News? I think interpretation is your strong point on the topic.
When you start pitying, can you do it for both of us? I'll be too busy giggling.
I forget. Have there been any famous internet-related murders?
Have there been any famous internet-related murders?
Well, there's Rachelle Waterman but, you know, it's just so sordid. All in all, I prefer this heart-warming internet-related fingers-and-toes amputation story. Love triumphs over all, baby. Except a 1600-mile hike in the dead of a Canadian winter. That beats love every time.
There was the German cannibal murder.
3: Do murders that people first discussed on their MySpace pages count? Jacob Robida's creepy Internet window is probably still archived somewhere, for example.
There was the the great Chinese online gaming murder.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a plant that is nice but thrives on minimal care? I've decided that I need a plant in my office, but I absolutely will not under any circumstances put in the effort to take good care of it.
My default is to go with a big cactus, since I know they're hearty, but I'd prefer something leafier. It will have plenty of sunlight.
I should say: I know next to nothing about plants. Everything I know about plants I learned from smoking dope.
I recommend a rubber tree, but keep it out of direct sun.
Purple wandering jew. They're damn near impossible to kill and you can get them anywhere.
Well, if Brock is going to derail this thread, I'll follow suit. Does anyone know the best way to get rid of bats? I awoke this morning at 3:45 hearing whirring and flapping and a sort of squealing sound. Jolted myself a bit and hit something with the top of my nose/bottom of my forehead. I jumped out of the room and turned the light on. I never saw the bat. I turned the lights off in the hallway, hoping that it would go into the hall. I watched Conan O'Brien from 3:45 AM-4:30 in the living room, went upstairs to get my sleeping bag and camped out on the futon. I was too chicken to turn the lights out, though. So, even though I hid under the sleeping bag, I didn't get any more sleep.
Suggestions? I wasn't bit. Do I need to call a doctor?
Google is telling me that a purple wandering jew is going to require frequent water. If I have to water this thing more than once a week it is guaranteed to die.
You don't need to call a doctor if you weren't bit or scratched. During my last bat infestation I found that tennis rackets made pretty good weapons for bat-fighting (hand-to-hand combat). The problem never really went away until the landlord plugged some hole in the chimney where they were getting in.
13: Pothos plants are resilient if a bit boring.
18: Apparently there's a whole site devoted to bat management. Perhaps they'll have some useful tips.
5: That German cannibal murder story seriously freaks me out. [shudder]
I have no luck with Pothos plants -- they always die within a week. Spider plants are pretty easy.
A rubber chicken would also be good for the office. You can get one from Teofilo.
BGirl -- last time we had a bat in the house we were not to our knowledge bit, but somebody in a position of authority (can't remember) advised us to get rabies shots anyway. FWIW
Rabies shots are not fun AT ALL. I would not recommend getting them just for shits and giggles. Of course, IANAMD.
26: Rabies shots aren't as bad as they used to be.. it's now six shots, in the arm, over 30 days. Or is that what you were talking about?
Really? I had to get a course of shots in the stomach, and it sucked.
I guess we should be posting this on the "unrelenting advance of medical technology" thread...
Bah. "Medical technology marches onward." Whatever.
Yeah I wanted to ignore the authority figure's advice too but was overruled by my more cautious half. Isn't that always how it goes...
But we got the series neil is talkin bout.
Philodendra are near unkillable. I'm nursing back to health one that I nearly killed twice, most recently by sticking it in a dark corner atop a kitchen cabinet next to a heating duct, stretching its vines out horizontally, and not watering it more than four times a year. It seems to be recovering a bit slower than I'd hoped, but I'm confident it'll be just fine in another couple of weeks of less harmful neglect.
I have always found spider plants to be not only un-killable, but also irrepressibly fertile.
BG, the bat question is not so much about the sole bat (it will find its way out), but how it came in. Likely it was just a one-off, and you'll never have one again. But if it has taken up residence in your eaves or there is a nice friendly little entry route somewhere, then you may see more. How long have you lived there?
I've lived here for almost 2 years. My crazy housemate has been here for more like 20.
Good luck running for the Senate 10 years from now if you kept "purple wandering jew" in your office. Didn't you stop to think how that would make people feel? Especially purple Jews?
"6 forgot 7."
Is this related to that joke about 7, 8, 9?
I keep a Peace Lily growing out of a fishbowl at my office, where I don't want to maintain plants. It'll live indefinitely in water (as will pothos vines). You'll have to refill the fishbowl from time to time, but the plant won't die until it goes completely dry.
Does "place in direct filtered light but not direct sun" mean placed in a bright window but not outside? If not, what does "filtered light" mean?
Thanks for all the tips, people.
Brock, I'd guess that "direct filtered light" means "in a sunny window with partially closed blinds or a gauzy curtain" or "in a sunny spot with a tree overhead." I'd just put it in a mostly sunny window and move it a little further back from the window if it looked like it was wilting or blanching. I mean, you don't live in Arizona or something, do you?
I also have a houseplant problem, which is that I visited an arboritum this weekend and decided that I really want a coral bark Japanese maple tree. Maybe I can find a bonsai version.
I am a plant abuser. I forget them for months on end. I, however, have been unable to kill bamboo, which seems to thrive on being over-watered, then ignored for six months.
There are some really, really good fake plants out there these days, some with fake blemishes to add to the illusion. Should I ever have an office again, I will probably own one.
Plants: the dragon plant in my office wasn't watered all summer; I just gave it to my office neighbor. It's kinda like a little tree, which works if you want a biggish plant. Christmas cactus is pretty resiliant, and it actually blooms around November/December, which is kinda cool. Philodendrons are nice and will help clean the air in your office. Wandering jews, imho, get leggy and ugly, as do spider plants. Sanseveria, aka snake plant or mother-in-law's tongue (I didn't name it) is hardy and has tall straight stripey leaves; it can get about waist high and if you *do* take good care of it, it'll actually bloom with little honeysucklish sweet-smelling blooms. I only ever managed to do that once, though. All of those are pretty flexible w/r/t light, though if you want to control the timing of the cactus plant's bloom, keep it in a darkish place until you want it to bloom and then put it in light. Finally, of course, there's always the good ol' African violet. Kinda old-ladyish, and don't water it from the top or the leaves will rot (pour the water into the saucer--a deeper saucer = less watering), but they're small and cute on a desk.
Or, you know, there's always fake.
Oh, I had advice re. bats, too. We've had 'em in our house on and off since we lived here. They can get in through teeensy cracks, so if you keep getting 'em, it's time to call the landlord Also, the local bat conservation society, so the landlord doesn't kill them, which is cheap and easy and illegal in a lot of places. Plus, even if it's not illegal, bats are nice.
*If* it bites or scratches you, there's a very remote chance it's carring rabies. People recommend that if one is in a room when you wake up, you either catch it (for them to kill and test) or get the rabies shot (which I think is a lot less awful than it used to be). That said, what are the odds? We never got shots. Sadly, the last bat we had did run into Mr. B's head and he was afraid it might have scratched him so he caught it and it had to be killed and tested. Negative. Poor bat.
It's not that hard to get them out of a room, though; after all, they have echolocation. Open a window and maybe use a blanket or towel to sort of guide it, ala a bullfight, towards the window and it'll fly right out. It's pretty unlikely to bang into you unless you're really darting around quickly.
I'm so glad to have stumbled into this thread -- I'm reminded of my own plant issue: for years, I have wanted a Larix occidentalis, and, against all advice, I going to try to plant one in my yard. I may be able to buy one later in the week -- I've got a short boondoggle on the schedule, and no respectable outfit 'round here will sell me one.
Wandering jews, imho, get leggy and ugly
Hey!
45 s/b
"Oh yeah, well imho vaguely Hispanic professors in unidentified fields in the humanities get sour and wrinkly”
"Vaguely Hispanic" isn't how I'd describe b, but then I've never met her.
I figure if your heaping abuse on someone, you don't need to be too precise.
What's that about my heaping abuse?
(Just for the record, I figured the best way to deal with the unpleasantness of mono was to get stinking drunk. I've reached drunk; stinking in T minus 60 minutes.)
45: The *plant*.
As to my ancestry, well, the legitimacy of my vague Hispanisma really depends on what you do (or don't) consider legitimate in terms of Latino cultural identity. Which is a whole other thread.
I'm pretty sure b doesn't fit my default definition of "Hispanic," but like she says it's a huge, contentious issue.
At least I dress up when I go out for the evening. You white people think it's just fine to show up in your fleece and jeans. Goddamn hippies.
B's Mexican too?! Well I'll be damned.
I'm not Mexican, but my grandfather and assorted more distant ancestors were. The question Teo and I aren't really debating is whether that counts.
Shit, I just passed up a good opportunity to harass Brock about his racist presumption that people of unknown ethnicity are white.
Able to adapt to and endure lower light conditions and generally poor treatment, Ficus elastica is a winner indoors. Provide as much light as possible, keep away from cold and drafts in winter, keep soil lightly to moderately moist with good drainage.
(Mine started growing faster when I moved it from direct to indirect sunlight; it doesn't mind at all if it doesn't get water for months -- the leaves won't get brown or shriveled, it mostly just stops growing.)
Rubbers don't grow on trees, neil. Sheesh.
Wait, you're really Mexican (sort of)? That was supposed to be a joke. Now I feel bad.
I don't generally assume people of unknown ethnicity are white. I just assumed you were, honestly I think b/c of the pic on your blog, which is probably not even you. Also, you've never mentioned being sort-of-Mexican before (that I'm aware of), whereas non-white people (in US culture, at least) tend to mention their ethnicity somewhere, sometime in the first 100,000 or so things you hear them say. And I'm pretty sure I've heard (read) you say at least that many things.
Teo: in what way does having a mexican grandfather and other relatives not fit your idea of hispanic?
in what way does having a mexican grandfather and other relatives not fit your idea of hispanic?
If the person in question has no other connections to Hispanic culture (not saying this is necessarily true of b), such as speaking Spanish, practicing Catholicism, etc., I don't think that amount of ancestry is sufficient to make the person Hispanic. But it's a controversial issue, and not everyone will agree.
I don't know if Teo knows anything about my ancestry, to be fair to him. I'm basically pretty anglo for most intents and purposes, but then, the whole problem of defining whiteness or not is difficult enough without dragging in the various permutations of whether Mexican-born anglos or US-born Latinos are "really" whatever-they-are, and do Chicanos count as Mexican, and is Pocho a dirty word, and what do you call a blonde haired chick whose relatives moved back and forth across a moving border for a couple hundred years, anyway?
And no, the pic on my blog isn't me or anyone I know; it's just a picture that I really liked.
I will say for the record though that I don't consider speaking Spanish or being Catholic necessary to Latino identity. I'm definitely down with the Chicanos on that one.
b, I think you've also mentioned being blonde and blue-eyed and having Scandinavianish features lately, so Brock might have been relying on that.
I don't understand what's controversial here: if a person speaks spanish better than they speak english, is catholic, and makes good corn tortillas, then he or she is Mexican. Otherwise, no. It's pretty simple really.
I don't actually consider them necessary either, truth be told. But it's kind of hard to express the sorts of things that would make me conclude that someone is Hispanic, and many of those things wouldn't be possible to discern in a non-face-to-face context anyway.
That's not supposed to reflect in any way on the question of Latino identity, just trying to be a witness for Brock's defense.
64- you are wrong on both counts.
65 - yes, I thought I remembered that, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure.
65: Yeah, my ancestors are a mixed breed.
66: What about someone who makes bad corn tortillas? Or, being male, doesn't make corn tortillas at all? Etc.
Brown hair and eyes shoudl be added to the list in 66.
71: Jesus teo this isn't hard. If you make bad corn tortillas you are not mexican. If you are male and do not make corn tortillas, you can still be mexican as long as you come from a family of good corn-tortilla-makers. Got it?
So Mexicanness, like Jewishness, comes down through the female line.
That works. My family goes back to the American Revolution via a woman named Lopez. Who I'm sure could make tortillas.
"Lopez" was, in fact, my nickname for a while at the U of C.
I was hanging out with a bunch of people I didn't know (it was summer quarter, so everyone's social circle was disrupted) at a 'Mexican' restaurant called Steak Burrito, which had the blandest, most entirely spice-free food I'd ever tasted. I complained, and the guys I was with gave me a hard time about having an opinion about Mexican food given my apparent utter gringa-ness.
About five minutes later, one of them asked, "Hey, Liz, what's your last name?"
"Lopez," I said. And it stuck for a while.
I must be tired. Rereading that, I sound drunk.
Doesn't "vaguely Hispanic" suddenly seem like a good descriptor now?
Sure, it works. It's just not the one that would have leapt first to my mind is all.
So, teo, my wife's mother was from Albuquerque. Family identified as Spanish, but father (my wife's grandfather) was half American Indian (Apache, they think, but no birth certificate; the Mormon sister tried). So I gather that if you mix Spanish and Native American south of the border, you get Mexican, but north of the border you get hyphenated. Is that about right?
My son still looks awfully damn haole.
you get hyphenated
That happened to me once. It was very uncomfortable.
Is that about right?
Pretty much. There's some more complicated stuff too,, but that's the gist of it.
Also, "Spanish" is what Hispanics in NM used as a self-description in English before the term "Hispanic" became widespread. And don't ever call a Hispanic person in NM "Mexican"; them's fightin' words.
Right, and Latino is the term lefty types use, while Chicano is a term from the 60s/70s left meaning American-born and not necessarily Spanish speaking, and Pocho is a derogatory term Mexicans use for same.
If you can get into JSTOR, I recommend this article.
85: I gathered that, but have never been to NM and my wife's mother was gone long before I came on the scene. We've been wanting to make a trip up that way for years but I've never made it and the best my wife has done was a business trip.
And none of the terms in 86 are used in NM at all.
86: And my wife is from the land where ethnic jokes are A-OK and is pretty much totally oblivious to mainland ethnic politics, so I figure it's probably best just to keep my head down if nomenclature ever comes up anywhere that it matters.
88: If you can make it, you really should go. It's a remarkable place.
We'll make it eventually, just not sure when. Not enough vacation time and too many family-visit type commitments, not nearly enough time or money to visit all the places we'd like to go just for ourselves.
[Still trying to come up with an appropriate response to 83]
I was trying to find info on a modern-day Spanish-speaking ethnic group, which I learned about in a class on the Spanish Inquisition. They live somewhere in the Southwest and identify strongly with Spain, resent being lumped in with Latinos, and may be adventists but I can't remember. Instead, I found this link and remembered why it's safer just to stay here. There's crazies on them there internets:
I think we should hird squads of soliders to shoot illegals in our streets and throw their bodies back to Mexico aka cesspool la granda! Then shoot em as they try to cross into the US! Remember go after the communists first. The top commies are the ones with the big bumps on their noses!!!!!!!
Ack.
New Mexico is a special place, actually and very much in their own minds. You may have heard the deadpan phrase "New Mexico Nationalism;" they aren't kidding.
My sister and her husband have moved down there, and my mother has too. I've known about New Mexico Spanish, through friends and the biographies of significant people: Estella Leopold, a figure in environmentalism in my youth and a near collaborator in her husband's development as a writer and thinker, was one of them. There's also that very interesting Murano angle. Now I'll get to sample that stuff first hand, as soon as I can pay them a visit.
Stanley, your description fits NM Hispanics to a tee (except the Adventist part; there are some, but they're mostly Catholic).
Mexican - 1) term used to identify a citizen of the Republic of Mexico. 2) Derogatory term used to describe persons of partial Amerindian ancestry who speak Spanish or who have Sapnish-seapking ancestry.
Spanish - 1) European langauge which became dominant in areas of the Americas forcibly colonized by Spain. 2) Designation for a person who comes from Spain, or who is descended primarily from 'white' people from Spain who emigrated to the Spanish colonies in the Americas.
Latin-American - 1) term used to describe a person who comes from areas south of the American border; in colloquial use mixes together people of various ancestrial descent, including people of African descent and speakers of Portugese.
White - politicized garbage can designation used in the United States to refer to people with pale skin who are presumed to be entirely of WASP descent.
Hispanic - politicized garbage can designation for any person who is considered either 'not white' due to skin color, political inclinations or presumed ancestrial descent from Spanish ancestors. (See Spanish.)
max
['Hrmmm.']
IDP: Where in NM do your relatives live?
The kids on the lawn win again! (103, soy yo)
Payback's a bitch, eh, apo?
Yes. Payback and chickens.
83, 94: Obviously wasn't done right. Done properly, hyphenation can be life-changing, mind-expanding and/or consciousness-raising. (Careful with the slash, though, that's a whole different genre.)
There are Spanish-descended people in NM who claim to be crypto-Jews whose ancestors fled the Inquisition. A very controversial topic because some claim that the Adventists (Saturday worship) are somehow involved.
I really believe that neighborhood dominates descent. My Mexican-American nephew-in-law (native-born American, cousins born in Mexico) is a military lifer who owns a compete collection of John Wayne movies.He grew up in Texas and spent 20+ years on military bases. There are scattered Hispanics in my little Minnesota town, perhaps 5-10 families, and they're mostly "doing in Rome". Another town down the road has 10%+ Hispanic and they may retain some identity.
#109: I really believe that neighborhood dominates descent.
Apologies if this has been posted already, but 10ZenMonkeys has a pretty comprehensive Jason Fortuny information post, replete with links and everything. Highlights include having to sell his "stunning collection of original Star Wars and Transformers toys and action figures" to pay off debts, and his checklist of what would make the perfect woman (the final item: "50. She knows that A is A.").
95/97: Yeah, my understanding is that New Mexican Latinos are more conservative re. the whole Mexican/Hispanic/Latino thing, so no wonder Teo's dissing my heritage.
Teo, you colonized motherfucker, I'm reporting you to La Raza.
having to sell his "stunning collection of original Star Wars and Transformers toys and action figures"
That was a scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, wasn't it? Christ, I almost am beginning to pity him.
Ugh, and the molestation by his grandfather. That's horrible. I promise never to think about him ever again.
Oh my god, he wants to be killed! That explains it all. He does these things to goad someone into killing him.
That is my professional diagnosis, which is not even based on reading his livejournal.
So stop me if you've heard this one:
MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- A 22-year-old woman was arrested after authorities say she tried to hire someone to kill another woman whose photo appeared on her boyfriend's MySpace.com Web page.
Heather Michelle Kane was booked Tuesday for investigation of conspiracy to commit murder, Mesa Detective Jerry Gissel said.
She was arrested after she met an undercover Mesa police detective at a grocery store, gave the officer $400 and offered to pay an additional $100 once the woman had been killed, according to court records.
The records say Kane gave the undercover officer photographs taken from her boyfriend's social networking Web page of the woman she wanted killed. She also requested a photo of the woman's dead body.
It wasn't clear if the boyfriend and the targeted woman were romantically involved, Gissel said.
---$500???? That's, like, 1/4 of the rent on Boardwalk with a hotel.
I know plenty of nice, well-adjusted people that like Star Wars and have collections and just once it would be nice if the whackjobs on the Internet like Fortuny were wine connoisseurs instead.
Really Cala? Plenty? I might believe one or two, but... plenty?
116: Cala, meet Apostropher.
116: Amen.
114: My fancy-pants, amateur, arm-chair diagnosis is that he has exposed all his own darkest, deepest secrets on the interwebs and it's gotten him exactly jack and shit, and now he's turned to exposing others' secrets because he's run out of his own to show off. It's partly finding new hunting grounds and partly teh lulz and partly lashing out at an intertron that didn't give him whatever he hoped he'd find.
My non-fancy-pants diagnosis is that the guy's a cock. I am so sad I didn't think to email his picture to Ben w-lfs-n, with a very-oversized ruler photoshopped into it next to him so that he clocks in somewhere around 3".
For some reason I cannot get enough of this guy.
he clocks in somewhere around 3".
For some reason I cannot get enough of this guy.
I think the first sentence probably gives you the reason for the second.
Robust, you and I should start some kind of support group.
But before we go cold turkey, have you seen the last page of comments on RFJason's last post? Things are getting a little vicious.
118: I am indeed a whackjob on the Internet, but I am not a whackjob on the Internet like Fortuny.
122 -- yeah true. I guess my granularity was a little too coarse.
Cala, if you have a star wars collection I will fall out of love with you.
Cala, if you have a star wars collection I will fall out of love with you.
But before we go cold turkey
Look, I can stop anytime, OK? No, that's not LiveJournal in my other tab! Get away!
I think the first sentence probably gives you the reason for the second.
Well, I certainly left myself open on that one.
Cough.
Cala: I know plenty of nice, well-adjusted people that like Star Wars and have collections
Robust: Amen.
No, no Robust, she was talking about well adjusted people, not you.
Seriously, I should shoot him myself; then I could get some work done.*
*This is a joke-- I'd find some other way to waste time.
Cala likes the guys with the big ol' lightsabers, Labs, so you were SOL in any case.
Hhhmmm...my son has dark hair, brown eyes, can make tortillas [and a hell of a mole sauce], and speaks Spanish. He is not Catholic, however, which means he cannot qualify as a Mexican. Ah, well...
He did freak out the kitchen help when he cooked at Sundance a while back - Asian chef who spoke Spanish? Never seen before in the wilds of Utah.
Cala, how would you like to see my Walrusman?
Ugh, the more I find out about rfjason, the more boring he is.
[and a hell of a mole sauce]
"No, really, this stuff is great on subterranean rodents."
Meaningless data point: one of the Tohajiilee clans (that's just west of Albuquerque) is called Mexican. It's not a figure of speech, but a historical artifact. Anyway, I know a shamanesque member of that clan, of whom the term "Catholic" would not be descriptive. His surname is Hispanic, as are all the Tohajiilee names I can think of.
I think the paper bag test, and the O Tannenbaum test, have been supplanted by more of an optional one drop test: one is permitted to identify with any ethnicity with which at least one great grandparent identified. Vaguely. One may recover heritage, and be more Hispanic, Japanese, Estonian, or Pikuni than one's assimilationist parents or grandparents.
According to this column, at least one person has told a columnist in the Seattle area that their personal information was falsely used in one of the responses Fortuny later posted as part of his "experiment."
On Monday I spoke with a man who said that his name, phone and e-mail had been posted without his knowledge.
The man said he never replied to the Craigslist sex ad, suggesting someone else -- a stranger? Fortuny? -- got hold of his personal information and used it against him.
137 -- I have no idea why that charge for a movie is on my hotel bill. Must be a computer glitch.
Oh, I don't have anything riding on the authenticity of the claim he never replied. I just find it amusing.
137/138- seriously. I expect similar denials from everyone whose reply didn't have a picture attached. (An identifiable picture...)
Ay, there's the rub, etc. This is what fascinates me about his whole prank, actually: in an effort to make fun of people who assumedly mishandled personal information and strangers on the internet, he opens himself to the accusation that he has mishandled personal information and strangers on the internet. I find almost endless pleasure in running around and around the hamster-wheel of that idea. His whole they-wrongly-assumed-to-whom-they-wrote "experiment" is so transparently flipped around that I am dazzled.
141: I've been savoring the idea that he has, in ridiculing the people who responded, rejected every plea he might make on his own behalf.
I believe it's a Rufus Wainwright reference.
136: The Naakaii Dine'e are actually present throughout the Navajo country (not just Tohajiilee). They may be more numerous in the eastern areas; Spanish surnames certainly are, but I don't know if there's a correlation. There are also clans named after some of the Pueblos, the Utes, and the Mescalero Apaches.
143: You know, that whole thing where the colonized internalizes the superiority of the colonizer and learns to despise his own mongrel nature.
Yes, but what does that have to do with me?
What's your man got to do with me?
You're from New Mexico, New Mexicans are all wanna-be Spanish, hence crappy vaguely latino type people like me don't count. Keep up, here.
Your statements all apply to New Mexico Hispanics, b. Keep up, here.
Yeah, well, you're from there, I'm sure you've picked up the attitude.
Perhaps, but I am far more colonizer than colonized.
Yeah, one of them New-fangled Mexicans.
I am far more colonizer than colonized.
QED.
Wait, theres a *New* Mexico, now?
Cleaner than regular Mexico.
144: What's a Rufus Wainwright reference?
I have a friend who caught crabs from Rufus Wainwright, which is a form of colonization, but I don't remember if I ever mentioned that here.
159: it's when you refer to something Rufus Wainwright did or said.
160 is a completely non-fictional Rufus Wainwright reference.
We sure are rocking the structural ambiguity lately.
160: Wait, wait, wait. Does this mean I'm in hell with Rufus Wainwright?
Seems unlikely. You arrived at the Hall well after this guy departed.
But Loudon Wainwright is a Xi from the '60s.
Normally I'd be all "darn!" but, y'know, crabs.
You know, a couch gave someone crabs when I was an undergrad. That person was not me.
170: Yes, as a matter of fact. Stylish and dangerous.
I slept on Paris' predecessor, Cleveland the couch, on many, many occasions during my undergrad career and the fact that I never caught crabs from it is almost enough to make me believe in God.
By '95, Cleveland (or part of it) had been banished to the computer room and I made many of my first acquaintances around the Hall by crashing on it after parties and introducing myself the next morning. Cleveland was, by that point, like something out of Ikea's Jackson Pollock collection.
Infested furniture always produces such fond memories.
White - politicized garbage can designation used in the United States to refer to people with pale skin who are presumed to be entirely of WASP descent.
Ah, the joys of recursive definitions...
In fact, it's true that "white" is a recursive category. That's not Max's fault.
Robust, did you notice that RFJason's livejournal has been losing comments?
Whiteness = lacking ethnicity. If that ain't recursive, I don't know what is.
Speaking as a white person, I can confirm that whiteness is recursive. You ethnics will just have to take my word for it.
Whiteness = lacking ethnicity. If that ain't recursive, I don't know what is.
All together now...
Does this mean Italians aren't white?
Italians who are Italians aren't white. Italians who are white aren't Italian. A=A.
And don't even get me started on Croats.
The 1790 naturalization law restricted naturalization as American citizens to whites. Italians were naturalized. Italians were white.
Isn't the whiteness (or not) of Italians, in fact, part of the point? I think that various groups (Germans, Irish, Italians, and Chinese come to mind) have, historically, not "counted" as white and had to sue or argue or front public relations campaigns to become white, or whiteish, or to count as "white" for purposes of government statistics. It's a weird category.
Ben, are you smartassly implying that I misused the word "recursive" or something, or what?
There are all kinds of problems with "whiteness studies."
The whiteness of Italians has in fact been in question for a long time.
Okay, then forget I said anything.
I bought something labelled "Italian Bread" once. It was white.
When you bring a Croat
Fresh off the boat
You can tell him lies so that
He thinks it all rhymes.
--Italian nursery rhyme
I'd like to see a cite on the claim in the second link in 192 and some elaboration. I haven't read the book in the first link, but am inclined to be skeptical based on the whiteness stuff I've read. Clearly people were using racialized language to refer to European ethnic groups in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the question is whether you can jump from that to saying that members of these groups were not considered white at all.
Hey, you're the historian. I don't actually know much about this.
I think it at least used to be the case that a lot of northern Italians didn't consider southern Italians, especially Sicilians, as white. Lots of jokes about the Moorish taint and stuff like that.
It's definitely an interesting question, and other people find the evidence more convincing than I do. I kind of like the term "provisional white" - for white, legally, in terms of things like naturalization, but not exactly white in terms of social and cultural acceptance by people who were considered unquestionably white - one historian came up with, but I don't think I ever finished his book.
The first couple of pages of the JSTOR link in 90 get into the problems courts have had with determining people's races. If interracial marriage is illegal, why not obtain an annulment by proving that you and your spouse are not the same race?
Have you seen this book, eb? It has some interesting stuff on this issue.
I have insomnia so I check in here, and what do I find? People hatin' on the Croatians. They gave us the cravat, for fuck's sake; show some respect.
Yeah, Poles, too. We demand respect!
They gave us the cravat
Never gave me one. I'm just saying, until my cravat shows up, I feel free to continue Croat hating.
They gave us the cravat. It just hasn't been your turn to wear it yet.
It is a -- MOST -- PROVOKING -- thing when a person doesn't know a cravat from a belt!
When I was an undergrad we had some Italian exchange students living opposite us. We invited them all out clubbing one night and one of them turned up, not kidding, wearing a red silk cravat and a blazer.
At the time we ought thought he was cheesy, but now, in retrospect, I can see he was just showing his solidarity with the oppressed Croatian people.
Cravat was the gremlin on the wing that freaked out William Shatner.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (the whole darn thing).
Cravat was the name of that gremlin? Oh dear, it's all coming together.
179: No way! You've got the eagle eyes; I had missed that entirely.
Is it possible he's editing out comments he doesn't like, perhaps ones that contain further of his personal information? Noes!
I laughed out loud at 162.
Whiteness vel non of italians is of course a classic Unfogged topic.
I'm lazy about clicking through. It comes back to bite me in the ass.
I don't know if moving from driving William Shatner crazy on a plane to biting you in the ass is a step up or a step down for Cravat.
Teo asked me way upthread where my relatives live: Silver City.
biting you in the ass
Does it pay scale?
222: Never been there. I hear it's nice.
I've never been there either, nor anywhere else in that state. I'd like to see it, see the mesas, do a Lawrence pilgrimage, the whole bit.
You totally should. But I should warn you that Silver City and Taos are at opposite ends of the state, and it's a big state, so "the whole bit" would be a big undertaking. Definitely worth it, though.