Here in PR, oatmeal is everywhere - you can even get it at McDonalds. It's usually a bit sweeter than I like but it's very convenient - especially when your two-year-old loves it.

Here in PR, oatmeal is everywhere

huh. that's unexpected.

Anne, I was sorry to hear about your grandfather. I think I forgot to mention that earlier.

that's unexpected.

I know. I forgot to mention most places also sell something like Cream-of-Wheat and a Cream-of-Corn for breakfast.

Grrr. Know what I hate?

At the Just For Laughs festival we'd joke that the Uptown in Uptown Comedy show was code for Negro comedy.

Maybe it was. Not sure who named the show, but dollars to doughnuts it was a white Canadian guy. I don't think there are uptowns in Canada. Well, not ones that aren't white and affluent, which was so much not the demographic as the show (there was one white NZer who peformed at the show, and many of his jokes were "Why am I here?" ones).

Apparently "Urban Comics" means black folk. You know that 616 universe Storm. Total hood rat. I mean, she's urban in the sense that she was an Egyptian street thief as a pre-teen, but she went on to be worshipped as a goddess by an as-yet-undetailed tribe out in the unpaved lands.

When I decided in 2006 to launch UVC magazine for comic book fans, we were clear about one purpose. To showcase the many characters of color in comic books

Yeah. Because there aren't any urban white or Asian people.

A while back tommyrot posted the picture of the big pink bunny. Clicking around, I spotted this. It's "The Guardian" ... with an iPod!

I've lived in New York City for 18 years... it is odd to me that I am not considered "urban".

Everyone knows "urban" means "black," ita. Sheesh.

Here in PR, oatmeal is everywhere - you can even get it at McDonalds. It's usually a bit sweeter than I like but it's very convenient - especially when your two-year-old loves it.

A former coworker spent some time at a language school in Guatemala (?) last year, and her host family kept offering her Quaker, and she had no idea... until they showed her the actual container. Because of course they were pronouncing Quaker en espanol -- more like quah-care.

Urban as code for black goes back a while - Network television demographers, IIRC, may have originated it.

[Aside from the Simpsons, context long forgotten:

Lenny: "Pick me, I'm Lenny!

Carl: "Pick me, I'm the urban Lenny!"]

I don't know why it irks me more when black people use racial euphemisms than when white people do. But why the fuck do they have to do it?

Then again I have a general beef with descriptions of identity that leave the language with fewer words or fewer ways to be specific.

And that's before you get politically correct.

Porridge is pretty big in Jamaica, or was--we certainly didn't have much cereal growing up. For the kids it was oatmeal or cream of wheat. My father liked cornmeal best, and our dogs were fed leftovers tossed into hot cornmeal porridge every night.

Mmmm, now I want cornmeal mush.