Some Brain Spew on Weight Loss

Urg, internet. I'm all annoyed now, and it's not even about the subject of today's rant. It's making me want to start a tangent rant about stupid people and pet ownership. And empty threats and complaints without the intent of correction. But, I should probably leave all that to the side since it's all just happening right now in my real life. This is the price of suddenly being surrounded by young adults who think they know what they're doing.

Anyway, I've been weirdly focused on food lately, and at work today I heard a radio commercial that just filled me with horror and irritation, and then I decided to write a blog post about it.

There I was, filling up egg pans before the morning rush, half listening to the classic rock station, and then this commercial came on for a weight loss center. They advertised for both "natural and chemical" weight loss methods, as well as single day visits and lifestyle/nutrition counselors to help you half-ass your way into being skinny.

At first glance, there wasn't really anything wrong with the ad, but it still infuriated me, because I hate--hate with a fiery, righteous passion-- this idea of losing weight for the sake of being skinnier. There's this disgusting focus on that, and it's everywhere. If a celebrity isn't skeletal or impossibly toned, people will comment on their figure, and it's this idiotic expectation that everyone in the entire world should look that way. There's no regard for health, body type, psychology, motivation, method, or diversity. It's all about results. Really, a singular, poisonous result.

Here's the ugly truth, boys and girls: people have different body types. They're shaped differently. Not everyone can be slim, shapely, and muscular. In fact, almost no one is all three of those because of their intrinsic contradictions in a body, and the way that we are about being thin and about eating, no one is really likely to be.

The thing is, that's not an ugly truth. Those aren't ugly bodies. Healthy bodies are not ugly. I say that as an artist with an ongoing love affair with the human shape. I love drawing the figure, but I don't love only drawing hourglass shaped women (as much as I love my sexy pin-up girls), and I don't only love drawing Superman. When I took figure drawing, my favorite models were the ones that were interesting to look at and fun to talk to, and that usually means not having a conventionally beautiful or symmetrical face.

But that's not exactly where I originally meant to go. This whole obsession with an end without regard to anything else, like whether it's healthy, or longterm, or even beneficial is one of the things that's been on my mind a lot. It shows up in Western culture a lot, but especially education, medicine, and this.

I watched Forks Over Knives the other day, along with a whole mess of Ted Talks about food and health and whatnot, and it really made me start thinking about the way that we relate to our food,
("How can anyone have a relationship to food?" Shrinking Women)
and more and more I notice how profoundly sickening it is the majority of the time. People eat the worst crap all of the time, and then complain about health problems caused directly by their laziness and gluttony.

How can you be shocked that you're overweight or diabetic when you eat garbage all the time?

Most of the stuff I was watching contended that the majority of health problems we have in Western culture are totally preventable and even the existing, chronic ailments can be mitigated by controlling what we put in our body.

But doing that requires putting in effort. We don't want to be healthier or feel better. We want to wear a bikini and eat a gallon of icecream. Why do things that benefit your body and mental health when you can just throw money and pills at it, or become a slave to self-denial?

I think this will need to explode into a few different posts. There's too much that I'm trying to say right now, and it's getting very muddled and confusing, so I'll stop now and try to sort my thoughts a little. I think it can break down into two or three separate topics. They're just all very tangled together.

A Month of Simple Pleasures, Days 18-21

I seem to be getting progressively worse at this, audience. I started this post the other day, and then somehow it just never happened. I'm gonna finish it now, though, because it's getting ridiculous, and there's only ten more days of this crap.

18. Laughing out loud at something in my head when no one else said anything
This happens fairly often to me. There's generally a lot more going on in my head than there is around me, and some of it can be pretty funny. I'll randomly think things, or remember something funny, and then I'll suddenly realized I've just laughed during silence. It makes one feel somewhat silly, but I feel like if you don't laugh at the things in your head sometimes, you can't have very interesting things going on in there. I'd much rather have the party in my brain.

19. Skipping, twirling, jumping, or dancing while walking somewhere
I don't really have any explanation or expanding to offer with this one. No analysis, or deeper implications. Just happy things that are probably more childish than not.

20. Moshing
For those sad individuals who don't know, moshing is one of the primary activities at any metal show. It's almost universally around the font/center area, and it's beautiful in one of the most violent, chaotic ways possible. There's so much enthusiasm and and animal energy, it's impossible not to be full of adrenaline and exhilarated. Plus, you're at a metal show, which means live music played by some of the most talented badasses ever. There is something both primal and sophisticated about it that fascinates me. And I love thrashing against sweaty strangers to really brutal music. The first time I ever entered a mosh pit, I was like thirteen or fourteen, and I fell in love with it.

21. Well mixed drinks
This is yet another of my fleshy pleasures. Most of the things I enjoy are either very intellectual, or very not. This is one of the not so intellectual ones. It applies to both alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. I just like flavors to be combined well, and for the tastes to interact well. I get kind of annoyed when one flavor overpowers the others. It feels like a total waste to mix them.

You know that part in Ratatouille where the little vermin voiced by that short chubby guy is eating things and there's these Fantasiaesque sparks and splashes of color and accompanying music for each flavor combination? It should always be like that.

And now I have lots of other things to be doing, so this post shall end here and be short. Hopefully I'll get back on track over spring break this next week.

Faceless (A disjointed ramble on being a food-service drone)

Before my actual post, let me briefly offer some vague, half-sincere apology about not writing in so long. I keep thinking I should post something, but then I lose motivation, or don't have time, or don't have anything to say worth posting, dubious though that distinction clearly is with me.

But on to this blog!

So today at this meeting I had for work, we got informed that there are some changes to the uniform; we now have to wear aprons, tuck our shirts in, wear a plain, solid colored belt, and if we wear black jeans, they have to be solid colored, with no fading or wearing anywhere. Our area rep commented to my manager during his last inspection that we were looking a little "sloppy" right after commending us on almost everything else. This was because we are allowed to wear black jeans and colorful, exciting belts if we so desire, and that day I wore capris and boots. When I got hired on, I was told I could no longer wear my nose ring (I can get away with the stud, but the ring is too extreme or something), my watch, my bracelets/wristband, any visible necklaces, and anything but studs in my ears. I also have to have a natural hair color, solid, dark shoes, constantly wear my work shirt and hat, and not paint my nails.

Yes, my fingernails cannot be painted pretty colors.

I realize that that isn't that bad as far as uniform requirements. It's actually not that much worse than my dresscode in high school, but the thing about the dresscode in school was that I was free to wear anything I wanted within the parameters. It's a genuine struggle for me to conform to the boring uniforms, and I have to try very hard not to look as individual as I typically do.

Let me give you guys some point of reference...

That's me in real life, more or less (my hair is actually black at the moment). I don't take issue with looking professional and making it clear where I work, especially since I'm often out of the store on deliveries and such. What I take issue with is the evil implications behind this stupid rule. Because the subtext of what my place of employment is doing is that I am not an individual. I am a food drone here to serve you.

The purpose of a uniform in food service is to make you, the customer, forget that I am a person, with my own life, my own problems and priorities, my own style, my own views, and they have nothing to do with you. It's more convenient and it's quicker is we forget that we are interacting with people and simply treat them as a function. I do the same thing. My customers are largely irrelevant to me, just as I am irrelevant to them. When I flash you a sunny smile and ask how your day is going, I couldn't actually care less, and if you don't tip me, my coworkers will hear all about what a fat trollop I thought you were. Your function, faceless customer, is to provide me with income, and my function is to provide you with food.

Actually, one time, I delivered to one of my coworker's houses right before she started working with me, and  the day I met her officially, she told me that I delivered to her before. I just stared blankly, having absolutely no memory of her until she reminded me that I got lost and her little sister walked around the corner to assist me.

I'd love to be able to give a fuzzy moral for this story, or to challenge you to remember that everyone is the hero of their own story, but that would likely just end with me telling you to tip, for the love of god, so I won't do that. Everyone is their own main character, but we are such egocentric creatures, we forget that not everyone is living our story.

Maybe someday I'll come back to this topic and write something clearer and better on it, because there's really so much more I wanted to say, but everything is coming out misshapen and cloudy, so I shall simply leave this monstrosity as it is and go about my day.

The Fridge, a Thing of Beauty and Evil

So I was fridge diving the other day, and it occurred to me that there's a tragic curse on me and my siblings that resides in our refrigerator. I had to divide it into separate parts, though, in order to explain this adequately.

First, let me define "fridge diving" for you. It's a term I coined a few years ago because there was no other phrase to describe what it was that I was doing. Fridge diving is a last resort starvation technique, like eating cheese with salad dressing on it (Caesar and chedder, guys. I promise.). It's when you open the refrigerator, stare, close, repeat, and then after three or four times throw random things together and then consume it. Not always delicious, but usually edible, and it shuts that annoying hunger thing up effectively.

And as an added bonus, it usually looks a little like vomit after I melt cheese and put ranch on it, so no one wants to steal any! :D

The thing that makes fridge diving possible is what I like to call the "over forty fridge." It's a phenomenon common among grownups raised with a semi-Depression-era mindset, which is presumably because their parents were raised during the Depression and following years. The fridge is always packed, and there's usually a layer of things that you don't question or move, because they've been there long enough to become simply part of the refrigerator's landscape. There's also frequently nothing to eat in the clutter. Which is how I end up snacking on things like cheese and mustard or eggs and ranch. It's all condiments and compliments for food, but no actual noms.

So in addition to the regular, mysterious, nonfood occupants to the fridge, I come from a ginormous family, which is all well and good, but the problem here is that we all still cook for between six and ten people. There's only five people living in this house (myself, my sister, my brother, and my parents), so there's constantly leftovers. In some houses, this isn't a problem, but my family isn't especially fond of eating leftovers, particularly when that's what we've eaten the day before. Add to that the fact that we're all a little leery of eating anything of dubious goodness, having at one point or another taken a swig of milk or bite of something only to discover it's flown right past the point when it ought to have been thrown out.

The reason that we end up with old things in the fridge is usually that we're all procrastinators. Cleaning out the fridge is no one's favorite job, so we all wait until it gets really atrocious and Becca's culinary OCD takes over.

This is one of the many reasons I take comfort in knowing that my house will never be that way. Because I obviously have nothing to do with the cyclical problem here...

Anyways. This took far too long, and I shall now go finish cleaning in my evil room. (Both in the fact that it is a thing of evil, and in that it's a room for being evil...Or something. Now I need to have the Evil Room right next to the Angry Dome. Maybe it'll be my studio in my future awesome house.)

Food

I have to find some serious amusement when I bounce into the kitchen and find Becca cooking, because it usually results in me immediately asking with the enthusiasm of a small child "Can I help? :D" if I already know what she's making, and inquiring about what it is that she's preparing when I don't.

Usually "help," as with with children, means lick off cooking implements and stir things. I frequently get yelled at or smacked when I assist in Becca's culinary endeavors, but that's alright. We both enjoy ourselves. Partly because we're usually singing at the top of our lungs, and partly because we have fun together entirely aside from the role reversal. We already knew that Becca's really the big sister, though, because she's an inner first-born, and I'm an eight year old masquerading as twenty.

And neither of us have even half this much hair anymore O.o

This was all spawned because I've just assisted in the making of tieramisu (one of my favorite things ever) for the previously mentioned dinner party. I put lady fingers in the pan, whipped the cream, and licked the bowls and things. Also checked the coffee repeatedly the see if it was ready and then forgot to get it when it was done XD

This stuff. It's beautiful.

I, dear readers, am what I like to refer to as an undomesticated female. Probably less than I think in a lot of ways, but I don't really cook as such. I make food, which is an entirely different process. But the thing I've realized is that food is basically the basis for my family's existence.

Life in my house centers around the kitchen. It's where we hang out most often, which is partly because we don't have a tv or much in the way of videogames or entertainment, but largely because we prefer interacting with each other. Whenever people come over, we generally feed them.

There's a kind of unspoken open door/open fridge policy. We don't really know what to do with people who act like guests--knocking on the front door and asking polite permission for things and such.

I was watching second season of Bones not that long ago (a show that I frequently ask myself why the deuce I'm watching, since I take serious issue with maggots and such), and Stephen Fry (one of the coolest creatures ever the grace the planet) appeared in a bunch of episodes as Boothe's shrink, and he was talking for some mysterious reason about how the word "hearth" originated with the idea that it was the heart of a house, which I thought was kind of awesome. It's pretty much true for my family.

We also don't rely on recipes.

I had to laugh when I realized that my process when cooking or baking or anything of that type is essentially this:

1) Look painstakingly for the perfect recipe (one with doable ingredients and estimated time)
2) Print or otherwise transport to the kitchen where I set it somewhere accessible and visible
3) Vaguely follow said recipe for about five minutes before I disregard it and just cook

It's only in my house or the houses of my older siblings that I've wandered into the kitchen, discovered that food is in the works, asked "What are you making?" and gotten "I have no idea!" as an answer. Usually that's followed by an overview of what we threw in, like chicken or tomatoes or whatever.

Recipes are meant more as suggestions and starting points than definitive instructions. Unless of course it ruins the thing you're making to mess with the proportions. But I pretty much cook from instinct rather than making anything recognizable or specific. I feel like the main merit of food is that there's infinite variety. It should be made with creativity and experimentation. Sometimes you stumble on something really awesome. Which seems to be true in a lot of areas of life. It's funny how much everything overlaps. But I pretty much haven't made anything inedible since I was about six, which is more or less when I started cooking for myself. I had to stand on a chair to reach the stove or cupboards XD

And now there's a slight crisis with the main course. That being that we're out of things, so I shall end abruptly as is my habit, but with reason this time. I must make an emergency grocery store run. So until next time, theoretical audience. I half apologize for the general pointlessness of my rambles, but I trust if you made it through you were amused, so you're welcome.