Nickel and Dimed

Ok, let me start off by saying that I don’t have my book with me right now, so I’ll have to do a direct quote tomorrow. So far in the book, I’ve gotten past where she does all her work in Florida, and has now moved to Maine. When in the beginning she sums up what exactly she’s going to be doing, I thought it sounded pretty interesting. Definitely rough, but interesting life to lead for a little while. I’ve watched movies during high school about similar things. People in foreign places that work and work and have no money to show for it, with a family to support. It really is sad. I’m not completely through the book yet, as I said, so I’m curious to find out what is going to happen. One thing that sticks out in my head is at one point when she’s waitressing and she faints. I don’t know if I would be able to continue on with the “experiment” knowing that I could back out whenever I felt it was necessary. She says she’s an olderish lady as well, so automatically I would automatically question things, I think. Another thing that caught my attention is the fact that she’s moving from place to place, I might have skipped over the reason she’s doing so, but it doesn’t seem to me that people with a low income and hardships can move around as much as she does, and how come she doesn’t try the public transportation, which is probably generally the way of getting around for families who lack.
That’s all I can comment on for now. I’ll pick a quote out later. I’m definitely curious to see what happens.
One other thing caught my attention that I liked- I found most of the facts that are at the bottom of some of the pages to be quite interesting. Some pretty crazy.

Current Events- OJ Simpson

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061115/ap_on_en_tv/simpson_interview

This is just a brief article about an upcoming event with OJ Simpson. I guess they’re going to interview him on how he would have committed the murders, if in fact he had committed them. A little weird, I think. I don’t see why anyone would want to interview someone about how they would have committed a murder. I remember hearing a lot about the case. I think that my gram might have followed it prety closely, but I don’t have an opinion strong enough to support about whether or not he had actually committed the murders. Either way, when I was looking for a news article this one popped up, so I read it. I would feel weird talking about something like that, especially on television, after having being tried for murder already. Plus, who just sits down and thinks about how they would kill somebody? That makes it seem, to me anyway, that if he didn’t actually committ the crime, he was considering it, or had atleast thought about it on occasion. It seems pretty sketchy to me. Also in the article it says that he has told someone that he doesn’t believe two people could be murdered without both being covered in blood. I dont think that necessarily has to be true. So his way of killing these two people would obviously be really gruesome.  There’s some pretty crazy people out there…

Current Events- Man pleads guilty in ‘84 college assault

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061114/ap_on_re_us/uva_rape

So, this article is about a man who sexually assaulted a woman 22 years ago at a fraternity party in college, and is finally coming forward and pleading guilty. Apparently the man has had some issues his entire life, since the reason he was coming forward was due to a 12 step Alcoholics Anonymous program. I’m kind of iffy about my opinion on the entire thing. First, they both have different stories. Either way though, I could go both ways on whether or not it’s a good thing. My first thought it that maybe we’re getting somewhere if people who have done something so long ago are willing to come forward and admit it, even though it’s been put in the past. If only we could get a few more people to do that, we’d be off to a good start. At the same time, though, I kind of question it. It’s been tucked away for so long, and they’ve both moved on with their lives, so maybe it’s not really worth it to open old wounds.
On an entirely different note, it’s kind of scary. You hear all the time as college students, or kids going off to college to always watch what you drink, and where your drink is. You hear that people can slip something in your drink, or to watch who you hang out with because something like sexual assault could happen. Normally, I’d say the majority of kids listen at the time, but don’t really think about it much when they’re actually out and in the scene where its most likely to happen. Then you hear about things like this. It’s scary to think that not only can it happen to anyone, but that it could happen and nothing could be done about it. 22 years is a really long time.
Watch yourselves when you’re out, kids.

Current Events- Greeks becoming obese

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061114/ap_on_he_me/diet_greece_obesity

The article that I picked, I got off of yahoo news. Figured I would switch it up a little bit since I normally use nbc.  The title itself caught my attention. “Greeks suffer higher rates of obesity.” It seems that obesity if definitely a huge problem that’s been going on for a while in the United States, but you don’t really hear much about it from other countries. Atleast I don’t, or I don’t seem to pay much attention.  It talks about a study that was done of fifth grade students, and it states that of 312 fifth-graders in Greece’s northern Ioannina region 29.4 and 11.8 percent of boys were overweight and obese, while the figure for girls was 39.0 and 7.5 percent. That’s a pretty high percentage. It’s funny because for some reason I always thought of places like Greece to be pretty conscious about what their diets consist of. Maybe that was a long time ago?
It’s pretty disturbing in an over all view of things that there is such a weight problem circling around everywhere. There is so many things that we all are so aware of that we can do to stop ourselves from getting to that point, but I guess less and less people take those things into consideration. You wouldn’t think that just having a healthier diet plan, or working out for 45 minutes once a day would be such a hardy task. Everyone seems to have such a goal to modernize societies, but they look over the bad things when they do it. Fast foods and things like that aren’t things that anybody needs. Just because the Greeks are trying to westernize themselves, they should take a look at what really goes on over here, and learn from it, instead of trying to repeat it.
I can’t imagine that anybody enjoys being overweight. It sucks that in an over all picture, there’s really only a pretty small percentage of people who care enough to do something about it.