A new direction for my blog

I am no longer "homeless" but am still unemployed and I expect to be until the new year. Don't have a lot of time to update so expect a big long entry to read in about a weeks time, after I get back from Edinburgh. For now, I'll say that things are going well enough. I am sitting next to Badam at the internet cafe right now. A little homesick over christmas but I made some friends so that I had a fun time during Christmas. Worst christmas dinner ever though. It was pretty much juice, bread meat and cheese. From an offy, yum.

Anyways, my flat is umm, tiny. Thus my room is somewhat less than tiny. I'd put the sq. footage around 50ish or so. My flatmates seem nicec enough, though Ive only met one of them...so I guess that last sentence didnt really matter! More to come on all this stuff later.

I am going to start posting about all the weird little nuances between british and american life. or rather american and london life. london is inherently different than england. I hear less English spoken in London than most of Europe it seems. Or, most of the commercials on tv are about texting "song 1" to 84888 to get the poly ringtones frrom sean jean or whatever stupid thing for your mobile. MTV dance is annoying and plays bad music. British like the worst American movies. And so on. I could call this a "reflection on london culture" but its pretty much just anecdotal sentencecs arranged in paragraphs about all the funny things brits/londoners do.

For example, remember in that movie with eddie murphy and dan akroyd called trading places? Eddie murphy dressed up as a guy from cameroon and kept saying merry new year and happy christmas. It always saounded funny, but people really do say "Happy Christmas" here!!! It's weird!!! Thats the kind of stuff Im gonna post in here from now on, along with random bits of my life.

Happy Christmas!
Joyeux Noelle
Felice Natale (portugeuse(sp?)) - hey kopietzzzz, i know some portuguese now.
Felicee Navidad

and Merry New Year

Not much new

I still live in a hotel. I'm still unemployed. Things are slowly happening. Had lunch with Badam today, standard pub fare. Have some leads on a number of different flats, will check 'em out tomorrow. Jetleg sucks! I have three minutes of internet left, so I should end this soon. Keep sending me your emails! Let me know whats up in the states and wherever else you may be! Love to hear from you all. Im off to get some kebabs!

London

I'm here, sitting at an internet cafe on tottenham court rd. about 4 blocks from where I used to go to school. Flights were fine, windy whilst landing in DC. The pond hop was uneventful. Just had dinner at Pret a Manger.

There isn't a lot else to comment on. I took a nap after dragging my luggage around west kensington.

Oh, I failed miserably at getting cash from the first cash point I visited. I couldn't even figure out how to get my card into the slot, which is funny because I had used the exact same machine numerous times 2 years ago. Maybe I shouldn't write about how I don't know how to operate an ATM and expect to work in finance/accounting field. Meh.

The sights and smells and sounds are all very strong. I feel very at home here. I barely had to use a map to get around streets or tubes. Was never nervous once, everything happened so smoothly after stepping off the plane. Which is good.

Now comes the hard part: flat and job. I have a mobile set up, email me at ejbiederman@gmail.com to get it from me. Its via tmobile, so maybe calling on your tmobile phones will be less expensive? I dunno. Next post I will hopefully be not living in a hotel.

Last post from the U.S.

If you read this because I gave you a link or found it through my AIM profile, you are undoubtedly my friend, which means you are of course welcome to wherever my new home may be. Next time I update this I will probably be somewhere in London. I am surprised by how much I used/posted on this whilst still living domestically. I didn't get everything posted I wanted to: expect my twins stadium article when I finally get my hard drive (now buried underneath futon pieces) connected to a new computer. I'm tiring and still have much to do...

Goodbye all! I will miss ya. Keep the comments rollin in and feel free to hop the pond at any time.

I feel horrible

Today I drove around in my Mom's SUV (sold the Volvo), stopped at starbucks and went to Target with a purpose in mind. I will now hang my head in disgrace. I'm such a Chet. At least I was able to avoid Home Depot.

3 days

Or more like 60 hours. Still no packing, still no moving stuff around. Today was my last day at HGA and I will definitely miss working there. Fun people, fun industry. Overall a positive impression on my views of the Corporate world. Time to get busy!

Hmm

In Mozilla, everything appears normal. In IE at work, the side bar is all messed up. In the end, the color was changed to a blue template. Besides, I don't want to copy from Bru. Not that that's a bad thing :)

Help!

My Blog went FUBAR!!! Someone help me fix it!

Wars

Hmm, Faux News discusses this war on Christmas so often, I am beginning to think they are simply creating a distraction for a discussion about the War in Iraq. On a related note,the vote is coming up. I hope we are all ready for a theocratic muslim state where constitutional reform is dictated by Islam. Is this what Bush meant by "spread freedom and democracy around the middle east?"

This Whole Gay Marriage Issue

I've listened to the debate for what seems like years now. Infact, I specifically remember making comments to friends or writing down notes back in my senior year of highschool/freshman year of college about how Gay Marriage was going to become a hot button issue over the next few years. Think back five years ago, it was rarely talked about by law makers, the papers and media or by the public. Much has changed. Now whenever I hear the arguments from all sides, I think that one of the main issues and problems governing the language of the debate is really the semantics of it all. Here are my thoughts on the idea in general, and a few side points created by the discussion of such a topic.

First, the way I understand it is that, (and I may be totally incorrect with this) when a man and woman receive their marriage license or certificate when they are married in a church, that legal authority comes from the state. I believe the priest or whomever says "and by the power vested in me by the state of (state)" which to me signifies that there are two levels to this traditional marriage arrangement. There is the legal state binding and the religious recognition by the church. The former is what guarantees a couples' rights - i.e. taxes, financial, death benefits and all of the things dealing with that nature. The latter makes it officially recognised by whatever church married the man and woman. What if a man and woman were married by a priest who did not have the state authority to wed them. They would be married, but this marriage would not be recognised by the state and thus these two people would not be titled to the benefits listed above under couples' rights. So now, what happens when two atheists want to be "married?" Certainly they don't go shopping around for the right church and their religious christian leader. Many opt for a JP - get "married" by a judge. So these two atheists, man and woman, now have all of those couples' benefits but don't have religiously recognised marriage, they have a civil union. The couple married by a priest with state power to officially wed them had a civil union underlying their rights and a marriage recognised by their church. The couple married by the priest with no state marriage authority does thus not have any civil union "contract." Follow me so far? There was a reason for going through that mess of the way I see things in its present form.

I do not believe the state as an entity can distinguish and decide which two people can and can't get "married" or rather in the proper technical terms (because this is what I think the problem is) the state can't decide who is elegible to be civilly unionised. There has been this big push by religious and social conservatives to make constitutional amednments and the state and federal level to "ban gay marriage." Now, I don't know why they need an amendment to do such a thing. Rather than going through a long and controversial political process, why not just refuse to marry/wed and refuse to recognise the marriage of any gay couple? I certainly don't agree with their stance, but I realise they have the right to do such a thing. This gay couple would then go and get a civil union from a JP and have all legally binding privaleges that any straight couple has. The only difference between these two "marriages" are that one has been recognised and performed by a church. If the gay couple can find a church and minister or whatever leader to perform a ceremony, then by all means. I would object for the same reasons any attempt by the government (I assume from pressure by liberal and pro-gay groups) to force leaders of the church to religiously recognise a civil union performed by a judge to a gay couple as the same thing as what they have done under traditional church marriage to a straigh couple. Or even to perform gay "marriages" against their will. This way religious leaders can't get on their soap box and talk about how gays getting married is "destroying the sanctity of marriage" because it isn't a marriage, it's a civil union. And if you have disagreements when one religious leader wants to recognise it and another doesn't, for Pete's sake fight about it internally. Don't make it a national issue and waste politicians' time when they have real work to do.

What I just typed out is probably poorly written and hard to understand. But when we get into talking about amendments to the constitution in specific reference to religious ceremonies, we immediately fall down a slippery slope that leads to theocracy. Again, to make my point again (and hopefully as clear as I can) it's all about what people are calling it. Marriage is the religious term, a civil union is a non-religious term. They will effectively be the same thing; it is about receiving equal rights and benefits. It is about keeping up the wall between church and state. The church should have no say when it comes to state sponsored rights, especially when they (the church) wants to discriminate on the basis of sexuality.

9 days

Im posting a description of my day last Friday. Wake up at 630, decide to sleep another hour. get to work aorund quarter after 8. Read the paper, drink hot chocolate, check mail/email, look at online accounts and ebay items. Put some pieces of paper in a series of binders. Work on my resumé. Surf the web for lunch hour - BBC/economist. Wander around and talk to people. Put some more paper in a different binder. Go to the bank and deposit money, talk to Foster on the phone for about 15 minutes. Swivel in my chair. Eat holiday foods. At 4:25 I start drinking beer and playing foosball. Eat dinner (I haven't left work yet). Have another beer and shrimps. Play ping-pong. Talk to my boss about Italy, and discover she is very interested in me coming back to HGA once I return from Europe. Drive home (sobered up of course) to swing by for a few minutes before going to Mike's to p-a-r-t-y d-o-w-n. At appoximately I don't know what time I believe I was yelling loudly (sorry household of 2641 15th ave s.) and passionately in a mostly drunken stupor whilst sprawled out on a love seat about the state of the nation and the upcoming energy crisis and liberal economics and how I was glad I gave my phone to Mike so I couldn't call certain girls. Then I fell asleep. Awesome times - to those who made them with me, I thank you.

I'm in a posting mood and as I finish this up, 8 days til London.

London countdown

I have about 11 days til I leave. I haven't started packing. I have made feeble attempts at flats, with interesting offers, to say the least. I have scoped out some jobs I would like to have but have not prepared/upated my resumé or CV yet. I haven't moved out of my room. I haven't sold my car. I haven't disposed of the rest of my motorcycle sitting in the back of said car. I haven't gotten my camera in working order. My preparations are a trainwreck waiting to happen. I'll let ya know how it goes...

I have a lot of things to do. I'm not even sure as to what some of these things are. Please help.