GINGER

I went to a protest march last night to show my support for the protesters in Iran. Even if I was in love with Ahmadinejad or the ayatollah or thought it was a good idea to have an Islamic (or any kind of religious state), I would STILL be protesting innocent, unarmed marchers being shot at, beaten up, and killed. I would still protest blatantly fraudulent elections with no independent election monitors. I would still protest the silencing of people's voices when they disagree with you, using threats, censorship, and brute force.

And apparently, so would my dog! He absolutely LOVED the man with the bullhorn who was starting up chants with the crowd, like "Democracy for Iran" and stuff like that. Whenever the guy would get close to our part of the group, that silly dog would jump like two feet in the air and try to play with people! It was so cute. In Iran, that could get him clubbed in the head.

I threw a terrible temper tantrum yesterday that makes me feel so ashamed today. I keep telling myself, "That isn't you, that was an aberration," but the truth is, of course it was me. And I was very, very ugly. I know we all do things we're not proud of and blah blah blah, but I am getting to the point where I just hate the person I am. Every day it seems like I do something new and horrifying.

I know it's so typical to gush your heart out on a blog, but I really don't know what else to do. Maybe if I see it written down, I'll change.

When I came out of the Au Bon Pain restaurant down the street from my office, I noticed a woman whose face was horribly burned and disfigured. I decided to conduct a sociological experiment that would compare manners (specifically, the acceptability of staring at a disfigured person for longer than you'd look at anyone else) in different races.

So I walked really closely behind her as she walked down the street and watched people's faces as they passed her. My results are thus:

Black people (I don't know if they were African-American, just African, British, French, who knows, so I can't be PC) NEVER stared. The most they did was glance in passing.

White (non-Hispanic) people stared some of the time. I'd say about 25% of white people passing stared at her.

Hispanic people stared almost 100% of the time. One lady turned her head to get a longer view.

Maybe in Latin cultures it's not rude to stare and for blacks in America it's a complete no-no? I don't know. I will admit that it's really not cool to exploit unwitting people to satisfy your own curiosity (i.e. the rudest of all was for me to follow her).