If you live in Boston, you may have heard some version of this story, in which the Ben & Jerry's franchise at Harvard Square decided to make a flavor for Jeremy Lin, apparently couldn't remember anything about Jeremy Lin other than that he's Chinese-American, and decided to mix lychee and fortune cookie pieces in with plain vanilla FroYo. The initial test batch received complaints that the fortune cookie pieces were soggy, and some sort of "initial backlash" that has not been reported on in detail anywhere, meaning that it could have ranged anywhere from someone throwing a giant fit and threatening to sue, to a few people giving it a side-eye or eyerolls or disdainful glances down the nose, or any number of critical comments in between. As sometimes happens when a new product is introduced and is doing an initial run at only one location, the store responded to its customers' comments by tweaking their product--in this case, replacing the soggy fortune cookie pieces with waffle cone.

Whether or not you live in Boston, by this time, you may have heard the version of this story that goes "THE PC POLICE BULLIED BEN AND JERRY'S (THE ENTIRE CORPORATION) INTO RUINING A PERFECTLY DELICIOUS FLAVOR FOR NO REASON AT ALL EXCEPT THAT THEY HATE FUN AND DELICIOUSNESS, AND ETHNIC STEREOTYPING IS TOTALLY NOT RACIST AT ALL AND YOU ARE JUST LOOKING FOR THINGS TO GET OFFENDED ABOUT AND MAKING A BIG DEAL OUT OF NOTHING, BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY THE ONLY OPTIONS ARE 'BIG DEAL' AND 'NO DEAL AT ALL', AND THE ONLY LEVELS OF PROBLEMS ARE 'NOTHING' AND 'KKK RALLY,' BECAUSE NOBODY WOULD EVER MAKE MILDLY CRITICAL COMMENTS ABOUT SOMETHING MILDLY RACIST, LET ALONE RESPOND TO THEM, BECAUSE MIDDLING LEVELS OF THINGS DON'T EXIST IN MY SIMPLIFIED WORLDVIEW."

Duuuuuuuuuuuudes. If Ben & Jerry's does not want to be even a little bit questionably racist, they are perfectly allowed to realize when they are being a little bit questionably racist by accident and quietly knock it off. You do not have to have massively and irredeemably pissed off every single Chinese person ever so badly that they'll never talk to you again in order to decide that maybe you should not always keep doing exactly what you're doing.

The original flavor may not have been particularly malicious, but it was definitely the sort of thing where you can, in the manner of Yo, Is This Racist?, imagine the creative session where this was greenlit:

"We have to make a flavor for Jeremy Lin!"
"Who's Jeremy Lin?"
"A famous Chinese dude."
"What Chinese foods would work in ice cream?"
"Er... lychee?"
"Good! What else?"
"Fortune cookies?"
"Excellent! Throw it in the FroYo and put it in a carton."

~FIN~

Is this malicious and motivated by intense hatred of Chinese people? No. Do you know what it is? LAZY. Way motherfucking lazy. It's lazy, half-assed, lazy, ill-thought-out, lazy, slapdash, and lazy. Do you know what you call it when you get as far as someone's ethnicity and are then too lazy to continue putting in thought or effort into what you're doing?

motha fuckin RACISM

The fact that they didn't seem to actually test whether the foods they're putting together ACTUALLY went well together or just sounded good also highlights how little thought went into the whole process, which does make the whole thing come off as more racist than if the product had turned out actually meet the same level of quality we expect from Ben & Jerry's. And it makes it particularly irritating that one of the more frequent responses I've heard to this is a sort of knee-jerk "That sounds delicious!" Yeah, it does sound delicious, off the bat; this is likely part of why they decided to put in the ice cream instead of, like, sweet and sour sauce. However, it would appear that it did not turn out to actually be all that delicious in actuality (and if they'd given it a second thought instead of moving right from "sounds good off the bat" to "serve it to people in actuality," it might have occurred to someone that fortune cookies are an extremely porous baked good and get soggy if you look at them sadly, and that ice cream starts to melt immediately at the temperatures you generally eat it). Businesses do not survive by refusing to fix problems with their products and digging their heels in going "Nuh uh, it totally SOUNDS fine, so it IS fine."

Also, even if you still think that something being lazy and stupid in regards to race is totally not the same thing as being racist, because it's not mean, it's just lazy and stupid, guess what: Lazy and stupid are not virtues. You should not strive for them. You should not be focused on how much lazy and stupid you can get away with before it becomes racist/sexist/whatever; you should be trying to be as not-lazy and not-stupid as you can be, and if someone points out that something you're doing is lazy and stupid, that is also a valid criticism and you should respond to it, even if it's got nothing to do with racism whatsoever. And while lazy shit might fly in some spaces, I see absolutely no idea why Harvard Square should be expected to be one of them. It's Harvard Square. Boston as a city is packed solid with more higher education than any one city should be expected to support, and Harvard is supposedly the most prestigious, elite private college in the country. I would be completely unsurprised if the most common form of negative feedback on the flavor was that it was so boring and obvious. Because that is the thing about stereotypes--in addition to being offensive, they are tedious. Tediousness is also a bad thing that people are allowed to not like, and to refrain from showering you with compliments on your cleverness for, and even to complain about, if they think listening to themselves complain will at least be more interesting.

None of this shit makes anybody the mythical PC police. But the anti-PC police are out in full force, Yahoo Sports being one of he worst offenders (sorry, not linking). Sadly, this includes Voltaire, who I follow on Facebook in order to keep up on wacky, dark, and whimsical things, but who, it appears, is still a middle-aged white guy. (How's that for not being PC?) Apparently, some people think that if they are not allowed to rely on boring-ass stereotypes, they will have nothing to say, because actually thinking about what you're saying and trying to come up with original and accurate ways to express your ideas (not to mention coming up with your own damn ideas) is the antithesis of creativity.

Some people are "tired of PC culture". Do you know what I'm tired of? White guys complaining about how totally oversensitive everyone else is. I am tired of anti-PC culture, like being expected to think about what you say or do or what words mean before you open you mouth is just so hard, those women and minorities and immigrants and people with disabilities just don't know how hard it is. I am tired of people who think that any action you take to be a little more considerate of other people, no matter how small, means that you are "caving" and "making a big deal" (again: small deals. They exist. If you do not understand this, you should withdraw from having opinions until you develop the ability to think with nuance) and blah blah blah. I am tired of listening to people go on long 'splainy rants about how that wasn't really racist or sexist or homophobic, they didn't mean "gay" like that, etc. I am tired of people claiming that supporting the status quo and being racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, and basically disrespectful of other people is now the brave, embattled, noble minority position. I am tired of being very, very, very, seriously and painfully aware that most of the people I know are assholes, most of the people I have ever been friends with or loved are assholes, most of my family is assholes, most artists whose work I have admired are assholes, and that realizing this makes me more like them--smug and self-congratulatory about how much better I am than everybody else.

I am tired of assholes who think that intent is fucking magic and I am tired of striking the terrible bargain and I am tired of being tired of people.

I am twenty-four years old and I am already thoroughly sick of this shit.

Cash Flow: the name for the fact that if you have $1000 starting cash in your checking account, $2000 in savings, $3000 in income, $4000 in your PayPal account, a $5000 tax refund, $10000000000000000 from any other source in the world... and $1001 in expenditures, you WILL be desperately scrounging around under your couch cushions for loose change and hoping you can get to the bank early enough tomorrow morning, because otherwise you WILL overdraw and get hit with overdraft fees. Because while you have to pay your bills promptly (and perhaps automatically), any incoming money can just take its sweet-ass time.

Am extra annoyed because part of my extreme cash flow crunch right now is because I had to pay sales tax and registration fees on my car TWICE. I paid the dealer in NJ because in NJ they take care of that for you. Exactly nine days into the ten-day registration window for MA, I was told that they couldn't do it and I had to go to the DMV to do registration and pay the sales tax myself. Dealer said they would refund my fees. Well, I went to the DMV on Monday, and MassDOT has cashed the check I wrote them, and my check from the NJ dealer hasn't arrived yet.

What's got me worried is that my $10 for Netflix bills automatically tomorrow. If I don't deposit literally like five dollars into checking tomorrow before that bill arrives, then my rent check will bounce should my landlord decide to actually cash it before I get either my paycheck, my refund from Nissan, or my Elance payment. Since it has been almost two weeks since I actually wrote that check, it is conceivable he may cash it soon. Transfers from savings take 2 business days, timesheets at work get submitted tomorrow but I think they send you the actual check through the mail, transfers from Elance to PayPal take two business days, and transfers from PayPal to BOA take four business days, and also tomorrow is Friday. So while I should be able to to do the five dollars because I have that much in cash in my wallet, I can't avoid getting absolutely down to the wire until at least the middle of next week.

I don't want to be complaining, because I've been in worse spots and I know a lot of other people are in worse spots--I'm fully employed at a fairly generous wage, plus the side job; I was merely underemployed and for only about six weeks before that. I have money in savings. I am doing pretty well overall, it's just that what I have immediately ACCESSIBLE is less than what I need to be immediately accessible and I don't want to pay forty dollars in overdraft to those tax-evading vampires at BOA because the Nissan dealership is too unprofessional to take a look at their out-of-state registration policies before billing me for them. BOA paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profits last year; they can leave me my $40 so I can keep futilely trying to pay off my student loans. (I think the Dept. of Ed. actually does not actually want my money, just to ruin my credit. Otherwise they would not make it so difficult to give them money. Also, I will never forgive them for unconsolidating my previously consolidated loans and thus tripling my monthly payment. Payments, plural, now. One of which cannot be done online, but has a website anyway just to waste your time trying to register.)

Also, I am still looking for housing for the summer. I need it to be less than $600/month and I need to be able to get into the Back Bay neighborhood in Boston via public transit in under an hour. That is all. When I get this squared away I will be much less stressed. If anyone knows of anything that fits that criteria, please let me know; Craigslist is a madhouse right now. Also when I get this sorted out I can stop spending the precious few hours I have in the evening looking for housing and can do some of my Elance assignments, so I don't have to spend all weekend doing it.

Blargh. I'm sorry I'm so stressed and angry and whiny, but I have been stressed all week, and when I started this week I thought "I only need to be stressed through this week!" and I assumed that by the end of the week, either the housing or at least one form of income would have gone through. But I end the week basically the same as I started it, except with even less cash on hand. So that is frustrating. And I haaaaate living on credit, but I did need to eat and buy train tickets this week.

*stresses and is frustrated*

In good news: I like my job! And they are test running free wi-fi on the commuter trains, so tomorrow I will experiment with bringing my netbook and seeing if I can't do some of my househunting or book-reviewing during the three hours a day I'm spending on trains these days. Because that would be awesome.

So, some of you may remember that my junior year (two years ago), I got into a ridiculous car accident the day before Thanksgiving. You may also remember that last year, I got into a slightly less ridiculous car wreck the day after Thanksgiving, and had a parking ticket waiting for me in Worcester when I got back.

This year, Thanksgiving week is ALSO sucking hardcore re: cars.

I stayed at Anders' place Sunday night after the Blind Guardian concert (WHICH WAS AWESOME), and parked on the street because that is what I usually have to do in Worcester, despite the frequency with which cars on the streets get stolen and/or vandalized. Monday morning I went to my car to go to work and discovered that the passenger-side window had been smashed in, and my GPS had been stolen. (I tended to 'hide' it by putting it on the floor as under the seat or as far under the dashboard and I could fit it; it didn't fit in my glove compartment because the TomTom was taped to its bulky dashboard mount, because the suction didn't work properly, because nothing in my life ever works quite 100% correctly. And usually I deal and just duct tape shit together and am like WHATEVER, SEE, I AM A CHILL PERSON WHO IS NOT BENT OUT OF SHAPE BY DUMB LITTLE THINGS, and then something like this happens, and then every minor thing that goes wrong makes me go all OH NO SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN I AM SO STRESSED I CANNOT DEAL and then I cry, for like MONTHS, until I just can't be that stressed anymore and go back to duct-taping stuff. But I digress.)

My first mistake in dealing with this was in calling AAA and having them tow it to the Chevy dealer down the street, on the basis that since I have a Chevy and they fix Chevies, they could fix my car. Turns out they do not do auto glass. They recommended me to a company who does do auto glass, but did not have my window and would not have had it in stock for at least another day, which was not good as I had to go to work. This company did not offer to collision-tape the window so I could use it in the meantime. Googled "auto glass massachusetts" and made twenty phone calls in one hour (I counted) and managed to find a JN Phillips in Worcester that had my window and could get it out to me that day and called my insurance to cancel the overnight order from the other company. They said they would have someone out to me by 2h00 or 2h30 at the latest.

JN Phillips dude showed up at 3h30 or 4 and informed me that he could not put in the windowpane because the window motor was broken. Talked to Diamond Chevy dude who said he could order the window motor and it would get here on Friday. I was not happy but need my window fixed, so I ordered it for what, according to the Internets, appears to be three to five times the parts' actual price. Also, the invoice that I have because I had to prepay because it was a "special order" says I bought a window regulator. I do not know what that means but the Internet tells me the motor and the regulator are different.

Anyway, JN Phillips dude told me he would call in another JN Phillips dude to collision-wrap the window so I could go to work the next day, and that that would take about an hour and he would call me as soon as it was done. Did not get phone call. When I called them back, they told me the collision wrap was done (yay) and had in fact been done a ten-fifteen that morning (uhh... what?). By this time, the Chevy dealer was closed, and the otherwise totally unprotected outdoor parking lot was blockaded off by large shiny Suburbans, which seem like a nice target for Worcester carjackers, and do nothing to protect the cars in the lot from anyone willing to do damage to the cars, but did prevent me from taking my car that I had not in fact had any work done on so I could get to work on TIME the next morning. So I was late.

Today, I went to the auto shop in Bedford for an oil change and to have the leak in my car looked at, which I was originally going to do Monday. Leak turned out to be a rotted fuel tank, so replacing that was expensive, but is now done. They also looked at the window, determined the problem was the power switch (which the Internet tells me is different from a window motor OR regulator), and replaced that for less than half the price of the motor-or-regulator that I bought. So there are two possible scenarios here:

1. JN Phillips will NOT be able to replace my glass on Monday because the switch AND the motor-or-regulator were fucked up, and I will have to pay to get the damn motor-or-regulator installed, and go at least another day with loud plastic sheeting where my window should be, OR
2. JN Phillips WILL be able to replace my glass on Monday, meaning only the switch was fucked up, and the expensive special order motor-or-regulator is THE WRONG PART, which will make me wonder if they even actually LOOKED at the window or just listened to what the GLASS technician said, and I will have to do my best to be assertive and demand a refund even though they don't do refunds for special orders (that sounds like a good reason to not ever keep anything in stock so EVERYTHING becomes a special order AND you don't have to pay for storage! that should be fucking illegal!) on the basis that the part was sold to be under false pretenses; ie, that it was the part I needed to fix my window, even though it was not.

I am having trouble deciding which one of these scenarios would piss me off more.

And if I cannot get the part refunded, it is looking like I'll probably be able to sell it online for like... a QUARTER of what I got it for. Fuck you, Diamond Chevrolet. I will not be going back to you ever again, unless every other car shop in Massachusetts simultaneously explodes.

So now I get to drive to NJ tomorrow with no window, risk the Black Friday sales to try and get a new GPS at a price I can afford after having spent more than I made this pay period on my crappy old car, drive back with no window, and try not to spend another unnecessary cent for at least the rest of 2010.

Also, I seem to be coming down with a cough, which is part of why I am up and ljing angrily at midnight when I have to get up at 6h45 tomorrow - I went to bed three hours ago and I kept waking myself up.

Anyway, back to bed to hope it goes away by morning. If I actually get sick tomorrow I am going to have to punch something.

Apparently the reason I can't log into ET's staffmate program is because they are closed until March. Apparently this is a habitual thing, despite the fact that I was hired in February last year.

They couldn't have told me this before I quit my job at Hanover because I thought I'd only have time for one? Or, y'know, at all?

Job-hunting sucks. Job-hunting in this economy, in January, without a car, is going to be a bloody nightmare.

Am super not happy about this.

HALP

So, if I can make it work, I really would like to do the five-week two-credit study abroad internship sumthing or other in Quebec. And I would like those two credits to go towards finishing my French minor so I can just worry about my major and maybe taking something fun senior year, because, as flattering as it is that Ferly thinks I can major in French too, she also probably thinks I'm getting through this semester okay, considering she still made me do my presentation today, and I still have to have the first five pages of my paper in on Wednesday, and is otherwise not being a fraction as nice about the whole almost-dying-and-not-having-my-school-stuff-on-me-all-vacation thing as Tapply. And I do NOT want my next semester to be as busy as this one (which I'd have to do to take National Imagination, which is required for the major--it'd be a fifth course), and I do NOT want to be taking TWO capstone courses fall semester next year (even if I only took three classes that semester instead of four), and I do not want to deal with all the other fussy little major requirements that are on the website but Ferly is not telling me about. And mostly I just don't want to go through this semester again. I just want to go to Quebec. And have a life. I think I'm going to take the suggestion to major as a compliment and apply my recently hard-earned lesson of Slow Down And Chill The Fuck Out.

And at some point I will have to deal with dealing with this whole car/driving situation over again from scratch, and seeing if maybe this time when I say "OH HAI WILL SOME GROWNUP SORT OF PERSON DRIVE WITH ME FROM JERSEY TO WORCESTER? I THINK THAT WOULD MAKE ME FEEL BETTER CONSIDERING MY TOTAL LACK OF LONG-DISTANCE HIGH-SPEED INTERSTATE EXPERIENCE, AND MY KIND OF LIMITED DRIVING EXPERIENCE IN GENERAL" maybe someone will. Because apparently leaving me to fuck around and figure it out on my own is, like, rilly dangerous. (Which *I*, actually, knew already, which is why I *asked.* Several times. But I will only sit around begging to be babied for so long.) So... yeah. I should save some time and effort for dealing with that.

Belt test in a week. Not half so nervous as I am for regular class tomorrow, because judo with half my skull bruised under my hair will not be fun. My legs are, at the moment, green, but they are legs, they can take it.

I will be so glad when this semester is over.

Hrm. So. Stuff.

Currently, I should not be allowed to focus on anything but midterms, no matter what. I have a French paper due the 20th, which is more or less on "Communists Think Religion Is Stupid," and an English paper due the 24th, which is on "William Blake Is A Douche."

Friday I went to work, which was awesome because it was bartending, but was also less than awesome because around 8 or 9 o'clock I came down with the worst headache I've ever had, and there were still three hours left on the shift and we were in Kent, Connecticut. By the time I got home at 2h30 in the morning I was crying from the pain, and couldn't even take any Tylenol because I couldn't swallow. So I went to bed, but couldn't actually sleep, so headache was still there on Saturday.

Saturday was Ren Faire, but of course I didn't go. Instead I stayed home, took pills, napped, and did homework. I'm spending a lot of weekend nights doing homework lately. Sunday I actually went out and was social because Ally was up and I wanted to see her before she left again, which was nice, except that my head still hurt and I have metric fuck-tons of homework to do, but oh well.

Today: Work at Hanover earlier. Still have headache (on upside, back not sore anymore, mostly). So stressed I start to cry every time the church bells come on. I think I need a shower before I can continue trying to do this French paper. Probably won't finish story for Tapply but hopefully he'll be willing to give me a bit of a break for being sick and super busy, since everything I've written for that class so far he seems to like. Have started taking melatonin supplements because I cannot afford to spend 10 hours a day in bed. Trying not to notice how quickly my social life is dwindling into absolutely nothing. Oh, well. Onward! Papers to write...

Today was fun. It was also long, complicated, sunny, fattening, and really expensive. Am not sure I will be up for doing this every year.

Dad officially not paying car insurance; the buying-new-car option is now Plan A. Notion of kicking in I'm-not-sure-how-much-yet-but-lots of money for a car is making me regret every cent I spend, especially on things like food. (Took a lot of the fun out of today, since today was basically all eating stuff.) Ergo, still cranky.

Slightly ahead on my homework schedule, somehow, but still starting to feel like it'd be best for me to limit any and all forms of "fun" to what I get off Netflix for a bit. Fun requiring expenditure of energy, money, or time sitting around waiting for people is just not leaving me feeling like it was quite worth it. This feeling may wear off quite soon, but for right now... ugh.

There are certain things I can never, ever, ever get used to, even if they are not surprises. It is one thing to know the truth and another thing to see it in action.

Am glad the school year's starting soon, and that I get to go home for a bit in a week. Worcester's getting a little boring. Liz and I are being forced to actually get creative about how we're spending our evenings because there's not much to do and not many people to do it with. Yesterday we went to Michaels and bought stuff for making our own Tarot decks (also candymaking supplies (candymaking and drinking are an amazing combination, btw)). Am pretty sure this project will last us what's left of the summer, until more people show up and I can throw a dance party.

I also bought books recently, because I am incapable of not buying books, so I always have the option of sitting in my room reading and writing. Will probably do that today once am done with the mundane things I didn't do yesterday, like cleaning and trying to figure out how to get to this job interview on Sunday (it's in Northborough, I don't know if Worcester's public transit goes to Northborough, I hope it does, I can't bum a ride off anyone because the people with cars all also have lives, I want my car so I can have a life too, I sound like a broken record...). If I have to cancel or reschedule I'm going to be completely impossible to deal with until at least the 23rd.

In happier if ridiculously shallow news, I bought a pink shirt. JUST TO BLOW EVERYONE'S MINDS. It is, however, exactly the pink shirt you'd expect me to get once you get your head around me buying something such an unGothy color--it's a mottled pink girly-tee with a big black distressed Jolly Roger on the front, specifically PirateMod's Jolly Roger Evolution 1 design. Also bought their messenger bag, bringing the number of PirateMod things in my personal inventory up to 7. They're a little expensive, but options for classy pirate gear are limited, and I like to be classy. Also, any website that has an entire "PirateGoth" line was obviously created just for me, so it would be very ungrateful of me not to buy all their shit, yes?

These past two nights I've gone to bed after 2 am and woken up a bit before 9. How is this possible? Jon went away for the weekend without disabling his alarm clock, that's how. >.< At any rate, I'm going to go start being productive before the alarm shuts off by itself and the ensuing quiet (unless the church bells start up again) makes me want to go back to bed.

Edit: No buses, no trains, no one to get a ride from. Cab cost prohibitive. Am in singularly bad mood and may stay that way for a while. You have been warned.