abzme Endorsements, 2008

With the election a week away, it seems we haven’t said much about politics on this website.  I know most of my readers are Republicans (since it’s Sean and UL), but despite my appeal to the rich, I tend to vote against them.  For now I know this is because I’m not rich.  I live with my dad.  But I like to think that if I was, I’d still vote against them.  The thought of switching sides like a cliche would make me feel like I live in the Matrix.

I voted already in Rockland in an absentee ballott since I’ll be away next week (GREECE!).  Since I got a chance to take my time filling out my form, I decided to check every candidate out.  Here’s the email i wrote to my mom…

I’ve already placed my absentee ballot since I’ll be away on Election day.  But I wanted to share my votes with you for who else you’ll be voting for in Rockland:

President – I picked Obama (no surprise there)

17th District in Congress –  Eliot Engel – Democrat.  I was a bit put off by his service for so long, but I read about how he’s voted and his support has only grown.  Goodman has very little to say except that he’s ran for state congress and some other stuff before but has never won that either.  Vote for Engel.

State Senator – Thomas Morahan has been in there for a while and he’s protecting his seat from Greg Julian.  I found that Rockland Journal News along with other websites think he wastes alot of taxpayer dollars on wasteful crap – for example, he sent a letter to me telling me to vote for him using our tax dollars – it’s a wasteful election tactic and in NYC they’re coming down on that stuff.   Julian on the other hand seems a lot more practical and on the side of the people.  He’s got a tough fight ahead, but it’s worth seeing the two sides.  http://www.julian08.com/

The trustee’s is the next place you need to make a choice: two of the three running.  Here I voted for Haggerty and Brennan, though they all seem like good choices.  Haggerty was once mayor and Brennan (a Republican) wants the community to have more voice in developments.

http://www.lohud.com/article/20081009/NEWS03/810090426/1019/RSS0102

Just a little help if you were curious.  Oh, and if you want to write in my name on the ballot, you’re more than welcome.

Right this way…

Starr directed me to a very cool looking website I thought I’d share with you.

hiddenpassageway.com

They basically build you secret rooms and stuff in your home.  Very polished and very cool looking.  They claim it raises the value of your home as well.  I don’t know about that, but I know as a kid, I was obsessed with secret passageways in my own home.   Anything that might resemble something like this would have made me the coolest kid in the neighborhood.  For my part, I spent alot of time checking out the crawl space in our house, which was in a closet in the basement bedroom that led to the foundation under the house that was higher up on the hill our house was built on.  Very creepy and very cold, but damn cool.  Eventually I grew too big to play in the crawl space and by then I figured out that rats probably lived in there and so I stopped hanging out in there.  But I guess it’ll always remain that bastard part of the house less understood than the rest.

POSTSCRIPT: Check out the wall facade that holds the vases.  One of them raises up to reveal…YOUR GUNS!  How’s that for secret James Bond stuff.

Large Bank Account

What kind of bank, looking for exposure, decides to use this lady for their advertising?  This is a Sterling Bank, which I’d never heard of until they moved into my office building lobby.  I don’t get the best impression of them with this picture and sorta feel like the bank is cheap.  Not to mention, you already have people behind desks right when you walk in.  Why spend money taking pictures of them and putting them up in the window, when they’re already SEATED BEHIND THE WINDOW!?!  Yeah right, like I’m going to give my money to these guys.   And more, okay, lets say you’re going with this ad campaign, why not take a picture of your hottest bank teller and put that picture in the window?  Or does this lady show how plentiful life can be with Sterling Savings bank.

I have a headache today that I woke up with.  I don’t understand.  I’ve got a mouthguard to protect me from grinding my teeth, and still my head hurts. What’s the point of getting the ugliest mouthguard if I’m still going to wake up with headaches.  My muscles in my back and neck are also in pain though, so this could be a cause of my headache, though it seems unfair for muscles to give me pain in two places instead of just one.  I think because I sleep on an air mattress with my cousin (head to toe), or because if I’m not on an air mattress I’m on the couch.  Or maybe it’s that the window’s open and I wake up tsittering (yiddish for shaking from the cold or something).  Or maybe it’s the fact that we don’t recycle enough at work.  I have no idea, but I think I will try to make an appointment at the Physical Therapist again to help me with my back pain.  Starr sent me this.

I’m going to columbus this weekend and so I’m trying to learn more about my host city’s history.  Did you know Columbus had ancient mounds all around the city?  I’m picturing the Shire, but I know it’s not true.  I wish it was.  I’d love to be dating a pretty girl like Starr who just happens to come from the Shire, and she grew up in a Hobbit Hole, with a big round door and they all had festivals all the time and everyone smoked, and when I went to visit I’d help them get things down from high up shelves and stuff.

[postscript: At the Sterling website they do indeed have a cute chick in their ad telling me that I need a responsible bank….maybe I do…]

The Grind

For the past year I’ve been grinding my teeth at night.  Starr tells me this often, and on top of the drool, the snoring, and the hitting (yes, I hit in my sleep), I don’t know how she still can call me up and ask me to spend the night.  Just the other night, she grabbed my face and pushed it to the side (I think…I was asleep) because my grinding was out of control when I was laying on my back.  In my fog, I think I yelled something about being really stressed.  I was….Work had me all worked up this week, but also, Starr’s bed is really high up and it sort of bothers me.  I guess I like a low bed.  Also, she’s got all these pillows that take up space so my feet hang off the end.  Not to mention that I sleep against the wall and that sort of reminds me of my bed growing up and I fear falling into that crack.  Oh, and to avoid offending anyone while I sleep I try to inch over to the edge as much as possible so as to give no excuse as to the amount of room I’m taking up.  But I still eventually roll around, snore, hit, and drool.

But I’m loosing track.  I decided to take care of one of my nighttime ailments last week and while at the dentist I finally caved and got fitted for a mouthguard to keep me from grinding my teeth at night.  The headaches have become somewhat unbearable.  So I took a 45minute train out to Queens today, then took the Q46 bus another 45 minutes out to 247th street to my dentist to pick up this thing and I must say, I’m sad.

My aunt told me about a contraption she used in Israel that fits in the front of your teeth, holds them from clenching, and she said in two weeks she didn’t need it anymore.  I believe her too because everything in Israel is better as per every Israeli I’ve ever met (though my Aunt’s from Springfield.)  So I took pictures (see above) and I showed them to my dentist cause a small thing like that and I’ll be cured in two weeks?!  What’s the catch?

But my dentist didn’t care about my pictures when I showed him and said he used something different.  And when I picked it up tonight, it felt like Forrest Gump’s dentist had said, Put this in your mouth and you won’t never grind them teeth again!  You don’t need that fancy foreign stuff!  Of course I don’t go on to win the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest.  Instead of my dreams of a two week, miniscule infraction into my sleeping mouth, my dentist outfitted me with a retainer.  A what? A retainer.  Like in junior high.  

But surely this will straighten my teeth while I sleep for added benefit, right?  No.  It’s just made to keep you from connecting your teeth together at night and to make sure you’re as ugly as possible when you’re doing it.

But I’m sick of waking up with a sore jaw when I’m not even gay.  And I hate the headaches I wake up with when they’re not just a side effect to planning a heist of the Federal Reserve.  And I feel bad for Starr who puts up with alot.  So tonight I’ll give it a try and see what happens.  

Meanwhile, I told someone at work about this and she said she was having the same problem and that when she told her dentist, he said, nonchalantly, that everyone in NY grinds their teeth.  Weird, huh.  Before this, I thought the only other place I’d heard of it was in a Daffy Duck cartoon. 

Babysitting….2j8kt8y

Right now I’m babysitting my nephew.  He’s watching Max & Ruby.  It’s a boring show about `68-=[ Sorry.  He just typed that…proving my point that the show is boring enough for him to be distracted by me typing and thus feel the need to push the buttons on the computer.  That said, the show is about a rabbit sister and her little brother Max.  For some reason, Ruby is always babysitting her little brother.  I think their parents are dead and the grandmother watches them, but only sometimes.  Anyway, Max is always the victim of Ruby and her one friend’s experiments in make-up, and cooking, and things like that, usually in an attempt to get a girl-scout badge (but I don’t think they call it ‘girl scouts’).  The show does feature a nice 1920’s-esque musical beat, with clarinets and brass humming nice music for the kids (I think this is good musical exposure for them), also, they live in a 3CQ FKVJYUqR4STHHBHG SORry

They live in a nice Victorian house, complete with wallpaper and a coathanger (with a hat on it (one day I’d like to live in that house)).  Other than that, the show is boring. Before he started watching this we played this great game where I showed him old cartoon theme songs from when I was a kid.  It was challenging coming up with more and more, but, man, those songs are great.  We watched He-Man, Mighty Max, Thundercats, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tailspin (great show), and Tiny Toons.  He loved it, but in the end was requesting a little less scary, so I finished him off with The Get-Along Gang.  That to me was the scariest one.   Meanwhile, I had a headache all day today due to a long bout of teethgrinding the night before.  It was utterly painful stuff and I think it was stress induced, because work has been off the charts exhausting lately.  Not to mention that my boss has been unhappy with me lately.  I know this because he’s yelled at me and told me he’s unhappy with me.

 

[please disregard the spacing.  i don’t know how this happened…please blame wordpress]