It's Not Me

It’s Okay, Call Me Fat As a fat person who has worked their ass off to unlearn all of the self-hatred that I have been internalizing all my life, few things irritate me more than when someone says, “But you’re not fat!” when I use the word to describe myself. I know they are trying to be nice and say the thing that they think they are expected to say, but it makes me want to rip my shirt up over my face and jiggle my belly in their face screaming, “But I ammm! Can you not seeee it?” Like, what…

much pressure on the children to choose a specific religion? These are questions addressed within Jewish children’s and adolescent literature. Author Judy Blume was one of the first writers to discuss intermarriage in her novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. While Blume was not from an intermarriage family herself, she knew that it was an important subject within the Jewish community. In an article written by Jonathan Krasner and Joellyn Wallen Zollen in 2010 they say of Blume, “Clearly,…

How It's Like To Be Muslim Me Sitting in my seat observing my surroundings, I saw a couple, sitting a few seats ahead of me, strangely dressed. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that something was horribly wrong. That these people were out to terrorize the passengers and me. I sat there praying to Allah, reciting the same prayers that those strangely dressed passenger may have recited. I am a Muslim. I believe in my faith. I believe in God. I believe that all people have been created…

Percival and Gwaine had been friends from the moment they met as rambunctious ten-year-olds. Their friendship had deepened over the years, but it was only when they were separated by a continent that they realized that they both wanted something more. Phone calls and Skype kept them going during the semester Percival spent in Japan teaching English, but once his contract was up, the tall blond was on the next plane home to Gwaine. Now, five years on, Percival felt the time was right to take…

Even though as I got older things crumbled, it helped make me who I am today. I try and visit because my dad still lives there, and eventually I’m going to own his home. I have mixed emotions on that though, because I haven’t the slightest idea how I’m going to upkeep it from here in California. Westford New York is where I’m from, and it means to me, because it’s where we spread my mom’s ashes. It’s where I said my final goodbye, and it’s where I started and ended my life in New York in many…

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. A simple commandment has not been more drastically disobeyed than here in the United States. The United States of America, after its years of forced labor, pains of global warfare and serious of contractions of the American people, birthed the spawn of death to this nation's values: Consumerism. At its full adulthood in the 1960’s this Gahimeth of Greed and Self-interest,makes all the nation succumb and bow to this figures Idol. But three wise…

Music is the creation of rhythms, beats, and other elements blended together to create a track. It can be with or without lyrics, however modern day music is generally created with lyrics. Sound and music are two completely different things; music is organized sound with repetition and rhyme which has meaning behind it. But unorganized sound is simply just sound without meaning. The roots of modern day music stem back to the early twentieth century. During this era the music industry was booming…

Baltimore. This propels Christine to drive over to the home of Bob Anderson, the station owner, in the mistaken belief that he's also chosen her to move to Baltimore. However, he reveals that he's chosen Andrea, the sports anchor, to go with George. It's obvious that Christine regards this as a betrayal, due to the exaggerated image she has of…

On December 7th, at 7:30pm, I attended It’s A Wonderful Life, A Live Radio Play. Illinois State University’s adaptation of this classic film took place in the Center for the Performing Arts. The actors took the stage as members of a 1940s radio show, playing a multitude of characters depicted in the original film. Although vastly different from the cinema version, this adaptation was very successful due to the congruous 1940s costumes, the use of varied voices to portray numerous characters, and…

In “Therapy” by David Lodge, Laurence Passmore, a middle-aged man narrates his experiences with therapy and his divorce. Laurence is a mediocre writer and the creator of a show called “The People Next Door,” who goes to cognitive behaviour therapy, physiotherapy, aromatherapy and acupuncture. Laurence has a habit of looking up words he says to “compensate for [his] lousy education,” (Lodge 33) but the words he looks up are not random; they are his subconscious way of putting his cognitive…