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11/07/2003 Entry: "On fighting sickness, OJ, and how life could be worse" I wanted to post some good news because this journal has too much bad news in it for my tastes: I seem to winning the war on the "doom flu," whatever it is. This morning, I felt a lot of junk in my lungs (which I didn't have yesterday), and prayed I didn't have pneumonia coming on, but I feel a lot better this afternoon. Last night, I ate a lot of mediocre (Ace brand) Sushi because I craved it. I also drank some Minute Maid Orange/Banana/Stawberry juice, which, unlike any other OBS juice, didn't have any sugar in it!. No, really! I was stunned when I read the contents. It tastes the same as sugared, too, although, yes, I do know that just because corn syrup or sugar is NOT listed as an ingredient, doesn't mean the juice hasn't been artificially sweetened. See, the ... liberty, I should say, that juice manufacturers have is that they often do everything from concentrate. So your "unsweetened" orange juice from concentrate could be 1 part water, 1.5 (or more) parts concentrate, so you are getting a kind of "super juice" you wouldn't get from just squeezing the orange yourself. Of course, all the calories and carbs come from the actual concentrate, not the water, so read the nutritional listings on the side. Then there's the centuries-old selective engineering of making sweeter and sweeter oranges ... but I digress. The juice and sushi made me feel better. I am also trying to eat a little better. Lately, my eating has not been so good, and I am sure my health will suffer in the long-term because of it. I mean, I take a multivitamin with my meds, but I really need to cut down on sugar. This Halloween, I ate less candy than I ever had since I was a teen, so that's going well. I also seem to have this ability to not taste "the difference" between aspartame and real sugar, so switching to diet sodas has been effortless. I mean, I turn 35 soon, and I can't eat like a dysfunctional teen anymore. I mean, lord knows I try! Hee! But, no, I should stop before I get diabetes or something. I have also found out that, while I am allergic to eggs, I am not allergic to "Egg Beaters," a yolk-less egg product where they use the whites, put in vitamins and nutrients, and pasteurize it. True, you can only make scrambled-egg-like products from it, but it has a lot less calories and cholesterol. I also want to thank Malle Babbe for her kind words in yesterday's comments section, and want to agree with her that the 1950s were not "ideal" in many ways. I have often thought to write a book on this, but that would take lots of research and I am lazy. Unlike Al Franken, I do not have a "Team Punkie" to do research for me. But someone has done something similar and I strongly recommend people who romanticize about history read Otto Bettmann's, "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!" Otto is the founder of the famed Bettmann Archive in New York, one of the world's great picture libraries, and he compiled a lot of Victorian woodcut material for this book. It basically shows that the Dickens-esque, rosy, Victorian utopia people go on and on about was anything but. Women weren't allowed to vote, health care was nonexistent, child labor was rampant, disease and squalor filled the city streets, and crime and corruption existed pretty much openly among the upper class. Even if you don't care a fig about the American Victorian era, it makes for some pretty cool reading (it's not boring, like a text book, but reads more like a tabloid-level, "Dude, look at how BAD things were!").