It just dawned on me today. It's no longer necessary to remind people to remember to spring forward or fall back. In order to break the habit, I'm going to substitue the following: "Enjoy that extra hour of sleep!" I guess in the spring, it'll be something else. Hmmm. Not sure how to put a positive spin on that. I have some time to think about it, though. An extra hour, tonight.
One other thing. I recently realized that it's no longer necessary to say, when describing a person from the south Asian country of India, that they're "Indian, from India." Best I can figure, there are two reasons for this. First, it seems that around here, there are more Indians from India than those who are of the "indigenous peoples of the Americas." Which it turns out, are no longer called "native Americans." Maybe the word "native" is offensive? Not sure, but interestingly enough, my cursory googling turned up quite a few answers indicating that the proper terminology is "Red Indians" for those from around here, and "East Indians" for those from South Asia. So confusing.
I won't even get started on the whole "African American" thang. Or "Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender." Or, while we're at it, whatever it is we used to call retarded people.
Except, I will start on it. I'll just throw out an idea. What if, for simplicity's sake, we assigned color names to groups of people. Hell, the disease people have gone nuts with it. By the end of October (thank god it's over), aren't we all sick of pink. Even the fucking newspaper showed up printed on pink paper. How many products are slathered in pink and hawked in the name of breast cancer research? I swear, everywhere I turn, something reminds me of this dread disease. Yogurt. Lipstick. T-shirts. Dura-Flame logs. Go figure. Except, don't go figure. The insidious answer is that it's a marketing ploy. Since ploy implies deceit, let me explain. When a company uses the word "proceeds," (as in "a portion of all proceeds goes to support breast cancer research,) this means nothing. Proceeds is not a real term in the financial world. I won't bore you with the details, except to give you an extreme example. I could sell $2 billion in pink maxi-pads, and give one penny to any cancer charity, and I'd be perfectly justified in boldly proclaiming the fact that I'd give a portion of all proceeds to charity.
Let's be clear. There are some good guys out there. The ones who say, "10% of sales support the Susan G. Koman Foundation," for example. So be alert. Think. Or better yet, ignore the hype and the pinkness, and send a little check directly to a legitimate organization. I think you'll make a bigger difference that way.
Back to my color coding idea. Maybe that song had it right. Red and yellow, black and white... We could add some other things. Think pink for breast cancer survivors (FYI - "remission" is out "cancer-free" is in.) Rainbow for our GLBT friends. The possibilities are endless. For the record, though, I call aqua for my thing.
