Today (Thursday, January 07, 2010), after Yoga class, while walking around near the BART station in downtown Berkeley, I was approached by a bubbly enthusiastic young lady who was raising funds for Greenpeace.
In an effort to play devil's advocate, I challenged her to explain why those nasty brutal beasts deserved any sympathy, let alone should inspire a donation to their organization. She resorted to the old domino theory and said that if folks let polar bears die off, other more cuddly animal species, such as the Pandas, would follow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let them have North Vietnam and the next thing ya know Saigon will become Ho Chi Minh City. Blah, blah, blah.
We continued to challenge her debating skills by asking if Ansel Adams, who was well known for his love of nature and his work on behalf of the Sierra Club, had ever taken any pictures of polar bears. She couldn't give a knowledgeable answer to my question.
Let me be perfectly clear: in an effort to help her sharpen her arguments, we continued our efforts to be a devil's advocate and indicated that her silence was tantamount to me saying "check" in a chess game.
If the existentialists in Paris think that global warming is worth worrying about, then that might be a point in her favor. Wouldn't Camus and company say that life is absurd and that polar bears might not want to continuing to live in a cold uncaring universe? Cold, yes, but don't most polar bears die saying: "Rosebud"?
If global warming is a real problem, why aren't people trying to tell the world that global warming will also kill off the penguins? When it comes to environmental issues, the polar bears have taken over. (Could that be called a putsch?) She tried to sidetrack me with the information that Greenpeace was big in Australia. Does size matter?
She then shifted her approach and told me about a new peril facing the polar bears. It seems that with the thinning out of the polar bear herds, apparently some of the frustrated young and horny members of the species have taken to mating with grizzly bears (. The resulting hybrid is called Grolar bears, as in gr(izzle + po)ar bears. Do they have their own Latin name? Have to check that online.
I gave her the old "I didn't know that" stalling tactic. She sensed an opening and pressed her attack. The white polar bears are in big danger of losing their species purity! Who knew? She sensed that she could manipulate me by using fear. Wouldn't it be a shame if polar bears couldn't maintain the purity of the white bear species? I hesitated and she pressed the point with renewed fervor: "Surely, Hitler would have believed in and opposed global warming." Would the scientists at Peenemunda have endorsed or refuted the theory of global warming? That's something to look up on the Internet.
If what she was saying about maintaining the supremacy of white bears was true, wouldn't some Republicans be donating heavily to her cause? Maybe the young lady in Berkeley has a new talking point worth considering?
Isn't seeing polar bears part of the Alaska tourist industry? So, if they were in danger of becoming extinct, wouldn't every governor of that state want to promote fighting the global warming that has put the Ursis maritimus on death row? Should we use the "set grandma adrift on a the melting ice floe" analogy? Shouldn't liberals turn the tables and instill fear by asking: "Are polar bears going to be the first death panel casualties?"
Is condoning the grolar bear trend the same as endorsing gay marriage? Note: that new species us a Google-able topic.
Where does the most famous polar bear in the world live? Isn't Knute the star of the Berlin Zoo? Just a co-inky-dink?
We told the young Greenpeace fund raiser that due to the "low budge = no budget" Rupert Murdock style fiscal philosophy practiced by most of the liberal web site publishers, I couldn't actually give her some dinero, but I could dash right back to my wickiup and pound out a sympathetic column on my new (used) laptop.
Didn't Germany save their auto industry (many moons ago) by nationalizing it? When will the new President authorize more bailout funds for the American car makers?
Who says there's no way that you can use conservative phraseology to make a liberal point? Who doesn't love a leprechaun? Aren't trolls just German leprechauns? Is there a sign in the Berlin Zoo that orders visitors to refrain from teasing the animals?
Would Republicans buy "White Bear Power" T-shirts to help fight global warming? They could add a bit of typographical humor by setting two words in big type and the middle one in very small type, eh? (and use the Schwaben alt. font?)
Which one doesn't belong (and why?): Evita, Eva Braun, Sarah Palin?
Poor girl, she must have arthritis because when she waved good-bye, her arm was kinda stiff and her hand didn't move much.
[Did Jonathan Swift have to put a "snark" tag on his "A Modest Proposal" essay?]
Ansel Adams has said: "It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."
We nixed the disk jockey's suggestion that he play "Knights in White Satin" and, instead, insisted that he play "The Beer Barrel Polka." (What? You were expecting "Quinn the Mighty Eskimo" or the Eagles "Take It to the Limit"?) It's time for us to go disappear in Argentina.
Have a "brown eyed handsome man" type week.
