Christina Can Sing Elsewhere

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail yesterday about a relatively new dating website that caters to the sensationally beautiful like myself. It has recently gotten some press because a lot of people suddenly found themselves kicked off the site after the holiday season. Here's how the founder explained the deleted accounts: Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which our website was founded.

Consequently, I will be signing up. First I'm curious if I will even get in as their is a screening process by the opposite sex. After getting constantly rejected, I need to feed my excessive vanity by being objectified and turned into a piece of meat. Second I'm curious about the people who are members. Clearly this site is devoted to the disgustingly shallow, and it will make for a great social science study. For example, I'm curious if the people on this site are actually as vain and shallow as we all assume them to be. For the initial process, I guess what I'm supposed to do is sign up and attach a pic. To make this simple for all of us, I'm just going to use the profile pic I use for this blog. I think it's a great one because both my eyes are open which is a major problem for me.

Now as terrible as this site may be in principle, I can see some redeeming qualities in it and I've mentioned this before. The problem with dating sites is that they don't work the way people do. If someone is going to go and start talking to a stranger in the hopes of possibly starting a relationship, they are naturally going to try to talk to someone they are at least remotely attracted to. You just aren't going up to an a stranger you are not attracted to (beauty is in the eyes of the beholder) and try to start something up. But this needs to be qualified. That stranger we may not be attracted to at first, could become beautiful to you if you become friends through some activity such as volunteering. I've seen that happen all the time. And it's great, and I think is the ideal way of meeting people. But when you use these sites the ideal has been thrown out the window and now you are simply looking at strangers and their profiles. If they aren't attractive you won't click on the profile, unless you want a cruel laugh, and then based on the profile you will decide whether or not to pursue the person further. This new site might simply be trying to revolve around that fact. By having the screening process, the girls are already going to decide whether or not I'm someone they would even be interested in seeing my profile. Unfortunately for me this is probably shooting myself twice. The chances I'm going to get in based on my looks is unlikely, and the chance of me then attracting someone based on my personality is nil. But this will be fun, and should tide me over until the students come back and I can restart working on this the good ole fashioned way.

You've Got Mail

Today, for the first time, I wrote my Congressmen. Never having written them before, I felt pretty good after doing it. It sort of feels empowering that I used one of my basic civic rights. I wanted to write to them about some of my feelings on the health care reform bill. Not having written them before I tried to find a quick and painless way of doing it, because while I was willing to write a letter, I didn't want to spend any time addressing it and figuring out where to send it.

In my searches I found a link usccb.org/action which will automatically direct you to a page with two form letters, one for the House and another for the Senate. The form letter can be completely edited which enables you to write on any topic you choose. At the bottom of the page it asks for your information about who you are and where you live. Based on that the site automatically sends out the letter to everyone who represents you. There's nothing to lookup, it couldn't be easier.

I encourage you to use this site and write letters if you never have before.

Prizes

In Columbus, Ohio there is a science museum called COSI. It used to be located right in the middle of downtown but many years ago it moved to another location. I have not been to the new location but I had been there before it moved. We are talking at least 10 years ago maybe closer to 15. Anyway, at the museum there was a hallway exhibit that lead to the planetarium. The hallway exhibit was a collection of old Cracker Jack prizes.

Thinking on that old exhibit, I did a quick google search for it and found a couple hits. Then I did another search and found this amazing iron-on transfer.

Never having heard the term 'gloryosky' I did a google search on this and found it's Little Annie Rooney's phrase, although possibly misspelled for 'gloriosky'. Little Annie Rooney is a direct blatant rip-off of Little Orphan Annie, the famous red-head Annie we all know from that marvelous movie staring the wonderful Carol Burnett. Back in the 1924 when Orphan Annie came out, it was just a comic strip. But it was such a hit that in 1927 some people thought they could have similar success with their own orphan and so Little Annie Rooney was created. She too is an orphan but she lives with her dog Zero. You'd think something so derivative would have been destroyed, but instead the cartoon strip was published up to 1966!

At this point I get a bit confused. Even though the cartoon strip was introduced in 1927, apparently a silent film about Little Annie Rooney was released in 1925. Now in 1890 a song was introduced in England that referred to Annie Rooney, and so Little Annie Rooney was probably around before the cartoon strip came out. But similiarly Little Orphan Annie comes from a poem written in 1885. This poem was American, so it's possible the two orphans were created independently. But the Little Annie Rooney comic strip was a direct rip-off.

The move stared Mary Prickford as Annie Rooney. In the movie Annie is 12, Mary was 32! But apparently the movie was very successful, because Mary was 'America's Sweetheart'. She was only 5 feet tall, so maybe this helped her pull of the 12 year old image.

The song, being written in 1890 had some interesting language that we've all but lost. In particular is the word 'twixt'. I would like to bring this word back into common usage. For example, 'Today I came into work twixt eight and nine.' I even save a syllable by not using 'between'. That's just efficient.

Honey and Dates

Should I ever get a honey and go on a date with her, I have the perfect dessert for the occassion, honey date cake. Last night I felt experimental and I combined two different cake recipes in an attempt to make the cake. I made it from scratch and used a few special ingredients. For example, I splurged and got special free trade sugar made from evaporated cane juice. And I used King Arthur flour. But after making it I found the flour had too much of it's own flavor and it masked all my other ingredients. So the cake is very tasty but I don't taste the honey and the dates.

Some of the called for ingredients were a bit strange. For example, the recipe I was following called for orange or lemon rinds. Well short of buying an orange or lemon, I was unsure where in the grocery store to find these rinds. They certainly were not in the baking isle. And unfortunately not too many Moms are walking around the store the time of night I was in there.

In the end I didn't want those fancy things anyway. I mainly wanted to only use the honey and dates. Things like ginger, and cinnamon were left out.

Frosting is difficult for me. I never seem to get it right. I use powder sugar, milk and butter. Maybe I should throw and egg white in or something, because the frosting always turns out to be more like icing. It comes out runny, instead of more like a paste.

Speaking of food, after 3 years of grocery shopping at the same store I discovered its deli section. In particular I found their already cooked rotissere chicken. This is fantastic. For 5 dollars I can have an already cooked whole chicken ready to serve. I love finding new ways to get out of cooking.

Found Some Words to Say

Dan Brown's latest work is pretty good. For the most part I thought it was a good thriller that was hard to put down. There are those moments when it becomes a bit encyclopedic but otherwise it's fairly entertaining. In all I only had a few gripes with it, which I think are interesting enough to warrant a post on.

In the book Brown promotes that the Bible is true. In fact he goes so far as to essentially say that anyone who believes the Bible is historical fiction is stupid. In addition he is in favor that all the various religions in the world share some fundamental truths. But then he goes and belittles the parts of those religions that make them unique. Typically he belittles some of the practices in Christianity, probably because that's his reader base and they know the most about this religion. Specifcally praying infront of the god-man hanging on the Cross (Catholic-centric), and eating his 'figurative' body and drinking his blood (probably not Catholic-centric as we see nothing 'figurative' about it). Brown likes to show how pagen these practices are. So I want to clear this up a bit. Even though Brown doesn't make this claim, I want to clarify that we do not pray to Jesus on the Cross. Rather we pray to Jesus in Heaven, and use the icon of the Cross for meditation and reflection. Catholics typically like to focus on the sacrifice Jesus made, and use it to inspire our own actions. Many of the other denominations focus on the empty Cross (possibly because of 'faith alone') which signifies Jesus' victory. Both approaches are fine, and it's not like one is better than the other. In fact we should probably focus on both, if Jesus didn't die on the Cross we wouldn't be saved, and if He didn't get off that Cross we wouldn't care. As for the bit about figuratively eating God, alright that one sounds crazy. If I was an outsider looking in I would probably be getting away from those people right quick. But at the same time if Brown is promoting the Bible as truth, then Jesus is God and we should probably do what He says. And so if He says we need to eat Him, then that's what we need to do crazy sounding or not.

But that's just a minor gripe. The next thing I want to talk about isn't so much of a gripe as I just thought it was interesting having been in Theology. During the last 5 pages of the book, Brown presents his Theology. He claims that we are made in God's image, but puts the 'twist' on it that it's not our physical bodies that are in the image of God but our mind. I found it amusing that his 'twist' was the physical body, because that's certainly not the Catholic understanding of being made in His image. Actually, it would be closer to our minds, but not quite. God is the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. By very definition, God is relational. We too, being made in His image are made for relations, with each other and with God. There's other things too, but my point is that it's certainly not something so basic as just our minds that is made in the image of God.

The other bit of Theology Brown wanted to push is the word 'Elohim' which is the Old Testament word for God. The special thing about that word is that it's plural. Brown's point is that in essence it meant that all of us are god, and we just haven't taped into our full potential yet. In reality we need to remember that during the Old Testament, God was revealing Himself to humanity. And much of humanity believed in many gods. The God of Israel, wasn't the only god around according to the citizens back then. In fact He wasn't even very high on the totem-pole. But also the plural, as found in Genesis during the creation (check it out, you'll find the language has God as plural), points to the reality of the Trinity which was later introduced by Jesus.

Anyway, I'm not writing this to make a big case here, or to change your convictions. I just thought Brown's ideas were amusing and it'll be interesting to hear how people react once they get a hold of the book.

Sledding

According to the weather report, tonight and tomorrow we may be getting 8 inches of snow. Unfortunately this is not exciting since work does not allow snow days. Instead, if we cannot make it into work, for any reason whatsoever, that is due to weather problems, we have to make it up. So if there is a week long hurricane, we are expected to make up that week of work. I can understand not getting paid for the time I didn't work, but being asked to make it up seems a bit rough. I wonder if taking the time off without pay is okay. But in any event, not going into work due to a little snow fall is wimpy so these rules don't apply to me anyway.

Nevertheless, the prospect of getting the snow had me thinking about sledding and how I don't get to do it anymore. Back home I used to go all the time. Being on the foothills of the Appalachian mountain range had its perks. And the sledding was great. Not only did I already live at the top of a large hill, but there were also plenty of other good places to go. In particular was the hill by the community college, Harvard on the hill. This one was a bit of beast, because it was fairly steep. It was a blast to go down, but no fun walking up.

One year a new type of sled was brought to the market. It was essentially a hard rectangular plastic sheet with two rectangular holes cut out on one end for your hands. This sled had you ride on your belly face in front. It was pretty great and you could get lots of speed. The major problem with this design though was the face first on your belly part. First off it was near impossible to turn since your hands were holding the holes. Second the tremendous speed and the fact that your head was pointed towards the ground made it difficult to see objects up ahead.

In particular it was quite difficult to see fallen logs, especially when they were covered up with snow. So when my sled went off the track and headed towards the woods I didn't see the log that I was quickly approaching. Not that it would have mattered much, as it's hard to change direction when you are airborne after going off a small ramp.

All in all it was pretty impressive. I didn't black out, but I did lay there for quite sometime. I wasn't in a great deal of pain but the whole incident was impressive enough that the other sledders took notice and someone ran to grab Dad. I think it was my sister who got him. At any rate no one wanted to look at me. My right eye had gotten clobbered by the log and was quickly swelling up. By the time I trekked up the hill and made it to the van with Dad and my sister, Dad said I looked like a Star Trek character. That night it swelled up considerably and the following days I had great trouble opening it up in the morning because of the pus and mucus that had solidified over my eyelashes during the night.

This was back in the 5th grade, just before I got glasses. I remember going to the Indian doctor, that was a rare treat back then since we have so few of them back home, and after it was determined that my eye would be all right after sometime I shortly had to go back for glasses. Also during that time I had a book assignment due and as part of it I was supposed to make a paper-mache bird with feathers stuck on. I was not looking forward to doing this, but in the end I got lucky. Being right after Christmas, we had gotten 'Free Willy' from Aunt Sandy as a Christmas present. Even back then I didn't want to watch this movie and thought it was for littlier kids, but my Mom popped it in and had me lay down on the couch. Turned out the movie was actually pretty good, it was just that stupid overly dramatic scene in the end with the Whale jumping over the kid's hand that ruined it all. I didn't want to watch that sissy stuff. Turns out I didn't, I wound up falling asleep and when I woke up, completely disoriented after having had such a long nap, my Mom suprised me with the bird all done. She did it while I was sleeping and I got out of the assignment. I still have that bird. Mom hates it, calling it a 'dust-collector' and she's right it is, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

Red Eye

Last week I set a new record for the amount of time I wore my contacts in one sitting, putting the time at just under 30 hours. My right eye was fine, however I think I infected my left eye. It got terribly bloodshot, hurt a lot, and kept wanting to close. And so for the next several days, my left eye made me look like a tired druggie, because I could barely keep my eyes open and when they were open the left was bloodshot. I was also not around any sort of real drug store, so to fix the problem I bought a small bottle of 'Cleareyes'. Just as Ben Stein claims, ther redness went away quickly. The pain was still there but even that was slowly starting to ebb away as the days went on.

The reason I had my contacts on for so long was because I bussed on down to a conference in Orlando this past week, and I was entirely too vain to put on my glasses. Afterall, there were going to ladies around and I wanted to look good. So instead, I wound up looking even more creepy than usual and I had to wear my glasses anyway. Oh well.

The conference itself was great. It was put on by a group called FOCUS, which is a Catholic affliated campus missionary group. About 4000 participants attended. The conference hosted a wide variety of talks put on by some pretty big names. For example Archbishop Caput, who has been in the news a lot lately due to Senator Kennedy, gave a talk. Each night of the conference for 1 hour they had free swing dance lessons and on the final night of the conference a swing band came and played for us and there was a big dance. That was a blast. It was funny watching the Friars dance in their robes, and they were really good. Sort of 'Sister Act'ish.