Sugar Free Poison

Other than something that sounds like a cool name for a dog, what is aspartame? Sugar free poison.

I'm serious, which is a rare occurence, believe me. If you see something labled "sugar free" they may as well be saying "deadly, proceed with caution".

Am I exaggerating? Hardly. A lot of countries have prohibited the use of the artificial sweetener. I have no idea why the U.S. has bothered to keep it around.

This ingredient is prominent in diet pop. Which is all around bad news. It's taking pop (chemicals, sugar, and carbonation) and substituting the sugar with evil.

Diet pop drinkers tend to drink it because of things like watching their weight, diabetes, avoiding sugar, or some reason that is not on my nifty little list. But get this: effects of aspartame include gradual weight gain, aspartame addiction, craving for sweets, loss of control of diabetes, and other nasty stuff.

So as you can see, this does more harm than good. A lot more harm.

I encourage you to look this up. I did after hearing about it, and I learned a lot. Is the damage really worth that guilt-free satisfied craving? When you look it up, check out all of the side effects. You'll probably want to write a blog post warning people too.

On a lighter note: I have an awesome fairy coloring book that I am addicted to coloring in. Is it an unhealthy addiction? We'll see! So far it just gives me something to do during the American Idol commercials.

-Aurora B.

Delightfully Awkward

We've all seen comments like this on facebook, conversation, or in  whatever else:  "that awkward moment when..." which is then followed by something that really isn't all that awkward. Here is the real definition from dictionary.com:

awk·ward

   /ˈɔkwərd/ Show Spelled[awk-werd] 

adjective

1..lacking skill or dexterity; clumsy. 

2. lacking grace or ease in movement: an awkward gesture; an awkward dancer.

3. lacking social graces or manners: a simple, awkward frontiersman.

4. not well planned or designed for easy or effective use: an awkward instrument; an awkward method.

5. requiring caution; somewhat hazardous; dangerous: an awkward turn in the road.

EXPAND

6. hard to deal with; difficult; requiring skill, tact, or the like: an awkward situation; an awkward customer.

7. embarrassing or inconvenient; caused by lack of social grace: an awkward moment

8. Obsolete . untoward; perverse.

So when you go to say "that awkward moment", make sure it really is "an awkward moment". If you don't, it really will be awkward because the learned people around you will think you are  "lacking is skill or dexterity; clumsy" in matters of speech and so forth.

I would say that I am an awkward person. I would say I fit 2,  sort of 3, and 7 of the above definition. I was thinking last night, "why do I struggle with a silly little thing like natural conversation, especially when I write so much?" I then realized, almost every character I have ever enjoyed was, like me, delightfully awkward. They didn't bother to fit in with normal speech and everyday conversation, so they made it their own original way to speak. The characters who were good with natural conversation had a tendency to be a little more high-strung, rude, exclusive, etc.. I guess I  was subconsciously proud of my awkwardness. Either that or I was trying to justify it.

Being delightfully awkward means you roll with things well, don't question the  bizarre, say things that are insightful, but really random and out of place. It means other things, too, but this was the list that immediately came to mind.

Here's an example of some delightfully awkward characters. I have better examples on my own computer, but this was all that was on google documents. Maybe I'll give a better example someday:

JOLENE

Happy someone in the world's birthday, by the way.

CHARLIE

What?

JOLENE

Someone in the world had a birthday. Actually, I bet a lot of people did... Yay!

Summer looks up at Jolene with a thoughtful expression.

SUMMER

I wonder if certain days have a higher average of birthdays than others.

JOLENE

I bet they do. It seems like an oddly large number of people were born in February or on December 28th.

ALEX

Were you?

JOLENE

No, man. I'm October. I've told you that like, four times now.

ALEX

Sorry.

JOLENE

That's okay. I forgot your birthday too.

There you go. Those are my thoughts on "awkward".

--Aurora B.