Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Antique Slim Jims: VICTORY

Although my stomache is still not taking well to food, the cramping is gone for the most part, leaving only a dull ache on occasion and a bit of "distress" upon eating. Nothing that requires emergency surgery or anything. However, I have been avenged somewhat.

The Health Department called today to say that upon inspecting, they discovered that most of the food on the shelves at the "Mercadito Ramos III" was expired. The store has now been officially ordered to removed all offending products from its shelves and either return them to the vendor or destroy them. Apparently, the regular inspector for the area has called this store her "problem child" and constantly struggles to keep them up to regulations.

Some have suggested I sue for pain and suffering, but I have declined that option. If I'd been left with major medical bills and lost wages from this whole affair, I may have considered it. As this is not the case, I'll stay out of the People's Court for now. It is enough for me that I have the moral victory and the knowledge that someone's child may be saved from a far worse fate than my own.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought I had got all the Imus I could stand from the TV news, but the new Time Magazine article on him is good food for thought. The best part for me is the trio of satellite “Viewpoint” opinion columns included with the main bit.

Cynthia Tucker said, “The obverse, of course, is the black woman who presumes to move into the American mainstream. That woman is not successful. She is uppity.”

Ana Marie Cox said, “It’s depressingly easy to find female journalists who will tolerate or ignore bigotry if it means getting into the boys’ club someday.”

And, most powerfully of all, Debra Dickerson said, “Imus targeted the greatest vulnerability of black women—our non-European looks—with the express purpose of reminding us that we are not, and can never be, beautiful. Feminine…So we had to be made into men.”

I couldn’t help but think of what I had read here about the prejudice against kinky hair and all that baggage that entails. Until somebody else pointed it out, I had never considered consciously how alienating and marginalizing hair can be just by itself—but it can. I don’t think everybody has been briefed on how much distance nappy hair can put between people. It’s old news to a lot of folks but there are many more who have never had cause to think about it. People that can’t grow dreads and ‘fros tend to be unsettled by them, often without realizing it consciously or analyzing why. They just back away because it seems foreign, and the owners of the hair sense this. Just being weirded out by somebody’s cornrows or worms is enough to drive a wedge between people, all the wedge that matters. I feel like Stan on South Park, where he figures out that he’ll never understand blackness and tells Token, “I get it now: I don’t get it.” I mean some non-specific good will by all this, though it’s hard to say what effect it will have.


Totally unrelated: Sunday night at 8 pm Eastern on History Channel, and again at midnight, they’re replaying maybe the best program I’ve seen on History Channel, “The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy,” which seeks to debunk a few of the conspiracy claims. All history buffs should watch if they’re able.

7:26 PM  

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