How Can We Be So Aware Of These Problems And Not Advance? ~ Drew's Little Life Blog

Today's blog is going to be a little random, because I know some of my readers are not into guitar, which is what I will talk about at the end, and I had a few other things to post about that would not fill up an entire blog. The first of which is McDonalds.

Now, let me be honest on my feelings about McDonalds. If they made burgers and fries out of ground beef and raw potatoes like diners do, I would not have a single issue with them as a company. Slather everything in grease and shortening; if it were real food, I would not care. The fact is, McDonalds does not sell real food in any sense as everything on their menu is processed and budget-built to a sickening level. A chicken McNugget has thirty-seven ingredients in it and is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty-four percent corn... Why people eat it, I will never understand, and why people believe anything they sell can be "healthy" I also do not understand. Even in my fat days, I did not eat at McDonalds.

The other thing that boggles my mind is why their advertisements pop up on my Facebook Newsfeed constantly and how comical the comments are from people who feel the same way I do about the company. Excluding a few misguided souls like this fellow:

*I did have to snip this picture together, but the comment was on the the same post.*

"It has fruit in it! It's healthy!" Said nobody ever. A company puts up a few pictures promoting a product that includes raw fruit in the background and they do not even need to falsely claim their new drinks are healthy. The consumer assumes this on their own without looking at the ingredients list. Good marketing strategy for a terrible cause is what I say. If I had to guess, I would say that a solid eighty percent of smoothies either bought or made in our own kitchens are not healthy at all. Check the sugar content of concentrated, fresh fruit. Eat a nice Honeycrisp apple and skip the smoothie. Especially any you get from McDonalds.

If you know me at all, you would know this article is right up my alley:

Also, if you know me at all, you are well aware of how much I read these days (such goes hand in hand with writing and learning) and I am not talking about pop culture garbage, but reading with substance. I was walking by a magazine rack at Target yesterday and this immediately caught my attention. Everything in this Time article is fascinating and if you are a Generation-Y Millennial, you can identify with it. If you are from any of the previous generations, you may be able to understand or at least comprehend why my generation does things that seem so stupid (I'm sorry!).

Original article here if you are a Time subscriber.

An independent perspective here if you want to know a little more.

Relating to an alluded portion of the latter article, I will be the first to tell you that I strongly oppose "selfie" pictures because I do not see the purpose in the same picture of your face at the same angle, but in a different location every few days. Nor do I understand the parents who post the equivalent of their child's baby book on their Facebook pages. Maybe I am oldschool, but I like that my childhood was not blasted all over the internet, but instead enjoyed in photo albums by close family and friends. My current self would be very embarrassed and bitter towards my parents if my entire life existed online in any form before I had the mental capacity to oppose it. Those who do this are not bad people, and if you do any of this, I am not judging you at all, I simply do not understand the phenomenon and wonder what it will mean for the future instead of the "right now" moment...

Next!

I bought these the other day:

They are in the Martin FX series of guitar strings. The core of the string is apparently of a soft design and instead of the Silk and Steel variety I used on my Gibson last time (I wear out a set of strings in a two weeks or less usually) I bought a set of Silk and Phosphor and a set of Phosphor Bronze. The Phosphor Bronze are standard light strings with the softer core on the four wound strings and I have not tried them yet in favor of trying the former first.

They come in the standard-issue Martin envelopes.

The Silk and Steel I tried last time were wound in steel (obviously) with a silk lining on the core. They sounded great for a few hours of playing, but dulled more quickly than I had hoped. These Silk and Phosphor are the same idea with a flexible core string and silk lining, but wrapped in bronze, like most acoustic strings.

They sound great as far as I am concerned, and I like the feel of them much more than the standard Silk and Steel, which begins to feel like plastic, the more you wear on them. I will give an update on how I feel about these the next time I am due to restring in a week or so. For now, I shot a quick video, sloppily playing Jimi Thing by Dave Matthews Band right after I put the new strings on.

Consider it a "Guitarist's Selfie"