Off Target, or: which decade is this?

Target rhymes with "garget".


Walmart is still the most evil of the big retailers, but Target tries hard. P is unhappy about a promotional email she received:

I'm not sure I feel so good shopping at Target anymore. Look at the "Girls' Toys": Horse World, Dolls & Accessories, Arts & Crafts. "Boys' Toys" are Science & Nature, Trains & Train Sets, and Tech Toys. Girls get doll strollers and cribs, quiet pastoral play with the horsies, and jewelry making, while boys get a head start on well-compensated careers in science and technology with cool stuff like "Snap Circuits Jr." I would expect that kind of gender norming in the '70s and maybe '80s but in 2005? Why not just call them all "toys" and leave it for grandma to decide that little Sally needs yet another item from the Pink Aisle?

Target doesn't just short-change girls in the career department and the all-important fun department — Target literally short-changes them. The pictured girls' toys total a mere $85 vs. $180 for the boys ' stuff. The girls' toys average less than the cheapest thing Target recommends for boys.

And Target has little excuse for "wen only" and "Snap circuts". I guess the same nine-year-old boy who chooses the toys also proofreads outgoing email.

The busy lad may have been in charge of Target's web design. P concluded

I'm also pissed that there doesn't seem to be any way to easily provide feedback on this to Target thru their website, even once you wade through their "Commitment to Diversity" statement.

Just like Watergate?

Increasingly, President Bush has been compared to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Shoot, I implicitly did it in my last post. But that's really unfair — to Nixon. Bush could just as easily be likened to any recent Republican president.

George W. Bush is like

• Nixon, without the ethics and sense of fair play.
• Ford, without the grace and quick wit.
• Reagan, without the intellect.
• Bush I, without the common touch.

And Cheney ... Dick Cheney is like Spiro Agnew without the sex appeal.

Election Predictions 2005

This is a little late to make an election prediction, but I haven't consumed any media today. I predict a near-sweep for the Democrats. Any race that's even vaguely close, the Democratic candidate will win. Same thing with propositions: if there's a chance for a Democratic proposition to carry, or for a Republican one to be defeated, that's what'll happen (Texas Proposition 2 will probably pass, despite the fact that as written, it wouldn't just ban gay marriage, it might prohibit all marriage.). And 2006 will be a Democratic tidal wave, like 1974, for much the same reason.

My predictions are tinged by partisan hope, and my record as a prognosticator reflects this. For example, I called the last presidential race in June 2004 for Kerry. It seemed so obvious. The Bushites frantically tried to claim Ronald Reagan's conservative mantle. But as Reagan ascended bodily into heaven, He failed to give W the necessary benediction. The way the Busheviks carried on, I expected Ronnie to say, "Well, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." But Reagan didn't say a thing! After that, I expected the voters to realize that W was no folksy conservative, but an out-of-touch radical — and they would reject his sorry ass. Maybe I was just a little early ...

Worse than killer bees: beedogs

Remember killer bees? Aggressive wild bees were threatening to hybridize with mellower domesticated bees. Killer bees turned out to a minor threat that was amusingly overhyped.

Now there's a new type of hybridization, and the results are frightening. As you can see from the images below, bees have begun hybridizing with a number of dog breeds. Many more are documented on Beedogs.com, which has over 20 pages of photos on this emerging ecological threat (via The Wisdom of the Illiterati). There are several pages on Flickr, too.

Beware of beedogs.

Ooooh, that smell

One of the things I most enjoyed about living in Chicago was the smell. Really. Not every smell — not the sharp tang of ozone and burnt oil from an El train running through a tight curve, not the scent of corruption wafting from the fifth floor of City Hall. But there's one particular smell ...

If you're in the right place (it's not far from the fork of the Chicago River), especially in the wee small hours of a still night, you'll get a good whiff of the Blommer Chocolate Co., one of the country's biggest chocolate manufacturers. If you're expecting the odor, it's one of the minor pleasures of life in the big city. But if you're not expecting it, the cocoa smell just slams you. Imagine a brick, made of joy and life —— hitting you upside the head. It's a sweet surprise that can brighten a whole day.

Naturally, some sorehead hated it and complained. The EPA cited Blommer for particulate emissions. Sounds like an amusing anecdote of bureaucracy run wild, right? But there's a context: the EPA has not cited Midwest Generation, which has six coal-burning power plants (of which five are in the Chicago area) that have over 7,000 violations (documented by the Illinois Attorney General's office).

Midwest Generation produces electricity and sells it to power companies. It was spun off from one utility and sold to another, a product of the Enron-ization of electric power markets. A little search through opensecrets.org shows that when Midwest Generation executives donate to candidates or parties, over 90% goes to Republicans. Suddenly, something smells, and not sweetly.

I think I need to wash off. Either

• a bath, with one of Blommer's Vertical Chocolate Holding Tanks (capacity up to 25,000 pounds);
• a shower, with one of their Chocolate Pumps (capacity: 500 pounds per hour to 1,000 pounds per minute).

Bush's popularity: falling like autumn leaves

Down, down, down. (Photo by Mark Twells, used under a Creative Commons license)

The American people are becoming ever more unhappy with President Bush. The latest CBS poll puts his approval rating at just 35%. That makes him the most unpopular president since Nixon during Watergate. Thirty-five percent means he's down to his hardcore conservative base.

Avedon Carol points out that Cheney's approval rating is only 19%. That's worse than Nixon's when he resigned. Even conservative true believers are beginning to abandon the veep. Cheney is down in Agnew territory.

The proximate cause of all this love is Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and his investigation into the unmasking of CIA agent Valerie Plame. He indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, last week, and continues to investigate Karl Rove, Bush's alleged "brain". Most Americans think Scooter Libby is a mascot for canned peaches and have no idea who Karl Rove is. But among those who have an opinion, 78% disapprove of Rove and 86% disapprove of Libby. More Americans think the Plame affair is a big deal than were upset by Watergate at a similar stage of its investigation.

The partisan part of me wriggles in post-Fitzmas glee. But the nonpartisan part is unhappy. Bush and his gang being so unpopular is a good thing only in the limited sense that it's harder for them to arrange more bold fuck-ups: no Social Security phase-out, no more tax cuts for billionaires, and no more wars under false pretenses. On the whole, it's bad to have a leader who can't lead. Far better to have a president who's both popular and competent. Like the last one.