How not to advocate for cancer research

[UPDATED INTRO: Hello folks who've clicked over from Yahoo's Buzz list and Rhodri's LJ feed! Browse around the archives as you like -- and trust me, I do write about more things in general than animated cancerous glands.]

I’m going to just copy/paste something I posted over at ILX, but let me just preface what I’m calling attention to here by saying, I’m sorry, but NO. BAD IDEA. Surely SOMEONE realized this was a BAD IDEA.

(And as I said at ILX, I am extremely interested in prostate cancer research and diagnosis for many good reasons — the cancer killed my grandfather and almost killed my uncle, and my dad’s been affected by it as well. I certainly am all for further attention to this, even if motivated by obvious self-interest. And I don’t believe in being humorless about something as grim as this either, humor and lightness can have its place and probably should. But…not…this…way…)

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So, I’m reading this article — as I’ve muttered elsewhere, prostate cancer runs in my family and it’s very likely I’ll get a diagnosis one day, therefore reading up on it is something I do as stories catch my eye.

And I notice this paragraph:

Prostate cancer groups have tried to replicate the success of the pink ribbon campaign with their own blue ribbon, but it has yet to gain widespread acceptance. A group advocating the development of imaging technology for prostate screening created a mascot, Prosty the Spokesgland, complete with a theme song, to the tune of “Frosty the Snowman.” Not surprisingly, it has not caught on, either.

waht

So of course I search for it, and I find it, complete with video.

Prosty the Spokesgland
Is a prostate gland, we’re told
Buried deep inside largely out of sight
He’s ignored by young and old

Prosty the Spokesgland
How we hope that lump’s benign
But it’s hard to say
Cause the only way
To diagnose and treat is blind

There might just be some cancer
In that lump they found today
But we really can’t be sure right now
Cause you can’t trust the PSA

Oh. Dear.

RIP Dan Fogelberg

Now that may seem like a strange sentiment to most ears, and I don’t blame you, really. Fogelberg’s work really was something — a bit like the Carpenters, which I talked about a couple of weeks back — which wasn’t apparent to me in a conscious sense. His songs just were, and something like “Longer” just makes me think of honestly nice, warm late seventies memories for whatever reason, a familiar cut on the radio. Not much else ever sank in with me per se than said song but I always liked how it would randomly crop up here and there.

Turns out that Fogelberg passed after a long battle with prostate cancer, though, and for that reason I do feel honest sorrow at his passing — this is a cancer which has taken its toll on my own family, killing my grandfather and almost killing my uncle, and which was detected very early on in my dad, though he went through an appropriate operation and is doing fine. Knowing that Fogelberg died at 56 is a little unnerving as a result — I’m nearer to there than to my birth — and without turning this into a PSA, it strikes me that there’s something honest and basic about taking the appropriate tests as one ages. I’ve talked with my own doctor about it and within the next few years it’ll be part of a yearly plan, as it should be.

Meantime, in recent years I’d been able to find examples of Fogelberg’s own unexpected (to me) cachet in odd corners. In a more considered, wry vein was Werner Trieschmann’s great 2006 EMP Pop Conference presentation on “Longer,” where, as he freely confessed, he found himself loathing nearly everything about Fogelberg but finding himself moved by said song. Then there was Kiki & Herb, who performed “Same Old Lang Syne” when I saw them in December 2005 and killed it (unsurprisingly). And doubtless his passing will produce similar ‘hmm, well, you know, not so bad at all’ sentiments of one form or another.

I won’t go that far. But you know, like Trieschmann I’ll take that one song still, and it’s a sad and too early way to pass. Simple as that.