Aspartame

I recently received an email from my mother about the chemical aspartame. Apparently it is a toxic chemical found in many diet drinks as well as artificial sweetners. It has many symptoms that are actually fatal and are similar to MS. Some of these symptoms are fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting, pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, unexplainable depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, and/or memory loss.
And this is the stuff that soda companies are putting into our drinks??? It seems just a little crazy to me. If this chemical can kill us, or do other serious damage, then why is it in our food? The article also said that anything that is labeled “no sugar added” has this chemical and is dangerous to our health. Well I guess if profit margins are high, who really cares if a few people lose their life to this deadly additive?

The Duchess

I saw a movie over the weekend called “The Duchess” with my friend, while I was staying at her house. The movie was pretty good, and very indicative of the relationships between men and women, at least as far as place was concerned in the eighteenth century. The movie was actually very shocking and informative, as I was under the impression that people in that era were for the most part good people of moral composition and strong values. That might have been the case for the ordinary people of the day, but according to the movie, the aristocracy was something different entirely.
The main character, Georgiana, becomes the duchess of Devonshire thanks to the meddling of her mother and, of course, her beauty. It is shortly after she marries the duke that she realizes how horrible a person he is and finds herself caught in a loveless, unfaithful marriage. The duke makes it clear that her one job as his wife is to provide him with a male heir and she has no place in any other matter—including his infidelity.
It made me think how far women have come since then, and while the advancements are impressive, many women are still the subordinate to men. Jobs still favor men to women, and we have yet to see a female president…but it’s okay because at least we’re not still expected to be solely heir-making machines??? Uhh…okay...

Vibes

Vibe is defined by a distinctive emotional aura experienced instinctively. I’ve never been a big believer of the whole vibe concept. But I’m starting to get the idea behind it. It’s an interesting concept, but an actually very common one. I think everyone has disliked a person in their lifetime for the sole reason that they just don’t like them. I know I have. Some people just bug me. Period. Now, I’m not superstitious or anything—I don’t believe in the whole crystal ball, terot cards, astrology thing, but I do think vibes exist. It’s like when someone says they have a “gut instinct” about something. How do you explain that? I mean, maybe people could use that as an excuse for feeling a certain way or being inclined towards a certain path, but I doubt that someone would just decide they don’t like something for no reason at all...

Love Happens

I saw the movie, Love Happens, last night with a bunch of my girlfriends. Though the critics only gave it a C, I thought it was really well done. I might be biased because Jennifer Aniston is my favorite actress of all time. Brad Pitt was an idiot for dumping her for Angelina Jolie, but I won’t get too much into that. Anyways, I thought the movie had a really good message. It wasn’t just a superficial, sappy love story, though I assure you I cried more than once during it, but a meaningful insight into the lives of people who had lost loved ones. The actors portrayed their roles so well I forgot that’s all they really were—especially the male lead, played by Aaron Eckhart. Burke, his character, was a famous author who wrote a bestselling book about dealing with the loss of a loved one and conducted seminars/workshops to help people deal with their grief. His book was centered around how he supposedly got over the death of his wife, three years earlier. What the readers and the workshop-attendees didn’t know was that he had never followed his own advice to grieve and move on. He was pretty much a complete hypocrite. But eventually he comes out with the truth and gets to be with Jennifer Aniston. But the movie is about even more than that. A man who attends the workshop (against his wishes, but he sister insisted he go) lost his twelve year old son, and not long after his job and his wife as a result. He lost so much, and was bitter for so long, but after being stubborn and holding on to his anger and grief for most of the workshop, he figures out how to get his life back—and it is very powerful. I don’t know if I would be able to come back from that.
At any rate, the movie was fantastic and I would recommend it to anyone—boys and girls alike. So I give it an A, against the critics judgement.

Construction

I’m pretty disappointed with all this construction business. I’m just going to throw that out there. I suppose I just think that funds entrusted to the schools by the good people of Aurora should be used for educational purposes and only educational purposes. Granted, we did need the classrooms, but there has been some extraneous spending on certain amenities by the administration of Aurora High School.
In a situation in which the language department needs new books and art programs are suffering as it is, I simply think that the school should prioritize instead of rewarding other programs that just aren’t, let’s be frank, as intellectual. In an institution that prides itself on being a blue ribbon school, I’m surprised that the administrators are so willing to forego allocating monetary resources that contribute to that achievement.

are you a "real" person?

I read a book in sixth grade about a girl who thought that she was the only real person in the world. Allow me to elaborate. She was convinced that people only existed when they were around her and that her life was the only one that was constantly present. So she thought that when she left the room, it and the people in it would disappear into darkness. Her theory also included the idea that when these other people were “in darkness” they were being programmed to think that things had actually taken place in their lives and to have memories and such. But then she meets this really awesome friend and decides by the end of the book that her presumptions were wrong, or at least that this friend of hers is a “real” person too.
Though I assure you the book was entirely juvenile and indeed targeted towards a sixth-grade level of comprehension, it still presented an interesting idea. Have you ever wondered what someone is doing at a precise moment in time? There’s no way of knowing without asking them, or setting up video cameras in their house, which is illegal and kind of weird. Or have you wondered what a celebrity does with their days. For instance, what is Miley Cyrus doing right at this very moment? Moreover, when you leave your room, does it remain exactly the same as when you left it? When I was little I thought that my dolls would get up and dance around my room whenever I left it like in Toy Story...but really. It’s hard to imagine what happens when you’re not around. And since it’s impossible to be in two places at once, it’s impossible to see everything all the time. It’s a bizarre thing to think about, but there it is. I don’t even remember the name of the book, much less the author, but I’ve kept the meaning and the story of it with me for years now, and I’ll think about it from time to time.