Hey guys !
I know it's been awhile, but I've been pretty busy.
I just wanted you guys to check out my friend's blog - http://thedirge.blogspot.com/
Dark Rob is a pal of mine and he can write a mean political analysis. So if you like dark humor and another look at politics, you should read up.
I'll write more soon and give you an update.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Let's All Bully : The bad influence of kids books
The book industry is a form of entertainment, and as such, should be regulated by parents. Society is more concerned with movies, television, and recently, video games than to even deal with monitoring books.
The excuse for parents is that reading stimulates their kids, and kids who like to read end up being smarter in life. So whatever they read, is okay with me...
But these are the same parents that when asked if they approve of bullying, would tell you that bullying is horrible and should be eliminated.
...so why are you allowing your fourteen year old girl to read a book that makes it look cool and intriguing ?
The book "Gossip Girl" by Cecily von Ziegesar, and all the other subsequent books that follow it, is one of the most influential book (and now television series) for teens and tweens at the moment.
It's also one of the most trashiest, misleading, and unrealistic view of teenage life.
To be popular you have to be rich, you have to live in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you have to do drugs and have plenty of sex...this is starting to be one of the best teen books out there, already !
According to Barbara Coloroso, a parenting expert and author of The Bully, The Bullied, and the Bystandard (Harper Collins 2006, Toronto), gossip is a type of bullying that she calls Relational Bullying. She classifies this type as something that is associated with girls. Spreading gossip and secrets about others have the same effect as proactive or "traditional" bullying, but leave deeper scars and continue the cycle of bullies.
Bullying according to About.com, is a social weapon and a means of psychological warfare. It leads to a cycle that gains strength as it continues. Based on the article, I've interpreted the stages as so :
The first is the actual gossip, malicious rumors and stories targeted on one specific person or group. This moves onto labelling and name calling, fueling the original gossip, which then leads to ostracizing and alienation. Psychologically this all gets absorbed by the target, and eventually bleeds into his or her life later on. Some in dire consequences.
There have been cases of teens who have committed suicide or attempted to, because of gossip that has ruined their lives, and many of them have been traumatized all the way up to adulthood.
I don't think I have to remind everybody about Columbine and why the shooters did what they did...
And that is just based on the title...
On page 6 of the first book in the series "Gossip Girl", von Ziegesar gives a short description about the habits of her teenage characters. I won't quote the exact passage since I don't know it by heart, nor own a copy of the book. But this is roughly what was described. I paraphrase :
Blair's family took after the quasi-European take on alcohol. They believed that more exposure to alcohol would desensitize them to it, so they were allowed to drink whatever they wanted whenever they wanted as long as it didn't affect their image. The same thing went for drugs and sex...
No sane parent who cares about their child - and the parents seem to not really care about their offspring in the book - would ever give underage kids drinks without them being there to supervise. I live in a European based culture, and many Europeans don't condone massive underage drinking, despite what von Ziegesar has written.
In fact, this is a terrible stereotype that many Americans, who by the way have a really strict policy on drinking, use as an excuse to show that allowing vices can help kids be more mature and open. Von Ziegesar seems to imply that Europeans don't have any problems with alcoholism because they were exposed to it at a younger age.
Wake up !
Rampant illegal teenage drinking happens in every country and Europe is not excluded, so get that Upper East side mentality out of your brain....
To study this even further, I decided to visit the Gossip Girl website, and couldn't believe what von Ziegesar and the CW network was promoting for young teenage girls.
The poll question on the site asked -
The essential must have for Fall :
1. A designer handbag, of course
2. Cute boots !
3. A cashmere sweater...mmm
4. A hot guy on my arm !
Let's forget the last choice for a second.
The credit card debt in North America alone is a huge crisis.
Dave Ramsey has stated that 1 in 5 very young people will file bankruptcy because of outstanding credit card debt. Cases of suicide over financial debts have been rampant in the US, and all over the world because of the financial strain and difficulty in paying back debt.
MP Dunleavy from MSN Money has written in her article "How Teens Get Sucked Into Credit-Card Debt", that the average debt that young adults carry with them is $1585 US. And even though many teens have their parents sign for the card as the guarantor or co-owner of the card, it still does not stop debt from increasing among young people due to irresponsibility.
"Most kids can't hand in a paper on time, let alone pay a bill on time.." says Janet Bodnar, deputy editor of the Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. She believes that it's the lack of physical proof of purchase that causes major credit card debt.
"This is funny money to them. It's not real. It's a license to spend, and they're not learning how to manage money on their own." Bodnar continues.
Even with the new types of pre-paid credit cards, many have hidden fees and compromise a teenager's privacy by disclosing vital information to companies for further targeting later on.
Okay, so how does this apply to Gossip Girl ?
Designer handbags, boots, and cashmere sweaters - you tell me where I see the connection.
This just helps to sell the idea of needing these items to be like the girls in the book, and sells the idea of being rich and spending money. Even the message on the site left by Gossip Girl herself even talks about the "problems" of a diva princess when it came to buying stuff. (Paris Hilton's got nothing on Gossip Girl...)
Look, I know it's a work of fiction and that everybody is entitled to have some sort of escape from reality. But if this is the case, then at least show the negatives about everything. Don't try to spin a Romeo and Juliet rip off that somehow shows apparent character evolution when the main character sees the world in a different view since her trip to Europe (and now it begs me to wonder if this is semi-biographical...)
The bottom line is that von Ziegesar does not condone the crap of divaism and shallow appearances, but she does not oppose it and seems to glorify it, even though that was probably not her intention. Gossip Girl is directed at young teens who get impressions from the media, now more so than the generation ten - even twenty - years ago. This is a book trying to reach the young adults, but fails to even impress the real adults out there, the ones who have to deal with the taunting of their children, the spending to make them happy, and the unwanted problems of pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse.
...way to go, Gossip Girl, you just made Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan fashionable once again....
The excuse for parents is that reading stimulates their kids, and kids who like to read end up being smarter in life. So whatever they read, is okay with me...
But these are the same parents that when asked if they approve of bullying, would tell you that bullying is horrible and should be eliminated.
...so why are you allowing your fourteen year old girl to read a book that makes it look cool and intriguing ?
The book "Gossip Girl" by Cecily von Ziegesar, and all the other subsequent books that follow it, is one of the most influential book (and now television series) for teens and tweens at the moment.
It's also one of the most trashiest, misleading, and unrealistic view of teenage life.
To be popular you have to be rich, you have to live in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you have to do drugs and have plenty of sex...this is starting to be one of the best teen books out there, already !
According to Barbara Coloroso, a parenting expert and author of The Bully, The Bullied, and the Bystandard (Harper Collins 2006, Toronto), gossip is a type of bullying that she calls Relational Bullying. She classifies this type as something that is associated with girls. Spreading gossip and secrets about others have the same effect as proactive or "traditional" bullying, but leave deeper scars and continue the cycle of bullies.
Bullying according to About.com, is a social weapon and a means of psychological warfare. It leads to a cycle that gains strength as it continues. Based on the article, I've interpreted the stages as so :
The first is the actual gossip, malicious rumors and stories targeted on one specific person or group. This moves onto labelling and name calling, fueling the original gossip, which then leads to ostracizing and alienation. Psychologically this all gets absorbed by the target, and eventually bleeds into his or her life later on. Some in dire consequences.
There have been cases of teens who have committed suicide or attempted to, because of gossip that has ruined their lives, and many of them have been traumatized all the way up to adulthood.
I don't think I have to remind everybody about Columbine and why the shooters did what they did...
And that is just based on the title...
On page 6 of the first book in the series "Gossip Girl", von Ziegesar gives a short description about the habits of her teenage characters. I won't quote the exact passage since I don't know it by heart, nor own a copy of the book. But this is roughly what was described. I paraphrase :
Blair's family took after the quasi-European take on alcohol. They believed that more exposure to alcohol would desensitize them to it, so they were allowed to drink whatever they wanted whenever they wanted as long as it didn't affect their image. The same thing went for drugs and sex...
No sane parent who cares about their child - and the parents seem to not really care about their offspring in the book - would ever give underage kids drinks without them being there to supervise. I live in a European based culture, and many Europeans don't condone massive underage drinking, despite what von Ziegesar has written.
In fact, this is a terrible stereotype that many Americans, who by the way have a really strict policy on drinking, use as an excuse to show that allowing vices can help kids be more mature and open. Von Ziegesar seems to imply that Europeans don't have any problems with alcoholism because they were exposed to it at a younger age.
Wake up !
Rampant illegal teenage drinking happens in every country and Europe is not excluded, so get that Upper East side mentality out of your brain....
To study this even further, I decided to visit the Gossip Girl website, and couldn't believe what von Ziegesar and the CW network was promoting for young teenage girls.
The poll question on the site asked -
The essential must have for Fall :
1. A designer handbag, of course
2. Cute boots !
3. A cashmere sweater...mmm
4. A hot guy on my arm !
Let's forget the last choice for a second.
The credit card debt in North America alone is a huge crisis.
Dave Ramsey has stated that 1 in 5 very young people will file bankruptcy because of outstanding credit card debt. Cases of suicide over financial debts have been rampant in the US, and all over the world because of the financial strain and difficulty in paying back debt.
MP Dunleavy from MSN Money has written in her article "How Teens Get Sucked Into Credit-Card Debt", that the average debt that young adults carry with them is $1585 US. And even though many teens have their parents sign for the card as the guarantor or co-owner of the card, it still does not stop debt from increasing among young people due to irresponsibility.
"Most kids can't hand in a paper on time, let alone pay a bill on time.." says Janet Bodnar, deputy editor of the Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. She believes that it's the lack of physical proof of purchase that causes major credit card debt.
"This is funny money to them. It's not real. It's a license to spend, and they're not learning how to manage money on their own." Bodnar continues.
Even with the new types of pre-paid credit cards, many have hidden fees and compromise a teenager's privacy by disclosing vital information to companies for further targeting later on.
Okay, so how does this apply to Gossip Girl ?
Designer handbags, boots, and cashmere sweaters - you tell me where I see the connection.
This just helps to sell the idea of needing these items to be like the girls in the book, and sells the idea of being rich and spending money. Even the message on the site left by Gossip Girl herself even talks about the "problems" of a diva princess when it came to buying stuff. (Paris Hilton's got nothing on Gossip Girl...)
Look, I know it's a work of fiction and that everybody is entitled to have some sort of escape from reality. But if this is the case, then at least show the negatives about everything. Don't try to spin a Romeo and Juliet rip off that somehow shows apparent character evolution when the main character sees the world in a different view since her trip to Europe (and now it begs me to wonder if this is semi-biographical...)
The bottom line is that von Ziegesar does not condone the crap of divaism and shallow appearances, but she does not oppose it and seems to glorify it, even though that was probably not her intention. Gossip Girl is directed at young teens who get impressions from the media, now more so than the generation ten - even twenty - years ago. This is a book trying to reach the young adults, but fails to even impress the real adults out there, the ones who have to deal with the taunting of their children, the spending to make them happy, and the unwanted problems of pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse.
...way to go, Gossip Girl, you just made Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan fashionable once again....
Monday, June 4, 2007
Chapter 7
Below is a sample of my new short story called "Recipe"....I didn't put the whole story since I'm planning to pitch it for publication.
I will post the whole thing soon enough, so stay tuned, and enjoy the story.
On a side note, I got my copy of "Rant" and "Haunted" by Chuck Palahaniuk signed at a live reading and event. It was a great show !
I will post the whole thing soon enough, so stay tuned, and enjoy the story.
On a side note, I got my copy of "Rant" and "Haunted" by Chuck Palahaniuk signed at a live reading and event. It was a great show !
"Recipe" by Keith Villamor
Too much vinegar can burn a person’s stomach if ingested. That’s why vinegar is usually diluted with water….
Chefs at prestigious cooking schools tell you to always warn people you are cooking for about bay leaves in the food, despite the fact that the choking hazard is large enough for people to see….
A certain type of blowfish in
They teach you how to cut properly in cooking school. Different styles of cutting, using different types of knives, each cut has a different use and different cooking purpose. You stand at your cutting board and slice away using very sharp knives, some of the best made and sharpest steel made. It’s when you’re cutting and practicing that you meet Mr.Grey.
Mr.Grey doesn’t tell you his first name, tells you to call him just Grey (“My friends all call me by my last name, so I got used to it. You know, like cops talk to one another ?), he calls you “Champ”. He has no apparent skills with a knife. He butchers the potato practicing Julienne style cutting.
“Harder than it looks.” He chuckles to himself and you can’t help but smile at him. He tries again, and cuts his potato too thick once again. You give him a pointer – he should rub the knife across the potato piece, letting the cutting edge across the potato and not bring it down onto the piece.
“Thanks.” His cuts become better and he thanks you again. He introduces himself.
From then on you’re classmates. You talk about your girlfriend Connie, and he tells you about his late wife Meredith.
“She would’ve been thrilled that I’m taking classes…she always said she’d like it for me to cook for a change.”
You move from cutting, to sauces, from sauces to salads, from salads to meats & poultry. You move to main courses. Mr.Grey says,
“I’ll finally know how to do a proper chicken…”
You tell Connie later on that night about Mr.Grey as she brushes her dark hair before coming to bed.
“Sounds like a nice guy. ” She responds while still watching herself in the mirror.
The next day at cooking class you learn about sauces.
You learn that a perfectly blended sauce can mask any other taste or smell on food, which is why many foods incorporate sauces – to cover up the original taste of the food prepared. Some foods required a sauce to even taste edible. You help out Mr.Grey who’s having a hard time with his Bolognese.
“Meredith always made the best meat sauce…” He tells you about the time a huge snowstorm had prevented him and his wife to leave their cabin up north.
“The only thing we had was tomatoes, some ground beef, and spaghetti…she was able to whip up the best plate of pasta I had ever tasted. Still is to this day the best.”
Certain foods can cause allergic reactions and can cause death – nuts, shellfish, fruits, milk….
Certain foods have a high percentage of chemicals from the environment, and if not either properly cooked or eaten without moderation, it can lead to life-threatening disease and even death.
You and Mr.Grey go through all of the motions in cooking school: filleting, tenderizing, baking, frying…
Your teacher tells you you’re the most promising cook in the class. He tells you, “You have superb technique and you don’t forget presentation.”
Pretty soon you’re the one that everyone goes to for help, and you start seeing Mr.Grey less and less until he disappears.
For a few days you wonder where he went, but you soon leave it to being too busy or boredom, and you press on. At the final, the Fois Gras you chose as your final piece won the top prize, and you go home happy that you graduated at the top of your class.
…Fast forward, and your working as a short order cook in a local diner. The pay is shit, you work long hours, and you’re miserable. If it wasn’t for Connie’s work as a paralegal, you both would be out on the street…and then Connie accuses her boss of sexual harassing her. He had asked her in to take a letter and bring in a file he requested. His hands were all over her and she had slapped him to get away. A lawsuit came up, but needless to say she’s out of a job now.
This takes us to now, where the welfare checks are running out, and you’re working extra shifts at the diner to keep paying the rent. And then a familiar voice calls out to you as you’re walking out of the diner at one in the morning in the middle of February.
“Hello Champ…”
Mr.Grey is wearing a black suit, black tie, and long black coat. He’s a startling contrast with the snow all around him. You go to a coffee shop to catch up on old times. You notice something different about him, but ignore it. You ask him why he left the cooking school.
“I was there…I was observing.” He takes a slurp from his coffee. You suddenly feel nervous. He puts his cup down and looks you straight in the eye.
“How would you like to make two thousand dollars, Champ ?” Your thoughts go to the overdue electric bill, the water tax, the maxed-out credit cards. You ask him what you have to do.
“Cook.” He says this nonchalantly. “We give you the time, place, who to cook for, and what to cook. Simple…All we ask is that you first come along for an observation.”
We ?
“Me and my associates…the people I work for.”
He doesn’t tell you who they are, but hints that they were important in terms of the nation and its protection…
And just like that you’re sitting in one of those hard to eat restaurants, observing the chef preparing a Thai beef salad. He sprinkles the chilli over the top of the salad. He finishes off the dish with a sprig of parsley. Mr.Grey takes you outside and to sit at a table. He motions to his left across the room to a successful business type, with bleached teeth, a severe tan, and a bunch of bodyguards surrounding him.
“He loves Thai beef salad. Introduced by his ex-wife.”
You remember playing the Last Meal Game with your friends from cooking school…
If you were going to be executed the next day, what would your last meal be ?
You would get answers like – mom’s chicken soup, my wife’s meatloaf, a turkey sandwich with that special turkey dad bought…
Nobody would ever say the fish cooked at Spago’s….
You watch as a waiter puts the plate down in front of him, and you watch as he digs in. He savours the flavours and you can see his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he closes his eyes in delight.
He doesn’t drop dead until he’s about to climb into his limo outside of the restaurant. You and Mr.Grey watch as the ambulance takes the body away, and the two of you are in another café.
The psychology of food says that many people equate food with comfort.
Food can be used as an aphrodisiac….
Food can be used as a window to the past….
Food can be used to kill….
The very dead business man had mafia ties. The FBI couldn’t find anything on him so they contacted Mr.Grey. And now Mr.Grey is asking you to cook for him.
You think of bills.
The credit cards.
The rent.
You think of Connie….
Your first target is a minor drug lord. Mr.Grey’s reports tell you that he loves to eat chocolate cake. You wear the chef’s coat from a restaurant famous for it’s pastries and desserts, and you are pulling the cake from the oven, the same cake this drug lord’s mom used to make. The smell is good, and you remind yourself not to test it.
Flavours are determined by the spices and ingredients put into a dish. The more flavours in a dish, the more endorphins are released into the brain.
Context and memory play the biggest role in the great food of one’s past…
The drug lord is putting the napkin in his lap, and you can practically see the drool coming from his mouth.
When he cuts into his piece, you’re already throwing the uniform in a dumpster outside of the restaurant.
Kings who were afraid of being assassinated had food testers, people whose job was to make sure that the king’s food wasn’t poisoned by tasting it first….
When he’s more than half way through his second piece, you’re already in a taxi on your way to the airport.
By the time the police find him dead in his room, still in the clothes he wore to the restaurant with vomit on the front, you’re climbing into bed with Connie.
Ironic death by chocolate….
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