this is a strange place

Ever since my older sister spent a year in England, I’ve been thinking about why European countries don’t have anything near the same problems with drunkeness as Ameica does. Over there, everyone drinks. Heck, if you want to find your pastor in the evening he’s probably down at the pub having a cold one – and this is considered normal behavior. But they don’t have the problems with alchoholics, the drunk driving that we have here in the states. Why is this?

The first theory I came up with is the fact that drinking is sort of the ‘forbidden fruit’ in America. It’s ‘wrong’, therefore it’s tempting. Further thinking doesn’t bear this out though. This theory could possibly explain part of the underage drinking problem, but once it becomes legal it’s acceptable enough to drink in most circles, particularly the type of circles that breed most alchoholics. So that theory sort of fizzles.

Then I started contemplating Europe’s mass transit system. This does an excellent job of explaining fewer drunk drivers – there’s fewer drivers, period and absolutely no need to drive because the mass transit system can get you pretty much wherever you need to go. However this is only a partial answer, because it does nothing to explain why Europe has fewer alchoholics.

Then it struck me, as I sat here in my chair finishing my LaBatts (canadian beer, quite good as cheap beer goes). American beer is nasty stuff, better used as punishment in the lower levels of hell than as a beverage. When drinking American beer, you drink the first one and it leaves this nasty taste in your mouth, you just need something to wash it down with. Unfortunately, the only thing around is another nasty American beer. So you drink a second one, and that one’s nearly as bad as the first, so you grab a third to wash the second one down and then you need a fourth to get over the third one. Once you hit that fifth beer, due to the alchohol inhibiting your taste, you can actually start enjoying the beer and by the time you’re at seven or eight it’s tasting pretty good.

Unfortunately, seven or eight beers will get you pretty thoroughly smashed, but it’s necessary to drink that many in order to enjoy American beer. Contrast this to good beer (Blue Moon, Killians, the aforementioned LaBatts and many others) that you can enjoy from the first sip, and there’s your explanation why Europeans with their good beer have less of an alchohol problem than we do. They don’t need to be drunk in order to enjoy their beer, their beer tastes good from the start. That is the answer.

For my psych class I have to write five different reaction papers through the semester. This one is on a subject that is really important to me, so I thought I would stick it here.

Reading the section on eating disorders in chapter 12 reminded me how much the typical media portrayal of women bothers me. We glorify a body type that is unattainable by 99% of the women in the world, a body type that is further enhanced by professional makeup, lighting and airbrushing. Woman, understandably, have got it into their heads that in order to be attractive they must conform to what is glorified by the media, but what is glorified in the media is not something that can be obtained by any woman.

How many times have you heard someone say that they had seen some celebrity in real life, and they didn’t look as good in real life as they do on screen? That’s because when you take these people away from their make-up artists, gaffers (lighting technicians) and touch-up artists, take them away from the people who are paid to make the celebrity look good and they really don’t look that different from you and me. They might be a bit skinnier, a bit better looking, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Despite that fact millions of people (particularly women) are killing themselves with eating disorders, and spending millions of dollars on make-up, health clubs and plastic surgery to try to conform to a standard that no one can live up to, not even the people who are setting the standard.

I wish women would wake up to the fact that most of them are attractive just the way they are. They don’t need to wear a ton of makeup, they don’t need to starve themselves, they don’t need to fit into a size 4 dress, they don’t need to be fake in order to be attractive. As the adage goes, beauty is only skin deep. What you are underneath is what’s really important.

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat. Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb of innocence. To yield to its blandishments is so easy. The wrong, it seems, is venial… Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth.
– Benjamin Cardozo

Now, I have no idea who Benjamin Cardozo is, but that guy is spot-on here. As has been said before, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people do not actively choose to do wrong, at least not at first. I’m not aware of anyone who woke up one morning and decided that they were going to become evil, yet there is much evil in the world. That is why we must constantly be on our guard, to make sure that we don’t take that first step. To paraphrase the above quote, you need the most courage at the times when you would least expect.