Top 10 Reasons You Should Be Friends With Me

1. I am fiercely loyal: I demand an extremely high level of loyalty from my friends, and I reciprocate in kind. If you need someone to, say, testify in court on your behalf, or help you hide a body, I'm your girl. 

2. I will send you things in the mail: If you live far away, I will write you letters. By hand. And then put them in envelopes with sealing wax and mail them to you. I will burn you carefully considered mix CDs and send those in the mail, too. I might also send you weird things like leaves, bookmarks, and glitter.
3. I will be there for you: Need someone to help you move? Need someone to talk you through a bad trip or a suicide attempt? My phone is always on, I don't mind drunk dials and I will respond to your 2 a.m. texts. 
4. I am an extremely good listener: Need to vent about your SO? Your job? Have a heartbreak or unrequited love that you need to discuss? At length? Over the course of, say, five years? I'm all ears. If you want advice, I'm ready with answers. If you don't, I'm good at shutting up.
5. I will give you a ride: Don't have a car? That's OK. I will pick you up from your hovel and drive you to the coffee shop so we can have mochas and discuss whatever it is we're going to discuss.
6. I love parties. I will throw them for you. I will harass your other friends until every last one of them shows up. I will surprise you with them. I will come to yours, and come early to help you set up. I will be your safety guest when you invite your boss to a party. I will (probably) not get drunk and embarrass you. Much.
7. I will fight your battles: People in your life giving you sass? They better reco'nize your authori-tay, or they'll have me to contend with. I am deeply offended by injustice, particularly when it affects people I care about - so when you need to sue that slumlord, I'll do everything I can to bring the offender to justice.
8. I don't judge: Cheating on your boyfriend? Got a teensy coke habit? Four payments behind on your mortgage? It's cool, I still love you. Even if you're doing something I don't agree with, like voting Republican, I can still understand your side of the story and empathize.
9. I will remember you: Did you meet me ten years ago? Think I won't remember you if you send me an email, friend me on The Facebooks, or follow me on Twitter? Think again. I remember everything about you - your middle name, your quirks and your weird obsessions.
10. I will make you look good by comparison: I get laugh too loudly and eat too many cookies, I "drop it" at dance clubs, I ask ridiculously forward questions of people I've just met, and I'm an unapologetic snob. These things bring fringe benefits to the people around me. You will learn. Oh, you will learn.

Related: Top 10 Reasons You Shouldn't Be Friends With Me

Classic Adventures

Bored? Explore the Adventures Archives this week for fun and profit!

Adventures in Pee
From 2006, when I could still drink things called "Foo Foos" with a straight face.

Easily Distracted
Even back in 2007, before I learned about StumbleUpon, Twitter, and iPhones, I was a terrible single-tasker.

Breedin' is what branded me, to some readers with below-average reading comprehension, as a hater of children and their parents. Which I am not. I just don't groove on the smug superiority that's the primary facet of the cult of parenthood.

The Tropical Isles of Wherever, is a somewhat coherent rant against the well-traveled, faux-bohemian Millenials among us.

Soundtrack of my Love Life
A glorious explanation of the zeniths and nadirs of my music collection, chronologically arranged by lov-ahs. 2009.

Satter's Hierarchy of Food Needs

Reposted from the wonderful Sociological Images with permission from Lisa Wade

Responding to critics who argue that poor people do not eat healthy food because they’re ignorant or prefer unhealthy food, Ellyn Satter wrote a hierarchy of food needs. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it illustrates Satter’s ideas as to the elements of food that matter first, second, and so on… starting at the bottom.

The graphic suggests that getting enough food to eat is the most important thing to people. Having food be acceptable (e.g., not rotten, something you are not allergic to) comes second. Once those two things are in place, people hope for reliable access to food and only then do they begin to worry about taste. If people have enough, acceptable, reliable, good-tasting food, then they seek out novel food experiences and begin to make choices as to what to eat for instrumental purposes (e.g., number of calories, nutritional balance).

As Michelle at The Fat Nutritionist writes, sometimes when a person chooses to eat nutritionally deficient or fattening foods, it is not because they are “stupid, ignorant, lazy, or just a bad, bad person who loves bad, bad food.“ Sometimes, it’s “because other needs come first.”

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This, this is glorious. Why? Because FINALLY, someone has come up with a succinct counter-argument to foodies who think they simply 'have better taste' than hoi polloi. I would love to see a similar argument applied to travel snobs and smug parents.