¡Viva Las Vegas!

Las Vegas: Home to Casinos, Various Forms of Entertainment, and Wedding Chapels.  Lots of wedding chapels.  At these chapels, you can choose a theme, like Star Trek or Hawaiian; a language for the ceremony, like Japanese or French; or even a drive-thru option, so you don't have to get out of the car!  The number of unique and absurd options is endless.


In "Marrying Absurd," Joan Didion describes the process of these weddings, as well as various scenarios from them.  She exposes their trivial nature through her ridiculing diction; phrases like "what happens there has no connection with 'real' life" (Didion 102) and "There are nineteen such wedding chapels...each offering better, faster, and, by implication, more sincere services than the next" (Didion 102-103) contribute to her mocking tone.  In addition, the examples of couples that have participated in these wedding "ceremonies" help add to her point that most of the people who get married this way are "children who do not know how else to find it, how to make the arrangements, how to do it 'right'" (Didion 103).

Vegas weddings, with their extremely short ceremonies, ridiculous options, and inexpensive costs, are hardly weddings at all.  On a couple's wedding day, they are pledging their lives to each other, telling each other that they will stay together "in sickness and in health," and promising their love for eachother "from this day forward until death do us part".  However, Las Vegas weddings take the focus off the true meaning and significance of marriage by emphasizing the unimportant elements of the wedding and rushing through the meaningful ones.

Fish Cheeks? I'll pass

One of the most distinguishable characteristics of a culture is its food.  Most cultures have a staple food like rice or pasta that has been eaten at almost every meal for generations.  This often makes it tough when a family relocates because they have to choose between assimilating and sacrificing part of their own culture or maintaining their own cuisine in the new place.

In "Fish Cheeks," Amy Tan describes a Christmas Eve dinner scenario from her teenage years that involves a white boy named Robert (whom she had a crush on) and his family coming to her very Asian household for dinner.  In addition to her father's loud belch at the dinner table, Amy's mother serves traditional Asian cuisine rather than the usual ham or turkey dinner that Americans are accustomed to.  She finds this very embarrassing and worries that Robert won't like her because of her family and culture.

However, there are numerous things that can be taken away from other cultures.  If you think about it, the American lifestyle that most of us have grown up with is really just a combination of a bunch of other cultures.  Rather than being ashamed of the way your family acts and what your family eats, take that as an opportunity to teach those around you about your background.  And if you're in Robert's shoes, enjoy the learning opportunity that you've been given.

Disabilities in Today's Society

What is your reaction when you see people who are different from yourself?  Have you ever judged them?  To be frank, you would be lying if you answered, "No."

What if the person was very small in stature, in a wheelchair, or mentally retarded?  Generally, there is a reason for these things, like a birth defect or disease the person has.  However, we tend to ignore that and still judge the people in some way.  In addition, maybe you would think that they aren't as good as yourself since you don't have any physical issues like they do.  However, these are the people who have been through the most in life and are the strongest because of it; often, they have been teased and ridiculed and laughed at and bullied for their entire lives.
                    
In Disability, Nancy Mairs discusses our society's response to people with impairments.  In the piece, she highlights one point that really stands out to me.  She wrote that when she asked why disabled people are rarely used in advertisements, a local advertiser told her that, "'We don't want to give people the idea that our product is just for the handicapped'" (Mairs 14).  When I read that, I instantly loathed the advertiser.  To be honest, I really don't think having a disabled person on a box of Cheerios or a billboard for McDonald's would stop people from buying something they like or have any negative effects at all.

You might be thinking, "In what ways would society benefit from people with disabilities being included in advertisements?"  Well, the most important thing that would do is provide people who have these disabilities with role models who are in similar situations and have overcome the hardships that their condition has put them through.  This would provide these people with a source of strength and give them perseverance to keep fighting through their disability.  Also, it would mark an important milestone in our culture.  It would be the day that companies stopped letting their desired success trouble them so much and focused on something even more important, which is showing people who are disabled that they care about them.