Day 164 - March of the Faux Aware

January 19th, 2010

It has been brought to my attention that tomorrow is Penguin Awareness Day.

I know. Right? It’s here already? I’m still cleaning up citrus remnants and feces from my annual orangutan potluck luau. With only one day to prepare, I ran to Barnes & Noble and was fortunate enough to pick up the last copy of “Penguin Enthusiast”…in Spanish.

Let’s take the opportunity to learn about and appreciate one of the few natives of Antarctica. I’d like to share a few little known facts about penguins that I learned from my magazine (more of a leaflet actually.) I don’t speak Spanish. At all. My translation should still be on par though.

-Along with fish and squid, black and white cookies were a staple of the penguin diet until it was discovered that they were actually made of penguins.

-Michael Phelps trained in the frigid southern hemisphere with these aquatic birds. He was asked to leave because his abnormal unproportioned torso to leg ratio “freaked the penguins out.”

-The smallest penguin species is the Little Blue Penguin (Eudyptula minor), also known as the Fairy Penguin. Gay as a French horn.

To me, awareness day just means that there are 364 days that we make the choice to be deliberately unaware and disinterested in a person, cause or penguin. On the one celebratory day, we march. We eat. We justify too much drinking. All in the name of awareness.

I am pioneering a new annual holiday. Starting right now, January 19th will be Awareness Awareness Day.

Awareness Awareness Day aims to increase people's awareness about people who claim to be aware. But are not. Fake awareness affects men and women of all races and in all geographic regions and has a large impact on families, communities, societies and blond comedians. The prevalence is currently rising in many countries around the world. Caring for and educating people with this faux awareness condition places challenges on health care, education, training programs and blog writers like Jacqueline Kabat.

Be Fair. Really Care. Don’t Be a Fake Aware.