BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Thirteen Popular Stereotypes Reevaluated
Stereotype: Black people like to eat watermelon.
Status: True. However, this does not arise, as popularly believed, from nineteenth-century traditions of cuisine in the American south. Rather, it is the result of African-Americans’ well-documented predilection for foods that are compound words, which is why they also prefer pancakes to waffles, crème brûlée to custard, and snickerdoodles to macaroons.
Stereotype: White people can’t dance.
Status: White people can dance, but shouldn’t, out of common courtesy.
Stereotype: Asians are good at math.
Status: Wrong. Asians are great at math.
Stereotype: Blondes have more fun.
Status: Sometimes. Blondes who spend the extra for the Disney Pass with Five-Day Park Hopper® Option have more fun.
Stereotype: Poles are stupid.
Status: False. Most poles, including flag, barber, and stripper, are smarter than a typical Polish person, except for those smart enough to leave Poland.
Stereotype: Dogs are more intelligent than cats.
Status: Dogs = Ph.D. in Quantum Physics from M.I.T.; cats = Online Associate of Arts degree with a concentration in General Studies from the University of Phoenix, “Committed to student success for over 30 years.” You be the judge.
Stereotype: Gays are gossipy, flamboyant, melodramatic drama queens who are obsessed with their grooming habits and appearance.
Status: Oh, Mary, you don’t know the half of it.
Stereotype: Eskimos kiss by rubbing noses.
Status: True. They also sneeze with their kneecaps.
Stereotype: Jews are cheap.
Status: Only when buying rounds in Irish pubs, because you know how those people drink.
Stereotype: All Mexicans are lazy.
Status: This is a misconception that can be traced to a never-corrected typographical error in the 10th edition (1901) of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. The passage in question should in fact have read, “Tall Mexicans are lazy.” Short Mexicans are known to be quite industrious.
Stereotype: Large-breasted women are frivolous, air-headed bimbos who readily lend themselves to objectification.
Status: I’m sorry, what was the question? I can’t stop staring at your enormous jugs.
Stereotype: Short people got no reason to live.
Status: Not if they’re Mexican. Those people just work themselves to death. Otherwise, non-Mexican short people can make themselves very useful indeed by catering to the whims of the average-sized.
Stereotype: Old people are virile sexual dynamos with a youthful outlook and a keen, sassy sense of fashion and fun.
Status: This stereotype sponsored by the AARP.
Stone Soup: A Cautionary Tale
One day, in the bleak, wintry dead of February, a man showed up in the village with an enormous cast iron pot. It was one of those huge jobbies from a maple sugaring scene by Grandma Moses, only more realistic; sixty, seventy gallons, easily. The man, who had huge biceps from lugging this thing around who knows where for God knows how long, set it down smack in the middle of the town square, which was actually more of an irregular trapezoid, and started to build a fire. A few people gathered nearby to watch, wondering what the hell he was doing, and whether he had a permit. He began to fill the pot with snow. Soon the fire, which had grown considerably in the span of three sentences, was roaring, then bellowing, then clearing its throat and hawking up a loogie into a nearby snowbank. The snow in the pot melted and came to a steaming, rolling boil, having passed from the solid state into liquid and finally into gas, per science. With a critical eye, the man began to survey the stones that dotted the ground around him. Hefting one in his hand and examining it closely, as though to judge its quality, he finally tossed it into the pot. He continued his search intently, discarding some stones as unworthy, lobbing others into the hot liquid.
Finally, Clem Partridge, a clichéd old New Englander who clutched a burlap sack of Yankee ingenuity in one hand and a covered bridge in the other, spoke up.
“What’re you doing there, fella?” he asked in a drawl heavily accented with thrift and cheese curds.
“I’m making soup from stones,” said the man.
“Do you have a permit?” asked the town clerk, who was hated by all for his notorious permit-pushing ways.
“Right here,” said the man, pulling from his pocket the permit the town clerk had issued to him less than fifteen minutes earlier.
A mannish woman, Ann Drogeny, of the Boston Drogenys, spoke up. “So, this rock soup. Is this the thing from the infomercial? Is it the fat-burning stuff?”
“No,” said the man. It’s stone soup. Just stones and water. Delicious. Best soup you ever had. But what would really make it great is a carrot or two.”
Least Scary Gerund-Titled Horror Films
The Scolding
The Shirking
The Averaging
The Guesstimating
The Sautéeing
The Starching
The Spackling
The Chafing
The Prancing
The Presoaking
The Deicing
The Brushing-Up
The Comparing and Contrasting
The Stopping and Asking for Directions
The Spaying or Neutering
The Upholstering II: The Reupholstering
Old Years’ Resolutions
Stop wasting so much hunting-and-gathering time painting bison on the walls of my cave
Perfect my two-dimensional Egyptian walk
Tone down my slaughter-every-male-child-under-two policy to a five-minute time out
Eat more zinc lozenges before the Black Plague arrives in my village
Reorganize my moveable type
Consolidate and streamline my blaspheming to merely insisting that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around
Accuse, try, convict, and burn more witches
Revive the flagging pastry industry by encouraging my poverty-stricken subjects to eat cake
Forget about slowly poisoning Mozart and just stab him in the neck with a quill pen before his career overshadows mine
Read Moby Dick, then kill Moby Dick
Invent moving pictures, then invent pornographic moving pictures
Stop swallowing live goldfish to impress flappers, and just brush up on my Charleston
Stop asking the guys selling apples on the street for a nickel for a discount
Release Amelia Earhart from her decades-long imprisonment in the well I dug in the basement of my moth-filled house
Combine my interests in feminism and solving the energy crisis by developing a burning-bra-powered automobile
Give Mr. Dangerfield the respect he has so long deserved
Be a Pepper, like the commercial tells me
Upgrade my mimeograph to a dot-matrix printer
Publish a book of my secret Pac-Man patterns and retire a millionaire
Finish the job that Kristin Shepard failed at so miserably and shoot J.R. myself
Restrict my use of the word “gnarly” to objects that are, in fact, knotted and/or twisted
Restrict my use of the word “awesome” to objects that fall into the category of the Grand Canyon
Invest my entire life’s savings in macarena futures
Start a “weblog”; come up with a shorter, cooler name for “weblog,” like “eblo.”
Worst Punchlines Ever
“Four: one to hold the light bulb, and three to set the orphanage on fire!”
“So Helen Keller signs, ‘The Aristocrats!’”
“The Eskimo virologist says, ‘It’s a deadly new Arctic-based strain we’re calling “Cool AIDS!”’”
“‘Need Another Seven Acrobats,’ to replace the seven acrobats whose net collapsed under the weight of falling space shuttle debris!”
“And the parrot says to the bartender, ‘He’s trying to tell you that he’s going into hypoglycemic shock, and do you have any orange juice?’”
“Then the rabbi says to the priest, ‘I’m an undercover agent for the FBI, and you’re under arrest for possession and distribution of child pornography!’”
“Finally, the blonde says, ‘Sorry, I’m dyslexic, and also recovering from major back surgery. I’m doing the best I can, and just trying to fit in. Why are you being so mean?,’ and begins to weep quietly in front of the entire student body!”
“Acacia peuce, a native Australian hardwood, has a specific gravity of 1.425, and therefore does not float. Other unusually dense woods with similar properties include red bauhinia (1.39), Brazilian ebony (1.25), and lignum vitae (1.25)!”
“Scientology!”
“Zipper? I hardly even know ’er, now that she’s in the advanced stages of dementia!”
“To get to the other side of the KKK rally!”
“It was originally thought that one of the crew members forgot to close the screen door, but a NATO investigation determined that an invisible stress fracture resulting from improperly annealed steel, which quickly worsened during an unusually deep dive, ultimately caused the hull to fail, sending the submarine to a watery grave in the North Sea at a depth of approximately 2,750 feet, nearly 18 hours after its departure from Gdansk, on the Polish coast!”
Which noble gas likes to prance around the house in sexy, lacy lingerie while his wife is away on business? We’re sure we don’t know—though maybe our local dollar store should change their sign to read “she-lium balloons.”
Rumor has it that a certain aging precious metal has secretly been maintaining its honey-colored youth with extensive plastic surgery. However, as strict adherents to the golden rule, we find it unseemly to speculate further.
“Ho” may just be the symbol for holmium, or it might describe the way one rare earth was behaving after six drinks too many at fluorine’s annual holiday party. Either one. Or both.
Speed it up, we say! What will it take to get the lead out? Of the closet? If that happens to be where you store your lead? Just saying.
Fresh from a messy divorce, this highly reactive—or is it just randy?—gas has been celebrating his newfound freedom by combining with anything that isn’t nailed down. Which one, you ask? “One” might also refer to an atomic number. Might. Let’s just say that your water may not be as “clean” as you think. Really. If I were you, I’d start making ice cubes out of Purell.
Several actinides have been grumbling that one of their own has a severe problem with body odor. “P.U.,” they say. Or, alternately, “Pu.” Then they choke from the stench. Don’t bother looking it up. It’s the abbreviation for plutonium, which is an element, and therefore cannot sue. Even sulfur is holding its nose.
How does one statuesque post-transition metal manage to maintain a svelte atomic weight of 114.818—very close to, or exactly, that of indium? Concerned galpals say that her self-esteem is lower than her melting point, and she’s purging neutrons after every meal in a desperate attempt to land a man. Come on, gurl—you’re better than that, and any man who won’t love you for what you are doesn’t deserve you, or should probably date actual women rather than semiconductors.
Bismuth is “Bi.” Make of that what you will.
If polonium, oxygen, and phosphorous could somehow magically combine into a new molecule, the symbol would be “PoOP.” This isn’t gossip, it just makes me snicker, even though I am an adult. Also: Iron + Carbon + Aluminum = FeCAl.
Guess it’s easy to get hooked on prescription meds when you’re a mood-altering drug—right, unnamed alkali metal? Of course, we say this purely hypothetically. [Pointing at lithium, rotating finger around ear, and silently mouthing the word "bipolar."]
Oh, you naughty silvery-white devil. Silicon may have told you that her atomic number was 21, but it’s really 14. It’s gonna take some quicksilver moves to convince the judge not to throw your pervy old ass into prison, where you’ll have plenty of time to remain liquid at room temperature. And make license plates.
Shoplift much, praseodymium? Oops. Too obvious. Fortunately, no one even knows what you are.
AsshoLOLcats
A Memo to Readers, Plus: Japey Makes His Off-Off-Under Broadway Debut
Some of you have been wondering, according to an elaborate fantasy I’ve concocted, what’s up with Japecake’s seemingly casual publication “schedule.” The fact is, Dear Reader, that Japey, as a card-carrying member of the 99%, is holding down two jobs (one full time, the second full time-ish) and subsists on little more than catnaps, coffee, adrenaline, and good looks. [Note to self: Caffeine-induced nightmares, funny aspects of—work on this.] This is in addition to numerous side projects, including development of some new blogs—that’s right, blogs, with an “s,” not a “z,” this isn’t Tiger Beat magazine. While rumors of Japey’s demise, and good looks, have been greatly exaggerated, by me, I’d rather post less often in order to make the posts I do squeeze out more worthwhile, unless you’re the type who, during their first trip to Vienna or Milan or Paris, makes a beeline for KFC or McDonald’s for lunch, in which case, I want nothing to do with you anyway. So, until Japey is ready to announce his IPO (invisible porn overcoat, now under development at the Department of Defense in collaboration with Brooks Brothers and Hustler), items will be posted about once a week, not necessarily evenly spaced, except when they are, or more or fewer items are posted within that span of time. In other words: if regularity is what you’re after, get a Rolex, or some Ex-Lax. If you really insist on reading, what I recommend, in lieu of camping out next to the computer with some Army-surplus MREs and repeatedly hitting the refresh button for days at a time, is that you subscribe, so that you will be sent a handy e-mail reminder each time a new item is posted. Think of all the extra time you’ll have to Tweet with your kids.
* * * * *
A live adaptation of Japey’s scathing indictment of loving paean to contemporary motherhood, W.O.M.B.: World’s Outstandingest Mommy Blog, will be presented by Lively Productions, in association with the Horse Trader Theater Group, as part of their ongoing monthly series of “blogologues,” this one on the theme of family and titled “Blood Is Thicker than Blogologues.” The performances will take place on Monday, November 28, at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m, at Under St. Mark’s, 94 St. Mark’s Place, New York City. Tickets are $15 and, and I quote, “include a beer,” which, one suspects, is the real point of the whole enterprise. While “Under St. Mark’s” sounds suspiciously like someone’s basement, perhaps even the basement of someone canonized by the Holy See, just think—if that same basement were an apartment in that zip code, it would cost approximately $27,615 per month to rent. Wall Street Occupiers are certainly welcome, but please note: you must hose off before entering. More information here.
WordPress Default Gravatar: The Japecake Interview
What do you call that color? Off-lavender? Dusty mauve? Grayple?
I don’t know. I’m not into labels. I guess I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of Pantone 5225, 5235.
My first impression when I saw you sitting there was “patchwork quilt square.” Was I right?
I get that a lot. I’ve also been described as an Art Deco pinwheel, a cyberpunk rotary saw, and the bastard child of an Easter egg and a Chinese throwing star. I got an e-mail from a guy who swears he knows me from Phillips Exeter, though I prepped at Phillips Andover. People read into you what they want to see.
To be honest, there is kind of an unapproachable air about you. I have to admit that when you stood up to greet me a few minutes ago, I was nervous as hell to shake your hand. I really expected a serious laceration.
Let me see your hand. See? Not a mark.
And you ordered us some sushi and sake, which was nice.
Well, look. I’ve never claimed to be a saint, but I like to think that basically I am a nice guy. Do I look like I’m studded with shards of broken glass and razor wire? Maybe. Does that mean I’m going to shred you to ribbons? Absolutely not. People get so hung up on appearances. It’s a shame. I pay my taxes, give blood once a month, and volunteer as a Big Brother. I clip coupons, play on a hockey team, and watch the History Channel. Apart from my ridiculously large collection of antique shaving mugs, I guess you could say I’m as normal as they come.
Is there anyone special in your life?
Well, the job makes anything like a real relationship pretty difficult. The hours are so unpredictable. You’re always on call. Some blogger is completely convinced that she’s writing the Great American Novel, so she’s posting about her “process” three times a day. And then you get the guy who’s all gung-ho to blog about building a log cabin for like three days, then not a word for two months.
It must be frustrating.
Not really. You just need to know what you’re getting into with this line of work. Gravataring is a service industry. The customer is always right. You’re not there to judge, tempting as it may be sometimes. I try to just go with the flow. My yoga instructor has gotten me sort of curious about Zen Buddhism, so I’ve been exploring that some, and I find that it really helps to keep me on an even keel.
The more I hear you speak, the more I do sense a kind of pervasive calm about you. Is there anything that upsets you?
“Anything that upsets me.” Hmm. I don’t know. [Long pause] You know, there is one thing. You know those guys who put those nickel-sized holes in their ears and wear those goddamn ear plugs? Did you ever see one of those guys walking around without the plugs, and they have these huge, stretched-out, holey ear lobes that are just kind of hanging there and flapping? That I could do without. One man’s body modification is a freaking horror show for everyone else.
When I first contacted you about an interview, I was surprised to hear that you were actually familiar with Japecake.
I’d love to blog myself, but, again, I just don’t have time for that kind of thing. But yes, I do follow a few blogs, including Japecake, which I dip into whenever I have a spare moment.
Oh, yeah? What do you think of it? Be honest.
Generally amusing, and occasionally quite funny. You’ve been a little hard on the Amish, for my money, but you could stand to go a little harder on Mitch Albom. By the way, WTF was up with the fornicating popcorn? Sick, dude.
You mentioned an interest in Zen Buddhism. Would you say there’s a philosophy that governs your life?
You know, we all like to think that we’re here for a purpose, but in the end, it may just be that each of us is nothing more than the product of a program that automatically generates symmetrical, rotationally symmetrical, or quasi-symmetrical monochromatic geometric formations within the confines of a square. And then randomly assigns us to a new user.
That’s pretty insightful, if a little bleak.
No, not at all. I’ve learned to embrace and cherish the ephemerality of existence. One day you’re here, the next you’ve been replaced by a photo of a cat wearing Groucho glasses, or one of the Scooby Doo characters smoking a joint. One of my best friends, an azure-verging-on-cyan guy with a really striking Moorish tile kind of pattern, disappeared into thin air one day, only to be replaced by a unicorn barfing a rainbow. Sometimes, that’s just how it goes. [Long pause as his expression tenses.] Sorry. Wasabi went down the wrong way.
Find the Clique that Clicks for You
Uh-oh. Now that the school year is well underway, all the good cliques are taken. If the social strata of high school were represented by a cup of piping hot, foamy cappucino, you’d be left with the gritty dregs. Starbucks is closed to the likes of you, socially speaking, and you’ll be lucky if you can score a lukewarm paper cup of vending-machine decaf. This is no time to be picky. Just pray that one of the following will still accept you into their ranks, and dump in plenty of sugar.
Miniature Golf Jocks
Pros: You get a varsity jacket with a tiny windmill above crossed putters on the back
Cons: Everything about them is small, ladies
4-H Satanists
Pros: Cute goats to raise, then sacrifice
Cons: Lots of bad pubescent poetry rhyming “cloven hoof” with “coven roof”
Knitting Punks
Pros: Knitting needles can be worn as ear, nose, and tongue jewelry when not in use
Cons: Mosh pits are hell on cashmere
The Poplar Kids
Pros: Sponsorship by the local lumberyard
Cons: Poor at spelling, worse at proofreading
Workout Nerds
Pros: The stereotypes of lunkheaded muscularity and extreme social ineptitude meet at last: trigonometry homework is pummeled, sounds of exertion while dead-lifting are grunted in Klingon
Cons: Considerable expense for the replacement of broken eyeglasses and torn pocket protectors after episodes of ’roid rage
Drama Club Club
Pros: Members carry around large wooden bats emblazoned with quotes from William Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill, and David Mamet
Cons: This is pretty much all that happens in DCC, except for the annual car wash, which funds the repair and replacement of excessively worn clubs
Scrabble Cheerleaders
Pros: With each cheerleader wearing a different varsity letter, participants can spell out a wide variety of anagrammatic messages during human-pyramid formations
Cons: Endless “nice rack” jokes from fellow students; the chance that you might get stuck with Q at the end of the school year
Origami Goths
Pros: Learn to fold morose cranes, cynical sailboats, and morbid cubes from black construction paper
Cons: Our whole freakin’ conformist society is a con, man. Here. I made you a dead elephant.
The No Debate Team
Pros: Complete agreement on all points; everyone gets a “Unanimity Rulz” T-shirt; practice matches generally last under 20 seconds
Cons: Regularly victimized by members of the Society of Contentious Quakers
Junior Republican Burnouts
Pros: Weekly talking-point discussions on the future of conservatism in America behind the 7-11; envelope-stuffing for vulnerable GOP congressional incumbents while “hotboxing” in a red, white, and blue Volkswagen bus covered in NRA and “America: Love It or Leave It” stickers; circulating petitions at Phish concerts to have Ronald Reagan carved onto Mount Rushmore
Cons: Troubling philosophical quandary on legalization of marijuana; rumors of busts by undercover cops disguised as “job creators”; chronic lateness means they will likely show up to vote 3 hours after the polls have closed
