Saturday, December 26, 2009
I Used To Be A White Supremacist Too!
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It all started when I was 4, after my family moved out of Los Angeles to a suburb of Cleveland. Though I don’t remember anything from my days in the city of angels, my parents insist that I had a black best friend, so I can only assume that I wasn’t bigoted just yet. It seems that the transition came about in my new cornbread Ohio suburb.
Naturally, my sister and I were pretty damn whiny about the whole move thing, since we felt so at home in our city of crack and earthquakes, so we bitched and cried and cried and bitched to my parents. Eventually, the folks decided to make it up to us by getting us each a cat!
My sister, who was 5 or 6, got a brown calico female that she named Daisy. I got Daisy’s brother, a black cat with a really cool white belly that I named Mickey. Clearly, we were painfully unoriginal Disney-loving tykes when it came to naming our cats. Incidentally, Mickey and Daisy were quite the incestuous siblings, kittyhumping day and night, but I digress.
One day, my sister and I got pretty bored with the status quo, as young whippersnappers are want to do. Our status quo? A brown cat and a black cat. Since Mickey’s white belly looked so cool, we thought he would look even cooler if he were completely decked out in that white fur of his. While we were discussing the issue, we decided there was no reason for Daisy to be stuck with boring ol’ brown if Mickey was getting even whiter and more awesome. Our parents liked Mickey’s white spot too, so they would be thrilled if we surprised them with all-white Mickey and Daisy Redux!
Obviously, we thought about decking the cats out in white paint, but, as my astute big sister pointed out, paint comes off. We needed something that would last longer, something that would stick to them. We realized that the durable, permanent solution we were looking for was right in our trusty arts and crafts kits: Elmer's Glue.
We grabbed our glue and went to work, covering both our cats with as much Elmer’s as possible. I was sure that the cats would be ecstatic about the whole ordeal, since everybody knows how fun it is to get glue all over your hands and then peel it off, like a neat new layer of skin (I wasn’t a twisted little kid for enjoying that, right? Right??). After a good glue-bath for each, we couldn’t have been prouder of our new kitties. Now when Mickey and Daisy shack up, we’ll get a whole litter of Caucasian fur balls!
Naturally, this ended exactly as you can imagine: We showed our parents, and they were glowing. They adored the cats’ new looks so much that they decided to reward us with a trip to Bennigan’s for ice cream! At least I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.
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I can only hope that confronting this awful bigotry and sharing it with you can serve as a purging of my sins. I pray that these words I’ve written can be my waters of purity, slowly but surely washing away the thick, syrupy glue of white supremacy from my dark, matted fur. I may whine, scratch and bite at my tail all the while, but in the end, I will be cleansed anew.
Monday, February 2, 2009
A Story From My Youth
For whatever reason, I remembered a fun little story from my youth the other day. When I was in third grade, a couple years before I realized how easy it was to bullshit my way through school, I put a whole lot of effort in my work. On one assignment in particular, I was stuck with a very daunting task.
Remember those stupid things where you would spell out your name going down the left side of the page, and then you’d list a bunch of horribly trite adjectives to describe yourself, with each one starting with a letter from your name? They usually went something like this:
Special
Terrific
Extra Special
Very cool
Extraodinary!
First off, fuck Steve, that little paste-eating shit. There’s nothing “Extraodinary” about having to use two words because you can’t think of an adjective that starts with V. You’re probably right about being special though.
This was my attitude back in third grade, though I was admittedly less vitriolic (how do you like dem apples, Steve); I wasn’t gonna half-ass such an assignment, because I’m fucking better than Steve. I’m terrific, motherfucker.
So I set to work. I’ve only got three letters in my name, so this should be a cakewalk.
M. Well that’s an easy one. I’m marvelous. I’m also the manliest eight-year-old there is. I’m macho. I’m mighty putty, baby. I got this shit.
A. I’m athletic! I’m an eight-year-old in a fucking BOWLING LEAGUE. You know what else I am? Amazing. I’m also adorable in my lil’ denim jacket (but still manly!). I’m awesome as hell. Holy shit I’m good at this! It took like two minutes and I’m almost done. Cartoons are just ‘round the corner!
X. WHAT. THE. FUCK. Nothing starts with X! Mommy, is xylophone an adjective? Shit. How about x-ray? I can be x-ray, right Mom? Are you sure?
I checked the dictionary just to make sure. Nope, couldn’t be x-ray. You know what kind of bullshit Steve would pull if he had an X in his name, right? eXcellent. What a fucking cop out, Steve. You might as well drop out of school now and get a heard start on your Taco Bell application, because that shit ain’t excellent at all. It's eFcellent, and the F stands for failure, bitch.
So no taking the easy way out, no matter how long it takes. There’s GOTTA be an adjective that starts with X! I decided to read the entire X section of the dictionary until I found one. I even read secondary and tertiary definitions.
After what seemed like hours, I finally stumbled across an adjective that started with X. The primary definition didn’t fit all that great, but one of the secondary definitions said something along the lines of, “One who interacts with people of the same appearance, such as those having blond hair and blue eyes.” Seeing as I was blond-haired and blue-eyed, this was clearly the perfect fit! Finally!
Jokes on you, Steve, ‘cause I fucking NAILED it! I got the X! The final product:
Marvelous
Athletic
Xenophobic
Seriously. I guess my teacher was either uneducated or racist, because it hung in the classroom for a few weeks.