Has it been this long...

Since I've blogged? Was it the vacation to Florida to see my dear mother (and get some sunshine) followed by a super hectic work schedule at my school? Is it...Christmas?

There are few places like my home, Alaska's Mat-Su Valley, where people come unglued over a toy doll being sold at Target. A doll whom some think has a pro-Islam agenda Why do they believe this? Because when activated, it appears – to some – to say, along with a lot of baby babble, “Islam is the light.”

Full disclosure: I haven’t been to our new Target to personally hear
Fisher-Price’s “Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle and Coo” make her subliminal “Come to Mohammed” pitch. But others have, and they’re upset with Baby Cuddle and Coo, thinking the doll sends an insidious message that’s dangerous to our four and five year-old children, and probably that she should be pulled from Target’s shelves and sent back to Tehran where she belongs.

Now, cognitive scientists tell us that humans are hard-wired to "connect-the-dots" and see patterns. It’s the reason we're superior to the beasts in the jungle, and try to make sense of the universe. Because of our ingrained hopes, fears and biases, it’s also the reason some people think that 9/11 was a government operation, make pilgrimages to Roswell, New Mexico, or believe they'll have a five-star day if they read it in their newspaper's horoscope.

A thought: might the people who are so exercised over Baby Cuddle and Coo be the same sort of people who see the Virgin Mary – or Elvis - in a potato chip, and phallic symbols in all the animated Disney movies? The sort of people who a few years back demanded that all the Cosmo magazines at the local grocery story checkout counters be covered high enough that impressionable pubescent male minds would not be distracted from purer thoughts by all that Cosmo Girl cover cleavage?

Lastly, what would Valley shoppers think if Baby Cuddles and Coo seemed to babble the phrase, “Jesus is my light? That would be OK, I take it?