Let me get this straight.

I forgot one tiny part of the Gennifer Flowers story. After she called thebrownhornet a local, she talked about New Orleans is a great town for visitors, and how "we love visitors, but you have to be careful.....sometimes, we lose people." She then went on to talk about a friend from Dallas who claimed to know how to party, and then came to New Orleans and went missing for two days. He came back limping. Gennifer said, "I don't want to ask where you've been, but....are you at least alright?!" Apparently he got stepped on by a mule.

Which reminds me, thebrownhornet, I read that those generally are mules you see clopping around the city, not horses.

Mules which is also the basis for the word "mulatto" which is part of why it's not exactly an, um, appropriate term for a biracial or multi-racial person. Also, mulatto was the original technical term, along with quadroon and octoroon, when the colonials folks used to keep extremely thorough geneological records of everyone's exact racial content, with mulatto being "half" black, quadroon being a quarter, octoroon being an eighth. I'm writing this all because I recently got into a conversation where I was asked why it wasn't an appropriate word to use when referring to people of mixed racial heritage. I mean, I know there actually might be some people who self-identify as "mulatto", and that's certainly their business, but that doesn't mean I'm going to automatically up and call any person or persons by such loaded archaic terms.

Also, right before my trip, I got into a discussion at some bar explaining what the literary phrase "tragic mulatto" meant. I'm being haunted by the word, I guess. Or maybe it's just the word of the month, brought on by that whole Dairy Queen "moolatte" debacle.

I just woke up from a nap and my brain is all over the place.