I encountered the stupidest people EVER this week.
One guy wasn't offensively stupid, but he sat there, slack-jawed, spouting cliches, whilst I attempted to hold a conversation with him. I don't even know how to comment on him, other than to say I spoke with him for a good hour and have absolutely NOTHING of substance to bring from it. I can't even remember his name.
The other instance was seriously offensive. Two mid-forties people, a man and a woman, in the bar where Portland Idol was being held (I didn't audition for lack of time, but fear not, Romans and countrymen... there's always next week!). The conversation started off innocently enough, but then suddenly they were saying Negro and Spic and mentioning how many Mexicans there are in Portland. I (again, innocently enough) said how, comparatively, the Southern and Central California regions are markedly more racially diverse than the Pacific Northwest.
They DISAGREED. They said that I hadn't lived here long enough to know what I was talking about. They said that Portland was really, really racially diverse and that there are tons of black and Mexican people ("look behind you. See? a black man AND a Mexican.") And then, when I was explaining where I grew up, they LAUGHED at me when I said I was from Fresno, as though Fresno was not a true California city. The lady asked "How old are you, sweetheart?" as though my youth would somehow shed light onto the RIDICULOUS comment I had made... and then she went on to kindly explain to me that the "numerous farms in the Portland area really give the immigrants a place to work. Oregon needs lots of workers, so that's why the Mexicans come here."
I even went as far as to offer up a new thesis for agreement sake: perhaps they would buy that Portland was much less racially INTEGRATED than Los Angeles? No. They LAUGHED at me, as though they could literally not believe the mush coming from my mouth.
I seriously wanted to leave the bar, go online and print them census reports from 2003 and maps denoting racial integration in all areas and shove it up their ignorant, white, outspoken bullshit asses.
