Nice guys finish last?!?

GG and I went out for lunch today to a nice Indian buffet restaurant. There were only a few people there, but at the table next to us was occupied by three people, two men and one women. I wasn't really paying attention to them and their conversation, but the one male was at times a bit louder and so I could hear bits and pieces of what he was saying. At one point, he said "Men want only attractive women. There is nothing you or I can do about that." GG leaned over to me and said, "the Fat Princess controversy is taking over." Later on, the one guy continued about his dating life, how he is a nice guy and yet he can't find a date. He also commented that he was 37 and still looking. I couldn't hear all of what he was saying, but based upon what I could hear and the body language of the women at the table he obviously was being a misogynistic asshole. Just FYI the other guy was seemed to be quiet the whole time and really didn't seem to want to get anywhere near the conversation. I think I even heard him try to steer the conversation in other ways, but to no avail the "nice guy" really wanted to talk about how he was a nice guy and that women just didn't seem to get this. Now I want to go back to the first statement I heard him say about men wanting attractive women, he is absolutely 100% correct about this. The issue is that what I find attractive is not necessarily what you find attractive and what you find attractive is not necessarily what I find attractive. All humans, male and female, are trying to find mates that they find attractive, I mean no one goes out thinking wow that person is really unattractive, I want to be in a relationship with them. We try to find what we find attractive in people and for those of us who are not asshats, it is more than just their physical appearance. So, yes, he is right, we do want to find partners who are attractive to us, but the issue is when someone tries to define what should be attractive to everyone.

The other issue I have with this guy and any man who has to argue that he is a "nice guy" is if you are a nice guy, why are you arguing about this? I know plenty of men who are nice, who are not asshats, who are sensitive and caring and you know what, not one of them has to argue with someone else about being a nice guy. Hell most of them do not brag about being a "nice guy". So if you have to proclaim your niceness to others to convince them of it, than you are not a nice guy.

Coming soon to a theater near you

I was watching The Colbert Roport yesterday and he was interviewing Toby Keith about his new movie. Yep, Toby Keith has a new movie out called , Beer for my Horses.This looks to be this year's winner for the Razzies. It was written by Toby Keith and Rodney Carrington and the cast stars Keith and Carrington, Ted Nugent, Willie Nelson and Tom Skerrit. Keith, Carrington, Nugent and Nelson are not known as actors, hell three of them are county singers and Rodney Carrington is a comedian. Well, at least he is supposed to be a comedian of the southern Redneck variety. Did someone not learn with the Larry the Cable Guy movies and apparently Toby Keith put out another movie at some point that these southern comedy movies suck? The previous Toby Keith movie lasted apparently like two weeks in the theater and then went straight to CMT for airing. Now I know that the Blue Collar Comedy Tours are popular, but really a movie with non-writers and non-actors just seems destined to fail. And why the hell would you put this out during the summer months when it has no shot against the big blockbuster action films, why not try to put it out before or after the summer months when maybe your target audience of idjits will at least sort of pay attention to it being put out and not ignore you for the big action films or the latest Will Ferrell stupidity.

Disney musicals: a good thing or a bad thing

Since I have been in at least two different childcare centers over the past few months I have noticed something. The new musicals like High School Musical, High School Musical 2 and most recently Camp Rock that the Disney Channel has been producing over the past few years are immensely popular with kids. These kids range from the 4 year olds that were in my class in North Carolina to the 8,9, and 10 year-olds that were in the camp-esque setting that I will in over the past month or so since I moved to Illinois. Now these shows seem to be geared toward the pre-teen and teenage set, but since they are on The Disney Channel and have catchy pop tunes the range of kids that they appeal to seems to cover a wider range of ages of children. Now I have never seen any of these movies, but have now heard the music for all of them several times especially recently here in IL where the kids seem to play one of the three CDs for these three different musicals everyday and sometimes more than on CD a day.

So a few weeks back I started to think that maybe this is a good thing, that these kids are so into musicals. The whole idea of people breaking out in song during a movie is a bit unique and is not something that seems to be real popular in most genres. It seems most movies or even plays are pretty music free or the music is not incorporated into the action at all. Sure there are musicals that have become popular among adults over the past ten or so years, Rent and Mama Mia! that were so popular they were turned into movies then there are musicals like Jekyll, Avenue Q, Wicked among many others, but these are all geared toward adults so maybe it is good that children are being exposed to musicals that are geared toward them. It would seem to be a good thing that they are being exposed to a new genre of movie and maybe one that will make them want to become more involved in theater as they are in high school or college. Also, does this help to potentially revitalize the stage theater genre. High School Musical transitioned from the TV to what seems to be a very popular stage production that is sold out everywhere it goes.

So this is a good thing, right. Right?? Having never seen any of these movies and only seeing the impact they have on kids, I wonder if they do not continue to add to the increasing pressure on children to look a certain way or act a certain way. I have seen children who want to act out their favorite characters from these movies, but other children have said you can't sing, only I can sing good enough for that person. Now this can easily be blamed on the fact that the children in question were pre-teen girls who have been catty and obnoxious on other occasions about other things. It also seems to be a phenomenon that is more prevalent in girls than in boys. All of these shows have both male and female actors and actresses and yet only the girls are interested in the shows. Is this another fault of the overall society saying that boys who are interested in theater are less manly or worse yet gay?

I have no answers to any of the questions I have posed, but it is another instance where observing children and societies impact on them has proven interesting and even somewhat worrisome to me.

Craziness

So my life has taken a bit of a twist which mean I can be back to blogging earlier than I thought. It turns out that the daycare corporation that I worked for has this policy where if the director feels that it would be best for the center or the employee that they can do what is called "pay in lieu of notice", where the employee is paid for two weeks of work without actually having to be at work. It turns out that since I have given my two weeks notice at my former job, the director called the human resources department and found out that she could let me go on Monday (I gave notice on last Friday) and they would continue to pay me till August 8th which was my last day. This allows her to not have to send people home since they are so overstaffed and can give my hours to others. She asked me if this was OK and after seeing it in writing that I will continue to get paid for working at the center for the next two weeks and not have to actually put up with the bullshit that is going on there, I did it. So now I have a little over two weeks till my next job starts to just do things around the house. I will do some baking, lawn work, spending time with our new kitty, going to some farmer's market that were during the week that I wanted to go to, but wasn't sure I was going to be abel to with working, making dinner for GG and I, doing the paperwork and any other necessary things for the new job with the public schools, taking Logan to the vet to have this lump on his leg checked out, reading, watching movies, and various other things that will need to get done around here. I am also going to try and convince GG to take some time off and go on some day trips with me, but shhhhh she doesn't know this yet. I will also be back and blogging again, yay.

I'm taking a break

I know I have not been around here a lot lately and so I figure I might as well make this an official break. I will not be around here for about two weeks or so till I have finally left this job that I don't like. Then I will have some time to get back here I hope.

If only I won the lottery

The one aspect of my move to here in Illinois that I have not talked about is work. I had a few interviews before I moved here and really only got one job offer. Many of the jobs seemed to not want to wait till I moved here or I just never heard from them after one interview. I did have one interview that I set-up for after I moved here staying with the same daycare corporation that I was with in NC and another interview kind of thing with another daycare corporation that I had done two different phone interviews with. So, I moved here and went into the daycare that I had worked with in NC. This was a great center, it had a great location in Chicago and I really liked all of the staff that I interacted with and the kids were great too. The only problem was that this would have meant an hour and a half commute by public transportation and even longer if I wanted to do it by car each way every day, so three hours on public transportation ended up being too long for me. I would have basically gotten home, then maybe been up for like an hour and eaten and then gone to bed to get up the next morning and do the same thing. This did not seem like a good idea to me. So I took the job at the other corporate daycare which is only ten minutes away. The issues with this place are that one, I am being paid like 85 cents an hour less than I was making in NC, it is mostly working with a summer camp for the summer and then I will be a pre-kindergarten teacher in the fall, but for now I am working with 5-12 year olds and I don't like working with kids over 5. This experience has not changed this for me. The boss and organization are not very organized and the pay structure is really messed up with me with a masters degree making less than some guy with only a high school degree, but who was friends with the director. Yeah this is really fucked up. So obviously I hated this job from day one. I started to look for a new job the first night I came home with Goddess Gourmet's help, of course. I had applied for jobs in many of the local public schools as a preschool teacher as many public schools nationwide have begun to create and grow preschool programs especially surrounding children with special needs and/or children from low income families. In this endeavor, Illinois and Waukegan specifically, where I live, have created a public school preschool program. I applied again or renewed my application or something, I am not sure exactly which, within public school preschools. I got an interview last week and then got a job offer on Friday for a preschool teacher in the public school system. YAY!! So now I have a job that I expect to like better with better benefits and better pay.

Book Review- In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

I just finished reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I found it to be an interesting continuation of Botany of Desire and Ominove's Dilemma. The book In Defense of food, continues Pollan's views on eating more plants and looking at the ways in which the Western diet is reflected by the food we eat. This book is more of a rant and is a culmination of the other two books. Where as Omnivore's Dilemma and Botany of Desire were more books of him exploring and issue and then talking about what he had learned, Eater's Manifesto is him talking about the issues with our diet and ways to change the way we eat. He begins with a section on nutritionism which is the focus by Americans on single nutrients such as protein or vitamin b12 or fat rather than on the whole foods. He discusses that we have become so focused on what we should not eat such as fats or carbohydrates and that the "bad foods" have changed over time as science has changed. We have gone from margarine being the perfect alternative to butter to realizing that butter is much better for us than margarine because of the trans-fats in margarine. Pollan also goes into the science of nutrionism and how we are still not sure how all of the vitamins and chemicals in our food interact and how they in combination work to make us healthier. The next section is where he defines food. As he says, we should not have to define food, but unfortunately we do at this point. He is trying to define food as anything that your great grandmother would recognize as food, so things like twinkies are not food, all the chemicals we add to bread among other things then negates them as food, high fructose corn syrup which seems to be in everything these days is not food and should not be treated as such. Pollan seems to be trying to redefine food as more "natural", he wants to get away from chemical additives as being allowed to be called food. The final section is then on how to eat.

Because I agree with his views on things that we as Americans eat too much food that is processed, I really liked this book. I liked his thoughts that things like bread have been so altered now it is hard to still see them as bread. At one point he lists all of the ingredients in bread, there is a long list of them. Bread should be simply flour, yeast, and water. He also looks at the fact that we have so processed foods like flour that we now have to add nutrients back into the bread or other final product to replace what we have taken out. He is also honest that we need to change our eating habits. We need to eat less, less snacking and less on our plates when we eat our main meals. We need to eat more plants and less meat. We need to recognize that the interactions between us and our food have evolved over a long period of time and that in processing these foods we have changed these relationships.

Eater's Manifesto was an interesting book with ideas that have been proposed and discussed in many other places, but it is nice to see them put together in one book that is easily accessible to all who wish to change their eating habits and to be more aware of the issues in our current food system.