I'm a bad person.

So I guess I'm a horrible person for complaining that the world sucks.
/emo slashies.
With that, I close this blog.
Because I totally care what the world thinks.

It's back to school time!

It's back to school time, and I can't wait to get my shallow, pathetic, selfish ass to all the stores to stock up on slutty outfits and electronics I'm not even supposed to have in class! And I can't forget an overpriced laptop that I'll only use to visit mySpace during class, and of course I'll need to be wearing all the trendiest makeup too!

Instead of commercials for school supply sales and things beneficial to a learning environment, it's all commercials based on the attitude that you go to school to show off your clothes and play with your electronics. Mottos like, "Don't just go back to school, ARRIVE," and commercials where an insolent spoiled brat ignores his teacher to listen to his iPod and revel in his consumption addiction make me want to beat the shit out of every half-qualified idiot parent that lets their kids act like that.

Not that I didn't already know this, but just to reiterate: our society is doomed.

How the world works...or doesn't work, to be more accurate.

Let's imagine you've hired two temps from a local agency.
One of them is young and cute, but does sloppy work. Instead of finding something to do, like clean up, when the project runs out, she plays games on the computer and complains how boring the job is. She answers the phone unprofessionally and wastes time doing things that don't need done. More than likely, working isn't a necessity to pay rent or buy food.
The other temp is faster, neater, and more professional in all aspects, but has an unfortunate haircut that looks something like June Cleaver took 50,000 volts from an electrical socket.
Who do you ask to work for you Saturday?

On an unrelated note, I have the weekend off.
Fucking a.

the end of things

THINGS!! THINGS I SAY! AND ENDS OF THEM!
So it's finally the end of what has to have been the longest and most grueling school year ever. I'm currently celebrating by having myself some beer, which may account for the crappy writing style. Yeah, that's it. After spending 2+ hours watching people with various degrees of talent, most of them disturbingly better than mine, present pretentious flash projects in my digital arts final, I damn well deserve a beer or two. Or a bottle of hard alcohol. Something like that.

If things go right, only two more years of this crap.
GO ME!

i'm drinking Aquafina water...

I used to think the world of fantasy was safe from commercialism, but while reading today I was greeted with the unfortunate reality that authors, too, sell out. Not once, but twice, the book used a specific product name where a generic "computer" or "mp3 player" would have sufficed. It wasn't a passing reference, or something required to develop the character, it was blatant advertising of a product.

I think I was going somewhere with this, but I've got other things to do....

lolartmajor.

http://www.uoregon.edu/~jfrisch/artd252/project_2/index.html

Ahahaha. I can't draw. Woot!
Entertaining nonetheless.

and here's another

Blame Fark.

http://creativebits.org/inspiration/portrayal_of_george_w_bush_in_international_advertisements

best use of the web i've seen in a while

http://johnsidneymccain.com/

LOL.

why i should drop digital arts

http://www.uoregon.edu/~jfrisch/artd252/project_1/index.html

Okay...I made it in like...8 hours.... Okay that's probably not helping my case.
Uh...yeah......

I'd say it's pretty good considering it's based on a completely vague description of what the instructor wanted ("something describing a landscape or complex relationship"), shitty class examples that looked like something from Bud Ugly web design, and a raging hatred for Dreamweaver. *shrug* When in doubt, be an ass, and you can play your gross ineptitude off to parody. Booya.

LOL

http://www.slate.com/id/2189281/?GT1=38001

Cheers to Michael Agger, you saved me from throwing myself off a bridge this week.

more signs the apocolypse is nigh...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/132240/page/1

I'm kinda...speechless.
Must...kill...self before world implodes....

over nine thousand?!

It's been a while since I got annoyed enough to bother with actually writing up a response to an article, but this one was worthy.

http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2008/04/17/Opinion/Professors.Dont.Need.To.Teach.Time.Management-3331462.shtml

_________

Deborah Bloom’s “Professors don’t need to teach time management” article in Thursday’s Emerald reflects the immature selfishness that pervades our culture and the UO.
“If I want to pay thousands of dollars a year to mess around and be irresponsible, then that is my own perogative [sic].” It’s funny that she would use a term more related to privilege than autonomy (and misspell it to boot).

There are too many people at this school that treat classes as an inconvenience and intrusion into their social lives rather than the job that they should be. Many of these students are freshmen, making their attitude somewhat forgivable because the transition between high school (little more than babysitting) and college is difficult. The author sounds like one of these students, which probably means she’s taking lower division classes. Lower division classes are generally overbooked and full of problems because they are intended to weed out the slackers, idiots, and immature kids that are here wasting mommy and daddy’s/the government’s money to party and “learn about themselves”. They’ve seen little of the real world, they have a lack of financial accountability, and they aren’t used to the demands of critical thinking, so they become distracted with the freedoms of college, flunk out, and leave. That’s why freshman classes have mandatory attendance, copious amounts of busywork, and pre-major blocks of virtually useless classes that are run like a kindergarten—the people that can’t follow the rules and learn to learn drop out before they become a nuisance to the upperclassmen. The ones that develop responsibility and diligence move on.

If instructors don’t require attendance, then you get the same credit for being absent as the people that make the effort to show up, no matter how much they hate being there. By the reasoning laid out in the article, assuming that I’m able to keep up with the class, I should get the same A grade in a class for having barbeques and hanging out at the mall as the people who go to class every day. That doesn’t seem logical. The issue of distractions is not limited to the people who would rather be somewhere else. Even the students who come to class without being forced are distracting and annoying. The students dragging in 10 minutes late slurping their coffees and blasting their iPods because 11 am is sooooo eaaarly for a class are just as bad as the ones that are texting out of boredom. From the guy sniffling and refusing to blow his nose to the girl eating a smelly sandwich in the back, every student in a class has the potential to be a distraction, whether it is smacking their gum, wearing too much perfume, breathing with a whistle in their nose, typing on their laptops, or rolling their eyes and sighing at the teacher because they already “know everything.”

You’re not the only one here, and everyone hasn’t come from the same place as you. The sooner you realize that, the better off everyone will be. If paying thousands of dollars every year to be here is a ticket to do whatever you want, then they have every right to draw anime in their notebooks and text their friends. Everyone is paying thousands of dollars to be here, just like you. Maybe that guy who is sleeping in class is doing so because he has an egocentric roommate who pays thousands of dollars a year to party all night. Or maybe he’s sleeping in class because he has to work 40 hours a week on the swing shift and he’s so dead tired he can’t stay awake. I offer that suggestion because I’ve been there. That is time management—that is being the adult that you’re supposed to be when you get to college, not complaining that things are unbearable because you can’t sleep in an extra hour or drive to the coast to party due to the obligation you have to do your job as a student—attend class.

College prepares you for real life—skip work a couple times to “jet off to the hot springs” and see how long you have a job. Start thinking about someone besides yourself for a change. That empty seat is one that could have gone to someone who actually wanted to be there. If you’re taking the class because you absolutely have to for a university requirement, go to class, sit down and shut up, and deal with the fact that once again, you’re not the only one in the world. You will still find mandatory attendance and annoyances in upper division courses—and indeed the rest of your life—but you will also find critical thinking and discussions from people that really want to be there and actually care about the material.

If you think school is anything but teaching to meet standards, you’ve already been skipping too much. Writing for example—you have to write a certain amount of words to pass, some standard likely set down by some board of old people who are out of touch with reality. You can pad your papers with liberal “very” usage and add other fluff, or you can take the time, effort, and responsibility for your education to write a real quality piece. It’s not the instructor’s job to make you do that—at this level, it’s your job as a student to take the initiative to develop past rote memorization on your own.

Similarly, you can’t be taught critical thinking—it’s something you develop through the exercises, readings, and discussions that you’re missing by not being in class. “Someone taking notes for you” is not a substitute for your actual presence and interaction. If you already have those skills and you can skip every class and get straight As, take the responsibility to challenge and better yourself by taking honors courses.

Don’t get me wrong. I find it ridiculous to be forced to attend an art class 6 hours a week when I can learn more in an hour on the internet and my learning style favors independent work. But at the same time, I find it depressing when half the class is missing and we end up having a weak discussion about a subject that would otherwise be interesting. I find it frustrating to have to spend half of a 50 minute class playing catchup for all the people who couldn’t inconvenience their busy lives to come to class. Your struggling to catch up after missing class isn’t about just you, you’re inconveniencing everyone there. Teachers that give you a grade penalty for missing classes are holding you accountable for your actions and treating you like an adult.

Unfortunately it is the more vocal percentage of our culture that becomes representative of a group. The guy shouting about Jesus on the corner is more noticeable and more memorable than the quiet religious guy down the street. People that read articles like this in the Emerald or hear half-baked arguments from students about why they should pass after missing half the term see a spoiled “me me me” mentality as the average student rather than the ones with valid reasons for wanting to miss an occasional class, and that’s why they will continue with the policy. Should we have some leeway for the occasional sick or even playday? Of course, and most professors already cut students enough slack to let them miss a few days of class with no penalty. Those engaging and interesting teachers that don’t take attendance know that it shows in your work when you’re not coming to class, and they will treat you accordingly.

If you really dislike a policy, take the initiative, responsibility, and use some independent thinking to start writing letters or petitions to make some change. Write an email to professors asking them to enforce their no-cell phones policy or raise whatever issues are bothering you. They shouldn’t have to be babysitters, but they should have control and authority over their classrooms. If you’re a student that shows up regularly and participates, you’ll be taken far more seriously.

Try going to class next week. Try going to class the rest of the term.

Congratulations on your first step towards growing up.

chicken or the egg?

"Is the twenty-first-century American urban ghetto simply an open-air prison in which the most stigmatized and demonized are confined? Some observers think that the urban ghetto of today is an outcast ghetto, comprised of those that society has no use for. As Marcuse notes, 'Those in today's black ghettos are not productive for their masters; their masters get no benefit from their existance. As far as the dominant society is concerned, they are only a drain on public and private resources, they are a threat to a social peace, and they fulfill no useful social role. They are outcasts....'
Since urban ghetto dwellers have no role in U.S. society, the population at large simply sees no reason to provide for their continued reproduction. In this light, current welfare and public housing policies are mainly attempts to reduce the social expense of the poor. Will the outcasts remain quiescent? Or will the U.S. experience another round of urban rebellions that once again threaten to destroy social order?"

---Jeff R. Crump "Producing and Enforcing the Geography of Hate" p. 241


If today's "social order" is about oppressing the poor and underprivileged, it's goddamn time somebody starts destroying it.

what do you want from me?!

No, really.
What DO you people want from me when you insert completely irrelevant information like "yeah, I'm a writer" into a conversation that has nothing to do with that subject? A pat on the back? An awed air of respect?
It's like when you talk to a girl and she turns the conversation to herself, then says something like "I'm a dancer (singer/artist/photographer/model)" with what she thinks is a cute smile, you can almost feel the wave of smugness emanating from her. Am I supposed to like you better, respect you more for your complete lack of modesty and pathetic cry for attention from a mere acquaintance?

And people do this to me all the time. Apparently it’s a socially acceptable way to have a “conversation” now, derailing it to supply your conversational partner with worthless trivia that is supposed to make them like you more, and validate your existence somehow. It’s not really that part that annoys me so much, it's the fact that they're usually terrible at whatever they claim to be:

"I'm a writer"= I write pretentious, wordy, worthless crap in my parents' basement and will never get anywhere in life because I’m so full of myself I’ll never learn to take direction or feedback on my work.

“I’m a singer” (blonde bimbo) = I sing off-key karaoke with the wrong lyrics at the local bar when I’m wasted and all my bimbo friends tell me I’m good so I keep doing it.

“I’m a singer” (pretentious bimbo) = My parents let me (forced me to) take voice classes since I was five, so I can almost hold a note when I’m not singing in that fake high voice that I think makes me hot. I love my voice so much that I’ll burst into song while walking down the sidewalk, and hum in the middle of classes, and I have no shame because I’m sure everyone loves me as much as I love myself.

“I’m a musician” – see above –or- I own an accoustic guitar that I pick up once every two months to strum, out of tune, while humming some folk ballad. –or- I own an electric guitar that I almost never pick up because I’m too busy doing things like buying leather wrist guards and “rocker” attire from made-in-china chain stores like Hot Topic, all the while thinking I’m a individual and unique rebel.

“I’m a model” = I’m an insecure whore, out of touch with the reality of what gives a woman worth and value in this world. I wear too much makeup and too few clothes, and project the attitude that I’m better than everyone, when in reality, I’m pathetically inadequate on every level. I only say I’m a model because I think it makes people like me, when the truth is, I’ve only had my picture taken for some contest or worse, a Shopko ad.

“I’m a dancer”= I take pilates classes at my local gym and/or flail around half-naked on my local dance team to shitty hip-hop music/strip for a living while wearing sweatpants that say “DANCER” on the ass, all of which will never result in respect from anyone except the idiots doing the same thing right next me.

"I'm a gamer" = I play WoW or some other mindless button-pushing sociopathic-attracting game because my boyfriend is borderline mentally retarded and won't give me the time of day unless I do. I don't bother to learn to play the game, and instead get by on declaring that I'm a girl every five minutes to anyone that will listen to me. I wear thickframed glasses that I don't even need and order tacky shirts 2 sizes too small that say stupid things like "GRL GAMR" because the guys on my games told me the picture of my cleavage that I posted online was hot.

“I’m a photographer”= I run around with my pink camera snapping shots of puppies and fences, then develop them at Walmart and change them to black and whites in Photoshop, all the while thinking I’m a deep, innovative individual. I take photography classes and sit smiling smugly while the teacher lectures because I already know everything.

“I’m a digital artist”= see above –or- I draw Hawaiian flowers on my notebook then scan them into Illustrator and then use the tools instead of my lack of skills to make them look like every other piece of uncreative “graphic design” that has come out in the last five years. I bring my Mac notebook to the computer lab and browse Facebook and MySpace instead of doing the lesson because I can’t learn anything from anyone.

I could go on with this alllll day.
Hey everybody! I’m a writer.

........................

..........................................
................
..........
-.-;

Meet Thomas. Thomas is pregnant. Huh? Thomas used to be Tracy. Bend gender, Tracy, Bend gender.

I had the pleasure of staring at my TV train wreck style today (I seem to do that a lot lately, with only 5 fuzzy channels to choose from and an inability to entertain myself on my own) as Oprah introduced the viewing audience to a pregnant man who used to be a woman.

Oprah, when did you go so far off the deep end?

I suppose it isn't really Oprah that's done so...as a talk show host, she has to pander to the disturbing interests of the viewing audience. I love how she keeps talking about how she wants to make sure that Thomas and his wife, yes his wife, get to tell their story from their own point of view instead of have them being used, while she dominates the entire interview with leading questions.

Some of the questions she neglected to ask were things like...What is that going to do to your kid? Having a "man" give birth to a kid is going to fuck that kid up, maybe not physically, but mentally for sure, when that poor bastard finds out and has to go through life branded a freak. How is it having a biological child with your wife when it's sperm from some random stranger at a sperm bank? Sperm banks? How do these people pay for this shit? Hormone therapy, breast removal and surgery, pregnancy and care all cost ridiculous amounts of money. Obviously gender confusion is a problem only the rich can afford to deal with. And speaking of gender confusion, when is someone going to wake the fuck up and realize that when children even 5 years old are talking about being lesbians, they don't have a clue what they're saying? Why would you lend that any more belief than when your same little kid runs around making swishing sounds and declaring she has magic powers?

I'm not going to get into ranting about homosexuals today (I can hear the sighs of relief now...), or even Oprah. In fact, I'm just going to quit right now while I'm only semi-behind. Hurray for preaching tolerance. Let's just let everyone be self-serving, ego-centric morons. Go America!

HONK HONK HONK!

Congratulations, VW, on making the singlemost annoying commercial on television to date. I love watching tv late at night and almost drifting off to sleep only to be jarred awake by a fucking car alarm horn going off over and over again. Ha, haha, it's so clever of a commercial...not.

And here's your reward: I'll never buy a VW in my life because of it. Hurray!

Bridezilla...?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/115866/page/1

Does anybody remember what a wedding is about? Anyone? No?

A marriage is about joining two people that LOVE each other in a formal ceremony.

Unfortunately it has become a joke, used for a myriad of other purposes: a way for illegals to stay in the country, a way for spoiled rich kids to show off how pathetically materialistic they are, a way for couples (regardless of their feelings for one another) to share insurance benefits and other such perks that one partner may have, and, worst of all, a way for shallow whores to show everyone how "beautiful" they are. And I use "beautiful" because Botox, chemicals, fake tans, and starving yourself do very little besides make you more of a whore.

Grow the fuck up. So what if it rains on your wedding? So what if you're 20 pounds heavier than an anorexic fashion model? So what if you can't get the famous caterer you wanted? So what if you're not the right fake shade of tan? So what if your dress isn't the designer fashion famous in Paris? This "perfect day" you've dreamed about since you were 5 isn't all about YOU, it's about the partner that you love so much you want to spend the rest of your life with them. Guys don't fucking care that you spent 3k on your dress, in fact, they're probably annoyed that YOU care so much. Dressing up like a whore and trying to be gorgeous for people who already know and care about you just shows how completely shallow and pathetic your like must be. Throwing temper tantrums because things aren't going just right means you need to get a grip on reality. (The same goes for the idiots that watch and enjoy shows like Bridezilla).

If you're getting married for the right reasons, you don't need to spend a dime proving anything to anyone.

Don't Forget Your Dignity!

The Fox station, and everyone that watches it, should be eradicated from existance, right away. This includes me, for even the 5 minutes I spent watching it just now, in a horrified and paralyzed state of disgust. Just like a fucking car accident, you can't look away!

"Don't Forget the Lyrics," hosted by Wayne Brady, of all the horrible people, featured the typical overly-madeup whore trying to be hot as she butched famous songs in a wavering voice. If this wasn't bad enough, "she can also break dance!" declares a smitten Wayne, as she flails around on the floor in what is supposed to break dancing but appears more like a seizure.

Am I the only one wishing Wayne Brady would go away? Am I the only one that wants to slap the smug "i'm so fucking hot" look off her face as she dances around with the coordination of a drunk 5-year-old and misses note after note? Am I the only one that bristles when I hear my favorite Beatle's song sung in 3 different keys? Am I the only one that thinks people with obvious lack of talent shouldn't be rewarded on the basis of being whores?

Am I the only one watching this shit?
The world could be so lucky.

fan-fucking-tastic!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infix

I tend to get easily distracted when writing a paper, especially a research paper. Came across this one from Censorship -> Censorship (US) -> MPAA ratings -> Fuck -> Expletive Infixation. I find it hilarious to have inserting the word "fuck" into other words broken down into grammatical rules and arguements in a scholarly manner.

Hooray for the internet!
And booze. Can't forget booze!

make love, not war....

Walking home today, I was presented with the reason that we are, and will continue to be, at war. Don't get me wrong, I don't encourage a long-running pointless war, but a cluster of 5 people wearing various levels of thrift store junk and waving rainbow flags as they scowl at passerbys doesn't really do much to encourage anyone to join the anti-war cause.

Crackhead hippies do for peace what armpit-haired, grudge-toting, fuzzy-legged lesbians do for the feminist movement: screw it up. The loudest mouths are the ones that get the notice, and 9 times out of 10 they're not the voice the general movement wants. You want to make some change? Get off the corner and work on legislation, petitions, recruitment, and for fuck sake, do it without the rainbow flags and reek of pachuli. If you feel you have to stand on the corner to get your message across, do it with more than the small circle of friends you could convince to act like morons for a day. 100 people standing on the corner waving hippie flags, while still a horrendous vehicle for social change, is far more noticable and bound to have somewhat more impact (although probably still a negative one).

So quit making peace quilts and smoking weed and get to work!

Macs suck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQiiszIthx4

(Gotta admit the song is catchy, although it reeks of the pretentious "indie" culture it's trying to attract. "We're so counter-culture, spending all our money on things we don't need while people starve in the streets, ha, hahah!")

I don't know what's funnier, this parody or all the wannabe-artist-Mac-slave-idiots rallying behind the thing like every negative remark on its functionality and price are attacks on their family's honor. "OMG GUYZ U R STEWPID, MACS RULE~! I CAN DO DIG ART ON ITE WITAUT USING MI BRIAN!?11"

Pick up a pen and some paper, or a guitar, or whatever real life object correlates to what you're doing on your overpriced toy, and stop thinking that you're a better artist/musician/etc than everyone because you use a Mac.

And take off those fucking thick-framed glasses that you don't even need before I slap you across the face with your own laptop.

what the fuck is an enthymeme?

Well here we go, Paper #1 for writing 123, my arch-nemesis in the academic world. To be honest, I have no fucking clue what it was supposed to be about, I don't know what the hell an enthymeme is, and I was drinking vodka and cranberry juice for the larger percentage of the endevour.

And I wonder why I can't pass my classes!

_________________

Obesity as a Class Issue

Fresh-cut asparagus: $1.98 per pound. Fat-free, whole grain pasta: $2.99. Jar of all-organic spaghetti sauce: $3.95. Loaf of 12-grain wheat bread: $3.99. Pound of 99% fat-free hamburger: $6.99. Carton of 100% pure cranberry juice: $4.99. Time spent shopping and preparing: 1 hour.
Knowing your family is eating a nutritious meal that is good for them? Priceless.
It may not be an actual commercial, but it could be. Mastercard, with its “Some things money can’t buy” ads epitomizes the attitude of today’s affluence-obsessed culture. You can’t put a price on things like this, they try to convince consumers. The unfortunate reality in America is that everything comes at a price, and some people can’t afford to pay. When faced with a choice of expensive, healthy food that takes a long time to prepare, or cheap and usually unhealthy fast food, working class Americans will more often than not opt for the latter.

Does this mean that America’s obesity problem, now being called an epidemic by many, is a blatant effort by the rich to keep the poor in check for some greedy reason? Quite possibly. It seems as if poor Americans are being targeted by companies like McDonalds and makers of cheap foods, and a large part of the obesity problem can be traced to class differences. Others argue that it is not so much that companies target the poor and try to make and keep them fat (after all, what good is your labor workforce when they’re obese?), it’s that the poor are more likely to make unhealthy choices on a regular basis for the convenience and affordability. Both sides’ arguments are valid.

Obesity is a class issue, related to not only the availability of food but of exercise equipment, or time to prepare proper meals. Rich people work fewer hours than the poor for the same pay, have more access to fitness clubs or safe recreational areas, and have the luxury of choice when it comes to food. Lawrence O. Gostin offers a number of reasons for obesity in his article “Fast and Supersized”:

Health officials can provide information about healthy lifestyles, but if individuals live in poorly designed communities, their health will suffer. Many urban environments lack safe, open, and green spaces to facilitate recreation and physical activity. They also lack easy access to inexpensive, nutritional foods. Convenience stores and fast food outlets may vastly outnumber grocery stores where people can buy whole grains, fresh fruit, and vegetables. At the same time, suburban sprawl facilitates reliance on automobiles and discourages walking or cycling (11).

This is most true in poor neighborhoods, where people are crammed in housing projects and convenience stores line the street. At the same time, companies are targeting the poor, following the basic rules of capitalism: go where the money is, and do and say what you have to in order to get it. The rich aren’t going to shop at 7-11 as much as the poor are, so why build stores in neighborhoods that won’t make money?

Greg Critser describes the opening of a Dunkin Doughnuts in an ethnic neighborhood in California in his article, “Let Them Eat Fat”. He cites a discussion with the manager about why they decided to locate their restaurant in that particular place. The manager replies that they were looking for “all the bigger families”(106). When prodded, he clarifies “bigger in size” (106) with a roll of his eyes.

The Dunkin Doughnuts in Crisner’s article is targeting a certain population, and the question of whether or not it is a malicious decision focused on taking advantage of the poor, in this case Hispanic people, is pressing. An entire class of college students, supposedly developed in their critical thinking skills, missed the potentially deeper meaning of this seemingly innocent exchange (or found it prudent to leave it untouched). Bigger families, as in Mexican families? Or bigger families as in fatter? Is the targeting of the poor so subtle that we often miss it? Do social stigmas on discussing race and class prevent people from addressing these issues? If so, Crisner’s claim that obesity is a direct result of companies’ blatant irresponsibility toward the poor suddenly becomes more valid.

The fact that an entire class would miss something like that shows just how subtle the problem really is. Then again, university students don’t generally hail from the income bracket these companies target.

“Well, they don’t have to eat there,” one boy haughtily declares. Choice for the poor is an interesting thing. After working an 8 hour day, the choice of spending $20 to ride the bus for half an hour, shop for food (assuming you can find childcare for your kids or beat them home), then go home and spend another half an hour cooking it, who isn’t going to opt for convenience that McDonald’s located right by their house offers? It’s cheaper, faster, and tastier.

Of course not all poor people are obese. An entire sub-class of “poor” exists within those below the middle class. Shell Feijo writes a saddening story of a sleepover with a friend in her essay, “There are Holes in My Mandarin Dog Bisquit”:

“We were hungry and there was nothing to eat. I don’t mean that there was only peanut butter and jelly, or milk instead of juice; I don’t mean that there was nothing we liked. I mean that there was nothing there” (99).

Michelle Tea’s compilation is full of stories like this, families without the means to sustain themselves. Are these families the target of companies like fast food chains for their poverty, despite their inability to afford it? In a way. Daisy Hernandez talks about working at a McDonalds in “My Father’s Hands”: “The job was like walking on a tightrope without a net…. You never know why they sent you home but not the others. A wrong word could mean your hours the next week were reduced from forty to thirty-two” (56).

Jobs, and the security of those jobs, are another class-related commodity. This suggests that not only is obesity of rising concern, but the causes of it, like difference in classes,
While fast-food corporations like McDonald’s are often the main focus of the anit-obesity movement, looking at other low-cost foods reveals the same problems. Examining the nutrition facts on a package of Top Ramen, a staple item for many struggling college students, once again reveals that cheap does not equal healthy. A package of the instant noodles contains a low caloric content (280 calories if one consumes the entire two-serving package by himself), but high fat content (22% of fat and 36% of daily recommended saturated fat). Knowing that these packages often sell for ten cents each, does this mean that the Nissen company is intentionally targeting the poor, and ignoring the lack of food value? Is this even their responsibility?

Do corporations like McDonald’s blatantly ignore health issues to make more money? What are the benefits of keeping the poor, poor? The questions about where responsibility lies in the obesity problem continue to grow, and there is no finite answer. The only answer lies in a solution: “The answer, I suggest, is that in almost every public-health arena, the need to address obesity as a class issue—one that transcends the inevitable divisiveness of race and gender—has been blunted by bad logic, vested interests, academic cant, and ideological chauvinism” (Cristner 109). Moving past pointing fingers and instead focusing on a real solution is the only answer to this crisis. A cooporative effort by an entire society, ignoring class, race, and social standing? Priceless.




Works Cited


Critser, Greg. “Let Them Eat Fat.” In The Curious Reader. 104-115.

Feijo, Shell. “There are Holes in My Mandarin Dog Bisquit.” Without a Net: the Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Ed. Michelle Tea. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2003. 97-101.

Gostin, Lawrence O. “Fast and Supersized: Is the Answer to Diet by Fiat?” The Hastings Center Report. March 2005: 11 -12.

Hernandez, Daisy. “My Father’s Hands.” Without a Net: the Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Ed. Michelle Tea. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2003. 49-57.

word count: 500

Sitting in the desk-crowded, ugly green-tiled, sun-blinding WR123 room that's located on the third floor of Allen Hall today at 3:00 which is when I have my writing class because it's nice to have classes in the afternoon, someone (a girl sitting three desks away with brown hair and too much makeup) asked the teacher who was standing in the front of the classroom wearing a scarf and a sweater if it was acceptable for our reading responses that she had assigned the previous class (not Monday because we had that off for MLK Jr. day--MLK Jr. was a very talented speaker by the way--but Friday) to be less than the required 400-500 words. Although reading responses are only one of the various types of busywork (busywork is all the superfluous stuff that teachers make students do to make sure they're actually reading the materials) assigned for this writing class, they are the most time consuming and annoying and frustrating because we are forced to draw meaningful thoughts and ideas from crap essays (by crap essays I mean poorly written garbage that some pretentious geriatric—Bruce Ballinger—thinks is meaningful in one way or the other but is generally incorrect) with no point and then type them up and turn them in to her. (And she's very picky about the ink, even though I'm running out of black ink in my printer and have to print in red or brown or some retarded color, she doesn't care, she just plain doesn't like weird colors when we turn in papers that she has assigned.) Anyway, her response was no, that we would be graded down a certain amount off the total grade for not having the required amount of words, which was 400-500. Why? Because writing classes at UO require us to write a certain amount for the term. Apparently it doesn't matter if it's poorly written and grammatically incorrect, or even borderline illiterate, just as long as we meet that golden word count. These writing assignments don’t ask that much of us; 400-500 words is a stretch even if you actually care about the assignment. She informed us this policy of meeting word counts or getting graded down would be in effect for our two research papers as well.

"So it's better to keep writing after we've run out of meaningful things to say than to have a paper of substance?" I asked on my way out of the classroom at 4:00 when class was over. I've never been one to pad a paper; when I'm done saying what needs to be said, there's no fucking reason to go back and cram in as much shit as possible to meet some idiotic standard. She nodded her head. "Yep!"

That’s right, instead of writing thoughtful papers and responses, we have to continue spouting nonsense after we've already made our points in order to pass this class. This is quality in education.

I can feel my writing skills improving already!

I'm hungry....

Apparently I’m something of a picky eater. When I say picky, I don’t mean snobby, as I’m quite happy with a hamburger and fries any day. By picky, I mean I won’t eat just any place I come across.

Apparently that’s why I can’t find anything to eat at UO. Well, can’t find anything to eat that isn’t hippie crap or overpriced crap (Subway comes to mind—how much DO vegetables and bread cost to mass produce, anyway?). Even the vending machines with their $1.10 snack size bags of chips are there to partake in the masses of spoiled kids with too much disposable income.

I found myself hungry enough to venture into the EMU for lunch the other day, which was a bad idea not only for the food, but because waiting in line with a bunch of obnoxious, jostling idiots for upwards of 20 mins for ANYTHING is bound to make you dislike it. Since everything had ridiculously long lines and I didn't feel like breaking my hand on someone's face, I decided to try out the Holy Cow Café for a salad, figuring that you can’t possibly fuck up vegetables and dressing.

I guess you can. Chunks of what I thought to be chicken (should have known better on that one) turned out to be fried tofu with the consistency of plastic and a flavor like grilled Playdoh. The vegetables were old and wilted (but organic, hurray! *sarcasm*), the dressing was some terrible healthy version of good old ranch, and to top it off, I paid $4 for the thing.

Contrasting this, I had breakfast today at the bus station, a distasteful prospect to many of my peers. It was cheap, it was horrible for me, it was delicious. And it was served with a smile and courtesy by an older gentleman who was just eccentric enough to be cool and not annoying or scary. The collection of bumper stickers and signs behind the counter and around the register varying from silly sayings to profound statements of advice just added to the charm of the place.

You don’t find that around the school. Any of it. Holy Cow Café with its collection of self-righteous vegetarian and pro-earth comics and articles gives me nothing but a feeling of “I don’t belong here”.

Although that’s probably what they wanted in the first place.

sour grapes make delicious wine

to drown your sorrows in.... Or something like that.

I'd been looking forward to going to Sakura-con, an anime convention, in Seattle for the longest time, at least five years. And every year something would happen that stopped me from going, including no money, boyfriends that didn't give a shit, no money, and no money. This year I vowed to go, being so bold as to send in the $40 preregistration fee to guarantee a spot.

Hotels tend to cost money, as do transportation and food. So I tried to rally some friends into going. For months all I got was meager enthusiasm and no real committment, which of course is not encouraging when you're going to be the one reserving a $120/night, 3-night hotel stay on your bank card.

Besides the vague 'yes' vote on the part of my friends, my car is a piece of crap. I've known this for a while, but when pushing it out of intersections became a daily affair, I decided this car would not be an appropriate choice of vehicle. This left planes, trains, or someone else's automobile, none of which were viable choices. Trains take too long and cost too much (although the cheapest of the options), airplanes suck and cost too much, and nobody I know owns a car that can drive that distance.

But it wasn't any of these things that destroyed my desire to go. It was sitting in Japanese class listening to some spoiled kid ramble on about how she was going to go abroad to China for a term, and then Japan after that, how her Grandpa was paying for all her school, how it was so silly that she didn't get any financial aid because her family did construction (yeah there's no money in that business at all....), and how she couldn't wait to go to the convention with her Chinese teacher. It struck me then that these were the kinds of people that went to anime conventions, brats with disposable income coming out of their asses and nothing better to do with it than buy toys and think they're cute for speaking Japanese and liking anime.

Well, okay, there are the kids that sit around playing D&D (nothing inherantly wrong with D&D, I'd probably play if I'd gotten into it earlier on) and discussing how in episode #47 Naruto's hair is parted the wrong way in scene 24, and how that's some sort of symbolism for his state of mind throughout sidestory brought up in episode #33. (I made that up, I don't have a fucking clue). And then there are the squealing cutesy fan-girls that you want to slap. I've come to realize that these people are going to do nothing but make me hate anime, and that would be a shame. Anime is best enjoyed alone or in the company of a few friends, and there's no need for plastic figurines of characters, running around in an uncomfortable costume for the pleasure of 12-year old perverts and pedophiles, or even the signature of your favorite voice actor.

So yeah. Have fun at Sakura-con, assholes.

sugar, we're goin down

It was the first day of a new term today, and, while it wasn't really punch-the-wall shitty, it had that same old 'why the hell am I here' ring to it.

The more I see of the world, the more I realize that I hate it. At first it was "I hate this town, I want out". Then it wasn't just that town, it was the next one too.
Well, wait, maybe it's this state that sucks.
No, no, this one sucks too.

We all know Americans are self-serving assholes without an ounce of care for the rest of the world or the implications of their actions on the future. The question is, if your ship is sinking, do you bail out or go down with it?

And are other countries any better?

/end pointless rambling.