as i got off the bus to walk to maria's building i realized i was hungry. like, really, really hungry. therefore i went into the tiny grocery store closeby, knocked my head into the magazine shelf filled with porn magazines (what do you mean "under the desk in brown bags?") on proud display and bought two vanilla yogurts. what i didn't buy was a plastic spoon. i'm clever that way.

according to the stares i got from passing people out walking they've never had to try and figure out how to fold a functioning spoon out of the metallic yogurt lid while carrying a purse and a huge notepad before. it worked, though (i must confess, i've had previous situations where figuring out how to fold a spoon out of a lid was necessary), and soon i was spooning yogurt like mad while trying to not spill any on my clothes.

i made it, though, and with a sticky face and vanilla scented fingers i made it up the stairs to ring their bell.

after i washed my hands and face we watched some taped jerry springer and ricki lake episodes about racists and various ignorant and intolerant people. now know this about me - nothing gets me more riled up than shows like that (that and abuse shows :().

it never seizes to amaze me how, for example, a seventeen year old boy can have lived his entire life in an all white neighbourhood and have had no personal experience with any person of a different skin tone, religion or sexual preference than his, and yet see himself as perfectly able to hurl out all sorts of degrading, stereotypical generalizations against anyone that isn't him.

i also refuse to believe that any talk show is really going to change a persons belief's that have been a part of a person's character for a long time in a day, or even a week.

i remember once reading a quote along the lines of "it's pretty sad when the only thing you have in your life to be proud about is the one thing you had no say in - your heritage." blah. intolerance pushes my buttons so, so much.

i don't know how much impact three semesters at a black college has had on me, but i can tell you that it has made me a lot more aware of the way we treat people around us.

and with that i'm stepping off my soap box.

the rest of the night was spent watching apt pupil, the wedding singer, eating homemade mexican food and ending up with a collective tummy ache.

• the cast of this journal.