Shayne at No, not you (h/t) has this counterpart checklist that gives a darkly humorous look at the advice and warnings ought to get a little more of our focus:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1.   Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2.   When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3.   If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault  them!

4.   NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5.   If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6.   Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7.   USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8.   Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9.   Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

In the meantime, here are two things for you. One, you can follow me on Twitter if you like. I post my little snippets there. Two, here’s a dump of some old saved links. This is what all was on my mind when blogging began to recede from my mind. Enjoy.

• Hitchens versus the Christians video
• Pot versus alcohol
• “That’s why they call it Plan B, asshole.”
• “Cop chastises 911 caller for potty mouth, hangs up on her, then arrests her”
• The Shape of a Mother
• “Mad Pride” and refusing to take mental health medication
• Is Oprah anti-sex?
• Parents who are keeping their child’s gender a secret

I once imagined a system where people would kind of “adopt” a post-prison person into their home, offering them stable emotional support, financial support, and information resources for looking for jobs and making new connections. I’ve learned that some people actually do this. Not surprisingly, their neighbors often strongly object to this practice. Here’s a story about one family who took in a former criminal and are now facing threats from their neighbors.

I have such a hard time with the idea that once someone has done something - even something horrible - we must write them off forever. If we aren’t willing to offer a little support - even the basic “support” of just leaving them alone - should we really be all that surprised that post-prison people return to their pre-prison behaviors? If someone is unable to live anywhere and unable to earn money legally, they’re not left a lot of options, are they?

Why “can’t” the child play the harmonica in a restaurant? The general reason is something about politeness and “acceptable” or “appropriate” public behavior. Who decides these rules, though? Where are they written? How many people actually agree with them? There’s a huge body of information that relates to what you’re supposed to do or not do in public, but there’s no oversight for these rules and it can be hard to examine them or change them.

Now, I can imagine that some people would be annoyed by a child playing a harmonica in public. How will you know  whether those people are even present? I wanted to hear the  harmonica. What if the other 18 people in the restaurant did, too, or at least didn’t really care one way or the other? What if this child was squelched for a reason that didn’t really exist? Assuming that you care about the opinions of others on this matter at all, do you have to choose between possibly bothering some people and possibly controlling the kid for no good reason? Is there another option that makes room for something other than automatically following the unspoken rules?

The other 18 of us were sitting at 6 tables, which isn’t so many. What if the kid went around and asked us if we minded if he played his harmonica? If we all said no, he could happily play without his adult companion stressing out. If some of us said that yes, we minded, he could not play, and his adult person could be confident that her desire for him to stop playing related to the actual preferences of the other people present.

To me, this seems like a great solution. However, I can imagine some of the objections. One, people might not be willing to tell a child that they don’t want him to play. And two, people might not want to be bothered by a question about something that “everyone knows” you shouldn’t do in public. I scoff at both of these suggestions. Number one says that people aren’t capable of being honest toward a simple question about their preferences. That sounds like their problem! And number two means that people expect other people to be psychic, constantly alert to any aspect of their behavior that might upset anyone else. What a ridiculous expectation to have of the people around you!

I would prefer to take the solution a step further. Rather than be prohibited from an activity that his adult  guessed might be annoying to someone present, and rather than ask permission for his potentially annoying behavior, I think the kid should just play away. If someone is annoyed, I’d rather the responsibility fell to them to either suck it up or to ask the child to stop, and then attempt to negotiate a resolution.

People generally doing what they want and straightforwardly speaking up about their preferences sounds to me like a much better way of going about things than all of us running around trying to remember at all times the immense list of possible irritants to other people.

Doesn’t that sound like a better idea to you?

PS - The child in question just hopped up to stand on his seat, and the adult in question leaned over and hissed, “Christians sit!” A few more issues going on there than whether or not the kid can play his harmonica in public, huh?

The Western Diet

While Americans may not think of themselves as having a specific cuisine, there are themes playing out in our diets, nonetheless. Probably the simplest description comes in the alternate name for the Western diet - the “meat-sweet diet”.

What characterizes the typical American diet? I’m sure you’ll recognize the items on this list:

• Red meat
• Refined sugar desserts
• High fat content
• Refined grains
• High-fat dairy items
• High-sugar drinks

Besides these specifics, we’re also quite at home with foods known as “fast”, “pre-packaged”, or “convenience”.

Western Diseases

There’s another set of bullet points that go along with living in a “developed” country. That’s the collection of health problems that have come to be known as Western diseases or diseases of civilization. These are also all too familiar to many of us:

• Acne
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Asthma
• Cancer
• Cirrhosis
• Depression
• Type 2 diabetes
• Heart disease
• Osteoporosis
• Stroke

Some of these are related simply to living longer. Some, such as asthma and allergies, may be related to larger environmental factors. Some diseases of civilization, though, notably breast cancer, prostate cancer, coronary heart disease, colon cancer, and type 2 diabetes are thought to relate significantly to our diet.

My Diet

My personal diet is very American. I eat a lot of fast food, pizza, fried foods, etc. Even when I eat “healthy” foods, they are often pre-packaged convenience foods. I eat a lot of cheese. I eat few fruits and vegetables.

Most alarming, perhaps, is my absolute devotion to Coca-Cola. I read recently that the American average is to get about 115 calories a day from soda. My thought when I read that was, “Wow. Only 115?!” I have at least one soda a day. Two or three wouldn’t be unusal. Sometimes I have more than five.

I also like to eat out in restaurants. When you look at dietary guidelines, average daily calories are often listed at around 2000 calories a day. However, what seems like a “normal” meal in a restaurant can easily top 1500 calories. Add a soda and a salad or half an appetizer, and you’ve knocked out your daily calorie allotment in one meal.

Eat Food

Michael Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, two books that take a stark look at the food mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. When figuring out what to eat he offers this advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. He calls most of what’s available in our supermarkets foodlike substances. They may have started out as food parts, but then we process it beyond recognition into profitable, unhealthy items. He has several suggestions for how to determine whether something should qualify as food. Here are the ones I’m going to utilize over the next week.

1. Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. If it’s been invented in modern America, chances are, it’s not food. I like to picture Ma Ingalls for this one. If they wouldn’t recognize it in the Little House, I’m going to stay away from it.
2. Avoid food products carrying health claims. You’ll even find health claims on your potato chips these days, which is a good enough reason to be suspicious of the whole practice. And when’s the last time you saw a health claim on an orange? There may be some exceptions - oatmeal comes to mind - but staying away from packaging in general, and packaging that’s trying to “sell” me in specific, is a wise idea.
3. Avoid food products that contain unfamiliar or unpronounceable ingredients.This is one that I’m excited to implement. The list of ingredients in many food products reminds me of the list of ingredients in shampoo - chemicals and additives that don’t make sense to me. I’ll be happy to get rid of them.

Check out this article for more on Pollan’s eating suggestions and an overview of In Defense of Food. I’m going to eat solely food for a week and then evaluate my thoughts about the matter again. I can only guess that this practice will be extremely good for me.

It was a little jet - only three seats across. As we began to decrease altitude, we began a very bumpy descent. We had greater turbulence for a longer period of time than I’ve ever experienced. Once, there was enough of a bump that our butts left our seats momentarily.

At that point, I was getting really alarmed. Shortly after that, our plan made a sharp dip and turn. I had the thought, “You shouldn’t do that without warning me!” which is silly, of course. Clearly the pilots had much better things to do than alert me to their every move.

As we settled nearer to Roswell, the bumps kept up. This was alarming. Usually, by the time you’re landing, it’s a smoother ride. I didn’t understand why we were so close to the ground and still being tossed around.

Joshua got really excited and wanted me to look out the window.  I was white-knuckled with my eyes closed, though, and wouldn’t look. I’m glad I didn’t because apparently we had a huge crosswind and were coming in sideways right before straightening out at the last moment before touching down.

One thing I pondered after this situation was why I was afraid in the first place. I’ve flown on commercial airplanes a lot throughout my life. Not as much as a business traveler, but I’d guess I’ve been on at least 100 planes. All of those have landed safely. I’ve never know anyone else who was on a plane that crashed. Intellectually, I understand that there are about 30,000 commercial flights per day in the US, and they land all land safely, with extremely few exceptions. Where do I even get the idea that there’s a possibility of crashing?

The answer to that is the media, of course. I may have flown on 100 airplanes, but on television and in movies, I’ve seen multiple times that number crash and burn. In fact, almost every time there’s a plane in a show or movie that behaves the way this Roswell flight did, a disaster is imminent. And there may be 30,000 flights a day, but I never hear about those. I only hear about the crashes, and when I do, I hear a lot about them.

The second thing I pondered was what purpose my fear could serve me. The short answer is an emphatic “none”. The plane is either going to land or it isn’t, but there’s absolutely nothing I  can do about that in the moment. My fear served no purpose at all except to leave me jittery and tired. Emotional responses are my brain talking to me, but I’ve got the ability to talk back.  On the return flight out of Roswell, it was again a bumpy ride. I simply refused to be afraid. This is a fear that doesn’t serve me well and adds nothing to my life. Now that I’ve had the chance to experience it and think about it, it won’t bother me again.

I am fascinated by the presence of wildness in the city.

Three stories.

There are still wolves here now and then. A few months ago, I was about to pull into the driveway of work, which was in the Old Ivy section of Buckhead. There was a…dog?…in the road, which I slowed down to look at and not hit. I’d never seen a coyote or a wolf outside of pictures that I didn’t look that close at. I had an encounter in the woods once with an animal coming at me that I initially thought was a wolf, but turned out to be some overly friendly Alaskan-type dog. This animal was standing still, looking completely non-threatening, just looking around. I stared at it in complete awe, for some reason absolutely sure that I was looking at a wolf. I don’t know why I was sure. It wasn’t that big and could have been a dog or a coyote. But, however, I knew that it was something else. I just looked. It wandered off. I went to work, not sure how to shake the odd feeling of having just seen a wolf in a residential neighborhood. I didn’t see it again, but a few days later there was a newspaper article about it and another wolf spotted in the neighborhood, including a picture. Although the article stated that they weren’t really any risk to people, I’m sure “they” were called in to “deal” with the animals.

A few years ago, I was at a party at an apartment complex in Dunwoody off of Roswell Rd. Several of us were out on the porch, which had a view of “woods” where you could see more apartments through the trees. A friend of mine started counting on his fingers–”One beer, two beers, um, guys? Look over there…” We all turned to see a bear wandering out of the trees. Dunwoody. A bear. It was a light colored (honey?) bear. It was young, about 200 pounds. Preston and I, being who we are, hopped over the railing of the porch and walked over to greet it. We figured if there was a Momma nearby too, we’d hear her coming. We got close enough to stand and breathe and be in awe of this vision, and then the bear wandered back into the trees. Again, we saw an article a few days later, saying it had been picked up and dropped off in the mountains.

And a fox gave me a rare chance to actually act on a belief. I was living with my mom in Lilburn. When I first moved in, my mom stressed about her birds. She had an elaborate set-up in her backyard to attract and feed lots of birds. I brought two cats with me, who were outdoor cats. My cats absolutely loved stalking, torturing, and sometimes eating the birds. My mom felt like she was doing something wrong by “luring” birds to the yard to be entertainment and food for the cats. I told her that this wasn’t a dilemma at all. It’s good to feed birds. It’s good for birds to feed cats. All was as it should be. She reluctantly agreed, as she didn’t have any emotional connection with particular birds, and the cats didn’t really catch that many anyway. A while later, we got a notice that there was a fox in the neighborhood, which had killed a couple of cats. Everyone was supposed to keep their cats and small dogs inside until “they” could “get” the fox. My mom gave me this notice and said I could keep the cats in the basement. No. I explained the process again. If she feeds the birds, and the birds feed the cats, and the cats feed the fox, this is not only acceptable, it’s wonderful and exactly right.

• Private space, public space, and finding a place to pee.
• From media images, you might think there’s a narrow field of “normal” for women’s breasts. This website delves deeper, with a huge collection of normal breasts presented non-sexually - you can see a wide spectrum of normal. (h/t)
• Is there a statutory rape double standard?
• A strange ad campaign trying to make non-smoking sexy.
• Sign of the times? A report from April that 1500 farmers committed mass suicide in India due to economic distress.

“Gossip” is a hot button word that I hear you are supposed to dislike. If someone accuses you of gossiping, you are supposed to gasp and say “No, I wasn’t!” as if they were accusing you of killing your dog.

Just for the record, before I go any further–I was. That’s right. I was gossiping. I do it all the time. If you know me, I talk about you to someone. I do not keep my impressions of you or any of your words or actions bottled up inside me. If I think you’re interesting, on any level, I talk about you. Since most of you are so interesting, chances are I talk about you a lot.
Also for the record, and I’ll cover this more later–I fully expect you to gossip about me, too. Really. It’s okay.

www.m-w.com has a couple of definitions for gossip. The one that is closest to what I’m talking about is “rumor or report of an intimate nature” or “a chatty talk”.

I believe gossip to not only be “not bad” but to actually be good–a valuable, vital component to a community. Gossip disperses information, reveals secrets and patterns, and generally brings everything to the surface. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I can think of several cases where gossip has positively impacted my life, or cases where *more* gossip would have been beneficial.

• Hearing what one acquaintance said “behind my back” helped me realize that people can’t really know me if they only see me at parties. This started a whole new focus of mine to reach out to people for more regular, casual contact.
• Hearing what another friend said “behind my back” showed me a conflict between what I felt about her and how I actually came across. I was able to approach her and be more clear about my feelings.
• Gossip can serve to keep people safer from dishonest individuals, such as people who are not upfront about STDs.
• I have seen on more than one occasion a situation that wouldn’t have become so out of hand if people were gossiping more. Gossip is the antidote to manipulative people.
• I know of situations where gossip could have saved some heartache. If you know that he uses these same lines on every girl…

Gossip of the bitching and ranting variety lets off steam that might otherwise be damaging. If I can say to a close friend, “So-and-so is a fuckface asshole moron and I hate him”, then when I actually talk to the person I can say, “Look, I was hurt when you did this, what can we do about it?” Without the opportunity to vent, the conversation goes much differently. “You’re a fuckface asshole moron” doesn’t lead to apologies.

People who are honest and true to themselves have nothing to fear from gossip. If you’re doing things that you’re ashamed or embarrassed of or if you have things to hide, you should examine *that* rather than attempting to control gossip. A life lived openly and with integrity doesn’t keep you from gossip–people will always talk, as they should–but it makes gossip about you just information instead of something that can damage your life.

As for me, you have my blessing to gossip away. I hope I’m doing interesting enough things that there’s something there to talk about. Talk to me, if you want, because it can’t hurt me to hear what others think of me. If you’re upset at me, I prefer it if you gossip first to the people close to you. Then you don’t have to call me a fuckface to my face. And if I later hear through the grapevine that you said yucky things behind my back, I can assess that objectively. Maybe I’ll think, “Wow, she was really pissed!” Or maybe I’ll think, “Yeah, I was really being a fuckface.”