Goombah? I thought they were those guys in Super Mario Brothers.

They are.

Oh, der.

smacks forehead

I was, of course, talking about Super-fucking-Mario Brothers.

"Goombah" is the bastardization of the word compare, which means a close friend.

Huh. Do Italians make it a habit of jumping on the heads of their close friends? That's not very genial.

Do Italians make it a habit of jumping on the heads of their close friends?

Only on special occasions. Like when they don't have fireballs.

I was, of course, talking about Super-fucking-Mario Brothers.

See? Compare is a word that is used for very special relationships. It should not be describing the lowest level of fiends in a video game. Especially when Goombah carries additional negative connotations.

It's odd where lines get drawn amongst the familiar.

During a particularly stressful time before an event a few years ago, Maya and I got a little heated at each other.

Maya said, "You're just being a bitch because I married a Black man."

I said, "Sluts like you muddy the race."

And we fell apart laughing at the stupidity of the entire argument.

I don't presume that I could have that exchange with anyone else.

I don't presume that I can touch ita's hair, though I love her and she knows I mean no harm, for example. There's a boundary. Maya says to me, "YOU can go there." Someone else can't. There's the understood.

It's an interesting thing.

And by a strange coincidence, in today's Boston globe, something semi-related to this discussion.

I was just going to post that, Frank!

My father still gets the racial slurs, and I get them, from friends and acquaintances who think it's "cute." It's demeaning, yet I'm being uber-sensitive when I ask them to cease and desist.

You are NOT being oversensitive, dammit.

I had a friend in HS, Italian American, one summer he fell in love with doo wop music. Fill in obvious jokes and insert additional slurs here ________. It was just goofy kid shit and bugged no one.

But if it did bug him? It would have sucked. It would have been rotten verging on evil, not kids on the dock playing in the sun and cracking each other up.

Because I wouldn't hurt that kid for the world, no one decent would do that to a friend.

As I said in Natter, I was familiar with the word mulatto due to one of my best friends since gradeschool always having referred to himself as such. I was completely unaware they were any racist overtones to it. Especially after hearing the word in popular music ("Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana and a song the name of which I can't remember by Seven Mary Three.) Obviously, now that I am aware, I know not to use it.

It's odd where lines get drawn amongst the familiar.

I have a good friend who is Japanese and Irish. He's fairly short. As I'm tall, broad-shouldered and fair-complexioned he makes a lot of Viking and nordic jokes at my expense which I'll occaisionally retort by calling him a ninja leprechaun or some such. I wouldn't dream of saying anything or even thinking along those lines with anyone else, but for us it's just part of our banter. We've been friends for 17 years and it's just one of those things that grew out of it.

a song the name of which I can't remember by Seven Mary Three.)

Google says "Lame."

That sounds right.