Black People Like Menthols?

To be honest, until recently, I had no idea that they did. I smoke menthols. I'm white. Logically speaking, nothing follows these two facts, except perhaps that black people do as well.

This brings me to a separate tangent. People who post questions and even more absurdly, people who answer these questions on online forums- today's example being 'Yahoo Answers" with the appropriate question of "Why do black people like menthol cigarettes"

Before you waste your time actually clicking on the link, be warned there are no good answers. Someone took the time to note that he "had no idea" while another gem came back with the piercing rhetorical question of "why do Asian people like cats?". Hopefully she will start a new thread to get that one ironed out.

I decided to try and find someone with an expensive degree to answer the question, like Sarah S. Lochlann Jain, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Stanford University, who sounds really white and probably doesn't smoke:

"The sensation you get from a menthol cigarette—a rush of cold, a feeling like your lungs are clearing—might have appealed particularly to black people because of its similarity to eucalyptus- or menthol-laced over-the-counter cold medications. Such meds were popular with blacks who, perhaps not surprisingly, had limited access to health care. For a time, in fact, people thought menthols did have medicinal benefits and that they were healthier than regular cigarettes."

"Why do Asian's like cats" is almost a better answer.

Gay Men Love Cher?

Answer: I have no idea.

Its not that I don't love Cher. I definitely do. But she seems like she is writing for the divorced over 40 women of the world (highlighting why I love her). Take the following hit titles:
Soner Or Later We All Sleep Alone
This Is A Song For the Lonely
Strong Enough To Live Without You....
Do You Believe In Life After Love

Im not saying gay men don't have these problems- now that they can get married, I'm sure they do. This still fails to answer the cult following. So, to get to the heat of the question, I did some extensive research (read: I googled "why do gay men love cher?"- on a personal note, yes, I did just recently stop using Ask Jeeves).

Thank god for USA Today which consistently thinks to cover important issues like this (which is undoubtedly why they remain the hotel paper of choice). In a breaking interview with Cher, she explains: it's like to be an outsider....To singers, I wasn't a singer. To actors, I wasn't an actor. I know what it's like to fight for your place. Besides, gay men are very choosy, and they have great taste."

Answer: Cher = marginalized, who knew? If this secret got out, she could wedge her way in to all sorts of minority ipods- maybe do some work with a famous black rapper? or maybe a spanish album?

People Order A Large Popcorn With A Diet Coke

Better question being, why not? There is this tendency to see this as a giant contradiction. Given the question of "what does not belong?":
a) giant tub of popcorn wit extra butter
b) king size snickers bar
c) 87 oz of blue dye Mountain Dew
d) Diet Coke
Most movie goers would choose d.

Wrong answer. Given the choice of a-c, d makes the most logical sense. Why not spare yourself the extra 700 calories from a movie vat of soda?

A few years back, I had a similar run in with poor decision making when I saw a man eating a meatball sub while riding a stationary bike. The natural thought being, what an idiot- who eats while exercising. Excluding the obvious fact that it would make the average person violently ill, its probably pretty efficient execution- input and output trending towards zero.

The problem here is context (isn't it always). If I saw the same man eating the sub on a bench outside the gym, I would probably think, hmmm what a delicious sandwich. Sandwich eaters belong on benches, not on bikes. When the content of bench sitting collapses into stationary bike riding, nothing makes sense. There is a demand for identity consistency within the context. Gym people either don't eat or we imagine them grilling up 4oz of fresh salmon in their condo at home. Bench people, well, bench people sit and maybe they eat a sandwich if the sitting isn't overwhelming.

But why not allow people to be inconsistent? Why not offer a high five to the runner who stops to smoke? Maybe smoking is the only thing that makes their life as a runner even remotely tolerable. The point is that narrow contexts overly consolidate the way we think about actions and people, when really the "idiosyncrasy" of it all is what makes the most sense.

College Grads Feel Compelled To Start A Blog

Because the world is suddenly meaningless. It turns into the reproductive cycle of working to make money to work- an outcome no one saw coming when they were pursuing a self titled major in black feminist economics with an emphasis in early Greek literature. This also speaks to why business and marketing majors don't have blogs, or a soul for that matter.

But are these post college bloggers pouring out prolific prose on the intersection of technology and third world marginalization? Absolutely not. The poster college blogger will undoubtedly chose one of the following topics:

1. Food. A BA in anything entitles you rip apart any and all restaurants and also, surprisingly enough, makes you somewhat of a gourmand in the home kitchen.
2. Music. There is nothing quite underground enough- and, if people have heard of it, it probably sucks.
3. Self indulgent ramblings. This blog being an excellent example. If you have had a recent break up or are pissed off enough, you should be able to post at least a few times a week.
4. Fashion. http://fopsanddandies.blogspot.com. Enough said.

Posting on something meaningful is: 1) trying to hard, but 2) and more importantly so, reminds them of the vapid life the blog was created to alleviate. If the rest of life is going to be composed of getting dressed, eating, and making fun of people, they might as well let everyone else know how good they are at it.