no patience for anything

Alas, the distractability compounds, and it seems I've moved on to a regime where I have no patience for anything. Waiting, sticking with, muddling through, etc. Heck, I've been annoyed with iPhoto ever since I bought a Mac product, and it crashes ever so more often the more photos go in it, but my patience falls apart when I have to learn how to use Fink before downloading other software. So again, I'm dissatisfied with iPhoto, but it sits there, holding photos, crashing eventually, sucking up memory in the meantime. Argh.

so yeah, what was I talking about? oh yeah, fucking crackers... [sigh]

By now we've seen enough YouTube videos of Palin/McCain rallies where the supporters are spewing essentially naked hatred. But here I am parked at the pub, enjoying a pint on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the room quiet, and this guy, too loud to be ignored, spouting some sort of Osama/Obama bullshit. Un-fucking-believeable. If he wasn't standing up and about to walk out, I was *this close* to making a point of getting up and calling him out on it - but he got away. I'm sorely, sorely tired of the closet racists who are spouting what is, ultimately, closeted racism. With the current theme for a lack of patience, let's just say that I've got my "are you a complete fucking idiot?" ready for the next moron that encroaches on my eardrums.

Reminds me of the last time I was in a situation that I couldn't quite believe it was actually happening... or at least, the last time I made a note to myself about it...

I'm at the bar on St. Paddy's Day, stopping in for an obligatory pint, chatting with a friend. They leave, I stay to finish my pint, and the guy on the corner of the bar gets chatty.

At the time Kwame Kilpatrick is in the news, still in office, but the scandal is heating up. Conversation on the barstools drifts to current events, and since AA/Ypsi is sufficiently far away from Detroit to allow a certain amount of detached amusement at the goings-on, it's like talking about the weather, right?

he notices my U of Illinois hat... "You from Illinois?"
"Yeah, near Chicago... grew up there. Moved here a while ago."
"Is there as much of a problem with blacks there?

What... the... fuck. The assumption that a clean-shaven white boy would be assumed to share the same closeted racist opinions just shocked me into dumbfounded silence. I should have gotten up and walked away in disgust. I should have said any of a dozen different things, but all I could come up with was "I think you and I don't share the same opinions about race." Now, in 2008, this kind of shit exists? Alas, it does. I'm not naive, but I'm just surprised at how close to the surface it is.

I might be an able-bodied college-educated straight-acting adult white male, but that doesn't mean I share your assumption of closeted racism. Or sexism. Or homophobia.

But here's the rub: for minorities or women or LGBT folks, they also see the able-bodied college-educated straight-acting adult white male with a haircut and assume that I'm not an ally.

So yeah... it seems I've got no patience for anyone these days.