Magic Jewball

Happy New Year! Am I insane? Yes! But completely aside from that, this month, Nisan, is actually the first month of the Jewish calendar even though we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the common New Year, in Tishrei, which falls in September. The Jewish calendar actually has four new years days:

1st of Nisan – new year for the reign of kings as well as holidays
1st of Elul – most obscure one, it was for tax purposes (how apropos)
1st of Tishrei – what we call Rosh hashanah – anniversary of the day the world was created
15th of Shvat – what we call Tu B’shvat, the new year for trees

Anyhoo, I’m taking the occasion of the first holiday of the year, Passover, which starts tomorrow, to clean out my phone of photos.

Remember I said I’d show you the empty elevator cage in the building where I work at school? And that I never noticed that the stairs wound around an elevator size shaft while all the time wondering why there was no elevator? No? Me either. But here it is.

Button, button, where’s the button? No, I never noticed this either, I swear.

I did notice this. It was a giant inflatable rat outside Petco on my way to my internship one morning. So either they had a union problem or one of the giant rats at Petco escaped and was menacing passersby.

Oh look, it’s the last holiday, Purim. I guess I’ll finish with food I won’t be eating for the next eight days. Here was the line-up this year: Hamantaschen in my usual raspberry and Nutella flavors, brown sugar pound cake, chocolate chip crack, and tootsie rolls. I made three things instead of four this year in deference to the fact that I’m already trying to fit 25 things into a 24 hour day.

And now, a Passover/festival of freedom/Emancipation Day/springtime thought. Recently, I saw Waiting For Superman, a movie I refused to pay for and so I had to wait seven months till I could see it for free. Lots of the statistics in it are wrong or misleading and even though there are great public schools and terrible charter schools (the filmmaker even states that 80% of them have worse performance than public schools), the main point still stands. Education in this country blows. Not only do kids drop out and make bad neighborhoods worse because they can’t get jobs, not only do we still stiff the very people we emancipated, but who is going to cure cancer or solve problems when we’re old?

So what are we going to do about it? Let’s do something about it! Or let’s just do something to make the lives of other people better. I say, free your minds and the rest will follow. Or, actually, EnVogue said that. But you get me. It’s a whole new year. The farmers markets are filling up with new produce. The Shiba Inu webcam dog had new puppies. Your team has five months to get to first place. Let’s start fresh and do good things.

Chag sameach and happy Easter and springtime to my non Passover-celebrating friends.

Title comes from:
Bob Marley – Redemption Song

Despite the sad, sad weekend the Yankees had, I still laughed and laughed at this commercial when I saw it last night. And as a bonus, I didn’t even have to sit through most of the rubber game, as I took a three hour standardized exam, came home, ate dinner, and promptly fell asleep for four hours. Apparently, so did CC Sabathia. Rimshot!

Anyhow, I realized why I haven’t been doing any cooking these last few months and it’s not because I don’t have time, although I don’t, it’s because there was no baseball to listen to in the kitchen. This week, I made a fantastic flounder while John Sterling was making an awful home run call for Russell Martin (“Monsieur Martin est là,” really?). By the way, here was one of the questions on my exam:

If you don’t know what job you’ll have and whether you’ll be sitting at a desk or moving around or how long your day will last, or even if you may be at home living off your 401k, is it best to buy Gameday Audio for:
a. Your phone
b. Your computer
c. Your iPad
d. Your iPod
e. None, you need that money for ramen noodles

Ha, no, actually, most of the exam was based on things I seem to have known all my life, like what a database is for and what’s the best solution for sending out the same memo to many different people (if you said Mail Merge, hopefully we both passed). There were more complicated questions, I will admit, but none as hard as the fake one I posted just above. For the record, I chose iPod, since that will be the most convenient to listen to whilst in transit, which is when I am most likely to need to hear a game. Also, because my phone battery dies in about twelve hours as is; in active use it will never make it through your typical five hour Yankees-Red Sox affair. E was a trick answer: how could I make noodles without baseball to listen to?

You know, I’m not really sure how a review could be MORE helpful than this.

Can’t you just feel her deep excitement at the music which has emanated from this 4.7″ disc? When I read this, I knew I had to submit legal currency over an electronic network in exchange for this good and/or service. Once the sound waves affect my aural networks, I am sure the neurons in my brain will fire substances which will cause my mouth to turn in an upward angle. After I receive it from the helpful gentlemen, I will be sure to use my pointing device to select the affirmative reply to the final question which has been posed.

In case you were wondering, although I just know it will be obvious to you, this review is of John Waite’s Greatest Hits. A better question was why I was reading this review at 2am, or indeed, any time, but that is a story of many web pages through which I clicked my pointing device and of little interest to the average reader of this linear-oriented textual journal.

Thank you for reading.
B. Jball

I kid! There are several songs by John Waite that I like. This is one.
John Waite – Change