Author: Joel Gross

Feel free to add entertaining questions or answer these… most of mine are goofy or religious or philosophical…

-Why can I cross my eyes towards my nose, but am unable to move them in opposite directions?
-Why does god need to forgive me of my sins when he has committed far worse ones (killed a planetary population with a flood except for a few who worshipped him unquestioningly, tortured a man for many years and destroyed his familiy and property just so i could prove he was loyal, created evil (God is all-powerful and created everything right?)?!?
-Why does the Easter bunny give away eggs, when rabbits don’t lay eggs? Why isn’t it the Easter chick or goose?
-Why do football and basketball coaches make more than college presidents?
-Why do people in power almost always abuse it?
-Why is it called the People’s Republic of China when it’s not a republic?
-When swearing in a Muslim in court why don’t they replace the Bible with the Koran?
-Why is it so difficult to find love?
-Why does your boss say you just have to get the job done, but then requires you to stay for a certain number of hours if you get done early?
-Why hasn’t evolution killed more stupid people?
-Why are smokers granted more and longer breaks than normal people? If I was addicted to heroin, could I have special, long breaks to shoot up?
-If God wants people to believe in him and love him, then why doesn’t he show himself?
-When you have cancer and get chemo, do your pubes fall out?
-Are you looking at me?
-Why would anyone buy a tiny bottle of water for $3?
-Do you feel embarassed when you answer a rhetorical question or weird if you don’t know if it is rhetorical or not? Or when someone assumes a real question of yours is rhetorical?
-Why is there no light in the freezer, but there is one in the fridge?
-If jealousy, pride and anger are bad qualities, then how is God good when he has all of them?
-If Christianity is a kind religion people are supposed to find on their own, then why do people use the hardest of hard sell sales tactics? Why are pastors always such sleazy douche-bags?
-Why are sports (and especially sports statistics) so fascinating when nothing productive is really accomplished? Why is so much more money spent on this then on world hunger, global warming and other problems?
-How is free will possible if God created everything and everyone and knows everything that has happened or ever will happen? Doesn’t he have no choice but to control everyone’s fate-if he changes something, then won’t I involuntarily do whatever he changed?
-How do you regain lost trust?
-Why do gay men usually have more female friends then male friends?
-Why do people always romanticize deer when they are basically just graceful cows, with all the flies and bad-temper and other issues?
-Why are pants, panties, trousers, shorts all plural when they are one item?
-If vegetarians don’t eat meat because it came from a living creature, why do they eat vegetables? Is it because broccolli isn’t fun to pet?
-Why is it sometimes considered manly to be hairy, but most male models are completely hairless?
-Why would God/Allah (depending on your perspective) throw people into an pit of eternal torment when they have never heard of him and he won’t reveal himself?
-Why do people worship a God who kills billions who don’t follow him, but call a country’s leader who kills millions in a program evil?
-Why do athletes thank God when they successfully make a big play, but don’t blame him when they fail?
-Why don’t people have more self control?
-What happens if I get scared half to death twice?
-Why would anyone want to live to be older than 60?
-Why do people say you owe your parents something when they weren’t thinking of you at all when they brought you into this world, they were just having animal sex? What if I didn’t want to be brought into this world?
-Why don’t my palms tan?

I have a friend who is going to visit an ex who is attending Harvard for a weekend. She sent this email to a bunch of her friends and him to see who wanted to join them in their activities… rather intimidating, eh? And I thought I was ridiculous sometimes with my schedules… but I suppose it’s these time-management skills that got her into Harvard in the first place, right?

Dear friends (and by friends, I mean the only people I can stand for
more than five minutes at a time in this god-forsaken institution),

My friend XXX is visiting me from Friday to Sunday and I’ve written
up an itinerary for him. Since some of you have expressed interest in
meeting him and I haven’t seen most of you since before midterms, I
wanted to invite you to join us for meals, museum tours, and shows
this weekend. Besides, we’re all mutual friends and we rarely have an
excuse to get together en masse. I’ve listed our schedule below. Just
respond with the event that interests you and I’ll add you to our
calendar.

Friday:
08:00 am Arrival to Harvard
09:00 am Breakfast at Mather House Dining Hall
10:00 am Harvard Museum of Natural History
11:00 am Fogg Art Museum
12:00 pm Tour of Harvard College Campus
01:30 pm Lunch at Henrietta’s Table (menu:
http://henriettastable.com/menus/lunch.php_
03:00 pm Harvard Business School Tour
05:00 pm Dinner in Porter or Inman Square — please recommend a restaurant!
08:30 pm Ex-Rated, Expressions Dance Team Show — tentative

Saturday:
12:00 pm Brunch at The Paramount in Beacon Hill (menu:
http://www.paramountboston.com/pages/menus/brunch.html)
01:00 pm Historical Tour of Boston, incl. Fanueil Hall, Newbury St., North End
06:00 pm Dinner in Harvard Square, most likely with my blocking group
— please recommend a restaurant!
07:30 pm Titus Andronicus in The Garage
10:00 pm Coffee and Dessert at Finale Desserterie (menu:
http://www.finaledesserts.com/menus/menus.html )

Sunday:
11:00 am Easter Services at Memorial Church
01:00 pm Brunch at Mather House Dining Hall
02:30 pm Coffee at L.A. Burdick
04:00 pm Departure from Harvard


All the best,
XXXXX

I went out on the art walk tonight (first Thursday of every month) with Fletcher and Leah and Ashley (who left early for dinner). It was a lot of fun even though most of the art I saw was pretty poor. Leah had a good friend who was a dancer with a company based out of New York, so we went to her gallery. The guy who owned the gallery/apartment was a systems engineer for Amazon and he and I got to talking about some of our entrepreneurial ideas and I think I may have found a potential new partner. The apartment was several thousand square feet of gorgeous architecture in Pioneer Square that he paid $2k a month for…on his own. Pretty ridiculous. He knew a lot about web design and database architecture for very major websites (amazon.com for crying out loud) and he is interested in becoming a partner in the business I have started. We even got to chatting about putting a solid executive presentation together and raising a few million in venture capital. I am really excited about my future and the possibilities it holds!

Lately, I have been reading a lot of articles about problems with accountability in the government. For instance, a rampant problem in many state and city governments nationwide is that they have spent massive amounts of money they didn’t have in recent years. New Jersey has spent massive amounts of money out of it’s workers’ pension funds and used sly accounting tricks to hide it’s misdeeds. Texas is also facing the same issue and when the voters passed a measure that demanded clearer accounting, the legislature refused because the data that will come out shows that they are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and have violated the terms of their bonds. These accountability problems are not just fiscal, but also about basic resource management: the West is in the midst of a long, slow drought that has been depleting water reserves and soon there will be a major water crunch in Nevada, California, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. Governments are fighting each other for scarce resources. Huge problems are coming down the pike since they won’t work together to ensure both the cities and farms get enough water in each area. Global warming will only exacerbate the problem.

Issues like these are rampant in most state governments because of a lack of responsibility. State employees are very difficult to fire and have powerful unions that protect them from the pressures that free enterprise puts on people to be productive and successful. For a long time, the large state bureaucracies have stuffed themselves while doing little to help their citizens. Their lobby groups have put massive pressure on politicians for higher pay and better benefits with no corresponding increase in productivity. The politicians can’t/ won’t clean house because if they tried to they would be crushed by the unions and lobbyists.

Another problem, is a basic issue with democracy itself: each politician only serves a limited time in office and thus does not have to answer for poor decisions he or she makes that affect the future. That is why our national government is buried in massive debt and many cities and states are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. If China didn’t continue to fund our treasuries by buying our bonds, the dollar would quickly collapse. We need to find a way to make politicians responsible in the future for decisions they make during their limited terms or our government does not have a future.

I have begun to look for new housing. Yesterday, I looked at some condos that were for sale on 5th and Yesler and they were pretty nice and I could afford them. Only I am still not sure if I want to make that kind of commitment. It would probably be a better call for me to get an apartment. Any opinions?

(*) college/seattle [univ. washington, 4 years, Finance degree]
(*) frat [Sigma Chi]
(*) dorm [McMahon]
(*) apartments [many rented, looking for new one]
(*) job [Visible Technologies, Business Analyst]
(*) pumping iron [290 bench, 24 pullups]
(*) web design
(*) mountain climbing [Mt. Adams]
(*) read Bible [2.5 times through]
(*) start to learn to dance [tango, hip-hop, need more]
(*) 4 Earl’s drinks [blacked-out, great photo]
(*) predict final 4, championship teams & winner [2007, espn bracket]
(*) 1st car (own money) [1990 Ford Ranger]
(*) 2nd car (own money) [1999 Ford Contour]
(*) Me [6’5”, 215, green eyes, light brown hair]
_ mountain climbing [St. Helens, Ranier, Adams again]
_ own successful business [working on it]
_ marathon [training]
_climb a redwood tree [gathering spikes]
_ foreign language[not started]
_ dancing [hip-hop, tango, salsa, ballroom]
_ lifting [300 10x, 6 pack, 30 pullups]
_travel [europe, china, thailand, south america]
_gimp [in a box, probably faryar ;)]
_build personal site [forum, blog, pix, video, etc.]

and i have a lot more goals i want to accomplish and have accomplished, but this is a snippet. The best is yet to come!
(*) – completed

I am starting to get worried that I may have some weird form of insomnia. For the last three mornings in a row I have awoken really early and felt agitated and really awake and not been able to go back to sleep for at least a couple hours. Sleep is one of my most reliable old friends, but apparently it is abandoning me. I am not sure what to do with myself. Perhaps it has something to do with my weird situation I am in, it’ll probably go away when I get myself stabilized. Well, I think I’m going to play with my Facebook profile for awhile and then go back to sleep.

Something about the three Saw movies holds my attention. I haven’t been frightened by any horror movies in many years, but the Saw movies are pretty suspenseful. They aren’t exactly award-winning material, but they are a good way to make a couple of hours fly by. Plus, I like my movies every so often to NOT have happy endings. Keeps me on my toes. Warning: the Saw movies are extremely gruesome and bloody and packed with gore, so be careful… it’s not often a movie actually makes me queasy, but i was pretty disturbed.