[Not a lot going on these last few days. My main project has been working on this 'zine I've been wanting to do for a while. Here's the introduction I've written for it.]

What kind of life do you live? Is it killing you?

Do you care?

I quit smoking - really quit - back in July. My sister and I were leaving my mother's house after a visit with my brother, who had come in to town for a visit. The warrants finally expired on my brother, which gives you some idea of the kind of guy he is. Not a bad guy, certainly, but a redneck, yes, and a hoodlum. My sister gave me one of her smokes and we shared a Marlboro moment, a shuddering, grateful exhalation. I think what we were happiest about was that our brother wasn't staying with us.

And that was it. That was July first or second, I can't remember. A had a few one night at a concert - Duran Duran at the Horseshoe Casino, that was - when I was so staggeringly drunk that smoking seemed like a good idea. I kept lighting them, taking a few drags and then dropping them, grinding them into the carpet. They hurt my throat.

A couple of weeks ago, at a bachelor party at a beer joint Downtown, I had another smoke. I smoked it all the way down to the filter. It was gross. I think I've put that habit behind me.

And peanut butter. Your average, normal person doesn't have to worry about eating too much peanut butter, but I do. I was a picky eater as a kid, but I'd always eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. For years I ate nothing of substance beside PB&J. Peanut butter is made of fat, for the most part, so I'm sure my cholesterol level is ominously high.

I don't know that, mind you. I haven't had it checked in five years, and it was pretty damned impressive (read: life threatening) back then. My eating habits haven't improved since then, either.

So I've quit peanut butter, too. I've quit it several times in the past, though, and it's never taken. I have a feeling it will prove far harder to get off of than the nicotine.

I started running about a year ago, too. But I've slacked off here lately - it's been several weeks since I went on a good hard run and nearly a month since I ran in an actual race. I've been waiting for the whole addicted-to-fitness-runner's-high thing to kick in, but so far I've seen no hint of it. Running is hot, hard, sweaty work that makes me feel better afterwards, not during.

And I drink, too, but not too much and never to excess. Really, everyone drinks. I'm squarely in the mainstream, there. Rarely to excess, anyway. It's been quite a while since I was sick from drinking too much. Maybe I haven't felt 100% the next morning, but actually bowing over the toilet and retching? That's in the distant past, baby.

And I don't do drugs, either. So that's no peanut butter=good, and no smoking=good, but not running=bad, or at the very least not good. And drinking? That could be bad, but it's not. It's a push.

Anyway, that's me. But what about people in general? It's fashionable to blame parents, but I think that may be a wee bit misguided. I got this friend, and we were friends all through high school and college. We'll call this friend Elmo, which is most assuredly not this friend's name.

Elmo was raised by good, god-fearing Southern Baptist parents. Elmo's dad was a deacon, you know? Before Elmo went off to college I bet Elmo had never missed church two Sunday's in a row. Hell, Elmo played the piano at church. Still, Elmo was having lots of the sex before going to college, and at college Elmo picked up all sorts of sinful habits. What happened? Do you blame Elmo's parents? I don't think so - they gave Elmo a good raising. Elmo knew better, yet Elmo continued to sin.

And another friend from college, whom we'll call T-Bone. Yeah, T-Bone, that's a good name. T-Bone came from a good Church of Christ family out in the country. By the time he'd been in college a couple of years, though, T-Bone was out of the closet and gay as the feather in grand-dad's hatband. That didn't happen because of his family, and the Church of Christ certainly didn't make him that way.

Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with smoking or drinking or being gay or fucking - or some combination of the four. True, taken to excess any one of the four could kill you, but that's your own damned business. I've done three of the four (quite a bit of three of the four, actually) and I'm still alive. However, it can be a cumulative effect, and when the doctor gives you the bad news it's too late, right?

Then you see some guy on the news in Spain who's 157 years old and he attributes it to his daily cigar and belt of whiskey. And drinking his own urine. On the other hand, in the town I grew up in there was this family who had three sons, all about my age. Over the course of my high school and college years these three kids either had heart attacks, went in to comas or just dropped dead. It's a bitch, ain't it?

I cross a lot of streets when I walk to lunch every day. Will I stop taking risks? Probably not. But at least they're risks I choose.

Maybe I'll start running again, too.

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