Getting the F over one's self.

Yesterday, my mom got lost. (For any relatives who still stick around, take a minute to go "Duh.")

She saw an international grocery store, and it said things like "Arabic" and "Indian" on the front window (along with Russian, Greek, so many countries!) and she knew I'd be excited.

I was. Especially since it's not far from my school.

My school is half in and half out of the bad/poor/black/poor black part of town. My white friend lives in a neighborhood filled with huge old growth trees and old postwar houses (some have these amazing pre-AC deep porches that make me want to become an architect. I'm weird) and lots of crime.

The grocery store is in that part.

Mom and I may have been the only white people in there, I was too busy looking for Bollywood DVDs only to be disappointed because my Arabic isn't that good and I forgot to check if they have English subtitles, something to look for next time!

The woman at the check-out was light skinned with an accent (from Ohio, I think she admitted that our winter was cold *Memphis snow day pride!*) and she didn't look at me like I was some weirdo for being white and buying something. I did, however, regret my 50 pounds of pennies when I learned they don't take cards. Mom ran out to get some cash.

I bought hummus and baklava. Someone brought hummus to my anthropology class last semester (3 hour night class, snacks about an hour in) and I loved it! I found the brand at Kroger, even in Tipton County. (Locals, locals, locals are you with me? Someone fetch the smelling salts!)

But then I read that the stuff here doesn't hold a candle to the real stuff. I remember the hummus from this cheap middle eastern restaurant, and bought the only container they had. It's decorated nicely with spices and ... green leaves? I am an American wuss and don't like it.

Oh well.

Anyway, to the title.

My sister went to the Wal-Mart in Raleigh by herself Friday evening, and felt so out of place because she was the only white person there!

When I went to the mall with her, she wouldn't let me go in a clothing store because it was for black people (bright colored t-shirts know no race!).

I always wanted to go back and go in there and find something pretty, but the malls are far away.

I don't think I'm the only white person at Bollywood movies, but when I arrived early for "New York" this summer, the only other people in the lighted theater were Indian. They wanted to make sure I was in the right place. (The movie was not advertised anywhere in the theater, you had to be in the know.)

I remember thinking about being the only white face at Dehli 6 a year ago, mostly because it was a 7 or 8 pm weeknight showing, and they wouldn't let us in the theater! So it's a bunch of Indian people and a girl in a Stanford hoodie (open so her SRK shirt shows) milling around. I felt more out of place because I was alone, and the themes in the beginning of the movie stressed family and friends.

My mom and I don't always see the same way on race, and my sister and I will never see eye to eye, but as we were driving through the old neighborhoods (not old money neighborhoods), she was talking about living there. (The porches! I love me a good porch!)

Maybe it was her time in Japan, maybe it was the military that opened her mind, because she is quite tolerant of my desire to wander through places like the international grocery store and that one in Knoxville, we looked for brands from Japan and I looked for the ones advertised on Bollywood DVDs. And with the Pepsi Throwback out (it has sugar, which improves the taste according to former Pepsi addict Mom), we are looking at foreign sodas. I got an orange one at a Mexican restaurant a couple weeks ago - no HFCS.

The one pity in all this? Neither of us are coffee drinkers (she likes the chocolate confections with a dash of coffee) so we can't test Arabic coffee! It's supposed to be stronger.

They not only had Nutella, they had other brands of hazelnut spread, oh drool.

Anyways, my point is be aware of your surrounding, but if you (and a companion) are the only whatevers in a group, get over it. Maybe you'll learn something.

Of course, my friend and I ate at some sub place a couple weeks ago, and she was like, "Kaitlyn, we're the only girls here." My response? "Stop taking us to gay bars, Elizabeth, and this won't happen!"

So yeah. Maybe it is white privilege that lets me wander around a Middle Eastern grocery in the poor part of Memphis (I haven't tried that baklava yet... this will be my third try. I keep hoping for the nirvana others talk about. Damn that stuff is rich!) um where was I going?

Happy Black History Month, ya'll!

I'm not going to the Civil Rights Museum because I cry and cry when I go, though I stop to gape at the conspiracies surrounding James Earl Ray (something ain't kosher, but still) and then continue crying. I don't know why.

I also cried during a video about the design of the Vietnam War memorial, but that was last semester which was an emotional roller coaster, so it may not count. But when I think of the memorial - of going there old enough to appreciate it - I start getting teary. And I lost no one in the fight.

Something that pissed me off

I have an Obama sticker on my laptop.

My Kerry sticker went on my bedroom door as a reminder of the first election I gave a damn about.


So Thursday, I was on my computer, trying to get the damned thing to work (it did), and Becky's friend John came over. He saw my sticker and groaned. Apparently, he sees Obama stuff everywhere and it's killing him.

He reminded me of this bumper sticker I saw (on a SUV or truck with shell with TENNESSEE plates) that said "Conservative in exile." Hello, you're in Tennessee. Tennessee went to McCain, remember? Ugh.

Anyways, apparently ***black people*** wear shirts that say Obama is their president, among other crimes. Oh noes.

My mom did it too, right around the election. "The black teachers and students are so excited, they're calling him their president, but he's half-white." And she voted for him.

I don't get this bullshit and I hate it.

And it's so damned stupid that I can't think of anything to say back. Not that it matters if I do say something. I tried to get John and Beck to stop using "gay" as pejorative, so they switched to homosexual.

Comical Thoughts

Today's Curtis made me happy, which is unusual. I love the artwork, but I only laugh at the Sunday strips where Curtis makes fun of the hats.

But today's! Curtis is at the barbershop, listening to the barber, who always has something interesting/funny to say.



The sign(s) on the wall change from panel to panel. Little background gags.

But look at the first one.



I don't know what Ray Billingsley had in mind when he put this in the comic, so this is merely my interpretation.

If you can't see it, it says "Blonde Dye! Not Here!"

That says to me that Gunther is proud of being black, and proud of every physical part of his identity - including his hair. (Or he was.)

But some people aren't, and one way to hide blackness is to change hair - straighten it, make it lighter, make it whiter. (In 11th grade, we had to read an excerpt from Malcolm X's biography about the time he used lye on his hair to look "better".)

So this sign makes me happy - comics do matter, or they wouldn't be there. They do stay with us. Curtis is already important because it has a black family doing... family things! The horror! And now with the black pride background gag, well, that's great.


Curtis's uplifting background sign is challenged by Billy's lies in today's Family Circus.



It is true that you never see rabbits wearing glasses, but that has more to do with the fact that they are animals than their diet. (Which isn't exclusively carrots.)

Carrots are the only vegetables I will eat willingly - as long as they're uncooked. In fact, according to a kindergarten or 1st grade project, carrots were my favorite food. And yet, I wear glasses.

Carrots won't stop the glasses monster from vandalizing your face, but the vitamin found in it is good for eye health, I believe. I'm not looking it up, I'm just saying that Billy is a liar.


Despite the lies and social messages, I still laughed at a comic: today's Mother Goose & Grimm.



::silly grin::

Enjoy your Wednesday, the week's halfway over!

Adventures in Procrastination

I have a rough draft to do for English that I will finish as soon as I finish this blog post. Swear on my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Hey, you know what would be a good idea? If I walked over to the bookstore and got the paperback omnibus edition, I never liked only having it in hardback. ::slap::)

Moving on.

I used to get the Commercial Appeal on a daily basis or a Wednesday through Sunday basis. Sometimes I only got it on Sunday because I hiked 5 miles uphill to get it (just for the TV guide). Comics were not my main priority. Oh sure, I had some Far Side books here, some Dilbert books there, and too many Garfields. And Bloom County!

Somehow, I got hooked on comics. It was before I got hooked on sites like the Comics Curmudgeon, though that didn't help matters, since he got me hooked on soap strips, which the CA, in one of its rare bursts of wisdom, doesn't carry. (They have For Better or For Worse and Luann, two that mix the soap and gag-a-day styles with varying degrees of success.)

I know when and why I started reading comics online. I don't mean comics like This Modern World or Tom the Dancing Bug, since I never saw them in the paper, and I don't think they're carried in dailies. TMW is in the free weekly The Memphis Flyer, but that's it.

The first comic I read online that was carried in a daily paper is Pearls Before Swine. The CA stopped running Cathy Monday through Saturday, and replaced it with PBS. Unfortunately, they thought we still needed a weekly Cathy dose, so I had to find my Sunday PBS online.\

Now I'm a cool 21st century college student and I do not have a subscription to the paper. Mom and Beck don't care - the news is everywhere, as is the TV guide. And comics aren't important.

But they are to me.

One of the greatest comic websites is the one provided by the Houston Chronicle. Their archives go back years, and you can create your own page, just with the comics you want to look at. However, it doesn't work on Sunday, despite the fact that a little address manipulating will bring you that day's strip. (Only with the color comics.)

So.

Awesome.

However, there are six daily comics not at the Chron site that I love. (I'm sure there are more, give me time.) Arlo & Janis, Candorville, Jump Start, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, the New Adventures of Queen Victoria, and Lio.

These six are the easiest part of my Sunday comics experience, since they are at the top of my favorites. The one at the Chron site, not so much, because I have to look up the black and white ones. (Too lazy and don't really want them in my favorites. I'm sure there are easier ways.)

Some Sundays, I will look for the Sunday edition of every daily comic. Usually when I'm procrastinating, not just bored. One of these that I only rarely glance at today is Herb and Jamaal. It is a very boring comic with lame jokes, but I don't hate it. The lame people are black, so it is a special comic.

I'm getting to my point.

I read Candorville first today, as usual. What is unusual is that one late night, the official site had not updated, dammit. So I replaced my link with this one, which updates at midnight (or maybe 11?) my time.

I saw this, got a kick out of it, and went on. Then I read today's H and J. That's right - it's the same joke. I know that sometimes this happens, comics will use the same joke on the same day. Sometimes it's on purpose, other times just a coincidence.

I visited the official Candorville site, looking for an explanation. And scrolled right past it. D'oh!

If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have e-mailed Darrin Bell, the creator of Candorville, and he wouldn't have replied to me. So there.

Well now I know. And it is awesome. Cartoonists of Color are uniting today by using variations of the same joke to protest how their work is seen. They're all seen as interchangeable, identical, because they feature minority characters. If you've seen one, you've seen them all.

Which is just not true. Curtis is a great strip, no matter how tired the jokes and themes get, because the art is phenomenal. Jump Start is consistently funny and I have many strips saved to my desktop because they're funny or I can identify. (And I'm white! And not a nurse, cop, parent, or married. OMG, STOP THE PRESSES.) Herb and Jamaal just sucks, art, stories, jokes.

The aftermath will be interesting - how many people will notice?

As I said, I haven't read the CA in a while, but I doubt many people who only get their comics there will find out. They don't carry any of the strips participating, unless Curtis counts because he talked about the Quakers today. (Though gossip is more important to an average kid.)

Which is really odd. Memphis's black population is the majority, we have a black county and city mayor, but the comics don't reflect that. That sucks. There are many legacy strips, or there were, like Dennis the Menace, Blondie, Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, BC, pick a name. I can't wait until, like 2025, when Curtis or Jump Start have been around for 30+ years and join the dinosaurs.

Okay, okay, I'll start working on my paper.

It won't be as pointless or rambling as this blog post, and it will be read by someone other than me. So there! I win!

Help me find a book!

More help needed!

I read this great book probably last year before my 18th birthday. I got a Memphis library card for my 17th, the $50 is only good a for a year. But I'll be going to school there in 2 months, so I'll get another one.

Nothing will stop me from reading a book, magazine, comic book, or anything not related to school at least once a day.

I will make time to watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report (and World Series) and I will demand time of myself to read a book to unwind.

My uncle graduated this year, he's going to be a middle school teacher. During the school year, he couldn't read a book for fun, and he has a great collection.

However, he had time to watch a couple of hours of TV a day. And he's not like most people, he likes to read. But he doesn't read in bed, so he doesn't read while in school.

Forget that nonsense. I spent more time fretting about what book to take to school than what I was going to wear. (Jeans, a t-shirt, white socks, and tennies. Ta da!) It had to be long enough to get me through all 6 periods, and something I hadn't read in a few months, so I wouldn't know everything right away. And if it was a library checkout, I had to read enough to know if I'd like it enough to read throughout the day. And I always stuck a few MADs in my backpack just in case.

One day my junior year, the unthinkable happened. I finished the book I had before 5th period was over! (Ella Minnow Pea, a delightful book that I later bought.)

6th period was taught by a slacker, and I had nothing, nothing! to read until I got home.

I think I even had 2 books with me. Ella was the second one, the other one was probably already half-finished or something. Or an equally fast read, or a dull day filled with tests, who knows?

Back to my query - I don't know the title or the author of the book.

I just know it was damn good and I'd love to read it again! (And again, and again, and again.) I will end up buying this book one day, I can guarantee it.

Okay, here's what I remember. It is fiction. It's filed under African-American fiction. It was written by a man. The main character is a black male author, who is upset about the fact that his work is put in the African-American literature section of stores because the blackest thing about the book is his picture on the dust jacket.

He writes boring academic books that are lauded in academic circles but nobody else cares, because it's about stuffy stuff. They're not even about Africans or African-Americans or Africa, they're just about some other scholarly subject.

One day, he decides to write a fictional book under a pseudonym.

He writes it in first person, and the person telling the story tells it using street talk, the most stereotypical English of the uneducated black man. I believe he has a baby with a woman he hates.

Anyways, the book takes off, makes him a ton of money, and he hates it. His publisher (or agent, whoever) was the only other one who saw it as a joke, which it started out as.

The book wins awards, and he wears a disguise - sunglasses and monosyllabic grunting.

He's also on the judging board for an award (the award? I don't remember) that his new book falls under.

Everyone loves it and says it's so real and an accurate portrayal of contemporary black life, etc, etc.

I don't remember the ending, but it wasn't happy or sad, it just was.

It's a great, thoughtful book, and I need to know the title or the author's name.

Thank you.

Ann Coulter is a redneck bigot.

Despite being from Connecticut, she's just like the idiot robbers in Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen.

I am referring to her comments earlier this month that a poll that showed Barack Obama in the lead ahead of Republican candidates helps the terrorists.

When I saw that in the paper, I laughed so hard.

Especially at the last sentence - paraphrased - she didn't say how it helped them.

I just finished Lucky You again. I don't know how many times. It's one of my favorites, because it's the first I ever read. And I got the hardback version at a library sale for $1.50. I wish I could find a paperback copy at any secondhand place, but I haven't yet.

Anyways, this book is hilarious. It's about the lottery - 2 people had the same numbers, so 2 people won the lottery. It's $28 million, but $14 million each is nothing to sneeze at.

Especially for our heroine, who wants to use it to buy 44 acres of pure nature to prevent a shopping mall from being built there, and to prevent it from being developed forever. The turtle on the cover is one she found in the woods.

However, the other winners want all 28 million dollars.

Greed, mostly. They're lazy criminals, and this would be the end of their criminal life, and the start of their militia, devoted to the purity of the white man. Their enemies - liberals, Jews, aggressive women, Cubans, Mexicans, black people, Communists, and the US Government.

They have many insane theories for why something criminal is in fact good for the white man, why something is bad - because NATO is out to get them, along with black militants, etc.

One theory towards the end hit me and reminded me of Ann Coulter's statement. They purchased a map of the bay (down in Keys) that showed channels and depth. The leader said the reason they kept getting lost and running aground was because the map was wrong, because the mapmakers didn't want them to get to the right island.

Two of my favorites - using forged handicap decals is good because they are blue and white, and NATO's troops (in the Bahamas) will be wearing blue helmets. It's not a coincidence.

Also, they should use the stolen credit card, because when NATO takes over, they will make the US dollar worthless, and only give the 'real' money to the blacks, Jews, and everyone but the white man. (Unless he's liberal or Jewish, of course.)

They're insane and hilarious and fictional.

Ann Coulter is not.

And, unfortunately, bigotry is not fictional, or a historical embarrassment yet.

I worry about how vile it will get if Hillary or Barack are leading in a year.

I've said before - the nation is not ready for a minority president.

Why? We have this war in Iraq that's going to hell faster every day. If a minority candidate ran - on either side - the pundits and slimeballs will focus on that, making the candidates color, sex, or religion more important than their views. And Ann Coulter will be part of it.

Who would you rather have a beer with?

Thank You For Smoking

That's a great book and an okay movie. I just reread it last week, and I still like it. The main character is so sincere in his statements, the last chapter still shocks me, when he's like, yeah, smoking is bad for you. Duh. A bit that popped into my head today while reading the paper was when Nick was on Larry King and said there's no health risk in smoking cigarettes, the CDC and the NIH make it up because if they don't, they'll lose funding. Naturally, someone from the CDC calls the show and tells him he's full of shit. He counters with the growing epidemic of pneumonia now that smokers are forced to go outside. What bullshit, but it pays the mortgage.

I am not a fan of smoking. This may have to do with the fact that my dad smokes and I do not like him. While he lived with us, he smoked outside. And any time one of mom's smoking relatives visits, they have to smoke at the end of the driveway. However, dad smokes in his house now, as does my uncle. Uncle Danny was married to a smoker, but they both smoked outside. He's married another smoker, and this time they smoke inside. In the kitchen. During his oldest daughter's birthday.

My dad also smokes in his kitchen - when my sister complained, he pointed out that she was in the living room and couldn't even smell it. He has a semi-open floor plan - the kitchen can not be shut off from the rest of the house. He also smoked in the car, with the windows down, while taking her to the doctor. She had bronchitis and pneumonia and was coughing like crazy. But no big deal! The window was open. Sheesh.

At the Crisis Center, you cannot smoke in the building, and if you're a client and you step outside to smoke, whether you missed your turn or not, you'll have to come back the next day. The building is small and the director is allergic. Plus, it stinks. One woman lied about smoking, and went looking for clothes. The room is big, don't get me wrong, but it's packed with clothes. It stunk.

One of my mom's best friends is die-hard smoker - she smokes outside, or at least in her garage. She went to Sonic with my mom and sister yesterday afternoon (Becky has a job!), and smoked while Becky ate. Sure they were outside, but still. When they worked together, she drove everyone nuts by going outside to smoke and then spraying herself with perfume. She came back in every day smelling like perfume and cigarette smoke.

Dogs are banned in more places than cigarettes. I don't think people should smoke where food is served. You can't smoke at a gas station, but the last time I went in one to get the paper, a guy in front of me reeked of cigarette smoke. But I was the bad one because I'd stepped in the door with a 12 pound poodle mop in my arms and didn't go farther than the cashier, which is at the front of the store. I know, I know, they're not allowed.

Mom and I found this great little burger place in Memphis and it was ruined by a smoker. How can you smoke and eat? Ew. (It was very small.)

I loved eating out in Washington - no smoking! One of my uncle's favorite restaurants was worried it would lose business after the ban. Business increased.

There is no 'smoking section' that keeps the smoke 100% away from nonsmokers, unless it's in a separate wing with good ventilation. There's not a peeing section in pools - that stuff spreads.

I realize that long time smokers don't have as good a sense of smell as nonsmokers, so they don't realize how they smell and how it affects others.

So - I hate smoking.

Imagine my joy when I look at today's paper - all area hospitals are banning it from the campuses - no more 'smoking sections' just outside the ER door, no more smoking before visiting sick people, yay! It starts November 15th, the American Cancer Society's Great American Smoke Out.

Most hospitals are taking great steps to help people quit - free nicotine gum or patches along with classes.

They're doing it to improve health and set a good example for the nation's health - they're hospitals. The VA has a problem, as it has smoking shelters that are federally mandated. But I don't think it'll be a big issue - I think this will go through and it'll be great.

Some people are worried about visitors that want to smoke - screw them. They're visiting a sick loved one, they can put the damn things away for an hour, can't they? My dad did that when he visited me in August - he never stunk.

Last Friday, I had an ultrasound done at Baptist Tipton. It is an old, small hospital, but it doesn't have old-world charm. It seems dingy. Anyways, we walked out the front doors and someone was smoking. Yuck! Now smokers will have to go farther, but they'll survive.

If you can't stop smoking while in the hospital, you have a problem. Of course, it is an addiction, but still.

Last time I was at the ER at St Francis, a very sick looking woman walked outside about 5 times. She was a patient and she had to smoke.

That's sad.

But yay! No more smoking anywhere near a hospital. It makes perfect sense. Even when you do it outside, the smell stays with you. Trust me.

Anyways, the story was on 2 pages, A1 and A4.

A4 had an interesting little article at the top of the page about black churches and the new hate crime bill making its way through Congress. They oppose it, because they can't preach against homosexuality.

Unlike smoking, homosexuality hurts nobody, but the homosexual him or her self if he or she chooses to hide it and repress their true nature.

All this law will do is add sexual orientation to the list of things that are already on the hate crime books, like race, religion, gender, ethnicity.

But this will hurt the country, somehow. I'm not sure how.

Besides, the church has been a haven for homosexuals. They have to be celibate and so do priests, monks, and nuns. Problem solved.

The black churches that do support the bill liken this to the Civil Rights struggle of the 50s and 60s. I agree. People want to deny the humanity of other people, just because they are different and it 'goes against God'. So did freeing slaves and marrying someone of a different race at one point.

Of course, there is a big difference between this struggle and the older one - you can hide your homosexuality, you cannot hide your race or you gender.

But I still think this is a waste of time, and will only hurt homosexual Americans if it's not passed. You can think what you want about homosexuality, but you don't have the right to deny a gay person the same rights and opportunities you have - to get married, to adopt, to be a foster parent, to not be harassed, assaulted, or killed for who you are.

I hope these religious leaders end up looking like the idiots they are - protesting giving a minority the same rights as yourself on the grounds that it's a sin, you think it's wrong.

Guess what? If gay marriage is legalized, you don't have to marry a member of the same sex, you don't have to divorce your opposite sex spouse, you can still marry your opposite sex sweetheart and no one will care.

Don't like gay marriage? Don't have one. Don't do one, but don't deny others the right to do so.

The Skin I'm In

I found two great books Saturday at two different yard sales. (My mom bought a bike at yet another.)

The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake is an adolescent book, and it captures all the pressures of middle and high school that my sister went through, as did I, to a much lesser degree. It's also an 'African-American' book in that the main character and most of her classmates are black, but I still identified. I was also shocked at the cruelty toward the main character - just because her skin is darker than everyone else's. I've heard of that before, but it still doesn't make sense to me.

It's not a sad book, but most of it makes me sad - the way Maleeka goes along with the other kids in picking on the teacher and getting into a lot of trouble. Thankfully, she learns what really matters by the end of the book, after a disastrous exercise in peer pressure.

The book starts when a new English teacher arrives at Maleeka's middle school. The book is told in first person present tense, something that often rubs me the wrong way, but didn't this time. The present tense part, not the first person thing. If I don't like a book (The Nanny Diaries) it grates on me until I give up. But if I like a book, it's natural.

The teacher is a former advertising executive who decides to teach when the school system starts a program for executives to teach without getting teaching certificates. Everyone hates her because she makes them do a lot of work, but I got the feeling if they'd STFU, they'd learn something - Maleeka did.

One thing that really resonated with me was her intelligence. She's in 7th grade, but can easily outdo a 9th grader when it comes to math and she's a gifted writer. I like to think of myself as smart, but I never felt pressure to dumb it down. That is something that bugs me about school - no one wants to look smart, even in the honors and AP classes! This week is Gateway Testing week at the high schools, and most teachers won't do a thing, they can't, because their schedules are messed up and most have students taking a state test. The Gateway tests sucked. They were not timed, but you couldn't bring a book to read when you were done, and you couldn't leave early. When I had to take the English 2 test (my last Gateway), I used my 504 health plan and horrible skin infection that had pretty much cleared up as a reason not to sit for 3 hours doing nothing but sweating and itching. I got to take it in a little closet-like room with a window off the guidance office and checked out after I was done. There's a lot more leeway with the End Of Course tests - they're required to graduate, but you can leave early or bring a book. (I left early both times.)

The thing that pisses me off? My sister had to sit in the cafeteria for 3 hours today because her 1st period teacher was giving a test and the classroom was being used. The class is a senior class she was put in instead of study hall (they told her that sophomores had to have parental permission for study hall. She got the note. She didn't get study hall.), so she had no one to talk to.

It was very boring.

I know she doesn't like to read, but come on! It would not have killed her to take a Gossip Girl or Cosmo in, it would have killed the time.

No one can complain about having nothing to do in school if they know how to read, have books, and are allowed to bring them.

Back to Maleeka - I got the feeling that she hated being so smart, because it let another girl exploit her and made her an outcast. She went to a typical poor school - no one gives a damn, and when someone tries (the new teacher), they're attacked.

And this was written in 1998, before NCLB.

Oh! The title. She comes to terms with the deep color of her skin, and that made me extra happy. In the book Pledged, there was a snippet about a black sorority that had the 'paper bag test'. If a pledge's skin was darker, she was out.

White is the norm and non-white people, especially women, have been trying to be as white as possible for too damn long. I make the point of describing everybody's race - even the white guys. It's just me, but it's a step.

Maleeka was 'inferior' because her skin was dark, even though a number of people thought it was beautiful. (The teacher is one, much to Maleeka's chagrin.)

She was inferior to the other black students who had lighter skin, because white skin is still the ultimate goal. Unless you're white, then you want to be tanned all year. (Not me - too long in the sun and I turn beet red, usually from overheating, but sometimes from a burn and it doesn't fade to a tan, it fades to white.)

That's just wrong, but I don't know how to correct it. I've never picked my friends by the darkness of their skin, more the personality and interests and will they talk to me than anything else. The hottest guy my senior year, to me at least, had dark skin and the most amazing dreads. And, despite his popularity, he talked to me.

Back to the book - I got it for a dime at a yard sale (black family) because I'm always interested in books from the 'abnormal' perspective. (Not white, not male, not Christian, not American... I could go on.) Since it was a kid's book, it looked like an easy read and not a waste of a dime if I didn't like it.

And I do.

However, I don't want to read it again. I'm taking it to the Crisis Center next time I go. (Supposed to go today, but Lois was sick and I was in crippling pain. I'm not now, I'm on a 100mcg patch instead of 2 25mcgs. It kicked in within the hour. Awesome.)

Why the crisis center?

Goodwill sells their books, we don't.

Most of our clients are black, and most have children. I hope another girl, black or white or whatever, gets it and feels good after reading it.

"Do you remember September 11th?"

Oh my god.

On A7, there is a snippet of an article about a disgusting lawsuit.

A California woman of Iranian descent is suing CHiPs. Good for her.

She apparently asked not to be cited for going 79 on I-680 last year on September 12, 2006.

The bastard said, "Today is September twelfth. Do you remember September eleventh? Do you know what happened on September eleventh? It's people like you who killed all of our people. This is our country! Why don't you go back to your country?"

Then he told her to shut up and wouldn't give her a business card when she told him she was filing a lawsuit.

The officer asker her to sign the citation, and she asked if she could read it first. Another racist tirade. "I don't have time for you foreigners to sit in your Mercedes! You think you own the road! You think you own the country!" He also pulled her from her car to yell at her further.

The supervisor showed up and told him to chill the fuck out. She went to the hospital for burises on her arm and leg and elbow pain.


Sick, sick, sick, sick!

Iranian descent means she's been here most of her life. And since she's alive, she plainly wasn't part of the attacks. God, what an ass.

I swear, police think they are above everyone else, because they're cops. My dad's a traffic cop, and he's teaching my sister all the wrong things when it comes to driving. He takes her driving in a car on the empty side of the base. Then she gets in mom's truck and drives around town, where there are other cars to deal with and it gets conflicting. He told her that the part of the car connecting the windshield to the windows, the side of the door, that thing... he told her that was a blindspot! And she yelled at my mom when my mom told her it wasn't. There are good cops, but too many are power-hungry assholes or corrupt.

So let's do away with government funded police forces. After all, anytime a welfare cheat is found, we should do away with welfare programs all together, right? Private forces, the market is God. "My sister was raped, robbed, and killed. Because of the robbery, they won't investigate - they said there's no money in it."

This is the only story I can find about it online. It's credited to the Associated Press in the Commercial Appeal, you'd think there'd be more than one online.

Her name is Zahra Sedaghatpour, and if this account is true, I hope she wins. I don't care what she wins, he better be fired.

Oh my god, he wouldn't return her "driver's license and car registration, telling her 'maybe the wind blew them away.'" According to this article, two other officers showed up and manhandled her and shouted profanities. Sick asshole bastards. I hope they get suspended without pay.

If it's true.




Above the bit about the lawsuit is a bigger article about a Roman Catholic couple that was interviewed on Ash Wednesday and pictured in the local paper (Wyoming) with ashes on their forehead, a mark of their Catholic faith.

The problem? It's two women who got married in Canada. They returned to Wyoming and sent a letter to the state senate asking them not to criminalize their marriage.

Then they were interviewed. And now, they're banned communion in writing, which is apparently a big deal.

They've been going to this church for a while, and it's not that they're gay, it's that they're not ashamed of it, that they appeared in public as a lesbian couple. One asked why Catholics who use birth control or have premarital sex aren't barred from communion and were told that those sinners don't go around telling everyone they sin.

They haven't been back since then, they don't want to make it worse. Your religion condemns you, but you grew up with it, you can't deny it. The two women have obviously come to terms with their sexuality and their religion, but the church hasn't.

Here's a link to the article on another attack on a minority.

Well, that was A7.

God knows what I'll find further in.

Oh, on A2, I found out I have to watch America's Most Wanted tomorrow night, even though a Law and Order rerun is on at the same time because Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed will be on - helping solve a case, not in trouble.

And on A3 was an interesting bit about the Hatfields and McCoys. The McCoys suffered from an incurable disease that can be treated if caught soon enough and the tumors are removed. One place the tumors grow is on the adrenal gland, which can make you aggressive. Descendents of the McCoys today still have it.

What, it's interesting.

Now onto the B section - Germantown and Collierville residents can't have their grass higher than 6 inches or... er, the paper doesn't say. Probably a fine.

The United States should apologize for slavery.

As should every country involved in the slave trade.

Well, there are still slaves in some countries, not like the slaves in the US in the bad old days, but I think every country involved in the slave trade that has ended and involved enslaving Africans and Native Americans for the rich, should apologize.

I think a form of slavery that continues today in the US involves illegal immigrants working in sweatshops or farms. Every cent they earn goes to rent, the coyote, food, "Two rolls of toilet paper in one week?", and then a little bit to their family or children or legal status. If they complain, they can be deported or arrested.

But, I'm thinking about the slavery that "ended" with the Civil War.

Yes, former slaves were free, but free to do what? In the south, their formerly rich owners were bitter and started a gentleman's club, you may have heard of it? The bitterness led to countless deaths, 'seperate-but-equal' everything (the Pentagon has twice as many bathrooms needed for its offical capacity because it was built before the law changed. Flush them all at once, and the government will be higgledy-piggledy. But you didn't hear it from me.), and general suckiness for most of the former slaves.

Sharecropping was a way for the rich to enslave poor white and black people - no discrimination there!

My point?

Every state that had slaves should issue an apology, along with the country as a whole. Just a measure next February for black history month (eyeroll) saying, "Hey. Slavery sucked and we're sorry. And even though it's been officially over for 140 years, we still have a way to go to true equality. This apology is a step forward."

I don't see why there's a resistance to an apology.

Actually, I do see it from my mom and sister. "I didn't own slaves, nobody in my family did, why should I apologize?" They probably didn't on my mom's side. I think her mother's family emigrated to America in the late 1800s or early 1900s. They're Czech, and one of my grandmother's relatives, had, in her diary, a handout so old and brittle, but so scary - it was a prayer in praise of Hitler.

As for my dad's side, it's possible on his father's side, but not his mother's. She's only a generation or two from Germany.

So my mom and dad did not own slaves and knew no one who did. Your mom and dad didn't either. Your mom and dad weren't slaves, your grandparents probably weren't, but I do know there are some people who were born at the turn of the last century that knew people who'd been/owned slaves.

But abolishing slavery didn't abolish racism. There was 100 years of institutionalized racism after the war. A middle school that's in the county, but close to Memphis was a high school in my mom's day, the black one. And I think they didn't desegregate until a few years after the Brown ruling. Just pictures of the high school in Little Rock. The governor of Arkansas came to the school and said no. And out of the 9 students that eventually got in, only one or two ended the year. The rest quit, most likely due to harassment and threats.

An apology is a gesture. It won't be completely worthless, though. It will acknowledge that the United States made a mistake (in the past) and we're working to correct it.

Opponents say it's an empty gesture, we know slavery happened, get over it already. But we can't get over it - there are still racist stumbling blocks in place (but like sharecropping, they've spread to other races, including whites, but that's class warfare if you mention that poverty is hard to escape), though not government backed anymore.

I told my mom that she wasn't hurt by Jim Crow laws, and neither were her parents. But my black classmate, her black coworker, their parents and grandparents were. It takes generations to achieve equality or come close.

An apology for slavery will not be an empty gesture, but a sign that we know we made a mistake and we're working to correct it.

Maybe some politicians are scared of it because they don't want to admit it happened, or that it has any relevance today. But it does, because it didn't end 140 years ago, or even 40. Racism still exists, and slavery is pretty obvious cause.

It won't hurt anyone to say I'm sorry. How can it?

By leading to reparations?

The best reparation I can think of would be money for education from pre-school to college, from the federal level, so a school in a poor district (black or white) can have the same things as a school in a richer one, and so we'll all have the opportunity to go to school after high school, because a high school diploma can't get you what it used to, unless you join the military.

But I'm not a politician, just a blogger who got 3 hours of sleep and spent the night looking at lefty cartoons and a long post on Pandagon about a Virginia state senator's opposition to an official apology, and the 100+ comments that followed. This one guy had this idea that all the liberals at the site were saying black people should do nothing until someone gives them something, when he was the only one saying it, not endorsing it, but saying that's what everyone else said, when they didn't.

The Reverend Billy Graham Confuses Me By Agreeing With Me.

In part.

This is from yesterday's M section, March 9th. I had TV to watch once the sun went down (Las Vegas and Law and Order baby! The L&O was from the start of the season and had Chevy Chase as the Mel Gibson character, complete with Sugartits. (Which is totally one of Wickett's new nicknames. He used to be called TeeTee because he "teetee'd" all over the house, and I guess she is too much of a lady to call him a walking pisspot when she catches him peeing or titshit when he acts like a rotten shit.)

There was a good point made - spoilers, I don't care, this is its second run on TV. Chevy's kid killed the lady, and to get the kid less jail time, they were going to charge Chevy with child abuse because he'd passed on the anti-Semitic torch. Jack McCoy said his dad was an Irish cop who would rant about the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Ukrainians, and every one who wasn't Irish. The new female ADA (who knows how long she'll last or if she'll get TV show of her own later on - Jill Hennessy has Crossing Jordan now, another show I adore.) said something along the lines of see, you did the right thing and came to your own conclusions. Jack's reply?

"Only because I hated the old man."

That was so funny to me (I was in horrific pain that went away within the hour.) and it was so true. My dad is a bigot. He was raised that way, and he loves his mother and his dead stepfather, going so far as to keep stepdad's name, when his two other siblings kept their father's name. (So did the youngest, but he's my dad's stepdad's biological son.)

My dad's a bigot and a conservative.

I don't like my dad at all.

It was just too funny, too true. I think I would have reached my own conclusions about life and people, but who knows, if they'd never divorced, this could be a conservative blog, weeping about Libby's conviction (not from laughing too hard) because Libby forgot something. We all forget things. Tim Russert forgets things - and it's on camera! And they convicted Russert. Travesty of justice. That's what Charles Krauthammer said in his op-ed piece printed in the Commerical Appeal yesterday. Basically, the paper's in the outside trashcan.

Back to my main point - Billy Graham agreed with me! And confused me.

A person wrote in asking if God knew people would get all murderous and imperfect. If he did, why didn't he make us good?

The Reverend's answer is straightforward, and he agrees with me on one point - God wanted us to have free will so we'd choose to love him, because love is more real if it is chosen. (I agree with that.) He ended up saying accept Jesus for your salvation, blah blah.

But what he started with makes no sense, and my sister can't answer my question about it. (She's a Methodist and doesn't go to church services, she sticks with her youth group. They don't believe what the Baptists believe, and they don't judge other religions. Clearly, she is going to hell.)

God made us becaue He loved us and He wanted us to love Him in return.

Where did God get the idea? It would have been easier to get a dog, really, they adore you, and yes, the brats do choose to love you or not. Trust me.

Where did God get the idea to make people? Is there a race of cosmic beings who have their own planets, and he saw the nearest one and the god forced his creations to love him and he didn't like that. Or the Sims existed back then in some form.

In the Big Book of the Unexplained, God or whatever is in charge, is called the Cosmic Trickster. I like that. It's the only thing that makes sense.

Martin Luther King Day

This holiday is a pain for students, I mean, we just got back into the swing of school again, and another day off to sleep in and watch Dirty Jobs?

Kidding, kidding. I'm still surprised that it's not a holiday in Nebraska, or at least where my cousins went to school.

My mom and I visited the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

It was amazing and incredibly moving.

One of the images that stayed with me was the sheer hate in the faces of the young white students in Little Rock. It was so disturbing.

I want to go back, and I will. We went on Monday afternoon (it's free) along with, it seemed, every single summer day camp group of kids, who didn't seem to care.

The museum is split into two parts - the hotel and the boarding house where James Earl Ray stayed. The conspiracy theories about why he was there, the money, that intrigued me - not surprising, considering my love of the X-files.

There was a woman protesting outside the hotel. She believes that the money for the museum would be better used in charity projects. I talked to her and treated her with respect - we were at a museum about protest, it was appropriate. She's been out there for a long time, and, dammit, I forgot the website she had.