2012.12.10 — Dripping Noses and Skin Colour: Two Small fushigis*

Today was a day of two weird, tiny fushigis. I guess I am feeling a bit bored, tonight, and so here I am blogging them.

The first begins with a drippy nose in the WSS game, called TPBM (The Person Bslow Me).

Post# 2295:

TPBM's nose keeps running and he/she is very annoyed with it.

Nothing special. But later that day, I heard a pre-news news announcement. The tag line was something like

"Have you had a drippy nose that doesn't seem to want to clear up? Well, a woman had a constantly dripping nose for months and wait until you learn what was finally determined to be the cause."

I didn't turn on the news to get the scoop on the drip, but it struck me as amusing enough that I noted it on one of my fushigi sticky pads.

The other began last night. I stumbled into a CNN broadcast of Defining 'Black' In America, which is a part of the series called Black in America. The host for the Sunday (2012.12.09) show was Soledad O'Brien. I haven't seen any of this series before, and I do not even clearly remember having heard of it before. I suspect that I must have, but dismissed it out of hand In part, I imagine, because I do not respect CNN very much and because I have, rightly or wrongly, been completely un-impressed by O'Brien as either a reporter or anchor (or whatever she is).

But, for whatever reason, I caught the title and the opening without being aware that I was on CNN, or watching a CNN series, while I was flipping through the stations looking for something to catch my interest. Well, what caught my eye on this show was the poetry I was seeing spoken by two young women, and then later, a university professor. I learned a new, bizarre, word: colorize, as it applies to people. (I went to find it on a google search, but came up empty.) I found the state of American social intelligence to be extremely depressing, in this show. And didn't watch it to the end, in part because I didn't find the direction of the questions and exploration of the issues to be fruitful. Perhaps it's what America needs, given that I have seen them arguing about removing Mark Twain from syllabuses because he used the word 'nigger' in his writing.

Anyway, I'm not here to critique America's racial madness, nor solve the problems of skin colour in the world. But what got me writing this fushigi blog was that this evening, December 10th, I visited Gareith's blog My Continuing Education: A Rich Jewel in an Ethiop's Ear. And it was about the lack of black images to accompany text in literature that includes black people. Gareth sites Shakespeare and Coleridge. And the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

(It struck me as interesting that my quick look at this massive painting did not reveal to me obvious black men, just the few woman shown here, and another one elsewhere.)

Okay, the final reason for my including this as a fushigi is that the silly and inane television show, TMZ, which I guess originated as a web page, was looking at Dutch Christmas practices. In point of fact they were kind of making fun of the Dutch Christmas having something / someone called Black Peter (Zwarte Piet), who accompanies St. Nicholas to take away the bad kids. And TMZ was also poking fun at American racial hypocrisy, by pointing out that they still have a football team called 'The Redskins'.

As I said, two tiny fushigis, but ones I find amusing.

Addendum 2012.12.11 7:45pm
Well, the world continues strange. Tonight for no well defined reason and, if truth be told, in complete contradiction to what ostensibly is demanding I write and bake, I decided to re-watch the brilliant movie Groundhog Day for the first time in five or six years.

I was amused when within the film the skin fushigi was once again extended. This is what I wrote as a comment on Gareth's blog My Continuing Education:

Hello Gareth. Once again one of your posts that interested me also managed to attach itself to a tiny synchronicity in my life. I've blogged it @ Dripping Noses and Skin Colour - Two Small Fushigis.

And that got extended tonight when I watched Groundhog Day, again for maybe the 5th time. However, tonight I noticed something I hadn't before, and that is that the ER Nurse, an Afro-American, had pearl or silver earrings.

Now to your comment about finding images: I went to find an image of this scene on the web, and was unable to find any Groundhog Day images with her or that scene. Nor, as it turns out, in the movie/celebrity web sites. The name of the acrtress is Dianne B. Shaw. I did find a fuzzy image of a Diane Shaw singing Blue Moon on Youtube which has the silver/white on black skin.

Bemusing. Maybe.


2012.12.012 Sigh: Another Addendum — but stretching it!
I turned on CBCR2's The Signal, and the host, Laurie Brown introduced the next musician as: "If David Bowie were a black female, he might sound like this. This is M'shell NDEGEOCELLO and Rapid Fire.

And Brown was quite correct! Except that Ndegeocello is quite a bit better than Bowie I think. Okay, not quite good enough to fushigi, but on the off chance I wondered if there would an image of Ndegeocello with pearl or silver jewellery — maybe even earrings, to help Gareth out. And, yes! And quite an interesting ear 'ring', too. I think I've just discovered someone new to me to listen to!

And, with this beautiful image, it has been elevated into fushigi-hood. And I will go and provide the link to Gareth.