Ah, don’t you love Stuff White People Like? Ol’ Christian Landers doesn’t post new entries very often, but when he does, I read, I laugh, I sigh and realize that I’m totally that white person he’s writing about. His latest entry, #105, is about unpaid internships:
White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum.Any white person who takes an internship outside of these industries is either the wrong type of white person or a law student.There are no exceptions.
Last summer I turned down a full-time business-y job that would have paid me so that I could work part-time at a non-profit that could barely pay its employees, let alone its interns. Also,I was hoping to make my father even more irritated with me by continuing to make no money. Ever. It worked.
My Australian friend Kate, whom I studied abroad with in Italy, recently wrote on my Facebook wall (when I am too old to not drop things like “Oh, she wrote that on my wall” in everyday conversation?) that I should keep myself entertained “with some good old kiwi (New Zealand) humour.” (She also says fun things like “bub” and “mad blog,” which I love.) Of course, she was talking about Flight of the Conchords, the musical comedy band that most of you have probably heard of. According to Wikipedia, they bill themselves as “formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo.”
As Christian Landers points out, because I am a white person, I like musical comedy: “This style of humor involves a person or group singing a song but rather than singing about something serious, it has funny lyrics. It’s not any more complicated than that, but white people can’t get enough of it.” Landers cites Flight of the Conchords as a perfect example of musical comedy that white people like. And to anyone hoping to make friends with a white person, he offers the following sage advice:
If you find yourself at a corporate retreat where you have to put on a skit for the other employees in your office, it’s always a good idea to suggest doing a funny song. The rest of your group will get very excited and start work immediately on some clever lyrics. Do not worry about the music part, if you have more than two white males on your team, it is certain that one of them can play the guitar.
Wise man, that Christian Landers.
Anyway, on Kate’s recommendation, I started playing on YouTube watching various Flight of the Conchords videos, and naturally, in the process, I formed crushes on the two singers. (A bearded man and a nerdy guy with glasses? Who both can sing and play the guitar? Sign me up.) All of the videos are entertaining, although sometimes I feel like I’m just not getting the joke (wrong hemisphere, maybe?). The wannabe-peace-loving-hippie-with-a-sense-of-humor in me quite liked this one:
When I become president, this is going to be the foundation of my national security strategy: “If every soldier in the world put down his weapon, picked up a woman, what a peaceful world this world would be.”
I also love this one, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room”:
I’d like to think that I’m in the top three most beautiful girls on the street. Depending on the street.
This is a mini rant. You know how sometimes you read something and you just get so angry? Well that happened to me as I was perusing USA Today. Get this: according to a study, black people don’t all think the same and see the world differently! WOW. This is a revolutionary thought because…all white people do? Haha well I guess they do if you ask Christian Landers of stuffwhitepeoplelike.
But seriously, there are just some things you don’t need to have a study for. And it’s sad that we have to waste money scientifically proving that members of a group have individual thoughts.
And by the way, number 101 on the list of stuff white people like is being offended. (My brother cites this as the most accurate post to describe me). Haha. Maybe he’s right, but somebody’s got to do it.
six words to change the world. 