Tuesday, November 16, 2004

It’s a funny thing about blogs, those cottage industries sustained by nothing more than imagination and a few fingers. They begin as clearly and forcefully as a gunshot, but where they end up is anyone’s guess. Sometimes they strike a chord with the public and rocket into the limelight, while other times, most times, they nobly endure with little desire for fame and fortune. And then there are those that trickle out and die.

Or do they? Unquestionably many that die stay dead, as still and dejected as a hound in a field full of carrots. Every once in a while, however, you happen upon a weblog gone Lazarus. Why the author resurrected it and how long it will stay resurrected, these are concerns that don’t really matter. All you know, all you see, is an empty grave and a filled page.

I’m speaking in general, to be sure, but I’m also referring to Cicero’s corner of the Internet. He’s back. In the online sphere, there’s a tendency to drop various codenames with nary a care for audience comprehension, and I’m often guilty of this. Here’s a mental picture for your troubles. On a bad day, Cicero resembles an erudite Chandler Bing infected with Yellow Fever. On a good day, he resembles a well coiffed Winston Churchill, at least in his mind.

When you flatter someone, flatter someone silly, that kind of thing doesn’t go unnoticed. So I’ll hit you one back, Cicero, and in the process you’ll have an anecdote to enjoy, gentle reader. Remember the narrative tradition we talked about yesterday? Yeah, we’re aiming for some continuity here.

This story begins, like so many others, with food and a woman. The food, in this case, is a Philly cheesesteak. The woman is a prodigious African-American who’s taking orders. We know we’re hungry and intent on cramming Americana down our throats. What we don’t know is that racial tensions will soon boil over like grease in a deep fryer.

The woman gives Cicero a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised higher than the other, an obvious nonverbal substitute for “What would you like?”

“I’ll have a Philly cheesesteak, please,” says Cicero in a vain attempt to be polite.

“What kind of cheese?” asks the woman gruffly.

“Ah, um,” sputters Cicero, temporarily caught off guard, “I’ll have the white cheese.”

That skeptical look she gave earlier? It’s now a withering look.

“WHITE cheese?” she says loudly without a smile. “We don’t have no white cheese.”

In one tense moment, on a street corner nestled in the heart of a liberal college town, decades of civil rights activism go straight down the shitter.

At this point, Cicero’s completely surprised. The woman proceeds to name his options.

“We got Swiss, provolone, white American cheese, and yellow cheese,” she lists with a huff.

“Provolone,” concludes Cicero quickly.

It’s obvious to me that he’s copping out by selecting the racially neutral cheese.

“No, no, you want American cheese,” I helpfully inject, much like how they’ll probably inject some spit into his sandwich.

In retrospect, I’m not sure why “white cheese” differed so significantly from “white American cheese.” Perhaps patriotism is what binds us, what melts away our racial divides? Maybe, but all I’m thinking about right now is how the phrase “yellow cheese” insults me mightily.

That’s my story. It’s a story for you, dear reader, but it’s also a story from a dirty chink to a filthy cracker. Wait, my mistake. I meant a dirty American chink and a filthy American cracker.