The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost.

Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, is on the Mediterranean waterfront. There may or may not be a seafaring route to get here, but my requests in Athens and the island of Aegina for "a boat to Thessaloniki" were met with charmed, friendly laughter. This is how Circus Ninja ended up at the Larissa train station in Athens at midnight on a Thursday.

I was there on Wednesday as well, hoping to buy an advance ticket at a window clearly labeled "same day departures."

"Come back tomorrow," the beefy Greek encouraged me, cigarette pressed between his fingers.

"Will there be a train at the same time tomorrow?"

More charmed, friendly laughter, clearly a trademark of the seen-it-all-and-still-kicking Greeks. It occurs to me that the Russians could learn a lot from these people.

"Tomorrow, you come, and we talk about trains tomorrow."

The Athens train station is a veritable nightclub at 9pm on a Thursday. The beefy Greek and I, we talk about the trains, and I even get to ride one after handing over my purchased-as-far-in-advance-as-i-possibly-could ticket. Smugly, I note the international band of hippies clogging the ticket line just before departure.

Less smugly, I settle in to seat 83 and notice it faces the wrong way. People who clearly bought tickets even later than I did - I am judging this by their dreadlocks, which to me indicate a clinical inability to plan ahead in life - are assigned forward-facing seats on the train. This will be the least of my worries as soon as I meet my seatmates, a flock of nineteen-year-old Greek women on school holiday or perhaps heading to Thessaloniki to set up a commune where they will teach the youth of tomorrow how to wear dreadlocks and pierce their cartilage.

When I say, "Athenian woman," what comes to mind?

You're wrong. You're so wrong it's not even funny. Admit it, your mental image involved an aquiline nose and alabaster skin and some form of toga. Let it go. You're totally wrong.

Perching my backpack on my lap, I press my face into it and attempt to get some sort of sleep. The train arrives at at 6:30am Friday morning; I bought this ticket instead of spending money on a night's lodging, and fully intend to sleep here, spend the day sightseeing in Thessaloniki, and prepare for Shabbat in my northern Greek youth hostel.

There's just one wrinkle in my grand plan: I can hear the Athenian Women chattering away, clearly the type of people who would start their evening at midnight and remain awake until 6am even if they weren't on a transnational railroad. In my youth I was one of these people, and G-d clearly has no intention of letting me forget it.

Clucking and chirping and chatting in Greek, they sound for all the world like a henhouse. "Go with it," I purr to myself. "Just pretend you're in a henhouse." There is a precedent, is there not, for farm-animal-based self-soothing techniques? Something along the lines of counting sheep? I try to pretend that my Henhouse of Disappointingly un-statue-like Athenians is actually row upon row of sleepy-eyed rams, lining up to be counted as they leap fences in the idyllic pastureland of my fathomlessly creative mind.

1...2...

Nope, they still sound like chickens.

High Tide at Dawn

So there was this one time, when I was about nine years old, that my sister and I walked into the kitchen to find the dishwasher spewing massive pillowy mounds of foam. We had run out of powdered dishwashing detergent and someone had evidently substituted liquid dish soap.

Alarmed, my sister ran towards the dishwasher, only to find that it had apparently been belching out suds for quite some time because the floor was slick with soapy water.

She went flying.

I mean truly, ass-over-teakettle.

I mean, it was such a massive and clownishly epic wipeout that, when I re-enacted it 22 years later for my little niece, she laughed so hard she practically peed her pants.

And then she did that thing kids do where they make you repeat the action like a hundred times until you're bored and sore and you need to sit them down and deliver the ol' lecture on comic timing, reading your audience, and the rule of three.

The reason I tell this story now is to indicate in no uncertain terms that I KNOW you are not supposed to use liquid soap in a dishwasher.

I REALIZE that if you put liquid soap in a dishwasher it will be like bubble mating season.

So I did NOT put liquid soap in the dishwasher. Ok?

I used Tide.

The powdered kind, OK?!

But for those of you planning to try this at home, powdered Tide and liquid Dawn are pretty much the same damn thing when it comes to stuff you shouldn't put in your dishwasher.

Ninjas DO NOT HAVE FEELINGS!

My ninja training involved cold apartments with frozen pipes and slippers that were just a touch too far away from my bed.

My ninja training consisted of long subway rides and even longer years of listening to people mispronounce the word "integral".

My ninja training featured instant coffee instead of brewed....Gala apples instead of Red Delicious...the fluffy toilet paper instead of the regular kind.

Also when I was in college both my childhood cats died and I had to bury them by myself.

Say what you will about my life of deprivation, young grasshoppers. But remember this: I trained to be tough. I trained to be impervious to the emotional whims of other people. I trained to be a relentless killing machine who could disappear at will without a backward glance.

Here is what happens to a ninja when you ask her to defy her training and tell a person how she Feels. The ninja dies inside, just a little. She releases shimmering sparks of discomfort and begins to babble, like so:

"Ok, um, I think all my cards are on the table. I mean, I don’t think I have any more cards that I can put on the…oh, wait. Queen of Spades. And here’s the Three of Pentacles. Oh, and my library card.

Ok that should be all the…wait, UNO.

I’m sorry that I can’t just express feelings like a normal person.

Ok. Go Fish."

I need this

The back says, "I'm a fighter, not a lover."

Mom, if you're reading this, please call me and tell me this is worth twenty bucks and I should buy it.

Jabotinsky. I miss that little guy...

"I am thinking of writing a scientific tractate on the importance of not being afraid to commit foolishness. It is one of the most successful ways of living like a human being."

- Vladimir Jabotinsky, Memoirs by my Typewriter

Privacy is Dead. Chivalry is alive, in the form of an artificially intelligent droid who opens cyber-doors for you...

...into rooms full of more crap for you to purchase.

Circus Ninja has accepted the reality that she cannot trust the Internet. Circus Ninja realizes that passwords will be saved, mailing addresses will be automatically filled in to online questionnaires, and email messages from ten years ago can reappear suddenly in the event of an unexpected deposition.

Circus Ninja understands now that when she moves to, say, Israel, she can expect that when December rolls around her Facebook ads will start offering her donuts.

Circus Ninja now absorbs, grudgingly, the revelation that there is SOME force or program that reads all of the messages in her Gmail account, scanning for buzzwords with which to tailor its advertising to her particular interests.

Here are some things that Circus Ninja does not understand:

WHY, if she replies to a childhood friend, "OMGsh that guy is so cute I wanna have like ten thousand of his babies," does Gmail immediately produce an advertisement for competent mohels to perform a brit milah?

WHAT did she write to any number of friends that could have produced the following sidebar of advertisements, taken verbatim from Gmail this morning?:

Learn French in 10 Days. World-famous Pimsleur Method. As seen on PBS.

Creative Thinking.

Holocaust Tour, 12 days. Meet survivors; all inclusive.

Halal Jerky - Insane Beef Jerky

The Next Dor Conversation. For those dedicated to the next generation of North American Jewry. Why am I suspicious that the "ten thousand babies" comment had something to do with this?

The 9mm Won't Save You. Discover what Self-Defense Masters and the Army don't want you to know.

Quran/Koran. Enlightened explanations.

Conversations for Families. Conversation Starters About the Day.This one completely cracks me up. I can't think of a funny punchline, just...gah. Read it again. Picture me at the dining room table, surrounded by, say, Dad, Grandma, one or two of my sisters, a handful of young children, and...some pages I printed out off the internet.

FUNNY ANIMAL PICTURES. [emphasis added.]

Gospel Lyrics.

One can't help but notice that, between the Next Dor business, the Halal jerky, and the Gospel lyrics, Gmail is really keeping its religious bases covered.

Clearly Circus Ninja has not been writing enough tell-all letters to her atheist, Hindu, and Greek Orthodox friends.

Circus Ninja regresses to third grade and settles an old score

I have friends. Friends! Circus Ninja has friends!

Yay.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Ninja

It is a known fact about Ninjas that they have a propensity to disappear entirely for, say, a month, and then reappear somewhere else.

If she had to explain this behaviour, Circusninja wouldn't really be much of a ninja. Telling you exactly where she is now wouldn't be very ninja-like, either.

Devotees of the art of ninjitsu will tell you that traditional Japanese ninjas move from place to place by dematerializing and traveling along one of the Earth's invisible spiritual meridians (pl: meridia?). American and Israeli ninjas use their cars.

Circus Ninja's car has a very clever and catchy name but it would be a violation of his Ninjitude to publish it on the internet. Let's just call him Downhill...um, Patrick.

Downhill Patrick had a full trunk and a semi-full backseat, and basically a fully inhabitable passenger seat, when he and Circus Ninja embarked on their latest de- and re-materialization adventure. Circus Ninja is now happily ensconced in a remarkably spartan apartment inside a building so luxurious she is almost embarrassed to tell you about it.

The apartment itself, however, is admirably outfitted to suit a Ninja's minimal needs. After three quick trips with a pushcart, Downhill Patrick was relieved of his cargo and Circus Ninja's new home was kitted out as follows: Kitchen stocked with necessary equipment; Mr. Coffee humming on the countertop; closet crammed with clothes mostly purchased in Israel; and living space consisting of an air mattress (thanks, Mom), a stack of really good books, two bar stools, a laptop, and a large empty space that honestly would be a suitable place to park Downhill Patrick except that the carpet is white.

Happy, happy ninja.

A final word about Downhill Patrick: for this trip, and all others prior, Downhill Patrick has had the following items in his trunk: bivvy tent; all-weather sleeping bag; case of bottled water; can opener and canned goods; aluminum space blanket; battery-operated speakers and CD player containing one mix CD of 80's rock songs; can of pepper spray (thanks, Grandma); L.L. Bean emergency kit (thanks, Sis); and bag of dried banana chips.

What this means for most people is that if they broke down somewhere off the beaten track, they would be able to hole up for the night and probably would not die. What it means for Circus Ninja is that if she broke down somewhere off the beaten track, she likes to think she might just stay there if the view was nice enough.