Like White on Rice

Through an interesting (and unsolicited) blog linking system that WordPress generates, I made my way to a very funny blog called “Stuff White People Like.” My two favorite entries (after perusing more than I’d care to divulge) are on Grammar and Kitchen Gadgets.

The funniest part was that while reading “Grammar” I actually noticed that the author used a comma splice to introduce, as an afterthought, the comma splice as a rival white-peev to using the wrong kind of “there/their/they’re” in a sentence. (And yes, I do have a developed opinion on the Oxford comma).

And, after laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe at “Kitchen Gadgets,” and just as I was grasping the couch arm in an ecstasy of hilarity at the very last line that references William Sonoma, I actually thought, “well, they do have nice stuff.”

Yeah. I’m pretty white.

Fool’s Gold

It should come as no surprise that I agonized over the title of my blog. This isn’t my first blog and the first was shipwrecked more or less over issues of Title. When the enormous pressure of gathering together all of my thoughts heretofore beneath a single banner confronted me, I didn’t fare well. I went Latin, and not Latin like Ricky Martin, but Latin like Catholic Liturgy. I called it “Ipsum Audite,” a title from an obscure verse reference that I got from a book. I wanted to write about the nuances and perils of modern Christianity, and I didn’t see this as a light topic, one that could be peppered with pie recipes and sports banter. I intended to dispel with a Title any expectation of reading about my favorite latte foam or random thoughts about life distilled from the current weather I was experiencing. I would have done well instead to have borrowed a title first penned by Dante: Abandon all Hope all ye who Enter Here. (He imagined these words were posted at the gates of Hell.)