L'histoire de sa vie

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!

One hundred seventy four years ago today, the greatest Republic to grace the Earth was born at Washington on The Brazos. A small group of freedom-minded Texian settlers fighting in the Texas Revolution realized that it wasn’t just a revolt they needed but complete independence from the tyranny of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s Mexico.

So they created a Texas Declaration of Independence which was then adopted on March 2, 1836. Of course, just as in 1776, though the Nation was born, the war had yet to end. Two months later, on May 14, Sam Houston managed to secure defeat of the Mexican forces, and the Texian Army was able to stand down, allowing the Republic of Texas to elect its first President, Sam Houston.

The following year, the United States recognized the Texas Republic. Ten years after independence (1845), Texas would join the union, to cement its status as greatest state in the union.

There are very important lessons to be learned from the story of Texas Independence, and while today is a celebratory day (I recommend following John’s suggestions to “Drink a Shiner, give someone a Shiner, talk with an accent, wear a Texas flag as a cape, and make Santa Anna surrender”) it should also be a day to recall the bravery of those who fought and died to make Texas free. Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad!

Texas, Our Texas! all hail the mighty State! Texas, Our Texas! so wonderful so great! Boldest and grandest, withstanding ev’ry test, O Empire wide and glorious, you stand supremely blest. God bless you Texas! And keep you brave and strong, that you may grow in power and wealth throughout the ages long.

A continuation of my “Confession” series, modeled after Alana’s “Sunday Confessional.”

Admittedly there are some things about me that are a little OCD. Along with eating in order, I also like to prepare my food according to routines. These are harmless routines and usually I’m not even aware I’m following them. However, I make a lot of sandwiches, and recently I noticed a pattern with my mayonnaise spreading that can be best described with the help of this flow-chart:

As I said, it’s perfectly harmless, but where I spread my mayonnaise dictates the entire makeup of the sandwich. Everything goes on top of the foundation that the mayo creates, so my whole sandwich ends up on the left side. Finally I place the last piece of bread on top, and boom, my plate is left-heavy.

Actually this left-heaviness, now that I think of it, is convenient since I hold my plate with my left hand and my glass of whatever beverage I’m consuming with my right. So far from being harmless, this particular OCDness is a major benefit to my sandwich mechanics!

Moore’s Law, as my computer-savvy readers probably already know, is a computer science “law” named after and coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. Moore’s law states the following:

The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit will double approximately every two years.

Basically this means that computing performance, and this has been extrapolated to performance of other consumer electronics, will double approximately every two years. This represents an exponential growth in performance.

May’s law is a similar “law” named after and coined by my mother. May’s law states the following:

As space is made available, you will expand to fill it.

This law originally applied to house space, but has also been extrapolated to space in other areas as well. Consider this story:

Several years back, I spent three hundred dollars on an awesome external hard drive. When I bought it, it was leagues ahead of any other external hard drive I’d seen for such a low cost, weighing in at 500GB.

About a year and a half ago, I had completely run out of space on that hard drive and needed a new one. I bought, for one-hundred fifty dollars a beautiful sleek 1TB drive. For half the cost of my original purchase, I tripled my storage space.

A few months ago, I realized I was rapidly approaching the fullness point. Thus, after several attempts to consolidate data and clean up old stuff, it was time to make the latest purchase: for one-hundred thirty dollars, a 1.5TB drive.

My total storage space is a massive three terabytes, significantly more than anyone I know. Each new drive adds ever more space for ever less money, according to Moore’s Law. And each new drive opens more possibilities of things with which I can fill the space. The filling begins immediately, essentially until I’ve again run out of space, according to May’s Law.

HD movies, here I come!

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.

Yesterday I dropped my absentee ballot into a mail box on Columbia’s campus. I received my ballot a few days ago, and it took about that long to finish filling it out since apparently there are ten million open positions that all require primaries. In addition to the gubernatorial race, there’s the Lieutenant Governor, County Clerk, some other clerk, a Railroad Commissioner, Tax Assessor-Collector, and an astronomical amount of judges.

I learned in Mishnah Sanhedrin that the lowest ratio for judges should be one to ten. However, I’m concerned based on the size of the ballot that we may be exceeding that. In fact, it seems that I am the only Houston citizen not running for a judicial seat.

Seriously, the ballot was three pages long, each page about the size of three normal sheets of paper, with four columns on each page. I was actually a little amazed. I understood the full meaning of “Voter apathy” as I ran through checking off the occasional unopposed name.

Anyway, here’s my reflections on this election and a few things to consider should you ever decide to seek public office: [My reflections are from the LWVHouston Voter’s Guide, a non-partisan publication produced by the League of Women Voters annually.]

• Get a website. Seriously. Several times there were three or more candidates who all had the same things to say but one had a website. Guess who got my vote.
• If you’re going to say the same thing as every other candidate, at least use proper spelling and grammar. I did in fact see a few mistakes, the kind of rookie mistakes unacceptable for someone seeking any form of job, especially one in which you can publicly see who you’re running against.
• Incumbency goes a long way in races with little else telling the candidates apart. At one point I voted for someone because she not only has held the office before but has been a judge for over twenty-three years!
• Send in a bio when the LWV asks you to do so. It’s not hard. In races where one candidate had a bio and one did not, the choice was clear. I’m not voting for a lazy judge.

That’s pretty much it. If you’re in Texas make sure you stop by the polls on March 2 and cast your vote in the Primaries. It’s a great coincidence that we have the chance to make our voices heard on the anniversary of Texas’ independence.

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.

Every year I try to see the Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films. It has been my experience that they tend to be amazing pieces with phenomenal animation, a great story, and they’re over before you have a chance to get bored. Last night, I went with a bunch of friends to the IFC to see this year’s slate.

We saw eight animated films in total, including a few that were “highly acclaimed” though not nominees. My favorite was The Lady and the Reaper, a Spanish film that was unbelievably funny. [Try this link.] In addition, French Roast, A Matter of Loaf and Death (the latest Wallace & Gromit Film), and Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty were all excellent as well.

There was one film that was overly dreary, and of course it came from Poland (not much of a shocker then that it included a caricature of a Jew as one of the characters). Other than that, the films were all pretty awesome.

Of course, nothing will come close to the awesomeness of The Danish Poet. I have still yet to see an animated short as good as that gem.