A pleasant sort of irony.

When you drink, eat too much, and smoke a cigar because you're at the birthday party of a personal trainer who trained you, thrown by his wife, the OTHER personal trainer who trained you.

I had a GREAT time, and did all the reasonable things about deciding ahead of time just what sorts of unhealthy behaviors I was going to do, and keeping myself within those limits, and, in general, had the sort of extravagant time that is great fun without throwing things out of balance. Because physical health is a very important component of health -- and so is social health, and enjoyment, and setting appropriate limits, including setting limits to one's own limit-setting.

I have no intention of living a life where I don't drink, or eat rich food, or smoke a pipe or a cigar once in a while. I also have no intention of living a life where I drink CONSTANTLY, eat rich food CONSTANTLY, or smoke a LOT. All things in moderation -- including moderation.

Brian and Bethany are two of the (many) people in my life who have helped me learn about health and well-being. And I had a chance to practice self-restraint, but not TOO MUCH self-restraint.

Why you can't make an anti-war movie, 1950s edition;

Roger Ebert quoted Frances Truffaut as suggesting approximately that it's impossible to make a truly anti-war film, because a good film makes war look cool, no matter how against it you're trying to be. And TV Tropes has a section which used to be called "Truffaut was right," but has since been renamed to the clearer "Do Not Do This Cool Thing."

Which is to explain why, last night, I was at a MADMEN themed party, smoking cigars in the backyard, when some of the other guys started literally talking about how things were better in the Fifties.

It wasn't my house, and, in fact, I was there semi-working -- I was there as bartender as well as guest -- so I wasn't going to get into a real fight, but I DID mention that my parents and grandparents were actually around during the Fifties, and they liked it better now. And I managed to sort of gently derail that part of the conversation, but I didn't feel like I could actually get into it with people, y'know?

So, I just want to mention it here: in the Fifties, my grandparents couldn't buy the house they originally wanted, because Marblehead Neck was deed-restricted against Jews.

If I'd wanted to get into it, rather than simply guiding the conversation into a direction that was less uncomfortable for me, I could have pointed out that a lot of the people there were Irish or Italian, probably a bunch of them were Catholic. And that, even though they didn't realize it, we would ALL of us been in the "oppressed" class in one way or another, at least a little. It's like romanticizing the antebellum South without realizing that, even if you wouldn't have been a slave, you would have at best been a tenant farmer.

But I didn't. I've got SOME moral courage, but not enough to actually say all that at somebody else's birthday party.