Forgive me, but....

Ok... Right up front, I admit to being less than enthusiastic about "holiday" cheer. Having said that, let's take a look at what we're about.

A well meaning soul sent this to my e-mail.

http://www.sparkleball.com/intro.htm

You've just gotta see this to believe it. I don't know how to enable a link here, so please copy and paste it - look it up before you read any further, so that what I'm going to address, and why, might make sense.

Thank you, I assume that you've now seen the site on "Sparkleballs". I just don't seem to be able to avoid feeling the sad irony of this. I've come to define the condition/disability I suffer from as DIS "Denial Impairment Syndrome". Sparkleballs with their giddy distraction value, won't be the cause of our species' demise. But, they are yet another of thousands of examples that represent our persistent commitment to the inane.

In our world today there are many, frankly overwhelmingly relevant issues that need our direct and immediate attention. I find the "Sparkleball" phenomenon so sadly reflective of our times and the condition of our consciousness...

First. Note the quote at the top of the Sparkleball page...

"Making a light ball out of plastic cups won't change your life, but it will make everything a little sparklier."

Well thank god, yes! We wouldn't want to change our lives. That's hard. That requires self-examination, humility and the "C" word - Change. Our predominant, collective choice is to ramp up the level of sparkliness around us - to maintain our ever escalating commitment to making everything "a little sparklier". Yes, please... Sparklier is the secret to success, to happiness, to fulfillment. Sparklier is the key to a consciousness that might save our ignorant species from extinction! Sparklier! Yes! Gotta have it! Can't afford it? Put it on the credit card.

So, making our lives a little sparklier, requires a commitment. To embrace this enhanced level of sparkly meaning and purpose requires only that we acquire and consume more fossil fuel based plastic cups (and all that it implies), strings of electric lights designed to light up our robotic response to Hallmark Holidays, and use up more electricity to build and drive these symbols of our insanity.

If you follow along the Sparkleball page... the people involved in this amazing contribution to the human experience have also found a commercial niche. Apparently people who don't have the time or dexterity to build them, can buy them from the sparkleball wizards. There seems to be no shortage of humansdes who share a deep hunger for a sparklier sense of lifes' meaning. Please check out (if you haven't) the Global Sparkleballers Map (yes it's really there) at the bottom of the website. You'll discover, (I'm shocked!) that Americans are leading the world by an enormous margin, in Sparkleball wisdom.


Ok, so call me a scrooge. Call me what you will, but again, the opening quote says it all...

"Making a light ball out of plastic cups won't change your life, but it will make everything a little sparklier."

Maybe all that's left for us. Our noble destiny is to sit and stare at the sparkely lights. Perhaps sparkelballs are the symbols for our deliverance from the pain of realizing what we've done with our species, our planet, and our helplessness to correct it. Maybe a sparkelball would be the kindest, most effective distraction for a frog - while we boil him. Or someday, perhaps the human population will awaken to another way of thinking - a reexamined focus of resources and consciousness - perhaps something along the lines of:

"It won't make everything "sparklier", but it'll sure change your life".