1983 Rabbit Years

I wrote a commentary recently about the faux fur at Nieman Marcus. It was actually faux faux, or really real, and Nieman Marcus had to pay the FTC for faking out both PETA and consumers.
I know, fur out.
But it got me thinking about what fur the faux faux fur was. Turns out it was mostly rabbit. Which would have been an even greater outrage had it figured more prominently in the story. Because America loves its rabbits. The rabbit mythos is America is vewy vewy stwong.
From Bugs to Harvey to Roger to the Playboy Bunny, rabbits scamper through our lives. So as Barbara "Fudd" Walters would say, "Don't go messing with siwwy wabbits."
Even so, we don't take rabbits as seriously as some cultures. Like folks it Asia. 2011, just a few months ago in dog years, was the Year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar. It's pretty serious when you give a animal an entire zodiacal year, right up there with monkeys, dragons and rats. 2011 was the Year of the Cat on the Vietnamese calendar so you can see the equivalency.
Similar fur by the way...
China also doesn't see a man in the moon like we do in the west. They see a rabbit in the moon, as does Korea and Japan. The full moon doesn't look any different there, just the inside of their imaginations. In Japan, the rabbit in the moon has a stick and bowl and is mixing rice cakes. In China and Korea, the rabbit is mixing an immortality elixir.
Always a tough choice for me in the diet section of the grocery store. Hmm... rice cake or immortality elixir...?
Maybe I'll just skip mixing up my own dinner.
And go to IHOP.
America, ya gotta love it.