Lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, cheese, bacon, and a hotlink.
You can only get this at the lovely, locally owned Silver Fork.
Local is better. You cannot get it at Applebee's. I don't even like Applebee's.
I guess that makes me a food snob. Maybe Laura will pat my head and talk about her poop.
Here's something for you to think about: corporate hegemony is ethnic hegemony. Discuss.
Thanks to Claire @ 8Asians, who links us to a commentary by NPR's Robert Siegel about Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho.
Certainly, Cho was a Korean citizen, a detail that national and international media have run with. Just the fact that in the first couple days after the shootings, some were calling him Seung-Hui Cho (American style first name/family name), and others were calling him Cho Seung-Hui (Korean style family name first).
And of course, conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel exposed her instant racism by saying it was probabaly a "Paki" (read about it in Andrew Leonard's article in Salon.com)
Robert Siegel gets it right when he says, "People who don't know this country don't get this country." He was talking about foreign journalists, but he could have just as well been talking about Debbie Schlussel.
First of all, Schlussel should be fired. If Don Imus deserved to be fired (and he did), Schlussel deserves to be fired and slapped in the face with a shoe.
Second, it is not even useful look for some kind of foreign explanation behind Cho's actions. Siegel points out that his insane rants were grounded in American culture, not Korean. The Washington Post referrs to Cho as a local, from Centerville, Virginia.
A local. Cho was one of us. Regardless of his legal nationality, Cho grew up as a kind of American, just like the rest of us. There was no ideological or military training; just public schools and American TV.
Yes, he held a green card. But that doesn't explain anything. Cho was a deranged murderer, an American deranged murderer, like the Columbine kids, the Oklahoma City Bomber, the Unibomber. He's one of us. He's a member of a club that the government is not going to protect us from by fighting 'em "over there."
What an awful tragedy. Pray for the victims, pray for their families, but don't forget to pray for America. Most of all, say a prayer for the people who don't get this country. God help us all.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! The Limerick Festival ends at midnight tonight!
______
My parents immigrated to this country in the early 70s. I was born a year after they arrived, at St. Peter's Hospital in Olympia, Washington.
That makes my parents immigrants, and me, a first generation American. Because the word "generation" implies birth.
(But wait, JP, wasn't your mama born an American citizen in the Philippines? Yes, so technically she was the first generation of American citizens in the family, an American Filipina. So you can say I'm a second generation Amerian citizen, if you want. But I am the first generation of culturally Americans in my family. By the way, dad was born a Philippine citizen and naturalized in the 80s.)
I am not a "second generation Filipino immigrant" because I am not an immigrant. I was born here. Our Japanese friends have a tradition of counting the generations starting from immigrant (Issei, Nisei, Sansei...) , and certainlly I do not begrudge them for their tradition; however, I do not want to be counted that way.
Of course, people are, and should be proud of their immigrant heritage. I certainly admire my parents for having left everything they knew and making a life in a new, baffling country. And, yes, the culture that they brought with them is certainly part of the fabric of my own life.
However, I find it more useful to keep the term American on my ethnic label (Filipino American, first generation American) because it reminds people that I'm from here.
So am I trying distance myself from immigrants? No.
Granted, Americans have a long and storied history of treating immigrants like shit; right now, somewhere in this country, ICE is breaking apart a family and putting children at risk. And why, to protect us from.... ?
(If you just tried to use some kind of impact-on-economy argument to contradict me, go punch yourself in the neck.)
In fact, last year's Day without Immigrants was a day without me.
The truth is, lately, that the blunders and atrocities of the Bush Administration's war on Iraq, I've becoming increasingly ambivalent about being an American. Sing about that, Lee Greenwood.
bumba: naked. To go bumba; to be naked. Bumbastar; porn actor, or someone who is naked for too long.
labos: naked, exposed, without pants (i.e., Porky Pig)
burles: inverted slang for labos, therefore more fun. Also, reminds me of "burlesque."
panty: any underwear, including men's. E.g., "tell your brother to put her panties in the dryer with the panty of your dad."
puwet: butt. See also babot, ubet, tumbong.
singit: crotch. Funny because it sounds like English "Sing it!"
puki: vagina. See also pipit, pekpek, bao
patutin: weener
mabaho: stinky. Also mabantot (butt/fart-smelling), ma-anglit (rancid smelling), kilikili power (b.o.).
bungid: bend over.
Dear Bitch traffic,
I see all of you coming to my site, and I know you're looking for the story about J farting in the classroom, but I done told you.... this blog is about me, not J. When I have a farting story, I'll share it with you.
You may feel free to tell your own (or other people's) farting stories in the comments section if you like. And as for J, she will have to start her own blog.
So here are some of my thoughts for Monday's big BitchPhd post. It's gonna be a letter (or series of letters?) to Non-Brown America, with some information that might help them get to know us better.
Thanks, BitchPhd, for the discussion about Zizou's famous headbutt.
Sometimes, when brown folk get together, we talk about white people. We talk about how fearful some of them are of us, we talk about how theye're always drinking dairy, we talk about how they seem to love their mamas less than we do. Maybe it's not true, but that's what it seems like sometimes.
Once, in college, I was eating a hamburger at the fraternity house, and a guy named T came in and started telling mama jokes. Yo' mama jokes. I was like, man, don't talk about people's mamas. Of course he loved it, he told jokes about everybody's mama in the room. And everybody laughed good naturedly. Ha ha, oh T, that's a good one.
When he got to me, I said, don't. Don't talk about my mama.
And then he told a mama joke about my mama, so I said, take it back. Take it back, or you're going to wear this hamburger.
He made another joke, and I threw my hamburger onto his shirt. Mustard, onions, relish and grill grease, all down his front.
Hey! He cried angrily, it was just a JOKE! You ruined my SHIRT! It was just a JOKE.
I told you, T, with words: take it back, or you're going to wear this hamburger. I couldn't have made myself more clear.
It was a fucking JOKE, he said, this was a BRAND NEW SHIRT. You're going to buy me a new shirt!
You don't talk about my mama. I don't give a fuck about your shirt.
I walked out of the room, fully expecting to some kind of disciplinary complaint to come up during the week. They were going to call me before the chapter, and lecture me about my temper. And yes, I do have a temper. But my temper is not the problem.
The problem is that I value my mama, more than I value T's shirt.
So I was prepared to get kicked out of the fraternity that week. Seriously, why would I want to live in the same house with some white guys who loved a shirt more than my mama? What would have been the VALUE in holding my temper? A new shirt and a hamburger?
I was surprised that it was never discussed again, not even by my friends. I learned later that those guys all feared me.
The Chinese Community Drill Team
The Dragon comes out at Hing Hay Park.
Dragon, Dogs, and McDonald's "I am asian."
I love the Dogs! I like them even better than the lions!
Dinner at A's. Da la A si mangia bene. Vi faro vedere le foto dopo.
International District streetfair. I took the bus to the ID and met la H and la L at the Toyota Karaoke tent. The karaoke seemed to be about singing; we considered signing up but I decided not to once I saw how lame it was. The audience was sitting on their hands in the sun.
For some reason, McDonalds is promoting itself to Asian Americans, it's totally baffling, but the website is interesting. So of course, McDonalds had the most expensive looking presence at the streetfair, and to be fair, people were interested. The immigrants were, at least. Immigrants, wearing their sun visors were all over the McDonalds and Starbucks booths. Everyone else, including the Asian Americans, avoided the corporate booths like the plague.
The Republicans had a booth too, staffed by some young repubs who just... they just wear the wrong clothes to a street fair. Also, there was one rich Chinese guy wearing a republican tshirt. What a joke.
The booths to see were archipelago-inc, which is the awesome Filipino American culture t-shirt company I should have started in the 90s if I had any business sense. They are based out of Seattle and their shirts are all awesome. Let me know if you need any cultural explanation of the t-shirts. The other cool stuff was from spicy brown, run by some Japanese American kids who were quick to point out they were from LA (we know, son, we know). La H got pretty verklempt when she saw the salmon family tshirt.
There was also entertainment at Hing Hay Plaza; mostly dojos on display. There was a dragon team (lazy), some lions (shy) and some dogs (AWESOME!). I told la L that the UW cheerleaders should make a Husky mascot that worked like the Chinese costumes, instead of stupid Butch the Husky, who first appeared in 1994 when the UW athletic dept. discovered marketing. I told la L but she either didn't hear me or thought it was a bad idea.
Mool naeng myun. Ichiro was closed, so instead we went to the Hana at the Great Wall for some mool naeng myun. It wasn't that good, but it was fun surprising the Korean ladies with our addiciton for mool naeng myun. When we went to pay, I saw them sitting at a table eating salad rolls. Hey, I said, you're eating Vietnamese food! They giggled, yah, sometimes we get tired of eating that (pointing to the kitchen) all the time.
The neighborhood. Rushed home for an HOA meeting; it lasted an hour. I ended my term as HOA Secretary. We knew that the drughouse family and the B's were moved out, but la K broke the news that V was gone as well. Amazing! I think the Section 8 people across the alley drove her out.
With all the yuppies moving in across the street, the neighborhood is getting whiter; white neighbors = higher property values, which in turn gets me closer to my latest dream of owning a fabulous condo in Pioneer Square/ID/stadium district. I'm hoping the new owners of the drughouse tear it down and build a bunch of skinny townhouses for MORE YUPPIES.
Of course, more yuppies changes the feel of the neighborhood. White people tend to stay inside, so it's harder to meet them. I finally met one of the new neighbors across the street, and only because I've been walking through their alley on the way to the bus stop with the express purpose of running into and introducing myself to the new yuppies. I forget his name, but he seemed like a nice white kid and he had a lot of tatoos, so he's more like the old neighbors than the new yuppies.
Arrr. Dinnarrrr at Ivarrrrrr's; cajun style cod and chips with a cup of salmon chowder and an iced tea. Yes, it was too much sodium. Arrr. Then we went to see the pirate movie. Ay, the sea turtles!
I haven't done my Chinese homework yet.
Filipino American word of the day: koriput. It means 'stingy' and there's a tinge of humor to it.
My financial terror level has been set to Red: Koriput. I am broke as a joke. (get it?)
It's only the 5th of the month, but I'm already operating on emergency procedures. After months of successfully saving, I'm down to two digits in savings and checking. The culprits? University credits that my grant didn't cover, and 30,000 mile check up.
Don't worry, mama, my refi will go through this month, so instead of paying my mortage, I will take care of my property taxes, and then the rest of my savings for the year will go toward our trip to Europe.
Ay. Anyway, all my bills are paid for the month, so that's good news. Until payday, I will allow myself to use the credit card for a) groceries, b) piano lessons, c) gas, d) new glasses. THAT'S IT. No more eating in restaurants, buying school supplies, seeing movies, replacing light bulbs, getting my hair did... none of that good stuff.
Luckily, I have plenty of groceries now, so I doubt that I'll get to the point of crying into tuna and rice at all.
__________________________
Dear non-latin world,
I have seen you do "latin" ice dancing, and "latin" so-you-think-you-can-dance now, and I'm sick of your spicy stereotypes. Some of you think latin=vulgar, and that's why when you try to do latin dancing, you look vulgar.
You want to know the secret of latin dancing? There are two secrets: a) your posture must be impeccable; b) the partners must act like they are either proud of each other or they want each other. The end.
So no slouching. No writhing. No hairography. No molesting. The 'sensuality' that people talk about when they talk about latin dancing comes from being sensual, not dancing sensual.
Love, your favorite Spanish teacher.
ps. Yes, I am your favorite Spanish teacher. Make a note of it.
Inside Edition is doing an expose on sushi restaurants; how fish is often kept in the "temperature danger zone" (above 41 degrees) and how they've found e coli on samples. They tested ten restaurants in LA and DC.
Here is the snobby Seattle response.
First of all, how does fresh fish get from the Pacific Ocean all the way to Washington DC? Answer: it doesn't. Therefore, I don't give a rip about sushi in DC.
Moving on to LA--the report showed beautiful pieces of sushi from obviously high end restaurants, sending pieces to the lab, and hitting them with a laser thermometer. THEN they cut to the gross violations, the crappy sushi dive in the crappy strip mall. Here's a hint: don't go to the crappy dive.
Here's another hint, and white people, this will be hard for you to hear, but try to understand: go to a sushi restaurant that has JAPANESE PEOPLE in it. Seriously, you have to get over your fears.
Ok, final point of Seattle snobbery. The question on Inside Edition is "How do you know if your sushi is safe?" I don't know, children, how do you know if your hamburger is safe? Do people die of sushi contamination? Not that I know. Do people die of hamburger contamination? Ten years ago, kids and old people died when they ate e coli contaminated hamburgers from Jack In The Box on 50th and the Ave in the UDistrict.
So what is this about then, Inside Edition? It's about playing off the fears that white Americans have of asians and asian Americans. Come on, yes it is. Don't you see it? Is there an expose on "How Safe Is Your Salad?" How about, "What The Hell Is In Your Milk?"
Seriously, our white friends and neighbors drink hella milk. You figure it out.
H's friend in England sent this problematically named candy to her. We have yet to sample, but but I'm going to send a copy this image to a Congalese guy I know.
Here's another ethnically themed snack. When will I be able to snack on something named after a stereotype of ignorant white people? Hmph, it better taste good.
I wrote a blog earlier that didn't get published. It was about a dream I had that D broke into somebody's messy house and was pouring out the liquor cabinet like it was her own. When the owner finally showed up, I woke up panting. It was a great dream, with sunlight, hardwood floors, dirty dishes and clean bras next to each other on the counter.
