Adam Sandler Sang It Best

Woke up in the morning.

Put on my new plastic glove.
Served some re-heated salsbury steak

With a little slice of love.

Got no clue what the chicken pot pie
Is made of.
Just know everything's doing fine

Down here in Lunch Lady Land.

I have always admired people who are willing to put themselves on the line in the name of political activism. A teacher, dubbed Mrs. Q, kept her own blog about eating school lunches every. single. day. to prove a point about the weak standards used in American school lunch programs. While I have yet to read her personal blog, I did come across a Yahoo! Shine article, Would You Volunteer to Eat School Lunch Every Day to Prove a Point? This Teacher Did.

Mrs. Q uses pictures and personal taste test stories to get her point across that American school lunches are not healthy or good tasting. The Shine article attests that the lunches served in schools all across the nation are teaching students poor nutrition and eating habits. I can attest to the fact that in my high school, if it was gyro (always pronounced ji-row not the proper "hero" way) day or riblets day, I would A) raid the vending machine for chips, combos, taffy, and Mountain Dew; B) drive home and make 2 grilled cheeses; C) drive to Cenex to grab a personal pan pepperoni pizza, a sub, or breadsticks and Mountain Dew.

More recently, I read an article in Fargo's High Plains Reader, an independent newsmagazine type of paper written entirely by its staff (never AP wires) and distributed in the Fargo-Moorhead area. I was sitting in the Broadway Erbert and Gerberts enjoying my turkey sub on wheat and chicken dumpling soup reading Of School Lunches and Socialism by Ed Raymond. This article compares American lunch programs to French ones. What a difference! (And no, the French kids don't enjoy a complimentary cigarette after each meal, either *ha!) It's a great read that I definitely recommend.


Going off of that article, I came across another HPR article, The Problem with Public School Lunch. This one deals with how vegan and vegetarian students aren't given choices in today's hot lunch lines. The author throws out a lot of information, stats about diseases, the USDA, and how food, mostly processed, gets on our fading yellow lunch trays.

Now, I just want a "slop, sloppy joe, slop, sloppy joe" on my fading yellow lunch tray!

The Sign is Arbitrary

As Dr. Bruce Maylath drills into his English 209 - Linguistics - class at North Dakota State University, "The sign is arbitrary." He didn't coin this expression, but some famous linguist did. When I found Slate's article The Big Red Word vs. The Little Green Man, I knew I had to share it. While it has very, very little to do with the English language or linguistics, it does have a lot to do with us (Americans) vs. them (non-Americans). While my superiority complex, gained by being a United States citizen for all of my 24.5 years, says to keep the red EXIT sign, I can see how people who don't know English would fail to "EXIT" a burning building.

The author claims that the red color of our exit sign signals danger (red = danger or stop) but the green running man tells people to go or signals safety. I say do as sheep do and just follow the other running, screaming, highly obnoxious people ahead of you.

Which do you prefer?

OR

Becoming the next Eminem is easier than ever...

I just discovered StumbleUpon after multiple people were singing its praises. I finally gave in to the highly addicting, very popular site despite my known hatrid for all things viral. Well, I'm a believer. Here's a little ditty I found that would be quite useful in a classroom's poetry unit. Its called writerhymes.com. It does exactly as the name implies: writes rhymes. Basically, type in a line, then option click on the word you want it to generate rhymes for. Easy Peesy, Lemon Squeezy (see, I've just done it!). I've actually incorporated it into a poetry unit lesson plan I had to co-create for a class this semester. Enjoy.