0 This is what I think about that: The viral facebook campaign for breast cancer awareness at 07:06

I am on facebook a lot and I admit it, so since the turn of this month I've been seeing girls post their ambiguous and coy statuses in the format of "I like it on _______." My initial reaction to these was about a millisecond of curiosity in the form of cognitive processing, as I had to race against my imagination to filter against mental associations with the raunchy wording, and shortly thereafter complete and utter apathy. After witnessing about four of these from girls that I knew who had no relationship to each other whatsoever, and one even of my close friend, I was reminded of the one-color-as-the-status epidemic last year and realized it was for breast cancer awareness. (I found that article by searching with the key words, "breast cancer i like it on".)

I would really like to meet the person or people who came up with this campaign, so I can slap them across the face and see if I can't beat some sense into them. I am assuming they want this campaign to work on the principle of 1) people seeing these cryptic but widespread messages, 2) being confused and 3) asking about them, and therefore creating an opportunity for girls (or people like me, except out of spite) to tell them about breast cancer. I mean, otherwise, people will never care about this disease, right?

But that is idealistic and idiotic. The majority of facebook users are friends with so many acquaintances that most interactions are superficial and inconsequential due to the volume, and therefore have very little incentive to ask about these statuses unless it comes from one of their closer friends, and then only slightly. Also, since the first person who thought it would be clever and artistic to apply ambiguous lyrics from some artist who already doesn't know what they're talking about, facebook users are conditioned to ignore statuses they don't understand. Heck, I already ignore most of the statuses I do understand.

Secondly, I often see this: Girls who post the status and actually elicit an inquiry refuse to explain it. I probably hate this more - but only marginally - than having actually posted it in the first place, because you are undermining the whole purpose of this campaign. Some girls are merely treating this as an in-joke among women (which I understand is important because smugness seems to be integral to feeling like you're part of a community), and therefore raising NO more awareness about breast cancer, not to mention simply letting my fellow men (and in some cases, other women) wallow in ignorance and mild annoyance.

My last point is this: Why do we even need to raise awareness of breast cancer? I don't think that's an issue anymore in the United States, or at least for anyone who even has access to facebook. For me, I admit that although I know cancer is a scary issue and has directly affected people around me, I don't know much about the statistics of breast cancer and sought to educate myself - but I am not as invested in this issue as my cohorts without a Y chromosome because I don't have boobs, and they do. I really feel like women know about it already and should get a mammogram (when you're older and more at risk), but just having awareness doesn't seem to be doing anything here to help - it's like knowing, in the back of your mind, that somewhere in the world, some group of people are starving or dying of malaria.

Awareness is still very pertinent issue and part of the battle against breast cancer, but not in this part of the world. Do me a favor, if you've read this far already, go and read this article. In developing countries, the greatest danger is that people don't know it's a problem, but here in the States, new diagnosis and treatment options become available all the time. So really, awareness isn't the problem.

At least the campaign has worked on me and I count as one more educated person on the issue of breast cancer. In the meantime, I am going to go copy and paste these links as comments in people's facebook statuses.

Post-post thoughts:

[The only other thing that has gotten me so riled up is the third movement of Preludios by Thomas Oboe Lee, who obviously hates marimba players and wants to punish them.

Thank the lord for the people giving up facebook for the Daniel fast, that's less of these statuses I need to be mildly annoyed at.]

0 Exhortation to Exploration: Tamalpais Path at 06:11

I went on a walk on Saturday in Berkeley, and just kept going. Berkeley's like the opposite of Irvine in that the more north you go, the more trees and nature and elevation you will find.

My general destination was the Berkeley Rose Gardens, even know it is fall and most of the roses will probably be bare bushes, but I had no idea how to get there and didn't really care.

Eventually I came upon Tamalpais Path:

I started at the top and made my way down, pretty much going as far vertically as I did horizontally:

I eventually came across a clearing with two bridges, and the sound of many children's voices.

 Following them, I realized I was in Tilden Park, and probably had been the whole time.

The walk getting to the path was a scenic route in itself, winding higher and higher in the hills of Berkeley and passing by the cute, cabin-like houses that probably cost a lot of money.