I was shocked to hear my New England grandmother recently refer to my cousin's Japanese employers as "little Nips." To the point where I didn't process what she'd said until it was hours too late to confront her about it.

My Cincinnati grandmother is only prejudiced against Republicans, but 60+ years of volunteering at Planned Parenthood in Cincinnati will do that to a person.

Aw, crap. Almost home on the bus and I just remembered that I drove today. I'm now waiting for a bus to head back downtown. I feel like an idiot now.

A section of my family takes glee in using Jamaican epithets. I don't know what Coolie Plums are called now--I'm just sure we don't have to call them that--and I managed to work out as a kid to stop. But they're all "using these terms is bringing it out into the light!"

Please god, let me be there when someone calls your kids niggers and we'll talk about "into the light". Oh, wait--your kids were actually served out of disposable cups and plates while the white kids ate inside using plates and glasses. But yet your "in the light" is independent of the shit that your kids got heaped on them in the 90s in their home neighbourhood. It didn't fix it, it wasn't in response to it, and I don't think you ever realised that you are similar assholes.

I snapped and bought this out of a very real need for a non-black lightweight jacket. It'll just be one of those one-person in jokes.

I enjoy it because it's a show where stuff *happens*.

This is indubitably true, but it has some of the most epic occasions of non-communication. Like, seriously--THE MAID???

Oh no! I have almost done that a bunch of times. And the reverse, frantically searching for my parking slip when I took the train in.

I snapped and bought this out of a very real need for a non-black lightweight jacket. It'll just be one of those one-person in jokes.

Nice!

I never knew the rhyme as anything but "tiger" until... five years ago, maybe? My parents, growing up in 1940s-50s Oakland, grew up with the other version -- which I found out when Matilda was showing off her counting-rhyme knowledge to my dad a few months ago and he whispered to me that he'd felt sick to his stomach until she hit the word "tiger."

I did hear one relative use the other word, once, at a Thanksgiving dinner when my aunt and uncle thought they'd reach out to some distant cousins, a retired cop and his wife, who lived out by Sacramento somewhere. They didn't get invited again (not that regular family members don't say some cringey things, but they've always been very oblique about it; it's one thing to think those words, but incredibly gauche to say them out loud).

Accomplished today... uh, I did dishes and vacuumed the living room, which already needs a second go. And I took Matilda to see My Little Pony with one of her classmates and the classmate's mom; the place was packed, with a line out the door and almost round the corner, and the four of us got the very last tickets before they closed the door and sent the last 50 people away. Including the Brony behind us who'd been liveblogging his waiting-in-line experience to his YouTube channel -- another linestander asked him how many followers he had and he shrugged, "Not many. Some. Less than a lot of people. Maybe twelve hundred?" Then he did a Cadence's Wedding Day Song duet with a random teenage girl on the other side of us.

Also including at least 25 little girls and their caretakers.

I don't know whether it was the theater or the distributor or who, but someone badly failed to take the adult fandom into account; it was supposed to be part of a Saturday old-timey kids' matinee series, but the place was packed with high school and college kids and very young grown-up junior hipsters. I'm hugely relieved that we got in, because there would no question have been a tearful meltdown if we hadn't, but I'm still annoyed with the Bronies and their peer cohort. Grown-up fandom is delirious good fun, but if you're playing in a fandom originally made for kids, don't crowd the kids out! Poor form, dudes.

In my childhood version of the rhyme, we caught a tiger by the toe. Because that rhymes with Moe. Even then I thought, why...? how...? My imagination spun out an image of catching a tiger by the toe that remains with me today.

The place where the cat scratched me two days ago is closed up neatly and it's a little red; it doesn't look bad for a two-day-old fairly deep cat-claw scratch, but it's itching and burning to the point of distraction. I wonder if maybe I'm allergic to something I put on it (Neosporin cream, or the non-latex bandage, or something). Or maybe it's tetanus and I'm going to die.

Can someone reassure me and maybe give me some sensible advice?

I'm listening to Danny Elfman's "Corpse Bride" soundtrack. It's lovely, very Elfman. Very Nightmare Before Christmas. I'm used to hearing familiar musical phrases in favorite movie composers' stuff, but Elfman seems to use larger chunks.

Brony?

Brony?

There are some questions that are best left unasked.