Endangered Species

How can you be an environmentalist and an evolutionist simultaneously? How can you justify spending billions in resources on saving all the endangered muskrats in the world and, at the same time, believe that only the fittest survive and extinction is a necessary and natural consequence of evolution? I just don’t get it. Can someone help me understand? Am I totally misunderstanding something here?

A specie that is about to be extinct is the all-American cowboy. Over the weekend, I called my mom to get more Christmas gift ideas for my little brother, eight-years-old. She told me that lately he’s been asking for a cowboy hat, holster and gun. In fact, he’s been asking for this stuff repeatedly and REALLY would like to have it. "Great," I thought, "No problem - that’s what we’ll get for him."

First, we went to Toys R Us. We looked high and low to find anything in the cowboy genre. Finally I asked a sales associate and he told me they had nothing cowboy-related in the whole store. What?! Impossible. Isn’t cowboys and Indians what every little boy has role-played for the last century and more?!! That is when I realized how politically incorrect my brother’s Christmas wish was. I mean, guns are EVIL. Right? And, cowboys only represent destructive white aggression toward defenseless Indians. Right?

Political correctness has gone way too far. I’m so sick of it.

We next went to K.B. Toys. Nope - no cowboy stuff there either. Not even a cowboy HAT for heaven’s sake! Oh, but we did see an Indian tomahawk and native, feathered headgear. It’s probably not a violation of politically correct thinking for a store to carry Indian paraphernalia. After all, they are the oppressed ones, modern historians tell us.

Oh brother.
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Speaking of cowboys . . . this reminds me of something.

Kevin’s grandma gave me a present when we saw her at Thanksgiving. It was a little cowboy about six inches tall with red and blue beaded legs and arms, a big smiley face, a red hat and boots, and a lasso. Apparently Kevin gave it to grandpa when he was five-years-old and lived in San Antonio. He picked it out especially for grandpa and bought it with his own allowance money. I just thought it was all very cute. Someone asked Kevin why he got a cowboy, of all things. Kevin got defensive and said, "I lived in TEXAS."

Maybe Toys R Us and K.B. Toys in Texas would carry cowboy paraphernalia. Let's hope!
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I now realize how rambled-scrambled this whole blog is. But, hey, that’s what blogs are for - the random journaling of haphazard thought.

Ta, ta for now!