F&W Hmm...

>>After seeing this commercial, I began to think to myself: if the main ingredient is chicken, and this boosts the dog's health (?), then how does this work out?

>>Does IAMS purchase chicken from chicken farms and put that into their dog food? Or do meat distribution companies sell the extra unwanted parts of chicken to be put to use in IAMS's dog food? Which would actually be healthier for the dog? What do dogs eat in the wild? How far away have dogs been bred from their natural state to possibly need different nutrients? Can we trust IAMS when they say a dog ought to eat chicken? I mean, meat factory cows were taught to eat corn, but they're supposed to be eating grass.

>>Or could IAMS have their own chicken farms which they raise to make into dog food? (That's an odd thought...raising an animal just to be eaten by another animal. It shows you how far away our culture has come from the land if even our pets don't eat from the land.)

F&W Curiosity

>>So, as you guys know, I work at Arby's. A few months ago we had a price inflation of tacking on ten extra cents onto everything. As if we weren't already the most expensive fast food, the company's big wigs just had to jack it up a little more.

>>The logical thing to increase profits would have been to NOT change the menu. Keep the fish sandwich, the gyro, the classic italian sub, the grilled chicken pecan salad sandwich, loaded baked potato bites, onion petals, root beer, citrus Sobe, and last summer's strawberry-banana shake. I can't tell you how many times a day at work I have to say, "I'm sorry, but we no longer offer [insert item]." and if I'm feeling generous, say, "Would you like to try the [some other item] that's kinda like it?"

>>People are stubborn. They don't like change. They like knowing what's going to happen before it does. It's more frequent than you think where customers bring exact change just to hear that the price is now different. Why does it cost more? Why is the product only a semblance of the thing I used to love?

Example: The Classic Italian vs. The Angus Cool Deli

>>The Classic Italian was on a sub roll, it had lettuce, tomato, onion, red wine vinaigrette sauce, pepperoni, pastrami, ham, banana peppers, mayonnaise, and swiss cheese. When we offered it it was probably our most complex sandwich on the menu and we did have the staple customers who would only order that particular sandwich from us. When it was dropped, we lost those customers. IF MY MEMORY SERVES, that sandwich costed $4 and some cents by itself and $6 with some cents as a combo (meaning fries and a drink with it).

>>The Angus Cool Deli is on the new sub roll which is softer but covered in dusty crumbs that cake your fingers (it does taste better but it's irritating to have dusty fingers), the same lettuce, tomato, and onion, a different dressing, diced pickles and banana peppers which are premixed and thus it's a pain when someone doesn't want one of the two, the Angus meat which Arby's as a company has for whatever reason come to love, swiss cheese, and mayonnaise. The sandwich by itself costs $5.34 with tax and the combo is $7.48 with tax.

>>Our vegan customers who are tired of salads who instead are getting meatless sandwiches are happier. There's more on the Cool Deli than the Italian regarding veggies. That's a pro. But that's $7.48 on one meal... not just a meal, but one meal that isn't very healthy for you. Yes, you feel better that there are some veggies, more than any of our other options on the menu, but then you're just drowning that out with all the grease from your small curly fry and washing it down with your small Diet Pepsi. Especially when you used to pay less for a very similar sandwich that already had customer love behind it.

>>I don't get it. I really don't get it. By the way? A Classic Roast Beef Combo costs $5.34...that's the sandwich, fries, and drink. Wait, isn't the Cool Deli by itself that cost? They can cover the same size fries and drink in that sandwich's combo but not this one?

>>Don't even get me started on the Super Reuben.

F&W The Chew

>>So recently I was having a bowl of ice cream, Neapolitan to be specific, and sitting in my mess of a living room watching The Chew. It's only a mess because the kitchen's being repainted, so it's got two rooms' worth of furniture in it. Anyway, I'm watching this show and there are five or six people onstage, all hosts who can cook and describe food in ways that make your mouth water and one of them is a guest from The View. I recognized her by face but not by name. Apparently she just got married.

>>Anyway, they were prepping the immense audience for Thanksgiving. What caught my eye was this:

>>Stuffed Acorn Squash. The leafy stuff? Collard greens, basil leaves, and some other stuff but I forget. It's mouth-watering, isn't it? Now if only I could go to Ingles and find this without being afraid. *Pulls out list of farmer's markets...*

F&W Damn It Pollan

>>I have now become afraid to eat.

>>Let me expand on the topic. The phrase, "we [the American people] tend to look at food as a collection of nutrients, not as food," rings in my mind every time I go to reach for something that was about to go in my mouth. I had cereal bars that boasted, "Only 100 calories!" which used to comfort me. I proceeded in reading the box further and the marshmallow coating was actual marshmallow-flavored coating...I know that the typical tastes America is used to is Greasy, Sugary, and/or Fatty, but why replace marshmallow coating's Sugary with marshmallow-flavored's Fakey? I ate it anyway due to needing something to eat while driving, but nevertheless I wasn't happy about it as I would have been had I not known.

>>I went to Ingles to buy just some basic groceries; things that I tend to eat often. I went to get milk and did a double-take. On the right hand, there was the milk I usually got. 2% off-brand, like $3 maybe. Healthier for you, delicious. Food, Inc. and PETA crept into my mind then...Sarah, those cows have infections in their milking parts. The pus gets in your milk, and even though they pasteurize it out and your body will never know the difference, that cow's not getting any better. Don't put your money on unhappy cows! That's financing no change! Then I look to the left. Organic milk and happy cows costed $6. Double! For a gallon of milk! I ended up not purchasing either and walking away, remembering that my mother had some she was going to give me. Still, it should be easier to go shopping.

>>Somewhere in all these influences I heard someone say tomatoes were ripened with gases to be sold out of season. I highly doubt that is restricted to only tomatoes. So when I finally veered on a limb and went to the produce section, shopping there on my own for the first time, I felt that I didn't know anything. What was in season? Rather, what wasn't going to be ripened with gases? What would I actually eat? How long would it keep in my kitchen? How much should I buy if it only lasts however imaginary time I determined in my head?

>>Shopping for food shouldn't be this hard. Eating shouldn't be this hard. It really figures that I finally get my stomach back and now I'm too mortified to put anything in it.

F&W Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead

>>Around the time that Food, Inc. was introduced to my life, I decided to try and peruse the internet for different things which would basically horrify me in the same way. You know how the scientific method is--if the experiment is done once, it's not believed until everybody else has done it and came to the same conclusion.

>>The result? This nifty documentary which may have the weight-loss diet answer that America needs. What's the secret? Listen to what your mother's been telling you for ages: eat more vegetables. In fact, eat more fruits and veggies than any other food you eat. The show takes it to an extreme; Joe the protagonist goes on a 60-day juice fast and gradually adds exercise into his daily routine. You can see the difference on the cover.

>>Also, if you think that you don't need to lose weight so this sort of thing is too extreme and not for you, a 10-day juice fast showed that it helped a lot of people with day-to-day pains like headaches, backaches, and generally they just felt more energetic.

>>Compared to Food, Inc., I wasn't mortified by how cows standing in their own feces or shocked at Monsanto, but I was surprised to see what eating real food can do for you. The only downside to this fast is that the first couple days you're detoxing and you feel sad (JUST in those first couple days!). A lot of us feel like we don't want to get out of bed as it is, so why not try it? The end result is oodles of energy, more intense focus, and for Joe Cross, no longer having to take any medication.

F&W I'm Thinking Arby's

>>Before entering the work force, I never thought that I could ever work in a restaurant. I thought being around the same food all the time would turn me away from that food and make me a picky eater all over again, like I was when I was a child. Not to mention I figured anywhere I worked would be nasty and turn me away from wanting to eat out altogether. In retrospect, I realize I was just silly and had no idea what was really going on.

>>As of sometime in September, I have officially been working at Arby’s for about a year and a half. Certain things on the menu—such as the Reuben, the French Dip and Swiss, the Philly Beef Sub, the Classic Italian, and probably more—always stick out to me when I go to other restaurants. At that other restaurant I think to myself, “Oh, I can eat that at work.” For a split second I feel rebellious and look for something else to eat, but that familiarity pulls me back to the common option between the two restaurants and I get it. It’s delightful because while I’m eating it, I’m not just enjoying it; I’m comparing it in my head to our version. Who is cheaper? Not just in how much I am spending, but how much the restaurant spends on making the sandwich, for instance the Classic Italian at Arby’s only has a few banana peppers on it but if you got it at Subway, you could get probably three times as more. Which tastes better? Which sauce is better? Which bread is softer? Is their sauerkraut edible? How is the meat’s texture? (At Arby’s we pride ourselves on getting the meat sliced as thin as possible, which affects the flavor immensely.)

>>Sometimes the people are so unbelievable I want to scream, sometimes the hours are so slow all I want to do is go home, sometimes the rushes are too much and my brain may as well be mush, and sometimes the works seems so monotonous that after this long I can’t believe I still work there, but in the end it’s worth it. There’s that small satisfaction in the paycheck (of course), in winning the glove-ball war among colleagues for a brief moment, in telling sly jokes through the headsets’ walky-talky feature, in seeing returning customers smile as you greet them by name, in seeing the small child sweetly ask for a spoon so they can eat their Value Vanilla Shake like it’s ice cream…it’s good mood food, after all.

F&W Hand Me That Nintendo Controller

>>If only life were like a videogame.

>>In Zelda Ocarina of Time, some Lon Lon Milk hits the spot like nothing else. In Harvest Moon, you can find random berries in the wilderness in the outskirts of town and for some reason not be afraid of poison. In Earthbound, fresh eggs heal a little bit of HP when you’re in a tight spot, unless of course you wait too long, and then it turns into a little yellow chick and takes up a spot in your inventory. Unless you’re willing to just drop it off in the middle of the dungeon, anyway. Mario has mushrooms, Donkey Kong has bananas, Pokemon have bait (at least in the Safari Zone) and rare candies, Dark Cloud 2’s Toady eats weapons…

>>I say this because there are immediate positive affects to what they eat. Aside from maybe Kirby, most games’ protagonists benefit from eating. A player eats a hamburger and their life points are increased. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could eat a hamburger and not be counting calories in our head or worrying if our stomach liner can take it? In the game, your hunger is not merely tamed for the time being, but your living ability is strengthened by eating! What I mean by living ability is that you literally have more life, thus you can take more hits before losing a life.

>>We all wished as a kid that we were Mario and that we could simply eat a mushroom so we’d be tall enough to ride the roller coaster. Likewise, we wished when we were older for the mushroom effects to wear off so we could fit in the teacups at Magic Kingdom.

>>Yes: if only life were like an RPG game.

F&W Cravings

>>I am starting to believe that my stomach has a mind of its own, or maybe it’s just got multiple personality disorder. A few years ago, it was a Hispanic and constantly craved nachos and cheese, meat, salsa, and lettuce (nachos y queso, carne de res, salsa, y lechuga…), in my late highschool years it was a twelve-year-old who microwaved all their food, consuming Americanized super-processed Mexican foods [taquitos, pizza rolls (which are essentially empanadas), burritos, chimichangas, the list goes on] and pizza, and all that time I had prided myself on never really craving sweets. Perhaps this is the reason why I was under the delusion that cravings were meant to lead us toward food containing the certain nutrients the body was low on.

>>But now it’s hit. The estrogen has been full-on for a few years now, getting me past puberty, and now with nothing else better to do to my body (since I’ve not gotten it pregnant) it now sends waves through my nerves, screeching, “Chocolate! I need more chocolate!” My surroundings are of no help. I work at Arby’s 5 of 7 days a week…the shake machine has chocolate, the Jamocha Oreo Shake (medium size only) requires chocolate swirl in the cup so that chocolate is always there, there’s chocolate icing for the turnovers, those specific turnovers have chocolate filling, and there’s chocolate milk…so. Much. Chocolate. Not to mention my particular Arby’s has a CVS right next door just filled with Reese’s, Snickers, Milky Ways, and so many other chocolate bars for about a dollar…

>>So now when I have a craving, it’s an internal debate. Do I want to satiate that desire, feed the whim, or would I rather hold true to my fitness challenge?

>>…Usually the shake machine wins.

F&W And Eat Yo Brains

>>The other day, I decided to visit my family, more specifically my mother and younger brother. He’s almost six years old and has more love to share than anyone I’ve met in a good while, so his innocent presence and sing-song voice is a breath of fresh air in the midst of my immensely cluttered life. Again and again it has happened where as soon as he sees me and our hellos are exchanged, the first thing he pries me for is to show him how to beat Plants vs. Zombies. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a videogame that has become multi-platform (PC, Nintendo DS, as an app on your iDevice-of-choice, perhaps others) and obviously, this is the zombie apocalypse and you must protect yourself from the various types of zombies by planting plants, such as “peashooters” which shoot seeds, kernels, watermelons, and many other plant-related things at the opposing force.

>>What does this have to do with food and writing, you ask? The food part. Zombies eat brains. The thought seems so foreign to humanity, Hannibal Lector was frowned at for enjoying it (especially when he shared it with a young child and called it lamb), yet there are people on the other side of the Earth who eat monkey brain fresh. People write books that sell about preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Film has a broad range of comedy and horror films involving zombies. I am part of an event of Facebook called “Zombie Apocalypse Party” which is supposed to occur December 21, 2012, and I am one of over three thousand people who have responded if they are attending. (I put “maybe” because you never know if you’re guaranteed tomorrow.) There are even catchy love songs about the forbidden love between a zombie and human.

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

>>But boiling back down to the Plants vs. Zombies game—it’s a fight for survival. The plants claim to be protecting their planters (you, the player), but they benefit in being planted by their species still existing. You the planter are fighting to be able to plant another day and eat from your armed forces oddly enough. The zombies are fighting to fill their stomach. It really just comes to the fact that all parties involved in the game are hungry. My point? Play the game. It's intoxicating and fun for all ages.

Reality Feels So Physical

>>...in the sense that so many worlds just collided for me. I was reading On Being Certain by Robert A. Burton (M.D.) and I learned a new term for endorphins: opioid peptides. That's seratonin lock and key mechanisms triggering what we call the emotion happiness.

>>We tend to perceive thought as this anomoly (forgive my spelling) which just is. Or maybe that's just me. But the truth is that if you cut the epidermis, there is tissue underneath, organs too, and their teamwork makes your existance. The brain is really in your head and not heavy at all, yet it processes the world into something that makes some sort of sense so as an organism you can survive in it...and it all boils down to chemicals. Seratonin, endorphins, opioid peptides (peptide bonds keep protein structures together, or maybe it's nucleotides, either way) are all just simmering in that mass of organized cells right behind our eyes...our brain has pretend auditory and visual cognition, imagination, we call it thought...

>>Call me crazy, blind, blonde, what you will. I think it's amazing that we are at all.

F&W The House of the Spirits

>>So I was reading one of my favorite novels over for the second time, and with this food and writing class in mind I have decided to pick out foods from it as they're mentioned and discuss them.

>>Allende doesn't mention food often, but I did often notice that when it was brought up, it was tea, aside from one almost grotesque mentioning of a roasted pig with a carrot put in a very awkward location and some poisoned wine. Granted I am only two and a half chapters in.

>>The first tea I noticed was "barley water flavored with almonds." Nothing else is said about the drink other than that it was "made on holidays", and so I was curious to know more. Upon some googling I discovered that people take the grain, boil it, pour the hot water over the pulp and skin of a fruit (usually lemon or lime, I imagine an orange may be good), and then add sugar and maybe some of the fruit's juice for flavor. Better instructions and health benefits are listed here:

http://www.tandurust.com/health-faq/barley-water-benefits-to-health.html

>>The next tea mentioned is linden tea, which in the novel was drank for its therapeutic effects, despite all the sweating it can cause. Although, I suppose perspiration can be considered therapeutic, otherwise why would we have saunas? To bake ourselves? Anyway, I've ordered some out of curiosity; I'll give a report on a later date how it tastes and if it actually helps with fever and airway inflammation. (I'm 90% sure I have asthma, so a natural remedy may be nice to try.)

>>The last tea I've seen so far is cinnamon tea. Allende's translator (the novel wasoriginally written in Spanish) and editor definitely misspelled cinnamon as cinammon. The English major in me winced, the dyslexic stutterer in me thought "cinnaminamon" as I read it to myself, but it is just a typo so I kept reading. Apparently all cinnamon tea is is hot water and pure cinnamon. It's supposed to lower your cholesterol if you have a half teaspoon of cinnamon a day. It either sounds very potent or very bland. I plan to try it too.

>>Stay tuned! The House of the Spirits may bring to my attention more odd foods from 1960s-1970s Spanish haciendas.

F&W Grief

>>does a funny thing to one's stomach.

>>Unfortunately, I have experienced this sensation so I can describe it first-hand. It's rather odd. When I was a kid, I could go to a buffet and get 2 or 3 plates of food before stopping, but now I have maybe 1 and I'm done. They say that the grieving forget to eat, and they meant it.

>>At first my hunger was nonexistent because of the emotional distress. It was like I didn't have a stomach at all. Maybe it's the chest pain from all the heartache of losing someone so close forever that distracts you from hunger enough that you think the nerve endings are cut, or maybe it's the gut-wrenching physical reaction to the intense stress induced by the loss which simply overrides hunger because the pain is more obvious. Perhaps it's just that someone who is mourning can't focus on something as ritualistic as eating without making an effort out of it. Whatever it is, it severs your senses of touch and taste forever and distorts them into a whole new personality of their own.

>>For the longest time, at least a year (and still to this day sometimes), everything I put in my mouth tasted like cardboard. I had no lure toward food no matter what it was, in fact looking at food made me feel a little nauseous at first. I ate because my boyfriend at the time was a dream come true and was making sure I ate daily. (It's not like I was going to remember to. The natural drive was gone.) When I did eat, a bit of the nerve endings worked in my stomach, but it felt more like an upcoming illness than that satisfaction of being full.

>>I had a brief period where sweets, particularly Reese's peanut butter cups, tasted exactly what they used to taste like when I was a child. What a wonder! The rich sweetness of the chocolate meshing with the salty peanut butter was the first thing that had tasted edible in months, and it was superb. I would eat 8-packs at a time I was so thrilled to taste something. The only issue was is that I hadn't had Reese's in years (since my childhood probably), and it made me worry if the grief was making my mind revert back to a simpler conscious to reduce the pain by creating a childlike denial of it.

>>I'm still not really sure if that's true or why Reese's became delicious again, but slowly other foods gained flavor. None of them have the same luster that they used to, but it's better than cardboard. That occasional rumble gurgles in my stomach, and on those days I'm thankful that the stress weighs a little bit less with each passing day.

Amurikin

>>Wait, wait, wait: you didn't understand? "Amurikin" is an emerging language used often in today's times. It's what English (or "Engrish" in Amurikin) is turning into, slowly but surely. Working at Arby's I get examples of this often:

(Through the drive-thru speakers.) "Hello, welcome to Arby's, may I take your order please?"
"Yes, could I get a Jamocha shake?"
"Certainly. What size?"
"Jamocha."
At this point I have to stop myself for a moment, catch my breath, and remember that in Amurikin it is common to replace words you hear as you see fit for communication efficiency. What they imagined I asked was the flavor again. So I take a deep breath and attempt to ask with a straight face, "I'm sorry, but what size? We have Value, Small, Medium, and Large." They then get the picture.

>>Another Amurikin word-swap: Again, I'm taking a drive-thru order and they tell me they want whatever size shake. So I ask, "What flavor would you like that to be?" "Jamaica." Perhaps instead of it being a word swap it's merely a vowel swap: "oh" for "ay" in this case. Either way Amurikin is very versatile in the sense that it has no logical patterns.

>>The language has even reinvented contractions! Things like "we'ze", "I'mma", "youz"...the rule, I think, is to add extra unrelated letters and if you feel so inclined remove some from the original Engrish word. Well, I suppose that works for all nouns in the Amurikin dictionary as well: "Git in the core!" translates to "Get in the car!" It's really fascinating.

>>Btw? The National Adult Literacy Survey of 1993 stated the following findings:

Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers, or "functionally illiterate." They can't carry out simply tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job.

>>So it makes sense that now in 2011, those people in the early 90s who raised children...out of this emerges the new Amurikin language complimented by our already distorted American dream of selfishness and individualism.

Analyzing Stephen King's "Why We Crave Horror"

>>The philosophical question of “What is moral?” has always been looming in the back of human minds. Different cultures pose their own theories on what is “good”—religions of all kinds give guidelines, societies’ views form rules as a whole per society, and both groups’ acceptance of whatever action is on the spotlight. So the idea of a true hero or true villain is difficult to fathom if it must be universal, considering what the hero or villain stands for can only be seen as “right” or “wrong” by a limited amount of eyes. In analyzing horror film audiences, Stephen King has given an intriguing hypothesis to this conundrum that there is no hero who can walk the Earth: instead, the planet is populated by antiheroes.

>>King did not blatantly state this of course—he was not even writing in terms of heroes and villains—but it is clear that when he brings up the boy and the “chocolate-covered graham crackers” that he is discussing if the boy chooses to be “good” or “bad” to society’s standards, which translates into if he is acting heroic or villainous (or at least in which direction he is growing). An antihero is a hero who may deontologically not have the best ethics and often he or she is very flawed, but this person still works toward their sense of order (which for an antihero would be society’s heroic sense of order). To continue with King’s example, the boy would be an antihero because he does the “right” thing for others (adoring his little sister), but he is flawed since he still commits acts of violence (slamming his little sister’s fingers in a door for fun) and he only does the “right” thing because he knows there will be a reward (the chocolate-covered graham crackers). He may not act that way otherwise. This is his flaw, but he still is in society’s eye as “good” because he is still learning and abides by his family when they punish him.

>>The purpose of “Why We Crave Horror” was to subtly say that all people are dualistic in the sense we both possess “good” and “evil” inside: normally people act to their society’s standards, but once in awhile they must let their evil which exists inside “be let loose to scream and roll around in the grass.” (King) King argues that the majority of people are more “good” than “evil”, but that the “evil” part of us manifests itself as “emotional muscles” (King) that “demands its own exercise to maintain proper muscle tone.” (King) Translation? We all have the flaw of being somewhat “evil” alongside our “good” nature, and that everyone is a bit morbid—his example was the existence of dead baby jokes. They are repulsive but for some reason they still make people laugh.

>>Horror films take this concept a bit further—instead of your average person merely thinking of something considered politically incorrect as amusing, “the fun comes from seeing others menaced—sometimes killed.” (King) In most societies (and certainly the American society King writes from), murder is considered taboo and there is an array of punishments for doing such a thing, such as life in prison or being sentenced to death. Yet watching it on screen for entertainment is okay. It introduces a dark element to any individual yet simultaneously to the masses—after all, who skips on watching scary movies? King is correct when he states, “we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better.” When thinking that all people are antiheroes, heroes who seek their “good” while deontologically flawed, this makes perfect sense: horror film audiences are flawed since they enjoy watching the suffering they are supposed to be against.

>>Of course even with this flaw the antihero can be heroic, “[a]s long as you keep the gators fed,” King concludes. What he is referring to is that the antihero must use those “emotional muscles” (King) fueled by evil once in awhile in order to keep the evil within at bay. After all, one evil action here or there does not mean a person is no longer “constrained by an ethic” (Alsford 83) as any society’s hero is supposed to be. It is just that we must acknowledge the “‘beast within’, a lawless predatory creature that wills to do all the reckless wickedness that civilization, society, religion and ethics are designed to keep submerged and suppressed,” (110) which Alsford brings to our attention. What it all boils down to is if our antiheroes of society choose to let their “good” or “evil” natures rule their actions and thus their effect on the society.

>>Works Cited

Alsford, Mike. Heroes & Villains. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006. Print.

King, Stephen. “Why We Crave Horror.” http://drmarkwomack.com/pdfs/horrormovies.pdf

Hope

>>So I recently discovered that I was wrong about some geeky information. It had to do with whether or not hope was left in Pandora's box or if it was the one good thing that escaped (if hope can be called positive). It turns out that it actually does stay in the box and horrible things such as death, disease, and well evil in general are unleashed from the box.

>>What doesn't make sense to me is why anyone other than Pandora herself could have hope if she didn't unleash it and thus did not share it.

>>But is hope a good thing to have? Yes people hope with all their might that some event or circumstance may happen, but it could also be a mask for procrastination and laziness. "I hope I'll make it to grad school." Don't hope. Make a 4.0, be interactive, find an internship, study abroad, be impressive, and go apply. "I hope I'll find someone who loves me for me." Make yourself worth loving by first loving yourself and being someone people are naturally drawn to. Have nothing to hide.

>>The point is you decide your destiny. It's called "free choice" or "will" for a reason.

Talent

>>No one ever said talent was geared toward progressive areas only, such as singing or dancing or anything really where something good is created rather than collapse. Frankly, people can be geared toward calamity. I know I have a lot of useless talents: losing my keys, losing my phone, clumsiness, and lately naivety.

>>Although there would be two things that I could say are positive talents. The first, GPA management, which is more or less useful. The second would be my ability to think. Often times it's useless (and a lot of times it's hard to explain things because it's hard to narrow down the big picture), but sometimes it actually leads me somewhere.

>>A recent epiphany I've reached through the help of several others is a debate over the existence of "good" and "bad", or "right" and "wrong". You see, we say that helping an old lady across the street is good. We have young boy scouts do it, or at least we used to. But who said that was a "good" thing to do? What if the old lady is offended that the boy thought she was unable to walk on her own, something she's been doing for longer than the boy has been alive? In India, cows are sacred. They aren't eaten and if one is in the road, you wait until it passes in its time before proceeding. Here in America, we've got slaughterhouses loaded with them.

>>My point? It is all a matter of perception. Also, these things that have been labeled as "right" and "wrong" were just that--labeled. People said it was so. I think a lot of people don't realize that ethics falls into questioning human morals, not morals concerning reality in general.

>>Can reality even have morals? It's just existence; the world is a mass of matter populated somehow by billions of organisms, some with more intelligence than others...anxiety plagues so many people (myself included), but is the fuss even worth it when there's so much more than the speck of dust we are in the galaxy?

>>If God created all of space and then took the time to put all these details into Earth, shouldn't we be grateful? That is, if you believe in some form of deity. If you don't then the world is incredibly brutal: here it is, have at this crazy for awhile, and then death.

>>Scariest question of all: does an omniscient being exist, or did we as people make one up in order to bring some sort of order to the chaos of early civilizations? Think about it. In the Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan lies to the inhabitants of Earth and chooses to be the bad guy in their eyes so as to form peace treaties all over the globe. Yes, it's fictional, but what if one wise guy in early civilization made up God so his tribe would have common goals and work as a unit?

>>Just some food for thought.

OH THE ANGER

>>Do you see the woman in the center, reaching upward? She's a very famous mother, yet, so few of us know of her. Her Greek name is Alkmênê, and guess what? SHE'S A HUMAN. So screw you, Disney, for hiding Zeus's scandalous/promiscuous nature. You see, in the movie Hercules, they have Herc lose his immortality temporarily because he drank a potion that took his powers. In actuality, rather, in the myths, Heraklês is a demigod because he is only half-god, half-human. There are no brotherly brawls for power over Olympus, instead, Zeus was just his typical self and had an affair with precious Alkmênê presented above. Again, Hera was cheated on. I have yet to find out if Hera took any sort of revenge on Alkmênê, but it's likely. Hera's been known to smite or torture Zeus's affairs.

>>So I'm mad at Disney because they degraded the Greek culture by lying about the very nature of the myths and twisting around the facts. Granted, their mythological facts, but however it works they really should have done more research and made a story that fit with what's already well-known.

>>Another thing I'm angry about. Because of that movie, everyone calls him Hercules. ROMANS WERE THIEVES! Why flaunt the Roman name when all they could come up with was "We worship the farmland. Oh farmlandgodman, grant us happy soil that will grow seeds. Oh farmtoolgodman, please keep our tools strong and functioning. Here's some cow fat." REALITY CHECK: Hercules, from the movie, was not a jolly single man that flirted with the damaged Meg that saved the day from Hades taking over Olympus. No, Heraklês was a very depressed man who in a drunken rage accidentally killed his wife (Megana, at least they got that right) and children. Hence the constant depression that Disney pathetically mimicked.

>>Speaking of common misconceptions, I hate it when people refer to Eros as "Cupid", the Roman name. It really grinds my gears.

>>So there you have it. That's what makes me angry today.

Homer's Odyssey has PURPLE Sheep. =D

>>Yup! These sweeties are what the great cyclops, Polyphêmos, herds and keeps for their milk, wool, and probably eventually meat. The proof is in the poetry itself.

>>If you're curious as to what is happening when the hero, Odysseus, falls into the path of purple sheep, rather, rams...he is on his vastly long adventure home, he and his men rowing away trying to find any island from which to find where they are and thus plan how to get back to Ithaca, so they by chance land on an island of giant cyclopses, and unfortunately for them Poseidon's son Polyphêmos resides among them. (How Ocean God + Random Nymph = Giant Cyclops I have no idea.) They go in search of local life and run into Polyphêmos's cave, and from there they are eventually trapped. Polyphêmos gladly eats some of the men, intending to make all of them share the same fate. Odysseus, sly Odysseus, Athena's favorite, comes up with the plan to sharpen and heat a huge log, and when Polyphêmos is drunk enough off of their wine and sleepy enough to lean over, Odysseus and his men jab the point into his sole eye. Blindness makes Polyphêmos squirm, not to mention the burning sensation, and when he opens the cave once again he tells his fellow cyclopses that he was attacked by "Nohbdy". Very sly, that Odysseus.

>>How the men escape, though, is not by running quickly through the opening. There was not time enough to do so by the time Polyphêmos returned from talking to the others. Instead, Odysseus has this epiphany:

"[Odysseus] drew up all [his] wits, and ran through tactics,

reasoning as a man will for dear life,

until a trick came---and it pleased [him] well.

The Kyklops' rams were handsome, fat, with heavy

fleeces, a dark violet."

--Book 9, Lines 460-465

>>There you have it! PURPLE MAMMALS! Greek culture is so fun. Also, how they escaped with violet rams? They tied themselves to the bellies and were chauffeured right out, Polyphêmos never knowing the difference since he was blind. With such wit it's no wonder Athena prized Odysseus and his family so much.

>>By the way, if you're curious, the Ks in "Kyklops'" are due to translations making for funny spellings. It's referring to Polyphêmos. Cyclops. Kyklops. Hahaha. Speaking of translations, I ought to give credit to the man who reads in both Greek and English: Robert Fitzgerald. Never met ya, Robert, but I'm very grateful!

>>Lastly...BAAAA!

Yawn...

>>I don't really know what to think right now.

>>My Sudowoodo's at level 43 and I keep fighting the Elite 4 on Silver Version. Obviously I'm failing because that's my highest level. Damn my skill at being able to get to that point in the game 15 levels too early.

>>I keep wondering whether my time is cluttered or free. It always seems like one or the other, never just one forever. I never have one feeling forever. Isn't that sad? There's no consistency in the world. Then again, that's how we grow and prosper: through many changes.

>>There's days like today where I feel like I should be doing something yet there's nothing to do or no motivation. For instance...I could be doing the past two days' worth of peer-facilitating journals. I could be reading "Master Harold and the boys..." and taking notes on it, as a part of a 50-page project. I could do that History of Spyware assignment that was given to us a week ago that I haven't started and most likely won't touch. Hell, I could be looking up words for my Spanish oral next week. I could clean the house, clean out the car I basically just scored due to my brother's ignorance. I could play with my little brother. I could fly to China and demand that woman give me my prom dress.

>>I could do all of these things, yet I have no motivation to do them. I don't know if it's senioritis (especially since I've already been accepted to a college), lack of sleep, lack of sunshine, or lack of whatever my other Ss are. Maybe it's a lack of energy because now when I have time to do things I just wish it were quiet. That's something that's been bothering me lately: this strange need for quiet. It's not like I have headaches all the time or anything like that. I just want something to be quiet and peaceful and tranquil and lovely and warm all at the same time.

>>"It's all of us, or none of me." -Max Goof on the Extremely Goofy Movie. Sounds like a Oedipal slip, does it not?

>>However it works, I might as well do something productive. Where did I put those journals?

Valentine's Day!

>>So I promised a Valentine's blog depicting the events of how I spent it. Because it's a day late, I'll be posting two blogs today. This is the first of the two.

>>Step back a bit. Think about Valentine's Day in the first place. Where did it come from? Did men really want to express how they felt to their lady friend aside from any anniversaries they would share? Did women force such a holiday into place because they didn't feel loved enough? Does it have nothing to do with either genders' wants, and simply couples everywhere wanted a day to celebrate what they were? Or, perhaps, it's a bigger thing, a bit like Christmas, where maybe at one point the holiday had great meaning, but now is completely comercialized?

>>I did some research. Now, I'd love to think that it has to do with the Greek god Eros, or as his more popular name that the Romans gave him, Cupid. However, he is only a symbol of it. Sadly, it is a Christian holiday, created by Pope Gelasius in 496. Believe it or not, the flowers, the cards, the chocolate, and the heart-shaped everything has been in the tradition from the start. So when people comercialize the holiday, it's still in the spirit of Valentine's Day...just bigger. However, it's rumored that the holiday was put where it was to distract pagans away from their holiday (Lupercalia, google it) and focus more on the ideas of Christianity.

>>Sneaky, strategic buttholes.

>>Why Eros in naked over there, I don't know. Why he's a baby, I equally don't know. But if you think about it, Eros would only be a proper image of love if he were mature enough to experience it. In the stories he's older. So I don't like this baby-Eros common symbol of this holiday. Especially since this is a CHRISTIAN holiday, if the Christians were going to borrow symbols they could have at least borrowed the RIGHT one.

>>Anyhow, that's enough background on the holiday itself. My Valentine's Day was great! Will set up some surprises for me, and despite that some weren't really romantic in the first place it was more the fact that we were doing things together than focusing on trying to do romantic activities. Besides, people can't do mushy-gushy junk all the time. It'd drive you mad!

>>So the first surprise: Eating at a japanese steakhouse where they cook the food in front of you. Ah, precious. This could count as romantic. All sorts of foods are aphrodisiacs, after all. The food was delicious, the other party at our table weren't rude or drunk, so that was a positive experience.

>>Second surprise: Seeing a movie. It's the Percy Jackson, blah blah blah, My Title's So Ridiculously Long That No One Remembers It, and despite that overall it was funny and cute and mostly mythologically correct, I had some issues with it...the part with the lotus flowers is on an island near Greece, not in a casino in L.A. Plus, Percy Jackson ≠ Hercules!! The Hydra and Medusa were long defeated by HERCULES before Percy was ever a thought between Poseidon and what's-her-face-mortal-lady. Not really romantic but still fun, and we got to spend time and laugh together.

>>Third surprise: Going to a park. We just chilled and walked and laughed and spent time together. Despite that we did absolutely nothing, it's still a point for the romantic side.

>>Miscellaneous presents which I've forgotten to mention til this point: roses, a chocolate rose, chocolate in that heart-shaped box, Popey Gelasius up there (there's so many "there"s that that could be! Guess which in comments) would be oh-so proud, a sketchpad with a gushy cutesy lovely note, a thing of red ink for my calligraphy, and lots and lots of smiles.

>>Mom got me chocolate too. A shit ton of it, since it went on sale on Valentine's Day. But that's after the fact of all this. Basically, yesterday was amazing, asombroso, and it doesn't look like it's changing. So huzzah! Victory!