Which Reminds Me

In October of 1992 I was hired as a staff writer for South Florida Newspaper Network and two or three months later Eva, the writer who sat in the cubicle to my right, was fired. I do not know very much about that. She rarely made appearances at her desk and when she did she seemed sullen and angry. I doubt that I ever said much more than hello to Eva. I just remember that she was suddenly gone. Some time later Bonnie, who sat in the cubicle directly across from mine, mentioned that Eva had been fired because she was apparently pathetically bad, her stories requiring major surgery by Cathy, the editor who fired her. Eva went home to Puerto Rico where she was soon hired by the Associated Press so I guess either our editors were overly zealous in demanding accuracy and writing skills or else it pays to be Hispanic for ethnic quota reasons even if your work is not exactly stellar or impressive to those who know how things ought to be. Something like that. Which reminds me that someone later brought up that song, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina," as if she thought that I was Eva and was identifying whatever uninformed and ignorant opinions Eva might have with me and my job. I just don't even know where that was coming from. My name is not Eva, I don't know anything about Eva and I don't believe that I should have to sit and listen to this nonsense concocted by slobbering witch Stacy and her lowlife idiot husband Byron, with whom I prefer not to be in touch. Those Puerto Ricans live in their own private La-La land to which regular white people such as myself are not admitted without blood ties, generally speaking. Which reminds me that the youngest daughter of my Dad's cousin Murlene, who had nine children in all, married a Puerto Rican man and has a couple of children with him. We met at a family funeral and she was making some snarky jokes about the Assemblies of God hymnbook, which just goes to show that it will be hard to have any family unity or peace with those snarky distant cousins constantly stabbing us in the back on a regular basis. Latins are all linked to each other and they behave sort of like a pack of Pavlov's dogs, trained to bark and bite at particular codes that only they understand because that is their way of wreaking revenge on the white man's code of the century past and paying the white man back tit for tat. This dog pack behavior seems creepy wicked to us and makes us want to wring their wicked Latino necks, especially as their intentions toward us are entirely murderous. Which reminds me that there was some discussion of the Broadway musical that the Rivera Cheaters are planning as a monument to their victimhood at the hands of white people, headed by Scotty Kid, musicalized, no doubt, by Mark. However, the story was proving problematic because while the children were Puerto Ricans living in Hawaii, not exactly the Caribbean, and Scotty Kid is a reformed crook with a puzzling past only partially accounted for in his autobiography. I really don't know anything about it, nor do I care to participate in any Broadway project. If done properly, someone would have to persuade the Puerto Ricans to play their fitting role of villains redeemed by missionary intervention and that would require quite an argument. I really am not interested in getting involved in that argument. It is just not by problem.