Category Archives: Twitter

Diving into Safety Head-First

We have helmet laws here in British Columbia. Even if we didn’t, I’d be wearing mine.
One saved my life. And still I’m different than I used to be.
When I saw this article come up on Twitter, I got pretty choked about it. I started thinking of the friends I’ve seen riding without a helmet — whether for a block or in the thick of city traffic with bad weather — and I found myself clenching my teeth in frustration.
Head injuries are horrible.
They change you forever.
They affect you emotionally, spiritually, physically.
And I’ve had far too much personal experience with head injuries to let the topic of helmets disappear easily into the cybernight without some commentary.
My personal experience, with just people my age?
Well, personally, I almost died. Had I not been wearing a helmet, I would have died when I somersaulted off my scooter and hit the pavement at Columbia and 2nd back on August 29th, 2004.
I spent the next year trying to get back to who I was while I laboured without a diagnosis on my head (because judgment is the first thing to go; you can’t be objective about yourself and you don’t think about the reasoning behind why you’re such a “fuck up” now; it becomes a self-esteem and time/skill-management thing when it should really be a head-injury thing).
I changed as an employee — it cost me my job security and made me first on chopping block when needed lay-offs came rolling around. (We didn’t know then that it was my brain-bouncing that was the cause of my production getting slower and less sharp.)
That started two years of job insecurity as I hopped around the employment world, learning that I couldn’t handle stress like I used to anymore, and realizing I couldn’t learn new skills or organize as well as I once could.
Experience 2 with head injuries is my brother. Hit by a Chevy Suburban, he spent 5 days in a coma in late 2005 and has never been the same person since. He takes longer to understand things, has a hard time processing his emotions, is more inclined to depression, and it’s all a result of the severe head injury he took — since he had another one within 6 months of the first.
Experience 3 with head injuries was a beloved old friend, in 2008, just 34 years old, who was out adventuring with friends just 9 days after the birth of his little baby girl. His ATV tipped, crushing his head on rocks, and leaving him washing down the fast river, where he drowned and died — orphaning that beautiful baby girl in her first two weeks of life.
Yes, head injuries are bad.
So, when I see brilliant, fantastic friends hopping on their bikes in their almost-hipsterness, cruising around town without their helmets, it fucking kills me.
Know what a head injury feels like?
Take equal parts of STUPID, ANGRY, and CONFUSED, throw them into a martini shaker and mix liberally with IMPULSE CONTROL ISSUES and BAD JUDGMENT and you’ll have the start of what you’re after.
Now, take that horrible mood cocktail and spread it over your days — 24/7, 365.
I spent a year at a loss about what I felt, what I needed, where I wanted to go, how to get there. I’m lucky, I’m a writer, and somehow through the act of writing EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year, I managed to get my brain to finally start firing again.
I don’t even remember ANY of the first 6 months except a Pocky Incident and being unhappy about a hamburger while watching World Cup Hockey.
I’ve never been as good at learning things as I used to be, I need more guidance and have more questions, but I’m smarter than the average person so I get it together sooner or later on new tasks, but only after a lot of frustration.
I’m still smart as hell, no doubt, but I forget large chunks of my life.
Large chunks.
And my mother’s dead.
And some of the chunks are of her. When death rolls around with your loved ones, memories are all you’ve got left, and your head is all you got to protect that with.
It kills me, you know. Just kills me.
When you’re a writer, your memory is your most valuable tool. I’ve lost a lot of mine. My years are a hazy blur when they used to have crystal clarity to them.
I have to live the rest of my life with the very real knowledge that head injuries are like a good savings plan — they compound infinitely.
Every time I hit my head, I run the risk of making myself less of who I was.
Every time my noggin bumps a doorframe or something, a shock of fear runs through me.
You parents failing to put helmets on your kids, I’d be all right with calling that child abuse, given what I know has changed in my life from my head injury.
Protect your children. It’s your job. It’s the law.
I can’t tell you how much I wish I could have that day I almost died back. How much I could undo the stupidity that led me to thinking I should be on my scooter that morning.
I just can’t tell you.
Most people who know  me would never think I’d had a head injury. I’ve got razor-sharp wit, keen conversational abilities, and I’m sly as the day is long.
But they’d be wrong. I’m different. Just in little ways I can work around.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t anger me still that I’m different now.
I used to test at Mensa levels on IQ tests, you know. Between 145 and 170, depending on the day, over the years. “Smart” is a commodity one can’t afford to trade on, not via head injuries or anything else.
Really, it’s not that the head injury takes you out of the game — because it doesn’t. That’s kinda part of the problem — you become the “walking wounded” afterwards.
You go through life okay enough — you look fine, everyone thinks you can do your job, they think you’re as normal as can be. But because you’re rendered some lesser part of yourself as a result of the changes, you’re not even aware of how much you’ve changed — you’re in a fog, a daze, so you can’t say “Hey, something’s off here.”
And because you’re not defending or explaining yourself, those around you think you’re just in some depressive funk and that you need to “shake it off.”
But you can’t.
You hit your brain and you have a boo-boo that can’t be bandaged, doesn’t get air, never sees the sun, and can’t be displayed to others. You’ve seen how long a bruise on your leg takes to heal? What about if it’s under a skull, and all the bruised areas affect how synapses and thoughts and neuro-body-controls occur?
It was two years after my head injury that I finally realized how much I had changed, and only because I was seeing the same stuff happening to my brother with his head damage. A strangely consistent downward spiral in his life mirrored the one that had been happening to me.
Finally, I went to see a shrink I’d been to in the past, who’d had muchos experience in head injuries, and I learned what was going on inside was all part of the healing journey a head injury victim usually takes.
I had a helmet on and I’ve luckily lived to tell my story, even though I’m changed and will probably always have to live with the legacy of that day in small ways.
In fact, everyone I’ve written about here today was wearing a helmet, and yet, look at our stories.
Put your fucking helmet on.
Get over your haircut. Get over yourself.
If not for your own life and the hell it will likely be if you survive a head injury and have to live with it for the remainder of your life, then at least wear it so my fucking tax dollars can go somewhere more intelligent than dealing with your dumb-ass negligence.
Please.

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Think you might’ve had a head injury and wonder what the indicators are? Check here. The New York Times has a good cheat-sheet HERE on what to do or look for after a head injury has first been suffered — please read it NOW, not when you need it. Remember how quickly Natasha Richardson died from a ski fall? Yeah. Know your shit.

An Open Letter to Our Planet

Dear Mother Earth:
I’m not an environmentalist, I never have been. I’ve never donated to Greenpeace, probably never will. I’ve never protested on your behalf.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.
I’ve not been religious since my childhood, but I have no doubt there’s something bigger than me — all I need do is find myself under a towering West Coast evergreen or sitting by the ever-flowing river, pulling a Siddhartha on the shores.
And that thing bigger than me is you, Mother Earth.
You’re everything. You shape my every day.
In recent months, I’ve had to further reevaluate my actions in life.
I’ve always been aware of the peril you teetered on the brink of, Mother, since the rainforests began coming down in Brazil in the ’80s, but seeing how close you are now to the precipice of no environmental return breaks my heart and makes me wish I’d been more vocal earlier.
There’s not a lot I can do for you.
I’m but one small voice in the fray.
Yet I can educate the others, and hope they join me in the small actions I know can build into a giant movement, but only if we all act together.
As I write, an island of garbage is growing in the Pacific. Halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii lies a manmade island of floating garbage now considerably larger than the entire state of Texas. Diapers, plastic, toothbrushes, and garbage of all kinds have floated into formation and now sit there, clogging the Pacific, as an homage to the incredible crassness of man.
And deep down in the Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon keeps spewing oil at a rate no one can agree upon, decimating the fastest-disappearing environment on the planet, the wetlands of Louisiana’s Gulf.
Anger has built around the world, with words of rage being flung at British Petroleum and the lagging actions of the Obama Administration, but were it not for the demand we’ve caused, the insatiable hunger we’ve shown for all things plastic and cars that go vroom, we would not be in this position.
We have the mentality, Mother, that if we didn’t put that piece of plastic in the Pacific with our own two hands, or if we didn’t perform the negligence that caused Deepwater Horizon to blow and kill 11 men before decimating shores and industry, that we’re just innocent bystanders in the eye of an environmental storm.
But we’re wrong, Mother.
It’s our fault.
We drop the garbage that eventually slips down storm drains and flows into the ocean.
We buy the senseless “bottled water” and purchased drinks that are made from aluminum and plastic — materials that can’t be made without petroleum.
We drive the three-minute trip to the store instead of walking for 10 minutes.
We do it.
It’s our fault.
I’m trying to do my part, though, Mother. I look at the bottom of plastics and glass before I buy products to ensure they’re recyclable in my area.* If not, I try to choose better or live without, if I can.
I’m trying to use my words, my ability to communicate, to inspire others to care, to help others see the horrible direction we’re headed in, and to teach others that you, Mom, deserve our very best.
And you haven’t been getting it.
It’s our fault, Mother.
We know not what we do to you, but you do. You know, and now you’re starting to show us. Oh, are you showing us.
It’s not too late.
But soon it will be.
We have the opportunity to learn, to change, and to take this planet in a new direction. We’re more creative, connected, motivated, educated, and empowered than we’ve ever been as a society, and if we’ve ever had the opportunity to undo all the harm we’ve done, that time is now.
I, for one, know I can continue to improve.
I can do better, waste less, think more.
I will do better. I will waste less. I will think, do, and say, more.
It’s not too late at all, Mother.
But soon it will be.
With hopefully undying love,
Your Daughter, Steff
*My home trash collecting will allow for recycled products in class 1 & 2. There are 7  grades of plastic, and just because it shows “recyclable” doesn’t mean it actually *IS* recycled in your part of the world. Here’s a quick reference of how to recycle and what works: Click here. In short? Really only classes 1 & 2 can be recycled; everything ELSE you should reconsider purchasing.
WANT TO FIGHT THE GARBAGE PATCH? Join here and see what you can do. Stay engaged via following PlasticPollutes on Twitter. WANT TO WEIGH IN ON THE OIL SPILL? Probably the best way to stay involved is via the TED Oilspill expedition’s work right now: http://tedxoilspill.com/ Look into opportunities to do shore “clean-ups” in your area — every piece you pick up is one less that can harm the ocean and its inhabitants. I’ve just organized one in my city for July 18th, at a more “neglected” and less-visited beach. You can organize one, too — or just go as a family or with friends. It’s not ‘weird’ to help save the planet. Not anymore.

The New Post-Relationship World

There’s a couple that have been long prominent in Vancouver’s web community, and last night came the heart-breaking news that they’re ending their marriage.
How did the news reach us all?
They both changed their Facebook relationship status to “…from married to single” within moments of each other, and with one simple “Yes, it means what you think it means”, the cat was out of the bag and their entire friend/peer community knew.
Gone is the era in which they’d have to have uncomfortable dinners or stilted conversations with one friend after another after another, gently breaking the news that their friends are gonna take hard, making them feel even shittier for having a marriage fall apart.
Now, boom, everyone knows. Just like that.
It’s terrible, in a way, the idea we can all receive so quickly and casually such perspective-shifting news affecting people who have genuinely touched most of our lives.
There’s something disjointed about reading one small system-generated line of “X has changed their relationship status from married to single” among a newstream filled with political news and shared videos of a cat dancing.
These “small” tidbits about our changing lives float in “newsfeeds” now, as if they’re just another piece of fascinating trivia we’re supposed to digest while we absently surf the web in sneaky moments on the job, or distractedly click through those social sites where we just vicariously absorb the coolness of others’ lives.
Facebook isn’t just a revolving door of meaningless status changes. It really is a way to keep us all connected.
In all the nauseous sadness that came with the suspicion that, yes, those two relationship status updates really did mean what they looked to mean, I thought “Thank god they can tell everyone so easily now.”
Dissolving a marriage? Oh, my god. I can’t imagine the shattered illusions and sadness that comes from having to admit it’s over, the horror and fear that comes from making the first step to end the possibility of all those dreams you once made together, the feeling of perverse betrayal and anxiousness at telling friends and families the union is over.
It’s unquestionably going to be one of the worst weeks in the lives of both of those people. And here, bang, pow, all of a sudden they have everyone in the know, offering support, and just saying, “We’re so sorry, we understand, we’re here.”
As if any message could mean more to either of them today.
Say what you will about the flash coolness of the internet and how detached it makes us from each other — always plugged in via vicarious tidbits, thus able to stay comfortably at arms’ length while we busily carry on with our modern mad lives — but there are times like these the internet is like a lifeline thrown to troubled souls.
Never has it been easier to rally the support of those who love you, or to just put a desperate plea for understanding, help, or time out to those best able to deliver.
As a society, we need to learn to share more with each other, to use each other as crutches through hard times, and we have to learn how to react when our friends express themselves.
I’m sad for my peers today, for what they’ve lost, and for what I know they face in the coming year as they try to re-find their place in their newly-single worlds, but I’m very glad their choice of being plugged into an online community (that has really strong roots in real life, locally, too) will get them through this time with support and love.
That’s the power of the internet — it holds the ability to unite us, inform us, and keep us tuned into every passing minute… not just globally, but interpersonally.
It’s a good power. A life-changing, life-saving power.
Yes, I’m sad for my friends today, but I’m proud of them for having the courage to know when it’s time to change things. What a difficult, but important step. I’m happy to know they have friends who swear they’ll be there, I’m glad to know they have a place to ask for help.
It’s a strange new world, friends.

The Fear of Moving On



One of my guiltiest pleasures is my addiction to the CBS series The Mentalist. I’ve had a girlie crush on Simon Baker for 20 years, and there’s something about a smart, cynical, fun-loving, light-hearted genius crimesolver that taps into my childhood passion for Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys. (We’ll get you yet, Bugs Meany.)
And you thought you knew me.
Somewhere deep in the caverns of my dust-ridden closet sits a box of past-life mementos that may, in fact, hold the “Police Kid” ID cards and badges my brother and I made when we were 7 & 9, in an effort to keep the order in our very boring white little verge-of-’80s suburban ‘hood.
Ahh, me in my seven-year-old lisp: “Thtop, sthpeeding car!”
If I was a detective, I’d totally be a chill, happy, funny brainiac like Patrick Jane, not a coke-addled-and-moody one like Sherlock Holmes.
So, this morning I found myself wrapped in thought as my TiVoed episode closed out. Backstory? Baker’s character “Jane” turned to crime-solving after his wife and daughter were killed. This week is the first time they’ve opened the possibility of him moving on after his wife, when he finally feels the nebulous sparks of chemistry for a mysterious smart chick involved in the crime-solving.
Oh, how dramatic! That’d make an excellent TV show, huh? I know, it’s cliché. But I can’t be smart all the time, dude.
Naturally, the episode got me thinking about the idea of “moving on” in general.
Me, I’ve had me a little of that this month. In fact, my entire last 6 weeks has been nothing but movin’ on.
I’m never going to be able to make you or anyone understand how 2006 affected me, and on so many levels. God knows I’ll try.
To go from just being some chick trying to figure shit out to being a loudly lauded new sex-blogging voice and getting so much attention was the most surreal thing ever. And I was not my own woman. I was not strong enough to have the sense of self one needs when people start latching onto you for guru-like input into their lives.
It was fucking weird. I can’t possibly tell you. I’m totally fucked up, and you’re turning to me for insight? Yo, WTF?
Walking away when the shit got weird was the only thing I could do. The landscape of my life was more explosive than a wartime minefield. A girl makes her choices, a girl keeps on keepin’ on. That’s what to do when the going gets weird.
When the beginnings of success come so easily to you the first time, though, there SHOULD be this little seed of confidence that grows deep down inside. I did that. Me. I worked. I got results. Me.
I had the confidence but I also knew my life was a fucking mess.
When they tell you life doesn’t give second chances, they’re right. It doesn’t. We create them.
Sooner or later, I knew I’d have to take that second chance. But I had to have my shit together and feel comfortable with life before I got there… because, well, third chances? Good luck with that, chump. This ain’t baseball, there’s no three strikes.
Moral of that story? Don’t fuck up again, bub.
So, I spent the last year just treading water and enjoying a delightfully boring life after I finally got on a somewhat even keel again.
Then I lost my job.
And it made me happy. Worried, but happy.
And I figured, “Hey, well, if ever there was a time to get in the game…”
But getting in the game would require one major thing:
Finally owning that this meek little Mom-approved chick — raised uberCatholic, with Dad & family following on the wide web — had to come out and be public with sex-blogging identity, and use my real name. And, worse, my face. And, like, speak publicly. And stuff.
Moving on, for me, means swallowing whatever I once defined as “pride” and coming up with a whole new brand of it. For me, it means shutting up that meekness and stop my apologies for being blunt, honest, and irrepressible.
It’s all about putting my money where my mouth has long been.
It’s been a really tough and soul-searching move. Scary as all get-out, man.
Oh, I’ve been terrified. It’s the “real, whole life” version of jumping off that zip-line or standing in front of 150 people and saying, “Yeah, so, I’m a sex blogger and, like, I kinda nailed writing one of the best oral sex guides you’ll read online… and…”
But I did it. And I did the zip-line. And the speaking.
However hard it’s been… I’m real goddamned glad.
Open, honest, in-your-face living is easier once you get the hang of it. It means fewer apologies, more shared grins, and it instantly repels all the twats and asshats you used to secretly wish would fuck off.
Moving on from anything is hard.
The fear of the unknown and the infinite chance to fuck up is what daunts us all before taking on new phases, projects, or relationships in our life.
By moving on, we’re officially closing the door on that past, accepting it’s done, and embracing the future.
“The devil you know,” though, right?
Whatever the hurts and failings and stupidities of the past, at least you know it and know you’ve faced/survived it. The future? Whew. Do ya got that in ya, punk? Well, do ya?
I remember my great friend Jon writing to say he was getting married, the big question got popped, she said  yes, and, dagnabbit, they was gonna wed. I wrote him back, “Geez, Jon… that’s awfully optimistic of you.”
Because it is.
Moving on, stepping forward, it’s all about optimism. Or at least the dream of it. The hope of possibility. It’s what we all want, right? The unscripted to get written with a side of awesomesauce?
But it needs that proverbial leap of faith, the big chance, the trip into the great unknown.
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll fail.
That’s okay.
At least you’ll keep yourself warm with the smug satisfaction of being the one with the guts to make the play in the first place, while the pussies who won’t make that leap sit on the sidelines and jealously watch.
Do it. Move on.

I'd Like To, But I'm Writing

I get a lot of pressure to go to events sometimes.
I usually don’t go, in the end.
Sometimes I’m just burnt-out. I get that a lot. Being a genius is hard work. All those thinky-thinky hours, whew!
Or maybe it’s just the ADHD, the five-years-straight of working like a fucking dog, or only having one real week of vacation in those years, or the fact that I’m okay hanging out on my own. I dunno.
Maybe it’s that I’m really apprehensive of getting into a new social mix where I’m the new person and lotsa people are intrigued or want to be my friend. It’s a bit overwhelming. Being funny, too, is hard work. It’s a great party favour, so are inappropriate comments, and I’ve got both covered.
Me, I’m the same person I was five years ago. Happy to take a bike ride, or hang out alone and drink some wine, write, that kinda thing. I enjoy the quiet life. I REALLY enjoy the quiet life. I’m the “yeah, I’d like to live in a cabin in the woods, write the rest of my life, and avoid the mailing list” kind of person… but blessed with a good personality and disarming grin.
Actually, I’m kinda despising that my picture’s gonna be in a column for the online version of a paper that has 700,000 readers. My tummy’s turning.
Why? I really fucking love my privacy.
Know why I write well? I remove myself from life a little. Hang back. Watch all you people. I judge you. I pick up on your mannerisms. You don’t know it, but I’m there, people-watching.
For a bit there, I was using a “full” picture of myself on Twitter.
Then I got approached on the street. I was in a completely different mindset, thinking of something I wanted to write about, planning talking points. It freaked me out. Someone I’d never met before, exchanged maybe a dozen tweets with, but they read me.
It became about why I wasn’t following them. Well, I don’t follow most people. I’m not on Twitter to ratchet up my “friend” count. I don’t care if we have “the same friends.” I don’t give a fuck about being invited to parties and making mailing lists. I don’t want my drinks comped or my credibility propped up.
I just don’t care. It’s not ABOUT that for me.
I’m proud I’m getting featured in a column tomorrow. GOOD ON ME. Fucking right! I’ve worked hard on writing over the last five years. I WANT to be read. I WANT to have have resonance.
Sure, I’ve only JUST thrown my hat back in the sex-blogging ring, but girl’s got game. Just you wait.
But do I want my picture on it?
Yikes. Jesus. That’s new. I liked anonymity. I liked intrigue. All that’s gone. Now I won’t know if someone on that train read that column and noticed me doing X.
I  think I deserve a decent audience. I think my voice is needed on the subject of sex, just because there are people like me who think no one else is doing the talkin’ for them.
But being social?
Is that part of the job?
Seriously?
It’s SEX blogging. It takes ONE person other than me to do subject research, but there are workarounds for having that additional party, y’know? Why do I need a crowd, huh?
What ever happened to reclusive writers with addictions and surly dispositions?
Can’t I just be one of those but use my sense of humour powers for good on Twitter?
Do I have to gussy-up and come to your party?
I suppose there’s a balance.
I have friends. Good friends, time-and-dead-body-removal-tested friends.
And now lotsa people claim to want to be in that role. Eek. Take a number, there’s only a few spots, and everyone’s health is good!
So who do I befriend? Which of you is coolest — with “cool” being relative? Who among you has the most to offer ME as a friend — the right ideas and thoughts and plans for fun? Who among you can be goofy in my kinda way?
Friendship isn’t about who YOU want to know. It’s about what people best bounce off each other and bring out the most elements of who/what we are.
I’m seriously good with a handful of friends — people I can let down all the walls with, be myself, talk comfortably, and not apologize to for being absolutely inappropriate, which happens a lot.
Trust is a big thing for me. If you’ve read my stuff over the years, you’ll know that I think it’s probably the most important element in any relationship. It’s the be-all end-all of how I judge people.
Online, people have infinite ability to hide their true selves or be the biggest asshole in the world. Anonymity is an empowering thing.
Me? This penchant to blurt just about everything that comes to mind, and a total comfort with immortalizing all my idiocy on the web? Makes me pretty much the most honest person you’ll ever meet. I don’t dress my words up pretty for anyone, and I won’t say what you want me to say. I’m honest to a fault, and as trustworthy as the day is long. I think that speaks for the kind of person I am.
Maybe you can imagine how toughly I judge others.
I’ve had more than a few friendships start, and end, in the year that I’ve entered the Vancouver social media scene. People who collect social engagements like they’re status cards, or who have little moments where their overly-selfish self shines through, or inconsistencies in things said and behaviour — they’ve all come and gone on my watch already.
I enjoyed the attention at first, but then the variety of people befriending me increased and I didn’t know who to trust.
Pulling back? Smart. Judging folk? Brilliant.
If I’m happy with six friends, yeah, I can raise the bar pretty fucking high and see who clears the top. Especially when I know I’m that kind of friend. I’m not always “there” there, but I’m there in the right ways.
I’m good with people when I want to be.
But I’m good alone, too.
People still just don’t get it. Anti-social types aren’t all defective or socially challenged. I sure as hell am not.
You want me interested in attending? Make it a bonfire on a summer night — beers and hot dogs, flip-flops and fun people. No pretensions, no business cards.
I like people who see moments for what they are, who prefer to be on the outside of walls rather than inside ’em, who see the big picture and have big hearts, who laugh often, and who generally give/don’t give a fuck about all the things I care about, too.
Pretty simple. I’d rather dress down than up, laugh than schmooze, be under bright stars than bright lights, and hear the roar of waves rather than the crowd. I’m also better in living rooms than lobbies.
Keep your canapés and coat-checks. Those are special, rare events for me,  not a life fit for regular consumption.
Sociable? Sure. I got moments.
But you’re not HERE to be my friend. You’re not reading me on Twitter to be my friend.
You’re here for content.
If we both remember that, it’s for the better.

Hurting Kids By Protecting Them

I actually am somewhat empathetic with the “pro” stance on this issue. People are mean. Many folks have thin skin. Protecting the weaker is what the stronger should do. But at what cost? So, when in doubt, I say educate and don’t overly interfere. Read on.

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Hey, I know what we should do.
We should make people scared of things. Like, you know, social media. We should demonize the medium instead of putting responsibilities upon the user. We should say that, because bad things sometimes happen, everything in that realm is therefore always bad.
Because that’s worked with everything else.
Like rock and roll. Or sexy books. Cable television. Elvis’s hips.
If Anthony Orsini has his way, his high school’s students won’t have any freedom or privacy when it comes to social media, if they have access at all.  New Jersey’s Benjamin Franklin Middle School principal sees social media as the beginning of the downfall of civilization if the students keep at it in Facebook, Twitter, and phone texting.
R u srs? I rly dbt it.
As the principal explains in his email to students’ parents:

I want to be clear, this email is not anti-technology, and we will continue to teach responsible technology practices to students. They are simply not psychologically ready for the damage that one mean person online can cause, and I don’t want any of our students to go through the unnecessary pain that too many of them have already experienced.
Some people advocate that the parents and the school should teach responsible social networking to students because these sites are part of the world in which we live.
I disagree, it is not worth the risk to your child to allow them the independence at this age to manage these sites on their own, not because they are not good kids or responsible, but because you cannot control the poor actions of anonymous others.
Learn as a family about cybersafety together at wiredsafety.org for your own knowledge.

The principal makes valid points in his email. Cyber-bullying is insane. Just yesterday I witnessed supposedly intelligent, kind adults being complete dicks to each other over, get this, child care, on Twitter.
Yeah, humanity’s capable of ridiculous things.
And the internet is a portal to all of them.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
Which is precisely why we can’t say “NEIN! NO NET FOR YOU!” to our kids and then just open the floodgates when grade 12 rolls around and the real world comes a-knocking at their door.
How crazy that’d be — all of a sudden hurtled into the all-too-real world of the internet, with its predators and fuckheads and petty people and madness — at the 16 or 18, if entirely sheltered and uber-patrolled by parents who want to bubble-ize the world so their precious kids never, ever get hurt?
Until, of course, they become adults and go out in the world all by themselves. Boy, talk about your culture shocks. Talk about mindfucks. It’s not preschool out there, folks.
Prepare your kids for the Real World by letting ’em get hurt the way nature intended: In high school.
Speaking about nature, did you know some medical journals have been running stories about how we’re doing damage to our feet by wearing these hyper-engineered running shoes designed to protect our feet and soles? Super-padded, ultra-complex sneakers. It’s the anti-Chuck’s All-Stars.
Know why we’re supposedly damaging our feet with all this protection? Because the added support interferes with the spread, support, and reach a foot should normally have on its own, so lesser inner muscles are now rendered unused. Deemed somewhat inconsequential when you look at the whole of the foot, these “bitty” muscles are actually to skeletal structural integrity what a stud is to a building’s stability.
So, we have more foot injuries than ever before.
BUT, HEY, that’s okay, ‘cos we’ve got this awesome new Nike shoe, dude! And it’s pretty.
Increasingly, trainers are proposing barefoot training as part of an overall fitness regimen, to help create better overall strength.
Take away the excess support and the support becomes unneeded because strength increases.
Sounds like some of the 15-year-olds I know could use a little of that therapy.
Nowadays, a “social networking crackdown” for the “protection” of kids is like putting them in a bubble or over-engineering shoes — you’re just making ’em more susceptible when they hit the real deal without all your safeguards.
There’s a reason we don’t let socialized animals return to the wild from shelters — they’ll be mincemeat! Why do we insist on doing it with our children?
Know what life is?
Hurt. Pain. Achievement. Failure. Love. Joy. Accidental. Surprising. Mysterious. Unpredictable.
But it sure as fuck ain’t safe.
This safety-drive’s fucking up everything.
We decommissioned the Hubble telescope because it was “unsafe” for astronauts to work on it. In space. Where astronauts are supposed to work. These aren’t cable guys — safety wasn’t a job requirement for them. “Flaming rocket hurtling into space? Cool. Sign me up. Ooh, oxygen deprivation? Cool!”
We put rubber on playgrounds so kids would stop falling — LOL! — and hurting themselves. Now they just burn the shit out of themselves when they fall on the scorching rubber in the dog days of summer. Protecting equals hurting, oh, ironic! Who knew!
We have labels on coffee cups telling us the hot coffee we just bought is hot. On my planet, if you’re too stupid to know this, you don’t get a label.
You know what?
Stop it.
Get hurt. Get over it. Animals do.
We’ve taken the Darwinism out of human existence.
We’re fucking pathetic.
Educate children. Teach them what a predator is. Empower them to band in groups if it gets them through. Intervene when kids are being dicks. Make examples of bad behaviour.
But don’t tell me the only way to be safe is to stick your fucking head in the sand and pretend the real world isn’t there.
I say teach kids the dangers of the real world, because the dangers will find ’em anyways. I say give ’em slingshots and full-fat ice cream.
Whatever it takes, this wussification of the modern kid has got to stop.

______________

Seriously, though?
Remember Columbine?
What if Klebold & Harris had been on Facebook? Would the worst massacre in American high school history have occurred?
And, just, you know, as an aside?
Have you seen these numbers? Note the advent of the Internet’s use by the general population, starting in 1994, and the numbers of school massacres since? Declining every year.
Your fragile children? Safer than ever. So, back off, mama.

Oh, You Naughty Librarian!

In college, I was a librarian. I worked both in books and in the audio-visuals section. Then I was a bookseller.
Everything I ever needed to learn about sex, I learned on the job. It’s probably the only thing escorts and librarians have in common.
Okay, well, no, not everything I ever needed to learn… but it sure as hell helped me write informative web sex commentaries like:

What can I tell you? There’s nothing like being paid in quiet work moments to go searching through shelves for titles you’d never have the balls to take out if you were just Joe Public, like Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man by Dan Anderson.
A quiet rainy night and no one in the bookshop, and I have a date with my boyfriend later? Sure, why not learn new oral techniques or read about the psychology of sex in the Guide to Getting it On by Paul Joahannides?
I was ALLOWED to read on the job. Clients might enter and ask about those books! (And in 3 years, only one did, and when I gave her Dan Anderson’s book and pointed out a couple passages worth really absorbing, she cancelled her evening plans then and there and invited her guy over for breakfast, laughing while I rang the book in.)
Will Manley reports over on his blog that, in 1992, he had more than 5,000 librarians answer his Librarians & Sex Survey, but the results were quashed by Those Who Be who thought, perhaps, that librarians couldn’t appear THAT naughty.
I woulda scored pretty good in some of the categories, I suspect, but thank god I’m not relevant here because you people just don’t need to know too much. Hi! I’m Steff the sometimes-sex blogger with boundaries.
But all this comes back to what I strongly believe — great sex requires:

  • great knowledge
  • communication
  • articulation
  • attention to detail
  • ability to be versatile
  • openmindedness
  • access to information and resources
  • insight and commentary
  • ability to not take things too seriously

Furthermore? I believe the people with the healthiest sex lives are usually people who are most open to other people’s points-of-views and lifestyle choices.
Why? Because being a great lover means realizing the world has more tastes than just yours. And accepting that personal taste matters.
The reality is, just because you think you have a money-shot doesn’t mean it works on everyone. Sex isn’t about YOU. It’s about your partner. And if your partner thinks that way too, then congratulations, you probably know what it’s like to have your mind totally blown by sex.
But if either of you think it’s all about the orgasm, or that your performance reflects on you in a “being-graded” kind of way, or that sex is about obligation or routine, then you probably haven’t transcended that place that takes some of us from being mere enthusiasts about sex to feeling profoundly sorry that the rest of the world doesn’t get what we’re talking about.
Frankly? If you haven’t been laid by a sex geek, you’re probably missing out.
The truth is, the more I learn about other people’s hang-ups, the more I read up on the difficult journeys many of us take as we fumble from awkward through to confident lovers, the more I’m able to accept myself as a total vixen-rockstar-lover while also being a woman who has all the insecurities most women have… and it’s okay. ‘Cos openness and vulnerability have their own hotness-factor, too — so long as I realize it’s in my head, I’m not the only person that feels this way, and I can admit it. Besides, that vulnerability is part of what makes me this unique blend of who I am.
My vulnerability is not all I can admit. I’ve found power in confessing things like this, that go against the supposed “sex blogger” image, even though I’ve written one of the most plagiarized how-to-give-blowjobs postings on the web. Why? Because I know I’m not alone, because I’ve shared in that human condition that writing & literature can inform us about.
It’s learning, reading, and sharing in others’ experiences and sexual journeys through blogging and the written word, and just plain learning biology, that has really allowed me to own my insecurities and stop apologizing for them.
So-fucking-what if I’m insecure about my size sometimes? If I tell a lover that and he uses that knowledge to covet ALL of me, it helps fight that insecurity — because it’s hard to fake that attention, it’s hard to be disingenuous as you consume someone whole. You can’t easily sell being turned on by a flabby belly, you know.
It’s my knowledge and life experience that helps me understand how and why we all differ sexually — I don’t have hang-ups about talking to a lover about how he likes it, what he wants, and other little fantasies and peccadilloes that shape each of us as a lover. It’s not some reflection on me if he doesn’t like it when I do X to him — that’s a reflection of how his body’s wired, and I can’t change it, no matter how good my X skills might have proven in other encounters.
That’s the kind of confidence that comes from education. It’s getting past THOSE conversations that make good intercourse become the kind of mindblowing sex that everyone dreams of having.
Learn something. Ignorant lovers are lousy lovers. Get over yourself. Learn about your partner, learn about how their sexual tastes differ. Teach them about you.
That’s when carnal knowledge is sexual power.
So: Do you think your knowledge about sex has changed you as a lover, and how? What are your thoughts on this?
Photo is by Dumio_Momio, and is Creative Commons.

Extreme Writing 101: Scab-picking

The phrase “Physician, heal thyself,” is meant to be a dry poke at the medical profession. You may be god-like, but you can’t fix yourself.
“Writer, heal thyself,” however, isn’t a poke, it’s a goal.
In talking with a friend over dinner last night, I likened writing to the extreme sports of the artistic world. No other art requires one to be so isolated and confrontational, so alone and challenged, for so long. It’s an endurance sport, one with almost impossible odds. You’ll never say everything you want to say, you’ll never be as complete as you want to be. You never get to the end and go, “WOW, look at what I did!” like when one climbs a mountain; you’re always flawed and missing a certain something.
There is no “right” way to write, unlike what the schools will tell you. Grammar isn’t even as rigid as you might think it to be. Schools of thought exist on many different grammatical styles. The most hotly contested wordgeek event of the year is the Oxford Dictionary releases annual new words. “Unfollow” was a big one last year.
There is a right way to do the writing, though.
From a place of truth. Honesty. Rawness. Forget what your mother taught you about picking at scabs. Rip that motherfucker off.
This book I’m writing is highly cathartic. I’m forcing myself to be more honest there than I am for you. It’s not that I’ve been afraid of sharing those truths with you… it’s just that I think it’s kinda like how women shouldn’t wear microskirts — don’t just give that away, honey.
You haven’t earned the right to know about my deepest, darkest passages. This needs to be a two-way street. Right now, I give to you, you take, I get nothing. But that’s the way of the blogging world.
In a year or two you’ll be able to buy your very own copy, and feed the belly of this beast. That’s when you earn it. And that’s not me being a bitch, that’s a brutal fiscal reality.
What, I’m supposed to eat idealism for breakfast? That’s how it works if I choose art, not ratrace? Really?
There’s not many things in this world that I love to do, am good at doing, and see myself wanting to do for the rest of my life. There’s nothing, actually — except writing. For that to happen, for me to pull these scabs, spend late nights staring in blackness at a cieling I can’t even see, as I think of topics I want to tear apart, I need to pay my rent.
At some point there enters into this a consciousness about you, my audience. I know you’re there. I can now engage in a monologue that’s both true to me, yet relatable for you.
It’s an interesting consciousness. An even more interesting exercise.
If I was in grade three, I’d simply explain it as: I find writing weird, and writing for an audience even weirder.
It’s something I know in my heart I’m very good at — but I see myself as being very good at writing the kind of thing I like reading; not necessarily “very good” at the craft as a whole. If I was GOOD, it would have to be harder for me, right?
Then again, I’ve never really tackled fiction. Who knows, right? But, still, I don’t follow traditional writing schools or all the Proper Things To Do. I’m not even very linear, I go all over the place. But nothing comes more comfortably for me in life than writing.
I was talking with writer friends about Twitter — they don’t follow me and I don’t know if they’ve even seen my Twitter stream, but I pepper the thing with one-liners. I’m all about the jokey stuff and scathing observations. And one says, “I don’t understand some people — how they just post all their best stuff, great one-liners. I mean, you could spend up to 60 minutes composing a single tweet…”
And I said nothing. I’ve never spent more than two minutes on a single tweet. Never! It just pops in my head and BOOM, there it is. There are so many areas in my life that DON’T work efficiently, though.
But there? Writing? It’s seldom a struggle, not anymore. For six years, I’d have better luck squeezing water from a rock than pushing out readable words, but once I found my way out of that writer’s block, I’ve never gone back.
At some point, you gotta figure out who’s the lion (the writing) and who’s the tamer (me), and then it’s all about remembering who’s in charge.
It’s my extreme sport. I’m always pushing to see what new thing I can say, what new button I can push. It’s what I really, really enjoy doing — whether you’re reading it or whether it’s gathering dust until it finds its way between covers or never sees the light of day. THAT’s my extreme sport. That’s where my life’s legacy will probably be found, in words I’ve cobbled together over decades and credos I’ve hammered out one phrase at a time.
There are people who go their who life without ever knowing who they are.
I may be broke, facing losing my job in the coming days, unlucky in love, always rehabbing, waging battles with ADHD, and any number of other things…
But I know exactly who I am, who I want to be, what’s important to me in life, and what I cannot live without doing — what’s as important to me as the air I breathe.
Writing makes me one of the richest people I know.
Hopefully I can take that figurative statement and make it literal in a “Holy shit, we’re capitalists?” kind of way over the next year — but not at the risk of losing my soul or my self.
Some prices can’t be unpaid. That, too, people can go a lifetime without learning.
Like I said, I’m one of the richest people I know.

Why I Love My ADHD

I’m going to be writing more about ADHD over the next while. I started last week with this posting here.
Seems to me too many people are all shame-filled about their ADHD. What the fuck is that about?
Here, take your stereotypes and shove it. Know what my ADHD doesn’t make me do? It doesn’t make me run around like I’ve had 42 coffees and have been mainlining coke and adrenaline, all right? It doesn’t mean I freak out on people. It doesn’t mean I can’t have a conversation with you. It doesn’t mean I can’t get to appointments punctually. It doesn’t mean I can’t be an awesome employee.
What it DOES mean is, I have organizational challenges that negatively impact my life and leave me predisposed to feeling overwhelmed and constantly daunted by the life in front of me. But that’s biochemical. Continue reading →

RANT: "Whine, Whine. #FML! Fuck My Life!"

ED. NOTE: This posting is meant for people who say “FML” and mean it. Like they say, people love the internet because they get to whine on it, and that’s fine. Go ahead, grumble. Just be interesting about it! And don’t be some snivelling fuckwit hyperbolizing and going “FML” because you woke up 30 minutes before your alarm, all right? I don’t care about grumbling, but I _hate_ the saying “FML”. Which is why we’re at this dance. Shall we?
Oh. And this may contain swearwords. Be careful of your fragile little vocabulary thresholds now.
fuck_you-1Trendy these days is the acronym “FML”, short for “Fuck My Life.”
No, fuck your attitude if you’re saying that crap.
Forgetting your lunch is not “FML.” Having to deal with a friend you find annoying because you’re too pussy to deal with it, that’s not “FML”.
That’s “fuck, I’m dumb” or “fuck, I’m a pussy.” You’re to blame either way. That ain’t “FML”.
I’ve been pissed off about seeing “FML” all the time for quite a while now. I see it from spoiled rich kids who have a bad day, or people with ordinary lives who have victim complexes about every little thing that happens. I see it from people with more good luck in a week than I’ve seen in a year sometimes, too. I see it from people who blurt it without really thinking about what it means a lot. People are whining on Twitter about forgetting their lunch and tagging the comment with FML. Seriously?
And this week, THIS WEEK, I’m done.
Shut the fuck up. Continue reading →