Stuff That Scares Me

So. I have an uncle who is a paranoid schizophrenic.

These days, especially here on the internet, severe psychological disorders seem to be the "cool thing" in certain circles. Which bugs me every kind of sideways, but I won't go into that. It's not "cool," though. It's very far from it.

( family shit )

It's like I'm stuck here in this absurd back and forth - if I clean everything up, suddenly I'm my mother. If I leave it like this, suddenly I'm my uncle. Can't I just be myself, without anyone else's faults encroaching on my actions? I let the house get messy. That's all. I'm a busy person, I work two jobs, and try to have a social life. The house got messy. This shouldn't be an indication of my mental state or of anything else other than the fact that I've over-scheduled myself, and THAT'S IT.

Done...

Well, I did it.

Now I'm kinda cowering in fear that someone is going to scream "racist" at me.

There's been several wank posts at doctorwho about the "Turn Left" episode of Doctor Who being racist against the Chinese and Asian cultures in general. I'm totally not seeing it. Granted, I'm not Chinese or any type of Asian, so it's not like I can say, well, it didn't offend me so it can't offend you...

I'm not exactly the most politically correct person out there; I'm the first to admit it. But striving to be "politically correct" is not what motivates my words and actions - if I think something is wrong, I don't do or say it. If I think it's okay, then I don't hold back. Sometimes I do offend people. It happens. Is the stuff I said about Chinatowns racist, or just observant?

I certainly don't want to be the white girl who says "well but see I have Asian friends so I'm not racist, it's okay."

Asian friends? Not around here, lol. Everyone is white around here. I'm the fucking minority - apparently I look hispanic, cause Spanish speaking people (like the tourists in the coffee shop the other day) are always approaching me to speak Spanish to me. I'm, oh, a whopping ONE QUARTER Mexican and you know what we spoke in my house growing up? English. My mom doesn't speak Spanish and god forbid we speak a language she can't understand, nevermind she does it all the time, lol.

Then I got to thinking about stuff that does offend me - I get super offended at any kind of anti-gay stuff. I hate people who say, "oh, I have a gay friend, so I'm not being a bigot at all, it's just that I would never want to risk them influencing my children, blah blah blah." Ok, that kind of thing will make me fly off the handle, or at least storm out of the room.

I get incredibly irritated when STRANGERS ask me what's wrong with me or what happened to me (I use crutches) but I seriously don't care when people make short bus jokes. In fact, I really get a big kick out of shutting them down by saying, "hey, don't knock the short bus!" Then they look at me, realize, omg, I just made a disabled joke in front of a disabled person, and cackle while they squirm. I don't get nasty or storm off all offended. Should I?

Bigger question is, why am I even asking what should and shouldn't offend me?

Should I be offended that my favorite TV show has offended a few (maybe a lot) of it's viewers by... I'm still not exactly sure what... inaccurate Chinese characters on the banners on Chinaplanet? Having an Asian bad guy? Having the bad guy be a fortune teller who, since she's the bad guy and all, is evil?

I'm waiting for some kind of scathing response to descend upon my inbox, leading me to turn bright red and feel embarrassed. But I still think I'm right. The episode wasn't racist.