The Faux Sweet Secret Invasion!

You may not have noticed this but artificial sweeteners are everywhere! I am fine with them being labeled and saying “No Added Sugar,” but they are being added to many more items and they are not letting us know. It is only on the label if you read the ingredients. If it is a primary ingredient they need to add extra labels, but if it is one of the last ingredients; I guess you need to just keep reading for those funny little words like aspartame and saccharine.

The first switch I noticed was Juicy Fruit and Wintergreen Wrigley Gum. They used to just use sugar for those gums and yes, the flavor was gone in 5 minutes. But what a fantastic 5 minutes it was! Now it has aspartame and the crappy flavor lasts much longer. Meh.

Yogurt is supposed to be healthy, right? It is, unless it is fat-free and sugar-free. Then, to me it is just a chemical factory with a possible addition of those healthy bacteria for your tummy. You have to read the labels very carefully when you buy yogurt now, unless you like the taste of a chemical factory and it seems many people do.

My last and most egregious example is hot chocolate. Nobody is probably thinking of the stuff right now because it is summer but I still am pissed about what happened last winter. I was at the local Target buying the hot chocolatey goodness for my kids. I saw a package of Swiss Miss Marshmallow Lovers Hot Cocoa. Perfect, right? I mean why would a box of “Marshmallow Lovers” Hot Cocoa need any artificial sweeteners, since you are asking to get sugared up with the extra marshmallows.

Well, I make cups for me and my kids and instantly tell that there is something wrong. It is subtle but still the sweetness tastes wrong. I check the ingredients and it has Sucralose. I then go back to see if there is a hot cocoa I can buy with just sugar. At Target in Tucson, the answer is no. ALL THEIR HOT CHOCOLATE PACKAGES HAVE ARTIFICAL SWEETENERS SOMEWHERE IN THEIR INGREDIENTS! I was only able to find the generic brand at Safeway only has sugar. For us, that is the only safe way or make our own, which is really not that difficult.

Why does this bother me so much? Well you can call me an artificial sweetener detector cause if there is even a 0.00001 of a gram in there I will taste it. It tastes wrong to me because those sweeteners have always given me headaches. If it gives me a headache, I avoid it, wouldn't you? It used to be much easier to avoid these things but now they are popping up where you would think regular sugar should be just fine. The reason? My guess is that the producers of these items think they are making it more healthy by reducing the overall carbohydrate amount. Sorry, but for me a headache is a headache, and it just tastes WRONG! And it does not matter what kind because to aspartame = sucralose = saccharin = any other artificial sweetener = tastes wrong = headache. Give me good old-fashioned sugar and I will adjust the amount I want of it to sweeten my tea.

There is another thing about one artificial sweetener, you can get aspartame poisoning. It is very difficult to detect and is often misdiagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis. There are many symptoms associated with aspartame toxicity reported by the FDA. No wonder I get headaches, it is the #1 neurological reaction. When my kids are older and can make the decisions for themselves they are allowed to eat all the artificial sweeteners they want, but for now we try to keep them out of our diets.  I also have type-2 diabetes running in my family. Instead of running to the artificially sweetened drinks and foods, we are just trying to monitor our real sugar levels, with the occasional hot chocolate with marshmallows as a wintertime treat. Then make sure that me, my hubby, and my kids exercise.

Can We Just Get This Stinkin' Election Over With?

I have come to accept the fact that most people want to be distracted. They want to care about something that may even hurt their lives. Love that High Fructose Corn Syrup even though it is causing obesity and rotting teeth. Love that “Walking Dead” and have to watch it even in front of the kids although seeing zombies eviscerated is quite traumatic for them. Love that massively inaccurate political ad cause it follows my political beliefs even though it cheapens the entire concept of Democracy.

Now it seems that many of our elections will not change much, but that does not keep the media and bloggers from making the biggest deal out of them possible. First lets take the London mayoral election. London has a lot going on this summer, from the Queens Jubilee to the Olympics, somehow they were first able to fit in an election to basically an almost powerless job. But boy did they made such a big deal about it!

In local politics we just got through with an election to fill Gabrielle Giffords seat, for a 6 month post. Wow, think of this distraction as a warm-up to November. Amazingly, after Jesse Kelly lost to Ron Barber, after losing to Gabrielle Giffords in 2010, he is actually NOT going to run again for November. I am absolutely shocked, I figured he would keep hacking at that tree till it fell down. I do have to say I am glad Mr. Kelly is not running again. I found his type of distraction politics to be very negative, although he had to be tempered after a psychotic schizophrenic shot Ms. Giffords as she was doing her job. During the election of 2010 these type of billboards were gracing the roads of southern Arizona:

Classy eh? This type of negative “hate” politics has been running rampant lately. ON BOTH SIDES! These type of no compromise unless our complete agenda is fully set in motion we will say no to everything (Tea Party Republicans) or our leader will never do enough to satisfy us (extreme-left Democrats) attitude makes me nauseous. And if you are a moderate, prepare to be completely ignored.

It often does not come from the political parties themselves, but from Groups and billionaires that our Supreme Court in its questionable wisdom opened the money door to with the Citizen's United ruling.

Here is classy advertisement from Hartland Institute:

Mr. Kaczynski had a Ph.D. in Mathmatics, so if I agree that 1+1=2, then I must be politically on par with a domestic terrorist, right? This kind of lowest common denominator politics is what is hurting our country. We need to find things we agree about and instigate those policies, it is time to build up, not tear down.

My family is quite politically diverse. Before the internet, we only had to deal with each others political attitudes during Thanksgiving and Birthday celebrations. Now we have Facebook and an internet full of hate and lies which gives my two cousins, who are brothers, ample ammunition to do the “I'm right and you are wrong” dance, much to the encouragement of those who agree with them. A friend of mine says she likes our politically diverse family since hers is all in agreement, with a preaching to the choir attitude. I would like a little of that actually, this not quite civil war amongst us wears me down. I know I should be enjoying this since I wrote a political satire but can we just get this stinkin' election over with?

I AM SO FRIGGIN' TIRED OF ZOMBIES!

There, I said it, and I feel so much better. It didn't start this way. I loved the movie “Shawn of the Dead,” but that was released in 2004. Eight years ago I might have checked out “The Walking Dead” but now, no way. Maybe it was because it was a comedy with Simon Pegg that let me be OK with the whole zombie thing.

It does not help when you tell your cousin you are writing a political satire in 2009, and he says “What about zombies? You should write something about zombies, zombies are so hot right now.” Yes, and I guess I should have written a zombie love story, cause zombies are so hot right now and romance never goes out of style! Just ask the writer of “50 Shades of Grey!” OK, so we will mix zombies with “Mommy Porn.” How about “50 Shades of Grey Matter: A Zombie Love Story.” It would fly off the shelves!

Now there are people on the internet talking about a “Zombie Apocalypse.” All because some idiot took a very dangerous drug called 'Bath Salts' and then attacked a homeless man in Miami. If you haven't heard about this you must have been on a deserted island with no internet. Lucky you!

For the fun of it let's give a definition of a Zombie (according to Dictionary.com): (in voodoo)

“the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.” Sounds like a really exciting character!

In many stories with zombies there is usually a horrible virus or in the case of South Park, Worcestershire Sauce that turns people into zombies, but they said it was “Pinkeye.” It is a hilarious episode, made in 1997. Like I said, comedy makes zombies tolerable to me.

Do some people want this zombie apocalypse? That is certainly what I get from this situation. The funny thing is I think the only people who would survive a zombie attack are well trained military people and the extremely lucky. That is what those shows are about right? We all want to be the lucky ones, hacking off heads and limbs but not getting bitten and therefore infected to then become a member of the Z tribe.

By the way, I cannot think of a better anti-drug campaign than: “Bath Salts Will Turn You Into A Zombie And You Will Want To Eat Someone's Face!” Nothing says “Don't do it!” quite like that. But there are those very special idiots out there who would probably say “cool!” Sigh.

This, of course, is a huge distraction. There are those that speculate that our fascination with this genre peaks during recessions. I guess you would want to think that “Hey, it could be worse, there could be a zombie apocalypse!”

Now I get to back track a little cause there is an exception besides comedy. I have to say I am fascinated with the world of “A Game of Thrones.” There are in this world creatures called “Wights” which are created by “The Others.” Or as my husband called them “Ice Zombies.” The great thing about this novel and now show is that they don't use the word zombie. They are called “Wights.” No Z word anywhere! Also, they don't just walk around with sores and limbs falling off calling for brains and sort-of attacking people. The Others are a stealth-like force, attacking quickly and are really scary to me. Finally, an original kind of zombie.

A Review of AJ Scudiere's “Resonance” - 4 Stars

I enjoy sci-fi and suspense. But, the sci-fi needs to be plausible and the suspense needs to be able to keep me from sleep. This only partially works for Ms. Scudiere's novel.

I found the premise very interesting but never really fully explained as to why shifting the magnetic poles would cause animals to go into a coma and potentially die. If that was the case then wouldn't we see strange results from analysis of people in MRI machines or from the people who use NMR to do research? We don't see people falling asleep in the MRI (that often), so this theory, while interesting does not seem that plausible. There are also those people, two of the protagonists, Jillian and David who can fall into a coma in one world, and wake up in another. Is an interesting plot-line, but goes a bit into the supernatural, why should they be able to do wake up in either time line when not many other people can?

Also, the idea that this phenomena killed off, or placed the dinosaurs on another earth is interesting, so if birds are what evolved from our dinosaurs, what happened on the other side? This question along with why Jillian and David are“special” and a lot of other questions go unanswered, they are just either vaguely speculated or ignored.

OK, now to suspense. A.J. Scudiere is a suspense writer. Suspense should be able to keep you awake at night and you have to force yourself to put down the book. There were many nights where when reading this book I fell asleep, maybe it was all the talking about comas. Really there is no way to truly be suspenseful with this story. Yes, it is a cataclysmic change to the world, but it is not done with explosions or tidal-waves, but with people and animals falling into comas and possibly dying.

Hopefully, her later works are more suspenseful, because she does market herself as a suspense author, and is definitely genre-bending. I really liked the originality of the story and still gave this 4 stars even though I am critical of the science and a few other aspects, I love to see originality in writing.