Why I Chose… Vanilla

I love the flavor and smell of vanilla.

When I was a kid (and even as an adult when I'm around my mother baking) I'd love when my mother poured Benjamin's vanilla extract into the batter. The sweet aroma of the thing, along with the buzz of the small amount of alcohol, were addicting.

Whenever we'd get vanilla ice cream, I'd eat helpings of it by the soup bowl. Whenever we'd get Neapolitan ice cream, I'd eat the vanilla part, my sister the chocolate, and my brother the strawberry. I'd eat the strawberry too, sometimes, but the vanilla was my thing. Chocolate, it just had too overpowering and bitter a flavor. That's something I still feel.

I think it's partly because vanilla soothes me why I love it so.

The Left Hand

I tend to make a big deal in my head noticing people being left-handed. I'm left-handed myself, so it may be trying to have a commonality with other human beings.

I never really faced a stigma against my being left-handed, though I do cite how my grandfather (and, now thinking about it, occasionally my dad in the earlier years) would have me put on and tie my right shoe first. My dad has asked me sometimes why I hang clothes on hangers the way I do, and that is primarily because I'm left-handed.

When I found people actually didn't mind, I would wear watches on my right wrist, making it so much easier to put on.

I would have to remember consciously that people shake hands with their right hand (even though I think I may have extended my left on more than a few occasions out of not even thinking about it), because there are some people who consider shaking the left hand rude (or even gross, since some people believe one must wipe after using the restroom with the left hand only).

It's funny, though, that traditional place settings have the fork on the left and knife on the right, even though when eating with just a fork I see people use their right hands to manipulate their food. I have, to horror, seen some people do a reverse place setting. I've had to learn to not put drinkware on the left hand side, and to make sure the handle on teacups and coffee cups face the right (since, especially in hospitality, one wants to make things easier for people and err to the majority of your clients being right-handed). 

I have a Wikipedia page in edit/draught status where I've been amassing a list of left-hand "celebrities" as I've noticed them. There are people like Eliza Taylor who seem a little ambidextrous, but others like Barack Obama that people would recognize.

This world is interesting enough with cultural differences with left and right. I still need to read The Left Hand of Darkness.

Chevelle

Ever since I was a teenager really discovering music for the first time (since most of it was either something I'd heard my piano teacher play at her house, Christian music my mother played, or oldies records my dad would put on), I'd had the sense that I was more of a songs fan than an artist fan.

Most people seem to be able to rattle off the artists they like and the heaps of songs those artists have done that they like. There are a few artists like Disturbed, Metallica, and Darlene Zschech who've done a handful of songs I like, but nothing comes to Chevelle. I'd discovered them and put them to my "one song per album test" (since it was that usually I'd only like one song off an entire album).

I liked every song!

They haven't failed yet. I own every studio, non-live album, plus a track off the live album they'd done with Disturbed, Slipknot, and a few other groups.
Now, yes, each album has songs I tend to favor more than others, but I like every one.

My most favorite Chevelle songs, though:

Hats Off to The Bull: Envy

La Gárgola: Take Out the Gunman

The North Corridor: Shot From A Cannon

Wonder What's Next: An Evening With El Diablo

Wonder What's Next (Deluxe Version Bonus Tracks): It's No Good

Vena Sera: I Get It

This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In): Get Some

Sci-Fi Crimes: This Circus

Point #1: SMA

I'm glad I'd discovered them and that they're so great.

Separation

US Considers Separating Kids And Adults At The Mexico Border

Here's what it's about:

Typically, adults who illegally enter the U.S. with children are released from detention while they wait for a court hearing.

Another means of forced dissuasion. This one, it actually seems a little cruel, but rather pragmatic.

The immigration issue, I have mixed opinions. I often wonder what I'd be like today if I grew up in Jamaica or the United Kingdom instead of the United States. As far as living here, I'll just say that it probably wasn't the most kosher way of doing things. I'd have preferred proper channels.

If they forced me to move, I suppose it would be inconvenient, and I suppose I'd have to think about alternative plans.

Proper channels themselves are up to debate at the moment, and constantly in flux. I wonder, though, how traumatic it would be for the parties to have themselves in separation. It beings to me an image of Nazi times where they'd done the same thing, separating parents and children, but it seems they'd done it more for cruelty (because the people had no choice in their relocation) than to actually try to stop people who (debatably) have a choice in their relocation and migration patterns.

Their options may not be ideal (and thinking about it might cause some people to think I'm supporting it instead of completely dismissing it), but they seem to have alternative options that might not be timely but there.

It does sadden me some that they have to consider this.