Minds Wandering

As I make my bi-weekly pilgrimage through reading blog posts, I realize that I haven't posted on here in a while, and I apologize.

I have had writing on other blogs taking up my time, but don't get me wrong...I haven't run out of things to complain about on here.

But after a while I would just start to sound repetitive, and voicing the same things over and over. And while I have issues, I just don't tend to vent myself often, and that is another reason why this blog has been long dormant.

Should I start things back up here? Will the minds come back to their home base? Will the one finally decide to say yes?

Those are all really hard questions, with no answers in sight.

248

What does the number 248 mean to you?

The simple answer, whether you are Jewish or not, is that a human has 248 limbs.

It is also the amount of positive commandments in the Jewish world.

But the noticeable comparison for me, is the amount of words in Shema.

While I am not always on top of davening, one thing I try to make sure I say correctly, is Shema.

The 248 words there, should always be said carefully, just as carefully as you'd like each of your 248 limbs to be working.

This is also why you add three words at the beginning when praying alone, to compensate for the three word that a Chazzan would say at the end, with a minyan.

This is my first random act of Jewishness on this blog...what is happening to me...

OTD Bingo

Thank you FrumSatire for this wonderful piece of joy.(who credited it to Leah Vincent)

Most Popular Food In America

I heard a statistic recently that surprised me.

Did you know what the most popular food in America is?

The answer: The Burger.

The statistic showed that on average, a person eats a burger once every 9 days.

Now, obviously not all of us do that, but that's why it's an Average.

The cool thing about burgers is they can contain so many different types of meats, toppings and spices.

My favorite is a Beef Burger with Hot Pastrami on top.

How about you? Beef? Lamb? Chicken? Turkey? Something else entirely? What's your burger of choice?

Ke$ha

I know. It's a weird topic...but in my free time, I flip through different TV channels, and happened upon her MTV reality documentary "Kesha: My Crazy Beautiful Life".

While it does show her fun side, it also shows touching moments with fans...ones that were bullied in school, but through her songs helped stay upbeat, and push through it all.

I'm not saying to go out and watch it...but if you are bored, or flip past it on TV, don't brush it off so fast. Give it a shot.

"This is our last chance"

Jason Collins

So yesterday morning the big news came out that Jason Collins was gay.

For those that don't know him, he is an NBA Center who has played for many teams.

Now, this is obviously a big story, as no male athlete in the four major sports has ever come out.

Now, that last sentence is very specific.

We've had big sports stars come out before (Read: Martina Navratilova). We've had current players come out (Read: Brittany Griner).

But never in the big four sports in America. For the underinformed, those being the Men's versions of Baseball, Basketball, Football and Hockey.

But waking up this morning, nothing has changed for me, and my view of sports.

Which is good I guess. Because big picture, it doesn't really matter that he's gay and a professional athlete.

Read the full Sports Illustrated story here.

PS. Did you notice that he also came out as being black? Who woulda thunk!?

Blogaversary

I was going to ignore it altogether...but really, my life has changed a little bit with all of you in it.

So to my 89 posts, 12,000+ Page Views, and those 9 special followers...

Thank you.

Without you guuuuuuuuuuuuu

10,000 Page Views

Not much to say in this post...except that when I started blogging, less than a year ago...I never thought I would have 1,000 page views, let alone 10,000.

So this is just me blowing that little paper horn that people use for New Years, in celebration of a mini milestone.

So thanks for all the reads, people of the internet!

1600 Penn

So for those that have explored the minds, they have come to learn that there are very few Network Television Shows, that have yet to be watched.

But regardless of that...I had yet to see an episode of "1600 Penn".

I have seen lots of bad reviews for it...and the ads were pretty terrible...but what else is one to do on a boring afternoon?

So I started watching.

Nine episodes later:

I laughed.
I cried.
I enjoyed myself.
And I quite seriously have no idea where the last three hours went.

The show is fun.

Sure, some of the story lines are stolen from shows like "The West Wing" (Thanks Donna Moss and Josh Lyman for some great years), but that doesn't take away from a decent comedy.

And with shows like The Office (awesome) and 30 Rock (eh) going into retirement, maybe this can be a good placeholder for Thursday nights?

If only I didn't have three other hours of programming to watch that night already.

Yay. Word play.

Suggestions for the blog? You know what to do with them :)

Woman...Unexplainable Creatures

Status Update

By Chris Jones | ESPN The Magazine

Illustration by Mark MatchoRebecca Marino has a seemingly envious job and life that she's choosing not to lead.

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's March 18 One Day One Game issue.

YOU PROBABLY HADN'T heard much about Rebecca Marino, at least not until she decided she wasn't going to be that Rebecca Marino anymore. The 22-year-old Canadian tennis pro has announced she's leaving the game again, having already taken a seven-month hiatus and mounting the briefest of comebacks, citing in part the twin devils on her shoulders: depression and idiots on the Internet. Before she held her mid-February conference call to talk about her second departure and her mental illness, she deleted her Twitter and Facebook accounts because she knew what was coming and that it would do her no good. "Social media has taken its toll on me," she said.

In some ways, Marino's story is a small one: Lots of young people decide they've taken the wrong path in life and try to correct it. They go back to school or change their majors or quit their internships. But what makes Marino's story larger is its counterintuitiveness, the seemingly envious job and existence she is choosing not to lead. She was a good player, once ranked as high as 38th in the world, with an overpowering serve and forehand. (After she faced Venus Williams during the second round of the 2010 U.S. Open, Williams said: "Now I know what it's like to play myself.") When someone is blessed and gifted enough even to approach that kind of spotlight, we assume she is going to try to reach the center of it. That's the natural order of things. Nobody chooses to stay in the dark.

Unless the dark is the only place that feels safe. I've also battled depression, and I believe I know what or at least how Marino is thinking. I've thought a lot about giving up my job and vanishing -- if I'm being honest, I've occasionally thought about vanishing in bigger ways too. When I'm in a good place, it seems insane to me that I've ever thought that way. My job is a dream job; my life is a dream life. But depression's worst trick is its powers of distortion. It takes the good and makes it nearly invisible, and it takes the bad and amplifies it. People with depression also have long memories for hurt. Stings linger and layer.

"With professional athletes," Marino told The New York Times, "people put them on a pedestal sometimes, and they forget that they're actually a person still." For someone like her, social media -- where she was berated for her weight or by gamblers who lost when she lost -- isn't the wound. Depression is the wound. But social media is the infection that makes it worse, and there are only so many ways to resist it.

You can choose to become callused and awful like me, the monstrous result of my finally having followed the easy advice and grown a thicker skin. An anonymous stranger on Twitter recently said that he'd like to see me "eat a shotgun." Not that long ago, I would have gone after that guy with all the rage I could muster, which would have been plenty. Instead, I made a joke about it. Later, a (real-life) friend mentioned the exchange and how messed up it was -- not just that someone publicly hoped I would kill myself, which is really something if you stop and think about it, but that I'd laughed it off. My friend was right. I don't like that I can't feel anything anymore, my newly flatlined self. And if my tiny spotlight has changed me this much, imagine the horrors that a larger one could do.

Rebecca Marino did that imagining, and it led her to make a different choice from mine: She decided it was better to try to change her world than herself. She doesn't yet know what she'll do instead, but she's talked about going back to school or applying for different jobs, quiet jobs, anonymous jobs, such as a cashier or restaurant hostess. Then at least the strangers in her life will always have faces.

I understand her decision. In fact, I envy her in a lot of ways because she's rescuing the best parts of herself before it's too late. A thick skin doesn't seem like something you would want someone you love to have. You would want them to be able to feel fully. You would want them to be warm and open, affected by the people and lives being lived around them. You would want them to have a big heart and for them to be able to keep it safe, even if that meant they had to hide it away in the dark.

Why Do We, Miss Judge?

SuperBowl: She Noticed Me!!!

Did everyone see it?! She finally noticed me!

Last night, right in the middle of the halftime show, from across the room, our eyes met, and she blew me a kiss.

BTW, yes, I am talking about Beyonce.

The Dark Side

I sense the Dark Side is lifting its head...and a storm is coming.

A storm that will lead to the war, to end all wars.

One that will bring out the fiercest of all.

And the filth that inhabits the Earth will come crawling out of its hole.

Only to get smitten by the sword that it brandished.

Evil can never win.

Evil shall never win.

Only the strongest will survive.

Ask, and you may learn.

Sometimes people see things, and don't really understand them.

So they either ignore it (and then the next time it comes up, they still don't know, but by then they really should, so it's too late to ask), or they say "I have no idea what this means", but never ask for an explanation.

If people would just ask, there are plenty of us out there that would just answer.

And then you would know :)

Mr. Google

So, like every obsessive blogger, I check my stats once in a while.

Simple things, that blogger generally provides me with. Things like, "Page Views", "Most Popular", etc.

But then I found a website that can tell me where I rank in Google Searches, based on different search queries.

Some of my posts, I was fairly surprised, when it would give me the ranking, it would say: "Your page is ranked #19 in this query".

19!!!! Yes, I am starting to make a dent in this world.

But then I got a real shocker...one of my pages came up listed as "Your page is ranked #1 in this query."

#1!!!!

NUMBERO FREAKIN' UNO!!!

Granted it was on Google.uk and not Google.com, but still, I'm impressed. :)

I just wish I knew who some of the people reading my posts are...because the ones getting the most reads, are all people I would love to have a conversation with.

Happiest Day Ever

For those that missed it, yesterday was the happiest day of the year in China!!!

:)

Rules, Rules, Rules

If I don't want to play by the rules, who is anyone else to tell me to?

Especially if the rules aren't really rules, but guidelines, that some choose to do, yet others don't.

Maybe your interpretation of the rules are wrong? Or maybe rules truly are made to be broken...

Now I'm differentiating here between "rules" and "laws", laws are obviously to be followed, or suffer the consequences (death, hell, and all that other good stuff).

But if it's a rule, lay off, and let others do as they wish, and if you don't like it, well then, simply walk away, and don't become a pimple on the rump of society.

Damn You Google + New Look

So Google decided to randomly reset my page views to 0.

So instead of a few hundred, thousand, whatever, I now have 0 page views. So now I can hopefully get a few views on this to start it off again!

And since they messed me up, I decided to change the look of my blog.

What do y'all think?