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Josh and Sara came over last night and had adult beverages on the front porch with us, which was a good time, except that Josh was being responsible because he was driving. That's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but Josh is a Funny Motherfucker™ when he gets drunk, so I felt like I missed out on something. Also, towards the end of the evening, I saw my newest neighbor, a middle-aged woman by name of Sue, going into her house. She paused on her porch for a moment, and I waved the wave of the enthusiastic drunk, despite being only pleasantly buzzed. Denise yelled over for her to come by for a beer, and she and her friend Tom did so.

All was well and good until I was animatedly telling a story about the first time I mowed the yard this year. The grass was pretty high (okay, really high), and my neighborhood bunnies had taken quite a shine to it. As I followed my lawnmower in ever-tightening circles around the yard, I would occasionally see disturbances in the grass, moving on trajectories away from my weapon of grass destruction*. I knew, of course, that these disturbances were terrified bunnies. Faced with the unpleasant decision of either being near 5.5hp of whirling roaring death, and coming out into the open where I had already mowed, the bunnies simply moved as far away from the lawnmower as they could, while remaining relatively hidden. Several times, I had to stop and scout ahead, shooing them out of my path. They were teeny little bunnies, cute and quivery, and I felt bad for them, but also did not want to be evicted.

Finally, I was left with a square of uncut grass perhaps ten feet on a side and full of these cute and quivery bunnies. I knew by now that they had no intention of leaving their knee-high shelter, and I would not be able to live with myself if I mowed over a bunny, so I moved the mower off to the side and began hunting wabbits, as it were. I had a rough idea (or so I thought) of how many bunnies I was looking for, so I figured I would just scare them all out, and they would run to the shelter afforded by the neighbor's shed, or perhaps just go home to their rabbit hole. I described this portion of the story as, "So I go wading into this tall grass full of bunnies like I'm in the jungle looking for Charlie, and eventually I scare out about five rabbits, who all take off running." Or something like that. I thought nothing of it, but Sue said, "Well, that was pretty racist." I've been called a lot of things before, but never a racist. I didn't even realize what she was talking about at first. I've never thought of Charlie as a racist term, anymore than I would blink at someone talking about the Nazis or the Legionnaires. Now granted, calling someone a Nazi is pretty serious, or was until Seinfeld desensitized it. However, the term is historically correct. If I had said I was going through the underbrush "looking for chinks" or "gooks", I could understand, but I would of course not say that.

I don't even know if she was serious. She didn't exactly jump up in an outrage and leave, and invited us to drop by at Christmas for dinner (which is a little funny if you think about it - I don't think people even have decorations up yet). Nevertheless, it had me a bit upset last night, and still today. I'm not a people person by any means; most of you annoy me to some extent. However, it has nothing to do with where you're from, how you look, or your sexual or political orientation.

After I thought about it a while, I'm not concerned that I was being racist. Racism isn't vernacular, it's intent and attitude. But I'm curious, is that term generally considered to be racist?

In other news, it's 10 pm on Saturday night of a three-day weekend, and I'm at the office working. I suck.

* I just this very moment made that up, and I'm pretty proud of it.

Currently listening to: "Burning Inside", Ministry