Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Healthy School Lunch VS Filling School Lunch

I’m probably gonna get slammed for this, but I have to ask. Is it more important that our kids eat in school or what they eat? In a perfect world, they would eat healthy, fresh food and toss out only the empty plate. But that’s not the case.

Admittedly, before this school year, my attention to Mrs. Obama’s healthy school lunch initiative was, ‘oh, okay, that may suck’. But really … it does suck. Maybe not for the privileged schools who don’t rely on government funding. But for those who do … lunch time is bogus.

The guidelines are strict, if you don’t follow them, you don’t get funding. Sure there are creative ways and tasty ways around the lunches, but a small school or low income school doesn’t have the funds or resources to get creative.

What they are left with are lunches that follow the guide lines. The lunch lady’s hands are tied.

Some kids get one good meal a day. They rely heavily on the school lunch.. One … and now, that one healthy lunch, their only meal, ends up in the garbage. We waste.

While the well funded, privately funded schools can tastefully dart their way around, low budgets are stuck with what they can afford. And it isn’t great. Whole grain pasta … is gummy. Kids won’t eat it. Whole grain pizza … really? Whole grain bread … dry.

Try as they may, the lunch ladies can only do so much with the guidelines and funding. Take a look at some of these lunches.




I have seen it first hand, volunteering in the cafeteria, I watch kids throw away more than they eat. The ones that eat all their lunches are the ones that pack. And I’ll tell you, the parents don’t follow guidelines, they follow instincts on what their children will eat.

I understand the need for healthy. And yes, let’s make sure lunch is balanced. The five food groups offered at every meal. But if a child will eat a plate of pizza and have a fully belly, to me it is better than a full plate going in the trash. A hungry child will not have a good day in school.

Kids have been eating school lunches for decades without issues.

The government can push healthy lunches on a kid, but if he or she doesn’t eat it, you can bet when they get home from school, they’ll chow down on junk. So what’s the alternative.

What a child eats should be a parent’s choice. Let the lunch ladies do what they do and make a good lunch, if a prent doesn’t think that lunch is healthy, let the parent PACK the healthy lunch.

Lots of pictures of Mrs. Obama eating at a school cafeteria, but I can bet if she had to eat the inner city, low income school lunches, she’d have a different attitude.

She doesn’t eat school lunches every day, our kids do.


By the way, I’m still convinced her healthy eating is a front. Bet me she has Oreos in her closet, Ben and Jerry’s in the white House Freezer and Dominoes on Speed dial. We just don’t know it.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

400 Days (Movie) - Review and Ending theory

If you are like me, after watching the movie 400 Days, you immediately went on line to google the ending. You probably screamed at the screen and or just scratched your head. After watching the movie for an hour and a half, I decided to go back and watch it in pieces, breaking down the movie so I could rest easy about it.

Yes, I’m not kidding, the movie will drive you nuts because you think there just aren’t enough clues. But there are. It's well written and well acted.

If you haven’t seen 400 Days … STOP.  Watch it and come back. This entire review/explanation is full of spoilers. You have been warned. SPOILERS AHEAD.

400 days deals with a psychological experiment to test the effects of astronauts in space for long periods of time. It's a solid movie that will keep you entertained and guessing.

Hint one – Psychological experiment. That alone tells you it all. But they want you to believe, is it? Is it all an experiment or did the apocalypse really happen while they were tucked 100 feet underground in a simulated ship?

The film gave plenty of clues to explain the ending of the film.

SPOILERS
In the beginning, it is painfully obvious that the Doctor is a part of it. “Remember our deal,” the director says. Although, she explains later that he was reminding her to stay estranged from her boyfriend the captain.

Doctor chick, Emily, gives injections to the men. Not herself, she takes pills. In every experiment there has to be a constant. She is the constant. The pills help her keep clarity, while the injections cause hallucinations in the men. Hence why she keeps testing them.

Her supposed death, was a fake, if you recall she took extra pills, got dizzy and went to sleep. A set up.

Hallucinogenics cause a projection of fear or something in your subconscious, hence why Botany boy, Bug, kept seeing his dead son.— He wasn’t going crazy, seeing a ghost, he was hallucinating.  When he figures it out, the experiment snatches him away. Actually …. Emily helps with that. That’s why she disappeared briefly. Being part of the experiment, she had to step back so Theo could discover the blood bath. She had to get Bug out of the way.

Now for some things you may have missed or not thought of. When they have the explosions, the ship rocks. Dane Cook's character (My favorite and most well rounded) asks, “Are we moving?”

I believe they were moved to the stage.  Where everything was set up. The crew said the town wasn’t there before the experiment. So in the apocalypse the town appears with power?

Moon dust? Okay, serious, if the moon fell apart, there’d be a lot more damage than  rocks falling from the sky. How about tsunami’s? The computer read outs could have been duped by the experiment.

As a writer, we place the truth in a character. A glossary guy. But sometimes you may miss that the character is giving away the truth. We think he’s nuts or unbelievable. Dane Cook is that character.

He continually states it’s all part of the experiment, reminding the viewer that none of it is real. He does so passionately. Like shouting. "Dudes, listen to me. It 's not real." But we don’t pay attention, we’re too busy hoping it is not.

He states that all the towns’ people were familiar and were the reporters. He is correct. The reporters are credited in the movie credits as reporter 1, 2, 3 etc. But none of the townspeople get a credit. Because they would confirm they were also reporters.

The  big one, and the reason Cook disappears is he figured it out and recognized the town hottie as Miss February. She indeed was one in the same. The mag with her picture was done on purpose to see if he would remember, he did, he called them on it, he was taken out.

The final death scene, well, to be honest, maybe they were real, maybe not. One thing is for sure, it was nothing but an experiment, The surveillance camera view at the end along with the hatch opening and the sunlight coming in were, in my opinion, final confirmation.

I’m not saying I’m right, and you can double check what I put here, but I’m pretty darn sure the filmmakers left enough hints to let us turn off the movie with the certainty that it was all a big experiment. I liked the movie, I liked it more once I figured it out completely … at least to my satisfaction.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Bite Your Tongue: Trump is NO Reagan

I posted a simple question on my Facebook page – Why Trump? I wanted to know what people thought. One person responded that she believed (Not felt) That people saw him as another Reagan. What! No, she had to be wrong. Just reading those words sent me into a tizzy. Trump like Reagan … uh, can we say ‘Blasphemy’?

Believing that there was no way people thought that, at least the masses. I googled ‘Trump like Reagan’ and lo and behold, not to my surprise, the first thing that popped up was Trump comparing his campaign to Reagan.

Seriously?

Maybe I am taking it too much to heart. As a diehard Reagan fan, there was only one Reagan. And my fandom comes from the man he was, not even so much his politics. He was charming and funny. Trump is rude and obnoxious. Reagan had class, Trump needs to take one on manners. Reagan was strong, Trump is a mean bully. It’s like Prince Charming VS Archie Bunker, apples to Oranges. Sweet pickles to olives. There is no comparison.

Admittedly, I am not a Trump fan. I disliked him when the world disliked him. Remember when he was a joke? To me, he still is.

Any comparison to Reagan is blasphemous.

People talk about how Reagan wasn’t a politician. Really? Wasn’t he a Governor first?

Hey, Trump? You wanna ban Muslims? Kick out all undocumented immigrants, build a freaking wall? Conservatives like to forget that Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Yeah, he did.

To further educate Trump. Foreign Policy isn’t a policy that is foreign to people and they don’t ‘get’.

Our Nuclear triad is not a spicy new gum.

Granted there are a few similarities between Reagan and Trump and I begrudgingly mention.  They both had more than one wife, both are 69 running for office, they both worried about their hair. But could you see Ronald Reagan saying, “Yeah, my daughter Patty, I’d date her if we weren’t related.”? No! But Trump said that about his own kid. That’s wrong on so many levels.

But then again, his daughter is female. Trump loves women only if they look a certain way.
Reagan would never publically call or even admit to calling another woman a ‘fat pig’, like Trump. Let’s see, Trump claimed all women on The Apprentice flirted with him, blames Hillary for Bill cheating (So freaking male), dissed Carly Fiorina’s looks, called a female reporter a dog, said Meagan Kelly Bleeds from ‘wherever’ said a breastfeeding mother was disgusting for needing to pump her milk, and since ‘disgusting’ is his favorite word, let’s not forget Hillary using the restroom was disgusting. Like he never had to take a dump or a piss. What is he Kim jong un?

To twist-a-quote from Lloyd Benson, “I loved Ronald Reagan, I studied Ronald Reagan, you Trump are no Ronald Reagan.”


I feel much better now that I wrote this. I’ll step off my soapbox now.