Waiting for Cookie Monster

Three things:

A lovely holiday was had -- the snow was gorgeous, the hot mineral springs were amazing, the hippies were entertaining. And then, what seemed like three straight days of eating and drinking -- very yummy. Followed by the Griswold family Christmas tree adventure yesterday -- more on that next time. I need to get my quality tree time in before I depart for the East Coast on December 10th. In "yay for the department" news (a new category I think), they just checked out a laptop to me for the entire trip, which will make my life, blog, research, etc. so much easier. Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend as well!

Quote from a student paper: "Women played an important role in the revolution because without them the men would have had nothing to come home to when the war was over." And before you ask, it's from a female student. Much like an armchair, women make many important contributions by waiting around for men to get home.

On the viewing of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special as an adult: oh, dear. I'm not even going to get into the special on the Mayflower, but as we were watching the Thanksgiving show, J. suddenly noticed that there was something strange in the seating arrangements. I tried to find a screen shot, but couldn't, so picture this: Marcie, Sally, Peppermint Patty, and Snoopy are ALL FOUR sitting on one side of a long table, with Linus and Charlie Brown at the either end of the table. Alone on the other long side of the table, across from the FOUR on the other side, is Franklin. Remember Franklin? He's Charlie Brown's black friend. Charlie Brown's Segregated Thanksgiving Special! It's disturbingly eye-opening to watch stuff as an adult that you saw as a kid, the little things that are slipped in or normalized. It also ties in with this Sesame Street news -- the early season DVDs are apparently appropriate only for adults, only this time it's because kids today need a more gentrified, less explicitly working-class/mentally ill/obese puppet show. Because it would be wrong to reflect in any way the lives of all the children who are not white suburban upper-middle-class yuppies. We're a nation of aspiration! Kids just need to believe that if they don't have the sane, shiny celery-eating lives of TV, it's because they or their parents aren't working hard enough. Even though this recent study on economic mobility pretty much proves that it really doesn't matter, 99% of the time, because you don't get out of the class you're born into. But you can still make a very important contribution, by waiting for someone that matters more to get home.

*By the way, I'm not actually attached to keeping Cookie Monster old-school either, given that he was originally designed as a marketing device for cookie and snack companies and then incorporated into a show for kids. Whatever, CM -- go talk to the Marlboro Man about karma.