Thursday, February 28, 2008

bumper stickers 2

Avoid alliterations always.

God loves you. But I'm His favorite.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

Double your drive space. Delete Windows.

If it ain't broke, take it apart and fix it.

I'm Canadian. It's like being American, but without the gun.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.

The control key on the keyboard does not work.

The meek shall inherit the earth, after we're through with it.

Being "over the hill" is much better than being under it!

Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up.

God loves you! Everybody else thinks you're a jerk.

Lawyers have feelings too (allegedly).

If there is no God, who always pops up that next Kleenex?

Too much Pluribus, not enough Unum.

Forget world peace; visualize using your turn signal.

If you believe in telepathy, think about honking.

Every time you open your mouth, some idiot starts talking.

The box said Windows 2000 or better. So I installed Linux.

Use the best: Linux for servers, Mac for graphics, Windows for Solitaire.

Don't make me mad. I'm running out of places to hide the bodies.

I plan to live forever. So far, so good!

Rock is dead. Long live paper and scissors.

Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil.

Veni, Vidi, Velcro. I came, I saw, I stuck around.

On the journey of life, I choose the psycho path.

On your mark, get set, go away!

Honk if the twins fall out.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list

answering machines

answering machines have a way of making the most talkative person tongue-tied and the shyest person become quite loquacious. take for instance, my dad. he never talks excessively. he only says what needs to be said. but when he comes up against an answering machine, he goes on and on and on. he says the most embarrasing thing is when he's in the middle of leaving a rather long winded conversation and the machine beeps and cuts him off. he always wonders what to do then. should he call back and finish the message? assume whoever was calling him got the message? and i'm quite the opposite. every the loquacious person, afte i hear that beep, i usually have to take a second to work up the courage to speak. my messages usually sound something like this:

BEEP!
(pause)
"oh, right, hi it's me call me back"

which is why i hate leaving messages. so i never do it.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

out of the mouth of babes

little kids are so cute.

i was driving my four-year-old cousin somewhere, and i was talking to her about what time she goes to bed. the conversation went something like this

me:what time do you go to bed?
her: i don't know time. when it's my bedtime, my mommy tells me
me: and you always listen to your mommy?
her: no. i don't like to listen to my mommy
me: but you know, it's a mitzvah to listen to your mommy...
her: (thinks for a minute) then maybe i could do a different mitzvah?


Monday, February 25, 2008

a most unlikely teacher

sitting in biology lab, I'm wondering how anyone can teach/study science and not believe in G-d. last week we studied the cell, and this week we're looking at epithelial tissues. and my professor is enraptured by the works of our body. she keeps remarking at how amazing it is that we have "teeny-tiny-microscopic machines in our body" i watch my lab partners look in their microscopes and wonder what they think when they see slides of cell division:
Nick is just sitting and eating sour sticks. he eats them every week. and they're the gross kind too, the ones you buy for 25 cents in a vending machine. every week the professor gives her little speech about no eating in the lab, and every week he pulls out his sour sticks. this week they're red. sometimes they're blue. when he's not eating sour sticks, he's putting on chap stick or busy with his phone. the only time i every saw him get worked up about anything at all was the time the professor told him he can't make up the quiz he missed last week. then he got ticked off.
Frank keeps looking into his microscope and muttering "gorgeous" just the way the professor says it in her Queens accent. he says it just loud enough for everyone at the table, and the professor to hear. he's a bit of a clown. he just likes mocking the professor because she gets so ticked off. but he's actually quite a good mimic.
Peter is absent. he misses more classes than he attends. he comes to class, he slouches in his chair with his hood on and practices making faces, alternating between I'm-bored-face, I'm-tired-face, and i-don't-want-to-be-here-face. if you look really closely you can just discern the difference between the three of them.
so it's just me left to wonder at the beauty and precision of creation. I'm not usually so enamored of things i can't see. ok that's an understatement. i HATE learning about cells, but somehow it seems almost interesting. if you stop and simply think about what's going on in your body-even when you're sleeping, all those three trillion cells in the body are constantly at work. quite like the inside of a clock. I'm still not a fan of memorizing the names of cells (simple, squamous, cuboidal) types (epithelial, connective, muscular) or their characteristics, but how can you you look at something like that and not wonder what's making it function like that? how can you accept that a body that works so perfectly is just running by itself?
it's funny how it takes a Catholic science professor from Queens to teach me a lesson like that

Sunday, February 24, 2008

languages

i was sitting in the student lounge trying to study, but i was distracted by the group of students sitting near me. they were indian (sorry, dunno PC term for whatever nationality they were) and they were speaking...whatever language it is they speak. and they sounded so funny! every hear indian people speak? it sounds like the gurgling kind of noise you would make at a baby. and it was all i could do not to burst out laughing (which only would have elicited scowls from them and maybe weird looks from anyone else, cuz i was holding a biology and what could possibly be remotely funny about mitosis and the parts of a microscope?)

so i was thinking about all the different languages i hear around me every day. it's a veritable United Nations in community colleges. and all the different nationalities have their own clubs (on a side point, i was discussing this with a friend of mine who attends a community college in a different state and she said that everyone there has a ten year plan cuz they love being part of all the different clubs. me i'd rather cram as many credits as possible into each semester and hightail it out of there asap)

i realized that when people around you are talking in a language you cannot understand, you automatically assume they're talking about you. like when you go for manicures and they're all chattering away in korean. my friend once asked what they were talking about, to which the woman patted her hand and replied "you very pretty" like heck they were saying that. probably something more along the lines of "check out her shirt, man that's one ugly article of clothing, what's wrong with these weirdos they come here in ninety five degree weather wearing long sleeves!" my case was proven last semester when i used to talk to the girl next to me in hebrew and the guy who sat on my other side was always convinced we were talking about him. always.

sundays

there's something about sundays.

maybe it even starts the night before. it's that wonderful feeling that you have 24 hours with no obligation. you don't have to set your alarm clock (not that i ever do-i start school quite late) don't have to work out a schedule, no need to think about what to wear. and you don't have to feel guilty about going to sleep after two like you do during the week.

then you wake up sunday morning and you can roll over and go right back to sleep! no need to jump out of bed in a frenzy like what happens in my room, with me and my sister rushing around, banging into eachother. you can take twenty minutes to put on each shoe, brush your hair a hundred times if you so wish, put on ur mascara carefully, doing each eyelash separately. you can lazily make your way upstairs, or into the kitchen, and actually eat breakfast, maybe even sitting down! no obligations, no schedule, no demands, just you and the afternoon ahead. (of course in the winter, the days are so short, that by the time you've gotten up and started, the afternoon is almost over)

for me, the worst part of a sunday is like 5:30 pm. that's when the day is ending, and any big plans you've had for the weekend are either over, or it's too late to start them. all the stuff you have to do for the week, any tests, papers to write (of which i have alot this week) hit you with a bang.

and before you know it, you're waking up on monday morning and it's back to the drudgery of the week.

"...just another maniac monday..."

"...leftover memories of sunday..."

Saturday, February 23, 2008

there's a method to my madness

everyone thinks i'm crazy.

my family knows it for sure. i'm a freak when it comes to germs and hygeine. i shower every single night before i go to bed, no matter what time it is. i shower the second shabbos is over. by the time my dad gets home for havdalah, i'm already out and washing dishes. i don't let anyone drink from my cups, and i'm always brushing my teeth. my mom worries that i won't make a good nurse cuz i'll be too grossed out, but i already proved her wrong when i had to help one of my campers pull something out of her brackets cuz it was digging into her gums. my little brother knows this so he intentionally tries to antagonize me by sticking his fork into my food (gross)

in high school my friends always told me i was going to crack cuz i was working on way too many projects. i was editor-in-chief of the newspaper, g.o. did technical work for our production, and layout for the year book. my teachers thought i was insane because i skipped classes left and right, never studied, didn't follow rules, and still was convinced that i'd do well. my principal knew i was for sure nuts cuz i was really dumb about breaking rules, so she found out every little thing i did.

in seminary, i was the one who did crazy things like stay up all night to watch sunrise, skipping class to go eat breakfast in a park, sitting on the phone for hours trying to get tickets to the yom hazikaron ceremonies, i gave out apples to soldiers before rosh hashana...i think i set a record for skipping curfew the most.

even now, my friends think i'm insane because i don't plan my free time, but just take it as it goes. when i needed to take pictures for photography class, i went upstate in the snow to get pictures of frozen lakes. i woke up at five to photograph sunrise. i refuse to live my life bound to the constrains of society.

but i think being a random and sporadic person keeps life fun and intersting. i still manage to pass my classes in college, i always get the groceries that my mom needs, and i don't forget my keys in shopping carts (although i once dropped my boss's credit card, that wasn't too funny) ppl who plan out their whole lives don't have any fun.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

raw fish?!?!?

my mom always taught me to chew with my mouth closed and not take too big bites, but tonight i was having a hard time doing that.

i went out for sushi with my dad.

i still remember the first time i heard about sushi. my thoughts probably ran around the lines of "ew!" but then i tasted my first piece of sushi, and i've loved sushi since then. but really, if you think about sushi, it sounds kinda gross. ok so there's rice. then seaweed. i mean this thing was floating around the ocean! ppl probably stepped on it! and then there's raw fish, my sister says it's practically aiver min hachai! but the other funny thing about sushi is that it's become such a jewish thing. every wedding, dinner, function, that used to have a viennese table, potato kugel and chopped liver, now has a sushi bar.

so my dad and i were sitting there eating sushi, and one of the rolls we ordered were huge. my dad and i both looked at eachother at the same time, trying to eat it, and burst out laughing!

(but seriously, my dad's the best person to go out with. he doesn't care if i act like a little kid-nothing really immature, just blowing the straw coverings at eachother, something we've been doing for ages. don't worry, no one was looking)

"laughing is jogging on the inside"

i'm taking chemistry. and i already failed it in high school so i need to make sure that i'll do well in the class. so i signed up for a tutor through the college.

his name is Albert.

he tutors chemistry.

i was convinced he'd be a geek.

when i walked into the tutoring room i looked around for the dorkiest looking guy. there was a dude maybe 45 years old wearing a white shirt and tie (i looked for a pocket protector but didn't see one) with graying, thinning hair. i was sure this was albert. but i had no clue, so i txted a frum girl in my class who'd had a session with albert already, and asked her what he looked like; did he have glasses, grayish hair. she answered me

"Albert is hot."

by now i had convinced myself that the old guy was Albert so i thought she was kidding. but she insisted albert didn't wear glasses, and was like maybe thirty years old. i went over to the only other male tutor in the room and asked him if he was albert.

he was.

he's dark with a really cool looking tattoo on his arms, i guess he could pass for hot, though i would put him in the very cool category.

i still can't figure out why he doesn't go by the name Al or something, and how he could possibly like tutoring chemistry.

so i made it through the first tutoring session only slightly distracted by the tattoo (tattoos fascinate me)and came up with an observation.

Albert doesn't laugh.
He doesn't even smile.

this shocks me. how can you be a person who doesn't like humour? i know there's something to be said for having a little brevity when needed, but he didn't even smile when i introduced myself. now don't get me wrong, i wouldn't appreciate it if he wasted the time alloted making jokes instead of tutoring, but he was so serious almost to the point of being stiff. it couldn't have been trying to be professional cuz his clothing was too casual. and i could tell that it's just his personality to be like that.

i think laughing is good for you. i read somewhere that u actually get excersize all over, not just in your face, when you laugh. mental health professionals will tell you that it's good to laugh. heck you just feel better after you've had a good laugh. one of my favorite things to do is get together with my friends and reminisce until we're crying with laughter.

again, i understand that there's a time to be serious, and i can be serious. i'm not like one of those shmucks who makes jokes and makes everyone want to punch them. i just think that everyone needs a healthy dose of laughter. like they say (who they heck are "they" anyway?):

Laughter is the best medicine.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

innocence can be embarrasing

in high school my teachers were always lauding the praises of those who insisted on sheltering their kids. they said it was a good thing to not have to know about 'the outside world' until you go ahead and are unceremoniously dumped in it; meaning when you go to a secular college.

i think it just sets you up to make a fool of yourself.

in my biology lab there are two frum girls. one of them was in high school with me. she comes from a pretty sheltered home. and she herself is pretty naiive about lots of stuff. especially spring break. if you ask her what she thinks of when you say spring break she'd probably say "oh i hope it coincides with pesach cuz then i won't miss school" ask anyone else what spring break means, and they'll say "cancun, bahamas..." last week we were talking during break, and different girl in the class and she said she's going to hawaii for spring break. so this frum girl in all innocence asks "oh what's there? do you have family?" so everyone around her kind of tittered. she was a little bit confused, but being a sweet girl, she just smiled.

so i was watching this whole thing and i realized that all through high school my arguments with my teachers had been right! it is not always best to be sheltered! in fact, i would say 93% of the time it's not good.

of course there is something to be said for innocence. moms always cringe when they find out that their child is hanging around the girl who knows about "stuff" as my little sister once put it. but why wait until you're thrown out into a foreign world to be left stumbling around in the dark?

maybe i'm crazy and wrong, but something inside of me rebels at the thought of sheltering ur kids so they have NO CLUE what's out there.

what do you think?

cellphones

what is it about people today that we're so dependant on our cellphones?
i noticed this recently when my phone was at verizon and i had no phone for three hours. on the one hand, i felt cut-off from civilization (in a way i was. i was in a park in nowheresville taking pictures for photography class)and panicked that someone would call me and i'd miss the call (my friends and i never leave voicemails. ever. it's a waste of time to listen to them)and i didn't even know what time it was cuz i wasn't wearing a watch! but then i realized that it kind of felt nice. i was just doing my thing, without being interrupted. it was like being a little kid again, when you can go out and play with your friends without having to worry about keys, wallet, phone, the whole purse thing. and guess what? i totally survived! nothing earth shattering happened in the three hours that i didn't have my phone (although it drove the technicians nuts cuz it kept vibrating with every incoming text)

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

WARNING!

I'll try to be good about posting everyday but that will be directly proportionate to the amount of work i have; meaning, the more work i have, the more posts there will be cuz i'm the best procrastinator. also, my thoughts can be very erratic, especially when i've had like three hours of sleep....