Hi everybody! So with the new posts there's going to be a lot of different stuff posted on here. I don't have very much time to read anymore (so sad, I know) and so all the posts I'll be doing will be about things that I do during the day and feel compelled to share my knowledge or experiences with everyone. So today's post will be about hair care (kinda boring lol sorry).
In the middle of winter a girl's can dry out. Pretty bad. To the point of snapping in half when you bend it-like mine was or is. So with the technology we have today I decided to peruse Pinterest for some hair masks. Amid the many many many pins there was one recipe that was everywhere and that was: Coconut oil, olive oil, and raw egg. Now I had tried the coconut oil and it was working but not to the extent that I would have liked and olive oil didn't sound so bad but the egg...now the egg was a different story. I really really did not want to pour raw egg in my damaged hair but I was desperate (and very very bored) so raw egg it was. After warming up about a tablespoon each of coconut and olive oil I cracked the egg and poured the concotion all over my scalp. Gross. Ew. Disgusting. Blech. Shudder shudder cringe. Worst mistake of my life.
The coconut oil and olive oil were fine. The egg? Not so much. As soon as it touched my scalp my skin shriveled up, no joke. Wherever the egg touched on my hair instantly dried into a hard clump of nasty hair. After I left it on for about an hour and a half (thanks to the insistence of my loving husband who didn't want me to waste one of his eggs) I washed it off and after the shower my hair was softer but almost to the point of feeling greasy.
My overall feeling about this hair mask is: coconut oil and olive oil was awesome. I will definitely be using them again. The egg, though? Never in a million years. Ever.
~Blogger out :P
The Maniacal Bookworm
"Saving the World one book at a Time!"
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Monday, January 18, 2016
alrighty folks...
Alright guys I know I've said it multiple times but this time it's for real. :)
It's time for a change. I'm going to try to start blogging more regularly and it's not going to be just about but anything and everything, starting with your suggestions. Anything you would want to see me review or post on my blog email me at themaniacalbookworm (at) gmail (dot) com or comment in the comment box! I look forward to hearing from you all and thank you for being so patient with me as I get everything situated.
~Blogger out :)
It's time for a change. I'm going to try to start blogging more regularly and it's not going to be just about but anything and everything, starting with your suggestions. Anything you would want to see me review or post on my blog email me at themaniacalbookworm (at) gmail (dot) com or comment in the comment box! I look forward to hearing from you all and thank you for being so patient with me as I get everything situated.
~Blogger out :)
Monday, April 27, 2015
Should We Provide Jobs for Welfare Recipients?
Hey all! I know it has been a while but with school and work and wedding planning I've been a tad busy. I hope everyone is doing well and I hope you know that I feel bad not posting anything for such a long time but life has a funny way of keeping you busy as I am sure you can all relate; however, I was thinking about what if I started posting some of the papers I have been writing for college? (you will notice that my writing sounds a tad bit more professional now lol college has ruined me) So here is a paper that I wrote for my English class talking about providing jobs for welfare recipients. It is a little lengthy but I hope that you take a look just the same :) *Bookworm Out*
“If they was to cut out all this welfare like they’re talking
about…they can’t starve people to death and they can’t put everybody to work.
It’s just not there.”
The above
stated by Neil Bowling in the American
Undercover television series documentary titled American Hollow. American
Hollow depicts how hard life can be living off the land as the Bowling
family does. Yet for life being so hard to live off the land, many of the
scenes of American Hollow are of the
Bowling family doing nothing but griping about their living standards and how
poor they are; however, one of the Bowling sons stated halfway into the
documentary that they did not work all they did was wait for the government
welfare check to show up every month.
Today, I will show that jobs must
be provided for welfare recipients that are more than capable of working and
supporting themselves. I will show how more jobs can and should be provided for
these welfare recipients able to work, whether they want to work or not, and how more jobs can be provided without starving
any of these workers like Neil Bowling incorrectly believes.
While
the idea of living solely off the land is a romantic one indeed, the Bowling
family needs to realize that living solely off the country is not possible
anymore without having taking and living off someone else’s hard earned
paycheck in the form of the government welfare check because of their ‘romantic
idea’. The Bowling children deserve a better life than the bare minimum because
their fathers will not provide for them. Sadly, the world has changed and it is
impossible to live 100% off the land anymore. Instead it is necessary to work
40 or more hours a week at a job outside of the home. Life has changed.
As can been seen from the 2009 film
documentary titled, Redemption of the
Welfare Queen and directed by Freddie Rhone, there are many welfare recipients
that do not live off the land as the Bowling family does, but instead see
welfare as a way not to work. Many, not all, of these people become even more
greedy and begin to lie to the welfare system in order to receive a bigger
welfare check. Even though there are many people on welfare who can work, there
are millions on welfare who cannot, examples of people who cannot work are the
elderly, the disabled, and in some cases, young mothers with little children
who cannot leave home to work. These people will be taken into consideration in
this paper. By pointing out the people on welfare who can and cannot work shows
that taking money away from the people who cannot work and giving it to those
that can is not fair and it is inhumane. To determine how those who need
welfare and those who are able to work will be separated, will be discussed
later in the paper.
First, what is the history behind
welfare and why was welfare created? The question of providing welfare
recipients with jobs has been prevalent since the creation of the welfare
system in the year 1935. Still today, eighty years later, providing jobs to
welfare recipients is a highly debated topic with many people calling for yet another
welfare reform.
The welfare
system began admist the Great Depression and was put into action by President
Franklin Roosevelt to help the millions upon millions of unemployed Americans
survive until the rough times were over and the economy bounced back and more
jobs were added to the work force. The Constitutional Rights Foundation article
titled, “How Welfare Began in the United States,” states that “Before the Great
Depression began 18 million elderly, disabled, and single mothers already lived
at the bare subsistence level. When the Great Depression struck in 1929 by
1933, 13 million Americans had been thrown out of work, thus joining the
previously mentioned 18 million on the streets.” With 31 million Americans out
of work and starving truly the Great Depression was hell on earth. The welfare
system was created to support those families until the government could supply
enough jobs for those who could work. As can be seen, the welfare system was
created not to give people an excuse to remain unemployed but to help them
until they could get their job back. Today, 110 million or 35.4% of all
Americans are welfare recipients. America needs a drastic economic change and
part of this change includes providing jobs for those on welfare.
During the course of American
history many, if not all, of America’s presidents have tried to help abolish
poverty. The most popular welfare reform occurred during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential term and was appropriately
dubbed, ‘The War on Poverty’. Lyndon Johnson stated in his 1964 State of the
Union address that:
For our goal is
not merely to spread the work. Our goal is to create more jobs. I
believe the
enactment of a 35-hour week would sharply increase costs, would
invite inflation,
would impair our ability to compete, and merely share instead of
creating
employment. But I am equally opposed to the 45- or 50-hour week in
those industries where consistently excessive
use of overtime causes increased
unemployment. (War
on Poverty)
The challenge arises when the
numbers of people in the work force is more than the amount of jobs in the job
market. Jobs must be created in order to provide for every citizen in the work
force. To give these people a job two things must be done: First, more jobs
must be added to the economy in order to keep up with the high demand of
employment. Second, there must be a change in the welfare system itself.
The first
step consists of adding more jobs to the economy. Without enough jobs in the
economy Neil Bowling will be correct in stating that “people would starve”. The
2014 Huffington Post article titled, “U.S. Creates 248,000 Jobs in September;
Unemployment Rate Falls to 5.9%” states that, “Employers have added 226,000
jobs per month, on average, this year—a healthy pace that more than keeps up
with the natural population growth.”
While this sounds promising and good, the vast majority of these jobs
are part-time. According to the Affordable Care Act passed in the year 2010,
full-time hours are considered to be just 30 hours a week. A family cannot
survive on just thirty hours a week. If the majority of these 226,000 jobs
are part-time, welfare recipients will still be unsupported if they are only
able to work the allotted 30 hours a week. To add to the struggle, the 2013 New
York Times article by Teresa Tritch titled, “Trying to Redefine ‘Full-Time’
Work”, the Affordable Care Act cut 45% of all employees hours. Nearly half of
America’s labor force was demoted to a part-time job and was then forced to
find a second job to continue to support their families, thus further
contributing to the lack of jobs found in the America’s economy. Indeed,
according to the 2014 Congressional Budget Office or CBO, it is stated that,
“The reduction in CBO’s projection…represents a decline in the number of
full-time workers of about 2 million in the year 2017 and 2.5 million by the
year 2024.” To provide enough jobs for both welfare recipients and non-welfare
recipients the solution is a simple one: the Affordable Care Act must be
repealed to create more jobs and full-time hours should be increased to forty
hours a week to ensure that employees will receive enough money from their hard
earned paycheck to pay the bills.
The next
step of the solution requires a reform in the welfare system itself. The
welfare system should be broken up into three main categories: permanent,
active, and temporary. A permanent recipient is a recipient who is elderly or
disabled and cannot work for the rest of their lives. These recipients are
permanent recipients and will receive a check until they pass away. An active
recipient is a recipient who is disable for the time being, but after he or she
receives the treatment they need, they will be able to work again. The active
category will also include single mothers with at least one child below the age
of five. Once all her children are five or older and enrolled in school the
mother will be placed with a job that allows her to be home when
her child or children leave for school and when they return home from school.
If she doesn’t hit full-time hours the mother will still get a small percentage
of what her welfare check before her children were sent to school. Active
recipients are welfare recipients that will receive welfare for an extended
period of time but not for the rest of their life like a permanent recipient. A temporary recipient is anyone who has lost a job or had an
unfortunate turn of events in their life but is still able to work at the time
they apply for welfare. A temporary recipient will be given welfare for up to
but not exceeding one year of the date they applied. An employment agency will
give them priority and will place them within a job as soon as possible.
To determine the status of welfare
recipients, all applicants must be examined by a qualified medical doctor. To keep
the welfare funds going to the well-being of the recipients and their family
welfare recipients should be tested for drugs and alcohol, including nicotine.
After all, it is vitally important that the welfare money be spent on what it
is purposed for. Recipients can return to their addictive past times only after
they are completely off welfare, until then there are too many people needing
welfare for us to waste it on an individual that will only spend the majority
of their welfare money on alcohol and drugs. The 2014 newspaper article titled,
“No We Don’t Spend $1 Trillion on Welfare Each Year” and written by Mike
Konczal states that, “The federal government spends $668 billion dollars per
year on 126 different welfare programs.” It is vitally important that the $668
billion dollars going to these welfare programs are going to the right place.
Such a huge amount of money should be treated and handled responsibly and must only be used for its intended purposes. Special
guidelines should be created for welfare recipients and what they can and
cannot spend their welfare check on. While doing this may sound like invasion
of privacy, individuals must remember that the money used in the welfare
programs comes from hardworking Americans that deserve to have their money
going to the right places. When welfare recipients are completely off welfare
and make their own money they can then spend that money in a way they deem
best.
In the radio documentary titled, Our America: Life and Death on the South
Side of Chicago and part of the Ghetto
Life 101 documentary series was broadcasted in May 1993 and, quite
literally, shook the nation. The two storytellers, Lealan Jones and Lloyd
Newman, were two 14 year old black men who have an extraordinary outlook on the
harshness and unfairness of life and decided to them share their outlook with
the entire American nation. Rather than support the welfare system, like many
at the time were doing, both young men stated that, “Giving a man a job will
feed him for life, but handing him money will provide for him only until you
die. He never actually learns to take care of himself.” Our America: Life and Death of the South Side of Chicago became
such a powerful documentary that it was later published into a book and still
continues to open America’s eyes to the problems running rampant through
America’s cities. The 2008 eBook titled
Welfare and edited by David M. Haugen and Andrea B. DeMott points out that
welfare recipients slowly but surely lose their independence by becoming more
and more dependent on the monthly welfare check instead of gaining independence
and relying on themselves. Because America is a free nation we need to
encourage American citizens to be independent or America will slowly lose the
very thing that created her in the first place, which is yet another reason to provide jobs
for America’s welfare recipients.
By reforming the welfare system and
providing jobs for those able to work, the economy of America will be in a
better position, and the $668 billion dollars that we are currently spending to
support families will be drastically reduced while still providing more than
enough exceptional help for those unable to work. We can cut the welfare and we
can create jobs for everyone. Doing such is a hard but not impossible task. No
one will starve and in the process, America will become the great nation that
she once was.
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
New Product Review: VenusSnap
New Product review! Because, face it, we all love a new product. Especially if the product is a beauty product. ;) I'm here to review the new, the one and only, Gillette Venus Snap! (in its own little travel case, btw)
Photo Credit: Influenster
This nifty little razor is about 4 inches long with five blades on one end surrounded by a blue ring of skin moisturizer that allows you to shave without shaving cream. Simply wet the razor and go! The best part about the VSnap is that it comes in its own little carrying case that's small enough to fit in a purse or backpack allowing you to take care of those pesky little hairs you missed in your morning rush. I seriously don't think I can ever go back to a regular disposable razor that requires gobs of shaving cream and multiple shavings to get it all. For me, Venus Snap is the only way to go. :)
#InASnap
Photo Credit: Influenster
This nifty little razor is about 4 inches long with five blades on one end surrounded by a blue ring of skin moisturizer that allows you to shave without shaving cream. Simply wet the razor and go! The best part about the VSnap is that it comes in its own little carrying case that's small enough to fit in a purse or backpack allowing you to take care of those pesky little hairs you missed in your morning rush. I seriously don't think I can ever go back to a regular disposable razor that requires gobs of shaving cream and multiple shavings to get it all. For me, Venus Snap is the only way to go. :)
#InASnap
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Five Enchanted Roses Cover Roses and Writing Contest
Rooglewood Press is delighted to introduce their second fairy tale novella contest.....
The challenge is to write a retelling of the beloved fairy tale in any genre or setting you like. Make certain your story is recognizably "Beauty and the Beast," but have fun with it as well. Make it yours!
Rooglewood Press will be selecting 5 winners to be published in the Five Enchanted Roses collection, which will be packages up with the gorgeous cover you see displayed above. Perhaps your name will be one of the five displayed on this cover?
All the contest rules and information may be found on the Rooglewood Press website. Just click HERE and you will go directly to the site.
Rooglewood Press's first collection, Five Glass Slippers, is available for pre-order now and will be released on June 14th. Grab yourself a copy and see what these talented writers have done with the timeless "Cinderella" tale!
Cover Credit:
This cover illustration was rendered by Julia Popova, "ForestGirl." You can find more out about this gifted artist on her website, http://www.forestgirl.ru/
FIVE ENCHANTED ROSES
a collection of Beauty and the Beast stories
The challenge is to write a retelling of the beloved fairy tale in any genre or setting you like. Make certain your story is recognizably "Beauty and the Beast," but have fun with it as well. Make it yours!
Rooglewood Press will be selecting 5 winners to be published in the Five Enchanted Roses collection, which will be packages up with the gorgeous cover you see displayed above. Perhaps your name will be one of the five displayed on this cover?
All the contest rules and information may be found on the Rooglewood Press website. Just click HERE and you will go directly to the site.
Rooglewood Press's first collection, Five Glass Slippers, is available for pre-order now and will be released on June 14th. Grab yourself a copy and see what these talented writers have done with the timeless "Cinderella" tale!
Cover Credit:
This cover illustration was rendered by Julia Popova, "ForestGirl." You can find more out about this gifted artist on her website, http://www.forestgirl.ru/
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Below the Surface by Tim Shoemaker
BELOW THE SURFACE by TIM SHOEMAKER
My Rating: @@
# of Pages: 397 (hardcover)
Inappropriate Scenes: None
Swearing: None
Genre: Middle Grade YA
Publisher: Zondervan
Back Blurb:
Buried fears don’t stay buried for long. Something is wrong with Cooper. He doesn’t understand it, and he won’t admit it, but after surviving the trauma of abduction, Cooper is plagued by a deep fear he can’t control. A vacation aboard the restored Getaway with his friends is just what he needs. No drama, no mysteries, just fun, relaxation, and a few well-planned pranks. But trouble follows this crew, and the idea of a carefree vacation soon disappears along with a missing woman. The police think she drowned, but Hiro has her own suspicions and starts investigating, while Cooper keeps busy and hides behind his practical jokes. But fear has a way of rising. A prank gone wrong, a dark water dive, and the four friends find more than they bargained for - just below the surface.
My Review:
I received this book from Book Look Bloggers in exchange for an honest review. I mostly got this book for my brother who loves the series. I enjoyed the first book in the series but for some reason I couldn't get into this book. It didn't grab my interest at all. Maybe it was because it was below my age level, I don't know. The plot didn't make sense. It seemed to me like this kid dived into the water and he got scared because it was so dark under the water. That's what the first couple of chapters were about. I hate to say I didn't like the book because I feel like there needs to be more clean books out there for kids and I would like to support Tim Shoemaker as much as I can because being an author cannot be the easiest profession. So I will recommend this book to other kids that are younger than me because they will probably like it. I know my brother did, it just wasn't for me.
My Rating: @@
# of Pages: 397 (hardcover)
Inappropriate Scenes: None
Swearing: None
Genre: Middle Grade YA
Publisher: Zondervan
Back Blurb:
Buried fears don’t stay buried for long. Something is wrong with Cooper. He doesn’t understand it, and he won’t admit it, but after surviving the trauma of abduction, Cooper is plagued by a deep fear he can’t control. A vacation aboard the restored Getaway with his friends is just what he needs. No drama, no mysteries, just fun, relaxation, and a few well-planned pranks. But trouble follows this crew, and the idea of a carefree vacation soon disappears along with a missing woman. The police think she drowned, but Hiro has her own suspicions and starts investigating, while Cooper keeps busy and hides behind his practical jokes. But fear has a way of rising. A prank gone wrong, a dark water dive, and the four friends find more than they bargained for - just below the surface.
My Review:
I received this book from Book Look Bloggers in exchange for an honest review. I mostly got this book for my brother who loves the series. I enjoyed the first book in the series but for some reason I couldn't get into this book. It didn't grab my interest at all. Maybe it was because it was below my age level, I don't know. The plot didn't make sense. It seemed to me like this kid dived into the water and he got scared because it was so dark under the water. That's what the first couple of chapters were about. I hate to say I didn't like the book because I feel like there needs to be more clean books out there for kids and I would like to support Tim Shoemaker as much as I can because being an author cannot be the easiest profession. So I will recommend this book to other kids that are younger than me because they will probably like it. I know my brother did, it just wasn't for me.
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