Confessions of a High School Teacher

Let me preface this by saying that I found pictures of this little delight here on Tumblr. They didn’t come with written instructions but, well, it wasn’t rocket science.

Why am I putting up a step-by-step recipe if it’s not rocket science, you ask? Sadly, a friend asked for instructions after she butchered it. No, really.

Also, the name is self-explanatory.

Ingredients:

A pack of Oreos

Reese Peanut Butter Cups

Fondue chocolate (or any chocolate, really)

Sprinkles

Wax parchment on a cookie sheet or cutting board

Directions:

The number of oreos and peanut butter cups completely depends on how many you think you can eat. You may revise this number after the first one. Also, grab a helper.

Melt your chocolate in a bowl. I suggest using a pot of simmering water (you place the bowl over the pot, make sure it’s not a tight seal or you’ll get hot water spitting at you). Stir it frequently so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of your bowl.

Open your Oreos and place a Reese Peanut Butter Cup between the two pieces.

Dip your Oreo/Reese sandwiches in the chocolate. It is inevitable that you will get messy at this stage, just accept it and avoid licking your fingers until you’re finished. Be careful that your sandwiches don’t fall apart.

Place your covered Oreo/Reese sandwiches on to the wax parchment and have your helper decorate them with sprinkles.

Put your cutting board/cookie sheet laden with deliciousness in a fridge or (if it’s winter and cold enough for it) outside. Be wary of the wildlife if you choose the latter. I speak from experience.

Enjoy your diabetes.

Adapted from All Recipes.com

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts

1 tbsp butter

½ white onion

3 celery stalks

3 medium sized carrots

8 cups chicken broth

2 cups vegetable broth

2 – 2 ½ cups egg noodles

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp basil

1 pinch garlic powder

Directions:

In a skillet, cook cubed chicken with a little oil and a pinch of oregano. Make sure it is fully cooked before setting aside.

Chop your carrots, celery, and onions into small pieces. You want to make sure that they are small enough to soften in the broth.

In large pot, melt butter and sauté onions and celery until slightly soft, roughly 5 minutes.

Add broth, carrots, basil, oregano, garlic powder, and chicken (I usually shred the chicken by hand as I put it in)

Bring mixture to a boil over high heat. Once boil is reached turn down to low-medium and allow to simmer for 20 minutes.

Add noodles for the last 5 minutes of simmering (noodles cook quickly and become very mushy if left too long). Serve immediately.

Additional:

Broth (with everything except the noodles) can be frozen and used for later. Warm the mixture in a large pot and add noodles once liquefied.

The internet is a wonderful and terrifying place. I could wax poetic about how awesome the internet is (hello, meme central), and I could probably write a novel about the weird and freaky things you can find (read: 4chan) on the internet, but that’s not really the point of my thoughts tonight.

I came across a post on Tumblr the other day of a screen shot of some girl’s twitter account. To summarise it in my own words, she basically said that she’s not a homophobic person but that she doesn’t like bisexuals because she can’t understand how they can like both genders and they ought to just choose one or the other. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist of it. Underneath this screen shot was a litany of angry people denouncing this girl for being an idiot, a bigot, and a hypocrite. Actually, one of them used an analogy about cake versus pie that was quite clever, and I really enjoyed it but, again, not the point.

The internet audience for teenagers now, versus teenagers ten years ago, is extremely different. The teenagers growing up today are in a generation where almost all of them have constant access to the internet. They have twitter accounts, facebook accounts, tumblr accounts, they have accounts that I don’t even know about because apparently at the ripe old age of 25 I’m a geezer (or so my students would have you believe). I grew up with computers but the Internet was still in its early days, it was a teenager itself, and half of the things that exist now didn’t then. I had ICQ, and then MSN. I used chat rooms, and made my own website with Angel Fire (and boy, did that baby suck). The only public profile that I had was on this creepy vampire-esque website that, at the time, I thought was super cool but now I can’t even remember the actual name of it.

I had an internet audience that consisted of my friends and the occasional stranger in those MSN chat rooms. Even in those chats, I was usually among people the same age as me (barring any creepers that we didn’t know about and I’m sure there were at least a few). Now, however, with social networking sites people are exposed to a far wider audience than I ever was as a kid. This means that, unfortunately, their idiocy is broadcast for the world to see.

Now, I don’t know if the girl whose account I saw was actually a teenager, or just an ignorant woman but based on the language used, I’m going to hazard a guess at teenager. It just oozed teen speak, of which I am frequently exposed to and skilled at deciphering. As I read it, I remembered a comment that I once made to a friend of mine when I was considerably younger. It went something like this:

“I don’t understand bisexuality. How can you like both? Isn’t it a bit greedy and selfish?”

Again, paraphrasing (because I don’t have a photographic memory or anything even remotely close). This was long before I was exposed to a variety of sexualities beyond heterosexual and homosexual (I grew up with openly gay and accepted relatives), and it was long before I had explored my own sexuality.

You know what’s funny? I’m totally attracted to both men and women, but that was something I hadn’t realised at the time.

At the time I was an ignorant teenager and all I had was the knowledge of my tiny corner of the world. I’d never met anyone who was openly bisexual, or at least not one who had told me about it, and I didn’t understand it. I said something stupid, and thoughtless, and hurtful to bisexual people. But I didn’t have the kind of platform that teens now have access to. I didn’t have a Twitter account where I could broadcast my thoughts to the world and experience the backlash when that world didn’t agree with me.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe when we come across these kinds of things, we ought to not jump down that person’s throat right away and rip them apart. Granted, the majority of the comments on the post that I’m talking about were calm, rational, and well spoken, but there’s always that one person who rages and swears and while I’ve definitely been that person before, I’d like to think that I’ve grown up a bit since then.

Ignorance and bigotry is not going to be combated by telling the person in question that they make you ‘soooo fucking MAD’. Hell, even a calm and rational debate is probably not going to get through to most of them, but losing your cool is definitely not going to solve anything. You’re only giving them the opportunity to show your rage to others and say ‘Look at these people, look at how out of control they are!’.

And let’s be honest, not all of the ignorance you find on the internet is malicious, or bigotry (though there certainly is a lot of that). Sometimes it’s just plain ol’ ignorance. People speak before they think all the time, but the internet lends them the safety of anonymity and so that gum flapping habit of theirs becomes all the worse.

Next time you come across some mild ignorance like this, just talk to them instead of yelling at them. SHOUTY CAPS ARE NOT ALWAYS NECESSARY, OKAY? IT CERTAINLY DOESN’T MAKE PEOPLE INCLINED TO LISTEN TO YOU. DO YOU LISTEN TO THE WORDS BEING SPOKEN WHEN YOU’RE FEELING ATTACKED? I SURE AS HELL DON’T!

Of course, this is pretty optimistic (which I usually am not, let me tell you!), and some people would even call it naive, but I remember what it’s like to be a kid (read: stupid) and I can easily imagine what it’s like to be one now. At the very worst, you’ll realise that the person you’re conversing with is not just ignorant, but wilfully so, and you’ll pity them before you move on. At the best, you’ll plant a seed of thought in someone’s head, and maybe it will stay with them, maybe they’ll think about it harder, and maybe they’ll learn from the experience.

That’s a lot of maybe’s, but stranger things have happened.

Doesn’t stop me from singing along, though.

Or knowing all the dance moves to ‘Stop’.

…or digging out my old CDs and ripping them on to my iPod.

What?

Haters gonna hate.