Sometimes it gets ugly

New York is my home, its the only home I've even known. No other place in the world feels like New York does, loud and crass while at the same time maintaining elegance and class. To live in this great city is to carefully walk the tightrope of a thousand oxymorons all at once. To play both ends all the time pretending you're too good to engage in any of it in the first place.

There are times when we show ourselves to be a lowly sniveling bunch. (Please don't flame me on this I'm lumping myself in the above mentioned group.) This strike, these three days have broken my spirit more then they've broken the soles in on my shoes. To browse Craigslist looking for opinions on this strike one will come across racist rambling and hateful diatribes.

I grew up in a world of granola crunching culturally aware teachers and lesson plans that revolved more around world atrocities then math or English. As I grew I understood that not all people get along and that not all groups get along. But reading posting after posting I'm beginning to believe that if I look outside I may find men with white hoods burning crosses in the middle of Columbus Avenue, or angry mobs pulling white people out of cars to beat them for being in the wrong neighborhood. To be honest I'm slightly confused, the bus drivers seem to be of all races, and the last train I took was piloted by a white woman. Are we truly so narrow minded? I'm being led to believe that no matter how progessive we may be that it's all like "Holiday Inn" when Bing Crosby sang in blackface about how great Lincoln was for freeing the "darkies."

On a different note, I came home from Christmas dinner to find that my shower drain had burped sewage into my shower stall. If bad children get coal I have to wonder how bad does a person have to be to get sewage? Oh well Merry Christmas to me, maybe next year I'll get nuclear waste.