oh the sensitivity

I'm sitting covertly in my former apartment, using the fast and convenient web access. I just love doing illicit things. I feel like a secret agent.

Happy Birthday to Beth and Jane. I bet Jane is excited that The Omen opens on her birthday. wow, once in a century...and you lived to tell the tale. am also betting my friend Damian is cursing his parents right now. in a much less serious way than the kid in the movie, of course.

hmmm. things you would never see in the u.s.:

the bestselling taiwanese toothpaste called Darlie. formerly named Darkie. yes. and in chinese the name is still "black people toothpaste." because black people have such shiny white teeth. oh hey, did i tell you the most disturbing fact i've heard in the last month? A report in Time that says 500 million rural Chinese people have never brushed their teeth. it seriously makes me want to start a charity organization called Project Toothpaste or Toothbrushes Without Borders and send in volunteers to demonstrate toothbrushing techniques. it would take ever so much less training than say, a project where they fix all the cleft palates of a village through intricate surgery. but i digress.

in addition to our heinous darlie toothpaste that has a black man with a tophat as its mascot, recently there have been commericals for a hair product and it starts off: did you ever wonder how the American Indians had such long, full, shiny hair? and it has a big picture of a native american with warpaint on. and then it goes on to talk about how they have culled the secrets of the chippewa haircare regime and brought it to the people of taiwan. faaantastic.

today i told one of my students that his wearing an iron cross necklace with a swastika in the middle was unacceptable. i took it in my hand and said "these people would have hated you. do you understand what this means? do you hate yourself? do you hate others? you need to be very careful." that kid thinks he is such a badass when he is in fact a flapping moron. if i was in the states i would probably have been sued for touching him. oh well. he needs to be beaten. but i felt so adult.

better go to sleep.