That damn The Poet just came by and brought me two boxes of NutThins, and there goes my diet. Not that I remotely was on a diet. I'm just telling you, NutThins are the shizz. She got me the cheddar ones. Have you had them? I highly recommend as part of your balanced diet.
She's brought me these crackers before, and my coworker Griff has gotten wind of them and has become similarly obsessed. "These crackers are a revolution in snacking," said Griff. He says stuff like that. Anyway, recently he asked if he could have one of my NutThins, and when I said yes he poured a VESUVIUS of crackers onto his hand.
Women would never do that. They'd delicately take one and lust for more.
Anyway, I'm writing you now because (a) I just let the alarm keep going and slept till 8:10, which was relaxing when I realized it. I use my phone as my alarm now, and I have it set to play Led Zeppelin's Going to California. Maybe that's too mellow, though, because hello sleeping through it 20 times.
The other reason I didn't blog till now, but I'm not gonna write (b) just to be annoying, is that last night, Tallulah stretched out on top of me and slept with her snout in my hair pretty much all night, and she wanted back on my lap this morning. This is not like her, as you well know. Usually I pet her and she tells me to go fuck myself. Anyway, I petted her till she fell asleep this morning, after her pain meds kicked in, and Edsel had gotten up and snuggled next to her on the bed. He'll take it from here this morning till I come back for lunch.
As long as her meds are in her, she seems fine. But when they wear off, she still shakes. It's awful.
In other news, last night I came home and ended up watching this Oprah Master Class about race. It was MLK Day, after all, which let's face it, usually for me just means I took the trash out for no reason, because no one gets it on MLK Day. Plus, dammit, where is the mail? ...Oh, right, crap. MLK Day.
So yesterday she had this special, Oprah did, Oprah who's making 2016 the year of her best body, and in the special were actors including Sidney Poitier and Dianne Carroll. There were other people, too, like Lenny Kravitz and hello, Lenny Kravitz. Call me. The point is they all had terrible stories about race.
This morning when The Poet brought NutThins to my desk, Fleeta was over here, and we all got on the topic of the show I watched. I told them how Sidney Poitier had moved to Miami from the Bahamas when he was 15, and had no idea what it was like to be black here. He was a deliveryman, and he walked up to this house and knocked on the door to deliver a, you know, package.
"What are you doing at the front door?" the lady of the house demanded.
Sidney Poitier had no idea what he'd done wrong. "I have a package," he said.
"Go around back." She slammed the door in his face. He was befuzzled, and left the package at the front door and left. That night? The fucking Klan came to his house. The Klan! Because he was 15 and new to this country and had the audacity to leave a package at a front door.
He also one night was visiting family till late and decided to hitchhike home. The police stopped, a whole car full, put A GUN TO HIS HEAD, and told him to walk back where he'd come from, and if he turned around even once, they would shoot him. The drove all the way back to his relatives' house, right behind him. He never turned around.
Poor Dianne Carroll grew up in Manhattan. Once she and her mom were on a train, and when they got to Washington DC they had to switch cars. Once they hit DC, the cars were segregated. "That has to be wrong," she told her mother. "This is DC. It's the Capitol." Her mother apologized to her. Not for being black, but for the country.
I was so appalled at these stories (and there were other, more recent examples of racism on that show, as well), but as I told them, Fleeta's face didn't even change. The Poet and I were all ruffled and appalled, and Fleeta said, "I was waiting for these stories to be so much worse. They can be a lot worse than that, you know. I was waiting for ropes."
She told us how big things still happen, but also little things, that she tries not to take personally but she can't help but wonder about. Like, she and some friends were in a bar watching the Carolina game. An older white couple were next to her. "Oh, did you go to Carolina?" one of them asked. She said she sure did.
"Did you graduate?"
I mean. Think about that. Has anyone, if you're reading this and you're white, asked you that question? If I say I went to Michigan State, it means I graduated from there, wouldn't you think? And I'm sure that couple didn't even think about what they were implying. You know? They probably didn't mean to be malicious, but wow.
So. MLK Day ended up making me think a little. I also can't help but picture Oprah with a rockin' bod. I wonder if she'll turn all Megan Fox on us?
Oh! And another thing Oprah had on was this little old white lady, who goes around giving this blue eye/brown eye lecture. She divides people up based on their eye color, then gives this very convincing lecture on how science has proven that people with brown eyes are smarter.
She treats the brown-eyed people better, and when the blue-eyed people get pissed off, she tells them to "act brown-eyed. Don't be so ignorant and rude." After a bit, the brown-eyed people in the lecture start agreeing with her. "I worked with a woman who had blue eyes, and she really was dumb." It doesn't take long for the brown eyes to feel superior.
Eventually she points out that the color of your eyes is determined by melanin and you have no control over it. The color of your skin is determined by melanin and you have no control over it. It is absolutely absurd to think that people are different or superior based on melanin. It was fascinating. She said she's been hit in the face, by a man, during that lecture.
She said the people who get the angriest are the people whose only claim to fame is that they happened to be born white and assume they're superior.
It was riveting. The whole thing was riveting.
Anyway. That's all I have to say about that, but I'd dearly love to hear your racist comments, should you have any. I will send Lu to go shaky Pit on your ass.
Love,
Jooooooon
