Oooh, Retro!

I totally forgot to post this, and I really should have!

The Adorable Husband wears Gargoyle sunglasses -- remember Terminator? -- and has for twenty years or so. He likes them, and hasn't found anything else that blocks enough light and that don't make him look like a deranged bug.

So he was up skiing with my nephew last month, and one of the lift operators thought they were pretty cool -- "Really neat, man -- totally retro!"

I don't think you can be considered fashionably "retro" if you have been wearing the style the whole time. I'm not sure what that is, exactly, but retro it ain't! The Adorable Husband disagrees, of course, and he's feeling quite fashionable and stylish.

Only 2166 Chickens

Senate hopeful Sue Lowden’s plan for Healthcare reform is to barter for medical procedures. It's eminently mockable, not because the barter system is a bad idea (it's honestly not), but because she simply doesn't seem to grasp that the same people who don't have money for health care, have little to barter, and continues to repeat it. People bartered chickens for medical care becuase they couldn't afford to pay. That is not a solution to healthcare - bartering won't "Bring down prices in a hurry", unless, perhaps, you're a car dealer, it is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get care and it turns medical care into a 'maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't" proposition. That's not acceptable.

Sue Lowden (R), the leading Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, recently articulated her vision of how the American health-care system should work. At a local candidate forum, Lowden, a former state senator and chair of the Nevada Republican Party, encouraged Nevadans to "go ahead and barter with your doctor." It would, she insisted, "get get prices down in a hurry."

"I'm telling you that this works," the Republican candidate explained. "You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say, 'I'll paint your house.' I mean, that's the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I'm not backing down from that system."

I would point out that "Before we all started having health care", people died of simple things that we can now prevent, and people with easily treatable diseases got no treatment at all because they couldn't pay for it. It just wasn't an option. The reason why people paid with chickens was because they were broke. Not because it was some idyllic time when things were simpler. It was because it was a horrid time when there were more poor people and there was no social safety net.

But, I really posted this because the following website made me laugh. A lot.

Some enterprising person has put up the Sue Lowden Chicken for Checkups web page, which just make me laugh uproariously.

Double Standards

Apparently bra- and panty-clad women prancing around in Victoria Secret ads are ok becuase the women are thin and have a-cup breasts. But try airing an ad for plus-sized lingerie, and the networks balk. Lane Bryant has a new Cacique lingerie ad that the networks didn't like, and apparently didn't want to air. The only reason I can see? Because the women aren't thin.

It appears that ABC and Fox have made the decision to define beauty for you by denying our new, groundbreaking Cacique commercial from airing freely on their networks.

ABC refused to show the commercial during “Dancing with the Stars” without restricting our airtime to the final moments of the show. Fox demanded excessive re-edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting to air it during the final 10 minutes of “American Idol,” but only after we threatened to pull the ad buy.

These are the same networks that run Victoria Secret ads. What was their complaint? "Too much cleavage". Well, yeah, when you look at real women and not coat-hangers and they tend to have breasts. Real women look like this -- far more than look like the airbrushed version of beauty that the fashion mags would have us believe. Talk about a double standard.

Cool Science Badges

Just popping in to link to Cool Science Merit Badges.

"I work with way too much radioactivity, and yet still no discernable superpowers yet” is my favorite!

I can't believe you said that....

I can't believe that they actually used the name. I can't. It's just too damn funny. I'm laughing so hard I nearly ruptured something. Yup. I'm twelve.

Duluth Trading Company Ballroom Jeans. Yup. Ball Room.