spike

Shiva

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Earlier tonight, I participated in my first shiva call, at least the first one I remember. It’s a much, much more “pleasant” experience than a wake. There are no strangely-painted motionless bodies in a casket to look at, for one thing.

My father’s girlfriend’s mother passed away on Saturday. The funeral was on Sunday, and tonight was the shiva call. It’s such an expedient process, no need to drag it out over a week. She was 89 years old and deep in dementia. From what I know of her, she had a full life. Some of her time growing up and living in Europe was spent on the run from Hitler and Stalin.

When I first met her, we could have conversations. Subsequent times in the past several years, she would ramble aimlessly, switching incoherently from English to Polish to Russian to Yiddish, believing that she was somewhere else and that the people she was talking with were other people.

Movie Time

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If you haven’t seen the Chronic-cles of Narnia Rap, you’re missing something fun. As far as I know, it’s the first time Yahoo Maps, Mapquest and Google Maps have all been mentioned in the same rap, which also seems to be a thinly-veiled reference to marijuana.

I caught Syriana this weekend. Darren and I had the same reaction afterward — we couldn’t determine whether we thought it was good. Thinking about it now, I believe the movie, while long, had to be four hours instead of two in order for everything to make a little more sense.

Amy‘s reaction was different: at the end of the movie, she woke up.

George Clooney looks like a later Saddam Hussein in the movie. I guess it was sort of appropriate.

clooney.jpg

How’d I Do?

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In early January, I posted my plan of action for 2005. How did I do?

Part I: I didn’t really progress anywhere here. 2006 for sure.

Part II: I’ve made progress on A and B. I’m leaning away from law school at this point. I’m not convinced it’s the right thing for me, and it’s a huge investment for not knowing. I’ve made progress on C as well, though I usually make it through two interviews only to be not selected in the final hour of decision or to determine myself that it’s not worth it.

Part III: Excellent progress here.

My resolutions for 2006 have been posted on my other website, although they’re somewhat money related, as the topic of my other blog is personal finance.

I Pay My Rent On Time…

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… and this is what I get.

I came home last night and I was welcomed home by Rupert, only I wasn’t. Normally I am, but I couldn’t find him. He didn’t answer when I called.

Then I spotted something weird: the doors to my bathroom closet, which are normally where they should be, were in the dining room, leaning up against some crates filled with books. The crates were in the right spot, but I wasn’t sure how the doors moved.

I thought that there was some kind of strange conspiracy involving the cat and the doors, as Rupert continued not responding to my calls. Normally he runs to me the second I start talking, even if I’m not calling him. Perhaps who ever was in my apartment let him out…

Nope, he was sleeping behind the television. This still didn’t solve the question of the closet doors, so I called the management office. After announcing my name and apartment number, the woman knew exactly what happened. Maintenance received a call about a broken water heater from my apartment number… but it wasn’t for my apartment. It was for an apartment in a different complex with the same number. Maintenance entered my apartment because of incorrect information. They realized this when, after inspecting my water heater, they determined it was working perfectly. So they left.

There are still the unanswered questions: Why didn’t they put the doors back on when they were done? Why didn’t someone leave me a note or call me to tell me what happened so I didn’t have to be wondering what the hell was going on when I got home? What did they do to scare Rupert into almost-permanent hiding?

The woman from the apartment management company apologized profusely. She tried to get maintenance to visit last night to put the doors back on, but apparently they were otherwise occupied with dealing with some sort of emergency, which I wouldn’t dout that they caused in the first place.

Bat Mitzvah

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My Bar Mitzvah was nothing like Elizabeth’s Bat Mitzvah. While I didn’t have Steven Tyler in attendance to sing with the band, my mother lent her talents to the stage, and it’s quite possible she sang an Aerosmith tune.

Music On Load – A Rant In Three Parts

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There was a bad web design trend around 1996 and 1997 that has since gone away, thankfully. There were many people who designed websites and decided that the user would be required to listen to music, usually annoying music, when the sites finished loading. Sometimes, there was no way to stop the music, but usually you had to press the Esc key or click the browser’s stop button.

Thankfully, this annoying “feature” fell out of favor. Unfortunately, however, it’s back in the form of MySpace profiles. I fcuking hate MySpace, the third most-visited site on the internet. It’s such a horrible website, poorly designed and programmed, it’s a miracle that its shoddiness hasn’t caused the site to crumble under its own increasing mass.

Of course, to appeal to the masses (and to cater to bands that are unsigned for a reason), MySpace lets users add music (and videos) to their profiles. This means that even if I’m not already listening to my own music while browsing, my experience will be completely interrupted. It is disgusting. Turn off the profile music and make it an option to start playing. Otherwise it is a horrible annoyance.

Of course the answer is to stop using MySpace. More and more people are using it as thier main form of online communication, so just giving it up is unfortunately not going to work for me. I’ll just deal with it until people realize that even the Netscape blink tag was less annoying than automatic music (especially automatic “bad” music).

They will. Eventually something much better will replace MySpace in the minds of the hordes that use it. I have faith. I have faith because if I didn’t, I might cry. :>

Potter and Plans

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My brother and I caught the latest Harry Potter movie last night. It wasn’t too bad. There seem to be several movies I’d like to see over the next few months. I think it’s going to be a busy holiday season. Hopefully the plans that are still squishy will solidify a bit. I’m flying back to the “home area” on Friday and going into New York City on Saturday for Laura‘s birthday. I’ll finally make it home to Rupert on Sunday — then it’s back to work.

At some point, I’m supposed to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular with Amy. That will be a first.