Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

"I support the Food Revolution. America's kids need better food at school and better health prospects. We need to keep cooking skills alive."

If you agree, go sign the petition Jamie is going to take to the White House: http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution/petition

Still not convinced why this is important? Here's Jamie Oliver's own words: "I believe that every child in America has the right to fresh, nutritious school meals, and that every family deserves real, honest, wholesome food. Too many people are being affected by what they eat. It's time for a national revolution. America needs to stand up for better food!" (Link)

I agree with him. Fresh food is something everyone deserves to have. Healthy and nutritious food is something everyone deserves to have. Enough food is something everyone deserves to have. The children of today are the first generation for centuries that will likely have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And it's largely related to food, to what they eat. We need to change that.

So please sign the petition. Help make a positive change in the lives of America's children.

And dude-with-potential goes down in FLAMES

So, remember those personality quirks I mentioned that were annoyances? The ones that were sitting in the back of my head and kind of poking at me that something wasn't quite right? Well, my instincts were right. I really need to remember to listen to them more often.

At any rate, turns out those little annoyances pointed to something much bigger and much more serious. A perpetual victim (see also victim playing), complete with anger issues, among other issues that came to light. Victims are those people that blame everyone else for their problems, and take no responsibility for themselves, their lives, or their actions (past or present). Victims generally think that everything wrong in their life is someone else's fault or society's fault as a whole. They see themselves as victims of great injustice.

I discovered over the course of several conversations that he has absolutely no awareness or understanding of the concept of the upper-middle class white heterosexual male privilege that he grew up with and still has as a matter of course. Instead he feels justified in complaining about anything and everything and blaming the world for the fact that his life isn't just perfectly the way he wants it. And yet he does pretty much nothing to improve himself or change his not-perfect life. He's perfectly content blaming the world for his unhappiness.

Victims are also often (although not always) angry about the injustice(s) they face. And in this case he is angry enough that I was flinching and cringing internally at the vitriol he was spewing as my date went off about yet another way his life sucks because of someone else. He has some serious and slightly scary anger issues.

I will not date another perpetual victim nor will I live with that kind of anger in my life. You don't like your life? Well then change it. The only person that can change/control your life is YOU. The world doesn't owe you anything. Here's the world's tiniest violin, now go grow up and get a pair. I'm not going to try and rescue you or fix your life for you. Nor am I going to stick around and listen to you complain and then turn your attacks on me for calling you out on your victim behavior and anger issues.

So I'm walking away and diving back into the dating pool. Moving on.

[Side note: Hooray for personal growth and ending unhealthy patterns in my own relationship behaviors!]

Online dating...take 3

In the interest of actually getting out of the house with some regularity and meeting someone I might actually want to have a long-term relationship with, I reactivated my online dating profile.

If you're counting, this is take three for me and online dating. I swear on whatever god/gods/goddesses you want, if this online dating experience becomes the train wreck the previous two times did, well, that's it. Never again. Three strikes, and online dating will be OUT. I'll have to go back to asking, err, begging my friends to help a gal out and play matchmaker.

Also, the "creep quotient" is definitely calculable. The inevitable "divorced Catholic with 3 kids" has contacted me, as have "never been to college," "bad speller," "types in ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME" (please stop yelling at me...kthxbai), and the "conservative but not narrow" (cough...bullshit...cough) individuals. Yeah. All have been politely told "thanks but NO." Moving on.

But so far this time things are going better than in the past. Fewer creeps overall. AND I have been on multiple dates. With the same person.

Yeah. Shocking, I know. I can hardly believe it myself. I think that means things are going well. We're getting to know each other. And yes, I do want to know more, we haven't run out of things to talk about, and I genuinely enjoy their company, despite (or in spite of?) the personality quirks that have appeared. That's good, right? No major red flags, just a couple of annoyances. Not that we won't be talking about at least a few of those personality quirks/annoyances, but still, overall I think it falls on the side of good. There's potential.

So I'm calling this 3rd round at online dating so far so good. Now I have the difficult task of trying to not think about or over-analyze the dates/person (um...yeah...right...) and just sit back and enjoy the experience and see what develops.

Less vegetating...

I canceled my cable. When I moved to a new apartment in December...wait...did I ever write a post about that? No? I'm sorry. I moved. To an apartment managed by a company that's competent and actually responsive to needs. It's amazing. Also, my apartment rocks.

Ahem. Cable TV. Right.

When I moved to a new apartment in December, I had to give up DirecTV. They have a strict no-satellite dish clause in my lease. It's a bummer. I loved my DirecTV. Overall I had a very good experience with that company. But alas, I had to switch. To Comcast. Almost exactly four months later, I canceled Comcast. I had more problems with service and outages and billing (WTF with paperless billing only working if I have a comcast.com email address?!?) in those 4 months than I did in the 3 1/2 years with DirecTV. It just wasn't worth the headache. Comcast is evil.

The final straw? My cable suddenly went out for no good reason last Thursday. It worked in the morning when I watched the news and then just stopped sometime during the day. So I called when I got home and discovered it wasn't working (box wouldn't turn on) and was told that clearly there was something I did (WTF? I wasn't.even.home) and that since the sending the box a signal to restart didn't work they'd have to send someone out. The first available slot for service? SUNDAY. That's THREE DAYS LATER. Which means that unless the cable suddenly and magically fixed itself, I'd definitely be missing the new episodes of Bones and Fringe that night. I was pissed as I was really looking forward to that after a long day. Also, being without cable for 3 days meant I'd be missing my family's beloved Michigan State Spartans play Butler on Saturday. So I thought about it, and decided the so-called service I've received was unacceptable and not worth the headaches Comcast had given me the past few months. And then called them back the next day and told them to STUFF IT. Service canceled.

I watched the first part of the Michigan State game online. Thank the gods for Verizon and my remarkably reliable DSL internet and wireless service from them. I found out the final score from a TV in a bar with some friends (I may have yelled F*CK a bit too loudly when I leaned the Spartans lost). Also, Butler? DAMN if you didn't play good ball. I gotta give it to you. Pity you lost to Duke because I do think you played better ball than they did overall.

So right now I have no TV. I have an old non-digital TV so unless I get one of those digital-to-analog converter boxes I get nothing but static. I never got one because in all my previous apartments/houses/etc. I've always had to have cable as I've not gotten enough signal to get any channels otherwise. So I didn't need one. And since I'm constantly trying to get rid of stuff, I couldn't see any logic in getting a thing I didn't need and I may never actually be able to use. Oh, irony. You can be cruel sometimes.

Ultimately this means less vegetating. No more getting sucked into bad random television on the weekends. And my television watching will clearly have to be more deliberate and likely will be more choosy and specific...no more turning on the boob tube and just zoning out for hours on end and losing time and realizing it's much later than I thought and OMG why am I not in bed yet?!? Between Netflix and Hulu I'm pretty well covered if there's a show I want to watch.

Actually, I signed up for Netflix for the first time a few days ago. I know. I'm "behind the times" or whatever. I've been having fun populating my queue. Lordy there are a lot of movies and TV series I've never seen or started and never finished. Eventually I might invest in one of those Roku boxes if I find I'll use it enough.

The downsides I've discovered thus far to not having TV/cable: FoodNetwork shows are not streamed online anywhere that I can find. That truly bums me out. I'm going to have to find a new way to get my Iron Chef America fix! And I'll have to start carefully avoiding spoilers as I'll be a day behind for most shows on Hulu. But I can deal with that.

Right now I'm rediscovering radio and catching up on online reading and print book reading. I feel less zoned. I'm not exaggerating. I really do.

This does not, however, mean I'm going to actually going to start playing video games or invest in a PS-whatever or Wii-thing. Let's not go too far now.