L'histoire de sa vie

During my Midterm week of hell, my posts are a little shorter:

It snowed in NYC pretty hard on February 26, eleven days ago. It was a ridiculous snowstorm, called by the media various nicknames such as Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse. Because I don’t fare well in snow, I got sick.

But that’s not the point. I am now recovered from my illness. It’s in the 50s outside and I’m not wearing my puffy jacket anymore. It’s going to rain tomorrow. Spring has all but officially sprung.

Yet there are still, eleven days later, mounds of snow, covered with all kinds of nasty, all over the streets. This is ridiculous. Examples below:

First of all, let me say that Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin may be the worst hosts I’ve ever seen. It was painful at times and even worse the rest of the time to watch them up there, thinking they were funny, being so unfunny.

Every year when I watch the Oscars, my favorite part is the “Death Reel” where they go through the list of all the important people who died since the last Oscars. This year they left out Farrah Fawcett but included some Public Relations guy.

This is the reason why it’s my favorite part. Every year I call my mom and we laugh about whichever the most ridiculous tribute was. PR was it this year. We always joke that they left out our favorite late Key Grip or Best Boy or Caterer.

After all, if some PR guy can make the cut, how come the 2nd Assistant Cameraman can’t?

I have to say James Taylor was not the best choice, as he managed to turn a beautiful song into a boring lullaby. Between his performance and Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, it was a shame there weren’t a few more names in the memorial montage.

A week of hell is about to begin, unparalleled by any midterms I’ve had before. I’ve stated many times that this semester is my hardest and will be so, but it’s not just a couple really hard classes. It’s also the workload from all of my different classes.

This week alone I have two database assignments, an OS assignment, a Computers and Society paper, an Astronomy Midterm, and an OS midterm. I have papers to grade for tomorrow, midterms to grade on Thursday, and at least two of the assignments above are group assignments, meaning I also have to work within the schedules of others.

It’s bad news. Even writing this is a way of taking a break from one of my database assignments, which I’m going to get right back to in a few minutes.

I won’t say that you shouldn’t expect the quality of posts to drop this week, because that’s pretty much inevitable. However, I will attempt to trade off size instead. So hopefully this week will be filled by good but short posts. Stay tuned.

First of all, I promised that this entry would come yesterday. But then I was hit by the life-changing qualities of Honey Bunches of Oats: Just Bunches and knew that I would have to postpone this entry. So for that I apologize.

When Adir and I visited Vancouver for the Olympics, one of the things he noticed is that every time we took a bus trip, I fell asleep almost immediately. He would attempt to fall asleep, but in the meantime, I had already dozed off, not to awaken again until we reached our destination.

See the trick is that I put in my ear-buds, attached to my now pretty-much-dead iPod, put on any album, and let the vibrations of whatever vehicle in which I’m enclosed lull me to sleep. This is true on bus trips, trains (I usually stand on the subway if I’m alone, so as to avoid missing my stop), planes (thank god – with the amount I fly, if I didn’t fall asleep I’d hate life), and in cars (when I’m not driving. When I am, I have a beverage.)

The combination of music and vehicle guarantees me sleep, yet you shouldn’t feel jealous. I pretty much never wake up feeling refreshed like after a nap. Au contraire, I usually awake more exhausted than when I began sawing logs. And if I’m with someone, I have to deal with the added guilt of having been able to sleep while they were stuck awake in the real world.

To add to that, sometimes I miss cool sights. I can’t remember the last time I flew and saw something interesting out of the window. By the time the plane takes off, I’m fast asleep, and I usually only awake for meals and after we’ve landed. In Vancouver, I missed the entire countryside between Vancouver and Whistler, which Adir informed me was splendid.

So there’s ups and downs. I don’t know which way I’d rather have because I’ve really only had it one way. What do you think? Do you sleep in transit or not? And either way, which way would you find better?

The following is the full text of an email I sent to Post Cereals:

Yesterday morning, I opened the box of a cereal I had purchased a few weeks back since it was on sale at my favorite neighborhood supermarket, Met Foods. It was called “Honey Bunches of Oats: Just Bunches.” The box showed a cute image of a fan blowing the flakes out of a bowl filled with HBO and milk. However, no matter how cute the outside of the box was, it was the inside that would change my life forever.

I poured a bowl of Just Bunches, added my 2% milk, and took my first bite. To say that I was amazed would be an understatement. It would be an injustice to the magnitude of that first bite. It would not come close to adequately explaining how different of a person I am now that I have tried Just Bunches.

The first bite tasted like pure honey. My milk had turned to honey. What I’m about to say draws on my experience of living in Israel for a year: it wasn’t until I took my first bite of Just Bunches that I truly understood the idea of “Milk and Honey.”

My taste-buds were in for a wild ride, as each bite tasted like the amazingness of a milky, honey-y deliciousness combined with the crunch of a bunch of oats. In fact, it was the crunch that I noticed most as I took further bites. See, Honey Bunches of Oats (with Almonds, please) is easily one of the best cereals yet there is one problem: the flakes. The flakes get so soggy so fast. And frankly, they aren’t that great. They’re not even frosted. They’re just a waste of space and sog.

So when I say that Just Bunches is infinitely better without the flakes, I’m again understating the importance of this invention. Post Cereals, you’ve outdone yourselves. Please allow me to (virtually) shake your hand. Thank you.

I will freely admit that Sunday’s post was created for one reason and one reason alone: flow charts! In fact, when Yoni approached me suggesting that he didn’t care about which side of my bread I spread, I responded with this exact excuse.

See, it’s been a while since I started this blog, and when I began it, I promised you, the audience, that I would have more than just “Superfluous Paragraphs.” (Okay, actually I made no such promise. Actually it was pretty much the opposite. But I guess in a way I’m making it now.) Part of this promise, in my mind, was images, and part of this subcategory of images was self-made flowcharts.

Until two days ago, I had failed you. And for that I apologize. But this shall not be the case in the future. Whenever I see an opportunity to make a flowchart, I will do so:

See? This post is already infinitely better!

Anyway, I don’t just love flowcharts, but rather charts of all kinds. I’m a big fan, for example, of charts of songs, and even made a pretty detailed set of charts for the first verse of N.W.A.’s “Gangsta Gangsta” after I had a dream about said flowcharts. These are lost somewhere in the depths of my hard drives, but it’s worth discussing the dream, because I rarely remember dreams and as you shall learn, this particular dream was quite pleasant.

In the dream, I was talking to Jacob Slosberg, and telling him “I think someone should graph ‘Resemblance to Ice Cube’ and ‘Ideal date of prison release’ on a line graph.” This, of course, corresponds to the first lyrics of the song. He started laughing and I started laughing, which caused me to laugh in real life, loud enough to wake me up. I woke up laughing. That’s it.

Speaking of sleeping, stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on how my sleep patterns and vehicles get along unlike that of most people!

This will be a quick entry because I have very little to say except for this: apparently I pronounce the word “syrup” differently than others.

Throughout my time outside of Texas, I’ve noticed that there are many things I say differently than others, such as the days of the week, the word “display,” “descent,” “umbrella,” and other things. This doesn’t bother me that much. I’ve come to expect it.

But yesterday in Talmud class, I was talking to Arielle about fruit cups and stated that I like the peaches better in syrup rather than water. Tani freaked out: “What did you say?”

“Syrup,” I responded. [Sir-Up]

Apparently outside of my region of the country (aka the region that matters), these ridiculous people pronounce the word differently. Something along the lines of “See-rup.”

This has almost no effect whatsoever on the Kanye West line: “I drink a boost for breakfast, an ensure for dessert, somebody ordered pancakes, I just sip the sizzurp.

I’ve spoken in the past in this blog about my hatred for Dunkin Donuts, and I believe I made it sufficiently clear in that post that I consider a good doughnut to be a real treat. When done right, a donut is a sweet, delicious, awesome food pretty much unparalleled in the pastry world. A doughnut is a fried ring of goodness, and is truly a thing to be celebrated.

Friday evening, I was watching Curling on TV, an exciting match between Canada and Denmark, when suddenly I had a serious urge for a good doughnut. I turned to Rebecca and Ariel and announced my intention to go, albeit in the dead of night, downtown to 14th street and acquire for myself some doughnuts of high quality from the fine establishment known as the Donut Pub.

We departed around one in the morning, and arrived, due to the fact that the NYC Transit System pretty much sucks hardcore, much later, around twoish. Luckily, the Donut Pub, living up to its reputation, is open twenty-four hours a day. We ordered our doughnuts and sat down at the bar to eat. [Contrary to the name, the Donut Pub also serves various breakfast foods. Those around us were drinking coffee and eating other stuff too.]

I had a regular glazed doughnut and a French Cruller, which was so sweet that it kinda hurt to eat it. Ariel, who also had one, agreed. Nonetheless I finished it with a smile on my face, as it was fantastically delicious. I washed it down with Hot Chocolate, and we went back uptown.

There’s really not much to this post, I’ll admit, but in writing it, my goal was to accomplish the following tasks:

1. Express (again) my love of good doughnuts
2. Point anyone in New York who feels the same way toward the Donut Pub
3. Use the phrase “fine establishment,” a phrase oft underused in this day and age (sadly).

I was able to successfully do all three. Stay tuned tomorrow for my reflections on voting in Texas’ upcoming primary election.

While I’m at the Olympics, the reins of L’histoire de sa vie are being handled by guest posts from two of my favorite blogging friends. Today’s post is from Jody, who can usually be found at his site, Jody’s Escapades. Check it out! –Nathan

When Nathan asked me to be a guest writer for his blog, L’histoire de sa vie*, naturally my response was "absolutely not." However, after much persuasion and the promise of redemption in the afterlife, I reluctantly agreed.

People are always asking me for favors: "Jody, can you pick up my son from daycare? His father is incompetent and I am going into labor." "Jody, can you sit in this desk and speak into the teleprompter? Michelle and I want to take the kids to Hawaii." "Jody, can you land this plane in the Hudson? I think a pack of birds just flew into the engine."

While it’s all nonsense, I always comply because I am a pushover. So, here I am writing a blog post for Nathan Hernandez Menachem-Miller, who is currently in Vancouver, British Columbia, competing in the Miss Teen Canada Winter Curling Beauty Pageant. If you are still reading, you were either born stupid or have had a lot of practice.

I like Nathan’s blog because he takes us from the micro to the macro. Little situations expanded into big ideas. For example, I was reading his post about how he managed to save $90 on a digital camera by using someone else’s credit card, and then BAM! the identity crises of developing nations in the post-colonial Indian subcontinent! Micro to macro, that is what good blog writing is all about.

Unlike Nathan (or Barbara, as he prefers to be called), my experience in blogging is very limited as I only write about explosions, sex, and the exploitation of the lower to upper middle class, yet I think I can make a really poignant statement today during my stint on this little soapbox called the Internet.

Possible topics of discussion:

1. Why I am a vegetarian.
2. Why I don’t live in Texas.
3. My third hysterectomy.

Reasons why none of the above will be discussed:

1. Nathan is from Texas.
2. I am a vegetarian.
3. I only had two hysterectomies.

Why are you still here? Didn’t anyone tell you that the Internet now has revealing
pictures of Rosie O’Donnell for free?

… Alright, fair point. You can stay. Just don’t make any noise or touch anything.

I was on the crowded subway yesterday evening, returning from my internship at the New Yorker’s cartoon department (high five!), and a group of rambunctious youth packed on to the train. Included in this group was a young lady with a bunch of balloons. One of the goons who was with her intended on popping her balloons. I know this because he said "I have the intention of popping your balloons!" POP. Everyone on the train jumped and averted their eyes. Not me, though. I whipped around and gave the kid the telling of his life. "Listen you delinquent piece of bacteria, what could possibly compel you to pop a balloon on a crowded train?" He replied, "whacha gonna do about it, old man?" Whip. Crack. I nailed that doofus right in the groin. Dropping to his knees, I whispered to him, just loud enough so the whole car could hear, "if you are trying to impress these ladies, why don’t you act like a gentleman instead of popping their balloons." At that, I produced a bouquet of roses and gave one to every single lady in the car. To rapturous applause, I jumped out the back door of the train and disappeared into the darkness and mystery of the subway tunnel. It was really great and a complete lie. The kid popped the balloon and I did nothing. I jumped, averted my eyes, and ignored him because that is what we do in New York. We avoid confrontation out of fear of becoming a statistic and a blurb on the 15th page of the New York Times.

Well, shoot dang.

At that, I leave you with a piece of wisdom that my father’s father’s neighbor told him just before they left for the Battle at Valley Forge.

"Better go to the bathroom before you leave, as you never know when the next piss stop
will be."

Sincerely,
Jody Zellman
www.jodyzellman.wordpress.com

*An 18th century French phrase meaning, "the history of savie." Historians are still debating the exact translation of ’savie,’ but the current understanding is that it refers to instances when one attempts to turn on hot water in the shower and is instead doused in expensive, red wine.

While I’m at the Olympics, the reins of L’histoire de sa vie are being handled by guest posts from two of my favorite blogging friends. Today’s post is from Lia, who can usually be found at her site, bril-lia-nce. Check it out! –Nathan

“Checking in”

I used to know what it meant to “check in” at the airport.

It used to mean, “I’ve made it! I’ve arrived at the airport! Hear ye, hear ye, I am here, ready, willing, and able to fly today!”

But today, you can “check in” a few days in advance from wherever you happen to be. So instead of alerting the airline that you didn’t get lost on the way to the airport, you’re just telling them, “Yes, I’m still planning on flying next week. Will I make it there on time? Not necessarily. But I think I still might fly. Unless something better comes up.”

Once you make it to the airport, unless you’re checking bags, your airline has no idea that your cabbie didn’t accidentally take you to the wrong airport until you get on the plane. Clearly they don’t care if you don’t show up – they’ll auction off your seat to the highest standby bidder (if they don’t, they should!). So the question remains: Why bother checking in?

Special baggage items

As I was doing this online check-in a few days ago for a business trip, I found one question particularly interesting. “Are you checking any special baggage items?”

Of course, all my items are special. My new purple sweater with ruffles – it’s special! My laptop? One of my most special items. And one of my most special possessions is my new, New York-made, special brand of curly hair shampoo.

Since I didn’t think those items were noteworthy enough to have to declare, I clicked on the list of examples of these special items.

Antlers??? I knew I was forgetting something on this trip!

Clearly every time I travel, I make sure to remember to bring my contact solution, my warm coat, and my vaulting pole.

And I always bring a kayak, just in case the plane has to make an emergency water landing.

A Christmas tree, antlers, a pet in the cabin (reindeer?), and snow skiing equipment – apparently Santa Claus has set off the metal detector one too many times at the airport.