Why Death Sucks Parts 2 & 3
He Didn’t Get to Finish the Job
I’ll always be seen as a disappointment [to myself] in the eyes of my dad. Its pretty difficult not to glorify the dead, and its just as difficult to live up to their glorified standards.
I’ll always think that if my father had been around after the age of ten to raise me, teach me, push me, I would have ended up a much better person.
The Fact that it Can Get Better Makes it Worse
I’ve realized that after all these years I have two things to still hold on to:
The actual sense of loss. The loss means he was once here.
A bunch of bricks in Brooklyn.
Why Death Sucks
The Little Mermaid
One of the disney movies that my dad took me to.
We had gotten to the theater too early, and the current showing was maybe half over. So we walked around to wait it out. For some reason we were around Radio City Music Hall, and I must have said that I wanted to see The Christmas Show.
A short while later (maybe a couple of weeks) my dad took me to see The Christmas Show. I don’t remember any of the show though. I only remember any of this because I was so amazed that he remembered.
Crispix
So yesterday I bought a box of Crispix cereal. I remembered eating it all the time as a kid so I must have loved it. So I finally tried it again for the first time in years.
Wow. Its… amazing. Yes, I know it tastes like nothing, but its the best nothing ever.
Actually now that I think about it, it tastes just like Special K. Regardless, its delicious.
Words I Didn’t Write
So I’ve started a new baby project, called Words I Didn’t Write. It is a lyrics blog. A place for me to collect lyrics from songs that I like.
I always want to post lyrics on here or on my twitter, but I never did, because I knew that once I started, I’d never stop. So this seems like the idea solution. A place for me to post lyrics that I love that I just can’t get out of my head.
It won’t ever replace my blog. Its just… in addition to it.
In many ways it may end up being the most personal thing I do on the web. It also may end up being sad… many lyrics I love happen to be sad. It doesn’t mean that I’m sad, but sometimes sad songs are just so pretty.
So, yes. wordsididntwrite.com.
Little Changes
Its not terribly interesting, but I’ve made a couple of very little changes to the site…
I finally updated my install of Django from pre-1.0 to 1.0.2. Feels good! Though really anyone else shouldn’t notice any difference. I’m really starting to look forward to Django 1.1!
The tree branches that go all the way down the page on the left side now alternate colors… woo!
I’ve made site searching more thorough.
I’ve done a bit of re-organizing. I’ve finally gotten rid of the Swag section. I still have the Cinema section. However random reviews of other things (such as tv shows or random stuff) will still happen. Until I can think of a better section for it, they’ll just be regular articles that happen to have ratings.
Top Five Records
I used to have a little section on the site where I’d post my current favorite albums… I got rid of of it in the redesign in an effort to be as minimal as possible. So, for no particular reason, the top five albums I’ve had on heavy rotation lately…
Santogold - Santogold
I don’t know why… I just love it. Can listen to it all day long. Catchy as hell.MGMT - Oracular Spectacula
Same thing. The songs “Electric Feel”, “Future Reflections”, and “Weekend Wars” will just get you.The Gaslight Anthem - The ‘59 Sound
This album is just… fantastic. “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” gets me every time… over and over again.The Bird and the Bee - Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future
I just got this album a couple days ago, but I can tell, its a keeper. I loved their first album, and this one just spells to be so much better.Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak
No matter how much I don’t want to, I just love certain songs on it. Listen to “Bad News”, “See you in my Knightmares” and “Paranoid” a few times. You’ll see.
You can find more of my recent musical loves on my last.fm. ;)
The Dyad Invasion
My Social Experimental Psychology class did our first “social experiment” Tuesday night, on “Dyad Invasions”. A dyad invasion being a person walking in between two people obviously talking to each other. Basically we stood on a New York City street in pairs, two-to-three feet apart, and spoke to each other for five minutes at a time, to see if people walking by would walk in between us or around us. Every five minutes we’d try a new spot. We had three spots outside on the street and three spots inside the university.
We had another girl sit a bit away to take count of the number of invasions. I was surprised by how many invasions we ended up having… the average was probably around four, but we had one instance outside of thirteen and an instance inside (when some classes had just ended) of twenty-three.
We may not have discovered anything too exciting, but at least trying to make small talk with a partner for 45 minutes helped pass the time in my four-hour class.
School Helps You Watch Television
So I have a terrible terrible final tomorrow. I’ve been studying a lot, or at least I’ve been trying to. So tonight I was taking a break and was watching a repeat of House because apparently repeats of House are my new addiction.
Anyway, at one point House asked the Team where fear was in the brain, and before Foreman answered I told him out loud “the central nucleus of the amygdala”. Right after I did, Foreman answered “the amygdala”. Now I actually understand much of the neurological terminology on the show. I guess this class was good for something.
Uselessness
Bird in the Supermarket
I survived the short-answer half of my Physiological Psych test. Considering the fact that he gave us no real insight into what it would consist of, I’m pretty sure I did pretty well. Have a few essays to write for the second part by Friday… but I’m just relieved to be done with the first part.
So! As you might know, I’m a big fan of twitter. Today the guys at twitter were kind enough to offer me the username liz. When I first signed up a looong while ago, the username Liz was taken. However over the past several months the account has been dead, and they were nice enough to kill the account and offer it to me. This totally made my day (as silly as it is). So… go add me! Yay! :)
The new spiffy address is: http://twitter.com/liz/
TiVo Addiction
For the first time ever, I had issues with my TiVo.
I noticed on Wednesday that my TiVo hadn’t recorded anything since Monday night (I hadn’t been home much in between).
So, I checked my To Do List. Turned out there were only two items for October 12th and nothing else scheduled.
So I restarted, etc. Nothing worked. Checked the TiVo support site, nada. So I called TiVo support for the first time. The first guy told me to spend an hour cleaning out all of my To Do List and Program Information. No go.
The next day, the next girl told to turn off TiVo Suggestions, which she didn’t know how to find through the TiVo Menus. Luckily I had remembered seeing it a couple of days before. Then she told me to restart. She said that while I was waiting to restart, she would get off the phone with me, and call me back in fifteen minutes.
Alas, she never called back. However, while I was waiting, I manually deleted all of my Season Passes and each “none scheduled” item in my To Do List. After I re-added all my season passes, everything has been peachy.
This post isn’t really about so-so customer service. This post is really about how thoroughly sad I was to be missing my TiVo for a couple of days, and how positively relieved I was when I had fixed it. So silly.
Sun, Food and Surf
Oh my goodness, its been almost a week since I’ve posted.
So I spent the weekend out east for my grandparent’s 50th anniversary. I finally got some sun, which was long overdue. I also attended a fundraiser for at The Surf Lodge, which is Sam from season two of Top Chef’s restaurant.
The restaurant had an absolutely gorgeous view of the water and a very active outdoor bar. For hors d’oeuvres, there were spoonfuls of civiche (complete with popcorn, which I recognized from him preparing it on Top Chef), spoonfuls of spicy chopped vegetables, and skewers of beef. Eventually we were served a very casual dinner of watermelon salad with feta, potato salad, clams, and fried chicken. I have to say I was rather surprised with the style of food served for dinner, since I had heard the food was fantastic. However the watermelon salad and clams were impressive (and I usually hate clams).
After dinner was served we ran into Sam who had come out from the kitchen for a couple of seconds and complimented him on the party. Overall it was a lovely laid-back time, and I’m looking forward to going back to try the usual menu.
I Wear My Glasses Far Too Often
Ever since I got my new glasses, I am wearing them far too often. Pretty soon the world without them will be completely fuzzy.
Love, love, love the Delicious redesign. I was part of the beta, but I didn’t really use it. Definitely seems speedier, which was my only complaint. I am such a delicious addict.
Speaking of addictions, if Apple ever gets totally rid of Input Mangers, I’m screwed. Edit-in-TextMate is just indispensable.
Not surprised that TiVo has let the Series 3 go.
Loved the SYTYCD season finale. I voted for Katee, but I knew that Joshua would win. I’m very happy that she was the top girl, though. I would also like to point out that Katee was in four of the ‘favorite’ dances while the rest of the four finalists were only in two (or three, in Twitch’s case) dances each.
I’m liking Shear Genius much more than Project Runway. I didn’t expect that at all.
Cablevision added a whole mess of HD channels last week. Including Discovery HD, FX HD, AMC HD and Spike HD. All this really means are HD versions of MythBusters, Deadliest Catch, Rescue Me and repeats of CSI. Pretty awesome though.
Incase you couldn’t tell, I’ve really been missing lists.
The Thing About American Idol
Apparently executive producer Nigel Lythgoe is leaving American Idol.
I personally didn’t watch American Idol this year… I wanted to, but it just didn’t interest me. I think that this mostly has to do with the contestants that are being chosen for the show. They’re selecting people who aren’t always very appealing or at least very talented.
Regardless, the people they should pick should be people who just have not been discovered yet, instead of people who would never be discovered.
SYTYCD, however, picks more appealing/talented contestants, and the ones who aren’t appealing are off the show fairly quickly. I don’t know if this is because of the pairs, the fact that two people are kicked off each week, or the fact that the judges pick the first few people who are kicked off. For whatever reason, the contestants are more compelling and that is why I watch.
Cable YoYo Pop
Cable YoYo Pop (RadTech)
Yes, I know I’m reviewing a ten dollar product.
It’s designed to stick onto the back of your iPod. However, if you have an iPhone, you probably don’t want to stick your headphones on it all the time.
So I stuck the suction cup to the included same-sized belt-clip. It worked like a charm.
It took me way too long to find the ideal way to keep my headphones in my purse.
Small and very thin.
However not too tiny that you lose it within the first day.
It’s the perfect size.
Very, very impressed.
Clearly, I Need Sleep
This morning I noticed I was pretty much out of face wash, but I knew I had another bottle in my bedroom so I didn’t buy one today. So tonight, when I went to wash my face in the bathroom, I realized I had to get the other bottle. However I couldn’t find the new bottle anywhere. I was looking all over forever. I finally found it on the bathroom sink. Yes, I had completely forgotten I had already put the new bottle in the bathroom this morning.
Clearly, I need sleep. Plenty of sleep.
