Public Service Announcement- H1N!

Yeah I left that exclamation mark in there on purpose...

It's a large hullaballoo for what may very well be less serious than the common cold, but I'm here to address the government nay-sayers who are a little too in-touch with their paranoid side--this one kills young people, so I wouldn't mess around with it.

I have talked about the vaccine with a nurse I work with, and I am intimately involved in discussions surrounding the vaccine, results, tests, releases et al. There are always risks involved in every vaccine, no matter how benign, but in the whole, the positives outweigh the risks in almost every case.

What people really can't bank when they say they aren't getting the vaccine because;

a. untested, which isn't true--they have been running tests in AUS as well as Europe as soon as it became clear GlaxoSmithKline was going to have to release something soon.

b. Heard bad things about it. There are always going to be 'iffy' things about vaccines-they are not perfect. They can cause allergic reactions, or the incredibly rare Guilliam-Barre syndrome--but again, these things have to be monitored in a clinical setting, and Gulliam-Barre is so rare and difficult to predict, any kind of flu vaccine could trigger it

c. Teh internets told them otherwizse. Never a good idea, particularly when it comes in the form of a fwd by friends/family. I just read one telling me how plain ol' warm saltwater was as effective as Tamiflu when injected up one's nostrils. REALLY? Go to a real site (and the govt nay-sayers, calm down. If anything went wrong with this, they would have to pull absolutely everything out.) There is no screwing around with the entire Cdn. population.

I have read on teh internets about how asparagus will cure cancer, and the million and one uses for hydrogen peroxide. Not true. Everytime someone wants to spout out about how 'they read on the internet' about a certain item, I want to ask if they were at the deputy minister's teleconference, and did they have a discussion item on it? Because I did!

Basically, the nurse boiled it down for me. Vaccine--risks involved, but minimal compared with an illness that can and will kill young people. Sore arm vs. month in hospital? Should be an easy one, and please don't leave your responsibility to get vaccinated by the wayside, saying 'others will get vaccinated and halt the spread.' Sadly, this is how some diseases make a comeback in the population, and you know how rubella, measels, mumps were stopped? Because everyone got the jab. End of story.

A pocketful of theories

I'm currently enrolled in a Master of Arts in Communication and this 'student' thing is taking a bit (lot) of getting used to...

I finally cracked a book today with grand ambitions of reading two, yes count'em, TWO chapters. Read one, and didn't quite finish it. Got seriously bogged down by theories. What kind of theories? Why, glad you asked, let me take this opportunity to bore you...

In reality, one of the theories was quite familiar to me (cognitive dissonance theory, one of the theories under the 'cybernetics' realm of theories) and that was because cognitive dissonance is behind that uncomfortable feeling of 'buyers remorse.' I guess it helps that I also live alone right now and only have CBC on TV. Save meeeee....

Buyers remorse is a pretty obvious theory. The bigger the purchase, the more the dissonance, or 'remorse'. If you had a choice between two cars, then not a big deal. A choice between a car or a trip to Europe? Big deal. Lots of dissonance. You might even return the car to go on that trip!

That and 'Queer Theory' really called to me. Maybe I will write my paper on those two. Queer theory is the 'untheory' and the 'unlabelling' of all things. Basically, it is how can you normalize things and name them when that is a gender construct and Queer theory serves to deconstruct all that is 'normal' and 'named' but that doesn't mean it is only for gay/lesbian/transgendered...even married people who remain childless by choice can be considered under the Queer theory, because they are bucking social normative conventions as well as gender constructs (women=reproductive organs, etc).

Very interesting! Well, sort of interesting. At least I can extemporize on it a bit, instead of it just whooshing over my head.

So, not a ghost but...

I spent the majority of that evening with an irrational sense of paranoia. I couldn't find my lunch, and then when I couldn't find juice for a smoothie, and no sign of the juice container everywhere, that was it!

Clearly there was a thief who stole lunches and half-full bottles of cranberry juice. I flew through my house checking all the windows, locks and rolling down the blinds. Armed with my fussy dwarf rabbit and an ancient tennis raquet, I crept downstairs to confront my lunch and juice thief. Nobody there. I checked the windows just to be sure.

I puzzled and puzzled over the mystery juice until I decided to go for the smoothie anyways, pulled open the freezer and found the juice in the freezer. Evidently in a brain fog of some sort I had misplaced it into the freezer and forgot all about it... And funnily enough, I guess Wednesday was an extreme brainlessness day, because today I even found my missing lunch--in the work fridge. I had put it in there in the morning, and then forgot where I put it! Jesus.

Somebody tape my head to my shoulders, because it is in real danger of falling off and then where would I be?

Ghosts ate my lunch. Yes one of 'those' days

Ok, we have made 'progress' sort of. Blogger is acting like a fucking idiot and won't let me compose anything, like I need this shit on this kind of day of all days.

Ides of Fall? Seems like it.

Today I packed a lunch, wasn't a great lunch but it was there to eat. I made sure I packed it carefully in my bag as I noticed the tupperware lid was loose, and didn't want potatoes and veggies spilling into my bag. Get to work, take lunch out of bag and notice tupperware isn't in there. Think to myself, 'probably fell out of bag in car' and think no more of it until lunchtime. I go to my car, figure I will drive to the bookstore, search car for tupperware, buy books, then go back to work and microwave lunch.

Several hitches to this plan:

While searching for tupperware, I took my keys out of the ignition and left them on the passenger seat. I did not actually find my tupperware lunch. I failed to notice the keys on the seat, locked the doors and proceeded to buy books.

Go back to car to find keys on seat, doors locked. Run back to bookstore, shriek my anguish about leaving keys in car during lunch time from work, lovely good samaritan drives me to my house, waits for me to find spare house key and then find spare car key (thank you husband who knew this would happen one day) and then drives me back to my car. Phew, disaster averted!

I go back to work, still without lunch, and have to rush and buy lunch (Quiznos, could be worse!). Work blah blah blah, come home and expect to see tupperware sitting happily next to couch like nothing ever happened. But there's no tupperware. In fact, it isn't anywhere. Cue spooky music...

Clearly ghosts ate my lunch. I am exhausted from a temporary new position at work, car issues, started school, husband is gone for the forseeable future...ENOUGH!!!!!!

Oh and blogger decides to have a total shit fit and not work worth anything, adding to my feeling of insanity that is building. Today is not a day to accomplish anything, read school notes, nothing. I have to take a step back...

stepping back...

An absence...

Yes that's right, your always-faithful blogger took a week leave of absence from the blog.

Did it because was feeling a tad burned out by life, and am back with a new take on things (hopefully!).

Also, I felt that I had to share a bizarre dream I had, which was possibly spurred on by reading too many gal mags at the gym. My dream was that I was in charge of naming nail polishes, like OPI, Revlon, etc. but the names for them were strange...

'Wrathful' red

'Other Woman' heather

'Keyed-car' silver

'Trollop' teal

'Let me down' blue

'They don't have phones where you were last night?' pink

So you get the idea. Still not sure how I remember all this either...

ZOMBIELAND

!!!!!

Just saw it the other day, and like today when I saw my first 'actually jaundiced' person, it was a shock to the senses, a bit of a horror, and very badass.

Now, the jaundiced person was just interesting, kind of yellowed around the edges, vaguely red eyes, clutching a cigarette and coughing lungs out.

Zombieland on the other hand, was a splatter-guts gore hilarious. Man, who knew cutesy 'Little Miss Sunshine' Abilgail Breslin was so funny? New fan right here. This is a huge spoof on all these new vampire and zombie movies, but with the addition of Woody Harrelson and a fine zombie cameo by the big guy Bill Murray, it couldn't go wrong.

There are some touching parts, like Harrelson's son he first referrs to as a 'puppy' he lost in the great zombie apocalypse, but is actually his child. Also touching is the extreme nerdom of star Jesse Eisenberg, rivalled only by Michael

Cera for king of the adorable dorks. His greatest romantic dream is being able to tuck a girl's hair behind her ear while she sleeps. This goes very wrong when he does that, wakes up to find said girl has turned extremely carnivorous--for him!

I also like that they keep anonymous, so Woody's name is his destination-Tallahassee. Jesse is Ohio and the two scammer girls are Witchitaw and Little Rock. It's cute and it works. Oh and Tallahassee has an obession with Twinkies and destroying shit.

What have you got left to lose when you've already lost it all? Absolutely nothing.

Enjoy the show, it's gore-riffic!

Women's Health Magazine- The new Cosmo?

Yes I have read and do read Cosmo on occasion, like waiting around at the grocery store or on a bike at the gym. I expect trashy articles, re-used stories and lots of ads.

When I picked up Women's Health at the gym, I was expecting something a little...different. This mag. publishes Men's Health, Runner magazine and books under Summit Media.

Interestingly, I watched a CBC documentary yesterday on the million-dollar industry that is diet books, starting off with the much maligned Atkins diet phenomena. What CBC also showed me was how Summit Media was pushing the new South Beach diet in each of it's magazines--but not as advertising, but as genuine book reviews. Liars! So basically, we pay for magazines so they can feed us as much crap articles posing as genuine as they can, along with the treasure trove of ads.

Ok, aside from that aside, I read through Women's Health and was expecting some fitness articles, health articles, healthy food recipes, you know, things that lend themselves to health.

What I got were ridiculous (ok, I hate it when people spell ridiculous as 'rediculous') articles that were pandering and simpering.

Case in point: What if you and your boyfriend/partner aren't compatible on certain issues? We tell you how hard this is to resolve!

1. He's a slob, you're a neat freak.
2. You like tabloids, he's more intellectual.
3. You want 3+ children, he wants one.
4. You like to shop and spend, and he's a saver.

Seriously? Need I go on? All I got from this stereotypical tripe was that women are dumber than men (tabloid reading); baby obsessed (show him how practical 3 childen could be!); spend like money grows on trees and shopping is a sport (shop vs. save); and are obviously neat freaks who love donning the 'hausfrau' role (you're neat, he's a slob).

And people pay for this garbage.