A Shot Over Old Navy's Bow

The struggle to stop dressing little girls like skanks continues.
I took the princess shopping for jeans today. Should be fairly easy, right? Yes, but only if I planned on setting her out on the street corner, instead of sending her to school.
The princess has a rather slim waist but regular-sized thighs and bottom, which makes finding jeans that fit half-way decent a bit tough anyway. Add to that the fact that I refuse to buy her pants that show off her pubic bone, and it become darn near impossible to find pants.
Sure, I had a pair of hand-me-down hip huggers (very cool) when I was probably close to her age. But they were hip huggers, not crotch huggers. And I knew girls who wore painted-on jeans in high school (not me, I like to breath and sit at the same time, thank you). And it was only their faces you saw turning blue.
I thought this whole "Look at me I'm a skank wearing lower than low low riders" fashion had run its course. If so, then the Midwest is truly light-years behind in fashion. This whole low-riders thing is just about the ugliest, most unforgiving fashion ever. It only looks decent on a handful of emaciated waifs. Everyone else -- normal sized, healthy girls -- end up looking like the Michelin Man when they squeeze into these unflattering pants, then top it off with the oh, so tasteful, tight, polyester t-shirt.
To paraphrase Scarlet O'Hara: As God is my witness, I will never set foot in Old Navy again. I wasn't too impressed with their three new categories of women's jeans to begin with. Something like "Skank", "Ho", and "You Don't Have to Pull Them Down, Just Slip In Over the Top."
Little girls have only two categories: The Darling (low rise) and The Girlfriend (classic fit). Although about 75% of their jeans were "darling," I managed to find a "girlfriend." To me, "classic" indicates that this would be about the rise that has been used for a long time.
Apparently to Old Navy, "classic" means within the last five years. I'd just like to know when "classic" came to mean three-inches below the navel.
I'll admit there is a chance this pair was mislabeled -- on the paper tag and the sewn-in tag. They certainly don't look that low in the picture on the web site. Then again, if they did, Old Navy would probably get busted for kiddie porn.
After four stores and nearly an hour and a half, we managed to leave the mall with two pairs of decent jeans. And I didn't kill any one.
Some people wonder why Islam, with all its restrictions and repressions is so attractive. It's simple.
There are no low-rise burhkas.

LiveStrong Wimps Out

First of all, let me say I admire Lance Armstrong. He's an amazing athlete, and an incredible spokesperson for the fight against cancer. Him and his little yellow bracelet have probably done more to raise cancer awareness than just about anything else.
As a person who's family has been decimated by cancer I believe strongly that we need to find a cure for this horrible disease. I've lost my father, my sister, a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law, and at lease one friend to the rampaging killer. And my mother is a 36-year survivor of cancer.
Having explained my support for Super Lance, I must admit I was less than taken with his recent cancer forum for presidential candidate hopefuls in Cedar Rapids. For those of you not lucky enough to be from Eastern Iowa, let me explain. Lance invited candidates from both parties to discuss cancer, research, goverment's involvement, etc. on Aug. 27 and 28, in Cedar Rapids. Iowa's first in the nation caucus position does get us a lot of candidate face time every four years.
Only four of the bazillion Democratic candidates participated, which is still more than the two lonely Republicans who showed up. Among the reasons cited for the mediocre response were timeliness (cancer is not currently grabbing headlines), and the crowded campaign schedule.
But everyone is missing the obvious reason: what's there to discuss?
The forum was billed as an opportunity for candidates to outline their "policies to address America's #1 Killer." Was anyone surprised that these candidates, looking to drum up support, all said "spend more money on research." If so, they should be taken out and beaten.
They are in the middle of a campaign, for God's sake. They have one two answers to just about any question right now: "spend more money" and "form an exploratory committee." Increase in the number of left handed pole vaulters with athlete's foot on their big toe? Increase federal funding for research and treatment.
There's a part of me that wonders how much good increased funding will do. I'm sure there's new equipment to buy or labs to build, but who's going to do the research? Are there a plethora of researchers out there just sitting around doing nothing? Or are we going to buy the researchers away from researching muscular dystrophy, muscular sclerosis, autism, heart disease, AIDS, or any of the less-well publicized but no less deadly diseases?
I didn't attend the forum or even watch it on TV, what with recuperating, vacationing and all. My rant is based only on what I heard reported on the radio and read in the paper. However, I doubt that I would have been able to watch more than, oh, 30 seconds of this drivel before I made myself watch reality TV as a very painful penance.
While I admire Lance's dedication to keeping the spotlight on cancer, I can't help but think that any money spent to organize and run this joke of a forum could have been better spent on (all together now) funding cancer research.