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GREETINGS FROM THE NEW MILLENNIUM
H eather’s other Mommy is about to get her due. Yes, this long-suffering half of the modern lesbian couple — you know, the one who didn’t get turkey basted — is being honored in 2007 with a new holiday. Invented by the American Greeting Card Consortium (AGCC), a coalition of U.S. card manufacturers, Other Mother’s Day® is just one of a rash of new, patented celebrations — and the paraphernalia to go with them — being unveiled this year to offset the financial bite that e-greeting cards have been taking out of their, once unassailable, profits. Aimed at modern obsessions and interests, like gay lifestyles, tween culture, the aging of the baby boomers and even foreign markets, the AGCC is betting these novel celebrations will become as vital during this century as Sweetest Day was during the last.
 Debuting in June to coincide with the birth of Mary Cheney and her partner’s first baby, Other Mother’s Day®, celebrates the woman who is not biologically a mother, and not even a father, but who must still coach months of soccer practices, defer real vacations in favor of Rosie O’Donnell’s cruises and endlessly explain why neither Mommy is Chinese.
In another bid for gay-related dollars, the coalition has also created a line of Coming Out Day cards. With punchlines like “Everyone already knows,” and “We know you're not roomates,” they hope to take some of the personal drama out of, what is for many, a momentous decision. As AGCC spokesperson, Mark Hall, quipped, “Gaydar is not just for homos anymore. If we can’t laugh about someone’s deepest secrets at the office, what’s the point of equality?”
Another demographic card companies hope to capitalize on is the aging baby boomers. Though Boomers hail from various ethnic and economic groups, they have a number of things in common — like Type II Diabetes and liver spots. The card consortium’s catalog boasts: “With a whole generation obsessed with the vicissitudes of aging and weight gain, our companies have developed a line of greetings with taglines like, ‘Congratulations on losing that 10 pound… again,’ and ”Scratch and smell the Botox (for women) and I Love the Smell of Viagra in the Mornings (for men).”
“We are also working on a character called Ms. Captain Crunch, a cross between the beloved breakfast cereal icon and Suzanne Sommers, who eschews sugar in favor of washboard abs and firm thighs,” says Hall. The Captain will preside over AGCC’s first National Boomer Day® which  will be celebrated in tandem with the old VE day, “because that’s when the whole boom began.”
One passion all Boomers share is their love of pets. The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA) estimates that pet owners spent $38.4 billion on pet-related products in 2006. According to the organization Charity Navigator, that’s ten times as much as was donated to the needy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So, it was only natural for the greeting card industry to reduce their reliance on sales of sympathy cards —where do you send them when these people don’t have addresses anyway — and introduce a pet-oriented line.
The bulk of AGCC’s 2007 pet cards will focus on dog and cat birthdays, because, as they say “what’s more important?” However, next February, in conjunction with the new, Fuzzy Friends Appreciation Day@, they plan to expand the array to include obedience school graduation cards, puppy’s first “number two” on the rug greetings and, the inevitable condolences that will be needed at the end of “that most important person’s”, all-too-short, life.
While the Boomers cling to their pets and their strikingly undiminished egos, those latchkey kids they produced, and then ignored, are finally having kids of their own. They certainly took their time about it, and many of them are going to be in their sixties when their offspring finish high school. Luckily, it looks like Generation X  might not have to live through the alarming mood swings of their kids’ adolescence combined with their own hot flashes after all. It seems that, as a result of too many hormones in those Big Macs, a remarkable evolution has occurred and children are maturing faster than ever before.
Yes, a condition called Central Precocious Puberty, which causes freakishly early sexual maturation, is beginning to show up kids as young as four-years-old. For some this would seem like a medical nightmare. For the greeting card consortium, it should be a boon in marketing their new Princess Period® cards. These witty greetings feature all of the most popular princesses — from Cinderella (I have to get home by midnight to change my tampon) to Snow (doesn’t it always happen when you’re wearing) White. Depicted in full-pink-hued regalia, doubled over with cramps, or trying to shoo dwarves out of the bathroom to get a moment of privacy, all the cards bear the positive message: “You’re never too young to celebrate becoming a woman.”
Those are just some of the new ideas the AGCC is promoting for the domestic market. Still, as we’re all too aware, America is part of a global economy now. To remain profitable, companies need to reach beyond their borders to sell goods to any country that can’t keep our military at bay. “After all,” says Hall, “Americans are losing their jobs to offshore corporations every day. So we can’t rely on them to keep us in business. After they buy that first “So you got downsized card,” they’re, pretty much, tapped out.” So, AGCC is taking a cue from global-marketing forerunners like cigarette and pesticide manufacturers in looking for foreign customers who are not yet inundated with locally produced products or who live in areas with growing economies. .
One under-served market they are betting will take off — as soon as the car bombs stop maiming everyone—is in Iraq. The AGCC is just waiting to be able to get their trucks safely from the airport and into Baghdad to introduce their Burka Birthday® line. They hope that pictures of women swaddled from head to toe in  black garments accompanied by catchphrases like, “You never looked better,” and “40? Who knew?” will help to promote Middle-Eastern girl power as well as drive sales.
They are also poised to promote a new Iraqi holiday, tentatively called, Sectarian’s Day®. The greeting cards designed for this celebration are strikingly like valentines except that they and are rigged with tiny smoke bombs that explode when opened. Once the smoke clears, the recipient can re-enter their home and approach the card to read one of a number of pretty-darn-funny, anti-American slogans — reminding Sunnis and Shiites alike, on this one special day, who they really hate.
“This is just the beginning,” says AGCC’s Hall. “The field is wide open for innovation. In the next few years we plan to promote more modern holidays, like African Baby Adoption Day® which will feature the likenesses of a number of movie and pop stars. We haven’t given up on e-cards either.” In fact, one of AGCC’s most popular online greetings is their Identity Theft@ line of cyber-postcards which wittily inform recipients that their credit information has been stolen. These fun e-posts can be sent anonymously from anywhere on the globe with an Internet connection.
The modern world if rife with events yet to be celebrated — like hunger, war, global warming, pandemic disease, rising poverty and genocide. And while politicians argue about how to address these sour subjects, the greeting card industry is poised to squeeze lemonade from each and every one — with a spoon full of sugar, a 39-cent stamp and a heartfelt smile.
LAZY SUZANNE ARCHIVE -CURRENT- 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12
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Merriam Webster Throws “Pride” to Gays and Lions
Each year, the venerable Merriam Webster dictionary adds a few words to its alphabetical tome that have become part of common parlance. Seldom, however, does it change the meaning of an existing term. Yet, last month, in deference to American slang, the wordsmiths at M-W removed all references to heterosexuals from the definition of the workmanlike noun, “pride”, forcing many to find another way to express a sense of self-esteem.
“Let’s face it,” said Horace Smith, head lexicographer for the publishing giant, “almost any mention of pride these days is just an abbreviation for the phrase “gay pride,” or “GLBT pride” — which is more than a mouthful. We decided to make it easy on everyone and just omit any definitions of the word that didn’t refer to rousing parades, GLBT events or basic rainbow consciousness. The only exception was made for lions, who will still be able to use the term to talk about themselves in the plural.”
While this change makes it clear what is meant by phrases like: “Should I get a spray-on tan for pride next week?” or “Over my dead body are you wearing that to pride,” it has left a hole in the language for the general public when attempting to make reference to feelings of self-worth.
Smith suggests a possible new word, “proudiness,” to fill the gap. “For instance, one could say, ‘Despite repeatedly dropping her son on his head, Britney Spears feels proudiness over her accomplishments as a mother.’ Or, ‘President Bush thinks Barbara and Jenna are a disappointment, but his dog Barney, is his proudiness and joy.’”
While, the switch will be simple for most to make during daily conversation, publishers will have a harder time excising “pride” from books, magazines and other previously published works. The already besieged Catholic Church will feel the most pressure when having to modify all mentions of the first Deadly Sin in its Catechism. In a statement issued by the Vatican press office, church officials said, “We don’t have the financial resources to fight the “Da Vinci Code” and this, too.
For others, however, the change is an unexpected boon. Freelance copy editor Zoe Wright, already has more work than she can handle correcting books about Cardinal baseball great, Dizzy Dean, the “Proudiness of St. Louis,” and Jane Austen’s novel “Proudiness and Prejudice”.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Wright. “Once I’m done with historical works, there are all the self-help titles. I’ve even got my eye on a sweet, little condo I thought I could never afford.”
Merriam Webster’s Smith, answered publishers’ outcries by asserting that, “Any costs or confusion our decision generates will be mitigated by the long-awaited streamlining that will occur within the English language in reference to GLBT celebrations. The only way to change our decision will be through an act of Congress, and they’re too busy trying to redefine marriage to bother with this.”
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