What Should Sarah Palin Do?

I was tooling around on cnn.com when I came across a post from Jack Cafferty asking what Sarah Palin should do if she wants to run for President in 2012.

My first inclination at the thought of helping Sarah Palin take office is to laugh, hopefully while drinking coffee so it can spew out of my nose, and then to say (out loud), “Don’t run!”

But, seriously, that is not the question. The question is, What would you advise Sarah Palin to do next? (see full article below, with link to original)

Well, Sarah, if I’m to take a neutral stance and answer honestly, here’s what I think you should do:

5. Tone down the down home country talk. It does seem to appeal to some people, but those people already think you’re A-okay and most of them also consider Chee-tos to be actual food. What your ’simple folk’ speak mainly does is help paint that Sarah’s a regeelar country bumpkin picture that you like so much. The thing is, no one wants a dullard running the country. We already tried that for 8 years and it didn’t turn out well.

4. Try real honesty. The more people try to hammer home a righteous religious message, which almost always includes telling others how they should live their lives, the more those people have to lie to cover up their own transgressions. And it seems to me, if I’m to be honest, that the more these very people try to live by this strict moral code the more they fall off the wagon, as evidenced by the huge numbers of republicans and church officials getting caught in (mostly) sexually related scandals lately. So if you really had a baby at the age of 44 and no one could tell you were pregnant then congratulations. But if your teenage daughter has really had two kids and not one then say a mea culpa, apologize to the public for treating us as if we’re riding the short bus and talk about other ways to deal with sex education besides pushing abstinence since covering kids’ eyes, ears and mouths still leaves the critical areas exposed.

3. Quit bashing Obama, the other democrats and your own party. It’s so easy to point fingers, but there’s a saying about how that leaves three fingers pointing back at you. You may not agree with what others are doing but you’re wasting everyone’s time trying to milk your fifteen minutes of fame by talking smack about the competition. Be constructive and come up with solutions that make sense so people can see what you might have to offer as a leader.

2. What are you doing other than press junkets? Get a job, make some change in the world. Rather than asking how Obama’s “changey thing” is working out for him, show us what you can do. No need to wait until you’re elected to start leading by example. Haiti has just laid the golden egg of opportunity at the feet of anyone looking to make a name for themselves among those of us who know there’s a world outside of our U.S. border. Get your  butt down there and do some old fashioned good. BUT, you have to be genuine about it and you have to really actually help people or we’ll all smell the publicity stunt and think even less of you. And that’s saying a lot, because outside of a certain demographic, we think very little of you to start with.

1. The article I’m citing for this blog says that you’ve been receiving political and economic briefings. I’m all for educating yourself and I don’t think you should limit yourself to politics and the economy. They are but two facets in a very diverse world. Learn some foreign policy and study other cultures. Learn about the other religions, take some classes on public speaking and how to craft an argument. Then form your arguments based on your experience with the real world, which you need to actually go out and get. My husband has a tattoo on his elbow that quotes Mark Twain: Travel is Fatal to Prejudice.

Conor's tattoo

By travel he means gaining experience and perspective on the world and I think that would be very beneficial to someone with limited experience outside of the U.S. of A., such as yourself. Then, if hell froze over and you got elected President, you’d be a little better at dealing with the rest of planet Earth, with whom we are on somewhat tenuous ground.

Unfortunately, I think that if you did get elected all of the countries who hold our debt would immediately try to cash it in and we’d be belly up overnight. And that would be pretty bad. We’re barely hanging on as it is. So I hope you don’t follow my advice. Better you stick to your policy of blindly spouting rhetoric you don’t really understand and milking that fame machine for all it’s worth while you still appeal to those who consider Taco Bell ethnic cuisine.

So that concludes my blog on what Sarah Palin should do if she wants to run for President in 2012. I hope that day never comes, but if it does I hope she reads and heeds this blog. Yes, I’m admitting to a bias against Mrs. Palin because I am not a member of the fourth estate and therefore I’m not obligated to be objective.

And in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that this blog topic comes to you at the behest of my mom, who wants you to vote and vote smart in every election.

Have a great week!

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

Sarah Palin is making it clear that she’s not going anywhere – and she may just have her sights trained on the White House.

The former Alaska governor says she would consider a run for president in 2012 if the situation is right for the nation and her family. That’s swell.

Palin, who was woefully unprepared to be John McCain’s running mate, acknowledges that she “sure as heck better be more astute on these national issues” than she was two years ago. Seriously.

And maybe that’s why Palin says she’s started receiving daily political and economic briefings over e-mail from various Washington experts. That should do it.

Palin delivered the keynote speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville over the weekend. Palin used much of the speech to go after Pres. Obama on his national security and spending policies, describing him as a “law professor at a lectern,” criticizing him for “apologizing for America,” and asking the Tea Partiers: “How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for ya?” She even has her own language.

Meanwhile – it appears that Palin had written crib sheets on the inside of her hand, including the words “energy,” “tax” and “lift American spirits” – likely for the question and answer session after her speech.

That would be the very same speech where Palin criticized Pres. Obama for relying too much on Teleprompter.

Here’s my question to you: What would you advise Sarah Palin to do next?

Everything Old Is New Again

Remember when we were kids and we thought our parents were so out of touch with the world? They were so uncool that they weren’t even relevant enough to qualify for the icky old title of ‘fuddy duddy’ (That’s the family friendly version of the term).

Well, now that I have a little perspective (not too much perspective, though, I mean I’m not some sort of ‘fuddy duddy’ myself) I see that we are constantly mining the past for our modern day entertainment, sales pitches, well, for a lot of things. It’s only when we’re too young to know what came before that we think everything we see and hear is new and wholly original.

Look at our favorite TV shows. The premises may be new, or a variation of something that came before, but if you watch individual episodes you’ll see storylines that you recognize from the TV shows that came before. And we can take these TV shows and movies and video games and group them into broader categories called ‘genres’. So then we have a frame of reference for them, i.e. romantic comedies.

In movies or TV shows we know that romantic comedy means a story where we will laugh as a couple is kept apart, only to (hopefully) come together, finally, at the end. This genre was not originated with Jennifer Aniston’s oeuvre. It goes back to the beginning of story telling and the birth of films (way back before they even had color!).

We do things this way because it’s easier for both the writer and the audience. It’s like a story telling shorthand. The writer doesn’t have to tell you a ton of backstory to get you caught up to the place where the story starts. You know that boy meets girl and they hate each other, ergo, by way of this being a romantic comedy, they will fall in love and live happily ever after. Just like in a horror movie you know that the girl who takes her clothes off is going to die, the only question is, how will the killer do it and how much blood will soak the screen?

That brings me to sales. You know the saying: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right?

Just recently my dad was regaling us with the tale of how he got his first job in a frigid winter-numbed Alaska when he only had a few dollars left in his pocket. He walked into a car dealership and asked for a job. To prove himself worthy of employment he walked out to the intersection and approached a car waiting at a stop light. After convincing the driver to open his window he told the man that he had a customer who wanted to buy a car just like the man’s and would he be willing to sell it to the dealership?

Well, my dad was charming and attractive, but I think it was the idea of making a few bucks off the bucket he was driving that enticed the man to sell his car to my dad and then, needing new wheels, he had to buy a new car from the dealership. My dad made his first sale before he’d even been hired. He went on to be very very successful in sales for his entire career.

My dad, back in the day, dressed for skiing

Yesterday in the mail I got a letter from Robertson Honda, where I bought a new Civic back in 2004. That car is long gone, but the good folks at Robertson don’t know that. They wrote to me saying that they have a drastic need to acquire 2004 Civics and they are hoping, hoping, praying that I might consider selling them mine. In return for my kindness they offered to make me an incredible deal on any 2010 Honda in the store!!

I laughed and thought immediately of my dad.

There are no new ideas under the sun, only our own interpretations of them. With this in mind, we should respect the creative minds who’ve come before and do our best not to discount those fuddy duddies for daring to continue to exist on our planet. Thanks, Dad!

Being me

Fair warning, dear readers, today’s blog is about our bodies <big gasp!>… and stuff. Read on with great trepidation, for once you start you won’t want to stop, unless something better grabs your attention.

On my way home from work Friday night I started thinking about how there have been lots of times in my life where I’ve had something great, like the perfect outfit or the world’s most relaxing massage, and then when it was gone or over I missed it and wished I’d appreciated it more when I had it.

It occurred to me that there may come a time when I will wish I had spent time appreciating the body that I have. That’s right, I’m talking about my human, physical form. I’m young and healthy and when I’m older or, depending on what you believe comes after life, when I’m dead, I may wish that I’d spend time really enjoying and appreciating what it feels like to be in this body now.

I started to really pay attention to what it felt like to be me from the inside out: the slightly sore muscles from recent work outs, the way it feels to move my hands, seeing clearly out of my eyes. How does it feel to be tall (or short or in between)? Am I hungry? What exactly does that feel like? Is it the same for everyone?

The odd thing was that as I concentrated on how it felt to be me my body relaxed, physically and mentally. My thoughts slowed down and I was suddenly calmer. It was a great feeling and I’ve been working on keeping that feeling up ever since.

Keeping any thought going for a long period of time is a challenge. We all know our society is set up to constantly distract us with shiny and desirable objects and our focus softens if we don’t work hard at keeping it sharp.

Part of the reason that I even came to be thinking about appreciating my body was because my husband, who is now in a masters program studying acupuncture, has his Qi Gong class on Friday nights and he’d told me that very day that this class had proven to be his most challenging. In that class they practice meditation and being able to focus was one of the hardest things for him. I’ve tried it and it’s hard for me too. One of two things generally happens: the mind wanders or I fall asleep. But if you want to figure out what should be on your grocery list or what so-and-so meant by the comment they made about your outfit earlier in the day you should definitely attempt to meditate.

Focusing on appreciating my body helped a lot with keeping my thoughts on one track, for a while.

Sure, it’s an ongoing practice. But at the risk of sounding like some new age person with an uncomfortably fervent affection for trees, I really felt like I got a lot out of that experience and I thought I’d share it with you this week.

Give it a try… or don’t. But if you do, feel free to comment below and tell me about it.

Violinists on the Titanic

I spent my weekend in a bootcamp learning to do something new. The teacher told us over and over that we would have to work hard to become good at what we were learning. She used this analogy: You are not going to graduate from USC (my alma mater!) on Monday and be CEO of IBM on Tuesday. You have to work hard to get there.

And that got me thinking about something that’s been bothering me for a long time, because I’ve struggled with it myself and because I see it running rampant in our society.

On a small scale:

I know a lot of actors here in Los Angeles at all levels of their careers. I’m friends with most of them on facebook and, for the most part, their status updates fall into one of two categories. Those who are struggling to “make it” alternate between hoping for their big break, thinking that every audition is going to be “the one”  and feeling depressed that it’s not happening fast enough for them.

The other category is the working actors. Their posts are often about the work they are doing on their careers, the classes, the meetings, the work they’re booking. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this: There are those who are doing some hard work and there are those thinking that success should come knocking on their doors.

Having been a member of both camps I can understand buying into the dream that we’re so fabulous it can only be a matter of time until we’re discovered and the reality that we are each but one small fish in a turbulent sea and if we are to avoid the net of despair we have to keep on swimming as fast as we can toward the light/food/brass ring/(choose your own analogy here).

As a nation we’ve grown up over the last 100 years hearing about the “American dream” and how we’re all entitled to a piece of it. Somewhere along the way the notion of working for it has been jettisoned in favor of waiting for Ed McMahon to bring us our Publisher’s Clearinghouse check or Calgon to come and take us away from our worries.

And that brings me to the mindset of our country in general and my sinking (pun intended) feeling that we’re all sitting around listening to the violinists on the deck of the Titanic playing the tired tune, “Things are getting better” as the ship that is the U.S. goes down.

We continue to hear that things are getting better in our economy, that the recession is finally over at the same time we’re hearing that the big banks we bailed out continue to do risky business as usual. As we hear that unemployment is improving we also see that the unemployment numbers continue to get higher. So where is the improvement coming from? The millions of dollars we are printing? I don’t think so – that’s nothing but a bucket trying to bail water out of the Titanic as it goes down.

What’s really going on is that without hard work and a lot of sacrifice on our part, on the part of our government and on the part of the greedy Wall Street bankers, we will only continue to sink. We the people can’t expect that a financial crisis that was years in the making is going to be turned around overnight by a President in the first year of his administration. No matter how good his intentions are he still has to had to sell a bit of his soul to the big banks (namely Goldman Sachs) to get to the White House. No one makes it there these days without greasing dirty palms with promises of favors… you know, in a very democratic way.

In the meantime we can get discouraged that we’re not discovering new financial wealth overnight or we can start doing the hard work of saving, paying off our debts and taking our business away from companies we know or suspect of being corrupt.

And then we’ll all be movie stars. Yay!

My First Short Story

My sister called me on her drive home to San Francisco after Christmas. I was in the grocery store and she skipped the greeting and went right to: Do you remember a guy named Thomas Andrew Young? I told her it sounded familiar but that I was not sure who the person was.

She and her boyfriend burst into laughter in the car. While she was at my parents’ house she’d been going through the boxes of pictures as she is wont to do. Amongst the family memorabilia she found a copy of my very first complete short story, written when I was 11 years old.

Thomas Andrew Young was the main character of this story. My sister greatly enjoyed reading passages of it out loud and regaling me with the hilarious details. She asked where the story came from, how did I come to write this? Was I upset with someone? I explained to her the story was not about me, it was a work of fiction and what she was failing to fully realize was that I was awesome as an 11 year old. I made the story up and it was great.

I’ve read it from time to time over the years and I always enjoy it with nostalgia and a sense of pride. I thought that today I would share it with you. I hope you enjoy the inner workings of my 11 year old mind as much as my sister did.

I have not edited it or changed it in any way.

TOMMY

Hi! This is the diary of Thomas Andrew Young (that’s me) and you can call me Tommy. I am an overweight eleven year old with serious psychological problems. One of these is my loving, skinny family.

I also have an array of school problems (besides my grades, which I believe to be low because it’s hard to concentrate on math and spelling while your face is being beaten in and your butt is being kicked). Another one of my long list of problems could be my lack of friends. In my whole life I’ve had one friend. Who was, by the way, an imaginary one. His name was Fred, but I killed him off when I was eight.

My parents find all of this hard to believe since my skinny brother, Sean Allen, who is a junior in high school, and my skinny sister, Natyli Ana are so popular – not to mention honor students.

Some of my mental problems are due to the fact that putting me down is a favorite family pasttime in my house. If a day goes by that Sean doesn’t get the chance to beat me up or play a mean trick on me, he becomes a sad and lost human being with a bad temper.

An example is the time I was seven and fell in love with my sister, Natyli. When I asked her to marry me, she and Sean decided to “teach me a lesson in life” and I would tell you about it, but the memory is too painful.

Then, when I was at the tender age of eight, my imaginary friend, Fred (mentioned before) betrayed me. (You’re asking yourself, “How can an imaginary friend betray someone?” Well, then, PAY ATTENTION!!) He made me tell Sean about a very serious problem of mine. This was my crush on his girlfriend, Cindy. (By now, I was long since over Natyli, who was no 14 years old and in the ninth grade.) Sean decided it was time for another “Lesson in Life”, so Cindy, who went along, pretended to be in love with me and got me to tell her of my love and when I went in for the kiss I had seen Sean perform flawlessly so many times she shoved me away and started yelling. Well, as you may have guessed, Sean was right there and had the whole thing on video tape.

And from my parents all I ever hear is:

“Tommy, you look awful today, go change.” (This almost every day.)

“Tommy, why can’t you dress more like your brother and sister?”

“Tommy, why can’t you behave more like your brother and sister?”

“Tommy, why can’t you get good grades like your brother and sister?”

Now, I believe everyone needs someone to put down and be mean to, as I discovered early in life, but why me? I mean, I don’t encourage cruelty and bodily harm unto myself, I take showers and I’m generally neat and as nice to everybody as you can possibly be to people who use you as a punching bag. So, I have arrived at the conclusion that I was God-chosen and the only cure is:

REVENGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unknown to my family, I had begun planning my revenge. For three months all I could think of, night and day, was my sweet plan for revenge. But in the end all that was destined to go to waste. For that reason I won’t even take the time to tell it to you.

What happened instead will astound you and you may not believe it, but read it anyway. (You’ve come this far so you might as well suffer through the rest.)

It was a warm spring day and I was out for a walk to observe nature. (I also had to get away from the house because Sean was in a particularly bad mood and I was still sore from the bad mood he’d been in yesterday.)

As I walked along, what should I come across? It looked to me to be a bunch of papers. But I’m no expert and these days you never can be too sure. So I looked inside and there were about 15 pieces of paper full of what looked like plans or something. Anyway, they were in another language.

Being paranoid as I am, I immediately took them to our local FBI branch and a “friendly helper of justice and the American Way” (as they call themselves on TV) helped me locate someone called a bilingual. Since I’m only eleven, I thought the worst – why does someone with a weirdly named disease work for the government?  As it turned out, bilingual meant someone who spoke more than one language and the funny writing turned out to be Russian. They were plans and they said that the Russians were planning a secret attack on the United States.

Before I knew what was happening to me, I was a National Hero. Suddenly my life was forever changed. For one thing, now Sean and Natyli kissed up to me and I was now my parents favorite child, and always (secretly) had been.

I didn’t buy that stuff for one single second – would you? But I took full advantage of it – I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy being spoiled and pampered?

All over the country I, Thomas Andrew Young, was on newspaper covers, magazines, TV.

But wait! Here’s the best part of all: The President of the United States wanted to give me a reward! On national television! The day arrived and I went up there and received my reward in front of the whole country and I shook hands with the President. Then came my revenge! (You thought I forgot about it, didn’t you?) My family stood around the podium at my feet and clamored for attention. our great Commander in Chief saw them and asked me if they were my family. At that point they jumped up and started hugging me – on national TV! So  I said that no, I didn’t know who they were, had never seen any of them in my life.

The President thought that they were trying to hurt me (And Sean was, he tried to discreetly pound my back in with one hand while hugging me with the other.) Security guards and Secret Service men came and my family was taken away in strait jackets.

Then, while they grew old in separate mental hospitals, I grew up as the adopted son of the President of the U.S. of A.

THE END!!

My first blog of 2010

Happy New Year!

Last week I wrote about the holidays; about the difficulty of travel, the troubles that can come from a lot of close family time and how no matter where you go home is where you come from.

Well, my mom read that and thought I wasn’t enjoying my Christmas time with my loved ones. I assured her that I was and I meant it. I am lucky to be part of a phenomenal and loving family and I did have an awesome holiday season. And, as I mentioned, I drove to and from so I didn’t have to endure any airlines, airports or the hassles of air travel.

Where I was

All that said, there is nothing like coming home. It makes you remember and appreciate that you have this home, this sanctuary that you have set up in a part of the world where you (hopefully) have chosen to live and that it’s all yours.

Home Sweet Home

I returned late Saturday night and as I hiked with my girlfriends on Sunday morning I was reminded of how much I love living in Los Angeles. I’d just returned from a place where snow was piled up in the streets, a real winter wonderland, and here I was going up Runyon Canyon on a beautiful, sunny 73 degree day in early January where to the left of me I could see ships on the ocean in front of Catalina Island and to the right of me I could see the Griffith Park Observatory framed by distant snow capped mountains. There were a few clouds in a blue sky and clean, clear air all around me. I was with the family we make as adults, those people who share our interests and lifestyles and I was enjoying one of my favorite pastimes.

Runyon Canyon

What could be better? Of course, Monday brought the grind back into focus, but having been refreshed by time away I am ready to get back into it and face the challenges that this year will present.

What are your plans for 2010? Personally I am not one for New Years’ Resolutions. I have goals and I intend to accomplish them but I don’t consider them New Years’ Resolutions. Am I kidding myself? If they coincide with the start of a new year are they indeed New Years’ Resolutions? What do you think?

The Holidays have come, and what did they bring?

So the holidays happened.

Every year most of us get together with our loved ones for the holidays. Some of us come from far away, traveling great distances through airports whose main goal often seems to be to make our lives more difficult, and to make us undress in public. Some of us even have to wrestle would-be bombers to the ground mid-flight. That particular incident will probably result in our having to take off our underwear and run it through the metal detector. How fun.

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab ruined it for everyone

Once we reach our loved ones, those we love with all of our hearts, the ones we write into our last wills and testaments, we sometimes find that our love can dim a bit in the stress and high expectations of the season.

But there always comes that moment when we remember that these people are where we come from, who we are and no matter how far we’ve migrated over the course of our lives, where they are is home.

For that reason today’s blog is short, I am spending time with my family and it’s all the sweeter because I drove here.

I wish you a very Happy New Year! I hope your year is filled with great times and great memories.

My Christmas Gift

Every year I set out with great goals regarding how much I’m going to volunteer for worthy causes, how much money I’m going to give to help those in need and how much less I am going to consume in an effort to help the environment… Well, like all resolutions, I could do better.

But there is one thing that I do on a fairly regular basis – I donate blood. This is quite the donation, it requires you to be healthy and above a certain age and weight. You can’t have a cold, you can’t have been to Africa recently or Europe for more than 5 years. You can’t have taken certain medications, etc. There are a lot of hurdles to pass but I go through them because this is something I can do to make a difference, to help others.

My blood type is O+, I am the universal blood donor, everyone can take my blood. Plus I am something called Cytomegalovirus negative, which means that newborns and cancer patients can take my blood.

I wasn’t sure what Cytomegalovirus was or why it was supposedly so rare. All I knew is that the Red Cross has told me that’s what I am and that they really really want my blood because of it. So, not knowing, I looked it up.

Here’s a brief definition: Between 50% and 80% of adults in the United States are infected with CMV by 40 years of age.  Cytomegalovirus is a member of the herpes virus family, which includes herpes simplex viruses and the viruses that cause Chicken Pox (VZV/Varicella Zoster Virus) and infectious mononucleosis (Epstein Barr Virus). According to: http://accessclinical.com/cytomegalovirus.aspx?gclid=CNz93bHz6J4CFSgVagodb1L1_g

Wow. Now you know a lot about me. Very personal. I hope this doesn’t become awkward between us.

My arm, bandaged after my donation

Who knew this was such a prevalent disease? 50 – 80% is pretty high. So I guess I’m pretty lucky. But this blog is not about CMV. It’s about the Christmas gift I feel best about giving this year. The one that you know no one is going to ask for the receipt for in order to return it. The gift you know they really will be happy to receive. The gift that really does keep on giving. And I’m proud to be giving it, not just now, during the holidays, but as often as I can.

So though I may have a long way to go to get to that place where I feel comfortable about my philanthropy but it’s a start and a start that I really like.

I wish you all happy holidays. Thank you for reading my blog this year, my first year as a blogger. I look forward to writing for your reading pleasure in 2010. Happy next decade!

Best,
Zena

The Story of Stuff

How ironic is it that last week I blogged about struggling through my consumer oriented holiday shopping and then this week I saw this: http://storyofstuff.org?

This is a twenty minute documentary about where all the stuff we buy comes from, who makes it and how it’s made.

So I settle in to watch the movie with my skeptical pants on because I’ve seen a lot of ultra preachy films on being eco friendly and pretentious ones about not eating your weight in meat per day. And that can get to be a bit much, even when I agree with what they’re saying.

But I was instantly sucked in by this film. It’s not preachy and it’s not pretentious. And after watching it I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Follow me on my train of thought, if you will…

I like to buy stuff. I like to have the latest and greatest in electronics and fashion. I want to keep up with Joneses, even though there is a big part of me that fully rejects the idea of being concerned with such things as fashion, having the latest and greatest and buying into the notion of name brands. And why should I even care what the Joneses are doing? What makes me think their taste is so great? They probably listen to R. Kelly and put out human-sized waving Santa Clauses on their lawn every December 1.

From there I start to wonder about this discrepancy between what I want and what I think is right. I start thinking about the way I’ve been indoctrinated since earliest childhood to focus on not just consumption, but very specifically guided consumption.

I love watching television. And I know that I am being sold something at every moment, not just during the commercials, but in the shows themselves. That’s called product integration and as a writer I’ve even done product integration passes on screenplays I’ve written in order to help producers get money to make the films from the makers of the products I’ve mentioned. So I’m aware of the process and what’s going on and I think I’m above it all and yet… and yet… I’ve fallen victim to it to such an extent that I hadn’t even realized how deeply indoctrinated I am.

So I’ve decided I want to change my mindset from that of an avid consumer to that of a person who is able to happily do without all this stuff. Except for my iPhone, of course. And my computer. And… well, it’s going to take a long time, even though I have long known that the corporations that produce the stuff I buy are engaged in practices that I don’t condone, from polluting my environment to using the money they earn from me to support causes and ideals that I do not agree with. The best I can do is take it one product at a time and ask myself if I really need it and if I really want the people who make it to have my money.

And that will have to go for holiday presents too, but next year. Yep, I’m definitely starting next year.

In the meantime, I’ll go back and watch this documentary every time I need to be reminded of the ideals I’d like to call my own because knowing that things are wrong is half the battle, right, G.I. Joe? Although, I wouldn’t be able to watch the documentary again without my computer, so… hmmmm. Maybe we need some of the evils to help make things right. Or maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to keep the things I want to keep.

The Holidays are upon us!

I’m beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by my holiday shopping; I want to get everyone exactly what they want and I want to do it on a budget, so it’s quite a balancing act.

After a day of contemplating my list I was feeling very tired as I sat down to write my blog and that’s when I was visited by an old alter ego of mine, Captain Cynical. Captain Cynical very kindly offered to write this week’s blog for me and, seeing that there was a new episode of How I Met Your Mother on the DVR, I agreed.

(Click here to listen to this song as you read the blog –>) ride_of_the_valkyries (Once you click on the song link it will take you to another window to play. When the song starts playing come back to this window to read the blog.)

Nothing is certain but death, taxes and holiday shopping, right? I’m pretty sure that’s a direct quote from Santa, or maybe someone who runs the government and decides such things for all of us.

Today’s blog is an honest, come on, we know it’s true, assessment of the holiday shopping season and our place in the corporate dollar re-distribution machine. We’ve been groomed from birth to outwit, out-shop and out-give each other. So let the games begin and may the one who spends the least amount of money on the fewest people feel guilty all year long.

First, a gentle reminder, dear friends: As we charge headlong into another inevitable holiday season we should make sure not to run over our slower moving brethren on the way to the cash register.

Charge!

We all know that Christmas, Hannukah, Festivus and whatever the Scientologists do are not about how good or bad we’ve been all year, but about how grand a spectacle we can put on, how extravagantly we can outdo our family members, neighbors and friends with our gift giving and decorating prowess.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So as we rush out to crush the competition, let us take a moment and be thankful for the available credit to buy the best that the malls have to offer and be thankful that we own the right Kitchenaid mixer to manufacture treats that make our loved ones exclaim in ecstacy and be thankful for our Dorito-nourished legs, which allow us to beat the competition to the hottest toys.

Santa Never Imagined This Tree

May your dinner table put Martha to shame, may your gift wrapping bring your gifts’ recipients to tears of amazement and gratitude and may the gifts inside bring you no shortage of joy that you and you alone thought of the most wonderful, perfect gift ever. No one can possibly outdo you. And if they do, may you have the fortitude to never let them know.

Once you’ve shopped, baked, wrapped and bestowed your kindness on all of your loved ones and those you feel obligated to shop for because they got you something last year, take a moment to sit back and take a look at what those people have gotten you. Hopefully they have given you gifts that show they were thinking of you with happiness and affection. Because while we may be perfection machines, it is of the utmost importance that our loved ones never become soulless automatons who shop just to make the point that they are worth loving. I mean, really. That’s just what Chase and Citibank want. No, no, best they leave the heavy lifting to you, gentle reader, a person strong enough to know the difference between the art and commerce of holiday shopping, a person who will always stay true to the art of being the best holiday provider ever.

Me, I’m getting them all gift certificates to Target.

Onward Christmast Soldiers! Shop away!

- Your Bestie, Captain Cynical