Thoughts for Company

A very special person likes to tell me that there is always WAY too much going on in my head - as if I needed a reminder.  While I am, generally speaking, intensely focused, I have my scatterbrain moments.  Sometimes too many genius ideas are born at once - I can’t help it!

I like to cite this as an excuse for my bad habit of not finishing books - though I’ve yet to decide if this is actually a “bad” habit.  On one hand, my parents taught me to finish what I started (I think this applied mainly to meals); on the other, why waste my time with a book that fails to capture and/or retain my attention?

A few years ago, it happened with Orson Scott Card’s critically acclaimed sci-fi novel, Ender’s Game.  Even with the rest of the series at my disposal, I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it.  And it happened again with Christian Lander’s “Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions” (as well as a handful of other books along the way).

You may recall my post from August 2008 (!), when I first learned of Lander’s satirical vignettes about white people’s shared appreciation for certain people/places/things/ideas/etc.  At the time, I had every intention of breezing through the easy read and immediately reporting on my whiteness.  The writing was witty, entertaining, and - best of all - light.

Then I lost interest.  I made it all the way up to #69 (Mos Def) before taking an indefinite hiatus.  The material wasn’t offensive, but I could only relate to so many items on the list.  So I picked up a different book, and then another… which brings us to March 2010, over a year and a half since I introduced myself to The White Stuff.

(from StuffWhitePeopleLike.com)

Today, I resurrected the book from the three-foot-tall, barely-started/almost-done/still-to-tackle literary graveyard next to my bed to bring you this: my whiteness score!  Skimming through the rest of the entries (#70-150) ensured that I sufficiently understood each one before I proceeded to fill in the trusty checklist at the back of the book.

I wanted to set up a table with separate columns so that you could easily compare the items that fell in each of the categories - but I couldn’t figure out how to do this, so here are the basic lists (along with some important commentary, of course).   I even have one for N/A items, which were omitted from the calculation!

Note that I’ve considered the opposite of “Like” to be “Not Particularly Like” - and not “Dislike”.  “Not Particularly Like” is a more comprehensive term that encompasses a range of emotional states, including apathy.  “Dislike” seems kind of harsh, no?  (Dear Mr. Zuckerberg: Facebook should consider using “Not Particularly Like” - or “Indifferent” - as a replacement for “Dislike.”)

LIKE:

1. Assists
2. Farmer’s Markets
3. Organic Food
4. Diversity (I’m not biased!)
5. Barack Obama
6. Asian Girls (Again, not biased at all…)
7. Tea
8. Yoga
9. Gifted Children (Biased, obviously! :p)
10. International Travel
11. Architecture
12. The Daily Show with John Stewart/The Colbert Report
13. Renovations
14. Arrested Development (Waiting for the movie!)
15. Apple Products (A loyal Blackberry user, but Macs sure are pretty.)
16. Sushi
17. Plays
18. Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops (Power Muffins. ‘Nuff said.)
19. Living by the Water
20. Sarah Silverman
21. Dogs
22. Kitchen Gadgets
23. Apologies (I’m Canadian, eh?)
24. Natural Medicine
25. Toyota Prius
26. Recycling
27. Bottles of Water (I drink a lot… of water.)
28. Musical Comedy
29. Multilingual Children
30. Modern Furniture (Especially when it doesn’t look like furniture anymore!)
31. Dinner Parties (Because this involves food.)
32. Scarves
33. Self-Deprecating Humour
34. Free Health Care (Anything with the word “free” in it. Though there is no such thing as “free health care”. We pay for it.)
35. Platonic Friendships
36. Reusable Shopping Bags (As long as they’re clean.)
37. Acoustic Covers
38. The Simpsons (Used to watch at least 3 episodes a day in high school; don’t ask how I was able to graduate.)
39. Following Their Dreams
40. Not Having Cash (I’m paranoid about misplacing things… especially money.)
41. Singer-Songwriters (Biased!)
42. Books (I collect them. Don’t necessarily read them, but collect them.)
43. Hardwood Floors (Better than carpets for sliding around. Rug burn is not so much fun.)
44. Therapy
45. Self-Importance (see Like #9)

NOT PARTICULARLY LIKE:

1. Coffee (Like the smell though. Love the smell, actually.)
2. Religions Their Parents Don’t Belong To
3. Film Festivals
4. Making You Feel Bad for Not Going Outside
5. Wes Anderson Movies
6. Nonprofit Organizations (I have nothing against profit. Plus many are poorly managed.)
7. Having Black Friends
8. Hating Their Parents (I love mine!)
9. Awareness
10. Being an Expert on Your Culture (I’m not an expert on anything.)
11. Writer’s Workshops
12. Having Two Last Names
13. Microbreweries
14. Wine
15. David Sedaris
16. Manhattan - and Now Brooklyn, Too! (Never been.)
17. Marathons (Too lazy.)
18. Not Having a TV
19. 80’s Night
20. Wrigley Field
21. Snowboarding (I can barely ski - and that’s on two independent legs.)
22. Veganism/Vegetarianism
23. Marijuana
24. Brunch (Why condense two perfectly good meals into one… Why?!)
25. Netflix (Damn, Canada.)
26. Indie Music
27. Public Radio
28. Asian Fusion Food (Confusing. You must mean Asian ConFusion. Har har!)
29. The Sunday New York Times
30. Liberal Arts Degrees
31. Vintage
32. Irony
33. Lawyers
34. Documentaries
35. Japan
36. Bicycles (Not if you like your crotch.)
37. Knowing What’s Best for Poor People
38. Expensive Sandwiches (”Expensive” anything is unattractive. Except maybe shoes. And handbags. And jewellery.  And - wait…)
39. Coed Sports (Face it; it’s not a level playing field and never will be, no matter how hard we try to pretend.)
40. Divorce
41. Standing Still at Concerts (What about sitting?)
42. Michel Gondry
43. Mos Def
44. Difficult Breakups
45. Study Abroad
46. Gentrification
47. Oscar Parties
48. The Idea of Soccer (I like The Idea of Fitness and Sport. I don’t like The Idea of Getting My Shins Kicked.)
49. Graduate School
50. Hating Corporations (Quite the opposite, in fact!)
51. Bad Memories of High School (Loved it - sorry! see Like #23)
52. T-shirts
53. The Wire
54. Shorts (Unless it’s really hot out. Otherwise, I’d be way too cold.)
55. Outdoor Performance Clothes
56. Having Gay Friends
57. St. Patrick’s Day
58. San Francisco
59. Music Piracy
60. Rugby
61. New Balance Shoes
62. Beards (Please don’t.)
63. Having Children in Their Late Thirties
64. Red Hair
65. Noam Chomsky
66. Non-Motorized Boating
67. The Boston Red Sox
68. Cleanses
69. Integrity (Defined in the book as “when an artist succeeds to the point where they are paid for their work and are exposed to a larger audience”. No apologies here.)
70. The Criterion Collection
71. Natural Childbirth
72. High School English Teachers (Ha!)
73. Native Wisdom
74. Trying Too Hard (I try just hard enough.)
75. Portland, Oregon
76. Che Guevara
77. The New Yorker
78. Non-American News Sources
79. Subtitles (I’m at the movies to watch, not read.)
80. Premium Juice
81. The ACLU
82. Plaid
83. Dave Chappelle
84. Tibet
85. Nintendo Wii (Except sword fighting.)
86. Conspiracies
87. Avoiding Confrontation (Bring it!)
88. DJs
89. Carbon Offsets
90. Adopting Foreign Children
91. LEED Certification
92. Expensive Strollers
93. Eating Outside (Show me a Chinese restaurant with an outdoor patio.)
94. Music Festivals (Too old for this.)
95. Glasses
96. McSweeney’s
97. Bakeries
98. Modern Art Museums (Tried this in London, but just didn’t get it.)
99. Cheese (Not part of the traditional Asian diet - unless you count Cheez Whiz.)
100. Public Transportation That Is Not a Bus
101. Dive Bars
102. Rock Climbing

NOT APPLICABLE:

1. Being the Only White Person Around
2. Threatening to Move to Canada
3. Pretending to be Canadian When Travelling Abroad

At the end of the book, Lander includes a simple formula for determining one’s whiteness; unfortunately, I had to complicate the formula by accounting for the N/A category (not to mention his error with calculating percentages, but I won’t get into that).

45 / (150 - 3) = 31%

Not far off my estimate of 50/150!  (And in fairness, it’s possible that I’ve become slightly less white since my original post in August 2008 - that’s a long time ago!)

So how white are you?