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rant

I hate small talk. I’m sure you all know that. And don’t understand people who enjoy it. But I really don’t understand some of the chosen topics of small talk. First I thought it was a generation gap, then I realized it might be a world traveler thing. But this boring, American ,white guy, who works for Morgan Stanley, who was only slightly older than me tried to engage me in a conversation about my ethnic heritage. This is one of the number one ways to bore me. I am sure that I have never had an opening conversation with anyone who has become my friend about ethnicity. Yes, it will probably, eventually come up in conversation in an unforced way and I learn something more about my friends. But, I don’t give a damn about the life history of strangers. And I’m leaning toward thinking it’s slightly rude to demand ethnicity from a stranger. The only people who can demand that are the Census, I think. For schools, for surveys, for anything else, it’s optional information.

Maybe I just have some hard races to deal with. Armenian: Fuck. The dumbasses who ask, often times have never heard of the place. And I become a history and geography teacher in the process too. Mixed white with a strong Polish leaning: 1. my white side of the family has never told me anything about my heritage. 2. the only thing the Poles are know for are being dumb and pirogis. Then they ask me if I’ve ever been to those places. And I tell them no, my family all lives in America, and I’m American. The next time I’m asked I’m going to say that my family worked hard to come to America for a better life, and spent all their money bribing people to escape being killed by the Turks. Who am I to second guess them? Do you think that will shut people up?

I think I’ve been brainwashed so much by being anti-racist, that I’m just anti-race. Ethnic differences don’t matter to me. I’ll fully admit to being ethnocentric, I’d be in big time denial if I didn’t. I’d just prefer that we’re all the same and that we talk about our similarities, and not our differences.

Also, I don’t particularly understand the draw of “exotic” races. Wow, you’re so different than me because your ancestors had dark hair and dark skin?

There’s current events, TV, my fantastic outfit, even freaking weather. Why ethnicity? Why? Is it just a good topic for boring people who have no hobbies, since everyone has some kind of ethnicity?

After this conversation I was so bored. But I couldn’t do anything about it. And I certainly didn’t want to listen to him talk. So when he asked me what librarians do, I started to tell him, but he was so boring I lost interest halfway through.

/rant

It’s a good thing the cheesecake was good. Really. Tiramisu Cheesecake Factory cheesecake. The crust is lady fingers, and is really much better than graham crackers. It didn’t taste like tiramisu. But was a very good flavor for cheesecake.