Ha HA! I'm NOT crazy!

http://www.slate.com/id/2111242/

Check out the article above for some backup to my theory that ads and kids should not go together. The author is the ad critic for Slate, and even he agrees--to a lesser extent--that there are no-goodniks on the airwaves.

Why is my counter in the middle of my last post?

republicans, meat...and White Males

Last night I watched "The American President." It's a good movie, but it's filled with White Males doing what they do best--Ruling the World!!! We shall all bow down in fe-ah! My favorite scene is early on, when the president is walking to the Oval Office, flanked by an ever-increasing number of prim white people. He passes a black gardener who gives a cheerful, almost Gone With the Wind-ish "Morrrnin' Sah!" The president's efficient personal aide quickly whispers "Name" into his ear and the president retorts "Good morning Name." Ah--nothing like a good bit of fakery first thing in the morning. Good job, Mr. White Male!

After the reverential climax of the movie, showing a Congress absolutely stuffed with White Males, I pushed Stop and was greeted by the sight of everyone's favorite White Males--The Donald and Regis ("Mommy, why is Regis famous?")--asking a bunch of other White Males their opinion on which apprentice should be hired. Will it be the no-nonsense, Harvard-educated, top-of-her-class bitch goddess lawyer? Or the "Yes Sir! "Yes Sir!" West Point graduate with the undeniably trendy military air ("There's nothing I respect more than the military," says The Donald)?

Gee, do I spoil it for you, dear reader? Or let you guess for yourself? Oh . . . I don't know! Perhaps I should let a White Male decide!

Be on the alert, all ye otherwise well-meaning White Males. I adore many of ye, but beware the Bitch Goddess who uses her heightened paganistic senses to sniff out the odor of overt or even clueless discrimination, and tries to get you to read this sentence as if it was written by a pirate. Arrrrghghgh.

Colonial Hymenopterous Insects for Christmas!

So, my dad calls last night and asks if it was OK if he sends us a warm Christmas check that we could use to buy Stevie and ourselves gifts with. Well, we're not going to buy ourselves anything, but we have to get a few (more) presents for Stevie that he can open at Papa's house.

Now, my kid is 4 and already has an embarrassment of riches awaiting him. This being the first year that he really gets the Christmas thing, we gave him the toy catalogs that come in the Sunday paper and a Sharpie and told him to circle the things that he wanted--with the realization that he's not going to get all of them.

Toy gender issues abound and are well known to me, and there needs to be some improvement in marketing bi-gender toys, in making more educational toys for girls, etc. But there is something to be said for inherent "boyness" and "girlness," because Stevie skipped right past the "girl pages" and circled any and all toys dealing with superheros (Go Go Power Rangers! Go! Go!), big K'Nex creations, and Slimecanos. We didn't encourage these choices--in fact, some of his choices were discouraged and some were thrown away when he wasn't looking. Some of the funniest things he circled were the Easy Bake Oven (he circled it in two different catalogs!), a doll-size beauty salon chair (which he later discarded as it was "too purple." I'm not kidding.), and a three-story, soft "puppy house" with little stuffed puppies sticking out of the windows. He also wants the S'more Maker. And a motorcycle with a big scary skull on the front.

Anyway, I go online looking for ideas, and I come across Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm. I'm not getting him Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm. The real fun is in reading the reviews of Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm. I've included some of my favorites below (#4 is my favorite):

#1 Frankly, shipping Ants across the country and then sandwiching them in between plates of plastic is an education in ignorance. It is no wonder most have died within a week! If you wish to experience any of God's creatures in a healthy, natural, intelligent and compassionate context, get off your keister and watch them where they choose to live. There is no State in the USA where ants do not thrive.

#2 Oh, give me a home, where the ants they do roam... January 10, 2003
Reviewer: Rik Burke
Firstly I need to clear something a bit misleading about the product up. Calling it a "giant ant farm" suggested to me that it was a farm for giant ants. However, on receiving the package, I was disappointed to find that the word "giant" referred to the size of the farm, and not its inhabitants. Bang went my meglomanical dreams of ruling the world with an army of giant killer ants, or (more peculiarly) being able to saddle up and ride a giant ant to work.
Once I'd got over my intial disappointment I looked closer into the package, to my horror, further disappointment awaited! As far as "farming" goes, this more resembles an early stone age settlement than todays agricultural powerhouses. No tractors, no combine harvesters, no grain silos, no sheds of turkeys with their feet nailed to the floor and their beaks sliced off.
I tried to bring this so-called farm in the 21st century by introducing them to the biological wonder of pesticides. However, at this point a killer bug must have swept the colony as they all died.
The only good thing I have to say about this is it's very durable; I bruised my metacarpal whilst punting it into the bin.

#3 Ant farm subsidies March 22, 2002
Reviewer: Susie from Omaha, NE USA
We got an ant farm for my oldest son when he was 10. Then by sheer genius,(he was a very precosious boy) he said: "Hey, they subsidize real farmers, maybe we should subsidize them and tell them NOT to do anything with the 'south 40' for a season or two!" They seemed to quit early and go home when it came to the 'south 40' area anyway,being farther away from their nest and so many obstacles to get through to get there,(we had bits of Lincoln logs scattered around to see the little "he-men" ants carry 100 million times their weight)... so it worked out very nicely. These particular ants were a bit sluggish when we first got them, but with the subsidies, they were able to add some bulk to their wee bodies in the "off season" and then cleaned up the South 40 with a vengeance the next time around. But then like everything, the newness wore off and they started to whine and want more subsidies while doing less around the place, so we took them to the local Ant Shelter. We hope the farm didn't break landing on the concrete floor after going through the pet depository chute. Now years later, the ant farm long gone, we still remember the fun and the learning experience. Yes a very educational toy it is!

#4 U. Milton's Ant Farm a fun way to learn about Toil & Death July 25, 2000
Reviewer: A guest from Sandy Springs, GA USA
Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm is a fun, interactive way to teach children ages 5 and up about unceasing, backbreaking toil and the cold, inescapable reality of death. My little ones had a front-row seat as worker ants labored, day in and day out, until they inevitably died of exhaustion, their futile efforts all for naught. The ant farm, complete with stackable tiny ant barns, see-through 'Antway' travel tubes, and connecting 'Antports,' is a child's window into the years of thankless, grueling labor that await them as worker drones in our post-industrial society. It's the fun way to teach your kids to accept their miserable fate stoically. The ants, which come separately from the farm, are bred in New Mexico and mailed directly to your home. Within days of arriving, a majority of the ants die at the hands of the small children responsible for regulating the temperature, humidity, and food supply in their delicate pseudo-ecosystem. Even under optimum conditions the ants survive no more than 20 weeks in the farm. As a result, children are assured the chance to contemplate the inescapability of their own mortality and the whole family will be reminded that the spectre of death hangs over every creature on this Earth. The lesson that the ants' labor is all in vain becomes clearer as time passes. During the first two to three weeks, the exclusively female worker ants are extremely productive, building an elaborate system of tunnels and hills amongst the miniature green trees and red plastic houses dotting the interior of the plastic dome. However, because neither male ants nor a fertile queen is provided with Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm, making reproduction impossible, the farm is doomed to extinction from day one. You'll learn such fascinating things about the natural world, like the fact that the social structure of an ant colony is extremely complex, with individual members occupying such castes as soldier, messenger, and larvae attendant. At some point, Uncle Milton's ants become cognizant that their hierarchical structure has been stripped away, rendering their already near-meaningless existence totally futile. There seems to be a breaking point at about the 22-day mark when the dejected ants begin to die off en masse. At this point the ant farm enters what is known as the "death-pile phase." A spot is chosen by the worker ants to deposit their dead, and the burial mound steadily grows as the few remaining ants devote more of their time to gathering and burying others. Yes, with Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm, arbeit macht fun!

Wildlights...and tears

Well, I managed to drag Kevin out of the house yesterday for some Family Fun. He got to pick the restaurant. We had fried fish and beer! Big surprise.

Anyway, we went to the Metro Zoo to see the Wildlights display. It was really, really pretty. I haven't been to said zoo in about 20 years, by the way--it's not really my bag--but I enjoyed myself last night. We saw the baby elephant, we saw the stingrays being fed, we saw manatees eating floating salad literally 3 inches in front of our faces.

After walking for nearly two hours, we turned for home and came across the Grand Carousel. It's quite lovely and Stevie, of course, wanted to ride. Kevin went outside and Stevie and I were near the back of the line, waiting our turn, our anticipation levels rising with each smiling face twirling past.

Almost time to get on, and Stevie is stripping away his heavy winter gear at a feverish pace, unhooking and unzipping with abandon, with his eyes firmly locked on the Prize. As we walked to the gate, I noticed that people were handing the controller a coin. "Oh, crap," I thought, as we approached ever closer, and I rummaged through my many pockets looking for a bit of silver. Kevin has the money . . . and he's outside!!!

About this time, Stevie turns and starts walking--quickly walking--the other way! Away from the gate! I called after him in vain. When I finally caught up to him, everyone in line behind us was now in front of us and mounting their steeds. Stevie said, "I couldn't find you" even though I hadn't been more than 2 feet from him in the last 10 minutes. Anyway, we make it up to the gate, only to hear that it costs $1.00 per rider. (The sign is very, very easy to miss.) Kevin had entered by that point, but had no money as he had given it to me the day before and it was now residing in the glove compartment. We told Stevie that we had no money and couldn't ride, hoping the gatekeeper's heart would grow three sizes and that he would wink and let Stevie through. The young taskmaster at the gate showed no emotion as he closed the gate--CLICK!--right in my kid's face. Stevie turned away, stopped, and started bawling. Crushed.

I'm serious--he was crushed. It was awful. I damn near lifted him over the gate and told him to "run for it, kid!" but I didn't.

Needless to say, consoling a kid who just got stone cold rejected (through no fault of his own), close to bedtime, after he had just walked for two hours and worked up a 10-minute, carousel-ridin' adrenaline rush is not easy. But the next time we go to the zoo (which might be as soon as this weekend), he's riding that golly-darned carousel--TWICE.

Big Sad Puppy Eyes

We have a kid's book at our house called "The Train to Somewhere." It's a fictional account of a real phenomenon--that of the "orphan trains" of the late 1800s. Orphanages back east would load orphans on a train and ship them out to the frontier midwest for immediate adoption by anyone at the platform who wanted a kid. Of course, many of these parents were looking for field hands, so the big boys would be picked first, followed by the cute wee ones, then the older girls. Many of these children "traded one form of misery for another" (according to the book's jacket), but others lucked out into good homes with loving parents. Either way, it was an exercise in brutality to "pick" kids this way--the kids standing in a group in their best clothes and spit-styled hair, groups of parents asking the social workers "Is this all that's left?" or muttering "Next time we'll go farther east to get a better selection." Can you imagine being the last kid left on the platform?

Kevin and I attended an "adoption event" last night down in the Queen Soap Pig-Processing City. All we knew was that we would be bowling, that there were going to be other adoptive families, and that there would be about 70 kids. The kids knew that the people with name tags who weren't social workers were potential parents. We were given a list of Do's and Don'ts prior to arrival. We were to talk to the kids about themselves, but were not to get into why they were up for adoption or tell them about what life with us would be like. We were just there to have a good time.

If we were interested in learning more about a child, there were pads of paper and pens laying around on which we could write their names. Of course, this was to be done discreetly, as were the questions to their social workers and the adoptive placement workers who were making the rounds.

This is how it worked, or not-worked-so-well: The kids were to pick a lane and get bowling. The parents were to move from lane-to-lane at designated intervals so we could interact with many kids without the kids having to disrupt their games (speed-adoption, if you will). Of course, this blew my average, but I sacrificed for the children.

We started out with Anthony (10, white), Antonio (16, black), and Dominick (15, black). It was a mismatch, kid-wise. Then we added Donta (9?, black) and took up two lanes. I had to wonder what Dominick and Antonio, who looked like a college freshman and a gangsta, respectively, thought of the prospect of being adopted by these two boring-looking white people--who were kicking their ass in bowling, by the way (boo-yah!). Fifteen minutes into the game, Sondra (an Alicia Keyes lookalike who was only 12 (?!?!), black) and Priscilla (a very "wise" 12 or 13, mixed race) showed up, and, well, not even the slight promise of a stable home can compete with that. Soon our teenagers were off, being their age-appropriate social selves, and we silently concluded that none of these big-city kids would like being one of maybe two or three black kids in a rural high school. When I asked about another 13 year old black girl later on, her social worker confirmed those suspicions.

Another 15 minutes later we were told to move to the next lane. Now we were bowling with 4 10-13 year old black girls who were having a blast and in a remarkably close game. They weren't paying too much attention to us. Anthony (in our first lane) had grown bored with bowling after 1 frame and was off to another activity. Donta stuck with the new parents for a few minutes and then drifted over to us (or to Kevin, really). The girl that I was most interested in was a little ball 'o fire named Mikia, whom I threatened with the prospect of taking her Twix away if she snuck my turn again. At one point she had eaten the Twix, stolen my turn, so I jumped up and tickled her belly for a minute to "get that Twix out of there" and she waffed and waffed, as Stevie would say.

Speaking of Stevie, we weren't allowed to bring him and wouldn't have wanted to. After we left for the evening we both admitted to having feelings of "cheating" on Stevie at times. Suffice it to say that any child we bring home will be problematic for Stevie, but we're going to put him through it. Any parent with more than one child has had to deal with sibling jealousy, and Stevie will be no different. Bringing another biological child into the equation is one thing, but choosing to bring in a child or children that have "issues" and may need a lot of attention, of knowing pretty darn well what you are bringing to the home, carries another kind of responsibility. Namely, will our selfish desire for more children screw up the one we already have?

Donta eventually drifted away, too. But let me tell you about Anthony. Anthony was one of the first kids there, and we were one of the first parents there, and one of the social workers asked us to help him get set up with shoes and a bowling ball. Kevin (dressed in his customary jeans, untucked button down work shirt, and ball cap) took Anthony's hand to size him up and squeezed his bicep to guage the poundage limit. While he was doing this, Anthony looked up at him with what can only be described as joy and wonder. Instant imprint. (Kevin JUST called, just now, just to tell me "I can't stop thinking about that kid." In Utah years ago I heard an NPR story about the foster system and they interviewed a 10-year old boy who, when asked what kind of son he would be, said "I would be a good son. A fun son!" I started bawling right there in the parking lot. We both associated Anthony with the boy in that story.)

Anyway, Anthony zipped back and forth from activity to activity (video games, face painting, balloon animals, ornament-making), but he always zipped back to us. He made sure he ate with us, opened his Christmas presents with us, played with his remote control car with us. Actually, with Kevin. (The attention lavished on him by two boys last night was an illustration of how so many of these kids need solid male figures in their lives.) I was attempting to make the rounds, checking in on the kids we had bowled with, who were now busy cherishing or lamenting their presents. I asked about several girls, but they were either already in adoptive placements that hadn't finalized (thus their presence at last night's festivities), or would not appreciate our white rural digs, at least according to our social worker.

When it was Anthony's time to go home, he gave us both hugs. We watched him as he walked away, and then he turned his head and gave us another big smile. It was like a Disney made-for-TV movie entitled "A New Family for Christmas." Instant imprint. As my social worker, Tim, told me this morning, "Some of these kids place themselves."

Which brings me to the "Big Sad Puppy Eyes" title. It wasn't like that. These kids were among siblings and friends, social workers and foster parents. They were engaged in a variety of activities, opening presents, eating pizza (all paid for by a local radio station). We adoptive parents could move amongst them darn near undetected. There were very few puppy eyes, but you did get an inkling with some kids, Anthony among them, of how much they wanted--needed--a family. The really sad thing is that all of the families that I noticed--maybe 10 or 12 (out of 26 who RSVP'd)--were white. Some of them had obviously found their own Anthonys, and they were all white, too. I wondered what the black kids thought of that. Did 16-year old Antonio, the very picture of Threatening Black Youth to mid American, middle class white people, feel like the kid on the platform who would never get picked, especially when folks were making a fuss about the little 3-year-olds with curly hair and adorably atrocious bowling skills? Did beautiful Sondra, on the cusp between flirting with Dominick and playing with Bratz dolls, think for even a minute that we had anything to offer her?

My social worker said that the state is looking into the color barriers. He told me that 2/3 of the white families who apply get an approved homestudy (the key to the adoptive door), while only 1/3 of black families do. And then there are issues surrounding trans-racial adoption and preferences among the families mostly and sometimes the kids, too. As for us, we struck out with the black kids, but Tim received a fax he will forward to us about two black brothers. If the kids are OK with no diversity, then we are, too. But I don't know of too many kids who would be OK with that.

So wish us luck, persistant reader, as we clear hurdle after ever-higher, more demanding hurdle on our quest to fill our bedroom-challenged house with kids.

This morning I had a nightmare. I dreamed that I rescued a child who had been kept in a box like those you would find on toy shelves, holding Cabbage Patch Kids--open in the front, but tethered to the back of the box by twist ties. When I first approached, the child was small and dirty and turned to the back of the box, crying. I asked him if he wanted to be free--yes--and untethered him. You know how dreams go--the child turned into Stevie, and I had to bust him out of a situation controlled by Kevin's and my parents. I'll spare you a lot of the details, but it ended up with Kevin and I finally "kidnapping" our own son (by snatching him off of his bike) from those who would harm him and trying to hitch a ride to the Capital City Airport without being detected by those who had undoubtedly called the cops.

When I awoke, my body was washed in anxiety and my heart was racing.

The meaning of the dream quickly revealed itself. We weren't really saving Stevie; we were saving the girl that we may want to adopt (and about whom we spoke with social workers yesterday). And our parents were (undeserving) stand-ins for her real parents.

The little girl we are considering (and being considered for) suffered horrendous abuse and neglect, which makes her very similar to many of the children that we have/are considering. After meeting with her social workers yesterday and getting a better idea of what we needed to prepare for when adopting these children, we went to the library and got books about the effects of child abuse. Last night I started reading a book meant for adult survivors of sexual abuse, and it is nuts, let me tell you.

It starts out with survivors' stories. I really will spare the hideous details. But what really got me after reading 6 of these stories was how incredibly damaging sexual abuse is. I'm sure that all of you reading this who haven't been abused have thought about its awfulness but avoided reading about it because, well, who wants to? It's more than enough to know that it's there. But Kevin and I have to if we really want to understand and be in a position to help, and after just one evening of reading I feel like someone in my head is clapping and shouting "Wake UP!" And I am.

Kevin and I are licensed to foster and adopt. When you foster, the main goal is to serve as caretakers for the children until the parents can get their act together and the family can be reunited. In our training, we were told that we must maintain some empathy for the parents, even if they've done terrible things to their children. That's a tough order, especially when you've seen the burns, the black eyes, the scars, the emaciated bodies.

When you adopt, however, you don't have to care about the parents--they are your kids now and you can keep them away from negative influences. But oddly enough, this book is helping me to empathize with the worst parents in the world. It's like this: being a parent or otherwise having authority over a child exposes you to power beyond your wildest dreams. You can do whatever you want to them--they are completely vulnerable and defenseless. You shape their lives. When you get upset with a child, somewhere from the back of your mind (hopefully the back) comes the realization that you could seriously hurt this kid. From another, loving point of view, it feels good to cuddle with your kids and you want to kiss them and pat their butts and hold them close to you. It's not that difficult to understand how some people could cross the line with both of those examples. But healthy people JUST DON'T. You restrain yourself from violence because hurting your children would tear you up--how could you hurt the people that you are supposed to protect, that completely trust you to protect them? Similarly, little children's bodies are attractive, but they're not sexy to healthy people. The cuddling is not sexual--it's akin to the happiness you get from holding a puppy in your lap, only it's a puppy you love so much that you would die for it.

Parents and people who cross those lines, and especially REALLY cross those lines and inflict the kind of intense, often long-term damage that these children suffer, are mentally ill. Many of them suffer attachment disorders, meaning that they never bonded to their parents for various reasons, most likely neglect, or had those bonds severed by trust-busting abuse. Having an attachment disorder means that you are functionally incapable of forming a bond with another human being and, thus, having empathy for others and for their needs. You can only focus on your needs and how other people can be used to meet those needs. Often they never mentally developed beyond a twisted childhood themselves. God help the children born to or exposed to such people.

Do these parents deserved to be punished? Absolutely! Should Kevin and I attempt to reconnect the damaged the child with the parent just because they are The Parent? No way. But empathy is important. Empathy will help you get to the root of the problem. Empathy for the parents will help the child, who was headed down that same road before the social welfare system and you came along.

It's so appropriate that I would dream about a child imprisoned like a doll. These parents treat their child like one--a little plaything without needs of its own that you use to meet your own enormous needs. Helping each of them to become "a real child" is going to take more than magic, but we can't wait for the chance.

My First Mammogram

First of all, it hurts. It really does. If you've ever placed a chicken breast between two pieces of plastic wrap, you know what it kinda looks like. If you've ever then taken a mallot and pounded that chicken breast, you have an idea of what it kinda feels like.

Of course, there's no pounding! The technician, deftly handling your breast as if it were her own, places it on a square of padded machinery that is attached to a large, optical-looking piece of machinery. After you are in position, she lowers the clear plastic tray-looking thing down, down, smashingly down until your breast is splayed between the square and the tray and you finally go "Whoa!" out of pain and a bit of shock. It's not just the breast that they get. They go beyond what would get covered in the average bra, all the way up the chest wall halfway to your shoulder. It all gets "compressed." I must admit to actually getting paranoid for a moment, thinking, "This is too compressed," "This is the beginnings of what medical torture must be like," and "Do a lot of women cry at this point?"

I didn't cry (it wasn't that bad), and she wasn't torturing me, but it IS pretty smashy. But not too--at least for the short amount of time you must hold still and try to ignore how very uncomfortable you are. Really--it's less than 10 seconds, and all of us can put up with it for less than 10 seconds.

After the top-bottom view she lines you up for a left-right/diagonal view, and then repeats it with the other breast. Only 4 films. You get 8 if you have breast implants, plus you have the constant mind meld of the machine busting open the implants, which is a real good reason to never get implants (besides the general ridiculousness of them and the possibility of resembling Pamela Anderson in any way).

I'm 34--a bit young for mammograms. However, my mother and her sister were both diagnosed with breast cancer last year at the ages of 58 and 53, respectively. I don't know by what percentage this upped my chances of getting it, but it did--significantly enough, apparently, to be told by three doctors that I should get a baseline mammogram now and one a year for a long time.

Women have a right to question the medical establishment. Our health has always been and continues to be--yes! really! even now--not considered as important/pressing/real/worth funding/etc. as that of men. And there has been some grumbling about women not really needing mammograms, false positives, and the general manipulation of women--once again!--by the patriarchal medical establishment.

Some of it may be true, but until it's damn-near a scientific law that mammograms are a sham, I will get mine, and I will do my monthly breast checks. The number of women who will get this disease is staggering. Plus, my mom and aunt both did regular self checks and didn't find their tumors--based on their location, they would not have been discovered without a mammogram. My mom's tumor was a killer, too--if not found, there is little doubt that it would have spread.

We need a cure, but we also need to find the cause. I have a sneaking and uneducated suspicion that the cause lies in all the toxins around us and inside of us--toxins that take up residence in fatty tissue, twisting and distorting into Gollum-like cells that spawn ugly little tumors.

My writing is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it is honest. Mammograms are uncomfortable. But less than a minute of moderate pain and lingering red marks on the chest are a small price to pay for a procedure that has saved thousands of lives--and maybe yours, too.

The Trouble with Blogs

Oh, blogs have their place. Freed from addressing specific people (and, thus, being directly responsible for what you write to those people), one can use the blog to address darn near any issue--even if it's politically incorrect or Too Hot! for work. I've really been enjoying my blog. I watched a whole bunch of Sex and the City last week and in one episode Carrie, the columnist, denigrates her "little column" as having no real significance, especially in the face of intellectual heavyweights. Her intellectual friend says, Nonsense! You're contributing to the dialogue, and talking about things (sex) that have long languished under the socially-acceptable radar.

Well, I don't fancy myself quite that fancy, but as I watched I thought, Hey! I AM contributing something! It's not always delightful, but at least it's varied and, I hear, pretty interesting. During my DJ years, my radio show was called "Lulu's Wild West Show," partly because I was in the West, and partly because I followed no set musical format. I'm happy that my blog is taking the same path.

Anyway, the bad thing about blogs is the lack of instant response and easy dialogue that occurs when you email something funny or provocative. People comment, but you have to log on to read it, and there's no real vollying. For example, yesterday I started an email string about whether or not a person who didn't believe in God can have a sound moral code. The responses were near instant and thought provoking.

Today I want to write about a news item I heard on last night's "Marketplace." A software company in California will pay $5,000 cash to the first 200 employees who buy a hybrid vehicle that gets at least 45 mph. When the interviewer asked one of the company's execs how they justified this million dollar move to the shareholders, he said 1. the shareholders that he's heard from so far are proud to be associated with such a company and 2. the brass wants the employees to not only be proud of the company's product, but of the company's culture.

When will more companies/capitalists wake up to the "fact" that creating happy employees and communities is more beneficial to ALL than a few more bucks for the FEW?

Comments?