[sigh]

I know I said I'd tell the crack story, but that kinda ties into the Velvet Underground and I can't post them right now. I am aware of how ridiculous this story sounds and how underwhelming it will be when I finally get around to telling it, but that's for the courts to decide. Besides, I'm hellbent on saving my C+ material for when I'm really struggling for something to think up.
So, it's about quarter to two on a friday morning, and I'm completely sober and unable to sleep because of the crazy storm beating down on this house I live in*. I've come to the startling realization lately that I am far more productive in the evening/night than I am in the morning. At work, it takes me three cups of coffee just to sit at my desk, and about an hour of dicking around on wikipedia before I start actually getting shit done. Yet when I leave at 7, I can't pull myself away from whatever task is at hand because I'm cruising through it. So I've made a deal with myself that focusing on getting a healthy amount of sleep isn't as important as maximizing my productivity, so we'll see how that turns out. Also, there's a brand new espresso machine in the kitchen that's screaming for me to put it to use. nice.
Anyways, I'm actually ashamed to be writing something so... tired. Something so seemingly obvious and easy. But goddamned if my last two days hasn't been flooded with racism. First there's that fucking insane op-ed piece that was pissing everyone off so much lately. This shit is paramount to perhaps all but the Klan literature of the 30s as the most disgusting and acrimonious tripe I've ever seen.
Then there was the story this morning on DN about Gary Tyler, whom I had never heard of before. It's fucking heartbreaking. I sat there at my desk just listening to this interview and background and it's just like you're slapped in the face with just the a state government that is just so insanely backwards and ridiculous that you're just left aghast. I mean, I'm in no place to talk, I'm from Pennsylvania, for God's sake. But regardless, this case is just dizzying in its unabashed corruption and racism, and this man has been jailed for the majority of his life because of that. and solely that. It's not that I do this sort of thing often and I never send you these sort of forwards, right? but this afternoon I had a prayer answered. and I don't pray. and one of the things I was thinking about while I was listning to this guy's mother talking about his life and the NYT reporter pointing out a similar case in which the races where reversed to the white killer getting out of prison in 10 while Tyler, at 17 became the one of youngest person ever sentenced to the electric chair and thinking Maybe I should happy with what I got. So I had my prayer answered this morning and I feel like I have to react to that somehow, so just write a pissy letter or email a form letter to Kathleen Blanco if you have the time. It'd help me square up so I can get out of this praying thing even. and what the hell, it might make a difference.
And the third thing was just a podcast that I listen to, and it's a very entertaining and nonthreatening show that I listen to every couple of weeks and they were talking about three somewhat somewhat well-known actors, all of whom have relatively hard to pronounce names and are of West African descent. and in a completely and entirely innocuous moment the hosts began mixing up their names andone of them worried aloud whether this would be construed as racism. and it goe me thinking about that. How quickly people are to be concerned with being seen as a racist. So much so that you see people acting like complete idiots just to not appear the way the genuinely aren't. and I think it's because we bandy that word about for so many situations that it's become sort of a something we're more afriad of catching accusation for than actually working to end.
Let's face it. Racism isn't going to end in our lifetimes. Not even if we're really, really lucky. But that doesn't mean it isn't something we can't have an active open dialogue about how to at least discourage it, then we're already fucked. I don't know if banning the N word in New York is going to make sweet fuck all of a difference, but at least it'll be interesting to observe in a city where you can enjoy constant abuse of foul language at any time of day. So next time use your head. racism and ignorance are not the same thing. It's a fine line, but one worth paying distinction.


**It's funny, because I swear I woke up this morning thinking of how I'm officially sick of the damned winter and how ready I was for weather warm enough for me to spend a weekend drinking on my back porch. and this will come. Like last year, I've vowed to spend whole weekends drunk on the porch, and I shall. But this storm is totally reminding me that I've got a rainy Spring to enjoy before I start thinking about passing out shirtless next to the grill.