My 2¢

Have you ever called someone negative or pessimistic or the opposite,optimistic. In our society I feel like being optimistic is viewed as a good thing or a good trait to have. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but I don’t think it is a good trait. Optimists like to look at the glass half full and look for the positives in life, even in bad situations. But let’s be honest, our lives are full of bad situations and being positive about negative things is just plain stupid. As an optimist myself I have tried so many times to look at the positives or say that everything happens for a reason but that’s just a way of coping with the shit you have to deal with. Being an optimist is a way of setting yourself up for an upset. If you expect the best and don’t get it, then you are continuously setting yourself up for aggravation. On the other hand if you are pessimistic or negative, you don’t expect anything or you expect the worse. In my opinion, this is probably the best way to live because you can never get upset about something because you weren’t expecting it to work out anyway; but when things do work out it’ll be ten times better because you didn’t expect them to. IDK if this makes sense but if you think the glass is half full and you’re in a dessert you’re going to be mad when that shit runs out real quick. But if you know that it’s half empty, you’re already preparing yourself mentally for having to be thirsty.

I can honestly say that being a politician is clearly a job that any high school graduate is capable of. I say this because our country has had so many idiots holding positions in government. Of course there are the obvious dumb asses such as Bush and Palin whom I thought were the worse of the worst. I also believed that a person with a level of that stupidity would not be in office or be considered for position in the White House again. But clearly I was wrong.

There is a new candidate on the Republican side again who is just as stupid as the previously mentioned morons, Michele Bachmann. This lady believes that slavery was abolished by the founding fathers by the constitution. How could I even take a person seriously that has the history of the country she wants to lead so screwed up. I actually hated history class but even I, a person who never paid attention to history in high school, know that the constitution considered slaves property not people (3/5 law or something like that) and that the founding fathers themselves owned slaves.

There are many other quotes that Bachmann has said that prove her level of stupidity and ignorance, including the one in which she said not all cultures are equal, but that was the first one that I found. These examples of stupidity are easy to be found by typing her name into Google.

With that said I must now refer to the title of the post, “Dumb Politicians Come From Dumb Citizens.” It is people like myself and anyone reading this or the man down the street, basically anyone, that these peoples are given a chance to run for candidacy. We as a public are the reason why these idiotic leaders are elected, and we as a public need to change that. We refuse to do research and for the most part, don’t care. We vote not by politicians’ views but of our blind loyalties to parties. Furthermore, hate and selfishness cause us to vote for a candidate that won’t help the country as a whole but rather for one that has a small idea to help ourselves. In my opinion too many of us pay attention to the popular details of an election rather than the important ones such as the war that seems to have no end or the fact that as a country our education system is failing.

I challenge myself and my peers to truly pay attention to the problems that candidates for the 2012 election raise and make sure that they are important and for the overall well being of our country. As of now I know where my vote is going but I, like everyone else, must be open to the idea of another candidate.

You are possibly the worst tease. Every college student looks forward to you after their brief trip home for thanksgiving and the strenuous week we are slaves to textbooks and the library also known as finals week. We can’t wait to finally sleep in and have a time where we can honestly relax. Then we get home and realize why we left our hometowns to go to school for 4 years. Home sucks. You can’t socialize with people down the hall or across the street because they’re all over 30. Websites like facebook and youtube are no longer tools of procrastination but the only method you have of entertaining yourself because there is nothing on TV during the day. And if your like me or any of the students from SU that goes home to Westchester, NYC, Long Island, Jersey, or Connecticut; the fucking snow that you tried to escape follows you home - except now YOU have to shovel it.

It’s sad that I actually miss taking a 40 min centro bus ride to my internship, because at least in ‘cuse I have the opportunity to actually take buses to places. Living in the middle of the woods means you don’t have public transportation, and taking a taxi anywhere can cost you over 30 bucks.

The only thing that makes being home a good thing is seeing all of my family, but let’s be honest, there’s a limit to how much you can enjoy them too. JK

I was bored waiting to go out for the first time legally…its a joke don’t judge

We’ve been together since the day before I left home

You were my friend that never left me alone

When I walked to the ghetto or went to P&C

You were all ways in my pocket, always there for me

You were a giver, helping my friends too

You bought me things that helped me get through school

But I no longer need you as of midnight tonight

A day that used to seem so far out of sight

GOOD BYE TO MY FAKE ID AND THANK YOU FOR NEVER FAILING

So as my senior year comes closer, so does the time when I must enter the real world, meaning the time to apply to jobs is approaching. Now that is a scary thought for me and all of my fellow classmates. But for more than half of the class of 2011 there’s another scary thought that approaches, DRUG TESTS. These days, most jobs require drug test; from working at a  clothing store to a hospital setting.

Unfortunately most people aren’t drug free in some way or another. Towards the middle of the spring semester I heard a numerous amount of seniors who refused certain choice drugs (mainly marijuana) because they were afraid of the possibility of having to take a drug test for jobs they were applying for.

It has been in my experience that the different parts of an application process will predict your overall job performance. Your resume tells of your past achievements and qualifications and your interview show cases your character and people skills. The drug test does nothing to show how you will perform in the work place. It only stigmatizes applicants for participating in activities on their own time. In my college experience I have known many people who do/take drugs and are extremely succesful academically. I’ve actually met a few “pot heads” that were also tutors and were succeeding outside of the classroom (ie internships). So how is it that these people might not get a job because of a drug they do and may lose it to someone who is less qualified but clean in terms of  drugs. It’s fucking BULL SHIT.

Obviously this blog post may make me seem bias and I am probably coming across as a drug addict of some sort, but that is not the case. I just feel that it is hypocritical that you are tested for some things that are assumed to effect your work performance and not others. Alcohol, for example, is a drug that can effect your performance but because it is legal you aren’t tested for it on a drug test. As a matter of fact an alcoholic can get a job over someone who takes illegal drugs irregularly. This also leads to the idea of other types of addictions that can’t be tested. Cigarette addiction is the most likely cause of the 15 minute break that we recieve at work because cigarette smokers need that fix every few hours to be considered productive. Why do we give breaks to people to go smoke in the middle of the work day. Wouldn’t it be more useful if we just didn’t hire cigarette smokers and just hired people that  can work a full day without having to take a break to smoke.These people would also smell better and have less random irritation (have you ever been stuck in a place with someone who was itching for a cigarette? its not pretty)

So drugs can effect your performance if they are taken but what if you don’t take them before you go to work, shouldn’t that be considered rather than the whether or not a person gets the job. There are other things in life that can alter one’s work performance. For example, what about people who  can’t handle stress very well; I’m sure any time something wrong occurs in their life they won’t be able to perform to their best ability. But it would be wrong to test people to see if they were psychologically stable. What about people who have physical diseases. These diseases and the doctors appointments that comes with them (let alone the cost to insure these people) could be a hindrance to their employees. But that of course is illegal to do.

One argument I’ve heard is the fact that drugs that are tested are illegal to take, which is true; but what if you hire someone who’s addicted to taking pain killers - which can be completely legal. What if you stopped hiring everyone who participates in illegal activities? That would include all those who drink and drive, text and drive, piss in a public area (something that every guy has done at one point or another), drink  or  smoke while under aged  etc. All of these are common laws that are broken but they don’t judge a person’s character but are considered illegal.

Drug tests are completely irrelevant in determining how good a potential employee could be at a job. All they do is eliminate half of the application pool and  make it easier for people to go through applications.

…well, it should be titled food for memories. Yesterday I visited the town that my parents and siblings and most of my family had grown up in, including me until I was 5. I spent all of my summers there and I usually stop by there now just to eat as I drive past. Unfortunately none of my family lives there anymore and so yesterday was the first time I walked through it to so I could pick something up. This caused me to walk by my Grandfathers old house, the street where my cousin used to chill and the laundromat where I used to help my Grandmother; all of whom are deceased. As I was walking by all of these place I started to think of them and I noticed that for both of my Grandparents, my memories were full of food. An example of this would be corn bread. Every time I see or eat cornbread I think of my Grandfather. That is because most of my memories with him include us cooking cornbread in his kitchen from scratch after I would get home from pre-school and summer camp. I even remember the time I wanted to write down the recipe and I did so by ripping up a pizza box and writing it down on the inside of the cardboard. 

My Grandmother’s food memory is a little different. I never actually cooked with her or even remember the types of foods she cooked, but about 2 years ago I was in the kitchen with my mom helping her cook and I had a sudden deja vu. I was chopping cilantro and all I could think about was my Grandmother. It then hit me that my Grandmother used cilantro in so many of her dishes and I had actually forgotten about it because no one else in my family uses it as much as she did. It’s crazy how my mom’s rice that isn’t even my Grandmother’s recipe (or is I wouldn’t know) brings back such strong memories and emotion of my Grandmother.

My cousins food memory is probably the wierdest. He unfortunately passed this year and I wasn’t really close with him. He was about 7 years older than me and i usually hung out with my little cousins when I was at his house due to the age difference. It wasn’t until I was walked into a bodega yesterday that I realized that here are foods tied his memory as well, Celeste Pizza and Cup Noodle Soup. I don’t think I ever ate these with him, in fact I detest Cup Noodle Soup, but I do remember that his kitchen was always packed with it. I feel like the only foods I ever saw him eat were Celeste and Cup Noodle Soup. Unfortunately this is only one of the very few memories I have with him but it still brings back such strong emotion because even though I never hung out with just him, his memory reminds me of the all the days I would spend at his house over the summer having fun with all of my cousins and him teaching us how to play video games.

It’s crazy when you think about how many of our memories are tied to food (or maybe its just me). Just the smells of certain foods bring me back to my childhood with my deceased relatives. These are memories that will live on forever just through our senses and could never be forgotten; and ones that I’m more than happy to have.