What is happening to me?

My analogies scare me. Not because they are inherently threatening, but because I am reacting to food and literature in oddly parallel ways which contradict my nature. And that scares me.

Consider me first day of school in August, Confident and arrogant, I knew that I did not care about English class. I knew that I if I was given the option, I would drop English and take double research. I figured that I know how to write decently and seeing as that is all I will ever need to do English-wise I wished I could just say bye-bye to English and hello to freedom.

Anybody who knows me at all knows that I love my food and that I have a strong sweet tooth. I kept soda and pretzels and cookies in my locker as a pantry freshman year, I routinely bought snacks and kept them in my room sophomore year, and junior year it was not uncommon to find a box of cookies in my car that I would snack on while driving. I am always up to go to Taco Bell. Food is amazing, especially if it has starch or sugar or fat.

Fast forward a bit. As English class progressed, I initially had my thoughts confirmed. The independent reading list, after all, is very restricted, and not just to books that have more value to them than Harry Potter. The independent reading list is constricted to books that English professors like to waste time talking about. If it is a book that English professors as a general whole would like, it is applicable to Literature class, if not, it is not applicable to Literature class. That being said, class was somewhat more interesting than I had anticipated: even if I still considered reading stories like "Hills like White Elephants" an overall poor use of time, I did start to find some of the hidden meaning and purpose of literature interesting.

As this year started, I did nothing to change my eating habits. I just vowed, as usual, to exercise more for the primary purpose that I could eat more. I still kept cookies in my car, I still bought candy bars prolifically, I still had a tendency to eat chips every day at lunch. My teenage body can deal with it, I justified, I can worry about health when I am old. Of course, I am basically guaranteed to get diabetes when I am older... maybe cut back on sugar a little bit, occasionally order water at restaurants?

It started about a month ago. It was probably around when I read my independent reading book and actually found that it was a good book, or when I was forced one day to actually think about Literature and write a blog or an essay about it, but by now I have to say that Literature may not be completely useless after all. I am still to proud to say that I appreciate it, but I suppose it is only a matter of time before I do not have to wrap up that message in arrogance.

Two weekends ago I found myself at Kroger. I proceeded to by a package of cookie dough and eat almost half of it. Later that evening, I had a handful M&M's. Then I had some more cookie dough. When I got home from Youth Group, there was pie at my house. I had a piece with some ice cream. The next morning, I had the rest of the cookie dough for breakfast. It all tasted amazing, but I felt guilty that I was torturing my pancreas so much. So I decided that it would probably be a good idea to try to eat a bit healthy.

So we come to today. On day one of school I probably would have read every word of Wuthering Heights with a fresh sense of loathing seeping through my veins. But at this point I have to admit, the first two pages are mildly interesting, the next two pages are not too bad, the next two pages are bearable, the next two pages are merely annoying, and it is not until the ninth and tenth page that I start subconsciously reaching for the lighter fluid in an act of self defense. It could be worse, I suppose; at this point it is more the story than the book that is bothering me. I am starting to appreciate literature. What is happening to me?

Simultaneously with me realizing that Wuthering Heights is not all that bad, I started bring in lunch to school. Healthy lunch (I have staid true to Kroger and bring in all Kroger brand, however). Why would I do such a thing? Why, why, why, why, why? What is happening to me?

My lunch every day but Monday this week. Amazing, isn't it?

Granted, I, thankfully, have not been damaged by this unexpected change. I still would not simply read Wuthing Heights because I can, I would probably also avoid most Literature because there are other things I would rather do with my time. Within a two week time frame I am bringing a big bowl of pudding into school 3-5 times; I have sausage and pretzels with my lunch as well. But I do find it very odd that just as I blog about the connection between food and literature, I start seeing both good food and good literature seeping into my life in tandem. Very, very strange.

Wuthering Chinese Food

When I was a child I absolutely detested Chinese food. With the exception of egg-rolls and fortune cookies, I thought it was horrendous, thus nights when my family ate Chinese food I just simply ate two egg-rolls, a fortune cookie or two, drank some milk, and then raided the pantry in about an hour.  Not because I tried it and did not like it but because white rice is bland and everything else has vegetables in it. It does not look like a 99% meat American entree so I am not interested; I mean, who actually likes all those weird vegetables with the odd sauce and such?

http://goldendynastykent.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/food1.jpg
I mean, that has brocolli and tomatoes and snap peas and weird corn-like things and mushrooms and some odd shiny sauce, among other things. Eghth, right?

When I was first given Wuthering Heights and told to read it, I was horrified. Based off what we had been told so far in class, I knew that it was going to be some stupid book about socioeconomic class and gender issues centuries ago that is completely irrelevant because we no longer live in Victorian England. Before I got into it, I complained to my mom and jokingly said that I was tempted to Spark-Notes Wuthering Heights. My mom's face transformed into a look of horror, and I quickly explained that I was just joking about Spark-Notes. Turns out, it was not Spark-Notes that had my mom horrified, rather, she was repulsed by my mention of Wuthering Heights. This only reinforced my fear and apprehension.

Some time a few years ago I decided to maybe give Chinese food a shot. I think the egg-rolls must have been low that day, and I was hungry with an empty pantry. For whatever reason, I actually ate Chinese food. Apparently that odd shiny sauce is actually rather tasty, the noodles are rather good, and vegetables are not as bad as they could have been (white rice is still bland though). Apparently, Chinese food is okay. It may not be my favorite, and I may not stuff myself as is usual for me at dinner, but it suffices when I cannot get my hands on anything whose contents is a bit less vegetable-ey, or at least more vegetable-ey in a way that I enjoy.

I had to read Wuthering Heights, sadly. It is slow, it has a lot of dialogue, and it is such that I cannot remember every detail and as such I keep messing up the reading quizzes. I do think it's overall content is dreary. But the odd shiny sauce - the diction and syntax and tone and the like - is actually pretty decent. I would much prefer something similar with less of the abnoying content in it, but I can bear it. Maybe next time I shouldn't judge a book by it's time period. Maybe next time I should give a book a chance even if it is on a topic that I either really do not want to spend time on or that I feel could be better discussed in a less droll way. For my independent reading, I am reading A Tale of Two Cities. Similar diction and syntax in the sense that even though the book is by a different author it was from the same era and region so the vernacular is the same and the syntax is similar. I am actually interested in the French Revolution, however, so I think I will actually rather like A Tale of Two Cities even though the warmest feeling I have to Wuthering Heights is that it is not a completely useless piece of garbage.

Source too big to fit, so stuffed into this link.

Sesame Chicken is amazing. Why? Because it is covered in that tasty shiny sauce and has so few vegetables. I still do not like Chinese vegetables. I want my stereotypical Americanized Chinesefood (not like in that video though, just thought it went well with the phase). In this manner I do not fully appreciate Chinese food. In this manner I basically say, "tasty," and move on. But I want to enjoy food, not critique it (which helps explains why I like Taco Bell). I want to enjoy a book, preferably a book with few "vegetables," and not critique it. I am sure that there is some kind of symbolism going on in Wuthering Heights that I do not understand. But I am ok with that because I want to enjoy it as best as one can enjoy that book, by which I mean I do not want be using my glazed over mind as I  read it. I just want to enjoy that glazed feeling as best as I can (glazing is good).

In short, don't judge a book by its time period. Give it a shot, it might just make it. At least try to enjoy the glazing (eat a doughnut while you read perhaps?). And keep in mind that there is always a far, far worse book out there (and a worse food).

Analoception

Analogies are very odd sometimes. I was intending to right a post comparing qualities of food to qualities of characters, some kind of foodization. I was going to start out discussing Taco Bell's amazing menu and the different qualities that the different food on it has, like the different characters in a book all come from the same book but all have different qualities.
But then I remembered where my last blog post left off. Menus are libraries.
So, by transitive property, the set of all characters in a novel is a library. I'm not quite sure that that works.
Which is it then? How can all of this make sense?

(http://i918.photobucket.com/albums/ad22/gifsarelove/WeNeedToGoDeeper.jpg)
Deeper into the quadilla, that is. And this will collide the two analogies to synergize one that is even more amazing than either of them.
Because there are characters in a library. It's just that it's not a set of characters - its a set of a set of characters. A set of books, each with a set of characters. So it's not the qualities of the chicken quesadilla that analogize to the character traits. It's the qualities of the delectable cheese inside. The gooey-ness, the right amount of softness in the cheese. They foodize the cheese, just as the right amount of crispiness with the right amount of thickness in the tortilla foodizes the tortilla. And then you have the chicken, the auxiliary vegetables (minor foods), all of these amazing things. You mix them up in just the right way, in the right order with the right structure, and you get an amazing creation of food. Mix up characters in just the right way, in the right order with the right structure, and you get an amazing creation of literature. Then you group all of the books together in this place called a library and people can go in, get whatever book they want, free of charge, and leave. We group all of the foods together in this place called a restaurant.
There is one place where this analogy breaks down though. And I believe that it must be fixed, because it would be a marvelous improvement to the world as it is today. We need public taco bells where people can go in, get whatever food they want, free of charge, and leave.