How do I get on these lists?
Bad enough that I get pleas from every animal rescue organization on the planet–puppies, kittens, polar bears, horses, donkeys, whales, big cats, farm animals, exotic animals (I tend to hope that abusers, traffickers and slaughterers will all fry in hell), you name ‘em. I also get tree-hugger stuff–parks, water, trees, natural resources, pollution control, environmental damage restoration. Then there are the health issues–Susan J. Komen for the Cure, March of Dimes, American Heart, NAMI, diabetes, cancer, kidneys, blindness, University Hospitals, Summa Health, disease-of-the-month–I get them all.
Now they’re starting to get insulting…and on-line.
Dr. Oz (Who IS this dude? He’s in all kinds of magazines, on the TV, presumably, a guru of the first water, who apparently knows about EVERYTHING having to do with health and well-being, yours, mine, everyone’s) wants to tell me, online, how to Melt Away Holiday Fat. Well, the NERVE of him! He’s going to begrudge me a little chocolate? Homemade rolls at my sister’s? My A-list New Year’s Day dinner featuring pork and sauerkraut–cadged from a genuine Bohemian grandma’s (Not mine. My grandmas were strictly Celt and Anglo-Saxon. We ate ham loaf and coleslaw on New Year’s Day. Our chili had no chili powder either.) secret recipe and genuine mashed potatoes? Holiday fat? Does that include the nut bomblets that have about a dozen variant names and as principal ingredients nothing but butter, sugar, flour, finely chopped nuts–walnuts or pecans–and more powdered sugar? Them? At some point you just have to go in for what that book title called “magical thinking”. The book was kind of a downer, being about bereavement and all, but the title has a ring to it, sort of like how we joke about having all of the calories removed from some particularly fetching pastry because there’s skim milk in the icing instead of the real stuff. If you don’t think about calories they’ll go away. If you don’t think about them while walking around the block…maybe two…they’ll go away even faster.
In the mail, I keep getting information and “special offer” stuff from hearing aid people, mobility supplies people (stair elevators, scooters, special tubs, etc.), insurance people. The real insult, though, came the other day when an envelope arrived with one of those faux handwritten notes on the outside : “Iva, I tried this and it really works!” Not knowing anyone with such good handwriting other than my mother, who would never send such a thing, not in bright blue ink, any way, I opened the missive and found that it was a pitch for some kind of anti-wrinkle cream. ANTI-WRINKLE cream, my Aunt Fanny! (I did have an Aunt Fanny, who probably would have used the stuff by the bucket, if she thought it would work but she never got all that wrinkled anyway.) What is this, somebody trying to tell me that I’m beginning to look the part of the love-interest female who attempted to leave Shangri-La in the snow storm and came down the mountain only to look like an old boot, not the fresh young thing up in the mountain fastness where no body got old? Is the message about my incipient resemblance to one of those apple dolls available at craft fairs and such? Insulting, I calls it!
I’m sticking to the motto voiced by Gordon Kalina( who voices lots of things that I wouldn’t pass along) , “I’m in pretty good shape, for the shape I’m in.” How’s that for circular reasoning?
Some of the internet items are even insulting to other people, in my opinion. Like the magazine, Working Mother. Aren’t they all working ? All of the good ones are.
More news at eleven.
