It's been busy for me in Brazil. E-mail, Google Alerts about Orkut, its relationship site, a proto-MySpace, my own little problemas in Orkut, and so on and so forth.
Here peace is gone upon the arrival of the aborrecente, a très kewl coined expression putting together adolescente and aborrecer ( to annoy. ) He needs ample supervision as teachers were trained to write instead of writing lazy.
Are you aware of your own level of prejudice ? Did you ever find yourself playing Motown when expecting African-Americans for dinner, proposing some dance, serving ribs, kale and peas ? I read a piece on prejudice, or maybe pre-conceived ideas, in Newsweek many years ago. I remember this Caucasian couple who switch their music to Motown as they hear their guests ring the doorbell.
Or do you assume you must speak very slowly if your guest's last name is Kowalski ?
Maybe you add letters os and as to word endings in hope of making them more comprehensible to your guest whose name ends in -ez. Will you say, "Gooda morningo, howo aro you-o? I have-o a car-o." How embarassing if it were our number one freedom fighter, Gonzalez himself!
If your guest were French, would you accuse the house help of having stolen the dishware and silverware, "...and that's why we have paper plates and plastic forks and knives, but you can use your hands anyway." (Ooops! What a faux pas; in France nobody uses his/her hands directly on the food, not even for chicken. Exception: sucking on artichoke sections.)
Will you bore you Italian guest to death showing your support for any Italian-American who ever made the news here? Do you believe he knows or cares about them? A better strategy is to point out architecture and art by Italians here in the USA. Or stick to futebol.
Once we admit we all have a dark side, "Force yourself, too" a famous actor was fond of saying in the heyday of Star Wars, 1977, why don't we force ourselves to admit we do have our own pre-judices. Once we do, it will be easier to work on them.
The USA used to be known as a much more tolerant society than it is famed for now. Let's be the genuine Americans, "I don't care what you do as long as it doesn't interfere with my life. That is what Pluribus Unum (Many in one ) and the old Don't tread on me stand for. No snakes, peace, my friends! No, I haven't seen this Snake movie, no time and no money.
Please click on the photo. A-baw-BITTI-nyash are used as slang for empty talk. Kind of like the content of this Anarchic Universe. Squash is spelled abobrinhas.
