The new hippies

Young people these days! Why do vegans exist except to take up space in the aisles of otherwise empty organic food stores on Sunday evenings. They don't believe in grocery bags, so their earth-friendly canvas sacks sit in the middle of the aisles, forcing me to navigate around them in a shopping cart with a car attached the front the size of an extended cab Hummer. They look at me with disdain, as if I were actually driving a Hummer (going against every ounce of their soy-infused being). It could be that my daughter is shouting nonsensical words to her own special song and banging on the horn of the mini-Humvee with her lollipop-filled fists. Do they think I would try to grocery shop on a Sunday evening without plying her with processed sugar snacks? Whatevah! I'm sorry, but to take up 2/3 of the aisle pondering which vegan organic dog snack would most put little starved Fido in harmony with his chi is enough of a crime that I feel no remorse in running over the tofu-cheese and non-gluten breakfast crunchies that are sitting in the middle of the aisle in the 30-gallon earth-friendly canvas bag. The wheels of my Humvee may actually help your malnourished system in digesting this crap.
Or maybe I just don't like vegans because it sounds like wiccans and that's some weird shit.
Or maybe I don't like 'em because they're all so skinny.

Back from VayCay

We spent 4 days on a mountain with some college friends. They skiied, I pretended to do enrichening things with my daughter. She watched a total of 18 hours of television and I read Us, Vogue, People, Jane and all of the pamphlets describing wonderful activities available to us while visiting Big Mountain. Apparently I could have actually left our rental and had rewarding experiences while excercising. I'll have to remember that next time I go on a ski trip pregnant with a 3-year-old (no, duh, not pregnant carrying a 3-year-old). Where was the pamphlet that showed me where to drop off my daughter in a loving and eductational environment while I shopped and got a 2 hour foot massage? Does that nirvana exist? The two things I mentally store away for future daydreams: cable tv - specifically the Cartoon Network - and the ability to watch Law and Order at any time of day, and a bathtub big enough to fit me and my gi-normous belly.
I've also developed a healthy scorn for people who flaunt their physical fitness while on vacation. Hmmm, eat another brownie while watching reruns of everything (see daydream about cable tv above), or run 8 miles and eat whatever it is those people refuel with. No, I don't want to go for a walk in the refreshing night air! That would disturb the constellation of snacks I've comfortable arranged on my belly, plus this is the part where they bust the kid for taking nude pictures of the teen TV star...

The Real Question

As heated debates constipate the Montana House on What Is a Quality Education, a more fruitful and pertinent question is pondered by Princeton professor Harry G. Frankfurt: "On Bullshit". As reported in the NY Times, "[t]he bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] 'does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it,' he writes. 'He pays no attention to it at all.'"
This reminds me of a friend who, when in the midst of debate, would call bullshit with a curt "Cite your source!" I think of this phrase often when discussing contentious topics, but don't have the guts to say it, as I am typically guilty of using unresearched and unsubstantiated "facts" to support my arguments. Although, the fact that I know I have no source for my data indicates I'm more of a liar than a bullshitter. Whatever. I know I'm right anyway.

Buster: Left-wing Propagandist

That Buster. Always trying to corrupt. My daughter won't watch it anyway ("Just plain ol' Buster is boring without his friends."), but that definitely shouldn't preclude our we-just-have-the-best-interest-of-parents-in-mind Education Secretary from lambasting the program as too extreme for young, impressionable minds and threatening to pull the plug on funding of such endeavors. Sure, I understand the need for parents to monitor what kids watch, which is why this type of program is even more important. How else are right-wing Baptist couch-potatoes (sorry, was all that redundant?) and their progeny going to see normal happy children growing up with two loving adults. Because the divorce rate in the Bible Belt sure indicates that those type of households are few and far between. Yeah, even the Word-of-God-sanctioned marriages are falling down at a rate of >50%%, which indicates more than half of the kids in the BB don't know what a committed relationship with two loving adults looks like. We're talking about >1 million children, nation-wide, that are affected by failed marriages.
Damn you PBS for trying to show them what a good one is! And, as Margaret Spellings said, we can't have renegade networks like PBS trying to "[expose children] to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode." And that would be... um... I'm searching... loving households?

Should the news always make us depressed?

An unofficial tally from today's rag: 34 dead people, 3 raped boys, House and Senate at state and federal level continue with partisan bickering, 1 dog killed by a trapper and 1 alien abduction. That was section A. Then my 3-yr-old asks me to read her the comics and they're not funny. Not to me or her, although she gives me an obligatory laugh at Mutts because "puppies are always funny, right?" Yeah, just not in the newspaper. I read once that Brooke Shields' favorite comic was Mutts (we all remember bizarre factoids about the richnfamous, c'est oui?), and I read it daily. So far, 3 years and not even a chuckle. Depressing thing #5 about the newspaper.
So I get my kicks on the editorials, which never fail to flummox, befuddle and amuse. Especially with respect to aforementioned alien abduction and Christian zombies spouting scripture as "reason". I like Geese Aplenty's vision of "who's right" in the religion debate (from 1/27). Today I'm going with Buddhists, in honor of the Chinese New Year. Yeah!! The year of the cock!