Brake Master Cylinders...

Hi I’m Andrew and I’ll be doing some contributing posting on this blog. I don’t necessarily know how to introduce myself in this occasion so I’m just gonna spit out what has been occupying my thoughts…

An event startled me while I was at work the other day. I work at an auto parts store, and as the work day was drawing long a man came in with a return. This didn’t really bother me because I was already working on processing returns from a number of our credit accounts. Had the man come in and simply said, “I would like to return this,” I wouldn’t be writing this presently. Instead he proceeded to inform me of his motivations, despite the fact that I had not asked him nor had any desire to know really, his statement: “I’m going to have to return this, I was looking at the box and noticed that it was made in China, I won’t have anything made in China on my Corvette.” Yes, it was for a Corvette. No, it was not a nice one. It was a completely middling, inauspicious late ‘80s model with an engine no more powerful or sporty than a new Ford Taurus and far and away the ugliest body to ever be considered a “Corvette.”

This led me down two distinct paths, the first and inconsequential one was thus, if this man truly believes that there is nothing on his car made in China then he has about as much intelligence as the clay Boba Fett paperweight sitting on my desk. The second more important thought to emerge focused on this thread in the self-admitted age of globalization and global exchange how do so many people remain so culturally ignorant?

To that I don’t have a clear answer and welcome any and all comers. The bigger issue is in the wrongness of the situation, in the age when you can send, receive and process Facebook friend requests in 30 seconds or less using any web-enabled device currently in production, or receive Twitter updates from truly ANY person in the world who has a Twitter, where the world’s political leaders converse using Google’s completely free translation product, why is it that this mutated version of racism is still so popular?

I hope this generates some thought, and if not I promise the next time I write it will be more free flow and with less vexation, but this has been diminishing my other thoughts and I needed to air it out before moving on.