Racism

My family is pretty political, so any family gatherings often end up talking about politics and values related to it.

I walked into the living room to hear my youngest sister declaring that there's nothing wrong with racism, that it's human nature. After being taken aback by this, I thought that it must just be a semantic thing. So I said racism isn't just distinguishing race, but having overgeneralized opinions about a large group of people (based on race, in the case of racism) where no amount of contrary data will change your mind.

I was absolutely shocked that she went right ahead with her position: "I'm proud to be racist. I don't like Mexicans." Even now, I still don't quite know how to phrase my reaction. What?? How??

I tried to point out that, sure, she didn't like the particular individual Mexicans she had met, but she'd only met a certain subset that probably wasn't representative of all subsets of Mexicans everywhere. She didn't care about such arguments. She doesn't like Mexicans.

How can an intelligent, educated person think that way? How can believing such a generalization seem acceptable? How can it not be clear that this is classic us-vs-them psychology — which, while human nature, we are capable of overcoming.

I know my family reads my blog, but I'm just so flabbergasted by my sister's opinion that I have to write about it. I wish my sister good, varied life experiences in the future, so that her opinion might grow.

Categories: politics, family

Fall 2006 Denny's Run

Jerry Caught Red-Handed

Disclaimer: The bulk of the text in this blog post is shamelessly stolen from my descriptions of each photo I've posted to Flickr. Edited here for better seamlessness. You only need to read this post, or the descriptions of each Flickr photo, but not both.

Among my group of friends, there is a tradition of going to Denny's the weekend before finals week. It must be post-midnight. We normally go to the "good" Denny's by the Madonna Plaza, but that block just happened to lose power last night. The "bad" Denny's, further down the road, recently closed (due to being the "bad" Denny's, I'm sure), so that wasn't an option, either. The next closest Denny's was in Pismo, so to Pismo we went.

Near the end of dinner, people with desserts started giving them "up for grabs" — and of course there were no shortage of takers. Mostly things went calmly, until Joe offered up his strawberry cheesecake.

There was much flailing of arms, which ended up with Forrest and someone else (Asian Ben?) playing tug-o-war on either side of Joe's plate, hovering it above the table. Jerry wanted some too, and the most obvious solution was to simply grab the remaining piece of cheesecake directly off the plate with his fingers. (See photo.)

Strawberry Blood

Joe's knife had been innocently sitting on the cheesecake plate before The Cheesecake Conflict erupted. We discovered after the indignation to Jerry's solution died down that the knife had flown into Ilona's dessert, the cowpie. (See last photo.)

After the first knife photo-op documenting its travels across the table, we — being the mature college students that we are — wanted Joe to pose with the butter knife slitting his wrists. We plopped a bit of strawberry jam on his wrist for effect.

It was shaping up to be a good snapshot, until we added some liquidy strawberry sauce to Joe's arm. He jumped, not expecting the cold sugary liquid to suddenly be running down his arm. (See second photo for what I actually got to take a picture of.)

Cowpie Dessert and Lots of Ketchup

Ilona ordered the chocolate brownie dessert, which looked yummy although she says it wasn't actually. (Thus its only partially-eaten state.) Asian Ben began referring to it as "the cowpie," and the name stuck (as previously mentioned).

Also starring in this photo are the four ketchup bottles given to us by our awesome waiter, Jarrett. We were a party of 13? 14? so they initially brought us three ketchup bottles. But then we discovered that not only were they sticky on the outside, they were all mostly empty on the inside.

There are also photos on my Flickr account of all of us sitting around the table. However, they are marked as "friends & family only" photos because they have people's faces in them. (Jerry has said he doesn't care if his likeness is put online, so those photos are still public.) If the rest of you would like to be able to see those photos, get in touch with me so I can make you a "friend" contact on Flickr.

Edamame Grossness

Unassuming pot, right? So you might think!

While I was gone for a week of interviews, Forrest did no dishes. This means that when he made himself some steamed edamame, he let the leftovers hang out in the pot.

When I got home, he looked sheepish about the kitchen overflowing with dirty dishes and promised to do them soon. But while he was out doing errands today, I decided I wanted them done more than I wanted him to do them, so I just washed the sinkful of 'em. No big deal.

That is, no big deal until I lifted the bowl inside the pot to wash it. There I was greeted with — horror of horrors, grossness of grossnesses — fuzzy edamame. I left Forrest a note for when he comes home. ;)

Categories: humor, apartment

Interview Trip Update

Current status: two companies's "hire/no hire" decisions pending, one interview left to do, and one offer! As if I didn't already like BillMonk this much. :) Just a verbal offer right now and details may vary depending on how soon I can start, but the offer letter's forthcoming. Wootles!

(And here's me being embarrassed if the BillMonks actually know about my blog here and see me [virtually, anyway] hopping up and down. ;))

Categories: career