I stayed on the site for a while, reading articles by various contributors. The site’s emphasis is on self-improvement, health, and relationships but I liked the overall focus on simplicity and against materialism in many of the articles. A little on psychobabble-y and woo woo side, but still interesting.

At 41, I’m not quite ready to admit to being middle aged yet but I am increasingly aware that kids these days drive too fast and play music I don’t understand. Readers around my age who are dating someone older should know that when they join AARP at age 50, they might think it’s a laugh riot to you up for the group without your knowledge. I was just shy of my 40th birthday when I received my AARP card in the mail. Ha ha, Mark, but you’re still a decade my senior. Although I’m not AARP-age yet, it’s weird to realize that Gen X is entering middle age now, after over two decades of that being strictly Boomer territory.

Anyway since that seque had nothing to do with energy, I’m eager to read McKibben’s book since Amazon reviewers praise him for his clear and unsparing writing. There are too few voices talking about how unsustainable an economic paradigm based on unending growth is, which is tragic since it ought to be part of everyday conversation at this point.

I’ll have a post tomorrow about the bullcrap going on at the lege.

Can nothing be untouched by politics? The Tebow ad had already stirred up pre-game partisan controversy but it was at least (tangentially it turned out) about a hotly debated topic in politics, abortion. But some people can’t even let you pick a favored team to win the game without turning it into a reason to be a preening, pontificating jagoff. Troy Nelson writes for a blog called American Thinker and, apparently, spends a lot of time thinking about how hard it is out there for a white dude and why can’t those whiny brown-skinned disaster victims shut up already?

Shiftiness notwithstanding, I think President Obama’s answer is simpatico with this generation’s elevation of “victimology” and symbology above all else. Rather than focusing on the teams playing the game the rooting has been transferred to the more “deserving” team by proxy of their suffering fans. The Saints represent their fans which represent New Orleans which represents Katrina which represents victims of a storm event… which happened five years ago. See, the choice should be easy.

What happened to the days of pulling for organizations, teams, and players whom best demonstrate the virtues of team work and heart and will power? Who overcome the challenges of a determined opponent on the level playing field of competition? Of blood, sweat, and tears? I guess in our coddled, emasculated, socialist society any overt demonstration or celebration of these qualities is offensive, too Darwinian, too Randian, too capitalistic.

There’s nothing wrong with having a sentimental favorite, of pulling for the underdog. Who doesn’t sometimes pull for the David – the guy or team that’s not the BMOC (Big man on campus)? I do, when they earn it, when they overcome by the honest “capitalist” traits listed above. When did the Spock philosophy overtake the game? “The hopes of the many outweigh the hopes of the few.”

As Obama expressed, socialists and bleeding hearts have warped even sports and rooting into a meritocracy based on sympathy that often has nothing to do with the teams themselves but what they represent externally to the game. Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts don’t have a serious sympathy card to play. Sure, they can try to play up the angle of their rookie wide receiver and Haitian native Pierre Garçon as a “beacon for Haitians” but the Saints trump this with an entire city of victims. Advantage Saints.

That’s funny because I thought the Saints made it to the Super Bowl by “winning football games”, which I’d always thought was the most apt demonstration of the virtues of teamwork and heart and willpower in football. Seriously though, why would a manly capitalist like Troy even take an interest in football since players are unionized? They also have that pansy affirmative action un-meritocratic draft system. Honestly, I don’t know how conservative dudes can even watch pro football and risk the gay commie girl cooties infection they might catch from it.

Because Troy is such a strong believer in white power meritocracy, he rooted for the Colts.

If I do watch I just might have to pull for the master-of-his-craft tall white guy QB and the Colts. How capitalistic of me, how unsympathetic, how un-Barryish. I’m ashamed… not!

That worked out well, didn’t it? I notice there are no comments to Troy’s blog post after Saturday. Wonder why that is?

They scramble over heaps of rubble, often at great peril to themselves, to help their handlers locate trapped people. They don’t care about politics and they don’t make value judgments.

The famous prayer, “May I become the person my dog thinks I am. Amen.” has never had such resonance as it does now. You may not have as powerful a sense of smell, nor as infinite a capacity for loyalty and love, as the average dog. But you can show our best friends that you’re willing to try to be as good as they are by kicking a few bucks to some good charities.

Based on my research, I’m recommending the following charities for aid to Haitian earthquake victims.

Doctors Without Borders

UNICEF

Mercy Corps

And while we’re at it, how about helping out a charity that provides cooling vests to the brave and hard working doggies? HelpingUdders.com

Yes, my face is full of pus. Enjoy your yams.

Mark had been helpfully suggesting that I go see a doctor from the onset of the incident. “Donna, you should really get that looked at and I think you might need stitches.” “Pshaw!”, I scoffed, ever the sunny optimist that my DIY ministrations would succeed in ejecting the bacterial invaders from my injury. This morning I had to acknowledge, grudgingly, that Smartypants McBrainiac was right and it was time to trudge my swollen-headed self to the urgent care. I’m currently what you’d call “health insurance-challenged” so this caused me no small amount of trepidation.

Thanks to the fine folks at Advanced Urgent Care at 24th Ave. and Dunlap, I am on the mend. Hopefully. The doctor (a wonderful gentleman named Jeffrey Larson) told me if it doesn’t get better I may need a trip to the hospital for IV antibiotics. Keep your fingers crossed. He also admonished me that I should have gone to the urgent care right after it happened for stitches. Too late for that now so I have a gaping slash near the corner of my eye. I’m hoping it will heal into a jaunty little scar. The best part came when I got the bill for my services. When I got there they signed me up for a discount program called ValueCard that took more than half off the cost of my visit. Huzzah! My prescriptions were available as generics. Double Huzzah!!

The moral of my cautionary Christmas eve tale, Diva reindeers, is that when your face is bleeding and a person in your life whom you know to be smarter than you tells you that you should get it looked at, you should listen.

Edit to add: Merry Christmas to all.

According to the website: “Time is of the Essence. Based on recent 2008 statistics, we are losing World War II veterans at the rate of approximately 1,000 per day.” So if you know any WW2 veterans, please let them know about this program, and please donate to it if you can.

As a token of my regret and to honor my fellow vets and active servicemembers, I offer a link to a site showing dogs greeting their returning parents.

More soldiers with doggies.

Umm…I guess we’re supposed to take away from this that buying furniture on the cheap is always a good thing whereas the goodness of being a “cheap” woman is situational. When Joy and several others sent messages on facebook asking the company to change their advertising out of respect for women (who make something like 80% of household purchases just so you know) the administrator of the page deleted their posts and “unfriended” them. Joy sent a direct email to them and got the following response:

We love our billboard and think it does everything BUT objectify women. We are a woman owned-women run business and our “Being cheap isn’t always a bad thing” campaign is one that we feel tells three stories. 1) We are turning twenty years old this year. We started in a recession and we are currently in a recession. In such times, people often evaluate their purchasing and want to be more frugal or “cheap”. 2) 1989, the year Furniture Affair was conceived was not a year known for great style and class. Bold and brash, big hair, Peg Bundy and day-glo was the style story of the time. Our desire was to embrace that as well as the fun and carefree feeling of the time in our billboard. 3) The fabulous sofa featured in our ad can be bought for a fraction at our store that you would pay for it at the big, obviously more politically correct stores.

Huh? What, pray tell, is a politically correct furniture store? One that sells furniture to the kind of politically incorrect woman (like Peg Bundy) that you can have for a fraction of the price you’d pay for a politically correct wife (like, I dunno, Claire Huxtable or whats-her-name the mom on Growing Pains)? The 1989 reference is just silly because there’s not any serious nostalgia for that era and why would you want to tie yourself to a time not known for style and class when you’re selling home decor? Plus, once you get into having to explain how your image “works” you’re pretty much in the territory New Yorker cartoonist Sean Delonas was in last summer with the “Obama terrorist fist bump” cover. IOW, it’s a big old satire fail.

I understand they were trying to be fun and kitcshy but Furniture Affair is making the same stupid mistake that many marketers make – being totally oblivious to who your target audience is (women, the majority of the time) and assuming that since “sex sells” all you have to do is put a hot chick in front of your product in a suggestive pose, throw in a double entendre about her sexual availability, and watch the dough-re-me flow in. As a result, a good percentage of advertising and marketing out there looks like it’s hawking beer to frat boys. It unnecessarily causes girls and women to internalize some rather potent messages about how we’re supposed to look and what we are valued for. It also demonstrates how a lot of people in marketing take the lazy, too-easy route of perpetuating gender stereotypes instead of making an attempt to understand their customer base. It’s idiotic.

And speaking of idiots, the people who take the prize have got to be PETA. Several years ago they had some modest success with their “I’d rather be naked than wear fur” campaign. Okay, I’ll grant that is was a clever juxtaposition of fashion models with the anti-fur message. In the intervening years PETA has launched a series of insulting and embarrassing publicity stunts featuring Hot Naked Babes, or occasionally making fun of overweight women. They’ve received numerous complaints and their response to them is invariably dismissive. You’d think they’d realize that feminists could be natural allies to their movement and would be making a concerted effort to build a bridge with us, but no, they continue to pursue the eyes and approval of Teh Dudez. Yet, oddly enough, I haven’t noticed frat boys going vegan en masse.

Finally, enough with invoking the tired “political correctness” canard when someone confronts your inconsiderate behavior. There’s not a whole lot of actual “political correctness” out there but there are a whole lot of people using the concept to repackage the same old bigotry as something fresh and rebellious. Frankly, the people I’ve observed demanding actual political correctness most often – as in treating them with kid gloves, not challenging their beliefs, according them automatic respect while letting them say whatever they want about you – are to be found at the Tea Parties. But that’s a subject for another post.