Daniel's lunch

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Daniel loves to eat lunch at school
So far, mom packed his lunches, he only bought chocolate or strawberry milks sometimes whenever we want it
He finishes his lunch everyday
Day 1 Chocolate chip waffle
Day 2 Buttered Pasta
Day 3 Ham & mayo sandwich
Day 4 Ham & mayo sandwich again (his request)
Day 5 Hamburger bun with....another ham and mayo...haha
Day 6 Jelly sandwich and Cream cheese sandwich

Until day 5 he always ate it up, he is also finished his snack
Looks like he is always hungry
Note: Now he can eat more than Clarissa, who is 4 1/2 years older

Mom is happy that he can eat all of it .
So far he doesnt want to buy lunch at school, he still enjoy homemade lunch. These days he is memorizing his pupil number ( which is also like a pin number for buying lunch)
Maybe next week or week after that he can buy lunch. NOT everyday hopefully. Mom will go bankrupt if he buys everyday :)
(Note: we dont have to order at the beggining of the month, he can just order if he wants)

Hand sanitizer and static electricity may have created a fire that burned a girl www.privateofficer.com

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PORTLAND OR Feb 20 2013 -- Hand sanitizer and static electricity may have created a fire that burned a girl earlier this month at Doernbecher Children's Hospital.
Doctors have been treating an 11-year-old girl after she caught fire in her hospital bed on February 2, as first reported in the Oregonian.
Ireland Lane was in the hospital after falling and hitting her head at her Klamath Falls home. She was reportedly making crafts for the nurses when she ran into the hallway engulfed in flames.
"That this would happen anywhere, much less our hospital, was just awful," said Stacy Nicholson, M.D. of Doernbecher Children's Hospital. "Our hearts go out to the child and her family."
Ireland's father Stephen, who was asleep in the room at the time, ran into the hallway and jumped on his daughter to smother the flames.
The state fire marshal has been investigating the incident. The cause is unknown, but one scenario involves the static electricity and flammable hand sanitizer.
Nicholson says what happened was unusual. He said the hospital plans to make changes if investigators determine the hospital was at fault.
In the meantime, Ireland has a long recovery ahead.
She suffered third-degree burns to 18 percent of her body. Doctors at Legacy Emanuel Burn Center were treating her.
Ireland's mom Danielle is confident that she will be okay.
"She has her faith," she said.

Virginia Beach pizza shop owner offering a 15 percent discount for gun owners www.privateofficer.com

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VIRGINIA BEACH, Va Feb 20 2013 - A Virginia Beach pizza shop owner is offering a 15 percent discount for gun owners.
All Around Pizza and Deli owner Jay Laze said the discount will be offered to anyone who comes in with a gun or shows a concealed weapon permit.
"I've always been a supporter of the right to carry," Laze said.  "You're either on one side or the other, and it seems like more politicians are against us rather than for us. I want to show them they really aren't representing the people or the constitution they are sworn in under."

Customers like Christopher Cody came in with guns attached to their hips. Cody said he didn't get pizza at Laze's restaurants because of the discount, but because of the message.
"Not everyone who owns a gun is dangerous," said customer Christopher Cody.  "All the laws that are coming out are trying to protect the children. I've been sitting here with a gun for the last 45 minutes and it hasn't caused any kind of problem."
James Lea joked about the clientele.
"Probably not going to get robbed here tonight," Lea said.
Laze said since Friday, 80 percent of his customers have come in carrying guns. He had planned for the discount to run until March, but because of the response, he is considering making it permanent.

Source: WAVY

Constantino's Market Downtown

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It's easy to believe there's no grocery stores in downtown Cleveland if  you don't know what you're looking for, but Constantino's Market is definitely there, at 1278 W 9th St.
On the plus side, they have a lot of local grocery, they're family owned, and the quality of the food is very good. The downside is the price- but what would you expect from a grocery store with no competition? If you want groceries without having to drive out of downtown, you probably have to hit Constantino's.
The popular consensus is that it's good for the prepared foods, but the staples just aren't worth it to buy there.

Mama Santa's - Little Italy

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People in Cleveland think that the Little Italy area is lovely and romantic, but having lived there for three years, I think it's kind of overpriced and bigoted. There's definitely a dark side to Little Italy, including but not limited to a racist mob and some super gentrification going on.

Most of the restaurants in Little Italy are overpriced and vermin-infested. One of the cheaper places to get something to eat is Mama Santa's; and it's where we got pizza from while we were in college.

I went with my friend to Mama Santa's for a walk down memory lane, and both of us being visibly queer, we were treated with some condescension (weird looks, snippy remarks) from the waitress. The food was the same ordinary food we enjoyed during college; nothing special.


Note well that they don't serve pineapple on pizzas here... the waitress made it clear to us that we'd need to go up to Hippie Coventry to get something so outlandish as that.

Ford Escape tops list of most-stolen SUVs www.privateofficer.com

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The Ford Escape tops a new list of the most-stolen SUVs and crossovers, according to a study by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The NICB — an insurance-supported nonprofit in Des Plaines, Ill. — combed through vehicle thefts from Jan. 1, 2008, to June 30, 2012, on 2009, 2010 and 2011 model-year cars.

Of nearly 20,000 reported thefts in those parameters, the Escape topped the list: 1,014 were stolen. Other hot SUVs included the Chevrolet Tahoe (856 thefts), the Toyota RAV4 (801), the Ford Edge (739) and the Dodge Journey (721). California, Texas and Florida experienced the most thefts, but New York City, Los Angeles and Detroit had the highest thefts for specific metropolitan areas.

The list suggests the Escape, Tahoe, RAV4, Edge and Journey may be the most-stolen vehicles in total. But like many stolen-vehicle lists, it gives little sense of how much theft risk you incur when buying a particular car.

Consider this: Car thieves purloined the 2009-to-2011 Escape 1,014 times in NICB's sample. But from October 2008 to September 2011 — a 36-month period when new Escape sales would have mostly included 2009, 2010 or 2011 models — Ford sold 582,792 new Escapes, according to Automotive News. Presuming that's a rough indication of 2009-to-2011 Escapes on the road, new owners incurred a risk of theft roughly equal to one in 575, using NICB's figures.

The second-place Chevy Tahoe, by contrast, had a much higher theft risk — one in 257 cars — because fewer 2009, 2010 and 2011 Tahoes were in circulation, using the same sales math. And a Cadillac Escalade shopper would have been wise to invest in a good security system: Theft risk of an Escalade, using NICB figures and sales data, was one in just 175.

Per-car thefts would "be a more accurate gauge, but we don't have those figures," NICB spokesman Frank Scafidi told us. "This isn't that kind of report. This is just raw numbers in a limited model-year run."

There were some other interesting nuggets, however. NICB found that some 15% of SUV thefts are "unrecovered" — dismantled for parts, exported or VIN-switched and resold. Apparently that's a regular occurrence for Toyota Highlander heists. Of the 10 most unrecovered vehicles (again, just raw numbers), Toyota's family crossover went unrecovered 30% of the time.

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a beginning consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

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fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.