Next time will be about Sony, I promise

I know you've all been drooling in anticipation to hear me bitch about Sony, and I promise that post will materialize. But right now I need to talk about something else:

Race.

Intellectually, we all know that race is just a construct, but that doesn't make it any less of a bitch, does it? Right now I'm in this Constitutional Law class on race and gender discrimination (althought "in" is sort of a stretch, since I have trouble not skipping it). It's a fantastic class and I love my professor, but every time I go I end up wanting to kick someone. I was talking to Erin earlier this week about how this class is really demonstrating that there are people - lots of people - who've never really had a close friend that's different from them. There are all these people walking around who've never really tried to get out of their comfort zones, to experience hardship, or to try and understand other people. And if I'm saying this then you know it must be bad, because we all know that I'm extremely lazy and that my idea of going out of my comfort zone is studying in a new coffeeshop.

I was lucky because I was raised in a very diverse relgious community, made up of people from vere different racial, social and economic backgrounds. But what do you do if you aren't in that situation? What do you do if you live in a suburb that was originally developed to accommodate white-flight?

Part of the reason this class is so troubling is because, legally, it's hard to find good answers. For starters, it's hard to walk the line between letting courts have total control in one area without opening the door for some potentially crazy court to have control in another area.

Beyond that, how much can we (legally) take away choice? If young couples want to live in the suburbs for completely race-neutral reasons, like good school systems, how to do you justify forcing them to do something different without possibly creating racial animosity that wasn't there before?

And, most troubling, how the heck do you get anybody to care about this when most people think that everything is great?

Earlier today I saw an episode of Malcolm and the Middle that got me thinking about all of this again. In the episode, Lois (the mom) has finally been hired back at the grocery store where she worked, and Malcolm has gotten a job there too. Lois is on probation and she can't get fired because the family needs the money. The store sets up a new display for some brand of malt liquor, and the display is a cardboard cutout of an African-American guy in what looks like a janitor's outfit, holding a mop in one hand and a case of malt liquor in the other. The cutout is smiling and his nametag says "Slappy".

Lois freaks out as soon as it goes up because of how offensive and racist it is. So she steals it. But the store gets another cut-out and asks Malcolm to set it up, which he does just to piss off his mom. After the conflict between the two of them goes on for a little while, Lois decides that she has to do what's right. She grabs the cutout and starts to march out of the store.

As Lois is leaving, the sweet and soft-spoken lady who works in the checkout line next to her says "Oh, thank goodness you're getting rid of that thing!". "Yes", Lois replies, "I just couldn't take it anymore." "I know!", said the lady, "Ever since that thing went up, there have been so many black people coming to the store." Lois sort of stares at her with this shocked look on her face, and then the lady continues with something like, "We just aren't that kind of store, and I'm so glad that thing is leaving so that they stop coming around here."

Of course, after that, Lois then decides to leave the cutout. But I thought the storylinne was interesting. And telling: it seems like there aren't a lot of good options when it comes to current state of race relations in America. Whether you take or leave the cutout, it's still racist. There's no way to fix the problem without changing people's minds, and forcing people to act is almost impossible.

*Sigh. I didn't mean for this to be depressing. I guess I'm just a little frustrated. I should've just ranted about Sony.

I got your Final Fantasy right here

For the past six months I've been biting my tongue so that I don't write a long, rambly post about how much Matt & I hate Sony. I could go through and name all of the reasons that we feel this way but I'm sure you have better things to do. However, just now I was watching a program on PBS about video games, and this Smarmy Bastard Sony game developer was all "Sony is such a great company and here we all love video games and it isn't about the money like it is at Microsoft." Oh, really? Is that why you just hired a new CFO to reorganize the company? Because you love games so much? Silly me, I thought it was because Sony was a huge, sprawling corporation run by a bunch of rich people who want to make a lot of money.

Then Smarmy Bastard #2 was all "People love Sony, but everybody hates Microsoft. Sony is a great company to work for." Guess what asshat: LOTS of people don't like Sony. You know, like the people who got viruses bc your CD's were putting spyware on their computers. Or the people who refuse to buy Sony TV's since they're only compatible with other Sony products. Sure, lots of people hate Microsoft. But just as many people hate Sony. You are BOTH huge, sprawling corporations whose job is to make money. At least Microsoft is honest about. You should stop kidding yourself.

I hope that Bill Gates DOES have Halo 3 ready so that he can release it the same day that you start selling the PS3.

This should be called "Erin nails claw on the rocky beach" but no one would get it

I'm very lucky in that my two best friends from high school, Erin & Krissa, are both still in my life. The three of us have always been very different. Very Different. I think that makes for a great friendship. We were, however, united in out totally inappopriate love of a beautiful man named Gordon Sumner, who is more commonly known as Sting.

One time we were driving somewhere (probably to Cafe Artiste) when Fields of Gold came on the radio. We were singing along when someone asked what Sting says at the end of the line "We walked in fields of ---". Amazingly, none of us knew. We listed harder the next time Sting sang that line and still couldn't tell, so Krissa whipped out her Sting CD. (Okay, it might have been Erin. I don't remember who was driving, but we made Krissa drive a lot, so let's just say we were in her car.)

We put the song on repeat. "It sounds like whatever they walked in begins with the letter 'b' or the letter 'h'". I was given the task of leaning my ear to the speaker while we played it again, and I confirmed that the mystery word did indeed begin with one of those two letters. So we all started coming up with suggestions.

"Maybe it's 'we walked in field of holly'?" But that suggestion was quickly rejected when someone (probably Erin) logically pointed out that holly is very sharp and pokey and it would NOT be pleasant to frolic/get it on in a field of holly. It had to be some sort of plant, we thought, but city girls don't know much about plants.

Then someone - and I will keep this part anonymous to protect the guilty party - suggested that perhaps Sting was walking in fields of Bali. You know, like that country that exports all the gold. It sounded more reasonable than anything else.

Later I mentioned this puzzle and the amswer we'd come up with to my Mom, who doesn't even like Sting very much, and it was probably only about five seconds before she said, "Um, isn't he saying 'we walked in fields of BARLEY'?" Ohhhh. Like the wheat.

(I just googled "Bali" and learned that their primary export is textiles. Save that information for Jeopardy)