Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

2006-09-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

So if you know me than you probably know my philosophy. And if you know my philosophy than you probably know that Im really looking forward to rosh hashana. Thats right. As others are quaking and moaning, fearing reprisals for past actions through vindictive recipricocity by a ruthless and cruel deity, bemoaning the coming of the realization of another earthly spin-cycle and how it will affect their divine fortunes, I eagerly anticipate the coming benedictions that the celebration of the new year will bring. I do this, because I am aware that God loves me. He loves me more every day and so with the coming year he will love me even more than he has in the last one. How then can I be fearful of rosh hashana? I accept his blessings upon me and I love him in return for all he does and vow to be his most faithful servant for as long as he remains my master.

But good news you guys... he loves you too! yay! So quit your fearful bellyaching about the impending doom of rosh hashana and look forward to the opportunity to praise God. We will pray in praise and thanks for the wonderful year that he will most surely bestow upon us in his almighty wisdom and his endless charity and grace. It will be a year of plenty for all. A true bumper crop of divine goodwill.

And so I say, do not moan but celebrate. How then should one celebrate the new year? Much like any other new year. Drink! Only in this state of drunkeness are we ungaurded enough to be open and thankful for what he have. We can truly say "God... I love you man... You rock!" and mean it in much the same way I love you guys. Because i do and want to thank you all. A man is measured by the company he keeps and the people he calls friends. And you all, as my friends, are then to thank for me being such a kick-ass guy. And I you. And so forth in this vast social network of awesomeness to which you all contribute.

And so with love in my heart and blessings on my tongue I wish you all a happiest of new years. If I have ever hurt anyone of you than I beg you harbor no Ill will and I shall surely return the favor.

May we all merit to be inscribed in the book of a good life. With health, wealth, love and happiness to all.

happy holidays,

Xvi G.

2006-09-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

So whatsup? Its been a while. Dunno if Im gonna continue with this thing or not yet but people have been asking for an update on my school situation, my life and my overall mental well-being so here goes. What follows is just thought-process ramblings. I apologize for grammatical errors but its an infrmal post.

First(ly?), no, Im not in med school this year. I got on the downstate waitlist, but as we know i was so terrifically late that I shouldnt have ever convinced myself i ever really had a shot at acceptance. Instead of being productive and working torwards a positive goal I sat back, yet again, and hoped that the crack would develop into a full fledged hole that I could pass through. No go though. So there went the summer. The good news is though that the summers over!

Let me explain.

This year was pretty bad. Pretty damn bad for me all things considered and Im glad its gone. Yes, with the end of summer comes the end of leisure but I can deal with that. People will be back to school or full time jobs or yeshivah, and ill have to find work and be bona fide and such, but at least last year will be past. The questions are gone. Im not in school. I know that. No more "maybe"s or "wait a little more"s. No more endless months of uncertainty, waiting to be informed of my status from on high as I listlessly wait in drooling anxiety. Yes, Ill have to reapply and do the process again. This time though, its in a timely manner, its on my terms and I know the procedures. I know who to talk to and what to do. Who to ask and who to tell. Even if i dont pull it off this time around, it wont be like last time. Ill maintain my sanity and maybe even be happy... a little. Were working on that one.

With the new year comes a clean slate too. They say that rosh hashonah is a yom din and if your teshuva is proper your slate gets wiped clean. Im gonna apply that to the dating situation and maybe be a bit more chipper too. Last years eighteen get dropped back to zero. No more annoyance at women and shadchans. I get to start over and be annoyed anew. Or not. But probably.

What of this year though? Not sure honestly. Its kind of wide open while I simultaneously have no options. On the one hand, its a meaningless year. I still intend to start school next summer and in that sense have this year to throw away (chas vshalom ;) ). However, apparently, the resume' building never ends. Due to my failure to be accepted last time, my folks, advisors and other people not-in-the-know believe that I should be doing more volunteer work / laboratory research / doctor shadowing. This despite the fact that my application has already been sent out and this will only reflect well on the interviews. There is some logic tho this though and so i must consider it. What this means, though, is that full time work cannot be an option. No more wide-open possibilities on the year. Now its part-time work and no one enjoys part-time work. But its money. So yay.

My parents also want me to go back to yeshiva, but im not so sure. Its hard to find a program thats going to study what i really wanna study and not just give me a chavrusa to learn some random mesechta of "yeshiva gemara" with. I already know that if one man's ox gores another man's ox, compensation depends on whose field the oxen were in. Thats not very exciting. Considering the fact that my parents want me back in yeshiva to beef up my shidduch resume'...

Im working on one resume' this year. Not that one.

So what about work? I dunno that either. Other than a hasc/beis ezra type job I dont even knbow my options. Is my BA is psych good for anything? Its just the year. And its part time. Suggestions are certainly welcome.

Anyway, thats pretty much it. My current status. Consider yourself informed and in th know. And say hi.

Until later then...

2006-06-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

So Ive explained the situation. Ive described the anguish of the unknowingness, the induced inability to perform basic human functions, the incapacity to grow as a person or develop past this point due to an inability to commit myself to the slightest activity. What I havent described though is, by a significant margin, the most painful and torturous portion of the experience.

The Boredom.

So I sit and I wait. Im used to that. But I dont do anything while I do it. I read a book, but its only killing time until time X where I will have some epiphany of where/when/what. I go to the beach, I meet my friends, I eat out, I finish up at Dunkin' Donuts. But so what? If everything is done in anticipation of the future event than nothing is performed for its own merit and, therefore, has none. So I lose the urge to perform the basic social activities. I sit in my room. I dont read. I dont study. I dont watch.

I surf.

I read a lot of blogs now. Not because I am necessarily interested in the news or discussions, even though I am, but because its a simple activity that can be performed from my desk in my room. It requires no movement. No activity. No interaction with other people in the present tense. I spend hours here, at my computer, cultivating boredom. I have my AIM profile set to invisible so I can voyeuristically see who I am ACTIVELY ignoring because I dont feel like chatting. Im not good at it anyway. I cant multitask and the activity of IMing consumes me. But all I do is wait for Time X and exist as boredom.

But its not just the current boredom.

With the boredom that is the result of my present lack of doing anything, is the boredom of yesterdays inactivity. And the knowledge of tomorrows boredom and the day after. My boredom exists non-temporaly, as I simultaneously experience the mind-numbing loneliness of every point of space and time. I experience this nexus of infinite nothingness that illogically is able to grow exponentially to greater values of infinity. Worse yet, I induce it, as it gives me something to focus on and write about, rather than being genial but inactive.

Now, granted, I may have a flair for the melodramatic.
The point remains though.
Im pretty damn bored and I seem to have an inability to do anything about it.

2006-06-08T22:54:00.000-07:00

Update Time.

But first, if yiu havent read my last post you may not know what Im updating on... so do that first.

So here is what hass happened recently. Firstly, I hate physics, but not as much as she hates me. In my very last semester in school I failed a course. Ive never struggled for a B and I failed a freaking course. And what course? The only one that mattered this semester which inevitably means the only one I couldnt study for. So what does this failure mean?

At last update I was waiting to hear back from school. In fact, today (Thursday) was the 12 week aniversary and pretty much the promised deadline of when Id have some sort of answer, even if it just means being waitlisted. I got this big, fat, f**king F last week. Now, thinking from last weeks perspective what was I supposed to do? If I got waitlisted, Id probably have to send an updated transcript, in which case the F would become obvious and Id be contacted. Because Im already waitlisted though, I can easily just say that Im gonna retake it in the summer and my acceptance can be contingent on that. The same certainly can be done if I get accepted. So I took the initiative and signed up for physics in CSI.

Because its the second physics, it is only provided in the second summer module, which is the month of July. This means though that I cant get a job for July and need to find part time work for just June. This is a major impossibility. So I putz around my house now, watching videos on youtube and reading blogs. Ill usually leave the house for the very first time, only about... 3ish? Ouch. And Id love to jobhunt for next year (god forbid I should need it) but how can I land something I cant commit to?

Anyway, yesterday, judgement day, arrived. The letter was here. Finally! I tear open the letter.

Im on hold?

What the f**k is hold?

So apparently, the school is so backlogged on applicants and interviewees (a disconcerting thought itself when considering the 175 setas available for a year) that it has decided to not decide. They cant even commit to putting me on a waitlist. Basically "we know we promised you that wed inform you in June, but hows July sound?"

So now what? They havent put me on a list but they still want my updated transcipt that I WASNT SUPPOSED TO BE JUDGED ON!!!!!!!

Do I send it?

Anyway, next week I begin studying for the LSATs.

2006-05-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

The past is our friend.
The future... who can say?

The past keeps our secrets. It knows us. Where we came from. Who we were. What we did. It knows our fondest memories and who was involved in them. The present soon will be the past and will join that vast network of friendship. Soon the present will know our secrets of today and it will not yield. The past does not reveal secrets. The past protects us.

The future is the unexpected. Will the future be kind to us? Will it treat us well? Or will it abuse us and our trust. We allow the future to approach. In good faith, we say 'come future, and bring your good tidings.' We await its blessings, like the blessings of the past, but they are uncertain. Unknown. The future may betray us. It may reveal those secrets that the past has kept so well. It may disobey our wishes, in much the way that the past cannot. It may be our greatest fears.

In the light of the past, events are beautiful. Nothing is wrong and everything is unchangeable. There is certainty and assuredness. In the past we are Safe.

When you look to the future, events are glaring. It is dark. Unknown and unknowable. It offers no promise of protection. It is scary.

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I was going through my junk drawers during end-of-semester (incidentally, graduation) clean up when I came accross this short... poem? Essay? Editorial? Im no good at classifications. Anyway, I wrote that for some writing assignment in 9th grade and it probably meant nothing to me then (I was just a moody little pre-emo punkster), but it resonated with me today, Erev Graduation.

Im frightened to graduate. Truly scared.

Most people look forward to graduation, as it is symbolic of a continuation. The completion of one stage of your life, moving on to another. Many kids have jobs lined up, or are going to grad school, or even plan on traveling for a bit and having some time off.

Ive got nothing planned.

And how can I? Ive been in limbo for about 4 months now, and the bar keeps getting lowered, but the game isnt ending.

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It was supposed to be so easy. Go to college, get good grades, take the MCATs, go to med school.

Went to college.
Got good grades.
Did well on the MCATs.
One year later, still waiting to hear from school.

It started with the advisor. The letters of reccomendation are an integral part of the application process. No school looks at you without them. I painstakingly hunted down old bosses, retired professors, family friends and such and built up a small but mighty dosier of praise. I was ready to go. Applications complete.

One month...

Two months...

Into the third... Still nothing?

I called a school, a big no-no mind you, to find my appliction status.

What?

Never got the letters?

Next school... same thing. And the next. And the next.

And the next

"Professor! What happened to my letters?" "Oh shit, Stephen, look at this --> You never signed the waiver." "But you didnt tell me... that I needed..." "Well how was I supposed to know you didnt sign it? We dont open a folder until we have a waiver."

"You werent in the computer system"

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So now its late. Past most deadlines. Whats left? Downstate? Israel? DO? no. Not DO.

Einstein?
Declined. Too late.

Jersey?
Declined. Too late.

etc...

Downstate?????????????????????

March 15th intrview!

it went WELL!

Today: May 30
still no word. 'try calling in 2 weeks. '

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I cant take it anymore. Ive been strung along for too long and its driving me crazy. The very unknowingness of it and the absolute inability to do anything about it. Will I get in? Wont I? Should I get a summer job? But what if I get in? I cant commit to August. Should I look for a job for next year? Just In Case? Whos gonna hire me without commitment? OK, so what about june-july? But i need to retake Physics 2. Lousy mark the first time around. Should I be dating? Whats my hashkafa? Is there a god? Of course theres a god! Really? Or is that high school talking? Should I go to Israel for the summer? Why? So you can slack off and miss another opportunity ? No! So I can rethink my thoughts and organize my life. Vocationally. Spiritually. Sexualy. Objectively. Should I ask her out? NO! why? Shes 18. Shes 25. Shes too fat. Shes too thin. Shes not bright enough. Shes too smart for you. She hates/loves animals. Her father is... Her brother did... Should I run away?

Should I go to law school?

2006-05-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

They say tragedies come in threes, and so I wonder what the orthodox community is in store for next.

As you may know, this past week saw the abduction (and thankfully, the release) of a frum girl in Lakewood, taken from the rear parking lot of a gym and returned there 8 hours later. On some accounts she was abused sexually, on some only physically, but purportedly, the message that the kidnapping slime sent back with her was that she was merely a message to the community. The kidnapper had been fed up with the local jewish community, citing specificaly how on two seperate occasions in the same week, he was rudely cut-off on the roads by unapologetic Lexuses, and more broadly, how the Jews all remained insular and aloof, thinking they owned Lakewood and could take without returning to the community. She was the pascal lamb, demonstrating how quickly a simple act of kidnapping could bring the entire community to its knees.

Also recently, allegations of the past 20 or so years have been brought to court. A certain rebbi of a certain elementary school (that I MAY, or may not have attended) has had two seperate lawsuits brought to court, alleging that he molested and sexually abused the two accusers in his capacity as rabbi and camp director, and additional cases are suspected to exist and be brought to light in the near future. These cases go back as far as 20+ years ago and as recently as within the past 6 years. The statute of limitations may be ignored because in these cases if it can be proven that Rosh Yeshiva Lipa M. (too obvious... L. Margolis) blackmailed the students to keep quiet, with threats of public humility and physical violence. Whats, perhaps, most disturbing about this situation is that the rabbi in question, Yudi Kolko, has been allowed to remain active in his teaching children until last week, when the second case was brought. Perhaps most terrible of all, this is expected to merely be the tip of a massive iceberg; just one of tens of molesters who are believed to exist in the orthodox jewish communities who until now have gone completely unexposed.

In my (not really) humble opinion, there is a thread that connects these two situations. These instances are bound by their causation which is rooted in the absolute insularity of the ultra orthodox communities.

This shtetl-in-the-city mentality is what lead to the expanded ego of the Lakewood community. By maintaining a staunch seperation from the rest of the world, the UO have done double damage. They have created a sense of community ego, where the jews are above the petty laws of the community and play no role in Lakewood other than being close to the yeshiva. They have also, thus, alienated their gentile neighbors with their limited, and most likely egotistical, interaction leading to an image of reigiously-fanatical jerks who are resented by the gentiles of the area. I have seen similar attitudes torward jews by gentiles that I have spoken with during my summers in the catskills. They view us as leaches, coming for a few months of the year to interact only with each other and flash our shiny cars around their pickups and 80's models.

This insularity is possibly the cause of the perversion within our community as well. As New York Magazine reports, there is significant reason to believe that such cases of molestation and perversion are more rampant than we may even begin to imagine. What is the cause?

"There are some who believe the repression in the ultra-Orthodox community can foster abuse. Sex before marriage in Hasidic life is strictly forbidden (unmarried men and women are barely allowed to look at one another), and even within marriage, sex is tightly regulated (couples aren’t allowed to have sex, for instance, during menstruation and the week after). As Winston notes, fathers can’t attend their daughters’ school plays, “as the sound of women singing can lead to uncontrollable male sexual arousal.” In a world of Paris Hilton videos and Victoria’s Secret billboards, there are few outlets for an Orthodox man with compulsions the community refuses to acknowledge even exist. The repression, some say, creates a fertile environment for deviance."

The connection between insularity and communal issues clearly then requires some analyses, does it not? If so much trouble can come in so short an amount of time due to this one fundamental principle, surely the gedolim must be anticipating future issues, if not repeats of old issues, and are looking for ways to address the issue of insularity and the possibility of jewish integration into modern culture? That was why I couldnt be happier to hear that the Rabbinical council of Monsey would be calling an Asifa, to discuss threats to the community. Finally! Important issues will be adressed. Taboos would be discussed for the greater communal good. Walls of mandatory resistance would topple. Things would get done!

Well wouldnt you know it...

Looks like they missed the point after all.

2006-03-27T22:42:00.000-08:00

So I’ve been getting bugged for a while to follow up on my offer to blog about the hat. THE hat. That’s right... THAT one. Whatsit all about? Why wear one? Does it symbolize anything? Am I a bad jew for not wearing one?

Firstly, who wears hats? For the most part, the hat belongs to the orthodox. The ultraorthodox to be specific. the yeshiva boys and the fathers of said yeshiva boys. This alone should be enough to convince most that the hat is unnecessary and something that has been forced on the right wing for reasons that they cannot comprehend.

Halachically, the reason one might want to have a hat around is for tefillah. You should have a double covering on your head when praying and so, the hat is convenient in that aspect at least. Of course, a baseball cap or a lined velvet kippa is just as effective, but a borsalino works well too.

The reason though, if you were to ask a yeshiva guy or a yeshiva-specific rabbi, is because it is a dress code. To wear a hat is to state that you are in the service of HaShem, seemingly implying that if you don’t wear a hat, you are not. It helps one stand out as part of the right wing community of orthodox Jewry.

Why is a dress code necessary? To answer that, we go back to the late 50's and early 60's.
Christian America, particularly with its large percentage of protestant faithful, is a dangerous place for Judaism. In times of glaring hatred and anti-Semitism, the two religions would never see eye-to-eye and assimilation was low. Christianity today holds no such outstanding grudges and has even renounced certain theological differences with Judaism such as "replacement theology," wherein Christians replaced the Jews in G-D's plan for the world. In times of such acceptance, liberal Jews can have a hard time differentiating their religion from that of liberal Protestant Christianity with its weltanschauung of good living and hard work. They no longer view themselves as distinct from their neighbors and choose not to identify themselves as different either.

As this assimilation occurred, a counter-assimilation movement took shape in the underground of Jewish activity. As culture was lost in tandem with this loss of Jewish identity, small groups or individuals performed "reculturation" where outrageous exaggeration or even brand new concepts of Judaism were practiced. Small technicalities became central tenets of the religion and mystical or existential ideology became the outward face of that particular sect. What inevitably happened was the confusion of "standard" Judaism with these private practices, those not authenticated by the Rabbis, leading to a further befuddling of what is or isn’t Jewish.
More recently, Kabbalah has been dummied down for celebrities and those who wish to attain spirituality overnight, and has lost all its meaning and purpose in the process. This has not stopped it, however, from becoming a major part of visible Jewish culture which in turn drives another nail into the coffin lid of American Judaic culture.

To deal with this spreading of "false Judaism," the different major branches of Jewish pluralism adopted different methods. Conservatism, the traditional middle-of-the-road sect, has done little to address the change in public opinion of the last 40 years save for making its positions on matters of Jewish law more flexible than Orthodoxy without breaking recognizable continuity with traditional understandings. The Conservative movement has stayed in the middle without picking a side, hoping blindly that people will return to them, despite the obvious trends.
The Reform movement since the early 60's, has taken a much more open-minded approach, attempting to attract those who have strayed, by allowing all who identify with Judaism to fall under the Reform umbrella of Judaism. This opening of the floodgates has done its own damage to Jewish culture by being non-discriminatory in what it envelopes. As privatized forms of Judaism are accepted, the definition of Judaism is forever in fluctuation. By accepting all believers as Jewish, the Reform movement has destroyed the old standards of belief and custom and has watered down the culture of Judaism by accepting all.

If the Reform movement has been accused of being too accepting, then the exact opposite can be said of the right-wing ultraOrthodox. In every instance where the Reform have chosen to be open-minded the RWUOrthodox have drawn their borders tighter, becoming more and more severe in their control over their schools, summer camps and other organizations. Where once there was moderate leniency, there is now absolutism in what is and is not acceptable according to Jewish law. In direct contrast to the consequences of the Reform’s actions, the raising of the RWUOrthodoxy’s ramparts around their culture has done its own harm, keeping out those who once would have belonged. The severity of RWUOrthodoxy, as a result of its insecurity in these modern times, has alienated many former believers and has even created hurt feelings and class "wars" in Jewish communities.

In the years since the beginning of this war RWUorthodoxy has transformed. Where once there was a legitimate branch of Judaism, the staunch rightness of the group has turned it into a paranoid bunch of old men with beards, frightened of the future, and so, returning to the past. Once there was open-mindedness about issues of gender, the workplace and individual minhagim. Now we face daily publications of chumras that have no basis in halacha. Instead of facing the modern world head-on, with faith in Gd as our backbone, we have decided to turn tail and flee, using strict adherence to halacha and the torah as an excuse. We have decided to lock ourselves in the bait medrash and abstractly study non-applicable gemaras while we remain ignorant of basic Nach and halacha. If we do not ask questions, we don’t need to come up with answers. Its unimportant if we only keep the Torah, but ignore the Avoda and Gemilas ChaSodim aspects of our religion. After all, heaven is just one big Beit Midrash so you’d better enjoy learning. Ahavas HaShem? Whats that? I have some Yiras HaShem though if thats what you meant.

The black fedora is an embodiment of this concept. No one is quite sure why they wear it or if it has any halachic basis. Why a fedora came to represent RWUorthodoxy is anyones guess. They do know, however,as they were taught, that if you do NOT wear it, you are not a good jew and will probably go to hell. It transcends being a part of the dress code. It is actually fully symbolic of everything RWUO has been doing for the last fifty or so years.

So why do I wear one? Makes my dad happy :)

2006-03-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, firstly wanted to apologize for not posting for a while.

Stuffs been going on, keeping me busy. Theres been the wholepurim thing, then I had a med skool interview today, then theres the assload of midterms coming up next week, all combined with the endless dating. It can keep you away from a computer for quite a bit.

Purim was great as was the interview though. So those are behind me. Still got Ezzie's tag to get to. Will do that real soon. Thanks Ez.

Just keeping you posted. Ill be back.

Also, PS, changed the blog title. Lemme know if I should seitch back. This has more of the feel of my more recent writings, I thought

2006-03-05T21:09:00.000-08:00

As a funny aside, while having broached the topic of those Danish cartoons yet again, I stumbled upon a short-lived blog that pokes just a wee bit of fun at the subject. Check out Mohammed and Me. The kid got a lot of nasty comments.

2006-03-05T20:56:00.000-08:00

Some signs of the coming apocolypse and the doom of all mankind:

War in Iraq?

Flooding of New orleans?

Iran/South Korea getting nucular capability?

"The" tsunami?

Pamella Anderson's breast reduction surgery?

Turkis earthquakes?

The crumblong of New Hampshire's Man in the Mountain?

Greatest snowfall in NYC history?

International condemnation of some cartoons?

Boston RedSox victory OVER THE YANKEES in the world series?

Ever-growing population and GNP of communist China?

Selling our ports to Dubai, UAE?

Unexplainable popularity of Robert Patterson novels?

Unmitigated rising of oil prices?

Global Warming?

NO!

Do you know what I saw that finally convinced me that the world is coming to an abrupt and violent end?

Tonight, at the academy awards, three statues were awarded to the composers of the original track : Its Hard Out Here for a Pimp.

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere... 3-6 Mafia has an academy award!

Moments after the anouncement was made, I walked back outside to make sure the sky wasn't falling. The moon, still in the shadow of the earth, was hanging in the firmament, together with what few stars one can see from Brooklyn. But will humanity remain in the morning?

2006-03-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

So, The Pragmatician was talking about the olympics and how he dosent get what the fuss is all about. He also was talking about elementary and high school discussions on sports and how he had nothing to do with it. Well, I sympathise with that, being a massive couch potato myself from a very early age. I had ~~very little~~ nothing to do with sports during my early school years, although Ive come to appreciate football a bit in my later years. I did wanna say a bit about the olympics though.

Sports is what we watch most of the time. Its the local basketball games and the football and hockey games that have no particular meaning, that are repetitive and that are played much too frequently for anyone to care. Those are commercial endeavors and they are used to bring money to team holders and stars. They create a celebrity lifestyle for the players and so it is not too different then reality TV, its just geared more torwrads men.

Sport on the otherhand is eternal. Its is the struggle of man vs. man and nation vs. nation under rule regulation. It is a celebration of strength, intelligence and grace. It can exist as a sort of pride for nations as they can be represented by their "barbarians." Sport has existed as long as man and competition has and is a healthy expression of personal or national tension. This particular exhibit of sport, the olympics is the ultimate display of sport. It accepts all recognized nations and allows them to compete for dominance on a global scale. When else can Micronesia or Turkministan truly be represented as a powerhouse? Not in the UN.

The olympics are not an American event. They are a global spectacle and a beacon of pride for many countries that do not necesarily have the power... or the weekly/daily sports, of the world superpowers. That is why they have lasted so long and that is what the draw is till today.

2006-03-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

F#$K! S%$T! P&##$R!

It did it to me again! I wrote a whole freakin post... I tried to save to the editing board so I could finnish it after shabbat/shabbos, and whaddya know? I get an error message, and the inability to load my previous page!

K&%$J!

Shabbat Shalom*

*Translation: A Gutten Shabbos

2006-03-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

Judaism is a religion of food. Undisputed. They say that you could sum up the entire faith in nine simple words: "They tried to kill us, we won, lets eat!" This of course only applies to holidays, but food is an integral part of the culture and faith in other ways.

When gauging one's progression through Jewish milestones in life, there is always an abundance of food at said milestones. The baby is born? Family get together for dinner. Bris/Kiddush? Breakfast for the community/Shabbos mini-meal in shul or hall. Upsherin? Repeat. Bar/Bat mitzvah? Lavish feast in catering hall for a few friends of the kid and all acquaintances of the parents. Wedding? See bar mitzvah, multiply by three. The loop then continues as the married couple proceeds to procreate their own little feast-bringers into this world.

No meal is quite as lavish as the wedding though, and therein is the segway to my real post:

I read Sara's post today, the one about her friend getting married, and I realized just how out of hand we jews* may have gotten. The reason the weddings have become so lavish is two-fold. On the one-hand is the actuall wedding aspect. As a celebration of the binding of two souls in unity under holy matrimony etc... culture has expected a nice celebration with all the fixins'. In the Jewish sense though, there is a further celebration: The reaching of the pinnacle of one's life.

It has gotten to the point where if a female is 20 or a male is 22 and they are not yet married, the community becomes concerned.** The importance of marriage has become the utmost driving force for many jewish people in their late teens and early to mid twenties. Many people base their career choices, their five year plans and their summer jobs around the expectation of meeting someone and getting married wthin the next six months. Marriage (or is it just getting married?) has become the central focus of existence for many jews and its been causing problems. Now... Im not gonna get into trhe shidduch issue. Evereyone has their wag-of-the-finger or tip-of-the-hat torward that system and its not the point. Im not gonna get into the issue of underage weddings where the guy, or the gal, or both are in no way nearly financially able, or mature enough to care for, provide for or create another human being. I just wanna vent about societal pressures.

Its gotten so rediculous, that people will accept date prospects from complete strangers with zero information about a girl/guy. Its gotten so ludicrous, that when a guy wants to pursue an interest as a career that may not pay as much as... oh, I dunno... being a lawyer might, that he is looked at as strange. Its gotten so flabbergasting, that girls come home from seminary, never having had an actual job, responsibility or experience of life, already in love... just not knowing to who. Yet.

Now, Im not saying people shouldnt get married. I think it is a wonderful thing to find someone that you believe you can spend the rest of eternty with. I think its wonderful to be with someone that you completely trust with every facet of your life and who you want to raise children with. I think its a beautiful thing to perform the mitzvah of P'ru U'revu and I reccomend starting even before marriage. I do not, however, think its wonderful to demand that someone find this person as goal in life. Love should be discovered, not thrust upon us. It should not be demanded that we find true love before 25, or 30, or maybe even ever if thats how the cards land. Its, as I said, rediculous.

I call for an uprising! Feel some self-respect in yourself and your accomplishments without feeling that they are tainted because you are not married. Dont feel the NEED to start dating at 17 and having your formative twenties forcefully stripped from you as you become 19 going on 35 with two children and one on the way. Allow yourself to remain uncommited after three dates even if the rules tell you to start thinking matrimonally at that point.

But mostly remember: You are not defined by your relationship status or your significant other. They are merely additions to the wonderfulness that is you. We can exist just fine without them for as long as we need to.

*For the remainder of this post, "jews" refers to right-wing, religious, orthodox yiddin of ashkenaazic descent. This is the only sect I can confidently report as an insider on.

**By concerned, I of course mean talkative but unhelpful.

2006-02-26T19:21:00.000-08:00

So I installed this nifty little gizmo from a website that I cant believe they give away for free.

statfinder.com is a fun website that is probably in serious violation of certain invasion-of-privacy laws but is certainly entertaining for me. I found it initially just to put a hit-counter on my page so I could get an idea about how many people I field on a regular basis. The counter is so far the only thing that they havent given me.

They set up some sorta spy ring inside my page that gives me the breakdown of how everybody is coming around here and how they found me. It tells me the number of people that have come by, how many were new viewers, where they come from, their IP addresses, countries, cities and economic stability. Its probably not THAT invasive, but especially with the passing of the patriot act... I dont much care.

What I have come to realize though, in the 15 or so since I installed the thing, is that Im getting a bunch of hits that I was never aware of. I was under the assumption that the same 7-20 people were stopping by here and that was the end of it. My little computer agent informs me otherwise though.

In my 23 hits since this eraly morning, mostly were Americans, but I snagged a few canadians, a few unknowns, an Israeli and a Croatian. Of the Americans, Ive gotten hits from Hicksville and Fulton NY, Akron Ohio, the expected Brooklyns and oddly enough, a Nashville. This is good and bad. Its obviously good in that Im getting a more varied group of visitors then I had assumed. Its bad however in that Im not getting any feedback from these nameless, faceless visitors. Speak up. Tell me how you found me, what you enjoyed or hated, etc...

My ego demands it.

2006-02-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

While reviewing my most recent posts, in an effort to avoid studying for my physics test tomorow, I realised how biased this site has become. Sure, my opinions are golden and my writing is fabulous, but what if you dont speak English? Xvi should be available to more then just the Anglicaly-tongued, snarky crowd.

And so, in effort to reach out to my ever-growing Latino following, I present my postsecret.com post in Spanish.

Catharsis: Un lanzamiento de la tensión emocional, como después de una experiencia abrumadora, que restaura o restaura el alcohol.
¿Usted ha tenido siempre un secreto que usted deseó para decir cada uno pero el couldnt dice cualquier persona? , usted hace y cada uno hace. Reprimimos las cosas que son incómodas o imposibles compartir con otras por cualquier razón. Quizá su embarassement justo. Estamos quizá asustados de repercusiones sociales. Pensamos quizá que compartiendo nuestro desires/feeling/wants/emotions enajenaremos a nuestros amigos y familia que hacen el propósito entero de compartir nuestros secretos discutible y contador-eficaz.
Para los de usted antes de las cuales nunca lo han visto, le presento http://postsecret.blogspot.com
Éste es quizás mi Web site preferido para los 60 segundos simples a la semana del disfrute que consigo de él cada domingo.
A unintroduced, el postsecret es un lugar adonde la gente va a confiar estos secretos que ella puede ser cualquier cosa y fija la gama la gama completa. Hay postes del amor y de la lujuria perdidos u ocultados. Están sobre niños y padres. Amigos y parientes. Compañeros de trabajo y extranjeros y cada uno y todo .
El formato es simple. La gente, anónimo, envía las postales hechas en casa que revelan sus secretos al mundo. Estas postales entonces se fijan aleatoriamente en el Web site para que el mundo vea. Esto ofrece a remitente la capacidad de revelar su pequeño secreto sucio al mundo en un lugar conmovedor y artístico, mientras que mantiene anonimato.
En un nivel personal, como alguien que se ha observado para ser, y está obviamente, enteramente el unemotional y el interior totalmente muerto, este Web site emerge rápidamente las emociones en mí que nunca podrían los pedazos más conmovedores de arte o de música. Soy Tyler Durden y estos postes son mi grupo de ayuda, permitiendo que se sienta y que grite. Estas tarjetas perforan a las profundidades más profundas de nuestra base emocional y fijan la bomba que acciona la explosión del interior hacia fuera. Con el más simple de declaraciones nos relacionamos con y sympathise con estos extranjeros sin nombre que sean tan como nosotros.
Estoy escribiendo este poste porque ahora entiendo solamente la espina dorsal catártica del Web site. Hoy, después de trabajar en él en concepto y el formato artístico para los últimos 2 días, he enviado un secreto mis el propios. Es una tarjeta simple, con dibujos crudos y un secreto simple, pero las acometidas de caerlo en la caja, sabiendo puedo nunca recuperarla, era intenso. Su hacia fuera allí. Mi vergüenza enterrada se revela alguien, iguala quizá a mucha gente.
Ahora, no me pregunte lo que escribí. Su anónimo y, absolutamente franco, su algo poco importante. Incluso si la fijaran, que es inverosímil que ellos siempre voluntad, el wouldnt de I todavía dice. El punto es solamente tenerlo hacia fuera allí, y esperanzadamente inspira otros si se ve siempre.
Para un abreaction verdaderamente catártico, el reccomend de I que cada uno localiza un secreto sus el propios, uno nunca compartido con cualquier persona siempre, y lo envían en. Creo que dormiré un poco mejor esta noche para él.

2006-02-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

Catharsis: A release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

Have you ever had a secret that you wanted to tell everyone but couldnt tell anyone? I do, you do and everyone does. We repress things that are uncomfortable or impossible to share with others for any reason. Maybe its just embarassement. Maybe we are afraid of social repercussions. Maybe we think that by sharing our desires/feeling/wants/emotions we will alienate our friends and family making the whole purpose of sharing our secrets moot and counter-effective.

For those of you who have never seen it before, I present to you http://postsecret.blogspot.com

This is perhaps my favorite website for the simple 60 seconds a week of enjoyment I get from it every sunday.

To the unintroduced, postsecret is a place where people go to confide these secrets. they can be anything and posts range the full gamut. There are posts of lost or hidden love and lust. They are about children and parents. Friends and relatives. CoWorkers and strangers and everyone and everything else.

The format is simple. People, anonymously, send homemade postcards that reveal their secrets to the world. These postcards are then randomly posted on the website for the world to see. This offers the sender the ability to reveal their dirty little secret to the world in a touching and artistic venue, while maintaining anonymity.

On a personal level, as someone who has been observed to be, and is admittedly, entirely unemotional and completely dead inside, this website rapidly surfaces emotions in me that the most touching pieces of art or music never could. I am Tyler Durden and these posts are my support group, allowing me to feel and cry. These cards drill to the deepest depths of our emotional core and set the bomb that triggers the explosion from the inside out. With the simplest of statements we relate to and sympathise with these nameless strangers that are so like us.

I am writing this post because I only now understand the cathartic backbone of the website. Today, after working on it in concept and artistic format for the past 2 days, I have sent out a secret of my own. It is a simple card, with crude drawings and a simple secret, but the rush of dropping it in the mailbox, knowing I can never retrieve it, was intense. Its out there. My buried shame is revealed to someone, maybe even many people.

Now, dont ask me what I wrote. Its anonymous and, quite frankly, its rather unimportant. Even if they were to post it, which it is unlikely that they ever will, I still wouldnt say. The point is only to have it out there, and hopefully inspire others should it ever be seen.

For a truly cathartic abreaction, I reccomend that everyone locate a secret of their own, one never shared with anyone ever, and send it in. I believe I will sleep a little better tonight for it.

2006-02-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

A little help please...

Ive been seeing this a lot recently: "/*

and have no idea what it means. Anyone got a clue?

2006-02-20T00:47:00.000-08:00

There are roughly 7X10^27 atoms in a 150 lb. human body. Thats 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or seven billion billion billion atoms. Thats a lot of atoms.

Now these atoms come from everywhere. The things we eat, the things we come in contact with, the air we breathe and those atoms and molecules that we are born with. That includes atoms that our mothers and fathers ate,breathed, touched and were born with.

Given the nature of atoms and molecules and the kinetic laws and the laws of statistics, the atoms that compose our body come from, literally, everywhere and every time. We have, within each and every one of us, a little piece of the entire history of the planet.

It is more then likely that we have atoms of our grandparents within us. Similarly we have atoms of their grandparents, and their grandparents and their great-great-great-great grandparents. We have parts of Ceaser and parts of Napolean and parts of Adam within us. We have atoms within us that were present at the great flood and at matan Torah. We breathe the air that they breathed then and eat the molecules of proteins and sugars and such that they ate. Or at least composite molecules. This interconnectedness is a fact of nature according to the laws that we live by. We are directly related to the past, present and future in miniscule ways that we cannot escape. Every time we go somewhere or eat something or kiss someone we take a part of them with us and make it a part of ourselves for the rest of our lives.

Take that how you like. This idea can mean different things to different people. Just something that was rumbling around in my brain at 3:45 this morning.

2006-02-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

Hey Ezzie ( http://Serandez.blogspot.com ) first off, thanks for the mention on the round-up. Hopefully it will bring in some new readers that my exceptionally fabulous blog more than deserves ;)

Anyway, regarding your commen on the history of string theory, its something like this. String theory has been around since the early 80's and has been the prospective TOE (theory of everything) since then. Its primary combatant has been a concept called superGravity and the two have been duking it out for Physics supremacy for the past 2 decades. In more recent years, string theory has adopted some new equations that incorporate elements of supersymmetry. This evolution has led to the monicker of the superstring, as it goes beyond what the original string initially entailed.

String theory has been winning for most that while, but recently, since about 1998 ir so, there have been mathematical issues. Apparently, if one were to assume that the elementary strings were to inhabit 10 physical dimensions, as string theorists do, then there is a screw-up. The 10-dimension theory supports FIVE entirely different, yet mathematically feasible string concepts. This is a major tarnish on the reputability of ST as a potential theory. Funny thing is though, that when incorporates the superGravity idea of 11 dimensions, the five strings turn out to be variants of each other.

The evolution then has been:
String theory incorporates suppersymmetry and becomes superstring theory.
Superstring theory incorporates superGravity theory and becomes the mysteriously dubbed "M-theory"

I believe thats where its been since 2001 and where it currently stands.

2006-02-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

TODAY, (Sara < http://www.icecreamandme.blogspot.com/ > gets the coincidence [ by the way, Sara one or two? Did you guys work that out?]), I went to get a bill from college to show that I have paid so that I could have my ID validated. I happened to look at my bill for no apparent reason right before handing it over when I noticed something odd.

(Some background info before the fun stuff. 12 credits is a full time student. If you did not pay in full, classes were going to be dropped in mid-january. In mid January, I had not completely finished putting my schedule together, as I usualy wait for the 2nd week of classes to do that. In order to pay a bill for full-time student however, I needed to enroll in over 12 credits of classes, and so I arbitrarily picked classes that I MIGHT take, with intentions to dump them later if they prove unecesary.As usual, I got most of my courses through overtally and got a nice 16-cred semester going.)

When I looked at the bill , I noticed that I was enrolled in 20 credits of schoolwork. I ran online to check it out. Turns out I was enrolled in a 4-cred physiological class that I never dropped.

Normally this wouldnt be that big a deal, but today is the 16th. I also happened to notice on the schedule at the registrar that the 16th is also the last available day to drop a course without having a "W"-ithdrawl on your transcript. This is a huge mar, particularly if you have any interest in med school. If it came down to getting the W, I may have stuck with the course, only begining attendance 2+ weeks in.

Im not sure what the point of the story was. Am I a man-ditz? Exceptionally lucky? Blessed by G-d? Or maybe its choice "D"?

A) Man-ditz
B) Exceptionally Lucky
C) Blessed by G-d
D) All of the above

2006-02-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

So, my friend Yaakov ( http://www.myspace.com/yaakov ) has a blog on his myspace account and he asked an interesting question. Namely, he was interested in the age-old philosophical question of pre-destination and "bechira" or free choice. If one's actions are already known and mapped out by an omnipotent and omniscient G-d, are we still accountable for our actions? Why? Whats the point? Etc...

These are my opinions and do not reflect those of any Rabbi that I have consulted with or any particular philosopher. If they match those of one you are familiar with, then I just got lucky.

Now, see, heres the dilemma. You are trying to comprehend the future from a present tense. If g-d exists in a timeless world then all that is, was and will be exist in the present tense. Time does not progress but rather exists as a singularity.

A little moshul: Imagine being tied to the side of a moving trainthat moves down an infinite track. In addition to being tied down, you are also blindfolded, save for one eye which has a long narrow pipe attached to it. The only vision you have comes from whatever passes through the end of that pipe. Bear in mind that this is the only form of perception you have ever had. You would therefore naturally assume that this is all that perceiving is. How would know to assume that if the pipe were removed you could see all the vast scenery in one panorama?

This is the human perception of time. We experience it in a progressive fashion as dictated by our natural laws of physics. As Einstein's thesis on special relativity points out though, time progression is not uniform. At high speeds or excessive forces of gravity, time comes to an almost complete standstill when viewed relatively to a body at rest or in moderate gravitational fields.

More importantly, what this indicates is that time is a whole. It is a continuum that is only particularly viewed as progressing in the forward direction due to the laws of entropy. We look at the stars and see dots of light. The vision of the star as it is now at this moment. In the true sense of space-time though, stars are long spaghetti-like strings, with one end being a large gas cloud and the other being an exploding supernova. So to humans, in the true time sense, are long worms with baby legs on one end and old-man legs on the other. Time progression is simply a perception, much in the way that the eye perceives color. It is not a physical property but rather a cognitive translation.

This does not change free-will however, or at least it does not demand it as you might assume it would. Our actions are still our own. We perform them and are accountable for them. Just because they can all be viewed, beginning to end, simultaneously by a timeless g-d, does not remove our accountability for them. That is again, merely a perception of ours, bound as we are within this progressive constraint.

2006-02-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

Its weird. Ive been thinking a lot about change these days. How times have changed, how my friends have changed (be it that my friends have changed or my friends are different people), how Ive changed personally.

I was reading a post by The Pragmatician ( http://pragmatician.blogspot.com ) on happy people. He was talking about those people that just smile at you as you walk into the mall. The people that are paid to change your mood. The comments all seemed to say that everyone seems to like those people. The shiny, happy people who are always so sweet and bubbly and friendly. I seemed to be the only person who seemed to be annoyed at them, and I started to wonder why.

I started thinking about how my friend Orit always quips about me being depressed. So long as I know her shes been saying that. Then I started thinking about a comment that my friend Liba made a long time ago but always stuck with me. It was some random night in camp, I had just gotten off from putting my kids to bed and I spotted a group of my friends sitting on the benches. I went over and the very first thing Liba said to me was "how are you always so happy?" Apparently I was smiling at the time and just generaly smiled a lot back then. Real smiles. Not the picture smiles I throw at people these days (And im pretty unphotogenic too). It was a random comment but it pops up from time to time. One of those times was now.

It only occured to me now, that I hate the shiny, happy people because I was one of them once. Its kind of the way I feel about anarchy I guess.

In highschool I was a utopian anarchist. Basically I claimed that the fundamental right of the people was to rule themselves, no governments, no community boards, no nothing, but that government only temporarily needs to exist because people have done a pretty shoddy job at ruling themselves. Very Hobbesian. I know. The funny thing is that now Im a republican. I lean conservative and I bash democrats. Im the guy that yells at the guy playing hackeysack. "Get a job." I think i feel angry at them though because they have the idealism that I used to have, but have lost. Ive always been sarcastic, but I think its evolved into real negative cynicism. Id love to have that idealism back.

Liba taught me that I used to be happy. Now Orit tells me that Im f**ked up. Im pissed at myself for losing that hapiness and I get upset at happy people for reminding me.

Now I dont want people to read this wrong and start reccomending suicide hotlines or anything. Im not perpetuallly upset. Im not constantly down and sorrowful. I think its just that my feelings have become more muted. I used to feel the high rise and steep fall of happiness and sadness. Now its just bumps and drops. Im not sad. Im just not thrilled.

Its funny that I saw Garden State the other night. The Zack Braff character seemed to be going through the same detached thing that I do, albeit a bit more severly then I am. He also seemed to have gotten over his inner-deadness through typical movie-fodder romance. Should I buy the hollywood answer then and get back on the shidduch market three days after dropping off the wagon? Or should I accept this as a phase? A slight slump in my otherwise chipper disposition?

I mean, Im really not that pissed.

2006-02-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

So, Im not intending to turn this blog into a political forum. That's really not the point. I may be looking for direction on this thing but trust me, politics is not something I like to discuss with strangers. All the same though, I saw some stuff that just made me want to speak out even more on something that's been festering in my brain for some while now. So comment if you like, this is a democratic blog, but don't come here looking for your news. Im not that up-to-date on it myself.

I don't know if you've been following news on the Danish cartoon comics that were in a political mag some time back. The ones depicting Allah as a terrorist? Now, doubtless there was a large amount of insensitivity involved in the production of those drawings:

Doubtless, though, has been the absolute ballslesness (its a word. look it up.)of the liberal media, the political world and the defenders of free speech everywhere in their defense of the Islamic terror... I mean protestors who have been boycotting this production. As fundamental Muslims have learned since 9-11, you don't have to fly planes into buildings and kill thousands of innocent people to prove your point. Hell... that's a bad idea. Even the puniest of governments will find the need to respond to that, whether violently or politically. Rather, if you frame the issue in a light of "media insensitivity," the same nation that will hunt you donw through the deepest caves of Afghanistan will bend over backwards, so far as to even give you the keys to that same skyscraper.

This sensitivity has been seen globally, most recently in the firing of the editor of the Danish paper that printed those caricatures(sp?).

More recent news includes the actions of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic script.

Such sensitivity has similarly been seen in the discontinuation, by Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, of his hit multicultural comedy "Shouf Shouf Habibi!" Perhaps his motives for discontinuation should be explored though? When asked WHY he canceled the program (no doubt out of respect for the non-threatening fundamentalist community) he replied "I don't want a knife in my chest."

Um...

Is he being paranoid? Funny enough, this is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose "right to dissent" (a democratic right intrinsic to the right of free speech and freedom of the press) all those Hollywood blowhards have been strangely silent about. Perhaps they're just being "sensitive," too?

How about the sensitivity of the increasing numbers of Dutch citizens who "dislike" the growing tension and fear enough to emigrate to New Zealand and Canada? Many people find the Dutch countries to be among the most democratic and diverse nations on the planet. Unfortunately, multi-culturality is becoming a thing of the past. No longer are nations multi-cultural, rather they are becoming uniformly bicultural. One culture being most people: be they black, white, gay, Jewish, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, hippie, nudist, Catholic, Wiccan or atheist, all of whom try as hard as they can to get along with everyone else as best they can in a setting of racial, religious and lifestyle tolerance. The other culture of our bicultural experience has become folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a diverse and tolerant society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.

Now, as a Jewish kid, Im no stranger to the occasional offense against my religion, usually coming from Jewish people anyway (here's looking at you Jewish Press) but I understand A) the position of ignorance that most of these comments come from and B) the right of the public to express these opinions. Personally I find that the anti-defamation league, the protectors of the Jewish name in the press and media, often go to far in their protectiveness, pointing fingers where no nasty commenst were made. I dont believe however that this sort of protest is ever acceptable, free speech or not:

Personally, I think that freedom is a two-way street. You want the freedom to protest? Allow the freedom of rebuttal and criticism. It seems though that freedom is less two-ways and more double-edged. Democracy and freedom everywhere have an uphill battle to fight and when democracy is in trouble thats usually trouble for the jews. G-D help us all.

Thanks to ushi for the pictures and Mark Steyn for many quotes and the original insight.

2006-02-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

So some people see this picture and think Im gonna get Jewishly-political here. Warning. This is not the point. Im not here to rag on or support meshichistim. I had met this man many times while he was still blessing the world with his presence and I loved him dearly. He knew my grandfather and I feel like he knew me. I still have the dollar he gave me the first time we met. I exchanged it for a different one that I gave to tzedakah. The picture is up merely as a prelude to my personal history, which I am posting in response to Sara's (http://trophyofthehour.blogspot.com/ Sorry, Im not good at in-text linking) question about my "affiliation" with "the Lubeys."

Some personal history:

My dad was raised religious. His mother, father, sister and brother were all very heimishe people from boro park and they, and their respective families, all are frum as can be in the businessman Brooklyn sense. When you get past the immediate family though, things get quite different. My direct family being the epicenter, if you branch out into cousins, the more distant you get from me the less religious you seem to become (how egotistical am I?). As the familial layers proceed you go from people who put on their left shoes first (GASP!) to people who wake up after sof z'man krias shma (EGAD!) to not keeping kosher, to driving on shabbos, to eating pig with a hooker on Yom Kippur, to serial rapists.* It was inevitable then that my father would be searching for a gal whose exended family was a bit more religious then his own.

My mother was raised Lubavitch. Now, this only means in certain aspects. My grandfather did not have a beard, did not attend tish and never went on shlichus. He was a good ol' European jew in a town full of tradionionalists. He did daven at 77o Eastern Pkwy and he was personally close with the aforementioned rebbe zatza"l and he kept many of the more ancient lubavitch minhagim, including living in crown heights. My mother went to the crown heights yeshiva and was among the minority in her less the zealous keepings of certain lubavitch-specific aspects of Judaism. Again however, keeping myself as the epicenter, as one proceeds out further into the familial boondocks of my matriarchal mishpacha we seem to get more and more lubavitch. It starts with the beard, which grows ever loonger as you proceed away from Xvi on the family tree. There is also the proximity to 770, the distance one travels on shlichus and the amount of kids your family seems to have. I am one of three. My mothers cousins have roughly seven. Second cousins have, on average, twelve. My mother has a relative in Jerusalem that has (Im really not kidding about this, I mean it.) 21 children kenayna hora. My mother then was seeking out a soulmate from a little less of a tradional upbringing.

My mother and father met, however it was that they did, and thought they were perfect for each other in this, and assumingly at least a few other aspects. They, howeve, never seemed to discuss this as my mother rarely goes back to crown heights and my father set up his practice there.

This leaves me somewhere in between irelligious and completely fanatical. That ballance should not exist and yet here I am. Slightly Chasidish, slightly intermarried. Im a psychoanalysts wet dream.

*please note that this is all pure hyperbole and allegation. We have yet to have any convictions on any of these charges.

2006-02-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, so for those who dont know, Ive been shidduch dating a bit recently and it really hasnt been going all that well.

Firstly, the reasons for my being in the dating world at all are shady at best. Consider my parents primary reasons for putting me out to pasture:

1)75% of my high school class was married/engaged before the mesozoian age of 22. "Nu Xvi? Isnt it your turn?"

2)My fathers brother... his baby brother (who got married at 19 and had daughters instantly) has 3 grandkids. My father waited and had me. Clearly this has become my problem.

3)I live in flatbush, which means that the Rancho Carne of women opens at the just-legal 18 years of age limit. If i dont jump on the wagon Ill end up with some old maid, apparently. She may even be... ::GASP:: 22!

4) My room is a mess. I need to get married, learn responsibility and take my mess to some other womans house. My moms had enough.

These are the primary reasons for my unleashing according to the homefront. So, like the good yiddishe bochur i am I obliged. Why not? Meet some nice ladies, take it casual, if I meet someone I like... sure, Im cool with marriage.

But its never that simple is it?

Now, in my own best interests I laid down a few, simple guidelines as to the type of date I'll go on.

a) she cant be chasidish (excluding Lubavitch women, they are a breed all their own and this rule dosent apply to them)

2) she has to have pursued a higher education or at the very least appreciate academia on a fundamental level.

3) She dosent hae to be in mensa, but she cant be an ICP fan either...

4) She should, if at all possible, have actuall interests/ideas/hobbies/personality. That may sound standard... but Im from Brooklyn.

and most importantly!!! 5) the shadchan should KNOW THE GIRL, KNOW ME, and HAVE A REASON for thinking this shidduch might work other then "oh, Mrs/Mr. XVI, you have a son? I know a girl!" This happens. I kid you not.

So whats been happening? Well, I folded instantly when I accepted my first date from a woman who apparently knows my mother somehow from shul. My mother accepted on my behalf and I went out with an 18 year old.

Yup.

Then I went on a barrage of dates that were set up based on my classification of being "religious but different." This means that i went to a nice all-dudes high school, daven in a nice black-hat shul, spent 2 years in a nice heimish yeshiva in Israel, but I wear a kippah srugah. So I get set up with crack-whores, lesbians and Creed fans, all from nice flatbush homes.

Finally I put my foot down as Id had enough. I removed my mother from her executive position, placed her in a recon post and told her to do some homework before she sends me out to the wolves again. I didnt go on a date for a month.

Finally a friend decided to set me up. She had met a girl at a party, thought she was great for me, etc... I went on the date had a great time, saw actuall potential in someone for the first time ever... only to be refused a third date by my mum due to "baggage." No details necessary.

That was strike two of my current dating at-bat.

Most recently, my grandmother had been talking to me about this girl I had to go out with. Whats her name?
"I dont know"
what does she do?
"I dont know"
Where is she from?
"Im not sure. I think the 5 towns."
What do her parents do?
"I dont know."
So how do you know her?
"I know her great-aunt from back in Poland. A nicer family you wont find!"

Thats the date i went on last night.

Suffice it to say that she'll make some lakewood kollel guy really happy, but she just may not be my cup of tea...

What I said about chasidish girls, that can be applied to the uber-yeshivish as well. Then again I figured that was obvious. I think I may be done with shidduchim for a while.

2006-01-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

This is my 30th post now and as this is some sort of milestone (it is, after all, a round number thats is divisible by 1,2,3,5,6,10 and 15. thats gotta be pretty significant) I wanna get blogselfish. I decided that I want to join a powerBlog. Thats right, I want to lend my talent and credibility to a team of equally or slightly-less talented writers posting their opinions for the world to see.

My qualifications? I dont post that often... Im usually wrong even when Im very opinionated otherwise... Im not that good a writer... I dont spellcheck...

Well, the point is that a powerBlog would be the better way to showcase my particular form of writting. I dont have to worry about gaps of time between my postings as other bloggers will be filling it with their own pearls of wit and wisdom. Anybody wanna join? Itl be awesome! We can have a theme, and email ideas to each other and have a blog-based slumber party!

Waddya say?

2006-01-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to share a hilarrious story with you guys. It happened over three years ago but I was retelling it to someone tonight and just had to post it. I just hope it translates well on paper.

So I'm in Eilat durring sukkot break and me and two of the three guys I was there with decide we want to head out on the casino boat for the night. Gambling is fun and all, but more importantly, there is free alcohol. So we head out to the piers where the ship departs from (an international waters thing, I think) and go to the office to sign up for tickets. The ticketeer (word? sp?) dosent speak english well so I break my teeth on Ivrit to try to get us through. She takes my New York drivers license, examines it and copies the indormation onto the boarding pass. One thing to note is that I had to point out where the name was... an indication of her lack of English skills. She then takes my friends license, he's from Baltimore, and copies his information. She then takes the third guys pass and is gonna copy his info when she calls me over.

"It is the same name" she attempts.

"Hem achim." I respond. They are brothers.

She gives me a dubious look, checks the guys out, notices the uncanny resemblance and processes his ticket.

We grab our boarding passes and run for the dock. I forgot to mention that departure time is 9:00PM and its like 9:05. When we get to the security check, the guy looks at my ticket, looks at my license, looks at my face, looks through my bag and lets me through. Then my friend, David, gets up. He looks at his license, looks at his ticket, looks at his license again and again at his ticket and tells him to step to the side. Now were worried, but not really. Eli, David's brother, goes up and hands him his license and ticket. He looks at the ticket, looks at Eli and asks, "what is your name?"

"Eli."

"This not say Eli..."

We look at Eli's ticket and sure enough in the space provided for name it reads "Drivers License." Same as David's.

We didnt make it onto the boat but its a great story.

2006-01-10T01:38:00.000-08:00

This post was inspired by Dina's ( http://ilovejewfood.blogspot.com ) ((I'd link it through the word "Dina" but I dunno how...)) post on scars so I dont want anyone thinking I'm stealing ideas here or starting memes. Stupid laffy taffy...

So Im in camp munk like 10 years ago and were in the middle of a baseball game. Im stuck out in center, but like deep out. Anyway someone obviously made a call that someone else didnt like because the entire infield is conferring on the mound. Rather then coe in to see what all the fuss is about I stay out in deep center. Anyway, me and the leftefielder (Yanky S.) decide to be intelligent and have a rock catch. We were using baseball gloves of course. At first all is good. We chuck a few back and forth and shoot the breeze. Then someone (probably me) decides to throw some high ones. Yanky throws this really high one and i run under it, but lose it in the sun glare. BOOM! smack down on my face. So i reach up to see if i smacked anything and my hand comes down all bloody. Now, it feels like it hit my nose, so i reach up to my nose with the other hand and that one comes bloody too. So i grab some leaves, plug my nose and tell my counselor I have a nosebleed and need to go to the bunk. He looks at me funny, says I should go to the infirmary but I dont listen and go back to the bunk. I get to the bunk, take out the leaves and they are clean. Now im confused so i look in the mirror and see this massive gash on my upper lip. To test it out, I check if I can get my tongue through it and, lo and behold, I can! So I go to the infirmary, leave camp for the night and get the stitches. I still, to this day, swear that I got it in a knitting needle fight with my brother.

P.S. the scar is awesome cuz it looks like an underlined X so I say its my initial and I had it done by a pro.

My others car isnt as cool. I was kneeling at the lockers in the top floor room of YTT (the lockers in that particular room are stacked, with one row on top f the other) when my classmate (David B.) opens his locker into my forehead. yay. I went to the office, but they dont have any of those big bandages so they gave me a big gauze patch and I held it in place while the secretary wrapped gauze around my head to hold it. I took a cab home and my mom nearly freaked cuz I looked like I had massive brain trauma from the gauze headdress. It was funny.

P.S. the gauze part is true, but the story of how I got that scar is entirely made up. Its almost infinitely more embarassing then my rock-scar story so dont even ask me to tell it. It goes to the grave with me and anyone else who was at the lockers at that particular moment in time :P

2005-12-27T00:07:00.000-08:00

I got some emails from the 4 or so people that read this thing asking why I hadnt posted recently and I got to wondering. This is fun, this little blog project of mine, so why AM I not posting?
Now, not to brag, but I consider myself to be fairly creative. Regardless, I should have enough floating around upstairs to come up with SOME random topic that I could write upon. But the more I concentrated the more I found myself empty. And so, I tried to think about the conditions I had been in the last time I wrote a post of substance. Maybe if I could replicate that situation i could see what got my juices flowing and recreate that situation for writing purposes. I then realized what the issue was. Im on vacation. Dont take that to mean that because Im on vacation I refuse to work. Quite the opposite. Rather, because I am on vacation I dont think about schoolwork and because I dont think about schoolwork I have no subconcious reason to procrastinate. This has been the source of my lazyness. A lack of lazyness. yay!
Fear not then, followers of Xvi, for another semester looms before us. A semester with harder coursework then this previous one. A semester of physics and biologies. Surely there will be much posting in the coming future.

2005-12-21T17:12:00.000-08:00

THIS POST WAS CONCEIVED AND WRITTEN BEFORE THE STRIKE ENDED

So I'm not really supposed to be on vacation yet, but apparently santa loves jewish kids this year because guess who aint working right now? Ok, so if the answer is me, thats no chidush to anything, but hooray for the transit authority strike either way.
Confused? lemme explain. So right now should technically be finals week. However, the city of NY is in utter chaos because the transit authrity which controls trains and buses is on strike. No transport for the peons and crazy traffic to the lucky ones with cars (unless your from jersey apparently). How is that affecting my finals? Well, because CUNY is so considerate to its students (to all those who missed the sarcasm, I swear... it was there!) they decided to postpone finals, pending the reassumption of city transport. That means that finals week has been pushed of until Monday, january 2. So I'm on vacation. "But Xvi," your probably asking, "dosent that just mean you have more time to study?" HA! No way am I borrowing vacation time to study. Im in a Cali state of mind.

2005-12-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

Its funny how much we change sometimes and never realize it.

I was thinking about what I was like just a year ago and how much I've personally changed since then. Was I a happier person last year? Was I funnier and easier to be with? The answer to all those questions was a shocking yes, but that's for a different post entirely. One that will be posted on my much more anonymous site. ;)

But it got me thinking about change in general. We know that life is a succession of seconds, minutes, hours, days weeks and years but we never really see the implications of how, what seems like a short year or two, can change us into people that we wouldn't recognize back then. Similarly, I couldn't even imagine being the person I was two years ago.

I'll give you an example.

First, go back to about 7th grade for me. I didn't much listen to music, but I was profoundly against goyish music. I don't even know why I remember this, but I recall arguing against non-Jewish music for no particular reason whatsoever. I couldn't have even known better!

Anyway, flash forward a year or two and I'm listening to non-Jewish music. What got me into it? I don't remember at all, but here I am, 8th grade, listening to the spice girls. Shut up.

It was that time that I was a big z100 buff. I think it had something to do with that chumba wumba song but whatever. And one of the songs that happened to be in heavy rotation at the time was that Sugar Ray song called "fly" about how he just wants to fly. Deep. So I bought the CD. Disastrous. As it turned out, Sugar Ray was a heavy rock band at the time, and this fly song was the exception to the record. Of course they eventually sold-out completely and became a repetitive clone of their one hit, but that was later and not part of my current recollection. So anyway, I'm young, I listen to pop radio and I have this Sugar Ray CD that I hate. It goes into the back of the collection.

Flash forward two years and now I'm listening to 92.3 K rock. I've got a nine inch nails collection and I've burned my spice girls CD's at the altar to Satan. I'm going back through my old albums one day when, lo and behold, I come across my old Sugar Ray CD. I put it on out of curiosity and DAAAAAAAAMMMMMMNNNNNN!!!! I love it! Heavy rotation.

Forward another two, to eleventh grade and now I'm all heavy in the underground punk and ska movement. If I wasn't Jewish Id have a pierced eyebrow, 2tone b&w wingtips, and a porkpie hat. Sugar Ray? How could I listen to sugar ray? They don't have a significant political agenda! Besides man, they totally sold out. Those republican, money-loving pigs!

Shoot to today, not even a full 2 years after I completely left the punk/ska thing behind and I'm voting republican, wearing button-down shirts and preppie sweaters, applying to med schools and listening to Sinatra and Dean Martin.

Its weird how we change...

Its weirder what got me thinking about it too. I was going through my closet and I found my old HASC sweatshirt from summer '02. Its maroon. My summer '03 is hunter green... But two years ago I thought these things totally rocked. I loved the colors. Id wear them daily. I looked great in them. Now I look at it and wonder who thought maroon was a normal color... Efrem.

I don't know why I gave the same story twice, with the sugar ray cd and the sweatshirt. Its the same metaphor really... The point is: its interesting, funny, nostalgic but often also very sad to look back. Maybe your a better person, maybe not. Sometimes though its worth listening to the old sugar ray CD to remember how things were when you were a different person. Maybe we can learn lessons from ourselves?

Maybe med school, express-wearing Xvi can learn something from Ace-of-Base listening, generic-brand Xvi? Maybe were not always perfect, even when we think we are.

2005-12-14T19:47:00.000-08:00

I've been a pretty good student, I would say... I always do my work, I'm an A student if not occasionally A-, and I always seem to know exactly how much time I need to get something done. I've taken and done well on physicses and Organic chemistries 1 & 2, come out on top after 18 credit semesters and taken a freaking MCAT, so why am I having so much difficulty with a 12 credit semester that has no science? I've got a theory.

Call me maniacal, but I dont think I'm capable of taking it easy. It becomes all invasive. I give a finger, it bites me off at the elbow.

Here's an example of what my day would have been like before the summer...

3:15 AM: go to sleep

8:00 AM: first alarm goes off behind my bed. I slam the snooze button.

8:02 AM: Second alarm goes off on my phone accross the room. Get up, cross room, turn off phone, cross room again, get in bed, sleep.

8:03 AM: Third alarm goes off on phone accross the room. Get up, turn off alarm, take phone back to bed, fall asleep with phone in hand.

8:05 AM: Final phone alarm about to go off. Detect buzzing and turn it off before it even makes a sound. Continue sleeping.

8:05 AM continued: Alarm behind bed goes off again. Chuck it accross room. Sleep.

8:15 AM: Wake up ultra-panicky. Realize I overslept. Fly out of bed, into shower.

8:35 AM: get to shacharis late. Not to bad. G-D forgives me (?)

8:53 AM: Leave shacharis after ashrei-oovah l'tzion.

8:56 AM: get home, eat 1 bowl Raisin Bran Crunch (extra milk cuz its yummy at the end), wash face, comb hair, pack bag, watch 3 minutes of lousy morning movie on comedy central starring Judge Reinhold.

9:15 AM: Leave house, drive to college (15 minute walk away) look for parking.

9:50 AM: Find parking, run the 3 blocks from parking spot to school, get coffee from DirtyWater CoffeeMan outside of the gates. Run to class.

9:54 AM: sneak into lecture that began at 9:25.

10:40 AM: lecture ends. go to LaGuardia to look over notes, revise. read textbook for upcoming lecture.

11:40 AM: gonna put my head down... for... just... one... seco................

12:18 PM: wake up, wipe drool from face and run to 12:15 class. Teacher hasnt come yet. get laughed at for red spot on forehead.

1:30 PM: class lets out. go to cafeteria. daven Mincha. get lunch.

2:00 PM: go to recitation. physics/orgo (depends on the day) professor no speaka good engrish. bored. make origami frogs out of the little 8 X 5 papers from my punsy notebook.

2:45 PM: go to lab. get confused. break something. get a new one. repeat.

5:15 PM: leave lab half asleep. go to cafeteria. talk to jews. get a cranberry muffin and a diet sierra mist. breathe a little.

6:10 PM: go to evening psych class. flirt with married jewish girls (93% of the psych majors). correct professor a few times. learn about some new disorder I am sure I have.

8:20-8:40 PM: get out, go home. eat dinner. watch some South Park.

9:15 PM: maariv

9:30 PM: turn on computer. ignore people on AIM. space out for a few minutes.

9:45 PM: study chemistry/physics/orgo for about an hour. fix up lab report. read unassigned chapters in the psych book. Write essay for various english-based class.

11:30 PM: get on elyptical trainer. watch futurama on [ADULT SWIM].

12:00 AM: 45 second shower.

12:00:45 AM: talk to friends online/phone. check emails. surf for random craziness from stumbleupon.com

12:45 AM: Read newspaper.

1:00 AM: Read recreationaly, listen to music, drink tea, get mellow.

2:00 AM: watch same episode of futurama as was on at 11:30 PM

2:30 AM: watch family guy

3:00 AM: set various alarms. lay out clothes for the morning rush. get in bed. read book til I pass out. See top of page.

As you can see, the day is ordered. I know when I'm doing, what Ive got to be doing and how much time I have to do it. I may not be Mr. Organized, but I get the job done. Not too much wasted time. Not too much down time. Not too much sleep time.

Then it happened: I took the MCAT.

I wont detail the summer and how I killed myself for the hours and hours of studying a day, but suffice it to say, I was a different man. When I finished that test I vowed to never work hard again, and it seems to have happened.

Firstly, Im not taking any sciences this semester. Secondly, Im only taking 12 credits. Thirdly, Im not working. So thats three strikes. Younb think Id be able to get my work done in a timely manner, be worry-free and have plenty of Xvi time. Guess again. Ive never been so depressed about school in my life and Ive never struggled through a semester nearly as badly as this one. Allow me to demonstrate a typical day this semester.

4:oo-5:00 AM: get to sleep.

sometime between 9:00 and 11:00 AM: wake up grumbly, tired, pissed. Shower, shacharis, etc...

9:30 - 11:30 AM: Get to college. go to library. start/complete whatever is due in 20 minutes.

11:50 AM: go to cafeteria. get cappuccino. read college paper.

12:20 PM: go to 12:15 class. hand in paper. leave early.

1:00 - 3:00 PM: hang out in cafeteria/hillel. mincha. do nothing. talk to Harek or Greeny or Mordy or Shil or TipsyIpsy or Zeebs or Dovi or Josh or Ezra or assorted other jews.

3:00 PM: Leave college.

3:15 PM: get to yeshiva 15 minutes late.

4:45 PM: leave yeshiva 15 minutes early. walk back to college.

5:00 PM: go back to cafeteria. get another cappucino. shmooze more with motley crew mentioned above plus others.

6:15 PM: attend evening lecture.

7:30 PM: skip out early. go home.

7:45 PM: eat dinner. watch game show network/random TV.

9:15 PM: maariv

9:30 PM: turn on computer. almost start 5 page paper but talk to someone online instead.

10:00 PM: almost start paper. read Dina's blog instead. laugh at Moshiak. comment.

10:10 PM: almost start paper. make phone call.

10:40 PM: start paper. work for 15 minutes.

10:55 PM: stop working. make tea. watch Futurama/Family Guy/ Harvey Birdman.

12:30 AM: almost resume work on paper. check out facebook. make a new group.

12:50 AM: almost resume paper. play two tournaments of poker with play chips instead.

1:15 AM: almost resume paper. go to greeny's house instead. say hi. come home.

1:40 AM: resume paper. do half-assed work while playing nanaca crash and watching badger badger badger videos.

2:00 AM: stop working. blog about how I cant get any work done, or how I am out of rants...

2:30 AM: freak out about having done about 45 minutes of schoolwork all day. push off applications/emails/parking tix payment til tomorow. do another 10 minutes work.

2:42 AM: decide youll finish this tomorow also. watch the Colbert report. smirk at his snarky, tongue-in-cheek humor.

3:00 AM: check facebook and/or play poker and/or other online activities.

3:30 AM: read book in bed.

4:00 - 5:00 AM: fall asleep, pissed and depressed about having done nothing all day.

Maybe that sounds weird to you, but its been a lousy semester of doing nothing during the week and going on poorly-planned shidduch dates on the weekend. Hate me all you want but Im kind of looking forward to a 15 credit semester with crazy sciences and long study hours. Im looking forward to going to work and making some money. I need a vacation from this nothingness.

2005-12-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

I lost a massive source of entertainment today...

They say "you don't know what you've got until you lose it," and they are right. In his own wisdom of which I wont question, CK closed the forum on the current state of our messiahness. Deeming the comments no longer entertaining and seemingly being worried that someone may actually accept this redundant, broken record of a non-philosophy as real, the discussion at jewlicious.com on whom the messiah is, but mostly isn't was closed today. This saddens me. I had gotten some real kicks hearing the man whom claimed to be the messiah openly confess to not knowing anything about Judaism, not speaking a word of Hebrew and not caring if his "subjects" are Jewish or not. I couldn't even tell if he believed in G-D or not and that's a pretty important clause when claiming to be the priori of the sons and daughters of Abraham. But that's closed now, the conversations I once found so amusing finding censorship from the uncensored. What now? Who can I take my frustrations out on now? Its like being the bully and having every nerd of your highschool class moving to another city. Whose stupidity can I pick apart in a cynical and snarky manner? Hopefully Dina will continue to host the Friar's Club Roast of the Messiah. Otherwise I'm gonna have to pick a fight with some neo-Nazis. Until then....

2005-12-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

So I was in my foreign language class today, English 2 (this is an entirely different rant, but English 2, as a required course generally has a very small percentage of actual english speakers resulting in 1) Cultural mixing, making me a more well rounded person overall and 2) the damn easiest A+ you could possibly do no work for) When some girls ringer went off in class. The song that happened to be playing was that wonderful new dance track about laffy taffy, penned by those musical wunderkint D4L. Now, for some reason this ellicited some sort of chuckle from most of the class leaving me in confusion. Why was everyone laughing? Its a great song! I asked a guy next to me what was so funny to which he gave me a perplexed look, so I asked the girl on my other side, as I knew that she spoke English. She told me that, apparently, this laffy taffy song was funny because it contained some sort of sexual inuendo.

What?

I know! Im so totally with you on this one. We have come to a point, as a society, where a man cant even tribute a song to his most favorite of candies without pop radio transforming it into some sort of anthem for debauchery. I, for one, cannot stand for this. First they rape the blissful poetry of AC/DC's ode to ballroom dancing and high-society party, stealing its inocence away. Next they distort the true meaning of the Bloodhound Gang's catalogue. Now my laffy taffy song must go too? NO! Laffy taffy is too good for you to ruin with your euphamisms. i will show you! Lets analyze the song line by line:

Gurl shake dat laffy taffy Dat laffy taffy

Shake dat laffy taffy Dat laffy taffy

Gurl shake dat laffy taffy Dat laffy taffy

Dat laffy taffy (candy gurl) Dat laffy taffy

Just a new dance crazy. Much like shaking a polaroid picture, the laffy taffy is clearly the new "it" thing to shake among young, urban women.

I'm lookin fa Mrs. Bubble Gum

I'm Mr. Chik-O-Stick

I wanna (dun dun dunt) (oh)

Cuz you so thick

Gurlz call me Jolly Rancher (Oh)

Cuz I stay so hard

You can suck me for a long time(Oh my god!)

Clearly candy cares to spend time with other candies of its type. The boy candy cares to meet the girl candy for a fun game of chutes and ladders or something of that nature. And as anyone who has ever sucked on a jolly rancher can attest, they do indeed stay hard.

Gurl dis ain't no dance flo'

Dis a candy sto'

And I'm really geeked up

And I got mo' dro

Here, the narrator specifically mentions that there will be no hanky-pankying occuring here. This is a candy store! The dro reference is a bit obscure to me. I only understand it to mean weed... but clearly that cant be it. Comments are welcome as to the definition of "dro" in a candy-shop setting.

I pop, I roll It's soft I know

It's da summer time But yo laffy taffy got me froze (oh)

Laffy Taffy as the awesomest candies ever are eaten by the "cool" or "froze" kids year round. It may be da summer time but its ALWAYS laffy taffy season.

Gone get loose (oh) Gone get low (oh)

don't be shy Hoe, I'm Faybo? (oh)

I kno' you wanna ride You a star and it shows

(What's happening? What's up? What's up? Let's go, let's go, let's go)

Here he refers to his chewing method. he gets loose ( a pre-chewing jaw stretch is just the thing) then he gets low (lowering of the jaw, in masticative preparation). Then he says some stuff I honestly dont understand...

close yo mouth and dont say shit

bend on ova and hit a split

work dat pole and work it well

stacks on deck, yo ankles swell

gurl let me touch ya, i will neva tell

security gaurd dont scare nobody

damn right i touched dat ho'

all da money just hit da flo

Ok... so i was wrong. Still.

Did they have to do that to laffy taffy? Why couldnt they sexualize, like, Alexander the Grapes or something. He's a hottie, and nobody actually eats those.

Stupid D4L.

2005-11-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

Why in G-D's holy name can I not get off facebook?

Its enough. I know these people. I see them on a daily basis. The others... The ones that I don't; I don't need to see their floating faces (or pictures of things they find silly so as to endear us to them on a false pretense of interestingness) in my "friends" column. I don't message their walls nor do they, mine. I don't use the facebook as an impetus to get in touch with them, to invite them over to my home or to even email me. So why do I find it so compelling, the facebook? How do I come to spend nearly as much time as I do on a seemingly nightly basis joining groups I sort-of identify with or making groups I sort-of identify with? Why do I think its funny to be a part of "Procrastinators unite... Tomorrow" when all the group is, is a name? Why do I network and buddy up to people I met once in class and now pretend that I'm chummy with? Or friends I haven't seen in a few years who I find in the friends list of other friends? Or "Benjamin Franklin" who has a picture of Benjamin Franklin up? WHY?

I think I've gone insane... more on that later.

1990-01-19T18:12:00.000-08:00

So let me get something straight...

Everyone is always biatching about the cold. Everyone is always saying, "man, the winter is so frigid, I wish it were warmer." everyone is always going away on winter vacation, to somewhere nice and sunny. Everyone always says its so nice in California, or Bermuda or wherever. But all those same people are complaining about global warming...

Now don't get me wrong, Ill miss the polish ice caps as much as anyone else. I'm sure they are very scenic and bring in tons of tourist money to Poland's suffering economy, but cant we sacrifice one stinking eastern-European nation to make everywhere just a wee bit warmer? As it is, all we are apparently getting out of all this warming is a one-degree raise. So we go from 43 to 44... Big whoop. And for this people are complaining? C'mon folks, if we wanna get NY up to the 70's in mid-winter, were gonna have to buy a LOT more SUVs then we have. Quite frankly I'm sick of all you bleeding-heart liberals (I've always wanted to say "bleeding-heart liberals in a blog :-) ) whining about environment this and children that. The way I figure, get moderate zones real tropical-like, and go to cool places in the summer. Alaska will be the awesomest vacation spot ever during the killer summers as their outdoor temp will only hit a maximum of mid-80's.

The point is, we gotta get rid of that stupid ozone layer. All it ever does is release our hard-earned UV rays that we work so hard to accumulate. Its ruining our tanning opportunities too. You have to work extra hard to get that healthy leathery brown, if you have more ozone. And more time on the beach, means less time driving SUV's.

Here are my recommendations. We reinstate CFC's in aerosol cans and the like and promote the burning of mass amounts of Styrofoam and the sort. This will destroy the ozone at a much faster rate, thus maximizing the effect of ultraviolet rays and greenhouse gases. To accumulate more of these gases, we ban the creation of yuppie, hybrid cars and ban all forms of fuel-conservation. Then, we sell Saudi Arabia to Halliburton, replace the bald eagle with the Hummer as America's national symbol and kill all democrats (that last one is just for sport). Within 10 years, with your help, Green Bay could be a beach city!

Help us, will you?

1990-01-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

I don't even know how I'm coping right now...

Have you ever lived through a personal tragedy? A tragedy so crippling that the initial news of it brings you to your knees? Seven days ago, I received some of the worst news I could have potentially received at that point in my life. Things were going so well... Applications were proceeding to schools, friends and loved ones were generally healthy and happy. Financial comfort, or at least consistency. And then this! A week later, I remain glued here, morbid, weeping big, salty tears at the untimely extinguishing of one of the last few flames that brought light to my otherwise dark and dreary outlook.

There are few things I can take joy in in this life of pain and hatred. A connection with family and G-D, hard work and decent grades, friends to share the solitude of existence with, and mindless entertainment in the forms of video games and television...

I lost one of those last few rays of light last week, and I had taken the week to mourn. I would respect the shiva and wait seven days until I chose to move on, but the seven days have come and gone and I remain bitter and empty. Where is my happiness? When shall it return?

Why did you leave us so soon, Arrested Development? Did we not appreciate you enough? Did our lack of viewership not justify your large budget? If I could go back, and do it all over again, I would speak out for you. Call your name 0ut in the crowds and make people aware of your situation. Make people aware of the Bluths and their problems. Well, your in a better place now I suppose... I hope syndication is all they say it is. I will pray for you every day and I know I'll nsee you again someday; that they'll be airing you in heaven.

Goodbye Arrested Development. Goodbye.

( This was posted on Friday, Nov. 18, 2005)

1990-01-18T07:47:00.000-08:00

Everryone had kiddie tapes growing up. Be it a Mother Goose rhyme tape, Rafi, or some sesame street garbage, we all had these cute little $20 production cassetes as kids that taught us lessons through inspiring songs and silly voices. If you were a Jewish kid though, you had something similar but not quite the same.

Type A) The story tape; with interspersed songs.

I'm thinking specifically of "When Zaidy was Young."

This, a Shmuel Kunda classic, was the finest of its genre. This tape tells the story of the Himmelstein family, through the generations, as they grew up on the lower east side of manhattan in the 30's or 40's. Humorous anecdotes occured, many which you have to be a litvish jew who speaks yiddish to get. There was some major plot twist in which Heimy may have lost his job or something... I dont really rememeber to be honest. The music was cool also. I wanted to ride a trolly to RJJ for months after hearing that tape. Oh well. The voice acting, done primarily by Kunda himself was superb as well. And like all stories in this genre, of which when Zeidy was young is only an example, there was some major lesson learnt, like dont talk Loshon ha'Ra, or Daven with Kavana. Other such gems in this area of jewish-children tapeage include: When Zaidy was Young 2; Where's Zaidy?; the Golden Crown; and The Maharal of Prague.

Type B) The lesson tape, with intersperesed songs.

This was a little less story-like then the following group. Here, a knowledgeable, older male would teach children, talking inanimate judaic objects, and goofy-voiced, doofus adults lessons about being jewish. This would include such topics as: Midos Tovos, visiting the sick and the controversial issue of "who sat on my shabbos hat?" The format was usualy something like: 1) Someone does something he/she/they shouldnt have. 2) A lesson-song is sang to teach them the rules. 3) The kid feels bad, apologizes and gets a candy. This group was pretty abundant as well, the foremost examples being: SimchaMan; The Marvelous Midos Machine; and my personal favorite, Country Yossi, starriing Kivi and Tuki.Heres the rundown. Kivi and Tuki are aliens with voices that sound shockingly similar to Country Yossi's, except if it was computerized to sound a little sillier. odd huh? Now, these aliens come to earth and end up in the care of a single, bearded, orthodox male who calls himself Country Yossi and sings silly, effective songs. Kivi is your typical brown-nosing, yeshivish suck-up. He does whatever it takes to get to the head of the class, regardless of how Tuki will look at him. Tuki is the more rebellious one, but again, in a typical way. He dosent like to learn Gemara, or wake up early for minyan. That Rasha! However, with some simple song-singing, Tuki basically becomes Kivi with a big mouth, showing us that we all have the potential for good within. yay.

Type C)The all music tape.

This one sometimes seems like there are segmenst in between songs, but generally they are airy fluff that have no significant connection to what is about to be sung. The songs on this variety of cassete were usualy more toddler-oriented and dealt with less controversial topics. They would be more encouragement then admonishment and would not teach a lesson, so much as they would reaffirm parental teachings. these were the true Rafis and Barneys of the jewish muisic industry. there were many artists in this category but clearly Uncle Moishie takes the cake.

Uncle Moishie was and is a fat pederast with a large Mem on his hat that likes to make money by ripping off old standards and placing juvenile words in to them. he sang on such topics as: kosher, helping old people, loving your mommy and daddy, and of course, his ouvre: Hey Dum Diddle-Dee Dum. You usualy just played this tape to two year olds to get them to go to sleep or shut up in the car so Mommy can have some quiet time with her little helper.

These were the tapes I grew up with as a child. As we can see the great jewish propoganda-machine is still in full-steam. Good luck to your kids on readjusting to the world after growing up on these.

1990-01-17T15:40:00.000-08:00

So I was lamenting my lack of a portable media player this afternoon, when I just started drifting back to my first CD player.

See, this must have been about... 10 years ago now. I don't really know if that was late, early, or just on time to have gotten a CD player but I certainly do remember thinking it was really similar to the record player we had in the basement. Not because of the spinning disc, but because of the absolute lack skip protection. I always walked on tiptoes, slowly and deliberately, when I had my first discman on. People always thought I was trying to surprise or rob someone but all I wanted was for the Spice Girls to sound steady. I really enjoyed that CD player though, if even for its own sake.

I realize that at the time there was no practical reason to have a CD player. This was before ANY skip protection technology had been created or even before decent lasting batteries were in effect. I could have about 5 hours of jerky Hanson before I had to recharge. This, mind you, was in preference to cassettes.

Some of you may not remember cassettes. You should put the weed down. Its only been like 10 years. Cassettes were those little, plastic music thingys that apparently worked on magnet-strip something-or-another. I was reading about it and frankly, it sounded much more technologically advanced then CD's but what do I know? Anyway, these cassettes were virtually skipproof. You could have an old, sony walkman and actually dance with it, massive, foamy headphones and all, and not a single skip. The sound quality was average, they were stackable and most importantly, if you held down the FF button (>>) about half-way it would play really fast and sound all "Alvin-and-the-Chipmunksy." Not only that, but they made music pirating that much easier. Lawsuits? Please! I "ripped" my music right off the radio. I still go back and listen to those old Weird Al classics that I dubbed from my classmates without any fear of legal come-uppance. Those were the days.

Then of course, everyone had to switch to CD's. These things scratch, they skip, they get lost, they crack, they melt/bubble and they glint sun into your eyes. Why we switched I may never know, but we did none the less. So what did I do? I switched too. Spent all that money to reget all those classic ChumbaWumba and Billie Myers CD's so that just 3-6 years later the technology could already start to become obsolete. Before I knew it, the digital media revolution was upon me.

Now you may not know or remember this, but I had one of the very first MP3 players in existence. I won it accidentally from a radio contest in like 11th grade or something.

Booker: KRock.

Me: Hey man, can I request some Pennywise?

Booker: Kid... You won!

Me: Won? Huh? Won what?

Booker: You spaz, you're caller 92. You won an MP3 player.

Me: An empee what now?

Booker: Dorkface... whats your address?

The point is, I had no idea what an MP3 player was at the time. No one did. It took me a while to figure out even after I got the thing (which, by the way, held 56 Mb of memory and retailed at $299. That's like 1/8 of an iPod shuffle at 3X the price).

That being said, I still don't have any decent digital media player, I don't know why I haven't bought one and I don't remember why I started this post. I honestly don't remember what my original point was going to be, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna go back to the top to look. I refuse to edit this thing. Maybe I'll spellcheck. Later.

1990-01-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

So I'm at an impass...

On the one hand, I love this blog. In the 15 or so posts I have posted so far I have come to realize that my opinion is very important to the world today and that people wopuld be upset if I quit. On the other hand, I'm finding it very complicated to continuosly maintain the writing style that has carried me over these past 2 weeks. I'm not so certain that I always care to rant on about things I love or hate. Its good filler, and when Im inspired I enjoy it, but Im concerned that I am becoming a bit contrived. Or a lot contrived... either way.

So now what? Do I vacation? Take some time, reconsider my options, come up with some topics and return in full-furious form? Or do I start posting my random musings? Do I want to share my daily experiences? My political views? My favorite books/paintings/pieces of music? I'd like to post things that I'd like to post about, but again, I'm at an impass.

1990-01-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

What the heck is a metrosexual anyway?

Now, I know I'm two years behind the trend. Im not asking this as if I just heard the word yesterday. I just really wanna know what the heck a metro is. Because it cant mean what I think it means.

Now, if I'm to understand, metro means gay in every way but orientation. A metro acts, dresses and behaves like a gay dude. He shops at express, he spends a half hour on his hair in the morning, he just doesn't stick his *ahem* into another guys ::cough::

But can that truly be the definition? Consider this: I have been referred to as metrosexual.

Me.

Color-blind, messy-haired, fat Xvi has been called metrosexual. I barely bathe and I eat with my fingers. Clearly there is a definitional problem here.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have this sort of title bestowed upon me. To be told that I actually dress well, or smell decent; who could ask for anything more? But I just don't think that one should throw the word "metro" around so loosely as if it didn't have a specific definition. Granted, I wear pink shirts, but does that satisfy the metro requirements? I also celebrate kwanza... Does that make me black? No! I'm just a wannabe.

The problem then, is the overuse of labels. We like to use terms instead of descriptives when we talk about people, so that we can lump those we don't identify with into groups, making them easier to hate. Instead of having to deal with that person's unique point of views, we label them into a pre-biased group so that we can conveniently ignore them on that simple basis. For example, not all republicans hate Muslims, not all French are assholes and just because someone's religion is absolute bulls**t, that doesn't automatically mean they are Mormon. It is just as likely that they are Christians, Buddhists or wiccans. We must learn to open up. Accept every person for their personal flaws, not their group flaws.

That's what I learnt from being metro.

1990-01-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

Its odd, but I think us jews have actually taken an article of clothing and called it our own.

Now, Im not talking about a traditional article of clothing. Anyone could say "duuhhhh, but I thought that the shtreimel/bekishe/kapotuh/kippah/whatever-they-wear-in-Bat-Eyin was a jewish piece of clothing..." but thats not what Im reffering to. Im talking about a regular article of clothing that has been TAKEN by the jews and made their own. Im talking about the long skirt.

I dont know if it has ever happened to you, but anytime I am walking down the street (with my head humbly down) and I spy a long skirt, I think: Maidel!

This could be in college, in the city, or in Birmingham, Alabama. Regardless of local, if I dont see knees, Im thinking Jewess. And the type of skirt makes no difference either. Regardless of how fashionable the pattern, cut or assymetry is, if your skirt extends to your knees or below, I am going to assume you are Jewish until proven gentile.

This makes me happy, my compatriots. Its time we stood up for ourselves and fought back against a world that would have us expose our knees. The age of assimilation is over. We are counter-assimilating. We have taken the skirt and we are not returning it anytime soon. Take that goyim!

(special thanks to Karen for posing awkwardly for this picture)

1990-01-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

While bloggoscoping the web recently, I chanced upon a debate regarding an extremely important topic, more pertinent today, in our world of frivolous media and cheap knock-off television, then ever before. The hot topic these media pundits were dissecting was regarding children's television and specifically was asking: What is the most important children's program of all time? While many fine examples were brought forth, I was shocked to see that not a one could grasp the importance and sheer magnitude of the unequivocal dominator of all youth programming. While bantering about the merits and detriments of TMNT or the thundercats, they almost seemed to miss the point of children's television entirely, which leads to my next blegture (blog-lecture?)

The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers (the original!) was, and always will, the greatest piece of entertainment media ever fabricated.

Mind you, this incorporates ALL forms of media and could even be considered a culmination, a coming together if you will, of all such media. Take the humor of television's Conan O'Brien, the wit and cynicism of Jack Kerouac, the visual imagery of Salvador Dali, the direction of Roman Polanski, the soul and spirit of Pachelbel and the brevity of the Taco Bell dog and you may start to get an idea of how important Power Rangers was to a generation of children seeking a cultural identity.

Now, "Xvi," you're probably thinking, "what's Power Rangers got that any other show doesn't?" to which I will roll my eyes at you, calmly sit you down and attempt to inject some sensibility in the entertainment cortex of your brain, so traumatized from television-refuse like The OC or Masterpiece Theatre.

Allow us to go down the checklist of vital elements a show must have to truly be considerd a classic.

Monsters: Check
Ninjas/Martial Arts: Check
A culturally diverse, sexually deprived group of twenty-somethings acting like mid-teens: Check
Slaspstick humor: Check, and how!
A city skyline that is destroyed every episode and miraculously reconstructed before the start of the next: Check
Semi-imaginative, color-distinct costumes, garish in the marriage of pink spandex and biker helmets: Check.
Comic relief in the coupling of an abusive fat guy and his bumbling, thin, shockingly-stupid companion: Check.
Robots: Check.
Giant Robots: Check
Swords, nunchaku, lazer guns and dragons: Check, Check Check and Check.
A killer soundtrack by Danny Elfman: Well... You cant have it all.

As you can now tell, the adventures of Zak, Kimberly, Billy, Trini and Jason (Mastodon, Pterodactyl, Triceratops, saber-Toothed Tiger and Tyrannosaurus respectively) exist as a parable for the issues facing all youth today. The show was not afraid to tackle such topics as "what to wear to the dance" or "friends hurting the feelings of, and later apologizing to, their friends." Topics which children's television was so afraid to attack before the brave rangers killed those topics with their lazer beams. In fact, prior to Power Rangers, only the oft-censored Full House seemed to have any gumtion whatsoever in providing Americans with a window into the issues encircling its inner-city youth. And Power Rangers did it all, with a killer theme song to boot.

"GO GO Power Rangers!

GO GO Power Rangers!

GO GO Power Rangers, the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers!"

The repetition of the single affirmation, a support for their bravery, a request that they continue their public services and a well-earned pat on the back for saving the city and America's moral decline yet again. Indeed, GO GO Power Rangers. Save our youth from the Rita Repulsives and Lord Zeds of the world. Teach us how to deal with the Bulks and Skulls of the world. Fight the good fight. You truly are the mighty ones.

Godspeed.

1990-01-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

Three cheers for wireless internet!

I'm gonna be honest, I'm the ultimate dork of geeks. Im an absolute geek in the "I <3 Ninja Turtles" sense, but I'm not cool enough of a geek to have had anything faster than 56k dialup until right before this past summer. I know!! Whatever. The point is, I have it now and am attempting to make up for lost time by spending as much time as possible online. Now, again, until recently, this has been rather complicated. There was just all this downtime. What if I wanted to have fast internet but not sit at my desk? What if I wanted to lay on my bed? Or hide in the crawlspace where I keep the skin of that drifter I found? What about the countless, wasted hours of time I spend in the little-boys room every day? There was all this time which I used to waste reading, or doing something stupid like that, when i could have been online, "blogging" or "facebooking" or "StumbleUponing" or "IMing" or "mastu... well thats none of your business actually. The point is, I was restricted by my desk. Then I found out, that apparently we are in the wireless generation!!! Let me spell this out for you... w i r e l e s s! Apparently, one can now talk on a phone that connects THROUGH THE AIR. So i got a cell phone and called my friend Ariell, and he got me a router. Now I can waste away my life on the internet, wherever I want. This post? In the bathroom! The last one? Probably in the bathroom too, to be honest. Its funny: instead of spending more time online like I thought, Im on the same amount every day... I just spend a lot more time in the bathroom. Anyway, wireless. Cool.

1990-01-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

(So heres a post that gets an accurate time stamp as it relates to
something that actually happened today. Generaly, as my life is not nearly so
fascinating as to require a daily post, I do not respect the timestamp. My rants
and musings are timeless. This was today though so Ill report it as such)

11/09/2005

Ever put your foot so far down your throught that you arent sure whether to try to remove it or just swallow it down? I do that a lot, and today was no exception.

I was walking down bedford torwards my car when I saw a strange sight. Parked half-on/half-off the curb, with a scraped chasis, missing a tire, the bumper a few feet behind, was a wreck of a car. It must have been hit recently because it smelled fresh, ready for the insulting. I whipped out my camera-phone (that thing that serves the double function, neither of them particularly well) and said to a friend who asked that her name not be mentioned: "wow, I'm glad I'm not such a lousy driver." About that time, the owner of the car was getting out from underneath it, having assesed the damage. To say that he fired daggers from his eyes would be an understatement. Less poeticaly, more succintly, let us say that he wished death upon me and my loved ones. The bad kind of death. The kind that involves honey-smeared genitalia and fire ants.

Thats the kind of thing that happens to me on a weekly basis. I've put my foot in my mouth so many times that I can tell what socks I've been wearing that day, by taste alone. A particular event that seems to occure to me a lot (yet I never seem to learn my lesson) goes something like this:

GuyI havent seen in a while: Hey Xvi, long time no see. Whatsup?

XVI: Not much "guy." Yeah, I havent seen you since your wedding. How is the little lady?

(Now this part changes a bit, depending on how embarassing the situation is, but all of these situations are true! I just may have changed the actual dialogue a bit so as not to bore you.)

Ive gotten this response like 2 or 3 times:

Guy 1: Oh... her. Yeah, were seperated/divorced.

Thats pretty bad, but this has happened too:

Guy 2: Yeah... She passed away three months ago.

And if you think I havent learnt my lesson yet, another ACTUAL response:

Guy 3: Well... She's, kind of, been commited to a mental institution...

XVI! SHUT UP ALREADY! I really need to invest in some duct tape or something...

1990-01-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

I was really never that good at kugelach...

Most (Id believe a solid 99.999 percent of you) have never heard of kugelach (ku - gil - uch!) but for those that have, you will nod in agreement for most of this post. The simple concept of kugelach is a simple game of podular dexterity. Five square, metal cubes, roughly a half an inch to each side, are all that is necessary for the game. One must take the "kugs" and throw them, scattered, onto the elementary school classroom floor. The first round, or "onesies" if you will is rather simple. You pick up a single kug to be designated the game cube and keep it in your hand. You must then retrieve the other kugs in a specific manner. Firstly, you throw the game cube into the air. While this kug is airborne, you must snatch a single kug from the floor without disturbing the placement of any others, and catch the airborne kug before it lands. Perform this feat three more times (four cubes total) to move onto "twosies." Now twosies is a little more tricky, because you have to pick up two kugs at a time before the game cube lands. Threesies demands the snatching of three kugs simultaneously while foursies... Well you get it. This may seem simple, but also realize that skill is necessary even when scattering the kugs. If they are too close in onesies you may disturb the placement of one while reaching for another. In twosies you need to have two sets of twos, etc... The point is, it gets complicated and finger, wrist, and elbow dexterity are all necessary as well as proper planning skills and calloused palms to match the sharp-edged cubes.

Now I know what the girls are saying, "that game sounds exactly like jacks," to which I respond: "shut up! nu uh!" Jacks involves a rubber ball and weird shaped things. Kugelach has five bronze-colored cubes. There is a DISTINCT difference. Additionally, kugelach is not just a game of skill. In elementary school yeshiva it was a ranking system of one's placement in the hierarchy of coolness. If you could legitimately pass fifth level foursies and get through the finger-bridge you were given the key to the teachers lounge. This stuff was intense. Kids developed techniques ("shtick" we called it) like the SWEEP in foursies, or the backhand catch in which the game cube is caught on the backside of the palm. This was everything. This was real. This is where the boys were separated from the men... In 3rd grade. If you weren't good at kugelach you were nothing.

So I hear you, in the back, asking "but XVI you rock so hard, but you said you were never good at kugelach. So how can that be?" I will answer you, my good man, by informing you that I had the one skill that beat out even the top kugelach masters of Torah Temimah. The one true key to elementary school godliness:

I was unbeatable at Duck Hunt!

1990-01-09T00:39:00.000-08:00

Man, am I glad that Im not an Eskimo!!

I was thinking about "march of the penguins", which got me thinking about snow, which got me thinking about ice, which inevitably got me thinking about ice cream, which then got me thinking about ketchup, which got me thinking about Eskimos, when I realized how lucky I am not to be an Eskimo. I mean, think of the obstacles I'd have as an Eskimo.

ketchup freezes at temperatures lower then 24.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Its, like, almost ALWAYS colder then that in Alaska.
I don't like fish too much at all. Actually, barring gefilte and tuna, I can say with conviction that I HATE fish. Clearly less than I hate olives, but even more than I hate Avril Levigne. As a culture of fishermen, the Eskimos are just not for me.
I could never fulfill my dream of being a basic cable game-show host. Take Hollywood in general: did you know that there are over 10 trillion Jewish Hollywood actors? Did you? Wanna know how many Eskimo actors/game-show hosts there are? Seven. And three of them are named Bob, so you cant even get called "Eskimo bob" or whatever. And other then P. Diddy, famous eskimo rapper/rap mogul, which of those seven are even famous? None!
The primary Eskimo diet consists of little cream pies, sandwiched between chocolate wafers. That may not seem so bad to you, but realize what they've done... They've turned dessert into a main meal. Now, sure, when you're 9 years old that's awesome, but as an adult who can think logically I can say that its a ludicrous idea. They are de-dessertizing dessert! That treat that waits for you at the end of the meal now IS the meal. What if I get sick of Eskimo pies? They've ruined it! Everyone knows that ice cream is reserved for snacks and breakfast. Stop making it a meal!
Did you know that there are over 27 (or something, I may have made that specific number up) different Eskimo words for "snow." 27. Twenty Freakin' Seven! That's an awful lot of redundancy for one, but even more importantly, think of what that means about snow. Its everything. I cant imagine living a life where snow is a CENTRAL part of every day life. Now, Im not just saying they have a lot of it. That would be like 8 words. Its almost religion when you hit 15 words. But 27? (think about what that means for Americans and screwing/boning/humping/etc... Though)

The list continues, but the thought remains the same. Im just glad Im not an Eskimo.

(The thoughts and opinions on this blog do not represent those of XVI or his sponsors)

1990-01-08T00:36:00.000-08:00

So, what in the hell is earth science?

remember earth science? You probably took it in eighth or ninth grade, before you even knew how to spell psyence, forget about understanding it. I cant believe they tried to pimp this stuff off as legitimate to young kids who wouldn't be able to stand up for he real sciences. Had I been in an earth science class in, say, 12th grade, would I have amicably participated? Hell no! Dew point? Moh's Scale of mineral hardness? What is this garbage.

so what brought this to mind? I was talking to someone in college today when their geology test came up. Now, as a man of science I started pondering the hierarchical placement in the "science" totem poll. Clearly physics is the great originator, dictating all rules of natural existence. A second step would be chemistry discussing the physics of the atoms and subatomic particles, the quarks, mesons, muons, taus and such, and potentially even the strings (crap theory... But well see). Branching further is organic chemistry, the "white-supremacy" of sciences only dealing with the chemistry pertaining to living systems (those cocky animated objects) which then leads to biology, which is basically organic chemistry without any of the scientific reasoning. So where the heck is geology? Which area of science branches off into the study of rock strata and garbage of that sort? And then I remembered earth science.

it was at this point that I realized that all sciences are doomed to collapse so long as they remain associated with earth science. In legitimizing earth science as a distinct entity, one receiving even its OWN REGENT!, all things labeled science are now open to enquiry. The facts of yesterday are merely the hypotheses of today and the scams of tomorrow. Jump ship while you can, true sciences. Leave the state, take a new name, come back in a few years when we are ready for you again. You have been ruined.

1990-01-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

Olives... yuck!

People dont seem to want to soapbox on the hot political topic of olives and so allow me to break the ice of conversation. Olives are evil. Thats right. i did not say bad tasting, I didnt even say disgusting. olives are evil, the epitome of all darkness and vileness in this world. On the eigth day of existence, Satan sneaked to the world and laid his unholy seed in our mother earth and thus was the first olive tree to spread its horrific branches. Please do not ask me for proof, this is not a theological conversation. Rather accept what I say as fact and accept upon yourself the task of boycotting all imports of olives into our fair and beautiful country. I have personally accepted the task of singlehandedly wiping the genus Oleafrom the earth in the name of G-D and all that is holy.

now, I know a lot of people out there really like olives, and so I will make this apology. I am really sorry that you were born with mutated tastebuds. I understand that its not your fault and that you would like to repent but dont know how. Well, I have prepared a simple three step program to help you rid yourself of this disease. And yes,it IS a disease. if alcoholism is a disease then eating olives is a pandemic!

Step one: Admitting you have a problem. Pat yourself on the back; youve come a long way, baby!

Step two: Throwing out (most preferably destroying) every olive and olive-derived product within your living space. proactive measures are necessary. Whining about a problem will never get you past step one.

Step three: drink a tall glass of ketchup. Self-explanatory.

Step four: proceed to kill yourself. It may seem harsh,but if you are so far gone as to actually enjoy olives then it is already too late. Better to die in the glory of G-D then live in sin.

(step three is optional but highly reccomended. it helps make the transition into heaven much smoother.)

All who die as martyrs for the sake of G-D in this, His holy decree, shall be rewarded with direct ascension to heaven where 70 fresh bottles of ketchup shall await you. Ketchup Hu Akbar!

1990-01-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

Coffee: Physical necessity or abject love?

What can be said about coffee that cant be determined by a single sip? Paragraphs of eloquent prose could be authored here, on any blog or from any author; poetry could be written from the greats, Shelly, Keates, Seuss but to what use? One taste of that steamy goodness, the earlier in the morning the better and you realize how useless language treally is. Anyone who claims that language is the pinnacle of evolution, the benchmark of society, has never had a venti double shot charamel skim latte' with vanilla and two sugars at about 6:30 in the morning while waiting for the train. Coffee makes the bad into good, the wrong into right, and the hippy into an honest republican with visions of reagenomics and shining cities on hills. The evils of the world, the rapes, killings, floods, earthquakes, Kelly Clarksons... they all just fade away in the steam of frothy goodness that coffee produces for those fewethereall moments.

Now about decaf... Decaf is the Hercules of coffees. Sure, he may be big and powerful when compared to mortal teas, but on Mount Olympus, the home of the great coffees, decaf is nothing more then an impostor. A bastard son of coffee and water. No wonder Hera wanted him dead. I apologize for being close-minded about this but it just makes no sense to me. Would you drink non-alcoholic beer? Would you watch a PG version of Reservoir Dogs? Could you buy a Harlequin romance novel with a bald Fabio on the cover? Then how can you remove the caffeinated Yin from coffee's Yang? You leave it broken... incomplete. If even one person reads this blog and decides to accept caffeine back into their lives and hearts, then the effort of writing this would all be worth it!

1990-01-05T08:09:00.000-08:00

The ellipsis:

So you may have read a post or two of mine at this point in which case you have no doubt noticed my absolute overuse of the ellipsis. Those three little dots, so precious to my heart... Now... I'm not quite sure honestly why I overuse them nearly as much as I do. Comments are welcome, but i think I just like to leave thoughts hanging... kind of welcoming discussion or gentle reflection and observation... But thank you Mr. EnglishSyntaxWriter... I dont believe I would have the ability to write an essay or a blog with the nearly the same conviction as I do without your sewwt ellipsis. Oh sweet omission...

1990-01-04T07:53:00.000-08:00

Alas, the cell phone...

I have a cell phone. This makes me sad. Maybe that seems weird. Maybe right now, you're saying, "but Xvi... if you hate the cellphone why dont you throw it away?" or something benign of that sort. But I'll tell you why I keep it anyway: I Freaking need it. Its sad, its terrible but its true. Now, don't get me wrong. I happen to hate almost every form of long distance communication known to man. Email? bane of my existence! Messenger? The antichrist (or whatever concept is similar to the antichrist in my/your religion)! Smoke signals? Tollerable! A friend of mine once told me that if I didn't have cell phones to take out my frustrations on, Id probably rant about yelling-accross-rooms. Maybe its a fear, maybe I'm unwilling to reach out, to love the concept of long distance communication, even though in the back of my mind it makes some sense. None the less. Which is why I have come to hate myself by proxy. It has come to the point that if I have accidentally left my house without my cellphone, I could be 5 minutes or 20 minutes away; I will turn back. As if my cell phone were some poor, distressed child, left home alone crying. In fact, it is I who am the child. Dependant on my cellphone for the mother's milk of communication. What if someone wants to see a movie and I'm not there to pick up the call? What if Ed McMahon has a check for 11 million dollars for me? What if the messiah is on his way and justs needs some quick directions? The fear of what important call I'd miss if I dont have cell phone leaves me feeling naked and vulnerable whenever I don't have that blasted radiation box. Which is why I call upon you, the reader of this blog, to unite with me and our compatriots to rally for the destruction of this bothersome tool. Together we can end our technical reliance on all forms of long distance communication! But first, about that damn Fax...

1990-01-03T07:21:00.000-08:00

The philosophy of sleeping:

I woke up this morning and really didn't know why. I mean, I really really love to sleep. Now I know about shacharis and sof zman this and plag ha'that and shkia and what-not, but the point remains: I really love sleeping. And then I wondered why, because it seems to me, that I only get the enjoyment of sleep when I'm awake. So what is it that I really like? Is it the satisfaction of knowing that I got a bagel on friday night? Maybe its the subconscious concept of not having to talk to anybody for hours at a time, or do homework, or accomplish ANYTHING honestly. I think the idea that the people in my dreams are always funnier, classier, sexier, friendlier versions of actual real-life people could have something to do with it, but maybe I just dont any of the right people. Is it that I feel more refreshed when I'm awake after Ive had a better sleep? But its the sleeping itself that I love. Getting in bed... Staying in bed... never leaving bed. That doesn't carry over to waking up fully rested. So what is it about sleep? The theme that keeps popping up, again and again through all of my analases: not being awake. Why are we satisfied with longer amounts of sleep? Less time spent awake! Why do we refuse to get out of bed without being physically pulled out by our moms and/or dads? Less time spent out there! So why do we only get into bed at 2 or 3 in the AM at the earliest? I have no idea!

1990-01-02T19:43:00.000-08:00

An ode to ketchup:

Call me silly but I just figured that a blog titled "Ketchup Goes On Everything" should begin with a slight homage to that most wonderful of food-stuffs. The problem of course I have in writing such a tribute is the issue of classification. Many refer to Ketchup as a condiment... oh you silly people. Mr. Waiter, when I order a steak and ask for ketchup, please don't roll your eyes at me. I only want the steak to enhance the ketchup goodness. When you, my father, anounce: "have some chicken with your ketchup," I wonder why I should. Do I really need a side-dish? Clearly then ketchup is not a condiment but an entree, but of what variety? Is it a salad? Maybe, as it consists primarily of vegetable product. Is it a soup? After all, its great out of the bowl, eaten with a large spoon. Maybe its a dessert? Lord knows its delicious enough! Or perhaps its just a beverage. It can be slurped from a cup with ice on the summer days, or microwaved in a Mug for the bitter winter afternoons. I remember coming home as a kid, after swiveling the walk, and my mom would have a steaming mug of hot ketchup waiting for me. Alas, to relive childhood. Clearly the it does not fall into an umbrella category but is a category all its own. Much like the Norse Mead or the Greek Ambrosia, the Heinz Ketchup is a food of its own variety, able to sustain a bodies needs all alone. Truly there is no greater food-of-the-gods then the Great Red.

A poem:

Ketchup is red,
for a while it was blue(or purple or something),
I love Ketchup,
and so should you! (your not a communist are you?)

- XVI -

1990-01-01T00:44:00.000-08:00

So I've decided that this blog in general will be a window into who I am, as told through what I like. A series of tributes to my favorite people, places and things to help you and I understand me better. Some topics to expect: More on Ketchup... video games, British humor, redheads, roadkill, wireless internet in the bathroom, leftovers, any food that once had a face (except fish...), Dr. Seuss and/or the muppets, Frank Sinatra, etc...

Hopefully this will focus you (me) into what the essence of me truly is, one corporeal enjoyment at a time. Or at least make for enetertaining reading for the high/overtired readers.

P.S. Im not actually expecting any readers... If you're here, I understand it was an accident. Feel free to leave.