Teachers are like doctors in that regardless if they like the person in front of them, it is their duty to provide that individual with the highest degree of service they are capable of. While doctors must treat each patient, despite his or her personal distaste for a specific individual, a teacher has to educate the student in front of him or her without bias. This can be harder than it seems. As I have come to find during my first semester as a college Teaching Assistant, students can either make or break my day, but I cannot let them know if they aggravate me or which ones I favor or dislike. Teaching is not as easy as it appears. An instructor has to stand in front of a group of strangers, tell them what she knows, make sure everyone understands (despite the weird confused, worried, or bored faces), and maintain composure and authority while doing it. Maintaining a façade of authority isn’t easy at first. In fact, it’s quite difficult when you are initially placed in such an intimidating situation. Another difficulty is remaining objective when some students so obviously do not care an ounce about what you have to say. Whatever you are gushing about as an instructor, chances are you find it to be important and it’s frustrating when others do not have the same zest for that topic as you do. All in all, teaching is not hard after a few lectures, but it can be rough to maintain composure while facing all of the different obstacles an instructor faces from day to day.
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I saw a guy walking around the mall the other day with a walkman on his hip. Not a CD man, or an ipod, but a freakin walkman. I couldn’t understand what the heck century we were in. I am by no means an electronic snob, nor a snob in general, although this entry may beg to differ, but I really had to stop and think that a walkman is just no longer practical. Every piece of music is available as an mp3 or on CD that was ever available on cassette tape, so why burden yourself with carrying around some huge artifact of history on your hip when you can do yourself and the world a favor by joining the rest of the twenty first century and coughing up the ten bucks for an off brand mp3 player. My uncle who is in his sixties and can hardly turn on a television has an mp3 player. He has always been my benchmark of where technology hits last so if he has some new toy then it must either be a must have, or it is because everything else that had been previously manufactured that did whatever that new things does is not being made anymore. It was not as if the walkman guy was poor either, he had a nice watch, new shoes and a cell phone on the other hip. Don’t even get me started on having a cell phone on your hip either because that is a whole different can of worms…

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Forgetfulness is an affliction that has affected me my entire life. I leave bits and pieces of my life wherever I go and am constantly having to backtrack, re-live a recent episode of my life, and rack my brain to remember the mundane details of which aisle in Wal-mart I might have perused and which items I was looking at in order to find whatever it is that I lost. Like many others affected by forgetfulness, my keys are my most commonly misplaced item. On one occasion, I actually found my keys an hour after losing them on the hook inside the door of a restroom stall in Wal-mart. On another occasion, I found my keys in the bottom of the discount yarn bin at Hobby Lobby. I leave my keys, back pack, coffee cup, and purse all over the place. My problem, I have found, is that I aboslutly do not like having to carry things around with me. I like my hands to be free to pick up and touch items or textures wherever I go. I must just subconsciously put down my keys on any given random shelf to be able to pick up something interesting to me. In order to solve this little problem of mine, I have started leaving my phone in my car whenever I go into a store or other establishment. Since taking my keys with me is a must, I attached them to a carabineer that hangs on my belt loop at all times. This way I can keep track of them without having to carry them in my hands. Even if I leave my purse somewhere, at least I will have my keys, be able to get in my car, and use my phone to call and cancel my credit cards. Bada bing.
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Advertising has really become an art. I like to watch ads now. Not because I have any interest in buying what they are trying to tell me to buy, but because they are entertaining. In fact there are a lot of times that I don’t even know what the ad is trying to sell me, which works out great for me because I really don’t care. Bud Light beer commercials are usually the ones that get me going. There was one commercial that centered around the word “dude.” It was all of these situations where the guys would say “dude” to each other, like a guy sitting on a huge couch by himself and his friend comes over and sits next to him, almost on top of him, and the guy looks to his buddy and says, “dude,” as if to say, “there is a whole couch here, how come you have to come cramp my space?” I never realized how many different ways the word “dude” could be used. They seemed to use it as a noun, verb, subject, predicate, nearly every literary classification, yet I still didn’t want a nice cold Bud Light afterward. I am not really sure what advertisements are trying to accomplish these days. I understand that they are more interested in just getting their name out there rather than really trying to convince you to buy their product in the thirty second slot, but what is the point. For a company like Microsoft, who is really the only game in town when it comes to computer operating systems, to advertise just seems like a waste of money. I don’t know, these are multi-million and billion dollar corporations so I guess they have a better handle on what they are doing than I do. I hope that’s the case.
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If Aesop were alive today to write his fables on society, one might look something like this:

Once upon a time in a far away kingdom was a magical place called Wall Street, a place of great riches where powerful bears and bulls roamed the fields. But the ones who ruled Wall Street were not bears and bulls but wise and clever weasels.
The weasels possessed enormous riches and lived in opulent palaces. Their weasel wives wore the finest furs and jewels and ate the finest foods. The weasels, though, were not happy. They were an envious lot, and each weasel and his weasel wife wanted more than the next weasel and his weasel wife. So one by one, the weasels found themselves clever wizards who brewed magical potions that, over time, could turn one piece of gold into two!
“Buy our potions and they will make you rich!” the weasels proclaimed to the minions. And millions of people sent the wise and clever weasels gold and waited for their riches to appear.
The potions, so it seemed, did multiply gold, and the weasels prospered enormously as they sold more and more potions for more and more gold. The weasels grew fatter and fatter and built grander and grander palaces. From high atop Wall Street, thousands of weasels peered down from their enormous palaces perched atop magnificent spires of gold. Oh to be a weasel! They laughed derisively at the ordinary people below.
But alas, the potions brewed by the wizards turned out to be poisonous! The toxic potions slowly began turning gold into worthless paper! As their grand palaces, resting now on tall columns of cardboard, began to teeter and shake, the panicked weasels cried out to the only ones in the kingdom who could save them – the mighty donkeys and elephants.
“Help us! Help us!” the weasels shrieked. “We must have more gold to shore up our great palaces or we will fall and destroy the kingdom below!”
The donkeys and elephants grumbled and argued. They had already squandered much of the people’s gold, and they had none left for the weasels. So the donkeys and elephants set sail across the sea to the land of Panda the Bear.
“May we please borrow gold from you Panda the Bear?” they inquired.
“And how will you pay this gold back?” he demanded to know.
The donkeys and elephants looked at each other nervously before the answer dawned on them.
“Why, our children will pay you back!” they shouted in unison. “Yes, and our grandchildren, and all the millions and millions of children yet to be born will pay you back!” they exclaimed.
Satisfied, Panda the Bear gave them ships filled with gold, which they took to the weasels.
“Here you are wise and clever weasels, take as much as you like, and please do not fall,” the elephants and donkeys said.
The weasels helped themselves to the gold and shored up their creaky palaces while millions of people in the kingdom became sick and destitute from the weasels’ poisonous potions. But thanks to their friends, the donkeys and the elephants, the weasels did not fall. No, the weasels rebuilt their marvelous palaces and busied themselves making them more lavish than before. With many fine things to eat, the weasels grew fatter and fatter, and once again they bought their weasel wives the finest furs and jewels.
And they lived happily ever after.

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Anthropology can be broken down into two Greek words. The prefix “anthro” comes from the Greek word “anthros” which literally translates in to “man. The suffix “ology” comes from the Greek word that means “study”. Quite literally, “anthropology” means the study of man. However, in today’s politically correct society, we like to call it “the study of humans”. Since “the study of man” would more or less imply that we are examining only a little over half of the world’s population. Since “the study of humans” is such a broad area to cover, anthropology has been divided into subfields that break off bite sized chunks of humanity to be scrutinized. I won’t go into all of the subfields here. I specifically want to talk about a branch of the subject called cultural anthropology.
The job of the cultural anthropologist is to study how a specific group of people interact with each other, and their surroundings. This is a very broad over view of the field but in essence, there you have it. Initially, this seems like a relatively easy task. To simply watch and understand how a group of individuals, bound by common beliefs and values, interact with the world around them and simply write down your observations surely must be a job that even an undergraduate could do. Two things make this a little more difficult than initially perceived. The first, is the fact that the cultural anthropologist must essentially forget what he knows about the world he lives, in and delve into this new culture as ignorant as a new born as far as the language, customs, relationships and a myriad of other aspects fit together. This is challenging because it’s hard not to transpose your ideas on the workings of the world onto a group of people who think differently. Remaining objective isn’t an easy thing to do. The second challenge the cultural anthologist faces is something called “cultural relativity” This basically means that ideas about right and wrong, good and evil and what is acceptable vs. taboo is relative to the culture in which these rules are implemented. Cannibalism, for instance is considered to be disgusting, wrong and evil within Western culture. However, there are tribal groups who view it as necessary, spiritual or positive. One group of people will eat the flesh of formidable enemies that have been killed in order to gain their powers. This is a drastic (but true) example of a situation in which an anthropologist must understand cultural relativity and remain objective when observing and documenting ways of life.
Since this blog is reading so much like an article, I think I’m going to wrap it up here by admitting that while cultural anthropology is an absolutely fascinating field, it is very complex, emotional, and not for the faint of heart.
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I don’t know what popular culture has come to. I really don’t. As I was driving the other day I was flipping through the radio stations and I settled on one that plays just your normal, run of the mill pop music. I listened for a bit, but as I usually do I kind of just let the music be in the background, not really singing along or getting much into it. Then a song came on that I had to listen to just because it really blew me away. It was a terrible song. It was a group called LMFAO and it was a song featuring Lil Jon called “Shots. ” All the song does is describe them going to the club and getting drunk. I had no idea that this is what people wanted to hear. The chorus of the song is just Lil Jon yelling “Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots!” at the top of his lungs. That is literally the chorus of the song, the part that is supposed to tie the “A”section to the bridge of the piece of music. I seriously could not believe my ears. The fact that the song was even made, let alone played on the radio for other people to hear was something that I just could not wrap my head around. It’s not like the song was made by one guy in his apartment, this was put out by a major record label meaning a lot of people had to sign off on this song being produced then distributed. I am not a record producer and it is probably a good thing because if I was I most certainly would have prevented this cutting edge piece of art from finding it’s way to people’s ears. What a shame that would have been.

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There are a million different ways to warm yourself up. You could take a hot shower, wrap yourself in blankets, or start a fire and sit next to it. I have used all of these methods before and each of them does the trick. It has been cold here recently and it has also rained. When it is cold and rainy sometimes the only way that truly works for me to warm up is to cuddle up next to my significant other. There is a warmth that they give off that warms more than just my body. I know it is cheesy to say, but laying next to someone you love warms you right down to the soul. I sit and read while he works away diligently tapping on the keyboard or flipping pages in his book. When the weather outside turns cold, blustery, and inhospitable it makes the warmth given by a loved one that much better. Their presence seems to ensure that although the weather is harsh there is still calm and serenity. It is nice to have that soothing feeling. It is all too easy to get wrapped up in the traffic, bad drivers, and uncomfortable wetness that comes with the rain. Having a calm warm person to cuddle up next to is the best way to shrug off the cold and rain from the day. Wrapping up in a cozy blanket next to my boyfriend is the perfect way to heat up and wind down. It truely is an unbelievably safe, and comforting warmth.

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I know that staring at a screen all day is not the most healthy activity for our eyes. Human beings evolved on the open plains as hunters and we were tuned to see far distances in the light. We have poor night vision which is why most everyone, even those on the graveyard shift, get tired at night. We evolved in such a way that our sleep patterns were molded from our inability to be productive at night. I am sitting here staring at this computer screen, typing away and after a few hours I start to get nauseous and my head starts to hurt. It makes me think that this can’t be good for me. Plus I know that I’m not tuning my long range sight abilities by being ten inches from the screen, so wonder what good I am doing for my eyes. I guess maybe I’m doing my children a favor by sacrificing my eyes so that their eyes will be more attuned to looking at a computer screen. That is how evolution would have it, one generation must suffer with inadequate equipment so as to make an investment in further generations adaptation. That doesn’t stop my head from hurting, my eyes from stinging, or my stomach from being in a knot. I have no idea why the stomach feels the need to get involved, it doesn’t have anything to do with sight. Oh, well, I guess it’s just that misery loves company so the stomach figures what the hell, might as well join the pity party. Oh that stomach, such a bandwagoner.

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People can’t usually drive very well, but when you throw some inclimate weather into the mix most folks driving skills go from terrible to absolute crap. I was driving in the snow the other day and I am careful and attentive, but I also know that my car is all-wheel drive, so I have a leg up on all those two wheel drive cars when it comes to gaining traction. As I drove along the highway I passed plenty of cars plopped in ditches, spinning uncontrollably, and just driving like crap. I am not a driving instructor nor do I have a perfect driving record, but when there is ice or people seem to lose their minds. Why can’t folks realize that bad weather takes more attention as well as confidence in your own abilities? Most people that I see clumped in a ditch or spinning like a top are older and I am guessing that they have been driving for years. So what the hell have they been doing for those years? Obviously not paying much attention to their driving habits, obviously. I am not exactly sure what exactly makes people bad drivers, but it seems that it is contagious because there are plenty of bad drivers out there. If you are afraid of driving when there is bad weather then stay home. The Department of Motor Vehicles handbook advises people not to drive when they are emotional, so remember that fear is an emotion. Driving is taken for granted by too many. Many people see driving as a necessity and a right rather than the privilege it is, so next time you get behind the wheel and there is bad weather, ask yourself if you are really ok to drive.

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