Because It Isn't Enough Just HAVING Breast Cancer...

Ford Motor Company, in concert with the Susan B. Komen foundation (natch) is "powering" the "Warrors in Pink" campaign, featuring American Idol Kelly Clarkson. So while you are receiving chemo infusions, pulling chunks of your hair out and otherwise just feeling like shit, you can "rock the cause" like the true pink warrior you're supposed to be. Like Kelly, you can wear your rockin' Warrior gear, and imagine the day that your hair will grow out think and full again and blow seductively like Kelly's--all while rockin' the cure, baby! You can "wear it straight up or rock it. Either way, you can rock the world!"

This is a campaign for Breast Cancer awareness. Which means that the money dumped for all this pink crap goes toward manufacturing more pink crap, including those annoying giant pink ribbons that adorn buildings during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The website states that 100% of proceeds goes to the Susan B. Komen foundation. What I'd like to know is what percentage of that actually goes to research. Greater awareness, the story goes, increases the rates of early detection--but I wonder if there has been a randomized controlled trial that shows that wearing a Warrior Hoody or sending Yoplait stick pink yogurt lids has actually been a statistically significant factor in higher rates of early detection.

I think of the breast cancer patients who have come through our program--like the 42 year-old whose main goal was to have her pain managed without becoming too sedated so that she can still communicate with her 10 year-old daughter. When I think of patients like her, and see this Warrior Rockin The Cure shit--it makes me a bit crazy. When Barbara Ehrenreich wrote her piece for Harper's--"Welcome to Cancerland", I wonder if she had any idea things would get to Warriors in Pink--Powered by Ford. Because Ford Cares. If you have never read Barbara's piece, you can do so here.

Have a great day everyone. I'm off to test-drive a new Warrior Mustang.

The End Is Near (Again)

Last night my brother, sister-in-law and mother (along with several hundred others) attended a lecture by someone named Joel Rosenberg, a Messianic Jew, best-selling author (Tom Clancy meets Tim LaHaye) and celebrity eschatological swami beloved by the likes of Rush Limbag and Sean Hannity. Afterwards, I inquired about the lecture (e.g. was there any rubbing of a crystal ball involved, etc.) and the summing up involved the following: "of course there is no claim that anyone truly knows the exact time when the Lord will come back." My response of "but why not sell a few hundred thousand books off a gullible public in the meantime" was met with a disgusted harrumphing, a "you're so cynical" with a side order of glare for good measure.

Normally, and for good reason, that would've been the end of my curiosity about Joel Rosenberg. This isn't a blog-rant about why smart people like my aforementioned family members would find this sort of thing worth their time. I'm more than adequately accustomed to their exasperation with my unabating cynicism and my tendency to be pretty pissed off a good deal of the time (although I'm not like that at work or with other people in my life--I wonder why that is?). Many Christians have been curious about/obsessed with "the end times" for a very long time, and modest fortunes have been made by those deluded and ego-centric enough to suggest that he or she had discovered the eschatalogical equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. My pastor-ex-husband used to avoid asking parishoners what they'd like to hear from him about as inevitably someone would request an indepth exegesis on Revelation. Cue yawn.

I won't be able to contain my sudden interest in this topic with one post, so I'll end this one with the following questions that are on my mind today:

1) Why doesn't anyone ever suggest that the Anti-Christ could be an American? In my mind--there are some pretty strong contenders:

2) Apparently Mr. Rosenberg's primary sage advice for those worried that the world will end before the Rockies have a few more chances to win the World Series is this: pray for peace and prepare for war ("oh Lord please help the US kick some Islamic ass). My reponse to this is "whaaa?"

3) Rosenberg mentions that conspiciously absent in the cast of characters involved in the War of Gog and Magog is Iraq and Egypt. I wonder how he would classify the absence of......China?

Next time: The Geography of Gog and Magog.

And So It Begins...