Straight No Chaser

Too Much Tired/Thomas

pretty tired. phone was long but good last night; we wisely kept it light, both of us steering clear of questionable material in the hopes that everyone could go to bed happy. that's how i fell asleep, happy, at five-thirty in the morning, with the robins tweeting cheerily outside my window, and then lucky me, i got to get up forty minutes later to get ready for work. i really need to streamline my morning routine. there's really no excuse for someone as low-maintenance as i to take such a long time to get up and out every day.

we finished that project, finally. presentation is this afternoon. i might keel over during. hopefully the advil will still be working then, but i feel a little loopy, probably because i stupidly mixed it with my temporary claritin fix.

racist remarks in blogs, my thoughts: whatever you may think, whatever disclaimer you may slap at the beginning of your entry list, i'm with spidey on this one--your public journal is not, and by definition never can be, a private place. true privacy only exists in the mind; barring that, a paper journal fits neatly inside a pillowcase, and can't rightly offend anyone because it truly isn't intended for widespread viewing. an online journal, on the other hand, is designed to serve you when you really want the rest of the world to know what you're thinking.

so, okay. if you're racist, you're racist. or, to be fair, if you have racist tendencies, fine, you have racist tendencies. i have more class than to call you on it, particularly when you've made it clear that your journal isn't a forum for constructive criticism. but do you really not care that your entire readership knows you have racist tendencies? i'm sure writing.com isn't the most diverse of communities, all things considered, but there are those of us who don't wear our demographics on our sleeves, and any time you demonstrate ignorance of or prejudice toward a particular group, you run a very high risk of offending someone, blog or not. you may never get flak for it, which, if you've got one of those handy disclaimers, is evidently the way you want it, but i doubt anyone will look at you the same way afterward, either.

anyway. all that is a long-winded and hopefully tactful way of stating the obvious: i read something that completely pissed me off this morning, and am frustrated by the knowledge that my comments wouldn't be welcomed by the author.

hey, guys? i'm black, by the way. in case you didn't know, or missed the picture, or something. and actually, it's even more complicated than that--i'm one quarter irish, one quarter haitian, three-sixteenths cherokee, and the rest is sweet slave-descended african-american mutt. that's not a warning or anything. that doesn't mean i'm any more likely than anyone else to be offended by ill-crafted mexican jokes, it just means that i, like many of us, represent a lot of groups, and am also not likely to be amused by such. it also means that you don't need a spotless pedigree to speak fluent, articulate english, and that ours isn't the only nation that breeds people with intelligence and couth.

so that's my rant for the day, and i'm done with it.

pain is abating, so is cold, and it looks like my head'll be clear in time for that meeting. this is something i haven't experienced in days, free time between obligations. just in time, i've started carrying a spiral around with me. grim's story is in it, as is a letter to marcus, and the beginnings of something new i just started, kind of an exercise in differentiating between voices. fifteen people around a table, five of them narrators, three or four lines of dialogue--five takes on the same moment. if i can get it out of my head it'll be this summer's creative coup de grace. if i can't it'll kill me. writing is hard.

also in the notebook is a fantasy conversation with marcus's dad, whom i think i miss almost as much as i do marcus. the major was insanely nice to me, introduced me to strangers as his "future daughter-in-law" and such, made me feel completely welcome, complimented my hair, et cetera. i want to give him grandchildren. i want to make him proud and give him a reason to feel connected to me. grandchildren, it sounds ideal. i've never wanted to do that for anyone else before. oh thomas. sweet sweet thomas.

i also want some pad thai with tofu and bean sprouts. today's breakfast and lunch were a handful of parmesan goldfish. i never eat anymore. what the hell.