i wrote about a week and a half ago in foodieporn about how much i need that Caribbean washed grey sugar, what i didn`t mention is how much i miss things actually made with real sugar as opposed to high fructose corn syrup.
for those of you that are old enough to remember there was a time when everything sweet was made with real sugar and it was good. in the Caribbean there is no government subsidised corn so everything from soda to candy is still made with real sugar.
there is a certain je ne c`est quoi to a Coca-Cola made with real sugar, unless you`ve had one, it`s kind of hard to explain. there is also no surer way to ruin a good chocolate bar than to use a sugar substitute.
it was one of the first things i noticed when i moved here, everything tasted `different.` i miss the taste of sugar in my vices. it`s not impossible to find it, it`s just extraordinarily difficult. Coke bottles a special variety for Passover with sugar, because corn and by extension corn syrup is not kosher, i`m not sure about the size of Nashville`s Jewish population, but you can be sure i`ll be on the prowl for it closer to Passover. i also discovered if you can find it, Coke from Mexico is made with real sugar, i`ve had it once at a restaurant here and when i went back the next time, they were out.
there are a lot of genetic traits i`ve inherited from both sides of my family including left-handedness; there was no escaping that one — mother, father, paternal grandmother, maternal grandfather.
now i seem to picking up early greying from my mother. although on end i`m not sure how much of it was completely genetic. when she was 7, she got malaria and they gave her bay rum to drink which turned her hair completely white. before you launch into how barbaric that was, bear in mind this was pre-WWII, there are still no vaccines for malaria, so at that point that old Caribbean adage; “what don`t kill, will fatten” seemed like the most prudent course of action.
as long as i can remember my mother has been grey and for a time she dyed her hair and did the rinses until she realised how attractive she looked with her grey hair. i have just discovered two more in the front of my dreads to add to small number that`s somewhere in the middle. i`m of the school of `if you pull them, they will call for reinforcements.` i`m curious to see how many more start showing up and with what frequency.
there a great deal of satisfaction found in shooting stuff but since the smell or cordite doesn`t agree with me and i wouldn`t think of having a gun in the house, i have to get this satisfaction in two dimensions.
for the last week and a half i`ve been playing Halo. yes, i`m late with Halo 2 on the horizon, but i haven`t had a machine i could play it on until recently.
i was at the Macworld conference when Halo was initially demoed and even as a batch of screen captures and quicktime movies, it was fantastic and for that brief moment it was ours, a game by a mac company for mac users, then along came M$ with Xbox looking for the ultimate first person shooter and we mac users had to wait three years for a port. but i`m not bitter.
i find it very relaxing and it`s also very familiar. before made Halo and Oni, they were responsible for one of the best series of first person shooters every made on any platform – Marathon.
The master chief of Halo appears to be the same long suffering soldier of Marathon fame, placed hither, thither and yon to do what he does best. the weapons have changed but the level of intelligence require to play hasn`t. Marathon was one of the first games where if you shot a friendly, the rest would either refuse to help or if they were armed, they would shoot back.
i like a game that requires some skill even went all i want to do is vent and blow stuff up.
In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile — and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.
– hunter s. thompson from Generation of Swine
quite an interesting read, particular in reference to the Reagan and Bush sr. administration.
funny how art imitates life.
when i was growing up, my mother encouraged me to read the newspaper everyday. on November 19, 1978, i read a news story that i can honestly say changed my life. i can`t even remember what the headline of the story was, but in my seven year experience something terribly had occurred in one of our nearest geographical neighbours; Guyana. 900 people were dead including 270 children after drinking grape kool-aid laced with cyanide. to this day i don`t drink anything grape colour.
i suppose in retrospect that would be the roots of my cynicism. i stopped drinking the kool-aid literally then it also sowed the seeds from my metaphorical break from the kool-aid as well.
there are two things that really frighten me; wilful ignorance and blind faith in any leadership. and i`m realising on a daily basis how many people fit that bill. this is a country that is supposed to be the bastion for free speech and expression and some many people are willing to just give it up and believe everything they`re told without question and those that aren`t are branded `bad Americans`.
by definition a `Good American` is one who asks questions and doesn`t blindly accept. but based on the current events, pretty soon it`s actually going to resemble Jonestown in more ways than one; if you don`t drink the kool-aid you`re going to get a bullet to the back of the head.
there are two weeks left until this farce called election day and i have had enough. enough of the empty rhetoric, the empty promises and mostly peoples` blind willingness to accept what ever the party line is.
the cynic in me believes that the results of this election have already been decided in a board room somewhere, i would love to believe that the people that have registered and go out and conscientiously do their civic duty, do have a say in the process, but at the end of the day, politics is less about `we the people` and more about `the corporation knows what`s best.` i could be wrong, but i sincerely doubt it.
i can hope there is a change of leadership, if only for the singular reason that i don`t think religious beliefs and good governance don`t mix; if you can read this and tell me you don`t have a concern, i think you`ve had too much purple kool-aid. at the end of the day even if there is a change at the top i don`t think there is going to be much of a change in either foreign or domestic policy; the US is going to police the planet according to what serves the best interest of the corporations and people at home are going to continue to be marginalised and other people are going to take advantage of the system to the detriment of the majority of the tax payers.
is this worth not talking to your friends, neighbours or co-workers because their party affiliation is different from yours? i think not. in two week for good or ill this will all be over and no matter what the final decision, you`re going to have to live with it.
i have gotten slammed by Google bots today, it`s insane, i`ve had more of them thus far this morning that i had in actual visitors yesterday.
we missed the debates last night, because it was family night and we were watching a movie; well that is our excuse and we`re sticking to that; but we really didn`t want to see it.
i`m pretty much at the point when i want it to be over now. for me this is torture and cause for revolution; taxation without representation. i pay taxes but i have no voice, i can`t vote, my demographic has no lobbyists, but there are tax exempt organisations dictating national policy. there is no way in hell that can be right.
here`s an observation i`ve made; i`ve noticed that people with Bush/Cheney and W `04 stickers drive with more disregard for other drivers than people with Kerry stickers or no stickers at all. in my spin that indicates that Bush/Cheney supporters are reckless, arrogant and self-centred but that`s what spin is, one person`s interpretation of the presented facts.
people that are voting need to get off the spin cycle and start making factual decisions based on all the available information and no on someone else`s opinion. and you need to follow my advice because my opinion is right.
i`d written a lovely homage to this weekends celebrations when my machine came to a grinding halt and under OS X there are very few things that can precipitate a system wide freeze and in this case it was the Microsoft Office update. i loath M$ and their crappy products, hopefully i can pick up the threads of my original post and sally forth.
on Sunday, we had a celebration of our marriage. we`ll be married three years next January but thought that should be a celebration for friends and family because when got married it was just us, the hired minister, the travel agent who arranged it and ndelamiko who put us on the the travel agent and who i was meeting in person for the first time. we`re not counting the hotel guests who were gawking nearby or the leathery German guy in the electric blue speedo, who thought it would be a good idea to get a closer look.
this is weekend we invited family and close friends to celebrate the wedding that had already happened. to sum it up in a word; perfect. the weather was more than co-operative, cool and sunny all day, the food was magnificent and the people was wonderful. most of my people couldn`t make it, but vic is blessed with the most amazing family and friends and everyone, has done their best to make me feel welcome.
i`ve been working all day. no bookworm, no distractions; well i`ve been cruising about here, but that`s not so much a distraction as a necessary part of the day.
i`ve been making changes to an annual report, i didn`t design this project, the other artist that was here did it and i`m finishing up. i have to say i like annual report and brochure work, it`s not entirely mindless, but there is a structure to it, that needs to be maintained, so your play area is mostly typographic. this however may be the last project in quark for our little shop, quark has been flaky and unresponsive under OS X and with each upgrade adobe`s killer app, InDesign is getting better.
the first time i used quark it was like pulling teeth, the agency i was working for was doing a christmas brochure for a furniture store and the printer required artwork in quark native format.
even then quark was flaky, but it was a damn sight better at managing pages and type than pagemaker. i taught myself Quark in two weeks as i build the 48 pages of the brochure, i never looked back, . when it came to tabs and pagination, there was nothing that could beat it; until now.
i`ve been a loyalist, in newspaper pagination, annual reports, books, brochures, corporate identity manuals, but this week i`ve been fooling around with indesign and unless quark does something truly spectacular, they`re doomed. more and more newspapers; one of the bastions on quark`s business; are switching.
indesign brings the familiarity of all adobe`s other tools in a true pagination app. the work flow is spectacular, all the adobe apps are inter-linked so it`s pretty much once click edit placed items and pdf presets are built in for easy export. it`s taking me a while to unlearn some of my 12 years of quark habits, but i have to say i`m really happy with indesign and i`m not having many qualms about abandoning quark
according to Section 510(b) of Title V of the Social Security Act, P.L. 104–193, abstinence education must follow these guidelines:
(A) Has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
(B) Teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children;
(C) Teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;
(D) Teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity;
(E) Teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;
(F) Teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society;
(G) Teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances; and
(H) Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.”
some of this seems reasonable, doesn`t it, in black and white. however there are no guidelines on the implementation and as with almost everything else currently going on in the US, it`s all about fear. noteworthy is the absence of any guidelines stipulating health information or alternative lifestyle choices, as well as pointing a recriminatory finger at single parents.
according to Advocates for Youth:
Recent research by Advocates for Youth has shown abstinence-only sex education programs to be a dismal failure both in terms of not decreasing sexual activity and in terms of increased risk for teenagers who later do decide to become sexual. But the biggest risk of abstinence-only sex education may be the subtext in many of their programs. Tamara Krenin, president and chief executive of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) confirms; “…abstinence-only education is often fear-based…” The message is that sexuality is to be feared and fought against; it is dangerous, embarrassing, risky and emotionally painful.
this for me comes back to personal responsibility, i i don`t think my children`s sexual education should be for them to either discover on their own or be shaped by a moral bias that i don`t share.
the boychick just turned nine and i had the first of what i would like to be many chats about the subject. we covered the concept and mechanics of sex, the fact that not relationships happen between men and women and that HIV/AIDS is not a plague from God to punish homosexuals. it`s a very liberal outlook, but this is our outlook, his opinions may change or he may hear different information as he gets older, but he has a foundation and information to compare and analysis against.
the analogy i gave him, is like going into a test with incorrect or incomplete information, you`ll never pass. what i didn`t tell him, but was in the back of my mind is what you don`t know can kill you.
my point in all this, if we don`t equip our children with the right tools and information to make their own better informed decisions, how are they supposed to survive? it`s obvious the spoon-feeding and removing our opportunities to use our common sense as adults isn`t working.
