I just read The Hunger Games for the first time, and despite the fact that I longed to edit nearly every page of it, I really enjoyed reading it. But I couldn't help but think as I read it what a terrible contestant I would be in a fight to the death.
For this reason, I present to you
TEN WAYS I WOULD DIE IN THE HUNGER GAMES
-Shot with blowdart while running for pink backpack with Hello Kitty decal at Cornucopia
-Knocked over head with rock when given away by aroma of shrimp and grits cooking over fire
-Speared while tucked into a tree writing a poem about my feelings
-Beaten to death when neon pink Doc Martens prove to be ineffective camouflage
-Bled out after shooting self in leg with crossbow sent by well-meaning fans
-Mauled in hand-to-hand combat with a groosling
-Gangrene from Bedazzler injury stemming from attempt to to sass up my uniform
-Poisoned by what appeared to be a wild katniss but was in fact a discarded tennis shoe
-Tried to make friends with especially cute tracker jacker
-Collapsed into immobile, sobbing heap the moment the games begin; dog-piled by other tributes
Discussion Question:
How would you die in the Hunger Games?
Once again, I have been lured away from the YA I'm writing right now and back to ma blog to address a request. It seems that a number of my dear friends are visiting New Orleans this fall and need suggestions for things to do. Well. WELL.
Anyone lucky enough to be heading to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras can go armed with the sage knowledge I provided in my Mardi Gras Do's and Don'ts post, but what about folks heading to the Big Easy for the other forty-someodd weeks of the year? Don't worry. I've got y'all's backs with some hot picks from a former NOLA resident.
The French Quarter is only six blocks by thirteen blocks, but most people have a hard time remembering to go anywhere else when they come to New Orleans. There's just so much to do! French Quarter residents have reported to me that they've literally gone six months without leaving the bounds of the Quarter. So without further ado, I present to you:
You have to eat some French Creole food while you're in New Orleans. You just have to.
Maybe it's because it's the first place I ever ate in New Orleans, I don't know. There are a lot of fancy historical French Creole restaurants in the French Quarter--Antoine's, Broussard's, Tujaque's--but Galatoire's is the spot as far as I'm concerned. This is French Creole cuisine at its finest. I'd recommend something on the menu, but why bother? Chicken Clemenceau? Poisson Meunière Amandine? Close your eyes and point at one. It's all incredible.
I don't even know what this is and I'd eat it
It's expensive, but hey, this is the Fancy Food section! It doesn't' matter how much you spend, anyway. You will walk out of that place feeling like you should probably just Lieutenant Dan it into the Mississip' out of pure prandial delight. Just don't forget to have a cup of the turtle soup au sherry before you go.
Sandwiches are a very important part of New Orleans cuisine. You've got your muffulettas, of course, which can only be purchased at Central Grocery. If you need a burger, you head to Port of Call. But far and away the most important sandwich in NOLA is the po boy. It's a sub sandwich done as only New Orleans can do it--on halved French bread with incredible fillings like fried shrimp, roast beef, or even french fries.
If you need a po boy--and believe me, you need a po boy--you need to take yourself to Verdi Marte. You're going to get there and say Are you kidding me? but trust me. This is the best fast food in the city. It burned down a couple of years ago, but it's cool--Verdi Marte is back and better than ever. So go get you some.
You should probably also have breakfast at Mother's on Poydras (just outside the Quarter), lunch at Angeli on Decatur, and cafe au lait and beignets at Cafe du Monde across from Jackson Square. You're going to need to eat a lot while you're there.
Sort of like you're going to need to eat a po boy, you're also going to need to see some jazz. Even if you think you hate jazz. Trust me. There's nothing quite like sipping a cocktail and listening to a little bit of jazz in the midst of your crazy New Orleans night.
The best jazz bar ever ever ever was Funky Butt, which, unfortunately, never reopened after Hurricane Katrina. It was dark and full of couches and shadowy nooks, the music was always hot, and the bartender Wheaties knew how to keep a glass full of Funky Butt Juice. Funky Butt was my go-to French Quarter hotspot. New Orleans perfection. RIP.
With Funky Butt dead and gone, I must send you all instead to a very different establishment: Snug Harbor. Snug, along with The Spotted Cat, is on Frenchman Street, which means its actually just outside the French Quarter in the Faubourg Marigny. But trust me, it's still the place to go. While four hundred tourists try to climb into Preservation Hall, you'll be up on the second floor with plenty of elbow room and a bird's eye view of the best jazz musicians in New Orleans. Charmaine Neville plays here on MONDAY nights, if that gives you any idea. Just look at this schedule. Definitely worth checking out any night of the week.
BARS
My pick: Chart Room (300 Chartres St)
If you are looking for a bar in the French Quarter, my friend, you are in the right place. You can't swing a whatever in New Orleans without hitting a bar.
First up, you have to walk down Bourbon Street and see what's up. Marvel at the flashing lights and all the drunk people. It's like an R-rated Disney World. If you want to party where your loved ones can keep tabs on you, go to Cat's Meow, which has a live streaming webcam of the karaoke stage. Take advantage of the lack of open-container liquor laws: buy a daiquiri or a hurricane at an open-air bar and then just walk back out with it to the street. I once--and this is 100% true--bought a frozen daiquiri in New Orleans so large that it came with a commemorative plastic tub and neck strap because it was too heavy to carry unassisted when full.
But when you're done with all that mess, check out one of the more chill bars. Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar is (arguably) the oldest bar in the US. Hookah Cafe on Frenchman is now The Hookah on Decatur, but I bet it is still an excellent place to smoke hookah and get your drink on. I really adore Chart Room, a small rowdy bar on Chartres I love going to with my pal Karen. It's straight up French Quarter--open to the sidewalk, big beautiful bar, cheap drinks. It's an old familiar favorite.
THINGS TO DO
Food and drinking is enough to keep a person entertained in the French Quarter pretty much indefinitely, but I guess if you get bored with that somehow, you could...
Go shopping! Hit the French Market, or the antique stores on Royal Street. Be sure to stop by Fleurty Girl--I love their shop on Oak Street Uptown, and I bet their new Quarter shop is amazing too! If you're going to buy any souvenirs, do it at Fleurty Girl and support a very cool local business.
Get pierced!Rings of Desire might just be the best piercing parlor in the country. Elayne Angel, the master piercer, has pierced over 40,000 people. She has hands so gentle a person can barely feel a thing. And she's trained a whole team of amazing piercers to give the same kind of care. These people specialize in serious piercings, and they're they only people on Earth I'd ever trust to pierce my goodies with metal if I ever decided to go that route. Just don't try to do it drunk--they will not go near you if you are.
Go to high tea! After you get your goodies pierced, head over to the Ritz-Carlton for high tea. I can't explain it, but there is something really fun about doing something so proper in the City That Care Forgot.
Have fun!!!!
Discussion Question: What's the most fun you've ever had in the French Quarter?
This is something I've needed to write about for a long time.
I just read an article on Jezebel about this blog post about sketchy job interview parties at the American Philosophical Association meeting, and it is hitting so close to home that I am taking a break from doggedly trying to finish my novel to write this post.
Even though I've never been on the academic job market, I am all too familiar with this scene. I worked behind the scenes for years at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, which is the academic organization for professors of Latin and Greek. I have to say before I weave this tale of outrage that the people who run the APA are genuinely some of my favorite people on Earth. Integrity for miles. It's just too bad you can't say the same for all of the attendees.
Through the years, I saw it all at the APA. I went to every VIP cocktail party, met all the muckity-mucks. I worked the whole Saturday night circuit. I know the cheap yellow Chardonnay, the cheese cubes, and the endless uncomfortable chatting. As an undergrad with a plum internship, I got to see the fanciest side of being a professor of the classics.
I also got to learn early in my academic career about the seamier side of the profession. I learned at the conference about the absolutely prodigious amount of drinking that goes on. The hotel bar on any night of the conference is positively crawling with academics and overstressed bartenders. We'd hear at the post conference briefs about the shortage of limes, of clean high-ball glasses. I heard from hotel staff again and again that academic conferences often meant good business for the prostitutes who hung out at the hotel bars.
And as I went, I learned about the antiquated gender and class politics of Classics. That the profession is an Old Boy's Club. If you're not familiar with that term, here's roughly what it means: if you're not a rich white male, you are in trouble.
I experienced what you might call the perfect storm of these components when I interviewed for the Lionel Pearson Fellowship at the 2005 annual meeting. I was a freshman in college when learned about the fellowship, which funds one year of graduate study in Classics at an English or Scottish university, and I instantly set my sights on it. My amazing advisor Davina did an incredible job grooming me for grad school and for fellowships, and I in turn worked my ass off in school and at umpteen jobs and extracurriculars and leadership positions. I ended up applying to something like six schools and eight national fellowships for grad school. But I had my sights set on going to Cambridge on the Lionel Pearson. I nearly wet my pants with glee when I was named one of four finalists and was invited to come interview at the annual meeting.
The meeting was in Boston that year. It was my first trip to the city I now call home. I arrived with just a few hours to go before I was supposed to meet up with my fellow potential fellows and the fellowship committee for dinner.
When I arrived at the appointed meeting spot, it was a cluster of men. Young men, old men. The committee, the candidates. All men.
And do you know where we went for dinner?
Do you?
You do not.
Here's where we went for dinner.
If you've never had the misfortune of visiting this particular chain, the schtick at Dick's Last Resort is that all of the waitstaff are incredibly rude to you. The restaurant features dishes like Crab Balls and Pork Bonerz. Each guest is outfitted with a rolled up white paper dunce cap that reads somewhere between Dime-Store Pope and Ku Klux Klan, upon which your rude server will write a rude nickname for you. I think they should rebrand and change their name to Patriarchy's Paradigm. Go big or go home, you know?
If this sounds unbearable as a matter of course, I invite you to imagine being subjected to this in the company of the people who will make or break your greatest dream for your undergraduate career. Imagine, if you can, being the only woman at the table.
Imagine, if you can bear it, your hat says DOLLY PARTON.
If you pull it off immediately, will you ruin everyone's fun? If you storm out of the restaurant, will you be disqualified from the fellowship? If you concentrate really hard, will you melt into the floor and disappear? These were the questions that filled my head.
I pulled the hat off. But I did not storm out of the restaurant. I ate my fried basket of whatever and sipped a beer and tried to make the best of it. But I have never felt so negatively aware of my body and myself as a woman. My breasts felt huge under my smart Oxford shirt. When I got back to my hotel room, I was left with a slimy, uncomfortable feeling. When I called my dad to tell him about it, he told me he thought I was probably toast.
Are you wondering what happened the next day? I bet you are. Luckily, it's also a good story.
I don't remember much of the interview, to be honest. I don't think we really got through many questions before one of the professors--whom I long to call out by name but whom I will describe only as a professor from a small liberal arts school in the South--hit me with the most balls-out crazy interview question I've ever gotten.
Ms. Jones, imagine you get a phone call from Karl Rove. Here's what he says. We'd like your expert opinion on how to protect our country from Islamic extremists, based on your study of the suppression of the Bacchanalia in Rome. What would you tell him?
I was gobsmacked. That man smacked my gobs. But as soon as I regained my ability to speak, I knew the answer. "Well," I said. "I'd tell him that the suppression of a rogue religious element, like the Bacchanalia, in a nation with state-sponsored religion, like Rome, doesn't really have anything to do with the suppression of a faith in a nation with a specifically outlined separation of church and state, like we have here in the US." For a moment, I felt smug. It had to be the answer he was looking for.
However, this was not an acceptable answer. The professor who had asked the question pushed me further and further, trying to force me to offer some advice to Mr. Rove. But I stood by my response. He lost his temper. Here are the last words I remember of that horrible interview: "Ms. Jones, you are being very evasive!" That's when I knew my dad was right.
And I totally was. I didn't get the fellowship.
So, that's how Dick's Last Resort, Karl Rove, and unbelievable academic bullshit lost me the fellowship I'd spent four years working toward. I still stand by that answer, though. What a dumb question.
Luckily, my interview for the Mellon Fellowship a few weeks later went a lot better, so I wound up with a bigger, better fellowship in the end. I wound up going to the University of Texas. And, well, you know how that went.
...the Aristocrats!
DISCUSSION QUESTION:
What's the worst interview you've ever had?
Today's guest post comes from Julia Reed, Harvard PhD student in theology and women, gender, and sexuality (aka Sex and God) and my friend since 1st grade. You've already enjoyed her wisdom on the topic of old people having sex, and today she will regale you with an insightful deconstruction of The Lion King. Read my review of mine and Julia's recent viewing of The Lion King here.
My first year in graduate school I stuffed my schedule with courses in philosophy of religion and gender and queer theory; the material in those courses not only became central to my own work and teaching, but burned the circuitry of my psychic life. The lion’s share of my emotional vocabularies, coping structures, and understandings of self and love and loss comes from the texts and pedagogies of those baptismal months. And with all due respect to the years of work behind and ahead of me, maybe the best way to tell you about the relationships between Freud and Augustine and Judith Butler and Jesus and me might be to say that most of it I learned many years earlier from a scene in The Lion King.
Full disclosure, however: despite my, like, amniotic love for the The Lion King, there are aspects of the film that make me uncomfortable and angry, even though I know they are perhaps the only politically viable stories to tell in a Disney film. Scar is what queer readers might call a "deadly sissy"-- a malignant threat to a heterosexual dynasty, infuriated by his impotence, marked by physical weakness and leanness, resentful, malicious effeminacy, treachery, and association with other outcast deviants (the hyenas). Mufasa and Simba, on the other hand, are manly, monogamous tanks. Once Scar deposes the reigning heterosexual family, the circle of life is broken--the landscape literally becomes a black, bleak, lifeless boneyard---until Simba's triumphal life-ejaculating roar re-colors the savanna. (NB: Lion prides are not dynastic, and young males usually leave between 2 and 3 years old to take over other prides, kill the resident cubs, bone each lioness, and nap. Though I remain unconvinced that the cubs don't ride around on ostrich asses, because, please.)
The scene I'm talking about, however, is during Simba's exile. Rafiki, having caught Simba's "scent" in the air--the scent of the promise of life, restoration, latency, unclaimed birthright--has followed him to his No Worries Hakuna Matata land of plenty and anomie. Taunting Simba with nonsense, he finally whispers, "You're Mufasa's boy," prompting Simba to run after him. "You knew my father?" Rafiki responds, "Correction, I know your father." The scene's pulse quickens, the music becomes martial and insistent when Simba sighs that his father died long ago. Rafiki jumps up excitedly: "He's alive. I'll show him to you. I know the way." What follows is a masterful dreamlike pursuit sequence through the bases and roots of knotted trees. We don't know if we're above or underground; Simba, the brick-house big cat, crawls slowly, clumsily, desperately curious. I remember watching this scene the first time and feeling electrified at the possibility, the hope, that Simba would in fact meet his resurrected father in the open beyond the gnarled gauntlet. Rafiki stops Simba, parts a sheet of tall grass, and whispers, "Look down there." Simba peers down into a perfectly clear shining pool and sees himself. Deflated, he looks away: that's not my father, that's just me. Rafiki: "look… harder. He lives in you." But Mufasa is not Aslan. Unlike Bambi's mother, we have seen his dead body. (Like a reverse doubting Thomas, I could not quite believe it.) He appears as a specter in the sky to say, "Mark me. Remember me"--the words of Hamlet's father's ghost.
"Remember me"; "remember who you are"--I heard these exhortations, and still hear them, not as reminders of Simba's divine right of kingship, but in a literal, physical sense of the words themselves. Re-member yourself. Re-member your members. Put back together the parts that make you up--what in Freud's German literally translates to "investments" or "the places you've set yourself in." Which is only to say that the loss of these loves, these parts, would transform you and will transform you. Which is to say, says the father's ghost, you do not remember me because you have not grieved me; you have not re-membered yourself. Make my death a part of your life and your living. Not because you have rejoiced in it, but because it is a loss that brakes and builds you.
For me this does not mean that you will take your father’s place, that you will fully re-member yourself through your identification with him, and that he has therefore been successfully mourned as an honored legacy continued in and by you. (For Bible breathers: “Seeing you have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, that is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10)). It does not mean that we become the fully re-membered, resurrected bodies of our fathers, mothers, formative loves and teachers. We are never fully re-membered in memory and resurrection (Mufasa, the father) by those who re-member us and thus re-member themselves (Simba, the son, who becomes a father in the end) because losses and absences are real and cannot be undone, even by love and helpful meerkats. After his famous conversion in the Milanese garden—“Pick up and read, and put on the new man, Jesus Christ”—Augustine in his Confessions gives us one of the most beautiful passages in theological literature on memory and desire, continually pursuing the God whom he loves, who is in him and eludes him. “Late have I loved you […] late have I loved you. […] You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours” (Book X.27.38). Augustine has converted, but there is no consummation; though he seeks God in the “vast fields and palaces of memory,” again God retreats. “If I find you outside my memory, I am not mindful of you. And how shall I find you if I am not mindful of you?” (Book X.17.26) We’re not talking about a dead God here, but a God that is always greater than we can remember. So Augustine’s love beckons him to the perpetually unfinished re-membering of himself and God.
Full disclosure, encore: J. Christ is not in my wardrobe. But Augustine’s ongoing re-membering—both of his spiritual body “after” conversion and of his God in his memory—takes place between the presence and absence of the beloved, the old man and the new one, the realities of loss and the possibilities of remembering. It’s about the fog of desire, memory, and the parts of us that are made up of our love for the living and the dead. It’s about what we say to the dead to keep them alive: “Wait. Don’t go. Don’t leave me,” as Simba says to the sky.
Thanks go to this tumblr for this and all of the incredible gifs in this post.
Discussion Question:
What important life lessons have you learned from children's movies?
When The Lion King came out in the summer of 1994, I was 11 years old and about to start middle school--probably a smidge too old to nerd out on a Disney movie.
But nobody told me and my best buddy Julia that. We saw The Lion King together one sweltering Tennessee afternoon and declared that we wanted to see it again. And then again. And then again. We saw it over a dozen times in the theater that summer, and our enthusiasm never waned.
I was a child obsessed. When I wasn't begging my parents to take me to the umpteenth matinee of The Lion King at the Carmike Cinemas, I was making up dances to the soundtrack, or combing the Bellevue Mall for Simba paraphernalia, or just wishing the internet existed so I could write The Lion King fanfic the livelong June. I clipped every article I could find that mentioned the movie and collected them in a file folder, like I was Simba's senile old relative.
I had all the Burger King toys and the bedding and even the coveted trading cards, which I begged my parents to buy me approximately every five minutes. There was a Lion King Trading Cards Swap Night down at Bellevue Mall one special night. I spoke of nothing else for weeks leading up to the event. Mama took me but I was too territorial over my collection to let the other children even LOOK to see if they wanted to trade. That is...not a strong negotiation tactic.
Not my bedroom but close enough
In the 17 years since the film was originally released, I have Hakuna Matata'ed my way into adulthood and eventually stopped clipping The Lion King articles. And, much in the way Simba and Nala joyfully and unexpectedly reunited, I have rekindled my friendship with dear Julia, who is now working on a PhD at Harvard but still shares my predilection for musicals and eating gummy bears.
So when we found out The Lion King was being rereleased, we knew what we had to do.
We chose Fresh Pond Theater for our Sunday afternoon viewing--it seemed fitting to go to a theater that clearly hasn't been renovated since the original release of The Lion King.
We walked into the theater and we were the only ones there.
Julia, always resourceful, had smuggled in a bottle of wine, and I had a near-endless bag of gummy bears. We had our favorite movie and an empty theater.
I let out a barbaric yawp of joy.
We sang each of the songs at the top of our lungs. We ran up and down the aisles dancing with joyful jazz hands for "Hakuna Matata" and with soulful lyrical interpretation for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." Julia stood on the armrests to sing "Just Can't Wait To Be King." The wine was gone by the time Nala and Simba reunited.
We sobbed when Mufasa died but we wailed when Simba met up with Rafiki and decided to go back to Pride Rock. By the time Rafiki intones, "He lives in you!" we were holding hands and letting the tears roll down our faces without wiping them away.
We knew we'd love seeing The Lion King again but I don't think either of us were prepared for how grown-up the movie really is. This movie is positively Homeric in its scope--you deal with love, death, family, power, and a whole passel of other themes in the course of this 90-minute children's movie. We couldn't get over how unexpectedly sexy it is--Simba's weirdly anthropomorphic and masculine body. The whole "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" scene. Look at Nala's come-hither stare!
That was the night Simba became a man. Er...lion.
On our drive home, emotionally exhausted in the extreme, I asked Julia if she'd write a few words for me about the experience of seeing the movie again all these years later, now that she's armed with all kinds of information about how to interpret texts. Tomorrow I'll be sharing Julia's ridiculously insightful essay about The Lion King, so don't forget to tune in!
I leave you with this. Everyone likes to try to sing the opening of The Lion King, which goes something like NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASIBANYA BABADEEZIBABA. Here I present to you opening lyrics of "The Circle of Life" translated from Zulu into English:
Here comes a lion, Father
Yes, it's a lion
We're going to conquer
A lion and a leopard come to this open place
The stirring opening notes of this song are basically HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY A LIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNN IT'S A LION OVER THERE! Disney, you so literal.
I have recently hit 20,000 unique visits to my dumb little blog. In honor of this milestone, I’d like to share some statistics with you.
I love Google Analytics. I love combing through the stats and seeing how people get to my blog. Many come from Facebook or Twitter, but 20% of my traffic comes from search engines. And Google Analytics allows me to see what everyone is searching for that brings them to my blog. These searches fall into a few different categories:
and finally, there’s a category that I can only call
GOOGLE IS MAGIC
classy bitches in fur coats
fingernail’s grip on reality
Georgia peach season in New England
grad school is like a vodka drinking contest
hit the players club bout a month or two
starburst mouth burns
the worst kind of mischief that can get into the country
DISCUSSION QUESTION:: What’s your favorite stupid search term that led to my blog? What’s your favorite quidquid post? Thanks so much for reading my blog and sharing the link with aw your peeps.
Brugge 2 by Spencer Tunick. Installation of 700 naked people arranged in a theatre in Bruges.
There are brave souls in every land
Who worship nature, grand and nude,
And who with swift indignant hand
Tear off the fig leaves of the prude.
--Robert Ingersoll
I recently bit the bullet and splurged on a membership to the local fancypants all-female gym. This place is incredible. I’m talkin soothing eucalyptus steam rooms and unlimited towel service, y’all. It’s the swankest gym I’ve ever been to and I adore it.
So I was surprised to see that the Yelp score for my gym was only 3.5 stars. What more could anyone want out of a gym??
A quick read through the comments revealed a troubling trend: women were voting Healthworks down because of the naked women in the locker room.
Wait, what?
Okay everyone, listen up. This is important.
Just ask this girl.
Locker-room nudity has long been a source of anxiety for me. Even when I was a small child, I assumed that a room like a locker room that was designated for single-sex clothes changing would be an acceptable place to take one set of clothes off and put another set on.
I was wrong.
Surrounded by my blushing cohorts, each one modestly turned to face the lockers, all of whom somehow knew how to change clothes without exposing one square centimeter of flesh (I still haven’t figured this one out), I quickly realized that I’d better follow suit or risk being considered an underage Sapphic exhibitionist. So I dutifully turned toward the lockers and learned how to put a swimsuit on without removing my teeshirt.
Even then, I knew the truth.
These girls were full of shit.
Being naked is great.
I’m not alone in my ~radical~ views on nudity. The ancient Greeks didn’t just go naked in their locker rooms—they did their entire workout in the buff. That’s why gyms are called gyms—the name is derived from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked. These people are complaining about nudity in a place that we basically call the nakedtorium.
Modern luminaries like Alexander Graham Bell, Leonard Nimoy, and author Robert Heinlein are also vocal proponents of the benefits of nudity. Abraham Maslow, the brain behind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, states "I still think that nudism . . . is itself a kind of therapy." In fact, there are thousands of people all over the world who believe in the benefits of nudity. They’re called naturists or nudists.
Are there tangible health benefits to nudity? Yes. No. I don’t know. WHO CARES? It feels great. Sleeping naked keeps your temperature regulated nicely, not to mention the feeling of cool sheets pressing against your body. Swimming naked means no nasty infections from wet bathing suits, not to mention the feeling of water rippling across your body. Sunbathing naked stimulates vitamin D production—which we northern dwelling creatures need so badly in the winter--not to mention the feeling of warm sunlight warming all of the palest, most secret places. The mental benefits? Immeasurable. Being naked does a body good.
So here’s your imperative: Go take your clothes off!
Not sure what to do with your new nude self? You can participate in World Naked Gardening Day, or the World Naked Bike Ride. Wikipedia helpfully suggests nude activities like skinny dipping, nude snorkeling, nude canoeing (or “canuding”), or even nude hiking or ”naked rambling.” (I participate in an alternative version of naked rambling, wherein I stand around my apartment in the nude and talk to myself.) If you also enjoy thumpy music and flashy lights, you will love going naked at Burning Man and other regional burns, where clothing is optional. My particular tribe of burners have pioneered the field of nude line-cooking at our annual Pantsless Pancake Breakfast.
It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you try doing it without clothes.
Now go forth and naked your world up!
If anyone needs me, I'll be naked in the locker room giving my gym a bad name.
Discussion question:
Do you like to get naked and run around? If you think I'm nuts, please tell me, because that will be fun too.
Many thanks to 
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