I don't know what to think about the Paula Deen thing. I never heard anyone use racist terms until I moved to the South in my 20s. It always shocks me when I encounter it. We are products of our environment in many ways.

Yeah. I know there is racism in the north and that its no joke. But the casual use of slurs and tacit "agreement" that we can bitch about "them" when "they" aren't around isn't something I much experienced until I was in the south.

Where my brother and Mom and nephew live are "Blue Ghosts" - fireflies that have a blue glow. They don't blink on and off as quickly and they sort of hover near the ground. It's only during a short window of time and in a very small area. I haven't seen them but they sound cool.

I was pretty impressed by the fireflies when I was in Philly. See, this is the kind of thing that counts as exotic fauna for me.

I grew up hearing "nigger" in rural Missouri. A lot. There were NO black people around for miles and zero in my elementary school. I trained my father out of it ("It's OK if you use it in a joke, honey. Some of my friends are black." NO, DAD. You are an awesome person, but you were full of shit on this one, and to be fair, he got it) and got into a raging fight with my uncle one Xmas about him using it.

I have never once heard my mother, raised in the Northern South, say it. Ever.

I have never said it, except reading it aloud in class, used in a novel, with the caveat added before reading that were were offensive terms in the reading and if a student was uncomfortable saying it, they could skip it, or in an discussion with people about its usage.

I understand the sides of the argument that black people take it back by using it, like I call my good friends bitches all the time, but I hate the word, and will never use it.

I cuss like a fucking sailor, but even were a person chopping off my arm, I wouldn't use a racial or ethnic epithet. A lot of other choice words and phrases, though...

I never heard my 84-year-old mother or my late dad use the word and have never used it myself.

Even when I have used it in an academic way, it makes me physically uncomfortable. I really despise the word. It's a really visceral hate.

Maybe it's white liberal guilt; whatever. Fuck it. I HATE it.

Caveat: I heard my students (majority black) say it all the time. I didn't like it, but other than having some really good class discussions about it, I was OK with hearing it then. Like if my friends joking calls me a bitch/hooker/cunt, Idon't care. Someone uses those words AT me, though, and there wwill be some shit goin' down. I mean, I can and have been called those words when walking down the street from a car, but like when a person is RIGHT there in my face? Uh. No.

It's an official family story of when I was coming up the drive from school (Montessori) singing "Eeny meeny miney moe" and my mother holding her breath for the second line...

Turns out she didn't have to have that talk at that time.

It's a word we were exposed to a decent (applicable?) amount--we were fed lots of fiction and history with racists, so it was part of our vocabulary for discussing what we'd been exposed to. In that context, no language is explicitly banned--we just shouldn't use them as epithets.

Story of a woman diving into the deep end of internet dating (100 dates, 100 days): [link]

It's a word we were exposed to a decent (applicable?) amount--we were fed lots of fiction and history with racists, so it was part of our vocabulary for discussing what we'd been exposed to. In that context, no language is explicitly banned--we just shouldn't use them as epithets.

Yes, this. I have read a lot of both sides of the argument for its re-appropriation by Black academics and personalities, and I can see both sides. But I think it encapsulates a vicious amount of hate.

Someone said something random and sterotypical about Jews, knowing I nor anyone at the table were Jewish. My SS is. And I went the fuck OFF. And he was the husband of a good friend and we were in public. Oh, well. (The wife was superpissed at him too; he has a history of open mouth/insert foot.)

Fucking mosquitos. itchitchitch

I attacked the jungle of our backyard last Sunday and my legs look like tiny mean alligators ate me.

Little flying vampire bastages.