Prom Shopping

Sunday my daughter Jane and I went shopping for her prom dress shoes. Sigh. We spent the whole day Saturday getting the dress, but in the female shopping world, each purchase of one female clothing article requires an equal purchase of another the next day. All I heard form Jane was how impatient I was about my desire to get the shoes and go home. At one point (hour four!) I even suggested she choose some ill matched shoes, but she is too smart for that. But this browsing/shopping over and over again makes me crazy. Anyway, she found shoes to match (at a Macy's, the third Macy's we visited Sunday!) and the prom shopping should be over for this year. But then, Jane will do the prom dress bit next year and the same routine will occur (I should hide or run away from home).

Portland is environmentally politically correct. Uh...it is way over the top about the subject. The segment of the population that is in control politically here is driven by that global warming enthusiasm that is so trendy everywhere now. Portlanders recycle their shopping bags or use bamboo bags they carry everywhere. They ride their bikes whenever they can leave the car home. They always try to buy "organic". Bla bla bla....you get the idea. No need to list their many other "green behaviors "but they are what is expected here.

Well, it is a lovely place with a beautiful environment. So the net effect of their overzealous and pedantic obsession with protecting the environment is probably good if (ironically) wasteful. But here you have to get through some annoying and crazy aspects of the new age environmentalism. To illustrate, I have an example of one craziness I saw when I used the mall rest room today.

After doing my "business" in the toilet and washing my hands I proceeded to the hand dryer which has a message written in bold type on top of each had dryer: "This Hand Dryer Saves 24 Trees Each Year". I was amused, and when I got back into the mall corridor and met Jane again I told her about that odd advertisement of self congratulatory that is so common in Oregon. She laughed and remarked what I thought also when I read that self congratulatory line. "How do they know it is 24 trees", she asked?

One does not ask a global warmer for evidence of any, even the smallest global warming assertion, because we all know that in their words.... "EVERYONE knows the planet is being destroyed by man". I suggested to her that perhaps it was a guess (to a global warmer a guess is a "fact" when it applies to their theories of planetary heating) and that I wasn't going to ask anyone for evidence of any of their claims. The fact that the rest room hand dryers work via electricity generated at the tradeoff expense (there is perhaps more environmental damage from the hand dryers than by using renewable trees as hand drying paper) probably doesn't factor into that hand drying math equation I read in that rest room.

I feel an urge to go back to that bathroom and leave my own environmental message on that had dryer. "The electricity consumed to power these wasteful hand dryers is a greater planet warmer than all the hot air exhaled by Portland's global warmers. Save us all, and just wipe your hands on your shirts next time!"