The Lunch Break Blog

The Lunch Break Blog Has Moved!

Nick — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:09:10 +0000

Attention readers, writers, and lunch breakers. You may have noticed that nothing new has been posted on the wordpress version of The Lunch Break Blog in quite some time. You may also notice that the archives of all your favorite posts have been cut down to one paragraph. These changes reflect the editors desire to take The Lunch Break Blog to a whole new level. Don’t worry all our content has been safely crated away and moved to a new location.

Please check the new site out at thelunchbreakblog.com

Thank You to all of our readers and contributors. Please continue your participation in the Lunch Break Blog over at the new location.

The Genre of Gender

rmzak — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:19:32 +0000

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I have been checking in on the Lunch Break Blog regularly to see what’s new on the menu. One topic I see recurring that always grabs my attention is gender. My focus at our Lunch Break is music, so this led me to question why many men listen to mostly male musicians while females gravitate towards women.
I have little scientific data to help answer this. Taking a glance through my own music collection, I notice numerous female artists, albeit amidst many more men. Two of the best albums I’ve heard in the past few years happen to be male/female duets (Alison Krauss & Robert Plant’s Raising Sand and the soundtrack to the movie Once featuring The Swell Season members Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard), but the most recent additions to my collection have all been created by men.

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The Curious Case of Ibanez, Jerod, Gonzalez, and Rosenthal: The Long Awaited Revolution of New Media

newchinaguyritchie — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:16:14 +0000

“Every generation needs a new revolution” ~Thomas Jefferson

Any Midwestsportsfan.com, philly.com, ESPN, Sport Illustrated, or Raul Ibanez fan is well aware of the hot button story surrounding a blogger named Jerod’s blog entry about his fantasy baseball pick Raul Ibanez and the speculation that Mr. Ibanez is using performance enhancing drugs or PEDs. These fans are also aware that this seemingly harmless blog sparked an unprecedented amount of cyberspace communication and galvanized Jerod from the realm of New Media obscurity into the furious eyes, hands, and consciousness of the Mainstream Media spotlight.

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The Many Deaths of Michael Jackson

mrjimmyneutron — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:07:58 +0000

Michael Jackson’s corporal body passed away yesterday. This was in all likelihood the last of the King of Pop’s deaths. His career died in 2001. His grip on reality passed on at around the start of the new millennium. His innocence died when he was about 10. The term morbid curiosity might as well have been coined to describe our relationship with Jackson.

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Corporation to Hold Lottery for Position

shiketyshaq — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:51:06 +0000

In the town of Normal, Illinois things are far from normal. Ever since Norma Jean Perkins died, her job has had the town in an uproar. “Well, I was at the hospital when her dead body came in, and I thought what the heck, I should just go down and apply,” said Tim Owens, a former GM worker. “By the time I got down there, the line to get in the door was around the corner.” This line was not for the apple pie, but for an application for the now opened fry cook night time position recently relinquished by the dead woman.

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Confessions of a Ghetto Dad

shiketyshaq — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:43:47 +0000

Sitting with a can of beer in hand, slouched in my plastic white chair, overlooking a plastic blow up swimming pool where my two year old was swimming in a diaper and my five year old just stayed in her bikini all day, as the falling sun filtered through the heavy leaves of early summer, I had an epiphany. It wasn’t that resounding “praise jesus” affirmative to everything I had accomplished over the past thirty years. And it wasn’t that I was satisfied to what I had become. It was the fact that when everything is put away: the logic, faith, education, family, all the work, saving, planning, technology, I am exactly this base. I am a ghetto dad somewhere stuck in the middle of the suburbs. I am just what I was years ago and that next drink was the most complacent sip of anything I ever supped: the bitter taste of boundaries. I did it. I bumped my head against the glass ceiling that was actually the floor. As the R&B floated out the radio, performed live from West Oak Lane Jazz festival, I wished nothing more of my soul, body and mind than to watch my kids play with their bath toys in a two foot Wal-Mart pool purchased with a credit card.

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Universal Health Care: America’s Next Great Step

shiketyshaq — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:09:54 +0000

We can sit around blaming every component of the health care system. In fact, no table has been exempted from someone’s anger about the cost of procedures, medicine or bureaucracy attributed to our current system. We also can admit that health care is the most important issue facing America right now, even more than the wars on terror or Supreme Court nominations. It is this country’s time to address the issue for every American. We can even go as far to say that the economic future of the country rests on getting our health care costs in check. Health care and education should be provided to every American. I believe it will not destroy the quality of health care in this nation, but promote the promise of fair and equal treatment under the law for the protection and happiness of all the citizens.

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Morality and Mothballs

aprilmae — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:25:12 +0000

I have been alive for thirty-four years and I have never lost a single article of clothing to a moth. Has anyone? Really, the more I think about it, I have never heard one person complain of a moth infestation or voice a concern about the possibility of his or her wardrobe being decimated by moths. So, if this is the case, why does everyone know what a mothball smells like? I know that most of us recognize the smell of mothballs because we had a grandparent who thought that they were a good idea. But, who in their right mind was so ever worried about their clothes that they would rather have them emit an intolerable odor than have holes in them? Is it a generational thing, like a Depression- Era save everything at any cost type mentality, or as we age, do we develop a fondness for the smell of mothballs? Maybe old people are so hell bent on preserving their past that mothballs sort of serve as a formaldehyde for their good linens and fine flannels. I really have no idea, but recently mothballs have made a mockery of my life, and I hate them.

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Medical Crisis: Why the elite status of doctors will destroy America’s chances of universal healthcare

shiketyshaq — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:55:59 +0000

Put down the bologna and cheese sandwich…close up the bag of cheese curls…and go get yourself a salad with just a bit of vinegar and oil…no cheese or french dressing…there you go. Now you won’t have to think about your health or the big crisis Obama is trying to solve in this nation, the dreaded HEALTH CARE. If there is anything that can get people to stop eating, other than politics, it is the mere mention of nationalizing health care. In this post, I want to approach it logically and see if we can sit down and think long enough on the topic that people won’t lose their lunch, or at the very least, throw out that perfectly good sandwich.

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The Madness of Ignorance

newchinaguyritchie — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:52:31 +0000

Last night I finally watched the Emmy-Winning TV series, Mad Men, and I am completely hooked! The show concentrates on an advertising firm located in Manhattan in the early 1960s. It brilliantly and authentically depicts the fashion and decor of the time, the dynamics of gender roles at home and in the work place, the effects of post-war trauma socially and individually, the overt inequities of race, and the incredible influence of advertising on society. Above all of these commendable surface level aspects, the show also craftily and subtly conveys the harrowing danger of ignorance. And here is where this show functions more as a metaphor for our current times than a historical reflection of a tumultuous and influential decade.

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