Funny Word Things And Something Else

So you know how some letters should never be doubled in words? Like in the word "vacuum." There should never be two Us next to each other, because you would want to pronounce both of them, like you would want to say "vakyoo-um," because that's what it looks like. I was trying to find some words/letters, which should not exist. Here's what I found. Going back to U for a second, I found the word "squush." This is pronounced "skwush," with the U pronounced like the "oo" in the word "book." "Squush" is a fantastic word, up there with "floppy." So this whole thing got started when my friend was describing his father's lack of business sense. I recommended he use the word "savvy" instead. Two Vs should never be together like that. I didn't find any other great examples with "vv," but I'm on the lookout for other letters. "Bazaar" is a pretty good one. It's too difficult to find many others because when you search for things like "cc" online it shows you trivial words like "success" and "accentuate," while you want to find words like "soccer." Anyway, it was a fun exercise while it lasted. For some reason, while I was looking up the "aa" words and filtering through foolishness like "aardvark" and "salaam," the word "gaol" popped into my head as a terrific word. Now "gaol" is just a British way of spelling "jail," but they are pronounced the same; they are homophones. Okay, enough of this masochistic, maniacal mayhem.
I have to apologize. In one of my recent posts I mentioned some of the hilarity from this year's homestarrunner halloween costume commentary. Somehow I neglected to note the picture of the young woman wearing a hooded sweatshirt in a The Cheat pattern. Strong Bad's comments are as follows: "Hey, it's The Cheat's hot mom...dressed up as... The Cheat's hot mom! Is she giving out frozen margar-a-Cheat-as again? Ah, The Cheat's hot mom. Always in and out of prison." For some reason I didn't find that mind-bogglingly hysterical until a week or two later. Now I find myself referring to all sorts of people as being "always in and out of prison," even newborn babies and other G-d-fearing folk. I sometimes go one step further and mention conjugal visits, but you don't need to know about that. Okay, so until next time, have a happy Albanian Liberation Day!

Anonymous Responders

Now I know there aren't many of you out there who read my blog, but for those of you who do, know this: this is MY blog, not mine and everyone else's. If anyone has any comments or questions or concerns about anything I write, at least have the common decency to sign your name on your comments so that I know to whom I may direct my responses and/or farts. One of you out there is the Hermione Granger of blog commentators, i.e. an insufferable know-it-all. If you want to comment but you don't want to write your name, at least make your comments funny so that you add some value. Otherwise, get your own blog. I hear there's this thing called the internet, which has an amount of memory negligibly smaller than infinite, so there should be PLENTY of space for you to make fun of me. Hopefully this is the angriest I'll ever get on here; this is supposed to be a calming exercise; my therapist says so.

Observing Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, THE true American Holiday. Regardless of the reason for the holiday, Thanksgiving has emerged as a holiday different from every other one in this country. It is not a religious holiday like Christmas, which has become more Americanized than intended. It is not a day observed in respect of various American groups like President's Day or Veterans Day. It is not a "Hallmark Holiday," which exists primarily for commercial purposes, like Valentine's Day or Mother's Day. It is one of the only American holidays that commemorates a particular event in our history, the other one being Independence Day. There are those that would claim that July 4th is a more American holiday than Thanksgiving, and I'm glad that there are those who would claim such, because it provides a smooth segue into my real purpose for this post.
How does one observe Independence Day? People customary gather with friends and eat burgers and dogs from the grill, and then later watch fireworks. I admit that the fireworks are a measure of observance, but how can frankfurters and hamburgers be the staple food of an American holiday when both were popular foods in Europe half a century before we ever heard of them? In this way Thanksgiving wins out over July 4th. Thanksgiving has so many truly American aspects. It begins with a parade, which is obviously not unique to this holiday, but I believe it to be a nice way to "usher in the holiday season," whatever that means. Then we get to the meat of the day; families (and I stress the word "families") get together and have a meal consisting of, but not limited to, turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce. Now turkeys and sweet potatoes are native ONLY to North America. Another words, these are truly American foods, foods the colonists had almost certainly never seen or eaten. Next up on the agenda is football, commonly called American Football everywhere except here and in Canada. There are often basketball games played on Thanksgiving, but there is hardly a tradition. One of the teams that plays on Thanksgiving is the Dallas Cowboys, often referred to as "America's Team." Let's just say that Thanksgiving is riddled with American symbols.
People tend to disagree with me about many things, which is fine. You might disagree with my ideas from the last paragraph, which is fine. Many of you will certainly disagree with what I am about to say, but I need to jot it down somewhere, because when the topic comes up and I make my point, I often have staunch opposers who can provide no reasonable support for their opinions. Okay, here goes.
I just spent a paragraph delineating the modes of observing Thanksgiving. I'd like to transition into the observance of Jewish holidays. Most, if not all biblical Jewish holidays have observances that are clearly defined in the Old Testament. In many situations the exact particulars of the observance are left out, but the basic levels are meforash from the mouth of G-d through Moses. G-d has told us how we are to commemorate events in Jewish history and usually the reasons for each item. Since biblical times the sages have established other holidays to commemorate other events, such as Purim and the Fast of Gedalia. They decreed that certain commandments be followed in observance of these days. From off the top of my head, I can only think of one truly modern Jewish Holiday, which is not officially associated with the State of Israel, and that is Yom HaShoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance. Now since Yom HaShoah is not a biblical holiday and not a holiday established by rabbis it does not have any official observance. Many people spend the day watching Holocaust movies and hearing stories from survivors, etc. Some even accept upon themselves a fast for the day. Each person is entitled to his or her own form of observance. There is certainly no right or wrong way to do things. This past year I was invited by my friend to see a Holocaust movie and to hear a speaker. I told her that I didn't want to go because I felt that I wouldn't enjoy myself. She said that I had to go because it was Yom HaShoah, and you're supposed to be sad. This statement is categorically false. I don't feel like I need to suffer in order to commemorate those who did. Don't get me wrong, the Holocaust was a terrible event, and there are people who are still greatly affected by it. My heart goes out to those people and to their families. However, here is no biblical, or even rabbinical requirement to participate in any Holocaust related activity or event on Yom HaShoah. So next year don't bother inviting me to hear any speakers unless it's someone you genuinely think I would be interested in hearing. And if I happen to politely decline the offer, PLEASE don't make me feel bad about it. Who are you to judge?

I'm putting a double space here just so you all know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the post. After I finish a post I usually read it over once it's been published just to make sure that everything is spelled correctly and the sentences are grammatically and stylistically accurate. If there are any stnanks then I fix them. This time when I went to fix something I noticed something sinister. The evil blogspotters have a built-in editor, which modifies the text of the post to fit nicely onto the web page. This time I noticed that each time I put a period there was only once space before the next sentence. This is awful, AWFUL! Almost as bad as the Jets' run defense. Since when did blogspot take over for Microsoft Word as the Guru of Grammar? Why am I bothering to put two spaces after my periods if they're just going to edit one of the spaces out? In an effort to express solidarity for our missing spaces I am going to continue to put two spaces after each period. Don't worry about it guys, I still haven't figured out which one of you gets deleted, the first or the second, but even if I do figure it out I won't tell you. I want you to know that each of you is important, and you will not be forgotten. This cold one goes out to those spaces that got sent up the river.

More Shwarma and Some Other Tidbits

So I was pretty certain of this to begin with, but it has indeed been confirmed that Grille Point shwarma is the greatest thing to hit the USA since, well, let's just say it blows sliced bread right outta the water. If only it weren't in Queens...
In other news, my friend still gets those foolish word-of-the-day e-mails from Dictionary.com. I liked them for a while, but they got old in a hurry; they were just clogging up my mailbox. Anyway, he forwarded me today's e-mail, as there was an attractive quotation at the bottom. I acually found two noteworthy quotes: "What do you get when you cross a porcupine with an alarm clock? A stickler for punctuality." The first thing I thought was to change the joke to "what do you get when you cross a porcupine with a semi-colon? A stickler for punctuation." I will now proceed to hang my head in shame.
Anyway, the other quote was: "As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler," by Calvin Triller. That was the one my friend wanted me to see. People should really be using the word "whom" more anyway. Something, a-like-a-dis-a: "With whom did you go to the movies last night?" Any time you should use the word him or her, the question should have a "whom" in it: "I went to the movies with him last night." Now go study that.
So you know when events take place and you have no control over them? For example, yesterday the Mets signed Moises Alou to a one year contract. Regardless of whether or not it's a good deal, I can't do anything about it. My response to such things is "what can you do?" I say this all the time. "The sushi is pretty bad tonight. Oh well, what can you do?" Now, my friend has a similar response to such things. His is "it is what it is." I thought long and hard about what my feelings were about this particular issue. I decided that I like it. "The sushi is pretty bad tonight. Oh well, it is what it is." As in, it (read: the sushi) is what it is (read: pretty bad). It's only good in certain situations though. I'll need to come up with a strict rule for when this is allowed. I'm gonna get to work on that. Everyone else go and be productive. Go! Git! Skedaddle! Make like a tree and go away!

Response to Shwarma Post

In my last post I ended by saying that chicken is not chicken, but shwarma is shwarma. Now, that last thing I meant by saying that is that shwarma is shwarma, which is funny because that's exactly what I said. I just want to qualify my assertion by saying that there is really no distinct flavor difference between chicken shwarma, lamb shwarma, and turkey shwarma, at least not to my untrained soft and hard palates respectively. This is not to say that all shwarmas are created equally. (Note: you can say either "created equally" or "created to be equal." Either way, "created equal" is incorrect. Thanks Honest Abe. Honestly, Abe, did you think no one would pick up on it?) Anywho, depending on whom you ask, you will get varying opinions on which is the best shwarma around. I think the largest ongoing debate, at least within my relatively small social circle, is the one between Massov Shwarma and Maoz Shwarma. Both happen to be extremely good, but let's do this debate my way, i.e. the mathematical way. Both restaurants will be judged on these categories: size, price, flavor, structure, location, fame, and options. Each category will receive a rating of one to three. For visual ease I hereby replace the string of letters "ONE" with the character "1," the string "TWO" with the character "2," and the string "THREE" with the character "3" for the remainder of the post.
Let's begin with size. Both places make a hefty sandwich. Massov charges more for their laffa sandwich due to its bigger size, but from my experience, which for this post is the only one that matters, Massov's laffa sandwich is too big to finish in one helping, and the last thing you want is old Israeli shwarma lion around. So just to be fair to those with bigger appetites than mine, we'll give them both a rating of 2.
Next we have price. The last time I had shwarma in either of those places, Maoz charged 20 shekels and Massov charged 25. I'm quite certain that even though Massov's is larger, it's not 25% larger, so we'll give Maoz a rating of 3 and Massov a rating of 2.
Ooooh, flavor. This is what it's all about. I tend to like spicier food, and even without the charif sauce Maoz'z meat has a tangier flavor. Massov's is still very good but the meat needs too many ecoutrements. Maoz gets a 3 and Massov gets a 2.
Structure is where Massov really gets a leg up. I've eaten around 50 shwarmas from Maoz and fewer than half a dozen of them have failed to fall apart. Another words, if you order from Maoz don't wear your best white shirt. The guys at Massov must have taken a course in laffa folding because they do a great job. Massov scores a 3, Maoz gets a 1.
Ahh, the 3 most important words I know, "location, location, location." Massov is located right near the Tachana Mercazit, which means if you arrive in Jerusalem on the bus you can get a shwarma right away. Also, any time you want to visit MMY, and I have, you can get a shwarma on the way, which I did. However, if you want to get to Massov from the old city you can either walk for 40 minutes or take the bus. Maoz is definitely in a prime location, on King George right around the corner from Ben Yehuda. Most likely no more than a 20 minute walk from anywhere you might be in Jerusalem except Talpiot or Har Nof. From the old city you can take the bus, a taxi or walk through the old city and then up Rechov Yafo. Score 3 for Maoz and 2 for Massov.
In terms of fame this isn't even a contest. Maoz has been around for 30 years and is known as the best shwarma place in Israel. Massov is definitely on the rise, but it still has a ways to go. Maoz 3, Massov 2.
And finally options. Massov gives you the option of Hetzi Hetzi, while Maoz does not. I don't know of any important options other than that one, so give a 3 to Massov and 2 to Maoz.
So there you have it folks. Maoz wins it 17-16. For now I'll have to survive with Golan Heights, Ali Baba, and Grille Point, all solid options. Maybe I'll discuss those next time. If I have time and I'm trading poorly, then maybe I'll do them today. Good night and good luck.

Shwarma

So last night I bumped into a guy who davens at my synagogue on the east side. Whenever I'm home for shabbos I see him there. I must have seen him several hundred times over the past few years, but I never spoke to him, not even once. However, since I obviously know who he is, and he obviously knows who I am, we had to exchange pleasantries. This is not a rare occurrence. Soooo often, you see someone you know from one place in another place, and these are the only times you ever talk. Why is that? Why can't you continue to ignore each other? Or if you see each other all the time, why not just go over and say hi one of those times? It was so funny last night when I realized I fell victim to the same thing that I had to laugh about it.
Anyway, I bumped into him at a shwarma place, and I was with a friend who was having shwarma for the first time. She asked me why there was more than one chicken selection on the menu and I said they cook them differently, to which she responded "chicken is chicken." Now this is certainly not true unless you have a cold and everything tastes the same to you. However, the more I thought about it, I still believed my friend to be wrong, but I got to thinking about shwarma. Most places sell one, maybe two types of shwarma. The common types are chicken, turkey and lamb. Honestly, these all taste the same to me, which means that the meat isn't the ikar of the ma'achal, rather it's the means by which the meat is cooked. Another words, chicken isn't chicken, but shwarma is shwarma. And Alex Smith is Alex Smith, and Brett Favre is Brett Favre.

Cell Phones

I hate speaking on the phone. I would much rather speak in person. I know I'm not the only one, but I like the way my voice sounds in my head, but when I hear myself on a voicemail or on video or something, I think I sound like a jerk. In order to counter-balance said jerk-hood, the interlocuter needs to be distracted by my smiling countenance. On the phone you can't really tell if I'm having a great time or if I'm secretly hoping the urban legend of getting cancer from the cell-phone is true.
Anyway, the whole point is moot, at least for the next couple of hours because MY CELL PHONE DIED! It only occurred to me now how much of a disaster this is. How will I ever be able to make plans? I could be a block away from the person I'm supposed to meet and I would never know. How did I survive until I was 18? How did I ever see anyone? And now it's even worse because we don't have a land-line in our apartment. But things get far worse even than that. I'm absolutely convinced that people are trying to get in touch with me so that they can offer me amazing jobs, which pay me quintuple what I'm making now. I'm also positive that the person who wants to set me up with my bashert is trying to reach me, and will probably just give up when they go straight to voicemail.
What makes the whole situation muddled is that I really hate my phone. Last June, Cingular Wireless forced me to switch my phone from an AT&T phone to a new Cingular phone, which was totally fine; I'm always up for getting a new phone. But then I got my new car, and I absolutely HAD to take advantage of the built-in bluetooth technology. Luckily it was still within the 30 days from when I got the new phone so I just exchanged it for free with a bluetooth phone. Aside from the RAZR($200) the only other bluetooth phone available at that time was the Motorola V557, which was twice the size of my old phone (samsung e317). Also, I hate Motorolas; I don't like the layout. Additionally, after a while, the speaker stopped working so well, so for the last year or so I've had to press the handset painfully against my ear whenever I want to talk. Now I could have exchanged the phone for the same one with a better speaker, but that would require effort, minimal though it might have been. I'm even eligible for a phone upgrade in 13 days, but what am I going to do until then? I'll see if I can get a temporary replacement. Until then, I'll just assume no one is trying to reach me. So, if you try to reach me, G-d knows why you would, know that I'll try my very best to get back to you after a reasonable time interval, as long as it requires absolutely no effort. I'm lazy, what can you do?

Technical Names

I love that so many modern technical gizmos and concepts have rather less-than-technical names. I thought of a few, and I'm gonna try to think of some more while I'm typing. Firstly, this strangely shaped item with which I'm moving this fancy arrow around my monitor is called a "mouse." Now I don't claim to be equipped with nomenclature skills, but a mouse? I mean, I guess it has some mouse-like characteristics, like it's roughly mouse-sized and has a long, tail-like affair coming out the back of it. I'll let it lie. Sit still; lay.
What else? I mentioned this issue to a few people this weekend, and I forget who came up with some, but one I really liked was "cookies." You know sometimes when you open your web-browser and you go to a page and it asks you if you would like cookies enabled? Now, who in his/her right mind would ever want their cookies disabled? I've spent a good portion of my life making sure that my cookies were indeed enabled.
Ooh, I like this one. So before you could actually write on CDs, and before flash-drives and ipods, we all had to use some other devices to store our data if we wanted to transfer it from one computer to another. Since they were not hard disks like we have inside our computers, the proverbial "they" tried to come up with a softer word to describe these plastic squares. Instead of calling them "soft" disks, they went with "floppy" disks. "Floppy" is a fantastic word. Heh, floppy!
Now I'm gonna get a bit, erm, quantum on y'all, but this one is too good to ignore. So, two of our favorite sub-atomic particles, namely protons and neutrons, are actually made of smaller particles called quarks. There are six types of quarks, and I'll let their names speak for themselves: top, bottom, up, down, charm and strange. What? Sounds like the rewards you get for completing the bonus levels in Final Fantasy III. "You have obtained the Charm Quark! Return to headquarters to receive your reward!" Not only that, but each quark has a quantifiable characteristic called "strangeness." I wish you could put a number on my strangeness; it would be at least e^(i*Pi)+1.

Junior

So there's this brilliant website called firejoemorgan.com, which basically makes fun of the stupid things that sports announcers/writers say/write. I was reading an old article today by Junior about an article by Murray Chass, a writer for the New York Times sports section. No offense to Murray Chass, a hall of fame writer who, coincidentally, belongs to my friend's synagogue in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, but these guys at firejoemorgan just rip into him in this article. Hilarious stuff. Chass's article is about how Mike Mussina is the reason the Yankees haven't won the World Series since 2000. There's no need to explain anything, I'll just transcribe the article. Bold type is Chass, regular type is Junior. Oh, and I'm sorry about merely transcribing funny stuff from other places; I just don't have anything funny of my own this week. Rorry.
On with the transcription!

Nothing against Mike Mussina, but he is the symbol of the Yankees’ failure to win the World Series the last six years. If George Steinbrenner is seeking a scapegoat, make it Mussina.

First off, the article begins "Nothing against Mike Mussina," but the very next sentence basically says, "Hey, f**k you, Mike Mussina."

Chien-Ming Wang, playing his first full season in the major leagues, was the Yankees’ only reliable starter this season, and he came through again in the playoff opener.

Define "reliable." In the Murray-Chass Oxford-Webster Collegiate dictionary, reliable is defined as Asian.

That left Wright as the pitcher to put his finger in the dike.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Finger in the dike.

End transciption.

OH, I hope no one noticed, but there was a truly grievous error in yesterday's post entitled "Superb." Somehow, I managed to come up with this gem of a sentence: " I realize it's been a few days since I last posted, but there's really nothing about which I feel strongly enough to write about." Nothing more needs to be said about this sentence. I am going to behave as if this never happened. I will presently correct said error so that it may be stricken from the records. Well, except here where I'm talking about it.

Superb

Anyone ever notice that the word "superb" is just the word "super" with a "b" at the end? I wish I could get away with tacking on a letter at the end of a word. "My cell phone isn't really that smallk." "My pants are too tighth." "The window shades are pulled downt." And that's the best stuff I could come up with. I realize it's been a few days since I last posted, but there's really nothing about which I feel strongly enough to write. In fact, the elections took place yesterday and I felt the opposite of strongly about them. If someone were to ask me how I felt about the elections, I would say "weakly." Much like when W.C. Fields replied to the question, "how do you like children?" with the response, "fried!" By "much like," I mean entirely different, except for the fact that both our responses didn't answer the questions at all. But I digress. "From what?" you ask? Who can really say.

I watched the update to homestarrunner.com yesterday, which was the third annual installment of Strong Bad's commentary on fan holloween costumes. These are the highlights from those three episodes:
-A man in a Strong Bad costume is punching a man in a poorly constructed Homestar costume. Strong Bad comments: "Here I am beating up some kind of...mashed potato man."
-A man wearing a very large Homestar costume is seen standing on the front lawn. Strong Bad: " Oh man, if I saw that thing runnin' around my back yard, I'd get out the compound bow."
From the second season:
-small pictures of Marzipan, coach Z, Homsar, and the KoT are painted onto what appear to be squashes. Strong Bad: "Oh, and next on the worthless arts and crafts shopping channel, the least popular Homestar Runner characters gourd collection. Nothing completes an old lady vestibule quite like them."
And from this season:
-Well, I just like the one where Strong Bad asks Homestar if he ate Luigi.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share some of that brilliance with you. Oh, if I ever say "I wike candies," it's from there too. I think I once responded to an e-vite like that.

I need to go purchase a compact disc. Chevra 3 came out today. I hear it's not as good as the first two. But everyone who says these things likes only the first songs from the albums, which aren't always that good in the first place. I mean, "Yehei" is a good song, but it's certainly not the best one of the album. It's probably more like fourth or fifth best. And "Lecha" is also a good song, but once again, not close to the best on the CD. I wish I had brought my headphones to work today so I could listen to the excerpts they have on jewishjukebox.com. I'm going to buy the album anyway, I just hate that some people have heard it and I have not. Like I know I'm going to miss Lost tonight, and it bothers me that some people will have seen it before I have. It's the same thing.

Alright, that's all I have for now. I'll try to be coherent next time. If anyone asks, I can just feign inebriation. Happy St. Demetrius's Day.

Daylight Savings Time

Sounds like one of the many banks springing up these days. "Come bank with us! We're open as long as the sun is up! Special interest rates apply on equinoxes and solstices!" Anyway, as a Jew, Daylight Savings Time actually has a practical effect on my daily life. I now need to daven mincha before I leave from work. I have no time to prepare for Shabbat on Fridays, so I need to be ready by Thursday night. But here's the rub; we will inevitably stay up late Friday night schmoozing, hocking around, making a few l'chaims, etc. However, since Shabbat ends early too, we don't even get the option of a lengthy afternoon nap. This is not an issue during the summer because dinner ends so late that we're up late anyway, but at least we can do something fun on Shabbat afternoon AND take a nap. So even though dinner will end by like 7:30 on Friday night, I'm sure I'll still be up at midnight. Sounds pretty foolish, but let's make fun of our less-enlightened non-mosaic faithful. They have this fascination with night-time. I don't mean darkness, I mean the specific hours between roughly 10:45 pm and 3:00 am. Honestly, who goes out on a Saturday night before 10:30? It just doesn't happen. I promise you it'll be just as dark at 11:00 on Saturday night as it was at 7:00. But no one's gonna think to himself "well, it's dark outside, but it's only 7:15...screw it, I'm getting hammered." Another words, I could easily come back from synagogue on Saturday night at 5:45, play basketball for two hours, watch two movies and then go out. Isn't that ridiculous? Why don't people go out as soon as it gets dark? That way, you can party or drink or cry, or whatever it is you do for entertainment on a Saturday night and still get a full night's sleep and be up at a reasonable hour. As Simmons would say, everyone could use his or her own vice-president of common sense.