iTunes meme

How many total songs?

  • 9049 (Although my harddrive has about 30 000 that I just don’t listen to)

Sort by song title – first and last? (Not including numbers)

  • First: A - The Barenaked Ladies
  • Last: Zzzzz - The Cab 

Sort by time – shortest and longest?

  • Shortest: Prelude - Next to Normal (0:27)
  • Longest: Untitled - Queen (22:33)

Sort by Album – first and last?

  • First: Abbey Road - The Beatles
  • Last: Zenyatta Mondatta - The Police

Sort by Artist – first and last?

  • First: Aaron Kelly - I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing (American Idol)
  • Last: ZZ Top - La Grange

Top five played songs?

  1. Hey There Delilah - Plain White T’s (629)
  2. It Ends Tonight - All American Rejects (439)
  3. This Boy - James Morrison (434)
  4. Gunnin’ - Hedley (431)
  5. Thunder (Acoustic) - Boys Like Girls (419)

Find the following words. How many songs show up?

  • Sex: 28
  • Death: 36
  • Love: 454
  • You: 1171
  • Home: 73
  • Boy: 263
  • Girl: 207

Q:u seem to know a lot about friendship and what it really is. question. what do u do when u need to talk to a friend about something but they dont wanna hear about it

Anonymous

Well for the most part, if I need to talk to a friend, the friends that I want to go to are there for me. Generally speaking of course. There are a few instances where I know that my friend doesn’t want to hear about it though, and in that case I don’t talk to them about it. 
Generally speaking, if a friend is a good friend, then they will either hear it, or tell you that you are an idiot for doing whatever it is that you are doing and will offer constructive criticism (with or without you asking them for it). I think that if your ‘friend’ doesn’t want to hear about your issues, and if they aren’t there when you need them, then you have to seriously reconsider how good of a ‘friend’ that person is.  

This is what happens when one has no life on a Friday night and Saturday afternoon, so one spends one’s day drawing pictures of Pikachu and Firefox. 

Prom

So I asked Tori Joseph to prom today. 

This is the video of how I asked Tori to prom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs9OzZ27gUg

I wanted to do something a bit different, but something that was thought out and personal. I feel like I did a decent job at fulfilling those requirements.

I started off her day by putting a note on her locker in an envelope. This note started off a sort of scavenger hunt; the note was her first clue which led to the next clue.  

I know that what I wrote was slightly corny, but that’s kind of the point, and I made it rhyme and everything. Here’s the four clues that I made for her: 

So she started off at her locker. The second note was on the grade 12 bulletin board, under a sign that said PROM on it (I know, subtle eh?). The third was in the library in the encyclopedia, and the fourth was back on her locker, which I put there right before lunch started. 

I hid while people mulled about and I watched her open the envelope, and then I walked (with Ethan filming and Yehuda holding my rose, thanks guys) to her and played her the song “Billionaire” by Bruno Mars, which I rewrote to fit the occasion. You can see it (in case you missed the blatant link at the top) if you go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs9OzZ27gUg

If you can’t understand the words very well, here they are: 

“I wanna go to prom with you so frickin bad
I just wanna take you to our grad
You are my birthday bud, we’re born on the same day
I am asking you to prom this way

Oh I have known you for so long
For you I have now written two songs
We’ll have a lot of fun you’ll see
Tori, will you please agree
To go to prom with me?”

A little background: I have known Tori for almost my whole life. We share a birthday (January 27th, write that down), and I’ve gone to school with her for 15 years. In grade 8, I wrote a song called “Birthday Buddy” for/to her. In case you were all wondering what those references were…

So there you go. Promposals at my school are a lot of fun, and although some people bash them because of the pressure, I think that after going through the experience, it was worthwhile. It was a lot of fun, and regardless of how nervous I was, I think both Tori and myself got a lot out of it. I’m happy that she liked it, and thanks to everyone who helped out and to everyone who watched. 

A true friend

*Disclaimer - although everybody tries their hardest, nobody is perfect, and this is expected and of course accepted. I cannot say that anybody does everything perfectly, regardless, in an ideal world, everyone can do their best. I do not fulfill most of these guidelines on a daily basis, despite how hard I try, and to those of you who I call friends: I am very sorry that I am doing a bad job. Regardless, here goes.*

It is very difficult to be a perfect friend. 

Let me point this out: perfection is something that by definition is quite impossible to achieve. It can be defined as: 

1. Lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind.
2. Being without defect or blemish.

Along with many other definitions that are not relevant.

No human being can be perfect, at least not in this sense. Totally complete? Without defect or blemish? Perfection is something that most people seem to strive for, but like an asymptote (yes that’s a math reference, deal with it) it is something that even if you get really close to it, you will never hit it. There is always that little thing that you can do better. 

And there is nothing wrong with that. 

Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but for the purpose of my argument, a true friend can’t be perfect. It would defeat the purpose of friendship. A friend must be able to make mistakes, and a friend has to be able to show you that in fact nobody is perfect, by being imperfect themselves. You can’t make the argument for a perfect friend by conventional definition, but with regards to friendship, a perfect friend can lack ‘essentials’ and have ‘blemishes’. Everybody lacks something, and everyone has defects of some sort, not necessarily physical, but more emotional or psychological.

So for this blog session, I am not arguing that you need to be a perfect person in order to be a true friend. In fact, I am arguing quite the opposite. You need to be a true person in order to be a perfect friend.

After saying this, there are a few things that friends can do to achieve the status of a true friend. 

  1. For starters, lying is never a good thing to do. Lying is something that will always get back to you. Once you start a lie, it spreads and spreads, and like wildfire, it can’t be put out until the whole forest burns down. Lying to a friend is one of the biggest slaps in the face. Trust is extremely important in friendship, and lying betrays trust more than almost anything else can.
  2. Be there. When a friend just got a 37% on his test (or her, but since I am too lazy to say ‘his or her’ every time, I’m just saying his), and he thinks that his life is over and that he may as well give up, it is imperative that you be there for him. Sacrifice something out of your life in order to do something for him. Of course there are limits; you can’t do this every single day, and there are times when you need to put yourself first. But on the odd occasion where your friend needs you, be there to allow him to lean on you. 
  3. Express yourself. Communication is such a necessity when it comes to being friends. And I don’t mean just through electronic devices, but I mean in person too (this is something that I really need to work on, and to all of my friends out there, I am sorry that I am so abysmal at this point, but I am trying my best). It really defines a true, good friend, if you can get together and just chill. Do whatever it is that you do together. And when you’re not together, talk to her as well (see what I did there, switched to her, that was for all you gender freaks who will blow up at me for being sexist by saying him and not saying her). If you don’t enjoy talking to your friends, then why are you friends with them. 

Now I’m tired of this list, and I could probably go on for a very long time, but apart from these three things (at least off the top of my head) the definition of a true friend varies from relationship to relationship. Regardless, the point of this post for me isn’t really defining what a true friend is, it’s more defining what a true friend isn’t. Since we have decided that being arbitrarily ‘good’ is not ‘perfect’, we can then come to the conclusion of saying that being ‘imperfect’ IS ‘good’. Therefore, the moral of the story: people make mistakes. Suck it up, work through your differences, and if you mesh, then your friendship will blossom. Don’t go and throw it away for some stupid reason. You never know: in thirty years from now, your kids may be friends, and then you’re stuck together. So in my opinion, just be friendly. I don’t want to look back on my life and not be able to face people that I went to school with because we were not friends, or worse, because we were ‘enemies’. In the end, what is a friend? It’s a person who you see on the street when you’re old and grey, and you smile and wave, and you walk on by. Or it’s a person who you spend the rest of your life with.

To be a true friend just takes that small little bit of effort. Go that little tiny bit out of your way to make somebody else happy. With a good friend, you go that mile out of your way. In the end, it makes you happy as well. 

Friendship is weird that way. You have better friends than others, but ultimately, if you are just in general ‘friendly’, you can just go on with your life without regrets. 

Death

When somebody who is close to you dies, you just don’t know what to do. 

I am having a very difficult time wrapping my head around death. My biggest problem is that I just don’t know what I believe in. Death is quite a difficult stage for most people as it is, as the person who they know and love has passed away, and you can’t talk to them anymore, and you will never see them again. That feeling of emptiness takes over, and you are left grieving for the person who is gone. 

I felt this emotional void yesterday, and of course, I was upset. Although I am shocked that Sandra Farber is gone, and I will never be able to see her again, she was experiencing the later stages of cancer, and her time was up. She was 72 years old. 

She isn’t my immediate family, but regardless, my aunt’s mother is a close enough relation that I really feel the affects of her death. My family spent enough time with her that we grew accustomed to her wit, her laugh, and that maternal presence that she had when she was around her children and her grandchildren. Nevertheless, her time is up, and she has ‘moved on’. We will miss you Sandra, we love you. 

This brings me to my difficult dilemma that is sparring inside my head right now, this essential problem that I can’t seem to get over. Because I don’t know what ‘moved on’ really means. 

Nobody really does though.

Regardless, I am a Jew, and as such, I go to a Jewish school in which we learn about the practices of my people. It is quite coincidental that in my Rabbinics class, we just finished the Death and Mourning portion of our curriculum, and consequently, I am pretty well versed in the laws and rituals pertaining to death. My biggest problem is that I do not believe in God, so how am I supposed to apply these rituals and laws to my own mourning?

I am having this dilemma, in which I don’t know what to do. I know that regardless of my beliefs, I am still Jewish, and so in respect to my culture, my history, and my aunt’s mother, I will follow those rituals as I am supposed to, but am I honestly doing them for myself? No.

I don’t believe in God and so how can I say that she has ‘moved on’? What has she moved on to? I don’t know, but what I do think is that I don’t believe that she has gone to what Jews call the Garden of Eden, which is our closest equivalent to heaven. In fact, it makes the most sense to me that her life has ceased to exist, and that is that. 

That is a very uncomfortable and chilling thought. It is hard to even think that Sandra Farber has ceased to exist. It is all the more difficult to try to say that to someone in my family, who along with me, is grieving. When I go to Montreal tomorrow, and I see my extended family, and I’m at the funeral on Sunday, what am I supposed to say to all of the people who are mourning? If I can’t come to terms with saying that she has ‘gone to a better place’ or she has ‘moved on’, then what can I say? 

I have been struggling with this ever since that topic has begun in my Rabbinics class. Never mind what observant Jews believe, never mind even what non-observant Jews believe; what do I believe? Well I can say that I don’t believe in God. So how do I look at death, within a relatively observant family, when I don’t believe in God? How do I comfort my family; how do I comfort myself? 

I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m stuck in the middle of the crossroads, and every time I try to extricate God or religion from this equation in my head, I am left with my empty, lonely thoughts. Which is what I do believe in, but regardless, doesn’t solve this issue. 

The issue is not that I am confused as to whether or not God exists. That is not one of the main questions that pop into my head when a family member dies. The issue is that I don’t know how to associate myself within a group of religious people during this emotional time. I don’t know how I can follow rituals that I don’t believe in. I don’t know what I’d want my family to be doing if I was the one who was dead. I don’t know… and that is what my issue is. 

At this point in my head, I can see the value behind the religious aspect of mourning. Jews come together and emphasize community and focus on the mourners, and as a whole, we can overcome the grief. Death after all is a part of life, and we need to stay together, through thick and thin, and so all of the rituals following the burial are designed to keep us united, and to help us through the hard times, and get us back on our feet. The seven days that we sit Shiva emphasizes the importance of transition, and it allows the mourners to properly integrate themselves back into society, after accepting the death, and after being able to go through the initial pain of losing somebody you love. The community is there for the mourners, and this is something that without religion, there would be no purpose to this process. 

Religion gives us a guideline as to what we should be doing when something like this happens. Religion doesn’t necessarily guide my life, in fact it doesn’t at all. But when those few occurrences happen, such as this, when I just don’t know what to do with myself, what do I need to fall back on? Religion. Although I am falling back on it because there is no other standard. There is no other way for me to go about mourning. And also, my entire family is doing the Jewish rituals, I don’t really have much other choice. 

I am not nearly at the point where this topic is coming to a close in my head, but I don’t know how exactly to express my words in any other way, so this topic is coming to a close on this blog. I don’t have a solution yet, and I just don’t know exactly what I believe in. What I do know is that I will not be able to let this go. I have reached a stage in my life where I have to make this decision, and I know that I won’t be able to impulsively make a decision and be happy with it. I will think about this until it is resolved, or at least nearly resolved; when that will be… I don’t know. 

Sandra Farber - May you rest in peace. We miss you, and we love you.