Worms: are our nation's children getting enough?

Apparently, according to yesterday's New York Times Health section, our children are consuming neither enough dirt nor enough worms. The consumption of dirt by young children and infants programs and trains the new immune systems to respond to various bacterial and viral vectors. Introduction of microscopic (and not so microscopic) worms to the human body has also worked in a similar way to foster a healthy digestive tract. The physicians and researchers mentioned in the article obviously did not mention tape, ring, round, or other kinds of worms detrimental to one's health. Nor do they mention the unbridled consumption of filth/dirt (a psychological disorder called allotriophagy). Hopefully this isn't a carte blanche for parents to allow their children to start eating animal droppings but at least it reinforces the fact that the United States should, as a society, ween itself off of anti-bacterial soaps.

-OH Bond Holidaze

I've been gorging my mind with a semester's worth of physics and chemistry over the last couple of weeks in preparation for my final exams. Yes, I am currently a student - a super super super senior, to be exact; but for all university purposes I'm just a lowly freshman. With some luck and some elbow grease, I'll do well in all my pre-requisites and get into medical school! In my previous life, I was employed and living in New York, in wine more specifically. In said past life, a time-honored tradition called for a sober month of January. The real hard-boiled red-nosed guys would all swear off alcohol for a month in order to detox after the holiday season of bingeing (and presumably to see if they actually could cut alcohol out of their lives for 30 days).

I have been dry for nearly two weeks, which, I realize, is actually something that I haven't done in quite some time. This certainly has been a good time to cut out drinking since I need all of my faculties to concentrate - one can say that I'm going dry in order to prepare FOR the holidays. I stumbled upon the following article in the NY Times by a man who hasn't had a drop in 16 years. Despite all of the time that has gone by, he still struggles, but only during each Christmas season.

It's a thoughtful essay on why we are driven to drink and the challenges of sobriety. I'm sure he had to let some steam off somehow. As for me, I'm looking forward to sitting by the fire with a belgian Christmas ale as soon as my exams are done.

Follow the link for the article: It's the Holidays. How About Just One?

Cupcakes Out. Salad In.

Cupcakes are out, according to today's New York Times.

While whoopie pies have made cupcakes obsolete, as Liza Shore wrote in her great essay, according to 12 people in New York, they have become obsolete for entirely different reasons. School children across the country are apparently being dissuaded from bringing in unhealthy foods for their classmates to enjoy. One would assume that our right to sell baked goods to fund the 6th grade Halloween dance would be upheld by our great constitution but it looks like someone needs to call the ACLU.

It's like Double Stuf Oreos, but more like a bake sale.

Luckily, no one is raining on my parade since these spectacles are dead to me for three reasons:
1. I'm 25.
2. When I went to public high school, "bake sales" were pre-packaged messes, mere masquerades of Nana's recipe for fudge brownies (or Mandel Bread).
3. I was walking down 72nd street in NY one day and at 5th Ave. students from a tony private school were selling cookies to raise money for some kind of exotic vacation to the Maldives or the zoo or something. The cookies looked very good and i already had 3 in my mouth when I was told that I now owed the 12 year old kid with braces five dollars! Five dollars?!?! I'm pretty sure that cookies and brownies at bake sales when I was growing up cost 50 cents!

But this fascist elimination of the bake sale is ridiculous. What's next? Turnips and rutabagas? Bulgur and wheat germ? When are kids going to splurge a little bit? Can't they stuff their faces twice a year with semi-sweet chocolate, butter, cream, eggs, bleached flour, and, if they're lucky, polysorbate 60. If bake sales were not dead to me, I would not hesitate to make this into a political issue. Cupcakes may be dead but as long as we preheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake at 325 for 40 minutes I think we'll make it.