Random Thoughts on Judgment, Paleo and Grammar

I have this folder called “Post Ideas.” This is where I dump blog post ideas when I have a flash of inspiration but I’m not in a position to write the post right then. Sometimes the idea is a good one, but it isn’t enough for one post. That’s where the random thoughts posts come from. Here’s one for your mid-November reading pleasure.

I’m convinced that food is the new religion and Paleo is the new Calvinism. How else can you explain the evangelism, the absolutism, the fiery judgments against those who are “doing it wrong?” I’m not just making this up – I made an ill-advised foray into Paleo once because some people at my gym were doing it. Evangelism, check: my gym friends spoke in glowing terms about how the wonderful changes I would see if only I gave up dairy and grains. Absolutism, check: why dairy? Why grains? Why are seeds OK but not grains? (Um, grains ARE seeds.) Why all the coconut milk? No one really had an answer, but they were adamant, it must be this way. There was also a thing about buttering your coffee, which just … uck. Fiery judgment, check: the guy who runs the “challenge” I partook of wrote a blog post about how he was out with friends and accidentally bit into a corn chip, then saw the horrified look on his wife’s face and ran to spit it out. He presented this is normal behavior. However, no fiery judgment for being a weird douchebag who spits out food in public, apparently.

Speaking of judgment … it’s actually kind of fun to judge people (which is, I think what drives the fitness industry and certain branches of religion), but the older I get the more I realize the futility of it. Oh, and it’s not actually very nice. But, even if it weren’t mean, it’s pointless because to judge you have to assign motive, and you can’t really understand the motives of another person as experienced by them. I know someone who is made very angry by people who drive to the food bank. His reasoning is that if they have a car they can afford food. He is certain that if HE were to ever need a food bank and he had a car, he would sell the car for food first. And then I guess he walk to work. Then if money got even tighter he would sell his feet on the organ market for more food money and walk on his hands to work. But he would never, ever, ever drive to the food bank.

Grammar peeves:

• Saying “I” when you mean “me.” “I” is a subject pronoun. You use it when you refer to yourself as the subject of the sentence. As in: “I went to the store.” “Me” is an object pronoun. You use it when you refer to yourself as the object of a sentence. As in: “my dog went to the store with me.”
• Dangling participles: This is when you use a participial phrase to modify a subject then forget to include the subject in the sentence. In other words, you use a phrase like “riding my bike in the woods, the trail was brown and ribbony.” Makes it sound like the trail was riding my bike. In this sentence “riding my bike in the woods” is the dangling participle because it’s left with no subject to modify. What I meant to say was “riding my bike in the woods, I found the trail brown and ribbony.” That’s actually a really weird sentence and I would probably never say it, but it’s a good example.
• Oh, and for the love of all that’s decent, can everyone please learn to use apostrophes properly?