Jason wishes you all a peaceful and introspective Yom Kippur

Or at least to all my Jewish readers.

It's the Jewish Day of Atonement, so instead of going to the movies, I'm staying home, fasting, and reflecting on the past year. Allow me to take this opportunity, if I've offended you in any way, to beg for your forgiveness. I don't know how I offended you, perhaps I said bad things about your movie. Perhaps you're the maker of "Balls of Fury" (in which case you should also apologize to me). Perhaps I used a dirty word in this blog. Whatever it is, I ask your forgiveness.

But I'd also like to point out one thing that has always amused me about Yom Kippur. I should preface this by saying that I'm not religious, I'm not going to temple today (nor have I in I guess about a decade), but I do take this fast seriously. No food, no water, no sex, no bathing (normally if it's a work day I do shower just for the courtesy of my co-workers. But since that's not the case this year I guess it's more holy for me to wallow in my filth instead.)

We Jews fast for one day in order to wipe clean our souls and be written into the Book of Life. But we also define a "day" as starting at sundown, not midnight. So our fast is from sundown last night to sundown tonight. We also have this fast in the middle of the fall, when the sundown-to-sundown period is the shortest. Here in the SF Bay Area, the sun set last night at 7:07 and sets tonight at 7:05 (according to the Old Farmer's Almanac). So my day-long fast isn't 24 hours, it's 23 hours, 58 minutes. If I lived in (just to choose a random city) Anchorage, AK, my fast would only have to be 23 hours, 57.

So you see, even when we're dealing with G-d, we still get the best price possible!

I guess I have one more thing to apologize for now.