Why do I suck at life?

Just needed to get this out and have no other forum to do so. Just had a phone interview for a position at WGBH Boston, and I think I did all right, only maybe a bit too honest with questions like "what would your colleages say your three best work qualities are?" and "What would they say your worst is?" (the second one hurt much more than the first, obviously) I don't think I'm going to make it to round two, I don't find out until the week of the 26th, and probably won't post again until I do find out.

One question I thought was funny was "how do I set my priorities?" The first answer I thought of (but thankfully didn't say) was one my younger brother once used when asked the same questions: "I put them in a list and order them by level of importance, isn't that how everyone sets priorities?"

I'm sweating so much it's crazy. Man, I'm depressed.

I guess I'm it

I was tagged by Cute little box so I am completing this meme. I wasn't planning on posting again so soon as I'm still working out my stuff, but it seemed like fun and I was getting a little bored. I don't know when the next post will be and I'm just considering this post a short recess from my self-imposed absence. Anyway, without further elaboration or excuses (and pardoning the poor writing), here we go.

Ten Years Ago: I was just starting my sophomore year of high school. It was wicked freaky as most my freshman year was spent in in Israel and I had maybe three friends in my American high school. I had such an amazing time the year prior the first semester of my return I hated school. I wasn't a complete loser, but I was pretty close. The worst part was biology. It took me almost a semester to realize I had learned it all the material in Israel only now I had to learn the terms and names in English.

On the plus side I did make friends and was for some reason given the nickname Moses (which I was called even by people I didn't know) because apparently, Amichai wasn't Jewish enough for them.

Five Years Ago: I moved across campus starting my junior year in a new dorm. I went to a small college in downtown Boston, so across campus was really a seven minute walk across Boston Commons and the Public Garden. I moved because I wanted a single room, and I wanted something new and fresh as I had lived in the same dorm room for my freshman and sophomore years. Moving turned out to be one of the best things I ever did as most of my college friends I keep in touch with today are the friends I made at the new dorm.

A side note, the dorm was built in a brownstone on Beacon street (132 Beacon to be exact) and there were maybe 70 people living in the dorm total (compared to the 70 people per floor of the my previous dorm -13 floors total). Since I am a very forgetful person and didn't own anything of any value what so ever I never locked my dorm room door. I was scared I'd lose my key or lock myself out, both of which carried a fine as a penalty. Once Mike and Sara (two people who consequentially became some of my best friends) found out that my door was never locked they snuck in and messed with my stuff. Being something of an (and by "something of an" I mean complete and utter) absent minded doofus when they cleaned up my desk - didn't notice. Then they turned some of my stuff upside down (my calendar, a few business cards, and a small poster) and I didn't realize it. I am always fiddling with something so when I saw them upside down I figured I didn't it with out realizing it. They even switched two drawers in my dresser. When I woke up the following morning and opened the drawer for my socks I saw my pants. Instead of wondering how this switch occured I just assumed I was an idiot and forgot which drawer I put my socks in. It took about three weeks for me to think maybe something strange was going on.

One Year Ago: I quit my job at Kolbo Fine Judaica and moved out of my apartment in Somerville back to Framingham. Nothing else really exciting happened. Of mild interest, it will be exactly a year ago tomorrow that I had my last hair cut.

Yesterday: I hung out with my mom in the morning, scheduled a phone interview for a job at WGBH I really want (the interview is thursday at 11 am) went shopping for bread and fruit, then watched TV. I'm a pretty boring guy.

5 Songs I Know All The Words To: Basically everything by They Might Be Giants; Cosmic Dancer by Marc Bolan (though I prefer the Lo Galluccio version); Coin Operated Boy by the Dresden Dolls; Down South, 10 Hours, I-5 by the All Girl Summer Fun Band; Punk Rock Girl by the Dead Milkmen.

5 Snacks: Oreos, Edy's whole fruit bars, Granny Smith Apples, Rum Raisin ice cream with carmel syrup and sprinkles, Zebra cakes.

5 things I would do with 100 million dollars: Buy six houses in Israel (one for each member of my immediate family), start my own production company (to print comic books and produce movies), Pay off my student loans and for my brothers college educations, I'd do the whole charity thing; maybe start my own non profit to subsidize grants to local artists and education initiatives, and roll naked in huge vault with what ever was left just like Scrooge McDuck.

5 Places I Would Run Away To: New Zealand (just to see the Kakapo Bird), Tzfat in Israel, Tokyo, Micronesia (but just general island hopping in the Pacific), Curocao.

5 Things that I'd never wear: Assless pants, Bike shorts, a toupee (don't need one, but as every male in my family over the age of 40 is bald or balding - both paternal and maternal sides of the family - I figure it's only a matter of time before genetics catches up with me), anything with a swastika on it, a parachute (well I would wear one, but I never plan on being in a situation where one is needed).

5 Favorite TV Shows: Simpson, Arrested Development, Barbershop, Deadwood, Gilmore Girls.

5 Favorite Joys: Don't really know how to answer this one. I'm not someone often filled with joy. In fact i'm not quite sure what joy feels like. I've been happy, celebratory, but never filled with joy (well there was this one girl I had a crush on named Joy but I don't think that counts).

5 Favorite Toys: All my old HeMan action figures (I don't play with them anymore but if we ware talking about all time favorite throughout the course of my life HeMan probably ranks near number one), My playstation 2, Shrinky Dinks - those things are awesome, My Computer (an old iMac, but it's still cool), my various frisbees (I love them all the same).

5 People I'm Tagging: I don't know if anyone reads this now, as I am not really posting, so I don't think anyone would know if I tagged them, but if you have read this entry, consider yourself tagged.

That is all for now (at least until I get my shit together or get bored once again).

Cat and Girl (and me)

As with most of my writing I've read over older entries of this blog and have found them to be lacking. They don't feel complete, missing a sense of a larger image in which they fit. As I read two ideas slowly crept into my head. The first: "Man I want a falafel." Followed almost immediately by: "Gasp! The imitative fallacy."

The first is pretty self explanatory, Falafel=Goodness. The second I'll take a moment to explain. For the unaware, the imitative fallacy is a trap many young (and even older) fiction writers fall into. The presentation of the plot imitates the themes and story, completely unintentionally. For instance, if you write a story about a race, where everything is speeding by, you might find that each paragraph is short, the sentences choppy, and the characters jump from one idea to the next very quickly, and none of it was planned when you started writing. The imitative fallacy is especially problematic if said style is bothersome to the reader (as stories that fall into the imitative fallacy often are).

Now how does this apply to my blog? I'm very glad you asked. I am unemployed drifting around aimlessly in a small suburban town. I have very little contact with my friends outside the phone and e-mail. No face time. I don't do much, as I said, I'm just sort of drifting trying to find a job (I had a job, I mean a good job, a job I'd like, not just a job but a Career). I'm 25 and I think it's time I started growing up. I don't want to get all stuffy in a suit and pants (pantsless employment=fun job or porn star, and I don't have the...ehem, body to be a porn star - nor do I think being a porn star would be a fun job, but that’s niether here nor there and this has become far too long of a parenthetical break) and just worry about money, and marriage, and children and all that other crap adults are supposed to worry about. But I also don't think I should still be bumming around working in a simple retail or coffee shop type job, not three years out of college with a nice (and expensive) degree.

I’ve looked back on my blog and found that the posts mimic my life. Drifting, aimless, self-contained, and searching for meaning. And really, that's just not good enough.

I just read the newest installment of my favorite web comic Cat and Girl and there was a line that really struck me. To quote, "If television's a babysitter, the internet is a drunken librarian who won't shut-up." I realized I didn't want to just be another voice of an endless "drunken" cacophony. So I'm taking some time off from this blog. I don't want to be profound (who really can be profound all the time, and those that are, man they're annoying), I just want to come up with a greater context.

I am still going to read all the blogs I read, because I like those blogs (noodles is posting again; I've said it before but I really, really dig her prose, both smart and funny - it doesn't get much better than that), but I'm refraining from posting until I find my context.

Or get really really bored, whichever comes first.

uh... carry on then...

just another 332 days to go

I know, I know, three posts in one day, do I even have a life anymore? Actually no, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. Onto the topic at hand.

It's early, but I totally know what I want for my birthday next year.

For the next 15 minutes

I know I don't have many readers. But I'm posting mostly just to keep myself occupied, and this blog is devoted to my own narcisism.

That being said, through no fault of my own, I think I may have stumbled on to the next big interet hype. I may be wrong but I think (update 5/28/07: link disabled due to the fact that the blog doesn't exist any more - I guess I was wrong) This Blog is going to become insanely popular soon. Get in on the ground floor now. It's quite possibly (as advertised) the cutest blog ever.

If I'm right, you've heard it here first. If I'm wrong, well, I'll just add it to the list.

Take that Lex Luthor

For truth, justice, and the...er...Surbian way.

Mork would want it this way

I really hope this is a joke.

Why didn't I see this sooner?

So Jon Stewart was on Crossfire last october and I never saw it untill today. It was freaking brilliant and if you haven't seen it I urge you to check it out.

Amichai's life Lesson #327

Never watch the Iron Chef when you're hungry.

I'm a stinker

Yesterday:

It was around 8:30 at night and I was driving home from the supermarket. A horrid popsicle craving struck me about a half hour earlier so I hit the supermarket hoping to find Edy's whole fruit popsicles. Alas, they were all out. In their stead I purchased a box of Tropicana popsicles; 12 for the price of 14 (advertised "made with real fruit juice" which kinda scared me that there are enough popsicle makers out there who don't use fruit juice for fruit flavored popsicles it has to be advertised as something special).

With the popsicle box open in the passenger seat and a raspberry popsicle in my mouth I hit the road feeling very pleased with myself. I was in no rush, the night air was cool, and even obeying the speed limit I was no more than ten minutes from home. The road was dark, quiet; the type of quiet found only in open stretches between adjoining suburban towns. You know, the noise disappears, just for a moment, woods wall the road, and even though you know in two minutes you are going to drive passed condominium complexes, at that moment the quiet makes you feel as if the world is actually a gentle place to live.

I left my windows open and the cool air rushed through the car. The road was empty, or so I thought as I was about to step down on the gas, forgoing the 35 mile per hour speed limit and race home to get the popsicles in the freezer. But just before I put any pressure on the gas pedal, a large, white, Cadillac SUV pulled up behind me and flashed its brights. I was caught a bit off guard, so when I didn't immediately accelerate to satisfy the drivers lust for speed the SUV's brights turned on, no longer flashing, but now glaring into my car. Popsicles or no popsicles, I was not about to be pushed around by some jerk. So I did what any other jerk would do. I slowed down.

I kept my car traveling down the quiet road at a few miles under the speed limit. And when the speed limit dropped I obeyed (probably the first time I ever have driving that particular road). Brights still glaring into my car, the SUV practically nipping at my back bumper, we remained like this for about a song and a half (the fifth and sixth tracks on Transatlantacism by Death Cab For Cutie).

Finally we got to a red light and I pulled into the left hand turn only lane. The White SUV pulled up to my side. From the driver seat a very addled woman, no older than 23, stared at me. She did not appear angry, just awfully confused. I suspect she was expecting a different sort of person behind the wheel of my car. Who she was expecting, I can't say.

So I waved, and smiled as sincerely as I could, because when you boil it down, I am, as Daffy Duck likes to say, a stinker.

Oh, and the popsicle was delicious.

Questions without answers

I don't support the war in Iraq, but that's old news and that isn't what this post is about. I just wanted to get it out of the way, and give a little background before I charge head first into this rant.

There's been more and more talk about Cindy Sheehan, in the papers, and on the various news programs. Whether she is vilified (say, by Foxnews), put up on a pedestal (MoveOn.org), used as a jumping off point for discussion (Newsweek) or mined for comedy (The Daily Show) no one can seem to shut up about her and her protest down in Texas.

Now whether you agree with her motives or not, you should concede it takes a very strong woman, and strong sense of commitment to do what she is doing. There are those who are denouncing her motives saying she is just using her grief and the death of her son for political gains, but then again many of those same denouncers are the ones who supported Terry Shiavo's parents who used their grief over their daughter for political gains (the denouncers political gains, not the parents). But the left isn't blameless either, just look at the recent attack adds on Judge Roberts NARAL pulled because they were just too damn mean (and by and large, blatantly ignored the facts). Both sides like twisting the truth for their own political gains.

To be honest, I don't really care about all of that. It's back story. Here's my real issue. In her protests Sheehan asked if this war was so important why hasn't he (President Bush) sent his daughters off to Iraq. This question, if you recall, was used by Michael Moore in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 as he approached Senators who voted for the war whether they would enlist their children to fight. The point being, if the Senators and President Bush aren't willing to sacrifice their own children it must not be a just war. I find that to be very flawed reasoning for a few reasons. First, I can't think of a single parent who would willingly sacrifice their children's lives for any cause. There are parents who swell with pride when their children choose to join the army, and fight for their country, even with a strong possibility that their children will die fighting. That being said, no parent I know would sign their children up themselves if given the choice.

Which brings me to the second reason. It's not the parents choice. My parents can't sign me up for the military. The only person who can sign me up is me. Even if they wanted me to be a soldier, if I didn't want to be a soldier, there was nothing they could legally do about it. The same is true for the first daughters. Even if President Bush wanted them in the army (which I doubt he does, as Jon Stewart of the Daily show said, "Are you kidding, I thought we wanted to win this war?") with out their consent he couldn't do anything about it, legally. The same applies to the children of Senators, or Congressmen or women. It's the children who have to choose to volunteer, that's why it's called volunteering.

The question "would you send your children to war?" is a divisive one. There is no way one can answer it and look good, sound good, or be righteous. It's asked simply to make the recipient look selfish, greedy, and - for lack of a better word - bad. Bad as in evil, morally repugnant, and hypocritical. These sorts of questions just make protesters on both sides of the aisle less palatable to the other side. They just entrench us in our beliefs that those on the other side are wrong as we think to ourselves: "I mean look at the kind of cheap tricks they pull to get some sympathy." To really spark a helpful debate we need to start asking better questions, not just divisive ones.

I'm a man a head of my times

Holy crap I'm psychic! But of course in the bad sorta way. If only I could predict good things to happen instead of this crap.

As reported in the Denver post:

Officials of the city's system, which this month pulled 6,000 racy Spanish-language picture books from its shelves, are worried that a full review of its 2.5 million books, CDs and videos may follow.

Doomed for all eternity, though I hear there's a starbucks there

Another stupid internet test.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate.

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Moderate
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

The virtuous non-believer thing makes sense, as I'm, you know, not a Christian. And I'd argue the fradulent bit, though you wouldn't know if was being honest or not. But lustfull? I think that's just a result of not having any sex for over a year. Er, was that too much information?

Crossing my fingers

I just sent my resume and cover letter off to a job I actually want. Wish me luck.

More of the inane

I stepped on my glasses and one of the arms snapped off. They're six years old so it's time for a new pair anyway, I just really liked them. They were one of the few things I owned that was stylish but not trendy or too hip to make them passe after a year or so. Ah, my glasses, I mourn thee.

If you're a guy...

You know your hair is too long if it gets in the way when you try and blow your nose.

this is such a pain in the...

For a while (as in this past month) I've had a pain shooting down the right side of my neck. As the time has passed it's dimmed to a dull throb, or disapears completely letting me forget about it, that is until I tilt my head up. Then the sharp pain kicks into gear. It's one of those things I'd like to think will just go away by itself. I should probably see a doctor, but I am poor and uninsured, so maybe a free clinic. If I was insured I still probably wouldn't see a doctor, because I'm just that sort of idiot.

Take that you hippie freaks!

As someone who has no health insurance I prefer to try and find ways to prevent illness without the use of proper medical advice. Echinacea has always been in my stock of preventative medicines, mostly in tea form for when I get sick. Echinacea and vitamin C (gallons upon gallons of OJ consumed regularly) were my main tools to stay healthy.

Apparently I was wrong. As reported in the New York Times (well really first in the New England medical journal):

Echinacea, the herbal supplement made from purple coneflower and used by millions of Americans to prevent or treat colds, neither prevented colds nor eased cold symptoms in a large and rigorous study.

Stupid hippies with their free love (which arguably is way better than paying for it) and herbal loving remedies. I'll never listen to you guys again. From now on all my medical advice will come from Emo-rockers, certainly they must know where it's at.

Juvenile delinquents

I always feel like such an idiot walking into the library, heading straight for the YA section to read the graphic novels (ie. comic books) I can't afford at the moment. I don't feel like an idiot because I can't afford them, rather that I have to walk into the section filled with 13-16 year olds playing some sort of online computer games, to get my graphic literature. I feels eyes boring into the back of my head as I browse ("look at that dork, still reading comic books").

Yeah, I like comic books, so what?

But shocked me the most is the nature of some of said graphic literature in the YA section. The librarians, who don't read the comics themselves (and I'm not advocating that they should, or that there is anything wrong with not reading comics) assume that if there are pictures it's for kids. This could get a library in serious trouble. Some comics contain images not suitable for young adults (at least by certain adults or parents).

For instance, if Preacher, the award winning series Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, were made into a movie it would definitely be rated R. Strong religious themes and theological debates arise amidst a sea of sex, nudity, and blood. It is smart, funny, but with out a doubt adult (Adult as in a R rated movie, not a porno). If I had a thirteen year old child I probably wouldn't have a problem having him or her read it, but I know there are parents out there that would forbid it from their house.

And if teenager, or child took out a comic like Preacher from the library, and their parents don't approve of that sort of mature content for said child/teenager it's the comic that gets blamed for the content, not the library for putting it in the wrong section because "comics are for kids."

I know, I know, this is just a hypothetical, but stuff like that happens more often than we think, but mostly to comic shops than libraries (as most people I know aren't even aware libraries carry comics). Check out the comic book legal defense fund for more info.

I'm just sick of the bad rep comics get.

Anyway, rant over. Bah, humbug.

USA, USA!

Lance Armstrong is AMAZING!!