Recipe for Dead Meat Dianne Sandwich

I first encountered this sandwich in university. It was impossible to find during school breaks but once term paper season had started it was almost guaranteed to start appearing. It's fairly easy to make but watch out when you chew it, since it has a tendency to get stuck in your teeth.

2 slices of prospectus
3 thick slices of of Term paper deadline (the meat)
3 tbs of No more extensions
2 tsp of Irritated prof
3 slices of Procrastination (more meat)
8 Essay sources, finely chopped up
2 Slices of distractions
2 leaves of Due date approaching
Chopped up Thesis

Take the 2 slices of Prospectus and spread the Mo more extensions on them. If you desire, and if you want your sandwich to contain more fiber, you can substitute the Prospectus with "Utter confusion". This will further enhance the already stressed and thready texture of the sandwich. After you have spread the No more extensions on the Prospectus, or the Utter confusion, put the slices of Procrastination on top, and then add the Irritated professor over it. After this, sprinkle the chopped up Essay sources on top and cover with the Sliced distraction. Decorate with the Due date approaching leaves. Use Thesis to taste. You can also add some References. Some people prefer more References, others a lot less. Using too many references will cause the sandwich to taste very bitter, although this is preferable to some people. You can also season the sandwich with "Fear of getting a B" or "Annoyingly over-eager and prompt classmate".

You may find the sandwich very chewy and extremely hard to digest. It is possible that while you chew the sandwich you fill frown. This is due to the stressed quality of the meat. Don't worry, the frown will leave your face once term paper season is over. Sometimes the sandwich may also cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, headaches, emotionality, and in some cases it might make you unsteady on your feet. You may suddenly stumble and fall without warning. Don't worry, this is all part of the experience. Given time, you will begin to like this sandwich and eventually even love it.

Good luck, and enjoy!

Reunion time

I have agreed to go to a junior high school reunion, but now I question my decision. I wasn't popular in school and was only friends with a few people from my class, and we still keep in touch, so what's the point of going to a reunion? The past is the past. Let it be. Although I can understand why people go to reunions. It's a chance to relive old memories and talk about the past. However, if you were one of the outcasts, what's the point? What do you have to look back at fondly? Exclusion? Hating gym class because it was run by the jocks? Once upon a time, that crap was annoying and sad, now it's ancient history, and best left in the past. I'm way over it. It's over and done with. Why go back? No backing out now though.

Racial pride = Racism?

One of my very favourite T.V characters, Maxine Gray, once said something like "What exactly is the difference between racial pride and racism?". I ask myself the same thing. In my mind, racism is racism, whether or not it's coming from a 20-year old skinhead or a 60-year old mother who refuses to accept her son's girlfriend because she's of a different race. I'm not prone to viewing things as black or white. I travel in the shades of grey. However, eiher you're a racist or you're not, it's that simple. Just because you say you want your kid to marry someone of the same race or culture because it's tradition, or because it's easier on your kid that way because people won't talk, doesn't make you less of a bigot. Tradition is the world's most over-used and abused excuse to perform unspeakable acts. Female genital mutilation is also a tradition in some countries, does that make it right?

For some reason, people really react badly to skinheads, but when it comes to a mother immediately dismissing her son's new girlfriend because she doesn't have the same skin colour or cultural background as the family, the public outrage goes missing. "They're very proud of their heritage!" "She just wants her children to marry people from the same culture!" These are some of the lame excuses that are used to justify this nonsense. Come on, we all come from the same place. If you penetrate our skin colour, culture and religion, we're all the same. Shouldn't the character of a person be what really matters?. Yes, in some cases, cultures can clash and can cause disruption and conflict in relationships, I know that from experience, but ultimately it's more important that we all get to choose our life partner based on love, not skin colour. It astonishes me that some parents out there would rather see their son marry a bitch with the same background than an angel from a different background. This is the perfect example of tradition coming before people.

I must be terribly naive, because I actually see people as people, not races. I hope I never lose that.

I'm a horrible person

I read in the newspaper about a fire which may have taken the life of one person and one dog. My first thought went out to the dog, not the person.

What does that say about me?

Bloody Sundays!

There is just no way to have a thoroughly pleasant Sunday. Even when there is no work on Monday, there is something gloomy and slightly stressful about Sundays. The weekend more or less consists of Friday evening and Saturday. Sunday is for anticipating the coming of Monday. It doesn't matter how I try to relax, or how much fun activity I attempt to pack into the day, the knowledge that it's Sunday is always lurking somewhere in the dark, muddy pit called my mind. It's psychological. Even if Monday is a statutory holiday, I will still go into the Sunday state of mind.

The Sunday state of mind is ingrained in our brains. It started in childhood when we had to get up to go to school on Monday morning.
Presently, the facts are:

I have to sometime during Sunday prepare for Monday, if I am teaching. I could use any day of the week to do this, and sometimes I do, but for the most part I procrastinate until Sunday.

If I need to get up early, I will begin to fret about it around dinner time on Sunday. I will abstain from things such as coffee and tea, out of fear of not being able to go to sleep. Setting the alarm clock is a must, and a source of agony. In the true style of the neurotic fretter, I have to check the alarm several times before I am assured that the damn thing is actually set and working. Even then I still worry about oversleeping. This will ruin my sleep, and as a consequence of this I will wake up on Monday morning feeling groggy and listless.

Because I feel groggy and listless all Monday, nothing seems to go right. It's not until I get home in the afternoon that I finally stop feeling like someone clobbered me over the head the night before. It's not the actual work, that's fine. It's just Monday! There is something about Mondays!

Was I too that annoying when I was a teenager?

Just curious. Recently, I have reacted to how increasingly irritating local teenagers can be. Especially the girls. Today I was in a store and was coming up the escalator to the second floor, and side by side stood 3 teenage girls, looking bored and blowing bubbles with their chewing gum. Teased, messy hair and skanky tights and loads of makeup. Yikes! I must be getting older. I had hoped that I would never have to lay eyes on a pair of Converse again. I wore those in junior high and as always with me and fashion, once I leave something behind I can never go back. I develop a real aversion to it and will never again get the urge to wear it, such as vests and shoulder pads.

Well what is most annoying about teenagers isn't the clothes, although I must admit that seeing stubby legs squeezed into sheer leggings isn't exactly pleasant, it's that they're self-centered. It's a drama show whenever they get on a bus and clip-clop down the aisle to the back seats. They walk in and look as if they're expecting all of us to be watching them in awe, because they're so incredibly cool. I deliberately stare out the window, refusing to pay attention to them. I've become like a Geography prof I had once, who told the class she used to do this.

I must admit, I too was once this self-centered. At 14, I thought I was all grown up and devastatingly pretty. Why is it that we're so self-centered when we're kids and teenagers? Do we look for recognition? Do we think we know everything? The answer to the last question is of course, yes.

Sometimes I see girls that I pity. Girls that are unattractive and that you can just see don't really fit in, but who try anyway. Those are the girls that I feel the most sorry for. They hang out with the more attractive, self-assured girls and they try to dress accordingly but it just looks so horribly sad. They have this look about them, as though they come from abusive or poor households, and I get this mental image of them pleading with their parents to buy them the kind of shoes that all the other girls wear. I see them in the malls with their scrawny shoulder bags, like ghosts beside the popular, pretty girls, and I see the store clerks watch them like a hawk to make sure they don't steal anything. They're trying. That's the sad part. It's not that they're unattractive or don't fit in, it's that they have to try so hard, and yet we all know that they will never be the ones to get the admiring looks from boys.

I never fit in either but I never really cared. I was content with belonging to a small group of social outcasts. I'm glad I wasn't one of these ghostly girls whose life is one endless struggle to fit in and get noticed. But then, isn't this typical teenage life.

Equally annoying, but quite sad as well, are the teenage boys with dead eyes. You can find them all over. Boys with baggy pants hanging halfway down their asses, showing off their underwear, always with the same blank expression on their faces. Where the boys like this when I was a teenager? I don't remember. It's that expression that makes me fear for what the future holds for our society. Will coming generations be walking zombies? Skanky girls and boys with dead eyes. Of course not, they'll grow out of it, we all do. It's just a phase in their development. Right?

Oh, why is it that every generation complains about the one after theirs?

A little bit of Carrie

I love Carrie in King of Queens. She's my hero. She's assertive but manages to be so in a sassy way. Whenever I get confronted or mad I either keep my mouth shut and stew on the inside, or totally erupt. There's no in between with me. I want the kind of spunk and sass that Carrie has. One of my favourite Carrie moments is when she and Doug had a bunch of Russian carpenters working on the house who took forever finishing the job, but they weren't able to complain about it because then the carpenters didn't show up at all. So they had to keep the quiet. Finally when the job was done, Carrie got to lay down the law. The way she did it was marvelous.

"Who the hell do you people think you are? I want you all to know that if I see any of you walking down the street and I am in my car I will run you down, okay. And just when you think it's over I'm gonna put it in reverse, I'm gonna back over you, okay. Then I'm gonna get out of the car... and that's where the real whoopass begins. "

Yes, Carrie can be extreme, but I love how she's not afraid of confrontations and how she stands up for herself. I wish that when someone butts ahead of me in line, I have the guts to point with my thumb and go: "Hey buddy, the line starts over there!" But I don't do that. Usually I'm too stunned to say anything. Sometimes I do say something, it depends on the person who butt in line. If it's someone who looks like an axe murderer, I'll keep my mouth shut but continue to brood about it.

The problem is that I'm so conflicted as to how to behave. My instincts always tell me to let people have it when they're rude, to insult them, but in my mind I know I should be above it and not stoop to their level. Then there is the soft part in me who worries about hurting people's feelings. So what is the answer? Wouldn't it be better if we were all a lot nicer to each other? But no, we can't let people treat us like doormats, but on the other hand why should I let them get to me when I know they're the one's that are in the wrong? This is me. Constantly in conflict with myself as to how to behave. I'm really a peace loving person and don't go out of my way to create arguments, but if you confront me I will retaliate. I suppose it all depends on which mood you catch me in.

Why on earth would anyone voluntarily want to live in Emmerdale?

I'm talking about the English soap of course. I remember when I was a kid and it was called 'Emmerdale Farm' and was a lot more tame than it is now. In those days, the plot more or less revolved around whether or not the cows had been milked or the garbage taken out. As my mom always says when she describes that show: "At the beginning of the episode the old lady is taking out a pail of garbage and at the end of the episode she's carrying the empty pail back in the house".

The show has gone through a drastic change, to say the least. Now everybody is nasty to everybody and there are intrigues and intricate plots that seem never-ending. This is nothing new in the world of soaps. However, the likes of Dallas, Melrose Place and Dynasty have nothing on Emmerdale. Here people will call each a tart for no particular reason, and gloat viciously when bad things happen to their fellow villagers. One has to give them credit for being honest I suppose, but I have to ask myself, apart from the beautiful scenery, why on earth would anyone in their right mind live in such a place, where you would have to face despicable characters such as Viv Hope, Matthew King, Debbie and Eli Dingle? Thank goodness for a bit of comic relief in Shadrach Dingle and Val Lambert.


Well, the show has its charm, otherwise I wouldn't watch it whenever I'm home and have nothing else to do. Fortunately it's on just at lunch time, and I like to eat my lunch while watching, since in every episode there is pub food. And gay Paul is very easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean. That aside, I have to say that I miss the old days when the stories were less dramatic. It was more genuine. Like a slice of farm life.

You poor ball!

I feel sorry for inanimate objects. I pity them and worry about them as though they were human beings.

We lost a ball on the ice this weekend. The dog dropped it down an ice fishing hole and since it was made of hard rubber it sank like a stone before we could get a chance to fish it up.

I fretted, not so much over the loss of the ball, although that was a bit sad too, but more for the ball itself sinking down the icy water down to the dark, murky bottom. I imagined that the ball could hear us as we left the ice that day, abandoning it there, dooming it to a life of being assaulted and mauled by fishes. Some big pike will probably make it his bitch. My imagination is not only overactive, but also slightly warped.

Then the other day as I was walking across a bridge, I looked down into the water and saw this old bike on the bottom of the lake. The water was dark, murky and uninviting with chunks of ice in it. I imagined, as I always do whenever I see a really crappy, rundown or vandalized bike or car, about how it must have looked when it was brand new. Somebody must have cared for it once. Once upon a time it was a cherished possession. Now it's just garbage on the bottom of a lake.

Then I think about when we're born, and how we're all innocent and pure and unknowing of what life will throw us. I've even found myself feeling sorry for people who have committed horrible crimes, because I find myself picturing them when they were infants and toddlers. Even serial killers were babies once.

Anyway, I think I'm a bit nuts, attributing human emotions to inanimate objects. Feeling sorry for things when I take them to the garbage room and leave them there. Making sure that my stuffed animals are comfortable on the bed before I leave for work. I also make sure that they are all included at time bed, so that no one has to sleep on the floor. The bed is like a menagerie. It gets cramped at times, but at least no one has to feel left out.

I also pity cars that have been stripped for parts or/and set on fire.

Maybe I'm not nuts, but just plain childish. Perhaps it's a combination of the two.

So you can see why the thought of that ball on the bottom of that lake haunts me.