YouTube Fridays

I saw this on the news this morning and thought it was so funny, I had to share it with y'all. In case you have not seen it, here is Paris Hilton's new campaign ad and she has the best president evah in her ad, Jed Bartlett.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Paris for (fake) President.

Thoughts on fasting and Yom Kippur

As many of you know, tonight is the first night of Yom Kippur, so I will be fasting for the next 24 or so hours. (It might not be 24 hours exactly depending on when GG and I eat tomorrow and I ate kind of late tonight, but still...) I was talking to a co-worker who is taking tomorrow off since it is Yom Kippur and she is fasting. I have no idea if she is going to a synagogue tomorrow, but I would not be surprised if she was. So I started to think about why I am fasting this year. I have not been to a synagogue in at least 2 or 3 years and not regularly since I graduated from undergrad seven years ago. So why am I fasting? It is not related to the idea of fasting to concentrate more on prayers, which never made sense to me in many ways as it was harder to focus having not eaten. It is not because I am especially religious. It is not even because I think that this is God's commandment, so I must follow it. I am a cultural Jew, someone who does the routines and rituals like fasting for Yom Kippur, lighting the menorah and eating latkes for Chanukah and not eating bread for Passover. I don't even light the candles for Shabbat or do any of the rituals like I used to do. But the fasting is the only one of the rituals for a holiday (I am not including the Shabbat rituals here) that I really follow for reasons outside of this is just part of my identity and Jewishness.

I fast because it is a reminder to me that I am lucky to have food on my table. I am lucky that I can eat three meals a day and snacks in between if I want. I am lucky that I do not have to decide between food or bills or gas. I am lucky that I have never truly experienced food insecurity. I went through some rough times, where I had to watch my food budget, but I was always able to eat. I work in public schools now where the snack that we feed to kids may be their breakfast or their lunch depending on whether they are in the AM or PM session. Where the fact that they get milk or juice and some cookies or crackers means that they will have eaten at least once that day. This may not apply to all of the kids that I work with, but I suspect that at least some of them do not eat at home before they come to school or at least not three meals at home. I think about the fact that I have the luxury to make a choice to not eat for a day and that many people for whom this is not a choice. There are days at the end of the month where there is nothing to eat for some, something I have not had to experience. I think about the fact that when tomorrow night comes, I will be able to eat again, not always an option for everyone. Fasting is hard, it is difficult and I seem to think more about food and drink when I am fasting than usual, but I know that this is only temporary. I know that I have people who care for me and that will help me if I ever truly do have issues where I cannot afford to pay for groceries. This year I also think about those families who are now struggling more than ever. Those families who got stuck in sub-prime mortgages or other tricks by shady lenders and are experiencing economic distress that they are not used to. I think about how some of these families are still trying to live the same way they had, while others are now just trying to now put food on the table and keep the electricity turned on. I am lucky to not have these struggles and so I fast for those who do, so that I may be more empathetic.

I also think about how this is supposed to be a Day of Atonement. There are many things I am sorry for, but I really think that our national leaders need to atone for what they have done to us as a nation. They need to atone for sending people to fight a war over oil. They need to atone for the lives they have cost us as a nation. They need to atone for the economic crisis that is now dragging our country down. And they need to atone for the hatred and bigotry that they have allowed to flourish i.e.-homophobia, racism and sexism. My actions probably affected one or two people, probably no more than ten, but when you send people to war to die you are affecting many more than my ten. I think there is a passage during the Yom Kippur prayers where we ask God for their forgiveness of our national leaders, I cannot do that. Our leaders need to ask forgiveness from first the peoples of this nation and then if their are so religiously motivated, their God.

To those of you who are fasting like me, I wish you good luck in your you fast. It is hard and by tomorrow night I will be ready to eat whatever we have for dinner, but I also like to try and make this fast meaningful to me and so I hope that if you are fasting you do it with meaning.

So does this mean I am an official Illinois-ite?

Today I mailed my NC license plate back to the NC DMV. I had gotten my IL plates yesterday, I had gotten my Illinois drivers license last week, I have a new cell phone number that is an IL number, so that license plate was the last vestige of my life in NC. It is just odd that, I guess I have to now accept that I have really moved here and am no longer a North Carolinian. Life is funny.

Movie Review- Towelhead

NOTE: When I looked this film up on IMDB.com. the title for it was Nothing is Private which may be a better title for the movie than Towelhead, but Towelhead is what the film is currently being shown in theaters as.

Towelhead is the story of a young women, Jasira, whose mother is White and father is Lebanese. At the beginning of the film, Jasira is living with her mother and her mother's boyfriend until the mother walks into the bathroom to find her boyfriend shaving her daughter's pubic area. The mother then realizes that Jasira should not be living in the same house as the mother's boyfriend and sends Jasira to live with her father in Houston. It seems unclear how long her parents have been divorced, but Jasira knows her father pretty well, but has not lived with him for many years. She is now living with her father in a brand new house in the 'burbs where two houses down live a White family with a young boy. The family comes to welcome Jasira and her dad to the neighborhood and are taken aback by the fact that their neighborhood has been invaded by Arabs. The father is in the National Guard and is about to be sent to Iraq in the first Gulf War under George Bush the First. The father played by Aaron Eckhart, is a stereotypical military Southern man with his blatant xenophobia and racism. He also is very creepy in the amount of attention he pays to Jasira. There are other neighbors that appear about midway through the film are played by Toni Collette and Matt Letscher who are a married couple just returned from the Middle East where they were Peace Corps workers. They also realize that Jasira may need some adult guidance and become involved in helping her to mature as much as they can.

The film follows Jasira and her developing sexuality as she has many different sexual experiences occur to her and the experiences that she initiates. As Jasira's sexuality and maturity are developing she is surrounded by an unstable environment with adults who are very immature and abusive toward her. She experiences physical and emotional abuse from her father and sexual abuse by another character in the film. She is also trying to figure out where her boundaries are sexually and struggling with hormones that are raging. Since the film focuses on the sex and sexual development of a 13 or 14 year old girl, it is very disturbing and cringe worthy at times. But these cringe worthy moments are what makes this film so strong. It is the struggles of the audience especially as adults who can see where the mistakes are being made and the problems when a child is maturing with few stable adult figures in their lives to help them to navigate through the hormonal rushes of the onset of puberty.

I saw this film with GG, of course, but there was no one else in the theater when we saw it. We were not sure why we were the only ones there. It was the opening weekend for the film and I didn't expect the theater to be packed, but I did think more people might be interested in the film. Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, and Toni Collette all have large parts in the film which I would have thought would have had drawn some people to the film. But I would recommend this film if you are willing to cringe at a film, but like Todd Soldonz, who did not direct Towelheads, films the film feels real because of the cringes not in spite of those moments.

A cheap easy post

I figure since I have posted the other SNL Palin videos, I would post this one too. There are shots taken at all of the debaters, Palin, Biden and they even make fun of Ifel a bit too. If you have seen it, hope you enjoy this one.

Youtube Fridays

This is what I am listening to recently. I really like this band and I have to give most of that credit to my sister-in-law who put them on a CD for me and I found that I really liked them.


Portions for Foxes- Rilo Kiley


Does he love you?- Rilo Kiley

Ripped from the headlines, sorta

Here are some interesting stories that I found in today's papers online.

First, how in the hell do you steal a 450-pound pumpkin? I have no idea, but this man in Flint, MI had just that happen to him. His prize 450-pound gourd was stolen from his front yard.

Second, did you know that Coca Cola is an effective spermicide or that wires will inevitably tangle themselves in knots or that slime mold can find its way through a maze? Well, if followed the Ig Noble Prize winners you would know all of that. These awards are given for odd discoveries or research in legitimate science journals.

Third and this one is dedicated to Mathman, here in Chicago the schools are teaching about math using the baseball playoffs. A school near the White Sox park watch the baseball game on TV and learned about computing batting averages. But it seemed to be an excuse to watch some baseball with not as much learning which I fully endorse at times.