Diatribes of Madcap Inanity

"If you were an Indian, your name would be "Runs Like Fag." - middle school guy in the mall to his middle school friend.

1) Indian is not equal to Native American.

2) Cool, stereotype all homosexual people. They all run prissily. Because all gays are effeminate, and there are no athletes who are gay.

3) Being gay is not an insult.

4) Saying the word "fag" does not make you cool.

5) You're trying too hard.

Wow, no one posts anymore.

I guess now is the appropriate time for me to make a joke like, "livejournal? more like DEADjournal!"

Whatever. Happy early Halloween!

This is special.

And what's really sad about this is the fact that he can say these comments knowing that people will still vote for him. As long as he pins all our problems on minorities (in this context, black people), he can avoid the blame on himself and his political party. This isn't a matter of politics to him. He knows that he can lie and sound ignorant - just as long as he's less ignorant than those who are voting for him. No one considering him as a candidate is going to question his "facts." Racists are going to say, "hey, that's what we've been saying for years! I'm voting for him!"

And there are a lot of racists.

I don't live in a town with blatant racism. Black people and white people can be friends, date, whatever. Over half of my school is black and the demographics continue to go in that direction. The thing is, though, that there are negative racial stereotypes that are rarely acknowledged.

And this doesn't just go one way. I see more reverse racism than the traditional "white people hate black people" racism that everyone seems to think of the south. It's like being racist toward white people is acceptable because of slavery, which I don't understand. Racism = racism = bad. It doesn't matter what my dead great-great-great grandparents did. I mean, it was bad, but I don't agree with it at all. I shouldn't be a victim of it.

A mild example. Yesterday in class my teacher let us listen to music. I took out my MP3 player. The black girl next to me asked, "You got black people music on there?"

Me: Uh...what's "black people music"?
Girl: You know, music by black people.
Me: Oh...I don't know...
Girl: Oh, you just got white people music on there. Never mind.

This isn't "racism," necessarily, but it's still a racial generalization. What if I had said that to her? What if I had asked "do you have white people music on there?" I mean, I think it's really funny that she said that. But if I had said it, I would have been construed as racist.

Racism is just like any other stereotype. It's labeling a group of people. Generalizing about them based on an outward characteristic. I mean, sure, there are a lot of "ghetto"* black people, but there are white people like that too. And just because someone is black doesn't mean they are "ghetto". I have a lot of black friends. My brother's girlfriend is black. None of them act "ghetto" like some of the kids I see at school. There are a lot of black people who it's possible to have an intelligent conversation with. It's just awful that the ones who are "ghetto" ruin it for everyone else.

*Not meaning poor. "Ghetto" is the "black culture" - meaning the kids who wear their pants down to their thighs, scream in the stairwells, block the hallways, and fail all their classes.

"The factors involve a child's inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals."

Uh, what? So when a child is bullied, it's because they can't "pick up on social cues"?

So, researchers, may I ask...why can some kids pick up on social cues and some can't? Is it in their genes? Or is it just that some kids are stupider than others? Are these inept "psychologists" saying that it's the kid's fault that they are being picked on? Have they not considered that maybe kids can't pick up on social cues BECAUSE they've been isolated from society?

( Cut for length/rant... )

It seems like these kinds of studies always assume "A is caused by B," rather than just saying "A has been shown to have a correlation with B." So if you can tell me that kids are bullied because they suck at socializing, maybe you can ALSO tell me which came first: the chicken or the egg?

"Live it up while you can/ We all lose in the end..." (Cobra Starship - "The City is At War")

( This post is basically pointless )

So, Scott Westerfeld had this great idea to change his blog's time zone to Tehran time. His reason:

Censors in Iran are currently searching for blogs with Tehran local settings as a way of finding and shutting down sites that are protesting Iran’s recent (probably stolen) election. The more blogs in the world that are set to Tehran time, the harder the job is for these censors to do their job.

I do not know if this will actually work all that well, if at all, but it's worth a shot. The time zone change is +4:30 UTC time. On Livejournal, you can make the change here.

This was worse than last year when David Cooke beat out David Archuleta. This is worse than Taylor Hicks beating Katherine McPhee. This might be worse than Ruben Studdard beating Clay Aiken.

How did Kris Allen beat out Adam Lambert, possibly the best singer American Idol has ever had? Well. It's the same thing that always happens.

The actual talent in the world is always totally underrated. Kris was a good singer and all, but he's just a standard issue pop singer. Pretty face + nice voice = instant success. It's sad. It's why I stopped watcing American Idol. It just got...boring.

Adam, on the other hand, is totally original. That voice, that makeup, that hair...that voice!!! Adam is the reason I started watching American Idol again (along with Allison Iraheta). Everyone knows he is the better singer. Kris can't even dream of hitting the notes Adam hit. But Kris has the mainstream glittery pop star appeal.

It's the same thing that happens with all other art. How else would Stephenie Meyer become famous? (Weep, MFAs across America. You write ten times better than Stephenie Meyer, but you will never be as famous.)

What won Kris the title was the fact that he appeals to American Idol's main audience - kids. Kids who think "Adam is weird!" Just because he doesn't conform to their idea of a "good singer." It's funny. All adults whose opinions I've heard like Adam better. Most kids like Kris better, with the exceptions of the free-thinkers and musicians.

Stupid, mindless teenyboppers. Just last class I heard at least 6 or 7 "OMG KRIS WON YAY"s. Once one certain influential person said it, of course the chorus of wannabes joined in. It's the exact same thing that happened with Twilight last year.

I don't even want to know what my sister is hearing in sixth grade. Epitome of trend-following. It's like school is just a competition to see who can be the most boring, unoriginal person. Or maybe it's not just school.

I don't know much about how this works, but I guess this is a good thing for Adam. He can pretty much choose his own record label and all. He will have more freedom in his first album. He can be the artist that he is instead of being the artist that the producers of American Idol want him to be.

My sister has, alas, discovered The Mysterious Ticking Noise.

(For those who don't know: The Mysterious Ticking Noise is a video on YouTube by The Potter Puppet Pals. I would post a link to it, but YouTube is blocked from this computer.)

Kindergartners and annoying YouTube videos don't mix. Videos that were slightly irritating the first time through do not need to be played and replayed for hours a day.

Snape. Snape. Severus Snape.

(Well...at least this is an improvement from badgers.)

Moral of this story: don't show kindergartners anything you wouldn't want to watch over and over.

As anyone could notice, I have a lack of consistent LJ posts. And I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing me rant. So instead of writing something myself, today I introduce a post by person A. Person A has an odd relation to me that I don't feel like explaining right now. So for now, they are just person A.

( Person A )

So on my very first post I mentioned that I despise ignorance and arrogance. But it's not really that I hate ignorance as much as I hate when people are arrogant about something they know nothing about.

For example. There's this girl I knew last year. I wouldn't exactly call her my friend - she was too stuck up and only acknowledged my existence when she had no one else to talk to. I generally detest speaking to this sort of people, so I rarely talk to her anymore. However, I was feeling nostalgic today, saw her online, and decided to say hi.

( Warning: racist. And rather lengthy. )

Point? Racism is still such a big problem in the United States and around the world. Racism is the kind of narrow-minded thinking that prevents problems from being solved between nations and within nations. Is anyone totally free of negative racial generalizations? Will people ever stop judging others based on generalizations like this?