Foodie Over Easy
I’ve been called a foodie many times, which at times makes me concerned. Yes, I love to cook. I love to share recipes. I head the Culinary Arts Club on campus. I indulge more then a skinny little Asian girl should. Nonetheless, the amateur foodie is a misunderstood title. The usual suspect is someone who loves food, but everyone loves food! It takes more than just a love for food to be a foodie: it takes a relentless passion.
Ode to My Favourite Food
First – the green tape
Sealing the deal of my favourite meal, it is usually found other places
Namely, drifting side to side under the sea
This is the glue that holds it all together
Here it plays a necessary role
Here it is the foundation
Next – the white
Like a mattress atop a bed frame, it is the support
Navigating Food Marketing in the CSR Generation
Organic, sustainable, natural, green eco-friendly, locavore, omnivore, vegetarian, pescetarian, vegan, freegans (eww!) and raw foodists. These are just some of the many terms that are bandied around when we are talking about food in the post-Inconvenient Truth era. I use Al Gore’s documentary as the benchmark for this discussion not because this is when these terms were first used, nor even when many of them became popular, but you certainly would not have seen them used in the cereal aisle pre-2006. This is the point at which many of these terms first arose, and also the point at which others overnight made the switch from mere descriptive terms to what they are today: marketing tools.
Don’t-Cha Put It In Your Mouth
Food is such a basic thing, but it comes with a lot of baggage. The very simple habit of eating three meals a day is loaded with significance if we just stop our munching and think about it. When you consider what you actually know about your food, it’s not a lot at all. If you’re eating a pre-packaged meal, you have to wonder what exactly is in it, if those things that look like meatballs but taste like shit actually have any naturally occurring substances in them. The closest most processed food gets to real fruit, vegetables, or animals is through the picture on its box.
Food for What? Commit To Knowledge
As I sit here typing, I muse about our sleeping patterns. Harnessing fire, electricity and even the elements; we sure are an assertive bunch. The entire body of impositions and assertions produced by the collective process of human brain development has the bonus and handicap of being good for the species. Agriculture is one of those developments. Agriculture is our white elephant in the room.
Seven Months and Counting
Marilla: “You’re not eating anything?”
Anne: “I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”
Dress Codes
What is gender? What is sexuality? There are no real answers to these questions, except for the ones we find in existing cultural conceptions. Indeed, gender and sex are situational and periodical social constructions. The definitions of what makes a ‘woman’ and a ‘man’ are changing, they are not true but based on a collective agreement from the majority and/or the influential parties of a society and are maintained by those same parties.
Eroticism
Most of us have heard that we are sexual creatures from birth. But too often we hold ourselves back from fully expressing ourselves sexually. Why is it that we do this? Sex and eroticism is something that comes by us naturally. Is it because we are shy about our bodies, or that we are ashamed? Or is it because ever since we were little, eroticism and sex were seen as evil and taboo concepts?
Whatever You Feel
While I was in Montreal this summer, I was at a music festival at a beer tent when I was asked what my sexual orientation is. Try to imagine this from my point of view: I had known this person for all of two weeks when she asked this. She has kissed my face prior to this conversation, which struck me as odd. It would seem that kissing my face and me kissing back would be a clear indication that I wasn’t gay. The response to this is where I’d like to start your understanding of what this piece of writing is supposed to be about.
Knocked Up
I never thought it would happen to me. It took my girlfriends, at the time, to convince me to take a test because I was in denial. My instincts were right, and now I’m sitting on a toilet seat staring at the positive sign.
What did I get myself into?
Purity
The silk, smooth to the touch.
The softest I’ve ever felt.
Pure beauty radiating outward.
My fingers drinking in every sensation.
More, I long for more.
Children Of Piraeus: Never On A Sunday
From my balcony I send,
One, two, three and four kisses to the world,
Over the docks of Piraeus fly,
One, two, three and four seagulls, I am told…
Allow Me To Be Blunt
“The girls are crying and the boys are masturbating”…
No one says it better than Amanda Palmer. I am, however, hesitant to truly want to see the reality in that line, but I can’t deny how well this summarizes our narrow perception of gender, relationships and sexuality.
Lesbian
I heard them muttering my name before I even entered the gloomy cafeteria, a place where I once found refuge among friends when times were tough and school seemed to be too much. Now, it was the one place at this high school I despised. If I could, I’d avoid eating just to escape the entrapping grey brick walls that the cafeteria provided. It seems like anything is better than facing the truth. But this is everyone else’s problem now, not mine.
A Night of Sex, Drugs and Spray Tans
After a bottle of pre-drink Jaeger, a couple cups of sugar-free Red Bull, and the first couple drinks at the bar, I’m asked if I’m a gay boy. Honestly? I’m drunkety-drunk, I’ve had a long week of Laurier bullshit, assignments, classes with excessive and annoying student participation, and a lot of rainy weather. And I’m at Phil’s, where fucked-up goes to pass out. When I finally get out to Phil’s at the end of the week, don’t bug me about my sexual preferences.
I Wanna…
I wanna kiss you, I wanna suck you, I wanna fuck you.
I don’t wanna miss you anymore.
I wanna see you burst into our room,
I wanna push you down onto the bed,
I wanna jump on top of your head.
I wanna kiss your entire body,
I wanna put myself inside of you,
I wanna rub myself on you, all over you.
Let’s Talk About Death, Baby
Zinta Avens Auzins and Joseph Craddock set out to explore the idea of death by interviewing each other.
Musing On Death
Sometimes I fear death and dying. Sometimes I ponder what will happen to me when the stone overturns. Sometimes I want to talk about death and then realize no one really likes talking about death. I mean, who talks about death? Don’t we all avoid it? Parents say, “Oh please,” and friends tell you to wear colour. Some say go to church. But beneath all the “cover,” there’s a shroud forming above as time goes by…and yes, it’s unmistakable.
Death as Spectacle
When I was twelve years old, the first person that really meant anything to me died of lung cancer. He had been ill for two months prior to his death, barely living on the IV drip that slowly passed through the plastic tubing and into his veins. He was my grandfather, Maxie Mask, and he died at age 65.
Why Fear Death?
Epicurus once said, “Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.” There are words such as these that float around in the midst of our existence, yet human beings are insanely preoccupied with death. They are preoccupied with the concept of it, how it happens, and what happens after they die. These are questions that are, for the most part, unanswerable.
One Gray Day in April
You walk past each other,
Each on your own mission,
Never stopping to say “hi”
Or even flash a friendly glance
That says “I hope today treats you well
A Dialogue on Love, Life and Death
Ominous, relentless and permanent are probably the three words most apt in describing the term death. And, almost as if out of a storybook, it somehow communicated to me the value of life.
A Beautiful Example of Death
As a Gerontologist, Master of Social Work Candidate and a front line worker in long term care, people always ask why I think death can be a beautiful experience. I see the beauty. When someone is ready to pass, or they believe something or someone is waiting for them in another life, there is often such a sense of joy that emanates from them, even if they are in physical pain. When surrounded by a group of family, friends and loving staff, all celebrating your life, how can your death not be considered beautiful?
