Erin, I love both your parents, but especially your dad!!

I had an English teacher in high school pick up my Silhouette Desire book off the top of my stack of books before class started. She then proceeded to open the book all the way up, bending the front cover to the back cover (arrrrgh!!!) and then read a random passage in a very mocking way. It really pissed me off to no end that she felt the need to mock my reading choice to the entire class, not to mention the way she mangled my book.

I have a cousin who hates Nigerians because she thinks they're the only black people whose superiority complex tops the Jamaican one. And the last thing she wants is her sense of superiority topped. Which takes some doing. I don't know enough Nigerians to have a sense of their national identity in that way, but I'm pretty unlikely to agree with her.

This is true of my one Nigerian friend, but I suspect it's true of most people from most countries.

My dad is tops!

And Kathy, as an English teacher, I feel the sudden urge to find this woman and kick her in the shins. Really hard.

Twice.

Pink kitchen featured in Apartment Therapy. (A few days old, so may have been linked already?)

Pink kitchen featured in Apartment Therapy

The comments say they're inspired to make cupcakes. I'm afraid I was inspired to get rid of half the stuff so it didn't look so claustrophic.

Lisah had linked to it. It gives me lots of ideas. I swear getting a new kitchen to decorate is the biggest driving force to me looking at houses.

I suspect it's true of most people from most countries

That their superiority complex can rival the Jamaican stereotype? I don't even think the American Land of the Free, Home of the Brave or the British, Former Seat of the Empire match Jamaican national arrogance--not least of all because we've never been and never will be a world power.

I got bonked in school for reading ahead of class, but that teacher bonked me for everything. The teacher the next year lent me books from her personal collection, which was good because I'd just about robbed the classrooms blind of their available books.

Sometimes I just read books I found in the classroom. That's how I discovered Christopher Pike and Dean Koontz.

I still remember being dinged by the science teacher in middle school for lugging around Samuel Butler's "The Way of all Flesh". He told me I had no business bringing that kind of disgusting pornography onto school grounds. I asked him if wanted to write a note to my parents or to the principal, but something in my tone must have given my intent away, cause I could not get him to criticize Samuel Butler as a pornographer in writing.

Here's a fun quote from Cornel West's new book:

“The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”

Good luck with that.

Decline of the West

eta: He's getting divorced for the fourth time.