Math teachers can’t be English teachers

Non-English teachers are really funny. Gym teachers have been known to say really funny comments, but today I have a line from my math teacher. (He wrote this on the whiteboard:)

“This still does not exist cuz limit’s must be real values.”

Ok, so the “cuz” is slightly humorous (though grammatically revolting), especially because he’s older than 13 and seemed to do it to be funny. But the apostrophe in limits? COME ON! Attention, world: if you are making a word like “limit” plural, you don’t need the apostrophe. Just add an S. Just like that. Poof. L-I-M-I-T-S.

That reminds me of a story of my brother when he was little. The old Dominick’s signs used to have really big apostrophes, that looked like a period with a curly tail (as opposed to the straight kind). My parents asked Michael if he could read the sign.

So he read the sign outloud.

“D-o-m-i-n-i-c-k-9-s.” He actually said the nine. No wonder he has grown up to be a math major!

an article for west word…be a part of it!

I’m writing an article for West Word on…BLOGS! Haha isn’t that exciting?

So if you go to NW (and even if you don’t, it will give some me nice perspectives), comment here on why you like blogs (and if you don’t, why not).

(Someone told me yesterday that blogs are stupid! I almost cried.)

Also…I’m kind of (REALLY) curious as to who reads this. If you’re reading this now, comment…say something funny, talk about blogs, talk about your favorite…things.

Why do you like blogs? (That means weblogs, like livejournal or xanga, for the “FS” among you.) (Nathan, best theory EVER!) I’ll quote you! (maybe)

School…grrr

School has started. My last best summer ever is over. (Every summer for about the last seven years has been better than the last. For some reason, I don’t think that working next summer will top Israel or Wheels, or even camp.)

My classes look hard. But I have a feeling I’m going to have early onset Senioritis. But not because I’m lazy or I don’t want to do the work…but because I’ll be so busy with USY and West Word.

Yes, I’ll be missing about 15 days of school this year for Jewish holidays and USY conventions. WOW.

In Euro, there’s a big map of Europe and some surrounding areas. There’s no Israel on the map though. It says Palestine. Ummmm.

I forgot how much chemistry there is in bio. Booooooooo.

It’s weird that every single person in the school is younger than us.

Senior year. Well then.

Look, ma–a live journal!

I just learned that my mom and dad read my live journal on a regular basis. So I wanted to send out a special shoutout just to them. Hi Mom and Dad!!

an English paper–it’s funny

By popular demand (Dan Macsai!), I am posting this paper that I turned in last year for English–our “creative project.” (The assignment was: “Take some words that we worked with this year and make something creative out of them.”) So I made a funny skit making fun of the characters from a lot of the books we read. So if you’ve been through Niles West GAW, take a look here.

“Alcoholics Anonymous”

It tears apart families, relationships, and friendships. It separates the mind from the body, and deteriorates the brain. It is, in this writer’s opinion, something that causes way too many deaths than it should. It did, however, serve as a unifying factor for a majority of the novels read in Great American Writers this year. It’s alcohol, and characters in almost every American book live by it.

Due to the recent surge of knowledge of the harmful effects of alcohol, many of these characters have discovered the wrongness in their ways, and wish to quit their problems. We encounter them here, some years after each of their respective novels concluded, wanting to share their experiences with others.

[The room—the basement of a church in a small town—is filled with people sitting in fold-up chairs in a circle. People don’t seem to be conversing with each other, and most don’t seem to have any relation to the others.]

Leader: Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. You have all taken the first—and most important—step of recognizing your alcohol problems and beginning to combat them. Congratulations for doing this. From now on, whenever you have a craving for alcohol, you need not step foot in a bar. You need only come here, to AA, to share with the rest of us what you’ve been going through. We will now bond as a group and listen to each other’s stories. Feel free to begin talking when you’re ready.

James Tyrone: I guess I’ll start. I’m James Tyrone, and I’m an alcoholic.

All: Hi, James.

Tyrone: Hi. I used to say that good whiskey, taken in moderation as an appetizer, is the best of tonics. I knew that I could handle moderation, but it’s my sons that I was worried about. I always knew that it would be a waste of breath mentioning “moderation” to Jamie, my son. My other son, Edmund, was sick, and my wife Mary had a morphine addiction. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Alcohol was my way of escaping it all. I smoked cigars too—I’ll admit that I still do—but I’m trying to give up alcohol altogether.

George: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf…

Leader: Good for you for admitting to your cigar addiction as well.

Tyrone: With my alcoholism and Mary’s morphine addiction, it was hard for us to lead normal lives. But what keeps me going is Mary’s long-lasting words in my mind: “We’ve loved each other! We always will! Let’s remember only that, and not try to understand what we cannot understand, or help things that cannot be helped—the things life has done to us we cannot excuse or explain.” We cannot excuse or explain our alcohol addictions, but we can try to put a stop to them.

All: [applause] Thanks, James.

Benjy Compson: Cannot excuse or explain My name is Benjy Compson.

All: Hi, Benjy.

Benjy: I’m an alchoholic. Sassprilluh. Whooey. Sometimes I like to drink alcohol. My sister Caddy had a wedding and I had sassprilluh. It made me feel good. I saw cows jumping out of the barn. Sassprilluh. I don’t know if I understand how I felt. I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t crying, but the ground wasn’t still, and then I was crying. The ground kept sloping up and the cows ran up the hill. T.P. tried to get up. He fell down again and the cows ran down the hill.

All: [confused looks]

Leader: Let that consciousness stream!

Benjy: [begins to cry] Sassprilluh. Whooey. It was hot inside me, and I began again. I was crying now, and something was happening inside me and I cried more, and they held me until it stopped happening. Then I hushed.

All: [applause] Thank you, Benjy.

Peter Fallow: [in a British accent] Good day. I’m Peta Fallow, and I’m an alcoholic.

All: Hi, Peter.

Fallow: I don’t exactly know where to begin.

Leader: Start anywhere, we’ll pick up. Start when you’re ready.

Fallow: Well, my most distinct memory of being drunk was that morning-after—the hangover. Those days I often woke up like this, poisonously hung over, afraid to move an inch and filled with an abstract feeling of despair and shame.

Martha: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf…

Fallow: The ringing telephone began to alarm me. Suppose it was The City Light. I had sworn to be in the office by ten o’clock every morning, and now it was after one. I thought that I better not answer the phone, but then I thought that I should. I rolled out of bed and put my feet on the floor. I was thrown into a violent headache. I wanted to vomit, but I knew it would hurt my head too much for me to allow it to happen.

Benjy: Caddy smelled like trees.

Leader: What happened the night before that caused you to have the hangover? Why did you drink?

Fallow: I had been at Leicester’s the night before, my favorite restaurant. I usually managed to insinuate myself at the table of an American who could be counted on to pick up the bill without pouting over it. The night before, it was a fat fellow named Aaron Gutwillig. I was broke, but I just kept ordering drinks, and he kept paying for them. The American girls just kept coming, and I just kept getting drunker.

All: [nodding in understanding]

Fallow: But it needed to stop. I am a reporter. I am an Englishman, and I needed to preserve the extraordinarily respectable reputation we have here. The City Light is one of the most honorable newspapers in New York City, and if I wanted to keep my job, I needed to learn to stay sober.

Leader: Good for you.

All: Thanks, Peter.

Fortunato: It is indeed very lucky that I am here. I am Fortunato, and I was an alcoholic.

All: Hi, Fortunato.

Fortunato: I know for a fact that I will drink alcohol nevermore. It inflicted upon my friend over a thousand injuries. Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak July…I mean…December…that my dear friend Montresor called me to have wine—the Amontillado—with him. I was sick—I had a cough—but he insisted on taking me down to the catacombs of the wine cellar. I drank the wine, and drank, and drank. I didn’t realize what I was doing.

[bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells ring]

Fortunato: Montresor had brought a trowel down to the wine cellar, he told me, because he was a mason. I was so drunk, I didn’t realize that it would be the death of me—literally. I was locked in the cellar, left to die. It was most unfortunate.

[A raven flies through room. A black cat is seen walking across the ground.]

Huckleberry Finn: I’ll betcha won’ do that again?

Fortunato: Alcohol? Quoth Fortunato, nevermore.

All: [applause] Thanks, Fortunato.

Huckleberry Finn: I’m Huckleberry Finn, and I ain’ no alcoholic, but my ol’ pap was, an’ I wanted to speak ‘ere bout what that did to me.

All: Hi, Huck.

Huck: It all started when pap got money from Judge Thatcher. Every time pap got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me.

Benjy: Caddy smelled like trees in the rain.

Fallow: So when your father was drunk, Huck, would you describe yourself as being up the creek without a paddle?

Huck: So when pap went into town to get whiskey, I reckoned that I could pretend that I died. Pap usually complained about the govment when he was drunk. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn’t go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. Pap cussed at me and hit me, but then left me alone long enough for me to fake death.

Roland Auburn: Yeah, faking your own death is really fun. Henry was real good at it. I mean…no…he was killed by “Shumun.” [realizes he said something he shouldn’t have]

Huck: Yeah, I could enjoy my life with Jim and have enough adventures—completely sober. I don’ want any of you to become like pap.

All: [applause] Thanks, Huck.

Virginia Woolf: Why is everyone so afraid of me?

George: I’m George, and I’m an alcoholic.

All: Hi, George.

George: I am a history professor at a college in New Carthage. My wife Martha and I invited our colleagues Nick and Honey over late one night, and all we did is drink. The alcohol just caused my wife and I to argue and argue, and yell at each other.

Leader: How did you start drinking?

George: When I was sixteen and going to prep school, during the Punic Wars, a bunch of us used to go into New York on the first day of vacations, before we fanned out to our homes, and in the evening this bunch of us used to go to this gin mill owned by the gangster-father of one of us—for this was during the Great Experiment, or Prohibition, as it is more frequently called, and it was a bad time for the liquor lobby, but a fine time for the crooks and cops. One boy among us kept drinking bergin, and soon, shot his own mother. That’s what alcohol can do to you.

All: [applause] Thanks, George.

Holden Caulfield: I’m Holden Caulfield, I’m an alcoholic—underage.

All: Hi, Holden.

Holden: I had a pretty lousy high school experience. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how I became addicted to alcohol, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. That stuff bores me. I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas.

Benjy: You dont want your hands froze on Christmas, do you.

Holden: Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one o’clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. I could hardly see straight. When I was really drunk, I started that stupid business with the bullet in my guts again. I was the only guy at the bar with the bullet in their guts. Boy, was I drunk. I was so drunk that I couldn’t call old Jane, so I called old Sally Hayes instead.

Non-GAW high school student: Holden, stop going off on tangents, you’re boring! Why do I have to read this?

Holden: I was crying and all. I don’t know why, but I was. I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome.

All: [applause] Thank you, Holden.

George: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf…

Tyrone: For the love of God, for my sake and the boys’ sake and your own, won’t you stop now?

[There is silence for a few moments, and people being to look around the room. Everyone’s attention is suddenly fixed on a woman with a scarlet “A” on her chest. All of the alcoholics glare at her quizzically.]

Hester Prynne: What, you all thought it stood for ADULTERY?
[The end.]

Hope you enjoyed.

essay questions

For any of you applying to Northwestern for fall ‘05, if you haven’t looked at the major essay questions, here they are:

1. In 1972 meteorologist Edward Lorenz theorized that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. What small action had a larger impact than you expected? How were you affected by the consequences?

2. Ballpoint pens do not write in zero-gravity conditions. While a pen manufacturer spent more than $2 million and years of research developing a pen that worked in outer space, astronauts solved the problem by using pencils. Describe a time when you discovered a simple solution to a seemingly complex problem. What was its impact on you or others?

3. According to astronomer Carl Sagan, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” What unknown would you like to see revealed in your lifetime? Why is this of personal importance?

4. U.S. President Richard Nixon (1969-74) stated, “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger, the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.” In what “crisis” situation were you aware of the danger but were able to seize the opportunity, and how did this experience affect your future actions?

Sorry, but these questions are extraordinarily bogus.

I feel like writing some of my OWN questions now. (And yes, that is one of the questions in the short-answer section: to write your own question.)

1. New shoes are often stiff and sometimes have an odor. It is not until a few wears that they actually begin to fit. Discuss a time when you felt uncomfortable in a new situation, and it took you a while to become acclimated. How did that make you feel?

2. Most would agree that freshly picked flowers are beautiful and exciting. They soon, however, begin to wilter. Mint gum tastes great in the beginning–minty fresh–but after a few minutes of chewing, begins to taste like the shoes in the last question. Discuss a time in your life when something that used to excite you “lost its flavor.” Did you move on to new interests?

3. The Arabs and Israelis are often criticized for their bitter relationships. However, the word for peace in Hebrew is “shalom” and in Arabic is “salaam.” Discuss a time in your life when your differences with other people masked similarities that could have brought you closer together.

4. Former President Jimmy Carter used to be a peanut farmer. Describe a journey in your life where you started as something seemingly unimportant, but ended as an accomplished person.

Writing essay questions is fun! I think I found a new hobby.

Feel free to answer any of these! Or think of your own.

spooning!

I just got back from an all-nighter board meeting. Yup, we met from about 11:00 pm until 4:00 am. It’s incredible how much you can get done at those hours of the morning! (We actually did get a LOT done!) You should all really try it. I wonder if I’ll be able to convince my parents that I should stay up late every night because “I work best between the hours of midnight and 3 am”…we’ll see.

So after the meeting, we all hung out and chilled. And, we got to take advantage of the new buzzword I learned this summer: SPOONING. Spooning is cuddling close together in a position that the bodies are curled like spoons. Over the summer (through Israel, camp, and now this board meeting), we’ve created some variations: knifing (that’s spooning but straight, like knives) and forking (hahahaha).

I’m not very good at spooning though. I can’t stay in one position all night. (Of course, last night, “night” = from 6:00 am to 9:00 am.)

I had never heard of spooning before this summer–I must live under a rock or something.

back from camp

Is Camp CHUSY really over? Woahhhhh. It felt so weird being there–we were the seniors! I felt like everything we did was “cool,” because we were the oldest, just like the seniors last year and the year before were so cool.

It was so lonely last night sleeping by myself without 13 of my closest friends with me!!

I sold 6 candy bars from Israel (mekupelet, pop rocks chocolate, white chocolate, etc) for TO and raised about $65!!! Someone (namely, Dave Goldberg) paid $25 for the pop rocks chocolate…wow, that’s crazy.

Why are the senior boys so weird?

cleaning for the cleaning lady

I had to clean my room tonight. Not because I don’t want it messy after I come home from Camp CHUSY next week. But because the cleaning lady is coming tomorrow. The CLEANING LADY is coming TOMORROW. My mom forced me to clean my room tonight before the cleaning lady gets there tomorrow. What are we paying her for??

It’s too bad that I won’t be able to hang out with her tomorrow–I actually know some Polish now! I could say “Djen dobreh!” (“Good morning!”) or “Prosheh!” (“Please!”) or “Lody!” (“Ice cream!”). We could reminisce about the different graffiti marks and smells that make up Poland. I wonder if she ever used zlotties for firewood. I know I would.

Maybe she’s friends with the Lot flight attendant who woke me up on the plane when it was time for breakfast. Or maybe she’s friends with the man at the mall who freaked out when we sat on the floor. Yeah, it’s a pretty friendly country, so I bet they are all friends.

1

So I decided to pretend to be cool and start one of these live journals. What do you write in these anyway?

It’s been a whole week since I got back from Israel. YEAH group 4. I really miss that whole thing. Poland really sucked though. But Israel–achla, chaval al hazman. Such a small country, such a small group of people…had such a big impact on me.

If you think you’re going to a good college, just talk to Dan Macsai, he’ll straighten you out. Because for sure, unless you’re going to schools 1-11, Northwestern is better ranked than your school.

My rabbi told me tonight that I should start thinking about rabbinical school. Ummmm….