White Man's Burden

Caution: some links contain sound and may not be safe for work.

It is getting to be sooo hard to be part of the dominant race these days. Nobody understands. Well, except the rest of the white people in the world (which is diminishing every single day, by the way). Everyone is just sooo eager to jump on any little thing that we do.

I mean, we try to be nice. We try to be inclusive. We even go so far as to pepper our speech with ebonics and yiddish, just to let you all know how we 'get it'. But the rest of the races still think we be putzes, yo. And what do we get for our efforts? Jokes about our ability to jump and dance.

Does anybody ever just thank us? Heck, no. I mean, does anybody just pat us on the back, look us in the eye and say, "hey, thanks for colonizing the planet. Good job."? Nope. It's all "you made us slaves, you put us in camps during the war, you're poisoning our rivers and our skies!" Gawd, sometimes it makes me so mad!

We're not perfect, you know. We've still got crosses to bear! And we're under incredible pressure. Sometimes it's hard to know what's best for the entire world, you know? But we're trying, okay? Do you understand "trying"? I mean, we don't tell you how to drive your cab or clean our houses, don't tell us how to run the world!

I...*cleansing breath* I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I guess this whole Michael Richards thing just really got to me, you know. How people can take things so out of context? I mean, hello? He was in character? He's not even racist, I don't know where people are getting that from. The man is a comedic genius, he can't be expected to not yell the occasional racial slur during a performance. Besides, it's stand-up, it has been well documented how brutal it is.

Anyway, he's apologized now and I hope that we can put all of this nastiness behind us and get back to the business of running the planet. Can't we just celebrate the baby Jesus' birthday in peace? Just for once!?

Peace, out.

You Can Never Go Home Again

That's what they say. Just take a look at the Big J.C. Left his home town one day a bastard carpenter, a few years later shows up claiming to be the Almighty Son of God. And what did his friends, family and neighbours say? Well, they very understandably wanted to put him in a nice, rubber cave for a few years.

The reason I bring this up is that recently I saw something about a guy I knew in high school. Okay, had a bit of a crush on, whatever. Anyway, I worked with him at McDonald's and went to high school with him. Nice guy, totally new wave, British born (exotic!), wafer thin, Flock of Seagulls bangs, the whole deal. What's not to like? He of course was waaay too cool for me, but we were always friendly.

Years later, in University I saw him dj'ing around the city, usually techno stuff. It wasn't really my taste, I found it hard to dance to eleven minutes of a electronic drum beat while a computerized voice repeated "evolve" in a monotone, but that's just me. Cheap beer night is cheap beer night, you go where the pitcher takes you.

This one place hailed him as "world famous" on their flyer. When I saw him I joked "World famous eh, Rich... which world would that be?" He just blushed like crazy and said nothing. But other friends assured me that he was "big in Europe" in the techno scene. Ah, I thought, easily claimable, hard to verify. I chalked it up to Windsorites trying to grab a little fame where they could find it.

Years later a friend of mine who is into raves and is from the UK showed me an industry mag with his picture and a story in it. This lent a little credence to the "big in Europe" bit. (England is a part of Europe, right?)

My incredulity may have something to do with my not being the least interested in techno. I understand that it's an art form and I get the visceral need to release through movement and music, but with my lyric jones I need to be able to get something more than just danceability out of a song. Or it may have something to do with my inability to believe anything of value can come out of my home town. It really says more about me than about anyone else.

So the other day I came across an interview with Rich that also claimed he was big stuff. Turns out he just might be. He's still dj'ing and doing the techno thing, whizzing around the world to fabulous clubs, hobnobbing with the beautiful people, and generally being self-actualized.

And yet I still find it hard to believe. No offence to him in the slightest, it's just that after witnessing a person cleaning out the fry vats, well, it's hard to picture them as anything far removed from that. Don't get me wrong, I started there too, and I assure you I have moved far beyond my mad up-selling skillz (would you like another link with this post?). I guess the real issue is that it was the only dimension I really knew of him, a geeky teenager like me.

The point is, he grew up and has done well for himself. Although, after seeing one of his videos*, I am kinda leaning toward the nice, rubber cave myself.

*Warning: you may need to do some 'e' before watching this video. I hear that if you do, it will totally. Blow. Yer. Mind.

Dude.

Pay No Attention...

...to the idiot behind the blogging. Yeah, well, I tried last week to update every day, and since I forgot to update the times to when I was actually POSTING it instead of when I loaded it up on the old blogger dashboard, it effectively looks like I only posted two days.

Which is sooo not true. I did one a day, dammit. A full week's worth of posts! It's true! Ah, well. It's too late now, I'm not going back to try and figure it out. I'll just have to learn for next time, I guess. Those legions of you who check the site every damn day know anyway.

Anyway, I'm going to try and be a bit more timely with this thing in the next coming weeks. I know we've all heard this before, but this time, I actually mean it. I'm going to also try to be a little more concise as well. So hopefully, my posts will be shorter, but there'll be more of them, resulting in the same net words for you, the loyal reader.

See you tomorrow!