Good Food Review

The Second Restaurant we went into to review for the Check Please project was Miller’s Pub in the loop on 134 south Wabash Avenue. The atmosphere inside is very classy and elegant. The lighting is relatively dim and the chandeliers that cast light down upon you look like they have been stolen from the Hogwarts castle of the Harry Potter books and movies in a good way. The seating includes single tables and booths as well as longer tables for parties and larger groups of people. The walls are hung with beautiful oil paintings in glamorous golden frames. There were also many different signed photographs, ranging in decades by date, of various famous people that have visited Miller’s Pub over the years. The waiters are very good and the service is overall very friendly and prompt. The menu is very wide including everything from burgers, seafood, their famous ribs, to all types of desert. Since I had already eaten a nice sized meal at the first restaurant I decided to order a desert. There were many scrumptious choices on the menu and I stopped on the key lime pie. One of the reasons I pick the key lime pie was because I love all types of pie. The second, and perhaps more important reason, was that I had no idea what exactly a key lime was. I figured it was a type of lime, but what exactly made it different from a regular lime was a complete mystery to me. In the end after consuming the piece of pie, and very much enjoying it, I was no closer to learning the secret of the key lime. That was okay because I still had a good time.

Winter Poem

The sky is starting to bombard the ground.
The little white bombs fall with no sound.
In our hearts and minds there's no silence but cheer,
Because everyone can feel Christmas soon will be here.
Yes, indeed it's that time of year.

Still there is much work to be done,
Whether you're mama, or papa, or son.
For one, there are lights to be hung,
Then, of course, carols must be sung.
Would it be Christmas is no jingle bells are rung?

But there is one element of Christmas that is essential,
It's our strongest happiness producing utensil.
It's wide at the bottom and quite sharp on top.
It's green now and thats not going to stop,
Until every last needle it's got comes to a drop.

So we all load up in our own horseless sled.
And off to the manmade forest we head.
There's many a tree to pick from, all lined up and bound.
In the end we decide on a small one. A choice that is sound.
To our roof he is bound. Hold on little buddy don't fall to the ground.

Back to our home safely we arrive.
For the best tree we've ever had we strive.
We hang the glass spheres up from side to side.
From high up we drop the ribbons. We watch them glide.
Could anything possibly be more fun? I just can't decide.

Globalization

Globalization means different things to different people. To CEOs of major corporations globalization means a wider market for their product and a more opportunity for growth and profit. To working people it might mean losing their job to a foreign country when their company decides to outsource this position or even their whole department to save money. To me it means watching the world get smaller and smaller as it gets a little bit easier everyday to connect with people across oceans and over mountains. America has been called the melting pot for the number of different cultures and background people who live here come from. I see globalization as a larger scale version of that. Fifty years ago McDonalds was something you could, for the most part, only find in America. Today you can find the golden arches in pretty much every major city through out the world. In soccer, as we have read in How Soccer Explains the World, it means watching the best players from each country play on the same club teams on a weekly basis. Another aspect of globalization is the slowly but surly standardization of countries, cities, and people. One day, and this day will most likely not be in our or our children’s lifetime, you may find yourself in London find it almost identical, except for major landmarks and geographical features, to say Beijing or Los Angeles. This may but a good thing in some way, such as perhaps a more stable globally-intertwined economy, but it could also mean the loss of national identity and cultural traditions. Regardless of weather you are in favor of globalization or not it’s coming fast and here to stay.

Sports in my life

I think over the years I’ve become addicted to sports. There is rarely a day much less a week when I haven’t watched some type of sporting event or at least watched or read about highlights. I enjoy all types of sports from soccer, football, hockey or rugby to track and field, swimming, tennis (table and court), volleyball, and handball.

As long as I can remember, sports have been my main interest in and out of school. When I was in grade school, playing soccer or football during recess, the gym classes were some of my most favorite things to do. As I grew older and went into junior high, I started playing on the sports teams at my school but, more importantly, this is when my interest in sports took an intellectual interest. I started to think about the financial organization of major sports teams and the economics behind my favorite activity. I also noticed a lot of athletes in commercials and on television in general. From here I began to develop an interest in psychology and what makes people want to watch these sport stars and buy the products that they endorse. Then I started thinking more about general psychology in relation to marketing and advertising. What paterns convince, what don’t? How exactly does a commercial convince people that a particular gum is tastier than any other? It is exciting to think about how something as simple as a yellow background rather than a brown background could speak to the subconscious and make us feel that the object in the foreground is something that we desire, without even being aware of this.

Thankful for a classmate

I am thankful for all my classmates! They all are a part of the class and without them I would never learn all the things I learn every time we have a class discussion. I am also thankful for all the classmates that sit around me. I’m thankful for Ryan as his is the only other boy in my corner of the room. I like how he is someone I can have a conversation about sports with hold it for more that a couple of minuets. I’m thankful that he is one of the few people in school that I can talk to about soccer with depth. I’m thankful for Courtney because she is a dedicated student and can always help me out when I’ve forgotten what the homework for tomorrow is. I’m also thankful for the inspirational courage that radiates from her. It isn’t easy eating a banana in class everyday knowing that she will always without fail be called “Banana Girl” for doing so. I’m also very thankful for Annie and Hannah who have allowed me to join their group late on multiple projects this year after I was gone when the class formed groups. I’m thankful for the laughs we have shared while making the power point on How Soccer Explains the World, going out to review restaurants for the Check Please project, and every other day spent in class. I’m also very thankful for all the orange segments they have shared with me over this last semester and hope that in the future we can share many more orange segments and laughs.

Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy

Dear Mr. Cormac McCarthy,
First I would like to thank you very much for writing The Road. It is truly something special. Not often do you come across a book that you just can’t put down, but for me The Road was definitely one of those books. I remember when I first started reading it I was a little behind my class which was already about fifty pages into the book. I sat down that night around nine or ten and though I would start and have time to catch up to the class and still have a decent night’s sleep. Little did I know that the hours would roll one after another as I turned the pages one after another until I had read the whole book. It didn’t take long to get me hooked to the story of the boy and his father and the beautiful language that described the ugly world around them. There was something about the characters that just had me reading page after page until I finally came to the end of the book and found out how their story ended. If I had tried to put the book down that night half way through I know I would have been laying in my bed awake thinking about the boy and his father resting somewhere along the road at night waiting for the sun to rise as much as they were waiting for me to pick up the book once more so they could continue their journey. One of my favorite things about the plot was how you never mentioned how this horrendous setting came to be. I think the mystery of what triggered this apocalyptic future was perfect for this book. Thank you again for writing The Road and I hope to get a chance to read your other books sometime in the near future.

Defend the Poet

Defending Charles Bukowski is an easy task. Or it would be an easy task if I knew how and from where he was being attacked. I personally like Bukowski, and “Dinosauria, We” so I have no reason to attack him and can’t easily imagine a reason why anyone would. I guess the only thing I could see people attacking him for is having such a dark and grim perspective on the world and the future of humanity. In the poem Dinosauria, We he describes the world as he sees it and how bad things have gotten. He talks about how everyone of us is born into this terrible hopeless world that is falling faster and faster each day into a spiral of destruction. He talks about how the environment’s health is being forgotten and how college degrees are losing value as the years go by. He talks about how the world around us is turning us into violent hateful creatures. He talks about the state of the legal and health care systems and how ridicules it is that its cheaper to die than to be treated at a hospital or plead guilty rather than pay lawyers to fight your case. He talks about the direction the world is headed and almost predicts an apocalypse in the near future. I can see why some people might not like to hear this but the fact is that everything he mentions about the general state of the world now isn’t too far off from the reality of things. I’m not sure how much I agree with his prophecy that soon all hell will break loose but I can’t say that the idea is completely ridicules and unbelievable. Charles Bukowski might be pessimistic but he has every right to be so.