This is the start of a series of drabbles that come from a 'Dork diaries' volume that is primarily a diary for the reader to write for it's a book of questions that I am going to answer as an adult for some of these questions could be for us as well. January 8- If you could be any other person in the world for one week, who would it be and why? For me there is not just one person, but really a compilation of people from old teachers for they showed me how to think about various ideas.
About the Creator
Mark Graham
I am a person who really likes to read and write and to share what I learned with all my education. My page will mainly be book reviews and critiques of old and new books that I have read and will read. There will also be other bits, too.
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More stories from Mark Graham and writers in Critique and other communities.
Old School
Jeff Kinney has written another in the series of the 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' and this one is entitled 'Old School'. There is the usual cast of characters present from the mom and dad and his brother Roddrick and now his grandfather has moved in the house, and you will never guess where mom and dad put him. One cannot forget one other his best friend Rowley. The main idea of this story is that Greg has to figure a way to get out of going away to camp, but as you know with his luck things happen. This is a weeklong field trip for school that seems to be requirement for all.
By Mark Graham10 months ago in Critique
The Ignorance Tax: Why Your 20$ Gourmet Burger is a Scam
A friend of mine charges twenty dollars for a piece of ground beef and two slices of bread. He calls it a "burger." In private, he calls it an "Ignorance Tax." We’ve reached a point where basic survival is marketed as a luxury, and frying an egg is treated like cold fusion. While the West pays a premium to be fed like infants, I’m sitting in my kitchen in Croatia, watching the world forget how to live—one overpriced burger at a time. *** Last night, I committed a miracle. At least, that’s what a modern-day lifestyle influencer would call it. I actually made dinner. In about fifteen minutes—roughly the time it takes an average Californian to find their car keys—I produced six gourmet burgers. Beef, veggie, and fish. All sourced from a local organic shop where the ingredients actually remember being alive. I toasted the buns with ghee, caramelized some onions, and watched the local cheese melt over the patties like a slow, delicious tragedy. I assembled them with the precision of a watchmaker: a thin slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce, a pickle. Total cost? About the same as a mediocre latte in San Francisco. My wife, my daughter, and I “suffocated” ourselves in the goodness of it. It was healthy. It was fast. It was, frankly, a joke how easy it was. And that’s the problem. The Teeth-Brushing Paradox I’ve been cooking since I was fifteen. Not because I had a “passion” for culinary arts, but because life is a series of unfortunate events. My parents were divorced and busy; I lived with my grandfather, a man who viewed a stove as a decorative object. So, I cooked to survive. To me, cooking is like brushing your teeth. You don’t stand in front of the mirror and congratulate yourself for five minutes because you managed to clean your molars. You just do it so your mouth doesn’t rot. In Croatia—this little patch of earth that used to be Yugoslavia—a man in the kitchen isn’t a “sensitive modern hero.” He’s just a hungry guy. Roughly 90% of the people here, even the kids obsessed with TikTok, can actually whip up a decent meal. We are like the Italians, but with more cynicism and slightly worse PR. We value the origin of the food, but more importantly, we value the “table.” In the States, dinner is the big event. Here, it’s lunch. Even in the middle of a workday, the world stops. We drink coffee, we eat, we talk. The capitalist model of “time is money” hasn’t completely strangled us yet. We still think time is for living. Charging a Tax on Ignorance When I lived in California, I felt like a wizard from a superior civilization. I watched people—educated, successful people—treat the act of frying an egg like it was complex engineering. If someone “cooked” for you, it usually meant they’d taken three semi-finished products, dumped them in a pan, added too much salt, and called it a masterpiece. The flavors were aggressive, the execution was sloppy, and the conversation about the meal lasted longer than the eating itself. I have a friend who owns a burger joint. I asked him once, “Why the hype? It’s a piece of meat between two pieces of bread. Why are people paying $20 for this?” He looked at me with the weary eyes of a man who understands the decline of Western civilization. “They don’t know how to cook,” he said. “That’s it. To you and me, it’s nothing. But I’m not charging for the meat. I’m charging a tax on their ignorance. I charge for the service of doing what they’ve forgotten how to do.” The Survival of the Simplest We’ve turned a basic survival skill into a luxury “experience.” We’ve made it so expensive and so hyped that we’ve lost the simple reflex of feeding ourselves. Knowing your way around a kitchen is no longer just a domestic chore—it is the ultimate act of rebellion. It’s a stand against a system that wants to sell you back your own autonomy at a 500% markup. Back in my kitchen, my family is full, the dishes are done, and I didn’t even notice I was “cooking.” I was just hanging out. Maybe I’m ready to become a professional chef. Or maybe the rest of the world is just ready to admit they’ve forgotten how to live. Either way, the burger was great—and it didn't cost me twenty dollars to realize it.
By Feliks Karić6 days ago in Critique
Why the Melania Movie Missed Its Mark (Part.1)
I was born in 1973 in Croatia. Melania Knavs—the woman the world knows as Melania Trump—was born in 1970 in Sevnica, Slovenia. If you took a compass and drew a circle, you’d see we basically shared the same sandbox. My front door is maybe thirty miles from where she first inhaled that crisp Slovenian air.
By Feliks Karić4 days ago in Critique
Comments (4)
I would be my Mum. She is the kindest-hearted woman.
I would def be Sherlock Holmes, but a little less narcissistic. Love the idea
written well and good luck
I would be Me but younger to make better choices with my life ♦️♦️