Of course you'd register for health insurance at the post office. OF COURSE. Where else would you even think of doing so???

just had a nightmare...i only ws asleep for 3 hours, and i dont have to wake up for another 4. fuck i miss having a roommate. it's horrible to wake up from some scary shit and then realize that you're in a room all by yourself and that you dont know a single one of your neighbors.

hug please?

I can't stop singing the Brigadoon song. Like, non-stop.

Shit. So I just finished my 5-page history paper and now I have to do my logic problem set. Which I don't really understand.


So tomorrow is the drop deadline. So I decided to drop logic. Cos it's not like I'm graduating anyway. haha.

מכתבים...

My dear fellow women,

Please don't treat itty-bitty undearwear-length shorts as outergarments. They are not. They are not an acceptable replacement for pants, I don't care how hot it is (though right now it's freezing out....weird....). Also not an acceptable replacement for pants? Leggings. I seriously do not need to be able to see every contour in your ass. Leggings are supposed to supplement something that is already covering you, like a skirt or dress. Not just a big t-shirt. Maybe you think you're pulling off some bizarre retro style, a throwback to some of fashions greater hits. When was that style popular? The middle ages. Well, this isn't the middle fucking ages, and even if it were, it'd be the men in the leggings. Not you. So put on some goddamn pants.

Your prudish fellow woman,
Sam.



Dear Annoying Bitch,

Please stop talking to me in that condescending tone. Fine, maybe if you wanna use it when we talk about gossip or sports (besides soccer) or science or anything that you know better than me, MAYBE I'll get over it if you use it then. But don't patronizingly tell me about "how things are in Israel" and "how Israelis live" in that condescending voice when you 1) don't keep up with the news in Israel and 2) have never even BEEN to the fucking country. I know I'm not an expert, I know I'm no Israeli myself, but just shut your fucking face.

Thanking you in advance,
Sam.

ALL FORMS HAVE BEEN TURNED INTO THE JEWISH AGENCY! !!!! let's see what happens...

Also, I knew I did the right thing in turning in my forms and heading down this road when I came out of the building. I felt extremely happy and excited, and when I turned on the ignition in the car--"Ticks," from the beginning of the song, started BLASTING from the radio. haha. it was a perfect moment.

never realized it until now: i cant hear public transportation from my room. i can hear the train going by every few....i dont now how long in between. i cant hear it during the day i guess because it's noisier outside and stuff, but right now i can hear it chugging along.

One of my neighbors is definitely smoking weed at the moment. They're blasting reggae and there is a sweet, strong smell definitely making its way out of their door and into the hallway. I think it's a little ridiculous. I mean, if you're going to smoke, whatever. That's your deal. But you're already going to attract attention with the smell, so what's with the reggae. That's just like blasting an advert that says, "YES, YOUR SUSPICIONS HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED--WE ARE INDEED SMOKING ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES."

I think I need to clean my room. When I open the door and walk in, it smells like salsa. Which is not exactly something you'd like your room to smell like.

That would suck to be a shaliach for the Jewish agency. Cos basically their job is tell other people how fucking amazing Israel is (okay, not's not what they'll tell you their job is), and all the while they're stuck in a different country.

I hate that every single time you make an aliyah attempt or whatever, there's always something you need. Like, when I was in Israel, had I declared citizenship, I would have needed a letter from the Los Angeles police saying that I didn't have a run-in with them. Or so I was told. Now I'm being told that I need high school/college transcripts or some other kind of proof that I've been in the US and not Israel for the past 7 years. Dude, just let me into the fucking country. I mean Jesus, the Law of Return makes it seem like you just show up at Ben Gurion and say, "I'm Jewish, and I wanna be Israeli now." But ohhhhhhh how much more complicated it all is.

okay, there's a chance i might be in jerusalem--as a citizen--by january 15th. there's a slim chance that i could be there by december 30, but im not banking on that one.....

תקווה גדולה.

So apparently the fattest man in the world got married this week. I gotta say, this has been the best news I've heard all day. It just goes to show that there's hope out there for all of us.....


...I guess this also means I can have cake at lunch today and still have hope of getting married in my future?

תקראי. תקראי. מה? מה הבעיה? תקראי

My Chilean roomie (well, former roomie....) wrote on my facebook wall in transliterated Hebrew, and it just reminded me how people with different languages as a native tongue transliterate Hebrew differently. For example, what I might write as "ch" or "kh" she writes as "j." Where I would write "ha" she writes "a." Stuff like that. I find it really interesting.

Also really interesting was something that happened at "army camp." Dunno if I wrote about it when it happened, but here it is, maybe for the first maybe for the second time. Our mfakedet handed us slips of paper, in English, to read aloud. And she said in Hebrew to my Chilean roomie, "Read what yours says." And my roomie explained in choppy Hebrew that she can't read English. And the mfakedet was like, "What does that mean, OF COURSE you can read English!" And then everyone from the ulpan jumped in and was like, no no no, she speaks Spanish, she doesn't speak a word of English and so she can't read English.

And I'll never forget what happened next. The mfakedet adopted the most incredulous expression on her face, and blurted out as if the answer were so simple: "But it's the same alphabet!"


Which I just thought was priceless. It seems like such an obvious answer. "But it's the same alphabet." It makes total sense when you hear it, but then you realize that just as I can't read Czech, my Spanish-speaking roomie is going to have a hard time reading English. Even if it's the same alphabet.

Jesus H. Christ is it going to be cold today...

אפשר לשכוח את זה...?

is it possible to forget how to fall asleep? Cos I think I may have done just that.

Maybe it's just cos I have a lot on my mind or something. Or maybe I need to get more exercise during the day or something.

Or maybe the problem is that I love breakfast so much that I get too excited about it to sleep.

מחר אני נוסעת לסוכנות היהודית

Good lord, is that smell my feet??!?


Tomorrow is my meeting with the Jewish Agency....get excited. Cos I am. I'm going to try to get my application submitted on the same day--I already have my letter from a rabbi, my birth certificate, my passport, passport photos, and everything else they require for the application. So hopefully this will expedite the process and I can be back in the holy land before Martin Luther King, Jr Day. And I can celebrate it Israeli-style by not celebrating it at all.

אני שונאת את החבורה

So i was thinking about different Hebrew words, and for some reason that reminded me of "Chavura." The horrible group of Jewish adults (and their children) from our temple that my parents socialized with once a month and forced us along. If I had to point at one single thing that killed Judaism for me in my childhood, it would probably be these people. And for some reason I "lucked out," because for the most part all the kids in our particular chavura were my age, and not my brothers' ages. And so I attended Hebrew school/Sunday school with them, and hated most of them to begin with.


Aaaaa, fond memories of growing up Jewish.....

2 a.m.

Oh Jesus, the infomercials are starting to come on now.....

oh shit, is tonight going to be another night where i cant sleep? SHIT! my mom has terrible issues with insomnia, so i hope some inherited disorder is not beginning to manifest itself now in me...

omg, house marathon on TV right now......best evening ever!!!

אבל הוא יקח את הדברים שלנו!!!

I'm pissed off because I got a bad grade on a history paper. What was one of the reasons listed?

"Excessive use of metaphors."

Well fuck. On the sheet we received in class when we got our papers back (with general criticism and tips for the whole class), it said, "History is boring enough as it is. So instead of using passive verbs, use active ones to make your paper more exciting!"

Well I thought using metaphors and similes and stuff would make my paper less boring. But apparently it was too exciting or something. :-(



Also, this has been bothering me for a WHILE now, but I finally figured it out. This horrible girl in my logic discussion section looks exactly like Wallace from "Wallace and Gromit." She has a bizarrely large jaw, just like him, and she has bizarre teeth, just like him. Once I figured this out, I couldn't stop staring at her. I kept imagining her making two fists, raising her hands in the air, shaking them in unision while screaming, "GROMIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!" Whenever she haughtily laughed at others' stupidity in class, I wondered if she had ever gone on a rocket trip to the moon, which was made of cheese, and whenever she tried her hardest to correct the TA (who wasn't wrong), I ever wondered if her control of her body was ever taken over by a pair of "wrong trousers."

This probably explains why I'm failing logic.

I also realized that this girl TRIES to be dirty. Like, I'll just forget to take a shower and then I'm dirty, but this girl like tries to make it a fashion statement. LIke, "I don't care how I look, and I spent 3 hours trying to figure out how to convey this in my clothing and in my ratty ponytail."

Also, when the hell will looking like a racoon go out of fashion??? I'm really looking forward to this day.


Also, I went to the market on Thursday with Abr. and I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've been in a market since my days in Israel. So I pull the cart down towards the bagging area and I wait to bag our stuff. While I'm waiting for our stuff to get scanned, I turn my back for a second to look at my surroundings (a kosher market I've never been in) and when I turn back around some guy I don't know is putting bagged items into my cart. And in my head I was freaking out, because I thought this guy had taken our cart (which made me think, "AND WE HAD TO PAY FOR THAT!") and that, omg, was he planning on taking our stuff?
I looked back at Abr. but he didn't seem to even notice. So I went around the checkout counter to stand behind him, and I kept trying to slyly point his attention towards this weird man taking our stuff, but Abraham doesn't seem to notice.

Finally, once everything had been bagged ("Shit, that mans gonna take our stuff!"), the bag man looked up and said something like, "Have a nice day" or something, and then I was like: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It's this guy's job. He's the bag boy.

Boy did I feel like a paranoid idiot.

עיוור בבוקר

I love "Wake-Up" blindness. You know, where you when wake up everything's blurry for like five minutes. I used to think that my dad was the cure, cos approximately 5 mintues after I woke up I'd run downstairs for breakfast, and my dad was the only person downstairs at that time....and he was thus the first person to come into focus every day during my school life.

what's the first thing that comes into focus in the mornings for me now? Nothing. Because my room is so messy that nothing is defined--socks on shirts, binders on boots, bags on books, etc etc. I gotta work on that...

"I love you, wildcat."

Wow, what a way to kill the romance in a scene.

Why wasn't my high school like High School Musical???? I feel like I missed out.

אתם צוחקים עליי?

oh my god, i finally drifted off to sleep at around 3.30.....and then the fire alarm went off at 3.50. and we all had to evacuate the building. and it's pouring rain and VERY cold outside. this must be gods idea of a sick joke.

aw gawd, is this going to be one of those nights where i end up seeing the sun rise?

fuck, i wish i could sleep....

Okay, I'm seriously convinced that my parents think I'm nuts. The tone they're using when they talk to me suggests that they think that at any given moment I'm just going to off myself. I've only gotten this tone three times in my whole life. This is the time in my life if (if I were at home) I wouldn't have to do any chores. Aw, too bad I don't live at home anymore...


GETTING EXCITED FOR MY ALIYAH APPOINTMENT ON MONDAY!!! (And I'm even more excited about this than I was about my Misrad Hapnim appointments because at the Jewish Agency offices in the US there's a lot less of a language barrier. I mean, here all I have to worry about is if the Chicago office lady uses the word "pop" instead of "soda," whereas in Jerusalem it's a completely different language--like, they don't even have a word for "is." And in the US I'm not going to accidentally wait in line for a marriage recognition certificate like I did in Jerusalem.....)

P.S. Oh my gawd, my yiddish professor needs to learn how to shut the fuck up and end class on time. She's a really nice lady, but I'm one of those people that NEEDS to get out of class on time, otherwise I start shaking with anger when you keep talking and it's 5.08 pm and I had somewhere to be 8 minutes ago. Like, so angry that I can't hear what you're saying and I can't sit still and I start to panic. With anger. Yes, I panic with anger, so angry that I start to panic. I'm sure you're thinking, "How the hell do you manage that?" But I assure you, I manage this without a problem. I am able to get so angry that I panic, no problem whatsoever. If anyone's reading this, maybe they can do me a favor and diagnose me with a psychological problem, because I get the feeling that people don't normally get so worked up over being made late to something else because their professor keeps talking.

My logic TA does it too, but usually I am not in a rush to get somewhere after logic discussion and if I am then I feel comfortable just getting up and leaving when I have to because the discussion section is moderately sized. But I'm in a class of 5 people for Yiddish, so if I got up......"SIME?!?!?! VOOHIN GAYSTU??!?!?" ("Sime, where are you going?" or, given the tone she would use should I get up while she's talking, it'd probably be more accurately translated as, "Bitch, where you think you're going?")

I GOT AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE JEWISH AGENCY ON MONDAY! GAAAAAA

(Dear Reader,
This is your cue to sing "Under the Sea" to me.
--Sam)

My letter got published! haha.

That McCain ad with all the people saying, "I'm Joe the Plumber" reminds me of Spartacus...

Best part of today? A moment during Hebrew Table when we were discussing our favorite dining halls on campus. And I was trying to explain "Burrito Day" which occurs on Thursdays in my dorm. And so I translated it as "Yom Burrito." Which i cant stop laughing about, cos I keep thinking about Yom Kippur except with burritos. Like, a solemn day of atonement, prayer and burritos.....

"I'm as mad as hell..."

Basically my life right now:



One of my favorite movie scenes of all time, from "Network." It takes a while for it to get interesting, but the payoff is worthwhile.

Oh great, now that I had that whole talk with my mom on the phone, she's now like, "I HAVE TO FLY OUT TO CHICAGO RIGHT NOW TO TALK TO YOU IN PERSON!!!" so now i feel terrible like im causing so much chaos that my mother has to fly out immediately to see me. and she was like, "You sounded sad, so i want to spend some time with you" which made me feel lame and baby-like...

So today people were handing out New Testaments on campus, and I'm just so fed up with all this missionary shit in what is essentially my HOME.

So I did what I could do: I wrote a letter to the editor. I doubt it'll get published, but here it is:

Dear People Standing by The Arch,

I hate you. No, I don’t have a minute for the environment, no, I don’t want to learn about Mormonism, no, I don’t want a copy of the New Testament, and, no, I’m not interested in being a Jew for Jesus. I am a Jew for Going to my 9 am logic class in Fisk. I’m more likely to find a 20 dollar bill on the ground on my way to class than I am to find Jesus, no matter how hard you people try, and frankly I’d be much happier to have the 20 dollars. It’s not as if you people are introducing me to some new thing, like I haven’t heard about Christianity before, like it’s some mystical and mysterious fringe religion. And it’s not as if I don’t know where I can find a church if I suddenly feel the need to go to one—there’s one right across the street from The Arch.

With love towards Christians who leave everyone alone but with hatred towards missionaries,

--Sam
Founder, Jews for Being Left Alone

Oh fuck, and I don't know how to do my logic homework, and i'm just SO done here. im just done. im done with writing papers on shit i dont give one flying fuck about, im done with doing logic trees about irrelelvant letters, and im done with sitting through hebrew class and learning about where to put a dagesh and where not to.

This is your chance to call me an idiot.

I hate being singled out on the street to shake a lulav just cos I'm Jewish. I hate being the weirdo.



Ended up having a conversation with my maaaaam about the whole to finish/not to finish college thing. And her response was, "Just wait, finish it out, it'll get better." Which is a ridiculous thing to say, because I've been begging to not have to go to school since 10th grade. Actually, that sort of acting out goes back even farther. Even in elementary school I was hiding in my closet in the morning so that I wouldn't have to sit through another day of class. My point? it ain't gittin better.

I'll admit, the thought of coming back to my friends was exciting. I was excited about seeing my old friends and whatnot, and seeing my FAMILY again. But then I realized that it wasn't a vacation from Israel, it was an actual farewell. Or maybe it IS a vacation, if you call two years a vacation. So seeing my friends, seeing my family, blahblahblah, was great (and still is), and being back in classes was pretty exciting. But now I've settled in and I'm bored and frustrated with classes again. The honeymoon is over, and now I have to stay married to this idea for two more years.

And talking on the phone to my mom made me cry. Because her response was just "Wait it out."

NO. I want out NOW.

Fuck. I wish I had an artistic talent. I wish I stuck with the bass, cos then I could just be like, "Fuck this, I'm taking my band to the big time." Or if I were a painter, I could paint shit, or whatever.

When I was little my parents bought me and my brother a book. A Dr. Seuss-style book, with fill-ins. And you were supposed to write about your likes, your dislikes, your habits, your this and your that. And in the spot that said, "WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE A ________" I wrote in my terrible, messy handwriting:

Taxi Driver.

And my parents flipped a shit. "Why are we paying for private school?!?!?!?" I still think it'd be great to be a taxi driver though. I love driving, and I love observing people without having to be their friend. You'd get to listen to their side of phone conversations, you'd hear people arguing or professing love in the back seat, and you'd get to consider to yourself, "Why is this person going to this place? And why were they at the place I picked them up from?" I mean, I HATE being a passenger in taxis for this very reason, because I believe that taxi drivers all chose to be taxi drivers for the same reason I'd want to be a taxi driver.

Another thing: Why do I like languages?
Because I like being able to eavesdrop in foreign countries.

I've never realized what a nosey person I am, but I guess that's EXACTLY what I am. I can't look at people without trying to figure out their background history. I can't go to someone's room without trying to visually take in EVERYTHING. Except when it's a friend who is talking, anything anyone says is constantly analyzed.

Jesus, maybe I should be a therapist? Hahah. I still like the idea of taxi driver though...

Ended up going to see a movie to clear my head. (The Duchess...). If ever you feel that your thoughts are muddled and you're not sure what to do next in your life: go to a movie. By yourself. A matinee, preferably, where either you're completely alone in the theater or there are two or three other people.

Also ended up calling a besty from high school....which was really nice. Sometimes it's nice to be told that some idiotic idea you have is one worth following. I miss having friends like that, you know, ones that are so idealistic that they will in completely good faith encourage you to do something that is risky, something that is bound to fail, but something that iis either life-saving or (more likely) life-destroying. It's nice to have a friend who doesn't anxiously say, "Well, what if X doesn't work?!" but rather, "Whoa, think of what'll happen if X works!! AWESOME!"

Also, I feel like I've created three separate Brigadoons. And I'm also simultaneously living in a Brigadoon AND living outside of two Brigadoons. And throughout all of this, I feel like I should be paying royalties to Lerner and Loewe for the amount of Brigadoon references on this blog.

Dear University/Midwest,

I am done. I've had enough of your forms and paperwork and payments and deadlines and whatever. There's a lot of fun to be had here, like at football games or simply eating dinner with old friends, but frankly the shit here outweighs what's nice here. It's like, I can't even enjoy a night out with my best friends because the stench of being stuck here cannot be escaped. It's like I'm walking around with a huge pile of shit under my nose at all times.

I'm taking the first boat back to LA or Israel. Hell, I'd even be fine with Arkansas at this point.

--Sam

P.S. I have "Start a Band" (Brad Paisley/Keith Urban) stuck in my head. majorly.

I love not having a roommate because now I can watch late night TV in bed. Conaaaaaaan!! It's also wonderful because in my room at home I was never allowed to have a TV. (My parents still won't allow me to buy a TV for my dorm room, but the university provides TV through your computer, thank goodness) YAY COLLEGE

I'm sick of those people on TLC who have so many goddamn kids. The Jon and Kate Plus 8 people I don't blame because they only had two pregnancies, but the OTHER families that the channel profiles with like 12 kids or more....it just grosses me out. Don't have so many fucking kids! How do you even remember all of their names??!?! And I'm not saying kids always need designer this or fancy-shmancy that, but if you have almost 20 children, they can never have ANYTHING even remotely special or nice. Which I just dont think is fair. Maybe that sounds shallow.

They just did a short little segment on the crowd at our football game on the news today, and I think I saw myself. Hahah!!

HOLY SHIT

So I tagged the uni's football coach in a picture I took at the game. (like 650 people from the university are friends with him).

And he/whoever runs his facebook profile ACTUALLY WROTE ON MY WALL! Hahahahahah

This is the greatest day of my life!!

hahah

Back when our football team used to suck, being at the game was kind of like the weather today.

Explain?

Today it's cold. Like, chilly and wet and rainy and cold and gloomy. And you know that this is basically just the beginning.

You know that the rape is coming.

Kind of like how at football games, when the other team scored their first touchdown of the game...and you knew it was just a taste of the coming rape.

I feel at some point I should do a proper post. But for now, let me just say the following:

1) The cut I got from that weird faucet thing in the shower back on the kibbutz is now officially a SCAR. I am now scarred both emotionally AND physically from my time on the kibbutz.

2) I am hiding from people in my dorm. I don't like these people, so I don't want to see them or be seen by them. I've become that creepy person that no one ever sees, and that some suspect has actually died in her dorm room.

3) I walked around a Barnes and Noble yesterday with my pants down. Actually, that's not entirely true. I was in the bathroom and there was some weird lady in the stall next to me talking to herself...so I was like, fuck this shit, I'm getting out of here. And in my rush to get out of the bathroom, I totally forgot to zip or button my pants. They were not even fully up, I'd wager.

4) We won on Saturday. And half of my face is sunburned. But not the other half. But I'm still glad we won. I got some great footage of the Game Experience, which I hope to upload onto here. Some great pictures and some great videos....my personal favorite was a picture of the claw gestures that we make that look like we're actually a stadium full of Hitler Youth. I also got on film a touchdown, complete with the stadium erupting into screams and the marching band launching into the fight song. Also on tape was the notorious key jingling. Be prepared for that awesomeness.

5) I can't decide if I hate or love this place. maybe a bit of both? I guess I'm ready to be done with school and ready to be done with cold weather, but I like being in education rather than in a laundry room.

6) In the car with Abraham today I actually went through a list of most of the Bitches/Women of the Wash I worked with, and it was so weird....it seems so far away. Most of the time when I talk to people in person about my time in Israel, I make vague statements like, "I worked in a laundry room." In that situation, I'd state that I didn't like the women, but to actually go through the list, with their actual names, and actually think about each one having a distinct personality.....It was so weird. I forget that each one had a voice, an accent, a way of speaking, a walk, body language, etc etc.... I haven't thought about specifics of the laundry room since I got back, and it was weird to think about it now.

7) The other day I was walking by this main courtyard place on campus and I hear this voice keep screaming, "ABBY?? ABBY MILLER??!?!? ABBY MILLER!" And she just kept yelling it, getting increasingly annoyed that Abby wasn't responding. And then all of the sudden this girl THAT I KNOW taps me on the shoulder and is like, "Jeez, Abby, learn to respond to your name! haha, how ARE you?!?! I haven't seen you in so long!! Tell me what's new!" And she acted as if we were best friends.
Needless to say, my name is Sam and not, in fact, Abby. Hell, I've even learned to respond to SemenTAH or Semi, but Abby? No way, my friend.

Jesus Christ, the alumni homecoming party down the street is louder than the kibbutz's neighboring arabs--and those guys had guns!

Was sitting on a bench eating shawarma, enjoying the tail-end of pleasant weather before the coming winter....

And this young couple, you know, somewhere in their early 30's, walks by. And the woman says, "Oh, it smells like foreign food!'

Not middle eastern food, not even a WRONG guess like "It smells like Indian food." I love that. "Foreign Food." hahahah

it just dawned on me that Dr. House is frequently wrong.

Just got back from the homecoming parade/fireworks display.

Oh man. School spirit is one of my guilty pleasures. I'm a total dweeb, but I love being part of this....mob. A mob of psychos.

The best float was by a a frat whose theme was China. (The theme of homecoming is like "Where in the world is carmen sandiego" or something). And they had a car dragging a trailer that was decorated to look like the Great Wall, and people were on it holding lanterns....and they had fucking ENORMOUS speakers blasting "BE A MAN!" as they drove down the street. It was almost as loud as the time I thought the apocalypse came during the Rose Parade.



GO 'CATS!

P.S. Speaking of Disney songs, I think someone needs to re-write "Under the Sea" for me, talking about how great this school is. And whenever I forget they can sing it to me.

i have another pretentious pete story.

Vote Sam for House of Reps.

So I just voted myself to the House of Representatives for my district. A district which, if you're keeping track, is in the middle of Los Angeles. Bearing that in mind, I'd have to say that my chances of winning are pretty good. This is, of course, keeping in mind that there was only ONE candidate for this position on the ballot...the same guy who's been doing it for years. But, well, part of me didn't want to be a follower. Part of me was like, "No, I'm not gonna be like everyone else. I'm gonna vote for....for....Mickey Mouse? No. Brad Paisley? No. Wait. HOW ABOUT I VOTE FOR ME?!"

So I did.

Wish me luck, folks.

Just found out today that my favorite musician (BRAD PAISLEY) does a version of my favorite Christmas song (SILVER BELLS). Um. Omg. My life is great.

Just had the most embarrassing moment ever.

So I've been getting really frustrated cos most people in my dorm don't hold the door for others. And it just PISSES me off to no end. I'm not used to it because most people aren't so ill-bred that they don't know that you shouldn't let the door fall back and smack the person behind you. But I guess since all the rooms in my new dorm are singles, people here are just trapped in their own minds.

So today after like the 5th million person in this person left the door to do what it does best--that is, swinging back into the next person in the doorway...aka me--I thought in my head, "WHAT A FUCKTARD!"

Except I didn't think it in my head. I accidentally OUT LOUD called the person in front of me a fucktard. Which caused him to turn around, stare at me with a completely bewildered expression on his face....and there was me, with my jaw dropped in shock. I thought the best thing for me to do would be to turn around to look behind me, as if looking for this bizarre person who randomly let out a "WHAT A FUCKTARD!" Except it turned out that I was the only other person, so it was obvious that it was me....


Oh man....

Christmas in October

Last Friday after my last class I got in my car and drove to the shopping center. On the way, the radio station said some station in Missouri or Wisconsin or some other irrelevant state had already switched over to Christmas music.

And, well, I figure that if a radio station has already switched over....I can switch over.

For those of you who are unaware: I fucking love Christmas. Specifically, I love Christmas music. Specifically, "Silver Bells" and "Snoopy's Christmas." I don't care that I'm Jewish, I don't care that the words to some of the songs I love go against my religion...... I remember that I used to LOVE the Christmas show my elementary school did every year, and I remember one year I volunteered to sing a Christmas song with my friends just because I love Christmas songs so much.

I love Christmas. Christmas Eve especially. It didn't matter to me when I was little that there would be no presents for me in the morning, I LOVED spending Christmas Eve with our Christian friends, and then running back over there in the morning to see waht my friends got.

I don't know. I guess what I like about Christmas is that for a brief period of time, everyone goes out of their way to be nice to each other. Everything just seems nicer at Christmas, and there always seems to be more hope for peace....

I think the only time I've ever felt uncomfortable about Christmas music was when my mom and I were riding around in the car around Christmas and this song came on:

Dear Mr Jesus
Uploaded by SEPTRE

And we just looked at each other with the most appalled stares.

This song appalls us, but we have no problems belting things like "CHRIST THE LORD!" in songs like "O Come All Ye Faithful."

Oh man....there's a chance I might get to go back to Israel over winter break for a week or so, but it'd be over Christmas. And I remember how badly I missed Christmas last year when I was in Israel over it.....so....now I'm torn.

I CAN'T WAIT FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Am going to health services today. Which is appropriate. On the kibbutz, day one of a cold you're expected to go to the fucking doctor, but I do not work that way. So I am going after the cough has been present for too long.

gaaaaaaaaaaaa i hate school. When I was 15 I realized that the driving force behind my trying hard in school was the genuine belief I held that, if I did well enough, my parents wouldn't make me go anymore. I'm now 20 and I'm still hoping I'll be allowed to stop soon. In elementary school I used to hide in my closet in the mornings so that my parents and my nanny wouldn't be able to wake me up and make me go to school. In high school that turned into going to school without a fuss, but then diving out of windows or simply walking out the door in the middle of class to relieve the boredom.

I used to always say that I like learning. And I think that's sort of true. But mostly what I enjoy is watching people. The only part of being in elementary or high school or college that is bearable is being able to watch teachers/professors and speculate on their personal lives. Or to watch Pretentious Pete and people like him.

I think this needs to be shared: For the past few years one of my dreams has been to have a dance club. Which I realize sounds ridiculous coming from me. But I think the funniest thing on the planet to watch is people trying to dance. Scratch that. People trying to look COOL while dancing. Because most people look like total ass when they dance. Thus, I want my own night club. I'd like to spend the rest of my life laughing at other people. I already have a theme and design picked out......
If that doesn't work out, I think I'll just fall back on my plan to open a bowling alley.

Just talked to a person who is supposed to be advising me on how to graduate. We discussed my plan, which is to leave this school after next Fall quarter and spend my last two quarters abroad. And it seems like it's possible. WOOT!

So I chugged a bunch of Pepsi cos I was expecting to be up for hours and hours writing my history paper.....

and like two hours later I'm done. 12.30. But now I've had too much caffeine to sleep. Fuck.

This is what I wish I could be doing all day:



I have the most comfortable sheets on the planet, even though they smell funny after I spilled shawarma on them last night. Normally I don't eat on my bed for this very reason, but I've started treating my bed like a couch instead of as solely a sleeping place....and this is what I get for it. Spicy sheets.

So I'd like to sleep all day underneath my Liverpool FC duvet, but unfortunately life has other plans. I have to do history reading, then write a 7 page paper based on the reading (fuck, I really should have started a couple days ago, not the day before it's due...), and then I have a logic problem set to do. Also, meetings meetings meetings today.

I think one of THE most depressing things about college is that there is so much stress....but then you step back and realize that none of what you're doing is in any way relevant or meaningful. It's all busywork for theoretical shit that you're gonna forget about once the class is over. And yet you're still gonna stress about it. For 4 years.

Catch ya on the flip side. Whatever the fuck that means.

Am finally giving in an listening to my dad's instructions. No more Dimetapp, no more cough drops.

It's time for Robitussin.

Fuck. I hate that shit. Wish me luck!

UPDATE: omg, it was vile.

Gotta love this school's football team. Only a couple minutes in and we're already losing....


Let's get excited anyway.


OH WELL!
Maybe we'll pull through

also, fuck, i feel like my lungs are going to come flying out of my mouth any minute now. just like when the guy from Belarus was on the verge of launching a water bottle from his throat, so am I now with my lungs.

Just saw a commercial on TV for California. By the tourism board. It's so weird being in another state and hearing your home state advertise itself. The entire commercial consisted of snowboarders and other people playing around on snowy mountaintops, and it ended with Arnold saying something. Which I found extremely confusing, because in my 18 years of living in LA full-time (and 2 years of being home there on breaks), I never once went skiing or snowboarding or whatever there.

please just listen to me complain

So I can hear my neighbors out in the hall. And basically all this week, every time I cough they all snicker among themselves whenever they're all out in the hall together. (They're all friends, they all planned to move into this suite together probably around the time that I was planning on leaving school for Israel. So they're all friends. I'm not.) Like, it's really embarrassing cos I'll cough a lot in my own room, I can't fucking help it, and then I hear someone out in the hallway mimicking it and then a couple girls (or one of their guy friends) snickering. I can't fucking stand it. I have not even met these people, I don't even know what they fucking look like, yet they're making fun of me for being really sick.
but then, i was surprised they could hear the coughing over their SCREAM-TALKING.

I dont know, I know it's not so much a big deal that they're making fun of my cough, but the fact that there is a crowd of people I DO NOT KNOW and who DO NOT KNOW ME outside of my door making fun of me for something, even something stupid like this, is just really distressing.

so now in addition to being sick i now have the added pleasure of being too fucking embarrassed to cough. which is great, so now I'm just wheezing. a least the sound of my impaired breathing won't be audible to the bitches in the hallway.

Oh gawd i feel like such a baby, but now I'm crying.

I had such a depressing day today. I still can't get over the fact that I have two years ahead of me of having people on lecture stages talking AT me for many hours a week and that a huge part of my life will revolve around this. I hate pretty much everyone involved with Hillel at the moment, and I'm not even entirely sure why. I'm so frustrated cos what little Hebrew I got out of working at that fucking kibbutz--one of the few upsides to wasting almost 5 months in a laundry room--is now rapidly slipping away from me due to lack of use. I miss speaking to my mom cos I haven't been able to call her in 2 weeks since she's been away on business in India.
It's fucking cold in the midwest already

the highlight of the day, one of the few moments where I didn't feel like the next two years is going to be this unbearable burden, was during history discussion section. these two pretentious boys got into a debate. Pretentious Pete (I'm naming the guy that I've referred to in previous posts now) looked up a long quote. Then he said to Pretentious Film Professor Look-Alike (this new guy I'm introducing who is like a literal CLONE of a film professor I once had):

"Well, in response I respectfully disagree and support my argument with the inspiring words of 'the gentleman of Virginia:' -________"

He then went on to quote some famous words, and we all knew that it was Nathan Hale, but part of me was struggling to understand why he didn't just fucking say, "the words of Nathan Hale."

Then Pretentious Film Professor Look-Alike responded by getting a little attitude. "Well, I don't have some fancy computer to pull up fitting quotations for me, so I'm just going to pull this one....out of my own head!" And he said it in such a way that just REEEEEEEKED of 'tude. You could tell that the dueling gloves were OUT!

A pretentious argument ensued between the two of them, during which a neighbor handed me a note. I know her, she's a friend I guess, but I don't know her nearly as well as I'd like to after this incident. And HERE is the highlight of my day. She had written me a note that said something like:

-" 'My metaphorical penis of history is bigger!' "
-=" 'No, MINE is! ' "


Which totally just made my day. besides, of course, the cleavage.

I'm pretty gross, and I frequently make it public information when I'm sweaty. But I think it's hilarious that southern females often insist that they don't sweat, they "glisten." As if "glistening" is somehow less gross. Well, I need to try to be less gross. So from now on instead of saying, "Fuck am I sweaty!" I am now going to say, "Holy shit, I am glistening like hell right now!"

Cleavage.

I seriously almost crapped my pants from laughter in my last class. It was the class on Israeli sociology. Contrary to what you may have assumed after reading a post about the professor's English writing, the professor's English speech is pretty good. She's one of those people who, even though she definitely sounds foreign, makes you jealous because she's academically fluent in a foreign language. In spite of her extremely heavy Israeli accent, she only rarely has to search for words, and actually uses quite sophistocated words from time to time. And I guess that's where today's problem arose. And again, I want to stress that this is not an attempt to make fun of her, because CLEARLY she's the intelligent one here and and I'm immature little kid.

Today she talked about cleavages. Cleavages in Israeli society. And she used the word correctly, because a cleavage can be a split, like in society. It's also kind of a sophisticated word to use. But, of course, being the five year old that I am....I kept thinking "boobs." And I started giggling.

It totally wouldn't have been a huge deal. Exception she kept saying "cleavage" again and again. And again. And again.

I cannot stress how many times she said the word "cleavage." There were "huge cleavages," "deep cleavages," "multiple cleavages," "serious cleavages," "forgotten cleavages," and, my personal favorite, "dangerous cleavages."

And I'm looking around to see the other 10 people in my class, to see if I'm the only one who is cracking up....and I am. I'm like ready to die from holding in the laughter, and everyone else looks like they're at a funeral.

But oh my gawd, the use of the word "cleavage" did NOT end. We then had "Israeli societal cleavages," "religious cleavages," "ethnic cleavage," and more cleavage cleavage cleavage.

Every single time I'd struggle to contain myself, and I'd finally calm down and stop shaking with suppressed laughter....and then she'd use the word "cleavage" again. This is basically what happened for all 50 minutes of class. The class should have been called "Cleavage," because that's basically the only word I remember from today. I think the problem is that when you're teaching in a foreign language (like the prof was), it's hard to switch around using synonyms and whatnot. So you end up re-using some words a lot. Like "cleavage." I'm pretty sure that I heard the word "cleavage" more today than any form of the verb "to be."
It got to the point where I heard the word "cleavage" so many times that simply hearing it again was funny, regardless of its meaning.

I finally did burst out with laughter at one point, but luckily I was able to cover it up with a coughing fit.


...this post is gonna get me some interesting hits from the Google search engine.

also

Also, I just received an e-mail from my mom, who has been in India on business for almost two weeks now. And apparently she has me and my brothers stored in her e-mail contact list on her blackberry as "Son," "Son," and "Daughter." hahahahahah. I mean, the funny thing is that each of us has a three-letter nickname, so wouldn't that have been just as easy (and less vague) in the two cases of "Son," and even easier to write "Sam" instead of "daughter?" Oh mom......

dorms

Aw fuck, now I remember why I hate living in dorms.

Now, mind you, I can barely hear right now because I'm sick and my ears were clogged. Like, it's so bad that conversations are difficult. So anyway, with that in mind, now know that I was woken from sleep by the sound of people talking in the hallway.

So I'm partially deaf at the moment AND normally I'm a pretty deep sleeper, but TALKING woke me?

Well, dear reader (me?), this was not "talking." Basically these people talked with the volume level that a torture victim might use when letting out a scream. So basically an enormous group of girls was scream-talking outside my door.

Look, I understand that sometimes in the moment you forget how loud you're talking when you're excited, but usually when someone calls you out you realize and immediately quiet down. Except if you're drunk, which, amazingly, these girls were not. So someone (not me!) went outside into the hallway to tell the girls to kindly shut the fuck up as it was the middle of the night--though I couln't hear him because my ears are so stuffed. I only know that if happened cos the next thing I hear is one of the girls still scream-talking: "GOSH, I'M SORRY!"

They then took their scream-talking into a room, although everything was still audible. You could still hear SCREAMS when something amusing happened. Like, it sounded like someone was being murdered in there, cos you'd never be able to tell that screams of that volume were screams of joy.

This went on for a while, and then it stopped VERY suddenly. I'm guessing that a CA wrote them up. hahahahaha

leprechauns

"Our daughter is looking FORWARD to being a leprechaun one day!" --little person wife on "Wife Swap"

Yam Kuhpp'r

Moment of the evening:


Freshman I don't know and who doesn't know I'm Jewish: "Oh, so it's like Yam Kuhpp'r or something tonight? That must be so nice for the Jewish kids, they aren't in class...."

Me: "Yeah, and it's good for us too, cos I hate Jews."

[*appalled stare from the freshman.*]

Me: (acting embarrassed) "Oh fuck! You DON'T?"

shiver

Oh fuck am I sick. I couldn't sleep last night because I was still shivering underneath all those blankets. Right now I'm wearing medium-weight long underwear, jeans, two long-sleeve-shirts, thick socks, and my winter boots. And I'm still fucking freezing. Today I'm buying another sweatshirt and another blanket for my bed, cos I can't stand being so cold. I really hope I'm just cold cos I'm sick, cos if I'm just cold cos I think Fall here is cold....I am so fucked for winter.


Wow, my AC/heater smells like the Haifa Carmelit thing. Haha, what a nice souvenir built-in right in my room!

Things I need to talk about:

Country line dancing to "Boot Scoot Boogie" on cruise ships in Europe
The people who work in the liberal arts college at this university, who are CLEARLY confused people.

Holy fuck.

Turns out that every Tuesday (today being the first time they've done it this quarter) they test the Air Raid/Tornado/generic emergency siren. But our CA forgot to tell us. So I'm just sleeping and all of the sudden I'm woken by a deafening,

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

So I spring out of bed, and I can't find my glasses and I'm panicking and yelling, "FUCK! FUCK!" I peer out the window to see if I can tell what's going on. I don't have my glasses, so I can't really tell. I just assume it's something serious, so I'm like, "FUCK! I gotta get to the basement!" Meanwhile all I can hear is still the defeaning

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

At this point, I'm completely convinced that the Russians/generic evil foreigners are attacking us, and that I'm definitely going to die within minutes. So I run out into the hallway, in my pajamas, messy hair and no glasses....and the CA is just out there. She's just walking down the hallway going, "It's just a test, they do this every Tuesday....."


Fuuuuuck.

My sample ballot came!!! I'm so excited I can't imagine how I'll feel when the real thing comes. Oh my goodness. It's like, all the years when I was a little girl and my mom would take me to the polling booth with her, and I felt like a big girl..... Like, this is the culmination of that. I actually get to vote on shit. I totally forgot that I don't just get to vote for President. Like, I can vote for a member of the state assembly. I'm thinking of going with the Republican candidate "Lady Cage-Barile" just because that is a ridiculous name.

Dude, I can pick judges! I can say that I want animals to be kept in nice conditions, or I can say, "FUCK ANIMALS!" I can vote to get rid of the California legalization of gay marriage, or I can be like, "No, let's keep that!" I can vote for more funding towards gang prevention, or I can say that I like gangs!

THIS NOVEMBER, I AM AN AMERICAN!! MUAHAHA!

penmanship

So I enrolled today in a course on "Immigration and Militarization in Israeli Society" or something like that. This is despite the fact that we're now in the third week of class.

So anyway, the class is really interesting and blah blah blah. But perhaps the one defining moment of the class was when the professor (who is Israeli) left her lecture notes and turned to the board to write something. In English.

Now, this is not to make fun of the professor, who is a very interesting, intelligent and nice lady. I'm only pointing this out because it absolutely fascinated me. Buuuut:

I swear, it was the most interesting way of forming English letters I've ever seen. I've really only seen two people who didn't grow up with the English (Roman?) alphabet write in English letters, and they always made it look so friggin easy. It really didn't occur to me that an Israeli could not know how to write letters in the proper way. I mean, sure English speakers probably look like shit when they write in Hebrew, but I figured that EVERYONE could do English. Which I realize sounds idiotic, but when you consider what else I think in the back of my head...it's relatively speaking not so ridiculous. Consider that in the back of my head, though I'd probably never admit it out loud, I think that all Jews speak English and are American. Okay, and I also think that EVERYONE on the planet speaks English (try telling that to my Chilean roommate), but that only all JEWS are both English speakers and Americans. I know it sounds ridiculous, but fuck off about it.



You know, the reason I'm pointing this out as "interesting" (to me at least), rather than making fun, is that.....it's probably exactly what my letters look like when I write in Hebrew. You know, starting from the wrong place, everything is disproportionate, crooked, etc etc. I probably write like some hideously stunted woman-child, and my apparent lack of any intelligence whatsoever will frighten people away.

This is actually making me panic a bit.....what if my Hebrew writing never improves?

sick

Ope, aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm sick.

Last night I gave up on the all-nighter, and I slept with a down comforter, a fleece blanket, and a thick sleeping bag draped over all that....and I was still freezing and shaking. And then I ended up having one of those weird-ass sick dreams, you know, where people have multiple heads and the storyline is less coherent than even a regular dream. I'll describe it later in detail just because it interests me, but it involved an angry Oprah taking over my history class. Except Oprah didn't look like Oprah, but I knew it was Oprah.

Also, I finally caved in and wrote a little note to the girl who lives next door. Her alarm clock goes off for at least 30 minutes, sometimes HOURS in the morning, and it wakes me up whenever it's my day to sleep in. And annoys the shit out of me if I'm already awake by the time it starts going off. At first I didn't want to write a note because I thought that'd be aggressive or creepy or something, but then I realized that I don't even know what this girl looks like, she's not my friend, and I don't even know if I'll see her just once between now and June, this being the anti-social dorm. So I went for it. I'm gonna credit that bit of determination or aggression or whatever you would call that (bitchiness?) to my time in Israel, because normally when it comes to neighbors and roommmates I'm pretty passive. So, thank you Israel!

Speaking of Israel, have I mentioned on this blog that I'm going to attempt an early graduation? I'm trying to get out of here after next fall quarter, thereby missing another winter in this Arctic Hellhole, but at the very least I'm aiming to get out of here by Winter 2010 (as opposed to Spring 2010 when I was originally scheduled to graduate.) The reason being, if I get back to Israel much later after that, then I don't qualify for full army service. I looked it up and I found that I could come back as late as age 22 and still qualify for full army service (because it'd be within 2 years of my having left Israel after being there for at least 120 days, at age 19/20), but I figure I'm already older than everybody and I dont want to be even older. This does, however, mean that I have to be in fucking summer school this summer.
Haha, I love that I got back from Israel a month ago and I"m already talking about going back.

Am pulling an (almost) all-nighter. How do we know it's an all-nighter (or thereabouts)?

I'm getting out the elastic pants.


ELASTICA SCHOLASTICA IS NOW IN SESSION, FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE LAST WINTER QUARTER!


Edit: omg omg omg! I'm watching TV instead of studying, and I'm watching this thing about ectopic pregnancies and this one woman had a baby in her for 46 years and it turned to stone/calcium. And they showed the surgery to get it out and it was so gross! Oh my gawd, I cannot even explain how scary it was!

Fuuuuuuck, I have too much history reading to do. Quiz mañana.

Am too busy to study since I am distracted by the very sweaty Steve Ballmer. It's almost as intriguing as "The Farting Preacher."

An open letter to Jews.

.
Dear Fellow Jews of this country and of this university,

Get the fuck out of the ghetto. You've been free to leave for quite some time now.

Just looking out for you,
Sam.
.

WELL IS IT OOZING?!

Something fucking hilarious (at least I thought so) happened today at the pharmacy.

I went up to the counter to pick up some meds for mah bloooooooood (said like a southern zombie, if you can imagine one), and I said to the lady that I was here to pick up a prescription under my name.

And the pharmacist turns around to sort through piles of bags, and she calls out quite loudly over her shoulder, "OH, YOU'RE HERE TO PICK UP THE [*insert medication name here*]?!"

Which wasn't exactly embarrassing since it's not exactly a well-known drug, and it's not as if it gave away to the assembled public what my medical problem, not that that would be embarrassing either. I just though pharmacists were supposed to be discreet is all.

So as I'm gathering up my bag and preparing to leave CVS, the woman next to me is now talking to the pharmacist. And I can't hear what she's saying. But suddenly the pharmacist responds loudly, "WELL IS IT OOZING OR PUSSING, OR DOES IT JUST LOOK WEIRD?"

At which point, EVERYONE in CVS turned to look at this woman, who we now believed to be a disgusting freak of nature.

The woman responded in another whisper-like way, and the pharmacist responds:
"WELL IF THERE IS PUS OOZING OUT, THEN YOU'D BETTER GO TO THE DOCTOR. YOU NEED ANTIBIOTICS, BECAUSE IT'S DEFINITELY INFECTED IF THERE IS PUS!"


anyway, that just amused me. something amusing to think about when im sad, i guess

update

ended up goign to a party for a couple minutes. Really far from my dorm, bad part of town.

A couple minutes in, I decided I wanted to be alone. It was one of those huge, sweaty party those so I figured the people I came with wouldn't miss me.

So I went outside very quickly, and started running down the steps out the apartment courtyard. It was one of those older apartment buildings, with staircases everywhere...kinda looks like something immigrants would live in.

So I'm running cos I'm in the bad part of town, after dark, alone....in a back alley of an apartment. So I'm running and running.....and then I realize that I have no idea where I am. No fucking clue.

After a few minutes, I stop. And then I realize that I left my jacket at the party. It is somewhere in the 40's, and I'm walking around in a t-shirt. And now I have no fucking clue where the party was, so I can't go back and get it.

So basically I ended up wandering around the city, freezing my ass off, quite lost, and a little bit tipsy. Fucking hell. As if I needed another thing to bitch about.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I FEEL LIKE SHIT

Oh man, I've reached the end of my tolerance for this depression.

I've realized that, holy fuck, two more years is a LONG time to have to be in a place. It's already too cold for me, too dark and grey and depressing. I'm already pissed off with classes and it's only the second week. I'm pissed because one (Hebrew) of the only two classes (in addition to Yiddish) that I'm taking for personal interest is really frustrating. I'm pissed because I just hate everyone here. Okay, maybe I don't hate everyone here. All I'm saying that that the people at this school are not "real" people. They're the weirdo in my history class who monologues about his "black" skin, they're the weirdo who constantly talks about how great she is, they're the weirdo who is refuses to apologize for anything in his life.

Do I have friends? Yes. And I adore them. This rant has nothing to do with them. As for everyone else.....All I'm saying is that I feel like my brain is on a different planet. I'm not in the least suggesting that I'm better or worse, inferior or superior, or more whatever or less whatever, than anyone else--all I'm suggesting is that I think my brain is wired in a different way. And occasionally the way my brain syncs with someone else's brain, but usually that lasts two seconds. And then it gets out of sync again and then I realize how fucking weird I am. I've had this problem my entire life, and I'm just fucking sick of it. I'd like to find ONE person in my life, just one fucking person, who I completely understand and who completely understands me.

Jesus, I'm 20 years old, I'm not supposed to be having these teen-angst rants.

Oh and fuck me, don't even get me STARTED on this fucking dorm room. And I'm also fatter than I normally am, so that's just making me feel fan-fucking-tastic right now.

And today during Shabbat services (I went to conservative like always, even though I was raised Reform), I was giving a dvar torah. And I'm a TERRIBLE public speaker. Mostly because I get nervous, but also because when I'm reading what I wrote....my brain is usually on a different planet. I'm usually thinking about something completely unrelated.
And today, in the middle of my dvar torah, in that packed library room....it suddenly dawned on me that I considered none of the people in the room my friend. I mean, the thought has crossed my mind before, certainly it has, but it's never crossed my mind when I was standing in front of ALL of them. In the middle of a fucking speech.

I mean, it's ridiculous when I think about it. I spend every fucking Friday, even many Saturdays, with those people, in services and at dinner. I've been coming to services since January 2007.
And yet none of them are my friends. Come to think of it, I only have two Jewish friends.

Who are my friends? Christians. My friends are almost all exclusively Christian. Do I hang out with Jews? All the fucking time. But who are my friends? The Christians. Fucking hell.

I've come to the conclusion that if I don't end up going back to Israel, I'll convert to Christianity. Not because I believe in that shit, but simply because I don't want to be part of some small exclusive and weird group.

I don't want to eat at "The Jew Table" in the university dining hall. But at the same time, I don't want to be the weird Jew who is quasi-religious but who hangs out exclusively with Christians and is the weirdo among them.

That was the cool thing about Israel. Most tables were "Jew Tables" but that's only because EVERYONE is friggin Jewish.
I guess my point is that, when it comes down to it, I want to be like everyone else. Which seems shallow and horrible, but fuck it. That's what I want. If I can't be different in the sense that I'm special or talented or whatever, then I'd like to just be like everyone else, because otherwise I'm just WEIRD.



Worst of all, I just feel really angry at G-d lately. Which sounds ridiculous, I know. But anyway, needless to say, being agry at G-d made being at services feel a little awkward.

Anyway, so all this was going through my head when I was doing my dvar torah. Which went horribly.

I came directly back to my dorm after services, and I knew I was on the verge of a total breakdown. So I thought about who to call. I realized that all of my friends at university are guys for the most part, and I assumed that as guys they wouldn't handle a tearful phone call very well. I then thought about calling my friends from high school who were girls, but then I thought about how ridiculously lame that would be....calling up people you only get to see on school breaks and crying hysterically. And then the thought of how embarrassing this all is made me break down and start crying. Fuck, I just feel like my shit. I want my mom, but she's in fucking India right now on business so I can't call her.

To top it off, I'd been listening to country music to cheer me up, but I've crossed the threshold from sad to depressed....so just hearing something familiar and happy has made me start crying even harder.

"I wanna check you for ticks!" --Brad Paisley
"Wwwaaaaaaaaaaaa, he wants to check me for ticks, that's so sad, waaaaaaa!!!!" --me

sleepy.

Oh, I like legitimately conked out today in class. A class of around 30 students. I sit in the third row.


And I'm really panicking because it was a lecture that had nothing to do with anything that is in our textbooks....and I got pretty much nothing of it. I remember being awake for a couple minutes, and then. And then..... well, the next thing I knew, everyone was leaving the class room. I had totally slept right through the lecture. In the third row. In a small class.

Fuck. I mean, I've shamelessly slept through classes where it was a huge class and the professor wouldn't have any idea who I was if they saw me sleeping. But this is a relatively small class.

Oh well.

P.S. Our logic TA kept saying things like "Jewish Letters" and "Jewish Logic" and said there's no such thing as "jewish logic." Oh man, it was weird. Whatever though, because that guy has like the same first and last name.

So if Tech is Brigadoon, and the Library is a scary film....

...my dorm would be a farce or a Benny Hill sketch because of how many friggin doors it has.

That movie coming out, "An American Carol," looks so funny. hopefully that's true.
.

Davy Crockett

So my cousin is spending a semester in the wilderness apparently, so to kind of playfully tease her I wrote on her facebook wall, "What, have you joined a Daniel Boone/Davy Crockett re-enactment society?"

And now, G-d help me, I have the Davy Crockett song stuck in my head. it will not leave.

Sing along with me, I know you all know the words:

Great news?

I'm REGISTERED TO VOTE IN CALIFORNIA!!!!!!!!!

I get to vote in a fucking election! WHAT?@!?@?!?!?@?@?

I'm going to elect the president! Or maybe I'm gonna vote for the loser! I don't know yet! OH MY GOODNESS!


(We, my parents and I, are also relieved that my registration in CA went through.....we thought we didn't send it in, so we were afraid I was going to have to register in Illinois and then I'd lose my right as a California resident to cheap tuition at a U.C. Well, that's what my parents were worried about. Part of me was just grossed out by the mere thought of being an official Illinois Resident.)

Speaking of which, let me repeat: GO DODGERS! (Taking on the Cubbies again tonight)

So working on "The House of Ramon Iglesia," I am constantly thinking about Enrique and Julio Iglesias. Right now I'm blasting "Bailamos" with absolutely no shame. Just thought you'd like to know.

YEAH DODGERS!


Watching the news, I just heard them say, "Make sure your heaters are working because it's going to get into the low 40's tonight."
Fuck. My heater is broken. Fuck fuck fuck I'm going to be SO COLD!

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Call me a traitor to my adoptive city (Chicago), but I hope the Dodgers win today!
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And call me an idiot, but when the hell did they start making Andrew Jackson dollar coins? I fucking hate dollars in coin format, and now they're putting Andrew Jackson on them? Seriously? What about poor John Adams? Nobody gives a fuck about that poor guy anymore. Or actually, I vote we put Taft on a friggin dollar coin, because he got stuck in a bathtub and that deserves to be celebrated with a coin.

OMG. EDIT EDIT EDIT. I just put some research into this and I discovered that they're going to do this for ALL presidents. WHOAAAAAA. cool. I still hate the idea of a one dollar coin, but still. Cool.

There seriously is not enough Butoh in my life.

I still get e-mails from the theater department here even though I switched out of that major almost two years ago. So today I got another classic e-mail, something like:

"Dear all,
Yesterday Professor XYZ has left a video on Butoh in the theater lobby area. Today it is now missing."




Which begs the question: Who the hell would steal a Butoh video?

Don't know what Butoh is?



Yes, Theater Department, I was just so desperate for some of that shit in my life, so I stole the video.

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January 2nd.

Have decided I will not be going to second day services. (well, beyond Maariv, which I went to last night...).

Mostly because I simply hate being in services all day. There, I totally admit that that's one of the main motives driving this decision.


But also because, being a child of the Reform movement, when I was growing up it did not even occur to me there existed a "Second Day" of Rosh Hashana. So to celebrate what I didn't know even existed until like two years ago with the same amount of dedication (whatever that amount is) as I celebrate something that I have ALWAYS known existed and that I have always celebrated seems a little ridiculous to me. I guess you could argue that I'm basically suggesting that we should only love what is familiar and anything that is foreign to us should be rejected. No no no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that celebrating the second day of Rosh Hashana would feel to me the same as pretending to be Muslim or Asian or some other race or religion or ethnicity or whatever for the day.

I mean, even though I didn't grow up celebrating Simchat Torah or Sukkot or basically any other holiday besides Yom Kippur and occasionally Passover, I at least KNEW that these things existed, that these things were out there to be celebrated. I just didn't. Now I celebrate those things here at school, which has always felt a little "forced" to me, but it doesn't seem as forced as celebrating a holiday (the second day of Rosh Hashana) that I didn't even know existed. Call me a bad Jew, but I just don't really give a crap about the second day. It's like, who the hell cares about January 2nd?

rosh hashana

So for morning services, someone farted. Like, right off the bat, right at the start, some old guy legit farted. Which had me laughing from when services started (9 am) to when we got out (1.30 pm). It might sound immature to be laughign about that, but what else are you going to do for four and a half hours? Also making me laugh was the fact that there was a LOUD power drill somewhere int he building during the middle of services. It was almost as bad as when we had a friggin marching band practicing in the room next door during Yom Kippur haftarah reading last year.

For afternoon/evening, I couldn't stop laughing for several reasons. 1) Abraham decided to take the low parts on certain prayers, and 2) Abraham pointed out that the cantor was going RIDICULOUSLY slow. And by that point I was so ready to be done with praying for the day that I reeeeallllly noticed how slooooooooooooooooooooooow all the prayers were. Like, it was almost farcical.

LET MY SOUL-PRAYERS GO TO HEAVEN or whatever. Hahahah. I'm going to hell.

Oh man. Oh man. I seriously need to stop being so....easily cracked up?

Also did Tashlich. A group of us ended up stealing boxes of stale matzah from Hillel since we didn't want to go out and buy bread only to waste it. Okay, I guess technically using the bread as a vehicle for disposing your sins isn't exactly a waste, but you know what I mean.

Between services I ended up sitting in the Hillel library for quite some time, skimming parts of the talmud. I think my favorite bit of Mishnah that was quoted was something like:

"If two deaf brothers marry two women of sound-senses, or two deaf brothers marry two deaf women, or two deaf brothers marry one woman who is deaf and one woman who is of sound-senses....Or if two deaf sisters marry two men of sound-senses, or two deaf sisters marry two deaf men, or two deaf sisters marry two men one being deaf and the other of sound-senses.....THEN:"

which starts getting into the territory of ridiculous.

I also love the arguments about what happens if two people, a high priest and a nazarite, come across a dead body that has no relatives of its own to bury it. Which one of the two has to defile himself to bury it?

Because, you know, there are just so many goddamn high priests and nazarites wandering around the world together in this day and age, and coming across dead bodies, and so I'm glad SOMEBODY had the sense to make sure we know what the correct procedure is.