Give me Liberty or give me Cereal

I think it was around the time my first teeth began jutting through my gums that I took my first bite of cereal. I imagine it was plain cheerios with no milk I initially gobbled down which really questions as to why I continued with the food genre, as they really suck that way. Eventually I graduated to adding milk and putting it in a bowl and taking care to eat the mixture with a spoon.

There’s something irresistibly versatile about cereal. You can eat it plain or with milk, (or any other liquid for that matter, though one would question the sanity of a person liquefying with more exotic drinks). There are countless different kinds; you’ve got fruity kinds, chocolaty kinds, kinds that are healthy, kinds that are guaranteed to leave you with multiple cavities, and kinds that are actually chocolate chip cookies (yes, I’m serious, you can have cookies for breakfast. They have the full-court press on advertising to kids with free-thinking parrots and hip tigers. What is there not to love about cereal?

According to my calculations, I’d estimate consumption of cereal to be around 3,000 bowls from ages 7-14. That averages out to a little over one bowl a day. The good thing is I always used reusable bowls so I did my part in saving the planet. And I know what you’re thinking, “well, everybody’s got to eat breakfast.” I would argue your point there but that is irrelevant, it was not just breakfast. Contrary to what you’ve been told by the government, cereal can be eaten at any time of the day, and to tell you the truth, it’s probably better during the afternoon, when you’ve woken up and can appreciate the serene quality of slightly soggy wheat.

There came a time when I was finally told to “grow up.” “You aren’t supposed to eat cereal all the time.” “No, you can’t have that for dinner.” Somewhere, somehow, things just sped up, life started getting “cereal,” and suddenly a children’s past time was no more. Cereal has become one of a long list of things left behind by things like “life” and “responsibility”. It’s time to take back our rights.

Wait, monkeys can act?!?

(warning: liberal movie review. In no way does this review attempt to be professional or otherwise conform to proper review criteria. Read at your own risk.)

Before watching the movie, I didn’t realize the brain-dead child of an orangutan (formerly known as the chick in the shitty Twilight movies) was in it. After the movie, I still didn’t know. Then I realized why I knew who she was and I came to the realization that her name is Kristen Stewart, she is not the offspring of primates, and she can actually get into a role and do some acting. I thought her performance was great and she stole the show from Dakota Fanning.

As a movie, it was subpar as a whole and totally brought down by the story/plot/script, whatever you want to call all the events that were just thrown into a huge pile and shot. I’ve always heard, “something being a true story is not an excuse for it being bad,” and that certainly applies here. I know it really happened, I know it was huge, but could you spare my boredom to actually construct a story that doesn’t resemble another “VH1: behind the music” with better resolution and higher paid actors.

That said, I enjoyed the visuals in the movie and was especially impressed with Floria Sigismondi’s directing abilities, (hint: try skipping the writing part next time and just direct.) There were some amazing scenes with unique angles and brilliant symbolism that attempted to pry every ounce of substance out of her flailing script, and as a visual piece, this movie is great.

So, some jailbait hippy chicks get together to make a band. They do some drugs, have some sex, make a few good songs, fight like bitches, and then break up. That’s the movie. Left the theater wishing I didn’t watch a bunch of cardboard cut outs walk around on the big screen. Dry characters and "Blahhhh" story. Less girls getting periods on camera and more girls jumping around in corsets and lingerie and you’ve already got a better movie.

Springtime Cometh...

And that means not having your hair freeze when you walk out the door in the morning, rolling your windows down in the car, and of course, fantasy baseball. For those who don’t know, fantasy sports involve drafting a team of real athletes to compete in a league against other people where the winner is based on your player’s real life statistics. And yes, it is extremely nerdy, but obviously awesome.

What makes it so awesome is that baseball is a sport that works in harmony with fantasy (it was created for baseball to begin with). It works so well because baseball is a statistics driven sport and very individualistic—as in players don’t depend on their teammates for their statistics as much as in other sports. This creates a supernova of epic proportions when bees start buzzing and the grass starts getting mowed.

Basically, it's one of those things I get addicted to that has it's own lingo (my backup catcher has a better OPS and VORP than your backup catcher!), it's own semi-recognizable/semi-annoying analysts (Matthew Berry), and where everything decision you make is right and everything everyone else does is wrong, until you end up being wrong.

In other words, you either totally get it and can't seem to get off the wagon, or you don't get it. I'm firmly on the wagon and quite enjoying the hay in my shoes and the splinters in my leg. Horses, Mush.

Drinking from Straws

"Suckers" by Artist Lisa Rae Winant
Image used by permission on the Artist
20 X 12 / oil on panel


If anyone ever bothered to ask, “What’s the point?” Wendell couldn't find a good way to respond. He’d shrug it off like a fly settling on his shoulder and be on his way, and in this respect it made him a simple man. Sure, people would stare from all directions whenever he took a sip from his beverage, but something about it made him so happy, that he didn’t care what people thought of him.

The genesis of this peculiarity may have begun in childhood. His mother, a self-respecting Christian, always told her young son about the world the way she saw it and Wendell sat and stared at her wild eyes while his mouth maintained its grip on the straw filtering chocolate milk to his taste buds.

For the better part of thirty-four years, Wendell found the stream of liquid through a straw to be exhilarating and couldn’t think of another way. Orange Juice, pasteurized milk, cola, whisky on the rocks, it all tasted divine through the cylindrical hollowness of the flexing contraption. There was something so effortless and so simple about hydration from a straw.

But when he was finally asked by a woman colleague at his new accounting job, his mind began to wander. “What is the point?” she said, while gulping down her bottle of water watching Wendell suck the contents from his bottle of soda. At this, Wendell didn’t have a reply, as expected, but something churned in his brain that had not been activated before. He gave the question legitimate thought.

At first he thought, simply, that it was easier. This was swiftly turned aside by the evidence of the woman sitting beside him releasing large quantities of water with every tip of the bottle. Then he thought, perhaps it tasted better, but this he just as quickly disregarded based on lack of facts. He thought about the noise the straw created by picking up the last drop and witnessed the woman silently wash the rest of her sandwich with the remaining water from her bottle.

As the woman walked back into the office, Wendell thought of those days with his mother, the stories she told, and the years upon years he had spent with her because she wouldn’t let him outside. She always said it wasn’t safe for him and he could only agree, without experience. He was always on this medication or that medication and was always being kept inside. She always gave him a new straw and threw out the used ones.

As the woman closed the door to the break room, Wendell spoke. “There isn’t a point,” he said. He lifted the straw from the bottle and tossed it into the waste basket. He then gurgled down the last bit of cola left and for the first time felt the cold liquid splash against his teeth and swim about his gums. He dropped the empty bottle in the trash and said, “I just didn’t know.”

J.D. Salinger

(January 1, 1919- January 27, 2010)

Created one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever in "The Catcher in the Rye" and constructed a timeless character in Holden Caulfield. Have read that book too many times to count. RIP J.D. Salinger.

Hello

First post.