America's Choice/Wii, Wii, Wii/Sounds of [almost] Blackness
Sabra is my favorite dancer. This SYTYCD finale was the best ever!
all the best routines were on this evening -- i cried again at mia michaels' routine about her father.
swooned at shane sparks' routine for sabra and dominic - again. the part when dominic just holds her. i freaking love dominic and sabra.
and. i get to sleep in tomorrow. cuz i'm off. yay, me.
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life is pretty much good. got a lot going on at work. hopefully everything will work out.
ooooh. i got a Wii. it is super-fantastic. and you know i've never been one for the video game system. i always sucked at Mario. and Mortal Kombat. [at which i would just bang on the buttons until i either won - or lost; and died.] but i'm awesome at Wii bowling. and Wii tennis. and i'm getting better at baseball. [golf is hard]
i watched the daily show from last night and became about as near to enraged as i ever get when it comes to politics. on the 'even Dick doesn't know Dick' segment, Cheney's past was illuminated -- as least the part in 1994 when he said, in a tv interview, that we should not depose Saddam, because Iraq is in such a volatile area and because of the issues about what to do after he's taken care of. Even to the point of saying that it is not worth the loss of American life that would take place. So, um. Nine years later, after September 11th, the loss of [more] American lives was so worth it. [@$!&$%!]
ok - cusswords were flowing through my mind - mostly the really big ones...cuz i cannot even understand how this could be construed as logic. these guys have the audacity to piss on the American public - tell us it's raining - and if we complain or point out the truth we're being unpatriotic and 'emboldening the terrorists'. BS!
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strangely enough, race issues have been (and still continue to be) a heavy topic for convo the last week or so -- everything from actual interpersonal interactions and dealing with being a minority in day-to-day situations to the political speculation about the so-called "blackness" of Barack Obama. reactions of white and black [and black&white] people to the evidences of oppression here in America and around the world.
note: as to the issues of Obama's blackness. a writer named Debra Dickerson articulated it better than i could here, saying: "Notwithstanding their silence on the subject, blacks at the top are aware (and possibly troubled?) by Obama's lottery winnings: "black" but not black. Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, he steps into the benefits of black progress (like Harvard Law School) without having borne any of the burden, and he gives the white folks plausible deniability of their unwillingness to embrace blacks in public life."
what keeps coming up though, is the fact that, for the most part, white people never think about being white. race is only an issue when someone else brings it to them -- or perhaps when they open their own minds enough to recognize that the privilege they were born into is not universal. that and the fact that most of the time you ever bring this kind of thing up with white people you will be met with a great deal of hostility. which is probably another reason we don't ususally tend to bring it up with white people.
i'm very thankful that i was able to talk about this and some other particular issues with a friend of mine last wknd. she's always been really friendly and genuine with me, and i guess i kinda took it for granted, because i was completely frank with her. not thinking about the fact that her response might be another one of those i'd rather not deal with. i went ahead, though, and i really got the impression that more than anything else, i was informing her and contributing to her expanding her thought processes.
i know how hard it is to wrap your mind around some statements and revelations that seem to threaten your entire grasp of reality -- my dad did it to me a lot growing up -- and i fought it. and fought it. and fought it.
during this past week, i've realized more and more, that i was basically raised white. the times when dad would try to explain things to me and jenn, we simply couldn't understand what he was saying. speaking for myself, i know i was just blind. there was SO much i never saw. or if i did, i dismissed it. i can't even really explain why.
what i do know is that my teen years and my early twenties were a time when i finally started picking up on what my life was really going to be like. as charmed as most of my life has been, it won't always be that way -- and hasn't been. of course, me being 15 kinds of different, sometimes it's hard to determine just what some people's issues are with me...but then, sometimes, i just try to find some humor in it. most of the time i don't stay angry for a long time - cuz to boil it down: it doesn't do me any good.
my eyes are getting tired. g'night.