Signed, Sealed, Forgotten!

I mentioned Oprah's "No Phone Zone" Pledge the other day and it got me thinking about this whole business of signing pledges.  I'm of the viewpoint that getting people to sign pledges is, at its most benign, utterly useless, and at its worst, a form of blackmail. And, as I'll demonstrate, it's even more insidious than that.

In the case of Oprah's pledge, she apparently started by having her staff all sign on.  Signing was supposed to be voluntary, but, c'mon -- would you be comfortable being the one staffer who says, "Up yours, Oprah.  I ain't signin' shit!"  (Note: I can't say this with authority, but I'm pretty sure Oprah's Pledge has morphed a bit since she started it to acknowledge that some people might only be willing to go so far.)


Out of random curiosity, I Googled "Sign the Pledge" and came up with over six million results.  Hmm?  Just what the hell is everybody pledging out there?  A quick and totally unscientific perusal (is there any other kind?) shows that Liberals browbeat people into pledging shit a lot more often than Conservatives.  I guess there's nothing surprising about that since us Liberals are notoriously "touchy feeley" about this kind of stuff.


The Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, wants me to sign a pledge to "...eat in a manner guided by the environmental, economic, and health consequences of my food consumption...".  Actually, I'm not sure he gives a rat's ass what I eat, since I'm in Brooklyn.


Leonardo DiCaprio wants me to pledge not to use plastic bags. 


Quite a few religious groups want you to pledge stuff about the environment.  There's Jews, Catholics,  Evangelicals, ... Hey, there's a whole big-ass Ecumenical group pledging to be Green.


You can pledge to go fur-free.  You can sign up to do (or not do?) a lot of stuff at California's Courage Campaign. You can pledge to buy only "Cruelty-Free" products. You can pledge an anti-bullying pledge. You can even pledge to "Blog with Integrity". (I'm not entirely sure what that means, but there has to be something ironic about the fact that you can sign on anonymously.)  


Lest you think this is all pansy-assed, pinko, liberal, "change the world" stuff, you'll find Conservative pledges if you look hard enough.  You can Pledge Allegiance to the Christian Flag. (You guys have a flag?  Who knew?). You can pledge to be a Born Again American (which seems to mostly be about being unemployed). The "Real Tea Party" has a pledge. (Is the Tea Party the going to be the next "Ray's Pizza - Famous Ray's Pizza - The Original Famous Ray's Pizza - Ray's Original Famous Pizza -- Famous Original Ray's Pizza" battleground.  It would be such a shame if such a cohesive splinter group got all...uh...splintered.)


There's a non-denominational, non-partisan drive asking you to pledge not to use "the R-Word".  I'm not sure how I feel about this one but I do know my own personal limitations.  I can't, in good conscience, take this pledge as long as there are cats in my house and talk shows on Fox.


Anyway, the whole thing seems like a huge waste of time (other than getting yourself placed on a mailing list). Are there Pledge-Police out there enforcing these things?  I mean, sure...if you get some celebrity to sign in a public forum, they'll be shamed into living up to their pledge, but I could run around signing all of those pledges willy-nilly and nobody would ever know or care if I lived up to my pledge. 


And before any of you get all, "But Pledges raise AWARENESS!" on me, I'd just like to say, "We've all been AWARE of the common cold for-ever, but does that do you any good when you're leaking stuff out of every hole in your head? I'm AWARE of space travel, but what are my chances of taking a vacation on Mars?  I'll bet you're AWARE of alchemy.  Any of you have a secret golden room hidden in your secret golden house full of tons and tons of solid gold chocolate bars?  Hmm?"




Pledging = Awareness = Hope = Disappointment.


Join me!  Take the Pledge to avoid Pledges. (Except for that dusting spray.  That stuff's pretty good.)

Saturday Schmorgasboard

Rolling Rock beer claimed it was going to put its logo on the full moon last night with a laser projector. I took a look and didn't see anything. Anybody else know anything about this? And if you look at the parties they sponsored, you may note that one of them was right there in the thriving metropolis of Parker, CO. Anything you want to tell us Janiece. Is your head OK this morning?

Second on the list today is the Asshats at Lauer Custom Weaponry Click on the "Bloomberg Collection" button on the left to see the "Brooklyn Blue" and "Manhattan Red" and all the other models. This is meant as a slap at Mayor Bloomberg for him daring to sue some Gun Stores that sold weapons without following federal regulations and then those same guns showed up involved in NYC crimes. Now, I don't care which side of the Gun Control argument you're on, but does anybody think a hand gun painted to look like a toy is a good idea? I mean, even if you think all law abiding citizens should be given a .45 with their Social Security card, do you think we should be making it harder for cops to tell the real thing from a toy? (BTW, Fark has its "Florida" tag. I'll be paying extra special attention to Wisconsin.)

Lastly, at least for the moment, I got an email the other day from someone I know telling me they liked my review of Shallow Graves. When I emailed back asking why "J" didn't just say so in the comments, "J" replied, "I'm shy". C'mon everybody, help me drag that lurker out of the shadows. And while we're on the subject, all other lurkers (I know you're out there), are invited to say hi.

That's all I've got for the moment. GF and I are going to spend the day spending the pile of Gift Cards that've been sitting around since Christmas.

I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky tumbling down.

Just in case you thought Fundamentalists Christians had a monopoly on nutso! TaDa!

Lunacy. Round II

So, I've had and rejected a few different ideas for the next Lunatic Challenge to throw out at you guys. And really, we all deserve some more lunacy sometime within the next few weeks.

One idea that I keep coming back to is an Internet Scavenger Hunt. Now, I'm not talking some pansy-assed educational thing where you do searches and answer questions. Fie on that.

Now, I haven't figured out exactly how this should work yet, so I'm open to suggestions Here's what I've (kinda) got so far.

The idea will be to collect something from a list we'll all be working from.
-comments from strangers?
-pictures of items you get from non-participants?
-??

Whatever is being collected, it only counts if you get it from people who are not linked on your blog. (poaching from other people's links would be permitted.)

If it's pictures (or something like that) being collected, we'd produce a list of, say 20 things? The game would go on for one week and whoever collects the most items would be the winner.
(Just getting stuff off the net wouldn't count, you have to actually communicate with a person who provides whatever it is we're looking for. I think the honor system might need to be in play).

As a side idea, each participant could throw Ten Bucks into a pot, winner take all.

As always, I thought this through in a thoroughly half-assed fashion. I think there's a good idea in there somewhere, but I haven't really rooted it out yet. I hereby through the suggestion box open for contributions.

International Hijack™ Day is over.

And I pronounce it a resounding success. You all have my thanks for your enthusiastic participation.

First, some stats:

10 full participants
3 or 4 drop in visitors (by my count)
315 overall comments made. (including on the e)
Comments from Croatia.
Comments in Dutch (but I think from within the continental U.S.)
Who got the most comments? Me ::gloat::! 34 comments here. FTW!
Shawn managed to get the second most comments and he didn't even show up until around 3:00pm. Bahstahd!

I don't know about your sites, but I got 116 hits today. This blows away my usual average of 9.

My favorite moment? When Anne's family turned up and said WTF?


And what have we learned?

Not much. First of all, we should listen to MWT. MWT was the first to point out that this was indeed, completely, irredeemably, utterly retarded! And it was. So I bid adieu to The First Annual International Hijack™ Day. And if there's a second, it won't be at my instigation.

(Although, I'm perfectly capable of coming up with something differently Retarded.)