The White Peril 白禍

Whoops. I thought I was being funny when I left a comment on this Joanne Jacobs post (how does our Ms. Jacobs keep a straight face while documenting this stuff?) about the use of non-red correction pens in schools to avoid bruising children's egos. Apparently, it's a bad idea to mark errors with a color that connotes mistakenness. Amritas caught me in an elementary PC slip-up, though [bracketed]:

Isn't anyone going to stick up for poor, marginalized indigo? After all, it has associations with South Asian vegetable dyes, so it recalls the thrift and nobility of the time-honored household labor of women [womyn, Sean, womyn! -A] of color. It's organic and cruelty-free, too.

Man, I spent 1991-95 as a comparative literature major. At Penn. How'd I miss that one? I feel like that guy in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes who asks for ketchup.

Finally got around to putting the new banner up. Connie, if you're having trouble seeing it again, please let me know. There shouldn't be a problem, though, since this one isn't done with a background image.

You know, I still think of myself as a commenter on a handful of my favorite blogs who just happens to have a site of his own, dilettante-like, now. I kind of looked through the features my host had because I wanted to know how to set up e-mail at my domain and stuff. Didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the stats pages. But over the last few days, my host (Verve) changed servers, so the layouts and things are new, and I decided to see what I could see.

Sakes alive.

There are actually people reading this. Estimating as well as I can based on the fact that (like me) there are probably quite a few people who click through from different ISP's at different times of day, it looks as if I may have 100 regulars and change. Never expected that. I mean, of course, if I'd thought I was going to be writing pointless bilge, I wouldn't have started. But the combination of Japan expat + gay stuff + how-the-world-would-be-better-if-everyone-just-listened-to-me stuff seems to me to be a real niche among niche markets. But I suppose there are 100 people of just about any type you name in the world.

So anyway, I occasionally write gushy letters of thanks to my favorite bloggers, several of whom do me the honor of visiting here, for providing an American-style forum where you can debate ideas aggressively without people's taking things personally all the time. Thanks to them again for the links that probably brought most of you here. And thanks to the people who are reading. I have yet to receive a single disrespectful comment or e-mail--lest anyone get any big ideas, I'm not saying that to issue a challenge, though I know I'll get clobbered eventually, the 'net being what it is. To my knowledge, no one's linked to me for the express purpose of talking about what a stupid jerk I am. I've been very, very fortunate with the site, as with the rest of my life. Thanks to all.

The other thing I saw when I looked at my stats page was, of course, the search keyphrases that had led people to the site. There were, apparently, four searches for "sean kinsell," which means there could be people who know me from "real" life lurking here at this very moment. The one that made me laugh, though, was "how to detect a gay guy?" I'm not infoplease, and I don't know whether whoever put that phrase in has kept reading here. (I hope it wasn't Dina McGreevey, although if it was, she shouldn't still need an answer.) But just in case: If a guy has a pink, purple, and green website with a category labeled "i like men" in two languages, you should assume he's gay.

There, don't say you've never learned anything from me.

And thanks again for reading.

Look at this story. The headline says, "Cuba's Brilliant Ballerinas Wow Dance World." The spin of the story is that, unlike nasty, evil capitalist countries where people have to pay for dance lessons, Cuba has a national ballet whose grande dame plucks the talented from the streets and turns them, for free, into world-class performers. The article is positively choked with adulatory adjectives to describe Cuba.

But I'm used to that. What's funny to me is that all the dancers discussed in the article, except two, are men who talk about how Cuba's tradition of virility in dance has helped them in their art. Aren't they ballet dancers instead of ballerinas?