Plural of Anecdotes

New comic up over at Anecdata (www.anecdata.smackjeeves.com).

The moose is, as noted, filling in for a deer head.

The deer head was a souvenir of my husband's, from a hunting trip that occurred before I knew him (he still hunts, but we haven't kept any more mementos. Just snausage.). It hung on the living room wall, gazing at the world with taxidermied and somewhat crooked eyes. Eyes hidden as behind a pall, because they were covered with spider webs, because I am the person who fights entropy in this household, and I wasn't touching that creepy thing. I don't mind trophies, but this head was malevolently stupid.

My husband , of course, did not see my point. The deer was dead, and so was definitionally harmless. Nothing I could say would sway him.

Until the night when, all unprovoked, the thing fell on me, all ten points of it, as part of a chain reaction that required emergency redecorating and bandages.

Deer Head lives in the storage shed now, and I am a happier bug. But this Van Gogh's been lookin' at me....

This is about this journal comic:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/anecdata/series.php

which may require a bit of explanation.

I make dolls, of various sorts. For a particular craft fair, I made sock dolls. Sock dolls, are, naturally, white, or other-sock-colored, but the cheapest socks to use are white.

And sock white is a boring color, and doesn't look good with any fabric I had for clothing, and also white is boring. And I was painting on the faces anyway. So I painted the rest of them, too. It looked pretty cool.

For the record, the colors I painted them were gold, copper, garnet brown, and sand. I've got another batch that're going to be in greens and blues. I will probably not do red, because red overwhelms other colors.

Anyway. Those were the colors I went with. Glittery, and on the brown/neutral side of things.

And while I was away, my Lovely Assistant had the conversation related in the comic.

The whole thing just boggles me, because: (a) how are non-white dolls racist? Are white people so insecure that seeing any other color on a doll frightens and confuses them, and I must be sensitive to that? Is it racist to acknowledge that other skin tones exist? Was it the metallic-colored paint combined with the stylized facial features (though, really, these are *sock dolls*. They have no fingers, thumbs, or ears. A person might expect they'll be a bit a cartoony.)? I don't get it...

Especially because, (b), how does my not being white make it all ok? Because non-whites can't be racist? Because non-whites are *allowed* to be racist? I...I'm so confused.

Also, (c) only a couple of white people had any such comment to make. The dolls were a big hit with the black and hispanic kids in town, and I am so making more, so I can sell them cheaper. I like seeing happy kids.

Accolades to any who can explain this weirdness for me.

Also! Anyone who can teach me to hyperlink, or point me towards a decent tutorial for such? Please do so in the comments. I think I'm the only person on the internet still linking with the actual URL.


*No, I'm not white. I'm what used to be known as a creole, before that came to be associated entirely with Louisiana, and is now commonly known as Heinz 57, or mongrel. Practically, it means I can spend a day in the sun without worrying over either sunblock or sunburn, and yet get seated at a Denny's without having to make a federal case.