Short Story

For my short story I plan to write about a homeless guy and how he got that way. I came with the idea by listening to my friend talk about how she gave $5 to a homeless guy when she was drunk. After thinking about the homeless guy I tried to think about how he got that way, so I was thinking a midlife crisis might be appropriate.

Anorexia Athletica or Exercise Bulimia

Exercise bulimia is a eating disorder kind of like anorexia nervosa. It is characterized by binging and then intense exercise to get rid of all the calories. Right now it is estimated that 5 million people in the US have exercise bulimia and 12% of those who go to the gym have it. The difference between healthy exercise and exercise bulimia is the motivation behind it, it is about self esteem, perfectionism, and control. Those with the disorder feel guilty if they miss their 2 or 3 or even 4 hour work out a day. Despite most exercise bulimics having low body fat %'s, they still dislike themselves or find themselves not "fit" enough.

why I want to be a desperate housewife when I grow up..

I regularly spend my Sunday nights watching Desperate Housewives at 8 pm on ABC. I'm pretty sure that it is the most ridiculous show ever, yet I'm slightly addicted. Not as addicted to it as I am to Grey's Anatomy, but addicted enough. I don't know quite what it is that draws me into the show, but whatever it is, it definately works. I'm not sure that desperate is the most appropriate title for the show, moreso "anything-goes (no matter what)" housewives. I know it is meant to exagerrate the lives of housewives, but having women die by falling off a roof or getting shot in a grocery store by another deranged housewife is pretty absurd. I know that some of these women are meant to portray stereotypes of housewives, like Gabby who had sex with the teenaged gardener, and Brie who is an obsessive perfectionist with nothing to do in her time besides clean. But at some point, I think the show crosses a line into complete unreality (if that's a word). Like if your mother was having a stroke, no way would you leave her on the lawn of someone else. It almost starts to bother me when things get that unrealistic. Kindof like Grey's Anatomy, of course there is some unrealistic aspects like all the sex and prettiness in the staff. But sometimes there are situations which totally disassociate themselves from the watchers. I know some of this is appealing but is it too much? Is Merediths mother waking up from her Alzheimers or whatever it is solely to yell at Meredith in Grey's Anatomy just too much? And does this all just contribute to the numbing we've talked about before?

The Numbing of the American Mind

I really liked this article, it kind of called us out on how we're losing sight of what's real and what matters. As I said in class, I really like the part where he talks about wolves and how we "see them" but don't actually see them. The only way we "really" see things are through accidents. And even when that happens, we get bored. All of this really echoes everything in the book White Noise. In White Noise there is a part about the "most photographed barn in America", which everyone can see, but again no one can actually see. We have these scripts encoded into us by our culture that tell us what to see and how to react. Like in the article, we are pretty much told we need to keep moving on and staying busy. That way at least, even if things hit us hard, we just keep moving. We become accustomed to disaster and no one can really experience it anymore. And the worst is if the disaster isn't disasterous enough, because then we feel disappointment as well. All this just goes to show that we have really become numb to everything that used to hold meaning. It's a little sad.

Customer Service

I'm kind of unsure about what customer service has turned into. I was trying to get back to Madison after break and my flight got cancelled, so I called customer service. I had to wait on hold for 30 minutes to finally talk to someone, who said they got me on a new flight. Unfortunately I couldn't check in online and I had to go through the process again. I finally ended up in Chicago and missed my flight to Madison so I was told to go to the customer service place. You would think there would be people there waiting behind a desk to help you with your problem. Instead I found a long line of people waiting to try and fix their problems on a row of computers. There was only one woman standing behind the desk to help those who couldn't be helped by a computer, which was a lot of people. I have an espresso machine that broke and I called the company today and instead of talking to someone about the problem, she just asked for my email address to send me a page on Frequently Asked Questions, and told me if that didn't help, I could call back. My idea of customer service used to be an idea of an actual person helping someone with their problems but I guess it's now become more of a computer-person interaction. So what happens when the technology doesn't work?