Lovely platitudes

One of the things that I find quite interesting is thinking back on sentences that I have said in the past. Especially the weird and completely wrong and horrible ones. Doing philosophy at university has helped me a lot in being able to analyze them and say how completely rubbish they are. Giving myself good reason not to say them again. One of these sentences that has peaked my interest over and over again has to be a semi-common one that hopefully people will recognize. This is the typical love platitude of: "honey, of course I don't want to change you, you are great, perfect even, the way you are!". This all done on one of those special quiet nights when looking lovingly into each others eyes. Of course, she replies back with more or less the same thing.

I know many others than me know that this is a rubbish statement (sometimes it seems that everybody but me realized it was rubbish straight away), but if I ask for a show of hands who has done this I would not be surprised to see most people have. I definitely have unfortunately. Worse still, at the time I meant it completely. But then again, back then I did not think very much. Reading philosophy, especially the post modern philosophy, that I really struggle with, has actually given me terminology to be able to explain myself and make sense of even a sentence like this. Since, well I would find it pretty hard to imagine someone, anyone, not wanting to change the person you are going out with. I do not mean completely change, but little things, smooth the rough edges if you like. I would even go so far as to say something cute, like saying that even the most hard-hearted thug would like to change their other half to love them more.

As Jeff Foxwothy (I think it was him and that that is how you spell his name) from the Blue Collar Comedy Festival explains in his one section. Is that he imagines himself being constantly and slowly changed by his wife, even imagining his wife calling her mother to explain how well the changing is going. Something else interesting is that people do want to change as well. I would go so far as to say that the couple changes themselves constantly to suit the other, and if they get to a point where both refuse to change themselves anymore is actually where the couple splits up. Basically that it is the point where the individuals decide (Subconscously) that changing themselves any more would mean that they are not themselves anymore, so they have to leave to maintain their identities.

By changing I also do not mean the complete and sudden change. That is why I brought in the thing about even only changing how much the person loves you. You want the person to be intrinsically the same person, because well, that is the person you decided to go out with and like, maybe even love in the first place. The good post-modern philosophy word for this is iterability. It means that things are repeated, but that they never stay exactly the same, yet there is always enough to recognize something as that something. Take for instance writing, and even typing. I can easily say that I have written the letter "t" countless different ways, and that each time I can still recognize it as a "t". The same with typing, and one can even do this themselves, type a word, and then change the font. No two fonts are exactly the same, but in each font one can still recognize the word written (and I do not include the different language or symbol fonts).

The same thing is true about people. They age, they get haircuts, dye their hair, change clothes even. Each time they are different, yet enough stays the same that one can recognize them. I would say the same is true about relationships. You want to change the other person, but not so much that they cease to remain to be that person.

Jon

What men, or is it women, want?

Well this is something that happens every now and then. Although it is usually in a bar when everyone present is either drunk or well on the way to being drunk. One of the women at the table turns around suddenly, sloshing half her drink over the table and the people present at the table. She then glares at all the men present. After glaring a while she says: “You know, I hate all men. Why? Because they expect us to be thin and skinny like the girls in fashion magazines. Men are all just rubbish, since there is no possible way for normal women to look like that!”

There is a big problem here. Most men do not read fashion magazines. The only men that do are the ones who are fashion designers, and there is a high chance that they do not really care for women physically. Fashion magazines are normally written for fashion conscious women to ogle over the pretty and often petty new fashions for next spring autumn or which ever reason. This I assume is so that they can figure out what they should wear next. I admit that I am mostly guessing since I personally really do not know much about fashion or women’s magazines.

The same is true about Barbie dolls (by Barbie dolls here I just mean all dolls that little girls play with, not really saying anything about the Barbie product itself) since those dolls are some kind of “ideal” person. This is not a person that exists, and for a good reason, there is the claim that if a woman were really the shape of a Barbie doll she would be missing half her internal organs, and she would have back problems from her oversized breasts. But here again, this is something that most men, or in this case boys play with, or care about.

So in these cases how can a woman, any women claim that any man causes them to try and live up to these stereotypes? They cannot, it is mean and rude, and completely rubbish for them to do so! If women actually want to know what shape and size they have to be for men to appreciate them then they are definitely looking in the wrong place if what they look at is a fashion magazine. Since because hardly any men look at those they generally do not know what the women in them look like, and it is therefore definitely not the type of women they appreciate.

Where a women who is worried about her shape should be looking is rather at men’s magazines that feature women in them. Something like a For Him Magazine, maybe even a car magazine with a centerfold picture of a bikini clad women washing a car. Actually, even better, pron magazines. If a woman wants to see what shape of women men like then a pron magazine is definitely the perfect place to look. Men look at these magazines sometimes; men appreciate and like the looks of women in these magazines. Even better for women, is that the women in pron magazines are not skinny, in fact they are good and shapely. The breasts are usually a touch big, but not all men like big breasts. So if you are a girl and can handle the nakedness of women in pron magazines then you should definitely take a look at one of these before deciding if the shape you are is appealing to men or not. Trust me on this, most men will agree, curves are much better than ribs showing through skin.

Jon

Morning Confusion

Wake up, switch off cell phone alarm. Yawn. Stand up, rub eyes. Yawn. Scratch that place that always itches just after waking up, on your lower back, just above the right butt-cheek. Yawn. Stroll around with one hand scratching belly the other rubbing eyes some more while looking for clothes. Pick random clothes, head to shower. Yawn. Turn hot water on, undress, get in… Clean head, clean hair, clean arms, legs, stand under hot water a while longer, just because it is hot. Taps off, get out, take towel, dry. Brush teeth, dress, deodorant. Time to make coffee, make coffee, sip coffee, finally wake up. Wait! What the hell deodorant did I put on?

I do not know whether it is something about being a man, or what manufactures think men want to think about their customers, but the names of men’s deodorants do not make sense. The can of deodorant in my bathroom cupboard is called shield men: cool. Is cool a fragrance? To think I thought it was a temperature, perhaps an attitude, although that is just slang. It is not just this deodorant, there are some interesting ones. The axe range of deodorants is a good example of what I mean; here are some names of their deodorants from the Wikipedia article on Axe: Dimension, Apollo, Dark Temptation, Gravity, and Phoenix. Now, are any of these a fragrance? I think the best one I ever saw was a deodorant called shower fresh, but why the hell would I want to put that on? Since it is usually just after showering that I put a deodorant on, and I smell shower fresh already, how can I not? I just showered.

Now on the other hand, for women you can get some much simpler fragrance names. It’s pretty great, women smelling like jasmine or peaches, maybe vanilla or caramel. Something simple and nice that is easily identifiable. Why can it not be the same for men? I personally would not want to smell like peaches or vanilla too much; since I admit that some things do smell feminine, and I would rather sniff at a girl to smell those than at myself. Which reminds me of interesting incident, I was with a friend who was shopping and went to the fragrance section and since she smelled the women’s fragrances I thought I might as well do that too. Unfortunately the first one that I tried to open I mistook a pull off for a twist off and took the whole top off and spilt a good bit of it all over my hands. I smelt like caramel all day long. Why did I not choose the jasmine one? Caramel just ends up smelling too sweet like pure sugar.

Back to the point. How about they make a fragrance for men like cinnamon, or pinewood, or some herb like rosemary or thyme (although I did find an herbal deodorant once that said it was mainly thyme and it was fairly nice in my opinion). Those are smells that I like enough to smell, that I would like to smell like. I would even like to smell like a good Irish stew, but that is a bit much. I do not need anything so mucho that has a name that has no connection to smell that I can think of. It would even be good if they gave a little description somewhere that said what it smelled like Maybe I am just weird, and I do accept that, but surely there is someone else out there that finds deodorant’s names confusing?

Jon

Cigarette Karma

Well, I am a smoker. I am not exactly all that proud of smoking, I know I am addicted and should quit. However, I do enjoy being able to sit back or stand around in the garden and have a cigarette. It really does calm me down and give me time to think, even though it does not make problems disappear. Yet it does not need to, just as a means of being able to stand back for a bit, it is useful.

However this is not the main point, it is just an introduction. I have noticed that there are different types of smokers like there are different types of people. You have your casual smokers and hardcore smokers, there are even those “once in a blue moon, really needs a smoke badly before he throttles someone” smokers. There are also different attitudes to handing out cigarettes. I have reduced these down to two fairly wide groups.

I find this interesting. The first group I call the debt-lenders. These are the ones that only give away cigarettes to people they know they can claim back from. They will also definitely claim the cigarettes back. I am not sure if any go so far as keeping a little debtors book with all the names and amounts of cigarettes they have given out, but I would not put it past some of them. I do have a few friends like this. However, at the same time they do not really care too much about giving back “bumbed” cigarettes unless forced to.

The other group I call the ones who believe in cigarette karma. These I think believe that the cigarettes will come back eventually, even if it is not from the same person and therefore hand out cigarettes fairly freely. You do a good turn and something good will come back. I would even go so far as to say that some of these believe in Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which basically states that one should act in such a way that they wish their actions to become a universal law. In other words I do not harm others so no one should harm others. In terms of cigarettes this means that one believes that by handing out cigarettes everyone should hand out cigarettes and therefore your cigarettes will always come back.

Yep, I know this post is fairly pointless, but hopefully it will be interesting for some non-smokers. Might even be interesting for smokers though, but I think most smokers have noticed smoking habits already.

Jon

Send me bricks! I'm building an inverted house.

Here is something that worries me: I was having some muesli for breakfast, with chopped fruit and yoghurt since I like it that way, when I noticed the cause of the worry that I have about people and food manufacturers. It was a little inconspicuous sign at the bottom of the packet that said “suitable for vegetarians”. Why does it need this, does everyone not know that muesli is vegetarian? Or are the people producing that brand of muesli trying to imply that other brands of muesli contain meat products?

This makes me feel like the one character from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (a really good book written by Douglas Adams in case you do not know it). This character decided to go to a remote part of the world and build himself a house, where all the furnishings were on the outside of the house with the garden inside, an inverted house basically. There was a plaque on the door saying, “now leaving the insane asylum”. Most people, in the book, seem to think that he is crazy but his reasoning actually makes sense. He did all this since he found directions on a packet of toothpicks, which it should be complete common sense to know how to use. Because of this he decided that the whole world was crazy and needed to be put into an insane asylum.

After noticing this sign on a bag of muesli I agree with this character more than ever, I think it is time to find some bricks and start building me an inside-out-house. People are either crazy or stupid. Really, what is next? A sign on a packaged T-bone steak saying that it is not suitable for vegetarians because it may contain meat?

Or, is this now just some big game to food companies trying to insult each other? Our brand of coffee, contains real coffee; or our cornflakes, contains real corn; or our brand of cereal, will not give you TB. Or are people this intensely stupid, and I do mean offence if this is you who needs these obvious signs, and I really do not care if it does offend you, you deserve it. I in fact hope that these are just clever little tricks to make you think that other brands are fake or bad for you. Since this is better than the alternative, which means that: manufacturers really think their consumers are that stupid. But, either way, most of these obvious warnings and cautions are rubbish. Rather stick to ones that are useful, like warning that a product that is not in itself peanuts may contain peanuts.

Jon

Pancaked Dilemma

Pancakes (or crepes, in South Africa we call crepes pancakes, or other places call pancakes crepes, your choice) are great, I would be one of the first people you would hear say that. However there is a big problem I have with pancakes, less of a problem with the pancakes themselves though and more of a problem with how people treat them. I know people of the opinion that there is only one way to eat a pancake: with cinnamon sugar. Others are less close-minded about the glory of pancakes but still see it as something that has to have a sweet filling or that only a handful of fillings could possibly work... Rubbish!

It is these people that truly bug me, no imagination. I like to think of pancakes as more like a sandwich. Anyone who only knows one or two ways to eat a sandwich would be frowned upon, or at least I really hope so. Imagine that there are only two ways of eating a sandwich, a peanut butter and jam or a bacon, lettuce and tomato. How quickly would you be bored to tears? Fairly quickly I would think. I would extend treating a pancake as a sandwich to even include those fillings, I have not tried a peanut butter and jam filled pancake yet, but just thinking about it now, I think I will next time I make pancakes, I probably will not try the BLT since I am not actually a great fan of raw tomato, but I would try bacon, lettuce and cheese.

To make my point clear I am not saying that eating a pancake with a sweet filling is bad, or that cinnamon sugar does not taste nice, rather they are infernally boring. So I am going to share some of my better experiments, and some of the fillings that my family has been having for a while, that are surprisingly tasty, and worth giving a try.

The filling I normally have, when too lazy to think up something new, is just a plain mince: onion and garlic fried with some beef mince spiced up with some tomato sauce/paste, worstershire sauce, a beef stock cube, salt, pepper, rosemary, basil and some chilli’s for the spice fans. It is also usually pretty good to add some vegetables: potato (cubed), carrots, peas, beans or basically whatever combination of vegetables that you like really, your choice there. Throw that on a pancake maybe with a bit of cheese or feta and you have a really tasty meal.

One of my favourites from when I was younger is actually a tuna mix. It is really simple, you will need an onion, a clove or two of garlic, salt and pepper, a can of shredded or chunky tuna, about a 125g can would do, a sachet of mushroom soup and you are good to go. Chop up and fry the onions and garlic in a little oil or butter, boil some water and mix up the mushroom soup in another container with about half or a quarter of the required water, since you want it to be very think. Put that in with the fried onion and garlic and then add the can of tuna, if it is in brine then remove the brine first. Add the salt and pepper to taste, and some herbs if you are that way inclined. By a similar principle I have also before made a really nice mix of bacon, fresh mushrooms and onions with that sachet of mushroom soup added in, it was actually also really nice.

The last one I would like to share is a dessert type one that usually has people frowning a bit, but once they try it they love it. My parent's favourite in fact. It is really simple all you need is a tub of yoghurt (choc chip works really well 500ml to a litre) and about 4 or 5 bananas. All you do is slice the bananas up, about half a centimetre think, and mix with the yoghurt. Nice and easy.

Anyhow, if you have some weird but good recipes for pancakes feel free to share them, I will probably even try them myself sometime. There are a lot of other fillings I want to try, and once I try them I will probably share the results.

Jon