Dear My Future Children: Here's the Talk You'll Get About Drugs

Hey kids! Greetings from the past--the probably distant past. There's been a lot of talk lately among the other grownups at work about lying to their kids. Probably since it was recently the holidays and you know how people get all tore up about the ethics of Elf on the Shelf. Anyway, the conversation always wanders over into drugs and alcohol territory, and what they'll tell their kids when they ask what their parents did. And that's when your old ma gets to put on her smug face--a face you know well!

You see, your mom is thrilled that she finally has an advantage to being a turbo dorkasaurus all those years. I can still have the moral high ground and never have to worry about lying to you at all.

Stop Being Horrible Jerks to The Transphobic Girl Scout

Dear Grownups of The Internet, such as you are: you're driving me crazy over a 14-year old girl. Because I agree with you but you are going about this the completely wrong way.

A pretty horrible video went viral a few days ago, but the thing has legs and it just won't stop. The message is undeniably awful. Taylor doesn't like that GSUSA includes trans girls. She argues that it creates a safety hazard, which is horrifying, because the only safety hazard I can see is the personal safety of trans girls among people who think the things in the video. She laments the death of "a place to be yourself and who you are, and not something you are not," which, ironically, is exactly the environment being created by letting both cis and transgendered children be what they are. She clearly doesn't understand that a trans girl IS A GIRL. Her video was co-opted by HonestGirlScouts.com, a bunch of horrible adults for whom the trans issue is tangential to their larger goal of hating Planned Parenthood and the UN(?) but, you make your bigoted hay while the sun shines, right? She calls for a boycott of Girl Scout Cookies to protest equality and inclusion, thus ensuring that cookie sales this year will be gangbusters in counter-protest. Every Girl Scout I see will be selling me as many boxes as all the money in my wallet will buy.

The reactions are shrill: Jezebel calling her "Stepford-esque." Gawker being, well, Gawker. But even Elephant Journal got snarky! The video is private now, presumably because of all the vitriol she suddenly found flying in her direction--surprise! All appropriate reactions if this were, say, an old lady ranting at a Tea Party rally that Obama wants to force everyone to have abortions so he can sell the stem cells to China.

But she is a child.

Yogadventures: Check Your Self Before You Wreck Yourself

Yoga is now popular enough that there's a backlash. Hooray! (Remember how fun that was with agave nectar two summers ago?). The New York Times Magazine, home of such hits as: "Do Female Comedians Mean The End Of Manners?" and "You're Still Single Because You Aren't Worried Enough About Falling Down," is terrified that The Yoga Will Kill You. You will die in downward dog!

A recent article, "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body" focuses on the risks of bending and twisting, and injuries that can come from yoga. Hip replacements! Fractured ribs! Strokes! And, yes, it is all very scary. Even I clicked on it because obviously if I'm doing something that's going to kill me, I want to know about it. I might decide to go ahead and roll the dice on it, but hey, informed consent and all that.

Scary headline aside, the gist of the article is that doing yoga WRONG can harm you:

In one case, a male college student, after more than a year of doing yoga, decided to intensify his practice. He would sit upright on his heels in a kneeling position known as vajrasana for hours a day, chanting for world peace. Soon he was experiencing difficulty walking, running and climbing stairs. 

Hours! Of course he hurt himself. There are also examples of people straining necks and backs by "throwing themselves into twists." What!