i need to learn hindi.

Well, howdy.

I was at the Y the other day (so many of my paragraphs begin as such, I know), and I saw on the tele-box the footage of Castro taking a fall. It was followed by a comment from the Bush administration: a reporter asked if he wished Fidel a speedy recovery, and the response was negative, followed by some heavy politicking. I thought maybe I misread the closed-captioning, because I couldn’t believe that they would actually not wish him well, at least on an official state level. But I checked cnn.com (shudder) today, and there it was:

Does anyone else find this completely appalling? That this is the state of international diplomacy? That the administration can’t muster basic human compassion? I have visions of W doing pratfalls in the White House, shouting, “Look, everybody, I’m Fidel! Hey, look at me! I’m Castro! Hey, everybody! Look!”

It’s embarrassing, but it stands to reason in a political climate that thrives on fear. If we start humanizing the enemy instead of seeing the bloodthirsty monsters who hold us in a perpetual state of siege, we might actually have no reason to fight anymore. I’m pretty sure our economy can no longer function in a peaceful world. Best to keep the war machine running; we don’t know how to live otherwise.

And another thing!!

Ha. So! Stephanie and I had trouble agreeing on a movie the other night, so we saw that animated Shark Tale movie. It was sometimes funny, but not great. I’ve seen some kids’ movies recently that have actually been pretty good. Anyway, I’m bothered by the fact that even in movies geared towards kids, Hollywood still seems to go out of their way to enforce ethnic stereotypes. It’s such cheap humor. This movie even had the typical black-white jokes.

I dunno. It just seems pretty socially irresponsible to be feeding that to kids, who don’t have the cultural frame of reference to discern the very fine line between ‘funny’ and ‘racist’. Which is really just a matter of personal judgment, anyway.

In other, less opinionated news, I have been a crazy knittin’ fool again, working on xmas presents. The awesome thing is that I’m now comfortable enough around this stuff that I’ve started designing my own patterns, or modifying existing ones. I’ve been writing them down so someday I can actually share them, too. At the moment, I’m working on this cable-knit scarf I designed for Mother Ripley, in the most fantastic organic cotton yarn. This is the first time I’ve attempted cables, and they’re nowhere near as difficult as I expected. The hard part is paying a lot of attention, because if you screw up you can’t just drop stitches and fix them with a crochet hook; you end up pulling out rows of work and having to figure out where you got off track.

The problem with me and knitting (as with me and any hobby), is there are so damn many things I want to do. I’ll never have enough time for them all. When I die, expect my tombstone to reflect that sentiment:

Note: I figured I should make my expiration date something really far out into the future, just in case there’s some kind of interweb death hex. You just never know. And I figure 100 years is plenty of time to get at least most of my to-do list accomplished.

Note II: Yes, I want my tombstone in lowercase.

Speaking of tombstones, I can’t wait for Halloween. And with that complete nonsequitur, I’m off.

Jenni