Carrying on from the previous entry…

41. Indie Music
    Meh.
42. Sushi
    I’ve enjoyed what sushi I’ve had, but I haven’t had enough of it to say I’m any kind of fan. I do like wasabe…
43. Plays
    Sure, I like plays. I don’t go very often because (a) movies are my first passion, and (b) movie admission is cheaper. But I do like them. I was even in one, about a million years ago in high school.
44. Public Radio
    Yep. I listen to my local NPR affialiate every morning as I drive to the train station. Despite what the right-wingers seem to think — i.e., that NPR is “liberal” radio designed as a counterpoint to Rush, Hannity, Beck, et. al. — I find it is actually pretty balanced most of the time, and the most reliable source for actual journalism, as opposed to fluff and sensationalism.
45. Asian Fusion Food
    What the hell is “Asian fusion?” Sounds like a reactor built in Japan…
46. The Sunday New York Times
    Nope.
47. Arts Degrees
    No more or less useless than a BA in English Lit, I suppose.
48. Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops
    Never set foot in one.
49. Vintage
    “Vintage?” That’s pretty vague, isn’t it? Vintage what? I guess in a general sense, yes, my sense of aesthetics is more in tune with The Way Things Used to Be, but that covers a lot of territory. Are we talking 1930s men’s clothing, 1950s modernist furniture, Art Deco jewelry, or Victorian homes? (All of which I like, incidentally.) A provisional bolding here, I guess.
50. Irony
    If by “irony,” we mean the smug, sarcastic, self-aware, “aren’t we clever” attitude that so much of popular entertainment has displayed for the last 10 or 15 years, then no, I do not like irony. I much preferred it when movies were allowed to be sentimental and no one gave you shit for actually daring to take things at face value.
51. Living by the Water
    I live in what is technically a desert. Not a sand-dunes-and-cacti desert like you see in Arizona or Nevada, but there isn’t a lot of water in these parts and by the end of July, the predominate colors are usually brown and gray. (The Great Salt Lake, a.k.a., The Big Smelly Pond, doesn’t count; yes, there’s lots of water there, but it’s brackish and most Salt Lakers tend to ignore the thing.) Which means that on the occasions when I have visited more lush surroundings, I’ve found them really enchanting. I can imagine myself living very happily in one of the small villages along the Rhine in Germany, or near the ocean in California. I doubt I ever will, but I like the idea…
52. Sarah Silverman
    You know, up until this week, I had no idea who this girl was. And now I only know her because of that whole Matt Damon video thing. Which is actually pretty funny, but I think what really makes it funny is that Matt Damon himself is in it. He seems like a really cool guy with a good sense of humor he has about himself. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, Sarah Silverman. Who is she again?
53. Dogs
    Of course. Dogs rock.
54. Kitchen Gadgets
    Kitchen gadgets are like every other kind of gadget or grown-up toy, I think: they always look neat and seem to be indispensable when you’re looking at them in the store, but you get them home, use them twice, and then they collect dust. But then what do I know? I rarely cook anything more complex than a Hot Pocket®.
55. Apologies
    I think I tend to say “I’m sorry” far too many times during the average week, and usually for things that I really don’t need to be apologizing for. It’s a sign of my own insecurity, and no, I don’t like it.
56. Lawyers
    I think Americans, by and large, are far too quick to sue their fellow citizens for any perceived slight or injury rather than just sucking up the fact that sometimes shit happens in life. That said, however, I do think legal counsel and, yes, even lawsuits are necessary evils sometimes. As with so many other things, I’m ambivalent…
57. Juno
    I’ve noticed something of a backlash building against this charming little film since it was nominated for a number of Oscars, and especially since its writer Diablo Cody won for her awesome screenplay, and I think it’s bull. It’s simply the same old pattern: something genuinely good comes along, a lot of people love it and start talking about it, and eventually other people get tired of hearing about it so they decide the movie must surely suck if so many people like it. I’ve seen it a hundred times before: Dances with Wolves, Titanic, and even the original Star Wars have all been subject to this syndrome. And it’s bullshit, it really is. Because the movies are no better or worse than they ever were, it’s just that they wore out their welcome as topics of conversation. I liked those other three movies and I still do, just because the fickle public seems to have turned its back on them, and Juno is the same way. I liked it a lot, and I’m not apologizing for it. If you didn’t like it, well, sorry, thems the breaks.
58. Japan
    I’d like to visit Japan, and I’m interested in Japanese history and culture. However, I never have been able to develop much affection for anime or manga, which I think is probably what this category is getting at.
59. Natural Medicine
    Snake oil.
60. Toyota Prius
    I’ve been reading lately that hybrids may not be quite the correct step forward that we’ve all been thinking, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s nothing more than a backlash against the Prius’ popularity, much like the reversal of opinion on popular movies (see Juno above). I do think the Prius has demonstrated to car makers that “alternative” vehicles will sell if you make them look like actual cars rather than weird little go-carts.
61. Bicycles
    I’ve always enjoyed biking, but it’s not a big lifestyle thing for me the way it is for some. And honestly, suburban Utah is so spread out and sprawly that it’s not much fun or practical to ride around these parts unless you’re really hardcore about it.
62. Knowing What’s Best for Poor People
    This item is apparently intended to highlight the hypocrisy of white middle- or upper-class people trying to solve the problems of those less fortunate than them through legislation or whatever. While I can see making legitimate criticisms that these efforts are misguided or unrealistic, I can’t help but experience a knee-jerk defensive reaction to accusations that my genuine compassion is hypocritical because I’ve never been poor or don’t fully understand how to help the poor. It makes me want to say, “well, excuuuuuuuuuuse me for giving a damn, and, oh by the way, screw you, you unappreciative jerk!” A lot is made of “white guilt” or “middle-class guilt,” but it is a real phenomenon and I feel it almost everyday when I pass some homeless guy in front of Sam Weller Books and wonder how it is that that poor bastard sleeps under a freeway overpass while I have a house and a bed, especially when we supposedly live in the greatest, wealthiest country in the world. Believe it or not, there really are white middle-class types who know the world is unfair and it bothers them. We may not know the best way to help, but that doesn’t invalidate our desire to help…
63. Expensive Sandwiches
    Cheap sandwiches are better.
64. Recycling
    I hate the wasteful, everything-is-disposable, the-new-model-just-came-out-so-this-one-is-going-in-the-landfill attitude our society has developed. My granparents bought a brand-new Zenith console radio in 1936. It’s sitting in my living room, and it still works (or at least it would if I did a little maintenance on it). We used to value goods that were built to last, and I don’t understand how or when that changed. Recycling is an imperfect process, but in my mind it’s better than burying ourselves beneath mountains of our own cast-off consumer crap.
65. Co-Ed Sports
    I don’t care about sports, therefore I don’t care if they’re co-ed or not. I suppose if women can compete at the same level as men (or vice versa) there’s no good reason why they shouldn’t.
66. Divorce
    I have virtually no experience with divorce — I suspect the divorce rate in Utah is lower than in the rest of the country, due to certain cultural factors unique to this place — but my grandparents on both sides divorced before I was born, and I have a good friend who is currently in the middle of one, and in all those cases I think it’s for the best. I see no reason why people should stay together if the relationship isn’t fulfilling, and no reason why people who do divorce should be stigmatized or punished for it. In fact, I sometimes wonder if “trial marriages” or “term marriages” that need to be renewed every so often wouldn’t be a better idea than our medieval notion of “til death do you part” (because, after all, the parting of death came much, much sooner throughout most of human history).
67. Standing Still at Concerts
    What’s wrong with standing still at concerts? We’re there to hear the music, right? How you react to the music is entirely your business. Although it does get pretty damn annoying sometimes when people are hopping around in front of me and blocking my view…
68. Michel Gondry
    Who the hell is Michel Gondry?
69. Mos Def
    Who the hell is Mos Def? I know he was in the feature film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and that many people apparently knew of him before that role, but I myself have no idea why I’m expected to recognize his name.
70. Difficult Breakups
    A stupid item — why would anyone say they like difficult breakups? They’re a fact of life, but to say that “white people like difficult breakups” is simply dumb. Especially since I don’t believe that they are solely the province of white people.
71. Being the only white person around
    I’ve never had that experience, except when I’ve been entirely alone.
72. Study Abroad
    I spent a month at the International Summer School at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England. One of the best experiences of my entire life.
73. Gentrification
    Mixed feelings. On the one hand, building condos and shiny new retail to revitalize rundown parts of town inevitably destroys whatever unique cultural quality exists there to begin with and replaces genuinely interesting people with the same damn yuppies you encounter every place else. But on the other hand, many people don’t dare go near the rundown parts of town in the first place, so which is worse?
74. Oscar Parties
    Never been to one.
75. Threatening to Move to Canada
    Who hasn’t done this? When you are deeply embarrassed by what your government is supposedly doing in your name, when you feel utterly disenfranchised and even threatened for merely having a different opinion from many of those around you, how else can you express your dissatisfaction? It’s a nice fantasy. So what if no one ever actually follows through on it. It’s not hypocrisy; it’s a safety valve.
76. Bottles of Water
    I know bottled water is largely a scam to separate Americans from their hard-earned cubits by convincing us that the stuff put out by the Coca-Cola Company is somehow superior to what’s in the drinking fountain down the hall (actually, you don’t see a lot of drinking fountains any more, have you noticed that?). Nevertheless, I do occasionally buy one. It’s convenient when I’m out driving in the car or when I’m at the movies and feel thirsty for something other than a MegaMaxiMondoGulp. That said, though, I don’t particularly like bottled water. It’s just there in our culture.
77. Musical Comedy
    Um, no.
78. Multilingual Children
    While I’ve always found it pretentious as hell to hear people bragging that their toddler is learning French, I do think it’s valuable — and probably will be moreso in the future — for Americans to know a second language, same as everybody else in the world does. I wish I’d taken language studies more seriously when I was in school, to be honest. It would make traveling a bit easier…
79. Modern Furniture
    Define “modern.” Does that mean the sleek, minimalist, Scandinavian-looking stuff? The 1950s futurist aesthetic? Chairs that look like blobs of extruded plastic? When it comes to furniture I like, I simply know it when I see it, kind of like art and porn.
80. The Idea of Soccer
    I like neither the idea of soccer nor soccer itself. It’s that whole “I don’t like sports” thing again. However, I will say that I predict the big-ass monstrosity of a soccer stadium that one rich developer has scammed the city of Sandy, Utah, into building for him is going to turn out to be the biggest white elephant in the history of this state. I mean, really, who besides a tiny minority of Europhiles and wealthy people actually cares about soccer? (The whole “soccer-mom” thing doesn’t count; I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap between people whose kids play soccer and people who pay attention to pro soccer.)
81. Graduate School
    I didn’t see much point to grad school for myself; in fact, I see little point to it unless you want a career in academe or know for sure that your career path will be better served with an advanced degree than without one. Your mileage may vary.
82. Hating Corporations
    Corporations are, I imagine, like any other invention of humanity: they solve certain problems while introducing certain others. They are not inherently evil. That said, I do think that big corporations in general have gotten way out of control and are having a deleterious effect on society in their never-ending zeal to accumulate ungodly profits for a small handful of shareholders and executives. Honestly, can anyone tell me why CEOs deserve huge payouts in exchange for failure? Or at all, for that matter? Is what a CEO does truly that much more valuable than an average worker down on the line? I’m sorry, but that offends my sense of fairness…

And there you have it. Out of 82 items that white people supposedly like, it turns out that this white person is really only enthusiastic about 24 of them. I’m ambivalent and/or indifferent to many more of them, and several of them I outright do not like. So… what does it mean? Do I have to turn in my racial membership card or something? Or does it really mean that the Stuff White People Like blog overgeneralizes and makes assumptions about white folks based entirely on one small and not-very-representative slice of society? I think the answer is fairly obvious…