America...*SIGH*

While driving through a city in northern Washington I saw exactly one football stadium, one soccer field, and one baseball diamond. Along with those I saw approximately 20 mattress stores, 15 furniture stores with lazy boy billboards, tons of liquor stores (you can even buy beer in the groceries stores and gas stations) and countless amounts of fast food restaurants every block where the smallest size pop you can purchase contains almost enough liquid to fill a small child’s kiddie pool.

 A lot of the restaurants I witnessed were also all you can eat buffets. And yet Americans wonder why so many of them are obese. I can understand how with all the improvements in technology that people are required to move less and less and become lazier and lazier. Also, with all of this junk food provided at such a low cost in such large quantities how it can be tempting for families to take advantage of this. However, one thing that I cannot understand is how they can continue to do this day in and day out and even when they begin to feel like complete shit with bodies full of fat that they don’t start to do something about their health.  

Don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about ALL Americans but there are alarming amounts (30-40% obese and 60-70% overweight) that are obese or close to it. I often hear the excuse of not having the time to go out to exercise during the week and it’s not like people in America are that more strived for time than the rest of the world. To me I do not see many things that can be more important than one’s health. If you are in good health you are in a much more cheerful mood, you have more energy during the time you take care of your family, more energy while going out and doing chores and even while at work. All of the excuses come down to one thing: just plain laziness. This laziness can unfortunately include being too lazy to think. It comes down to a matter of will power and self discipline. People are just used to getting what they want when they want it and do not execute common sense or logic and reasoning most of the time. But I will once again digress.

Having fun isn't hard when you got a library card!

It only took me about oh say; 19 years give or take to realize this and nothing helps more to drive this fact home than a rainy day. It is actually enjoyable to read a book.

All throughout my years of school I have never, not once read a full length novel. Not for a school assignment and not for the fun of imagining wizards flying on brooms or being there when the detective solved the big mystery. Spark notes, chapter summaries and the movie section in the library became my best friends. All this did me very well until one day in the 11^th grade when we had a surprise quiz on Hamlet. The quiz consisted of 42 marks. These 42 marks were based on quotes from the readings we were supposed to read before the beginning of that class. There were about 14 quotes and we were asked to first write down which character said each of these quotes and then explain the significance of each. Well… the quiz might as well have been written in Greek. This was the first time my antics had caught up with me. You see, my plan was to read all the chapter summaries and watch the movie at the end of the term just in time for the essay we had to write. As for the quiz, picture my paper as a chalkboard being written on by Bart Simpson in detention but instead of “I will do all my homework.” written on down the whole board it was:

 “Hamlet

        .

  Hamlet

        .

        .

        .

 Hamlet."

Yeah...that ended me up with a solid 8/42. Now you ask did this help me learn my lesson. Well, to be frank, not one bit. Luckily, I managed to get away with it for the rest of my high school career.

But then came the oh so wonderful realization that I would once again have the pleasure of taking first year English in university. What was even more awesome is that we also had seminars to go along with the lectures where we would talk in groups about the readings we were supposed to have read! (I hope by now you all realize the incredible amount of sarcasm present in the last few sentences >.<)

All I can say is I am glad my group consisted of mostly science students who only cared slightly more about the book then I did. I swear those people thought I was a mute. But, I mean seriously, why on earth would a math student be put into a class where we had to write an essay on a book where the reader is supposed to conclude that talking animals are used to represent the main antagonist’s emotions. Wait a minute… that sounds kind of like an isomorphism to me. Hmm. This must be the work of those crazy art faculty members who were getting bored of listening to the witty responses of hipster students sitting behind their douchey sunglasses. But I digress.

It was only after completing all the English classes in my educational career when I thought “why not read about something I actually enjoy?” Genius idea epop.

Reading and I are now on a first name basis. I am doing something I never thought I would be doing, that is sitting down and reading (and blogging of course) when my Play Station 3 is but feet away.

But don’t get too excited you English professors out there. I still wouldn’t expect my next art elective choice to be English.