THE DREADFUL SNOWFLAKENESS OF BEING

Sometimes I feel that my apartment mate has gone all white on me. Like all of a sudden there is a white person living in this apartment. Well, other than me, of course, but I did not grow up in the United States so I'm less crazy than the rest of you.

Item one: Lactaid milk. Say what? She used to be an anomaly among people of Chinese ancestry in her appetite for dairy products, now there's lactaid milk in the fridge. She uses it to marinate meats for her boyfriend, who like many Jews is both lactose intolerant and kashrus-casual.
I find the concept of lactose intolerant dairy repulsive.
Fortunately there is real cow juice in there too.
As well as a surfeit of cheese.
And butter.


Item two: A very large pizza. I do not know the backstory behind this large pizza. Surely it is too big for her breakfast? Frat boys -- the quintessence of white -- have pizza first thing in the morning, and frequently it is the last thing they eat late at night. Perhaps she is being optimistic?
It seems awfully large.


Item three: She seldom cooks with shrimp paste, fish sauce, or even soy sauce. Again, this might be the foul influence of her boy friend ('Wheelie Boy'), OR it could be the whitening effect of growing up in the United States. The several dried fish in the kitchen are mine, the various sauces (except for the ranch dressing) behind that kitchen door are mine.
The large selection of noodles are mine.
What is wrong with her?


Item four: Natural foods, non-GMO, organic, and crap like that. Probably because she shops at Trader Joe's, which caters to soft-in-the-head middle-aged white folks. There's very little there that's actually normal, unlike the supermarket which was in that location before. Good thing she probably doesn't pay the labels too much attention, but that sh*t is expensive.


Item five: She recently treated her horrible cold with ginger and turmeric tea (which didn't help). THAT is very white. You probably can't get any whiter than turmeric tea.

[Turmeric tea recipe: one teaspoon turmeric powder -- like all spices bought in the spice aisle, stale and several years old -- boiled in four cups of water for ten or fifteen minutes, settled, strained, and sweetened to taste with raw organic pure honey. I actually had to look this up. What's probably better for you is regular tea, with or without lemon. No dairy, because it promotes phlegm. Stupid white people.]


See, whiteness of the type so common in big cities nowadays is infectious, and almost an inevitable result of living here. You have to be a stubborn and cheapskate Dutchman (me, for instance) to resist the peer pressure

She's just a poor little Cantonese American girl.
She doesn't stand a chance.
Turmeric tea.
Bah.



Fortunately she still eats meat and gluten.
She's not gone totally goofy.



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