i always have all these little thoughts and anecdotes as the day goes by that i want to post but by the time i get a round to it (i still have never gotten a "round tuit" although my old violin teacher had one on a bulletin board) i forget.

but for now-

so, i just checked my recent direct deposit into my savings account online, and i noticed it was lower than usual, so i checked my paycheck on the hr system: they've started deducting some extra NYC tax since i moved to brooklyn (i don't even remember telling them i had moved) of $30+ :( boo :( i wonder what that goes towards...

hmmm...

i just discovered that with the "company" discount, a new apple ibook is LESS than two-weeks salary (after taxes!)!

p.s. much more about my actual life and thoughts coming soon (i have at least 3 unposted drafts sitting around here on blogger.)

NOW check it out.

"they preach that i should save the world; they pray that i won't do a better job of it"

it's the 50th anniversary of the village voice!
too bad it was just sold to New Times Media.
apparently the print edition that i picked up this afternoon, full of clippings from the paper that was the last 50 years, beat the online edition which comes out tomorrow.

bullshit, i know. but somehow i feel that's somewhat appropriate or metaphorical, a representation of what the voice really is. as i sat skimming through the issue on the subway home from work about an hour ago, i wondered what had not changed in new york in the past 50 years besides the subway and the voice.

p.s. if you can name who's lyric i quoted in the title of this entry (without googlecheating), i'll get you a spare keepsake copy of the special 50th anniversary edition of the voice.

i keep wasting time at work. i need to stop looking up random things online so i can finish looking up a few patients' phone numbers and then go home and unpack so that maybe later i can spend some time looking up random things online.

oy vey

there's this african-american nurse where i work who constantly says things like "oy vey" and calls me "bubeleh." it's bizzare.

there's actually more to that story, but not now.
my life has gone to insane shit. and i mean insane.

so the move was postponed yet again this weekend, because the apt wasn't ready on sunday when it was supposed to. saturday consisted of me frantically trying to pack and figure out if i was buying a bed or not and move other large furniture around my house. however this only got crazier b/c the day went from- yes, i'm moving to: becca saw the apt and it's still a mess so no i'm not moving yet to: nicole spoke to the landlady who assured her it would be ready by sunday, so nicole is insisting on moving on sunday and in order to share the movers with her i have to move to. but then i was like, fuck this, i'm not moving tomorrow so she agreed to just bring a mattress and sleep there this week and she'd move the rest of her stuff next week.

needless to say, i got there on sunday jsut to check out the place and nicole came a little later but it was clearly in no condition to be slept in so she didn't stay in the end. it's a huge mess and they still have things left to do like painting and installing radiators, filling in a hole in the wall in my room, some painting and staining of doors, putting in the kitchen sink, and A LOT of clean up.

but wait. it gets MUY better. during those several days of craziness, every time i spoke to becca, she was more and more mad at nicole and complaining that nicole was treating her unfairly and violating her, that nicole never listens to her and just yells at her on the phone and she's having serious doubts about livign with nicole at all. i tried to reassure her that everything would be ok (on sat night) and then didn't speak to her again until last night (monday) when she called me.

she called me to tell me that she can't live with nicole and she's pulling out of the lease and getting a subletter before we even move in.
meanwhile, i had been having major doubts about moving for weeks, bc i'm still not sure i want to commit to living in ny for a full year. and i had discussed this with becca. but i assumed that i couldn't actually pull out of the lease a) because it would be incredibly unfair and b) b/c the lease says NO SUBLETS ARE ALLOWED!.

i told becca this- she claimed she hadn't read the part of the lease that said no sublets allowed. she's still insisting that she do this, and it was an incredibly hellish night, one of my worst ever although, i did eventually get to sleep.
i literally almost pulled my hair out. if there was some way i could get out of this, i would. i really would. somehow she's getting out of this, but i'm not allowed to?

i don't understand how anyone could do this, and it's just an unbareably confusing and upsetting thing. i'm so mad yet i keep crying uncontrollably.

MEANWHILE, i had a research meeting at work last week where the Dr. in charge of my study announced (to everyone's surprise) that he wants to end the study immediately and move on to the rest of data collection/analysis and writing the papers. nobody really knew what was going on and my boss said she'd speak to him (he's sort of scatterbrained and she does all the detail work) and see what the hell he was talking about and get back to me. so she just got back to me and said that he wants us to stop recruiting new patients (which is currently the majority of my job) at the end of this week and focus solely on data collection for the existing patients which he thinks is going to take a really long time.

neither my boss nor i quite know what that means yet, but it's going to be a big change for me.

sorry there was no humour in this post. ugh, i don't know what to do, and my life is a huge mess! help!

[murder?], she blogged

"we can save democracy
with the wealth only freedom can bring"

-rosie

shanah tova; the year ahead...

shanah tovah to you all! as this past tuesday and wednesday were the jewish holiday of rosh hashanah, which celebrates the beginning of the jewish year it seems that the past few weeks have included a lot of thinking about the future, especially the coming year and where i want to end up by next rosh hashanah. this has all happened sort of surreptitiously, though, interspersed between a lot that's been going on in my life. all of this is the same reason that i haven't gotten to post in several weeks; - an apartment search, a found apartment, a lease signing despite many doubts about the commitment-to-NY entailed by the signing of said lease, and a bunch of other stuff.

i took a few pictures at the 9.24 anti-war march in DC which i hope to post soon, as well as some of the numerous pictures i took of my niece while she and her parents visited for the holidays this week. but now i should get back to work and save the blog posting for my own time.

tomorrow morning i'm auditioning to be on jeopardy (keep on laughing; you're absolutely right) and the very vague and likely not actually happening plan is to move into the new place in brooklyn on sunday.

more to come.

but in the meantime, i'm still on all these listservs from cornell and elsewhere that i need to get off of, but i'm reluctant to do so. after seeing this website earlier today, i had an idea that instead of trying to continue to cull all of the interesting articles i receive and forward them on to individuals who might be interested, i could post them on this blog and comment :) i don't know why it's taken me this long to figure that out. as i sit and wonder how everyone else gets so much fodder for their blogs.

so here's the first one, taken from an email:


Happy Birthday Desmond Tutu!

From Wikipedia.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born October 7, 1931) is a South African cleric and
activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of
apartheid. Tutu was the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of
Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of
Southern Africa. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the
land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we
had the Bible and they had the land."

"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of
the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you
say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

"I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were
hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I
feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread."

"We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot
for sinners. His standards are quite low."

"Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity."

"A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons."

"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are
trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we
are humans, too."

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the
table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of
rights."

"Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a
favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor,
and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious
systems."


http://www.afrol.com/articles/13584
http://www.afrol.com/articles/11404
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/820912.htm
http://www.whosoever.org/v2i4/perry.html

i'm so behind in posting for the week. i need to rant about my stressful apartment search as well as my anguish and embrassment at the way my country handles major crises and the needs of poor minorities.

i missed a protest of this local hate-fest, yesterday, unfortuantely. but i got to see jess briefly last night, which was nice. i've mostly been spending my weekends at home, hanging with the parents doing absolutely nothing because i'm so exhausted from attempts at apartment hunting after work on weeknights. we'll hopefully have a place in park slope or prospect heights, brooklyn within a week or two. cross your fingers. if you like me.

even though i've always had a lot of gripes with the clinton family, as the state of this country's elected leadership has sunken to new and newer lows over the past few years, and as i've read about bill clinton's work in stemming the aids crisis overseas and other work, my admiration for him has started to return, despite many of the decisions he's made that i oppose, most egregiously, his support for "free trade" capitalism at the expense of the rest of the world's welfare. as i walk past his foundation's headquarters every day on my way to and from work, i imagine that it might be a much more exciting and worthwhile place for me to be working. clearly much of his work is attempting to effect major change in global public health.

although i've disagreed with many of hillary's moves since she became my senator 4 and a half years ago, i think it would be really cool if she became president. although many of her goddamn liberal politicking drives me crazy, i do have to face the reality that nobody left of her is going to get elected to the highest office in the land, and of coures, she is a woman.

BUT i was extermely dismayed to learn that she's officially joined the leadership of the DLC. not that she was such a leftist before, as this stupid article seems to imply, but still. the DLC has the potential to suck every idealistic and populist bone out of her body, leaving a centrist shell infinitely indistinguishable form the GOP.

it's now 4 yrs since cornell and ithaca really became my home. i can descreetly remember the entire chronology of that day four years ago, 9/11/01, and how safe i felt tucked away up there amidst the large gothic buildings, the collective brilliance, picturesque hills and meadows, and the throngs of identical looking students. as i've mentioned earlier, i think that day really bonded our class together, as a group, because the place you can experience a tragedy like that and come through it together collectively, is truly home. although the only thing i'll likely be doing today in commemoration is posting on this blog and watching the reading of the names broadcast on tv, the fact that the four years since the 9/11 attacks coincides with the same four years since i began college, since i began my journey of joys and frustrations at cornell has some stronger meaning to me. i'm not sure what it quite is yet. i have a feeling that my journey and relationship to that place is not over and will continue at some point in the future.

as i read my first alumni magazine last night, it was actual more of a sad, heart-felt experience than anything else.although i spent the last 10 months or more complaining aboud so much and wanting to get out of there, last night what i experienced was a sadness at the speed with which those same four years passed and a recognition of all of the regrets i have, experiences passed up, moments extinguished, both trivial and not.

it seems like our country has more and more victimes with each passing year, and it's not only because i have come to experience a more complete political understanding of the world around me since i began four years ago as a freshman: first 9/11, the war in afghanistan, invasion of iraq, now katrina, continous violence in other locations intermingled, specifically israel and the occupied territories, and really every continent i can think of besides australia. i don't know. i feel like the past four years have only partially equipped me to deal with all of these global problems. i feel like it was an amazing start, an immersion in problems, solutions, nuance...but only a beginning. but there seems to be so much more i should have gleaned from that experience, and i can't help wondering if jacob lehman had been chosen a little earlier as university president and stayed a little longer, might cornell have made a bit more progress at advancing towards that goal of comprehensive global education?


may the memories of all the victims over the past four years, near and far, nameless and unnamed by the press be for blessings to guide us to a more just society and world.

i have so much stuff to bitch about and say about how shit's going down down south; maybe i'll write that later, but i just wanted to say--- i just went to lunch and i saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "hang out with your wang out" and now i can't get the phrase "rock out with your cock out" out of my head.

sim city 2000

according to CNN, they're following my lead and contining the real life city 2005 version of sim city 2000:

Widespread looting and random gunfire have been reported across the city. Police told CNN that groups of armed men roamed the streets overnight.

money and more money: being a real person sucks

issue number 1:
so i've basically had my heart set on moving to nyc the past few weeks/months. when i accepted this job, even though i didn't want to be in new york, i told myself it was only on the condition that i would not be living at home.

however, last week, i was reading this book i'm in the middle of, called hope's edge, which is an amazing book. technically the sequel to diet for a small planet, it deals a lot more with the relationships between food consumption, production and global justice movements. a section i was reading on the trains that mornign made me really excited about all these potential avenues for creativity in the future, all these exciting alternative development projects, and as usual my thoughts turned to thinking about how i could be doing that now and wondering why i'm wasting my time in this job that really doesn't excite me or make much progress beyond a few hundred folks in a very minute manner.

my rationale for the past few weeks every other time i've been wondering this is that i need to get a head start, start making some money, and then after either i've worked a bit or i've gotten a graduate degree, i can go off and do my own thing. but this morning i realized that if i'm going to live in the city, i'm really not going to be saving much, if at all, depending on what rent ends up being and the lifestyle i choose to lead. and so, it seems, that i'm sort of just wasting a whole year, becasue i know what i'll be doing the whole year, unless i change jobs, and although i'm making a decent amount of money, i'll just spending a boatload of it on rent and living in this psycho city, when there's so much more i could be doing if i was a less risk-averse person.

so i've definitely been having some doubts about actually moving to the city, although i can't see staying in the position i'm in for much longer either. and the problem is, that if i can't stand my job after a few months, i won't be able to move somewhere else and do something else unless i find a subletter. but i will likely be living with two good friends, which would be great, and i'm hoping to get involved in stuff and meet lots of nwe people. it's just that the majority of my awake time will be spent at work, and it seems like it will mostly be a waste. i suppose what i can do, if i do move, is to keep looking for cooler jobs in nyc and then if i get one, switch jobs while staying in the apt.

but what i don't understand is how i can get a recommendation if i'm looking surreptitiously and don't want them to know.

issue number 2:
i've received a lot of credit card offers in the mail and have been trying to decide between them which one to get, because i do need to get a new credit card to replace the one i currently have and need to cancel which is tied to an ithaca local bank. i had been vaguely thinking abotu the working assets credit card, because it could be a concerete lifestyle action on my part towards supporting progressive organizing. however, after i decided to research the card a bit, to make sure there was nothign sketchy about it, i discovered this whole issue people had been discussing online- apparently the credit line for working assets is through MBNA, a financial group that donates heavily to the republicans. while this was not something i had thought about previously, after reading it did seem relevant, causing me to have doubts about that card.

someone's comment on that board mentioned the Salmon Nation card, through the ShoreBank/Pacific, which is a local Northwest US bank also linked with community development in Chicago. So now I've been thinking about that card, but I can't decide what to do and would welcome any suggestions.

P.S. This post was intended for Friday Aug. 26 or earlier but I didn't finish writing it, so it's only being posted now. However, none of the above issues have yet been resolved so it is still relevant.

flooding--> city destroyed

CNN Reports:

Nagin said both the city's airports were under water, the Southern Yacht Club had burned to the ground, an oil tanker had run aground and was leaking, there were gas leaks throughout the city and Interstate 10's twin spans heading east over the lake were "completely destroyed."

I'm sorry, and this is really not funny, but isn't that reminiscent of old school Sim City 2000?

I will investigate any ways to help besides sending money etc. to Red Cross and post them here to compensate for my lack of sensitivity towards the subject. Please don't send me for sensitivity training.

oh my gawd, i'm kvelling!

so i've been reading jewschool for months, maybe years, now but nothing has topped both this insanely hilarious article
and this call for submissions that is WAY after my own heart and ideas and something i imagine i could get very passionate about/involved with in the future. i'm only sorry i never responded to the initial call for submissions for Mazel Tov Cocktail because you're damn straight i could write a friggin epic whatever about how amazing Barbara Myheroff is or the conversation that would occur if she had dinner with Emma Goldman.

mayors

so apparently mayor bloomberg thinks that noise is a big problem issue in new york? something on which time should be spent above other issues?

wtf

after reading/reading about last night's mayoral debate, i really like freddy ferrer. but then, i liked him 4 yrs ago too. also, i can't vote in nyc. damnit. although solicitors (not british lawyers) constantly come up to me and i have to turn them down bc it's utterly irrelevant for them to waste their time on me.

shoutout to phil kim, my fellow CIW '03.

how to blogroll, anyone?

engaging the disengagement

honestly, i don't know what to think. for months i agreed with the likes of Naomi Chazan, who I heard speak in October '04, and other members of the faltering israeli left, who have warned against the disengagement, both for its unilateral nature and for fear that leaders would view it as a substitute for rather than precursor to bilateral talks with the palestinians. however, honestly, this seems to be a huge step. i haven't been reading much of what the left opposition to the disengagement is saying, besides stressing that it not be the end-game solution. maybe they're saying it's all a big publicity stunt and that the palestinians aren't actually getting much.

i suppose we'll see what happens when it's over. as i write, haaretz is reporting that 16 of 21 gaza settlements have already been evacuated and it's only day 4. will there be civil war? will missiles be launched over the green line now as the right insinuates, proving that gaza alone might not even be sufficient as a first step? i don't know.

what i do know is that this is really going to continue wreaking havoc on israel internally. i wish i was taking the class i took on israeli society (with tamir sorek) right now. when i took that class, it was just a dead-end depressing time, in the middle of the second intifada (2003), when more people were being killed by the day and it seemed clear that the geneva initiative wasn't taking hold beyond the fringe. but now it would be really interestign to discuss these issues, because a main focus of the course was on the internal splits between religious and secular and between elite and poverty-stricken, and the intrsection of those divides.

even though it came from ariel sharon, for whom i would never have expected to have anything but fightin words, it seems like it might be the spark to light the internal struggle which was going to have to happen sooner or later. clearly, such a struggle would not be pleasant for anyone involved, but what i could never understand about the people who kept saying, well, we can't give land back, because they don't deserve it right now, or we can't do this, or we can't do that: did they honestly see the current situation as sustainable, as somethign that could continue the way it's been for the past 5 yrs (or the past 38 years) for much longer?

Yair Sheleg writes in Haaretz:

In recent years, there was an unofficial status quo between the religious right and the liberal left: On the one hand, the liberal left railed against the settlements, but never dared to evacuate them (including in the context of the Oslo agreements) out of an understanding that this was the apple of the right's eye, and out of a sense of what the consequences could be. On the other hand, the religious right railed against the control the liberals have over the legal system, the media, academia - in fact all the systems that create public opinion - but in actual fact did not wage an all-out war to change the situation, both because it was preoccupied with struggles over the territories as well as out of an understanding that these institutions were the apple of the liberals' eye.

He writes of a "deal that fell through," and seems to imply that the religious right will no longer hold up its end of the "deal," now that it has been betrayed. I agree with Sheleg's assessment of the way in which the disengagement represents a huge twist in Israeli politics and a huge departure from the corrupt and undemocratic status quo deals of the coalitions. But I'm not quite sure if the religious will be able to force their agenda in other matters as revenge, as Sheleg claims. And who's to say this might not lead to more honest brokering between the factions; more of a recognition of who actually represents the will of the majority and who doesn't...
TO BE CONTINUED (maybe)

8.19 update:

wow. it gets better and better.

Condoleeza Rice is actually towing the line of the Israeli left, "empathizing with Israel," while reminding her that the Gaza pullout is not enough, urging withdrawal from more of the West Bank and decreased travel restrictions on Palestinians.

wal-mart

another story about wal-mart, amidst all the talk of their hopeful (hopeful for them, i mean, clearly)expansion to places like queens, ny that have thus far been succesful at keeping out their poor labor etc. practices:

so they are complaining that their profits have been lower for the past two quarters, which they think is a result of the continuously rising gas prices and they foresee this to continue to cut into their profits. oh poor babies.

but maybe the other culprit is unions at work? have any of the wal-marts successfully unionized yet? i don't even know.

Wal-Mart is also struggling with keeping its expenses down, Scott said.

"We did not meet our goals as our expenses in the quarter grew faster than our sales," Scott said.

oh, poor babies again- their expenses are rising. well, clearly we know who will be hit if they are trying to lower their expenses.

(actually, i don't even know if increased wages/benefits/etc. would even increase their expenses by that much, given how big they are.)
thoughts anyone? or have i already expended too many characters and too much energy on the terrible titan?

maybe i should have been in "ordinary people"

i always thought they were a cool troup, albeit a bit too campy and amateurish for the subjects they were dealing with. well, apparently, although the NCAA finally got the hint about one of their major issues, the ridiculous appropriation, mocking and god knows what else of Native American tribes in sports teams, Jeb Bush can't possibly deal with Florida State University not mocking Native Americans, and actually claims that they like it!

some of these things are so out there one can hardly believe that they are true stories.

i also think that if i done more of that sort of creative arts before i graduated, whether it was non-chai notes music, drama acting, or writing- journalistically or whatever, i might have gone in that direction in the first place, and not be struggling to shove it into my life now. hopefully, once i look for, get, and move into an apt., i can allocate more time to these things.

i've really been realizing lately that i need to have a career that directly involves more politics (not just by explaining, well, these people are neglected by the mainstream healthcare system, and so by helping them i'm decreasing the disparities, leveling the playing field and subverting the system...) and definitely more writing. so i'm hoping that even though i don't have particular training/skills/much-knowledge in things like agricultural trade policy, or immigration law, which really interest me, if i try to begin reading and writing more on those topics and trying to freelance a bit, that will hopefully get mre more into the writing field, and show that i have some experience in those topics. (so it wouldn't really help me to freelance on any human development or non-political topics, like, say....colon cancer...lol)

8.10.05 edit: i tried to link to some reference website for ordinary people, but it seems that they no longer have an rso page or anything. i hope they didn't disband!

the news sucks

preface: there are a number of very annoying cliche/expressions in this post, for some reason, which bothers me immensely, but in order to post from work at all, i don't have time to work on the writing to try to say exactly what i mean, and must rely on this molest-some banter. ha! i made up a word!

i don't understand how this could have barely made the news, covered up by all this stupid detalia about the shuttle and whether the size of each astronaut's farts will affect the return to earth. literally, the mother of some astronaut from queens has been getting air time every single night to spew the same idiotic quote every single night, about how she completely trusts nasa and she believes her son is safe because they said so. dude, it's fucking outer space.....i'm sure anyone really know what they're talking about.

but anyway, back to reality, so all this time as bush was ducking away under semantic differences over who in his administration he was going to fire and who he was just going to slap on the wrist, regarding valerie plame-gate, it turns out john bolton had testified in the grand jury and then lied about it?

i love sen. joe biden (D-DE) who investigated and figured out this whole coverup and said:

It seems unusual that Mr. Bolton would not remember his involvement in such a serious matter...In my mind, this raises more questions that need to be answered. I hope President Bush will not make the mistake of recess appointing Mr. Bolton.

but no, bush has gone ahead and appointed him as a recess appointment, despite the hard work of senator biden, proving all of his (sadly) weak opponents correct again. so the horrible reasons the u.s. is going down to hell in a handbasket both domestically and internationally are just piling on now, and nobody seems to care! it's all still about the poor little spring break party girl lost in aruba, and angelina and brad's cute little african baby (clearly, not being orientalized or exoticized....clearly...) and who knows what else. in place of the fact that now both the american people and all the constituent nations of the u.n. (the whole world basically) are being screwed with their pants on.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

in other news, my stint as the sole resident of my house has ended, as my parents came home from their vacation last night. it was a little sad saying goodbye to the car that had become mine last night, but shortlived things are nice sometimes too. any you know, i don't really want to get too comfortable in the white picket fence, leather-seated car lifestyle anyway.