Storm warning: I’m having to concentrate really hard to control my sailor’s mouth

Tonight I’m really having to remember to breathe!   In and oooouuuut.  Innnn and oooouuuut.

Okay, composure regained.

What’s got me in an uproar?

Well, I’ve always had a big bone to pick with people that send me the mindless stuff that gets distributed through out the internet haphazardly.  Most are simply deleted without opening.  And when I get too many of these from the same person I usually speak up and politely ask the offender to remove my name from their list.  It’s the only way I keep my inbox sane and manageable.

This stuff is mostly sent to me by people who can’t be bothered to write a personal email or pick up the phone.  You know the stuff: the internet garbage that proclaims that if you’re a good person or agree with something they espouse then ”follow these instructions.”

How sad for us that an innovation like the internet has spawned a culture of lemmings that robotically follow whatever email instructions pass through their inbox without even bothering to check validity.  Or facts.

Oh yeah, and Bill Gates will get that check right out to you for forwarding emails that he will mysteriously be able to track across cyberspace.  I’m sure he has your address.

(For real, I first saw this one pre-internet on AOL in about 1994.  And I kid you not, I’ve gotten the SAME ONE in the past few months from people I thought were truly intelligent.)

I used to think that the worst offenders – the ones that really made my blood boil – were the ones from religious fanatics that proclaimed that if I followed a certain set of instructions in their blessing or prayer something really good would happen.  But IF I DIDN’T some bad luck would befall me.

Woe be unto the person that sends me one of these.  I consider this to be the psychic equivalent of a curse.  I mean, what would possess someone to make this stuff up and send it to people they claim as a friend?

Essentially it’s “You’re only a good person if you agree with the mindless stuff I dream up when I don’t have anything better to do and if you don’t have anything better to do than stop what you’re really doing and follow my orders.”

Yeah, that kind of friend I don’t need, thank you.

But I diverge.  What does something as mundane as junk email have to do with my mission for healthy living?  It was the content of the offending email that did it.

Tonight I’ve discovered a worse animal than the sender of the psychic curse.  It’s  the so-called politically minded racist idiot.  He is the equivalent of a war monger for hire to whatever piece of internet garbage that crosses his path that is the rant du jour.  This kind of person lives to incite.

One of these crossed my inbox tonight.  And I shudder to imagine what the poor young woman that sent it to me will think when she opens my response to her.  Let’s just say that the sailor’s mouth isn’t quite as restrained via private email to someone that I think should know better.  (Apparently I’m over my inability to find words when I’m insulted by bigots.)

And what are the odds that the subject of this particular email was related to the recent post I wrote about how I don’t understand bigotry? That’s my life for you.  Synchronicity at all times.  Even over the most mundane things like blog posts.

The email that was mindlessly forwarded to me showed a string of photos of hispanic kids in front of a high school in California in a raucous gesture of insult to the American flag.  And it was coupled with text insulting President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, calling Napolitano “Obama’s…Hispanic lady over our National Security.”

Helllooo, people.  Napolitano is ITALIAN.

Now granted the incident in question was such buzz at the time it occured that it’s got its own Wikipedia entry. And you know when it happened?  In 2006.

The insanity was furthered by the fact that the original instigator of this particular forwarded email string - from the species humanus internetus equivalent of an Evil Doer for sure, if you ask me -mispelled “Mexican” twice in an email calling Napolitano stupid.  And the next sentence sarcastically suggested the students spend their time learning better English.  Don’t you just love irony?

Sadly the young woman that clicked the forward button thereby landing this garbage in my inbox is a lovely person.  She’s very young and was raised by a family of foul mouthed men who objectify women.  It’s not her fault.  I hope one day she’ll learn the fine art of discernment, find her own truth, and not be lured into mindlessly distributing the venomous opinions of the less informed.

Ah, I’m tired of ranting.  It’s not in my character to do so very often.

My rage has nothing to do with politics, Obama, or Napolitano.  It has to do with the fact that Dazzling Daughter and Nuclear Sun have to tread the same planet and breathe the same air as these…these…these HICKS…and in many cases, ride the bus with them.

It’s kind of funny that this reminds me that I used to list Dazzling and Nuclear as “human” on the question asking what race they belonged to when I enrolled them in school each year.   Well, that came to an end when after about three years the school secretary nastily told me to “stop doing that” or she would not be able to enroll them.

One day I’ll have an answer for how to embrace THAT kind of diversity.  The kind that I think is so stupid I can’t understand it.

And for now my sailor’s mouth and I will do just fine.

And about the race question on all the form we’re incessantly asked to fill out?  I still think “Human” is the most accurate.

(At least until we starting accepting immigrants from oh, say, Mars.)

Tagged as: Dazzling Daughter, embracing diversity, hillbilly hell, internet garbage, Nuclear Sun, sailor's mouth, storm warning, synchronicity