Spinnaker [Distributed: Wednesday, January 10, 2007]

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Most of us have a phobia or two. Phobias range from general and common, such as acrophobia (fear of heights), to the less discussed such as pogonophia (fear of beards). Most of us may have more phobias than we realize.

With the beginning of a new semester, maybe you have experienced papyrophobia (fear of paper), scolionophobia (fear of school) or graphophobia (fear of writing).

According to The Phobia List, a Web site compiled by Fredd Culbertson, most phobias have Greek names, though many phobias have Latin prefixes because they are related to the medical field, which is heavily influenced by Latin.

Psychiatrists have placed phobias in three categories: social phobia (fear of enclosed places), agoraphobia (anxiety in social situations), and specific phobia (fear of specific stimuli, which usually causes avoidance).

Many phobias, like acrophobia, are created in situations which cannot be controlled or predicted. It's human nature to become anxious in such situations.

Many phobias are labeled irrational. A phobia becomes irrational when it interferes in one's daily life.

If a person has mycophobia (fear of mushrooms), and this prevents him or her from eating in a restaurant that has mushrooms on menu items or from visiting the grocery store, that phobia can be categorized as irrational.

Treatment for phobias goes beyond support groups and long talks with psychiatrists. Many Web sites offer chat rooms, workshops and suggestions such as hypnosis to rid phobias.

The Phobia List described a common technique described as exposure treatment. The patient is exposed to his or her phobia until the phobia fades away. Not all patients respond positively to this treatment. Other patients prefer hypnosis, a typically faster and less stressful option.

Some of the most common phobias are claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), aerophobia (fear of flying), xenophobia (fear of strangers) and arachnophobia (fear of spiders). Arachnophobia is arguably the most common phobia, as 50 percent of women in the United States and 10 percent of men in the United States suffer from it.

Less widespread phobias include arachibutyrophobia (fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth), geniophobia (fear of chins), cacophobia (fear of ugliness), and euphobia (fear of hearing good news).

Tattooed Lady. student establishes self-dignity

Stephen Oleszek looks like a typical University of North Florida senior.

He's an English major who wears Boston Red Sox jerseys and reads before going to class. But seeing him for the first time, it would be easy to overlook the fact that, unlike most UNF seniors, this one has a published book, "The Tattooed Lady."

Oleszek wrote "The Tattooed Lady" in three weeks during winter vacation last year. Though he said he didn't put as much into the story as he'd like to, PublishAmerica accepted the story for publication last June.

"It doesn't surprise me that he wrote [the book] as quickly as he did," said Russell Turney Jr., an English Department professor at UNF who first taught Oleszek in a college writing course four years ago. "If he decided to go through that wall, he'd put his head down and go through it."

"I think anything's really possible," Oleszek said.

"The Tattooed Lady" is a fictional book, however, many of the characters and events in the story are based on real people and real occurrences, Oleszek said. The main character, John Hennessy, is a rough depiction of Oleszek himself.

"We all have rough edges, mine are just a little rougher than most," he said. "That's why there's no real happy ending, no saintly character, no overall philosophy other than just keep your head up and 'keep stepping.'"

Though the book parallels Oleszek's life, he said the book really isn't about him, but more about keeping one's dignity, much like the tattooed lady herself.

The tattooed lady is a real person, said Oleszek. She's intimidating and hard to approach, however, she carries herself with dignity and grace. She knows who she is, and doesn't seem to care what other people think of her, Oleszek said.

Oleszek first encountered the tattooed lady when she was shopping at the grocery store where he worked when he was 17 years old.

Matthew Robinson, a senior management major at UNF and Oleszek's long time friend, worked at the same grocery store and found himself crossing paths with the tattooed lady as well.

Stereotypically you wouldn't expect a woman like her to have grace or elegance, Robinson said. But that's what Oleszek saw in her.

It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, Oleszek said. It's about the way you handle yourself and being true to who you are, and that's what the tattooed lady did. You could tell immediately she had a "rock star" quality, Oleszek said.

"There's something about that [rock star] quality that everyone needs to have," he said. "I think she knew who she was without anyone having to say so."

Two other people portrayed in the "Tattooed Lady" are Andrew Jones-Cathcart, once Oleszek's philosophy professor at UNF, and Robinson.

The characters in Oleszek's book are accurate, Robinson said. So accurate that a friend of Jones-Cathcart's was able to pick up on the depiction of his friend right away without anyone ever having to say anything to him.

"Stephen makes these characters complex," Turney said. "He's a complex person. He recognizes complexity in others."

The characters in Oleszek's book may be complex, but his message remains strong and simple.

Have dignity, Oleszek said.

"Keep on stepping no matter what happens to you," he said. "You have to be sure of who you are ... live your life the way you want."

Dating, sex affecting health in young people

Fewer teens are playing the dating game and more are doing things their parents didn't in relationships, according to several studies.

The number of teens who report not dating at all has risen from 28 percent in 1991 to 37 percent in 2004, according to data collected by Monitoring the Future, an ongoing study of American youth performed by University of Michigan personnel.

Conversely, Beginning Too Soon, a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on adolescent sexual behavior, states the proportion of people under 18 who are sexually active has substantially increased over the last few decades.

So why the disparity?

Sexologist Leonore Tiefer said in her book, "Sex is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays," that larger sociopolitical changes have wrought changes in the way individuals view interpersonal relationships - specifically, transforming a former economic necessity to an elective need for companionship.

As women have taken a more active role in the workforce over the past century and the salary gap has lessened, Tiefer said, relationships are formed less out of need and more for emotionally-driven reasons.

Dr. Adam Shapiro, chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of North Florida, agrees.

"What's replaced the economic incentive to marry is this romantic notion of love," he said. Shapiro added that as a result, dating is viewed less as "auditioning potential" for marriage and more as an activity for personal pleasure.

History of Dating

The earliest that dating began to resemble its current form was during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to "Intimate Relationships, Marriages and Families," a book by Mary Kay DeGenova and F. Philip Rice.

This is attributed to several factors, the most notable among them being the rise of public high schools in the late 1800s and the shift toward a greater role for women in the workplace after World War I.

The mid-20th century saw the end of World War II and the rise of the women's rights movement. The increased autonomy granted to women as a result meant they were no longer necessarily dependent upon men for financial support and inspired a shift in the perceived purpose of relationships, Shapiro said.

"[Dating singles today] all want to have the best friend and the lover," said Ashley Johnson, public relations director for Jacksonville dating service Great Expectations.

Evolution of Date Etiquette

The rules for dating have not simply changed, they may no longer exist, DeGenova and Rice said.

Today's society has discarded many formalized dating rules and has opted for more casual dating where many dates are arranged by mutual consent, women are increasingly assertive, attire is less formal and activities are less structured.

"In the middle and upper classes [in the 1950s], men knew the rules, and they always opened doors for women, helped them with their coats, walked them to and from their doors and remained well-mannered," said Dr. Harriet Howe, a sociology professor at UNF, who teaches a sexuality and marriage course. "They [men] did this to show their respect and concern for the women they were dating, not with the purpose of what they will get for it."

"I think the rules still apply to a select few, but having standards of how to treat girls is no longer the norm," said James McBride, a sophomore psychology major. "I think it starts with how you are raised ... it seems that in modern America how people are taught to respect members of the opposite sex has changed."

In a survey conducted by students at the Miami University of Ohio in 1999, a majority of students said they expect shared personal stories and a kiss goodbye on a first date.

Health Effects of Dating

The emotional effects of dating can be varied, according to findings from Monitoring the Future.

Dating leads to higher levels of self-esteem and autonomy in teenagers, and it is an important developmental marker for them, the study found. However, frequent dating can negatively affect academic achievement and motivation, and can lead to depression and parental conflicts, according to the data.

"A first date's level of stress and anxiety can be equal to that of a job interview," said Julie Merten, an instructor of public health at UNF.

DeGenova and Rice explain that changes in dating have led to people rushing to choose a partner and become intimate, so intimacy often happens too hastily.

Sexually transmitted diseases are a physical hazard of dating when casual sex is involved, Merten said. Chlamydia is the most widespread STD in the United States, with 929,462 cases reported in 2004, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Florida ranks fifth in the nation for Syphilis, with 4.3 people infected in every 100,000. A government-sponsored health promotion, Healthy People 2010, is striving to reduce STD rates in the United States in the next five years.

Dating and Sex

On average, a man's first marriage comes 10 years after his first sexual intercourse experience, while a woman's first marriage comes seven years after her first sexual intercourse experience, according to the report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

DeGenova and Rice attributed the most significant change in dating to the increase in opportunities for casual sex. "Hookups," defined as anything from kissing to intercourse without emotional involvement, have become a frequent part of the dating scene. DeGenova and Rice said 40 percent of women said they've had one hookup and 10 percent said they've participated in more than six.

"Sex isn't looked on as a means of procreation, but as recreation," Howe said. "[It] used to be a very wonderful and special thing, but today sex is for physical gratification, and people have the urge to merge."

The Health and Human Services study found that births to women under 20 occurred outside of marriage 71 percent of the time in 1992, up from 15 percent in 1960.

The study also found that of all pregnancies to women under the age of 20 in 1990, 84 percent of them were unintended.

"Now, it seems like there are no rules over sex and dating," said McBride. "It seems like casual sex happens all the time, and it is accepted by society."

Casual sex is a "no-strings-attached" type of relationship, which is an emotional hazard because attachments form, Merten said.

When one of the partners doesn't want the relationship to develop past sex, feelings of disappointment and rejection may result from the attachment.

"The body is made to form an attachment when people have sex, so people form a physiological attachment to that person by hormones such as oxytocins, the love hormone," Merten said.

Dating Today

With the number of teens reporting dating on the decline and increased sexual activity among the same group, some with a more traditional notion of relationships and their purpose are concerned that the trends may reflect an unhealthy mindset.

"My goal in dating is to find someone I can spend the rest of my life with," said Andrea Silvernale, a junior majoring in psychology. "When I date, I tend to look for someone who doesn't want a fling."

Local statistics suggest Silvernale may be in the minority. According to the Jacksonville Network for Strengthening Families, the divorce rate in Duval County is 72 percent and cohabitation is on the rise.

The numbers reflect the different reasons people are getting into relationships today, Shapiro said.

"We're becoming less rigid about how we view relationships," he said. "Today they're less in preparation for marriage and more for personal fulfillment."

Five stars for Five Guys

Peanut butter and jelly. Eggs and bacon. Burgers and fries. Some foods seem incomplete without their counterparts.

Juicy hamburgers and hot French fries are no exception.

At Five Guys Award-Winning Burgers and Fries, customers get both at reasonable prices, plus free peanuts that you shuck yourself.

The menu is simple: burgers, fries, frankfurters.

An easy choice is the Little Hamburger, which doesn't fit its name. It's really a decent-sized piece of meat that can be topped with the usual, like lettuce and tomato. But at Five Guys, toppings like fried onions, sautŽed mushrooms and jalapenos come free of charge, so go ahead and pile 'em on. If cheese is a necessity, order the Little Cheeseburger to satisfy that dairy craving.

Feeling brave? Order the Hamburger. Two big beef patties sandwiched between whatever toppings you wish.

What could be better? The Bacon Cheeseburger.

This one will probably fill you up for the rest of the day. If you demand your hamburger rare, you might want to try elsewhere. Five Guys cooks all its burgers right between medium well and well done.

If you prefer something a little lighter, Five Guys offers grilled vegetable or cheese sandwiches that are under $2.

The menu also includes kosher and bacon cheese frankfurters, available with the same tasty toppings as the burgers. However, it is hard to go to Five Guys and not get a burger.

After you figure out what type of sandwich or frankfurter to get, another big decision awaits: fries. Five Guys does not skimp on the sizes of its fries. The regular order easily feeds two. The Five Guys Style fries were tasty enough, but if you feel like spicing things up, get them Cajun-style.

Each day, an employee writes what city and state that day's potatoes came from. They make the fries in the restaurant, and the taste is noticeably pleasant.

Add a soda with free refills, grab a table in the red-and-white themed restaurant and wait for your number to get called. Meals come quickly in brown-paper bags, so taking out or dining in is a breeze.

Five Guys proudly displays its awards and distinctions around the restaurant.

Customers can write compliments on index cards and tack them up on corkboards placed on the walls.

This is one burger joint that got it right. The buns stay fresh, the patties stay juicy, the fries come hot and abundant and the dŽcor is simple.

Don't expect a fine dining experience at Five Guys. If a good meal at a reasonable price satisfies you, get your next lunch or dinner at Five Guys.

'Happyness' hard to come by

Hope can be cruel. It's that thing you still hang onto even after reason tells you the game is over. Having a little hope can be more wrenching than the simple act of giving up.

Hope is a vicious mistress to Chris Gardner. It's that one sale that can let him pay the rent; that one bus that he just missed for the job interview with a brokerage house; the one deal he is five minutes too late to make.

Hope keeps him going. But hope keeps putting banana peels on the stairs he tumbles down in "the pursuit of happiness."

Or in this case, "The Pursuit of Happyness." It's a poignant but relatively dry-eyed holiday weeper about a single dad (Will Smith) who always seems half a step away from success, even as his life spirals downward into homelessness.

A feel-good movie, you ask? Why, yes. But first you've got to feel miserable. And more miserable. By degrees. This movie lets its hero (a real person) take one step forward, always followed by two steps back. It's wrenching that way.

Chris is peddling a bulky, suitcase-portable bone-density scanner, doctor to doctor. He's sunk all the family money into these things. And virtually nobody wants one.

So his wife (Thandie Newton, angry, defeated, magnificent) leaves him. He won't let her take his son. He was 28 before he met his own father.

"My children were gonna know who their father was," he narrates.

He spots a man getting out of a sports car and finds out what the guy does for a living. You don't need a college degree to be a stock broker. You need to be "good with numbers and with people."

Chris is. But his timing is terrible.

If only he can make an appointment to apply for a Dean Witter internship. If only he can con the guy who hands out those internships into letting him take a cab ride with him.

If only he can solve the guy's new toy, a Rubik's Cube (this is set in 1981) and impress him. If only he can get away from the cabbie he can't afford to pay. If only the internship paid.

Christopher, his 5-year-old (Jaden Smith, Will's kid with Jada Pinkett Smith), can't quite figure out what dad is doing or why they keep sinking further and further into the abyss. Unpaid bills, eviction after eviction, stumbling through the subway with everything they own in a suitcase, Chris does not let on to his son that they've hit bottom. He barely lets himself see it.

Smith immerses himself in this part to a degree we haven't seen since "Ali." He can play personable in his sleep, but here, he gives us a man struggling to keep his desperation off his face. He cracks, but doesn't break, as he mixes with the white, more-affluent folks he so desperately needs to impress to succeed.

The movie's sense that luck has a lot to do with happiness is a little unnerving. Nobody here can see how close he is to the edge. But the audience can. And we feel it.

A great device Chris loses one of his scanners, and has several chases with assorted San Francisco street people for it. Director Gabriele Muccini, who wrote and directed the Italian version of "The Last Kiss," pays tribute to that Italian epic of the down-and-out, "Bicycle Thief," showing a proud man having to lie and skip out on his bills just to survive. He vividly brings the feel of 1980s America back.

The Reagan era was optimistic, full of entrepreneurial opportunity. But it was also the age when we perfected homelessness, as safety nets disappeared for people on the margin, and Americans learned, from their leaders, to just ignore the man asleep on the sidewalk.

The learning curve Chris goes through, and passes on to his son, reaches for maudlin but never quite gets there. The narration ("This part of my life is called 'internship.'") is cloying and unnecessary.

But for anybody who's ever been at the bottom, or feared they were headed there, it's a reminder that there's no guarantee of luck or happiness in the Declaration of Independence just the right to pursue it.

Oddball Antics

THERE THEY ARE, OFFICER, THAT'S THEM!
Two thugs forced a man out of his car in Decatur, Ill., told him to "get out of the hood," then fled. A short time later, while the victim was speaking to the police about the incident, the bandits drove by and threateningly honked the horn at him. They were arrested.

SO, WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU?
Two tourists were having sexual relations in the luxury Parador de Toledo Hotel in Toledo, Spain, when the bed on which they had been cavorting fell through the floor and crashed down into the room below. They were hospitalized.

AND WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT?!
A few months ago, a white buffalo was born on a farm in Janesville, Wisc., an event so rare that it was compared to the remote chance people have of being struck by lightning. Well recently, the buffalo was struck by lightning.

OH, HI HONEY; WHAT A SURPRISE! MY STOMACH? OK, FUNNY STORY
A convicted burglar escaped from Castle Huntly Prison in Dundee, Scotland, and immediately went to visit his girlfriend. When he arrived at her home, he discovered that she was four months pregnant. Alas, he had been in jail for six months. After doing the math, he became so distraught that he called the prison and asked to be locked up again.

HELLO, BOSS? YEAH, LISTEN, I'VE GOT A PROBLEM HERE
Managers were asked, in a nationwide survey, about the most unusual excuses employees gave for missing work. Some examples: My mother-in-law poisoned me; I blew my nose so hard, my back went out; I had to get my mother out of jail; I was too sad to come to work.

WHERE DID I GET THIS? UH, IT WAS A GIFT ... NO, UH ... I DON'T REMEMBER
A prisoner out on weekend furlough from jail in Serbia broke into a home in Sremska Mitrovica and stole jewelry and other items. He didn't know the home he burgled was that of the warden until he returned to the prison and the warden noticed that the convict was wearing his watch.

HOW MUCH MORE EVIDENCE DO YOU NEED, MA'AM?
A woman crashed her car into an optician's shop in Temple, Texas. She had come there to have her eyes examined.

DUDE, I NEED A BREAK ... WHEW, THAT'S BETTER
Police were chasing a man who fled on foot after stealing a car in Bridgeport, Conn., when he scaled a fence, and then, to their amazement, stopped to smoke some crack cocaine. They apprehended him.

WE ARE HOLY MEN ... KA-BLAM!
A gang of 50 con artists in Chengdu, China, shaved their heads and donned robes to impersonate monks and cheat the local villagers by selling them shoddy goods. After the victims complained, the conmen engaged in un-monklike behavior by attacking a TV news crew that came to film them and engaging in gunplay with policemen who came to investigate.

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