya informed me, “When I get back to LA, I want to take a lot of long walks.” I’m considering refusing, just to make a point. Maybe I’ll restrict my activities to the indoors. That’ll show her. I did mention, “When you get back. We’ve got to watch Reds.” Grant looked at Tanya. “Want to watch Reds today?” She nodded. This might be a problem.

I’ll preface this by explaining that I have discussed it with the people involved, and have gotten permission to recount this story here. It’s possible that by doing so I will give free publicity to people who don’t need it, but no matter. The story must be told.

On Sunday night, I returned home late from my sojourn into Northern California, and I was exhausted. I’d driven for a long time, through some very stressful places (including Castaic, California, one of my least favorite places on earth), and had eaten very little, as I was still working out the whole kitniyot thing. I was just climbing into bed when there was a knock on the door. I presumed that it was an angry neighbor (I have several) and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to get into an argument.

To my surprise, it wasn’t any neighbor at all. It was Rick Santorum, and he looked unhappy. If you’ve ever seen Rick Santorum unhappy, you know that the guy can look pretty pathetic. He and I go way back, and I saw him once discover that his favorite Miami restaurant had become a gay bar, and I don’t know that I’d ever seen him less happy (even as I assured him that the bar still served his favorite drink - Cosmo with a wedge of lime) until this night. He apologized for waking me up, and asked if I could take a walk with him. I got dressed and we walked out into the West Hollywood night.

He took out and lit a cigar, and offered me one, which I accepted. I was a little uncomfortable with the way he bit off the tip for me, but I could see he was in no mood to revisit our old “Is saliva sanitary” discussion. To the people of West Hollywood, we must have seemed a bit like the west coast Big and Little Enus from Smokey & The Bandit (a movie we watch together often). Both smoking cigars, and both wearing our trademark sweatervests (mine, incidentally, had once caused journalist Natasha Vargas-Cooper to describe my look as “murderer.”). I am a bit taller than him, and my hair is taller still, but he carried with him a kind of broken world-weariness that I could never pull off.

“I’m worried about my campaign.”

I was surprised by this. Usually when he came to me for help or advice, it was personal. I don’t want to go into details, but let’s just say there was a person who broke his heart time and again - he had once described sex with this person as being like “sex between a man and a dog,” but he would never specify which was which. I am certainly not a politically-savvy person, or a Washington Insider, but I hoped I could help.

“What’s going on, Rick?”

“People don’t seem to like me. I don’t understand it.”

Honestly, I didn’t either, and not just because Rick’s a friend. He was running against a man who could generously be described as “The most boring man in Massachusetts,” an elderly and furious man whose political ideology he cribbed from an unreadable sci-fi novel, and Newt Gingrich, whom I don’t think anyone has liked, ever. By contrast, Rick is a friendly family man who doesn’t seem to know very much about politics - exactly the kind of person voters like.

“Don’t say that. People love you.”

I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He started to look antsy, and asked, “Is there anywhere we can eat around here?”

It was late, but the burrito place up the street from me is open at all hours, and Rick went inside and came out with two huge, greasy burritos. I politely explained that I could not eat a burrito, because it was Passover, and he looked at me quizzically.

“These are both for me. What’s Passover?”

Classic Rick.

He started digging in and we hung around the parking lot while he vented. He’d done reasonably well in some primaries, but it seemed that the attitude the press had - that Romney was the nominee-apparent - was a self-fulfilling prophesy. He explained that when he’d been defeated hard in his most recent Pennsylvania election, he’d taken it as a mandate that his skill-set was needed elsewhere. He’d thought it was the White House, but now he was less sure.

“There are plenty of things you can do, Rick. Look at Sarah Palin. She lost the election, and went on to make plenty of money as a commentator on Fox News, author, and reality show star. Maybe you can do Celebrity Big Brother? Or, remember Blagojevitch on I’m A Celebrity! Get Me Out Of Here!?”

He shook his head sadly. “Rod’s a Democrat.”

“And Sarah?”

“She never seems to sleep. She’s got an incredible work ethic. I don’t have the energy to do all that she does on television. I want to be President.”

His lower lip started to quiver and I put my hand on his shoulder, which he pushed off.

“Come on, man.”

I remembered that he hates being touched by men in public. That was my bad.

“So maybe you need to campaign harder. Well, not you, but your supporters. Maybe you need to let it go all the way to the Convention. That’s how we used to do it.”

He didn’t remember that. He’s not a student of history. Neither am I, of course. Just to be clear.

“The disadvantage, of course, is that you could make yourself pretty unpopular in the Party that way.”

“So what? So effing what? I’m not popular now.”

I didn’t have the poll numbers in front of me, but I assumed he’d know better than I.

“But that would mean keeping at it, right? I’d have to keep going places where people hate me?”

“Probably. I don’t know if that can be avoided.”

He frowned.

“I have one more idea, though.”

He unwrapped his second burrito.

“You could change your name.”

“So people wouldn’t know that I’m Rick Santorum? But the Santorum name carries with it so much respect. People know Santorum. They Google it all the time, right?”

I stifled a laugh. Now was no time to explain to Rick, whom I was certain had never used Google, what that meant.

“Not just to distance yourself from your name. But do you know who the most liked opponent of Obama is?”

“Hillary Clinton?”

“No. Not Obama. If you change your name to Not Obama, you’d be polling though the roof.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“That’s a good point. But they might still know it’s me. Maybe I should disappear for a while.”

“Not a bad idea. Do you have family you can stay with?”

“We have an old hunting club. Nothing special, but we don’t allow blacks or Jews, so that could help.”

“Blacks and Jews don’t like you much, it’s true. If they can’t get to you, you might feel a little better.”

He wrapped up half the burrito for later.

“Ess, that’s a good idea.” He looked at his watch. “J-H-C, it’s getting pretty late. I better get out of here before I get recognized.”

My neighborhood is pretty heavily gay, and I was surprised nobody had accosted him yet.

“Probably.”

We stood up and shook hands.

“Thank you so much, Harry. I knew you’d be the right guy to come to about this.”

“Glad I could help.”

He passed me the half-burrito.

“I really can’t, Rick.”

“Give it to someone you love.”

He walked over to the black SUV that was idling nearby. That was Sunday night. My understanding is he may be taking my advice. I guess we’ll see.

This week is Passover, and I think it is time to break my silence on the Kitniyot Kwestion. I understand that there are people who look to me for guidance on these issues. I never claimed to be a role model, but I do want to be honest with you. You are wondering if this year, like every year, I have pledged to eat kitniyot for Passover. You are also wondering if, like every year, I will fail at this pledge.

For those of you unfamiliar with the more arcane of the issues surrounding Passover: For about a week every year, Jews don’t eat bread. That’s the essential issue. There is a biblical justification for this idea, but I promise you it won’t make the whole thing make more sense. Just stay with me: No bread for a week every year (Passover). But it gets more complicated, because Jews have spent thousands of years in rooms looking at the rules and deciding that they mean more than what they mean. This is not what I would do if I were in charge of such decisions. If I were one of the Rabbis In Those Rooms, I would say “maybe the prohibition on bread for one week a year actually means we should just try to eat bread faster, as Harry hates waiting for you to finish when you eat out together.” But that is not the way they do it. They seem to try to make Judaism harder than it already is (Allergies are an example of a way Judaism is already hard. Also genocide.).

It is this attitude that led some Jews (to oversimplify: Jews from Eastern Europe) to decide that rice and beans count as bread, because the cooking process makes them bigger. These Jews decided this like hundreds of years ago, and were using as their scientific evidence that whatever, anything to make things more difficult. These food items (which are obviously not bread) are called kitniyot. It is a Hebrew word, probably, for “Things that are not bread but just pretend.” Not all Jews avoid kitniyot during Passover, especially not Jews from Israel, or Spain, or the Mediterranean, or almost anywhere but Eastern Europe.

My family is Eastern European, but every year my mom and I agree: This year, we are eating kitniyot. Her argument tends to be “If it’s good enough for the Israelis, it’s good enough for us.” That is her argument on a surprising number of issues. My argument is “Bread is bread and not-bread is not bread and I also think maybe muffins should be allowed.” The muffin bit is a tougher sell, but I’ll exploit a slippery slope any chance I get.

Every year we agree to eat kitniyot, and every year we chicken out. Neither of us, to my knowledge, believes in God, and we certainly believe in the fallibility of the Bible and the books expanding on the Bible. But we’ve both spent our entire lives (about a half- and quarter-century, give or take a little on either sides) avoiding kitniyot on Passover, and making a radical change would be like agreeing that our ancestors who came here directly from Eastern Europe who were all atheists (my parents’ generation is the first in their families in a LONG time to be observant Jews) gave up their cushy late-30s Poland lifestyles for NOTHING. Or something.

This year, at a seder at my aunt and uncle’s house in the Bay Area, my mom and I once again agreed to eat kitniyot. My aunt was horrified, but she’s considered one of the better Jews in the family. It may be difficult to satisfy her, religiously. I drove back from the Bay Area and arrived at my local grocery store starving and ready to devour some beans. I picked up the can and read the label. The beans, like most canned beans, are canned at a facility that also produces bread. Not even Israelis would eat it. I am finding matzoh with butter on it to be a new staple of my diet. Not that I would recommend this diet to everyone. I’m not a Jewish role model.

There is nothing wrong with my car. This is clear to me. I noticed recently, while driving it, that it would make a scraping noise unexpectedly when I made turns, or sometimes just in general. So I took it in to the shop up the street. They drove it around, and lifted it up in the air, and reported, for $25, that there was no scraping sound. So, nothing to worry about.

Passengers would ask me what the scraping sound was. I would explain that there was no scraping sound. This rarely seemed to satisfy them, unfortunately. But there is a certain comfort one can take in car troubles that are not one’s own, and my passengers availed themselves of this pleasure frequently and often. As did I, as there was nothing wrong with my car.

We decided to go hiking, and I offered to drive, because I believe in carpooling as a principle. Environmental issues aside, it is the best way to force my friends to listen to the music I like (“Breathless” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, on repeat). I picked up Rebecca and Joel at their place. Then I picked up Raphael at his place. He told us that he had a friend who had just moved to town who would be coming with us, and could we pick him up? So we got Chioke. At this point my car was at human capacity, with five people. And everyone could hear the scraping sound, which was louder and worse and happening constantly. People were not comfortable with this.

I think it was Joel who identified the location of the sound as being toward the back left tire - the same place someone had smashed into my car when it was parked on the street about a month earlier. It was a visible problem, but the shop had explained that my car was sound-free, so I figured the dent was not creating any sounds. But everyone in the car agreed on its location, even after I turned up the music (“Breathless”) to cover up the sound of the scraping that wasn’t happening.

I think it was Chioke’s idea that we all lean forward and to the right, and so we all did. Joel leaned on Chioke who leaned on Rebecca. Raphael leaned out the window. I leaned toward the windshield. And, improbably, the sound decreased. It didn’t go away completely, but when we all stayed leaning, it was barely perceptible. Other drivers gazed into our car, wondering if we were a band from the 90s filming a music video (we were not, though I would be comfortable doing that, especially if we were filming a music video for the song “Breathless” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds).

When we left the hike, I convinced Emily, whom we met there, to drive Raphael and Chioke home to lighten the load in my car. The next day I brought my car in again. They pulled out the dent, and now everyone can agree that there is no sound at all. They also repaired my headlight, which had burned out around the same time. I drove the car home with no crises. I quickly tested the headlights. The one they had replaced was shining perfectly. But somehow the other one had gone out. I mean, they told me the headlights were working perfectly when I got the car. So I must be mistaken.