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.
Like this:
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.”
Like this:
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
Like this:
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.”
Like this:
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!”
Like this:
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.
